"We Spend 139% of Our Income": A Couple Near Retirement Confronts Their Numbers and Their Adult Children

Overview

On this episode of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi talks with Mary, 57, and Harry, 62. They spend more than they earn every month and still regularly support their adult children. The central question is whether a couple this close to retirement, with almost no cash cushion, can change fast enough to avoid serious trouble. Sethi's position is blunt: small trims will not be enough. Harry needs to earn much more, the couple should seriously consider selling their house and renting, and Mary in particular has to stop acting as the family's ATM. Sethi also argues that none of the numbers will matter unless the couple changes how they talk to each other about money.

28 min read

The Numbers Up Front

Sethi opens with the couple's Conscious Spending Plan (CSP). They have about $476,000 in assets (mainly their home and a car), roughly $499,000 in investments, about $3,000 in savings, and around $435,000 in debt, for a net worth of about $542,000. The figure Sethi calls "the ball game" is fixed costs: 139% of their income. They spend far more than they bring in every month. With $3,000 in savings, both of them estimated they could last about two weeks if their income stopped.

Sethi calls it "an extremely dangerous situation." Several factors combine: they overspend, they have less than $5,000 in cash, and they are in their 50s and 60s. With little time left before retirement, Sethi says the changes have to be large and immediate. He also credits them for coming on the show at all, since "burying your head in the sand is not a strategy."

Adult Children, Broken Trust, and an Income Imbalance

Sethi reads from Mary's application, which Harry had not seen. She wrote that their biggest challenge is "a combination of adult children, broken financial trust, and a severe income imbalance," and that most of the strain comes from her children, though his have contributed at times. Harry says he agrees completely: "We've helped them. Now, we really need to help ourselves."

Mary describes how overwhelmed she felt when she wrote it. They had given one of her children roughly $20,000–$30,000, and the money came from their home equity line of credit, so it added substantially to their debt. Harry's income is inconsistent, which makes the monthly budget hard to manage, and Mary handles all the finances. She says money is on her mind almost every day: when she wakes up, at work, and at night. She is angry at herself for her part in the debt and keeps "maneuvering figures around." She insists they don't live above their means. They rarely eat out or buy clothes, and Harry drives a 2007 Subaru "held together with duct tape and zip ties." She says she doesn't know what else to cut. Her own diagnosis is that both of them made "very poor choices," especially in how they used the HELOC.

The Secret Credit Card Debt

The breach of trust came about a year before the recording. Mary remembers the number as $50,000. Harry corrects it to $43,000 and explains that COVID hit him hard and he ran up debt across several credit cards over time. The charges were for "just living," including flights back to the UK, with only minimal help from what he was earning. He says he decided to tell her after seeing Mary struggle with her side of the debt, and that he had to be "brave enough" to do it.

Mary recalls him saying he needed to talk. They went outside and sat in rocking chairs under the trees, and her first thought was that he was about to confess an affair. She felt shock at the amount but was not entirely surprised. She says she had never been able to get a straight answer from him about money. She didn't yell. She told him to research every option, from bankruptcy to debt consolidation. A debt consolidation company advised him against bankruptcy and got the balance down to about $21,000. At the time of recording he was at about $18,000.

Mary's main point is that many of the decisions she made during that period were based on an incomplete picture of their finances, and that dug them into a bigger hole.

A Blended Family of Seven

The couple have been together about 16 years. They bought a house together in 2014, which they jokingly call being "married in a bank," and they are now legally married. They have seven adult children between them. Harry has three sons in the UK and one in the U.S. Mary has two sons, one in Australia and one nearby, plus a daughter. There are five grandchildren with another on the way, and they are fostering a grandson who is about five months old.

Both say money is the thing they argue about most. When they argue about the kids, money is usually the underlying issue. Mary admits she alternates between trying to tackle the problem and ignoring it for long stretches. As a couple, they talk "but we don't get anywhere." The house is their biggest expense, and Mary says it stares them in the face. She adds that selling it would make her feel like a failure, and that she already feels like one: "I worked really hard to get where I'm at and then I made stupid decisions about helping my kids out."

Harry says he felt a huge sense of relief after confessing the debt. He now wants them to "stop the bleeding" and take care of themselves before anyone else. He works in sports coaching and is slowly building a private coaching business, which he says is bringing in more money.

The Chaser and the Avoider

Sethi asks them to re-enact a recent tense conversation. Mary plays her usual role and tells Harry he needs to make more money, go after clients more aggressively, and charge more. Harry replies calmly that he understands. Sethi doesn't believe it: "There's not a single sentence of combativeness in this."

A more telling example turns out to be money for Mary's son. Mary tells Harry she gave her son $80 for gas because he is coming to fix Harry's car. Harry just says "okay." Harry explains that from the start he said they couldn't afford to support the kids. He says the total is now over $30,000. But he felt he couldn't push back, because he was still hiding his own debt at the time: "I've put us in debt... I should have said there and then... I wasn't brave enough." Mary admits she would have given the money anyway. She justifies it with the granddaughter involved and her fear that if her son lost his car, he couldn't work or keep access to his daughter, and neither could they. "I'm making decisions based on emotion." She has recently started therapy to learn how to say no.

Asked about their roles, Mary calls herself "the aggressor" when it comes to earning and "the sole decider" when it comes to spending on her son. Harry says he "just laid down and took what was coming," out of guilt. Sethi's interpretation is that both are approaching the conversation in a self-centered way. Mary shows up with an outcome she has already decided on. Harry just wants the uncomfortable conversation to end. Sethi calls it a chaser–avoider dynamic and says "you can't be a team when you have this dynamic. It doesn't matter what the numbers look like."

The same pattern shows up in how they filled out the CSP. Mary did it alone and occasionally asked Harry for a number. He says he didn't even know when she was working on it and felt left out. She admits she probably never invited him, because "it's easier if I do it." Sethi describes the loop. Mary wants control, so she manages the money, "by the way, she's not particularly good at it." Harry feels guilty about his secret spending, so he defers to her. Mary then feels alone, keeps managing poorly, and can't say no to anyone. The cycle "builds on itself."

Reading the Spending Plan

The couple's combined gross income is about $7,850 a month, around $94,000 a year. With fixed costs at 139%, Mary understands immediately: "We are spending more than we make." Sethi says that is why she feels anxious and why they are running out of money.

The plan shows 8% going to investments and 14% to savings. Mary says money moves into savings automatically, but then she pulls it back out to cover the kids, which is why the balance is only $3,000. Guilt-free spending came out at negative 61%, meaning they overspend by at least $3,000 a month.

Mary says it sometimes doesn't feel that bad. In December they refinanced, rolling the HELOC, a car loan, and their credit card debt into the mortgage. Now she can pay off the credit cards each month. But in reality, she says, roughly another $100,000 was added to the mortgage, and she feels they will never pay it off. Sethi replies, "You probably won't... Not the way you treat money today." Mary also says the 30-year mortgage frightens her, because they would still be paying it in their 80s. Harry says what worries him most is being locked into the house.

"What Happens If Nothing Changes?"

Mary answers first: "destitute, homeless... just miserable and looking forward to death." Harry predicts they would have nothing within about a year. Sethi rejects both answers as hyperbole that avoids reality, and calls it "actually disrespectful" given what they own. He does simple math. It costs them about $7,000 a month to keep the lights on, roughly $90,000–$100,000 a year. With about $500,000 invested, they could theoretically live off investments alone for at least five years. He stresses he would never recommend that, calling it "extremely dumb," but he wants them working from real numbers.

Harry also floats the idea of turning one dollar into two or five. Sethi says there is no magic way to quintuple money at their age. That would work if they were 25 and left it in the market.

When Mary answers more concretely, her prediction is more sober. They would keep not making ends meet. Things would get stressful and then worse as retirement cuts her income, health costs rise, Harry's car needs replacing, and old appliances fail. Sethi then asks what she would do if, a few years from now, a child called needing $10,000 for a car repair. She says she would say no, but would probably then try to find $5,000, or use savings or a credit card. She says she hopes therapy would help her refuse. Asked who comes first, she answers: "My kids."

Mary's Money Story: Three Generations of Overspending

Mary grew up in Colorado. Her father, from Cuba, worked in international sales and traveled often, and her mother mostly stayed home. Her mother spent a lot while he was away, and they had serious fights about it when he returned. Her father died a couple of years ago. Mary says her mother is still "awful" with money. For example, she spent over $300 on plants on her third trip to a garden center, and she spends heavily on her dog. Mary expects her to run out of money. Her mother grew up in a well-to-do family north of Chicago, where her father would hand her his credit card to go shopping in the city.

Sethi points out the pattern. Her mother overspends, Mary overspends, and Mary agrees her kids do too. That's three generations. Mary says she had noticed it in her mother and her children but never saw herself in it until now. Visibly emotional, she describes a sense of entitlement that comes after long stretches of restraint: "I work so hard. Why can't I?" She adds that her mother is also generous with others, maybe too generous, and she recognizes that in herself as well.

The emotional core is her time as a single mother. She waited tables, worked two jobs, and put herself through school. The electricity was sometimes cut off, the family crammed into small apartments, and they became "the poor family in the better neighborhood." No vacations, thrift-store clothes. Sethi keeps asking "so what?" until Mary arrives at the real answer: it was embarrassing, for them and for her.

Sethi offers his own upbringing as a contrast. His parents were immigrants from India, and the family was middle class with few vacations and no cool shoes. The family story was that they would have less stuff than others but loved each other and worked hard. Looking back, he says he is glad he had that adversity. Mary says her kids have said they appreciate that not everything was handed to them, though she admits she would have handed it to them if she could. Sethi says she has chosen a story in which she must "live in penance for the rest of my life... Please take it all." He calls that disempowering for her, for her children, and for Harry. Mary agrees there is a lot of guilt and says, "I enable my children, especially my one child."

Speaking to the audience, Sethi says Mary seems to be trying to atone for something and can never even get back to neutral. He shares that he struggled with math starting in seventh grade. His mother could tell his grade from how low his head hung walking to the car. He chooses to remember that he worked hard and learned it wasn't his strength. He hopes Mary can tell her own story differently: she was a single mom, it was hard, and she did her best.

Harry's Background and the Missing Information

Harry grew up in a working-class family in the UK. His father was a coal miner who was careful with money. He didn't go to the pub like other miners, and he saved to buy a house outside the mining community, with orchards. From age 10, Harry spent school holidays picking potatoes on local farms and was "taught to graft." He earned good money for years. Around the time he and Mary bought the house together, he started drinking heavily and stopped working hard. He is now six years sober. The drinking left him "very insular and isolated," and during that time he started using credit cards without telling Mary.

He then mentions money in England, a trust and inheritance he says will be worth about $360,000 when it matures at 68, when it rolls into his UK pension. He says he is ten years short of a full UK pension. Asked whether it's in the CSP, Harry says he wasn't involved, so probably not. Mary thinks it is. When they try to break down the $499,000 in investments, Mary estimates she has at least $250,000 and assumes the rest must be Harry's. She admits she has no idea what she entered or why.

Sethi uses this to describe a pattern he says he sees constantly. One partner is uninvolved. The other spends hours on spreadsheets and systems, carries all the anxiety, and still can't answer basic questions. He tells them this dynamic is "not acceptable." If Harry's money is included, the picture is actually worse, because it means Mary has only around $250,000 after a whole career. She says she started saving for retirement late and has emptied her retirement account before. She concludes she is in "avoidance mode," even though she worries all the time. Sethi says the worry has become a familiar friend that she mistakes for responsibility, while she keeps writing $25,000 checks.

When Mary says she isn't supposed to cry because it's embarrassing, Sethi pushes back. Crying is honest, and coming on the show is bold. He says he doesn't know which story is "right," but since he gets to choose, he chooses the empowering one.

Role Reversal: Giving Advice to Themselves

Mary says they parent their adult children with guilt, which brings chaos into their lives. She wants peace, but when asked what she would do to get it, she says she wants to say "anything," then admits she would keep helping her children. Neither of them can remember the last time she said no. Harry tells her the kids won't love her less and that she has "done more than enough for five families."

