Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm asking the question can love survive a budget? With Doug and Heather Bonaparte. So figuring out your money is tough enough if you're flying solo. Doing it with your partner ramps up the difficulty level because you're throwing in varied money history, habits, and goals into the equation. It can create a lot of friction. So my guests today they have a lot of great advice for couples looking to do better with their finances and to create a team
vibe with their partner. So if you looked up the definition I think of power couple in the dictionary, you might just see a picture of Doug and Heather Bonaparth next to it. Doug has built his own successful financial advisor firm while simultaneously tweeting hilarious memes. And Heather is a former corporate attorney. She's the director of business affairs for that firm, bona Fide Wealth, and they've written a
fabulous new book called Money Together. Doug and Heather, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast.
Well, thanks for having us.
We're so excited to be here.
It's going to be a lovely conversation. The first question I have for anybody who comes on the show is what do you like to splurge on? What's your craft beer equivalent. I know you guys are being smart, you're saving and investing for the future, but what are you blowing money on in the meantime.
I like to splurge on, probably clothes and fashion. But then on the family front, we've really like our kids are now nine and six, and we've just aged into like our vacation era. Like, we really didn't want to spend a lot of money on vacations when the kids were younger, because they one, they have no idea what's going on. Two, it's a lot more work. It's more like like just you know, just doing the family stuff somewhere else. But now, like we all really enjoy it.
So I would say vacations are even more important than probably anything else we're spending money on right now.
Right, Yeah, I'm aligned on the vacation side. This, This is really where I'd like to spend the most money creating those experiences. So good job there, I'm being aligned. He don't lie, No, No, I'm gonna get selfish with it. I'll go with my Look, I'm a collector, a habitual one at that. I'm that nineties kid that was collecting things, you know, throughout my entire life, and right now what I am collecting is tequila. Oh oh yeah, oh yeah?
So that that truly would be your craft beer equivalent there, right, So tequila, I've been stuck in that space for at least two or three years now, and I do not see myself getting out of it. I am a little intimidated by how many bottles need to be consumed at this point to actually like get through it. So good, good job, Doug.
So okay, so what attracts you to tequila?
Are you?
And are you like going for high end fancy labels and and are you I guess this is a question. Do you ever adulterate it and make a margarita with that tequila? Or is this no, this is like you sip it by itself?
Now, now, Joel, are you sure we're going to get to talk about We'll get there? Look here today, because you just opened up a huge can of work.
The next fifteen minutes is brought to you by a gove it. These are awesome questions. Yes, I will make a margarita, and you obviously will use you know, a certain type of tequila to do that. But the great part about tequila is you don't need to spend a whole ton of money to drink really good tequila. There are thirty forty fifty dollars bottles that you can buy. They're absolutely wonderful, but I am usually sipping it like my blancos, probably more than anything else. Although aged you know,
Renisado's and the Niehos are wonderful too. We can talk about this for hours and hours, but yeah, look, there are some there are some bottles in there.
What's the most important thing.
The most important thing, guys, for anyone trying to drink tequila is that it is additive free, right, three ingredients. Right, It's water, yeast and cooked to god.
That is it? Okay? What about what about mescal?
I haven't gone down that road yet. Like I feel like the bourbon drinker is to rye, you know, and your Scotch drinkers go super pety like that is the tequila drinker trying to elevate, you know, their experience into mescal. I'm not a big smoky guy. Lots of appreciation for it. Great in a cocktail if you want that smoky you know, agave flavor, but not not what I'm sipping on. I'm usual to be looking for a high proof or a nice blanco.
Okay, good news, good, it's good to know. Yeah, let's let's talk about couples of money, because I could ask you more questions about tequila, but we'll stop here. Tell me. Tell me a little bit about your own relationship to money, maybe individually, and then what it was like to bring
that history together when you got married. I think that's often one of those things where you talk about a lot of things as a couple pre marriage, and money might be one of those things that doesn't get talked about as much as it should.
Oh yeah, I admittedly had a very unhealthy relationship with money growing up. I'm an only child and grandchild on both sides of my family. My parents divorced right as I entered my teenage years, and it really impacted just my perception of not only wealth, but just of money in general. A real picture of scarcity was painted for me for a while there in those teenage years, and also from my father's side of the family, who came from wealth, and money was kind of viewed as a tool.
Money was used to buy loyalty, and to give money was to show love, and to withhold money was to withhold love. And those are some those are some deep messages to carry into adulthood. You know. Pair that with graduating law school in the midst of the Great Recession. You know, I had chosen, you know, to go to law school because it felt like a responsible thing to do.
It felt like my path to financial independence was to earn as much money as I can in a high paying career and kind of like search for that search for that exit from those family structures, at least emotionally, right, But that's not what happened. The decision kind of flew back in my face, and I graduated in law school with six figures of student loan debt and a ton ton of shame, and so carrying all of those feelings and money scripts and emotions and yeah, shame into our
adult relationship. You know, when I say adult relationship, I talk about the time that Doug and I really began to discuss marriage and settling down and having kids and starting our adult lives together. I mean, we knew each other long before that. But when you really start to talk about coming together, merging your lives together, talking about joint and shared goals, like you really have to start to do the work to unpack some of this stuff.
