{"id":2257,"date":"2025-09-19T08:33:56","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T08:33:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:33:56","slug":"episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 226. \u201cShe\u2019s chasing FIRE. I want to enjoy life now.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cShe\u2019s chasing FIRE. I want to enjoy life now.\u201d\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S-0ebla5UU4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/0xkEV3lfpJKj4jhdlDdWCc\/video?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-testid=\"embed-iframe\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Laura (34) and Cameron (38) earn over $200,000 a year and save thousands each month, yet every decision feels like a crisis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Laura, a first-generation Mexican American, grew up in financial chaos and now enforces strict rules, from tracking every purchase in YNAB to keeping Cameron on an allowance. Her dream is to hit Coast FIRE in five years. Cameron, meanwhile, just wants to enjoy life today\u2014take a trip, fix the car, maybe even expand their family. Their daughter is four, and the question of whether to have another child looms large.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Can Ramit help them break free from fear, build shared goals, and find a balance between saving for tomorrow and living fully now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A special thanks to DeleteMe for sponsoring this episode. If you want to get your personal information removed from the web, go to https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/ramit for 20% off.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_82_2 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Turinys:<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/#In_this_episode_we_uncover\" >In this episode we uncover:<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/#Chapters\" >Chapters:<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/#This_episode_is_brought_to_you_by\" >This episode is brought to you by:<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/#Links_mentioned_in_this_episode\" >Links mentioned in this episode\u00a0<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/episode-226-shes-chasing-fire-i-want-to-enjoy-life-now\/#Transcript\" >Transcript\u00a0<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"In_this_episode_we_uncover\"><\/span><b>In this episode we uncover:<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Why Laura enforces strict financial rules yet still feels unsafe despite saving half their income<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How Cameron\u2019s \u201cpassenger\u201d role with money leaves Laura carrying the weight<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Why their $228,000 household income doesn\u2019t feel like \u201cenough\u201d in an affluent Chicago neighborhood<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How childhood experiences shaped Laura\u2019s scarcity mindset<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">The emotional toll of living as if they are still poor, even with nearly half a million dollars in net worth<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How FIRE gave Laura a sense of control and safety\u2014but at the cost of enjoying life today<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How chasing control keeps them feeling perpetually \u201cbehind\u201d and unable to thrive<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">The stark contrast between Laura\u2019s authoritarian role and Cameron\u2019s passivity<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 300;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">How they can move beyond survival mode and start thriving by defining a shared Rich Life vision<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Chapters\"><\/span><b>Chapters:<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:00:00) <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">\u201cI keep my husband on an allowance\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:09:58) Ramit breaks down their numbers<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:25:05)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">\u201cWe feel poor\u2026 on $228,000 a year\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:41:37)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">\u201cMy parents racked up debt in my name without me knowing\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(00:54:48)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">\u201cI keep us living small\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(01:10:21)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">\u201cCoastFi says we\u2019re fine\u2014so why doesn\u2019t it feel real?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(01:24:06)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">\u201cWhat would make the next 10 years magical?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">(01:33:54)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Where are they now? Laura and Cameron\u2019s follow-ups<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"This_episode_is_brought_to_you_by\"><\/span><b>This episode is brought to you by:<\/b><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Wildgrain | Get $30 off the first box &#8211; PLUS free Croissants in every box at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/wildgrain.com\/ramit<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">ZocDoc | Download the ZocDoc app for FREE at <\/span><strong>https:\/\/zocdoc.com\/ramit<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\"> then find and book a top-rated doctor today #sponsored\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">SonderMind | Go to <\/span><strong>https:\/\/sondermind.com<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\"> to get matched with the right therapist in less than a week<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Facet | Facet is waiving their $250 enrollment fee for new annual members, and for my audience, Facet is offering $300 into your brokerage account if you invest and maintain $5,000 within your first 90 days. Head to <\/span><strong>https:\/\/facet.com\/ramit<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\"> to learn more about which membership option is best for you<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Links_mentioned_in_this_episode\"><\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"none\">Links mentioned in this episode<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;134245418&quot;:true,&quot;134245529&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:450,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:768}\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 300;\">Get tickets for my next live event\u2014September 26 in Los Angeles\u2014at <\/span><strong>iwt.com\/events<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Transcript\"><\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"none\">Transcript<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;134245418&quot;:true,&quot;134245529&quot;:true,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559685&quot;:2010,&quot;335559737&quot;:2010,&quot;335559738&quot;:375,&quot;335559739&quot;:375,&quot;335559740&quot;:768}\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Download the full transcript PDF<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;335559685&quot;:2010,&quot;335559737&quot;:2010,&quot;335559738&quot;:150,&quot;335559739&quot;:150}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I found out about the\u00a0FIRE\u00a0community, and to hear that you could save half your income and retire in seven years was magic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would get overwhelmed, and mostly it was just watching Laura move numbers around, and it&#8217;s so hard for me to have the interest and to follow it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like I keep us living very poor. It wouldn&#8217;t matter how much our money grew. We are not allowed to spend anymore than we&#8217;re spending now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m saying, &#8222;Hey, loosen up. Spend this.&#8221; She&#8217;s like, &#8222;Of course, it&#8217;s easy for you to say. You don&#8217;t know what we have coming up. You don&#8217;t know any of this.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0He wants to have fun. He wants to have a good time. He wants to enjoy himself. And I&#8217;m over here stressing all the time. Fun is a future thing you can do if everything else gets taken care of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Why don&#8217;t you allow yourself to enjoy your money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:00:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s not what it&#8217;s for. It&#8217;s for the future. I really don&#8217;t even feel like the money I have can be spent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:01:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What would you do if someone stole your identity?\u00a0And what if the people who stole your identity were your parents? That&#8217;s exactly what happened to today&#8217;s guest. In her words,\u00a0&#8222;My parents took out lines of credit in my name. In the process of uncovering how they wronged me, I vowed to always be able to take care of myself.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:01:25)\u00a0Today I&#8217;m speaking with Laura and her husband, Cameron. You&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0hear how this betrayal shaped Laura&#8217;s entire worldview about money. But that fear and that lack of trust is now affecting her marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:01:38)\u00a0For this episode, I partnered with DeleteMe because identity theft can happen to any of us.\u00a0And when we think of identity theft, we think of the annoyance of having to close a bunch of accounts,\u00a0but today&#8217;s conversation shows how identity theft can go way deeper. It can change the trajectory of your entire life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:01:56)\u00a0I use\u00a0DeleteMe myself. I even got an account from my parents because I don&#8217;t want their personal information floating around online.\u00a0So if you\u00a0want to\u00a0protect yourself and your family,\u00a0go to joindeleteme.com\/ramit,\u00a0and use code\u00a0RAMIT\u00a0for 20% off.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:12)\u00a0All right.\u00a0I&#8217;m about to open Laura and Cameron&#8217;s conscious spending plan, which breaks down their net worth, income, and where they spend their money.\u00a0You can download and create your own conscious spending plan for free at iwt.com\/csp.\u00a0Here&#8217;s the numbers. Assets, 319,000.\u00a0Investments, 335,000.\u00a0Savings, 29,000.\u00a0Debt, 245,000.\u00a0Net worth, 438,000.\u00a0Monthly income, 19,000. Fixed costs,\u00a047%. Investing, 20%.\u00a0Savings, 22%.\u00a0Guilt-free spending,\u00a011%. Honestly, these are some pretty impressive numbers considering Laura and Cameron are in their\u00a030s, but I have a lot of questions, so let&#8217;s get started.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:02:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura, application was quite haunting. You wrote, &#8222;I created a parent-child dynamic where I enforce money rules for the household, keep my husband on an allowance, and ridicule all of his purchases.&#8221; Laura, is it working?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, it&#8217;s not. I don&#8217;t want to be the only person making decisions about money. I don&#8217;t want to feel like I&#8217;m looking through all of the bank charges, and I get the dings on my phone, like Amazon purchase, Amazon. I&#8217;m like, &#8222;What is this game he ordered?&#8221; More games? It&#8217;s always games.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:03:44)\u00a0There&#8217;s frequency in purchasing that really bugs me where our spending is different in that way. He makes small but frequent purchases for things that he enjoys, and I make infrequent, but big purchases towards family improvements, professional development, health improvements. So I know I have a problem with how I view the money is being spent, where his money is being spent on his enjoyment and my money is spent on improving our lives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Was that you trying to explain how it&#8217;s not working and then&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s not working.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Explaining how you&#8217;re actually right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m not right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh. What part are you not right about?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t want to be judgmental about how he spends his money. We&#8217;ve already agreed this is his money and this is my money, and I should not be judging what he spends it on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Do you believe that as you say it out loud?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I believe I should not be doing it. I haven&#8217;t stopped doing it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. All right. How long have you been together and how long have you been married?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Together 13 years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Married nine years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:04:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, okay, nine years. All right. Kids?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. One daughter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How old?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Four.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Four. Okay, great. When you think about money in your relationship, what is the one or two words that come to mind? Cameron?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Stress, planning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Fear and future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Stress and planning. Fear and future. Similar. Quite parallel. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Do you both see money the same way?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, I don&#8217;t think so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh. Laura?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Probably not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hmm. Interesting that your words were quite similar, right? Are the two of you decisive about money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:05:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No. I have a lot of analysis paralysis. I prefer to research a lot and gather information and put off a decision. It feels good to me, like I&#8217;m educating myself on it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Cameron?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I avoid almost all money talk and basically let Laura handle it. So if she is circling around on a decision, then we both are.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You guys like that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How come every couple I talk to is like, no, I\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0hate this thing that we have kept doing for the last 15 years, every single day of our relationship. Am I the only one who&#8217;s like, maybe we can change it then? Is that why you&#8217;re here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0There you go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. You guys expecting me to wave the Abracadabra wand and then suddenly you become decisive?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh yeah. Both of them nodding. Okay, great. All right. Should we take a look at the numbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. What was it like creating the CSP together?