A Guide for Life’s Biggest Decisions with Abby Davisson #607

Enter Abby Davidson and her new book that she's co authored, Money and Love and Intelligent Roadmap for Life's Biggest Decisions. And in the book, Abby she lays out a framework to help empower folks to make the best strategic decisions without having to sacrifice their careers or their personal lives. It's the common nation of the rational with the emotional, and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Abby, thank you for joining us. I'm delighted to be here.

Thanks for having me, have you were glad to have you and glad to get into touch an easy subject. This must have been a quick book to write, taken no time. Sounds like, you know, it's just one of those things that's intuitive, right, just absolutely just back of the napkin and a few meals. We're good. Yeah, by the seat of your pants. With these big old decisions, right, the ones that kind of make or break our lives,

to change us as people. But um, yeah, the first question we ask people who come on the on the show, we want to know what's your craft beer equivalent? What do you suppore John while you're saving and investing for your future. Well, funny story about that. When I was growing up, my parents, who are big savers, you know, both born and raised in the Midwest, spent money on

two things. One was experiences. They I joked that they were like millennials without knowing it, so they we'd go to restaurants, we'd see Broadway shows, we traveled, and and books and my mom was trained as a librarian, and I just couldn't get it. I was like, we you know, we can get these for free, we can go to the library. And I just didn't make sense to me why we could cook meals at home but we would spend money at restaurants. And fast forward now, the two

things that I splurge on our experiences and books. So you know, the apple does not fall far from the tree, even if you are a little skeptical when you are younger. That's funny. Yeah, I feel like that's a response I hear all the time from super intelligent folks. Are like, I spare no expense on books, and I like to read. I don't read as much as I would like to, though, But I'm always amazed though that people don't utilize the

library as much as they can. I'm using Libby for audio books all the time, but I get it, and especially if you're like the iPhones, so it's always there. But if you're the kind of person like your mark those pages and you like to go back and you're an avid reader, I mean a book is still well worth the price, absolutely, And I have two little kids,

and so it's really fun to see. Actually I have books that my mom wrote inscriptions to me in, you know, Charlotte's Web when we read it together, And now I get to read that to my kids and they see, you know, the note that their grandma wrote in. So I love that we we do something similar with with every I guess of the more serious books that we read, we always try to write our name and the date on there as well. Same things sort of Joel like, like

like you and I do with our board games. Whoever, it's a record of who who is one recently, it's a record of who has held that copy and read it. But I love that Abby. So speaking of of your book, let's kind of like dive into money and love. What was the impetus behind the book? Why did you and your co author write it? Yeah? Well, I when I was in my early to mid twenties, I really struggled with how to make big life decisions. And you know, like everyone, you know, you're making them a lot in

that stage. Right, Should I move to a new city even if I don't have a job there, just because I want to live there? Um, when I do get a job, offer multiple offers if I'm lucky, you know which one should I take? Is this person that I'm dating the on? Um? Should I turn down a full scholarship to one grade school to go to maybe your other? Your top choice? And so these are all decisions I faced, and but I just I didn't feel great about how I was making them. It didn't stop me from making decisions,

but I just felt uncertain about my approach. And then when I was in graduate school, I took a class taught by my co author, Mirah Strober, and suddenly I realized why this was so hard, and I you know why I was going around about my decision making all wrong, And it's because the conventional wisdom is that if you have a money decision to make, think about it with your head, look at the four one k off or for the job, think about the salary, the career progression,

and if that front, yeah, And if you have a relationship decision to make, you know, just follow your heart. You know, how does that person make you feel? But you know, in reality, money and love decisions are completely intertwined, and if your process doesn't take this reality into account, you're going to miss a critical part of the picture. And so I took Myra's class and just this light bulb went off, and I happened to be dating someone at the time who was also in the class. We

had met at graduate school. We've been dating for about a year, and we were in our second year, so we were about to graduate, and we need to make decisions like should we look for jobs and in the same city, and if we end up in the same city, should we move in together? And because of Myra's class, we were forced into some really uncomfortable conversations that we didn't feel ready to make um or feel ready for, but it turned out to be so critical to building

the foundation of relationship. And we're fast forward today. We have been married thirteen years, we have two kids, We've navigated lots of job changes, and so we wrote the book so that others would have access to the same information. We didn't want it to be the best kept secret of Stanford Business School. Yeah, no, I like that bringing that to the masses. And it sounds like that class was helpful to getting you both on the same page with kind of so the ways you think about some

of these complex decisions. And one of the things you mentioned that what you say, a big part of making better decisions in this arena is to not make decisions too hastily, right, So is part of the problem sometimes

that we're just we're rushing things absolutely. I mean, we as humans do not like uncertainty, and so when we're weighing multiple options, you're actually sitting in uncertainty or you're kind of in this pause, and so our tendency, it's human nature, is to just get to the other side of the decision, like just just make a decision, and um, it turns out while that make might make us more comfortable in the moment, it could lead to some things

that we regret over the longer term. And so we definitely advocate slowing down and not making certainly those big decisions overnight. Yeah, I feel like and I mean, just our world today, it seems is only encouraging us to make those decisions incredibly quickly, just the amount of information that we're inundated with. Right. But with that mind though, you can plan things out perfectly, right, but the world it likes to throw us curveballs, both personally but then

also just from a from a macro perspective. Just think about everything that we've experienced over the past couple of years. So how would you recommend for folks to factor in the inevitability of uncertainty when it comes to their decision making processes. Yeah? Absolutely, I mean, if if nothing else, the last few years has taught us that you can make plans. But you know, the saying is, uh, you

people plan and God laughs right. Yeah, Um, so we certainly aren't saying, oh, if you follow this process, it will just be like clockwork. But what we do believe and we've road tested what we call our five Seas framework over the past several years, and not this has not been a smooth, you know, paved road, right. We've been like in a jeep with potholes and mudslides and monsoons.

