Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich talks to Grace and James, a couple from Ireland, aged 38 and 37, who have been navigating immense challenges. James was diagnosed with cancer and underwent a year of treatment, while Grace managed a difficult pregnancy and maternity leave with their second child, an infant. Amidst the fear and grief, their household income took a significant hit, causing financial strain. Grace felt the burden of managing their finances, leading to guilt about James continuing to work during his illness. Despite these hardships, they’ve built a strong financial foundation with high savings and have managed to stay afloat. Ramit helps them explore their individual money psychologies, the impact of their upbringings, and how their shared experiences have shaped their financial outlook, revealing a story of resilience, unwavering teamwork, and an inspiring pursuit of a rich life.
In this episode we uncover:
• How Grace feels immense pressure to manage finances• The emotional toll of James’s cancer diagnosis• Grace’s hidden “mindless” spending under stress• The English perspective on “mustn’t grumble” about money• James’s childhood money messages and aversion to debt• The surprising freedom found in small financial wins• Grace’s proactive approach to long-term financial planning• The power of internal versus external locus of control• How a shared money philosophy can emerge from conflict• The importance of planning for the worst when at your best• Their inspiring journey of overcoming adversity as a team
Chapters:
(00:00:00) Introduction(00:05:13) Grace’s guilt over James working during cancer(00:12:32) Grace’s “mindless purchases” and coping mechanisms(00:15:55) The surprising reality of their financial stability(00:30:03) Contrasting money philosophies: big spend vs. small treats(00:33:45) Reviewing their Conscious Spending Plan and uncovering hidden wealth(00:46:12) The impact of fluctuating income on their financial outlook(00:55:00) Planning for the worst when they are at their best(01:00:16) James’s upbringing and the origins of his money anxiety(01:11:10) Their “ice cream cone” fight and early money revelations
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Transcript
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[00:00:00] Ramit: Here’s the scenario. Your partner is suddenly diagnosed with cancer. They have to step back from work and your household income predictably drops on top of the fear and grief that you are both experiencing. Would you know what to do financially? This is what Grace and James have been navigating.
[00:00:19] They’re 38 and 37 years old. They live in Ireland with their two children, a toddler and an infant. James has been going through cancer treatment. While Grace is on maternity leave, their income has taken a hit. And like a lot of couples, they’re trying to figure out how to make it all work. Now, I know that a lot of people would avoid talking about money until they are forced to, but Grace and James are doing it and they’ve let us look inside their real numbers.
[00:00:46] I’m opening up their conscious spending plan or their CSP. It breaks down their income expenses, savings, and exactly where their money is going. If you want my help with your own conscious spending plan, join my money coaching program at iwt.com/money Coaching. Here’s what I’m seeing in their numbers.
[00:01:03] Assets, 328,000 investments, 79,000 savings, 42,000 debt, 230,000 net worth, 219,000. Fixed cost at 48% investments, 6% savings at 40%. That’s quite aggressive and guilt-free spending at 6%, that 40% savings rate. Tells me something is going on. Maybe they are in a rebuilding phase. Maybe they are trying to get ahead of what might be coming.
[00:01:35] It’s not surprising to see a higher savings rate given that they’ve been going through cancer, reduced income and having a newborn. But I also notice the 6% going towards guilt-free spending. That’s very low. I suspect things feel very tight. As a matter of comparison, I usually recommend 20 to 35% for guilt-free spending.
[00:01:54] Now I wanna hear from you. Have you ever been through a situation where your income dropped overnight? Maybe it was a health crisis, maybe it was a job loss. I wanna hear from you in the comments. I wanna know, what did you cut back on and looking back, what do you wish you hadn’t cut back on? I’ll check out the comments later today.
[00:02:13] For now, let’s get into it. Here is my conversation with Grace And James, if we just have an amazing 10 out of 10 conversation, what would you walk out of here with? Um, why don’t we start with you, grace?
[00:02:26] Grace: I think I, I really want a, um, a game plan for, um, how to build back up what we’re currently ratcheting down on.
[00:02:38] Um, I feel like we’ve had a huge, so many bumps in the road and we’ve done what we can, but I’d love to like. I get that skyrocketing, sort of like, okay. Kind of a big release. I’d love to have a plan to, to look towards the future and not feel so terrified. And I would love to kind of understand how I feel, maybe a little bit more and why I feel like that.
[00:03:02] James: Okay. James, how about you? Very similar with the, especially with the building back up. Um, but for me personally to kind of really get my head and my, my heart back into finances, you know, it’s been very much on Grace’s shoulder for the past while, and I wanna be able to kind of help pick some of that burden away and get myself more financially
[00:03:24] Ramit: literate against.
[00:03:25] Great. All right. Well I’m looking forward to this. Um, I have a lot of questions. Grace, you wrote, my husband has cancer and I’m on maternity leave with a four month old. I feel like I’m forcing him to keep working because of our money situation. Can you tell me what you were feeling when you wrote that?
[00:03:47] Grace: Oh, just the horrible guilt for me. So in Ireland, we get, I’m, I’m going off the concise now, but in Ireland we get six months paid maternity, and then we get. Three months unpaid, and then I get an extra three months. So in, in all, in all, it turns out to be a year, but I have been off sick and I have been on reduced hours because I just had a really rough pregnancy.
[00:04:10] So we had saved money, but not as much as I wanted. And I really feel, I really felt a lot of pressure to like encourage James to keep working through his treatment. His therapist basically said, um, she’s shocked that he’s still working with the, with the child, young children and cancer treatment. And when I, when he told me this, ah, the, my God, I felt like the worst wife in the world.
[00:04:38] Like I wasn’t supporting him through his treatment. I’m constantly looking at the numbers and I’m constantly like, okay, if you can keep working for another month or two, then we can put another 2000 in savings and then that’ll keep us going until January. And then, I don’t know, I, so yeah, I was just feeling incredibly guilty.
[00:04:56] Do you still feel that way? Yeah, I do.
[00:04:58] Ramit: Okay. James, if you’re comfortable, would you mind sharing what you’re dealing with from a health perspective?
[00:05:06] James: I got cancer first. Was it three years ago? Um, it was just a very simple, uh, a mole that went funny. Um, melanoma, um. They thought they’d got it all. Um, and then I found a lump in my arm of all places and it turned out it had metastasized and they hadn’t caught it.
[00:05:24] So thankfully they caught it early again. And, uh, surgery to remove the second site and then immunotherapy for over a year. And prognosis is looking good though, which is fantastic. I actually finished my last treatment cycle, uh, two weeks ago Really?
[00:05:42] Ramit: So, yeah.
[00:05:42] Grace: Yeah.
[00:05:43] Ramit: Congratulations. Thank you very much. Wow.
[00:05:45] That’s awesome. Yeah. How long have you been going through treatment? A year. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And how do you feel right now? Physically
[00:05:54] James: tired. It’s gonna take at least three months they said for it to kind of fully lead my system. And then there’s a lot of side effects and everything that crop up and various stuff.
[00:06:01] So I’m did a bit to go, but I think the big, the big kind of mental hurdle is out of the way, you know, so we are in a, a much better place than we were when we, when we, um, submitted to, to come on the show. I’m, I’m, I’m doing great. I can’t, you know, count my blessings. I’m doing really well. I’m very happy to hear that.
[00:06:17] Very happy. Thank
[00:06:18] Ramit: you.
[00:06:19] James: How
[00:06:19] Ramit: about mentally? How do you feel?
[00:06:21] James: I’m mentally much better. I’ve had a lot more mental space to kind of get my head around it and concentrate on getting better. Yeah, I’ve been off work now for two, two months. My work, work had given me till the new year, uh, then we’ll reassess. Um, and that has helped a lot.
[00:06:37] Um, and it’s given me a lot of mental space to kind of heal and it’s also given my, a lot of mental space for other things to prop up. Finances for one and that. Yes.
[00:06:46] Ramit: What led to the decision for you to stop working?
[00:06:50] James: Looking back, I don’t recognize who I was. I was, I wasn’t, I was a zombie. I was a tired husk, I was gray.
[00:06:57] Everyone used to talk about how gray I was. I wasn’t really working. That’s the thing. Like there had so many people covering, for me, doing various aspects. I was doing the bare minimum. But, you know, work gave me the option to keep working. Why? Just ’cause I thought I’d be bored.
[00:07:10] Ramit: Wait a minute. Hold on. What?
[00:07:12] Where’s your accent from? Are you, are you Irish? No, I might have wade into it. Where’s the accent? From? The England. Oh, okay. All right. The England. Am I in big trouble right now? I know there’s okay. Oh God. No. No. Sorry everybody. No, sorry. Okay. Listen, the reason I’m asking is I would understand if some American, you know, born and raised in the us all they know is work.
[00:07:35] That’s our entire life. We go, what else am I gonna do? Of course I’m gonna work, but the UK excels at leisure. What’s this? Yeah,
[00:07:46] James: it was money. Or if I take the year off, it would have to be unpaid. And we couldn’t afford it. We were always planning on having a second child. Uh, but our timeline massively accelerated.
[00:07:57] When the cancer came back, it was bluntly. Grace was, I might lose you. I want one more of you before you go.
[00:08:06] Grace: I want just a little bit more of him. Like I want a little bit, um, just in case. Um. That he vanished, um, from my life. So that was the first thought that popped into my head. If this has come back, I don’t have enough of him.
[00:08:23] I dunno if that makes any sense. But, um, I also, we knew that he would have to have treatment and we don’t know about the fertility long-term effects either. It was basically we try now and be pregnant and have a baby while you’re undergoing treatment, or we only have one child and that’s it. It was really hard, but we got our beautiful second baby out of it.
[00:08:47] So, um, she’s just
[00:08:50] Ramit: perfect. Perfect. Congratulations. It’s beautiful. Thank you. It’s beautiful. And the treatment now concluding hopefully future health. Mm-hmm. It’s a beautiful end to that chapter of your life. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Grace, you mentioned that you still feel guilty about asking James to work.
[00:09:16] Tell me more about that.
[00:09:17] Grace: Yeah, I feel, I feel like it made his treatment journey so much harder than it needed to be. Um, he ended up having to go on to steroids for low cortisol and I ended up having to, um, call the ambulance for him and, and he ended up having to go into hospital a few times. Um. Probably because he was under so much pressure and he wasn’t getting time to relax.
[00:09:45] And, and I think I was just expecting a lot of him, but I was also caring for a newborn. And um, you know, when the newborn came along, I just feel like I asked a lot of him and I asked too much of him and it probably did cause him harm. Do you
[00:10:03] Ramit: talk
[00:10:04] Grace: about this? Yeah.
[00:10:05] Ramit: Well what’s the conversation like? I’m gonna imagine Grace says, I feel like I’m asking too much.
[00:10:09] James: Yeah.
[00:10:10] Ramit: And then what’s your response, James? You’re not,
[00:10:12] James: I’ve never felt that. And I always tell her that she’s never felt that like, you know, a lot of decisions I made around work and everything was based around my recovery. Like, I wanted to keep working ’cause it was a distraction and I thought I’d be bored.
[00:10:25] And, you know, it wasn’t until I got to the very point where I couldn’t, I wasn’t, I was, I was probably causing work more harm than than good that I kind of said, look, and they were their credit, they were great. And it actually turns out they can, they, they can’t give me my full salary, but they are giving me, um, uh, three thirds of my salary while I’m off two thirds and they got it.
[00:10:47] Two thirds, sorry. Wow. Two thirds.
[00:10:49] Ramit: Yeah. Which they didn’t have to do. Yeah. That’s very generous of them. Yeah. Yeah. Big shout out to all the companies out there. You know, we usually hear only bad things about companies, but it’s quite amazing what great companies can do in tough times. Yeah, that’s awesome, grace.
[00:11:03] Uh, you wrote in your application quote, I’m constantly saving, but then I’ll blow money on silly things in a life is hard moment. So yes. What I wanna know is what kind of things are you spending on in those moments?
[00:11:21] Grace: Oh, reit. Absolute.
[00:11:24] Ramit: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:25] Grace: Um, this morning I spent 200 euro on Temu.
[00:11:29] Ramit: On what? Oh,
[00:11:31] Grace: just like little things.
[00:11:32] It’s all just small things. It’s two o’clock in the morning, I’m feeding the child, the child’s gone back to bed. I’m trying to go back to sleep. I’m on my phone. And then an Instagram ad comes up and I buy skincare things for 60 euros, which doesn’t even work. Like
[00:11:46] Ramit: what’s going through your head in those moments where you see these ads, you go on tmu and you buy what’s going through your head?
[00:11:51] Grace: They’ve got me here. I do look like crap. I am exhausted. I don’t take care of myself. This is one thing I can do to take care of myself. Look at me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, self care, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, exteriors. Here’s the, oh, I can just double click. Oh, it’s done Now.
[00:12:06] Ramit: What? It’s interesting, the way you describe it, like you’re dismissive of it.
[00:12:12] Like you, the way you describe it is it’s a con, but yet you do it over and over. Why do you think?
[00:12:19] Grace: I think I get a sick joy outta falling for it sometimes The stuff is lovely, so I’m like, maybe this time it’ll be really nice. The same as the other times. Mm-hmm. But other times it is. And when I look it up afterwards I’m like, oh, why didn’t I research into this more and find out that, and like just read the comments and read the reviews and look it up on Trustpilot.
[00:12:41] Ramit: Did you make these sort of, as you put it, mindless purchases before you had kids?
[00:12:46] Grace: Uh, yeah.
[00:12:47] Ramit: You did? Yeah. It really need to stop. How did money decisions get made in your relationship?
[00:12:52] Grace: I probably make most of them.
[00:12:54] Ramit: You take the lead Definitely now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And before, before James got sick,
[00:12:59] James: like we would do weekly budgeting and stuff like where every Sunday we would sit down together when the kids were asleep and we would kind of look over, we’d have kind of a set budget of what we’d normally spend and we’d go through the calendar, but then mentally I could just couldn’t take it And Grace kind of took it, took it all, and she still does now.
