A $362,000 Income, a 2.7% Mortgage, and a House They Don't Want: Ramit Sethi Coaches Chloe and Jake
I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Chloe, 32, and Jake, 30, have been together for ten years and are married with no kids. They earn about $362,000 a year and have a net worth of roughly $692,000. They also say they are "pretty grumpy and tired most days." The cause is the house they bought in their mid-twenties: a 3,000-square-foot renovated 1970s home on 1.5 acres, with a pool, a well, a septic system, and landscaping that eats their weekends. Both want out. They have not been able to decide whether to leave, because they have a history of expensive impulsive decisions and because giving up a 2.7% mortgage feels like a mistake of its own.
Ramit Sethi's argument across the conversation is that their numbers are not the problem. Either choice leaves them wealthy. The real question is what they want their life to look like, and they have avoided asking it directly.
A first look at the accounts
Before meeting the couple, Ramit reviewed their linked accounts. Their net monthly income was about $19,248, which he called a high-earning household. Debt payments were around $5,000 a month, and $3,480 of that went to Camping World. He guessed it was an RV. He also noted investments of about $311,000, debt of about $537,000 including a home equity loan, and two trips to Lowe's in two days: $866 one day and $47 the day before. The house-related spending stood out to him most, and he wanted to know why they had applied.
In her application, Chloe wrote that they were "wary to make the wrong financial decisions because of our chronic schemes that inevitably cost us money," and that this left them in "analysis paralysis where we know we want something different but seem unable to decide how to make that happen." She confirmed that this was still accurate. She said she was tired of spending money on things that don't matter to her, and named the house. Jake agreed. He said they could do much more with the money than spend it "trying to keep our house from returning to dust."
The "schemes"
Ramit focused on Chloe's word "schemes." She explained that both of them work corporate jobs and want to be entrepreneurs. They keep generating business ideas and wanting to pursue them, then get burned out by house maintenance. They also tend to put a lot of money into these ideas.
The main example happened about two years earlier. They decided to Airbnb their house after doing very little research into the local market, which Chloe says "isn't great." They took out an $80,000 home equity loan for renovations. They bought an RV and a new truck to pull it. A neighbor asked if they had won the lottery. Chloe guessed the neighbor concluded they were either rich or bad with money.
Asked to tell a scheme from a business, Chloe said that "a business makes money." She described a scheme as an idea they get excited about, put money and time into, and then drop, something "less serious than a business." She feels fine about some of them. About the RV she feels "just embarrassed" and calls it a terrible financial decision that seemed great at the time. Jake does not like the word. He sees these projects as attempts to escape the traditional nine-to-five. He says they don't mind working, they just want more flexibility than a corporate structure allows. For him the projects are "an out" from corporate America.
How they ended up in this house
Their one recurring money disagreement is about the house. They agree they don't want to live there. Jake wants to sell. Chloe hesitates. People around them keep telling her real estate is a good investment and they should rent it out, and she keeps coming back to the 2.7% rate.
They bought at ages 25 and 27, at the end of 2020 into 2021. Chloe describes it as the point where values had started rising but weren't yet extreme, and rates were very low. Neither of them dreamed of owning a home. They bought for purely financial reasons, based on the conventional idea that renting is throwing money away. Chloe says that idea came from Jake. His reasoning was that rates would never be this low again, and that living there 20 or 30 years could make the house a decent investment, "if not anything other than a savings account," since they weren't saving much then and earned much less than they do now.
They were paying $2,400 a month in rent. The mortgage plus escrow started at $2,990 and is now about $3,072. Counting everything, they estimate the house costs around $4,500 a month. Jake's verdict: "I mean, it was stupid. We did not make enough money." He was earning about $126,000 at the time. Their budget ceiling was $500,000. The house appraised at $595,000.
The house came with history. It had been in Jake's family since the 1990s. An uncle owned it, then sold it to Jake's parents, who sold it to Jake and Chloe. They bought it as-is with no inspection. They say that was normal locally, where buyers were paying $100,000 over asking without inspections, and that the same money would otherwise have bought a townhouse. Instead they got four bedrooms, an office, a pool, 3,000 square feet, and 1.5 acres. The family member who first owned it was a multimillionaire with gardeners, landscapers, and two koi ponds. Jake's parents couldn't afford that upkeep, so the grounds became overgrown. Chloe later added that the house had also been a rental for a while, which made it worse. For five summers the couple has been tearing out overgrown landscape features. They estimate eight hours of yard work most weekends, often more.
Jake said that at the signing he "wanted to throw up." Chloe's credit would have pulled their average below a 760 threshold, so she was left off the loan and Jake signed alone. He described feeling the weight of being responsible for half a million dollars, being handed a stack of roughly a hundred pages he couldn't realistically read, and having no lawyer. Chloe said she had "zero financial literacy" then and was "in La La Land." She had no wish to own a home. It felt like something 40-year-olds did, and none of her friends owned one.
Chloe also explained that when they met, her credit score was 430, and Jake told her he would never marry her because they could never buy a house with that credit. It hurt her at the time. Now she says she understands, and that she might not marry someone with a 430 score either. Ramit said the comment sounds harsh at first, but a score that low reflects money behavior, such as awareness, intentionality, and the ability to correct mistakes, which matters in a marriage. Jake said he helped her improve her credit, starting with getting her a first credit card.
Living inside the decision
Jake said he's glad they can own a home, and that for some people it would be their rich life, but not for them. He said you can see it in how they handle daily chores. Chloe complained about everything she now has to know that she never wanted to, like what a constant-pressure well pump is. Jake said their Lowe's spending shows how he feels.
Ramit described his own version of hell: waking up in a 6,500-square-foot house surrounded by shrubbery and dead animals, getting into a huge SUV with no gas that only drives to Home Depot, and repeating that every day. Jake called it "Groundhog Day." Ramit's view is that buying any house when you're young costs you geographic flexibility while you build your career, and that a house this size is "like a country estate." He told them it's okay to admit a big mistake. People who earn and spend more will make more money mistakes, and the goal isn't to avoid all of them but to be honest enough to acknowledge them and fix them.
The numbers: healthy almost everywhere
Chloe read their summary: assets $860,000, investments $304,000, savings $68,000, debt $540,000, net worth $692,000. Both liked the numbers but called the debt high. Jake pointed out that most of it is the mortgage. Gross monthly household income is $30,166, or $361,992 a year. Jake, a senior manager of an engineering department, earns about $20,000 a month. Chloe, a software engineer, earns about $10,000. Jake said he "sacrificed my 20s" to get there.
Ramit said he values their story because it shows that more income doesn't automatically solve money problems. Without a philosophy of what your rich life is, he said, people end up in their 50s, 60s, or 70s asking why they followed every rule and still feel scarce.
Their fixed costs are 43%, which Ramit called one of the lowest he's seen. He expects that at their income, since everyday prices don't scale with salary. He considers the mortgage modest for what they earn. They invest 10% on top of substantial 401(k) contributions. They save 38%, about $7,000 a month, which is set aside to pay off the remaining $45,000 on the home equity loan. They also have $68,000 in emergency savings. Guilt-free spending is just 9%, or $1,680. Chloe said that felt low. She said they've "gotten ourselves into a little bit of a pickle" and can't sell or do anything with the house until the equity loan is paid, so her whole salary goes toward it.
When Ramit asked why they didn't pay cash or wait, they said they had no cash and that waiting was an option. Ramit said it's "crazy" that Americans borrow for renovations. In his view most renovations are luxuries rather than investments, and only a few return more than they cost. He told viewers to look up renovation payback rates. Chloe said she would do it differently now. At the time, she said, any money put into a house felt like an investment because "that's what they tell you," and in hindsight the money could have gone into the stock market. Ramit said this reflects American culture: following the script of a house in the suburbs and a corporate job, then realizing you hate it. He added that a big suburban house is great for people who choose it deliberately.
The RV that never left the driveway
The $3,480 Camping World payments were the final payoff on the RV loan so they could sell it. The RV cost $50,000. It was already eight years old and 44 feet long, which Chloe compared to a semi-truck. They bought it to travel the country with their remote jobs while the house was on Airbnb. They kept it about two years and sold it for around $30,000 to $32,000. They never took it on a single trip. Getting it into the driveway had been brutal, and they concluded it was never going to come out.
Ramit asked how they could laugh about it. Chloe said it was "probably because we make enough money where it hasn't destroyed us." Ramit agreed. If Jake had lost his job while carrying these debts, he said, it wouldn't be funny. He told a story about paying a TaskRabbit worker to assemble a table in New York, only for the worker to tell him about 90 seconds later that it had arrived fully assembled. Ramit gave him a big tip and laughed. He said his parents couldn't have laughed off losing $200 that way, and that this is one reason he wants people to raise their income: so they can absorb mistakes like this.
Ordinary spending, and a good habit
Beyond the house, Ramit found nothing unusual. Pets were $163. Shopping was mostly Amazon subscriptions for toilet paper, paper towels, and dog food. Dining out included Chick-fil-A, DoorDash, and donuts. He called their spending "very normal, very modest." Only the housing costs (Lowe's, the pool service, the mortgage) and the unrelated Camping World payments stood out.
Their investments include both 401(k)s, about $60,000 in personal investments, and roughly $96,000 in unvested restricted stock units from Jake's company, vesting over two years. Jake has received RSUs for about six years, typically $40,000 to $50,000 a year on top of his salary. They plan ahead for each batch, usually toward a vacation or a house project they couldn't otherwise save for. They say they talk about money every day and enjoy it. Ramit praised this. He said anyone can decide in advance what to do with unexpected money, whether it's a tax refund or an extra $100.
Their only scheduled debt is Jake's car loan. Chloe's car is paid off. The home equity loan has no required payments, so they track it as savings. Ramit liked that they picked an approach and knew why they chose it. His overall read was that they "are going to end up doing pretty well regardless."
Why they still feel stuck
Jake said the numbers miss the time, effort, and mental energy the house takes: things breaking, scheduling contractors, and worrying about the second of two HVAC units, which he expects to cost $13,000 to $14,000 when it fails. If they aren't going to live there, he doesn't want the mental load of owning it.
Chloe agrees she doesn't want to deal with the house. But she struggles to give up the rate and the location, which she describes as an up-and-coming area with development. She said a real estate investor would look at the area, though not at their house. Having been "flippant with money" when she was young, she is now the more frugal one. She sees the purchase as a reasonable financial decision but a poor lifestyle decision, and she doesn't want to add another mistake. "I feel a little bit paralyzed," she said. "I don't feel like I know what's right anymore. Even though our numbers look good."
Asked if she trusts herself with money, she said "kind of," and pointed to both of them throwing money at problems. Her clearest example was a car. Two or three years earlier, her car was a few hundred dollars from being paid off when it developed an electrical problem that would have cost a couple thousand dollars to fix. She felt the dealership was gaslighting them, saying she was leaving the overhead light on. Rather than deal with it, she traded it in and took a $17,000 loan for a new car. By her estimate, fixing the old car would have saved about $14,000 over two years. Her fear is that selling the house would be the same move at a larger scale: walking away from something that could be a good rental just because they're exhausted. She said everyone around them calls it a great house and doesn't see the work or how much their lifestyle has suffered, and she wonders, "are we just dumb?"
Ramit said many people reach the thing they were told would make them happy and, when it doesn't, never examine the messages behind it. They stay, and then "feel bad about feeling bad." He acknowledged that Chloe's worry makes sense given their real past mistakes.
Where their money beliefs came from
Chloe grew up in Virginia, one of eight children. Her father was a software engineer earning probably six figures, but with ten people in a four-bedroom, one-bathroom house, the money didn't go far. Most of it went to religious private school for all the kids, with sibling discounts. The family shopped at thrift stores, didn't eat out, and only vacationed when grandparents paid. Her father told her she should never have a credit card because she wasn't responsible enough, which she says was probably true. Her parents didn't pay for college, and she was on her own at 18. She says her parents tried a little to teach her about money and then wrote her off as needing a husband. As an adult she sees that private school was the one thing her parents wouldn't compromise on, and she believes that taught her frugality.
She said her religious upbringing shaped her strongly. The message was that "God will provide," that you don't take agency over your life, and that things happen as part of a plan. So she saw no point in financial literacy. She barely graduated high school, skipped college at first, and later put herself through it while working full-time. She sees the same split among her siblings: some are thriving and some are struggling and reactive. She left religion gradually about eight years ago. Jake also grew up religious and no longer is. Ramit said he was 95% sure she'd say she wasn't religious anymore, because she now talks about money with an internal locus of control: we could save more, invest more, spend it on a vacation.