Like it's been very uncertain, tricky terrain. And we we know that even when those inevitable curve balls get thrown at us, if you're following a says that you are aware of that you are intentional about that, you feel more confident on the other side, regardless of of the outcome, and you feel like you've actually approached it in a thoughtful way, and no matter what happens that you didn't expect, you can't say that you didn't do your best in

terms of actually approaching it. Yeah, that's a good point. I think even if you end up getting down the road and you're like, man, I kind of wish I'd gone the other route, at least you put it through a rigorous process, right, And it's tougher to beat yourself up endlessly because you went through some sort of framework.

And you talk about the five Seas framework in the book, Can you give us a brief overview of what that looks like we're going to talk about in a bit some of the major decisions that you cover and how to think through them. But I think the framework could be helpful to kind of get to that. Now. Yeah, i'll give you, I'll give you kind of a high level of the five season. Then I'll just go deeper into one that I think your listeners will especially be

interested in. So the first is clarify what's important to you. The second is communicate with the people who are involved in the decision. The third is choices, evaluate all the possible choices, the fourth is check in with friends, family,

trusted resources, and the fifth is consequences. And I want to just touch on this consequences step because you know, I imagine people listening to the show are thinking a lot, particularly about the financial consequences of decisions, and just hypothetically so um by a house. It's way outside my proctory. It's one of the consequences of that. Yeah. So I think again, human nature is that we think a lot

about the near term consequences. We actually overweight Research shows the near term consequences of decisions, and so when you're making a big life decision, it's important to make yourself think about all the different time horizons, right, not just the short term, say like between now and six months, but the medium term, say, you know, six months to a couple of years, and then you know, what's the long term consequences beyond a couple of years and and

those it's important to overcome that UM near term bias by by tricking our brains and to plane out those consequences. And you can certainly do things like assigned possible outcomes to positive and negative consequences. You can, you know, get nerdy like my husband and I did and assigned probabilities and create decision trees. UM. Talk about that if you're interested.

But UM, you know it, just making sure that you've sort of played things out, not just what you can kind of imagine you're going to be faced with in in kind of the next couple of months, but further down the road can be really helpful to UM. Examining the possible consequences of your actions. Yeah, I like that, and I think one of the things that it makes me think about is even just the first question we asked you out of the gate, what's your craft beer equivalent?

Because I think it's important for people to identify that, like, what is it that you want to spend money on right now, even while you're being smart with your money for the future, Because if you don't have that outlet, if you don't have that release valve, there are consequences to that too, right to not enjoying at least some

of the money that comes into your life. So I think even a question like that is important for helping fuel the money decisions that we make, because there are long term and short term consequences that we bear, and if we don't, you know, use our money proactively in ways that are going to make us happy in the here and now, it's the investing for the long term might be short lived. So those are I think that thinking about it in terms of different time periods for

the possible consequences is really wise. So I was actually I was curious which of the five sees that you thought might be most consequential to our listeners, avvy, But what, like, what is it about like long term thinking versus short term thinking? Like is it just because we experience the short term most immediately most directly, that we're only thinking about the here and now and oftentimes we're not thinking

about our future selves. Like it makes you think about how like we we've recommended before Joel and I to like mess around with the face app even and it's like, let's see what you might look like in fifty years with future you, because oftentimes I think we do have a tough time thinking that far off in the future. But I'm I guess I'm curious to hear your thoughts

as well as to why it is that we do that. No, that's exactly right, and I think there have been studies showing that when you do see renderings of yourself in the future, you do make better decisions for the long term.

It's actually one of the reasons I love having a co author who's in her eighties, because she's seen so many decades of life that I haven't yet, and so it's very helpful when there is a um something that happens right like a pandemic, to say, Okay, well, I haven't quite seen this before, but I do know that we're going to come out of this, and so that

long term perspective is so helpful. And you can't get that unless you've lived it in a lot of ways, but you can sort of trick your brain UM into thinking that by playing out the longer term consequences over decades. And you can do that with your budget, right your financials and UM certainly before you make big decisions like buying a house, people do that, but you don't always

do that with UM relationship decisions right with UM. You know, getting married, you might do a budget for a wedding, but maybe you're not UM modeling out what it would look like to combine debt over time. And those are some things that is really a really important to think about in the long term. Yeah, well, I like what you said to age group, Like I feel like we we are. We tend in modern America to silo amongst

age groups. And there is something massively beneficial about having a relationship with your grandparents, about having an older neighbor next door that you look in on, take and from them, you know, like, yeah, we we are are we We value youth in our Yeah, and in many ways to our detriment. Um. I want to nail in on one of the other sees for a minute, Abbey before we kind of get into some of the specific topics you cover in the book. Communication right easier said than done.