Sethi then tries what he calls inoculation theory. He describes a 1980s approach in which kids role-played refusing cigarettes so they would know what to say when real peer pressure came. He plays a version of their own situation: he and his wife are near retirement, with a big mortgage, debt on the house, inconsistent income, five adult kids they keep rescuing, and constant fighting. He asks what they would advise.

Their advice comes easily. Mary tells him to let the kids stand on their own feet and help them find solutions rather than fixing things for them. When Sethi, in character, says he'd give them "every last cent," she replies that a parent helps children learn to navigate the world. Harry advises sitting the wife down "with a cup of tea," repeating the conversation daily, and helping the children with physical help like babysitting or painting some doors. What they can't do, he says, is "pay for a decorator to come around and paint the house." Sethi is stunned. Mary says Harry already says this to her. Harry says he "just read my own script."

Sethi then asks Mary to apply it to herself. For a broken stove, she can now say she would help brainstorm but can't help financially. She admits the harder case is a text like "I have to go pick up my daughter. Can you give me some gas money?" Sethi says no one in his life would text him that way, and Mary says, "I'm an ATM." Harry then tells a story from the drive to the recording. Her 36-year-old son was watching their grandson at their house, forgot the formula, and said he didn't have enough gas to go home and come back, so they gave him money to buy formula.

Sethi describes a scenario he says is familiar: parents in their 80s with no money, and a responsible sibling warning that another sibling "hasn't had a job in 45 years." Both Mary and Harry say that is essentially their story. Sethi says the only acceptable answer to whether they will change is "I'll do anything." He sends them outside for five minutes. He warns that change means no more money for the kids, a written list of what they can offer (such as babysitting twice a week), what they will no longer do, and clear consequences for pushing. He calls that the easy part, before the numbers.

After the Break: Sharing Control

Harry says his takeaway is that they don't have to prove their love and can control how they help. Mary says she hated seeing her son portrayed as a selfish loser. She says he works hard, helps them often, and has faced many personal crises. She realized she made herself the ATM, "that's on me. That's not on him." They agree to focus on themselves and help without enabling.

Mary says she needs "less control." Sethi reframes it as sharing control. Harry will own some numbers, she will own others, and they will learn together. Sethi warns that starting from "I need to give up control" means "you've already lost." He compares it to Harry's soccer players: a team that takes the field thinking it has to win or it's worthless isn't having fun and isn't playing as a team. Mary says she feels excited and afraid, and Harry says he is "totally up for it." Sethi says that at their age, the time for "trying" is over. They need a plan executed at a near-flawless level.

Cutting Fixed Costs, Line by Line

The target is fixed costs of roughly 60%. When Mary tries to skip the small items, such as $135 a month in subscriptions, because they "won't really help," Sethi says she has skipped an important lesson. Couples who spend 15 minutes debating a $20 phone cut realize they have been focusing on the wrong things. He tells her to trust the process and not be "too smart for your own good."

The cuts come in sequence:

Miscellaneous: The CSP automatically adds 15% for irregular costs, which came to $957. Sethi says a couple in their situation can't afford that. They set it at $200, and fixed costs fall to 125%.
Phone: Harry says the $100 bill can drop to $80 by cutting roaming and removing Mary's son, Stephen, from the family plan. Sethi cares less about the $20 than about who has the conversation, and says it should be Mary.
Groceries: They cut spending from $900 to $600. Harry takes over the shopping, going twice a month at $300 per trip. Mary hates grocery shopping.
Clothes: The $50 line goes to zero.
Subscriptions: Only Netflix stays, at $20.

Sethi leaves car payments and medications alone. After these changes, fixed costs are still around 116%, and the mortgage is the next obvious target.

The Text Message

Mary drafts the message to her son on camera. Sethi pushes her to frame it as a decision the couple made, not something happening to them. She writes that they have made a decision and are making drastic changes, that they will keep him on the plan for another month, and that after that they will not pay for the phone. She adds "We love you." She sends it.

Afterward she tears up. She explains that her son is trying not to lose his daughter or his house, and covering the phone felt like "such a little thing." Sethi compares it to putting on glasses in the morning, something adults do without worrying. He argues that by stepping in constantly, she has treated her son as frail, and people treated as weak become weak. He warns that when you change a relationship, the other person will try to pull you back, and that is when the couple needs to act as a unit.

Harry's Income and the Case for Renting

Before touching the mortgage, Mary suggests Harry can earn more. His gross income is listed as $1,500 a month. Sethi says he needs at least $5,000 a month from something "stable and predictable," not just the coaching business. Harry says his hours with the parks and recreation sports department rise through summer and fall. Mary suggests he ask for a full-time role, since the department has just acquired new land. Harry commits to hitting $5,000 through one or more jobs. Sethi estimates his take-home pay at about $3,850, and fixed costs drop to 75%. Harry says, "That's on me. Make it happen." Sethi praises Mary for raising the income issue without blame. Mary says her higher-education salary won't grow much, and caring for a baby limits her time for side work.

With the new income, the mortgage is about 24% of income, or roughly 31% with all housing costs. Sethi says that isn't crazy on its own, but it is a problem for a couple near retirement without enough saved. Selling might net about $90,000 after expenses. The couple first estimated a smaller place would cost about the same, around $3,000–$3,500 a month. Sethi's team then found a pet-friendly two-bedroom locally for $1,795. With that rent and utilities set at $150, fixed costs fall to 59%, leaving about $2,100 a month for savings, investments, and occasionally eating out. Sethi also argues a smaller home would make it easier to turn down requests for help.

Mary resists. Renting feels like failure. She once sold a townhome in a short sale after the 2008 crash, rented, declared bankruptcy, and worked hard to own again. Sethi says he and his wife could buy but choose to rent, and he talks about it publicly because Americans tend to see renters as poor. He asks for a more empowering version of her story. She manages one: selling the townhome let her build a life with her daughter, and renting now could let them save, eat out, and explore where they live. Sethi says her first narrative is always disempowering, but with a small push she finds a better one. He suggests they practice this together. He leaves the rent scenario in the plan while making clear the decision is theirs.

Retirement Projections

In the renting scenario, Sethi adds about $80,000 from a sale to investments, bringing them to about $580,000. He directs an extra $1,000 a month into savings, for about $1,583 a month total, and says that account should only ever receive money, never pay it out. He keeps their healthcare FSA contribution, which Mary uses for braces and co-pays. He also asks that they get no more pets.

His approximate projections:

No changes, retiring when Mary is 65: About $1 million invested. A 4% withdrawal gives about $40,000 a year. Adding Harry's pension (about $32,000) and roughly $30,000 in Social Security brings the total to about $102,000 a year.
Selling the house: About $1.1 million, or roughly $108,000 a year. Mary correctly explains that the gap is small because there isn't much time for the money to grow.
Selling and retiring at 67: About $1.3 million, or roughly $116,000 a year. Mary says she has had 65 in mind for years, is "coming to terms with" 67, and doesn't want to wait until 70.

Sethi notes these are approximations and short time horizons are uncertain. Mary observes the result is more than they earn now. Sethi reminds her they currently spend far more than they earn. When he asks the key question, she answers that the key to low fixed costs is "not giving money to people." Sethi summarizes: "It's not just about saying no to your kids. It's actually about saying yes to your life." Harry adds that his part is increasing his income, and more than $5,000 would put them in a much better position.

Sethi says he left out vacations because there is no money for them yet. He describes how he and his wife handle goals: talk openly about what they want, work out the cost, decide what it will take, save in a named account, and take the trip guilt-free. His final reframe is that they are not cutting off their children but empowering them. He also recommends a therapist or third party, and warns that changing a 30- or 40-year family pattern will take repetition.

"Lol. Okay."

At the end, Mary reads her son's reply: "Lol. Okay." She isn't surprised. "That's him," she says, and she worries too much. Sethi says he couldn't have asked for a better response.

Harry says what surprised him was how openly she listened and took accountability. Mary says she surprised herself by sending a text she didn't want to send, and now feels relieved. Harry believes they can keep going. Sethi warns that change is easy in the studio and hard at home, with family pulling into the driveway and texts arriving. That's one reason he urges them to move, comparing it to people in recovery who change environments. He says even moving 10 miles could help.

In his closing remarks, Sethi says they face "a pretty tough road": tangled family dynamics, a serious financial problem, and their age. Still, he is surprised to feel confident in them. He calls Mary's text "a total transformation of the way she views herself."

Follow-Up

In follow-up videos, Harry says his main takeaway was teamwork. He has taken over groceries and expanded his coaching with more facilities and clients. Mary says her biggest surprise was the generational pattern and the likelihood she passed it to her children. She wants to talk about money less negatively, framing it as "we have control together" rather than handing control to Harry, and they planned to redo the CSP together.

In a later joint update, Harry reports grocery spending fell from $900 a month to about $720 in June, and to about $450 in July with a week or so left in the month. Mary describes him as "quite the dictator," with some heated words over it. He has more hours with parks and recreation and more coaching clients. They have decided not to sell for now. They need to stay in town, Mary needs a dedicated home office, and they are caring for their grandson. They might later downsize to a smaller mortgage outside town. They have no credit card debt, with only the mortgage and Harry's consolidation debt remaining. The adult child they supported has started slowly repaying them, and they plan to set a repayment plan together "as three adults." They are working through Sethi's Money for Couples. In one exercise, Harry said he would buy Mary a horse, and she said she would buy him a Mini Cooper, "one day." The question of how to stop financially supporting their adult children, they acknowledge, is still being worked on.

He said, "I need to talk to you." I thought, "Oh, he's having an affair." He told me he had $50,000 in debt. It got us into a bigger hole.

Fixed costs are at 139%.

Unacceptable.

We are spending more than we make.

It is a grave danger.

I worked really hard to get where I'm at. Then I made stupid decisions about helping my kids out.

I've put us in debt. I should have said there and then, we cannot afford it. We cannot do it. I wasn't brave enough.

I get a text. "I have to go pick up my daughter. Can you give me some gas money?"

We pay for a decorator to come around and paint the house.

How old is this person?

36.

What the—

I just want to help my kids.

What about helping yourself?

I don't know.

These boundaries are the things that allow you to retire. It's not just about saying no to your kids. It's actually about saying yes to your life. What is going to happen if nothing changes?

Destitute, homeless, we will end up with nothing.

What would you do if you got to your 50s or 60s and you didn't have enough money saved? Today I'm speaking with Mary and Harry. They are 57 and 62 years old. They spend more than they make every single month and they continue to subsidize their adult children.

Just listen to their numbers. I'm going to take a look at their Conscious Spending Plan. Assets, $476,000. Investments, $499,000. Savings, $3,009. Very low. Debt, $435,000. Total net worth, $542,000. Fixed costs, 139%. That's the ball game. Completely untenable. And with savings of only $3,000, they are essentially hours away from running out of money.

What you are seeing here is an extremely dangerous situation. Consider, not only is this couple spending more than they make, not only does this couple have less than $5,000 in savings, this couple is in their 50s and 60s. So time is beyond of the essence. We've got to make huge changes and we've got to make them right now.

I will say I am thankful that they came to talk to me because burying your head in the sand is not a strategy and I hope that we can make some huge changes together and do it quickly. Now, let's meet Mary and Harry.

Mary, you wrote something in your application to me that I would like to read. You wrote, "The biggest challenge in our relationship is a combination of adult children, broken financial trust, and a severe income imbalance. Most of the financial strain related to the adult children comes from my children, though his children have also contributed at times. Their ongoing crises and financial dependence are draining our resources and putting us at serious financial risk."

Is that accurate?

That's very accurate. And he has not read the application.

Is that right?

So, he doesn't know what I wrote.

Harry, what's your reaction to that, hearing it for the first time?

Total agreement. We've helped them. Now, we really need to help ourselves.

Okay. What was behind when you wrote that? Where were you and what was happening?

I was incredibly overwhelmed. We have given one of my children quite a bit of money.

How much?

Probably $20,000, $30,000. And the problem is it was out of our HELOC. So it contributed to a huge chunk of debt.