Jake also grew up in Virginia. His father was a state trooper, and his mother was a former police officer who became a stay-at-home mom and homeschooled the kids. His parents used a percentage-based financial adviser and told him to save 10%, which he did in every early job. His biggest influence was his grandmother. She was the widow of a CPA, had invested early in Apple and IBM, and gave unsolicited advice constantly: start your own business, invest in the stock market, don't overspend, "buy quality furniture and keep it forever." Wealthier friends of his father's also talked openly with him about money.
His key memory is his father wanting a motorcycle and being limited by price. Jake said moving $5,000 up or down meant losing critical safety features. Around 14 or 15, Jake decided he wanted to "have my cake and eat it too," and he came to see money as "a tool to buy your freedom." Ramit said he made the same decision at that age. Jake did a year and a half of community college, quit when he started working at a hospital at 19, and later finished a bachelor's degree using a 90% tuition benefit through Chloe's job at a school, graduating in 2018. He started at about $100,000. He once believed six figures was all anyone needed, and remembers telling Chloe he couldn't believe he made $50 an hour and that the next goal was $100 an hour.
For Jake, freedom means starting his own business with enough runway and setting up retirement as early as possible. That's why he wants to sell. He says they have about $250,000 in equity, and by his calculation, putting it in the S&P 500 and adding nothing for 30 years would grow to about $10 million. After that, he says, they could "scheme" freely without setting themselves back.
Ramit said he connected with Jake's determination. He also observed that Jake likely talks to Chloe about money mainly in terms of numbers, ROI, and projections, and Chloe talks about it in terms of what could go wrong, so neither brings a vision of joy. He compared it to describing a spaghetti dinner by its carbohydrates instead of how good it will taste and the memories it brings. A rich life, he said, is "not just made up of your calculations."
What each of them actually wants
Chloe said they've been having the sell-or-keep conversation for about eight months. Each time Jake shows her the numbers she agrees, and half an hour later she doubts it again: the house will appreciate, they're paying more toward principal than interest, and she doesn't want to regret giving up a good asset. Jake clarified that his plan is mainly to sell and invest. It doesn't require starting a business. Their jobs aren't tied to the location, which Ramit said isolates the house as the single variable. They both said the problem isn't a lack of talking. They keep talking and can't agree.
Ramit said he often makes choices that look irrational on paper, such as keeping two apartments, because he knows what his rich life is. He asked each of them for theirs.
Chloe started with "It's not landscaping." She wants a luxury gym with a pool, massages, and tanning beds, about $400 a month once the equity loan is paid off. More than that she wants freedom. She has never been outside the United States and badly wants to travel. She has lived in the same area her whole life and wants to try the West Coast, California, maybe Hawaii, without being tied to a house or a place. Her "someday" dream is a private chef who would meal prep for her, since she's a serious gym-goer and tired of baking chicken.
Jake's rich life also includes a lot of travel, but his job makes that hard. He says he is essentially on call 24/7, 365 days a year. He disputed that they work nine-to-fives. He usually works 50 to 55 hours a week, often 70 to 75, and the previous week had worked 25 hours straight. Ramit pointed out that high-paying jobs usually come with heavy time and mental demands. Jake wants to go out to dinner on a random weeknight, which they don't do now because of his job and the "compounding chores." He feels like they're "constantly fighting the house." He loves technology and would like to spend about $14,000 to $15,000 on equipment to run generative AI locally. And he wants to frontload retirement so he could take a low-stress job if he chose. Ramit found their visions compatible and said Jake's equity plan makes sense as a way to reduce dependence on his high income.
Chloe's fears: parents, special occasions, and the devil you know
When Ramit said they'd be wealthy either way, Jake agreed. Chloe said "kind of." Jake could get hurt, and they've never managed to get their spending low enough to live on her income alone. Her real worry is her parents. Her father's health is declining, he had a health episode the previous year, he won't discuss it because it makes him anxious, and her mother has never had a real job and still has two kids at home. Chloe believes she and Jake are the only ones in the family with enough money to help. She doesn't know her parents' full finances. Her mother says they'll be fine because of life insurance, and Chloe asks what happens if her father needs 24/7 care after a stroke rather than dying.
Asked whether the house would help in that case, she saw it both ways. Their HOA is lenient, so they could build an in-law suite on the property, and their mortgage is very affordable. If they moved away and later came back for her family, they might face a $6,000 mortgage. She also admitted they could simply rent a separate place for her parents.
Ramit asked what else she's indecisive about. She named dinner and clothes, then described a habit Jake has pointed out: not wearing her nice things. She bought Lululemon leggings in 2016 and saves them for "special workouts," like a fancy gym or puppy yoga with friends. Otherwise she wears cheap clothes, including hand-me-downs from her cousin from when she was 15. Ramit said it is much easier to increase income than to change money psychology, which usually lags behind. He contrasted her leggings with wealthy people who treat things as "meant to be used," citing Jane Birkin throwing fruit into her Birkin bag.
Chloe also asked what happens if they sell, try her rich life, and find she'd rather have a garden than a gym membership. They'd likely rent first, she said, and coming back to this neighborhood would cost much more. Ramit asked whether there were any other neighborhoods "in a country of over 330 million people," and why she keeps herself "playing so small" when she doesn't even like her daily life. She answered, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't." She said she'd be comfortable trying something that didn't work because she'd then try something else. She'd probably be a little embarrassed, as she was with the RV, "but I'm still here."
Arguing the other side, then dreaming
Ramit asked Chloe to argue for selling. Her case was all about returns: she wants Jake happy, relaxed, and retired at 55, and they could get there by investing her whole salary with low expenses, or more easily by investing the equity from a house they don't like. Ramit noted that the argument was almost entirely about investment returns and asked her to make it again using only her vision of a rich life.
The second version sounded completely different. She talked about living somewhere sunny, trying new places and coffee shops, and the trip to Spain she had planned for the following week with girlfriends. Ramit joked that Jake would be working and meal prepping. Chloe said it felt "happier," "optimistic and dreamy." Ramit said being good with money isn't just calculating returns, which he called trivial. It means knowing "when to balance the numbers with the feelings." Asked what else money is for besides the numbers, Chloe said, "Happiness."
She said the main thing stopping her from enjoying their money now is exhaustion, plus anxiety about the house. A failed septic system could cost $50,000 at the high end, and they had no savings when they first bought and got caught off guard. Ramit replied that she only has to think about septic systems and well pumps because she owns the house, and said he doesn't even know what a septic system is. His principle is "not to let the tail wag the dog": one decision shouldn't commit you to years of things you'd never choose. Chloe said she'd already told Jake that as an investor she would never buy this particular house to rent out, because too much can break and the maintenance would have to be outsourced.
Ramit compared their situation to his own choice between a Google offer and starting his own company. A professor told him both choices would be great, so the question was what he really wanted day to day. He realized he'd resent badging into an office. He gave up the early salary, lived modestly with roommates, and valued being free to make his own decisions and live with the results. Asked what they would optimize for if both paths turned out fine, Chloe said retirement, travel, and doing what she wants, not the value of a 1.5-acre house. Jake said happiness.
Testing the alternatives to selling
Ramit said he wasn't trying to tip the scale toward selling. They could pay their way out of the chores by hiring a serious landscaping firm and someone for meal prep. Both rejected the idea. They had already discussed it, and paying to maintain a place they don't want to live in feels wasteful. Ramit said that if they won't do the work and won't pay someone else to, the only remaining option is to sell. Chloe suggested renters could maintain it, then answered herself: they won't, and that's how the house got overgrown when it was a rental.
Chloe said the rental idea came largely from online influencers promoting cash-out refinances and multiple rental properties as the path to freedom. Ramit called it "insane" to take advice from people whose lifestyle, morals, and ethics you don't share.
He still offered a compromise: rent it out for one year with clear success criteria, travel or rent elsewhere, then decide. They would need to settle in advance who finds and screens tenants, who handles repairs, how repairs get paid for, and whether it's worth it at all. Chloe said she would probably end up doing most of that because Jake's schedule is unpredictable. When asked if she wanted to, she said, "Not really. I just kind of felt like maybe I had to."
Ramit said many things people think they have to do exist only in their heads. Asked for her own example, Chloe said: having kids. They had discussed it seriously and decided it isn't for them, despite social pressure, and that felt "really good." Ramit suggested they make the house decision the same way, creating their own "internal culture." Jake said he had made similar points to Chloe before: they don't have to mow the lawn, and they could sell and rent nearby if they wanted.
Ramit's overall assessment was that despite their success, money doesn't seem to bring them much joy. Their money goes to the equity loan and the house, and the nice things they own come out only on special occasions. "I don't believe in special occasions," he said, adding that he wears his best things to 7-Eleven. He told them to set aside extra for possible family needs, and said he hoped that six months from now they'd wake up feeling their day "looks awesome."
Two retirement numbers and a rebuilt spending plan
Ramit ran projections. If Chloe retires in 25 years at 57, their current path leads to about $4.8 million, which he put at about $192,000 a year under a safe withdrawal rate. He said that might need to be lower for an early retirement. If they sell and invest $250,000 of equity now, he projected about $6.2 million and about $250,000 a year. He noted that they would then pay rent, which would reduce their investments compared with owning, but that early compounding matters a lot. Chloe said either amount is more than most people have. Ramit said he'd expect them to beat both because their incomes won't stay at age-30 levels. Jake called the numbers "rookie numbers."
They then edited their spending plan live:
- A lawn service at about $450 a month until they move, raising fixed costs from 43% to 46%.
- A $200-a-month gym, bringing fixed costs to 47%.
- A vacation fund for Chloe's first trip abroad, which she wants to take within at least 10 months. She suggested $1,000 a month, Ramit set it at $1,200, and later raised it to $1,500.
- An income adjustment from $20,000 to $22,000 a month to reflect the RSUs, which hadn't been included.
- Removing the finished Camping World payment, which pushed guilt-free spending to 40%, about $8,000 a month.
Chloe's first idea for the extra money was more travel, so they added about $300 a month for low-key weekend trips, which she said typically cost $500 to $1,000. With about $7,410 still unassigned, she raised the private chef but doubted they could afford it. Ramit said a chef who comes twice a week and leaves meals built to her macros was realistic. Penciling in $3,000 a month raised fixed costs to 59%, with about $4,400 still left. "That I have enough," Chloe said.
Ramit then modeled selling: invest $200,000 of the $250,000 in equity, and put $50,000 in a "fun fund" to spend within 18 months. With rent around $4,500 a month, fixed costs would reach 67%. He said that would be high for most people but acceptable for them, because the invested equity would let them redirect money they would otherwise invest toward living now. He said they should still capture the 401(k) match. They would also drop utilities and the lawn service. Chloe said not worrying about the septic system "takes a lot of weight off."
Jake liked the plan, especially a chef coming every few days. From the roughly $3,700 remaining, he set aside $500 a month, about $6,000 a year, for the expensive tech he likes, which Ramit praised him for owning. He raised vacations to $2,000 and added $1,000 a month to investing. That still left about $1,768. Ramit said this is not a cash problem. It's a question of what they want and whether they'll close some doors to open others.
Chloe said closing this door still seemed a little ridiculous because of the fear of regret, and then answered her own worry: "then we'll deal with it... We can buy another house if we want to. We have the money." Ramit called that the breakthrough. If they can trust themselves today, he said, their future selves, with more money, knowledge, and maturity, will be even more capable of handling whatever happens.
The pattern behind the schemes, and next steps
Asked what the Airbnb, the RV, and their other projects had in common, Chloe said they don't research properly, jump in impulsively, and underestimate the work and time involved, which burns them out. Ramit pointed out that this sounds like the house, and she agreed.
He suggested next steps for each of them. Jake could start telling his bosses that he loves the work but wants to be off constant on-call duty within about 18 months. Ramit said companies often keep handing on-call work to whoever accepts it, but they want to keep highly paid top performers happy, and long lead time can shape what they offer. For Chloe, he suggested planning the move before selling: which cities, what a West Coast morning looks like if they're still on East Coast hours, the cost of living, and where to go next if they don't love it. They don't need every answer yet, he said, and once they aren't spending eight or more hours every weekend on the house, they'll see far more options. Chloe joked they'd be bored without it.
Chloe said she was surprised that this felt like "a silly thing" to worry about. Ramit disagreed. He said her focus on safety is understandable given her upbringing, even if it's out of step with their finances, and that money mindset takes work like any other area of life. Jake said the surprise was seeing the numbers rearranged. They had never modeled spending more on groceries or vacations, and seeing what they'd have once the equity loan is paid off was "kind of absurd." Ramit shared a question he and his wife ask: "What do we get?" If something in their life isn't working and money can solve it, he said, they should be grateful they can pay to be free of it, since things like health problems can't always be solved with money.