[00:13:17] Ramit: Yeah. Okay. This all that seems very reasonable, by the way. Much more advanced than most to sit down and talk about money every week. So that’s great. The fact that as you got sick, James, you had to give up on participating in that also seems totally normal. And the fact grace that you took the load on yourself.
[00:13:39] Seems like great partnership.
[00:13:40] Grace: Yeah, I think we had a good system going into it because I had been doing a lot of the envelope system and I just really liked watching the videos and I was like, Ooh, I could do that. What,
[00:13:49] Ramit: hold on. What? What videos did you like watching? Who watches envelope videos? What stuff?
[00:13:54] Grace: It’s addictive.
[00:13:55] Ramit: What are these videos? That’s what I wanna know. What are they?
[00:13:58] Grace: It’s people being like, I’m going through my budget for the week, and it’s like, I just love watching other people’s money. Like I love your show. I know why you love my
[00:14:05] Ramit: show. Yeah, I get that. Good.
[00:14:08] Grace: But it did help because I set up a whole sinking fund system, so I have automatic money going to, so I, we have basically a year’s worth of the big bills always pretty much saved and that’s automatic, so we had a good system going into it so it wasn’t like too much of a big deal to take it on.
[00:14:27] James, don’t, don’t be
[00:14:28] Ramit: worrying about that. I’m impressed with Grace’s knowledge about money. She’s obviously taken the time to be curious about personal finance and it shows when she talks about having an emergency fund or as she puts it, a year’s worth of big bills saved up. But I’m struck by the way she describes her feelings around their financial situation.
[00:14:47] Remember Grace said she feels guilty for quote, forcing James to keep working because she was nervous about their financial situation. James isn’t working anymore, but she still feels guilty, and now even though she’s worried about money, she’ll go and mindlessly spend $200 on temu at 2:00 AM It’s all a bit contradictory.
[00:15:08] Those mixed signals. Tell me there’s something going on here, something deeper she has not worked through yet. And you can hear it in this one moment. She said, I might lose you. I want one more of you before you go. Can you imagine your partner saying that? Can you imagine feeling that way? There are a lot of layers to unpack here.
[00:15:28] We’re not just talking about a savings rate, we’re talking about mortality and love, and we don’t even know what’s going to eventually happen. So listen, as I gently probe grace about this explosive line from her application, grace, you wrote in your application that you feel like, quote, a pressure cooker about to explode.
[00:15:51] What do you mean by that?
[00:15:52] Grace: Having the, the sole responsibility of organizing the money and, you know, putting it where it needs to be. It, it, it feels just a huge amount of pressure. And then just the thought of not having any money coming in with the, with the maternity leave. And then things are just a little bit complicated and, you know, I’m looking at all the small fine points and like hoping they all slot together.
[00:16:18] And if they don’t then oh, I don’t know, I might explode. Mm-hmm. And I tend to, um, get quite cross and I think that’s why I was putting a lot of pressure on James as well to kind of keep working as well because. My systems don’t work if the money’s not there. Right. You know, if it’s money’s not coming in, this everything could fall apart.
[00:16:41] Ramit: When you would put the pressure on him as you put it. How would you do that?
[00:16:44] Grace: I think I would gently prompt you were having surgery in September and you took the month leading up to it off.
[00:16:51] Ramit: Oh yeah.
[00:16:51] Grace: That really, really stressed me out because I was like, you are gonna need a lot more time off than this. We can’t have this because yes, we get sick leave here in Ireland, you know, we get sick pay, but we only get a certain amount of it, and you’re gonna need a lot of it, and then we’re not gonna have the money.
[00:17:10] So I remember having this discussion with you about that.
[00:17:14] Ramit: Do you let James know?
[00:17:17] Grace: Yeah.
[00:17:18] Ramit: You tell him we can’t do this. What about that? I,
[00:17:21] Grace: I, I, I try. Yeah. So I try and like lay it out and say, oh, um, well I’m worried about this. And then James was like, well, I need to take it off. So he took it off and I was like, okay.
[00:17:32] Um, but then I would like hold onto it, hold onto it, and then like it would burst outta me again a week later being like, are you sure you can’t go back to work right now? And, and, and work for another week?
[00:17:42] Ramit: And what did that dynamic feel like when the two of you were having this in the thick of cancer treat?
[00:17:48] Grace: I was feeling. So stressed. I was feeling like there was a baby on the way I was, I knew I was gonna start feeling sick really, really soon. So I was trying to do all of my overtime really early on so I could like do nights and do this before my sickness started and I had to stop working. So there was such a time limit and I just felt like, you know, he, he just needed to push through like I was pushing through and he, he wasn’t.
[00:18:18] Ramit: And James, how do you feel when Grace would share this with you and feel anxious and stressed out?
[00:18:24] James: Maybe
[00:18:25] Ramit: like,
[00:18:26] James: you know, it was, I felt selfish. ’cause remember at this time we, it was a toddler as well, you know, she was, oh yeah, she was two. And so we weren’t sleeping, you know, we were trying to, you know, raise her at the same time and it’s just so much, so much pressure.
[00:18:44] Yeah. She would, every now and then, she would explode like that and she’d come out in a minute. But then, you know, between those, it was lots of little, um, microaggressions, I guess you could call ’em and that, you know, but for her it was very grace’s, very practical in every sense. Like, you should see our cupboards that are full of jam and pickles and hand tomatoes and stuff that she would, she would find farmers, you know, she’d go to the market, the veg market at the end of the day, wait until the very last where the farmer had.
[00:19:12] Whatever, X amount left, haggling down, buy it or spend a whole day chopping. And then we’d have just loads of kind stuff. So the idea was that if everyone tits up, we’d have, you know, food. And then that was so stressful for me because I would, you know, I’d come back from treatment or I would be have a bad week or something and I would have to take full responsibility, parenting and work and everything, because Grace was in this manic mode of we have to have, you know, 17,000 tins of tomato
[00:19:46] Ramit: just in case.
[00:19:48] This is a very good example. Um, what do you make of this example now that you are looking back?
[00:19:54] Grace: I’m really ashamed, actually.
[00:19:56] Ramit: Okay. Why?
[00:19:57] Grace: I think I was just trying to do something. Mm-hmm. To control the situation and like, try and preserve, you know, something for the future. The future was so uncertain that I just, I felt like I needed to at least feed my family.
[00:20:11] Ramit: Yes. Wow. Layers of perception in your answer just now, I feel ashamed. I love the acknowledgement of how you feel. That’s powerful. The need for control. I totally agree. Because if you look like going and waiting and haggling with the farmers and, and then finally this idea of at least I’m feeding my family.
[00:20:35] I can’t fix what’s going on with my husband’s health. Work is work. I’m trying to get as many hours as I can in before I get sick. I’m pregnant, I got a little one, but what can I do? Feed my family.
[00:20:49] Grace: Yeah. And I would spend hours, yeah. And hours and hours meal prepping and having food there. And I don’t know if it actually made any difference.
[00:21:00] James: It really did. It still does. Do you think we still got loads left? Yeah. When she was towards the end of pregnancy and it was starting to get bad for her and I was kind of having to, regardless of how I felt or how I was feeling, I had to look after the toddler. I had to feed grace and, and it just made life so much easier that I could just, you know, take a, a kind of a pre-made glass jar of peppers and tomato and stuff and throw it in with some rice and a bit of chicken or something, you know, wait,
[00:21:24] Ramit: was this a good decision or not?
[00:21:25] I’m trying to figure it out now.
[00:21:26] Grace: I don’t know what’s happening. I think that we also could have just bought,
[00:21:29] Ramit: bought it. It could have saved ourselves so much stress. Let me say this, first of all, do you know how much you have been through as a family? It’s a lot. Have you grappled with that? Have you talked about that?
[00:21:42] Grace: People say it to me all the time and I’m like, oh yeah, but like, you just have to do it. There’s no other option. You just have to keep going.
[00:21:51] Ramit: That’s exactly what my mom said. I asked her, how did you stay married for so long and how did you raise all these kids? And, and her answer was, there’s no other choice.
[00:22:01] You just do it. Yeah. And I love that answer. I respect that answer. And I think that. Maybe when we have that approach, we also don’t take time to pause and grapple with the enormity of what we have done, what we have accomplished, what we’ve gone through. Exactly. Grace, as I just saw, you take a deep breath.
[00:22:25] I think that many of us are raised to like, what do they call it? Stiff upper lip. Stiff. A stiff upper lip. Look forward, check the box. And I agree there’s power in that, but there’s also power in the softer side of saying like, Hey, have we actually talked about what we went through? What did it mean to us as a family?
[00:22:46] Because trust me, two powerful things are gonna come outta that. One, you’re gonna gain a deeper appreciation for each other. This tomato example is actually much deeper than either of you are letting on. There’s something really beautiful and something really haunting about this example. To me, the idea that grace, you just wanna feed your family.
[00:23:05] Yeah. Just to let them know you’re gonna be there. And it doesn’t matter that it took hours, it was irrational to spend that many hours, but you still did it and, and yet there’s something that perhaps is not that adaptive to your situation. The idea that you were a very, very busy pregnant mom and you were spending hours.
[00:23:25] Why, if you look at it that way, it doesn’t make mathematical sense. So there’s something beautiful. That’s the first thing you’re gonna get out of, is an understanding of what actually happened. Most of us never pause and look back, so we just keep marching forward. The second thing it’s gonna do is the two of you talking about it is gonna allow you to create stories for your family.
[00:23:48] Your kids need to know this story. They need to know it. Just the same way your parents passed down their stories. Your kids need to know what the two of you did and how can they learn If the two of you have not decided what happened, you know you have to feel for Grace. And James, they have had a really tough few years and my heart goes out to them.
[00:24:10] Before we go on, I just wanna thank them for coming on this show and sharing their story. I wanna thank all of my guests. Opening up some of the most intimate and taboo parts of your lives allows all of us to learn from you. You don’t have to come on this show, and it is very courageous that you do. I also wanna give a big shout out and thank you to everyone who listens and watches.
[00:24:32] There’s so many other ways you could learn about money, but coming here, allowing me to have these long in-depth conversations with people and share their stories with you is incredible. And of course, I can’t forget my team who makes all of this possible now for Grace and James, one thing that makes it all a little bit more bearable.
[00:24:53] Is where they live in Ireland. There are systems in place that help people when things go wrong, especially when somebody gets sick. Of course, it’s not perfect, but it is a safety net that works. Like when James got cancer, they didn’t have to worry about going bankrupt on top of everything else they were experiencing.
[00:25:10] Now compare that to what we deal with here in the us. In 20 24, 30 1 million adults incurred medical debt totaling $74 billion, and the American Journal of Public Health found that roughly two thirds of people that filed bankruptcy say that medical bills and illness related income loss contributed to their bankruptcy.
[00:25:30] This is why I always shake my head when people tell me in my comments, stick to personal finance. Don’t bring politics into it. That’s like me telling you, keep ingredients out of cooking. You cannot separate the two things just as you cannot separate money from politics. Politics is why your healthcare is so expensive.
[00:25:47] It’s why millions of Americans couldn’t even get health insurance before the a CA, also known as Obamacare, and it explains a lot of why people declare bankruptcy rather than the common belief that people bought too many luxury cars they couldn’t afford. I want you to be able to know that if something horrific happens like a car accident or a cancer diagnosis, that you will be taken care of and you won’t lose your house.
[00:26:11] That is where I stand politically and that is what I stand for. After this break, we’re gonna learn more about their individual relationships with money.
[00:26:23] Now, are the two of you similar in the way you think about money or do you think about it differently? Wow. Okay. I already know the answer based on James’s smile. James, go
[00:26:33] James: ahead. In some senses I think we are quite, I think kind of big picture stuff. I think we’re quite very similar.
[00:26:39] Ramit: Just tell me the differences.
[00:26:40] ’cause neither of you believe you’re similar. I can tell by your faces. Tell me James,
[00:26:44] James: if she has fun money, whatever, um, she’ll spend it on little things. I am more of, if I buy something, I’ll probably buy something big maybe once a year. What’s an example of a big thing once per year? My watch broke a year and a half ago and I finally replaced
[00:26:59] Ramit: it.
[00:26:59] How much did it cost? 400, uh, Euro. Okay. All right. And Grace, how would you describe your relationship with money?
[00:27:07] Grace: So I say first, um, I always put his Mac the max amount that I can think to save. Um, I earn a little bit more than James. Um, so I always have a little bit extra. So I think, oh, well, I can spend the rest of it now.
[00:27:22] Ramit: And when the stress goes up, whether through James’s illness or having kids, does anything change in your relationship with money?
[00:27:34] Grace: I think I spend more, uh, and I wouldn’t really tell James too much about it.
[00:27:40] Ramit: What do you mean.
[00:27:41] Grace: I suppose I do hide a little bit from him.
[00:27:43] Ramit: Like what’s an example of something you have hidden from him?
[00:27:46] Grace: I think I hide how much food I eat out when I’m out and about. I’ll often get absolutely ravenous when I’m out doing jobs or I am like taking the, taking the girls to events or whatever and I’ll be so hungry and they’ll both be asleep in the car and I will drive into a drive through and buy a huge meal and eat it all on the way home.
[00:28:08] But I, I dunno, I think I get a bit of a weird thrill out of hiding little small things from it. Do you take
[00:28:13] Ramit: the bag and throw it outside before you go inside? Yeah, I do. Yeah. How old are your kids?
[00:28:19] Grace: Our eldest is three and our youngest, well, we only have two, but she’s six months.
[00:28:25] Ramit: Six months. Okay. All right.
[00:28:26] Alright. Alright. What would you say the primary thing that changed financially speaking was when you had kids?
[00:28:35] James: Obviously the childcare costs, which are not under, are absolutely the astronomical down.
[00:28:40] Grace: Well, they’re, they’re nowhere near what it is in America, James.
[00:28:43] Ramit: It’s Wait, wait, wait. Just say the number so everybody in the US can get that.
[00:28:46] Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. It’s,
[00:28:48] Grace: oh, don’t get angry at us. I’m sorry.
[00:28:49] Ramit: It’s gonna happen. What is it? Three,
[00:28:51] Grace: 300, uh, 355 per month.
