Episode #172: “We saved for retirement but have no money to spend NOW” (Part 1)

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[00:00:00] Ramit: On today’s episode–

[00:00:02] Michelle: We are stuck with everything that we currently have. We stopped dreaming. You can’t dream at 113%.

[00:00:08] Ryan: I definitely feel stuck most days. I’m just trying to survive.

[00:00:11] Ramit: Meet Michelle and Ryan. Michelle is 42, and she is a worrier.

[00:00:15] Michelle: He doesn’t think twice. We missed the credit card payment by a couple of days. This is horrifying to me. He’s like, eh, do better next month. I think I would like an equal worrier.

[00:00:25] Ramit: Ryan is 43, and he refuses to worry about money. Ryan, you don’t worry about money, right?

[00:00:30] Ryan: No, I’m going to say not anymore. I made decisions based on money that, in hindsight, I later regretted. And I just at some point said, I’m never doing that again.

[00:00:38] Ramit: As we dig deeper, we learn that Michelle is resentful of how her relationship with money was different than Ryan’s when she was growing up.

[00:00:46] Michelle: When I’m sitting there babysitting with my several side hustles at age 24 watching Suze Orman, this guy is out in Australia, living it up, racking up the credit cards because he could. He had a place to fall back to; I did not.

[00:01:00] Ramit: Can Michelle and Ryan see beyond the past and stop the bleeding so they can start living their rich life today? This is a crisis.

[00:01:07] Ryan: Look at the spreadsheet; it’s not working.

[00:01:08] Michelle: It really is death by a thousand paper cuts.

[00:01:10] Ryan: I think big changes need to be made. I think I’m a little afraid to make them.

[00:01:14] Ramit: Let’s dig in with Michelle and Ryan.

[Interview]

[00:01:27] Michelle: I was probably panicking because that’s usually what I’m doing. We had fairly recently a credit card bill. I had to text him to be like, hey, can you pay this? And I got the, oh, hold on. I think I have to transfer over money for that. I never get that response from him. I was like, what do you mean? And I realized because the balance of the credit card bill, which we pay in full, basically matched the income for the month. So then I was like, yeah, we’re in trouble.

[00:01:57] Ryan: Yeah. So usually a couple of times a year I got to take money from the savings account, shifted into the checking account. That way we can cover the credit card bill.

[00:02:07] Ramit: You were just casual about incurring a late fee from your credit card?

[00:02:12] Ryan: Yeah, I probably would have been, all right, whatever. You know what? That stinks. I don’t want to pay it. Let’s just say it’s the cost of doing life. I should have been more responsible. I’ll make sure I’m better next time for it.

[00:02:30] Michelle: I actually said this to him over time that I feel like I have a very physical connection and response to spending money. I can physically feel it when I’m spending it.

[00:02:43] Ramit: Where do you feel it?

[00:02:44] Michelle: In my entire body, mostly in my chest and my belly is mostly where I feel it. But for him, I feel like you’re like, hey, you got 20 bucks? Yeah, sure. Here you go. He doesn’t think twice. Oh, we missed the credit card payment by a couple of days. It’s a little over 100 bucks of interest. This is like horrifying to me. He’s like, ah, do better next month. Whereas I have to call now and get one of my several one-time courtesies and get these things waived, where if it were him, he would just let it ride.

[00:03:18] Ramit: Is that how you would describe the basic dynamic of the relationship? You are worried, Michelle, and Ryan is along for the ride?

[00:03:30] Michelle: In terms of the worry and concern, 100%. Yeah, I’d say I’m the worrier, and he’s the passenger of the worry. I think I would like an equal worrier.

[00:03:41] Ramit: Oh.

[00:03:43] Michelle: I guess. I want someone to be as concerned as I am.

[00:03:46] Ramit: And you mentioned you feel it in your chest and stomach. Just so I’m making sure I get this right, this is a negative feeling about money, right? Do you ever feel positive about money?

[00:03:56] Michelle: Yes. When I see that things are going well. Maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Maybe it never feels truly good.

[00:04:09] Ramit: In your mind, Michelle, does worrying about money equal caring about money?

[00:04:14] Michelle: Yes. It really is an overload. It’s overwhelmed. It’s exhaustion. It’s the panic and then the, oh, we’re okay.

[00:04:33] Ramit: And is there a world where you can care about money without worrying about it?

[00:04:38] Michelle: I hope so.

[00:04:39] Ramit: And Ryan, you don’t worry about money, right?

[00:04:43] Ryan: I’m going to say not anymore. I try not to. I made decisions based on money that in hindsight I later regretted, and I just at some point said, I’m never doing that again.