Most of us were not great at it. Uh, And so can you give some advice on when and how to communicate effectively when you're kind of talking through some of these major decisions. What does communication look like? Kind of broadly speaking. Yeah, well, so the first thing to keep in mind before you communicate is knowing where you stand, what you want and so that's hopefully what you've done

in the first step. So when you get to the communicate step, this is you know, communicating with anyone who's involved in a big decision, so not making an assumption of what that person might value or or find important. You know, the biggest thing to keep in mind when you're starting a conversation is when to do it right,

especially if you're talking about these big meadia topics. Don't do it as you're you know, starting the morning rush to get the kids out the door for school and you're trying to remember all the backpacks and homework folders and lunches, right, that's not an excellent time to make sure that you're able to be calm and keep keep your head about you. So, you know, I personally what works for me is to do it on hikes. My

husband and I are big hikers. And so we'll just kind of get out of our daily you know, all the piles of laundry and and the dishes that need to be done, go out on a hike, let our kids, you know, run up ahead, and then have a conversation about some of these bigger topics when we're just kind of in neutral territory, when we're in nature. Um, that can be really helpful because you're not surrounded by the

stressors of day to day life. So thinking about the setting of where you communicate is equally, if not more important than thinking through what you're going to communicate. And certainly, you know, let's say, the last thing I want to share about this is is listening. Right, So many of us, when we're talking, especially about big things that make us anxious, we try to just get our thoughts out as quickly as possible and just you know, make sure that the

other person has heard us. But but really, when you're communicating, it is a conversation, and you want to make sure you're listening just as much as um as you're talking, if not more. Right, the whole old adage about like the two ears one mouth, and that's about the amount of time that you should be spending, and I think it's true, especially about these big decisions. I love it. Yeah.

Now I love in particular that you you and your husband do that while you're hiking, just as a way to kind of diffuse the situation, especially if it's something that's uh a topic that might come with heightened emotions.

And Okay, so along these lines in your book, you reference the Gottman's who there are there these relational experts, but you lay out the negative communication styles that they mentioned, Like what do we need to avoid when it comes to comes to these kinds of interaction besides just having it uncomfortably in the morning at a terrible time, Like,

what are the other negative communication methods that we can sidestep. Yeah, well, they say that they can predict within like fifteen seconds of a conversation whether a couple is going to get divorced just based on their communication styles. So I think that's fascinating. But yeah, I mean, certainly, um, what they do not like is people who are who just shut down. You know, that's called stonewalling, right you you, Um, one person introduces a topic and the other person just refuses

to engage. I mean, that is definitely a recipe for disaster because you might try to turn a blind eye to these conversations, but life is going to happen whether

you're you know, engaged with them or not. And so if you can, you know, have the conversation with your partner, even tried to do it on neutral territory as possible and diffuse a situation certainly, making sure that you're you're engaging, that you're you know, thinking about yourselves sitting on the same side of the table against the problem as opposed to it's me against you. It's like, no, the problem is you know, we have our kids going to college

and we're gonna have to save for that. Not oh, you're spending this much and you're spending that much. It's like no, Actually, let's be a united front against the problem. And the more you can sort of think of the

discussion like that, the better off you'll be. Like that that are We've got more to get to including we just want to really dive in now on those additional chapters where you literally give people frameworks for how to think through the biggest love and money decisions in their lives, dating and marriage. We're talking about uh prenups, about having kids, Uh, insurance, things like that, where you choose to live. We're gonna get too questions on all of the above right after this.

All right, we are back from the break talking with Abby Davison. Let's talk about some of the I guess, the major decisions that relate to love and money that a lot of folks encounter just throughout their lives, Like what should folks consider when it comes to dating and when it comes to marriage, because you know, these are some pretty big decisions. These are choices that are going to have massive, a massive impact in both realms when it comes to your money and when it comes to

relationships and love. Yeah, I mean, money is such a big topic and we are so strongly influenced by our own money stories and and so it's really important to tell them to each other early and just get that baggage out on the table so that you know what you're dealing with. And you know, one of the things that my husband and I talked about early on was debt. Actually I had taken on student debt to go to grad school, but I knew I was going to work for a nonprofit after I graduated, and so um My

Stanford was going to pay back my loans. That was one of the reasons I chose to attend there is that they had that policy. But I knew that if we did get married. Once we got married, they were going to take both of our assets into account and I would have had I had to disclose his assets in addition to mine. And so we talked about that. This was like even before you know we uh we be proposed and we got engaged, we talked about how after that happened, you know, what would happen to my debt?

You know, would he help me pay back my loans because he was certainly going to prevent me from getting Stanford to pay it back and so, um, you know, just just talking a out things that we have, like debt. But also, you know, I love the question that you start out with, you know, what budget item do you spend reckless amounts of money on? Because we don't want someone to say, like, oh, no, that thing that brings you joy, like you can't do that anymore exactly, no

more craft beers for the rest of the table. Get the run away. Yeah, okay, So when you say get it on the table, I am curious, like you're probably not talking about bringing your budget and all the dead dead bodies in your closet to the first date, right, Like, how do you have a formula? How do you suggest people actually do that? Yeah, well, actually in the book, we do have exercises that we have at the end of each chapter, and so there is one at the

end of the dating chapter. And it could be an easy way in to be like, hey, I just read this book and they have some questions that they suggest couples talk about when they're you know, they think they want to spend more time together. And that was the thing about the timing of this class for me. It was, like I said, not the type of converse aations I would want to have after you know, a year, let

alone like one or two dates. But because we were forced to have these conversations as part of the class, we were really well served by it. So I would say, before it feels comfortable, and so your definition of comfortable might be like after three dates. Um, you know, if you know you want to spend more time with this person, it's better to get these questions on the table. The

diving board is not going to get any lower. It's always going to be scary to have these conversations, and so better to find out early that the person that you are interested in grew up moving every few months because their parents couldn't pay their rent and and and so that's actually going to influence some of the decisions you make together. And so, you know, trust is such an important part of relationships. Um, in order to communicate well with each other, you have to trust each other.