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:06:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It was actually enjoyable, I think. It was one of the few times we&#8217;ve sat there and had to work together on a budget financial-based project, and we didn&#8217;t get upset at each other. I think we agreed on a lot of things. I liked it a lot more than I expected to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s cool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I will say we&#8217;ve come a long way. If you asked us like five years ago to go through our money, it would&#8217;ve ended in a fight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You both sounded surprised that the conscious spending plan was enjoyable. Why is that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I was surprised that he would enjoy it. Because he usually shuts down, or I will literally take the phone and the camera and the spreadsheet and the computer. I&#8217;m like, &#8222;I would do it myself.&#8221; But I really had to hold back and say, you&#8217;re going to do this job and I&#8217;m going to do this job. And I tried not to grab the phone out of his hands and do it myself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cameron?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:07:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I definitely felt that this time. I felt that we were both working towards something.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I run my own net worth spreadsheet, but it&#8217;s just numbers on a spread. It&#8217;s not any numbers that we feel or see. We save a lot of money, but we don&#8217;t get to enjoy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What is the cost of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s stressful. It&#8217;s a negative view of money leaving our hands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cameron?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I agree. There&#8217;s a lot of times Laura specifically will be looking at this stuff or going over it. It&#8217;s nighttime before bed and it just starts a spin on what are we doing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What is this, like 10:30 at night?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. Yeah. I&#8217;ll be falling asleep and then she&#8217;ll be like, &#8222;This is what I think we should do with this emergency.&#8221; And I&#8217;m like, &#8222;I can&#8217;t talk about this right now.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:08:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t like a lot of like directive rules for people because, I don&#8217;t know, I treat them like they&#8217;re smart. Maybe I need to make a\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0rule. No talking about money after 8:00 PM. What is going on here, America? Everybody&#8217;s sitting around, and it&#8217;s always one person. It&#8217;s the person who is obsessed with spreadsheets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:13)\u00a0And they&#8217;re like, &#8222;Hey, look at this spreadsheet. I ran this calculation yesterday. But if we add a variance of 6.5% over the next 45 years, it actually turns out we might be able to afford to take two extra vacations per year.&#8221; And the other partner&#8217;s like, &#8222;(Bleep),\u00a0(Bleep). I was sleeping.&#8221; And then it never goes well. Any of this sound familiar?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How were you in our room last night? How did you know that happened?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:09:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Ramit Sethi coming out with this first and only prime directive. It&#8217;s simple. No talking about money after 8:00 PM, you\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0freaks. Nobody. Nothing good is happening after 8:00 PM talking about your finances. That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s my rule. Hold on. Okay, I&#8217;m back in the game. I&#8217;m here to help. Can we just look at the numbers?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. Laura, can you read the word in bold and then the number in full next to it, please?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Assets,\u00a0319,000.\u00a0Investments,\u00a0335,814. Savings,\u00a029,338. And debt,\u00a0245,238.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Total net worth?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0438,914.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, $438,000. What do you think of those numbers? Why is it so silent in here? What is happening?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:10:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Because it feels like fake money on a spreadsheet that&#8217;s not ours. It&#8217;s money we&#8217;ve been stocking away for a very long time, but we don&#8217;t see it or touch it.\u00a0I have a goal of hitting\u00a0Coast\u00a0FI.\u00a0I feel like maybe someday we&#8217;ll get there,\u00a0but those numbers don&#8217;t mean a whole lot to us right now.\u00a0It doesn&#8217;t make us feel safe or wealthy or anything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let me translate. These numbers, which are quite substantial, almost half a million dollars, they don&#8217;t feel real to me. Therefore, I&#8217;m going to dedicate the rest of my working life to making them even bigger because surely then they will feel real to me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura is pursuing something called Coast\u00a0FI, which is part of the\u00a0FIRE\u00a0movement or\u00a0Financial\u00a0Independence,\u00a0Retire\u00a0Early.\u00a0Let me\u00a0break this down really quickly.\u00a0There are variations of FIRE. There&#8217;s lean\u00a0FIRE, which basically means you save aggressively and live on a small amount,\u00a0like 25,000 a year.\u00a0Or there&#8217;s fat\u00a0FIRE, which is saving and investing enough to live on hundreds of thousands or millions per year. There&#8217;s also\u00a0Coast\u00a0FI.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:11:49)\u00a0Coast\u00a0FI\u00a0means you save really aggressively, typically early in your career, that you can stop contributing to retirement altogether later in life.\u00a0The math says as long as you don&#8217;t touch the investments, compounding will grow enough to fund your retirement. You&#8217;re basically\u00a0coasting.\u00a0Mathematically, it makes a lot of sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:08)\u00a0But one of my critiques of the\u00a0FIRE\u00a0community is that they often overfocus on the math and under focus on psychology.\u00a0In my experience,\u00a0FIRE\u00a0tends to attract people who want control, and it often also attracts people who already have a scarcity mindset. Like Laura, think about it. She admits running spreadsheets at 10:30 at night. She&#8217;s obsessing over every Amazon charge and dismissing her husband spending as frivolous compared to her own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:37)\u00a0FIRE\u00a0gives her an outlet to double down on that need for control. It gives her rules, charts, formulas, and the promise that if she just saves a little more, then she&#8217;ll finally feel secure. In my opinion, what would be dysfunctional behavior in other circumstances is now blessed because she&#8217;s working towards Coast\u00a0FI.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:12:59)\u00a0But guys, it doesn&#8217;t work that way. People who are hyper frugal really think that they will one day feel safe with their money. It almost never happens. They save more. They still feel afraid. So what do they do? They double down to save even more. The very system that was supposed to create freedom often locks you into a prison of deprivation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:20)\u00a0Now, there&#8217;s a lot of good when it comes to\u00a0FIRE. In fact, I&#8217;ve created an entire YouTube video on\u00a0FIRE.\u00a0But I want you to understand the math part\u00a0is\u00a0bulletproof. It&#8217;s just math. But the psychology can become a problem unless you actively work to improve your money mindset.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:13:39)\u00a0If you\u00a0want to\u00a0improve your money mindset, I built a free mini course to help you.\u00a0You can download it at iwt.com\/mindsetpod. It&#8217;s free, iwt.com\/mindsetpod.\u00a0Now, Laura believes more savings will finally make her feel safe. I don&#8217;t really agree, and I&#8217;m\u00a0going to\u00a0explain this to her right after this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It doesn&#8217;t feel real, so I&#8217;m going to work even harder, because then maybe someday it will feel real to me. It doesn&#8217;t make any sense to me. Just if the number&#8217;s double, you think that&#8217;s going to make it feel real?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So what would make it feel real to you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Spending some of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Why don&#8217;t you take out 5,000 bucks and spend it? Whoa. Look at that face. What was that? Can you describe that? Hold on, Cameron, can you describe that face that Laura just did? Look at this face.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, that&#8217;s fear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, fear, bewilderment, or even&#8211; Laura, how would you describe it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That goes against everything I&#8217;ve been doing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Right. Spending money, the money you&#8217;ve been accumulating goes against everything you&#8217;ve been doing. Now I see sadness. Why is that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:14:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We work so hard. It doesn&#8217;t feel like we can enjoy our money right now. I actually don&#8217;t know when we will or if we will.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Meaning you might just accumulate, accumulate, and then what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No. Meaning that I&#8217;ve set our financial plan to Coast FI on a very small budget, which means we would have to be living on less than we&#8217;re living now in order to achieve that. So we&#8217;re not going to retire and then spend money. This is our baseline to make it a reality. It&#8217;s only going to get worse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Why&#8217;d you do that? Why&#8217;d you set that goal?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I set this goal before we were married, before we had a kid, and that goal is not realistic for the life that we&#8217;ve created. And I should probably let go of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:15:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let go of it. Adjust it. Adapt it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Make a new plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Coming back to the numbers not feeling real, what if I challenged you to spend a $1,000 of the money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That would be&#8211; Cameron&#8217;s like, &#8222;Yeah, let&#8217;s do it.&#8221; I&#8217;m like, &#8222;Oh, on what? Pay down debt?&#8221; I don&#8217;t even have the muscle to spend money. When I get money, when we have a surplus in our paychecks, what do we do with it? What bill can I pay? What debt can I put down?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When there&#8217;s something you really want though, when there&#8217;s something you really find that you feel is important to you, like you were talking about the larger purchases earlier, you will spend it on there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I could. If I had to spend $1,000 today, yes, I could figure out what to do with it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What if you had to spend 5,000?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We have something in mind that we could spend 5,000. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Really? What utility-based purchase would that be? Lawn mower?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0A couch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:16:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, that&#8217;s so nice. How did I know? How did I know that it was a functional purchase? Let&#8217;s look at the income next.\u00a0Cameron, can you read off your combined gross monthly income, please?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0$19,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a019k a\u00a0month means you make a household income combined of $228,000 per year. Did you know that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Roughly yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No. I don&#8217;t know anything. I don&#8217;t even look at my paychecks. When I come in, I show up, I do my job, but I do not look at these numbers. And that&#8217;s one reason why even talking about this is out of my comfort zone. I don&#8217;t know the basics of what we do as a family. And it goes back to that relationship Laura and I have, is I avoid it, and she takes it on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0He asked like, &#8222;How much can I spend?&#8221; And that&#8217;s why I have an allowance for him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:17:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Did you give him an allowance for the purchases of games and stuff like that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. And I will say that allowance has changed. It used to be&#8211; do you want to tell them what it used to be?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What, when? I remember it was $100.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, it used to be $5. It was $5.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t remember that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, but I will say we both carved out fun money per month that we can use on our own for anything that each of us would want. And even that little change, what, six months a year ago, at least for me, has made a big difference.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What did it feel to you to have that fun money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:18:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It felt like I could make my own choices about what I wanted to purchase. And before everything was so joint where it was like, &#8222;I&#8217;m thinking of doing this. I&#8217;m thinking of doing that.&#8221; And as Laura said, if I&#8217;m looking at multiple $30 purchases or going out to a baseball game or whatever it is, having that ability to just make those choices is obviously a lot easier, I think, for both of us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So that&#8217;s been definitely an improvement in my opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s good. Everybody should have their own individual guilt-free spending money. I like that. Laura, what do you spend your individual guilt-free spending money on?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;d probably make two big purchases a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So I don&#8217;t spend the monthly. I actually just remove my monthly money and put it in towards whatever else the family needs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, that sounds familiar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And then I&#8217;ll make two or three gigantic purchases. I&#8217;d say in the last couple of years, big purchases have been fitness and nutrition program that I committed to. And then I resigned, and I&#8217;m so happy I did that. A personal styling session that actually got really into inner child healing and future visualizations, I was very happy to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:19:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, that sounds awesome actually. I love both of those things. Did that come from your individual money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, kind of. I didn&#8217;t stockpile it or anything. I just said, &#8222;This is a thing I want.&#8221; And it comes very spur&#8211; I do the research and I tell him like, &#8222;This is a thing. It&#8217;s a big ticket thing. I really want it.