September 15, 2024 • 61 mins
Former award-winning teacher turned educator on financial literacy and relationships, Brian Page discusses the concept of 'Modern Husbands' and the importance of viewing marriage as a partnership. Learn about his innovative Marriage Toolkit, designed with insights from over 30 experts, and discover practical tips on managing money, home, careers, and family life in the 21st century. From navigating second marriages to conducting effective money dates, this episode is packed with valuable advice for couples looking to achieve financial harmony and a thriving relationship.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
A modern husband is simply someonewho is married to a partner who looks
at a relationship as a partnership.
And in the 21st century economy, mosthouseholds have two working folks and
the days where one person works and theother person tends to the home are over.
And so many times people don'tunderstand kind of how to go about
(00:24):
managing money and managing thehome in our new household economy
I literally buy a 2 lottery ticketand I know the odds are one in, a
trillion to win, but we also know fromresearch that one, 2 lottery ticket
actually creates happiness because youcan dream about what you do with it.
(00:46):
But what better way to dream than todream with your partner, with your spouse.
And so for your money date, you havethis lottery ticket in front of you and
you ask your spouse, okay, if we winthis money, what will we do differently?
How would we spend it?
What does our world look like?
If money is no object and what unravels?
(01:08):
what the toolkit does is it addressesthe topics that couples argue about the
most outside of actual like infidelity.
So it focuses on managing money together,managing the home together, supporting
each other's careers and family planning.
And, those topics require, different kindsof conversations, systems, and tools.
(01:33):
And so each of these contributors,as you're saying, like the
list of the contributors
(02:08):
Hello, and welcome backto Catching Up to FI.
I'm Bill Yount with Jackie CummingsKoski, and we have yet another
episode that's a little different.
There'll be money involved inthis, but we're going to talk a
little bit more about marriage.
We recently had a pre nup episodewith Aaron Thomas, so this is
along the lines of that theme.
So Jackie, why don't youintroduce our guests?
(02:30):
Yeah.
Our guest today is Brian Page, and I liketo consider him a great friend of mine.
I knew him from his teachingdays, and now he has an amazing
endeavor that he's embarked on.
So he is a former award winningteacher that made a major shift
over the past few years to builda platform called Modern Husbands.
There he shares the modern family and howit's changed from previous generations.
(02:53):
And in the true form of an educator, Brianinfuses data and research to support some
of the common ideas we've heard aboutwhen it comes to money, as well as sort of
dismantling of previous antiquated ideas.
So they recently developed somethingcalled the marriage tool kit, and this has
lessons from over 30 50 national expertson personal finance and marriage topics.
(03:17):
So some of them are actually friendsof ours and people that have been
on the show like JL Collins, SeanMulaney, Manisha Thakur, and yours
truly with a lesson on what else HSAs.
So we'll dive into allof that in today's show.
But first, I, I couldn't continuewithout talking about all of
his accolades as an educator.
(03:39):
So during that time, Brian wasrecognized as a National Educator
of the Year by the Milken Foundationand Ohio Department of Education.
He was a CNN Money Hero, a Center ofEconomic Education Forbes Award winner.
And Brian was also a workinggroup member of the U.
S.
President's Advisory Councilon Financial Capability.
(04:02):
And after retiring from teaching,he took on a senior level position
at NextGen Personal Finance, andwe had them on the show as well.
So Brian is married with threechildren, a dog, and a house full
of cute little foster kittens.
Brian, welcome to Catching up to FI.
Oh, I'm thrilled to be here.
(04:23):
That's awesome.
they've met and I'm about to hear all theBrian's learned about the modern husband.
It's not been the focusof financial education.
And first off, I want to hear exactlywhat is a modern husband in your opinion.
A modern husband is simply someonewho is married to a partner who looks
(04:46):
at a relationship as a partnership.
And in the 21st century economy, mosthouseholds have two working folks and
the days where one person works and theother person tends to the home are over.
And so many times people don'tunderstand kind of how to go about
managing money and managing thehome in our new household economy.
(05:09):
And so the focus would be forhusbands like myself, who have a
wife who is ambitious in her career.
She has lots of goals herself.
How is it that.
I can provide the support that sheneeds to excel in her career and to
reach her goals while also ensuringthat when she's in the home, we have an
(05:29):
environment where our family can thrive.
So Brian, I have a question.
So would this also extend to likepartners that are not married, like
domestic partners, same sex partners,there's the same concept apply.
absolutely.
Yeah.
And I struggle with the name becausefirst of all, when you say partner,
there's some lack of understandingfrom some folks, you have confusion
(05:54):
because you have a business partnership.
And so I say modern husband justbecause people really know what that is.
And, I want to be very clear aboutour goal is to ensure that all
couples, regardless of whether.
Through matrimony or through legalpartnership or through just an extended
relationship and same sex partners as wellthat they understand that we're trying
(06:17):
to provide them with the informationthey need in their relationships.
Okay, let's go back for a minute so thatwe can understand you a little better
now that we've defined modern husbands.
You are a super successfulas a K through 12 teacher.
What on earth convinced you to move intothis marriage and relationship stuff?
Well, my wife had a massivepromotion that required us to
(06:39):
move from Cincinnati to Ohio.
And in order to do that, I knewthat I had to give up teaching.
I also, had an offer from nextgen personal finance and my good
friend, Tim Ranzetta, and thatallowed me to work remotely.
And, while in Ohio, I helpedPass the, requirement that every
student has to pass a semester longpersonal finance class to graduate.
(07:03):
And so really when I was atnext gen, I taught teachers
how to teach personal finance.
And then I also ended up advocatingfor lobbying for personal finances
requirement in other states as well.
And long story short,my wife had a big job.
I had a big job and we hadthree kids and was At that time,
money wasn't what was needed.
Fortunately, because of some of ourearly investments what was needed
(07:26):
was one of us to have flexibility.
One of us to be the one to really shouldereverything or most of the work at home.
So it was my turn.
So that's what I decided to do.
And I did have a very part timejob as a, Visiting scholar with
the consumer financial protectionbureau, office of financial education.
While I did this, but I, I simplyGoogled how to be a great husband.
(07:48):
And I learned that I had a lot to learn.
And initially I, I did thatjust for myself, right?
As my thought is, okay,I'm going to own this.
I'm going to do everything I canto make sure my we're here in
Atlanta for my wife's career.
We're doing, I can't a supporter.
And, initially I started withmy wheelhouse with what I
understood and that's money.
And then that grew into understandingthat personal finance is personal.
(08:08):
We all know that.
But when it comes to relationships,there's a different layer of
complexity that is really toughfor a lot of couples to manage.
And when you look at thestatistics, one of the leading
causes of divorce is money stress.
And so I became to understand this wholenew world of money and relationships
(08:30):
and grew the advisory board.
And basically for, two or threeyears when I wasn't focusing on
family, just became is just head down.
Laser focused on understanding how is itthat people can manage money as a team?
And then that evolved into alsomanaging the home because that's
where a lot of friction comes from.
So it was just kind of an accidentalthing where I just Did it for myself
(08:55):
initially, did it for our familyinitially and recognize that, in our
world where a lot of us grew up in ahousehold where he's the breadwinner
or he goes to work and she has theflexible job or she doesn't work where
we saw what the inside of those homeslooked like and grew up in them, those
(09:16):
money conversations and grew up in them.
That's not the world today.
And so practically speaking, what weneed is information for couples in a
modern world to manage a modern home.
And that's what modern husbands is.
so you're kind of filling a nichethat's really not there or it's
not updated because you're right.
(09:37):
So many things has changed andwhat a household looks like.
And so you moved from Cincinnati,Ohio, and that's how I know you.
I know that you were instrumentalin getting the law passed
to require personal finance.
So I have yet to thank you.
So let me thank you for that andall the advocacy work that you did.
But you moved to Atlanta.
(09:57):
And now you built the, the modern husband.
So I know about you a lot as faras an educator, but, I don't know
a lot about like your upbringing.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat was your upbringing like?
And tell us like some ofyour first money memories.
So I was lucky.
I won the genetic lottery.
I had two really great parentsand I have a father who he's
(10:22):
downstairs, actually, at the.
As we're recording this he isFI before FI was the thing.
And I grew up in a household that livedeverything about the fire movement.
So really when, when I like read yourbook, Jackie, when I listen to these
podcasts, it's not new because it'sjust really what I know as a child.
(10:43):
So can I, can I give you an example here?
We did travel.
For example, we did a big trip to Europe.
However we never stayed in a hotel.
Now I'm going to take that back.
I think I stayed in onehotel before I turned 18.
We camped.
And when we were in Europe, we cycled,we cycled from Paris to Le Mans, St.
Michelle, up to Englandthrough the Netherlands.
(11:03):
And we camped at the whole way.
And, That was an example of a positivememory that comes from frugality
and looking at life differently.
I mean, that's for most people.
A three week vacation is unaffordable,but we did it in a unique way where
I would argue that's a better waybecause I really got to kind of get a
sense of what Europe was like, right?
When people ask me like, where doesyour passion for money come from?
(11:28):
And again, it goes tomy, to my upbringing.
I, I really fall back to a story.
So my father was a computer engineerand my mother was a special ed teacher,
and then my dad had rental properties.
Now he grew up super poor and inorder to finish college, he had
to live on, in a railroad car.
In order to afford college.
So he lived in the railroad car andworked on the railroad during the day
(11:51):
and then finished college in the evening.
So that's how he was able to afford it.
And growing up he would tellme stories like this but.
We were known for our terrible cars.
When I say terrible cars, letme give you a perspective.
Well, we had somebody follow us home inone of those giant Woody station wagons.
When I was like maybe a freshman inhigh school, sophomore, high school
(12:13):
to recruit our car, to purchase ourcar, to enter into the Clinton County
demolition Derby, and that's what we did.
They sold it and, and it won.
I saw it in the ClintonCounty demolition Derby.
Okay.
So then fast forward now to the next car.
My dad eventually had to sellthis Chevy Malibu station wagon
(12:36):
because the gas gauge didn't work.
And when we bought it, we boughtit that way, by the way, I
want to be clear about that.
You could lift thecarpet and see the road.
There was no ceiling, the carpeton the ceiling was probably
asbestos or, it was foam.
it was the worst car you've ever seen.
Now for perspective the, the,anything that was metal that
(12:58):
was not part of the frame rustedoff, including the door handle.
So what he did was he drilledholes where the door handles
were and ran metal fish wire.
Hooks.
And so to open the door, it waslike starting a weed whacker
and the door would fling open.
Right.
And he drove that and hehad rental properties.
(13:20):
He had like 20 units at the time andhe had to sell it because he pulled
out of the driveway and he was toe inthe lawnmower and the hitch rusted off
and the lawnmower went to the yard.
He's like, ah, I guess
I got to get a different car.
So I asked my father that when thishappened, I returned from college.
I think it was a sophomore in collegeand I had figured life out by this point.
(13:41):
I'd realized, okay, well, Myparents can afford nice cars.
My parents had money but theystill used old tornado damaged
furniture for their home.
They still drove cars like this.
Like what's the deal?
Why did you do this?
So my dad told me to get a calculator.
And I did, and he asked me what a monthlycar payment would be, and I guessed,
(14:03):
I think I guessed at the time 300.
He said, well, what about insurance?
And I guess he said, well, it's got to befull coverage because it's your borrowing.
So the bank's going to require that.
And so I put that number in.
He said, we'll take that times 12 months.
So, okay.
And he said, now take that times 20 years.
and obviously it's this really bignumber and I said, what's the point?
And he said, the point is, son,there's no way in hell that my kid's
(14:25):
going to live in a railroad car.