And Harry's income is inconsistent. So it's hard to manage the finances every month and it's a huge burden, a burden that I brought on us, a burden that Harry's contributed to. And I do the finances. So, I was just overwhelmed. I was probably done at that point, ready to escape.

How often do you feel overwhelmed with money?

Most of the time, almost every day. It is always on my mind.

You wake up, you think about it. Go to work, you think about it. At night, you think about it.

What do you feel when money is on your mind?

I'm angry at myself for contributing to our financial difficulties, the debt that we're in. And I keep trying to maneuver figures around to see if we can do something better. We don't live outside of our means. We hardly go out to eat. We don't buy a lot of clothes. Harry drives a, what, 2007 Subaru that's held together with duct tape and zip ties. So, I don't know what else to cut.

If you don't live above your means, what do you think is going on here?

I've made some very poor choices. He's made some very poor choices. And it's very easy to point a finger and blame each other. I think we got ourselves into a big mess with having this HELOC and not using it appropriately. So now we're in a ton of debt.

There were instances where Harry was not honest with me about his debt. He recently, about a year ago, told me he had $50,000 in debt. So, a lot of decisions we made or I made without knowing about that. And so, it got us into a bigger hole.

Feels like a lot.

It is a lot.

And Harry, where are you on this? The 50K of debt. What was that?

I was actually 43K in debt. COVID hit me as it did a lot of the population. The big factor is I run on several credit cards over a period of time.

What'd you charge on?

Just living, purchasing, flights back to the UK, just general living. Supported minimally with the money I was bringing in. Last June, I saw that Mary was struggling with her side of the financial debt, which I've contributed to. And I had to be brave enough, courageous, to tell her where I was at and what I brought to this.

What was that conversation like? What do you remember about it?

He said, "I need to talk to you." And we went outside and sat in the rocking chair under the trees and I thought, "Oh, he's having an affair." But thank goodness he wasn't. So I was just like, "Oh God, what is he going to tell me?" And he just spit it out. I think he said 50,000.

And what was your reaction?

Shock. That's a lot of money. I knew he wasn't being truthful about things because he wasn't being forthcoming with money. Any conversations about money, I couldn't get a straight answer from him. So, I guess I wasn't surprised, but I was shocked at the amount of money. But I didn't yell or scream at that point.

What did you do?

I told him to research all the different options, bankruptcy, debt consolidation, and that we would work through it, and we had to figure something out.

Today, are you better off or worse off?

The 43K was immediately dealt with by a debt consolidation company who advised me not to go into bankruptcy. So I followed pursuit of that and they got it down to 21. Right now I'm at 18 with payoffs.

Okay. How long have the two of you been together?

16 years.

16 going on 17.

Married for that long?

No. No. We bought a house together in 2014. So that's when we would say we were common-law married. Married in a bank.

Are you legally married now?

Yes.

Are there children involved here?

Yes. We have a blended family, seven kids all together, all grown. Harry has three boys in the UK and a son out here in the States. And then I have two boys. One lives in Australia, one lives close to us, and then a daughter as well. And we also have five grandchildren, one on the way, and one of the grandchildren, we're fostering one of our grandbabies.

Got it. Okay, great. How old is that grandchild that you're fostering?

He's almost five months.

Five months. Wow. Okay, great. What role does money play in your relationship?

It's just a big obstacle for our relationship and moving forward and having the life we want to have. We do argue a lot. I feel very lost on how to get out of this big hole and how to talk about it. It is one of the things we argue the most about. We argue about money and we argue about our kids sometimes, but it's usually because of money. So, it just feels like an obstacle we can't overcome.

Would you say that you have been trying to overcome it or have you been trying to ignore it?

Both. I try to overcome it and then I get frustrated and I ignore it for a long time.

And what about we? I hear you. What about we as a couple?

We talk but we don't get anywhere. We don't have the answers. We don't know where to go forward. We have our home. It's our biggest expense. And it feels like that is what's staring at us in the face, like you might not be able to afford this house. But it also feels like even if we sold our house, it would feel like I'm a failure. It really would.

Do you feel like you're a failure with money now?

Yes. I feel like I worked really hard to get where I'm at and then I made stupid decisions about helping my kids out. And it put us in a really bad space. That's my contribution to our debt.

Okay. Harry, what's the role of money in your relationship?

Well, obviously not speaking with Mary about my financial misuse. Since revealing to Mary what I'd done on my own to put us in a hole, I felt a massive sense of relief telling Mary that we need to stop the bleeding, work a game plan together, and be hardcore on taking care of ourselves before we take care of anybody else.

Have you done that? What's the game plan that you're working with right now?

Well, in terms of revenue, I work in sports coaching. I've started building up slowly my coaching, private coaching, skills lessons, etc., etc., which is evolving. I'm generating a lot more income to contribute to the house account.

So, you're increasing your earnings. That's good. Now, Mary, you mentioned that when you talk about money together that it is frequently combative. Can you think of a time in the last few months where you've had a combative conversation?

It usually happens when I'm stressing about money and I'm like, "We have to make more money. We have to figure this out." I started getting on him about, "What are you doing to get clients? You need to be more aggressive. You need to charge more money for sessions. You can make more money. And you just have to go for it a bit more."

Sorry. Can we recreate this conversation?

Yeah.

Who was the one who began that conversation?

Probably me.

Okay. Go ahead and speak to him and I'll just listen in.

Harry, you need to make more money. I don't see you working very hard to get clients. And I know that people want you to coach them. I know they want clinics and I just don't see you being aggressive and getting that.

I understand and I can see that coming from you.

Is this how the conversation goes?

Yeah.

Are you sure? I'm finding this hard to believe. I don't think you all talk like this. There's not a single sentence of combativeness in this. I've never heard a couple talk like this.

No.

How does it really go?

Maybe a better conversation would be when we're talking about when I give some money to my son for gas.

Okay, talk about it.

Harry, I gave Patrick 80 bucks for gas because he's helping us. He's coming down to fix your car and he needs gas money.

Okay.

That's it.

I have no choice.

What do you say?

That's what he says.

You say okay and that's it. It's like a pained okay. Is that it?

I'm not in pain over it. From day one, I said no, we can't afford it. And then I swear it's now 30-plus thousand. I said no to both of them. We cannot afford it. We cannot do it. The hidden part of that was still I'd not revealed to Mary my current. So there's a balance there of I've put us in debt. Here's another one coming. I should have said there and then. That was a moment for me to be—I wasn't brave enough.

So is the idea, I, Harry, kept this secret $50,000 in debt, and therefore who am I to say you can't help your son?

Right. Right.

Okay.

I should have been stronger and I wasn't.

Okay. So, what is the dynamic happening here?

I would do it anyway. I would justify it. There's a granddaughter involved, which makes it really hard not to help out. And that's not good for our relationship, obviously. So, I don't know how to say no to my kids and I would justify it. I just want to help them.

I just want to help them.

You still don't know how to say no as of today, right?

And I still struggle. I'm in therapy to learn how to say no.

How long have you been doing that?

Just recently. I don't like seeing my kids struggle. I don't want to see my son lose access to our granddaughter, which would mean we would lose access to her. And if he doesn't have a working vehicle, how's he going to work? How's he going to see her? And I'm making decisions based on emotion. And it's really hard.

When you zoom out and you look at that conversation that you had, what role did each of you play?

I played the aggressor. The boss. We need more money. You need to make more money.

And then when it came to spending on your son?

The sole decider.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Here's what's happening.

Okay. And Harry, what role did you play?

I just let it bypass me.

You just said, "Okay, in one ear, out the other."

Yeah.

Sort of like whatever.

Yeah.

Hands up, whatever. And what about the part about the you need to earn more money? What role did you play in that?

I didn't really have a role. I just laid down and took what was coming my way. Because of selfishness, guilt over what I had done.

What do you notice about both of your roles when you're talking to each other about money in your relationship? What do you notice?

There's no game plan between us.

Yes. What else?

At first, I'll try to be nice. I don't want to hurt Harold's feelings, so I'll walk softly and then I get frustrated.

What I noticed is both of you take a self-centered approach. It's all about you.

Okay.

You have the thing you want to accomplish out of the conversation. Mary, you want to tell him he needs to earn more money or pay for your kids in some way. And that's what's going to happen. You're just going to tell him. Harry, you are uncomfortable with these conversations. And so, in your mind, like you said, "I just lay down and take it because I want it to be over."

You're not actually having a conversation. It's the chaser, the avoider. It's one person being the aggressor, the other passive, and just, "Hurry up. Let's get this over with." You can't be a team when you have this dynamic. It doesn't matter what the numbers look like. I would like to take a look at your numbers. Before I put them up, what was it like to create the Conscious Spending Plan together?

I did it and when I needed a number from him, I would just say, "Hey, what's this?"

Why didn't you do it together? Isn't that the instructions?

Because it's easier if I do it. I don't know if we would have done it unless I did it.

I didn't know when Mary was doing it. So, I felt I was being left out.

Did you invite him to do the CSP together?

Probably not. I probably just did it. I know he didn't want to do this.

Okay, got it. So, is this a decision?

This is a common thing.

Yes. What are you noticing? You look kind of embarrassed right now. What's going on? What are you realizing?

I make decisions for us. And then I say, "This is what we're doing because I want to do it."

And then Harry doesn't participate, in part because I don't think you really like money or at least managing money. But also, you both have a dynamic where you don't invite him. So, he goes, "Great, she didn't invite me. I trust her. You know what you're doing. You're good with money," even though you're not. And so each person goes off into their own corner and does their thing. Meanwhile, what happens to the money? It just gets spent.

Mary and Harry are in a self-reinforcing loop that is very difficult to get out of. Mary likes to have control. So, she manages the money. By the way, she's not particularly good at it. Harry feels guilty about money because he has this secret spending. So, he doesn't want to say anything about money. It's not even his place. So, he goes, "Oh, you're so good at it, babe. You handle it." So then Mary feels

Alone. She's now forced to manage the money poorly again. Oh, and by the way, she can't say no to anybody, so she just ends up giving everybody a bunch of money. Do you see how it's like a snowball and it just builds on itself? It gets faster and bigger, except the bigger it gets, the worse it gets for them. This is very difficult to escape from. But I need them to see this dynamic so that they can get out of it. We're going to take a look at their numbers right after this.

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One of my early accomplishments with money was being able to invest consistently enough to have $100,000 in my portfolio. Once that happened, the money started really compounding and I could see it. I could even feel it. Now, I want you to get to the point where you have invested $100,000 of money and you can watch that thing really start to snowball. I built a program to help you do exactly that. It's called the Road to 100K. It helps you know exactly when you will have 100K invested. It helps you accelerate that timeline and it shows you step by step what to do starting today. You can join us at iwt.com/100k.

Let's take a look at the numbers. Mary, can you read off the word in bold and the number next to it, please, for this entire box?

Assets is $476,000. Investments is $499,924. Savings is $3,009. Debt is $435,978, for a total net worth of $542,955.

Okay. What do you think about those numbers?

Well, I guess it was about what I thought it would be.

And when you look at these numbers, do you feel anything?

We need a lot more in savings, and obviously if I want to retire at 65, we need to increase our investments quite a bit, too.

Okay.

What scares me is we have the mortgage. And it's a 30-year mortgage, which we've been paying on not that long. So we'll be in our 80s paying a mortgage. And that to me is not—we can't do that.

Harry, what do you think about these numbers?

They're not very good for the future, should we wish to retire, if we even can.

What part concerns you the most?

I think being locked into the house, knowing that I'm not going to live for 30 years.

Let's take a look at the rest of the numbers. Okay. Harry, can you read off the combined monthly gross income?

7,850.

Okay, great. So, I understand that that number is variable, but let's take it as an average, shall we? So, that means combined, the two of you, do you know your household income, annual household income? $94,000. Did you know that?

Around that.

Harry, what'd you think it was?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I would say around 95 because I make 76 and then...

All right. Shall we look at the rest of the numbers? So fixed costs, Mary, what's that number there?

139. Yeah, that's what freaked me out.

What does that tell you?

That we are spending more than we make.

Every month. Yep.

Every month.

Yeah.

You are spending far more than you make every single month. That is the ball game.

Yes.