And so we we believe that these questions can actually help build trust and that can lead to more success over time. Yeah, I mean you kind of talked about timeline, right, so oftentimes it might be sooner, it might be before you actually feel comfortable. Um, you know, you might be having these conversations earlier on. And as far as the actual topics you mentioned, you and your husband, you'll you'll

talk a decent bit about debt. What other sort of topics do you think couples should kind of delve into when it comes to some of these some of these questions, Yeah, some of these ways that money is going to impact a relationship like that. Yeah, so we certainly your approach to combining your money, right, So, there are i'd say

three options. You can pool everything, you can pull some things or you can keep entirely separate accounts and UM those You know, people are very influenced by what they see their parents do, maybe what they're seeing their friends do. Especially if you're making different amounts of money, it's important to get on the same page about you. How are you going to approach your your financial combination UM formula

and what might that look like over time? And so Ross and I had approach that was we at the beginning, before we were engaged, we had a certain percentage of our salaries because I was working for a nonprofit he was working for a hedge funds who were making wildly different amounts. That first year after business school, we contributed the same percentage of our salaries into a shared at pool that we then used to pay rent, groceries, things

like that. And then we actually increase that percentage over time, right we when we got engaged, we bumped it up a bit more. When we got married, bumped it up more. And then we had kids and we're like, okay, there's no like. I mean, we do have a very small separate account that we used to pay for gifts for each other or if I go on a girls weekend, UM, just because we don't, you know, want to have to check with each other about everything, and we don't anymore,

but in those early years we did. We said, like over a hundred dollars um, we will check with each other before we spend it, and and that really helped us again build that financial trust that you know. Now you know we we don't check in on those things, but it's important early on to layout what might your approach be? Very cool? Yeah, I like that yelled at percentages because it's like, well we got this them aout

a buying even though the dollar amount looks different. Yeah, for sure, and that can hold up when people make radically different amounts for sure. Yeah. You talk about pre nups to you get into that authority question, and I know it can be an emotionally charged topic. How how do you think couples should discuss whether or not they should go that route, because sometimes even just putting the prenup concept on the table can cause hurt feelings. It's true,

it's a it's a very charged issue. But actually prenups are on the rise. And you know, millennials who have seen uh their parents get divorced, they are delaying, you know, waiting longer to get married, So there have more assets that have accumulated than maybe their parents did. UM. More and more are actually going the prenup route. What we think can be really valuable is doing all the steps that you would take to create a prenup, but stopping

short of creating the document itself. And so that same level of UM disclosure, that same talking about UM what's important to me, can accomplish this same thing as the certainly doesn't accomplish it legally, but it forces you to have the same conversations, which we think are just good conversations. It's just good hygiene. UM. And then you know, actually, my co author, with her second husband, hired one attorney to create a prenup and the attorney said, but wait

a minute, this is usually not how it works. You you have your attorney and my then your husband has his attorney. And they said, no, we know. We we just were approaching this together and the relationship is the client, which I thought was a really interesting approach. Yeah, usually the lawyer's fight to the death, and you know, you see what shakes out in the end, then it already feels like a battle at that point. So the ability

for you to come in together. I think that is so important, Abby, and like it kind of takes me back to just what you're talking about. Wh it comes to communicating about your finances, like your five c's knowing what it is that you want. How that is so important, And like you said, going through the motions, going through the steps can help you to just to communicate and to kind of get on the same age without even technically creating a prenup. I think that's that can be

incredibly valuable. All Right, So let's say you you're dating, you have the prenup, you get married, and then kids are on the table. That's another question that you tackle in this book, which is I think it's amazing like to to actually have some concrete ways to help people walk through a big old life decision like this is really helpful. But uh, it can also be a really

difficult financial decision. When you look at the stats, something what like three thousand dollars is what it's predicted to cost to raise a kid from the age of zero to eighteen. So it's it's not just like, hey, this is going to change our lives. It's like, hey, this might change our whole financial trajectory as well. So how do you suggest couples discuss that major topic? Yeah, it's it's so material, um, but it is something that I mean, I certainly didn't know even though I took the class,

Like what what would the cost that the money costs be? Um? I mean I'm sure it was covered in the class, but I didn't like pay attention because that was so far um in the future for me, right, Like I was just trying to decide if this guy that I was dating was the one who was going to end up with and so, UM. What I love about the way that you know we wrote this is that, like that's a separate chapter. So if you're not ready to even go there yet, like just you know, don't don't

look at it. But when you're ready, then yes, you can kind of go in with your eyes wide open because it's three dollars through through eighteen and then you know another two hundred for college. Right, so you're looking at half a million dollars to raise, um, and send a kid one kid to college. Um. I think you know, the the other important costs that you need to think about is time, right, because the money is one thing.

But I'm sure you know, you're both parents. Um, it is tremendously time intensive, especially today given the expectations of what parents are involved with with their kids to raise a kid, and so before you you know, make those decisions, it's it's talking through how do we anticipate spending our time? Right? Do you want to continue your career? How do you feel about that? You know? How about you know the

other person in the relationship? Right, It's it's I think we are living in a time where the percentage of couples who have two careers is higher than ever. It's it's increased, you know, so significantly over the last you know, um, several decades. And there was a little blip in COVID, but you know, I think we're mostly back and so UM, I think it's important for people to be thinking about how they want having a child to affect or not

their ability to pursue a career. And then that means childcare, right, Um, so who is going to care for that child? Um? While if we're both pursuing careers, what type of childcare do we want? Can we afford it? Um? Is it available where we live? Um? Is it high quality? And so all of these things are important to go in with your eyes wide open about um. If you if you assume that, oh, you know, my parents are just going to take care of our kids when we have one.

