Hey guys, welcome to I Do Part two, the podcast where we talk about all the stuff that happens when the marriage doesn't work out, or when maybe you were married for many years and life just happened and now you find yourself back on your own for the very first time. I'm Cheryl Burke, one of your celebrity mentors here on the pod, and I think what a lot of people have learned about me I have to say through this podcast and this show is that I take
my finances pretty seriously. I've been really open about my thoughts on prenups, divorce, and so today I wanted to talk about money and relationships. Get sticky. My guest today is a founder, CEO and the host of the podcast Her Money, and she's a New York Times bestselling author of Women With Money. Please welcome Jeene Chatsky to the pod. Welcome to I DO Part two. How are you doing? I'm good.
Thanks for having me, of.
Course, thanks for coming on. Let's just get right into it. So, for people who have gone through divorce, would you say that when you start dating again, like, how long into the dating phase do you just ask about credit scores and being completely transparent about you know each other's finances.
I don't think complete transparency is something that you have to something that you have to approach until you know that this is a relationship that at least has at least has some legs, right, And I say this, God no, and I am I was divorced. So I was married for a long time, had two kids, got divorced at age forty or separated at age forty, and got remarried about five years later. And so I've been through this and know exactly what you need to cough up and when.
And here's the thing. You don't want to be dishonest. You never want to be dishonest. You never want to hide important facts about your financial life. But I think that the most important thing is to align on with a potential new lifetime partner or even somebody that you're going to just date for a long time. Are hey, do we have the same ideas of goals? Do we have the same ideas of values? Do we think the same way about spend a lot of money on dinner or a little money on dinner? How do we feel
about our travel vacations? And what's on my plate that I need to take care of and what's on your plate that you need to take care of? And how are we going to have our own life with these separate responsibilities existing.
To the side, I think, all, yeah, I hear you, and I believe that is maybe an initial conversation when you have chosen to take this relationship seriously. But like, there's also debt, and if you do marry each other, it becomes your debt.
And it's well, not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily, no, not even if you don't sign a prenup. So if I come into and by the way, I think you should sign a prenup. Right in many second marriages, you come in with a house or a business, or children or assets, an expected inheritance, sign a prenup. It's no big deal.
Well for some it is.
Well maybe, I mean, I don't think it should be a big deal. I think it's a big deal because we make it a big deal. I think it's a big deal because we give it emotional heft that maybe it doesn't really deserve.
I agree, because you have to separate the emotion and the fact that you know your two individuals. You each have your own finances that you've either worked and or going to inherit and respect that as an individual person. I think that with men, I've experienced that there's a lot of shame behind money and there's a lot of and that's when the emotions maybe are not necessarily communicated because that person may not know how or there's shame
period and they don't want to talk about it. So like it does get emotional complicated.
I think, yeah, I mean, I'm certainly not gonna spend after spending thirty years writing about money, I'm certainly not gonna argue that fact.
Right.
That's it's totally true. There is a lot of shame. There's a lot of you know, if you feel like you have too little, there's shame. If you feel like you have debt, there's shame. If you feel like there's too much, there's guilt. Right, If you feel like you're living in a way that you perhaps don't deserve to live, there's guilt. And all of these emotional forces fight themselves.
But let me just come back to that debt thing for a second, because it's important if you come into a relationship to a marriage and you've got student loan debt, or you've got a credit card that you owe money on, or a mortgage that you borrowed money on, that's your debt. That's not your spouse's debt money. If you get married and you borrow money together, that's both of your debt. But you can and part of a prenup is keeping your debts separate, so you don't want to co mingle.
You don't want to start taking responsibility for each other's debts because things get messy, and you want to understand what that person's responsibilities are and how it might impact your life. Because if somebody comes into a marriage or a relationship and they've already got a boatload of debt, chances are they also have a not great credit score, and that's going to make the goal of buying a place for the two of you to live harder. Right, That's that's just going to get in the way of
the life that you want to live. So you've got to be honest about these things. But you don't have to pay his credit card bills.
Okay, good to know. Good to know, especially for those that are maybe in a similar you know or wise in a similar situation. But how about if let's say your house is about to be for club, right, how about that and then you marry into that like that, does that not fall into your lap whatsoever? But what if there's no prenup, it's not your debt still, no matter what. Okay, unless you are on the deed of that house, got it.