[00:28:56] Ramit: Okay. Americans, yeah, go ahead roast them.
[00:29:00] Grace: A little bit of socialism for you. The government pay 25% of it.
[00:29:07] Ramit: God, this country is so sometimes I’m sorry parents. I just want everybody to understand ’cause I don’t think people actually know. No, they dunno how policy affects their actual finances. Things like childcare. The government can assist with those. They can subsidize them. Maternity and paternity leave taxes.
[00:29:28] Yes. Many other countries charge equivalent or higher taxes. But imagine getting subsidized childcare, paternity and maternity leave. The ability to get healthcare and not have to worry about a $78,000 bill. And on and on on, of course there are tradeoffs. Mm-hmm Of course there are tradeoffs. But just want everybody to understand when we’re sitting here looking at these numbers, these numbers are not just picked out of thin air.
[00:29:54] They are the result of who we voted for. The result of our political systems, the result of what our culture will put up with. So anyway, I appreciate y’all coming here. In fact, now that we’re talking about it, why don’t we take a look at the actual numbers.
[00:30:08] Grace: Yeah.
[00:30:08] Ramit: Alright. What was it like to do this conscious spending plan together?
[00:30:13] Grace: Oh, I loved it. Oh, I love it.
[00:30:15] Ramit: Alright. I know that, uh, James, what about for you? James got a weird look on his face. Like, oh God.
[00:30:20] James: I, it was surprising how off I was. Okay. I was off and normally I’d be able to tell you off bat what we, you know, what we make and what we spend and everything. But I was quite a bit off and literally a year.
[00:30:33] Less than a year away from it. And I was, and the numbers have changed now. I didn’t know what,
[00:30:37] Ramit: wow. Now can I ask you, were you off because you forgot and or were you off because the numbers have changed so dramatically in the last 12 months?
[00:30:47] James: Uh, a bit of both. Um, wage wise, I got that right. I thought we were making a lot less than we were.
[00:30:53] And then the savings, I didn’t realize how much we were actually putting in. I didn’t realize we had so much.
[00:30:59] Ramit: Ah, sorry. Okay. Wow. Great. Yeah. Well, let’s take a look. I think this is a great lesson for all of us, is that knowing your numbers is a skill. And if you stop looking at your numbers, which in your case it makes perfect sense, why you did, somebody gets sick, they have cancer, they’re going through treatment.
[00:31:15] Of course, they’re not gonna be sitting there looking at their CSP every week. But it just simply shows us this is a skill and the more removed we get, the more we lose touch with it. But we can also get back in touch. Alright, let’s take a look. Okay. Um, let’s see. James, can you read the word in bold and then the number in full next to it for this entire box, please?
[00:31:36] James: Yeah. Uh, so assets 328,000, um, investments, 79,000. Savings, 42,000 and debt, 230,000, the total net worth of 219,000. Great. What do you think about those numbers? Great. In my head, if I took three months off, we wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage and we would be at money and we’d be.
[00:31:59] Ramit: The streets. And obviously that has not come true.
[00:32:02] No. Hmm. What do you make of that now, in retrospect?
[00:32:07] James: I think a lot of it was psychological for what I was going through. Mm-hmm. You know, the idea of, it’s that whole kind of being provider thing. Even though I make a little bit less than her, I’m still, there’s still that kind of holdover of being the man of the house type thing, you know?
[00:32:20] Yep. And you know, we’ve always talked about how ’cause Grace’s wage is kind of set, she’s hit her max really. ’cause the HSE in, in Ireland is a set wage band, so she can’t really go any higher without moving jobs or being promoted. Whereas obviously I, being in the private sector, I have a much more higher threshold that I can reach.
[00:32:40] And we always talked about before, while I was starting out, grace was kind of up here already, that eventually I would catch up, which is kind of where I’m now. And eventually I would overtake her so she would be able to kind of drop down to maybe part-time or just nights and on call and everything, and I’d be able to pick up the, the difference.
[00:32:56] Um, and that’s always kind of been in my mind a little bit. And I know in the grand scheme of things, like it’s a year less than a year that I’d be off. You know, I’m gonna work until for another 30 odd years, whatever. But it still, it felt like it’s a massive setback.
[00:33:08] Ramit: It’s quite perceptive. The idea that, well, first of all, congratulations for talking about it.
[00:33:15] That is very rare, the fact that two people would look. As objectively as possible at their careers and say, okay, here’s where you are. Here’s where I am based on our trajectory. There’ll be a certain point where we’re gonna intersect, and then I’m probably gonna make more. That’s very forward looking. I wish everybody had those type of conversations.
[00:33:34] So well done. And then this is the hard part. You make a plan and then life gets in the way and something goes awry, family happens, illness happens, layoffs happen, whatever. And I know because, um, when I make a plan, I want that plan to happen. Like if I tell you I’m gonna be somewhere at six, I’m gonna be somewhere at six.
[00:34:03] And if somebody goes, oh, let’s actually switch it to 6 45, I’m like, ah, it’s, it’s annoying. Yeah. And I’ve had to train myself like, it’s not the end of the world, but given my own plan fullness, I just wanna follow the plan. And I see a bit of that in you, James. Yep. Even though when you look at the numbers, you realize it, it certainly did not put you on the street.
[00:34:29] Not even close. No. Okay. I think this is such a valuable lesson. I’m really thankful that you’re sharing with all of us the idea that if I don’t get this plan exactly right, I’m a failure. But what I can actually see from the two of you is the two of you working as a team. And at any given time on a team, someone is.
[00:34:48] Stronger. Someone is less, someone may be injured, someone is picking up the slack and it rotates. And that’s, that’s a team. And teams also are not only rated on how much money they make, and a lot of men look at themselves like that. It’s not just that we absorb the lesson that we need to be providers, we actively encourage it.
[00:35:07] It’s like, if I’m not making money, who am I? There are lots of ways to contribute to a relationship beyond making the incremental dollar grace. What did you think about those numbers?
[00:35:17] Grace: When we first got pregnant, we had to stop. I was putting, well we were both putting 500, uh, euro into um, like a long-term savings or like a long-term investment fund and we had to stop that.
[00:35:30] So we haven’t done that in like three years and it’s actually killing me not to have, not to be doing that. But we just can’t really afford it now. And I’m really glad we didn’t, ’cause we didn’t have to take it out then to cover this situation. But I would love for those to be higher. Um, it’s making me a little anxious.
[00:35:48] Okay. But I am really delight. Like I didn’t expect it to be that big
[00:35:52] Ramit: either. Take a look. Investments are 79,000.
[00:35:56] Grace: Oh. Oh gosh. Actually that’s including our pensions. So yeah. And then our savings is separate.
[00:36:01] Ramit: Just say that word again for all the Americans who have never heard it again. Just say it. Was it
[00:36:04] Grace: pension, pensions?
[00:36:08] Ramit: All the boomers on the call, by the way. They’re like, what are these guys talking about? I have a pension. My pension pays me 130% of my income. What are you talking about? Everybody has a pension. Oh. Alright. Let’s continue on. Um, grace, will you read off your combined gross monthly income? What’s that number?
[00:36:27] Grace: Uh, 9,000.
[00:36:28] Ramit: Okay. 9,000 bucks or 9,000 euros. I’ll just call it Dollars for For easy.
[00:36:33] Grace: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:34] Ramit: 9,000 bucks, which means that combine, the two of you make $108,000 per year by a show of hands. Who knew that number? Okay. Only Grace has her hand up. Thank you very much. Alright, thank you for continuing my statistic.
[00:36:49] 50% of people do not know their own household income. And James, you thought it was lower? Yep. Okay. Let me just for kicks, how much did you think it was? 85. 85,000. It’s actually 108,000. So now that you’re making like tens of thousands more than you thought, yeah. Do you feel any differently? No, ’cause it doesn’t feel like enough.
[00:37:11] You know what, let’s change the name of this show. Forget money for couples. Let’s just call it Ramit was Right. That’s it. That’s what this entire show ends up becoming. Nobody knows their income. At least 50% don’t. Then they go, if I made more money, I’d feel better. Then they make more money than they don’t feel better.
[00:37:26] And on and on and on. I’m gonna tell my producer right now we’re gonna switch to the name of this show. Alright? 108,000. What do you think about that household income?
[00:37:36] Grace: To be honest, Ramit, it’s more because I didn’t include any of my overtime, which is normally an extra 10 to 15 K.
[00:37:43] Ramit: Wow.
[00:37:44] Grace: Which is where all the savings comes
[00:37:45] Ramit: from.
[00:37:46] That’s great. Okay, so let’s put, let’s put a pin in that. So it’s even more than that. And how do you feel about that overall household income? To be honest, really good.
[00:37:53] Grace: Uh, it’s, it’s not a very common wage to get in Ireland at all.
[00:37:57] Ramit: You make more than the average. The average is about 60,000 pounds. Okay. Wow.
[00:38:02] Great. And James, it sounds like you feel good about the income as well.
[00:38:06] James: Yeah, hundred percent. And then, then, then you get the whole, uh, you feel so guilty. ’cause you look at it and you think, God, you know, we’re doing so much, we’re doing really well compared to so many people. And so you feel like you can’t feel bad, you can’t feel guilt about, you can’t feel that, oh, I need X amount or Y amount.
[00:38:23] You know, because you should be, you should count your best at what you have, you know.
[00:38:26] Ramit: Well, I will say that’s one of the reasons that I really love speaking to guests on this show. That until now, all of this. Has felt like it has to be shrouded behind closed doors. You know, there are people making considerable incomes and they’re just like, why do we feel behind?
[00:38:44] Why can’t we actually save as much as we thought we would? Making six figures? And until now you couldn’t really talk to anyone about it because it’s like, boo-hoo, wealthy people shut up. But I actually think that there are some legitimate questions and sometimes people don’t realize that their childcare costs are temporarily very high or they have not actually been automatically investing and that’s why they have no investments.
[00:39:09] So I’m grateful that we get to chance to talk about them. I do have a question about the incomes. James, I believe your income was reduced. Mm-hmm. Um, is that reflected on the CSP? No, that’s if I was in full wage. So can we update it to reflect what you currently make? Mine’s the 35. Mm-hmm. So might be um,
[00:39:34] Grace: probably two 10, something like that.
[00:39:36] Ramit: 2100? Yeah. 2100. Okay. 2100 instead of 3,500 for gross. And then what would that take your net down to? Ballpark?
[00:39:44] Grace: One five. Probably one six.
[00:39:47] Ramit: Alright. Let’s say that. Okay. Wow. So quite a considerable difference. What just happened was your fixed cost jumped from 48% to 58%. So just for some context, your fixed costs originally were 48%, which is.
[00:40:03] At least for the US quite low and it jumped to 58% because of the reduction in net income. Mm-hmm. Still not bad. Mm-hmm. Not bad at all. Why don’t we continue on and go down the rest of the numbers Here we are, we’re gonna, can I
[00:40:18] Grace: add something? Actually, as of this month, I am making, uh, 280 euros a month. So I have gone from full maternity pay, which was my five 50, uh, to zero.
[00:40:30] So I’ve three months unpaid currently. And then that we get a child allowance of 280 euros a month. So we are currently on zero money coming in from me for the next three months. And then what? And then it goes back up to five. 50 and then I go back to work.
[00:40:51] Ramit: Just so everybody knows, when she says five 50, the way we say it is 5,500.
[00:40:55] Sorry, just for everybody. That’s what I meant to say. That’s totally fine. Alright. You have a temporary reduction to essentially zero for three months? Yeah. Okay. I’m gonna, I’m not gonna reflect out on the CSP, but I’m gonna put a pin in that and I’m also gonna put a pit in the fact that you make approximately 10 to $15,000 more in overtime.
[00:41:15] Yeah. Which they sort of equal out. Yeah. Yeah, right. That’s why I’m just gonna, they’re a wash and it will just confuse things, so we just put ’em to the side. That’s fair. Can you confirm that you will be going back and making the same wages after three months? Yeah.
[00:41:31] Grace: When I go back to work in April, I’ll be working four days a week and then doing one or two overtime shifts, which will get me back up to that.
[00:41:38] Great. That level.
[00:41:39] Ramit: What I wanna reflect for everybody listening and watching is when we are living this, we get caught in the weeds necessarily. It’s like this thing is happening, but in June it’s gonna be this and then it changes after two weeks. It’s very, very detailed. That’s how we have to live our lives.
[00:41:54] What the CSP allows us to do is to zoom up and focus on the key levers, like in the grand scheme of things, having a three month reduction in wages for one person, even though it seems extreme, actually doesn’t even need to be reflected on here because we have the overtime. So you can basically say it’s a wash,
[00:42:12] Grace: we
[00:42:12] Ramit: could get a little bit more precise, but in general it’s a wash and that allows us to focus on the big picture.
[00:42:18] For so many of us.
[00:42:20] Grace: Yeah.
[00:42:20] Ramit: We immerse ourselves in the weeds and we get paralyzed and it is imperative that we zoom up and look at the big picture. You can just focus on the key levers, get 85% of the way there, and in most cases move on with your life. So we’re gonna keep it as is. We’re gonna continue moving down that CSP.
[00:42:39] We got 58% on fixed costs. What’s the percentage on investments? Can you read that number? 7%. 7%. And that is in addition to a pension? Yes. Okay. Uh, 7% or $380 a month savings. Whoa. What’s that number? 49%. 49%. Huge. You, American freaks complaining you can’t save 4%. 49%. I’m coming back to that category. Oh, wait, wait, wait.
[00:43:08] That, hold on before I get too excited. What’s this number under guilt-free spending.
[00:43:12] Grace: Oh yeah. Minus 14%.
[00:43:14] Ramit: Negative 14%. All right. So obviously the is all, but no, it’s messed up. In general. I can see what your priorities are and I love that A CSP is the fingerprints of your life. If you looked at my CSP, you’d be like, this guy likes to travel.
[00:43:30] Like, it’s very clear. Okay. But what I can see here is you like to save money. It’s very obvious. Even if the math isn’t quite right, we’ll fix that. I can see what is important to you. When you look at the CSP, what do you notice? Uh, grace first, then James.