Like I had to, to affordto pay to college.
That's the only way that we couldafford to pay for your college.
Wow.
Look at that sacrifice.
Well, interesting.
I remember in my childhood that my dadhad a Rambler and he put a trash can.
In the floor to cover up thefact that there was a hole
(14:46):
and the street was going by.
It had no seat belts.
it was the time when you hadthat rear facing flip up thing.
The kids are all overthe place in the car.
It was amazing that we all survived.
And, but this is a, this is anearly retirement extreme story.
He's got 20 rental units,significant cash flowing properties.
(15:08):
Did you ever feeldeprived or was this fun?
I really would haveappreciated a better car.
So for those FI folks who have kids,please don't go to that degree.
But beyond that no, I never felt deprived.
I mean, we always had loadsof opportunities and I had.
great neighborhood.
And my parents, like I said, like,what a gift they paid for my school.
(15:31):
So I just, I really strugglepersonally with just this infatuation
with stuff, with nicer stuff.
And maybe it's because I grewup where, our home was nice.
It was fine.
But like when you bought furniture.
Like we literally took furniture out ofa damaged home from a tornado or bought
furniture at a garage sale and it's fine.
(15:52):
And the notion that people are spendinglike 10, 000 on a couch is bizarre to me.
I don't understand why someone wouldrob themselves of that kind of time.
Cause money really is time.
For.
Like a couch, so I guess my perspectiveis, I find it bizarre when people
want to have all of these nicethings around them all of the time
(16:16):
and they're working really, reallyhard to have all of these things and
they're robbing themselves of freedom.
I mean, people forget, especially latestarters about opportunity cost and
Rob Berger who was a guest on our show,talks about a car as one of the biggest
FI busters going through those numbers.
It just doesn't make sense.
(16:38):
And if you compound that money foryou, as opposed to against you, I mean,
you're hundreds of thousands of dollarsin the green from a car that's $40,
000 versus five or $10, 000 over time.
So I hear you.
I couldn't do it.
I didn't do it.
I succumbed to lifestyle inflation.
(16:58):
I just got a new used car,but it was three years old.
But I do in, in my defense andI've said it before, I've driven
three cars in my adult lifetime.
And the last one I wantedto have the badge of honor.
turning it over to 200, 000miles, but it wasn't meant to be.
things started falling off of it andthe repairs became thousands of dollars.
(17:21):
And the trade in value of this car is 700.
I mean, it's unbelievable what happensto depreciation of cars over time.
And it was working for me, it wasgetting me where I needed to go.
It was a utility.
And so.
driving him a long time kind of offsetssome of that upfront expense, I think.
Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt.
(18:52):
So now we kind of see Brian, howthat may have led you to becoming
a personal finance teacher.
I never knew that history.
And so, what year did you startbeing a personal finance teacher?
Who knew that that didn'teven existed until recently?
Yeah.
I want to say 2004, somewhere in there.
(19:13):
Yeah.
So you had to be one of the first, right?
Yeah.
So I took over for a guy who hadthe class and there was one class.
So in teaching, you have seven periods.
And so of the, of those periodsone was personal finance,
the other were other classes.
And then within three years, it grewsubstantially to the point where it
was primarily what I was teaching.
And then it became arequirement where I taught.
(19:34):
And when did you become FI?
How old were you?
Oh, you mean financially independent?
Well, I'm financially independentbecause of my wife working.
So I don't know if that completely counts.
We're not both retired.
We had the financial freedom to make thatchoice probably than the last five years.
And it's largely because westarted investing a lot early
(19:55):
when we got married, both of us.
We had a child young and again,I just went with what I knew.
And I knew that buying a, typicalthree or four bedroom home
would get us into the rat race.
So I bought a duplex and rentedone side out and lived in the other
and saved just a boatload of money.
(20:15):
And then we.
I shouldn't say we, our renterspaid the duplex off I don't
know, five or six years ago.
And then, I can't believe howmuch money we sold it for the
rental markets going insane.
So we sold it a couple of years agoand there's more than enough there to
pay for our kids, college education.
Well, that's a great way to savefor a kid's college education.
People forget that that's anoption if you buy, and you were
(20:39):
one of the first house hackers.
I mean, you were very ahead of your time.
And it's just from your upbringing.
So of course I guess you could teachthe lessons to folks early on 2003.
I mean, you predated Mr.
Money Mustache.
So, you're Mr.
Money Beard.
I was ridiculed for doing that.
(21:01):
I was ridiculed by acouple financial planners.
They, they told me how extreme that was.
Even though I was not only had a pension,I had a 4 57 B, my wife had a 401k, I had
an IRA and they were still like, oh mygosh, that's such a volatile investment.
And she had the audacity to tell methat during the financial collapse.
So I'm raising rent and she'stelling me is the financial world
(21:24):
is collapsing that I'm the wrong one
It sounds like you were also modernin the sense that your wife may have
been the primary breadwinner all along.
Is that true?
now.
No.
So for most of my life I havebeen so again, I think this plays
into kind of the challenges thata lot of modern husbands have.
(21:45):
when we got married, we madethe mistake let me back up.
When we had a child, we made the mistakeof just looking in the short term of
calculating the difference between hope,going back to work and hope staying home.
So I stayed home for a little bit duringthe day and the evenings I worked.
And then eventually it, it turned intome working one job and then a side
hustle and then two full time jobs.
(22:06):
So I worked.
About 80 hours a week for about a decade.
I had a bleeding ulcer.
I'll never forget running down the hallwayin my school, vomiting blood in a trash
can when I was 37, 38 years old because.
I financially, my second job paid morethan my wife could make on a first job.
(22:27):
So she had more of a flexible joband it just, it was breaking us.
And, I really regret doing that.
And, and ultimately what happened was thatmy wife's career started to take off and I
was able to quit my second full time job.
I was able to reduce the amountof consulting work that I was
doing in order to be able to.
(22:47):
kind of live my life in a healthier way.
Well, did your wife ever takeover as the primary breadwinner?
She is now but, but it's, she's only beenthe primary breadwinner for a few years.
So you're truly a modern husband now,and then how do you explain the fact
that households with a female primarybreadwinner, or, a partner who's the
(23:10):
primary breadwinner and has a higherincome, there's a significantly higher
divorce rate in these couples, and whyis that, and what do we do about it?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Well, first, the modern husbandmight be the breadwinner too.
I mean, it ultimately what, what we'relooking at is that in most marriages
today, particularly where both folkshave college degrees that they kind of
(23:33):
take turns on who the breadwinner is.
And they, they have to constantlykind of adjust how they operate.
And their households based on whohas different career opportunities.
But yeah, you're right.
That first of all, 40 percent ofAmerican households now include
a woman who is earning aroundthe same as her husband or more.
And the data point is correct thatwhen a woman is the breadwinner she
(23:55):
is more likely to file for divorce.
But there are some importantfollowups to that data point, when
women earn more, they contributeeven more to managing the home.
So this report, typically men do a lotof the one off tasks, like mowing a lawn.
As an example, women traditionallydo the tasks that are in front of
(24:16):
you every single day and that requireconstant thought checklists in their
head to make sure things are being done.
It's called a mental load, and that isbecause traditionally that's what a lot of
us saw growing up because the man was thebreadwinner and she had the flexible job.
Unfortunately when you bear thatburden whether you're a man or woman
(24:36):
and you're working a big stressful joband you're working lots of hours you
become frustrated with your husband.
And what the research has found andexperts have stated is that women
are unfortunately psychologicallysuccumb to what's called like the
white glove test, meaning this isan actual literal story from Dr.
(24:58):
Ross, my co hosts on modern husband'spodcast, where his mother in law would put
on a white glove and go around the houseand check for dust and judge his mom.
Based on how clean the house wasand women oftentimes feel the
pressure of managing the home.
Like, if you walk into a home andit's dirty, women feel like that
(25:21):
that was their responsibility andthey're being judged, not the man.
When a child is misbehaving, womenfeel like I'm not doing enough.
And they're the one being judged.
And so what the researchers found wasthat women are oftentimes compensating
because they're working so many hours.
By coming home and trying to do evenmore at home, like they saw their
(25:42):
mom doing because they feel guilty.
And so men then in turn, who don'tunderstand that are like, fine,
they just kind of sit back and thenresentment builds and then it turns
into contempt and we know from JohnGottman contempt is the marriage killer.
And so.
In a modern household where bothpartners have big jobs men have
(26:05):
to, when they see that men have torecognize, Hey, like I need to sit down
with my spouse and I need to explainto them, look, I've got your back.
If someone walks in our house andit's dirty, it's our house, not yours.
And that's my responsibility, notyours, but they have to recognize
that they need to be the one totake the initiative to do that.
And they have to, to either developa system or use systems that
(26:27):
are out there to manage the homein a way where it's effective,
productive, and there's no arguments.
So that's why that isoccurring in most instances.
And you could also argue that.
Kind of through the historyof marriage, women oftentimes
were, were kind of stuck, right?
If a man is the breadwinner andshe doesn't have any real earning
power, I mean, a woman couldn'thave a credit card in 1974.
(26:50):
Like, so, they're kind ofstuck in bad marriages.
And so, yeah, you might have agreater likelihood of divorce
if it's just not working becausewomen can now earn an income.
And so that does playinto it a little bit.
Yeah.
And Brian, I think that will resonatewith a lot of our Late starter community
members, because sometimes that is thereason why they're getting a late start.
(27:15):
Maybe they relied on the husband a littletoo much, or they really didn't have the
ability to have their own profile as faras credit and investing and just realized,
Hey, this is not working, get a divorce.
And now you're having to start over.
So a lot of late startersare starting over.
Now you mentioned Gottman.
Can you explain to us who that is?
(27:37):
Is there John Gottman's regarded as one ofthe leading marriage experts in the world.
And so his focus reallyis on just relationships.
And I don't profess to be a JohnGottman expert or a marriage counselor.
I know enough to read the researchsummaries and to talk to the
professionals in that arena.
But what I recognize as I'm doing that.
(28:00):
Is there so many connections to what he ispointing out and then money and household
management, they're interconnected,they're not compartmentalized.
Okay.
Well, this has implications withregards to finances and you talk
about yours, mine, and ours.
As an important topic in partnerships,what do you recommend with
(28:23):
regards to commingling finances?
Let's talk a little bit about that.
So what I'm going to do is I'mgoing to share the research
because, I'm a sample size of one.
So let's start with first marriages.
That's an important distinction.
Last year.
The groundbreaking researchwas released by Dr.
Jenny Olson that found that for firstmarriages and engaged couples who put all
(28:48):
of their money together, that over time,that the happiness that we see decline.
After your wedding day, and I hateto break it to folks who are engaged,
all the research shows the same thing.
You become less happy immediately thatthat buffers and it buffers so much
so that after two years, the folks whowere managing money together in the
(29:13):
same account, not retirement, obviouslythat's different, but bank accounts
that they ended up being happier.
Then the folks who kept theirmoney separate or use the
yours, mine and our strategy.
And it was a significantpercentage of couples who did that.
That's what my wife and I did.
However, that's one strategythat works for the masses,
(29:35):
but there are always outliers.
And just because you're anoutlier doesn't mean you're wrong.
So a second strategy to bringup is if a couple Again, we're
talking first time marriages.
I'll get to the second marriagesin a moment is that when a couple.
Or is are financial opposites.
So Dr.
(29:55):
Scott, Rick both of these peopleare in my marriage toolkit.
He's at the university of Michigan.
He wrote tightwads and spendthrifts and a tightwad isn't
somebody who just loves to save.
There's somebody who hates to spend.
There's an assessment for that.