Right, And when shame is there, it can be so difficult, it can it can be an inhibitor to those conversations. So I'm curious where that shame come from and maybe came from, and then how that impacted your ability to kind of merge finances and come up with a cohesive strategy together.
Sure, you know, the shame came from feeling like choosing an expensive law school. It was a huge mistake. It was a huge financial regret for me, and I started to feel like not only was I not worthy of success, but I wasn't worthy of happiness, and that I was in fact worthless. And you know, those feelings were reinforced by the labor environment that I entered into. I spent some time in private practice at a law firm. You know, being a young woman in corporate law is difficult enough
as it is now. Tried doing it, you know, following in the years of the Great Recession and being underpaid, overworked, you know, all these messages together kind of sets you up to not really being the most empowered around the financial decisions that you've made. And I think that that's one of the toughest things is looking back at that time and being like, wow, I truly felt so stuck. Had I really did not believe one, I didn't have any control, any financial control at that time, like staring
at that giant student loan balance. But I also didn't think I was worthy of making financial decisions. I really didn't. I was like, well, you messed up. This is the lot you made for yourself and you're going to pay for it for the rest of your life. And that sounds really heavy, but it really felt that heavy at the time.
Doug, where were you coming from? And what's it like to enter into a relationship with someone who's kind of feeling all those things?
Yeah, Heather pointed out, we've been together for a very long time. I mean, I'm here for everything. She said. We met as freshmen in college when we were were eighteen and nineteen, so I was along for the ride here. And just give you a little bit of background as far as where I was coming from. I was the son and grandson of serial entrepreneurs. You know, there was this lesson of always investing in yourself and you could
go out there and build something. I watched my dad do it, I saw my grandfather do it, and that was a really awesome thing to experience. My brother and I started businesses of you know, fixing computers, you know, selling things on eBay when it came around. We were kind of born with the hustle and taught that that's a good thing. And as much as there was a lot of good parts of that, there was also some
bad parts. We learned valuable lessons, you know through you know, what's like to overextend yourself, what happens when there's too much risk on the table. Particularly through that, you know, two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine period, as I was working with my father, and I think a lot of it also backfired on me and that, hey, you know, you're going to just work in family business.
My father worked with his father, and therefore it was kind of assumed I would work with my father, and you know that that blinded a person from well what do I really want? You know, all paths led me to leave my family business and go to New York City, to be with Heather and have us kind of figure it out. And here we are in two thousand and eight and nine, you know, her with multiple six figures in student loan debt, me coming up to New York figuring like, hey, well we'll figure out how to make
our lives work together. I go to business school and take on another six figures in student loan debt because at this point, like why not, you know, I was very much committed to us, you know, taking these next steps in our lives.
What's another one hundred k?
What's another one hundred k when she's got three hundred thousand?
You know? It's also a problem solver. I think that's that's what he really gets at here, is that Doug was someone who viewed problems as challenges to overcome, and I viewed it as like crippling. I didn't know how to be nimble, but the background that he came from, he only knew how to be nimble.
Right, So was that what was that like then? Was that like a breath of fresh air for you, Heather? Or was that like more debility?
It was difficult. Honestly, it was difficult because I felt like, on one hand, he couldn't possibly understand. He also never really worked in a corporate setting before, so this was something that that was a point of friction for us for many years. You know, when when he's never had that experience, it's like, sure, you can approach you know, you can approach my my situation with with a bit of naivete about like, oh, just go in and tell the partner that you know, he's a jerk.
And that I think was less of think less of that, and more back to the like I knew Heather had done well in law school and had equipped herself with a you know, vast amount of knowledge that would serve her well. And I think it's you know, short term thinking versus long term thinking. That's not you know, the entrepreneur thinks, you know, it plays long games, right, Everything I was doing was going to be a slow and
long grind to get there. And that's not to say Heather lacks, you know, the ability to think that way. Is that when you're thrusted into the environment in which she did, and you're standing down, staring down the barrel of student loan debt of that size, it is extremely difficult for me to say, hey, you've made a great
investment in yourself. It's going to take time to pan to pay off when you're carrying that shame and you're carrying the regret of the decisions you made in that three year period of time of going to law school and graduating in the recession.
Well, a very a very intelligen CFP we interviewed for the book had said that shame is not a funk. Shame is a fog. It's fear, obligation, and guilt, and it's so sometimes blinding that you just cannot see more than a foot in front of your face. And that truly was me, And that was the difference between Doug
and I during that time. Yeah, sure he had that long term thinking, but I was My judgment was so clouded by the fog of the shame that I was in that there was just no way for me to see passed it for a while, but we did.
Yeah, tell me if I'm wrong. My guess is that sometimes sometimes, maybe Heather, it was hard to even put your finger on the fact that you were feeling shame like it was guiding a lot of your decision making processes and was guiding some of those relational dynamics but you're like, I can't. I can't call it shame. I don't realize that's what it is. And I think that's the unobserved reality that's directing a lot of people's lives, especially how they handle money.
I will tell you this, I had never used the word shame to describe my mid to late twenties until I started interviewing experts for this book. And when somebody said shame to me, I started I started to cry.
Experts, Yeah, and she shines a spotlight on it, and you're like, that's what it was.
I still say it, and I wrote it in the book. I said, when when they said this to me, the shame washed over my body again.