&#8221; And he is like, &#8222;Yeah, you should do it.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0But you&#8217;re using the money in your individual account to pay for it. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s typically more than that. So we give ourselves $150 a month and I never spend mine. But then I&#8217;ll come to them and say like, &#8222;This thing is $3,000. I really want it.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So we&#8217;re actually doing the&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The CSP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0&#8212; the CSP, we found that my average that I was spending was 450 a month and his was the 150 limit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s interesting because you&#8217;re the one who&#8217;s anxious about his spending on&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0&#8211;2-dollar game. What did that make you feel as you realized that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:20:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Like a jerk. Like I am over here hounding him for his Amazon games and I&#8217;m the one making the big purchases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, that was a surprise. It was a surprise that your average was high. And it also made me feel like, okay, it&#8217;s not just me who&#8217;s spending the family&#8217;s money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0This moment is so revealing. Laura has trained herself to believe that spending money is almost dangerous, that it goes against everything she&#8217;s been doing. She even admits she doesn&#8217;t know when or if they will ever be able to enjoy their money. This is scarcity.\u00a0And yet the numbers tell a totally different story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:21:42)\u00a0When they looked at their spending, it turns out Laura actually spends more than Cameron on guilt-free spending. She makes big infrequent purchases on things like coaching programs, and she&#8217;s happy with those choices. But because Cameron spends smaller amounts on games, on things she deems frivolous,\u00a0she judges him for it. This is how scarcity can distort your relationship with money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:05)\u00a0It convinces you that saving is good, spending is bad, and the only way to feel safe is to keep saving more and more.\u00a0Because of course you&#8217;re a good person.\u00a0But in reality, they already have close to half a million saved. They make over 200k\u00a0a year. This is a very healthy income, especially for a couple in their\u00a030s. Listen as I ask them how they feel about their income.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0These conversations are interesting considering the income that your household makes. How would you describe your income?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It is the most we&#8217;ve ever made together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So that&#8217;s the income. However, our expenses are the highest they&#8217;ve ever been.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re not talking about your expenses. Just talking about your income.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay. Is your income high, low, medium? What is it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:22:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think it&#8217;s average to low for the area and the age group.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You think your income is low for your age group?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And area. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, hold on. You two are 34 and 38 years old. Where do you live, general area?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Chicago North Shore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Who the (Bleep) is earning&#8211; what? What?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Everyone on our block owns a million-dollar-plus home. We live in a condo, and we own the garden unit, and we joke that our street is the Titanic and we&#8217;re the people in the bottom deck like doing the Irish jig. We live in a very affluent area, and we make significantly less than the people around us. For me, the people in my industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:23:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, then you&#8217;re going to be really surprised at the number I&#8217;m about to give you. Do you know the median income in your neighborhood?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You said your income was low, so $228,000 should actually be&#8211; what should it be? 5, 6, 7, 800,000?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. 3, 4, 5.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. The median household income in North Shore Chicago is $127,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0There&#8217;s almost no neighborhood in America, certainly not around there, where the median income is $400,000. What are you realizing right now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I still think that for the industry that I&#8217;m in, I&#8217;m not making as much as other people. And for the neighborhood that we live in, we definitely do not make as much as our neighbors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. So you want to feel poor for the rest of your life?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:24:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think we are making&#8211; so this is the most we&#8217;ve ever made, and I recognize that. We&#8217;re not trying to keep up with anyone. We are on our own path. But we do recognize that we don&#8217;t make as much as other people that we&#8217;re around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:25:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The reason I&#8217;m asking is that it&#8217;s very hard to feel appreciation, to feel grateful, to make decisions on offense with your money, if you constantly feel behind. Your numbers and the way you feel about them are completely at odds with each other. Making $228,000 in your 30s in Chicago is a lot of money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:25:34)\u00a0And the fact that the first thing both you say is like, &#8222;Oh, we actually don&#8217;t make that much. Our income is low compared to other people,&#8221; is grossly out of touch with reality grossly. And by perpetuating the narrative that you have told yourself, oh, we&#8217;re actually poor. We&#8217;re not necessarily, not even close to as affluent as our neighbors, then you will go the rest of your life feeling behind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:25:59)\u00a0You see the exact same thing when you talk about your net worth. It doesn&#8217;t feel real. Same thing. You&#8217;re grossly out of touch with your own numbers. What do you get out of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Feels like we&#8217;re chasing something that we&#8217;re never going to have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. And why do you do that? What do you get out of that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think I get satisfaction in knowing I&#8217;m doing all these little things and I can control a lot of little things, but I don&#8217;t ever feel like I&#8217;m in control of the big picture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I think you get significance. It&#8217;s me or it&#8217;s us against this unforgiving world. And in order for us to win against this crushing weight of the world, we need to be so aggressive. We need to save. We need to put aside this money, invest aggressively.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:26:48)\u00a0And if we make any extra money, what do we do? We invest it. Oh, and by the way, we retire at 40 and live a worse life every day for the rest of our lives. That&#8217;s the way that we win. How does that strike you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think that sounds accurate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Awful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Awful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Exhausting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, but it actually gives you some meaning. It gives you something to wake up and do. How many spreadsheets have you created to manage your money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You were still working on the one you made 12 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;ve had one since 2012. I just keep adding new tabs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I should have asked&#8211; sorry. Sorry, my mistake. How many tabs have you created?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know, probably 30.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. In my opinion, that&#8217;s about 28 tabs too many. And what do you get when you create a new tab?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s a thrill. It&#8217;s exciting. It&#8217;s like, oh, what am I going to do this year? Like, hey, what am I going to beat? How do we level up? How do I make this number get bigger?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:27:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s right. Significance. It&#8217;s almost like playing a game. It&#8217;s almost like that new tab is your new reality. What if we get a car? What if we go on vacation? What if we send our kid to college? And you can spend the rest of your life in your freaking spreadsheet instead of actually living life. That&#8217;s what so many people do, particularly people who have found themselves\u00a0slipping down into the\u00a0FIRE\u00a0community without an actual purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0All right. I got to look through the rest of these numbers here.\u00a0Fixed costs.\u00a0What&#8217;s the fixed cost number combined?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">47%.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. That&#8217;s pretty low, well below for the 50 to 60% that I typically talk about. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just under it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. All right. Good. If you&#8217;re below the number, you could spend on whatever you want, in my opinion. Just so we know, you make 228k. Your rent or mortgage is 2,100. You have childcare of $1,960 a month. Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:28:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just for kicks, can I just like strip that out and see what would your number be if you didn&#8217;t have childcare? Can we just take a look at that hypothetically?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, we&#8217;d be rich.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We talk about that a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We feel so poor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sorry, what did you just say? You&#8217;d be what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;d be rich. We have so much money. We&#8217;d feel so poor having pay this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura, look in my eyes. You are rich. Do you not understand that you are rich? You&#8217;re in your 30s. You make $228,000 a year. You have $438,000 in net worth. You are wealthy. Did you ever realize that? Neither of you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If you just keep this up and just allow the money to compound, you know how many millions of dollars it turns into. You know. You&#8217;ve run the calculations, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What does it turn into?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If we Coast FI in four years, we&#8217;d have enough to have 2 to 3 million at traditional retirement age.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:29:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That means you stop working in the age of roughly 40, and you would still be multimillionaires at the age of 65. That doesn&#8217;t strike you as being wealthy? That never occurred to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That is our plan. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s not what I asked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like we still are general talking about this. We feel like it&#8217;s still not enough, or will it cover? There&#8217;s still that fear of, how long do people live? How long will that last us?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think you guys like to worry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. We are both worriers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think you love it, actually. I think it gives you a lot of meaning, gives you a lot of purpose. I think that if you didn&#8217;t worry, you&#8217;re not sure who you would actually be or what you would do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So you worry about a house. You get the house or the apartment. Then you worry about retirement. Then you make a plan for retirement. You knock that out. Then you worry about your kids&#8217; college. Then you make a plan and knock that out. Then you&#8217;re like, &#8222;What else are we supposed to worry about?&#8221; Oh-oh, heat seeking mode.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:30:59)\u00a0Let&#8217;s find something else. Long-term care. Nobody knows how much it can cost for long-term care. So therefore, we need to plug in tons and tons of money. There&#8217;s actually no ceiling on it. Oh, and if we still end up with money, God bless our kid or kids, they can have some of the money and begin the cycle again. How does that sound?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Not good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s a good way to spend the rest of your life, just being scared. Is that why you guys are here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Survival mode and scarcity mindset got me here, but it&#8217;s really holding me back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you share an example of how it&#8217;s specifically holding you back?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I will say, I have a food hoarding mindset. I grew up poor. Spending usually only happens at the grocery store. That&#8217;s my big spending area, and I&#8217;m in charge of the grocery. So I&#8217;ll go and I&#8217;ll find everything that&#8217;s on special, and I&#8217;ll stock it in our cabinets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:31:59)\u00a0And sometimes it goes bad before we can even use it. But I get a thrill out of finding the sale and stocking up our cabinets and knowing we&#8217;ve got months of food. We will survive. Why am I wasting all this time thinking about survive? Food? You can tap your phone and food will come to your door. I don&#8217;t need to spend time going to the grocery store and hunting down deals. It is costing me time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Do you spend more than you planned when you walk out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Always. I go to the store with 20 items on the list, and I walk out with 50.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;s the approximate amount you would spend on a grocery shop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0120 per store per visit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How many times would you go per week?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0At least four.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Four times. So you&#8217;re spending 500 bucks a week, roughly $2,000 a month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:32:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We&#8217;re spending about half of that. So some stores I just go in, I get a couple things. But it&#8217;s a lot. And food prices have gone up, so it&#8217;s where I used to spend less than 100, it&#8217;s like $120. What is happening here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cameron, have you ever noticed this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, definitely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;d you say about it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;ve told Laura like, &#8222;You bring home a lot. We don&#8217;t need all this.