[00:04:55] Ramit: What was an example?

[00:04:57] Ryan: When we got our house. So when I save money to buy the house, I pretty much cut off frivolous spending, cut off a lot of socializing, everything. Save, save, save, save, save, save. Got to save, got to save, got to save, got to hit that number, that number, that number. There was no more Starbucks. There was no more coffee. There was no nothing. And I got there.

[00:05:19] And by the time you got to the table with the closing costs and this, that, and the other thing, the– let’s say, 50 bucks I might have spent on a Friday night going out with some friends would not have made or broken that entire situation. I don’t want to get back to that point where I’m so worried about every penny.

[00:05:42] Ramit: So you bought this house and you told yourself, I buckled down for this. Did you feel a sense of pride at being able to buy the house?

[00:05:53] Ryan: Yes, there was a sense of pride in it, almost followed by immediate sense of regret.

[00:05:58] Ramit: Well, that’s every homeowner. Michelle, were you in the picture when Ryan bought the house? Were you two together?

[00:06:07] Michelle: So, no, we were not together at the time. I was part of the friend group though. So we, the friend group, I distinctly remember making fun of this valiant effort to scrape together all these [Inaudible], like, no, Ryan’s not coming. Ryan’s not coming. He’s got to save for the house. And another friend would be like, well, why doesn’t he just open up the garage and take out half those toys in there and sell them? And then he’s got his down payment.

[00:06:35] Ramit: First of all, what toys were in the garage, Ryan? Just tell me.

[00:06:38] Ryan: In the beginning there was two motorcycles and a convertible.

[00:06:45] Ramit: All right. I get it. Are those gone? Are they still there?

[00:06:52] Ryan: The one motorcycle is still there. The convertible is still there, but the one motorcycle is up for sale.

[00:06:57] Ramit: Oh, okay. It’s funny, Michelle, that you mentioned you would make fun of him like, oh, this guy’s not going to come anymore because he’s got to save his money. But now you are the one who is intensely worried about personal finances. How did that flip?

[Narration]

[00:07:09] Ramit: Before we hear her answer, I need a quick favor from you. If you’re enjoying this show, please hit the Subscribe button. It really helps my team and me.

[Interview]

[00:07:18] Michelle: I really haven’t changed over time. The thing is, I would never just make a decision to buy a house and then suddenly have a few months to scrape together a down payment. That’s not how I roll. It’s never how I rolled.

[00:07:32] Ramit: Why not?

[00:07:33] Michelle: Even in my 20s, I was saving for this point in my life where I don’t think Ryan’s had the foresight. I’m currently living in what I planned for in my 20s. I planned for this only I didn’t go beyond this. I think I planned up to here.

[00:07:52] When he went to buy this house, there was like a scrambling to get together $4,000, and we were in the same friend group at the time, and I remember making fun of that with the other friends. Like, this guy has to scramble to get $4,000 together.

[00:08:04] That’s the other thing that right from the beginning, I held that against you. I’m like, what do you mean? You’ve had a real job making 60 grand a year, and you’ve been living home for the first four years of this job and you are scrambling to save $4,000?

[00:08:16] That’s incomprehensible to me. I would’ve had 200 grand in the bank by now. How come you have zero? Obviously, not ready to buy a house. How come no one’s telling him this? And so he still got it anyway.

[00:08:27] And then you go down the line in the years. It’s always me tugging him along through every financial milestone. We’re here because of you. You bought this house like this. I’m tripping over that cat and that kid and that toy because of you, and now we can’t fix it because you lived it up back in the day and I never got the chance to, and we’re still here, dude. So that’s where all the resentment comes from.

[Narration]

[00:08:51] Ramit: Did you notice how Michelle spent a lot of time talking about her feelings around money and how they were almost all negative? She talked about how she feels the negative sensations of money in her body. She mentioned feeling resentment that Ryan hadn’t saved more, even though he did a crash savings plan and bought a house.

[00:09:09] And when I asked her if she ever felt good about money, she gave me an ambivalent answer. These are clues, big clues that I want to dig into. Michelle, of course, is a worrier, and Ryan is along for the ride. He’s probably an avoider. I noticed that he’s got what he calls toys in his garage. By the way, why is it that men always call their expensive impulse purchases toys? Can anyone tell me? I’m going to ask how they grew up with money. Before I get into it, what do you think they’re going to say?

[Interview]

[00:09:44] Ramit: Let’s take it back to your childhood. What do you remember about your parents saying about money or your family?

[00:09:49] Michelle: It was always a source of contention. There was never enough. Then child of divorce. So then it was like, did dad pay the child support? Child support wasn’t enough. Never had enough for this, that, and the other thing. We ended up living with my grandparents on my mom’s side. I didn’t come out of childhood with any money. I’m sure people gave me cash for gifts at some point.