Yeah, Doug, I'm curious. You are a financial planner. How much have you learned about the relational dynamics of money as you've worked with clients, Because a lot of people assume financial advisor. He's helped me pick the right funds to me in. But you're so much more of a coach in so many ways. What does that look like and what have you learned from that?
Oh? Yeah, it goes well beyond on just the investment piece, right, you have so many areas that we focus on, from cash management all the way through a state planning. But at the end of the day, as much as you're writing great financial plans and walking clients through it, you're trying to connect to them on a human level and figure out how you can help them make the best decisions for themselves as humanly possible one and I got to give credit to any couple that's coming to the
table of a financial professional to engage in planning. A lot of the things we hope to accomplish in this book get carried out through meeting with your advisor regularly, putting down a plan, and implementing the recommendations that are designed to help them get to the goals that they have.
But financial planning is not a cure all. When you have people coming in with a predisposition in their relationship or in more importantly, in themselves, they have yet to discover their own identity with money, so they're incapable of working together with their partner to play the team game. They haven't even done the individual rual sport yet. So I see that a lot in practice, and over twenty years I've seen it all right from couples who you know you have the silent partner at the table who
says nothing is distracted. Maybe they're on their phone and just they're not participating, and you, as a professional, are really wondering why there's a lot of professionals who won't
even touch that with a ten foot poll. As long as one person, as long as the decision maker is listening, they're going to continue, you know, going down that path, and that will backfire later on in the client relationship, and more importantly, it will not create a team that is required to get to the joint goals that hopefully people have together all the way over to the positive sides, where people are building up their ability to understand each
other and sort out their pre existing feelings, therefore being able to talk about their joint goals and the things that they want for themselves and start playing the team game that will never end. That's the easy thing about money together. Pun intended is that you don't get to win the game. You just get to play different versions of the game, maybe a different level, and they don't
stop from literally birth to death. So figuring out how to play it is going to be extremely important if you want happiness, if you want fulfillment if you want to feel like you have enough, which we definitely touch on in the book.
Let me say this one thing. I think one of the most humbling experiences that actually led to our decision to write this book and to study this and to really spend the time we have on it was that when we overcame and I put that in quotes my student loan debt, right, we overcame a lot of my issues. We were able to do, like really jumpstart our adult lives and do the things we wanted to do, buy that house in the suburbs, have children, get married, all
that stuff. For a minute there, we thought we had it all figured out. We thought we won that game, and we thought that we were set, you know, and then guess what happened. Life happened, and the next challenge came.
Right, It's like what David Brooks calls the second mountain, Right, It's yeah, it's that next it's that next hill to climb.
And I think that so many it's so easy to focus on, especially like in a world of like self optimization, and there's so many articles and books and experts that come out here and say these, you know, do this one thing and you've won do this one thing and I can guarantee you this.
Yeah, it's the survivorship bias type stuff we wanted.
Yeah, we wanted to show you that life is so uncertain that we don't really know what's going to happen next. None of us do. We want to help you prepare for whatever happens next.
I want to dig in on the individual thing that Doug was just hitting on. And actually, Heather, you said at one point, not in this conversation, but it's something you wrote. You said, too often financial advice treats couples as a unit, but you're still an individual. And Doug you just mentioned something really similar along those lines. And how both people bringing something the table matters and financial advisors who gloss over that and just deal with the
decision maker. You're actually gonna it's a mistake. You're stepping on a rake. So why is that so important to remember when we're discussing financial advice for couples, Like the individual nature? Uh, two people coming together to you know, as a as a unit.
Yeah, that's why the cover the books of end diagram right, there are portions that are individually and you know, distinctly yours. And then there's the area in which you're sharing together. But let me drill down on that for just a moment here. Again, your ability to play a team game
requires that you have perspective of your partner. It requires that you're able to understand how they think and feel about money, so that when you start to put your ideas and the way that you feel and think about money on the table, that you're just not, you know, smashing your head against the wall and you're not getting any progress here. It shapes the things you say, the
way you do things when you have that perspective. So taking it a step back from there, you can't even get to that point, as I mentioned previously, without first understanding yourself and you know how you feel and think about money. So it's that two step process to get ultimately to a point where all right, we can share in ideas because we have perspective of one another and more importantly, an idea of where we come from.
And also looking forward. I think this is incredibly important because one of the main goals of this book is to find greater fairness and equity in the household, because that's how we're going to find greater equity out in the world is particularly for women. I think it's really important to not be subsumed by your partner in your career and your life and your goals and your dreams, and so it is important to remind people that what
you want matters. What you want as an individual matters too, and regardless of who is earning more income, right, that's an incredibly important concept. So it's just as important one, yeah, that we understand each other's past, but that we hold onto those pieces of our dreams for our future that truly matter to us. Because when we talk about not only building fair or sustainable relationships, we're also talking about
holding onto those things that we each want. So, you know, one of the questions that we asked we asked all the couples that we interviewed for the book, was do you have enough? And we wanted them to answer individually, not together, and it was very interesting to hear those answers.
I'm sure you did you have some like one person in the relationship say yes and the other ones like no, and so like they just they have no mind meld on that, okay.
And I had differing answers when someone flipped it back around on us.