That's it. Nothing else matters right there. That is why you feel anxious about money. That is why you are running out of money. And considering that you have $3,000, do you know how long you can last?

About a week.

Two weeks.

Two weeks. Yeah. And we have a little less than that now. Yeah.

It is a grave danger. Let's continue. Investments are at 8%. Your savings are at 14%. Let me take a big guess. Let me guess that in the last two to three months, you've started contributing money to your savings. True or false?

False.

Tell me. I love to be surprised.

I just automatically take money and it automatically goes into my savings account.

Then why is there only $3,000 in your savings account?

Because then I use that to cover...

Your kids.

The kids, whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And then finally, we have guilt-free spending at—what's that number?

Negative 6%.

61%.

You are spending...

Yeah. 61%.

An extra at least $3,000 per month than you make.

Yeah.

What does all this tell you?

Well, it's not sustainable. Sometimes I feel it's not that bad.

Why do you think it's not so bad?

And I shouldn't say—in December we refinanced the house and we put the HELOC and what I owed on one of our cars into one loan. Oh, and the credit card debt. So now we don't have credit card debt.

So this is why you think it's not so bad.

So it doesn't feel that bad because I can pay the credit cards every month. But in reality, it's all now tacked on to our mortgage. It was about probably another $100,000 when it was all said and done added to our mortgage.

Yeah. What do you think about that?

It feels like we're never going to get that paid off.

You want me to be honest with you? You probably won't.

Yeah.

Not the way you treat money today.

Yeah.

What is going to happen if nothing changes?

Destitute, homeless, just miserable and looking forward to death.

I'm not amused. I'm taking this more seriously than you are.

I'm right on track with that because we would have absolutely nothing and nothing to look forward to.

That's not true. That's not true. You are engaging in hyperbole to avoid the reality of the situation because it's easy to say destitute and we have nothing. You have $499,000 in investments. You have a $476,000 asset. You have some kind of pension. So it's actually disrespectful to simply say destitution, we have nothing. No, engage in reality. Be specific. What is going to happen if you make no changes? I want exact specifics of what is going to happen.

If nothing changes, we will end up with nothing.

How long?

A year.

I'm just throwing that out there. If we go on like we are going, seeing those numbers up there, we'd be dipping into, which we have been, everything we've got just to continue down that pathway of oblivion.

You don't look at numbers frequently, do you?

I do, but not in depth. If I have a dollar, could I make it two? Could I make it five? Yeah. And I think we have that. We just don't know how to do it.

No, you don't have that. I'm looking at the same numbers you are.

Okay.

You do not have some magical way to quintuple your money. No. If you were 25, you would because you just let it sit in the market. You are not 25. You are in your 50s and 60s. So that's not happening. What you have is very simple math. I will never ask anyone to do complex math on this show. It costs you about $7,000 a month just to keep the lights on.

You have $500,000. So even if we go a full year with no income, you could theoretically draw from your investments, all of it, and you could still go years just coasting off your investments. Now, would I do that? No. That would be extremely dumb.

But we need to be living in reality with these numbers. So Harry, when you say we have a year maybe, no, just looking at these numbers, 500,000, it costs you $7,000 a month just to keep the lights on, which is, let's just say, about $90,000, $100,000 a year. That's at least five years purely based on investments.

Okay. Okay.

Mary, what happens if you change nothing?

We're going to continue how we are, not making ends meet. We'll be able to live for a while, but it'll still be stressful. We won't be able to live our lives that we want to live, travel, go out to eat once in a while, and eventually it'll catch up to us. I don't know how long, but I won't be bringing in the money when I retire. We're still going to be overspending every month. And the reality is when you get older, it costs more to live because of health care expenses and whatnot. So it'll just be a stressful existence.

Yeah. Will it be better or worse than you are today?

Worse.

We have to replace his car at some point. That's more debt. We don't have money to replace his car. We have old appliances in our house. Eventually we're going to have to replace this. So all this stuff continues. So it'll be the same as what we're doing now.

It'll be worse.

Far worse.

Yeah.

I don't want that for you.

I don't either.

What would happen in this scenario where you change nothing? We fast forward a few years and one of your kids calls you up and says they need help with a $10,000 car repair. What would you do?

I couldn't help them.

What would you say to them?

I would say, "No, I can't." And then I'd probably try to figure out what I could do. I can give you $5,000 because I—or I have $3,000 in savings or we put it on the credit card. Again, I'm in therapy for creating boundaries. So I hope I would be able to say no.

This is a really tough situation.

I just want to help my kids. They had a tough life.

What about helping yourself?

Yes, I would like to help myself too.

Who comes first?

My kids.

I appreciate the honesty. I would like to understand a little bit about how you grew up with money. Mary, you mentioned your kids had a tough upbringing. I would like to go back to your childhood. What do you remember your family saying about money when you were a kid?

Not much. My father worked very hard, and my mom was for the most part a stay-at-home mom.

What part of the country did you grow up in?

Colorado.

Okay.

Yeah. But my dad's from Cuba. So he was the provider and my mom was the homemaker, and my mom spent a lot of money and my dad would complain about her spending money. And he was in international sales, so he'd go out of town quite a bit and then she'd go spend money on what she wanted.

And when he came back, would they fight?

Yeah, they didn't fight too much in front of us, but yeah.

And was the fight serious or was it like we're each playing a role and it's kind of cute? Which one was it?

No, they'd get serious about it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Are they still alive? Still married?

Yeah, still married. Married almost 60 years, but my dad died a couple years ago. Passed away a couple years ago.

Sorry to hear that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So how is your mom with money?

Awful.

How so?

For instance, we went to the garden center the other day and she spent over $300 on plants, and that was her third trip to the garden center.

How did she afford it?

She makes okay money, fixed income from retirement, my dad's pension, whatnot. But not enough. She'll probably run out of money.

What does she say? You talk about money?

Yeah, we talk about money.

Oh, what do you say? That's good.

It's hard. My mom's so nice. It's hard to tell her to stop spending money on the plants. I'm like, "Mom, I'll plant seeds for you." But she spends a ton of money on her dog.

Is she religious?

Yes.

Are you religious?

Sort of.

Okay. She believe God will provide?

No. No. No. She's Catholic.

Wait, what? Hold on. I'm not familiar. I know Catholicism, but Catholics don't believe God will provide?

Not really. Not like that.

What do they believe?

Hard work and helping yourself.

Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Because she's spending money. You know that she's going to run out of it. You talk to her about money. But what's the disconnect?

She grew up in a very—not a rich household, but a well-to-do household north of Chicago. She was the baby and my grandfather would give her the credit card and take the train to Chicago and go shopping.

Wow. So your mom was the somewhat wealthy daughter, daughter of a somewhat wealthy family. She gets married. She likes to spend money when her husband, your dad, is out of town. You spend money you don't have as well. And now your kids, do they spend money they don't have as well?

Yes, I would say so.

How many generations are we talking about?

Three.

Have you ever realized that you have multiple generations engaging in the same overspending?

I noticed it with my kids. I noticed it with my mom, but I didn't think I was like my mom, but apparently I am.

You noticed it with your kids and your mom, but me? No, not me. Okay. So just now you've realized there is a pattern linking three generations. What do you feel when you realize that for the first time, age 57? What are you realizing? What are you feeling?

I'm still overwhelmed by it all. I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do.

Okay.

We have to fix it.

Yes. What do you feel before you get to solutions? Are you happy, sad, dissatisfied, disgusted, confused?

I just want it to stop.

Yeah, tell me more.

I'm not supposed to cry. Been working really hard to just get us on stable ground. And then I feel like—and maybe this is where my mom comes from—you've been working so hard. Why can't you go out to dinner? Because you don't have any money, that'll go on the credit card? Well, so what? We deserve to go out to dinner once in a while.

Did your mom say that before?

No, she just does it just like I do, I guess.

This sounds familiar.

She just does it.

That makes her sound really selfish. And she's not. She buys for everybody, too.

Oh, she's generous with other people.

Too generous, maybe.

Oh, yeah. Yes.

Familiar, too.

What are you noticing?

That we're very similar.

Yes. And?

And we spend too much money. Sometimes we won't spend, spend, spend. And then I'll spend money that I shouldn't spend because I feel like we're owed it. Like, why not? I work so hard. Why can't I?

Did you realize this before now?

I would say that I deserve it. I work really, really hard. I deserve to have whatever it is.

And do your kids also deserve nice things, too?

Yes and no. They deserved nice things when they were younger and I couldn't give it to them.

This is hard to talk about.

Yeah, it is hard.

Okay. I appreciate you doing it. It's not supposed to be easy here, but that doesn't make it feel good sometimes.

It was hard for them. A single mom, and I waited tables. I worked two jobs. I put myself through school and they've had lights turned out, electricity cut off from them. We moved them into a better neighborhood, but then we were the poor family in the better neighborhood. So that was hard for them. We didn't take vacations. We didn't do anything. And it was hard for them.

Keep going. It was hard for them because what?

Because they didn't get the things that they should have gotten. And they had to go through living in, all of us crammed into a one-bedroom, two-bedroom apartment and moving and hustling because our car's broken down here and I don't have the money to fix it.

What's the problem with that?

It was hard. They got their friends

Went on vacations, their friends got cars, their friends had clothes. They didn't have to shop at the thrift store before it was trendy.

So what?

Yeah.

I'm asking legitimately.

Things were hard for them.

What's the problem with that?

They didn't get the opportunities.

I don't think that's what you're talking about. I think you are referring to they didn't get things.

Things that other people had around them.

Yes. And so what is the problem with that?

Because it was embarrassing for them.

For them?

For me too. Not being able to provide for them.

Yes. Do you remember at the beginning when we were talking about your dynamics? And I pointed out that when the two of you talk about money, you are both behaving in a blank way. What was the word I used?

Self-centered.

Yes. When you tell yourself this narrative about your kids, I'm sure they had a somewhat challenging upbringing. Okay, I'm not diminishing that. But we trace back: so what? So what? Why? So what? And it turns out that it was embarrassing for...

Me. Yeah, it was embarrassing not having a car that worked or having food stamps or whatever. That's embarrassing.

Yeah. And now when you look back, is it a source of embarrassment still?

Yes and no. No, because I worked really hard. Like I said, I worked two jobs, which then I wasn't there for my kids, so that was an issue too. But I worked very, very hard. I thought I set a good example for them. Work hard, go to school, do all your stuff. I don't know.

I just want to share an example from my own childhood. My parents, immigrants from India. My mom stayed home. Dad worked. We didn't have a lot of stuff. We had a middle-class lifestyle. We almost never went on vacation. It was like a road trip. And yeah, kids had fancier clothes and they looked cooler. Indian kids, they don't look that cool by design. Parents are like, focus, study, you can look cool later.

We certainly didn't have the cool shoes and all that stuff. And the story that our family embodies is, yeah, we're not going to have as much stuff as some other people, but we love each other and we're going to work hard. They taught us to study. They taught us to get into great schools. Even if we didn't have money, they taught us how to be street smart so we could get financial aid.

And when I look back, I'm glad I didn't have all that stuff. If I wore the clothes back then that I wear now, where do you go from there? So I like the adversity that I went through. What do you make of that?

We've actually talked about that kind of stuff before, and my kids feel that they have more of an appreciation for things, that not everything was handed to them. Although I probably, to be honest, would have handed it to them if I could. And also I think one of my kids just doesn't care. He wears it as a badge of honor that...

What do you make of this?

I guess maybe I just have avoided all of it for so long.

Of course you have. Yeah. It's easier to write $25,000 checks to kids and to spend on HELOCs and eating out and all kinds of stuff than to confront some tough stuff.

To me, the story you've been telling yourself is one story, but there's a perfectly acceptable alternative story of, yeah, things were tough and thank God they were. Because my kids learned not everything comes easy.

Yeah.

That's a very powerful story. You choose. The story you chose is what?

That it was embarrassing.

It was embarrassing. They never had enough, and therefore I have to live in penance for the rest of my life. Here, take everything I've got because I was a failure and I won't let that. I was embarrassed and I'm still embarrassed. Please take it all.

Yeah. There's a lot of guilt there.