There's a scale for that.
I am one of those.
There are things that I doenjoy spending money on.
I am not my father.
I love experiences.
(30:16):
I don't own a Tesla cyber truck.
I don't think I ever will, but Ithink it would be cool to own it.
So I don't want to make it soundlike I'm a complete tightwad, but
I am, I am pretty far in the scale.
My wife is not a total spendthrift,but she does like spend like a
normal human being she's normal.
I'm not now what he would say isif you are actual opposites that.
(30:38):
Oftentimes those people, theyhave big fights about money
for a number of reasons.
It could be because of financialinfidelity, because you have a
spend thrift who is hiding spendingdecisions because they're going
to be ridiculed by the tightwad.
So they don't want that fight.
So they just would ratherwe're going to hide it.
And then the tightwad obviouslydoesn't want to be deceived
(31:00):
or lied to about money.
And so it makes it much more challengingto have total financial transparency.
So what he recommends isfinancial translucency, meaning
you have yours, mine, and ours.
So imagine a structure.
And the structure, the flow ofthe structure matters a lot and
(31:21):
this structure both couples.
So we're assuming that you bothwork, have your paychecks directly
deposited into a shared account.
And from that shared account,all of your bills are paid.
And in most cases 95 percent ofthe money kind of flows from that.
And then you have your separateaccounts where money then is deposited
(31:43):
into your individual accounts.
And it could be a nominalamount of money, a hundred bucks
a month, 200 bucks a month.
Something that's enough where aspendthrift can feel like that they have
some financial autonomy and the tight wad.
And what he recommends is financialtranslucency, meaning that the money
(32:04):
that's in the shared account, it'skind of financially money laundered.
Right.
And they're psychologicallymoney laundered, I should say.
And after that, whereyou have a total picture.
Of exactly what's goingon in those accounts.
And you can have good money dateconversations about those accounts.
When they go to the separate accounts,just kind of leave it be the agreement
(32:27):
is if I want to look at what you'redoing, I have access to it because
maybe you fear actual infidelity asan example, but the recommendation
is just kind of leave it be, andthat helps couples who are financial
opposites navigate those extremes.
Okay.
The last point would be theresearch behind second marriages.
So Michael Van Cleve who's also in the,in the toolkit, he is working on his PhD
(32:53):
on managing money in a blended familyand he's in a blended family himself.
And what he found was That in blendedfamily, second marriages, particularly
when both couples are bringing childrenfrom past marriages into the relationship,
that it's really complex and you wantto do everything you can to simplify.
(33:13):
And so what he said works best is that youhave an account for your current marriage.
And then you have an account foryour previous life and you don't
commingle those accounts and it reducesthe friction, reduces the fights.
Again, at personal finances, more personaland finance, perhaps other people have
found methods that work for them, butthat's just what the research says.
(33:35):
Yeah, I think that's interesting aboutthe second marriages because there can
be a lot of sensitivity around that.
When you are, got, especially having thekids because everybody has a different
idea of how that should go down.
So I think that makes a lot of sense.
And a lot of our late startersare in second marriages or
maybe even Contemplating it.
So you mentioned the marriagetoolkit several times.
(33:59):
So can you tell us a little bit moreabout the marriage toolkit that you built?
I think it's impressive that you'vegot so many experts in both, both
personal finance and marriage andrelationships to contribute to it.
So tell us a little bit about that.
It's really been a team effort.
I mean, you're, you're anexcellent contributor to it.
I I've loved to talk about HSAs with you.
(34:19):
There's such the HSA
hack.
Oh, I love the HSA hacks.
But the idea is thatcouples are really busy.
And the challenges that couples facein this busy world where, kind of
financial world is far more complexrequire, evidence based solutions.
And I'm not.
(34:40):
Like kind of a dogmatic person whereI think there's one way for everybody.
I just, I think that's inappropriate.
So what the toolkit does is it addressesthe topics that couples argue about the
most outside of actual like infidelity.
So it focuses on managing money together,managing the home together, supporting
each other's careers and family planning.
(35:03):
And, those topics require, different kindsof conversations, systems, and tools.
And so each of these contributors,as you're saying, like the list of
the contributors, I'm so blessed.
What they did was we had five to 15minute interviews in most instances
over their topics of expertise.
(35:27):
We really addressed clearly andefficiently what the consideration
should be in that topic.
And then I have graphics totry to simplify everything.
Text that's reasonablyconcise to add value to it.
Conversation prompts that you canuse to talk about money and when
appropriate activities that you can dotogether, like the money egg exercise.
(35:51):
And the hope is that each of thosetopics only take about 30 minutes and
it's not a course, it's a toolkit.
So it doesn't have tobe taken sequentially.
You don't have to watchor dive into each of them.
You can dive into the topics asyou feel that they are appropriate.
Now, obviously I would recommendthat folks use the toolkit.
(36:12):
Before they get married, have allof these tough conversations before
marriage, it makes it a lot easier.
And then you can revisit them, butat least you're not stressing out
and having conversations while you'restressed because you weren't prepared.
Yeah.
It sounds like a great weddinggift or a wedding shower gift to
me to any of our kids or grandkids.
(36:32):
And we are going to include a linkand, and you have your, you'll be
offering a discount for our listeners.
But yeah, I love the fact that youdon't have to do them in sequence.
I was very happy to do it.
It was only my session was maybe 10minutes or whatever, but it covers so many
different topics and you have assembledlike so many experts in these areas.
(36:53):
And so to pull them aside for 10minutes and get them to be included
in this toolkit was a huge, and Ilove a lot of what you did, in true
teacher form is, what you're doingis rooted in research and you have
brought in experts where you're not theexpert to try to, work this thing out.
I'm divorced.
I don't know.
Some of this probably would have helpeda lot, when I was married, but I was
(37:16):
young, I didn't know what a good,Marriage or relationship look like
so, most of us were just winging it,and just trying to figure this stuff
out and having resources like yours,I think definitely would have helped.
Well, you can't wing really romanticallyalone a, merger of two businesses.
I mean, these days people are coming intotheir marriage in their late twenties,
(37:40):
early thirties, already with assets.
They may have a house they may havesignificant retirement already.
And.
This, your toolkit sounds likea great precursor to Aaron
Thomas's pre nup prescription.
I mean, if you want to get ready for a prenup, you should work through the toolkit.
And this is a lot of work.
(38:00):
A marriage is a lot of work.
And there's a lot of transparencyor translucency that really should
take place before the merger, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
as you said, with couples whoalready have assets that it makes it.
Even more important to havethese, these conversations.
(38:20):
I mean, I mean, obviously I could talkabout it for like 40 hours or 50 hours.
I mean, that's, that's basicallyhow long it takes to go through the
whole toolkit, but just somethingas simple as joining bank accounts.
I mean, we talked about that for almost 10minutes or, what about co mingling credit?
When do you add your spouseas an authorized user?
When do you not, when doyou have joint credit?
(38:42):
Like these are all different ways thatyou need to consider how to use the.
Each other's past like credit historyas leverage or past credit history
for avoidance, and you can go on andon about all of these things and,
retirement, I'll give it, I'll tellyou what, I read a study it was, I
think it was like two years ago, it wasreleased and it was, my jaw dropped.
(39:05):
One in four married couples, one infour they are collectively Contributing
enough to their retirement plans earn atleast enough to get the company match.
So again, one in four married couplesbetween the two of them are contributing
(39:26):
collectively enough for them each tobe getting the full company match.
But, but again, one in four.
Are not getting the full company matchbecause they've never talked about it.
So you have somebody who'slike me, super frugal.
That's contributing a hundred.
I'm literally that whatever theIRS max is like 22, 000, I don't
care what the employer matches.
(39:47):
And the other one who mightonly be contributing 3%.
And so if you just have a conversation,you can literally just have the one
spouse contribute another, let's say3 percent more to get the remaining
amount of employee match, and thenyou reduce yours a little bit.
It's it's that simple conversation wheremarried couples, one, four are leaving.
(40:12):
I don't want to say it's free money.
It's compensation.
They're leaving their employer'smoney that was supposed to be
given for you on the table.
They're just like, nah, you,we don't need that extra money.
Yeah, you're hitting a sore spot forme, Brian, because at the time of my
divorce, I've been divorced for well over10 years now, but we never looked at our
401ks or retirement accounts together.
(40:34):
I was really young.
So was he and, the retirement moneyjust felt like it was so far away.
It didn't even feel like mine.
But at the time of the divorce, youare forced to look at that stuff.
And , there was a big disparitybetween what I had and what he had.
I had $20, 000 in my 401kand he had $120, 000.
And so that's a huge difference.
(40:56):
We were right around the same age.
We're making roughly the same money.
you have the, that gender wage gap thatI think came into play where he was
starting to get faster increases than me.
And what it came down to is that wewere invested in different things.
What if we would have talked and lookedat our retirement accounts together?
(41:16):
And he's saying, Oh no, you should havethis fund, or you should be in stock.
You shouldn't be all in a, ina money market or whatever I
was invested in simply was notgrowing at the same pace as his.
So yeah, we definitely missed out on that.
And, I beat myself up a long time.
Like, Not realizing that we had such adifference, but I had someone asked me one
(41:38):
time, do you think it was hiding money?
I'm like, no, he wasn't hiding money.
It's just that we didn't talk about it.
We weren't on the same page.
I could have, again, as a couple, asa household, we probably should have
looked at the investment accounts,the retirement accounts together.
and made sure we were consistentin what we wanted to do and
what our goals were for that.
So yeah, that piece was reallyimportant and, I'm sure it fed
(41:59):
into all kinds of other things andperhaps, reasons for the divorce.
But yeah, yeah, I, I definitelyresonate with that and I can
see that happening a lot.
Well, in Jackie's story, I mean, ifI may be a little transparent here,
she started with that and then 10, 11,12 years later, she retired with $1.
3 million based on a moneymindset shift, and she never
(42:22):
earned more than six figures.
I mean, it's an incredible story and ourlate starters need to hear this over and
over again, they can start at 40, theycan start at 50, and they can get there.
It's entirely possible
(44:13):
now say you get married and you'vegone through your marriage toolkit.
You've gone through your prenup Howdo you keep the conversations going?
You have a neat trick that you talkedabout in one of your podcasts about
buying a 2 lottery ticket and money dates.
Can you tell us about, how doyou structure a money date?
What do you talk about in the money dateand how did the 2 lottery ticket help?
(44:35):
I wish somebody would havetaught me what a money date
was when we first got married.
we were kind of structured in a way whereshe trusted me, we went about our way.
I kind of managed things, but that,that might work initially, but that
begins, that begins to unravel.
So a money date is, is atime that you set aside.
(44:57):
Regularly.
So initially I would suggest once aweek and then as you get older, you can
obviously meet less frequently becauseyou're going to get into a rhythm and that
is a time where you're in an environmentwhere there aren't any distractions.
So there was no phone,there's no children.
It's not 10 30 at night whenyou're decision fatigued and, your
(45:18):
emotions are kind of running highcause, high emotion, low cognition.
And so.
Maybe it's a Saturday morning,maybe it's a Sunday morning, and
you sit down to discuss whateveris appropriate at that time.
So let's just say it's your first moneydate and you're nervous to talk about
money and a lot of people are, and they'llfigure out that the more you talk about
(45:40):
it, the easier it is, and it's really nota big deal when you get into a rhythm.
That first step's hard.
And One of the reasons it'shard is because people equate
money with stress and tension.
Money is a tool tounlock love and support.
And so something as simple as buyingand I want to, this is not my idea.
(46:02):
This is Dr.
Megan McCoy's from Kansas state.