If it's if it's your partner's house, it's it's not your debt.
Now is that in the state, in the whole country or is that just specific too because it's.
Your state there state by state laws and in community property states. It does get a little squishy. But as far as I understand it, and I am not a lawyer, but I have done this for a long time. Yeah, it's not your debt. Where where it gets messy is if you are married to somebody and you're living in this house and that house gets foreclosed on whether or not you're legally responsible to kick in some money to
pay for that house. You're going to kick in some money to pay for that house, right, yeah, because because of course that's that's what you're to do. You're gonna look at your life in many cases and you're gonna say, I've got some money, let me, let me do this. And unless you then really paper it up, you have co mingled these assets, and that money of yours has
just gone into that house of his. It's kind of like I've gotten letters from from some of my readers that at her Money, which is my company, my blog, and I've gotten letters basically saying, I'm moving in with my boyfriend to this house that he owns. He wants me to pay rent? Is that fair? Right? And the rent could be going to build equity for your boyfriend.
You're not married.
He owns that house, You don't own that house, So it gets real fast.
What do you think it depends?
I think it depends on how much rent?
Right?
Is it fair for you to pay money to live someplace? Absolutely?
Now, if he's renting, it's fine, I believe it's okay. Yeah, I got it. Maybe, But if you own the home, that's if he owns the.
Home, yeah, I think maybe. I think you know, you've got to figure some way to.
Contribute, right for sure. Now as far as just women in general, right, like, what can they do. Let's say they've been in a long marriage and when they got married, they got married young. And maybe I'm just being gender specific right now, but it could obviously work the other way. As well, but the man was supporting the relationship and then they decide to separate. I mean, how important is it for people, not just women, to be financial literate.
It's incredibly important and it's really Look, you have to come out of a relationship with a sense of what are you earning? What do you own at this point? Like what did you what assets did you come away with? Do you have a house, do you have a retirement account, do you have cash in the bank, and what do you owe? What are your debts, what are your obligations going forward? And from there you can set up a
budget that is sustainable. You can you can look at your roadmap and you can say, all right, here are the things that I have to do going forward. And if you don't know how to do those things, it gets really complicated. I think that many people need the help of a financial advisor coming out of a divorce to just get them on the right track. Make sure sure that they do. You're sort of doing a level set right, you still have goals. When I got divorced,
I had a job, right, I had some assets. I bought a house, not the house that I lived in with my ex husband, but I bought a new house, but I had responsibilities. I was paying for half of college, which was going to hit us about ten years down the road. I was. I had taken a big step back when it came to retirement, and I had to make sure that I was going to catch up so that I could so that I could have choices when it came to retiring when I wanted how I wanted.
I had this new house that I not only bought but then put a lot of money into to renovate because I wanted it to be what I wanted it to be, and I wanted to pay that house off before I got to retirement. So I had these goals and I had to make sure that I was on a path to meet those goals. That's what a plan does.
That's like, so how do you budget for people that may not know it's overwhelming? You know it is.
It's overwhelming. You look at my favorite way to budget, and I have a budgeting coaching class called Finance Fix. Yeah, and we get it online. We spell fix with two x's, and we get a ton of women who are just going through a divorce or thinking about a divorce because they want to understand this very very question, So I budget backwards because I don't. I think that's the best
way to do it. We use technology to help you look at where your money is going today, what are you spending on in a whole bunch of different categories. And once you see where your money is going right now, then you can start making changes about where you want your money to go in order to spend a little less, save a little more, pay down some debts. So always, always we see people who are discovering a hopic a ha moment that they are spending too much on food.
Food is just you know, it's eating out, it take its Yeah, it's exactly.
It's that retail therapy kills me every time. Yeah, that's help.
No, it does help. We can talk about that. It helps a little.
It's another numbing device. Yes, that's a whole other episode. It is.
It is so you know, we we look at the Postmates bill and we say, do you think do you think maybe you could.
Go to Starbucks instead of didn't? I think it delivered. I'm just speaking from personal experience.
There you go that and how much and that would say fifty percent right there?
Absolutely. Yeah.
So these are the kinds of changes that we.
That we make along the way. Got it? Now do you believe couples should have I would say married or even serious It is not to be married, but joint accounts.