[00:43:51] Grace: I think that it’s off because I, I basically put all of my overtime into savings, and it’s normally about 2000 a month extra.
[00:43:58] Ramit: Why do you do that? Just outta curiosity?
[00:44:00] Grace: Because I want to, we are saving for a lot of things. Um, we’re saving for a renovation on the house, but I’m also really, really, um, keen on saving for owning a house. There’s always stuff that comes up, so I’m trying to make sure that we’re saving into high yield savings and also an emergency fund.
[00:44:25] Ramit: Sometimes people save money purely out of fear. It’s what they were taught. They’re afraid. All they know is frugality, which in their mind is seen as I gotta save and essentially hoard. And you can tell, because when you ask ’em, why are you doing that? They just go like, well, yeah, you never know what could happen.
[00:44:43] Ah, and it just, it traces back to something their dad said when they were five. What you have told me is, look, I have plans forward looking. We’re saving for the house, we’re saving for this, we’re saving for that. That’s actually very important because what we do is determined by why we do it. And if your reason is, Hey, I have key things that we are saving for, as I can see in your CSP.
[00:45:12] Then it becomes more constructive. It’s not simply done reflexively out of fear. Under your savings category, you have vacations a hundred bucks a month, gifts, 50 house renovation fund a thousand a month, long-term emergency fund, 1000 a month, and sinking funds 5 58 per month for a total of $2,708. Now it’s quite interesting because you have 13 months of savings already.
[00:45:40] Were you aware of that? Wow. Look at Grace’s proud laugh. Tell us Grace, how do you feel right now?
[00:45:44] Grace: I feel great.
[00:45:47] Ramit: Did you know that? Yeah,
[00:45:48] Grace: you did. And I’ve actually stopped putting it into the, uh, long-term emergency fund and I’m putting it into sinking funds now. Instead, now that we’ve kind of got that year of savings, um, I want to start putting it into the investment again.
[00:46:05] Ramit: Alright, James, what do you think when you see this conscious spending plan? I honestly
[00:46:09] James: don’t know. I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t trust investments, I don’t trust banks, I don’t trust stocks. But at the same time I was like, it’s like I should feel good. And then like I get so annoyed at myself.
[00:46:24] I’m like, why am I not happy about this? This is incredible. You know, why, why am I still so nervous about this? This is, you know, the fact that we could, I can go down two thirds wage and Grace can have no wage and we’re gonna be absolutely fine. Yeah. I mean that’s incredible. How many people can say that, honestly, like, and yet it still doesn’t register really for me.
[00:46:47] Ramit: It’s weird. Mm-hmm. How connected do you feel to these numbers when you see them?
[00:46:51] James: My whole wage goes straight into the joint account bar. What I, what I need to cover my bills, and that pays for the kids’ school mortgage. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I’m not
[00:47:01] Ramit: asking about how the money flows. I’m asking how connected do you feel to these numbers?
[00:47:09] It doesn’t feel like it’s my num, my my money. That’s what I thought. What do you think was behind your answer where you started to give all the money flows? Just now,
[00:47:16] James: because literally I get my paycheck, I move over X amount to my joint account, and then that’s it. Yeah. It disappears. And then we have savings, and we have sinking funds and we have roof over our
[00:47:28] Ramit: head.
[00:47:28] Yeah. And it’s just like mechanized. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like asking like, how do I feel about the way that a car turns on? I don’t know. I just get in there and turn the thing and it turns on. I don’t feel any way. It just works. It’s a machine. Just to give you a point of comparison, when I see our numbers, I feel extremely connected to them.
[00:47:51] Not that I love looking at numbers, it’s not that. It’s that when many people see a spreadsheet or an investment portfolio, they see some zeros and sometimes they see their own failure. They will see things like, I should have started early, et cetera. When I see it, I see the ability to take a trip. Um, the ability to not have to look at prices.
[00:48:16] If we eat out once in a while, I see the ability that if somebody in our family needs help, we can help ’em. It’s much deeper than the numbers. It’s about the kind of rich life that we want to create for ourselves. So if I can ask you just for a second, James, to put on those lenses of not the logistics and the money flow, I get that, but rather what the money has allowed you to do.
[00:48:42] What do you see if I
[00:48:45] James: look at them, honestly, we are and we are creating a life for our kids that I never had. I remember I filled the car up, boom, without paying attention and I just paid it. Didn’t have to look at the price. I had a full tank gas and I paid it ’cause I knew I could afford it. And I got back in the car and I was just like, it kind of just struck me like, you know, that’s, you know, you don’t, I didn’t, I didn’t look at how much that diesel was for that particular gas station.
[00:49:16] I just pulled in ’cause I needed it. I didn’t go down to the cheapest one, which is a bit further down the road, you know, just showed up to it stopped and I paid it. And I drove off.
[00:49:24] Ramit: What did it feel like? Freedom. Freedom? What a beautiful example. Freedom is in the simplest of things. It’s in filling up gas.
[00:49:34] It’s in going to the grocery store and buying something because you can. It’s rarely about the fanciest vacations and flying on first class. It’s, it’s literally about being able to go to the restaurant and get a lemonade because your kid asks you for one. It’s a beautiful example. James. This is part of what I want us to be able to do is, yeah, of course we’re gonna analyze the numbers a little bit more, but actually to, to go way deeper beyond the math and to say like, what does it mean, grace?
[00:50:07] I see you reflecting on what you just heard, James, what’s going through your head right now?
[00:50:12] Grace: I just, I’m just really proud of us. I’m just so glad that all the work that we’ve been doing and all the work that I’ve been doing to kind of automate and make sure that our family’s safe and happy that it’s working and you feel great.
[00:50:26] Um, that’s so nice.
[00:50:29] Ramit: I love this. And big kudos to you, grace, for picking up, picking up the load when James had to focus on his own health and for you continuing. And I have to say on a personal level, one thing that really impresses me is that you made trade-offs. That’s not easy. You said, we’re gonna stop contributing to our investments, even though as you put it, it kills you.
[00:50:53] Yeah. That’s what a leader does. You said, look, I have to take over this decision making right now. My husband is sick. Yeah, and you did it, so I, I think the two of you should be commended. That’s true. Teamwork. It’s awesome. You know what’s interesting is May, maybe today is a chance for the two of you to really take a second, celebrate how far you’ve come, and then to reflect on the next chapter.
[00:51:21] Yeah. Yeah. We can’t stop bad things from happening. That’s life. But what we can do is make a few smart decisions when things are going well, so that when something unexpected happens, we can lean on our planning. In other words, we can plan for the worst when we are at our best. I have a friend just the other night, she got a note that her mom is sick.
[00:51:43] Her mom lives in a different country. She had to get on an international flight last minute. She booked the first ticket she could get her hands on. She didn’t check 20 different prices to get the best deal. She just said, I have to go now. And that is the level of focus I want you to be able to have in a crisis.
[00:51:59] To be able to say, I don’t care about anything else. Right now, my field of vision is narrowed to the one thing that matters. Getting on the next flight money is not my primary concern. I actually love this idea of money not being the primary determinant. I love it so much that I extended it to a personal money rule that I use for myself, not just for bad things, but also for good things.
[00:52:23] So my personal money rule is that for the big important things in my life, I’m gonna plan ahead so much that money is not gonna be the first concern. The second concern, even the 10th concern, and that includes our wedding, our honeymoon housing, and our health. Is this rule practical for most people? No.
[00:52:40] Is it right for me? Yes. That is the point of a rich life which fits you like a bespoke coat. It is meant for you to live your rich life. And the more you turn that dial, the more your rich life is increasingly confusing, even bewildering to other people. Now, the simplest way to start applying this concept of freedom when something bad happens is to start aggressively building your emergency fund.
[00:53:06] So when something bad happens and it will happen at some point in your life, you will be ready and money will not be your first concern. Now, for James and Grace, they made a series of money decisions during their journey. These decisions were not arbitrary, they were shaped by what they saw growing up, and we’re gonna get into that right after this break.
[00:53:28] I do wanna know a little bit about how you grew up with money, James. I’m very interested. Just from what you told me about your gas, I have my suspicions about how you grew up, but what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?
[00:53:41] James: It was never really talked about at all. Mm-hmm. We always had enough.
[00:53:44] As long as we had enough, we shouldn’t grumble. You know, we had food
[00:53:49] Grace: mustn’t grumble. That’s very English.
[00:53:51] James: Is that
[00:53:51] Ramit: right? Oh, muscle grumble. Muscle grumble, yeah.
[00:53:55] Grace: Stiff upper lip, you know? Yeah. Muscle grumble.
[00:53:57] Ramit: And would you say, how would you describe socioeconomically? Were you middle class? How do you describe that?
[00:54:03] Well, in England, it’s
[00:54:05] James: doesn’t matter how poor you are, you always say, well, we’re just, we’re just about middle class. We’re always just gonna be a bit, you know, we not, we never went hungry. We never, you know, we had Christmases and stuff, we didn’t have holidays, we didn’t have anything, any new cars or anything like that.
[00:54:21] But
[00:54:22] Ramit: it was always enough. Okay. That’s all interesting. But that doesn’t answer my question. Uh, trust me, we do the same thing in the us. Everybody lies about being middle. I talked to people who have $5 million. They’re like, well, we’re just getting by. We we’re comfortable. I go, shut the up. Tell me what you want.
[00:54:35] You’re rich. So now looking back, how would you characterize your family socioeconomically?
[00:54:44] James: When I got my first proper job, I was making more money than my mom and dad combined. Wow.
[00:54:49] Ramit: That explains a lot. That explains the feeling of freedom from filling up your tank in the car. That explains a lot. When you got your first job and you made that much, did you ever talk about money with your parents then?
[00:55:03] James: We talk about it more now, now that they’re retired and you know, they’re, they’re, they, my dad was in the for armed forces, so his pension’s actually pretty good.
[00:55:13] Ramit: Uhhuh. What, what do they say to you now? What do you talk about? I,
[00:55:16] James: I worry that they don’t have enough. I worry that they spend too much on our kids.
[00:55:19] I worry that, you know, they shouldn’t be buying stuff for our kids. We can do that. You know, I worry when my mom asks me what do I want for Christmas when I know she’s gonna put it on a credit card, and I’m like, I don’t need anything from you. You’ve had enough. You know? And can they afford it? They, they must be able to, they haven’t
[00:55:34] Ramit: lost a house.
[00:55:35] Like, wait, that’s, that’s a bit dramatic. I suppose they must be able to buy toys. They’re not homeless.
[00:55:43] James: I honestly don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Like, I know like mom, mom never. Mom worked odd jobs part-time and everything and her pension is very small. And do you ever feel good about money? I don’t know how to answer that.
[00:55:55] I think that’s the answer. I like that I could look at my account and I know it won’t be the negative, you know? I like that I can take up a hobby if I want it. Honestly, I hate, my biggest worry is I think if I liked money, I’d spend it all. Like, I think if I got, I think I have quite, I’d have quite a bad habit if I was to kind of really unleash myself of what I really
[00:56:14] Ramit: wanted to do all the time.
[00:56:16] Let me translate, tell me if I got this right. Okay. I don’t feel great about money. And that’s actually a protective mechanism because if I let myself uncaged feel good about money, I would just spend it all. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a very common, um, feeling that people who are ultra frugal have, they’ll use certain phrases like, I don’t need to eat at a fancy restaurant.
[00:56:45] Like, I’m perfectly fine with Taco Bell. Nothing wrong with Taco Bell. But what’s really said beneath that phrase is, I am worried that if I go to this nice restaurant or nice hotel, that I might like it, and then I might find myself actually needing to eat there every single day for the rest of my life.
[00:57:09] It’s obviously absurd. What, to me, what it shows is a lack of self-trust. I can eat at a nice restaurant a couple times a year. I can enjoy it, and then I can come home and say, that was nice, and I don’t need to go back there for another six months. Like, I trust myself to make the right decisions and to indulge occasionally knowing that I can afford it.
[00:57:31] But this idea of like, let me keep myself caged ’cause I’m a wild animal and I’m wild. We can work on that. Yeah. What do you say, grace? Am
[00:57:42] Grace: I getting this right? Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent.
[00:57:45] James: But then like you, when we, when we say we’re, we’re looking up a holiday or something, I always look at more expensive things than you do.
[00:57:52] Grace: Yeah, it’s true.
[00:57:53] Ramit: Why is that?
[00:57:54] Grace: I think you, I think you’re a bit of a dreamer. I think you, you you’re constantly thinking, oh, well when we have a million euro, when we win the lotto, we’re gonna do this. And when we do this, and we, and like I think you love the idea of thinking about, you know, having this money and what you would do.
[00:58:12] And um, then when I like, so you look up the expensive holiday and I’ll come back with the actual price. ’cause I’ll do a little bit of research and then you’ll be like, well obviously we’re just going to Wexford for the weekend. Oh, wait
[00:58:24] Ramit: a minute. That was my question. So he looks up the expensive things and then where do you actually stay?
[00:58:29] Grace: Oh, we don’t go. We
[00:58:30] Ramit: don’t, we don’t go. Oh, wow, okay. What the hell kind of story was that? I look up the expensive things and then we don’t go, what is that? Yeah. All right. Sorry. No, that’s actually extremely insightful and, and I think the characterization of pr potentially dreaming a bit, I don’t mind dreams.
[00:58:48] Like, I like ’em. I like saying like, Ooh, wouldn’t it be nice? I love that. But I like to go one step further, which is, Hey, do you actually wanna stay there? Because if you do, we could, we might not be able to do it this year, but we could put some money aside and we know exactly mathematically how long it’s gonna be.
[00:59:07] It might take two and a half years, and then we could go there. We’ll literally put it on the calendar right now. Do you want, this
[00:59:12] Grace: is what I say to him, this is what I say. And I, and then he like, no, no, no, no, no. That’s crazy. We can’t spend that.
[00:59:17] Ramit: Yeah. Yeah. And do you know why? Do you know why he says that?
[00:59:21] Grace: No.