[00:10:12] I saw none of it. I came out with nothing, and I built it all myself. So I knew that if I were going to survive going forward, that I had me and me alone to rely on. My parents, the people who were supposed to take care of me really didn’t. They made me instead feel like a burden wherever I went.

[00:10:39] Ramit: That sucks. I’m sorry to hear that.

[00:10:41] Michelle: Yeah. You take it and you move on.

[00:10:45] Ramit: Were you the first to go to college in your family?

[00:10:47] Michelle: Yes.

[00:10:48] Ramit: Wow. Congratulations. That’s amazing. That’s really cool. How did you pay for it?

[00:10:54] Michelle: I went there for one year and I ran out of money. I was about, I think, 8,000 short to go back the second year and I was like, this is my problem when I leave. So I’m going to leave here and go to a state school instead and not come out buried under debt.

[00:11:12] Ramit: So in your early 20s, it sounds like you started saving aggressively.

[00:11:17] Michelle: Yes.

[00:11:18] Ramit: Okay. What was driving that? What did you think about money at the time, and what did you feel as you started to save more?

[00:11:26] Michelle: I had zero for a while. I was breaking even for a while. I remember very distinctly I was $20 short. I think it was exactly $20 short for my car insurance bill at the time. And the office that I was working, it was right around Christmas, and I went in at night. I had left something behind and I went in and there was a card on my desk. One of the employees had left a card to say happy holidays with the 20-dollar bill in it. So things like that. I always managed to find it when I needed it, so to speak.

[00:11:57] Ramit: What did that teach you?

[00:12:02] Michelle: To not totally lose faith. That even though I grew up being let down, that not everyone will let you down. There’s still hope around the corner.

[00:12:17] Ramit: Thank you for walking me through that. That’s super helpful. Ryan, can I ask you the same question? What do you remember about your family growing up?

[00:12:24] Ryan: As a kid, I remember hearing a lot of, we don’t have money for that. As let’s say that 17-year-old who wanted a new car, there’s no money for that. But the little 1000-dollar car that I bought, when that broke down, they had no problem covering a repair when it needed it. If something came up, it could always get handled and managed. So I think they just budgeted it well. But I wouldn’t say there was a lot of ever talking about it.

[00:12:59] Ramit: Ryan, did you ever talk to Michelle about her upbringing with money and similarly did you share your upbringing with it?

[00:13:06] Ryan: We’ve definitely had talks here and there.

[00:13:10] Michelle: I’ve told you little stories because they’re so different from his. With the SATs, I’m like, oh man, this is $200 to pay for the SATs. Ask your mom. Ask your dad. I asked my guidance counselor who figured out how to get it paid for. Or there was a field trip that came up and I needed $100 above what we could afford. So my music teacher actually let me help her paint in her house so that I could earn the money to go on this trip. That kind of stuff I think is so far beyond what Ryan can– he grew up not like that.

[00:13:43] Ramit: Why not talk about that, out of curiosity?

[00:13:47] Michelle: Something that just comes up. It just comes up here and there in little tidbits. I don’t think you really go on that whole depressing journey in one. Like right now.

[00:14:00] Ramit: That’s very interesting, Michelle, because I could tell you, I hear some pain in your story, but when I think about your story, Michelle, I do not think about depressing. That’s not how I hear it. I hear somebody who grew up in a family where parents were divorced, money was lacking.

[00:14:19] It was an issue throughout childhood. And then I hear someone who said, I’m not going to let that define me. I’m going to find a way. What’s depressing about that? To me, that is incredible. Ryan, you ever reflected on Michelle’s journey like that?

[00:14:42] Ryan: For her to jump, not only one bad hurdle, but 100 bad hurdles, it’s very, very impressive.

[00:14:52] Ramit: I agree. What you both just revealed is so illuminating. I feel like I just shined a flashlight on your history and I can see something I couldn’t see before. Now, if I had three kids, ages 7, 5, and 3, you better believe I’d be wanting to tell these stories all the time. Because they connect your kids to where you came from. Michelle, do you think your kids are going to struggle by not having $20 like you did?

[00:15:25] Michelle: No, because they’ll have someone to call.

[00:15:28] Ramit: Exactly. So therefore, don’t you think it’s even more important for them to know where mom came from?

[00:15:37] Michelle: Yeah, probably.

[00:15:40] Ramit: This is how we create legacies. This is what generational wealth really is. That right there.