Afterward, Ramit predicted the couple would make a plan to either sell or rent the house for a year within a few months, and said either was fine with him. He expected them to start spending more right away and to build confidence through small steps, like buying an extra pair of pants or hiring someone for the lawn.
The follow-up
In their follow-up, Chloe said her biggest surprise was realizing how much anxiety she has about money despite having enough. Jake's was hearing from an outsider that they were doing well. He said it's easy to keep thinking you could cut more and optimize more, but at their income they don't need to. Chloe's main takeaway was that keeping or selling matters less than doing what they want rather than what they think they should, and that the time to enjoy their money "is now, not in 40 years." She said she will get her gym membership and wear her leggings to it.
They also announced decisions. They are selling the house, have talked to a realtor, and are getting it on the market. They plan to move to the West Coast. And they will adopt a waiting period before any large purchase that might involve debt, so they don't end up back in the pattern that produced the home equity loan and the RV.
I feel a little bit paralyzed. I don't feel like I know what's right anymore.
You said, "We know we want something different, but seem unable to decide how to make that happen."
We wanted to Airbnb our house, took out an $80,000 home equity loan. We bought an RV, needed a new truck to pull the RV.
Well, come on. Is this a joke? Am I on Candid Camera right now?
None of it has worked out. And it just makes us tired. I don't really look at them as schemes, but more of an out, an out from corporate America.
He wants to sell the house.
It was stupid. We did not make enough money. I wanted to throw up. Half a million dollars in a loan. I'm just like, this does not feel good.
Everybody that we talked to is like, homeownership is the dream, but we do have this debt hanging over our heads.
If you don't develop a philosophy, if you don't develop what your rich life is, and really start to practice it, then inevitably you wake up one day, you go, "Wait a second. I did everything they told me to." And then you're like, "This actually sucks. This is Groundhog Day. Let's see if we can figure this out."
I do enjoy snooping through people's money. That's my job. And now I actually get to do it even deeper because every couple on this podcast connects their accounts to Monarch before they meet me, which means I get to see all of their accounts, all of their income, all of their transactions in one single view. Now, I'm about to speak to Chloe and Jake. So, let's take a look at their Monarch account and see what their money tells me before I get the chance to meet them.
All right, let's take a look. Whoa! Net income at $19,248. That's a lot of money. Okay, we have a high-earning couple here. Debt payments at $5,000 a month. What the hell? Who's paying $3,480 to Camping World? What even costs that much? I've seen it on TV. Don't they sell RVs? Those gigantic campers. $3,500 a month for an RV. That's more than triple a normal car payment. We're going to find out if I'm right.
Let's take a look at their accounts. We have investments, $311,000. $537,000 in debt. They have a home equity loan. Why? All right, let's take a look at the recent transactions they have. Here we go. Homeowners going to Lowe's for $866 as recently as yesterday. Wow. And then Lowe's the day before for $47. I'm actually offended. Not that they're spending money at Lowe's, but that they went to Lowe's twice in two days. It's the house stuff that I'm looking at that's quite interesting, and I want to find out why they are here. So, let's meet Jake and Chloe.
Chloe, in your application, you said something. It caught my eye. You said, "We are wary to make the wrong financial decisions because of our chronic schemes that inevitably cost us money. This is putting us in analysis paralysis where we know we want something different but seem unable to decide how to make that happen. We're pretty grumpy and tired most days." Is that still accurate today?
I'm tired of spending money on things that don't matter to me, which I feel like this house is.
The house that I'm looking at right now?
Mhm.
Just from the small window I can see, I see what appears to be a somewhat new suburban house. Looks like a very nice room. Jake appears to be sitting in, I don't know, maybe part of the living room or family room. He's got a nicely painted wall. I always appreciate a nicely painted wall. Both of them are nodding. How close did I get to reality?
It's not a new house. It's a '70s house that's been renovated multiple times.
Oh, did you renovate it as well?
We have tried.
Wow, that's not a good answer. "We have tried" is like, oh, okay. Wow. All right. So, we have tried. You're grumpy about spending money on the house. Is that right? Okay. Wow.
Yeah.
You're in the right place. Let's talk.
Okay. And Jake, do you feel the same way?
I do. Yeah. I think that we could do a lot more with that money than spend it on trying to keep our house from returning to dust.
Okay. Now, you used the word, Chloe, "schemes," which I thought was quite interesting. Wow. Chloe, what was that look on your face just now?
When I say schemes, we want to be entrepreneurs. We both work nine-to-five corporate jobs right now and we are constantly thinking of different business ideas, wanting to pursue them and then getting burned out by the maintenance of our house and not being able to. But we like to invest a lot of money in these schemes and that's become a problem.
We decided we wanted to Airbnb our house two years ago. We did very little research into the Airbnb market in our area, which isn't great. And we took out an $80,000 home equity loan to do renovations on the house. We bought an RV. We needed a new truck to pull the RV.
Come on. Is this a joke? Am I on Candid Camera right now?
No.
Our neighbors thought we won the lottery.
Yeah. We had a neighbor ask us if we won the lottery and we were like, "No." And we gave her no other explanation. I think she was just like, "Okay, either they're rich or they're bad with money." We want to start businesses. We want to create apps. We're always scheming.
The word scheme is quite interesting. Let me read you off some other uses of the word scheme from your application. Quote, "We are realizing that a rich life involves more flexibility to follow our schemes." And then, "We are wary to make the wrong decision because of our chronic schemes."
Maybe I misused that word.
No, it's an interesting use of word. Tell me about that word.
I think they feel like schemes because none of it has worked out so far and it just makes us tired. It just feels like everything is kind of this side thing that we decide to do and then we get overwhelmed.
Mhm. What's the difference between a scheme and a business?
A business makes money.
And a scheme?
I don't know. I guess a scheme is an idea that you have, like, "Oh, let's do this thing. This is a great idea. Let's invest all this money in this. Let's invest all this time," and then just dropping it or deciding you don't want to do it anymore. And it's less serious than a business.
Got it. Okay. And when you think about the schemes that you have participated in, how do you feel?
Some of them I feel good. The RV one, I don't feel very good about that. I think that was a terrible financial decision. At the time it seemed like a great idea.
What's the feeling?
Just embarrassed.
Okay. Jake, what about you? What's your take on the schemes, as Chloe puts it, that you've been participating in?
I look at them more as opportunities to break out of the traditional nine-to-fives because it's not like we don't want to work. We just don't necessarily want to have to do it within the confines of a corporate structure. We'd like a little bit more flexibility. So I don't really look at them as schemes, but more of an out, if you will.
An out from?
From corporate America.
Okay, got it. Tell me a little bit about your relationship. How long have you been together? Are you married? Any children?
We are married. We've been together for 10 years.
No kids.
Great. Okay. Can you think of a time in the past six to 12 months where the two of you did not agree about something relating to money? Chloe, I can see it on your face. You've got one.
It's about the house again. We do agree that we don't want to live here anymore. It's just too much maintenance for us. It's crazy. But he wants to sell the house and I am hesitant to sell the house, again, because I think that sometimes we make decisions financially that aren't the best. Everybody keeps saying we should rent it out and real estate's a good investment and all this stuff, and we have a 2.7% interest rate.
Mhm.
So I think we might want to rent it.
Got it. Can we just go back to when you bought this house? What year was it? How old were the two of you? And then walk me through that thinking process.
We were 25 and 27 when we bought this. It was right at the end of 2020 and 2021. So right when all the values started inflating, but they weren't crazy high yet. The interest rates were really low. Again, that's how we got a 2.7. And we bought because it was purely financial. Neither of us had a dream of owning a house. It was just that traditional knowledge of renting is throwing away money. You need to buy a house and it's just the next thing you do. So we bought a house.
Where does that traditional knowledge, where did you get that from?
Oh, that's Jake.
Tell me, Jake.
With the interest rates being so low, we were never going to see that again. My thought process on buying a house was if we buy the house and we live there for 20, 30 years, then in some cases, it can be a decent investment, if not anything other than a savings account, because we weren't saving really much at the time. But then again, we were also making a lot less than what we make now.
Were you renting at the time?
We were renting at the time.
What was your rent?
$2,400 a month.
$2,400. And then once all was said and done, you bought the house. How much total cost every month?
When we first bought it, it was $2,990. Now it's $3,072.
That includes maintenance?
No, that's the minimum.
That's the mortgage plus the escrow.
What about if you include everything? Any idea?
Like $4,500.
All right. So, from $2,400 to $4,400 a month. What do you think of that?
It was stupid. We did not make enough money. I'm surprised that a bank lended me the money.
Well, banks love to give money to Americans. They love it. And Americans love to take it.
What?
I know.
I can qualify for this credit card, this mortgage. I must be successful.
Honestly, signing that though, I wanted to throw up. Half a million dollars in a loan. I'm just like, this does not feel good.
Is that for real? You really wanted to throw up?
Oh, yeah. In the moment.
Why did you do it?
I was 25, right? I was very young. I think I was making like $126,000. The house was $595,000 is what it appraised for.
So, well over our budget.
Did you have a budget? Did you have a number in mind?
We did. We had a number of $500,000 in mind. And that was kind of our upper, that was as high as we wanted to go.
Okay.
But there's a story behind this house. We bought this house because this is his parents' house.
Oh.
Yes. This house has been in the family since the '90s. I think it was one of his uncles and then they sold it to his parents and then they sold it to us.
We bought no inspection. We bought as is. It was over our budget, but everybody in this area was paying $100,000 over asking with no inspection. And we were like, we'll probably get a townhouse for this much. And this house has 1.5 acres. It has a pool. It's a four-bedroom house with an office. It has—
3,000 square feet. Yeah.
3,000 square feet for two 25-year-olds.
Mhm. Yep.
What do you guys do? Play hide-and-seek all day?
With the dog. With our dog at the time.
Yeah.
But most of our time is spent dealing with the house. And again, it has 1.5 acres and the pool. So we have eight hours of yard work pretty much every weekend, if not more than that.
Just lay it out for me. Eight hours. What do you do?
Really the main problem is that there's a bunch of different landscaped areas of the house.
This house, when it originally entered the family, it had been bought by a family member of his that was a multimillionaire. And this guy had gardeners, landscapers. There were two koi ponds on the property.
This house is like a mansion owned by a multimillionaire and now it's sold to two 25-year-olds. Successful, it sounds like. But still, hello. Does this seem a little weird?
Yeah. Yes.
You all are sitting there at escrow like, "All right, here we go."
We're like, "Money's on sale. Money's on sale."
Okay.
Yeah. To put it in perspective, this house was nice in the '90s. It was landscaped, everything. And then it was sold to Jake's parents. And then they weren't multimillionaires, so they didn't have gardeners. So everything kind of got overgrown. We have spent five years basically trying to take out all of these overgrown landscape features, and that's just been our life for the last five summers.
So, you buy the thing and then, Jake, you mentioned something quite interesting. You said, "I felt like throwing up when we were signing." Did you talk about that with Chloe at the signing?
At the signing, no, I don't think so. Afterwards, for sure.
What did you say?
But it was because I was solely responsible, right? When we purchased the house, her credit would have dropped mine below that 760 threshold, just the average of our two credits. So they had her off of it altogether. For me, it was just a very heavy weight of, I'm responsible for half a million dollars to this bank.
And what did you say afterwards when you started talking to Chloe about it?
It gave me a lot of anxiety to sign that paperwork. They're handing me a stack of a hundred pieces of paper where I'm signing here and there and there's no way that I'm reading through all of that. I don't have a lawyer.
Chloe, what was your take on this as you're signing and you're about to own this house?
At the time, I had zero financial literacy. So I was just in la-la land, like, this is fun.
Did it feel good to know that you're going to be a homeowner?
I had no desire to own a home. It was kind of just something, I was 27. And it was something that 40-year-olds did. None of my friends owned a home. I was just kind of like, okay, this is a good financial decision because we're throwing away money on rent.
Yeah. Did your parents tell you that?
No, actually. They didn't do a lot of financial educating. I'm sure they tried, but I was not the most responsible person when I was young.
Got it.
When Jake met me, my credit was at a 430. He told me he would never marry me because he would never be able to buy a house with my credit.
Whoa. Okay. And what was your reaction, Chloe?
At the time, my feelings were hurt, but now as a person with a little bit of financial literacy, I understand where he's coming from.
She goes, "Technically, he was correct. I was a liability in this financial partnership."