And why that's so important is because it helps you then gain some insight into where your partner's at with something with with such an important concept as your own personal contentment with your lot in life. Like for Doug spent almost twenty years to reach this point in his career that he is so content with and proud of where he's at, And I spent the first ten years of my career kind of like just digging myself out
of this hole of shame. I'm not there yet. This book and this project and this work is bringing me closer to my enough than I've ever have but us answering that question, and Doug knows how important this is to me, but only because we've had those conversations.
Like I mentioned, perspective of your partner, me having that perspective of Heather shows me that while I may be content with what I have done in my career, and I know I'll continue to grow and I've done things that I've dreamt of doing, this is all great stuff? Is it really great? If she, my partner, is not getting close to feeling the same way I do? And that perspective right, and that understanding has reshaped how I view my business, how I view time outside of my business,
as a father, as her partner. There is now a different picture than there was in the first seventeen years of doing this, and now we are together here envisioning something that brings us again together around a shared vision. Look how much individual play and identity got us to needed to be dealt with, uncovered, workshopped, thought out, therapy, you know, whether it's therapy or just conversations, whatever you need to do ultimately to get to a point where
now we're playing a different team game. So we didn't you know, we thought we had to figure it out for a little while. Life happened, you know, man plans, God laughs, that's the expression. And here we are, you know, in that next phase. Sure it's in the form of maybe writing a book, but joining each other in business and thinking about you know, the vacations that we want to take our children on to celebrate the fruits of our labor, all of these things.
Are there any introspective questions that you think individuals should be asking and that couples then should come back together and ask each other to kind of dig into some of these issues that maybe have been or remained unexplored.
Well, yes, we do pose it's a ten questions at the end of each section of our book that will really and some of the questions again, like back to this idea, there as much self work as they are
couple's work. And so we even suggest to readers of the book that it's really up to you whether you want to be answering these questions for yourself and then you bring them to your partner or whether you want to sit there oh Prah Winfrey style and interview one another and try and elicit those answers from one another.
It really depends on personal preference. But yes, there's an endless number of questions because communication, above all else is what you really need to reach this higher understanding of one another.
I think our goal is that as you read the book,
you will find yourself in it. You will find yourself or you will find your partner, and you will be compelled to bring that sentence, that paragraph, that chapter, that section to another person and say this is me, this is you, and before you know it, you're automatically talking about that and then you'll probably read the question and say, hey, I asked for these based on the stories that we are at based on the conversations that we're elicited from
a particular section, chapter, or sentence that you came across. And I think that's one of the most beautiful parts of this book is finding yourself and finding your partner in it, so you can have those conversations that you may be struggling to have or didn't know you even
needed to have. They definitely need to take place in order for you to find that fairness that everyone deserves to have because it leads to happiness, and probably one of the number one things we should be looking for in our lives is to be happy.
I love you said that, because I think ignorance can feel like bliss, but it's actually better and you will gain more happiness going through maybe some of these hurdles. I've got more questions I want to get to with you. I want to talk about conflicts, and I want to get to some practical questions too about how this actually plays out in reality, with like, Okay, how do you combine lives when one of the partners coming into the relationship with significant amounts of debt? So we'll talk about
stuff like that. Right after this break, we're back still talking with Doug and Heather Bond depart. We're talking about love and budgeting and whether the two can co exist and really what it looks like to have a healthy relationship on the money front and how that involves so much more than just money. And Heather, we talked about your student loan debt. You share a personal student loan refinance story in the book, And I remember talking to a friend who said he had just gotten married and
he was like, yeah, my wife's student loan debt. Like really, soon after they gotten married, she's got to pay off her student loan debt. And I was surprised by that, and I really realized every couple has their own relational dynamics. But when I got married, it was like, what's yours is mind, what's mine is yours debt and assets included. So do you think married folks should be combining assets and debts? Is that outdated? Look what's the approach?
I think it's you know, I'm going to preface this by saying personal preference, because there's lots of reasons why people may choose to keep these things separate that include family dynamics, family wealth, Like, there can be a ton of reasons why it could be a second marriage. So I don't really believe in blanket in a blanket statements to say everyone should do this or ever one should do that for us. And I will also say I think it gets incredibly sticky to say your debt versus
my debt. Right to your point, when you choose to combine your life together, how are you practically how is that practically going to work? Right? Let's say I have a student loan repay, I have a student loan debt schedule where I'm paying thousands of dollars a month towards my student loan debt. How then are we going to figure out a way where my income also helps to support our family and our and our dreams and our
hopes and our lifestyle. So like, I don't truly understand how that works long term, And don't even get me started about what happens when you add kids into the mix, like how are you going to continue to itemize? Like are you going to say.
Two thirds of that of my child soccer practice? I'm going to be right right, So you.
Know, I generally, if when you were first getting together, when you're first cohabitating, when you're first getting married, you feel like you're not ready to do it all at once. Okay, that's fine. But I do truly believe that somewhere, at some point, you are going to have to assume some responsibility for what your partner is responsible for when it comes to debt. I do believe that. I mean, look for us, maybe because of maybe because of the size of the debt, but I think also because of the
shame that I was carrying with the debt. Doug knew. And when Doug made that gesture of saying, yeah, I will be the co signer of the refinancing of your student loan debt, it meant so much more than the logistics of who you know, it.
Was of it right.