&#8221; But it&#8217;s also an activity that she really enjoys, to go out and get all this food. I don&#8217;t think I realized some of the hoarding stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You didn&#8217;t realize that until just now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You didn&#8217;t realize that our fridge is packed to the gills, and I go to the store when we don&#8217;t need anything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We have talked about that. Like, we don&#8217;t need this much. But I don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s part of this whole general thing, I think, that we&#8217;ve been talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Which is?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:33:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Which is living in a way that maybe isn&#8217;t our present situation. Living like maybe it made sense 10, 12 years ago. It&#8217;s different, but we&#8217;re still doing the same things that we had done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura, can you tell me a little bit about how you grew up with money? I&#8217;m so curious.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m first gen. My parents immigrated here from Mexico, and I remember that we were quite poor. We&#8217;d move every year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0There was one house that had a mouse infestation, and we just had to live with mice. My parents had to work sometimes two jobs. But also, they wanted to give us a better life than they had. And by many accounts they did. They truly came from nothing. We were able to buy a home, but the bank also took the house, so they weren&#8217;t very good with money. And I could see that they wanted to spend the money on nice new things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:34:54)\u00a0My mom wanted every new gadget. We had spinners on our van when spinners were a big thing. Why do we have spinners? Brand new soccer shoes for my brother anytime he wanted them. They liked stuff. They liked pointing to the things that they were working for. To their credit, they did give us a better life than they had.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:17)\u00a0However, there was no other financial education. They don&#8217;t know anything about investing or saving. I&#8217;m their retirement plan. They don&#8217;t have one. I learned to get a job and to work. And the messaging I got from my parents was at least graduate high school. Neither of my parents did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:39)\u00a0And they worked manual labor jobs, and they still do. So any job that you can do with your body for as long as your body can work is a good job. I work in software development. There&#8217;s no way to say like, I work on a computer, and you see things on your screen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:35:57)\u00a0It&#8217;s like that&#8217;s not a real job to them because you&#8217;re not using your body. It&#8217;s not manual labor. My parents taught me&#8211; I don&#8217;t know if they ever said this directly, but there was this idea that if you graduate high school and you become a secretary in a big fancy building, that&#8217;s all we want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:19)\u00a0Everyone they know is a janitor in a building. So I would say my family had very low expectations of me, and I was never surrounded by people who were doing more than that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow, that&#8217;s quite a story, especially for where you have ended up. When you tell that story about your upbringing, especially the mice infestation and your parents, their dreams, for you being a secretary, I can see you getting emotional. What are you feeling when you think about their lessons?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0They wanted me to be small.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:36:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow, small. You mean in your job. The highest you could dream is a secretary?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. But also I think they were limited to what they had been exposed to. So their world of view was very small. They didn&#8217;t know how to support me or encourage me because, in their defense, they&#8217;d already given me a better life than they had.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are they still alive?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are you still in communication with them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Not really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, okay. Would they understand your lifestyle today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No, no. I think my mom still makes fun of us because we drive the same car we&#8217;ve had since 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:37:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Where my mom still gets&#8211; she&#8217;ll lease a new vehicle every couple of years. She&#8217;s always showing up to the house in some brand new&#8211; I&#8217;m like, &#8222;Holy\u00a0(Bleep). How are you doing this? You have no retirement plan. You have no savings.&#8221; She wanted to retire a few years ago and she asked me like, could I help her? And I&#8217;m like, &#8222;How much do you have?&#8221; And she asked me, &#8222;Is that enough?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:15)\u00a0And I said, &#8222;You can do a simple calculation. Do you know how much you spend in a year? Okay. And then divide how much you&#8217;ve saved by that.&#8221; I&#8217;m like, &#8222;You can retire for two years and then you have to go back to work.&#8221; And she didn&#8217;t not like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What did she say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0She&#8217;s like, &#8222;Oh, I want it to be done. You&#8217;re saying I need a million dollars to retire. I&#8217;m never going to get that.&#8221; And to be honest, she won&#8217;t. At her age, and with her income and her spending, she will not have a million dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:38:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. It sounds like your parents liked to spend money and still like to. What happened to you that, in your own words, made you hoard money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would say it&#8217;s because of my parents. When I was 18, I pulled a credit report for myself and found out they had been using my social to take out lines of credit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow. What did they do with the money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:39:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0One was a furniture store line of credit, so I guess they bought furniture. One was a general credit card. One was in already debt collection. So I was in college. I was first person to go to college, only person in my immediate family. So getting no support there and dealing with debt creditors, debt collectors,\u00a0I felt so much shame\u00a0because other people get to go to college and have support from their families, and I was getting dragged down by mine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And they used it for furniture?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Other stuff. I don&#8217;t know. So when I found that out, I confronted my mom. She was like, &#8222;Oh, it was just to get this or just to get that. I was going to pay it off. You were never going to know. No, not sorry. It was so chill. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How much do you remember they took out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It was 10 to 15,000 maybe, which is a lot when I&#8217;m 18 and I&#8217;m in college and I don&#8217;t have a job and a debt collector, they&#8217;re calling me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What happened with the debt collection?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:40:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I made my mom pay that one down, the immediate debt collector. I closed the other accounts. Told her she had to pay the balance first, and then I closed the accounts. And then I vowed to almost cut them off, to never go to them. Not that I ever could. I was never going to go to them for money, but I vowed that I would take care of myself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Wow. Now can you trace that for me? How did that experience shape who you are with money today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Right around that time,\u00a0I found out about the\u00a0FIRE\u00a0community,\u00a0and to hear that you could save half your income and retire in seven years was\u00a0magic.\u00a0It was purely like, how does that happen? How do you just invest money and then you don&#8217;t have to work anymore? I&#8217;m like, &#8222;This is the ticket.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And when you say magic, why do they feel magic?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:41:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Because I came from a family that you exchanged your body and your effort in exchange for money. And here I was like, &#8222;No, you just have to put the money in this account and let it grow.&#8221; And you exchanged time for money. And while you&#8217;re doing that go and figure out other career paths. I don&#8217;t have to work in the same way as my parents did to make money and to have money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When you put it that way, it does seem quite magical. It&#8217;s like, let me get this straight. I don&#8217;t have to go work long hours, sometimes overnight hours, not see my family, beat up my body work when I&#8217;m old or older. Instead, I can just be really aggressive when I&#8217;m young, make some tough choices, but I&#8217;m fine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:26)\u00a0I can actually live on less. I don&#8217;t need all that stuff. And then I just put it in there and let it compound for years and suddenly I never have to work again? Sign me up. Did it give you a sense of control?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Definitely. Control and safety.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Tell me about the safety part.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:42:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That I wouldn&#8217;t have to move around as much my family did. That I could create a safe and loving and stable home that I never had. And I did that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That is really tough to hear,\u00a0and it explains so much about Laura&#8217;s relationship with money. At 18, she discovered her parents had open credit in her name, total betrayal from the people who you&#8217;re supposed to be able to trust the most, and she was left with debt collectors and this residual fear around money.\u00a0So what do you do when that happens? A lot of people find ways to control it. And around that same time she found\u00a0FIRE.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:26)\u00a0What a perfect fit for someone who wants more control. In fact, it can even feel like magic. A system with rules and formulas.\u00a0A system where you can win.\u00a0A way to finally feel safe.\u00a0Now\u00a0most of us didn&#8217;t have our parents steal our identity, but identity theft is on the rise and the numbers are truly staggering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:43:47)\u00a0Last year alone, the FTC received over 6.4 million reports and more than 12.5 billion was lost to fraud.\u00a0You can&#8217;t stop every scam out there, but you can make yourself a smaller target.\u00a0That is why I personally use DeleteMe. They clear your info off of all those creepy sites that sell it, and they actually send you a report so you can stay totally up to date with what they have done. I can see exactly where they found my information online and proof that it&#8217;s been removed.\u00a0And if something strange ever pops up, I can talk to a real person on their team to get it removed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:23)\u00a0For someone like Laura, that means fewer spreadsheets,\u00a0fewer things to control.\u00a0You just sign up and that&#8217;s it.\u00a0DeleteMe works in the background, constantly scouring for your personal information. This is exactly why I\u00a0want to\u00a0help Laura and Cameron change their mindset and get over their fear of money. Let&#8217;s get back to the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When was the last time you took stock and appreciated how far you&#8217;ve come?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:44:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s something I&#8217;m working on. I&#8217;m working right now with someone on inner child healing. As you can see, it&#8217;s really hard for me to own my narrative about my childhood because it feels like things that were done to me that I had to survive and overcome. I want to get to a point where I can tell that story in a really positive way, and I&#8217;m not there yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I totally appreciate that. It&#8217;s hard. I can even see it in your answer to my question, when was the last time you appreciated it? And your answer was, &#8222;I&#8217;m working on it.&#8221; That&#8217;s code for someone who doesn&#8217;t appreciate their own progress. I know because that&#8217;s how I grew up. What&#8217;s next? What&#8217;s next? What&#8217;s next?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:36)\u00a0I&#8217;m not really thinking about it. What&#8217;s appreciating? That&#8217;s just a waste of time. Let&#8217;s get onto the next thing and it&#8217;s taken a lot. That&#8217;s exactly the answer I would&#8217;ve said before I met my wife. You work with a therapist?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:45:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I have worked with a traditional therapist, and I&#8217;ve been doing other things too. We&#8217;ve gone through couples therapy three times, working with someone who&#8217;s more focused on inner child healing. I&#8217;m very interested and enjoy spending time on different types of healing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. I think I understand more about why you have this approach with money and why your numbers look the way they do. Thank you for taking me behind the scenes I would&#8217;ve never known.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:25)\u00a0Cameron, can I ask you about how you were raised with money? What do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:46:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think my youth is very opposite from Laura&#8217;s story. I think my family was more upper class, I guess. I had stay-at-home mom. My dad worked&#8211; an executive&#8211; for big companies. He was doing sales, so he traveled all the time. We always had two cars growing up and one of them was a company car. Both my parents, but my dad especially loved spending money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:02)\u00a0So growing up it was just like, yeah, if you need this, buy it. I really didn&#8217;t think about money. I didn&#8217;t worry about money. They helped me with most of my college, student loans. And then my first job out of college, I also went into sales. I didn&#8217;t enjoy it. I wasn&#8217;t happy. Everything in that job was focused on money. It&#8217;s all just goals, money-oriented goals. Every month resets, and I was very stressed out. I wasn&#8217;t happy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:47:38)\u00a0I did that for maybe three, four years, and then I didn&#8217;t know what to do. I didn&#8217;t really have a plan. So I made the choice right around when we got married in 2016 to leave this sales job, which at the time I was the breadwinner between us, and we were relying on my income more than Laura&#8217;s. I changed to go to a very low hourly rate wage at something I&#8217;ve never done before. A very small company in the suburbs, and I still work there today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do you do for a living? What&#8217;s the job?