At this point, I don't know if I would marry someone with a 430 credit either.
Wow, that's actually quite interesting because I think that first time hearing that you said that, it kind of came off a little bad, but once you become knowledgeable about money, you realize if we're talking about marriage, then money is a very important part of it. And a 430 credit score, while yes, of course it would be difficult for a mortgage, it actually speaks more to your behavior with money. Are you aware? Are you intentional? If you see something that went wrong, can you make changes? So the word liability is a little direct, but as Chloe points out, once you become knowledgeable, I don't know if I would marry somebody with a 430.
Jake, so she had the 430. What happened then? You put her on a performance improvement plan or something?
I did. It was a very strict regimen. To be honest, we just talked about how you can improve your credit, right? She didn't even have a credit card at the time, so I helped her with that.
So, here you are now years later with the house. And Jake, what do you feel about the house?
Don't get me wrong, I feel great that we're in a position that we can own a home. And for some people that might be their rich life. For us, it's not. You can just see it in the way that we interact with day-to-day chores.
All of these different projects that we've worked on and all this information that's just in our heads now, we don't care to know that kind of stuff. Like what a constant-pressure well pump is.
Yeah, I don't ever want to know that. I don't even want to hear those words again. I just heard it. I'm good.
Just look at how much we've spent at Lowe's, and that'll tell you exactly how I feel.
I do have questions about Lowe's. In fact, in the last two days, you've gone to Lowe's twice.
Yep.
Let me tell you something. In my hell, I wake up one day, I go out of my bedroom, and I have a 6,500-square-foot house. Okay? I go outside, there's shrubbery or whatever you call it, and just dead animals everywhere. And then I go out to my car. It's a humongous SUV, okay? It's out of gas, by the way. But I somehow get it turned on. And then the only place it drives me, the only place it goes, is Home Depot. I go, "Fuck, what did I do in my life to end up here?"
And then every day it's the same old thing.
Just Groundhog Day.
Yeah. Okay. I deeply understand where you are coming from. Let's see if we can figure this out.
When I think about two young people owning a house, first of all, I go, for a lot of people, why would you do it? When you're young, you're building your career. You want geographical flexibility, all that stuff. But that big of a house, that's like a country estate. And they said, hey, it's not really what we want. We didn't even realize it was going to be like this.
It's okay to be like, we made a huge mistake. It happens a lot. In fact, the more money you make and the more money you spend, the more mistakes with money you are going to make. That's okay. The goal is not to try to avoid all mistakes. It's actually to become honest and strong enough that you can acknowledge them and then fix it. They admit it, and they're like, "What do we do next?" I can work with that.
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I want to take a look at your numbers. All right. Chloe, can you read off the words in bold and then the numbers in full for this entire box, please?
Sure. So assets is 860,000, investments is 304,000, savings 68,000, debt 540,000, and total net worth 692,000.
All right. What do you think about those numbers?
I like them. The debt's kind of high.
Okay, Jake?
I feel good about them. I agree with Chloe here. That's a little bit high, but most of it's the mortgage.
All right, let's keep going. I would like to ask Jake to read off the combined gross monthly income, please.
That is 30,166.
Okay, that is a household income of $361,992. Who here, by a show of hands, knew that number?
Both.
Very impressive. Also, that's a lot of money. How old are you again?
I'm 30.
30 and 32.
How are you all making so much money?
10.
I sacrificed my 20s.
What do you do for a living?
I am a senior manager of an engineering department.
Great. Great. And Chloe?
I'm a software engineer.
Great. So what I'm looking at here for the breakdown is Jake is making 20K a month, right? Or roughly 240K a year. It's great, especially at that age. Very impressive. Chloe making $10,000 a month. Also very impressive, especially at that age. All right, I love it. I see that you are contributing a lot to your 401(k)s. That's great. And I see your net is roughly 18K or 19K a month. Cool. A lot of money.
So, I thought that once I make an extra 5,000 or 10,000 or 15, I'll never have money problems again. Isn't that how it works?
I thought so.
Probably not.
Okay. I actually really appreciate you being here because one of the things that I want to show people in my community is just making more money does not automatically solve your money problems. And in fact, if you don't develop a philosophy, if you don't develop what your rich life is and really start to practice it, then inevitably you wake up one day, you go, "Wait a second. I did everything they told me to, and how come I still feel scarce about money? How come we feel like, is this it? We work so hard. This is all we have to show for? Or what do I even do with my money?" So I would rather people get that now than wait until they're in their 50s, 60s or 70s.
All right, let's continue working on. We see fixed costs. Chloe, what's that number?
43%.
43% on your fixed costs. One of the lowest numbers I've seen. Then again, that is what I would expect with a salary that high. So if your salary were more modest, yeah, we're talking about 50, 60%, but as your salary goes up, you expect that number to come down quite a bit. Again, why? Because bread is the price of bread. Even if you double or triple the price of bread, it's still basically the same. And of course, people who make a lot of money spend a lot of money often. That's fine. But your mortgage is $3,72, which is quite modest for what you make.
Looking at the rest of it here, there's nothing that really stands out to me. It's 43%. I have no comments. Investments, 10%, but that is on top of your 401(k)s. Correct?
Correct.
All right. So that's a lot. That's tens of thousands of dollars that you're investing per year. That's nice, especially at this age. Great. Savings at—whoa, 38%, 7,000 a month. Although, explain this to me, Jake.
That is just saving to pay off the home equity loan.
How much?
$45,000 is what we have remaining.
Got it. Okay. So you're setting it aside to pay that off. Got it. Okay. And you have $68,000 already in savings. Is that your emergency savings?
Yeah.
Great. That's solid. Okay. That's nice. And then your guilt-free spending is 9%, or $1,680. How do you feel about that?
It's low for right now.
I would like to spend more, but right now, we've gotten ourselves into a little bit of a pickle. I know our numbers look fine, but we do have this debt hanging over our heads. We can't sell our house or do anything with it really until we pay off this equity loan. So right now, my entire salary pretty much is just going towards that.
Why'd you take out the home equity loan?
The RV trip.
To rent the house.
Yeah. To do some improvements on the house so that way we could Airbnb.
Why don't you just pay cash? You all make a lot of money.
We didn't have any.
So why don't you just wait?
It was an option.
Yeah, that was an option. I actually find it crazy that in America, we take out debt to do renovations. Renovations are mostly a total luxury. They are not an investment. There's a few that actually pay out a little bit more than you make, but in general, they're total luxuries. This is crazy. First of all, people are like, "What? Ramit said what?" Yes, it's true. Look it up. Payback rate, home renovations. You will find that the vast majority of them, you're just paying for a luxury. I think now, maybe, would your approach be different if you were to do this again?
Oh, 100%.
Yeah. Yeah. At the time, it just felt like any money that you put into your house is good money, right? It's an investment, and that's what they tell you. So, could have gone into the stock market.
Wow.
That would have been great.
Wow. This is the greatest transformation I've ever heard in my life. You sort of tick all the boxes of what they told you, and then you do it, which I love. You're like, "Okay, cool. We're going to do everything they told us." And then you're like, "Wait a second. This actually sucks."
The more I hear about this, the more I think this actually reflects American culture. The more we do what they told us to—it's this kind of ephemeral, nebulous they—and then we're like, wait a second. I'm supposed to buy a house in the suburbs, work at a company, and then one day when I retire, I can finally do what I'm supposed to do. I'm like, wait, I did that. I actually hate this. And again, some people love it if they do it intentionally. I have no problem buying a big old house in the suburbs. That's great if that's your rich life. But I love that you are sharing your experience so we can be like, "Wait a second. Is that actually my vision?"
Shall we take a look at some of the expenses? All right. Let's take a look. Let's go to last month. Let's take a look here at the fixed costs, which were higher than expected. Housing. What's Swim Gem? That's a pool service.
That is a pool service.
Okay, fine. Transportation. Y'all have two cars?
Yes.
All right.
Yes.
What do I care? You all are at 40-something percent. Again, I'm just like, do what you're doing. It's great. But let's keep looking. Debt payments at 5,89 per month. What is this? Camping World for $3,480. Explain, please.
That was paying off our loan so we could sell our RV that we bought.
I have so many questions because I literally did not know what somebody could buy at Camping World. I thought the most expensive thing at Camping World is a tent. That's what I know. Then I saw the payments. So how much did your RV cost?
50,000.
Okay. Why'd you get an RV?
Because we were going to rent the house out, Airbnb it, and travel the country. We both have remote jobs.
Okay. Okay. How much did you get for it?
30.
What was it? 30, 32 maybe.
How long did you have it for?
Two years.
So it went from 50 to 32. That's actually better than I thought. What do you think about that?
It's better than I thought, too. But we also bought it at eight years old. So it was not a new RV.
Oh, so it already depreciated.
44 feet long. It was a big one.
Is that good, or what is that?
That's huge. It's like the size of a semi-truck.
All right. Did you take any trips in the RV before you sold it?
Not one.
Not one.
That's the sad part.
You know why? It was too hard to get it out of our driveway. Once we got it in there, we were like, it's never going to leave.
That was brutal getting it in there.
This is so crazy. But I like that you have a good sense of humor about it. How is it that you both have a good sense of humor about this?
Probably because we make enough money where it hasn't destroyed us, honestly.
Yeah, Chloe, I think that's very insightful. If, let's say, Jake had lost his job and you had all these debts and the ongoing expenses, it's actually not funny. But I do appreciate that when you have enough, you can laugh it off.
I remember one time, this is embarrassing, I bought a table. So I hired somebody off of TaskRabbit or something. The guy comes over, and this is in New York, and I was on the phone. So I was like, here's the box. Can you just put it together and then let me know? I'll just come take a look. So he's like, "Yeah, yeah." I go back. I'm on my call. The guy comes up to me 90 seconds later, and he points me over to the table. The table came fully assembled. Okay, fully assembled. I just didn't even open it. I said, "Oh my God, this is going to be the easiest money you ever make." And I handed him a big old tip, and I'm just like, "What can you do?"
And you can laugh at that now, but if my parents had had that happen, even though they never would have even hired somebody to do it, but let's just say they had wasted 200 bucks for five minutes, it would have actually been really costly, really hard. But when you make enough, you can kind of laugh these things off. One reason why I want people to focus on improving their income, because I want you to be able to laugh off some of these things.
All right, let's keep going. I want to look at some other expenses here. You're done paying off the RV. The RV is sold. It's gone, never having been used. You could have put in the ad, "Like new."
Pets, $163. Sounds very reasonable to me. Shopping, there's just a bunch of Amazon purchases. Fine. Dining out, we have Chick-fil-A, DoorDash, and donuts. When you look at these transactions, what do you see?
It's mostly just living stuff. A lot of those Amazon purchases are toilet paper that we have on subscription, or paper towels, or dog food, or something like that.
My take from having looked at many, many people's spending is your spending is very normal, very modest. There are virtually no numbers that stand out to me as, wow, we should dig in there. None of it. It's all just totally normal. The only expenses that really stood out to me were housing-related expenses. Lowe's, swim stuff, obviously there's the mortgage, and then Camping World is a little unrelated, but it's that.
So if we look at some of the key numbers that you have, you have $304,000 in investments. Where did that come from?
A lot of it's individual. And then I have a 401(k). Chloe has a 401(k). And then we have about $60,000 in our own personal investments. And then I have roughly 90—was it 96,000—in restricted share units for my company.
Okay, got it. And when do those vest?
Over the next two years.
Cool. How do you treat your RSUs?
We could either treat it as it's going to be for a vacation, or we use it for a project that we've been unable, I guess, to individually save for around the house. And I've been getting them for the last six years or so.
How much do you get on average per year?
40 and 50,000 dollars.
Got it.
On top of my salary.
On top of your salary.
Yeah.
That's a lot. That's a lot of money. Okay. And it sounds like you discuss it before. So do you end up with a plan like, hey, we got roughly 50K that's going to vest. This is what we're going to do with it?
Great.
Yeah.
Great. That's the way to do it.
We talk about money all the time, every day. But we love it.
Okay. Good. I could tell this is the way to do it. I want everybody to listen here. Yes, you may not make as much as Chloe and Jake, but I want you to listen to just some of the things you hear. The idea that, hey, we have this expected/unexpected money that's going to come in, we talk about it ahead of time. That's what you should do. And even if you don't have a date where you're going to get an extra 50K, hey, if we made an extra $100 or if we got a tax refund or something, what would we do with that money? You should be talking about it ahead of time just like you guys are. Great job.
Okay. So, I don't see any debt payoffs in your fixed costs. Can you just walk me through that?