[00:59:22] Ramit: Ask him,
[00:59:23] Grace: why do you say that? Why do you,
[00:59:25] Ramit: because
[00:59:26] James: it’s a dream bounce. We can’t afford it really,
[00:59:29] Grace: but we can look at our savings.
[00:59:31] James: What if I get sick again?
[00:59:32] Grace: Mm.
[00:59:33] James: You know, they said it was gonna be gone the first time and it came back. Yeah. Or if it comes back again, what if I can’t work for another year and this time work won’t pay for it.
[00:59:41] Grace: Then you do the childcare and I work and it’s all fine.
[00:59:44] Ramit: I wouldn’t mind that at all, actually. Yeah. What I’m hearing is we’re having fun. I love talking to the two of you, but I really love peeling the layers and going deeper and beneath the jokes about the gas and the hotels. There is actually pain. The idea that, look at what we’ve been through together.
[01:00:08] It has been hard. Yeah. And what if we have to go through it again? What are we going to do? We did it once.
[01:00:15] Grace: I don’t know if we can do it again.
[01:00:18] Ramit: Let’s, let’s acknowledge that we don’t have to fix it this very minute, but I, what I can tell is money is deeply emotional.
[01:00:25] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:00:26] Ramit: We try to nibble around the edges, we try to ignore it.
[01:00:30] We, you know, we use logistical answers, but actually like the logistics are fine. We can fix some things here and there. That’s not what you’re coming to me for. No. It’s because there’s something much deeper here. Much deeper. Grace, can you tell me what you remember growing up? What did your family say about money when you were young?
[01:00:48] Grace: Both my parents come from really big families, and they were big. They would’ve been middle class in the fifties in Ireland, which was very, very, still quite poor compared to the rest of the world. My mom was a nurse and she, uh, was what they called the laying hen. So she would be the one with consistent money coming in.
[01:01:08] And my dad started his own business and it’s, and it worked super hard all his life. Um, but we were, to be honest, probably upper middle class, they did a huge amount of work. They bought, um, they invested in properties. Um, they were very smart with their money, but one of the things that always sticks out in my mind is my dad, um, uh, he had a business at one time where he made automatic gates and we had an automatic gate installed in our house, and that was seen to be like really rich.
[01:01:45] And then my mom pulled me aside and I think I was in primary school or something, she said, now don’t tell anyone we’ve got automatic gates because they’ll think we’re rich and we’re not.
[01:01:56] Ramit: Wow. When you remember this story from mm-hmm. You know, decades ago. Yeah. Why do you remember this story in particular?
[01:02:04] Grace: I think she was a bit frightened about money. I remember coming home from Irish College one day and they had a, the hot tub in the house. They had a hot tub in the. And I was like, where the hell did this come? And they were like, well, instead of buying a new car, we, we got a hot tub instead. And I was like, what?
[01:02:21] They’re doing really, really well. But I always had the feeling that it was like a secret. Yeah. That we couldn’t tell anyone
[01:02:28] Ramit: in. In what ways do they downplay their success publicly?
[01:02:32] Grace: They would never show off. We’d never buy expensive cars or anything like that. It was all very practical, normal stuff. What if I
[01:02:37] Ramit: met them and I asked them, what do you do?
[01:02:39] What would they say? It’s a very American question, by the way.
[01:02:41] Grace: Yeah. They would say, oh sure. We’re retired and enjoying it and we’re traveling around the world now and having a great time.
[01:02:47] Ramit: Okay. What are they gonna do with the money when they pass?
[01:02:50] Grace: They’re very generous with it. And I think it’ll go to, it’ll go to us.
[01:02:55] There’s three of us in the family and they’re gonna split everything equally. And we had conversations about it and kind of four, like kind of, they don’t want us fighting over anything. And I’m like, that’s fine. Like we’re all quite successful, which is really brilliant.
[01:03:10] Ramit: You know, it’s kind of a striking example for everyone listening and watching that you can see parents who learn about money and talk about money between themselves.
[01:03:24] They tell their kids about money.
[01:03:26] Grace: Yeah.
[01:03:27] Ramit: They have set you grace up with a very good. Financial education and they’ll talk a and they’ll say things, Hey, don’t tell everyone at school like, we’re not rich. Well, you may have been rich or certainly upper middle class, but I can understand parents not wanting their kids to go and blab.
[01:03:45] You know, I, I understand it, but it’s not a surprise to me that, um, siblings often turn out similarly with money. Not always, but they grew up with the same money messages. And, um, to me the big takeaway from this is you better get good with money and you better talk to your kids about money because it’s not an accident.
[01:04:07] If you want your kids to grow up equipped to deal with the world, you talk to them from the time they are 3, 4, 5, otherwise some shit, head selling, whole life insurance is gonna be taking over that role and you really don’t want that. So let me ask the two of you, the two of you grew up quite differently with money.
[01:04:25] Mm-hmm. When was the first time you substantively talked about money in your relationship Australia?
[01:04:33] Grace: Yeah,
[01:04:34] James: it was actually kind of a bit of a, kind of our first kind of really big fight. ’cause uh, grace went to Australia actually when I had met her. When I first met her, she’d already planned on to move to Australia, and I was, I didn’t really have, I was kind of working part-time, wasn’t really making any money, living at home still.
[01:04:52] And then she left. And then after a few months I was like, I, I can’t let her go. So I quit everything. And moved across follower. And to me, this was the first time that I had traveled really ever. And it was the other side of the world. Hold on, this is
[01:05:08] Ramit: very romantic. What the hell is very romantic. I’m like, yo,
[01:05:11] James: this is a good story.
[01:05:12] Sorry, go on. We bought camper van, we traveled down the West Coast, Australia for six months and um, and then Grace got a geography job and I was doing odds and end. We had a small flat, which was dirt cheap because it was right next to the airport in the flight path. So, you know, the best alarm clock in the world is a bow in landing over your head and six in the morning.
[01:05:33] Mm-hmm. Um, so I was making money so I could enjoy Australia, whereas she was taking care to make money so she could save. And then her plan was to maybe go back or stay. There was a ice cream shop around the corner that I really liked and if Grace was having a bad day, I’d get her some and she would just get so mad that I was spending money on ice cream.
[01:05:54] And I think that was the first time we kind of really talked about it and we hadn’t talked about it. We hadn’t talked about what our kind of idea and goals were when we were out there. And it was kind of a really eyeopening for me. ’cause I remember know Grace was talking. She wasn’t talking about what she wanted to do, the money she was making, it was what about the money’s gonna do for us?
[01:06:11] It was, we and
[01:06:14] Ramit: I hadn’t been thinking like that at all, honestly. I’m very impressed. Um, actually shocked in a pleasantly shocked because that story tells me so much. And I really appreciate you sharing it with me. The idea that James, you had never really traveled before. You get on a plane, you go across the world to chase a girl, the two of you, uh, living a very frugal life, living under flight path, just like we gotta make it work.
[01:06:41] But what really strikes me is the way that you looked at money differently. I can just imagine, James, the way you grew up, like not thinking much further ahead. Most people, at least the ones I talked to in the us, they are literally thinking about that month, maybe next month. And that’s it. And, and I’m begging people to think further ahead, six months a year, ultimately 20 years.
[01:07:10] Because when you look that far ahead, you can actually achieve amazing things. You can take the trips you want, you can buy the car you want. It’s awesome. What’s amazing is Grace was already doing that. Grace has been thinking about money, talking about money in her family since she was a kid. The fact that the two of you got in a fight about freaking ice cream cones is hilarious.
[01:07:29] This is a great example where sometimes the most substantive conversations can come from what seems like the most trivial purchase ice cream. And look at, look at what happened. You built a life together as a team. Yeah. Starting way back with the freaking ice cream purchase. Now I wanna ask you to, there’s a reputation for.
[01:07:50] People in Ireland, let’s just say the UK, for feeling guilty about money.
[01:07:56] Grace: Oh yeah. Is
[01:07:56] Ramit: that
[01:07:57] Grace: true? Oh, a hundred percent. Okay. A hundred percent.
[01:08:00] Ramit: Like you feel guilty about making it Spending it, yeah. All of it. Talking
[01:08:04] Grace: about it, yeah. Yeah.
[01:08:05] Ramit: So how are you two so open? How come you’re so comfortable talking about it right now?
[01:08:09] Grace: I think it’s because, uh, it, it clicked with me. I was in work one day and um, I had a meeting with one of these pension guys, um, uh, and we have a system in Ireland. I didn’t know about it really. Um, called additional voluntary contribution. It’s a pension. It’s kind of the only way you can save money with benefiting with tax.
[01:08:33] But I didn’t really know anything about it. But I made a me, I had a, a meeting with this guy and I said, listen, I know nothing. Tell me about this. And he walked through. If I did nothing, how much money I would have when I was 65, 70. I think on my contract it says I have to work until I’m 70 before I get a pension.
[01:08:54] But it was something like 8,000 euros a year. Mm-hmm. And that number stuck with me. And I was like, oh, that cannot happen. A, I’m not working until I’m 70 ’cause I can’t be hauling patients around when I’m 70, so I need to retire earlier than that or do something different. Um, and be like, I can do something now.
[01:09:12] And he was like, right, if you start saving now, you can have this much or whatever. I think it was like a million. And I was like, L okay, let’s try. Um, and uh, so I started learning all about it. And what I really started being annoyed about was no one else was talking about this. Everyone in work was like, what are you doing talking about pensions?
[01:09:33] You know? ’cause I was like, no, you need to go and, and learn about this because you’d only be getting 8,000 in, um, a year. And everyone was like, oh, I’ll deal with that when I’m 50. So it was really frustrating me that people were just weren’t talking about money and especially women. Um, yes, we get a fabulous, um, maternity leave, but it also affects our pension and all this sort of stuff.
[01:09:58] And, and as women, you, for me, I feel like it’s, you have to have your own something, something to fall back on. Mm-hmm. Because we are in a more vulnerable position at certain times in our lives if we’re having children and all that sort of stuff. So I started being sort of militant about it.
[01:10:16] Ramit: You looked ahead decades ahead and you said, that’s not gonna be the future for me.
[01:10:21] I’m gonna make changes right now. And you did. I love that. And I, it’s reflected by the way, in your CSPI can see it with a 49% savings rate. It’s obviously very clear. When you both think back to the messages that you grew up with around money, which of those messages do you think you bring to this relationship today?
[01:10:45] James: Debt, I think. Mm-hmm. And credit cards. And anything that isn’t like is the, is is literally the be and end all. You should never, ever, ever, ever own. Like we don’t, we have like our car, we just, we saved up and we bought it outright. And our old car is, God, it’s 13 years old.
[01:11:03] Ramit: Your lesson is, you bring, uh, an aversion to debt to this relationship.
[01:11:09] Is that right?
[01:11:11] James: Yeah, I think
[01:11:12] Ramit: so. Okay. What else?
[01:11:13] James: Yeah. Gifts, uh, physical things as, um,
[01:11:19] Ramit: showing love. Oh, that would explain the ice cream. Yeah. That you could not afford actually. Yeah.
[01:11:26] James: And I think it is one thing I actually spend my money on it’s toys for the kids because I remember, uh, Thunderbirds, there was a big toy island that every kid had to have and I couldn’t have it.
[01:11:40] And instead mom made me one out of plasticine and uh, by out of toilet roll and stuff and painted it and everything. That’s amazing. And I all pea. That’s kind
[01:11:49] Ramit: of adorable and like sad at the same time. I kind of love it. Yeah. That’s really beautiful. Do you have a bunch of toys in the house?
[01:11:57] Grace: Yeah, they’re everywhere.
[01:11:59] Ramit: No credit card debt?
[01:12:01] Grace: No. I have a thinking fund for. Kids toys every week. There’s about 80 euros that goes into the sinking fund for like, stuff they might need 80 a week. I know
[01:12:11] Ramit: I’m not in touch with kids toys, prices, but that seems like a lot. No, no,
[01:12:14] Grace: no. It’s not just for toys, it’s for like swimming lessons and trips away and things like that.
[01:12:19] Sorry.
[01:12:20] Ramit: Alright. Can you say no to your kids? No. Okay, great. You both admit it. Alright. Alright. Uh, grace, what messages do you bring from your childhood that you bring to this relationship with money?
[01:12:31] Grace: I think communication. Um, I always saw my mom and dad have conversations about money and mom always did the books for dad’s business, so they’d always just have the, have the books out and mom would be talking about taxes and returns and, and it, it would just be like in the air, like the conversations and they never fought about money.
[01:12:51] It was always just a discussion or, you know, and, and I think that’s what I’ve almost forced you into James because it was one of the things that I is essential to me in, in a relationship is to be honest and open about money. Yeah. And then I’m the one that’s hiding stuff. I don’t know.
[01:13:08] Ramit: Well, let me say that I, I really appreciate what you just said about your parents and I hope that the children of every guest that I speak to on here say the same decades from now, that they will say, my parents didn’t fight about money.
[01:13:23] They talked about it. Yeah. It was always a discussion. It was always in the air. That’s actually what I want. I don’t want money to be hidden. I don’t want it to be a source of tension, although sometimes it will be, and that’s okay. Mm-hmm. I want it to be an important part of the family. Just like food, just like respecting your elders, just like studying and having fun.
[01:13:44] Money is one of those core parts of a family. It has to be in the air, and when we shine a light on it, instead of hiding it, then we can build a healthy relationship with it. I love that Grace didn’t sit back and hope things would improve. She learned how pensions work, and then she made a decision that is gonna have a huge impact on her future.
[01:14:05] That is what’s known as having an internal locus of control. An internal locus of control is the belief that you can control your future. Compare that to someone with an external locus of control, who believes simply that life happens to them. So which one are you? Do you have an internal locus of control or an external locus of control?
[01:14:26] To answer that question, take a look at your own behavior with fitness, food, your relationships, your career and money. External or internal. It’s quite an interesting question to think about. This has actually been one of the biggest questions that I have come back to throughout my career. We all know intuitively that if we eat better, we will be healthier.
[01:14:51] We know that if we save and invest, we will be more secure. So why don’t we do it? This is the question I’ve been thinking about since the year 2000. One reason, and it’s a big one, is that a lot of people don’t actually believe that they can control anything around them. A lot of them have tried before or they’ve been told it’s out of their hands, or they have tried and it failed over and over, and so they simply stop trying.