It's so disempowering to you and to them and to Harry. Something to think about and maybe work on in therapy. What do you think?

Absolutely. Yes. I know. I enable my children, especially my one child.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you for walking me through how you grew up with money. Eye-opening. I appreciate that.

Do you hear the story that Mary tells herself? It's a pretty powerful one. It's a pretty painful one too. What I notice is that she has carried that pain through to today. And it's almost as if she feels so guilty that she is going to go the rest of her life trying to make up for it. That is no way to live life. Feeling like you are behind, feeling like you are trying to atone for something you did wrong. You could never even get up to just neutral.

I guess I just think about it differently when I hear people going through some sort of adversity, especially one where they came out stronger. I think to myself, how fortunate that you were able to get that lesson. We don't all get lessons of adversity that we come out stronger for on the other end. But if you were able to get that lesson or give that lesson, what a blessing.

That's why sometimes when people come on this show and I have tough conversations, sometimes they cry or sometimes they don't like me for a while. What a blessing. What a gift that I could give them to have someone be honest with them. Maybe for the first time in many, many years.

When I look back at my own life, I remember not being good at math, especially compared to my friends starting in seventh grade. My mom used to pick me up from middle school and she could tell what my math grade was based on how low my head was when I was walking down the little field to the car. And I know that I wasn't good. My friends were a lot better than I was. And I look back and I think to myself, wow, I learned early on that I was never going to be great at math. But I really tried. I busted my ass. I worked really hard to try to at least get to neutral. And now I know that is not a strength area for me. Okay, what a great way to look back and tell that story.

And my wish for Mary is that she looks back at the way she raised her kids and maybe just has a totally different interpretation. Maybe it goes something like this. I was a single mom. It was really hard. I wish I could have done more for my kids, but I did the very best I could. You get to choose your story. And Mary and Harry are a great example of that.

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Harry, what about you? What do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?

It was important, but I came up from a total working-class background. My father was a coal miner and we always had holidays in the same place in Scotland every year growing up. My dad would go to work, come home, didn't do what the other people did, go to the bar or the local miners community and stuff. We wanted for nothing. We didn't have a lot. My father was very astute with money.

So I lived on an estate, a neighborhood that wasn't in the mining community. So I knew later on in life that they'd saved and bought that house. It had orchards and apple trees and all the good stuff. From the age of 10, school holidays, I'd be sent to work on the local farms, potato picking. I was taught to graft and work hard.

I earned very good money. We decided after a period of years to purchase a house together. I started drinking heavily and I stopped working hard, which is what everything I'd been taught to do. I'm six years into dry now.

Wow. Congratulations.

But what it took out of me was I stopped working.

Yeah. And what about beyond the work? Did it change you here? Your mindset?

Yeah.

What did it do?

I became very insular and isolated. I became very enclosed. And not speaking with Mary about the start of my financial use, irregular use of credit cards. There was no income.

Did you used to be open about money?

We were reasonably open. I have money in England through my trust and finance and inheritance money, which we've now come to a resolution of numbers and figures on exactly what I've got over there.

Really? What is it?

When I'm 68, it'll be $360,000.

So this is an inheritance you have that will mature at age 68. Why 68?

That enrolls into my UK pension plan, which gives me more money because I'm 10 years short of a full UK pension.

So at 68, will you get the full cash?

It will mature and you'll be able to get the full amount.

Yeah.

Okay. Is it accounted for in the Conscious Spending Plan?

I wasn't involved in it, so I would say no.

Okay.

No, I asked you.

Did you?

Mhm.

Oh, is it in there, Mary?

I think so. So we have investments at 499,000. That's including yours, I believe. Yeah.

Okay. So that's 340 of his plus 150 of the two of you. Is that correct?

No, I have more than that.

Okay.

I want to say I have 250 at least. Yeah.

250. So what's with the other 250 here?

That must be Harry's.

Do you see why you doing this on your own is not working?

I do. I have no clue what I put there or why when I did this.

Exactly. Now listen, I'm not trying to come down on you. I want to just tell you the dynamic because I see this all the time. This is so common. We have the person who's not involved with the money, Harry. Then we have the person who spends hours and hours. They're involved. They often create multiple spreadsheets. They got all these forms and confusing things. They have their own weird system. Sound familiar, Mary?

And yet they are not skilled with money and they cannot answer basic questions. And that very person is the one who takes on all the anxiety, but they are not skilled at all. Mary, this is you.

Yes.

You can't answer basic questions about investments. It's not acceptable. It's actually not acceptable for the two of you to be in this dynamic. We have one person doing the money who does not know what she's doing. And it explains why you all are getting nowhere. You're only going down.

I'm going to assume that this is accounted for in this investment part of the CSP, both of your investments, which actually makes these numbers even more troubling. Okay? Because without Harry's $250,000, you'll have even less invested. A quarter million less. So after an entire career, that's it. 250. What does that tell you?

I didn't invest.

You did?

Yeah, though it started late, the retirement. I've emptied my retirement before. So it tells me that I'm not going to retire.

Before you get to the solutions, what does it tell you about your behavior?

I'm in avoidance mode. Even though I worry and juggle numbers all the time, I really don't have a grasp of it.

Yes. How long have you been worrying about money?

Forever, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And now it's become second nature to you. It actually is a familiar feeling. If you were to not worry, who would you be?

I have no idea.

Exactly. That's what a worrier always says. And so worrying has now become your familiar friend. And that worry now allows you to—you treat it as responsibility. You see worrying as, I'm responsible with money. And then at the same time, you go and write $25,000 checks that you don't have the money for. But I'm worried, so I must be responsible. No. It's a vicious cycle you've put yourself in. And then Harry, ignoring the money, not talking about the money, compounds it.

Okay, Mary, earlier you said, "I'm not supposed to cry." Why?

Because it's embarrassing.

Huh? I don't think it's embarrassing.

It is.

I think it's real.

Only person I feel comfortable crying around is Harry.

Okay. This stuff is hard. And I actually kind of love that you felt it was embarrassing and you did it anyway because I like when people sometimes do stuff that feels embarrassing. That's what it takes to be good. And that's actually probably what you're both going to have to do.

Great.

And that's okay because sometimes, as you put, Harry, you're in a hole, and if you want to figure out how to get out of that hole, you can't do things the way you've done it.

Embarrassing. So what? I cried in front of tons of people. I'm still here.

Yeah.

So what?

It's embarrassing being here.

I would say it's bold. So many times I hear you choosing one narrative when I would just choose a totally different one. It's embarrassing to cry. No, it's honest. It's embarrassing to be here. No, it's bold and courageous. I don't know which one is right. But since I get to choose my story, I'm going to choose the empowering one.

I like that.

Yeah. You can do the same thing.

Yeah.

Okay. What role does guilt play in your financial decisions?

We parent our adult children with a lot of guilt. And we want to help them, and it brings chaos into our lives.

Do you have chaos in your life?

Yeah. Yeah.

You agree, Harry?

Yeah.

All right. You like it?

No.

We love our grandson though right now. But no.

I think you like it.

You think we thrive on chaos?

Yes.

I'm exhausted.

So?

I really want some peace.

What would you be willing to do to get that peace?

I want to say anything, but I'd keep helping my children. And they always come to us knowing that we'll help.

When was the last time you said no?

I don't know.

Harry, when was the last time she said no?

I don't think there is a last time currently. I understand why, but they're not going to love you any less for saying no. And they all know what a fantastic mother you are anyway.

I see it all. And it's commendable, but it hurts us. You have the ability to say no without any guilt because you've done more than enough for five families.

Because of how stuck they are in their stories, I want to try something radically different. There's a phenomenon in psychology called inoculation theory. And they used to use it with kids, teaching them how to say no to smoking. So you know what they would do? This is in the '80s. They would bring them up in front of the room and they would have one kid go up to them and say, "Hey kid, you need to smoke a cigarette. This is what the cool kids do." And then the other kid would go, "No, I don't like to smoke. It's not good for my health." And they would inoculate themselves by creating a small argument against smoking. And so when the real-life thing happened and they got bullied or peer pressured to smoke, they would know exactly what to say. They were already inoculated.

So I want them to take that principle and apply it here. I want them to get out of their own heads and start to give my wife and me advice for what we should do. You know why it works? Because people love to give other people advice.

Let me ask you this. My wife and I have come to you for advice. We're not in a good financial position. We are approaching retirement, a few years away. We don't know if we can retire. We have a mortgage. It's a lot. I don't know if we're ever going to pay it off. We have debt we've taken out on the mortgage. Our income is inconsistent. We have five kids and they're adults, and they come to us and we love them and we try to help them. And sometimes we give them money and sometimes we babysit and sometimes we help them get a new appliance.

We never really have taken a look at ourselves, our own money, because we've been so busy with the chaos. Seems like we take one step forward and two steps back. My wife and I fight. We fight because we love our kids. We want to make sure they're okay. I'm starting to think that I don't know what to do because our time is running out. What advice do you have for us?

I would say let your kids stand on their own two feet. They're adults.

But I love them.

And so stop enabling them and let them figure it out.

But I love them.

And you can still love them.

But they need my help.

And you can love them by letting them be adults.

I feel so guilty.

Why?

They had a tough childhood and I want to give them everything that they didn't have.

See, that's where I trip up. They're adults. You give them love. You gave them everything you could at the time, and you still are, and now you need to focus on yourself.

So what am I supposed to do next time they come to me for help? I'm supposed to just slam the door in their face and kick them out?

No.

What do I do?

Just tell them you'll help them figure out solutions, but you are not fixing it for them.

I don't know how to do that. They come to me for help. I'm their dad. I'm going to give them every last cent, every last scrap off my back to help them. That's what a parent does, right?

No.

Oh, what do I do?

A parent helps their child learn how to navigate the world and stand on their own two feet, and they have to figure out things for themselves. If you keep fixing it for them, they're never going to figure it out.

And what about my wife? She's not involved with the money. I don't know. We don't really talk about money. What do you think I should do with her?

Sit down and have conversations. Go over numbers.

I try to, but it's easier to do it myself. Harry, what advice do you have for me?

You got to sit down and have a coming together with your wife.

I try to, but she doesn't even want to look at the spreadsheet.

Well, you're going to have to sit her down, make her a cup of tea, and just tell her straight on. And then do it tomorrow and then do it the day after and then say, "This is really serious. I need this to happen. We need to be together for our children because we love them and it's going to be the best thing for everyone."

Physically, we can help them. We can babysit. We can go around and paint some doors or something along those lines, but what we can't do is pay for a decorator to come around and paint the house or the doors or get a guy in to service the whatever. But we can do the best we can, but we have to be together on this.

Okay. What the—how are you so good at giving me advice?

He actually says that to me. I've already—

Am I in a different planet right now? What just happened?

I just read my own script.

That was quite outstanding. Now stay with me, everybody.

Let's rock.

What if we just flipped it and you took your own advice for a second? All jokes aside, let's live there for a second because what you just did was almost miraculous. You got out of your own heads. You saw things for the reality of the situation. My wife and I in this scenario are in big financial trouble. Mary, you were honest. You were relentless. You love them. You can't help them do everything. Can I flip that to you?

Yes.

You love—actually, say it to yourself.

I love them, but I can't do everything.

Yes. Now, I'm going to ask you a few probing questions. So, what are you going to do if your kid comes to you and asks for help because their stove broke down?

I would say, "I understand how that feels. Let's brainstorm and see what ideas you have, but moneywise, we can't help you."

That's quite amazing. You looked uncomfortable doing it, but you did it anyway.

Mhm.

That's pretty cool. What'd that feel like?

I would do it for a stove. It's hard when I get a text, "I don't have any money. Hey, I have to go pick up my daughter. Can you give me some gas money?"

What the?

And then I do.

Oh, I'll fix that for you right now. Give me your phone. I'll turn off giving money on there. I don't even know how to do that.

Mhm.

Do you know nobody in my life would text me for money like that? I want you to hear how abnormal that sounds to me. That is not the relationship that I have allowed myself to be in. So, are you hearing how weird that sounds to me?

Yeah. No, I'm an ATM.

Yes.

And instead of love, it's money.