Sure. So, we don't have any recurring debt other than Jake's car that we paid for. We don't have any scheduled payments. So, Jake's car is not paid off. My car is. And then we have this home equity loan where there's no actual payments. We just have to pay it off when we have the money. So, it looks like we have very low debt.
Got it. And you categorize it separately under your savings. Okay.
All right.
Yeah. We didn't really know what to do with it.
That's okay. It's okay. I like that you did it, though. I like that you picked something and you know why you did it. Hey, maybe it's right. Maybe it's wrong. But I like that you were like, "This is our best guess. This is what we're going to do." That's how you should do it.
Okay. Looking at your numbers, they look very healthy to me. You all make a lot of money. You don't spend a lot. You have your savings already dialed in. Yeah, you have some debt. You're paying it off. Okay, great. You all are going to end up doing pretty well regardless. So, why are we here? We're here because you said we're not living our rich lives. In looking at the numbers, tell me about the part that you are not living your rich life, Jake.
Well, the numbers only tell part of the story. It's really time spent, effort spent, mental energy just spent right on the house. These things are going wrong. We have to schedule contractors to come for XYZ. We have two HVACs at this house. So, we could lose one of them because we've already replaced the other, and that's going to be $13,000, $14,000. I'm already thinking about that. So, in my opinion, if we're not going to live here, I would rather not have the mental load of still owning the property because we're still responsible for those things that go—
Oh, you feel the same way?
I feel the same way as him where I don't really want to deal with it. But I'm having a hard time with the idea of just selling the house because we have such a good interest rate and we're in a good area where it's an up-and-coming area. There's development happening. If I were a real estate investor, I would look at our area. I wouldn't look at our house, but we already had it.
So, this is kind of a sticking point for us where I know that when I was young, I was very flippant with money. I didn't know anything. At this point, I'm the more frugal one. With this house, we made, I think, what was probably a good financial decision based on our income, right? As it is now, a poor lifestyle decision, but I want to make the best of it. I don't want to make any more financial mistakes. And the decision to rent this house out or sell it is another one. I feel a little bit paralyzed that I don't feel like I know what's right anymore, even though our numbers look good.
Do you trust yourself with money, Chloe?
Kind of. I think that now I'm good with money, but I think that both of us have a tendency to throw money at things. RV being an example, house. Even two years ago, three years ago, I bought a new car. The car that I had was $600 or $800 from being paid off, and it developed an electrical issue that would have been a couple thousand to fix. And they were gaslighting us at the dealership, saying that I was leaving the overhead light on, and there was all these problems, and we just didn't want to deal with it. So, I traded the car in instead and took out $17,000 for a car, and now it's paid off. We did pay it off, but I think it was stupid.
It was a good car. It just had a problem, and it would have been a couple thousand dollars to fix it, and then we would have saved $14,000 on car costs over the last two years. Instead, we had this extra loan that we had to pay off, and that money could have gone into the house or it could have gone into the stock market or it could have gone towards a vacation. Instead, it's gone towards another car that we didn't necessarily need, but we just kind of didn't want to deal with it. And that's what I worry with this house, is that we just don't want to deal with it, and it actually could be a good rental property, and we're just mentally exhausted and don't want to deal with it.
Got it. So, you are worried, hey, maybe we're making the same decision again impulsively, just on a much bigger scale, and I want to just slow down and check with somebody. Am I doing the right thing?
Yeah. And I specifically wanted your perspective. That's why I reached out about this, because everybody in our lives is like, "What are you doing? This is a great house." They don't see the work that we're putting in and how our lifestyle has depleted since we've been here. But at the same time, everybody that we talk to is like, "Homeownership is the dream." And I'm like, are we just dumb?
I love that you both did. I'm really glad. I love when anyone has a philosophy around their rich life. Often their rich life is different than mine. That's totally fine. And I just love to be able to pull, tell me what do you love, why do it this way, because so much of our money decisions are just based around really a lack of critical thinking and examination and, honestly, what other people do. I'm glad you're asking, and I think we can probably dig a little deeper.
It is fascinating how much we will stay with a bad decision, not even knowing why. Here we have a couple who could take their unhappy situation and change it like that, and they don't. Why? Well, since most of us were young, we were told buying a house, the American dream. Then you get this humongous house and, in their case, a low interest rate. Well, how are you supposed to escape this thing that's almost been tied around you, but you also let it be tied, and say, "No, actually, we don't want to live on a 1.5-acre property. We don't want to keep our 2.7% interest rate. We don't like this at all."
So many of us reach the thing that we were told would make us happy. And when we are not happy, we don't deconstruct it and ask, what were the messages we absorbed? Why did we listen to them? We just go, oh, we should probably just stay here. And then we end up feeling bad about feeling bad. It's kind of easy to understand how they've gotten here because they actually have made bad decisions about money. And what if selling the house is yet another bad decision? I want to help Jake and Chloe unpack all of the different messages that are coming in from family, friends, society, but also from the two of them, and help them see a simple way to look at this question. Should we keep the house or not?
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Chloe, I'm curious. What do you remember your parents saying about money when you were young?
I remember my dad clearly telling me that I should never have a credit card because I wasn't responsible enough, which was probably true. My parents, we were very middle class, but they had eight kids, so it didn't go as far. So, we had everything that we needed. We weren't poor, but we did all of our clothes shopping at the thrift store. There wasn't a crazy amount of scarcity, but they didn't pay for my college or anything like that, right? It was just at 18, I was out on my own. They didn't really talk about it with us much, to me. I think my parents kind of tried a little bit, and then they kind of just wrote me off as, "Okay, this one needs a husband."
Hold on. Well, I have a lot of questions already. What part of the country did you grow up in?
I grew up here, Virginia.
Okay. And what did your parents do for a living?
My dad was a software engineer. So it paid well. He made probably six figures, but again, it didn't go as far because they had eight children, and we had four bedrooms between all of us, 10 people and one bathroom and all that kind of stuff.
Got it.
Yeah. We did go to private school, so that's where all the money went.
All of you?
Mhm.
Wow. What do you think it cost back then?
I don't know. I know that they gave you a discount. It was like the first kid was the most expensive, and every kid that you had was a discount. So I'm sure by the fourth or fifth kid it wasn't that bad, but again, there were sacrifices made in other ways. The private schooling was very important to them. It was a religious private school. We didn't go out to eat. We didn't do any vacations unless my grandparents paid for it. That kind of thing.
That's interesting. Did you feel mixed messages about money?
I think when I was younger I didn't really think critically about it. It was just kind of my reality. As I'd gotten older, it's become clear to me that that's really what mattered to my parents. The private schooling was the thing that they were not willing to compromise on, and that they made sacrifices in every other area, even though I complained about it as a kid, right? I was like, I just want to go to the trendy stores and buy fashionable clothes, and I'm stuck at the thrift store. And I think that it taught me how to be more frugal, even if I didn't realize it at the time, but now I've drawn from a lot of that.
Got it. Okay, that's very interesting. Chloe, do you think that your religious upbringing had any effects on your relationship or view of money?
Yes, absolutely. I grew up in an environment where it was very much so like God will provide. You don't take agency for your own decisions. You don't take control of your life. It kind of happens to you, and it's all part of a plan, right? So, when I was younger, I didn't see the point in developing any type of financial literacy. I barely graduated high school. I didn't go to college at first. I did eventually. I put myself through college when I was working full-time, but I had to make up for a lot of that as an adult. And I see it in my siblings. Some of them are great and they're doing fantastic, and some of them are really struggling financially. And I think it's that same, things just happen to them, and they're reactive instead of proactive.
Yeah. Are you still religious?
Nope.
No. Okay. When did that change for you?
So maybe eight years ago. It kind of was a gradual transition.
Jake, did you grow up religious, too?
I did.
Yeah. And are you religious now?
No.
Okay. Got it. You raised a very interesting point, Chloe. Sometimes in certain religious upbringings, the idea of this external locus of control being God and the idea that, hey, I didn't really see the point of developing my financial literacy skills because in some way, in some form, God will provide. Talking to you now, it is like a stark 180-degree difference. When I asked, are you still religious? I was 95% certain you would say no because from the way that you grew up versus today, from a locus of control perspective, you're like, we could save more. We could use this money for a vacation. We could invest more. It's very, I can control what happens to me. And I hear that in the way you talk about money.
So just want to reflect on the journey that you have gone through, because a journey growing up with many, many siblings and a religious upbringing, which was obviously very important to your parents, and then now to go to an internal locus of control with money is really powerful.
Took a lot of work.
I can only guess. Anyway, thank you for sharing. It helps me understand much more about your view on money. Jake, let me ask you about your upbringing. What do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?
As far back as I can remember, my parents always had one of those money guys who works off of a percentage.
Mhm.
Right. So, I always had that kind of mindset that you invest your money, that you save your money, even if they weren't doing it. But then my grandmother, she actually had a huge impact, I think, on what I wanted out of money. My grandfather was a CPA. He died the year I was born, so I don't really remember or know anything about him. But she made some pretty lucky investments in Apple, IBM. So, she always had that mindset about invest your money, save your money, and she was very open. Pretty much at every chance that she could get, she was going to give you her opinion or her advice, even if you didn't ask for it. So, she was always talking about starting your own business, make sure that you're investing in the stock market, save your money, don't overspend, buy quality furniture, and keep it forever.
I think I've been doing a disservice to my nieces and nephews. I don't really
Talk about money that much. I kind of love what your grandmother was teaching you. That's valuable.
Yeah, it is very valuable. And then my dad had a lot of friends, too, that were more well-to-do than he was, and they were very open. They would talk to me about that kind of stuff. My parents were the same way about saving, right? Save 10% of your salary, which I did through all the early low-level jobs that I worked.
My dad was a cop. He was a state trooper, so very low middle class. I don't know that he ever broke six figures. We never hurt for money that I knew of, right? We had everything that we needed. The lights were always on, that kind of thing. But I wanted something different than what my parents had because I could see that they couldn't have the things that they wanted, or even the things that they needed. So my dad wanted to buy a motorcycle for a long time, but he was very limited on what he could purchase. And you shift up or down $5,000 and you lose a lot of critical safety features on motorcycles. And for me, I didn't want to do that.
I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. And I also realized that money was kind of like a tool to buy your freedom.
When did you realize that you wanted your cake and wanted to be able to eat it too?
Probably 14 or 15, right when I was getting into high school.
Same for me. I was like, I don't want to compromise. I'll work harder than anybody, but I want what I want.
Exactly.
Quick question. Your dad was a state trooper. What about your mom?
She was a stay-at-home mom for the majority of my childhood. She was also a police officer when her and my dad met.
Got it. Okay.
But then she was stay-at-home. Homeschooled us and everything. We didn't go to public school, private school, any of that.
How many kids?
There's two of us, and then my dad had another marriage before my mom. So there are four of us total.
What part of the country did you grow up in?
I grew up in Virginia as well.
Wow. Okay. All right. So did you go to college?
Not initially. I put myself through a year and a half of community college.
Mhm.
After graduating high school, but I actually quit community college because I started working in my field. So I started working at a hospital at 19 doing IT. Chloe and I met around that time as well, actually. And then a couple years later, she started working at a school and got 90% off tuition.
For her and it was like five friends or something. They were doing a scholarship thing at the time. But you also got it because we were domestic partners. So...
Yeah.
You got that either way. Yeah.
And get my bachelor's degree. And that was, what was that, 2018 is when I graduated.
How much did you make after you graduated?
100,000. And then I've been with them ever since.
Did you ever think you'd make 60-plus thousand a year?
No. No. That number was absurd in my mind. I don't know what it was with the '90s. You thought six figures, right? 100K, and that's all you're ever going to need.
Yeah.
You get to six figures and you're like, "Where's my mansion?" Right?
Yeah.
It's really not that much when you tip over from 80 to 100 or something like that. And I was like, "Okay, $140,000. That's all I'll ever do." But Chloe will even tell you, we would have conversations. I'd be like, "I can't believe I make $50 an hour." I was like, "Next goal, $100 an hour."
What does it mean to you to have that goal increasing?
Well, it buys me my freedom. The more that I front-load the beginning of my life, the easier the latter half of my life becomes.
And freedom means what?
I would like to start my own business and have enough runway to get me there. And I would also like to make sure that Chloe and I are set up for retirement as early as possible.
And that's a big reason why I want to sell the house, right? We have $250,000 of equity in this house. If we take that out and put it in the S&P 500 and you don't put a dime in for the next 30 years, you'll be at $10 million. To me, it makes way more sense for us to just front-load that now.
Yeah.