It meant so much more than who's going to be paying for what. It meant I trust you, I believe in you. Your problems are my problems. And that was literally a bigger gesture. And I say this in the book. It was a It was a more sweeping, romantic gesture in our relationship than the way he proposed me. Truly, it was that of a deal.
I believe it.
It's it's like the love, the action of love, instead of just like the lips are right.
Right, Everything about that's correct. I'm very matter of fact about this, right. I've for a number of times already talked about this being a team game, and I'll spare us the sports analogies and just talk about how you know, if you're looking for the most effective and efficient way to go about your financial life, you're going to want to play that team game. It's you know, it's a collection, right,
It's the collective household unit here. Notwithstanding the things Heather said that may exist for very personal or particular reasons, but the mechanics of it, the practicality of it, you know, it's better to start sharing, whether it's setting up your joint accounts and getting into the actual mechanics of how you do this. I do believe, you know, having independence
and autonomy is a part of that too. Still have an individual checking account, you know, your retirement accounts can't be jointly held, So there is individuality when it comes to managing your money, when it comes to your investments. But I'm a real stickler over this thing. You're married or you're a partnership, it's typically and should be for life. I'm not going to get you know, any particular religion
involved in this. As much as I'm saying that is the commitment you're making to one another, and you're.
That is the aspirational goal. I don't know anyone that goes into marriage hoping that or you know, just accepting that someday all and how will they end?
I have a question, right, I have a question of well, what are you doing here if you're not willing to go down this road? And it doesn't mean, you know, from the day you get married or get engaged, you're all in start sharing, you know, right down the middle.
It means you are going to go on that pathway and you are going to work your way to a shared financial household where hopefully you're capable of managing it as a team and not as two individuals who live in their own financial silos but happen to do stuff together.
The ultimate reality of life, I think is trade offs. Right. Everyone can't get what they want all the time, and money is this finite resource. So there is there Like the best place we were talking earlier about people like how each couple needs to bring what they want individually into the relationship, but sacrifices need to be made to achieve mutual goals that you have together. So there's a conflict, there's a little bit of tension there in this is the goal I want to achieve, this is the goal
you want to achieve. This is kind of what we want to do together. How do you? How does that like? What's the fallout from those conversations?
I'll say my favorite line, but be first, I think it's really important to think about this. Often times, almost all the time, an investment in one thing is a sacrifice in another. And when we talk about goals, individual goals, in order for me to reach one of my individual goals, Doug may have to sacrifice something, even if that's something is just time.
And that goes for non monetary goals too. Yeah. Right, so like trying to run a marathon and that is a pain in the butt for my whole family. So there's all there are all these things that go into this is my goal. Nobody else in my family really cares that much about it, but like they have to make sacrifices and then vice versa.
That is a perfect example, right, It's they're not just career driven ambitions. Look look at if a partner says, after becoming a new parent, I would really like to downshift from the workforce for a little while, and I would like to spend more time at home with our kids.
An investment in that time, on one hand, is a sacrifice, is a financial sacrifice on the other I think so it's really important to kind of see your lives as that fluid and that there will be a time for you, and there will be a time for me, and there will be a time for us all. And when it comes to kind of like knowing how you've struck the right balance. I mean, look, I negotiated for a living.
I still do, but I used to, you know, find myself sitting at tables negotiating eight figure settlements and the best compromises leave everyone a little bit uncomfortable.
That's just the truth the okay, talk about the power dynamics that enter into that though, because oftentimes the higher earning spouse feels like whether they say it or not, and it often feels like that to the lower earning spouse, to that person gets to call the shots or they are in some way the ultimate decider because they have more economic skin in the game. So what does that look like in practicality when one person feels like they holds more cards.
Yeah, I think you first need to recognize just how much that's actually conditioned behavior, whether that's through societal systems or the way that you were raised, generational differences. There are so many ways that you can contribute to your family that are far greater than who's making the paycheck and what those financial contributions are. And I'll say this till the cows come home. The person that is earning four or five, six times more or all the income.
If someone's choosing to support the family outside of earning money, that person would likely be unable to do what they're doing without the contributions of that other person. So it's a very silly construct, right to really, you know, bite down hard on when you think about it in that way. And Heather, you know, one of the biggest parts of this book is how people contribute far greater than what
they bring in. And I really want to give this space to Heather to talk more about just how important contribution is from a non monetary standpoint.
To Joe's point, we found ourselves in that position. You know, I was at one point in time the breadwinner in our relationship, and I held down a corporate job and some pretty great benefits for a long time so that Doug could take risks in his career and try and build his firm and his and his business and and you know, build his thought leadership in the financial planning space. But at a certain point, like his career took off and suddenly he was making three times the amount of
money as I was. And that happened to coincide with us having our children and COVID a pandemic, you know, and a pandemic started when our kids were eleven months and four years old.
And that can change something as simple as like who's expected to put dinner on the table?
That is right?
Right, that is right.
And it was very it felt at the time like it was very easy for us all to decide whose time mattered more. Yes, it was an extreme example because that was a quote unquote unprecedented time, like so many others that millennials have been through. But it was what we did. And as one of the experts said about me in the book, that I was complicit in my
own oppression. But it's true. It was just as much me saying, well, you need more time to work than I do, even though I was still a corporate lawyer, even though I was still helping Doug out with the business, even though I was still doing ninety percent of of what the kids needed during that time. So, like, I don't want to paint such a simple picture that it's just so easy to undo these scripts because sometimes they just kind of happen to you and you know.