What if he just didn't reply? Honestly, what would happen?

Maybe that means he doesn't get his daughter, but maybe next time he'll figure it out.

Do you have any texts on your phone right now begging for money? Because I would love to reply to them for you. I specialize in writing other people's texts. Is there one?

On our way coming into here. This is not me grassing up, and I laugh about it because it's insane. He's taking care of our grandson at our house, but he went up to his house, forgot the formula to feed him.

Mhm.

Arrived back at our house, said, "Hey, Mom, I've forgot the formula. I haven't got enough gas to get back home and get back down."

How old is this person?

36.

Okay. And I'm not slam dunking anybody here. And that's why I laugh insanely in madness. So he said, "Will you pay me for the gas to go?"

It wasn't the gas though.

No, but he hasn't got enough gas to get money to go to.

So we gave him money to go to the store to get formula to feed him.

I get it. You all get this. You all have heard these stories about parents get to be 80 years old, 85. They have no money. They're living in a trailer, and maybe there's one or two responsible siblings and they're going, "Mom, Dad, you don't understand. When you die, this guy doesn't know how to hold down a job. He hasn't had a job in 45 years." And Mom and Dad don't know how to deal with this. They have a deep dawning realization that they have truly screwed up their kids.

Mhm.

But they don't know what to do because now it feels too late. They are embedded, entrenched. How far are we away from that happening right now?

That's our story, isn't it?

Pretty much. Yes.

How could you allow this to happen?

I don't know. Misplaced guilt and wanting to help. Misplaced ways of helping.

But it's happening as recently as today. Are you willing to change it?

I have to. If I don't, then he's gonna—yeah.

Yes. I want to—I think—

When I'm looking for someone to make a radical change, the only acceptable answer is, "I'll do anything."

Mhm.

The path you have to go on, the two of you, is so difficult, so different than anything you've ever done, that the only acceptable answer is, "I'll do anything." Otherwise you have no chance of succeeding.

Right.

That's what I was afraid of.

Your worst fear is going to be your reality. You might as well just accept it.

Yeah.

I want to give you a break. I want to give you five minutes. Go outside, think about it, talk about it. Because if you actually want to make a change, it is going to require you to change every single thing about the way that you interact with each other and you interact with your kids, starting today.

You will not be able to give them money. There is no money. You will not be able to volunteer to help them with all these things. You will make a list of what you can offer. We can babysit twice a week. We can help with X. Here are the things we will no longer be able to assist with at all. Cold turkey. And here are the consequences of you pushing us. If you text us for money, this is what will happen. If something breaks down and you expect us to help, this is what will happen.

That's the easiest change you're going to have to make. The other stuff, we haven't even gotten to your numbers. That's going to be even harder. If you can do that, you might have a chance with your finances. Can we take five minutes and come back?

Yes, please.

Okay, let's do it.

You okay?

Yeah.

I empathize with how they both grew up with money. Not particularly healthy environments. The problem is Mary and Harry are living in those stories. I've always said that people who have problems love to talk about their problems. I see it every day. And I don't mind. I need to empathize. I need to connect with them and hear what's going on. But at a certain point, we cannot live in those stories in the past because it will not allow you to move forward.

Have you ever done this? Have you ever talked about your problems over and over again? What was it? Money problem, relationship problem, fitness problem, any kind of problem. We all do it. It's a human thing. But if we want to change, and if Mary and Harry want to change, I got to get them to see things a totally different way.

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Okay, welcome back. How was your conversation?

Enlightening. It begins with us. We don't have to prove our love. We don't have to prove our dedication, our commitment to our children because we know that we do that, and we should have and can have control on how we help them.

Mary, what was your realization?

I very much struggle when it comes to my children. I was hurting because I feel like we were making my son look like this selfish loser, and he's not. I made it so I'm the ATM, not him. He goes out of his way to help us all the time. And he works very, very hard, and he's had a ton of personal crises in his life, which I took on. And that's the realization that's on me. That's not on him. And I need to say no. And that doesn't mean we can't help, but in a different way though. Help him stand on his feet and not enable. We just can't.

Wow.

Because we need to live and we can't live if we're bailing him out all the time.

So what have you decided?

That we want to focus on ourselves and have a life.

Mhm.

And not enable our children all the time.

Okay. So, you want to focus on yourselves. What does it look like?

I think the foundation is numbers, finance. Where are we at in a hole? Can we get out of it? How do we do it? We have to work together financially and supporting each other emotionally with the hard and tough decisions that we have to make regarding our children.

I agree.

I think that makes us know we're both strong.

Mhm.

And our children know that we are strong together.

Yes. Do they know that you're strong right now?

They see us work together, and we might not come together with money. I get frustrated. I'm controlling. I just want to do it. And so that's something I need to fix, is have more patience and less control. And that's hard.

Less control, or maybe another way to put it is sharing control with Harry.

Mhm.

Trying to have less control is scary because what does that mean? But a more active phrase would be, "Harry and I are going to share the numbers together, right? He's going to own some of them. I'm going to own some of them. We may not know exactly what these numbers are, but we're going to learn together. And over time, I, Mary, am going to work actively on becoming more comfortable sharing that control because that is what has to happen." How's that sound?

That sounds good. The language is profoundly important.

It is, right?

Because I don't want to give up control.

Yeah. And actually, if you started off this entire process by saying, "All right, I need to work on giving up control," you've already lost.

Mhm.

You coach soccer, right?

Right.

If players come on the field and they're like, "We need to win or we are a piece of—"

They've already lost.

Right?

They're not even having fun.

Right.

They're not being a team. So before we ever set foot on the field, the way that we talk and think about the mission in front of us determines if we even have a chance at winning or not. So we're not trying to give up control. We are trying to share control with my partner because we are more effective as a team than either of us are individually. Okay. I'm getting excited. How are you feeling?

Excited and fearful.

Okay. Fair. Harry?

Totally up for it.

Great. Okay, we have some big changes to make. If you were 30 years old, we would approach things a little differently. You are not. Time is ticking. I just want to be honest about that. It's fast. You got to make huge changes and you have to execute them at a near flawless level if you want to have a good shot.

I don't expect perfection from anybody. But the time for trying to do things is over because of your age and because of your financial predicament. There is no time for that. It is, we are going to pick a plan. We are going to execute on it, and anything that gets in the way as an obstacle will be relentlessly pushed back or destroyed. That's it.

We don't have time to mess around. In a second, I'm going to put your CSP up on screen. And what we're going to try to do is try to take these numbers, which are at the moment out of control. You're spending way more than you make. We need to bring that down, and we are going to try to see what we can do about your expenses, your income, all of it.

Okay, let's put that CSP up on screen. So, we're looking at the net worth section here. Right off the bat, I want to understand: you have $476,000. What is this in your assets?

That is our home and my car probably. Yeah.

And under the debt, $435,000 of debt. What's under that?

That is what we owe the mortgage, what Harry owes for the debt consolidation, my braces and some random things, medical bills and whatnot.

How much is the mortgage?

What we owe?

Yeah.

It's 375ish. Right around there.

Moving along. Fixed costs are at 139%.

Unacceptable. Yep.

This number needs to come down to roughly 60%. How do you want to do it?

You've got on there—what do you got? Utilities, gas, water, electric, internet, cable, right? Subscriptions to how many things?

You have $135 of subscriptions per month.

Yeah. And we cut some of that already. We can cut more, but it's not going to really help us. This is where I get lost and frustrated and overwhelmed. I don't know where to begin.

Typically what happens is when people are in a similar situation, we start looking at the fixed costs, and what they do is they start off with really small numbers, and they'll spend about 15 minutes debating if they can cut $20 off their cell phone bill. I let them do it. And finally they do, and it moves the number maybe 1%.

And at that moment I go, "What did you realize?" And they go, "Holy, we've been spending all of our time on the wrong stuff." But it's a valuable lesson. In your case, you did not even let Harry cut the subscriptions because you tried to skip ahead. So, you actually skipped that moment of realization for the two of you. I would have rather you all went back and forth for 20 minutes on the subscriptions and then cut it. But you didn't even allow that to happen. Why?

Because I know it's not going to help that much to cut the little things out like that.

Is it possible that the things you think you know are maybe not right?

Yes.

Okay. Because if what you knew was accurate, you would not be in this position today. So, put your trust in the process.

Okay.

Don't be too smart for your own good. This is a classic problem with smart people. We want to act like everybody else right now. I'm a statistic, and I'm going to follow the process.

Cool. What do you want to do?

So what constitutes miscellaneous, since it already is 15%?

Great question. Miscellaneous is automatically added as 15% of everything above because people often forget things like their annual car registration or some random thing they had to get fixed for their whatever. And so I automatically bundle that in. Now for most couples, 15%, if they have no debt, is actually surprisingly accurate. For a couple like you that needs to make massive changes, you cannot afford to have 15%. You need to be dialed in.

So, I would take that number down, way down. It's currently at $957. Fact is, you can't afford that in just miscellaneous per month. So, what number would you like that to be at?

200.

Great. Let's do it. I'm going to zero this out. I'm going to make this 200. Let's take a look at your numbers. It dropped to 125%.

Insane.

What does that tell you?

We're on the right track.

We dropped 700 or so dollars and went down a few percentage points. So, I think this is positive movement. What's next, Harry?

It's minimal, but phone is 100 bucks.

Yeah, I can drop that straight down to minimal 80 straight away.

80. Okay.

That would cut off roaming and Steven's phone.

Oh, you have your son on your phone plan. Great. This is actually amazing. 80 bucks. Honestly, I'm glad the 20 bucks of savings, but I'm more interested in the fact that who's going to be the one to have the conversation with your son?

I'm happy to.

Whose son is this? That's your son? Well, I don't think you should have the conversation. I think it should be mom, Mary. Mary looks visibly uncomfortable right now. She's avoiding eye contact and looking away. Mary, this is the beginning of the rest of your life.

Taking your 36-year-old son off of your family plan is probably the easiest thing you're going to have to do right now.

Yes.

Can you text him right now?

Yes.

Okay. Do you have your phone with you?

No.

We can bring it for you. As we're grabbing your phone, I want you to think about what you're going to say to him.

Well, he knows we're here, and he knows why we're here. So, I'm going to say we have to make some drastic changes. We're going to give you a month more on the phone so you can get money coming in from your new job, and then you have to get your own plan.

I love that. Here's your phone. If I can make one suggestion, I love what you said about we have to make some drastic changes. We've made a decision.

Okay.

And then type what you said. I want you to own that power. This isn't happening to you. I'm not forcing you to do it. The two of you have made a decision. Is that accurate?

Yes.

Okay. Go ahead. Take your time. And before you click send, just tell me.

Okay. Mary, read me what you got so far.

We made a decision. We are making drastic changes with finances, and we will keep you on the phone plan for another month.

After that, comma.

Okay.

We will not.

We will not. I want to say be able to pay for you anymore, but...

We will not pay for you.

Okay. It sounds so...

Look at me. Look at me. Do I care if anyone calls me a little...

That's funny.

Call me a, America. Like I care. I'm trying to teach your son how to be self-sustaining and you how to live a rich life. If somebody thinks that you're, so be it.

Okay.

Okay. What do you got? A lot of typing over here.

I'm just fixing a typo.

Read it.

I said, "After that, we will not pay for the phone. We love you."

I like the incongruity. "We will not pay for the phone. We love you." Send.

Well done.

Thank you.

Did you send it?

Yeah.

Take a second. Hold on. Everybody look at each other. Well done. This is quite a moment. This is Mary and Harry 2.0. That may be the most difficult text that you have written. But you did it. You did.

I'm going to cry now.

I know. You should cry tears of joy. What's going through your head, Mary? It's okay.

He's just going through a lot, and I don't want to make it worse. He's trying not to lose his daughter, and he's trying to get his life together and not lose his house and his property, and he works really hard, and it's just hard. I don't like to see him struggle, and helping him with a phone just seems like such a little thing. One less thing he has to worry about.

When you brush your teeth in the morning, do you worry about brushing?

Well, since I've had braces, I do.

Okay, you got me on that one. When you put your glasses on in the morning, do you worry about putting them on?