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So it&#8217;s a gardening company. We grow and design organic vegetable gardens, mostly for residential homes, backyard gardens, school gardens, things like that. So when I started the job, I was like physically out in the gardens doing that. Now I basically manage all the operations, the day-to-day, hiring, schedule, client communications, all that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let me go back to&#8211; your income here is 63 or so approximately per year. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:48:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0How do you feel about that income that you have now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:49:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Echoing what Laura said earlier, it&#8217;s the most I ever made, especially in this job, so I feel really good that I&#8217;ve worked my way from what it was when I started here. But I still compare myself to peers and friends my age who are working other jobs at larger companies, whatever. And I find myself comparing what I think they make to what I make. And that&#8217;s still something I struggle with and plays a part in some of my avoidance with all this, because I feel like I&#8217;ve never really been successful at making money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:49:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can I make a quick correction? Looking at your numbers, your gross income is actually $84,000 a year, not 60 something. That&#8217;s your take home. Did you know that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:49:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. This is interesting. Can I ask, what did you think your income was if you had to guess?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If I had to guess, I probably would&#8217;ve said 75.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, so your income is almost $10,000 higher than you thought. How does that strike you? What do you feel hearing that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel that&#8217;s great. I feel happy. But it&#8217;s also that same where it&#8217;s just a number on a page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You don&#8217;t always feel any happier, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No. What is that going to do here or there?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I agree. If it was 95, would you feel any more happy or satisfied?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Probably not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:50:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are you guys starting to see this?\u00a0The number on a page is not\u00a0going to\u00a0change the way you feel about it. The way you feel about money is highly uncorrelated to the amount in your bank account.\u00a0Look, I made a accidental math mistake. I thought your income was 60. You agreed with me. Then I recalculated. Oh\u00a0(Bleep). It&#8217;s actually 84,000. Oh yeah. Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Zero change. Zero affect change. It means nothing to you. What are y&#8217;all noticing from this? Laura, you look like you&#8217;re thinking about something. Go ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I feel like I keep us living very poor. It wouldn&#8217;t matter how much our money grew, we are not allowed to spend anymore than we&#8217;re spending now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Would you say that you keep your family living small?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can you think of anyone else who kept their family living small?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Who?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0My family.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. How often do we hear it, people behaving the way they do with money, never connecting it to their family story and the habits and the attitudes that they grew up with? It literally doesn&#8217;t occur to them. Did it ever occur to you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. And it&#8217;s come up before in therapy when I don&#8217;t like who I am when I am this person. It&#8217;s like, oh, that is my mother talking. That is my dad talking. I know that I take on that persona when I&#8217;m getting really frustrated because I didn&#8217;t learn how to communicate at a young age like Cameron. And I have had to learn how to do that as a couple. I&#8217;m so glad we did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:17)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You&#8217;re telling me your immigrant parents didn&#8217;t teach you how to be verbally adept with your emotions?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:51:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I find that hard to believe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. That TV was always on. Who needs to talk if we&#8217;re watching TV?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s right. It&#8217;s quite interesting. It&#8217;s quite interesting to see these lessons passed down through generations, especially when the lessons that are passed down become less and less relevant due to changes in socioeconomic status.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:52:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. We were here because we survived. Survival skills are skills for a reason.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When do you get to move beyond surviving?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Probably now. Probably five years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm. Because if I made $228,000 a year and I had a loving family, one of the first things I would do would be to stop using the word survive. We&#8217;re past survival. That&#8217;s not a question for us anymore. I&#8217;m going to make sure I have enough saved up. I&#8217;m going to make sure that I create a culture in this family so that it&#8217;s not just me. It&#8217;s my partner as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:32)\u00a0We are partners in this venture, in this business of running a household together, and we are going to collectively decide how we are going to thrive. We&#8217;re not going to use the word survive. We&#8217;re not going to talk about it. That&#8217;s a given. That&#8217;s what our savings rate and our investments are for. If one of us gets hit by a bus, of course, we&#8217;re going to survive. I&#8217;m more interested in thriving and living a Rich Life. What would happen if you said something like that, Laura?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:53:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If I said that Cameron, would be like, &#8222;Finally. Great, let&#8217;s do it.&#8221; He&#8217;d be so happy for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:05)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Really?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes. I feel that in our marriage, in our relationship, he wants to have fun. He wants to have a good time. He wants to enjoy himself. And I&#8217;m over here stressing all the time. Fun is a future thing you can do if everything else gets taken care of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You agree with that characterization, Cameron?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, I do. Yeah. And it&#8217;s not like, &#8222;Hey, I&#8217;m just going to blow our money and go out to the bar.&#8221; But it is important mentally, whatever, that we take time for ourselves and go do things and loosen up a little.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:54:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I agree with what you&#8217;re saying, Cameron. I agree. Having fun is important. This is a marathon of life, and honestly, it&#8217;s more than a subsistence life. You&#8217;re both very, very fortunate to be in the situation you&#8217;re in, but I&#8217;m a little confused because, Cameron, you don&#8217;t seem particularly engaged with the finances in the family.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:08)\u00a0If I&#8217;m Laura and my partner doesn&#8217;t even know his income within $9,000, doesn&#8217;t know the household income, doesn&#8217;t know where the money&#8217;s going, basically it&#8217;s just like, &#8222;Hey, I just want an allowance, and then you do whatever you&#8217;re going to do?&#8221; I don&#8217;t really take him seriously when he talks about money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, that&#8217;s fair. And that&#8217;s some of the arguments we&#8217;ve had in the past&#8211; is if I&#8217;m saying, &#8222;Hey, loosen up, spend this.&#8221; She&#8217;s like, &#8222;Of course it&#8217;s easy for you to say. You don&#8217;t know what we have coming up. You don&#8217;t know any of this.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:35)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What is the role that each of you plays in the financial arrangement in your household? Laura, you are the what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would say I&#8217;m the parent. I&#8217;m the authoritarian. What I say goes. I set the rules and I make sure everyone&#8217;s following them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And what about for you, Cameron?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:55:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I&#8217;m the passenger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Are you the child?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I wouldn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s parent-child.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You do get an allowance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, but we talked through it. We talked about how much we think makes sense and what it should be. It wasn&#8217;t directly just, &#8222;Here&#8217;s this.&#8221; That part, there was a discussion about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay, so we have the authoritarian and the passenger. Would that be fair to say?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Does that work?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Good. I&#8217;m glad you both agree on that. That&#8217;s not a healthy dynamic at all. You could just see like it&#8217;s so many ways that this could go bad, worse. Laura gets hit by a bus. What happens now to the family? Cameron doesn&#8217;t really know what to do with the money. Cameron hasn&#8217;t been engaged with the money. You have a kid. That&#8217;s a big, big, big existential generational problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:56:58)\u00a0Or Laura becomes increasingly resentful or increasingly frantic and frenetic about money. Results in some really bad stuff happening. Resentment builds up into really bad stuff. Potential separation or mental health spiral because it&#8217;s taken on all this stuff and just spiraling. We already talked about food hoarding. Who knows? These are things to discuss with a therapist. You can see that it doesn&#8217;t&#8211; there&#8217;s not really rainbows at the end of that story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let me understand a little bit more about your jobs, because I think that&#8217;s a crucial piece of this. Laura, you mentioned you&#8217;re a software engineer or you work in software. Is that correct?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:37)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Do you like it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:57:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mostly yes, it&#8217;s very exciting. I think technology can be very creative and it&#8217;s always changing. I would like to work less, and I would like to be more aligned with a nonprofit, something that is really mission driven.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hold on, hold on. If you like your job, why do you want to retire in five years?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t want to work as much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You want work less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I want to work less, and I want to work in areas where I know I would likely be making a lot less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. That&#8217;s quite different than retiring in five years, the very goal that you&#8217;ve spent your adult life working towards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We want to coast by, so that we just have to cover our daily expenses without having to put money aside for retirement. So we&#8217;re front loading all of our retirement savings now, and then it could free us up to choose to work less or work in different industries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So you&#8217;re staying in this current job so that you can front load that, meaning invest a lot, and then eventually step to a different company, probably where you earn less, but you won&#8217;t have to invest at all or nearly as much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:58:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. And when you do that, if and when you step to a different company, taking lower pay, what will the effect be on Cameron&#8217;s career?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hopefully none. Hopefully he can work less too. That&#8217;s the goal, to not need to make as much and work as much to live off less. And we&#8217;ve set ourselves up really well for that. I think we both wish we had more time at home, more time with each other, more time with our kid. This is really stressful times to have a 4-year-old and be working two full-time jobs. Our relationship is like logistics. We&#8217;re just sharing a scheduling calendar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(00:59:38)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I hear you. That is stressful. Like you said, when you said our relationship is just logistics, that it&#8217;s not fun. It&#8217;s just like, who needs to be where, when? Who&#8217;s picking this person? What if the kid gets sick? What if this happens? So I can understand that you both want to have more flexibility. How do you think other couples do this, Laura?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think they do what everyone else does, which is save your 10% and spend your money now and hope you have enough in retirement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You don&#8217;t want to do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You want to invest max and then &#8222;coast&#8221; for the next 45, 50 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:24)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I want to know the money is there. I don&#8217;t want to hope I can retire someday. I&#8217;m actively working to coast, to not need to contribute to our retirement. So if I know the money&#8217;s there, I know we&#8217;ll be safe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cameron, how do you feel when it comes to work and earning money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:00:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I think I am in alignment with Laura that yeah, if we could get to a point where we&#8217;re working a little less, that would be great. I did have a year or two at my current job where I worked four days a week, and I thought that was such a sweet spot. I don&#8217;t think either of us are going to just not work, especially Laura.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:09)\u00a0She need to be productive. We want to be doing things. I think it&#8217;s fair to say that we would be making less money, obviously, if we&#8217;re working less hours and in a different industry, whatever it may be. So I&#8217;m in agreement that yes, I think we can work less, but there&#8217;ll always be something there that I think we can somewhat count on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Is there ever a time in this plan of yours where you can spend more?