You've been you're correct, But the conditioning happens over not just years, but often decades to where it's involuntary. That and of.
Course we don't want to fail to state the obvious that it is important that the person that's bringing in income into the household has the time they need to do their job. Yes, that is.
True, otherwise the whole house of cards collapses. Right the pay teke's got to keep.
Coming, sure, but I think that it's just incredibly important
to view time as a currency as well. And until you view it that way, and until that person, even if you are the breadwinner, you need to understand that that an investment meant in your time and ability to pursue your career to the best of your abilities likely involves and inherit sacrifice from your spouse and maybe from the rest of your family, and being mindful of that fact makes you show up more in the moments that you're not working and create that fairness and kind of
maintain that sense of equity.
And I think it's very important to point out that fairness does not mean equal right. This is a balance that two people will figure out how to strike in terms of what works for their lives and what makes both people say I can deal with this, we can play ball with this, because if you don't, the consequence is resentment. And there is no better way to erode a relationship, whether it's built on love or anything else
than by resenting the other person in that relationship. So typically you know only a few things happen when you get to that breaking point. You either watch your relationship fall apart, and many do because they've completely and utterly failed to figure it out by communicating and figuring out what kind of balance needs to exist, or that is the call to action in which both people will come together,
sit down and realize something has to give. And if you love each other and you care about each other, you're gonna work like hell to work it out and to make that happen. And Heather and I obviously love each other very much, and got to a point where she said, Doug, I'm starting to resent you know what's going on here, and we really need to think about how we fix this. And I heard her loud and clear, and we sat down.
You have to speak up, right, You have to have the conversation makes me think of I was just to throw myself under the bus. I was waking up five minutes before the kids woke up, and I was coming upstairs and with my bathrobe, get in my coffee, and like, my wife is already making the lunches and preparing the breakfast, and I'm sitting there like the dude in the Big Lebowski,
like an idiot, just groggy and yawning. And She's like, I think, like, I'm really starting to get upset that you're not like in the game in the morning, and so can you figure out a way to wake up earlier whatever you need to do to be in the game when the kids are up, And that I had listened to her, and I had to change my whole whole morning routine for that, and in the best way possible, right, I was happy to do it, but like she had to bring it up I probably should have realized before
she had to bring it up. But it's one of those things where you can't just resent in the background. You have to have a conversation about it.
Here's and here's an important point too. You might think that you're not communicating, but every you are communicating right. Your spouse may Yes, you should speak up and communicate in a constructive way right at a time and place that is like low right, that is conducive to having these conference stations. But an important point to note is that a lot of times, like we communicate in all
sorts of ways, we communicate in passive, aggressive ways. You know, I thought that I wasn't saying anything about the way that I felt, But the truth was my action spoke loudly, I was snapping at everyone all the time. I was huffing and puffing around the house for like over a year during this whole time. And what I could have just said what I was feeling, which was, Hey, I'm drowning, this isn't working, and i feel like I'm not getting the time I need for myself in my career.
And lots of times you think you are communicating it right, and you are in some ways, but the partner is like doesn't register with me, Like I just get that you're not in a good mood, but I don't really understand what's happening. And so you actually have to use You have to figure out and find the words to communicate what it is that you're feeling so that they can understand.
And that's why time and place are so important. Like it's not the right time when you're reacting, when you're angry,
that it's not the time to have that conversation. That's why like carving out the time, not just for money dates, which are you know, we're huge proponents of the money dates, but find a time that you're not reacting and you're not upset, to sit down and say, hey, I've been feeling this way a lot lately, and I really can we have a couple of minutes to talk about what we need to do here to make this better.
So what are the best practices? Because you even in my intro I said something about the vibes, like you do want people to have good vibes with their money, and vibes is like such a hot word these days, but what does it look like to have good vibes? In your relationship when it comes to money and what sort of ingredients are necessary to get there?
Oh well again, like we love that money date. We love the idea of setting a time and a place and an activity that you both enjoy and working the money conversation into that thing you both enjoy, because then you can also start by talking about the things that are positive in your lives. Like it's not just well we overspends. Let's scrutinize the budget and.
See, don't start with the negative stuff.
You want to start with the good stuff.
Say like, what are your wins?
What are your wins? What are our wins from the last quarter?
Would you do great this week? I think there's a lot here and it's little tiny adjustments are turning things just you know, upside down on their head. Everyone wants to sit down and think about, Hey, where where's the room for improvement? Talk about what you did right? You know, that's a great way to get to the things you want to improve on. So things that will make you
feel good upfront. Same when it comes to figuring out how to meet your partner where they're at and learning how they want to communicate and how they want to do that I can assure you. For most guys that want to get their wives involved, and what's in front of them is a budget or a cash flow statement or a net worth you know that is probably not going to work. And I'm speaking from experience.