[01:15:16] That can lead to an external locus of control, and I think this is one of the most overlooked reasons that people stay stuck. These beliefs are shaped by a lifetime of experiences, even multi-generationally. A lot of you watching this right now had some great grandfather who something bad happened to, and that story, that myth or legend was almost passed down your family tree and today you think you cannot affect the way the world works because of what a great grandfather, somebody you never met, experienced a hundred plus years ago.
[01:15:51] If you’re listening to this and you’re starting to realize, oh my gosh, I want to have an internal locus of control. I want to take control of my money and make rapid changes. Then I can help. Inside my money coaching program, I’m gonna walk you through the exact systems that I use to take control of your money and start seeing real results.
[01:16:09] You can join the program at iwt.com/money coaching. Now, grace believed she could make a difference in her own life. She saw the lever, she pulled it, and she got results. Up next, we’ll take a closer look at the other changes Grace and James are considering as they build their rich life. If the two of you continue on the way that you have with your money, when something comes up in life, what do you think happens after the next time and the time after that, and the time after that?
[01:16:45] What do you think will happen?
[01:16:46] Grace: Oh, I will just collapse.
[01:16:50] James: I’d worry for us as a, as a couple. Yeah. You know what? If it just becomes too much, what if we can’t support the other one anymore or, which just sounds crazy, but I don’t think that would ever happen.
[01:17:02] Ramit: It does sound crazy. I mean, you have such a beautiful teamwork here.
[01:17:06] Yeah. There’s no doubt about it. It’s so obvious, but I also think the two of you are very good at putting your blinders on and moving forward, and what a shame to live that way when you actually have all the ingredients for a true rich life. What I see in you versus what I see when I talk to other people who perhaps were not raised to save money, who did not have a healthy education about money, right?
[01:17:33] They didn’t have those role models. And so I’m having a different conversation with them. I’m actually trying to show them why it’s important to save money at all. The two of you have the ingredients for greatness, and in many ways we can see it on the CSP, it’s reflected. Wow, what a savings rate. It’s incredible.
[01:17:50] Maybe the way that you talk about money and behave with money could, could be tweaked a bit. I, I just wanna reflect the two of you went through an incredibly stressful situation. I don’t think anybody can give you feedback on how you did. Who the hell knows what it’s like to have one kid on the way? A young kid husband who’s going through cancer treatments, mourning, sickness, like nobody.
[01:18:20] So what we can say is, I think you handled it the best you could. I think you’ve done a pretty phenomenal job, and I think that life is going to be stressful in other ways. And what I wanna do is I want to equip you so that you can continue to get closer together, not let these stressful situations tear you apart.
[01:18:45] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:18:46] Ramit: How does that sound? Yeah, that sounds great. Wonderful. Okay. Awesome. Have the two of you talked about what your rich life vision is?
[01:18:54] James: Retiring early.
[01:18:55] Ramit: Okay. Retiring early. Great. Any idea what age? 50. 50? Okay. Alright, so that’s like about 12 or so years away. Um, what else, grace, what’s in your rich life?
[01:19:05] I
[01:19:06] Grace: would love to be able to go on two or three holidays a year. One back to the uk and I would love to be able to bring your parents James on holidays somewhere. ’cause they really haven’t been on many. And I would love to be able to, uh, help my kids the way that I was helped, you know, uh, financially going into college and stuff.
[01:19:38] Oh, I really want to do the renovation on the house. That’d be so incredible. Oh my gosh. I want to have my own craft room upstairs with the light. I would love to probably go down to maybe two days, two or three days a week working. Mm-hmm. And then the other two or three days work on my own businesses. I loved creating community and um, hosting events.
[01:20:00] Cool. Alright,
[01:20:02] Ramit: so here’s what I’m, what I’m hearing from both of you is you, you wanna live a very rich life. Like these aren’t, oh, I don’t know. Like when we’re 70, maybe we wanna take a trip. To the Grand Canyon? No, it’s like, we wanna retire early, we wanna renovate the house. We wanna travel three times a year.
[01:20:20] This is a lot. I love it. Right now, how do you feel about money?
[01:20:25] Grace: Uh, just nervous about if something like this is gonna happen again, are we gonna be okay? Are we gonna be able to manage it? Because we actually, we had a serious illness cover in addition to life insurance.
[01:20:42] Ramit: How much did they pay you?
[01:20:43] Grace: 30,000.
[01:20:44] Ramit: Wow.
[01:20:46] Grace: That’s great. It was really, really amazing. So that really saved, saved our, and it helped us. So that’s where a lot of the savings have come from.
[01:20:54] Ramit: So when I think about your rich life, I’m thinking first, can we set things up so that you are safe and resilient first? Yes. We can get to the home renovations and the travel second.
[01:21:09] Yeah. Safety first. How do you both feel about that? Yes. Yes. A hundred percent. Okay. I wanna know that if James gets sick again Or grace for that matter.
[01:21:19] Grace: Yeah.
[01:21:20] Ramit: That the family is financially safe and wouldn’t that feel good? To know that you have the math, that you both understand it and most importantly, you are both connected to it.
[01:21:33] Yes. It’s like, wipe away these blurry lenses. In fact, throw ’em away. We know that we’re safe and now we have earned the right to talk about the next part of our rich life. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. Alright, when we, I’m gonna put the CSP up on screen and I would like to get your help to try to figure out what needs to happen in order for you both to be safe.
[01:21:57] Quick recap here. Your assets 328 K investment, 79 k savings, 40 2K and debt 230 K. That’s a total net worth of 219 K. Income is 91,200. That will go up when you go back to work. James. James, when is that happening? January. January. First year. January
[01:22:15] Grace: or February,
[01:22:16] Ramit: I’d
[01:22:16] Grace: say.
[01:22:16] Ramit: Alright, let’s leave it for now, but we can change it.
[01:22:20] Yeah. Fixed costs are at 58%. Again, things are a little bit different where you’re living because of pensions and et cetera. Mm-hmm. I just do wanna reflect on some of the numbers in this fixed cost ’cause they’re quite, they’re quite amazing. So your mortgage is $997. What? The 997. There’s not even four digits in your, it’s incredible, right?
[01:22:40] It’s incredible. This’s. Insane. This is another one. I just wanna say it again just so people get even more pissed. Childcare is $355. Again, there’s only three digits in that number. This is insane. That is,
[01:22:53] Grace: that’s for 45 hours a week. And they get, they feed her and they include, um, yeah, it’s a, it’s
[01:23:01] Ramit: unbelievable.
[01:23:02] I love it. I want easy childcare for all parents. Like how can you expect parents to have kids and to work if it’s freaking thousands of dollars? Okay, let’s go on. I’m getting mad right now. Alright, car payment. $200. Um, debt payments 200. What’s that for? Oh, that’s my student loan. Oh, okay. Wait, how much is your student loan?
[01:23:24] Uh, 20,000. Alright, fine. Groceries are $600 a month. Oh my god. I feel like I’m living in like 1985. What? The phone is $30. What? Yes, for both of us. How is this possible?
[01:23:41] Grace: I, I call every year and I’m like, I want to move down to Tesco Mobile, which is like the super, super budget and they’re like, oh, we can do that for blah, blah, blah.
[01:23:49] So it’s fif I’m currently paying 15 euros. Like I’m,
[01:23:53] Ramit: I’m, I see so many CSPs. The thing about the CSP, I feel like some formula got m messed up and every number has one zero dropped off of it. Like literally every number is missing a zero. This is crazy. 30 for phone. Should be 300 in the us. Alright, so your investments again, uh, just to sum it up, you are doing 960, let’s call it a thousand bucks a month plus 380.
[01:24:19] So roughly. 1300 bucks a month for your investments on a salary of about 91,000 gross, 49% on savings and negative 14% on guilt-free spending. Obviously that doesn’t work. And you, you mentioned that you feel stressed out about money.
[01:24:38] Grace: Yeah.
[01:24:39] Ramit: You see why?
[01:24:40] Grace: Yeah.
[01:24:41] Ramit: If you don’t have any money to eat out or to do anything, but yet you are still buying all these toys.
[01:24:47] I know. Actually, it’s the worst of both worlds. Yeah. You might as well just be honest about it and maybe stop buying so many toys. I don’t know. That’s up to you. So what do we need to do in order to change these numbers? ’cause they actually need to be rationalized. Mm-hmm. We need to pick appropriate numbers.
[01:25:04] You can choose based on what you want for your rich life, but then you actually gotta stick to ’em. Hmm. If you wanna change ’em later, you could change ’em six months from now. But one of the most important things is, hey, let’s pick numbers together that match up with our vision, and then let’s both agree to stick to them, and after six months we can reevaluate.
[01:25:22] Mm-hmm. How would you change these numbers based on what you said your rich life vision was? I
[01:25:29] Grace: think we’re saving too much.
[01:25:31] Ramit: Okay.
[01:25:31] Grace: Definitely. I would like to save a thousand per month.
[01:25:37] Ramit: Okay. You’re doing that right now into your emergency fund. Keep in mind, you already have 13 months of emergency funds.
[01:25:42] Grace: Yes.
[01:25:43] So I, I’ll stop the emergency fund and we’ll just keep for the house maybe.
[01:25:48] Ramit: Yeah. Okay. So let’s drop. You’re saying drop the long-term emergency fund off?
[01:25:52] Grace: Yeah.
[01:25:53] Ramit: Okay. Watch what happens. Okay. Your savings drop down to 31%.
[01:25:59] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:25:59] Ramit: And your guilt-free spending is now at 4% or $216 per month. I spend more than that, but it’s a good directional change.
[01:26:08] So it’s interesting because you do have 13 months of savings, which I think is great. When James, you got sick, I’m guessing you burned through your savings pretty quickly. Sorry for this question, but what’s the likelihood of this happening again?
[01:26:21] James: In theory it should. Okay. Because you, I’ve gone through a treatment, bad surgery scans the good.
[01:26:28] Ramit: Okay. But there is no obviously exact, are you concerned financially speaking health wise, obviously, but financially speaking, are you concerned?
[01:26:37] Grace: We’re not gonna get that extra, we’re not gonna get that insurance payout again.
[01:26:42] Ramit: No.
[01:26:43] Grace: Because he’s uninsurable now.
[01:26:45] Ramit: Yeah. Can I say this? If I were in your situation, here’s how I would approach this.
[01:26:51] I would say, look, I think we’ve done an amazing job. I especially Grace, done an amazing job of shepherding all this stuff while I had to focus on my health. We have 13 months of savings. That’s incredible. But I’m in a high risk situation.
[01:27:06] Grace: Yeah.
[01:27:07] Ramit: If I get sick again, we do not have the same benefits that we had last time I that we should save what to others might seem like an irrationally high amount of money, but for our high risk situation, it makes sense.
[01:27:24] What number should that be? I don’t know. Let’s talk about it. Okay. Let’s settle on 18 months of savings.
[01:27:30] Grace: Yeah.
[01:27:30] Ramit: Yeah. I think that sounds good. And once you have that, it’s locked away and you know that that’s your break in case of emergency. But 18 months gives you time. Yeah. You can adapt, you can cut your spending, you can extend it.
[01:27:45] You’re not gonna count on all these subsidies and, and things like that, payouts, but it gives you time. What do you think about that? That’s, I like that. Yeah. The point is we need to pick a number that’s reasonable and and will serve the needs financially speaking in case one of you gets sick. Yeah. Okay.
[01:28:07] I don’t think I’ve recommended to anyone 18 months of savings, like my own personal thing. I, I, I like to have a year and that’s quite aggressive already, but, um, 18 months in your situation, considering all the things we’ve talked about. Mm-hmm. Could make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if that is the case, then can we go back to the CSP and let’s just take a look.
[01:28:31] We actually just took that emergency fund down to zero.
[01:28:35] Grace: What do you think? I would say we’ll pause the renovation fund and move the long-term saving fund into that. Yeah.
[01:28:42] Ramit: Wow. Okay. So now we’re back up to 31%.
[01:28:46] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:28:46] Ramit: Um, for an emergency fund, we’re putting a thousand dollars a month away. Mm-hmm. You have zero towards the renovation fund.
[01:28:52] Anything else?
[01:28:53] Grace: Vacations. Only a hundred euro really would make a difference to cut that. I don’t really want to stop going on holidays
[01:29:02] Ramit: at a hundred dollars a month. Yeah. It’s not really gonna make difference. It’s not gonna make a difference. And you both told me you like vacations. Yeah. And like you’ve gone through a lot.
[01:29:10] Yeah. I don’t mind it. I think if you wanted to save a hundred bucks a month, there are other places you could do it from.
[01:29:15] Grace: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:29:15] Ramit: Okay. Now that we have rationalized this a bit, you have 31% going to savings, which actually seems, I mean, it’s a little high, but it’s appropriate. You don’t have enough in guilt-free spending.
[01:29:27] No, I don’t. I understand that for the next three months, reduced income, but it’s gonna go back up. I’d like to just plan for real life. So tell me the numbers and I will adjust them here. So mind we back to 3.5. Uh, sorry. How, how do you say it in America? 3,500. Yeah. And uh, your net income will be what? 2 6 7 3 $2,673.
[01:29:52] Okay. Wow. Let’s see what just happened. Fixed costs are down to 48%. Amazing. A total reflection of your core values right here, which is like, we don’t need a big old fancy house. We don’t need a big old fancy cars. It’s all quite modest, which I like. I really like that. Next up, investments are at 6%. Oh my god.
[01:30:14] Savings are at 26%, but all the way down to guilt free spending. Look at Grace’s face. Look at that big old smile. She goes, yes. Yeah. Okay. And James is smiling too, guys. I love this. Yeah. So you’re at 21% or $1,389. Now what do you think about that number?
[01:30:33] James: Like we always overspend on guilt-free stuff and then in our heads we said, well, we can only spend X amount and then we beat ourselves up ’cause we spent over it.