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Before we did the CSP, I would&#8217;ve said no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:01:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So we did the CSP, and we had two projections. We had been deciding&#8211; it took us a few years to decide do we want to have another child? And to me, that was a decision based in fear. Like, how can we afford another child? We would have to keep working for even longer, so it is scary to me to think about how we could afford that life when the only lifestyle I&#8217;d been working towards is coast by. So adding a second child would change that plan. So it had always been a decision out of fear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Do you see what&#8217;s happening right now? What was my question to you?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t even remember.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The question was, is there a time to spend more?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:02:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. When your entire life is guided by fear, you actually cannot even basically physically hear the question I ask. I think what just happened is you heard snippets. You heard a word, something like plan and future, and it&#8217;s almost like your brain is wearing goggles. It&#8217;s like garbled and you&#8217;re seeing it through these different lenses, and you heard, &#8222;Oh my God.&#8221; The future might involve a second child. A second child means a lot of money. Childcare is crazy. We got to figure this out. I&#8217;m not sure. And you just went down that path. And that is a microcosm or a tiny example of how you have been living your adult life when it comes to money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I heard spend more, and I&#8217;m like, &#8222;Hell no.&#8221; We can&#8217;t spend more. We have to save more only.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I thought when we were doing the CSP, after looking at the numbers, we both saw that and said to each other that we are making more than we ever have. And actually, this is more than we thought. And if we are going to do things like have another kid or go on trips and do all this time while we have kids that are living here with us, this is the time to do it. That at least came up during the process of doing the CSP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:03:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s pretty cool. Where did it go? Because that didn&#8217;t come up in the last question I just asked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So we ran the numbers. We can temporarily afford two kids in daycare. We&#8217;d feel a crunch for about one overlapping year as the 4-year-old needs one more year of preschool and then the other baby needs daycare like that. That double daycare year would be a lot. And then our 4-year-old would be a five-year-old who&#8217;s in public school and it&#8217;s free.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m not a parent, but that sounds tough for a year, no doubt, financially speaking. But one year in the course of a lifetime doesn&#8217;t sound like that much. What do you think? Am I being dismissive?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:44)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0One year in the course of a four-year plan to finally achieve something we&#8217;ve been working towards is a lot. That&#8217;s derailing the plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:04:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I\u00a0want to\u00a0quickly jump in because what I see here is more than just fear. It&#8217;s actually over complication.\u00a0Laura\u00a0and Cameron have built their entire financial life around tiny details. Do you see it? Spreadsheets with 30 tabs,\u00a0manually entering every purchase into YNAB,\u00a0debating numbers down to the penny. It looks like discipline,\u00a0it feels like discipline, but it&#8217;s really just avoidance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:19)\u00a0If you tell yourself you can&#8217;t move forward until you have the perfect number reconciled, then you never really have to move forward at all.\u00a0And those tiny details are irrelevant. They&#8217;re also keeping them stuck about big decisions like whether to grow their family. You&#8217;ll notice that the dynamic also reinforces this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:05:37)\u00a0Cameron never really had to learn about money since his parents took care of it. Then Laura.\u00a0He became the passenger.\u00a0When Laura became what she herself calls the authoritarian. Structurally, the way that they have set up their dynamic guarantees that they will stay stuck in these same patterns. Guys, this is why I always say fight for simplicity.\u00a0Because the more complicated your system gets, the smaller your life becomes.\u00a0Let me\u00a0try to help them make a change right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Interview)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Is this story serving you, Laura?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Then why are you stuck following it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know. If we had something that we knew we were working towards, this would be a lot easier. We&#8217;d know where the money was going and we&#8217;d be excited about it. But we don&#8217;t, and I spin and I ask for things. When Cameron says I&#8217;m a pendulum, that&#8217;s why he&#8217;s like, &#8222;Yeah, whatever. Whatever you say. One day you say we&#8217;re moving to Spain, and then one day you say we should, I don&#8217;t know, buy another property or start a business here.&#8221; I don&#8217;t know what I want, but I know I want something big, and I want it to be different, and I don&#8217;t want to keep doing what we&#8217;re doing now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You&#8217;re sure?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:06:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sure? You&#8217;re pretty good at it. You&#8217;re pretty good at saving a lot, minimizing expenses, getting the 1-dollar plums. Why would you want to give up the competence of saving money and walk into an area where you are incompetent? I&#8217;m not using that pejoratively, but people who don&#8217;t know how to spend money are literally incompetent. They&#8217;re not competent at it. Why would you want to do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:21)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Because I was 18, 20 when I made this goal, and it doesn&#8217;t actually fit the needs of our family now. If I were on my own, great, I would&#8217;ve achieved it already. I could do what I want. That&#8217;s not my life. We&#8217;ve got a kid. We want more for her. I don&#8217;t want her to hear these conversations that we&#8217;re having, like, that wasn&#8217;t on the list. We&#8217;re not getting it. No toys. Put that back down. That&#8217;s what she hears from us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0She hears that now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. This Coast FIRE plan of yours, Coast FI, can I take a look at it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:07:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. All right. Let me describe what I&#8217;m seeing here. So we have a spreadsheet. Coast FI calculator. And let me just read the inputs here.\u00a0They&#8217;re quite interesting. Current age is 35. Target retirement age is 67. Okay. Safe withdrawal rate,\u00a04%. Inflation adjusted growth rates,\u00a07%.\u00a0That&#8217;s 7% returns. Annual expense, 84,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:24)\u00a0Annual passive cash flow is zero.\u00a0FI\u00a0number or the number you need to be able to live off of is 2.1 million. Your Coast FI\u00a0number, which is how much money you need to have invested today to be able to reach your FI number is $240,000.\u00a0Okay, keep that on screen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Well, that&#8217;s the inputs. And then the next page is the projections.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:08:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hold on. All right. Just so we&#8217;re clear, it says you need 248,000. You have 335,000 invested.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Let&#8217;s go to the next sheet you were going to show me. Timeline calculator. Okay. What is all this\u00a0(Bleep)? God, this is confusing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Those inputs and then down here it is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What the\u00a0(Bleep)? What is this? Row 20. You&#8217;ve already reached Coast FI. What are we talking about?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If we only want $84,000 a year, which would be less than we have now. So it&#8217;s about how comfortable we would want to be in retirement, and then do we want to keep working? Will we keep working?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:09:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Just hold on a second. Okay, this is crazy. Take this off screen. So your FI number is, you could have $84,000 a year. Basically safe income. I&#8217;m skipping over a bunch of stuff, but basically you can make 84,000 off your investments. You spend $99,000 a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If we subtract your savings and your investments. That&#8217;s not that big of a difference, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:10)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0This whole conversation has felt very existential to me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s assuming we stay with one kid. We would want to have one more. Are we going to keep working or not working? Are we going to need to buy health insurance? Childcare would go down and health insurance would go way up if Cameron doesn&#8217;t have any at his place. I feel like I would have to keep working. It wouldn&#8217;t be part-time if we wanted health insurance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is this literally the conversation that I told you people have? They&#8217;re like, &#8222;First we got to save for the kids, then we got to save for coffee. Then one day we got to save for long-term healthcare insurance.&#8221; Is this not literally what I just talked about?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:10:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, so do you see what happens if you approach the world through this lens? Let&#8217;s keep worrying. Like Whack-a-Mole, we&#8217;ll just keep worrying about one thing after another. Why? Because it allows me&#8211; when you play Whack-a-Mole, you actually feel like you&#8217;re in control. One thing pops up, I can fix it. It&#8217;s a very transactional way to go through life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You make tiny wins along the way, but you actually lose the war.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:11)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I agree. We&#8217;re playing small, and I like that so far I&#8217;ve been able to control these little things, but now it&#8217;s real. Now what are we going to do? We&#8217;re going to hit this number that I&#8217;ve been working for over a decade towards. We&#8217;ve got this little girl, we&#8217;ve got this great family. Now what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Saying now we can enjoy it. I think we both somewhat feel this way, is that, I said before, there&#8217;s this window of time why we have our child, another one, where we talked about we want to travel. We want to show them the world. We want to spend time with them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:11:55)\u00a0That&#8217;s a limited amount of time. And that&#8217;s something that&#8217;s really important to us, is taking them places, going on trips, taking time away from work. I feel like that is one of the major goals. And I think you&#8217;re right. We look at it in these tiny, little&#8211; in two years we&#8217;ll be here and then the goal sticks keep getting moved back or something else pops up. And we never really feel like, okay, we&#8217;re there. Now let&#8217;s book this trip and go here and do this thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:27)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura, you must be well versed in the downsides of the FIRE community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What&#8217;s the number one warning or horror story that the FIRE community talks about besides running out of money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Oh, that&#8217;s the big one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s 90% of it. What&#8217;s the other 10%?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;d say more recently what I&#8217;ve been hearing is, so you retired. Now what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:55)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Exactly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:12:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0You never strengthen that muscle. You scrimp and save for so long. When do you stop doing&#8211; how do you stop doing it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Exactly. And only recently have they even started to talk about that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And I think it&#8217;s great, but I think that if you only start talking about something decades into it, meanwhile, other people have been honing that muscle for years and years and years, it&#8217;s very difficult to learn that skill. And in fact, you&#8217;re reinforced by a community that actually keeps you playing small.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:25)\u00a0Look at your life. You are living your life through a series of spreadsheet cells. You started a plan using a Coast FI plan however many years ago. 15 years ago, dutifully filled in these cells every day, updating every week, every month. Oh my gosh. But life is not lived in that linear of a way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:13:47)\u00a0And actually life is not lived in a spreadsheet. You can win at the spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet looks really nice. It&#8217;s really well done. It&#8217;s filled out well. I&#8217;m happy about that. I&#8217;m not joking. I actually am impressed that you have taken the time to be as diligent and as forward looking as you have, and in part because of the way you were raised.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:06)\u00a0That is what you have to do to put that attention and thoughtfulness into a spreadsheet. But I&#8217;m afraid that you have missed the point of a Rich Life. Because you can win at a spreadsheet and lose at life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:22)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:14:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0To me, when you talk about your kid or kids, when you talk about time that you have together, when you talk about taking a trip or going to a zoo or a museum, that gets me excited. And I go, &#8222;Talk to me about that.&#8221; I&#8217;ll help you figure out how to use the money to make that work. There&#8217;s 10 different ways you could do it, but this dogmatic approach to, I picked a spreadsheet when I was 18 and now I have to win at this spreadsheet, it&#8217;s actually closing the world off to what life is, and it&#8217;s forcing you to live in the confines of a spreadsheet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, which is why these numbers aren&#8217;t real to me. These are numbers I&#8217;ve been staring at and working towards for over 10 years, and my life isn&#8217;t any significantly different. This is the most we&#8217;ve ever made, but it&#8217;s also the most expenses we&#8217;ve ever had to have with the mortgage and childcare. It feels like we have not yet been able to enjoy our money. We got together. We were making pennies. We got married. I used all of his savings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Why don&#8217;t you allow yourself to enjoy your money?