Have you talked to your parents about whether that's something they want to do? Sometimes grandparents are like, no, I did that. This is your turn. I just want to play with them on the weekends. Right, you might need to figure that one on. Sorry about that, right? So that's the communicate stuff, right, and make sure you talk

to the people involved. Yeah, I mean I like that you brought up choldcare because it is so incredibly expensive and I mean families today, like especially ones with with two or more kids, they just have you know, more difficult decisions ahead, uh to make on that front. So I mean, do you have specific tips for folks like as they're trying to determine, like, all right, are we going to pursue the career? Are we gonna pay for childcare? How do you recommend for folks to talk through that

difficult decision? Yeah, well we have another exercise about it. And this is the thing, right, it's it's UM can feel a little bit like you're in school again going through and like working on a worksheet. But I mean, at least for me, it's helpful to have that intentionality because I mean, once you have the kid, like, you know, you aren't thinking very clearheadedly in those first two months, right as you're like trying to you know, up at all hours. And so for a few years, Okay, I'll

go long, fair fair. I mean my oldest I did not um. But uh, you know, we actually did have some help with our kids overnight because we knew. I knew I do not do well on sleep. And so this is the thing about clarifying what's important or I did not do well on no sleep. I do very well on sleep. Uh. And that's the thing about the clarify step, right, it's just like knowing what's important to you. I I knew from like just the history of being me that if I don't sleep, I am a disaster.

And so like that was a way that we chose to spend some money. Actually it was a gift, a financial gift from our parents, who weren't able to be helpful for various reasons, but they actually paid help to pay for someone to be in our home and take care of our kids, um overnight for some nights a week because it was so important to to us to have that kind of help and we couldn't get it

through family. So um, but yeah, I think I think having the ability to zoom out before you're in the thick of it, clarify what's important to you, community ate with each other about, you know, your career, aspirations, your other things that are important for you to accomplish alongside having children can really set you up well for then when you're in the thick of it and you you know, so sort of like building that foundation, right, if you've built your house on a solid history of being able

to communicate about tricky topics, then what you're you know, kind of building the upper floors. Once you have maybe one two, I know you have more than that kids, then then you know it's it's even if the wind is blowing and the house is swaying, like it's it's on solid ground. Yeah. I like that. You also you document the rise of Dad's staying at home in the book, which he's so true. I'm the traditional fifty eras model

fortunately is no longer the norm in our society. How do you encourage folks to think about gender roles when it comes to work, family, and chores, as those gender roles are changing, like it, it makes some of those discussions based on how you're raised, based on what you saw growing up, based on kind of expectations that you have.

Because of that, it can make some of those conversations a little more difficult, right, absolutely, Yeah, I think, Um, the stats are pre COVID, but it's a little less than of dad's are staying at home and people are trading off over time, right, I think that that is uh an interesting phenomenon and actually, you know, really gives people flexibility to not feel like they're locked into one

role over time. Right, Like I am always going to be the breadwinner no matter how much I hate my job, I have to stay in it because I'm the one who brings home a salary. I mean that that is very freeing to both people. UM, in a relationship, if you are clear on what people want and not to

make assumptions based on generals. I mean, there's so much research that same sex couples actually have more equitable distribution of labor because they have to talk about it, because they can't default to what a society think, you know, I should do based on my agenda, and so we certainly think that you know, dividing household chores, childcare responsibilities

are is, you know, same approach as everything else. Right, be intentional, UM, clarify what's important, to clarify what parts of UM, what parts you hate doing UM, and make sure that you're you know, you're you're talking about what each person will do and what you will outsource. And you know that outsource piece comes with the financial implication, right, so so how do you you know budget for that?

And that's UM. And I remember actually in Myra's class, we had an exercise where we had to get with a pretend partner. I did not actually work with Ross for this, but we uh, you had to say like, okay, here are all the things involved in running a house and having kids, like what is PERSONET going to do? What does person be going to do? And what are

you going to outsource? And you've got assigned different salaries and you had to observe like where the power dynamics fell based on you know, those salaries and and through that you know, negotiation exercise. It was fascinating. No, that's good. It makes me think of like I've always sworn that at no time in my adult life will like break leaves because I was so scarred by all the leaves I had to rake as a child. That's that's why

you have kids. I know, yeah, but it's they're yeah, they're getting there there, but it's it's one of tho things where I have outdoor sat and I know it's not the most frugal choice, but it's one of those things where like for me, it's worth the money. And that's something we had to talk through. Similar to getting our house clean once a month, We're like, Okay, we kind of want to do it more, but no, we're

gonna stick to once a month. But at least that gives us like a baseline cleaning once a month, and we're willing to pay for that. But those are conversations that we had to have, like do we feel comfortable spending the money? How important is this to us? I also, I love that thing that you said about It can go back and forth, like in the beginning days of

building this business, my wife took on more responsibility. And now my wife she's in grad school and she's gonna start going into her career and I'm I'm going to take on more responsibility at home for a time, and so I think knowing that it can be a pendulum that's swinging and not just like hey, you just have to eat it and sacrifice what you want for the greater good of our family or for us financially. That's

a really helpful way to think about it. Um, Abby, we have a couple more questions we want to get to. We want to talk about how to choose where to live in steely enough there's like a personality component to that, and then careers, how you think through career stuff. We wanted to talk about both of those things. Will get to that right after this. All right, we are back from the break talking through a guide for life's biggest