[01:30:42] But now looking at that, actually what we have been spending has been. Reasonable for, uh, for the amount of money we do make and we shouldn’t be, be beating, beating ourselves up. ’cause I mean, we go out to dinner maybe once every other month and we have takeaway probably every once or three months or so.
[01:30:58] Ramit: I love the lies already. Oh, everybody noticed the lies? Just re rewind five seconds and look at Grace’s face. Yes. This is the favorite time of Ramit Satie’s life. Oh God. Okay. Why don’t we just discuss where you all have been spending guilt-free spending money.
[01:31:19] Grace: Yeah, let’s do that. Go ahead, grace. Okay. This September I have it on my little spreadsheet.
[01:31:25] Uh, we spent 250 Euros on dining out.
[01:31:31] Ramit: Wait, can you just put this on screen? Uh, yeah, I would love to look at it myself. Oh, great. Okay. Hold on. Let me just describe what I see right now. So this is a nice looking spreadsheet and it’s got, um, some different categories. Scroll up a little bit, if you don’t mind.
[01:31:43] Mm-hmm. So we have, um, cashflow overview, bills, expenses. I can see at the bottom tabs we have August, September, October, November 25, and on and on and on. Okay. Very good. Let’s go down a little bit. What’s nice, so I see the day it’s due. The budget amount, for example. Mm-hmm. The mortgage 9 96 and then the actual, which is 9 96.
[01:32:09] That’s great.
[01:32:09] Grace: And then the expenses on the, in the orange is the like every day, day to day.
[01:32:15] James: Read out, read out the kids one though.
[01:32:17] Grace: Oh God. The kids one. The budget was a hundred and I actually spent, we actually spent 1,133. What the,
[01:32:27] Ramit: on what now? Let me see. Let me see. Oh my God. Amazing. Stop right here. Stop right here.
[01:32:32] Okay, everybody remember what James said about 45 seconds ago? He goes, oh, we eat out what? Once every three months or some bs? Okay, look at this. September 3rd, dining out off the bone lunch. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds expensive. Next day, McDonald’s 5 25. That’s quite modest. Um, moving along, kids, what are these?
[01:32:56] I don’t even know what any of these words are. Knit comb and doty. What does that mean? So it’s just pacifiers
[01:33:03] Grace: and stuff. Just in get, there was, there was a head life in the, in the, in the crash. So I was just wanted to be prepared.
[01:33:09] Ramit: Okay, more words. I don’t know. I thought I spoke flu in English. Alright, moving along, we got Starbucks.
[01:33:15] This is all on the fourth. Dining out the next day, $20 and 90 cents for coffee. Next day dining out $20 at McDonald’s. Okay. And on and on and on. Okay. You could take this off screen for a second. Wait, I love, hold on. Just look. Look at this. Look at this. Look at row number 95 tmu. Like this is the only, this is the only one I’ve seen where people put what they spent, but then they go in there and add comments that are like, oh.
[01:33:41] Or like, who does this? Everyone should do it. It’s great crack. Alright, take this off screen please. Okay. First of all, how the, are you gonna tell me you only eat out once every three weeks or three months or whatever? James? None of that is me.
[01:34:01] Grace: It’s true. It’s me. It’s all me.
[01:34:04] Ramit: Ah. Yeah. So we’re, we’re a team.
[01:34:08] Except when it comes to eating out.
[01:34:10] Grace: Yeah.
[01:34:11] Ramit: Alright. Do you have an, because you have this sort of well constructed budget, you know, it has all this stuff in it, but when we go to the actual discretionary stuff, you’re behind on al on many of the things.
[01:34:27] Grace: Yeah.
[01:34:28] Ramit: What do you think about that?
[01:34:29] Grace: I actually find it so hard to stick to the budget.
[01:34:33] Ramit: Mm-hmm.
[01:34:33] Grace: Bills are fine. I can argue down bills, I can argue down everything. Um. But when it comes to like sticking to the budget that was set, it’s more of like a tracking expenses rather than like sticking to the actual budget. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not doing it very
[01:34:51] Ramit: well. It’s easy to track.
[01:34:54] Yeah. It makes us feel like we are doing something. But the one thing you are not doing when it comes to changing your behavior is changing your behavior.
[01:35:04] Grace: Yeah.
[01:35:05] Ramit: It’s a distraction for us. We track it, we go through it. We tell ourselves we’re looking for patterns that, you know the pattern. It’s very obvious from looking at it for five seconds.
[01:35:15] The real energy should be spent on saying, what is the overall vision of our rich life? Which we’ve done some element of today. How much do we wanna apportion to different four key buckets. Okay, we’ve done that. Now we know those numbers, we know what the finished puzzle looks like. How are we gonna get there?
[01:35:37] That’s where the energy should go. Tracking is irrelevant. Yeah. You should track a couple of discretionary things like eating out. One of you should own that number and you, you can track it through your credit card, debit card, whatever, but the, the level of tracking here is actually not getting you what you want.
[01:35:52] It’s getting you a distraction. How does it feel to hear that
[01:35:54] Grace: I know this, I know this in my soul. Yeah.
[01:35:57] Ramit: Yeah. Good. Okay, great. I personally think that you are destined for something bigger than tracking. 100 rows of expenses on a spreadsheet. I just do. There’s got the stuff that the two of you have been through.
[01:36:14] The way that you have done it together, you’ve tackled really hard stuff and it would be a shame to focus your energy in this small of a way.
[01:36:26] Grace: I think it’s the same thing that I was doing with the tomatoes. You know, it’s the control. If I can just get it down on paper, then I can make sense of it. But actually I, I know what’s wrong.
[01:36:39] Ramit: Yeah. Well, what do you think might be a different alternative to that approach that you’ve taken with the tomatoes and with the budgeting?
[01:36:48] Grace: Zooming out mm-hmm. A little bit more and seeing a little bit more about the importance of it. Really. I enjoy process. I always have. I enjoy knitting. I enjoy spinning.
[01:37:02] I enjoy, you know, the meticulous details. I really like that. Mm-hmm. And I find that I can’t do my knitting spinning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because I’m minding children. So instead I’ll focus it on things that are for the family, like meticulously tracking the budget or making food for my family. But I don’t need to be doing it in this way, putting in so much effort.
[01:37:28] I probably need to just relax a little bit.
[01:37:32] Ramit: Wow. One of the, one of the most profound things I’ve heard on this podcast, your level of self-perception is really high. And you just mentioned something offhandedly. I pro, I probably don’t need to. I think you said something like, work as hard or, or put the amount of time in.
[01:37:52] Grace: Yeah.
[01:37:54] Ramit: Can you say it a different way? Would you be comfortable putting less work into this?
[01:38:00] Grace: I dunno why that’s hard, because I love like, but yeah, I, I think I need to like put less work into do to do what then?
[01:38:13] Ramit: Isn’t that the key question that so many of us ask, if I stop doing this, if I delegate this, then what will I do?
[01:38:23] And on a deeper level, who am I? Yeah. Who am I if I’m not canning tomatoes for the family and tracking this detailed report that’s available for the last three years of expenses? Who am I? Can you answer that for me? Grace? Who would you be?
[01:38:42] Grace: I would just be probably just mom and wife.
[01:38:46] Ramit: Yeah. You know, moms are not loved because they have the most extensive spreadsheet in the world.
[01:38:53] Wives are not loved because they track every single expense. That’s not why they’re loved. None of us are. Yeah. Part of getting to the next level of where you want to get is having a crystal clear vision of where you want to go. And both of you as a team working to get there. You already did the easy stuff, then you got stronger.
[01:39:19] You had to, because you had to go through tougher stuff, you went through illness. Very difficult. Most of us cannot understand what that’s like. You did it and now to get to the next level, the level where you are safe as a family with 18 months of saving setup.
[01:39:34] Grace: Yeah. Where
[01:39:34] Ramit: you are showing your children a healthy relationship with money.
[01:39:39] That probably requires not doing some of the same things you used to and actually saying, I choose not to because in order to get where we’re going, that’s not my future anymore. James, what’s coming up for you as you hear this,
[01:39:55] James: what you’ve been talking about is just there is just been in the background for so long and we haven’t been able to kind of express it.
[01:40:02] You know, sometimes I feel like she’s so focused on the saving money, the carrying tomatoes, but you know, we never get to eat the tomatoes. We never get to spend the money, we never get to, it’s a process and then once it’s done, it’s put on a shelf, it’s put into savings and then we’re on to the next one.
[01:40:20] And so to, to be who she’ll be. If she doesn’t do that, you know, she’ll still be, you know. The best mom should still be my perfect wife. You know, that’s not gonna change. We’ll just maybe have a bit more time together, you know, enjoy our rich life. As you say. I said at the start coming out of this, we used to be be, we used to be a team and I feel like our budgets were dead on when it wasn’t just her because it was both of us and we could bounce off each other and you know, we could, I mean one of us might, you know, mention something which everyone didn’t think about.
[01:40:55] And so I hope a big part of her not being able to take on all this is that I will be able to come back on board and that we can start being a team again. Now that I’m hopefully out the end of this, that I can start taking on some of that burden and she can maybe relax a little bit. Let let the
[01:41:16] Ramit: steamer off that pressure cooker and let it vent.
[01:41:19] You know, James, you were always a team. Didn’t stop ’cause you got sick.
[01:41:23] Grace: Yeah.
[01:41:24] Ramit: Not once have I heard either of you insult the other, haven’t heard it. If anything, bending over backwards to support each other. And you were a team always. I love James that you are here saying, look, we used to be spot on when we were tracking our numbers.
[01:41:44] I want to get back there now that I am able to, I think the way that the two of you talk about money reveals so much. The idea, James, that you maybe deep down think that you’ve let down your partner, but of course you have not. You got sick now you’re better. You put in a lot of work to make that happen and now you can come back and you can participate in the numbers more than you were able to.
[01:42:18] Perfect, amazing grace. The idea that you have to control everything, that you may not be a good mom or wife if you are not tracking numbers reveals so much. And what I love, what I’m seeing the two of you get is, Hey, we’ve made this work. We’ve made it work. We’re, we’re actually very grateful at what we’ve been able to go through, but now perhaps there’s a new way to look at our money together.
[01:42:48] Maybe it’s not about going way down into the weeds, maybe it’s about coming up with a few key levers, those four key numbers, and like actually creating a vision for ourselves that lets us appreciate living. Let’s go out, let’s actually go out as a family and go eat out once a week. Fine. We’ll find a way to do it within our numbers, but that’s important to us.
[01:43:12] And trust me, when you go out to eat on Saturday with the whole family, you are going to really appreciate it.
[01:43:18] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:43:19] Ramit: That’s actually the best part of the whole thing. I will tell you from my own experience, my experience is not the same as yours, but my experience where I saved money, I planned ahead. I had a vision in my mind and when I got to the place that I wanted to go, it took years.
[01:43:39] I loved it more than you can imagine. Not just ’cause I was there and it was beautiful, but that I knew all the work that it had taken to get there and I appreciated it even more. It’s like cooking a beautiful meal. It takes two days to cook and when you finally eat it, it’s better than just the ingredients.
[01:43:56] It’s actually the journey that you went on. So that’s where the two of you can go. How do you feel, do you feel confident that you could change the way you relate to money together?
[01:44:09] Grace: I think we can change the way we’re going at it. I think we were going at it from a survival point of view. Yeah. And now that, now that we are at this place, even though we’re at a very sort of precarious place, but we both have jobs that we can go back to, um, we both can like build a backup in no time really.
[01:44:32] Once I’m back doing overtime, that can go into fun stuff, you know, and go into, you know, the extra savings and you get bonuses as well. So that’s extra money that we can do. So we’re actually fine and I think I just need to. Sit in it and enjoy the fact that we’ve sort of almost made it.
[01:44:54] Ramit: Yes. No, you have made it.
[01:44:56] You have made it, you made it out of a cancer diagnosis, you made it, you still have money in savings, in investing. Yeah. If anything, when I look at it, I feel gratitude. I feel gratitude towards your employers. I feel gratitude towards the government, universal health, univer. Exactly. I feel gratitude towards that insurance payout.
[01:45:17] Yeah. And that you had the vision to, to choose to get that a lot of gratitude. Huge. And what you said was so beautiful going from survival
[01:45:28] Grace: to
[01:45:28] Ramit: the next chapter. What word, what’s the theme of the next chapter of your life as it relates to money? James, what would you say? Enjoyment. Enjoyment. I love that.
[01:45:38] And what about you, grace?
[01:45:41] Grace: I’d love to
[01:45:41] Ramit: thrive. Thrive. Yeah. These are very positive forward looking words. Yeah. Like nobody look at, look at my body language. Nobody thrives like this. Uh, worried about how much am I? Nobody thrives like that, right? They thrive standing up straight, sitting up straight, leaning forward and saying, what is it we’re going to do in this chapter of our life?
[01:46:04] We are so grateful. We’re here.
[01:46:06] Grace: Yeah.
[01:46:06] Ramit: We’re gonna thrive.
[01:46:07] Grace: And I really wanna enjoy, enjoy our kids and, and see them grow and oh gosh, they’re just incredible.
[01:46:16] Ramit: You know, I can see when, when the two of you’re talking right now, I can almost see the, the family stories being created.
[01:46:23] Grace: Mm.
[01:46:23] Ramit: I can see ’em like a spiderweb.
[01:46:25] They’re almost unraveling in front of me. It’s the story. When we first started talking today of, you know, dad was sick and it was hard, and he got better and we’re happy. It’s nice. It’s a nice story. But this story is so much more detailed. It’s the difficulty we had to go through. It’s the fact that we didn’t know what was gonna happen.
[01:46:51] We had to stop working. Dad kept trying to work because he thought he would get bored, but actually maybe he was scared of just coming home. Who will I be if I’m not working mom over here? Going to the farmer’s market, canning tomatoes, because she was afraid. Afraid of who she would be if she couldn’t feed her family.
[01:47:18] And we were so grateful. We had the help of our employers and our friends and our family. And once we got that final check from the doctors, we celebrated. How? How did we do it? We sat at home, we watched tv. We cried, we hugged, we did it all.
[01:47:37] Grace: We went to Legoland. There you
[01:47:39] Ramit: go. Amazing. Yeah. So good. Exactly.