[Narration]

[00:15:47] Ramit: What a beautiful moment. Sometimes we don’t realize how important our stories are– the good, the bad, all of it. Those stories made you who you are. I have stories that I love to share, like the story about how my parents took my sisters to UC Berkeley, when they were little, and my dad would take them to the math and science buildings every year and he would say, one day, you can go here.

[00:16:10] And they didn’t even make it to the main area of college where all the college kids are. They just would sit outside the math and science buildings, and my dad would tell them that. And that is exactly where they ended up going. And the story about how I applied to multiple colleges, but the $50 fee was a lot. So I put a Post-it note in the envelope saying, listen, this is a lot of money, so please waive the fee, but if you really need it, contact me, and I will find a way to get the money.

[00:16:36] And then I got into my first choice. These are stories that define us. It’s so important for us to look inside, to remember our own stories and then to share them. And don’t be ashamed if these stories are not perfect. They’re your stories. Tell them to your spouse, tell them to your friends, and definitely tell them over and over to your children because they are a connection to where you came from. Let’s get back to Michelle, who in her screening interview, told us about her interest with personal finance, and it’s quite revealing, especially the last part.

[Interview]

[00:17:09] Michelle: I’m like the financial gurus spiral out person. So I’ve been watching Suze Orman since I was 24 years old. Then I recently found the FIRE community. I was like, ooh, now I learned a lot of technicalities, like the 4% rule, rule of 72. I heard more about that through the FIRE community, but it’s no longer working for us.

[00:17:29] I’m so far buried in my spreadsheet that I have no idea how to step back and fix it. I have no solutions I spent so much time in my younger years setting up for retirement that I never really considered the right now. So what am I saving for? What are we saving for? We don’t know what we’re saving for down the line. I started– it was a spiral. I was spiraling. I’m staring at an empty spot on the couch. I have nobody to vent it to. I got to talk to Ramit. I need to see if I can get on this, have him talk me down.

[00:18:05] I’m a long time Suze Orman fan, followed a lot of her stuff. She never talked about spending, but I got the savings part down from her, standing in your truth and all that good stuff. Then I found your stuff and that’s where the spending stuff came in, which I had never really considered before.

[00:18:22] Then I read Die with Zero, and I think that one put me over the edge. Because now I’m like, great, I’m spending all this life energy. I’m the ant, and Ryan’s the grasshopper is what took me over the edge a little bit, is that I married a grasshopper.

[00:18:42] Bill Perkins talks about in the beginning of the book, where you have an ant and a grasshopper, and the ant works really hard throughout the summer to make sure that there was enough food stored for winter while a grasshopper was out partying and hanging out and loving life. And then we all know what happened to the grasshopper who starved to death in winter. And while the ant survived, was she really happy?

[00:19:06] I was like, oh my God, I married a grasshopper. So when I’m sitting there babysitting with my several side hustles at age 24, watching Suze Orman, this guy is out in Australia, living it up, racking up the credit cards and student teaching internationally because he could. He had a place to fall back to; I did not.

[00:19:26] I only had myself to fall back on, so I made sure I maintained that, my savings myself. Because who else is going to support me but me? But him, he is like, I can just go back home. I married a grasshopper. This is what happens when the grasshopper marries the ant. So the thing is though, and Bill Perkins thing is like, when does the ant get to play? So that’s my question. When does the ant get to play? So I lost decades. He did not.

[00:19:57] Ramit: Are you saying you worked so hard in your 20s and you saved up a bunch of money and Ryan did not? It sounds like he went out a lot and bought some bikes and stuff like that. Now you two are married and you’re resentful of that. Is that what I’m hearing?

[00:20:15] Michelle: 100%. Because he got to live his happy grasshopper life. Where I had to constantly work and store and make sure– and I feel like we are set up, not to say he didn’t have a part in how we’re set up now because he was obviously a huge piece for that, but he got to end up here, even existing as a grasshopper then. I got here because I worked consistently to make sure I got here.

[00:20:47] And I actually had my eyes on here, whereas he was not looking ahead that far. He was looking a couple of blocks ahead, whereas I was looking decades ahead, and he still ended up in the same place as me. I 100%feel resentment over that.

[00:21:03] Ramit: Hmm. What do you think about that, Ryan?

[00:21:08] Ryan: I can understand the resentment. It’s upsetting to me that she didn’t get to experience a lot of the stuff that I did get to experience as I was living that grasshopper life.

[00:21:30] Michelle: I planned to the porch and the rocking chair, older retirement. I don’t really have a handle or a vision for the right now. I feel like the goalpost needs to be moved a little bit more and I don’t know where to put it for that.

[00:21:49] Ramit: I think in order to speak on this, I need to look at your numbers with you.