And like you said, it's in the toolkit.
But what she recommends and what Ido with my wife every once in a while
for fun is I literally buy a 2 lotteryticket and I know the odds are one in,
a trillion to win, but we also knowfrom research that one, 2 lottery ticket
(46:23):
actually creates happiness because youcan dream about what you do with it.
But what better way to dream than todream with your partner, with your spouse.
And so for your money date, you havethis lottery ticket in front of you and
you ask your spouse, okay, if we winthis money, what will we do differently?
How would we spend it?
What does our world look like?
(46:44):
If money is no object and what unravels?
Is some truth behind how wewish we were living our life.
And some of that truth can becomeyour reality in your marriage.
If you look at things a little bitmore skeptically, if you look inward
and ask yourself, do I really need tospend my money here when I could be
(47:06):
spending my money there to create morehappiness based on what my wife and
I, or my husband and I spoke about.
So for example, let's say.
That in that conversation, oneof the first things that comes
up is that we would hire maids.
We would have people thatwould do all the cleaning.
We would have somebody that does allthe lawn care with just, we would
never have to worry about that again.
(47:27):
We wouldn't fight about chores again.
Okay.
Well, most people can't hire a fulltime staff to be maids and cook dinners.
And, but.
You can outsource cleaning once a week.
some people can, you canoutsource mowing the lawn.
You can outsource meals throughlike meal delivery services.
There are ways that you can outsourcethe time that you would spend
(47:50):
doing things that maybe you don'tlove and pay to get that time back
to do things that you do love.
And so when you start the money date.
In a way where you're talking about yourjoys and your dreams, your aspirations.
It makes it a lot easier than thento then dive into your budget, but
(48:10):
to then say, okay, how can we worktogether to kind of get our life to
like, closely resemble that life.
We're not going to be driving aroundnine Lamborghinis, but we might
have a clean house on Saturdaymorning and we can actually go out
with our friends and go hiking.
And as money dates evolve.
(48:32):
Assuming that you're using the appropriatesystems you then have specific goals.
So for my wife and I, we always travel.
We just got back from Maui.
We loved it.
We went to Switzerland a yearbefore with, with our family.
We're probably going togo to Greece next year.
She just sent me a link.
She's like, this is where I want to go.
Let's talk about our money date.
And so we just sit down, we lookat our financial circumstances.
(48:54):
We love Tiller.
So we just have all ofour data right there.
We have our savings account andwe just have a savings account.
That's high yield accountspecific for that vacation.
We put the money in there.
That is our vacation fund.
It is untouchable.
This is our priority.
This is what we're going to do.
Maybe the next date is financialday is about cutting back
where we may be overspending.
(49:15):
What can we look at to reduce costs?
And each money date might have its ownindividual goals that come about it.
And some couples.
Can do that on their own.
Some need a financial therapistbecause things are rough.
It's tough to talk about money.
Some could use, I'm going to beat,the desk on this, a fee only financial
(49:36):
planner, somebody required to put yourfinancial interests ahead of their own
to sit down and meet with them and, andconstruct a longterm financial plan.
Some couples can do it on their own.
Some couples like to include theirchildren every once in a while.
We do that.
I, Ron Lieber wrote the opposite ofspoiled and there was a story in there
(49:56):
that I loved because the kids didn'tunderstand where the money went.
So this guy decides I'm going totake my paycheck and I'm going to
pull it all out in cash in 1 bills,and I'm going to lay it across the
kitchen table and I'm going to havecategories, envelopes, and tell the kids.
(50:18):
You put the money whereyou think we spend it.
So the kids are kind of guessing,but they're also recognizing
this giant pile of money.
And now they're like reallyappreciating their parents.
I realized, Oh my gosh, myparents are doing really well.
They're working hard for us.
And as they're moving it around,what it did was, It gave the kids a
(50:39):
sense of appreciation because theysaw that a lot of the money was
going to making their lives better.
And it then evolved into aconversation about values.
And so you can bring your kidsinto the conversations as well.
I love Ron Lieber and maybe youcan help us get him on the show.
I think he was one of yourexperts if I'm not mistaken.
(51:01):
is.
Yeah.
Happy to do it.
Opposite of spoiled one of the bestbooks period of I've ever read.
I cannot say enough great things about it.
I'm a huge fan of Ron and his writing.
Yeah, and I've read it too.
He also wrote one.
It's very important on how to affordcollege, which is important later.
So, yeah, I mean, I'd absolutelylove to have him on the show.
(51:22):
So,
just come out with a new book?
Is there a new book?
the how to afford college.
It was a
Okay, it wasn't the Algebra of The
It's the price you pay for college.
It's the blue book right there.
of Okay.
One of the things that may happen withthese money dates is, you may have a
hard time getting your partner on board.
What do you suggest to coupleslike this, where one person's like,
(51:45):
ah, you take care of all of it.
I have no interest.
who cares about this FI thing?
I'm not going to Camp FI.
What do you do with those people?
Yeah, that's a, that's a great question.
I think the first thing that you needto recognize is that many of our money
stories originate from our childhood.
obviously I shared mine.
(52:06):
You can see why I am the way I am.
And your spouse is going to havetheir own memories and their
own relationship with money.
And sometimes thatrelationship is, is negative.
Sometimes there's beensignificant financial trauma, big.
Big T and you need to understand whythey have this inclination for money
avoidance, because you don't want themto be excluded from these conversations.
(52:29):
So, I think a conversation is important.
And some of the conversation startersthat would help is just simply asking,
Hey, what's your first memory of money?
What's your firstpositive memory of money?
What's your negative memory of money?
What are some of the things thatyou saw from your parents Or your
parent that had to do with moneythat were tough for you to deal with?
What were some of the thingsthey did that brought you joy?
(52:51):
And let, let's assume that youdon't need the intervention of a
financial therapist, and it's reallyimportant that you distinguish.
Between controlling money and managingmoney and controlling money is toxic.
You never want to control a spouse usingmoney as that tool of, for control.
(53:16):
And that can be done withfinancial deception that can
be done by willful ignorance.
And.
It can be tragic if there's a divorce,it can be tragic if there's a death.
And so in the instance that youbrought up where one spouse is like,
I just don't want to deal with it.
And frankly, that's my wife.
she does not want to reallydo any of that stuff.
(53:40):
I'm the one who bringsthe data to the table.
Here are, here's our spending.
Here are our goals.
Here are our current accounts, oursavings accounts, our investment accounts.
Here's where we are.
What do you think, whatever the topicis, where are we going to go on vacation?
where, where can we spend our moneydifferently to become happier?
(54:00):
Whatever it may be.
So she is fully aware of our financialpicture and the conversation isn't
about the mechanics of money, themoney management kind of, nitty gritty.
She has no interest in that.
It's about our life.
It's about our goals, our desires, ourdreams, and money's just a tool to get
there and sitting down on a money datewith all that information in front of
(54:22):
her, so she can see it, although she'sdisinterested after 30 seconds, it may
for a data informed decision to come aboutafter the conclusion of the money date.
Well, we have an episode actuallyearly on in the podcast called Coins
and Couch Cushions, a story fromone of our listeners who came on her
first podcast ever and talked abouther husband who wasn't interested.
(54:46):
And she took the data from saya tiller and we need tiller as a
sponsor, Jackie, that would be a great.
Yeah.
Well, what is Tiller?
I, I've heard of it before.
Can you tell us real quick what it is?
Well, Brian uses it, right?
tracking app, but it integrateswith like Excel spreadsheets.
So it's great for people thatare spreadsheet oriented.
Right, Brian?
(55:07):
in a sense.
Yeah.
I mean, I, we, we used it becausewe just, we're time poor and it, you
can link all of your accounts to it.
And after you auto categorizeeverything, obviously there's, you're
going to spend some time onboardingeverything, then everything's automated.
So every day I get an email alert with.
Everything, all our spendingfrom the day before the current
(55:27):
status of our financial accounts.
And cause I just don't have the timeto manually input my, our choices.
I don't want to go in and redo the work.
It just does the work foryou after it's set up.
So for, for me, if I want to talk aboutmoney with hope, or if she has questions,
she has access to tell her as well, oursame, or we have the same account and
(55:48):
she just could log in and look at it.
So, so hope is your wife, right?
So shout out to hope.
Cause I'm thinking she's notquite as excited to come to these
money meetings as you are, but.
You can get her there long enoughto talk about the important things.
And I'm guessing some of the topicswould also be, do you talk about
like the state planning stuff, likeany other critical topics that you
(56:10):
include in your money meetings?
we just that our will before we leftfor Hawaii, we know we still have
, some additional estate planning todo some real nitty gritty typically
the way our relationship is, is Ido most of that work, that nitty
gritty work, and then I review it.
So like, for example, withour will, I wrote them.
(56:31):
Rewrote the will, I should say, andthen just sent it to her for review.
And then she's changed a coupleof little things and then.
went to our financialplanner as an example.
So, I mean, that, thatgoes into teamwork, right?
I mean, you don't have to have apartner who's into money like you.
I mean, chances are opposites marry.
So there's nothing wrong with beinglike the money geek, like all three
(56:55):
of us are and doing all these things.
And then.
Recognizing, okay, man, I can makethis kind of fun for my spouse.
If I make this about us, if I makethis about our marriage, if I make this
about our family and just use all thatdata to make sure they're in the loop.
And then focus on the stuffthey love to talk about.
(57:17):
Well, we want to berespectful of your time.
You're a busy guy that hasmany other things to do.
And we really appreciate the factthat you've offered to share some
of your time and knowledge withus and our late starter audience.
I think this has been agreat episode, Jackie.
What about you?
yeah, it absolutely has.
And he opened up our eyes abouta lot of things with, not just
(57:38):
married couples, but partners,relationships and things like that.
And I knew Brian had a lot to offer.
So that's why I was reallyexcited to to get you on the show.
And you mentioned Dr.
Megan McCoy, she was myprofessor at Kansas state.
So.
So I, I'm just still baffled by,all these heavy hitters that you
have, that's part of your tool.
So, so tell us wherepeople can get the toolkit.
(57:58):
Modernhusbands.
com.
You'll see a pop up, you'll see abutton at the top and just click
on the marriage toolkit button andit'll take you to a free preview.
The preview is just kind ofan overview of what to expect.
And then the first one is amoney date, how to conduct it.
And the expert.
For that is, is Dr.
McCoy.
And it's not a static product.
(58:18):
Think of it as kind of like an iPhonewhere it's always being updated.
So every month I go in andI, updates information.
I had to update one onwhether to buy a rent.
That was the topic based on,current, current Mortgage rates,
the, the recent law that reduce theamount realtors can make I make new
infographics and then we add new topics.
(58:38):
We're building a new topic nowon managing income volatility in
your home, if your monthly incomechanges quite a bit from one month
to the next, how do you manage it?
And then we're building one on, on travel.
So, it's not a static product.
We're going to consistently makeit better and better and better.
Oh, as a parent, this sounds likea great gift along with the prenup
prescription to your kids and your
(58:59):
I got it for my daughter.
She just got engaged.
I have it for her.
Thank you, Brian.
Oh, nice job, Jackie.
I, I have yet to cross that bridgeand, you can lead a horse to water, you
gotta, but you can't make them drink.
Hopefully my kids are interestedin, protecting their financial life,
being transparent, being translucent,and just, Having a better marriage
(59:20):
because of this, just like you said,the honeymoon period drops and the
stress begins, the work begins.
And this takes some of the work out ofmarriage and get you on the same page.
And so there's not all this stressand we are about taking stress out
of our lives, buying back our time.
And, Brian, thank youso much for being here.
(59:41):
This has been great.