[01:47:43] These are the stories that your kids remember, but secretly they’re actually not for your kids. They’re for you. Grace, before we wrap up, you mentioned that it’ll be 2:00 AM 3:00 AM and you find yourself purchasing something off of Instagram.
[01:48:04] Grace: Yeah.
[01:48:06] Ramit: Can you tell me what you might do to change that? Not out of judgment, I’m not judging you for it, but now it seems to me you have a powerful vision that is perhaps more powerful than whatever item is offered on Instagram.
[01:48:25] Grace: Yeah.
[01:48:26] Ramit: What tools could you use to change the way that you relate to spending?
[01:48:31] Grace: I think I need to take my cards out of the back of my phone.
[01:48:40] Ramit: Great. I love that. Very simple but very powerful. Great. And
[01:48:45] Grace: disconnect the Apple pay from my phone as well. You wanna do it right now? I do. Okay. Let’s do it. I do. I do.
[01:48:51] I do. I wanna do that right now. I’ll leave there. So these are, so, okay. She
[01:48:54] Ramit: took the credit cards out of the back of her phone and I just have my
[01:48:58] Grace: driving license in there now.
[01:49:00] Ramit: Okay. Okay, great. That’s gone. How does it feel to remove them?
[01:49:04] Grace: I feel like it’s gonna be hard to, uh, do the normal things that I’m doing.
[01:49:09] Yeah. Yeah. But maybe that needs to happen. That’s good. Important things are always hard. Yeah. Goodbye.
[01:49:17] Ramit: James. What’s it like for you watching this? I thought this would happen.
[01:49:20] Grace: They’re gone.
[01:49:21] Ramit: They’re gone. All the cards are gone. I see that. She held it up to the screen. Well done. Let’s, let’s do a round of applause.
[01:49:27] ’cause that’s very impressive. Well done. Grace. Many of us find it silly to have to do something like this, you know, like, oh, I have to remove cards for myself. Like I’m a grown adult. I should be able to control myself. But actually, once we accept that human nature is very responsive to even the smallest of barriers, then we learn how to deploy those barriers on purpose.
[01:49:53] Grace: Yeah.
[01:49:53] Ramit: As an example, in the US in California, a few years ago, they started charging like 5 cents for bags. Oh yeah. For, you know, grocery bags. The amount of grocery bag consumption went down dramatically, like huge, just for a nickel. Using these barriers in our own life is incredibly powerful to, for example, make it a little harder to spend on things that you do not wanna actually spend on.
[01:50:20] Mm-hmm. Very effective. And how about for the two of you? One thing that I heard is this feeling of guilt, this feeling of being behind with your money.
[01:50:30] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:50:31] Ramit: What’s a way that the two of you can change that relationship with money?
[01:50:34] Grace: I think having our meetings again.
[01:50:37] Ramit: Yeah.
[01:50:37] James: Definitely not hiding anything.
[01:50:40] You know, if you come home and there’s a McDonald’s cup and a thing, you’d be like, yeah, I, kids were tough. I needed something on the way home.
[01:50:48] Ramit: Fine. I love that. You know, honesty always. Yeah. I love that. There’s nothing wrong with getting McDonald’s once in a while. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s totally fine.
[01:50:57] There’s no need for shame. In fact, you can actually build it into your plan.
[01:51:01] Grace: Yeah.
[01:51:02] Ramit: That’s the way to do it. Hey, once a month, maybe twice a month, I’m gonna set some money aside from McDonald’s. Mm-hmm. Fine. You can certainly afford it.
[01:51:11] Grace: What I really want to do is when I leave the house, I have a little snack with me when the feeding hunger comes on because I’m breastfeeding.
[01:51:20] So you just get this like, oh my God, urge. Mm-hmm. And bring the coffee
[01:51:25] Ramit: with me. Can I make some suggestions here?
[01:51:27] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:51:27] Ramit: Because this is such a simple, it sounds so simple, but it’s actually layers of complexity that you can use in your own life. So let’s just break it down. Um, if it’s the coffee, maybe James, as you mentioned, you can assist, you could make coffee.
[01:51:40] Maybe it’s having an instant coffee thing available that is effortless to make so you don’t have to brew the whole thing. Mm-hmm. Maybe for snacks, you can leave 10 snacks in the car. Yeah. In a little case. And keep them there so that you’re not running out. Uh, maybe you can, uh, have a place that you go for snacks and you build in the numbers.
[01:52:01] There’s a million different ways to do it, but the important thing you notice is I’m not ashamed of needing a little help. There’s no shame in it. Yeah. I need help. This is what I’m going to do. Guilt free to be able to have a snack.
[01:52:18] Grace: I like that because I think it’ll keep us on track to where we actually want to be and not just kind of frittering away, um, stuff where we don’t need it.
[01:52:26] Ramit: Yeah. I want you, I want you to live a full rich life. And that involves eating out once in a while. Yes. Mm-hmm. Getting something for the kids. Yes. And building up a sizable savings just in case also. Yes. You can actually do all of those things with planning.
[01:52:45] Grace: Yeah.
[01:52:46] Ramit: Yeah. What surprised you about today’s conversation?
[01:52:49] Grace: I think that that control aspect that surprised me. That I thought I was gonna be just a really mean woman making my sick husband work. How dare I? But actually it was, it was really emotional. I, I just, I really appreciate that you saw me, you saw what was going on, and I didn’t,
[01:53:15] Ramit: you know, grace, I saw a different story than you saw in your application.
[01:53:19] There were multiple references to making your husband work.
[01:53:23] Grace: Mm-hmm.
[01:53:24] Ramit: 15 minutes into talking. I didn’t see any evidence of that. If anything, James himself said, what, what, what else would I have done but work? And so sometimes the way we see ourselves is not the way that others see us. And it is so rare that we get the chance to, uh, see ourselves reflected through somebody else and maybe for someone to give us honest feedback.
[01:53:49] Grace: Yeah.
[01:53:50] Ramit: And I think you were very open to it. I say all this because it really shows you the power of how you can craft your own story. Your story was that I’m a bad wife forcing my husband to work while he has cancer. That’s not the story I heard. Meaning you have the power to shape your own story. Okay.
[01:54:13] Yeah. Yeah. James, what about you? I’m
[01:54:16] James: surprised how easy it is to talk about it. My expectations for this is that, you know, it would be that we would beat around the bush and not be honest about it, or we would hide things. But then once we kind of got into it, the idea of hiding and, and not being honest about it was just ridiculous.
[01:54:37] Like, how are we even, how are we ever gonna get better if we, if we don’t talk about it, if we’re not honest about it, honest with ourselves? And I think maybe that’s something that we have been kind of holding back on. We, and it’s purely because we just don’t want to hurt the other one or don’t wanna burden the other person.
[01:54:50] But in some ways, we’ve actually come making it worse ’cause we haven’t been. And you’re talking about it so openly and so I’m just surprised how good it feels and how easy it is to actually talk about money so openly and, and even the stuff around money and how it affects us
[01:55:05] Ramit: all. Amazing. I appreciate you for, for really showing up and being so open, being so honest.
[01:55:11] I feel hopeful. Great Grace.
[01:55:17] Grace: I feel a huge sense of relief.
[01:55:20] Ramit: Amazing. And I really commend you for what you’ve been through, but how you have done it, especially, um, tough things like this, illness can really cause fractures in relationships. Not only did I not see any of that, I actually see the way that the two of you showed up for each other.
[01:55:36] It’s very, very impressive. And what an example you set for the many people that will watch this.
[01:55:42] Grace: Well, we’re very lucky. We’re so lucky that we have so much supports. Like, you know, that the financial cost of a cancer diagnosis in the States is a totally different story.
[01:55:54] Ramit: Yeah. What are the stories that you tell yourself?
[01:55:58] We all do it. We tell ourselves stories. In fact, we tell them so often that they start to feel like facts. I’m just not good with money. I need a big house to be successful. People like me don’t wear things like that. I once remember I was reading a financial forum and people were talking about, when you have x million dollars, what are you gonna do with the money?
[01:56:23] And there were hundreds of posts in this thread and I read ’em all. And I have to tell you, after reading them, the feeling that I got was disappointment. Almost every single respondent in that thread said the same thing. Um, I would get a house, uh, I would renovate my house. Um, I might get a car. And I was thinking, these are people from all over the country, all over the world.
[01:56:51] We’re not talking about having $10,000 or $25,000. We’re talking about millions of dollars. And everyone’s answer, like something like 85% of the answers are all exactly the same. You independently decided that you just want a house. That’s it. And I thought to myself, where is the creativity? Not one person said, you know what?
[01:57:11] I’ve always wanted to learn how to dance. I’m gonna hire a dance instructor to come to my house and teach me how to dance. Not one person said, I’ve always wanted to learn how to act. I’m gonna go to an acting class and I’m gonna get really good at acting. Not one person talked about hiring a chef to come and teach them how to cook.
[01:57:25] It was just a house. It was literally inanimate objects that they wanted. I don’t find this cool. I think that each of us is different. I think that each of us has something that we would love to do, but a lot of times we don’t think people like us do it. I think that we think that’s for rich people. I think that we tell ourselves all kinds of stories, and I’ve told myself stories too, that I’m just a skinny Indian guy, that I can’t express my emotions, that experiences are better than things.
[01:57:56] And for a long time, I believed them. I never even thought to question them. Most of us never stopped to ask, wait a second, is this even true? Like some of you believe you don’t even like to eat lamb, but you never had Indian Kima. You believe you don’t like opera, but you’ve never seen an opera that you understood or one that connected with you.
[01:58:14] So that’s what I want you to think about today. What is your story? What is your story? The story you’ve been telling yourself about health, about money, about relationships, about where you live, about anything? Take a second. Think about those stories. Write ’em down and interrogate them. Why do I believe this?
[01:58:31] Is it true? Who told me that? Keep going. Ask why, ask again. Sometimes you’ll get to the end of that chain and realize, I don’t even believe this. I just picked it up somewhere and I never put it down. And on that note, let’s now hear follow ups from Grace and James.
[01:58:49] Grace: Hi Ramit. Um, just a little update. It’s been about two, three weeks and we’ve just got back from, um, an amazing holiday, um, in the forest up in Longford and.
[01:59:03] It was so much fun. We had a budget and we hadn’t spent it all by the last day, so we just kind of went wild on the last day. It was lovely actually to like just have that guilt free spending and just be like, no, no, no. This is the money set aside for it. So that was really nice. Um, we are also, James is taking the lead on the money meetings, which I’m really enjoying because it doesn’t just fall to me, which is nice.
[01:59:32] And also it allows me, uh, a little bit more space in my brain, which is lovely. Um, we haven’t really started the big savings. Well, we’re not, nothing’s coming in, so, but we are kind of reducing down the silly spends. Um, I’m finding it hard, so I need to realign now after the holiday and have a little plan in mind for what I actually wanna spend my money on.
[02:00:05] But yeah, I think we have a meeting tomorrow now and we’re just going to kind of lay out whatever is ahead of us and we’re already planning next year’s holiday, which is really exciting ’cause we haven’t gone on any sort of holiday in about three years. Um, well apart from, you know, we’ve just, that, that, that’s been our first one.
[02:00:22] Um, so. Yeah, it’s all, it’s all looking positive and I can’t tell you how mu how much better I’m feeling. So I hope James is feeling better as well. Thank, he is, he started after the holiday, but, um, so yeah, thanks so much.
[02:00:43] James: Positive changes. Very positive changes I feel from it. Um, a big thing, obviously getting back involved with the finances again.
[02:00:53] So after the show, after the interview, we did a, we did have a kind of catch up. Grace showed me her, went through, went through the spreadsheets that we kind of been looking at. We set out some kind of big goals. Main one being to get our, we tried, we figured out how much of our savings we’d have to use over the next three months while we’re both on no pay and low pay.
[02:01:19] And then we kind of tried to figure out how much we would need to, where our savings would go next year, um, to kind of build that backup, that emergency fund backup. Um, so we’ve got, we’ve got our first kind of catch up tomorrow and then we’ll meet once a week briefly just to, ’cause we’ll map out the month before and then we’ll.
[02:01:41] Meet a we and see you. If something crops up another party we’ve gotta go to or um, we’ve gotta go somewhere extra that might meet a bit more fuel. Whatever it is. I found being involved in the money more, the ability to just kind of cool grace up on some of her spending. I’m loving that. She’s being a lot more open with me now about it.
[02:02:00] Um, ’cause she knows some of it’s ridiculous. Like she even says, she comes at me with how ridiculous it is and you know, and I have to because I think before I’d be like, you know, she was in charge of the money. She thought it was a good idea then great, go for it. You know, and that is kind of definitely, that’s helped a lot.
[02:02:21] Um, and being more involved with the money has helped me a lot as well. I can feel a lot more secure in. Us as a family and as our finances. I’m a lot less worried. I, I feel like I’m getting a lot less worried about Matt. It’s still there, obviously. Um, but kind of seeing it all, being more involved in it again, is helping a lot with the kind of anxiety that I was feeling about it.
[02:02:43] You know? Um, we probably won’t go completely bankrupt, uh, if I get sick again, you know? Um, small things like that. And, you know, I’m trying to, similar grace, I’m getting more, trying to be more involved with not worrying about the, be more involved with the family, like trying to not, um, spend money on things for the kids, but more in, um, so stuff together as a family, not just, you know, toys that they can play with and that’ll end up throwing away or giving away or something.
[02:03:22] Try to create more memories and more, more things together as a family. You know, we’ve been through a lot, a lot, a lot. And you know, we’re coming out the other side of it. It’s time to enjoy it a little bit, you know, so, yeah. So that’s where I’m at, you know, it’s early days yet, um, but we can stick with it.
[02:03:43] I think we’ll be on a much better course moving forward. So, um, thank you again for, sometimes you just need someone else to kind of listen in and. Because I think deep down we knew a lot of it. Sometimes you just need someone else to kind of point it out, someone from the outside just to be like, yeah, you know, you’re not crazy, you know?
[02:04:04] So next again, uh, who knows? Maybe we’ll see each other again soon.