No.

No. What do you do?

I just put them on.

You just do them. You're capable, right? You're an adult. He hasn't had to build that skill because there's a lot going on. I'm not going to take away from that. Obviously, there's a lot going on with him. But also, you have stepped in. It's almost like you've treated him like he's frail.

Yeah.

Like he's weak.

Yeah.

And when somebody treats you like you're weak your whole life, what happens to you?

You're weak.

But he's not.

He's not weak. He's strong. Look, treat me like I'm strong. I might fall down a couple of times, but then I'm going to get back up, and I'm going to become strong. That's the mindset that you've got to use. I think you did something really miraculous. I want you to stand strong.

When you change the relationship with somebody, it is very uncomfortable. And they will consciously and unconsciously do a lot of things to bring you back in line. That's where the two of you come in helpful. You're a team. You're a unit. Okay.

Okay.

Great job. Let's keep moving. We shaved off 20 bucks from the cell phone, but honestly, to me, that was worth a million bucks. That was incredible. Let's keep going. We got to get this number down to roughly 60%. We're at 124%. And frankly, we need to move a lot faster. What's next?

I think we could do a lot better on the groceries.

Groceries are 900.

Yeah, I think we way overspend.

Who does the groceries?

We both do.

From now on, one of you is going to do it because one person owns the number. Who's going to do it?

Six.

600. You're going to do grocery shopping?

Yeah.

Harry's grocery shopping from now on. Mary, you good with that?

Yes. I hate grocery shopping.

Amazing. Harry, you're on it. 600. How often do you grocery shop?

All the time.

I can't do that anymore.

Because every time you go is going to be more. So, how many times a month are you going to grocery shop?

Biweekly.

So, $300 each time you go.

Yeah.

Can you do it?

Yeah.

Amazing. Easy. Easy. That's what I'm talking about. What's next? Clothes. Who's buying clothes? Zero. No clothes. Is this for the grandchild?

No.

Then who the hell's buying clothes for $50 a month?

We don't buy clothes for a while, and then we'll go buy some jeans or shoes or something.

Am I living in an alternate universe? You have 119%. You don't buy clothes. That's it. Make it work.

Okay.

Next. This is the kind of energy we need. What's next? Subscriptions at 135. Yeah, right. Pick one. What do you want to keep?

Netflix.

Great. 20 bucks. Everything else is gone. Goodbye. Next. Car payments. Probably nothing you can do about that. Meds. All right. I'm not trying to—that would be really cruel if I'm over here like, "How much of this Tylenol, whatever, do you need?" I'm not doing this.

Hey, what's this mortgage at 34.6%?

That's our mortgage with insurance and what else do you pay? Taxes.

Do you realize that you are way overspending on housing?

Yeah.

Oh, you do. You just keep doing it. What would you like to do about that? Because if you look, we're at 116% fixed costs, guys. We're trying to get to 60%. There's no amount of changes you can make.

He can make more money.

Oh, that's true. Let's do that before we mess with the mortgage. All right. Going up to Harry, your income is gross income $1,500 a month. Not going to cut it.

Nope.

What job can you get now that will raise that number to at least $5,000 a month?

I have more hours now coming in through the parks and rec sports department because through the summer and the fall, my hours go up tremendously.

Okay, that's good. What about after fall?

My plan is personal coaching, which I'm building the clientele by school duggery.

Okay, that is one option, but that doesn't get us where we need.

No, I know.

So, I need another option that gets you $5,000 a month. What about a job? Straight up job. There are times where we have the ability, yes, to do a business. Right now, if you want to do that extra, great. But we need something stable and predictable.

Yeah.

Yeah. You can talk to Parks and Rec and see. They just acquired all that land. Maybe they'll be willing to give you a full-time job.

I know there is more work coming through anyway.

They love you.

Yeah.

They don't want to lose you.

Can you make it happen?

Yeah.

I'm not just saying that.

No, I'm asking, can you make it happen?

Yeah.

Okay. You can get a job or jobs that total—

I'm happy to do jobs.

Great. I don't care how you do it. I need $5,000 a month.

Got it.

All right. I'm putting it in here. 5,000 a month. But look at this fixed cost number. All right. You see what it is right now?

It's at 116%.

Shoot it. Go for it.

Watch this. I'm going to approximate your take-home pay. Watch. $3,850 net per month.

Holy. That's a kick in the right place, isn't it?

The fixed cost just dropped to 75%.

And we're targeting 60, did you say?

Yeah.

That's on me.

Make it happen.

I'm in.

Boom. That's what we're talking about. Nice work. I love that response.

I've still got time for shopping, groceries.

Yeah, that's right. I don't care when you do it. It could be midnight.

That's free. I'm in.

All right. Good. I'm liking this so far. I'm liking it a lot.

That's massive.

Huge.

Mary.

Yes.

Good suggestion. I want to take a second and note that you brought up he can earn more. It wasn't about blaming anybody. It was just like, "Hey, he needs to earn more. This is what I expect from a partner." We modeled the numbers. It's obvious. Holy, this changes the game. He goes, "I'm in." This is how we have these honest conversations in Mary and Harry 2.0.

Boom. Okay, let's keep going. Mary, anything on your income? Is it possible for you to make any more, or are you making what you make?

I work in higher education. I'm not going to get much more. Maybe a little bit more.

Okay. Can you do anything on the side?

I don't. Yeah, I've tried. Maybe.

Maybe.

Time-wise is...

What time? You have a whole bunch of free time now. No more chaos around you. People texting you. You just send them straight to voicemail and delete. I'll just delete 75% of the texts that come in. Oh, my kid's texting. Delete.

Because we have a baby.

Oh, that's true. Okay, that's true. Five-and-a-half-month baby. That's going to take some time. All right, let's go back down. Listen. Your rent, your mortgage, we need to figure something out.

Well, there's only a couple of suggestions here, okay? I'm going to tell you right now. Your mortgage is in a better place. With the new income, your mortgage now costs you 24%.

That's better.

Okay, but that is only if the two of you are making that kind of money. Okay, if we factor in all the associated costs with your housing, you're probably actually at 31% or so. That's not crazy except for a couple that is approaching retirement and has not enough money. Okay. So, your housing is your biggest driver. You have one option, which is if you were to sell your house, do you know how much you'd walk away with?

Maybe 90.

90K after expenses?

Yeah.

Okay. And can I ask you whether in your current location or anywhere where you would potentially move, how much would it cost you for a smaller place appropriate for the two of you and the grandchild?

It would be about the same, if not a little bit more.

It would be like 3,500 a month.

It would be probably around 3,000.

Really?

Mhm.

I think you're probably in no position to buy right now. But renting, I'm not saying you have to. I'm saying it's worth exploring. If you were to find a place where you could rent, especially if it is maybe a bit out there, a bit cheaper. There's some option.

Smaller place.

Because you don't need a huge place. I actually think a smaller place would help you. You know why? Not only the cost, but it actually makes it really easy for the two of you to politely decline a lot of requests for help.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm so sorry. We can't do that. We only have one bedroom for the baby. It's a bit of a squeeze.

Yeah, I like a squeeze.

We already have a squeeze.

I like it.

We only have a 1,300-square-foot house.

Great. Try 950.

We just need a bedroom and an office. I work from home.

Yeah.

And then a place for knickknack.

We looked in your location. My team just looked it up. They found a two-bedroom, pet-friendly place for $1,795.

Oh, wow.

You want to see what effect that would have on you?

Yes, please. Yeah.

Watch this. $1,795, you're down to 64%. Hey, let's drop your utilities. Let's put 150, a little bit more reasonable.

And we'll keep your insurance, even though I think you probably would pay less, but maybe your rent would go up, so over time we'll equal it out. You're down to 59%. That gives you $2,000 a month to be able to split among savings, investments, and even maybe eating out once a month.

A life.

Yes.

It's funny because we flip-flopped, because I was the one pushing him to watch the videos and everything, and he didn't want to think about it.

Yeah.

And now I'm like, "No, I don't want to rent."

You don't want to rent because—it's okay.

Because it's a failure.

Mary, I love the honesty. So this is one of the reasons that I love talking about our choice to rent.

Mhm.

We have the money. We could buy right now.

Mhm.

And we choose to rent. And I talk about it not to brag. I'm not bragging about renting. It's because in America, when we talk about renters, we typically think they are poor and they're failures. And we don't want to do that. I can see it on your face.

We had that label.

Yeah. And so we will tie ourselves, we'll twist ourselves in a knot to avoid being thought of as poor or failures. But my whole concept of a rich life, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Not I will teach you to copy what everybody else does. I will teach you to choose your rich life. If you want to own your place and you want to stay in it, I can help you do that. But if you want to have thousands of dollars more per month to be able to invest, to be able to live, then you may have to reconsider if you care what other people think.

I need to get over it.

The same way you were treating your son like he was weak.

Mhm.

I think you might be treating yourself like you're weak. Look at me when I talk about renting. Look at my body language. You think I say, "Oh, I'm a poor little renter. Life is so difficult. I hate it. I hate what you think of me, society." Think what you want. I have an awesome life. This is what we chose.

Mhm.

The smart choice for us, right? And you have to decide what's smart for you, right?

Mhm.

Tell me, Mary, what's going on? I love watching your facial expressions right now. I see pain. I see confusion. I see realization. Tell me what's going on.

Again, I just feel like a failure. I worked really so hard to not be the poor person renting with the car.

Who says you're a poor person? Who says you're a poor person?

Small person. I did have a townhome that we sold in a short sale.

Yeah.

When the market, the whole 2008 crap, and went to renting, and then we bought a house, and now it's back to renting.

Yeah. Can I gently challenge you? So the narrative that you just said, I respect it. I know that's what's going through your head. Can you give me a different narrative that's more empowering?

I made a decision to sell my townhome because I couldn't afford it anymore.

Yes.

And renting allowed me to live a life with the child that I had at the time, my daughter. But then I really worked very hard. I had to claim bankruptcy and everything. And then I worked hard to get past all of that. And it just feels like I'm going back to it.

Stay on the empowering part. You're doing great. Don't tell me about how it feels going back. Tell me why you might be making this decision. What will it get you?

It will get us a life, like Harry said. We'll be able to save money, which we can't do right now.

Yeah.

And we'll be able to go out to eat. We'll be able to explore the beautiful area we live in and maybe do stuff. Not spend a ton of money, but just—

Yeah.

Go do stuff.

I just see this over and over with you, Mary, is the narrative that you first come up with is disempowering. It is about the things that are wrong and the ways that you wish you weren't in this situation. But just with a little bit of pushing, you are able to come up with a very empowering narrative. This is an exercise for the two of you to work on. What are the narratives we used to choose, and what are the new narratives that we get to choose?

Okay. All right. I don't know what you're going to do with your renting versus buying. Personally, though, I really like to see this number at 59%.

Uh-huh.

So I'm going to leave it in here, okay? You don't have to do it. It's your money. It's your life, but this sure buys you a lot of flexibility. Let me show you a couple things that we could do with the numbers. Now, I'm going to move quickly on this, okay? We have $2,100 a month left over. Why? Because all that extra money you cut, including the mortgage and all this other stuff, flows to the bottom.

We also have an extra $90,000. Okay, $90,000 from the sale of your house. I'm going to make it 80 because, I don't know, extra fees and this and that, moving costs, whatever. But I'm going to go ahead and add that to your investments.

Okay.

Okay. So I will put, instead of 500K, it's going to be $580,000.

Okay.

I'm putting it all into investments. Okay. You still have $2,000, $2,139 a month. What are we going to do with that money? Well, we are going to save it and we are going to invest it, because time is running out and I need you to have more money. We good?

Yeah.

Let me just show you how I would do it. You all can totally adapt this and change it based on life circumstances. Okay. I would get way more aggressive with my savings because right now you are two weeks away from disaster. I don't want it. I want a thousand bucks extra a month going in there. You're now at $1,583 per month. That savings account is not to be tapped anymore. That savings account is one direction. Money goes in. It does not come out.

Okay.

What else? FSA healthcare.

Yeah, the flexible spending account. I didn't know where to put that.