Oh, this was fun.
I could talk to you two all day long.
Thank you for this.
Well, we're going to have youback on, I'm sure, because
there's a lot more to dig into.
Thanks again for your time, and we'llsee you next week on Catching Up to FI.
A modern husband is simply someonewho is married to a partner who looks
at a relationship as a partnership.
And in the 21st century economy, mosthouseholds have two working folks and
the days where one person works and theother person tends to the home are over.
And so many times people don'tunderstand kind of how to go about
(00:24):
managing money and managing thehome in our new household economy
I literally buy a 2 lottery ticketand I know the odds are one in, a
trillion to win, but we also know fromresearch that one, 2 lottery ticket
actually creates happiness because youcan dream about what you do with it.
(00:46):
But what better way to dream than todream with your partner, with your spouse.
And so for your money date, you havethis lottery ticket in front of you and
you ask your spouse, okay, if we winthis money, what will we do differently?
How would we spend it?
What does our world look like?
If money is no object and what unravels?
(01:08):
what the toolkit does is it addressesthe topics that couples argue about the
most outside of actual like infidelity.
So it focuses on managing money together,managing the home together, supporting
each other's careers and family planning.
And, those topics require, different kindsof conversations, systems, and tools.
(01:33):
And so each of these contributors,as you're saying, like the
list of the contributors
(02:08):
Hello, and welcome backto Catching Up to FI.
I'm Bill Yount with Jackie CummingsKoski, and we have yet another
episode that's a little different.
There'll be money involved inthis, but we're going to talk a
little bit more about marriage.
We recently had a pre nup episodewith Aaron Thomas, so this is
along the lines of that theme.
So Jackie, why don't youintroduce our guests?
(02:30):
Yeah.
Our guest today is Brian Page, and I liketo consider him a great friend of mine.
I knew him from his teachingdays, and now he has an amazing
endeavor that he's embarked on.
So he is a former award winningteacher that made a major shift
over the past few years to builda platform called Modern Husbands.
There he shares the modern family and howit's changed from previous generations.
(02:53):
And in the true form of an educator, Brianinfuses data and research to support some
of the common ideas we've heard aboutwhen it comes to money, as well as sort of
dismantling of previous antiquated ideas.
So they recently developed somethingcalled the marriage tool kit, and this has
lessons from over 30 50 national expertson personal finance and marriage topics.
(03:17):
So some of them are actually friendsof ours and people that have been
on the show like JL Collins, SeanMulaney, Manisha Thakur, and yours
truly with a lesson on what else HSAs.
So we'll dive into allof that in today's show.
But first, I, I couldn't continuewithout talking about all of
his accolades as an educator.
(03:39):
So during that time, Brian wasrecognized as a National Educator
of the Year by the Milken Foundationand Ohio Department of Education.
He was a CNN Money Hero, a Center ofEconomic Education Forbes Award winner.
And Brian was also a workinggroup member of the U.
S.
President's Advisory Councilon Financial Capability.
(04:02):
And after retiring from teaching,he took on a senior level position
at NextGen Personal Finance, andwe had them on the show as well.
So Brian is married with threechildren, a dog, and a house full
of cute little foster kittens.
Brian, welcome to Catching up to FI.
Oh, I'm thrilled to be here.
(04:23):
That's awesome.
they've met and I'm about to hear all theBrian's learned about the modern husband.
It's not been the focusof financial education.
And first off, I want to hear exactlywhat is a modern husband in your opinion.
A modern husband is simply someonewho is married to a partner who looks
(04:46):
at a relationship as a partnership.
And in the 21st century economy, mosthouseholds have two working folks and
the days where one person works and theother person tends to the home are over.
And so many times people don'tunderstand kind of how to go about
managing money and managing thehome in our new household economy.
(05:09):
And so the focus would be forhusbands like myself, who have a
wife who is ambitious in her career.
She has lots of goals herself.
How is it that.
I can provide the support that sheneeds to excel in her career and to
reach her goals while also ensuringthat when she's in the home, we have an
(05:29):
environment where our family can thrive.
So Brian, I have a question.
So would this also extend to likepartners that are not married, like
domestic partners, same sex partners,there's the same concept apply.
absolutely.
Yeah.
And I struggle with the name becausefirst of all, when you say partner,
there's some lack of understandingfrom some folks, you have confusion
(05:54):
because you have a business partnership.
And so I say modern husband justbecause people really know what that is.
And, I want to be very clear aboutour goal is to ensure that all
couples, regardless of whether.
Through matrimony or through legalpartnership or through just an extended
relationship and same sex partners as wellthat they understand that we're trying
(06:17):
to provide them with the informationthey need in their relationships.
Okay, let's go back for a minute so thatwe can understand you a little better
now that we've defined modern husbands.
You are a super successfulas a K through 12 teacher.
What on earth convinced you to move intothis marriage and relationship stuff?
Well, my wife had a massivepromotion that required us to
(06:39):
move from Cincinnati to Ohio.
And in order to do that, I knewthat I had to give up teaching.
I also, had an offer from nextgen personal finance and my good
friend, Tim Ranzetta, and thatallowed me to work remotely.
And, while in Ohio, I helpedPass the, requirement that every
student has to pass a semester longpersonal finance class to graduate.
(07:03):
And so really when I was atnext gen, I taught teachers
how to teach personal finance.
And then I also ended up advocatingfor lobbying for personal finances
requirement in other states as well.
And long story short,my wife had a big job.
I had a big job and we hadthree kids and was At that time,
money wasn't what was needed.
Fortunately, because of some of ourearly investments what was needed
(07:26):
was one of us to have flexibility.
One of us to be the one to really shouldereverything or most of the work at home.
So it was my turn.
So that's what I decided to do.
And I did have a very part timejob as a, Visiting scholar with
the consumer financial protectionbureau, office of financial education.
While I did this, but I, I simplyGoogled how to be a great husband.
(07:48):
And I learned that I had a lot to learn.
And initially I, I did thatjust for myself, right?
As my thought is, okay,I'm going to own this.
I'm going to do everything I canto make sure my we're here in
Atlanta for my wife's career.
We're doing, I can't a supporter.
And, initially I started withmy wheelhouse with what I
understood and that's money.
And then that grew into understandingthat personal finance is personal.
(08:08):
We all know that.
But when it comes to relationships,there's a different layer of
complexity that is really toughfor a lot of couples to manage.
And when you look at thestatistics, one of the leading
causes of divorce is money stress.
And so I became to understand this wholenew world of money and relationships
(08:30):
and grew the advisory board.
And basically for, two or threeyears when I wasn't focusing on
family, just became is just head down.
Laser focused on understanding how is itthat people can manage money as a team?
And then that evolved into alsomanaging the home because that's
where a lot of friction comes from.
So it was just kind of an accidentalthing where I just Did it for myself
(08:55):
initially, did it for our familyinitially and recognize that, in our
world where a lot of us grew up in ahousehold where he's the breadwinner
or he goes to work and she has theflexible job or she doesn't work where
we saw what the inside of those homeslooked like and grew up in them, those
(09:16):
money conversations and grew up in them.
That's not the world today.
And so practically speaking, what weneed is information for couples in a
modern world to manage a modern home.
And that's what modern husbands is.
so you're kind of filling a nichethat's really not there or it's
not updated because you're right.
(09:37):
So many things has changed andwhat a household looks like.
And so you moved from Cincinnati,Ohio, and that's how I know you.
I know that you were instrumentalin getting the law passed
to require personal finance.
So I have yet to thank you.
So let me thank you for that andall the advocacy work that you did.
But you moved to Atlanta.
(09:57):
And now you built the, the modern husband.
So I know about you a lot as faras an educator, but, I don't know
a lot about like your upbringing.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat was your upbringing like?
And tell us like some ofyour first money memories.
So I was lucky.
I won the genetic lottery.
I had two really great parentsand I have a father who he's
(10:22):
downstairs, actually, at the.
As we're recording this he isFI before FI was the thing.
And I grew up in a household that livedeverything about the fire movement.
So really when, when I like read yourbook, Jackie, when I listen to these
podcasts, it's not new because it'sjust really what I know as a child.
(10:43):
So can I, can I give you an example here?
We did travel.
For example, we did a big trip to Europe.
However we never stayed in a hotel.
Now I'm going to take that back.
I think I stayed in onehotel before I turned 18.
We camped.
And when we were in Europe, we cycled,we cycled from Paris to Le Mans, St.
Michelle, up to Englandthrough the Netherlands.
(11:03):
And we camped at the whole way.
And, That was an example of a positivememory that comes from frugality
and looking at life differently.
I mean, that's for most people.
A three week vacation is unaffordable,but we did it in a unique way where
I would argue that's a better waybecause I really got to kind of get a
sense of what Europe was like, right?
When people ask me like, where doesyour passion for money come from?
(11:28):
And again, it goes tomy, to my upbringing.
I, I really fall back to a story.
So my father was a computer engineerand my mother was a special ed teacher,
and then my dad had rental properties.
Now he grew up super poor and inorder to finish college, he had
to live on, in a railroad car.
In order to afford college.
So he lived in the railroad car andworked on the railroad during the day
(11:51):
and then finished college in the evening.
So that's how he was able to afford it.
And growing up he would tellme stories like this but.
We were known for our terrible cars.
When I say terrible cars, letme give you a perspective.
Well, we had somebody follow us home inone of those giant Woody station wagons.
When I was like maybe a freshman inhigh school, sophomore, high school
(12:13):
to recruit our car, to purchase ourcar, to enter into the Clinton County
demolition Derby, and that's what we did.
They sold it and, and it won.
I saw it in the ClintonCounty demolition Derby.
Okay.
So then fast forward now to the next car.
My dad eventually had to sellthis Chevy Malibu station wagon
(12:36):
because the gas gauge didn't work.
And when we bought it, we boughtit that way, by the way, I
want to be clear about that.
You could lift thecarpet and see the road.
There was no ceiling, the carpeton the ceiling was probably
asbestos or, it was foam.
it was the worst car you've ever seen.
Now for perspective the, the,anything that was metal that
(12:58):
was not part of the frame rustedoff, including the door handle.
So what he did was he drilledholes where the door handles
were and ran metal fish wire.
Hooks.
And so to open the door, it waslike starting a weed whacker
and the door would fling open.
Right.
And he drove that and hehad rental properties.
(13:20):
He had like 20 units at the time andhe had to sell it because he pulled
out of the driveway and he was toe inthe lawnmower and the hitch rusted off
and the lawnmower went to the yard.
He's like, ah, I guess
I got to get a different car.
So I asked my father that when thishappened, I returned from college.
I think it was a sophomore in collegeand I had figured life out by this point.
(13:41):
I'd realized, okay, well, Myparents can afford nice cars.
My parents had money but theystill used old tornado damaged
furniture for their home.
They still drove cars like this.
Like what's the deal?
Why did you do this?
So my dad told me to get a calculator.
And I did, and he asked me what a monthlycar payment would be, and I guessed,
(14:03):
I think I guessed at the time 300.
He said, well, what about insurance?
And I guess he said, well, it's got to befull coverage because it's your borrowing.
So the bank's going to require that.
And so I put that number in.
He said, we'll take that times 12 months.
So, okay.
And he said, now take that times 20 years.
and obviously it's this really bignumber and I said, what's the point?
And he said, the point is, son,there's no way in hell that my kid's
(14:25):
going to live in a railroad car.
Like I had to, to affordto pay to college.
That's the only way that we couldafford to pay for your college.
Wow.
Look at that sacrifice.
Well, interesting.
I remember in my childhood that my dadhad a Rambler and he put a trash can.