I'm a fan of joint and separate, So I think it's easier and a little more romantic to have like something joined. I don't want to be out in a restaurant and worried about who's going to put their credit card down, right, I just I kind of hate that. So let's have a joint credit card so that we just pay for dinner on that, but then we fund a joint bank account with the money that we need to pay for the household expenses, and whatever's left is
mine or my husband's. I put more into the joint account than he does because I make more than he does.
I was just gonna ask that, like, is that how like? Is that something that you resent though later down the road or No?
I don't. I'm fine with it, I think, but that's something you have to look at if you're gonna if you're gonna resent it, then you shouldn't do it. You should come up with the system that you're not going to resent, or you.
Match the person who makes the most money matches whatever your partner puts in that month or whatever exactly.
So I think it works. You know, we talk about fair and equal. I think it's fairst if you put in an amount of money that by percentages, like whatever percentage you earn more than him, you put that much more into the joint account. But it gets complicated. Let's say you've got a couple where one parent is staying
home with kids. They may not be earning money outside the house, but they get to have their own money too, and that has to get funded out of the account of the stuffs that does earn money, right, because everybody needs autonomy. You know, I don't want to answer for my retail therapy. I you know, I don't. I don't want to. I I go out and I buy a bag.
I don't have to ask, like you're a kid, like yeah, no, too parental, And that's when resentment I think built. It's just that this is why communication is vital, right, Like it always goes back to this, like the transparency, at least for me. I just feel like, you know, when I was married, there was just that piece that was like a very important piece, but it was like depending on the way you were raised, How were your parents with their money, Like, what did they show you? How
did they deal with their money? Did they invest or were they not? Like you know, and it's it really it's generational too, and there's so much there's emotion, but then it's hard to separate. Like I come from my mother, who is a very uh she was She grew up in poverty in the Philippines, and then she divorced my father when I was two and she made a freaking like empire, like completely devoted her life to her business. Now with that, because I was she was a single
parent raising me. She was able to put food on the table, she was able to support my dancing career. She was able to do so much, and I'm so grateful for that. But then that also required her being at her company all hours of the day and night, and then me being raised by you know, babysitters, which wasn't always a great experience. Now, look, I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for her support. But like, I am definitely raised by somebody who's very good with
her money and went from rags to riches. Now, you know, it could be the opposite with a partner, you know, and you kind of have to have that aha moment or that person does in order to be able to talk about it. It's like a whole thing.
It's a whole thing, and it's been We call it your money story. This is your money story. It is it's multi many chapters, it's a big book. It's Harry Potter, right, and we we have to understand our own money story, which we often don't, and we have to understand our partner's money story in order to sort of get the friction out of the relationship and understand, you know, what you're dealing with in your money story. And you get this, you just you you seem to innately understand this, but
it's it's not what you were taught. It's what you felt. It's it's the whispers that you heard and the tension in the house. And I am sure that when you're mom.
Saving picking up pennies on the sidewalk, like.
Come on right, well, and she probably continued to do that when when she made a fortune, made a boatload, right, and that that impacted you because you probably felt as if you had no money when in reality you had a ton.
My sister was impact like she definitely is more like
a penny pincher. I am the I went the complete opposite. Yeah, but I'm still I'm still aware of it, but I went to complete I'm like, you know, what, what are we gonna do at We're gonna get you know, we're all gonna die, and people are not going to talk hopefully about how much money you've made, Like you know, it's just we live this life now, in this present moment, and when you're so like, but that's just the way she was raised, and I have to respect that, you.
Know, yeah, yeah, but you add a partner to it and all of a sudden, oh, it's explosive.
Explosive many therapy sessions. But so why do you believe it's so much easier to talk about sex so openly, yet when it comes to money, it's like a uh no, no, no, no, we don't go there.
I think because we had the sixties. I like, the sixties was like all about talking about sex, right, so our parents in the sixties learned to talk about sex, and hopefully they talked like my I you know, they they were more free around sex than money, and why not?
I wish they mine was, But she's also Filipino, so like that, very Catholic.
Yeah, so I think I think we went through the whole birth control and the pill and the you know, burn your bra.
And wait, why what's that?
Well, you know in the sixties people women were burning their bras nobody. Yeah, yes, why I mean because they didn't want to wear them.
Oh just don't, no need to burn them, just don't.
Wear them, right, So there you go. But they were making a statement and we didn't really have that with money. I mean, what's changing, is what I mean. It's interesting. So my kids are much more willing and able to talk about money with their friends than I ever was at their age. They're in their late twenties early thirties, and they they know how much their friends make.