And then we don't have to invest anything if we don't want to for retirement at that point. And we can scheme, as Chloe likes to call it, as much as we like, and it's not going to set us back because we already set ourselves up there. And it's just, you forget about it.
Got it. I felt a connection with Jake when he told me that he did not want to compromise at the age of 14. I don't know if it's something about men at 14 who are just like, "Nope, not going to do that. I'm going to work my ass off so I can have a lot of money." If you were ever a 14-year-old young man who decided that, leave a comment below because I want to know if it's just the two of us or more.
His example was quite amazing. My dad couldn't get the motorcycle he wanted. Therefore, he had to compromise on the safety. So I decided I'm never going to do that. And to his credit, he followed through. Very determined. Went to college on his own later, built up this high-income career, works a lot of hours. It's all very impressive.
I think that probably the way he talks to Chloe about money almost certainly is focused on numbers and ROI and calculations. But I don't get the sense that there's a lot of rich life joy when he talks about money. And she doesn't also talk about money that way. It's what could go wrong, and we're here, we're supposed to be here. So neither of them are bringing that vision. And so of course money is not this fun, joyful, bountiful, alive thing. It's just a series of numbers and things that could go wrong and calculations to happen decades from now.
You have to build the skill of talking about the joy of money. You already know how to do it. When you sit there and talk about the spaghetti you're going to eat tonight, you're not sitting there, "Hello, everybody. I'm having 52 carbohydrates tonight." You go, "This is going to taste great. I don't care if the sauce gets all over our daughter's face. It's going to taste great. We have so much fun eating. Oh my God. It's like that one time we went to that one Italian restaurant," and on and on and on. There's a joy in it. There's a meaning in it more than the component parts of it.
Your rich life is not just made up of your calculations, although they are a part of it. It is your vision. It is your memories. It's how you talk about it. So you've got to build that skill as well.
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Chloe, when you hear Jake proposing that plan, sell the house, take the equity, 250K, invest it, let it just sit and grow, what's your take?
We've been having this conversation for, I don't know, eight months now. And whenever he shows me the numbers, I'm like, "Okay, yeah, good. Let's do it." And then 30 minutes later, I'm like, "I don't know actually because this house will also appreciate, right? And we're already paying less on interest than we are on principal. I don't want to be kicking ourselves down the road because we didn't hold on to a good asset."
Okay, let me push on this. First of all, is the dynamic that Jake is proposing we should sell this and start a business or businesses, and Chloe, you're like, that kind of sounds good, but also I don't know and I'm not sure. Is that the dynamic here?
Yeah.
Well, it's mainly let's sell the house. Don't necessarily have to start a business. Take that money, throw it in the stock market, don't think about it, and then we can do whatever we need to do with the rest of our mind.
Cool. And if you sold the house, could you move and keep your current jobs?
Yes.
Okay. At least it's a viable option. So it really isolates the variable over this house because your jobs are not tied to this location. Okay, cool. Chloe, you have a great point. Hey, we don't want to make a bad decision. Jake, you also have a good point. That money compounding over a long period of time turns into a huge amount. Yes, it's true. So what is the way that you two have decided you're going to make this decision?
We have pretty much just not made a decision. The problem isn't that we're not talking about it. It's just that we keep talking about it and we can't seem to come to an agreement.
Okay. Is there one decision that's probably going to make you more money? Yeah. But we don't only make decisions because of money. What I'm more interested in is what is your individual and joint vision of a rich life, because that makes things very, very clear.
Just as an example, I do a lot of things that seem irrational from a numbers perspective. Okay, we have two apartments. Why? Well, we know what our rich life is. On the other hand, we don't have a variety of other things that other people pay for. So I kind of love that you have seen examples of your parents, for example. We're going to spend a lot on this and very little on that. You have that heritage. Let's talk about it. What is your rich life, Chloe?
It's not landscaping. I want a fancy gym membership. I want a gym membership where they have a pool and massages and tanning beds. I'm not supposed to use them, but I still want to. Once we pay off the home equity loan, we have the money for me to have $400 a month in gym membership costs. That's fine.
Mhm.
I want freedom, though. I want to travel. I've never been outside the United States, and I want to so badly. I want to live in different cities. I've lived here my entire life. I want to move to the West Coast for a while. I want to live in California. I'd love to try living in Hawaii. I want to have a little bit more freedom. I don't necessarily think that I want to be tied down to a house or a location or...
You want to have a nice gym membership. I love the specificity of that. I also love how modest it is. It's like, okay, you could do that right now, but it tells me about you, which I think is great. Chloe, is there anything else in your rich life that would get you like, I really want that?
A private chef.
What would they make for you? How often?
Every day. I would love to. They would meal prep for me because I'm a big gym person and I do meal prep. It gets so boring to just put chicken in the oven all the time.
Yeah. It's so repetitive.
So I would love to have a private chef. That's a someday thing, right? If we make it big or whatever, but...
I like it. So let me ask Jake. Jake, what is your vision of a rich life?
My vision of a rich life, it does include travel, a lot of it. But in order to do that, I have to be able to leave my current position. Not that I could not travel today. It just is increasingly difficult, and I do have to make sure that I am available because it's like I'm on call 24/7, 365. And I know that Chloe was saying that we work nine-to-fives, but I don't work a nine-to-five. I work well over that.
How many hours would you say per week you work?
On average these days, which has gotten better, 50 to 55, but frequently it will be 70 hours, 75 hours. This last week I had to work 25 hours straight.
Wow. It's important for people to know this because here we have somebody, you're early 30s, making 260, 280. It's a lot of money, but also often, not always, but often those jobs are quite demanding from a time perspective, certainly mentally. I think people need to appreciate that if you're making a lot of money, you are probably working. Companies are not stupid. They're not just handing out $300,000 jobs. There's a lot of work to be done. Okay.
A lot of work to be done.
All right. Tell me more about your rich life.
My rich life, again, does not include landscaping at all. It includes going out to dinner just on a random Tuesday or a Wednesday. We don't do that today. Some of that, again, is my job, and some of that is just the compounding chores. So it's like we constantly feel like we're fighting the house, and I don't like that. So I really enjoy technology. It's why I do what I do. So I would like to have the disposable cash to purchase some of these things.
Like what?
For example, generative AI is a big thing right now, but it's very hard to actually run any local labs unless you have the capital to do so. So I would need to invest $14,000, $15,000 probably in equipment in order to do what I would want to do. I would love to front-load our retirement so that way it's just a complete weight off of my mind where if I want to take a low-stress job, I can.
Okay, that's interesting. They seem quite compatible. The one thing that seems to be a bit of a consideration is, Jake, your job, which maybe makes travel a little harder, things like that. But okay, we can work around that. I can see why you would propose taking the equity and investing it because then that reduces the focus on your high income.
All right. So I got it. Everybody started off by saying it's not cleaning lawns and pools. Okay, fine. So that's one strike against a house. Fine. So, Chloe, the concern is, hey, are we making the right financial decision or are we doing another impulsive scheme? Am I hearing that correctly?
Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Is it just stupid across the board to sell a house with a 2.7 interest rate?
Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. I'll tell you what. Let's do this, Chloe. Why don't you argue against yourself? So pretend that you are making the case that you should sell the house and XYZ. Make the best argument you can.
I want to see my husband happy and relaxed, and I'd love to see him retired at 55. And we can either invest heavily, like once we finish getting out of debt, we invest my entire salary and we keep our expenses low, and that's how we'll get there. Or we can take the equity out of the house that we don't like anyways and we can invest it, and then he doesn't have to think about it. We can just keep investing modestly, which seems easier.
It's okay. Great job. First of all, I know I put you in an interesting position there. You did a great job. I noticed that your argument centers almost entirely around investment returns. Y'all are wealthy. Do you know that? When you get comfortable with the idea that one way or another, you both are going to have a lot of money. That is a given. Do you both accept that?
Mhm.
Jake says yes. Chloe?
Kind of. Something could change tomorrow. He could fall off the ladder and not be able to work anymore. And then that all goes out the window because I can barely support us. Our goal was to try to get our spending down to where we could live off my income. It hasn't been possible for us. So it's like if something happens to him tomorrow, yes, we have some money in the stock market, but everything would change.
Did this happen to somebody you know?
I'm worried that it's going to happen to my parents because my dad's health is starting to decline and my mom has never had a real job and they still have two
Kids at home. And if that happened, what would they do?
We would have to support them.
Ah.
We're the only ones in my family that have the capital to do that.
Okay. Have you talked to them about this?
Kind of. My dad had a health episode last year, and that's when I started talking to my mom about it. And my dad will not talk about it because it gives him too much anxiety.
Ah, that's difficult.
Yeah. So my mom, she's aware, and I know they own a rental property. I don't think their house is paid off. I don't really know all the specifics of their finances. My mom seems to be kind of like, "We'll be okay. Your dad has life insurance." And I'm like, "Okay, but what if he doesn't die, though? What if he needs 24/7 care? He has a stroke like a bunch of his family members have."
So can I ask you a question? In the worst case that this happens, would your house help or hurt you?
It could help because we have an HOA, but it's extremely lenient. We could put a second structure on this property. We have plenty of room. I can't live with my parents. I love them so much, but the religious, political differences are just like—
Yeah.
It's a little much. We could build them a little in-law suite very easily here. And our interest rate's low. Our mortgage is incredibly affordable for us. What happens if we want to move away and then something happens to my family and we decide to move back, and now we have to spend six grand a month on a mortgage because we're trying to have them live with us?
So it could help, but also could hurt because at the same time, right, we could technically just rent something for them and have them live separately.
What's the circular paralysis that I see? Because in other parts that I've talked to you, you're quite decisive. Am I reading that correctly? Are you decisive in other parts of life?
That really depends.
Oh, wow.
Sometimes I'm extremely indecisive, and sometimes I can be very decisive.
Okay. What parts of life are you indecisive about? We already know money. What else?
What to eat for dinner, sometimes.
That's why you get a private chef.
Yeah, that would be nice.
Tell me what else.
What to wear.
What to wear? Well, is there any commonality among all three of these? Because two of them seem low stakes. What to wear, what to eat. It's like, all right, whatever. But money, much higher stakes. What's the commonality, if any?
I have this thing that Jake and I have talked about where I wasn't wearing my nice clothes. So I bought these Lululemon leggings in 2016. I only wear them for special workouts.
What's a special workout?
If I'm going to a fancy gym or something, or I'm working out with my friends and doing yoga or something. I'm doing puppy yoga or something, I'll wear my special leggings. But otherwise, I wear really cheap stuff most of the time.
Cheap like what?
Stuff I got from a hand-me-down from my cousin when I was 15.
Interesting. Even though the two of you make near $400,000 a year in your early 30s.
I do buy stuff. It just kind of sits in my closet, and I don't wear it unless it's a special occasion.
Okay, got it. So—
I'm working on it.
I have found that it is much easier to increase income than to substantially change your money psychology. Money psychology usually follows, and because we don't really take it seriously, we will overfocus on investment and allocation. All that stuff is good, but we're just like, "Yeah, whatever. Psychology is just for dumb college kids. It's not that important. I'm cool." No, it actually can cause a lot of the things that I see on this podcast, which is people who make a lot of money and they are kind of still living the way that they were in their early 20s or even childhood.
I love the specificity of a Lululemon set of leggings only pulled out: "Okay, today I'm going with my friends. Better put this on." Whereas in my experience, what I have come to love is I might have a nice sweater or whatever, and I was inspired by seeing people who have money and they're like, "Yeah, I just wear this every day." Or the old Jane Birkin bag. She literally threw stuff in it. She had fruit sitting in there. She really used this bag, and wealthy people often are just like, "This stuff is meant to be used. It's not a museum piece." So anyway, psychology changes often after the income changes.
Okay, back to your argument. You were making the best argument against yourself.
Oh, yeah.
Go back. Make the argument again in two sentences.
I want to see Jake retired early, and I want to see him less stressed, and this is the fastest way to get there.
Great. Remember we focused a lot on the numbers, but what I noticed is that there was no vision of a rich life. Can you make the argument again, but this time I don't really care about the investment numbers. I care about the vision of our rich life. Go ahead.
It's living somewhere where it's sunny most of the time, and I get to try new places and try new coffee shops and travel. And next week I'm going to go to Spain with some girlfriends. Maybe Jake has to work. That's not part of my rich life, that you have to work.
Put this guy to work. You could make it up. Put him to work. Listen, it's the girls' trip. This guy's going to be working. And by the way, Jake, you're also meal prepping from now on. This is my rich life.
I'm the personal chef here. Wow.
I'm the main character.
Quite a different energy level on that one. Chloe, what do you notice?