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s not what it&#8217;s for. It&#8217;s for the future. I really don&#8217;t even feel like the money I have can be spent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What would you need to ask in order to get clarity?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:15:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m going to ask, Cameron, what do you want us to spend our money on? If really we&#8217;re already here at Coast FI and we can pump the brakes on all of the retirement investing, what would we spend our money on?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:01)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0To me, I think it&#8217;s travel. You&#8217;ve talked for many years about, if your life went a different direction and you didn&#8217;t have kids and the job, whatever, you would be traveling the world. You want to show our daughter that stuff. So we have places, we&#8217;ve talked about where we want to go and things we want to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:21)\u00a0And again, it seems like it&#8217;s always like, oh, and next year we can do that. Two years we can do that. We can start doing that now. We can book some trips and plan, and that can be a goal still that we&#8217;re working towards, but it can be a real thing right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Where do you want to go?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well, we start with&#8211; we talked about Yellowstone as a big one. Start with that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:49)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0When do you want to go?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0This fall.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:16:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. That was awesome. Round of applause on that. That was so cool to watch. Cameron, you stepped up. You were like, &#8222;Hey, wait a minute. We&#8217;ve talked about this. We could do this. We don&#8217;t have to wait. We can do this now.&#8221; Laura, I love that you went back. &#8222;Okay, so where would we go?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:10)\u00a0You got specific, boom. Cameron had an answer. I love the answer. And Cameron, I don&#8217;t know if you caught it, but Laura&#8217;s response was like, &#8222;Wow.&#8221; It instantly grabbed her. And I love the push for more specificity. When? Fall. Okay. It&#8217;s that feeling of that chill you get in your brain when you and your partner are on the same page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:31)\u00a0It&#8217;s like, wow, we&#8217;re alive. We are a team. That&#8217;s pretty cool. Okay. Yellowstone is one. Again, I&#8217;m not here to tell you to spend more money. That&#8217;s not my job. I&#8217;m here to help you figure out how to live your Rich Life. Laura, what would you need answered in order to know how to do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:17:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would need you to do some planning and figure out what kind of trip that would be and how much it would cost. Are we flying there? Are we renting an Airstream and making a road trip, or is it a guided tour? What would we want, and how much would it cost?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I can do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:14)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cameron, what would you need in order to be an active participant in managing your finances?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:18:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Mm-hmm. That&#8217;s a good question. I think in the past when we tried to have a regulated sit down to go over this stuff, I would get I would get overwhelmed with the spreadsheets and filling this out, and mostly it was just watching Laura move numbers around, and it&#8217;s so hard for me to have the interest and to follow it. So having a clear, obvious goal that&#8217;s happening in six months or a year, whatever, and those choices are being felt pretty soon, that helps me for sure. It&#8217;s a more visible goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Laura, what do you notice in Cameron&#8217;s response? I saw the realization going through your eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I thought we had a clear, obvious goal, but that goal was a number on a spreadsheet that was my goal, and it was not his goal. And when we&#8217;re just talking about hitting a number, we&#8217;re not talking about what benefit we get in our life. What are we going to experience together that we are excited about? It was never the Coast FI goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Exactly. It was never. That&#8217;s the problem with so many FIRE plans, endless instrumentation on a freaking spreadsheet with a complete lack of focus on this. Look at my hand. This palm out, palm up. What do I get? I don&#8217;t care about a number. Most people don&#8217;t care about a number. Laura, you don&#8217;t even care about a number.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:19:50)\u00a0It&#8217;s driven you for 18 years, but you actually admitted you have no connection to it. It doesn&#8217;t even feel real to you. People in general are not emotionally moved by a number, not even the freaks on the most obscure FIRE subreddit, not even them. We can be much more moved by walking outside with our daughter and seeing a sunset and getting an ice cream cone. That can be more moving than literally having $5 million in a freaking spreadsheet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:20:19)\u00a0And what Cameron is saying, Cameron not being deep in the FIRE community, is like, &#8222;I don&#8217;t respond well to something that&#8217;s 40 years from now. I want to be able to take our daughter to the zoo or something like that. And I want us to be able to do something. And I want us to be able to do it this year. That would connect me.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:20:42)\u00a0Laura, I think if I were you, especially as the purported money person in a relationship, I would be looking at this moment with a sinking realization. Holy\u00a0(Bleep). I have not created a healthy culture of money in this household where my husband understands what the hell is going on with money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:21:05)\u00a0If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, he&#8217;s helpless with the finances, and that&#8217;s my fault, Laura. And secondly, this is perhaps even deeper. The only way I can create a healthy relationship with money in our household is for me to create a healthy relationship myself. If I do not have a healthy relationship with myself and with my relationship with money, then how can I create one with my husband in our house?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:21:34)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. It&#8217;s something we know. In other areas of my life, I&#8217;ve been working on it. I had a therapist as I was pregnant because I knew that I would have to be re-parenting myself as I raised a little girl. So I feel like this is the last big thing, but it&#8217;s probably the biggest one. We spend most of our day working and earning this money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:00)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What do I get? What do we get? Have you ever had a shared goal, a shared vision?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would say most of them have been mine. My goals that I make him achieve with me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:16)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Right. Is that a no? Sounds like a no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:20)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Small, like getting the house, working towards that. I would say that it is one of the major ones, but other than that, no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0We started this call. What do we want? We want a shared vision, a shared Rich Life that we can both be excited about because just hitting Coast FI is something I was excited about that didn&#8217;t really matter to him, and I&#8217;m not even that excited about it anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Is it time to go from one person having a solo goal to having a shared Rich Life vision?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:58)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:22:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. You want to do that right now? Okay, let&#8217;s do it. I&#8217;ll give you all 90 seconds, and you can write down anything that would make the next 10 years absolutely magical. Some of them can be, you would do them solo. You could do them together, husband and wife. You could bring your daughter along or any future children. Totally up to you. The next 10 years, what would make it magical? Go ahead. What was that like writing those things down?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:23:39)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It was nice. There are things I wrote that were floating in my head as ideas that I didn&#8217;t think I&#8217;d write, but I did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:23:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cool. Laura?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:23:50)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It was hard at first. The first 1, 2, 3 were hard, and it&#8217;s like, oh, we could do this and we could do that. It&#8217;s like everything else. It&#8217;s hard to do it. It&#8217;s like setting a writing goal. It&#8217;s hard to write that first post or that first chapter. It&#8217;s like you got to keep going to do the thing. To have energy to do the thing, you need to do the thing. We&#8217;ve never invested energy in thinking about how money could be fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:24:18)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. Can we compare notes now? I would like for each of you to share one thing, and I would like the other person to get excited and curious about it. That&#8217;s how we approach this. Go ahead, Laura. You start with the first one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:24:33)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I want to live in either Mexico or Spain and both of us take Spanish language classes, and\u00a0(Bleep)\u00a0too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:24:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I definitely want to take Spanish lessons. That&#8217;s something we&#8217;ve talked about. And I&#8217;m open to living in Spain or Mexico. I did have Spanish lessons on here. I want to visit Japan with you and\u00a0(Bleep).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:24:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I want to go back there with you. I think you would love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:02)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:03)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hold on. Get more curious. Where, when? What do you want to eat? Get into it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:08)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:09)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What would you want to eat when we&#8217;re there?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Definitely sushi, ramen. I want to try it all. And where to go, I don&#8217;t know. I just want to go Tokyo. There&#8217;s so much, but I definitely want to go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would want to take you to Kyoto. When I was there I thought you would really like it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:30)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. And our daughter loves Japanese food, so we know she will enjoy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:36)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I wrote living closer to your parents.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. And I think that&#8217;s another one. Where? What is closer?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know how close I would want to live, but closer than we are now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:25:51)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Well, maybe we say within three hours or less. Yeah. I wrote that I want to open a business with you in the next 10 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What kind?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:07)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I&#8217;m not sure. I think I lean towards restaurant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0What will we sell?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:15)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Sandwiches or Mexican food, like street food. Something casual, lunch-based kind of food.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can I just ask, Laura? I noticed the tears. Are these happy tears?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:26)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It&#8217;s something we&#8217;ve talked about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:28)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0But just in general, as you&#8217;re hearing this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:31)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. At first I thought it was tears because you understand the margins of a restaurant. But then I&#8217;m&#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:40)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a075% close in the first year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:43)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. All right. Keep going.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Was I next?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:26:47)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would want to truly take a couple of years off. Just not work. It would be great to do that if we had another child and just take those first two years off like we know now how hard that time was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:04)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. I think that&#8217;s a great goal. I think that would help us with the little one and help you. And I think we can do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:19)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Maybe we pair that with living closer to your parents for a short amount of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:23)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah. You&#8217;re right. That&#8217;s a good idea.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:25)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Can I pause you here? What&#8217;s this feeling like right now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Possibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:32)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0And combining. This is another thing, is we&#8217;ve talked about all these things at different times here and there, but talking about them all in one place, like what just happened is like, you want to do this? Oh, that pairs well with this other one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:27:45)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That was really cool. Oh, we could take two years off and live closer to their parents. You&#8217;re starting to see these synergies, these opportunities that were previously just unconnected satellite ideas. It&#8217;s really, really powerful and beautiful. Laura, if you weren&#8217;t afraid, what would you do next?