There might just not be the place to start. You want to meet people where they are the find the pathway to the interest that works for you. If you have a newsletter that you're really enjoying, if you'r's a podcast or a financial creator that you like to follow, like that is that is an on ramp to better conversations. It doesn't have to be zero to one hundred. And also, like I know Doug always, Doug always tells clients and
couples like find a positive shared goal. You guys can st say hey, Like a great example would be, hey, do you want to maybe go on spring break with the kids next year? Yeah? I do? All right, Well, why don't we take a look at what we need to do every month between now and then to make that happen? And yeah, that might require changing some behavior. It's casting forward decisions that you can make instead of
looking backward at what was wrong. We haven't been saving any money, so we're never going to get to go on vacation.
You know, that stupid purchase you made last week.
It really sets back think about what you need to get buy into the conversation. I know I tease Heather with let's do this family thing because we both know we like that. I'm going to get her to the table when I say, hey, can we look over some numbers here? Maybe that's the things she doesn't like to do as much. You'll say, yeah, let's figure this out. Look, there's a couple of nights we're going out with friends.
We just saw them. We don't need to do this dinner. Hey, we were thinking about going to this concert, but if it meant no to that, so we could go to a great you know, all inclusive with the family, it becomes fairly effortless to start making those sacrifices or shifting those things around. Now you're playing a team game. Everyone's on the same page, everyone's going for the same goal.
And to your point, the vibes are set. When you start to reap the benefits of that work, that would you start to feel, okay, we are so much more aligned on the things we want. Then you find yourself reacting less in the day to day to the little things, because you really are having the conversations about the bigger things.
So the good vibes are like setting the tone, yea, and they're actually created a better environment to make good money decisions together.
Here here's the biggest piece of it all. And I don't want anyone listening to you know, if you're pumped listeners like we're gonna go do that awesome, Yes, get going on that for sure, but I want you to remember that this requires consistency and discipline. You are likely, you are more than likely if you haven't been in the practice of this, going to have your first experience not meet the expectation you have in your head of like we're gonna have this awesome conversation. I'm gonna do
it differently. And you know what you're like, all right, that that really didn't go you know according to the plan. That's because you did it one time, right, Nobody goes to the gym one time after not working out for six months or however long.
And is actually I would, but then I don't be very sore, but you.
Won't be in the best shape of your life. Just like anything that requires whether it be investing or anything really filed under self care health and otherwise. It requires consistency. So if you're doing this on a quarterly basis, give yourself some grace. That's four cracks in a year, right, that's only four two years is eight three twelve. We're
discounting by force here. So until such time, it took us, you know, a lot of cracks at this to get into the rhythm and finding things at work for us.
And we still have to do the work. We are Our finances are are a unique situation. We both work in the family business now right, It's it's not your typical setup. So we continue to work and I have even more questions now than I did at the start. But that's good. It's not bad. It's curiosity and a desire to keep keep my hands in it more and more every month.
Right, go from macro to micro as you do this, right, the macro being, Hey, let's go over what a P and L is. Let's take a look at how the you know, the mechanics of a business work and relate to you know, our family expenses. And then question be like, all right, so now that we got this under our belt, why are we doing this, or how can we improve this? Or should we hire someone to do this? They become
business decisions that dovetail into personal decisions. So yeah, you know, that's kind of the life of entrepreneurs and business builders. But you know, even if it's a little easier because you've got two W two employees or one W two employee, you still have to put in the reps to get to, you know, running a smooth operation around these money dates
and conversations. And then you start to fill in between those money dates with actual better communication, better habits, and better behaviors that when you do get to you're meeting, things run more fluid, smoothly, and expectations are met more than they're not.
I love it all right, I got a few more rapid question couples of money topics I want to hit up with you guys, so we'll keep talking about this in just second with Doug and Heather. Right after this.
Are back still.
Talking with Doug and Heather about love and budgeting. And I want to ask you guys real quick, A lot of folks are hunting on bigger decisions like marriage, having kids until they achieve more economic security.
Is that a good or bad thing, what a great question? Like I can hear my grandfather in the back of my mind saying like love finds a way, Doug, you know. And also Grandpa didn't understand that love doesn't solve for you know, six figures and student loan debt. So I can really appreciate folks wanting to set up their lives. I know Heather and I spent a lot of time setting up our careers and lives before we decided to
get married. So while I have an appreciation for that, I think striking a balance between you know, you can get caught in this trap of oh, we'll do it next year, We'll do it next year. Before you know it, you've waited too long.
I'll never forget I had a friend who I used to work with a colleague who said that she wasn't going to get pregnant until she used up all of her star Ward points. I'll never forget that. But people come up with these things. It's too far, no, But people come up with these things, right like I'll do We'll do what they will do. And I think, like, on one hand, yes, right, like, I don't want to not acknowledge how incredibly difficult look, we're in like a
childcare crisis in this country. I could go on all twenty minute ran about that. Yeah, but I think there is a piece of this, especially when we talk about having kids, that I don't know if you're ever really going to feel ready.
Yeah.
So I think that that is a that is a difficult like a slippery slope. When you're waiting for that permission to proceed in any really big thing in your life, you might be waiting too long.
Right Like anyone who's quote unquote figured it out, whether it be in their marriage, their love life, or you know, companionship, whatever it may be, will tell you one of the best things that has happened to them financially has been getting married. We're starting a family. I remember a colleague, biggest motivator. Yeah, I remember a colleague of mine, you know, older gentleman, successful practice. Put his hand on my shoulders
that congratulations, Doug. This will be the best thing that ever happened to your business is having a child, is having your first daughter. And again, and I will con firm that it was that motivator. It was something that just makes for.