decisions with Abby Davison uh Abbey. Before we we talk about careers, we're gonna talk about geography, because I mean, where we choose to live like that's another decision that affects our entire lives. We know that very well because we actually we moved our our families earlier this year. Those are difficult decisions with a bunch of factors to consider. But how do you recommend folks sort through just the money, the relational that the lifestyle factors when it comes to

choosing a place to put down roots. Well, it's so interesting because when we were researching this book, we surveyed hundreds of people. We send out a survey to lots of folks, and where to when to move and where to live was the number one topic that people wanted to talk about on the survey. And I think it's because that, um, well, part of it was we sent it out during COVID, so people were in their homes

more than ever before. It gave us a lot more of an imagination to think about changing where we live, Like I hate this place. Yes, so no matter how much space you had, it was not enough. Um But I think, you know, it really did give us a moment to kind of step back and say, like, hey, what's important to me? And people talked about, you know, some of the ways that they had made the decisions before being about where the job prospects were the best

for their particular career. Suddenly, when remote work opened things up, people had an opportunity to reassess and say, actually, it's important to be close to my family or you know, we saw a lot of people actually comment on how issues of identity factored into their decisions, right, Um, maybe they're in a mixed race couple and in certain places they you know, they didn't want their kid to have like an eyebrow raised and people let's say like no, but what are you right, And so they wanted to

be in a place with lots of mixed race couples and so, UM, the vibe, if you will, of a place is is very important, you know, in addition to all of those the financial and the career and the

you know, the family pieces. UM. I think there's an interesting book that we read as part of the research by Richard Florida that talks about the personality traits of different parts of the United States and how um they've done surveys and they discovered that traits like neuroticism, UM are concentrated in the New York metro area and the Midwestern Heartland, and and traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness is like the Big five personality types they call it, are

concentrated in the Eastern sun Belt. So there could be you know, places that have a dominant personality if you will, that that might be a good fit for you based on your specific personality traits, which I think is fascinating. I thought that was fascinating too. That was the most one of the most interesting parts that I picked up on, And I was like, makes sense that I'm in the

sunbelt now, kind of agreeable? Yeah, I think so well, And so yeah, that was really interesting, And I think that's a good point, like when it comes to those external factors of what you're looking for, but then there's also a money aspect too, because if you're like I really want to live in a high rise condo in a downtown city it's like a major metropolitan area specifically, if you want to live in a place like New York City or San Francisco, that comes with significant money

trade off. So the vibe might be exactly what you're looking for, but the reality is on the money front, you might not be able to afford it. So those are really difficult topics to cover as well, because the money can vary so wildly between places that you might want to live. If you want to live in you know, even a downtown Birmingham, right, that's going to be a

very different money commitment than living in New York City. Absolutely, And I think along with those conversations and you know, the career impact conversations are important to have to write. It takes a lot of effort and commitment to make sure that you know, if if both people in a relationship want to advance their careers, that to make sure a move isn't going to hurt someone's career, right. So UM kind of like a hippocratic oath, if you will,

for people couples moving to say like, first, do no harm. UM. It's it's certainly important to go in UM intentionally with career moves because if you're you know, and I think lots of professions, you don't have a whole lot of control. I think of UM academics, I think of you know,

doctors that get matched to certain residency programs, right. But but having those conversations before you go through that matching process or before you apply to certain universities for tenure track positions, UM, just to get on the same page about what you're both hoping for over the long term career wise, financially, UM. Kind of the other pieces of

the picture that are important to you. I mean, when Ross and I were deciding where to move after grad school, we based on the industries that we were pursuing new York City would have been a top place for us to look, right. He was interested in in finance, and I was interested in social innovation and impact, and I knew there would be amazing career prospects for us in New York City. But I also knew because I lived there before grad school, that people work all the time,

and so you know I, I said. We we had a conversation about it, and we said, yeah, we'd have amazing jobs, we'd never see each other, and so we actually crossed New York City off the list because we valued all the things outside of our jobs in addition to, you know, our career ambitions and so a lot different in New York City. Exactly. Well, that's true, that's true. It was something that's one of our top things that

we love to do. She didn't want those neurotic vibes, Like, well, I grew up with the neurotic vibe, so I take them with me, but it's better if I don't have them all around me. Considering that your specific location. When when it's you by yourself, you can make oftentimes the it's an easier decision, but certainly when you bring somebody else into the mix, that is a conversation that's worth having.

And you know, like, like, how do you encourage folks then to to kind of find the balance between finding fulfilling work that they're passionate about and then at the same time, like you got folks who are looking to pursue a career that might allow them to achieve their financial goals. Like there it seems like oftentimes those two things are sort of that odds with with each other. And so how do you recommend for folks to kind

of reconcile those two things. Yeah, well, I go back to the five c's right, Um, what's important to you? Is it important to make it as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Is it important that you have a career that gives you the flexibility to kind of have periods of intensity, but then also be able to like go see your kids school play, um, and not feel like you're chained to you know, your email all

the time. So I think once you, once you have that clarity, you can then have those conversations too, because it's all about tradeoffs. It's not we can't we can't do everything, and so being able to say okay, I'm okay with driving a ten year old car. I'm okay with, you know, living in a house that's not you know, hasn't doesn't have the fanciest new kitchen. Right. I don't need you know, fancy brands. What I do want is to be able to take three amazing vacations every year. Right.