[00:21:56] Michelle: Okay. Assets are $584,836. Investments are $467,985. Savings is $135,249. And debt is $218,135.

[00:22:19] Ramit: Okay. Total net worth?

[00:22:20] Michelle: For a total net worth of 969,935 bucks.

[00:22:26] Ramit: Okay, great. How do you feel about that number?

[00:22:28] Michelle: Not going to lie, when I saw the net worth, I was a little giddy.

[00:22:34] Ramit: Interesting, right? Worrying about money almost every day. Probably had not added up a net worth before. What do you think about that?

[00:22:41] Michelle: Not a net worth. I had never done that before.

[00:22:43] Ramit: Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Ryan, let’s go ahead and talk about gross monthly income. Can you read that combined income right there?

[00:22:55] Ryan: 11, 815.

[00:22:57] Michelle: I think it’s six.

[00:22:58] Ryan: Cool. Yeah. 11, 615. Sorry.

[00:23:00] Ramit: All right, so that’s $139,380. Did you all know that that’s what you made?

[00:23:05] Michelle: Yes.

[00:23:05] Ryan: No.

[00:23:07] Ramit: There we go, 50%, what I tell you.

[00:23:09] Michelle: I hate being part of the majority.

[00:23:15] Ramit: What was it like doing the CSP together?

[00:23:17] Michelle: Oh my God, I loved it.

[00:23:19] Ryan: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

[00:23:21] Michelle: I was like spreadsheets, spreadsheets.

[00:23:23] Ramit: Michelle, I know loved it. Ryan, did you like it?

[00:23:26] Ryan: Yeah, yeah. It was really interesting.

[00:23:27] Ramit: Wow. So how long did it take you to do this together?

[00:23:31] Michelle: Multiple sessions because we– I don’t know if you can tell them a little on the thorough side.

[Narration]

[00:23:36] Ramit: I just need to cut in here to point out that Michelle spent several minutes describing her emotional and even physical reactions to worrying about money, which she does constantly. And she even said she loves spreadsheets and obviously spends a lot of time in them, but she has never actually calculated her net worth.

[00:23:56] This is so common. People play small with money all the time. They think that managing money means paying bills. They agonize over a $50 Target bill. They log into their apps every day, and they spend years, even decades, doing this, basically moving meaningless puzzle pieces around the board. 

[00:24:18] The truth is that most of this is pointless. Tracking the price of your family spending on fruit roll-ups is pointless, and so is logging into your financial apps every single week or day to make sure that your bill got paid on time. What really matters is not these 3-dollar questions, but the $30,000 questions, like, what’s our net worth? Are we hitting our four numbers in the conscious spending plan? When will our debt be paid off? When will we have a million dollars? When will we have enough to retire? And on and on.

[00:24:48] Guys, I want you to play big with money, not small. That’s why I do this podcast. And for those of you who want to do this together with your partner, go and pre-order my upcoming book, Money for Couples. You can get it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the indies via bookshop.org.

[Interview]

[00:25:05] Michelle: I’m currently staying home with the kids.

[00:25:08] Ramit: Ah, okay. How long have you been doing that?

[00:25:10] Michelle: Since 2016.

[00:25:12] Ramit: All right. So let’s take a look here. So your net is 8,130 bucks. Michelle, can you read this number to me? Fixed costs, what is this number here, the percentage?

[00:25:26] Michelle: That is 113%.

[00:25:29] Ramit: So I’m confused guys. How is it possible that you have these conversations about money and transfer and you assured me that credit card gets paid every month and all this stuff is fine, but you are losing money every single month?

[00:25:49] Michelle: Okay, so we talked about this. I had just as much upset as you when I saw that percentage. But it really didn’t hit me until that one credit card bill where it matched the income for the month. So it’s not a frequent thing. It’s not an expected thing, but it has happened a handful of times over those seven years.

[00:26:12] And it’s just worked. It doesn’t look like it should work. We mapped this out on paper before I resigned, and we were in the red. And there’s some stuff that just dropped off once I stopped working, and it just worked. We were actually ahead each month for a while.

[00:26:31] Ramit: And then?

[00:26:32] Michelle: And now we’re not.

[00:26:33] Ramit: You are losing money every single month. You’re broke. You are broke, both of you. It is clear as day. And you’re saying, well, somehow it works out. It’s not working. It just hasn’t caught up to you yet. Simple as that. This is why I wanted to look at the CSP early.

[00:27:03] Guys, the way you’re talking about money, I can see that you’re discontent with money and with the way you both look at each other, but you have a fire burning in your house. You’re losing money every single month. So do you see the severity of the situation?