It feels happier. It feels very optimistic and dreamy.
Yeah. In a way, you two have earned the right to be able to dream. I actually think everybody should be dreaming more, but you have really earned the right to be able to put those dreams into motion today versus having to wait many decades, as many people do. Being good with money does not only mean you are good at calculating investment returns. That's trivial. Everybody should be able to do that. And if you can't do it in your head, which nobody can, do it online. It's easy. Being really good with money knows when to balance the numbers with the feelings. So, Chloe, what are you picking up right now?
There's more to spending money than just the numbers.
Yes.
Yeah.
What is there?
Happiness. I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah. You have a big smile on your face right now. That's kind of what I love to see. Money should make you happy. It should make us feel awesome. It should make us feel like, "Oh my God, I wake up in the morning, I love this. I love it. I love having food prepped. I love having Lululemon leggings that I can wear every workout, and I love the gym that I go to." The irony is you could do it today. You could. So what do you think is stopping you from doing it today?
I'm just too tired.
Too tired? Okay, let's say that you took a trip, rejuvenated, etc. What's stopping you from getting the nice pair of pants and the nice gym and all that stuff?
Some of it, I think, is anxiety about the house. We're on a well and a septic, right? That's 50 grand if the septic goes out. On the high end, but that's what we have to think about.
Why do you have to think about that stuff? I don't think about that stuff.
Well, we have to plan for it, right? Because when we first bought the house, we didn't have any savings, and a lot of these things crept up on us.
It's because we have a house.
You have to think about the well pump because we have a house. You have to think about the septic because we have a house. If we didn't have the house, you wouldn't be thinking about that at all. I don't even know what septic is. I don't know what it is, and don't explain it to me. Don't care.
What a luxury. Just be like, "Not interested."
But one thing that I have learned in my life is to not let the tail wag the dog. Meaning you make a decision, and then you find yourself doing all kinds of stuff you never wanted to or would choose to do, all because of that initial decision. Do you find that maybe that's happening here, Chloe?
Yeah, actually, because now that you say that, I definitely said it to Jake. If I were a real estate investor, I would look in this area. I would never buy this house to rent it out because there's too much that can go wrong. There's too much can ruin. There's too much maintenance that we'd have to pay to have somebody else come do. This is a lot of people's dream, right? Having a house like this.
Is it yours?
No. But what if it is one day?
Tell me. Play that out. What if it is?
What if we sell the house, we move, I start living my rich life, and it's not what I thought it was?
Yeah.
Right. I'm like, "Oh, I'm not actually happier with the gym membership. I actually want to have a garden."
What would you do?
Well, if we wanted to come back here, we'd have to pay a lot more money because prices have inflated a lot.
That's one option. What else would you do?
We'd probably rent at first.
Okay. So you would pay more in this neighborhood to be back in this neighborhood, or what would your options be?
Not to come back to this neighborhood?
Yeah. Are there potentially any other neighborhoods in a country of over 330 million people?
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, probably.
Why keep yourself playing so small when you don't even like your day-to-day?
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Yeah. Yeah. As you said, it feels comfortable. It's all I have known. And yet I hear this yearning to travel, to try different things. I'd like to live on the West Coast. I'd like to try this. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. Would you be comfortable if you tried something and it didn't work out?
Yeah, because I need to try something else.
Yeah. Would you be embarrassed?
Probably a little bit. The RV thing embarrassed me, but—
Yeah.
I'm still here.
Yeah, that's a good answer. Yeah, actually it is kind of embarrassing a little bit, but it's also what it takes to learn what I like to do, especially because we've both lived in the same area for our entire lives. I like hearing the two of you talk about this because it's actually not just a money question. One way or another, both of these decisions will be fine.
It reminds me when I was deciding whether to take a job offer at Google. It was existential to me. Should I take this offer, or should I go do my own startup? And I was going around asking people for advice, very similar to what you're doing right now. And then I had a professor of mine who was like, "Look, both of these decisions are going to be great. You are going to be great no matter what decision you choose. So now the question is, what do you really want? When you think about your day-to-day, what do you really want?"
And for me, I feel resentful that I would ever have to wear a badge and badge in at work. It's just not my thing. I'm like, no. That made it so obvious and so easy for me to decide what to do. Now, of course, I missed the high salary I would have gotten at Google early on in my career, but eventually I made more. But more importantly than the money, the money is not how I think about the decision. I was free. Free to make my own decisions. Free to accept the consequences of when I did it right or didn't. I lived a very modest lifestyle. I had multiple roommates after I graduated. It was not that glamorous, but it was cool. It was cool for me. That's what I wanted. Chloe, as I say this, what's coming up for you?
I guess the point that you're making is that we'll be fine either way.
Yes. And if you accept that you're going to be fine, not only fine, you're going to thrive either way, you're both going to become very wealthy either decision. So if you accept both of those things, then how would you think about the decision? What would you optimize for?
Probably retirement, travel, and being able to do what I want.
Not asset value of a 1.5-acre house.
No.
Jake, what about you?
I would optimize for happiness.
Now, I do want to point one thing out. I'm not trying to weigh the scale here and be like, sell this thing. You all could actually pay a lot of your problems away. You can have somebody come in and do the meal prep. You could certainly have a more serious type of firm that would come in and handle all the stuff outside. Yeah, it would cost a lot of money, but you have the money. You could do it. What do you think? It's a very valid option.
We don't.
It is. Yeah.
Chloe says no. Both say no.
We talked about that before, too. We were like, technically, we could just pay somebody to come in and do all these things, but to us, it feels like it would be a waste of money because we don't necessarily want to be here.
To me, that makes it a very obvious decision. Then if you definitely don't want to do it yourself, because you told me we feel grumpy and we don't like it and all that stuff, and you both resolutely do not want to pay someone else to do it, then what is the only available option? To sell it.
Well, technically, if the renters were doing it—
You want to rent it out, and they're maintaining it.
That's the thing. They won't, right? But this house was a rental for a while, and that's how it got so overgrown.
Oh, okay. So that doesn't work either. Well, look, you could theoretically find the magical person, but history suggests maybe it'll be more difficult than you think. So you could do it, but realistically, do you want to?
Not really. It just felt like, everybody's like, "Oh, real estate investing is the best." And there's so many people online that are just like, "You got to buy your house, and then you got to take out cash-out refinance and buy five more houses, and then you got to do all this stuff, and rental properties are the way to freedom." And it's like—
Who the does that?
I don't know. I feel like there's so many influencers saying that.
I look at their advice, and then I look at my lifestyle, and I'm like, why would I ever take advice from you? Why? Please tell me. It's insane to take advice from people whose lifestyle and whose morals and ethics you don't agree with.
Here's a potential compromise suggestion. You could rent the place out for a year. Make a very clear measure of what would be success or what would not, and go travel or rent somewhere else and see how you like it, and you would have one year to make a decision. But if you did that, you would need to really discuss the options, such as if things break down, how are we paying for it? Who's going to go back and fix it? Are we going to hire somebody? You need to really think it through. And you should also ask yourself, is this worth it? Because if this works, how's it going to change our financial and lifestyle picture? Let's say we actually find a great renter. First of all, who's finding the renter? Who's interviewing them? Who's maintaining? All this stuff needs to be dialed in. Chloe, how does that strike you?
It's probably going to be me doing most of that stuff.
Okay.
Just because he's got such an unpredictable work schedule, so I tend to take on more of that kind of stuff.
You want to do it?
Not really. I just kind of felt like maybe I had to.
I'll tell you the craziest thing about living a rich life is you realize so many things you thought you had to do are only in your head. I have to own a TV. No, I don't. I have to own a car. No, I don't. We have to do this. We have to do that. Maybe. And sometimes, yeah, I actually like doing that. That's cool. I love that. But a lot of times, no. What do you think? What is something you thought you had to do and now you realize you don't have to?
Have kids.
Great. That's probably the biggest example of all.
It was one of those things that
Everybody tells you it's just the next thing.
And most people don't think about it.
So, you must have had a lot of critical conversations talking about this topic. Wow. And you both affirmatively decided, although other people do it, love it, we've decided it's not for us, even despite knowing probably there's a lot of pushback and societal things and stuff like that. But you decided that's not part of our rich life. How did it feel to decide that?
Really good.
Feels empowering to make an affirmative decision for the two of you. Your decision. Again, a lot of other people could disagree with it, but it certainly feels good to create your own internal culture. What if you did that here?
That's what we want. That's what we want to do. Yeah.
Jake, what do you think hearing this conversation? How is it reaching you?
You're bringing up a lot of good points to think about. And I feel like I've mentioned some of these things to Chloe before, too. We don't have to mow the lawn if we don't want to. We can sell the house and rent somewhere right down the street from here if we really wanted to.
I think that the two of you have been very successful financially speaking. It's very impressive, especially considering how you grew up. It's like, wow, this is incredible. I also am impressed that the two of you have taken this journey together and talked a lot about money. It's clear that you've talked a lot. I love seeing that. I love that.
I'm actually really glad to be able to talk to you because not all money conversations have to involve scarcity or deprivation. I speak to a lot of people in those situations, but I think there are plenty of other important decisions like, hey, we've made a number of decisions and sometimes they're embarrassing, and are we doing this impulsively? Or, hey, property is a good purchase even though we don't like this. Isn't it still a good decision?
To me, here's what I see. I see that despite being very successful, I don't see money currently brings you a lot of joy. It just seems like kind of a bummer. Where does all our money go? It goes to pay off the home equity thing, and then it goes for this, and the shrubs we could do, but we don't, and whatever. And then the things we do have are so rare and scarce that we don't really even pull them out except on special occasions.
I don't believe in special occasions. I wear my best stuff all the time. I freaking wear it to 7-Eleven. I don't believe that if you are in your 30s making almost $400,000 a year that you have to wait until, what, 60 to live your life. I reject that.
So, I think, yes, you need to be making a certain amount of money. You need to be covering your costs and saving. You did all that and you're doing all that. Can stuff happen in the future that's bad? Yeah, put a little extra aside for it. If you're going to need to take care of your parents, okay, let's put a little bit extra aside for that. No problem. But gosh, I would love for you six months from now to wake up and be like, "My day looks awesome. I'm going to the gym. We're gonna get an early dinner."
It's funny, in a way you may have overindexed on the numbers and underindexed on the feelings about money. We look at the numbers. If you retire 25 years from now, Chloe, you'll be 57. Okay. On your current trajectory, you would have $4.8 million. It's pretty good. Safe withdrawal rate of $192,000 a year. We might need to bring that down a little because you're retiring young. So maybe a little bit, but okay.
And if you sell the house now, add it to your investments, let's say home equity is $250K, you'd have $6.2 million with a safe withdrawal rate of $250,000. Yeah, of course you would need to pay rent now, so your investments would probably decrease relative to owning, but compounding early on is huge. What do you make of those two numbers, Chloe?
That's still more than most people have.
Yeah.
Either way.
Yes. When I look at those numbers, I go, "All right, either one is good." And honestly, if I'm the two of you, I'm like, "I'm going to beat that number anyway. We're not going to only stay at our salaries that we have at age 30." If it's me, Jake, the way you were talking at age 14, you were like, "Yeah, I'm never going to compromise." Exactly me sitting here, if in your shoes, I'd be like, "Yeah, that's hilarious. I'm only going to have $6 million. What a joke. We're willing to work hard."
Rookie numbers.
Yes. It's rookie numbers in your situation. Not for the median or average person, but the two of you, you're like, we're going to work. We're going to have more than we will ever need. So, once we accept that, how do we want to live from now until then? Chloe, what do you want to do?
Go get a gym membership.
Okay, let's do it.
And wear my leggings.
I like that. I think you should wear them. Not now. I'm saying when you go to the gym, why not? You have them. You deserve them. All right, let's just change some of these numbers. Okay, I want to start having a little bit more fun. What should we change, Chloe, that would make you actually live a rich life right now?
We could hire someone to mow the lawn until we move.
Great. Let's just put it under subscriptions. How much are you going to pay this person?
At least $500.
$450 would be probably.
$450 a month.
Yeah, because they'd come once a week.
Okay, cool. Watch this number. 43% fixed costs. Wow. Jumped to 46%. All right, problem solved. What else? Where's the gym?
The one near us is like $200, I think, a month.
$200 a month. All right, let's make it $650 for subscriptions. All right, 47%. Done. What else?
Vacations.
Okay. How much do you want to put aside for your first vacation abroad?
Probably like $1,000 a month, right?
Okay. And how long until you go?
That'd be minimally 10 months if it's overseas. Minimum 10 months.