And so I guess having that the ability to get so clear, you know, specifically financially on what financial freedom, if you will, means to you, and then you know, how do yeah, and then how do you craft your your life and career around that, not be a slave to kind of what what someone else told you was,

you know, a prestigious career. I mean, that's what's so tricky about so many people who are achievement oriented, right, and go through, um, checking off boxes for so many years, and then all of a sudden they get out and they're like, wait a minute, I've checked all these boxes off and I'm miserable. Um. Yeah, So so not allowing other people's ambitions to get on your life list, um, And that just takes a lot to discipline and a lot of self awareness to be able to sort those

things out. Yeah, and you said checking boxes, it's it's almost like it's a worksheet and like everybody is doing the same things, and truly what it does, like me, what we're talking about here is like being creative. It takes pausing and thinking and being creative and imagining and sort of uh like casting a vision of what what you want your life to look like. That is knowing yourself right, knowing what you want and not just falling

blindly what everyone else wants. And I think, yeah, I guess last question for you here, Abby, Like I feel like a lot of what's being sold to us when it comes career wise, He says, it's like your career should be incredibly fulfilling, should be deeply meaningful to you. And the reality is are a lot of people who are incredibly happy folks who don't have that relationship to their job. So do you feel like that's oversold and that maybe we should learn to divorce meaning from the

work that we do a little bit more. If we're able to, like you said, be untethered from our email. If he gives us copious amounts of free time to do things that we actually love, how should we think about that dichotomy? Yeah, I mean I absolutely think that um My father in law says like it's a job. That's why they call it work, right, It's not supposed to fulfill everything. But I think, you know, my generation was certainly told that your job, you know, your career

should be everything to you. And um, you should find

something that you know gives you passion and meaning. And I certainly think passion and meaning are critical, but I think there are places to get them other than you know, your your job, and so um, I think zooming out and and not just allowing your job and what you do for pay to to have so much weight put on it can be very freeing and and um, and I think having you know, certainly in this in this day and age, as we're hearing about layoffs, and we're

hearing I mean, we've been through so many trends, right, We've had the great resignation and then we had quiet quitting an hour into layoffs. And I think, you know, really, despite whatever we call it, I think people are looking for more purpose and meaning in their lives. And so hopefully there is a component your job that gives that

to you. But knowing what those other big rocks are, if you will in your life that you want to make sure you have room for um is as you know, it's even more important so that then you can um shape your life around those big rocks and not assume any one of them is going to be your be all and end all. Right, I mean, I I adore my husband. He is not going to fulfill every single need I have, right, I mean it's just like that,

right for a job, It's like it's not fantastic. Um, I adore him and when I want and heat, but he's an introvert, right, And so like we recharge our ballot batteries really differently. When I want like a great gossip session and a good conversation, I'm going to go have a drink with a girlfriend And that's totally fine. So it's the same thing with your job. It's like, you know what you're going to get out of it,

be eyes wide open about that. But then make sure that there are other elements in your world, in your life that are going to meet those other needs that you have. I love it. I love the framework that y'all have presented here in your book, Money and Love. It's going to be available next month in January. But working folks learn more about what y'all are up to and specifically, I guess to where to purchase that book. Yeah.

So we have a website, Money Love Book dot com that has links to places to purchase it, including where people can get signed copies if they wanted. It has a fun quiz on um that can help people learn more about their money and love decision making type, and all of our social media channels are on there too. Great way to combine money and relationship advice, which is tough to do, but you guys, I feel like pulled

it off really well in this book. So, Abby, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. It was really fun. All right, man, that was a super fun conversation with it was Abby Davidson. I feel like just a way to kind of think through the biggest life decisions that you have, and they often involve both those things love

and money, right, and they feel sometimes at odds. So I don't know, I guess my first question for you is, as always, like, what was your big takeaway from this combo? My big takeaway well, and one of the things she said is that these two things aren't at odds. Oftentimes we have too there's elements of both that we need to tap when it comes to any decision that that

we're making. Uh, we can't just completely turn on robotic rational mats when it comes to business decisions and then only save emotional, you know, decisions for like the family or things that you know that I'm personally interested in from like a emotional like love standpoint, when it, I guess comes to relationship, I enjoy the work I do. I don't want to make it sound like that, why do you hate me? Man? That the work we do

is only its business only? But yeah, there's a lot of different aspects that we need to take into account well as we're making these big decisions. But my big takeaway came, I guess maybe kind of early on in the conversation and Abby mentioned how hard And I mentioned this at the time because it stood out to me, But Abby heard her, hasn't They go on these hikes and they have some of these bigger, harrier conversations while

they are on their hikes. And I loved her too about letting the kids run up ahead, because there, you know, there's there's times when it's just like, all right, the kids don't need to hear us talking about this particular topic, but I really like how it allows you both And she kind of was talking about this as well, like she's like imagining, imagine both of you on the same side of the table and you're working against sort of like the problem, whatever the problem is. We're both looking

at it as opposed to looking at each other. And you kind of do that when you are doing an activity, when you're participating in something, when you're hiking, you're both hiking alongside each other, uh, and you're able to have that conversation that way. And plus it just makes it so much more fun. Right, Like we we talked about couples going on like money dates. It's like, okay, don't

make your budget meeting. This like face to face conference room like spreadsheets, printingdal like pencil sharpened sort of events. It's like man like crack open a bottle of wine, go to a brewery, sit down, talk about money in that kind of environment. And and that's why, you know, we think that us going to lead to much more successful conversations as opposed to the nose and knows we're gonna duke this thing out right, Yeah, what about you?