In the floor to cover up thefact that there was a hole
(14:46):
and the street was going by.
It had no seat belts.
it was the time when you hadthat rear facing flip up thing.
The kids are all overthe place in the car.
It was amazing that we all survived.
And, but this is a, this is anearly retirement extreme story.
He's got 20 rental units,significant cash flowing properties.
(15:08):
Did you ever feeldeprived or was this fun?
I really would haveappreciated a better car.
So for those FI folks who have kids,please don't go to that degree.
But beyond that no, I never felt deprived.
I mean, we always had loadsof opportunities and I had.
great neighborhood.
And my parents, like I said, like,what a gift they paid for my school.
(15:31):
So I just, I really strugglepersonally with just this infatuation
with stuff, with nicer stuff.
And maybe it's because I grewup where, our home was nice.
It was fine.
But like when you bought furniture.
Like we literally took furniture out ofa damaged home from a tornado or bought
furniture at a garage sale and it's fine.
(15:52):
And the notion that people are spendinglike 10, 000 on a couch is bizarre to me.
I don't understand why someone wouldrob themselves of that kind of time.
Cause money really is time.
For.
Like a couch, so I guess my perspectiveis, I find it bizarre when people
want to have all of these nicethings around them all of the time
(16:16):
and they're working really, reallyhard to have all of these things and
they're robbing themselves of freedom.
I mean, people forget, especially latestarters about opportunity cost and
Rob Berger who was a guest on our show,talks about a car as one of the biggest
FI busters going through those numbers.
It just doesn't make sense.
(16:38):
And if you compound that money foryou, as opposed to against you, I mean,
you're hundreds of thousands of dollarsin the green from a car that's $40,
000 versus five or $10, 000 over time.
So I hear you.
I couldn't do it.
I didn't do it.
I succumbed to lifestyle inflation.
(16:58):
I just got a new used car,but it was three years old.
But I do in, in my defense andI've said it before, I've driven
three cars in my adult lifetime.
And the last one I wantedto have the badge of honor.
turning it over to 200, 000miles, but it wasn't meant to be.
things started falling off of it andthe repairs became thousands of dollars.
(17:21):
And the trade in value of this car is 700.
I mean, it's unbelievable what happensto depreciation of cars over time.
And it was working for me, it wasgetting me where I needed to go.
It was a utility.
And so.
driving him a long time kind of offsetssome of that upfront expense, I think.
Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt.
(18:52):
So now we kind of see Brian, howthat may have led you to becoming
a personal finance teacher.
I never knew that history.
And so, what year did you startbeing a personal finance teacher?
Who knew that that didn'teven existed until recently?
Yeah.
I want to say 2004, somewhere in there.
(19:13):
Yeah.
So you had to be one of the first, right?
Yeah.
So I took over for a guy who hadthe class and there was one class.
So in teaching, you have seven periods.
And so of the, of those periodsone was personal finance,
the other were other classes.
And then within three years, it grewsubstantially to the point where it
was primarily what I was teaching.
And then it became arequirement where I taught.
(19:34):
And when did you become FI?
How old were you?
Oh, you mean financially independent?
Well, I'm financially independentbecause of my wife working.
So I don't know if that completely counts.
We're not both retired.
We had the financial freedom to make thatchoice probably than the last five years.
And it's largely because westarted investing a lot early
(19:55):
when we got married, both of us.
We had a child young and again,I just went with what I knew.
And I knew that buying a, typicalthree or four bedroom home
would get us into the rat race.
So I bought a duplex and rentedone side out and lived in the other
and saved just a boatload of money.
(20:15):
And then we.
I shouldn't say we, our renterspaid the duplex off I don't
know, five or six years ago.
And then, I can't believe howmuch money we sold it for the
rental markets going insane.
So we sold it a couple of years agoand there's more than enough there to
pay for our kids, college education.
Well, that's a great way to savefor a kid's college education.
People forget that that's anoption if you buy, and you were
(20:39):
one of the first house hackers.
I mean, you were very ahead of your time.
And it's just from your upbringing.
So of course I guess you could teachthe lessons to folks early on 2003.
I mean, you predated Mr.
Money Mustache.
So, you're Mr.
Money Beard.
I was ridiculed for doing that.
(21:01):
I was ridiculed by acouple financial planners.
They, they told me how extreme that was.
Even though I was not only had a pension,I had a 4 57 B, my wife had a 401k, I had
an IRA and they were still like, oh mygosh, that's such a volatile investment.
And she had the audacity to tell methat during the financial collapse.
So I'm raising rent and she'stelling me is the financial world
(21:24):
is collapsing that I'm the wrong one
It sounds like you were also modernin the sense that your wife may have
been the primary breadwinner all along.
Is that true?
now.
No.
So for most of my life I havebeen so again, I think this plays
into kind of the challenges thata lot of modern husbands have.
(21:45):
when we got married, we madethe mistake let me back up.
When we had a child, we made the mistakeof just looking in the short term of
calculating the difference between hope,going back to work and hope staying home.
So I stayed home for a little bit duringthe day and the evenings I worked.
And then eventually it, it turned intome working one job and then a side
hustle and then two full time jobs.
(22:06):
So I worked.
About 80 hours a week for about a decade.
I had a bleeding ulcer.
I'll never forget running down the hallwayin my school, vomiting blood in a trash
can when I was 37, 38 years old because.
I financially, my second job paid morethan my wife could make on a first job.
(22:27):
So she had more of a flexible joband it just, it was breaking us.
And, I really regret doing that.
And, and ultimately what happened was thatmy wife's career started to take off and I
was able to quit my second full time job.
I was able to reduce the amountof consulting work that I was
doing in order to be able to.
(22:47):
kind of live my life in a healthier way.
Well, did your wife ever takeover as the primary breadwinner?
She is now but, but it's, she's only beenthe primary breadwinner for a few years.
So you're truly a modern husband now,and then how do you explain the fact
that households with a female primarybreadwinner, or, a partner who's the
(23:10):
primary breadwinner and has a higherincome, there's a significantly higher
divorce rate in these couples, and whyis that, and what do we do about it?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Well, first, the modern husbandmight be the breadwinner too.
I mean, it ultimately what, what we'relooking at is that in most marriages
today, particularly where both folkshave college degrees that they kind of
(23:33):
take turns on who the breadwinner is.
And they, they have to constantlykind of adjust how they operate.
And their households based on whohas different career opportunities.
But yeah, you're right.
That first of all, 40 percent ofAmerican households now include
a woman who is earning aroundthe same as her husband or more.
And the data point is correct thatwhen a woman is the breadwinner she
(23:55):
is more likely to file for divorce.
But there are some importantfollowups to that data point, when
women earn more, they contributeeven more to managing the home.
So this report, typically men do a lotof the one off tasks, like mowing a lawn.
As an example, women traditionallydo the tasks that are in front of
(24:16):
you every single day and that requireconstant thought checklists in their
head to make sure things are being done.
It's called a mental load, and that isbecause traditionally that's what a lot of
us saw growing up because the man was thebreadwinner and she had the flexible job.
Unfortunately when you bear thatburden whether you're a man or woman
(24:36):
and you're working a big stressful joband you're working lots of hours you
become frustrated with your husband.
And what the research has found andexperts have stated is that women
are unfortunately psychologicallysuccumb to what's called like the
white glove test, meaning this isan actual literal story from Dr.
(24:58):
Ross, my co hosts on modern husband'spodcast, where his mother in law would put
on a white glove and go around the houseand check for dust and judge his mom.
Based on how clean the house wasand women oftentimes feel the
pressure of managing the home.
Like, if you walk into a home andit's dirty, women feel like that
(25:21):
that was their responsibility andthey're being judged, not the man.
When a child is misbehaving, womenfeel like I'm not doing enough.
And they're the one being judged.
And so what the researchers found wasthat women are oftentimes compensating
because they're working so many hours.
By coming home and trying to do evenmore at home, like they saw their
(25:42):
mom doing because they feel guilty.
And so men then in turn, who don'tunderstand that are like, fine,
they just kind of sit back and thenresentment builds and then it turns
into contempt and we know from JohnGottman contempt is the marriage killer.
And so.
In a modern household where bothpartners have big jobs men have
(26:05):
to, when they see that men have torecognize, Hey, like I need to sit down
with my spouse and I need to explainto them, look, I've got your back.
If someone walks in our house andit's dirty, it's our house, not yours.
And that's my responsibility, notyours, but they have to recognize
that they need to be the one totake the initiative to do that.
And they have to, to either developa system or use systems that
(26:27):
are out there to manage the homein a way where it's effective,
productive, and there's no arguments.
So that's why that isoccurring in most instances.
And you could also argue that.
Kind of through the historyof marriage, women oftentimes
were, were kind of stuck, right?
If a man is the breadwinner andshe doesn't have any real earning
power, I mean, a woman couldn'thave a credit card in 1974.
(26:50):
Like, so, they're kind ofstuck in bad marriages.
And so, yeah, you might have agreater likelihood of divorce
if it's just not working becausewomen can now earn an income.
And so that does playinto it a little bit.
Yeah.
And Brian, I think that will resonatewith a lot of our Late starter community
members, because sometimes that is thereason why they're getting a late start.
(27:15):
Maybe they relied on the husband a littletoo much, or they really didn't have the
ability to have their own profile as faras credit and investing and just realized,
Hey, this is not working, get a divorce.
And now you're having to start over.
So a lot of late startersare starting over.
Now you mentioned Gottman.
Can you explain to us who that is?
(27:37):
Is there John Gottman's regarded as one ofthe leading marriage experts in the world.
And so his focus reallyis on just relationships.
And I don't profess to be a JohnGottman expert or a marriage counselor.
I know enough to read the researchsummaries and to talk to the
professionals in that arena.
But what I recognize as I'm doing that.
(28:00):
Is there so many connections to what he ispointing out and then money and household
management, they're interconnected,they're not compartmentalized.
Okay.
Well, this has implications withregards to finances and you talk
about yours, mine, and ours.
As an important topic in partnerships,what do you recommend with
(28:23):
regards to commingling finances?
Let's talk a little bit about that.
So what I'm going to do is I'mgoing to share the research
because, I'm a sample size of one.
So let's start with first marriages.
That's an important distinction.
Last year.
The groundbreaking researchwas released by Dr.
Jenny Olson that found that for firstmarriages and engaged couples who put all
(28:48):
of their money together, that over time,that the happiness that we see decline.
After your wedding day, and I hateto break it to folks who are engaged,
all the research shows the same thing.
You become less happy immediately thatthat buffers and it buffers so much
so that after two years, the folks whowere managing money together in the
(29:13):
same account, not retirement, obviouslythat's different, but bank accounts
that they ended up being happier.
Then the folks who kept theirmoney separate or use the
yours, mine and our strategy.
And it was a significantpercentage of couples who did that.
That's what my wife and I did.
However, that's one strategythat works for the masses,
(29:35):
but there are always outliers.
And just because you're anoutlier doesn't mean you're wrong.
So a second strategy to bringup is if a couple Again, we're
talking first time marriages.
I'll get to the second marriagesin a moment is that when a couple.
Or is are financial opposites.
So Dr.
(29:55):
Scott, Rick both of these peopleare in my marriage toolkit.
He's at the university of Michigan.
He wrote tightwads and spendthrifts and a tightwad isn't
somebody who just loves to save.
There's somebody who hates to spend.
There's an assessment for that.
There's a scale for that.
I am one of those.
There are things that I doenjoy spending money on.
I am not my father.
I love experiences.
(30:16):
I don't own a Tesla cyber truck.
I don't think I ever will, but Ithink it would be cool to own it.