Ten grand. Yeah.
All right. Let's say $1,200 a month for that. Okay. This is good. Except now we're down to negative numbers. But I don't really believe that because you didn't really put your RSUs in here, did you?
No.
Instead of 20, can I just say $22,000?
That's fair.
$22,000. So, what do we want to say here? Like $13,000.
Yeah.
All right. Yeah, that's about right. So, you still have $1,000 left over, which, basically, you have more than enough money. And this freaking huge payment here is done this year, correct?
Yeah. Pretty soon. Yeah.
All right. So, watch this. Let me just zero this out. Oh, wow. 40% for guilt-free spending. What are you going to do with $8,000 a month?
I don't know.
She's like, "I've only been thinking about landscaping for the last three years." Think about it, though, Chloe. It's a real question. $8,000 per month. Most people will never be in this position. You are. And you're in your 30s. What do you want to do on a monthly basis with this money?
I'd like to travel. So, I guess I would bump up the vacation fund and maybe do weekend trips.
Nice. That's it. That's it. So, we have vacations. $1,200 is for your big one. I actually think that's a bit low. You got the money. Let's take it up to $1,500. Okay. And then you want to do a couple of weekend trips throughout the year. How much are each of those?
We usually keep it kind of low-key, like $500 to $1,000 maybe, hotel, gas.
Okay. Let's call it $300 a month. Give you a little bit more on that. You still have $7,410. What are you noticing?
I have a lot.
Yes. What did you say that you wanted to do in your rich life? And then, Jake, I'm coming to you, too.
Oh, also private chef. But I don't know if we can afford a private chef with that money.
You're thinking a chef that freaking lives in your mansion. You can have somebody come twice a week, cook your food, they leave it in the fridge all ready to go, and you're good to go. You can give them your macros and everything. It's awesome.
I was worried about that. I was like, are they going to hit my protein goal?
Yeah, exactly. You're like, "Listen, I'm cutting right now, so my chicken costs are going down, so it's great." Yeah, I think you can pay, let's just say $3,000 a month. Okay, just to show you, because you at one point said that's someday down the line. If we did that and we go to groceries, I'm just going to put it here. $3,000. Your fixed costs are at 59%. Wow, they did go up, but you still have $4,400 a month to distribute. What are you noticing, Chloe?
That I have enough.
More than enough. As an example, just to fast-forward on the house thing, let's say you sold the house. Let's say you got $250K. I would put $200K of that and invest it. And I would take the other $50K and just put it in a fun fund. We'll use it in the next 18 months. That's the goal we're setting for ourselves. Okay. So, now your rent's going to go higher because you have an enviable position that you're in, but you're going to be paying, I don't know, $4,500 a month. You're up to 67%, which is a little high, but we need to remember something. Why is that okay in your situation?
Because in this case we would have the money invested that we don't have to think about it.
Exactly. So where other people would have to be putting 10, 11, 12, 13% aside, you're like, we're good. So instead we can take the money that we ordinarily would have invested and we can redirect it to living our rich life today. Should we still invest? Yeah, probably. Certainly get the 401(k) match. If you want to put a little extra in, go ahead. But gosh, that's a lot of money that we would normally be investing that we could instead put somewhere else. Also, no utilities, no lawn guy or lawn person, just simple. And then what about up here? What does it feel like to not have to think about, is my septic going to go?
Takes a lot of weight off.
Yeah. Jake, what's your take on the changes that we have financially made so far?
I like them. I like the idea of a chef coming in once every few days.
If we still have $3,700 left over here, what do you want to do with the money? Didn't you want some gadget?
I would probably put $500 away for saving towards something that I wanted to purchase. A lot of my purchases are higher than, I guess, the average consumer.
Okay, so $500 a month, that's $6,000 a year for stuff you want. Great. I like that. I like how you just owned it. Yeah. Hey, I like to buy some expensive stuff. That's cool. Great. $500 a month. You still have $3,268. What do you want to do?
Personally, I would probably bump the vacations up.
Okay.
Even more.
Tell me.
I would do like $2,000.
Great. $2,000.
And then obviously if we have that extra money, I would probably put some of that into the stock market as well.
Sure. Let's just say $500 a month. Make it $1,000 just for kicks.
Yeah.
We still have $1,768 left. As you can see, this is not a cash problem. This is a problem of what do we want? And are we willing to close certain doors in order to open up an entirely new set of doors? Chloe, what do you think about that?
I was thinking about what doors could open, but I also just wasn't sure. I don't know if we could close this door and still be fine. Kind of seems a little ridiculous. I'm like, oh, what if something happens and we regret this? It's like, then we'll deal with it.
There you go.
Right. We can buy another house if we want to. We have the money.
That's the breakthrough. That's the breakthrough, which is we can trust our future selves to deal with what happens. We can trust ourselves today. So, of course, our future selves are going to be even more capable. We're going to have more money, more know-how, more maturity. So if things come our way, we are strong enough that we can withstand those things. Do you believe that?
Yeah.
Okay. The other thing I want to talk to you about is the schemes, as you put it, Chloe. I do think that you have correctly identified that you have both gotten into a variety of off-the-wall ideas like the Airbnb, the RV. What is the pattern among all of those things that you got into?
We don't properly research. We impulsively jump in and we don't consider all of the work that has to be done, the time that needs to be invested, all of that. And it ends up just burning us out.
That sounds kind of like the house.
It does.
If you want to run a business at some point, you can. It's also not clear you need to think about this right now. Can I just tell you how I would think about this? So, if it were me and I'm Jake, I'm like, "Hey, I love making this money and I know that my salary is going to go up, but being on call all the time is not for me. So, I would like to start bringing it up with my boss or bosses that, hey, I love doing what I do, but over the next 18 months, here's where I would like to be. I would like to be where I am not on call, X, Y, Z."
And who knows if that's possible or not, but at least I want to bring it up because obviously I'm getting paid a lot of money. They respect me, but here's what I need in my lifestyle. And by giving them a lot of lead time, you can actually often shape companies. A lot of times the companies just don't know. They're like, "Well, we keep putting him on call and he keeps doing it, so why would we not?" But gently working with them, especially at this level of pay, companies really want to keep their top performers happy. So, that's one.
Chloe, really deciding where do we want to go next? If we were to sell this house, let's make a plan ahead of time. Let's look at the places that we might want to live. Let's think about every aspect of it. If we're on the West Coast, what does it mean for us waking up in the morning? Do we have to wake up on East Coast time? What's cost of living out there? What if we love it? Maybe we stay there. What if we don't love it? Where would we go next? You don't have to know all the answers, but you just want to at least pose the question.
And I honestly think that once you are not spending eight hours a weekend or more on this house, you're going to have so much perspective. Because right now, you are literally in the weeds. But to zoom out and be like, "Whoa, what do we do if we're not spending all our time just keeping this house alive?" You will be shocked in a good way at how much else there is out there for your rich life.
I agree. I think we'll get bored without the house.
Sounds great.
Yeah. What surprised you both about today's conversation, Chloe?
I guess I was surprised at how this is kind of a silly thing that we're worrying about, or that I'm worrying about.
Maybe not silly. Maybe there are some very valid reasons why. And probably there's some further work you could both do to uncover the kind of focus on security and safety. It's understandable, but also maybe slightly incongruent with your financial situation. You're like, "Hey, we may need to do X, Y, and Z." I'm like, "Yeah, totally. You could totally do those things and more. So, let's check the box." But that's me just seeing numbers.
You, Chloe, have a lifetime of upbringing that has shaped your view of money. And though you've done a ton of work in so many different parts of life, money takes work. And you're actually doing it right now by starting to say, "Hey, my rich life doesn't actually have to be playing small. I don't have to save my nice things for a special day. What if I just accept that every day is a nice day?"
I know.
Yeah, it changes a lot. It takes work to get there, but you're there. You're there. It just takes some more tweaking. I'm really impressed, Chloe, in our conversation today. Jake, what surprised you about our conversation?
Honestly, it is surprising to see the numbers and when you shift them around, that's a big thing. We haven't really done that much with the shifting around. What if we were to spend more money on groceries, or what if we were to spend more money on vacations? We haven't done that math yet. We haven't gotten that far.
Mm-hmm.
So, just looking at once we're debt-free from the equity loan, how much
Money we'll have to play with, it's kind of absurd.
Yeah. I always think, my wife and I, there's this phrase that I started using, which is, "What do we get?" We're both entrepreneurs. We work really hard. What do we get? And if there's something in our life that we are not loving, it's like we better get freedom from that thing. And we should be so lucky that it's something that money can buy our way out of because, as you know, health is something that sometimes money cannot solve. But if it's something like we don't want to have to shovel the sidewalk or something like that, then wow, we are so grateful that we have the money to be able to solve that problem.
So that might be a question for the two of you to start asking. We literally put our hands out, palm up. We say, "What do we get?" And boy, that makes us really feel grateful for the work that we do and the jobs that we have because "What do we get?" means we can afford to pay people well to solve these problems and give us a rich life every day.
I am thankful that we got a chance to talk. I don't think this is a silly conversation at all. I think it's really important. I think that you both have done a great job with your careers. You have really made impressive gains in your knowledge of money. And now I just want to see your life start to match up with it. Not just the life you're living, but also how you feel about it should be awesome because you two have worked really hard.
This couple's very capable. I feel extremely confident they are going to make changes in their life. Just the way they talked about their house in the first two minutes of our conversation, I'm like, "Oh, they're sick of it. Now, what are you willing to do?" After talking, I think there were some major unlocks that they had, particularly Chloe. I think that they will make a plan. No doubt about that. I think that the plan will probably involve, some months from now, them selling it or even renting it out for a year. Either one to me is perfectly fine. I think that they will start spending more money immediately because they realize, "We have a lot of money. What are we doing? Why are we playing so small?"
And to me, this is the joy of the journey with money. You can start taking small steps. You build that confidence. You realize, "Oh my gosh, we bought an extra pair of pants. Nothing happened to us. It actually makes me feel good. Oh my gosh, we had somebody come and do the lawn. No problem. We can afford it." And you start to make bigger and more consequential decisions. So I'm personally really looking forward to hearing more from them. My greatest joy of all would be seeing them on a trip somewhere, having a great time, working out in a gym in Greece, and just enjoying their hard work and what it's gotten them.
Hi, Ramit. Thank you again for having us on the podcast. We really enjoy it.
Yeah, I had a great time. Thank you again. I appreciate it.
My biggest surprise, I think, was finding out that I have a lot of anxiety around money. Even though I have enough of it, I have a lot of anxiety.
Yeah. My biggest surprise was honestly just hearing that we were doing okay. I find that it's beneficial to have somebody external review your finances because it's very easy to get stuck in your own mindset, in your own budget, whatever you want to call it, where it's like you can constantly, "I could do better. I can do more. I could cut here, cut there, not pay for ads."
Optimize, optimize, optimize.
Constantly optimize. At our income level, it's like we don't really need to be doing all of those things. So it was really nice to hear from you that we were doing the right things and were on the right path.
My biggest takeaway was that it doesn't really matter if we sell the house or keep the house. It's really a matter of what we want to do, not what we should do or what might be the most financially optimal decision to make. So what's right for us matters more in that scenario. And also at our income level, we can sell the house and put that in the stock market and not worry about retiring. And I think also, too, the world is our oyster if, moving forward, we're intentional about how we spend our money. We can afford to live whatever lifestyle we want, which is great. We've worked very hard to be where we are, and the time to enjoy it is now, not in 40 years.
I don't even know if we'll be alive in 40 years.
Exactly. Within reason.
Yeah.
I will get my gym membership, and I will wear my leggings to the gym. That's fancy. And some of the changes that we're going to make moving forward: we are selling our house. We talked to a realtor today. We're getting it on the market, and we are going to move to the West Coast.
And we are also going to have a waiting period before we make any large financial purchases that might incur some debt, just to make sure that we don't get ourselves into debt again. And I think that should do it. Again, thank you for having us on the podcast. We really appreciate it. We got a lot out of it.
We had a great time.
Yeah. Great time chatting with you. Thanks again.
I want to thank our partners at Monarch for setting our couples up on their platform to see their exact CSP categories. Monarch is a private personal finance app that brings together all of a household's accounts, checking, credit cards, loans, and investments into one clean dashboard on your phone or computer.
One thing I love about Monarch is it allows you to save up for your rich life goals. For example, if you want to save up for a wedding or an amazing vacation or your emergency fund, a house, having a baby, college or retirement, Monarch makes it easy. You set up your goals, you tell it how much you want to save towards that goal every month, and Monarch lets you see your progress visually along the way.
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