[00:27:24] Ryan: Yeah, it can’t continue because it’ll keep chipping away into that savings. That’s not going to be able to float us forever.

[00:27:37] Ramit: It’s not the way you want to go through life, especially with young children. Michelle, what’s your reaction?

[00:27:48] Michelle: My reaction to it is I know that that number is why I feel the way I do day to day. I’m comfortable here. I’ve lived here my whole life.

[00:28:02] Ramit: Comfortable in?

[00:28:04] Michelle: In this stress. I know that it’s possible to come out on the other end of it. In my mind, the way that I justified it, and I still do, is that it’s temporary. The goal that I had in mind was to keep a float, was to stay even. I built up that savings for this so that if we got to this point, which we’re now in, that I’d have a little bit of time– I don’t know exactly how much time, but I’d have a little bit of time where it could soften the blow and keep the fire burning lower, or at least so that I could survive it until I get to the other side.

[00:28:53] Ramit: Why are you talking like this? First of all, it sounds like we’re on Game of Thrones or something. What the hell is happening?

[00:28:59] Michelle: In my mind, it was a temporary– and this was how I looked at it in my 20s too.

[00:29:03] Ramit: Yeah, but 20 years later you’re in your early 40s.

[00:29:05] Michelle: I know. I’m still here.

[00:29:08] Ramit: This is a crisis. What is going through your head when you see 113% going towards fixed costs?

[00:29:17] Michelle: That it’s not sustainable. I don’t have a timeline on that, but I know that it’s not sustainable, that we cannot exist this way.

[00:29:25] Ramit: What’s going to happen?

[00:29:27] Michelle: We will actually be broke, as in savings will be eaten away to nothing.

[00:29:33] Ramit: Correct. You’ll run out of money.

[00:29:35] Michelle: Yeah.

[00:29:36] Ramit: Okay. Ryan, what do you think my perspective is?

[00:29:38] Ryan: It’s a sinking ship. It can’t continue this way because we will run out of money. It’s the numbers. That’s what the numbers are. They don’t lie.

[00:29:53] Ramit: Is it working?

[00:29:59] Ryan: No. Look at the spreadsheet. It’s not working.

[00:30:04] Ramit: Let’s take a look at the numbers line by line, shall we? So your housing costs are 24%. It’s pretty good for a family of five. All right, moving along. Target, 763. What is this?

[00:30:21] Michelle: Okay. So I had to put separate line items because I don’t sit and take all the Target and the Amazon stuff. The groceries is easy because it’s specific stores, but for Target and Amazon, I get some groceries from Target. I get some birthday gifts from Target. Target covers a whole bunch of line items in one, so I gave it its own line item. Amazon is diapers too. There’s all sorts of stuff. Some people count diapers and groceries, but like–

[00:30:51] Ramit: Michelle, you know that that’s a very unsatisfying answer, right?

[00:30:55] Michelle: Yes, I do.

[00:30:57] Ramit: And we haven’t even gotten to Amazon yet.

[00:30:59] Michelle: No.

[00:30:59] Ramit: Okay, let’s talk about Amazon. What’s that number there?

[00:31:03] Michelle: That upset me. 1,185 bucks.

[00:31:05] Ramit: What is that?

[00:31:07] Michelle: I was upset about that one, you remember, Ryan? I have the household subscriptions like diapers and vitamins, whatever. So I have that all on my side. I was like, what is yours doing at– what was yours? Yours was at least 500 of that.

[00:31:21] Ryan: It’s 500 a month. It averaged out to be that.

[00:31:23] Michelle: I’m like what are you buying $500 a month on Amazon? That one was a surprise.

[00:31:28] Ramit: Pull up your Amazon account. Let’s just look at the last few orders.

[00:31:33] Ryan: It was a pair of sunglasses for my son that had gotten broken. $13 for the sunglasses. We signed the kids up for soccer. Here’s $25 for the shin guards and the soccer ball. There’s four pairs of shoes with the intention of returning three of them.

[00:31:49] Ramit: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:49] Ryan: One is 18. One is 38. One was 23. One was 18.

[00:31:54] Ramit: All right, keep going.

[00:31:55] Ryan: $21 for the bike tires. A replacement part for the refrigerator that broke. I think that was $17. Little paper cups for the bathroom. They were $16.

[00:32:10] Michelle: This one is water shoes, kids’, 13 bucks. Baby wipes, 40 bucks. Vitamins for the kids. That one’s 32 bucks. Shampoo for the kids. That one’s 11 bucks.

[00:32:26] Ramit: Guys, you don’t get to $1,000 a month on $13 sunglass purchases.