You put 150 bucks into it.

And now 200, yeah.

You spend it, right?

Yeah. I have to spend it all every year.

What do you end up spending it on?

Braces and—

Oh, okay.

Co-pays and whatever.

So you use it?

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

I don't mind this. I do need some more investments here. Let me look. 417, 580. We're going to calculate how much you have. Let me take a look at what this shows us. I'm going to just quickly summarize this. You're at 59% fixed costs. I would like it to be lower, but I don't mind it. I think some of these things may naturally get a little bit lower. You did mention pets. Can I just ask, are you all going to get more pets?

No.

Okay, good. The answer is no. That was rhetorical. No more pets.

No.

I love your dogs. Goodbye. We're taking the CSP off screen. I'm going to tell you some of our numbers that you may end up with.

Okay.

The exciting—the reveal.

So right now, if we hadn't changed anything and we waited until Mary was 65 years old, okay, you'd have about a million dollars invested. If you were to withdraw 4% of that, which you could safely, roughly safely withdraw for the rest of your lives, that would be about $40,000 per year in income. It's not a lot. 40K, not a lot. You wouldn't be able to make it. But we want to add on Harry's pension.

Mhm.

About $32,000 per year. We want to add roughly 30K of Social Security. So you'd have about $102,000 per year. Thoughts?

That's more than I thought we would have.

Yeah.

So if we don't have a mortgage, that's not bad.

Nicely put, if we don't have a mortgage and if we keep the rest of our costs pretty low. Importantly, if you retire, you may not need to keep investing. So that would be hundreds of dollars extra per month that you could use. You could save it for a vacation. Obviously, you need to pay off some of these debts. You could accelerate those payments. There's a lot of things you could do. Not bad. Not great.

Mhm.

But not horrible if you cut your fixed costs dramatically, okay?

Yeah.

But what about if you sell the house? If you sold the house, $1.1 million. If we add in all Social Security, pension, all that stuff, it would be about $108,000 of income. What do you notice? From 102 to $108,000.

Not much.

It's not much of a difference, right?

Yeah.

Do you know why?

Because the time of the investment, it's not enough time to grow.

Exactly. It's short. Now, if we stretch that number out, if, for example, you didn't retire at 65, but two, three, four, five years later, those numbers change considerably. What is the age that you would be minimally acceptable to retire at?

I've had 65 in my head for so long. I'm coming to terms with 67.

Okay.

Yeah. I don't want to wait till I'm 70. I want a life.

Yeah.

So at 67, rather than having $1.1 million, you would have about $1.3 million. So what you will notice is that those two years is adding $100,000 per year. Again, I'm approximating this. With shorter time periods, it can become a little dicey, but I'm giving you some approximate, reasonable numbers. At that point, you would have $116,000 per year of safe withdrawal income. So we went from 102 to 108 to 116 per year.

That's more than what we're making now.

Yeah.

So to me, that's better.

It's more than you make now, but right now you are spending way more than you make.

Yes. Yes.

So what is the key here?

Not to overspend. Keep our fixed costs down.

Yes. And underneath that, what is the key to making sure your fixed costs are lower?

Not giving money to people.

Bingo. You are nailing it. Honestly, I could see the confidence just in the way you're responding to me. It's quite striking. I love this momentum I'm seeing. Yes, the way to keep your costs lower. Obviously, you made some structural changes. You make some decisions together as a unit, but ultimately it is also about having these boundaries. These boundaries are the things that allow you to retire. It's not just about saying no to your kids. It's actually about saying yes to your life. Do you see that?

I do.

Yes, Harry.

And to work alongside that and support for both of us is increase my income.

Yes.

Just do it.

Yes.

That, nothing else.

At $5,000 a month, it's okay. At $6,000, at $7,000 a month, you are putting yourself in a much better position. The things that I have not outlined here, because I want to be realistic with you, I haven't really outlined vacation because right now it's not feasible.

Mhm.

There's no money for it. In order for that to happen, you could, but your earnings would need to go up.

Yep.

To me, I actually love that. In our own household, there are things we want to do. And so we talk about them openly. Here's what I want to do. Here's a hotel I want to go to, whatever. And okay, so what's it going to take? Well, we got to earn this much. We back out the math.

So if you decided you wanted to take a trip or you wanted to do XYZ, you both talk about it, you get excited about it, use the scripts in the book, and then you map out how much is it going to cost. Okay, so what's it going to take? Does one of us have to work on the weekend? Do we have to do this? Can we eliminate that? And then we bank the money in a named account, and when the time is right, we know the exact month and year we're going to have enough. We take the trip guilt-free, right? What do you think?

Yep. Yeah, we need to plan it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Structure.

Yeah.

This radical change you're about to make, it's literally changing your identities. Like I said, I joke around, Harry and Mary 2.0.

Mhm.

But it is everything. The way you talk, the way you relate to each other, to your family, all of it. Having a structured place to talk about this and maybe a third party to get help. You've seen what happens when somebody outside can help a little bit. Therapists do awesome work.

Yes.

I would encourage that.

Yes. Yeah.

Final reframe here. I've loved our reframes. What you used to say, what you're saying. You are not cutting your children off. You are—

Empowering them.

Yeah. Making them stronger.

Mhm.

And when you focus on your rich life together, what example are you setting for your kids?

How to live life.

Mhm.

How to live life.

Yeah, Harry.

Well, we're a team. We're working together. We are empowering you. We don't want you to make the same mistakes. We've seen it passed down the generations.

We care for you.

Yeah. We care for you. That ends here.

Yeah.

And it might feel uncomfortable, but that's okay. We don't shy away from it.

No.

We feel uncomfortable right now and we're still doing it. And you can watch us or not. That's up to you. But you're adults, and we're going to trust you to learn the right decisions for yourself. It's going to take a lot. You're going to have to repeat this over and over and over again. That's okay. But it will be important for you to speak it, to say it, to text it, all of the above, because 30, 40 years of the same type of relationship takes a while to sink in that things are changing.

Mhm.

Okay. Did you happen to get a response?

Yes.

Okay. Can you read it out loud?

"LOL. Okay."

Wow. What do you make of that?

I'm not surprised. That's him. And I just worry and mother hen too much.

All of that.

Yes. All of that worry and his response, "LOL."

Yeah.

That's actually really cool. I couldn't actually ask for a better response from your son.

He goes, "Cool."

Yeah.

"Sounds good."

Yeah.

What surprised you the most in today's conversation?

This has been such a hard issue for us, and how supportive and open he was to listening and taking accountability on that. It's been really hard to make ends meet.

What about for you? What surprised you about yourself in today's conversation?

That I texted my son, and I didn't want to.

Uh-huh. And you did it.

And I did it. And I feel okay. I feel relieved.

Yeah.

Well done.

Yeah. And that we have the fortitude to be able to do this.

Yeah.

Good for you. I'm proud of you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Harry, what about you?

In terms of being surprised, you didn't surprise me by texting Stephen because I knew you could. The biggest thing that we have now is the ability and the willpower to continue because of this. We couldn't have done that on the couch at home or walking the dogs.

And I want you to remember that because it's easy to make changes here. When you go back, it's going to be very easy to go back into your lifestyle. Families driving up the driveway, people texting. This is actually one of the reasons that I strongly encourage you to move. Financially, yes, but just to change an environment. For example, people who are in recovery, they will often move because they have an environment that does not facilitate the new person they need to become.

Well, guess what? We have a similar scenario here. You are enmeshed in a lot of unhealthy financial behaviors, and even moving 10 miles away could radically change that. Yes, I'm very proud of both of you. I am. This is a tough scenario you're in. It really is. I wanted you to understand the severity of it because if you do nothing, you will end up in a really bad position. It seems okay right now. The roof is here and blah, blah, blah. But it is a very dark place you are heading towards.

However, to watch the two of you realize what was going on, to commit to making changes, then we actually went through the numbers and it is possible. But everybody has to be executing, okay?

Mhm.

People respond to a big, bold mission. You two do. The kids do. Everybody does.

I think Mary and Harry have a pretty tough road ahead of them. They have family dynamics that are tightly enmeshed. They have a pretty serious financial problem. They are older. There's a lot of things against them, but I'm surprised to find myself confident in them. The way that they changed today was very impressive. Frankly, I did not expect it. And the ability for Mary to even send that text message, that was not just a text message. It was a total transformation of the way she views herself. And I could not have scripted a better response from her son. "LOL. Fine." That's amazing. All the stuff that was in her head may not actually be reality-based. So I hope that they are

Able to make some big decisions, cut those fixed costs. I think renting might be a very good option for them, allow them to bank tons of money every single month. Most importantly, I hope they can really come together as a unit as opposed to working independently.

I want to give a big shout-out to Mary and Harry. Thank you for coming here. I know that wasn't easy. I know that we talked about some really intimate, serious things, and I appreciate you coming here and sharing your story with everybody. And now let's check out their follow-ups.

Hey, this is Harry. Hello everyone. How you doing? Hope all is well. The takeaways I got from that podcast was teamwork between Mary and myself. Has to be teamwork. The accounts, management of the finances, it's vital for our success.

And the current changes right now is I have taken over the grocery account. So looking forward to dropping the expenditure on that. And at the same time, on the work front, I have enhanced my coaching programs with gaining more facilities and clients with immediate effect.

Hi Ramit. Biggest surprise of our time together is the generational aspect of my relationship and habits with money and how I most likely pass that on to my own children. Biggest takeaway is I just need to change how I speak about money and finances and not be so negative. So just for instance, saying things like instead of relinquishing control of finances to Harold, that we have control together, and together we have control and planning our financial future.

Also, I'm just empowering myself and my adult children into having rich lives. We are sitting down tomorrow to work on our Conscious Spending Plan together instead of me doing it by myself and saying, "Here you go, Harold." And discovering our rich lives, exploring that and understanding what our rich lives look like, and then what we can ruthlessly slash, and then also put a little money aside to enjoy what is important to us. We are super excited to move forward on our journey.

Everyone, hope everybody is well. Harry, Mary, Bunga.

Hi everyone. This is about take 500. We're doing really well. We are being very intentional about spending money and thoroughly thinking things through before we buy anything for the house or anything else. Harry has been in charge of groceries, and he is quite the dictator. So we've had a few heated words about the way he proceeds with being in charge of groceries.

Groceries. The initial onset when we all met up, and fantastic. 900 bucks a month. June got that down to 720 and a bit of change. July, we are probably a week to 10 days to the end of the month, and I've got it down to 450. Brilliant.

On the work front, I've got more hours in with the parks and recreation department here, in the sports sector of that. My coaching business, I have more clients coming in. So I've generated more revenue to put into the household account for Mary and us. Me, Harry.

Yeah.

Both of us.

We're a team. Sometimes, not just me. I know I'm the boss, but—

Get on with it. You're rambling.

As far as moving, selling our home, we're not going to do that right now. Something to definitely consider in the future. Probably just downsizing, buying, getting a smaller mortgage, moving out of town a little bit. But right now we need to be in town, and I need my dedicated office space, and we have our grandson. So not a good time to think about moving at the moment, but we're going to focus on bringing in more money. And we have no credit card debt. The only debt we have is our mortgage and the debt that Harry is working on.

And the other big issue that we had to work on, or are working on, is giving money to our adult children.

Your adult children.

Our adult children. It's not just my child.

Right.

We'll work through that too. But the one particular adult child has been paying us back.

Slowly.

And do you want to add anything?

I just think we've got to sit down over the next week, maybe two, and figure out a repayment plan that is conducive for everyone. I think we'll sit down as three adults and figure that one out. Brilliant.

And we are going through the Money for Couples book. And I really like the first exercise, the first couple of exercises. And when Harry told me what he would buy for me, if there was anything he could buy for me, he said, "A horse." He said, "A horse." And it was all emotional. It was very emotional. That was so sweet. This is why I love Harry. And I'm going to buy him a Mini Cooper. So, one day.

One day we'll get there.

There we go. All for now. Yeah. All for now. Signing off. She rambles, you see.

Thanks so much for all your help. You really helped get us on the right path, and we are moving ahead.

AOA.

Cheers.

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Article published September 29, 2026