So I don't want to make it soundlike I'm a complete tightwad, but
I am, I am pretty far in the scale.
My wife is not a total spendthrift,but she does like spend like a
normal human being she's normal.
I'm not now what he would say isif you are actual opposites that.
(30:38):
Oftentimes those people, theyhave big fights about money
for a number of reasons.
It could be because of financialinfidelity, because you have a
spend thrift who is hiding spendingdecisions because they're going
to be ridiculed by the tightwad.
So they don't want that fight.
So they just would ratherwe're going to hide it.
And then the tightwad obviouslydoesn't want to be deceived
(31:00):
or lied to about money.
And so it makes it much more challengingto have total financial transparency.
So what he recommends isfinancial translucency, meaning
you have yours, mine, and ours.
So imagine a structure.
And the structure, the flow ofthe structure matters a lot and
(31:21):
this structure both couples.
So we're assuming that you bothwork, have your paychecks directly
deposited into a shared account.
And from that shared account,all of your bills are paid.
And in most cases 95 percent ofthe money kind of flows from that.
And then you have your separateaccounts where money then is deposited
(31:43):
into your individual accounts.
And it could be a nominalamount of money, a hundred bucks
a month, 200 bucks a month.
Something that's enough where aspendthrift can feel like that they have
some financial autonomy and the tight wad.
And what he recommends is financialtranslucency, meaning that the money
(32:04):
that's in the shared account, it'skind of financially money laundered.
Right.
And they're psychologicallymoney laundered, I should say.
And after that, whereyou have a total picture.
Of exactly what's goingon in those accounts.
And you can have good money dateconversations about those accounts.
When they go to the separate accounts,just kind of leave it be the agreement
(32:27):
is if I want to look at what you'redoing, I have access to it because
maybe you fear actual infidelity asan example, but the recommendation
is just kind of leave it be, andthat helps couples who are financial
opposites navigate those extremes.
Okay.
The last point would be theresearch behind second marriages.
So Michael Van Cleve who's also in the,in the toolkit, he is working on his PhD
(32:53):
on managing money in a blended familyand he's in a blended family himself.
And what he found was That in blendedfamily, second marriages, particularly
when both couples are bringing childrenfrom past marriages into the relationship,
that it's really complex and you wantto do everything you can to simplify.
(33:13):
And so what he said works best is that youhave an account for your current marriage.
And then you have an account foryour previous life and you don't
commingle those accounts and it reducesthe friction, reduces the fights.
Again, at personal finances, more personaland finance, perhaps other people have
found methods that work for them, butthat's just what the research says.
(33:35):
Yeah, I think that's interesting aboutthe second marriages because there can
be a lot of sensitivity around that.
When you are, got, especially having thekids because everybody has a different
idea of how that should go down.
So I think that makes a lot of sense.
And a lot of our late startersare in second marriages or
maybe even Contemplating it.
So you mentioned the marriagetoolkit several times.
(33:59):
So can you tell us a little bit moreabout the marriage toolkit that you built?
I think it's impressive that you'vegot so many experts in both, both
personal finance and marriage andrelationships to contribute to it.
So tell us a little bit about that.
It's really been a team effort.
I mean, you're, you're anexcellent contributor to it.
I I've loved to talk about HSAs with you.
(34:19):
There's such the HSA
hack.
Oh, I love the HSA hacks.
But the idea is thatcouples are really busy.
And the challenges that couples facein this busy world where, kind of
financial world is far more complexrequire, evidence based solutions.
And I'm not.
(34:40):
Like kind of a dogmatic person whereI think there's one way for everybody.
I just, I think that's inappropriate.
So what the toolkit does is it addressesthe topics that couples argue about the
most outside of actual like infidelity.
So it focuses on managing money together,managing the home together, supporting
each other's careers and family planning.
(35:03):
And, those topics require, different kindsof conversations, systems, and tools.
And so each of these contributors,as you're saying, like the list of
the contributors, I'm so blessed.
What they did was we had five to 15minute interviews in most instances
over their topics of expertise.
(35:27):
We really addressed clearly andefficiently what the consideration
should be in that topic.
And then I have graphics totry to simplify everything.
Text that's reasonablyconcise to add value to it.
Conversation prompts that you canuse to talk about money and when
appropriate activities that you can dotogether, like the money egg exercise.
(35:51):
And the hope is that each of thosetopics only take about 30 minutes and
it's not a course, it's a toolkit.
So it doesn't have tobe taken sequentially.
You don't have to watchor dive into each of them.
You can dive into the topics asyou feel that they are appropriate.
Now, obviously I would recommendthat folks use the toolkit.
(36:12):
Before they get married, have allof these tough conversations before
marriage, it makes it a lot easier.
And then you can revisit them, butat least you're not stressing out
and having conversations while you'restressed because you weren't prepared.
Yeah.
It sounds like a great weddinggift or a wedding shower gift to
me to any of our kids or grandkids.
(36:32):
And we are going to include a linkand, and you have your, you'll be
offering a discount for our listeners.
But yeah, I love the fact that youdon't have to do them in sequence.
I was very happy to do it.
It was only my session was maybe 10minutes or whatever, but it covers so many
different topics and you have assembledlike so many experts in these areas.
(36:53):
And so to pull them aside for 10minutes and get them to be included
in this toolkit was a huge, and Ilove a lot of what you did, in true
teacher form is, what you're doingis rooted in research and you have
brought in experts where you're not theexpert to try to, work this thing out.
I'm divorced.
I don't know.
Some of this probably would have helpeda lot, when I was married, but I was
(37:16):
young, I didn't know what a good,Marriage or relationship look like
so, most of us were just winging it,and just trying to figure this stuff
out and having resources like yours,I think definitely would have helped.
Well, you can't wing really romanticallyalone a, merger of two businesses.
I mean, these days people are coming intotheir marriage in their late twenties,
(37:40):
early thirties, already with assets.
They may have a house they may havesignificant retirement already.
And.
This, your toolkit sounds likea great precursor to Aaron
Thomas's pre nup prescription.
I mean, if you want to get ready for a prenup, you should work through the toolkit.
And this is a lot of work.
(38:00):
A marriage is a lot of work.
And there's a lot of transparencyor translucency that really should
take place before the merger, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
as you said, with couples whoalready have assets that it makes it.
Even more important to havethese, these conversations.
(38:20):
I mean, I mean, obviously I could talkabout it for like 40 hours or 50 hours.
I mean, that's, that's basicallyhow long it takes to go through the
whole toolkit, but just somethingas simple as joining bank accounts.
I mean, we talked about that for almost 10minutes or, what about co mingling credit?
When do you add your spouseas an authorized user?
When do you not, when doyou have joint credit?
(38:42):
Like these are all different ways thatyou need to consider how to use the.
Each other's past like credit historyas leverage or past credit history
for avoidance, and you can go on andon about all of these things and,
retirement, I'll give it, I'll tellyou what, I read a study it was, I
think it was like two years ago, it wasreleased and it was, my jaw dropped.
(39:05):
One in four married couples, one infour they are collectively Contributing
enough to their retirement plans earn atleast enough to get the company match.
So again, one in four married couplesbetween the two of them are contributing
(39:26):
collectively enough for them each tobe getting the full company match.
But, but again, one in four.
Are not getting the full company matchbecause they've never talked about it.
So you have somebody who'slike me, super frugal.
That's contributing a hundred.
I'm literally that whatever theIRS max is like 22, 000, I don't
care what the employer matches.
(39:47):
And the other one who mightonly be contributing 3%.
And so if you just have a conversation,you can literally just have the one
spouse contribute another, let's say3 percent more to get the remaining
amount of employee match, and thenyou reduce yours a little bit.
It's it's that simple conversation wheremarried couples, one, four are leaving.
(40:12):
I don't want to say it's free money.
It's compensation.
They're leaving their employer'smoney that was supposed to be
given for you on the table.
They're just like, nah, you,we don't need that extra money.
Yeah, you're hitting a sore spot forme, Brian, because at the time of my
divorce, I've been divorced for well over10 years now, but we never looked at our
401ks or retirement accounts together.
(40:34):
I was really young.
So was he and, the retirement moneyjust felt like it was so far away.
It didn't even feel like mine.
But at the time of the divorce, youare forced to look at that stuff.
And , there was a big disparitybetween what I had and what he had.
I had $20, 000 in my 401kand he had $120, 000.
And so that's a huge difference.
(40:56):
We were right around the same age.
We're making roughly the same money.
you have the, that gender wage gap thatI think came into play where he was
starting to get faster increases than me.
And what it came down to is that wewere invested in different things.
What if we would have talked and lookedat our retirement accounts together?
(41:16):
And he's saying, Oh no, you should havethis fund, or you should be in stock.
You shouldn't be all in a, ina money market or whatever I
was invested in simply was notgrowing at the same pace as his.
So yeah, we definitely missed out on that.
And, I beat myself up a long time.
Like, Not realizing that we had such adifference, but I had someone asked me one
(41:38):
time, do you think it was hiding money?
I'm like, no, he wasn't hiding money.
It's just that we didn't talk about it.
We weren't on the same page.
I could have, again, as a couple, asa household, we probably should have
looked at the investment accounts,the retirement accounts together.
and made sure we were consistentin what we wanted to do and
what our goals were for that.
So yeah, that piece was reallyimportant and, I'm sure it fed
(41:59):
into all kinds of other things andperhaps, reasons for the divorce.
But yeah, yeah, I, I definitelyresonate with that and I can
see that happening a lot.
Well, in Jackie's story, I mean, ifI may be a little transparent here,
she started with that and then 10, 11,12 years later, she retired with $1.
3 million based on a moneymindset shift, and she never
(42:22):
earned more than six figures.
I mean, it's an incredible story and ourlate starters need to hear this over and
over again, they can start at 40, theycan start at 50, and they can get there.
It's entirely possible
(44:13):
now say you get married and you'vegone through your marriage toolkit.
You've gone through your prenup Howdo you keep the conversations going?
You have a neat trick that you talkedabout in one of your podcasts about
buying a 2 lottery ticket and money dates.
Can you tell us about, how doyou structure a money date?
What do you talk about in the money dateand how did the 2 lottery ticket help?
(44:35):
I wish somebody would havetaught me what a money date
was when we first got married.
we were kind of structured in a way whereshe trusted me, we went about our way.
I kind of managed things, but that,that might work initially, but that
begins, that begins to unravel.
So a money date is, is atime that you set aside.
(44:57):
Regularly.
So initially I would suggest once aweek and then as you get older, you can
obviously meet less frequently becauseyou're going to get into a rhythm and that
is a time where you're in an environmentwhere there aren't any distractions.
So there was no phone,there's no children.
It's not 10 30 at night whenyou're decision fatigued and, your
(45:18):
emotions are kind of running highcause, high emotion, low cognition.
And so.
Maybe it's a Saturday morning,maybe it's a Sunday morning, and
you sit down to discuss whateveris appropriate at that time.
So let's just say it's your first moneydate and you're nervous to talk about
money and a lot of people are, and they'llfigure out that the more you talk about
(45:40):
it, the easier it is, and it's really nota big deal when you get into a rhythm.
That first step's hard.
And One of the reasons it'shard is because people equate
money with stress and tension.
Money is a tool tounlock love and support.
And so something as simple as buyingand I want to, this is not my idea.
(46:02):
This is Dr.
Megan McCoy's from Kansas state.
And like you said, it's in the toolkit.
But what she recommends and what Ido with my wife every once in a while
for fun is I literally buy a 2 lotteryticket and I know the odds are one in,
a trillion to win, but we also knowfrom research that one, 2 lottery ticket
(46:23):
actually creates happiness because youcan dream about what you do with it.