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:28:06)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I would quit my job. Just trust the Coast FI number, like, okay, I did it. I don&#8217;t need this money anymore. We could live off of Cameron&#8217;s income. I would be home with my daughter. We wouldn&#8217;t have to be worried about paying for daycare. Have another kid, and maybe another one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:28:29)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s the right financial decision or not, but I know that that is a very useful guideline to start viewing the world through. Is it so polar opposite of how you currently do it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:28:41)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:28:42)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Cameron, you need to get involved with the money right now. And I know that it&#8217;s been challenging because even for me, it&#8217;s overwhelming to listen to some of the spinning that happens and look at these spreadsheets. It&#8217;s a lot. In some ways my money situation is simpler than yours, and that shouldn&#8217;t be the case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:29:03)\u00a0Your money situation should be infinitely simpler than mine. But I need both of you to be involved if you want to be able to escape this trap of the spreadsheet. That means Cameron, you probably need to&#8211;\u00a0have you read either of my books? You probably need to.\u00a0You probably need to to be able to connect with Laura and speak the language she&#8217;s speaking.\u00a0A lot of what&#8217;s really being communicated here is loneliness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:29:29)\u00a0It&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t feel safe. I don&#8217;t feel like I have anybody looking out for me. I need to do this all on my own. So give me every burden. I&#8217;ll plug it into this spreadsheet, and I will live smaller and smaller and smaller. Laura doesn&#8217;t say that, but that&#8217;s what&#8217;s being communicated. Laura, is that true?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:29:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Yeah, I&#8217;ve had to do everything alone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:29:52)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0So Cameron, one of the best ways to combat that is to become her partner, and that means start off&#8211; you have a structured approach here. You take one, take both of these books. Read them. Have a book discussion with her. Host it. And ask her questions. She&#8217;ll love&#8211; optimizers love to talk about their numbers and their knowledge and all that stuff, but at the same time, you&#8217;re actually going to be becoming competent with money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:30:17)\u00a0And you may discover that she actually has made a couple of decisions you don&#8217;t agree with. I would love that. My wife has challenged me with some of the decisions I&#8217;ve made. She runs our internal analysis that we do every quarter. It&#8217;s awesome. That would be amazing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:30:34)\u00a0Then the two of you can together craft your vision of a Rich Life. This is the kind of thing that you can actually use money and feel really good about it. It&#8217;s as small as an art class, as big as an international multi-generational family trip. It&#8217;s so cool. As for the job, those are bigger discussions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:30:57)\u00a0Yes, you got to be able to look at the numbers. And Cameron, you&#8217;ll be able to work those numbers up yourself, and both of you can talk about them. But also you have to decide like, what do we want in our life? What&#8217;s important now? What&#8217;s important later? Let&#8217;s start with the vision first. The money can come later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:31:13)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Okay. Yeah. I recognize that you&#8217;ve been doing this on your own and it&#8217;s time for me to step up. I think looking at it a bit from a real goal is helpful to me and having us start with these are the things we really want is also helpful. But I need to do my part. So yeah, that&#8217;s a good starting point, the book, and discussing it. And maybe starting afresh from building this out using a different form or a different version of a spreadsheet or something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:31:48)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I want to say thank you to Cameron. I want us to do this together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:31:54)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Me too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:31:56)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0That&#8217;s awesome. I love that. You two are a team. It&#8217;s so obvious. You really are. You two light up when you talk about your families and being able to travel, being able to have a vision, maybe future kids. It&#8217;s really quite lovely. Just a couple of pieces of feedback I want to share with y&#8217;all. Cameron and I already mentioned you would lead a book club with one or both of these books.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:32:21)\u00a0I would probably start with Money for Couples because there&#8217;s a lot of dreaming in it. There&#8217;s a lot of recalibration. Who are each of you in your relationship with money, and who do you want to be? So you can lead that discussion? And I&#8217;m sure Laura will come and participate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:32:40)\u00a0Laura, if I were you, candidly I would unsubscribe from all of the FIRE related stuff that I&#8217;m in. I actually don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s serving you anymore. The spreadsheets, the subreddits, the email reminders that you get, you know it. You already know that stuff like the back of your hand. It&#8217;s not going away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:32:58)\u00a0But I would start looking at what is your future. Obviously, I think my material&#8217;s really helpful. I think there&#8217;s a lot of great material out there. But to focus on the future and deciding what your Rich Life is. As you two start to create a vision, I think you&#8217;re going to discover a totally fresh way of looking at these big discussions that have consumed you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:33:19)\u00a0Questions about where are you going to work? Is one person going to take a step back or pause working for a while? Should we have a second child or maybe more? Those conversations, it feels like you&#8217;ve been running, \u200arunning, \u200arunning. Talking about them. I think those are still very important conversations to have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:33:36)\u00a0But it&#8217;s almost like you&#8217;re going to approach eating chicken, the same chicken you&#8217;ve had, but it&#8217;s going to have different spices. It&#8217;s going to taste different. It&#8217;s going to be more engaging and rewarding to talk about jobs. Because it&#8217;s not like you should do this. I don&#8217;t know about that. It&#8217;s going to be like, oh, we have a vision together. Let&#8217;s figure out how the pieces of our life fit in there. That is what I want for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Narration)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:33:59)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I\u00a0want to\u00a0give a huge thank you to Laura and Cameron for speaking with me today and for being so open. We&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0get to their follow-ups in just a minute. And honestly, they surprised me. The truth is, people who have trained themselves to never spend almost never change. They think they want to.\u00a0They may even come to me and ask for help.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:34:17)\u00a0But when it comes down to making decisions to actually spend more money, they don&#8217;t. What they often do is just wrap their inability to spend in a coat of virtue. Oh, I don&#8217;t need that nice car. I&#8217;m simple. I don&#8217;t need that dinner out. I&#8217;m practical. I don&#8217;t need that fancy wine or even to get a new jacket.\u00a0Why would I need that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:34:39)\u00a0They claim they want to spend more, but when it comes down to actually doing it, they usually change nothing. And that is because of their identity. They have created an identity, almost a prison in their own head that they could simply walk right outside of,\u00a0but it&#8217;s hard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:34:59)\u00a0I will say that by the end of our conversation, something shifted,\u00a0maybe.\u00a0Cameron leaned in. He got engaged for the first time, they were able to dream about something as it relates to their\u00a0Rich Life. Hearing them talk about it gave me hope. Maybe they can make some changes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:35:14)\u00a0The real shift is starting small. Take the trip,\u00a0like the Yellowstone trip.\u00a0And don&#8217;t overcomplicate it.\u00a0Try something simple. Start to feel good. Realize it&#8217;s not\u00a0going to\u00a0compromise your retirement, and then keep going. I also\u00a0want to\u00a0thank this episode sponsor DeleteMe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:35:31)\u00a0For people like Laura who&#8217;ve lived through financial betrayal and still carry that fear,\u00a0DeleteMe offers peace of mind.\u00a0It&#8217;s one small way to take back control and to protect yourself.\u00a0If you use DeleteMe, which I personally use, you&#8217;ll get 20% off all consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com\/ramit and use promo code\u00a0RAMIT\u00a0at checkout.\u00a0Now let&#8217;s listen to their follow-ups.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:35:57)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0My biggest takeaway was realizing with your help that we&#8217;ve already hit\u00a0Coast FI, which was this big goal that I set I&#8217;d been trying to achieve. And I&#8217;d been obsessing over tiny details in that spreadsheet for a long time, but I had never let myself celebrate\u00a0that milestone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:36:15)\u00a0And if I truly believe in the math of\u00a0Coast\u00a0FI,\u00a0then I don&#8217;t need to keep contributing to my retirement right now. I can use that money to buy back time with my family, which is most important to me. So as a result of our conversation, for the first time in 15 years, I dropped my retirement contributions\u00a0to zero,\u00a0and that was terrifying.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:36:41)\u00a0So my immediate next steps are building up our emergency fund and saving for a car. And that should take probably eight months. Another shift that I&#8217;m doing is\u00a0instead of having conversations that are really stuck in the short-term, like arguing about what&#8217;s\u00a0going to\u00a0happen in the next year, like car and daycare expenses, you helped us zoom out and frame, what could we do in the next 10 years that would be wildly exciting and fun?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:37:15)\u00a0And we&#8217;ve never been excited about our money.\u00a0It&#8217;s just been a chore. I&#8217;m also reclaiming more time. I cut a weekend commitment, and I&#8217;m using grocery delivery only\u00a0and just doing those two things. This past weekend, I finally enjoyed slow mornings with my family instead of hours at the grocery store.\u00a0So these are small changes, but this is time that I&#8217;m reclaiming,\u00a0and it feels amazing to spend that with my family. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:37:53)\u00a0<\/span><b>Cameron:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Biggest surprise,\u00a0that I&#8217;ve also been living with this survival mindset for years. I think I was so used to it. I didn&#8217;t realize it. And by being absent from the financial discussions, I&#8217;m leaving Laura to figure all this out alone, and I am allowing the survival mindset that she&#8217;s had for most of her life to run our family.\u00a0And that&#8217;s really not something after going through the call that I think we need to do anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:38:26)\u00a0We can afford all the things we want to do. The time is now to do them. So we need to think big,\u00a0stop getting stuck in the day to day minutiae,\u00a0and actually do these things.\u00a0Changes, I&#8217;m decided to work four days a week during the slow time at my company to give Laura and I a chance to be together and,\u00a0again, start doing the stuff we talked about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:38:53)\u00a0And then being a part of the financial discussions\u00a0as we have them and really trying to keep the focus on the big picture,\u00a0the goals that we have over the next 6, 12, 18 months, and again, not the day-to-day transactions. So thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:39:12)\u00a0<\/span><b>Laura:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Hi, Ramit.\u00a0This is Laura. It&#8217;s been three weeks since our call with you,\u00a0and something that has really stuck with me from our call was talking about how much fun we could possibly have with our time and money. So last weekend, it was a beautiful Sunday,\u00a0and we each had plans to be out of the house.\u00a0It was like a logistical nightmare, and I asked,\u00a0&#8222;Can we just cancel all of our plans today?\u00a0What would be the most fun that we could have right now as a family?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:39:44)\u00a0And within a couple minutes we decided, wait, we&#8217;re\u00a0going to\u00a0go to an amusement park. So we canceled all our plans, took our kid to\u00a0Six\u00a0Legs, and she got on every rollercoaster that she was tall enough to ride. And we had\u00a0a really good time.\u00a0And we would not have been so spontaneous without asking ourselves that question and giving ourselves permission to use our money to do something really fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:40:07)\u00a0Right now we&#8217;re in a cabin in Georgia, and we took a road trip down here,\u00a0and we stopped. We made an excursion out of it. We got last minute tickets to a cave to see an underwater lake. So much fun. We are creating beautiful memories for our daughter. And even while we&#8217;re here on our trip, we&#8217;re asking every day like,\u00a0&#8222;What&#8217;s the most fun we could have today?\u00a0What is something we could do that would be really memorable and enjoyable for the whole family?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:40:35)\u00a0So thank you for sharing that positive mindset and really simple question that we can ask ourselves\u00a0because\u00a0it&#8217;s working,\u00a0and it&#8217;s been amazing. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(01:40:46)\u00a0<\/span><b>Ramit:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0If you like this video, check out another one of my favorites right here.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\nn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\nif(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\nn.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\nt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);\ns.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\nfbq('init', '259290718675278');\nfbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com\/226-laura-cameron\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=226-laura-cameron\"> Nuoroda \u012f informacijos \u0161altin\u012f <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laura (34) and Cameron (38) earn over $200,000 a year and save thousands each month, yet every decision feels like a crisis.\u00a0 Laura, a first-generation Mexican American, grew up in financial chaos and now enforces strict rules, from tracking every purchase in YNAB to keeping Cameron on an allowance. Her dream is to hit Coast [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4406,4408,4190,4407,3968,4275],"class_list":["post-2257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sekmes-istorijos","tag-chasing","tag-enjoy","tag-episode","tag-fire","tag-life","tag-shes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sekmesreceptas.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}