They talk about things.
Yeah, and a lot of gen Z sort of very young millennials are right there, which I think is great.
I think that's great. But you also raised you obviously raised them well because.
You know, I have one spender and one saver. Really interesting, interesting like me and my sister. Yeah, yeah, interesting. I think it's like a rebel thing. It's kind of like, I don't know if I want to live like that, Like so.
Tight, Like it's just really but then I see the other side too, you know, so interesting, this is so helpful. What are the first steps to educating yourself on whether you put money into a retirement versus stocks and bonds? Like, how do you suggest somebody does this.
So they're not in either or a retirement or stocks and bonds? But can we just let's just sort of take a step back. I think that when it comes down to it, money is a series of habits that you repeat over and over and over again. And we're really lucky that we have technology that can help us start to participate in things like investing before we know everything there is to know and before we have all
the answers. My five thing, five habits, five things you have to do in order to live a good thing to life. You have to earn a decent living, right, what's that mean? Decent is comfortable? You have to earn a comfortable living. We know that having you know, huge amounts of money, much more money than you need to pay for your life to go on vacation every once in a while, to put a roof over your head. The happiness is really just incremental. It's not going to
buy you much more happiness. So you have to earn enough to maintain that comfortable lifestyle right enough to not worry. It's a good way to put it.
Food shelter, Yeah, than necessities.
You have to spend less than you make. That's the second one, and that's where a lot of people get stuck. And if you get stuck there, you can't do any of the others.
Correct because you don't want to have debt.
It's like this, people, Well, debt is a thing too, and I'm not really talking about a mortgage or a car loan. I'm talking about credit card debt. Debt is the thing that makes us the most unhappy. It's the thing that stresses us out the most. So, yes, we don't want debt.
But also the worry. Like some people, it's a belief system, right, It's like that constant worry, you almost manifest it.
Yeah, there are some people who believe in having debt. You know that you should bar Yeah, there are some people who believe that leverage is good. And no, I don't believe that. I believe in I believe that there is good debt and bad debt, you know, like a mortgage or a student loan or investment car that gets us yes, yes, but but credit card debt.
No, no. And I don't think a car is a good investment unless if it's like an old antique car that you can go like and sell eventually.
Well, you need to get back and forth to work, right, So if you lease it, you you you could lease it the best way that the best way to own a car is to buy a car used and drive it into the ground.
Oh okay, got it.
Okay, So if you're you know, maybe you want to be the most cost effective, if you have to have a new car, or you know you're going to get a new car every three years, then you should lease.
That's what I do. That's what my mom taught me. At least then you should lease.
And your mom ran it through her business, by the way, and you may be running it through your business. So so there.
You go, great, love it.
The third thing is you have to take the money that you're not spending and invest it so that it is growing for you.
Right.
You have to save some for emergencies and then you have to invest the rest. And we can talk about that in terms of what goes in a retirement account and what doesn't. There's a percentage right, there's there are caps on what you can put in your retirement account. But you that's that's the third thing you have to do. The fourth thing you have to do is protect this whole world, which means having insurance right and having a basic estate plan, a will right, and a power of
attorney so that somebody could handle your money right. And then my fit thing is you got to find some way to give back because that is a happiness booster. So when it comes to investing your money, we invest the next dollar based on where we get the biggest bang for the buck. So if you are if you are working for a company that has a retirement plan like a four to oh one K, and you get matching dollars, then you want to put money in that four oh one K first because those matching dollars are
like free money. Once you've done that, you look at other accounts with tax advantages, like iras and health savings accounts and college savings accounts, and once you've satisfied those, then you look at just plainal brokerage accounts. But these are all just buckets, and into those buckets you put investments. You buy stocks, and bonds, and they live in those buckets stocks and other mutual funds. Yep. Money markets are. Money markets are a type of mutual.
Fund safer maybe than stocks and bonds. They're safer, especially if you're not dealing with a lot of money, right, Like, if you're not dealing with tons of money, that you can just gamble, because it's a gamble if you're doing stocks.
Is not really so if we look historically at at the returns of the stock market, they since the since the Dow was invented, since the inception of the Dow, yeah, and since the S and P five hundred was invented, they've returned about eight or nine percent every single year on average.