That is a that is a whole I think that there there's some, there's some gendered there's some uh without a gendered scripts in that. But again, like I said, Joel, you opened up work.
Yeah, well this whole topic is a cannabis Yeah, which which is what makes it so fascinating? A couple of rapid fire questions? Who should pay on the first date? Is it the person who's got the higher paying job?
I like to split on the first date? Make no split, no presumption here between today's world of split and being a gentleman and just offering it up. And you know, that's really kind of too completely.
We eve been together too long to answer that question.
The kids do.
If it was me, I probably, yeah, I wouldn't mind a chivalrous, chivalrous man offering to pay for the first date.
Yeah, what's more important the budget of the vibes. We talked about the vibes just a second ago, But is yeah, which one? Which one holds more weight?
I think the vibes because when we talk talk about vibes, we're talking about mutual respect, we're talking about love. We're talking about feeling seen in each other's behaviors.
And yeah, and number numbers don't have feelings. Vibes are all feelings, and the feelings really kind of dictate behaviors here, so we've got to get the emotional side down.
That's the hard What's one word you would use to describe your money style as a couple.
Fluid? Yeah, fluid. I like it. We're I think, pretty synced up and pretty much on the same page to the point where we can we can spend freely. We have our eye on the prize and what our big goals are. We know when to check in on a purchase and when not to. I think we just are able to navigate our financial lives with a lot of fluidness. Fluidit.
Last question, last question. You've been successful in work, in marriage, you've got kids. What do you What do you tell people about how you've been able to make it work?
I tell everyone that it's about making room for one another, making room for everything, making not just not just our ambitions and our careers, making room for each other's personalities and not trying to dim the light of the other person or of our kids.
Dang, that's a good way to end. This has been such a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. Where can my audience, where can have money listeners find out more about your awesome new book.
Well, you can visit our book website, which is Do Moneytogether dot com. We also write a weekly couples and money newsletter called The Joint Account, which you can find by googling the Joint Account or just looking up Joint Account dot com.
I wonder interested in the firm. It's bonafide wealth dot com. But google social media it will take you to all of these places and more.
And so all the show notes up on the website at how to money dot com. Which so thank you guys for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much, Jill, thanks Jaul.
Okay, Well, that was a really fun conversation and it took some unexpected turns and I didn't realize that at the end of it. I might also agree that vibes are more important than a budget, but my goodness, Heather and Doug make a compelling case for that, and I
think I'm sold. Like, I think it's true that the money part is really important, but if you working on the relational aspect and creating good vibes even around those money discussions is going to be crucial to be able to making the progress that you want to see in your family's money life. And man, so many big takeaways I think I could go with after this conversation. I loved what Heather said there towards the end, an investment in one thing is a sacrifice in another. So the
trade offs thing is real. It is the ultimate reality in life. And you as a couple, there are some seasons.
I remember talking to someone else about couples of money not too long ago, and he talked about seasonality, how maybe this five years is the season to pour into my career, and then five years down the road, the tables are going to be turned, and maybe we moved to another city from my job the thing that I want to accomplish and you've got to figure out what that looks like specifically in your own life and in
your own relationship. But I think that's going to be true on a money and on a non money aspect when it comes to relational stuff that sometimes, like when my wife was in grad school and starting her budding career, I am more than willing to take a step back to help her flourish because man, for so many years the opposite was true, and she really took it on the chin to make sure that I could launch this podcast with Matt and that we had a really good
chance to succeed and to build this thing. And so now I have a little more freedom and flexibility, and so I can do the same for her and be there for her so that she can really has a chance to succeed in this career that she's starting out on. So what is that going to look like for you, for your spouse or your partner. Those are really important
discussions to have. I think it's also important, like right at the end, another thing the Heather was saying that making room for one another such an important part of a successful partnership and for your personality, for your different goals and dreams. I think sometimes it's really easy to shoot down. Well, Okay, I get that's your goal, not mine,
so I'm not really interested. But the dreams that your partner has matter too, And actually it can be so satisfying and fulfilling to play a part in helping them achieve those bigger goals, those things they really want to accomplish too, even if it's not initially the thing that you're jazzed about or wanting to work towards. Together each of you is going to have individual and separate goals too, so not all of those goals need to or will overlap or be goals that each one of you holds.
So good luck in having those conversations, and my goodness, this book from Dug and Heather Money Together, will I think be a big help in ushering in some of those conversations, prodding you to think a little bit differently about how you handle money as a couple, and so if you're looking for a place to start, and some non dogmatic advice that gets the ball rolling and does give you some thoughts about kind of specific ways to come together as a couple and handle money, but also
just some relational prompts to do some of the work. I think this is a great book to start. I was pleasantly surprise I was reading this book about how much how helpful it was given maybe some of the content that is out there, and we talked about this before we started recording, how some of the couples in Money content can be a little crusty, a little old. This one feels like it's a book for the moment, So I hope you go out there and pick it up. I hope you enjoy it. You can find links to
it up on the website at howtomoney dot com. Thank you, as always for listening. Hope to see you back here on Friday for a fresh Friday Flight episode. Until next time, best friend Out.