[00:32:33] Ryan: Yeah, it’s a lot of just nickel and diming. So it was $49 for a gas detector, $90 for a beach canopy for the summer, for going to the beach to create shade. A pair of sneakers for me. That was about 100 bucks.

[00:32:50] Ramit: Guys?

[00:32:50] Michelle: I’m scrolling through. Nothing else is higher than that on my end, really.

[00:32:56] Ramit: So what do you think’s going on here?

[00:32:58] Ryan: We’re impulsively buying things let’s say that we don’t really need.

[00:33:04] Michelle: I knew the Amazon on my end because it’s a subscription for house things. I was very surprised on his end. So we did fine tooth comb this. We really did. And it really was a ton of little things. It really is death by 1,000 paper cuts on the Amazon front.

[Narration]

[00:33:23] Ramit: You can hear that they jumped right down into the weeds. Of course, I did ask them to list out some of their purchases, but when I asked them to zoom up and to explain what they think is going on here, they play the innocent doe technique. Me? Little old me? I have no idea what’s going on here. Now, listen, I can understand not knowing where a few hundred bucks a month go, but $2,000 a month in unexplained charges from Target and Amazon? There’s something else going on here.

[Interview]

[00:33:50] Ramit: It’s not just Target, which is $763 a month. It’s not just Amazon, which is $1,185 a month. It’s not just groceries with the $1,230. We also then have kids’ activities, which is 955 additional dollars per month. If I spoke to your kids and I asked them, you’re young. What do your parents say about money? What would they say?

[00:34:18] Michelle: I don’t say, we don’t have the money. We can’t afford it. I don’t say those things. I say, I would rather spend my money on– we have this frequently with the ice cream man.

[00:34:27] Ramit: What else, Ryan?

[00:34:30] Ryan: I want to think I tend to say, all right, we’ll try and figure this out type of thing. In terms of let’s say the ice cream man, I’m a little bit more of the yes person for that. But let’s say we got some donuts, Dunkin Donuts, and afterwards they wanted the ice cream man. I was like, no, we just got that. We can’t also get the ice cream man.

[00:34:56] Ramit: You’re going into debt, and we’re sitting here talking about Dunkin Donuts? Are we being honest right now? Because I always say to live a Rich Life, you got to be honest, honest with yourselves and honest with the people around you. I think if I asked your kids, what do mom and dad say, they would say, dad says we’re going to try to figure it out. Mom worries about money, things like, how are we going to pay for this? Or, oh, it’s the end of the month.

[00:35:20] Michelle: They hear me get upset with Ryan, I would say.

[00:35:24] Ramit: Ah. What do they hear you say?

[00:35:26] Michelle: Why are you buying two separate slices of pizza for whatever it was, $14, when we just bought a 24-dollar pie. We took them to a little kitty show, and I was sick that day, so I ended up not being able to go. And Ryan went alone, which means the police officer wasn’t there. And of course, what’s the first thing I did?

[00:35:49] Ramit: Sorry. Are you the police officer?

[00:35:51] Michelle: I am the no officer. I am the limitation officer. Let’s put it that way. So my card pings my phone when there’s a charge over $200. So I wouldn’t say I was actively checking, but it pinged my phone for a charge over $200. I’m like, oh, that’s weird. I look at it and it says it’s the venue. He bought over $200 worth of merch after already spending $250 on the tickets for the show. He bought $250 worth of merch while there because they wanted it. As you can imagine, I was not okay with that.

[00:36:30] Ramit: Is the issue really just that, Ryan, you’re just overspending on the kids and we should just stop? Is that it? I think we could go the next five years pointing fingers at each other and it wouldn’t get us anywhere.

[Narration]

[00:36:41] Ramit: Ryan and Michelle are doing something that is so common for lots of couples. They’re living their lives day to day, and once in a while they pay attention to money, but it’s always when something goes wrong. And during that moment, they get so frustrated that they try to make a change.

[00:36:56] But the problem is they don’t have a shared vision. They don’t talk about money regularly or proactively. They see money completely differently, which leads them to adopt these very peculiar roles like Michelle calling herself the family’s police officer of spending. But most of all, the changes they try to make are one-time episodic changes.

[00:37:18] There’s no true lifestyle change, no systems, and therefore no sustainable change. It would be like you’re in a lake, you’re starting to drown, so you paddle for a few seconds, and then you go right back underwater, and eventually you drown because you never learned the really important part here, which is how to swim.

[00:37:41] Obviously, this goes a lot deeper than $13 sunglasses.

[Interview]

[00:37:44] Ramit: Have you ever said no to your kids? Like, we just can’t do that.