What was your big dick away. I think towards the end of the conversation actually which she said, it's all about trade offs, and it made me think of this Toma soul quote, who is my favorite economist. He said, there are no solutions, only trade offs, and that is the reality of human life, is that so much of the time there is no right way. It's to choose your own adventure book. And so you are talking about tradeoffs. No matter which direction you go in. Living in New

York City might be the time of your life. It might be worth also from from a career, sah all the money and the connections and the fund that you have, but you also might realize, wait a second, that training my bank account, and you know what, I don't like being surrounded by a ton of neurotic people. So it's it's not the best choice for me. But there are these are trade offs, and so especially when you're having this conversation with a significant other, even if you're not

in a relationship, that's totally fine. Even making this decision individually, there are going to be trade offs with every decision. You might have to move further from family, or you might opt for a career that's more fulfilling but pays less money. Uh, And yeah, finance has come into play

with all of these decisions. But I guess just to say, there is no perfect and you're just you're hopefully trying to find the best solution for you, and that involve saying no to something good in hopes that something better

comes along in the future. I love how Abby talked in the beginning about how these five sees how this intentional process it's not always going to land you in the best possible outcome, but at least you can point back and say, hey, I went through a lot of work to come to this decision, and I can feel secure and happy knowing that I did the work to arrive here. It's it's doing the due diligence, basically, And

we don't want the whim exactly. You don't want to at the end of the day to realize, well, I don't even know how we really got here, and you don't want to just leave it a chance as to whether or not it's a good outcome. Hopefully you've done and put in all of the work possible in order to achieve what hopefully is a good result, but it may out always be a good result, and I want to say it too. Sometimes it can be something kind of off the wall, but still take that possibility and

put it through this framework. Makes me think, three of the best months of my life. We're traveling around this great country of ours, Matt quitting my job after six months and just spending time getting to know the landscape

and visiting some great national parks kind of thing. So it's you know, that doesn't sound like the best long term option, right to make no money and to quit a career route that you're embarking on early on, But for me, it was well worth it, and I think, yeah, you can still come up with a decision like that, but putting it through some sort of framework to make sure that, hey, this is really what I want right here, right now, and I'm never gonna be able to have

this opportunity again. It's worth leaving something good for something better, and I can always come back and get today job later on a bit. But yeah, I think this framework is going to be really helpful for people to make better decisions when it comes to those biggest uh question marks that come along in our lives. Yeah, yeah, dude,

I love it. I love it so much because, like as an individual, if if you know a lot, I guess a lot of this episode we did talk about relationships, but what we're also talking about, like what we're talking about right now is the process. And basically, if you are making a decision on your own, what we're saying

is to think about it. But if you're making this decision with somebody else, if you have a significant other, a partner, what we're saying then is to think about it and then talk about it, right, Because I think that's one of the other things that Abby said that was so good, is that you need to know what it is that you want first in order to communicate clearly with your partner when it comes to making some

of these large, big, huge life decisions together. I think if we don't take the time to have actually thought through what it is that we're looking for, you might make a decision as a couple, but then two years into it you're like, oh, wait a minute, I don't really like this. And of course we can all change our minds at some point down the road, but again, you want to have done the work, like you said,

you want to put in that due diligence. For sure, all right now, let's get back to the beer that we had on this episode. This was Narwhale. It's an Imperial Stout by Sierra Nevada version. This is actually, uh this this is a beer that we've had on the show before, but it's a previous years and so they you know, they it changes slightly. So this is the one that I was okay us revisioning. This is one of my favorite widely available stouts. It's comes into six pack.

It's Sierra Nevada, which means I think they're distributing all fifty states at leastffordable at least most of them, as evidenced by the fact that it comes in six packs exactly. But this is this is a delicious one, like roasted cough fee. It's definitely dark, right, it's black, it's dark rosy toast. Yeah. So if you if you like the sweeter milk stylets, this probably isn't your jam. But if you like kind of bitter coffee not a little more a little more smack in the face, yeah, this one

is going to be for you. I I really like this. This is one where I was like, I thought they stopped making it, and when I saw this, it put us on my face on the shelf. I was like, yes, they're still making it, so this is this is a really good one. I like it a lot in the wall with its crazy tooth on its head. Yeah, this is more's uh, this is more of like an espresso style coffee as opposed to like the milk styles are very much more like that fall into that flat white category.

But if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, check it out in our wall. It's an Imperial stout that you can find most likely wherever it is that you purchase your craft beer and j We forgot to mention this at the beginning of the episode, but listeners will have a chance of getting a free copy of Abby's book, Money and Love. We're gonna give away five copies.

We're partnering with her publisher, and so what you need to do to ensure that you are entered into win a copy of Abby's book is just leave us a review over at Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that

you listen to your podcasts and then send us. Just send us an email over at how to Money pod at gmail dot com, do a screenshot, send us a screen name, and by the way, if you've left or even just you know, I don't know, Oh you're gonna say, just reply to previously emails you when you've entered will include you as well, So there's a lot of folks who do that. If you're reviewed on day one, you

still deserve a shout of playing this book. Absolutely, Yeah, if you if you haven't yet left review, please leave us a great review in on Spotify, whether it's just a star rating or an actual written review on Apple Podcasts, we appreciate it. Yeah, and hopefully yeah, you can win a copy of this really fascinating new book. But just leave that review by by Thursday at noon and send that email over our way so we can get you in and we'll announce the winners on Friday's episode on

the Friday flight. That's right, buddy, all right, Well, that's gonna be it for this episode until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out. M