But what better way to dream than todream with your partner, with your spouse.
And so for your money date, you havethis lottery ticket in front of you and
you ask your spouse, okay, if we winthis money, what will we do differently?
How would we spend it?
What does our world look like?
(46:44):
If money is no object and what unravels?
Is some truth behind how wewish we were living our life.
And some of that truth can becomeyour reality in your marriage.
If you look at things a little bitmore skeptically, if you look inward
and ask yourself, do I really need tospend my money here when I could be
(47:06):
spending my money there to create morehappiness based on what my wife and
I, or my husband and I spoke about.
So for example, let's say.
That in that conversation, oneof the first things that comes
up is that we would hire maids.
We would have people thatwould do all the cleaning.
We would have somebody that does allthe lawn care with just, we would
never have to worry about that again.
(47:27):
We wouldn't fight about chores again.
Okay.
Well, most people can't hire a fulltime staff to be maids and cook dinners.
And, but.
You can outsource cleaning once a week.
some people can, you canoutsource mowing the lawn.
You can outsource meals throughlike meal delivery services.
There are ways that you can outsourcethe time that you would spend
(47:50):
doing things that maybe you don'tlove and pay to get that time back
to do things that you do love.
And so when you start the money date.
In a way where you're talking about yourjoys and your dreams, your aspirations.
It makes it a lot easier than thento then dive into your budget, but
(48:10):
to then say, okay, how can we worktogether to kind of get our life to
like, closely resemble that life.
We're not going to be driving aroundnine Lamborghinis, but we might
have a clean house on Saturdaymorning and we can actually go out
with our friends and go hiking.
And as money dates evolve.
(48:32):
Assuming that you're using the appropriatesystems you then have specific goals.
So for my wife and I, we always travel.
We just got back from Maui.
We loved it.
We went to Switzerland a yearbefore with, with our family.
We're probably going togo to Greece next year.
She just sent me a link.
She's like, this is where I want to go.
Let's talk about our money date.
And so we just sit down, we lookat our financial circumstances.
(48:54):
We love Tiller.
So we just have all ofour data right there.
We have our savings account andwe just have a savings account.
That's high yield accountspecific for that vacation.
We put the money in there.
That is our vacation fund.
It is untouchable.
This is our priority.
This is what we're going to do.
Maybe the next date is financialday is about cutting back
where we may be overspending.
(49:15):
What can we look at to reduce costs?
And each money date might have its ownindividual goals that come about it.
And some couples.
Can do that on their own.
Some need a financial therapistbecause things are rough.
It's tough to talk about money.
Some could use, I'm going to beat,the desk on this, a fee only financial
(49:36):
planner, somebody required to put yourfinancial interests ahead of their own
to sit down and meet with them and, andconstruct a longterm financial plan.
Some couples can do it on their own.
Some couples like to include theirchildren every once in a while.
We do that.
I, Ron Lieber wrote the opposite ofspoiled and there was a story in there
(49:56):
that I loved because the kids didn'tunderstand where the money went.
So this guy decides I'm going totake my paycheck and I'm going to
pull it all out in cash in 1 bills,and I'm going to lay it across the
kitchen table and I'm going to havecategories, envelopes, and tell the kids.
(50:18):
You put the money whereyou think we spend it.
So the kids are kind of guessing,but they're also recognizing
this giant pile of money.
And now they're like reallyappreciating their parents.
I realized, Oh my gosh, myparents are doing really well.
They're working hard for us.
And as they're moving it around,what it did was, It gave the kids a
(50:39):
sense of appreciation because theysaw that a lot of the money was
going to making their lives better.
And it then evolved into aconversation about values.
And so you can bring your kidsinto the conversations as well.
I love Ron Lieber and maybe youcan help us get him on the show.
I think he was one of yourexperts if I'm not mistaken.
(51:01):
is.
Yeah.
Happy to do it.
Opposite of spoiled one of the bestbooks period of I've ever read.
I cannot say enough great things about it.
I'm a huge fan of Ron and his writing.
Yeah, and I've read it too.
He also wrote one.
It's very important on how to affordcollege, which is important later.
So, yeah, I mean, I'd absolutelylove to have him on the show.
(51:22):
So,
just come out with a new book?
Is there a new book?
the how to afford college.
It was a
Okay, it wasn't the Algebra of The
It's the price you pay for college.
It's the blue book right there.
of Okay.
One of the things that may happen withthese money dates is, you may have a
hard time getting your partner on board.
What do you suggest to coupleslike this, where one person's like,
(51:45):
ah, you take care of all of it.
I have no interest.
who cares about this FI thing?
I'm not going to Camp FI.
What do you do with those people?
Yeah, that's a, that's a great question.
I think the first thing that you needto recognize is that many of our money
stories originate from our childhood.
obviously I shared mine.
(52:06):
You can see why I am the way I am.
And your spouse is going to havetheir own memories and their
own relationship with money.
And sometimes thatrelationship is, is negative.
Sometimes there's beensignificant financial trauma, big.
Big T and you need to understand whythey have this inclination for money
avoidance, because you don't want themto be excluded from these conversations.
(52:29):
So, I think a conversation is important.
And some of the conversation startersthat would help is just simply asking,
Hey, what's your first memory of money?
What's your firstpositive memory of money?
What's your negative memory of money?
What are some of the things thatyou saw from your parents Or your
parent that had to do with moneythat were tough for you to deal with?
What were some of the thingsthey did that brought you joy?
(52:51):
And let, let's assume that youdon't need the intervention of a
financial therapist, and it's reallyimportant that you distinguish.
Between controlling money and managingmoney and controlling money is toxic.
You never want to control a spouse usingmoney as that tool of, for control.
(53:16):
And that can be done withfinancial deception that can
be done by willful ignorance.
And.
It can be tragic if there's a divorce,it can be tragic if there's a death.
And so in the instance that youbrought up where one spouse is like,
I just don't want to deal with it.
And frankly, that's my wife.
she does not want to reallydo any of that stuff.
(53:40):
I'm the one who bringsthe data to the table.
Here are, here's our spending.
Here are our goals.
Here are our current accounts, oursavings accounts, our investment accounts.
Here's where we are.
What do you think, whatever the topicis, where are we going to go on vacation?
where, where can we spend our moneydifferently to become happier?
(54:00):
Whatever it may be.
So she is fully aware of our financialpicture and the conversation isn't
about the mechanics of money, themoney management kind of, nitty gritty.
She has no interest in that.
It's about our life.
It's about our goals, our desires, ourdreams, and money's just a tool to get
there and sitting down on a money datewith all that information in front of
(54:22):
her, so she can see it, although she'sdisinterested after 30 seconds, it may
for a data informed decision to come aboutafter the conclusion of the money date.
Well, we have an episode actuallyearly on in the podcast called Coins
and Couch Cushions, a story fromone of our listeners who came on her
first podcast ever and talked abouther husband who wasn't interested.
(54:46):
And she took the data from saya tiller and we need tiller as a
sponsor, Jackie, that would be a great.
Yeah.
Well, what is Tiller?
I, I've heard of it before.
Can you tell us real quick what it is?
Well, Brian uses it, right?
tracking app, but it integrateswith like Excel spreadsheets.
So it's great for people thatare spreadsheet oriented.
Right, Brian?
(55:07):
in a sense.
Yeah.
I mean, I, we, we used it becausewe just, we're time poor and it, you
can link all of your accounts to it.
And after you auto categorizeeverything, obviously there's, you're
going to spend some time onboardingeverything, then everything's automated.
So every day I get an email alert with.
Everything, all our spendingfrom the day before the current
(55:27):
status of our financial accounts.
And cause I just don't have the timeto manually input my, our choices.
I don't want to go in and redo the work.
It just does the work foryou after it's set up.
So for, for me, if I want to talk aboutmoney with hope, or if she has questions,
she has access to tell her as well, oursame, or we have the same account and
(55:48):
she just could log in and look at it.
So, so hope is your wife, right?
So shout out to hope.
Cause I'm thinking she's notquite as excited to come to these
money meetings as you are, but.
You can get her there long enoughto talk about the important things.
And I'm guessing some of the topicswould also be, do you talk about
like the state planning stuff, likeany other critical topics that you
(56:10):
include in your money meetings?
we just that our will before we leftfor Hawaii, we know we still have
, some additional estate planning todo some real nitty gritty typically
the way our relationship is, is Ido most of that work, that nitty
gritty work, and then I review it.
So like, for example, withour will, I wrote them.
(56:31):
Rewrote the will, I should say, andthen just sent it to her for review.
And then she's changed a coupleof little things and then.
went to our financialplanner as an example.
So, I mean, that, thatgoes into teamwork, right?
I mean, you don't have to have apartner who's into money like you.
I mean, chances are opposites marry.
So there's nothing wrong with beinglike the money geek, like all three
(56:55):
of us are and doing all these things.
And then.
Recognizing, okay, man, I can makethis kind of fun for my spouse.
If I make this about us, if I makethis about our marriage, if I make this
about our family and just use all thatdata to make sure they're in the loop.
And then focus on the stuffthey love to talk about.
(57:17):
Well, we want to berespectful of your time.
You're a busy guy that hasmany other things to do.
And we really appreciate the factthat you've offered to share some
of your time and knowledge withus and our late starter audience.
I think this has been agreat episode, Jackie.
What about you?
yeah, it absolutely has.
And he opened up our eyes abouta lot of things with, not just
(57:38):
married couples, but partners,relationships and things like that.
And I knew Brian had a lot to offer.
So that's why I was reallyexcited to to get you on the show.
And you mentioned Dr.
Megan McCoy, she was myprofessor at Kansas state.
So.
So I, I'm just still baffled by,all these heavy hitters that you
have, that's part of your tool.
So, so tell us wherepeople can get the toolkit.
(57:58):
Modernhusbands.
com.
You'll see a pop up, you'll see abutton at the top and just click
on the marriage toolkit button andit'll take you to a free preview.
The preview is just kind ofan overview of what to expect.
And then the first one is amoney date, how to conduct it.
And the expert.
For that is, is Dr.
McCoy.
And it's not a static product.
(58:18):
Think of it as kind of like an iPhonewhere it's always being updated.
So every month I go in andI, updates information.
I had to update one onwhether to buy a rent.
That was the topic based on,current, current Mortgage rates,
the, the recent law that reduce theamount realtors can make I make new
infographics and then we add new topics.
(58:38):
We're building a new topic nowon managing income volatility in
your home, if your monthly incomechanges quite a bit from one month
to the next, how do you manage it?
And then we're building one on, on travel.
So, it's not a static product.
We're going to consistently makeit better and better and better.
Oh, as a parent, this sounds likea great gift along with the prenup
prescription to your kids and your
(58:59):
I got it for my daughter.
She just got engaged.
I have it for her.
Thank you, Brian.
Oh, nice job, Jackie.
I, I have yet to cross that bridgeand, you can lead a horse to water, you
gotta, but you can't make them drink.
Hopefully my kids are interestedin, protecting their financial life,
being transparent, being translucent,and just, Having a better marriage
(59:20):
because of this, just like you said,the honeymoon period drops and the
stress begins, the work begins.
And this takes some of the work out ofmarriage and get you on the same page.
And so there's not all this stressand we are about taking stress out
of our lives, buying back our time.
And, Brian, thank youso much for being here.
(59:41):
This has been great.
Oh, this was fun.
I could talk to you two all day long.
Thank you for this.
Well, we're going to have youback on, I'm sure, because
there's a lot more to dig into.
Thanks again for your time, and we'llsee you next week on Catching Up to FI.
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