[00:37:51] Michelle: That’s how I grew up. I never did the gymnastics. I never did the swimming lessons. The money was just not there. We took the calculator to the grocery store. We heated up some Ellio’s pizza. We did all the extracurriculars that school had to offer because those were free.

[00:38:12] I wanted to be able to give them the chance to do that stuff. I took them to the trial gymnastics class. I took them to the trial swim class, and we never stopped it. It never stopped.

[00:38:26] Ryan: If you had to pick one and drop everything else, those are the two that they would want to keep. So those are the two that I want to try to keep for them.

[00:38:38] Michelle: Problem is, though, I have played with that spreadsheet. No matter what I did, I didn’t get it below 75%, even dropping stuff entirely.

[00:38:47] Ramit: What does that tell you?

[00:38:51] Michelle: I mean, I would think it’s an income problem.

[00:38:54] Ramit: Well, every couple who overspends thinks it’s an income problem. If you two started making $250,000 a year, you’d run through every last cent of it right now.

[00:39:02] Michelle: There’s no site beyond what we have now.

[00:39:06] Ramit: Saying what?

[00:39:07] Michelle: This is it. And this is where we exist. This is where we are stuck. I use that word a lot with Ryan, actually. We are stuck. This is where we are stuck. He bought a starter house. We will retire in the same house that we started in because we’re stuck. We are stuck with everything that we currently have. We stopped dreaming. You can’t dream at 113%. You can’t. You just can’t. So we don’t.

[00:39:37] Ryan: I definitely feel stuck. I’m going to say most days I’m just trying to survive. I’m trying to juggle the 9,000 things that all have to be handled on a daily basis between everything. Vision of the future, would love one. I’m trying to get through tonight, so it gets tough to get out of that mindset.

[00:40:09] Ramit: Often offer people the ability to make no changes, minor changes, or big changes.

[00:40:19] Ryan: I think big changes need to be made. I think I’m a little afraid to make them, but I think they need to be made.

[00:40:26] Ramit: Okay. Michelle?

[00:40:30] Michelle: I think I’d have to see what they entail before I can choose what I’d be on board with.

[00:40:40] Ramit: What big changes could I suggest that you would be against?

[00:40:49] Michelle: You watch this from the other side, and it’s just so obvious. I’m flashing back to being 24 years old and throwing popcorn at the TV with Suze Orman while I have the kids I’m babysitting for sleeping on the couch next to me because, of course, I’m earning money. Of course, you can’t afford that. You’re not fully funding your Roth IRA. And here I am on the other side not wanting to let go of some vitamins.

[00:41:17] I’d have to see what it is first because I want my kids to remember. I remember thinking like, I really wanted to try gymnastics and I couldn’t do it. And I want them to be able to do it. I know. I don’t know.

[00:41:52] Ramit: Hearing both of you answer my question is painful because I can see your future clearer in some ways than you can see it. I know what it means when you have 113% fixed costs. It’s like catastrophe. You just so far haven’t yet experienced the earthquake that is coming your way.

[Narration]

[00:42:18] Most people don’t know their fixed cost number, but even among those who do, when they discover that they’re overspending, they usually get this vague feeling like they’re doing something wrong. It goes something like, oh, no, this is supposed to be 50 to 60%, but we’re at 113%, and that’s bad.

[00:42:38] And that’s as far as it goes. This is where you really see that human nature is not quite as rational as you were brought up to believe. I guarantee that if Michelle and Ryan saw their son get a paper cut, they would react with more urgency than realizing they have 113% fixed cost. In other words, that they are spending more than they make every single month.

[00:43:00] Now, I’m not blaming them. In fact, we are all irrational like this in some part of our life, but this is a slow-moving train wreck that will happen. See, money is complex. It’s not as simple as, oh, I’m doing well because I have $10,000 in my checking account, or I’m doing horribly because we’re down to $27.

[00:43:21] That’s not how it works. Money is complex. You can actually be losing money every single month and not realize it for months or in some cases years, but eventually it will catch up with you. And when that happens, it gets bad. It gets very, very bad.

[00:43:36] You don’t hear many stories about couples in those situations, the ones who spent more than they made over and over for months and months. You know why? That’s because the people who lose their house and sometimes lose their family don’t want to talk about it, and sometimes they can’t talk about it because they now have to work two jobs just to keep the lights on.

[00:43:56] I don’t want this for you. That’s why I created my conscious spending plan, so you can see where your numbers are today, and it’s free. And that’s why I created my book. You can get it from the library or any bookstore so that you can set up your automatic money systems and save and invest and spend on the things you love. That is what I want for you, to go on offense with your money. Next week we’ll continue this conversation with Michelle and Ryan, and I promise you you’re going to be surprised. I will see you then.