Okay, and it's been pretty consistent.
Well it's been like this, not so consistent. But what that means is that if you've got a long time to invest your money, ten plus years, you put your money in a diversified S and P five hundred fund or a diversified total stock market fund, and you just keep adding to it. Every time you get paid, you buy more. And even though the market goes like this,
over time, the market goes up. Right, So even though you have some ups and downs in the middle, the historical trend is going to be up, and that's how your money compounds, and that's how it makes more money for you. And when you are younger and you have more time until you need to use the money, then you put more of it in stocks. And when you're older and you have less time until you need to use the money, you put more of it in safer
places like bonds and like money markets. If you have other goals, shorter term goals, things you need to get to, Like you want to buy a house, and you want to buy a house in five years, you don't put your down payment in stocks. You put your down payment money market.
Right, yes, yes, yeah, that's what I'm currently doing. There you go, you buying a house. Well, yeah, I live in California, you know, so it's like right now, it's just not the best time, but it will be.
Sorry, are you okay?
I am, because I don't live in the LA I do live like a couple hours away from LA So I'm fine. But man, I used to I had a home that I owned in the Hollywood Hills for sixteen years and they all got it back. I mean, it's it's just horrible. But thank you for asking. I'm okay, sure, but that has changed the real state. I was actually looking for homes in Pacific Palisades that week that it
all happened, So yeah, it's devastating, awful. Last question before I let you go here, how much money do you believe a single woman should have in her savings account? I guess at a given time, whether it maybe in her forties or thirties.
So you said saving account, savings accounts, so not in her investments, in your cash account, your emergency account. I think single people should have six months worth of fixed expenses in an emergency account. If you're if you're part of a couple, it can be a little less. It can be three months. And that's because if one person loses their job, they have the other person's income to.
Fall back on. Got it. And as far as hiring business managers finance advisors, what is your suggestion?
Trust? But verify is my recommendation, right, So get recommendations from people that you know who use these people. On top of it, state, yes, do not take your eyes off the ball. Look, you have to look at all the statements, even if you've got somebody managing it. For you, but but make sure that you interview several people, make sure their credentials are up to date, make sure you
check references when you talk to them. Make sure that you're in line with what they think you should be doing with your money and what you think you should be doing with your money.
Important. Yeah, you don't want to go in there like not educated about your finances, because that's when people start to take advantage of you.
Right, And if you feel like I just can't talk to this person, then just leave, you know, run in the other direction, because they're not They could be a great advisor, they could be brilliant financially, but they're not brilliant for you because you're not going to be able to communicate with them.
Because I mean it is emotional a little bit, right there is that huge You could be great with numbers, but if I can't speak to you and you're not speaking the same language, because that's also a thing that I've run into, is that you're speaking like a completely different langue. But you're gonna have to bring it down to like maybe an eighth grader, or.
Just explain it to me in English rural, right, just explain it to me and if they can't do that, I'm not working with them.
Or if they get impatient, done like done done.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like lawyers too, same thing. I'm like, you got your speaking Shakespeare like I can't understand you. But yeah, communication is key in every relationship. Thank you so much. This was so helpful. Where can people find your online course because I would love to take it?
Oh well, we would love to have you.
Thank you.
You can find our budgeting course at financefix dot com with two x's and our investing club for women and you should come, Cheryl, because we near buying individual stocks. We're like learning about the market. It's every other Monday night on zoom. I teach it with Karen Feinerman from CNBC and you can find that an Investingfix dot com.
Again to I'll seriously look into it because I would love to just you know, it's never too late to get more of a grip. I do have a grip, but I would like to have more of a group.
Yeah, we've got five hundred women investing together.
Oh wow. And then is it just online like you can take it out your own time or if.
We tape all the classes, but we do do them live every Monday at eight pm. Every other Monday, eight pm on the East Coast.
All right, cool, I'll look into it for sure. Thank you again, thank you bye. Thanks to Jane for joining me today. And I just love talking about money because it's just so uncomfortable. But single women out there really do need this information and you're never it's never enough, you know, you always want to be educated for sure when it comes to your finances. Are you divorced or newly single? Maybe you need advice on how to navigate this next chapter in your life. Call us or email us,
follow us on socials. All the information will be in the show notes, so make sure to rate and review the podcast I Do Part two and iHeartRadio podcast where falling in love is the main objective.