245. "We make 6 figures. Why am I hiding fast food purchases?"

His therapist said she's shocked that he's still working with young children and cancer treatment. "I was just feeling incredibly guilty."

“"You wrote in your application that you feel like a pressure cooker about to explode."”

What if I get sick again? They said it was going to be gone the first time and it came back.

What if I can't work for another year? This time, work won't pay for it. "I actually find it so hard to stick to the budgets." "I spent 200 euro on Timo." "On what?" "Oh, sh*t, Remy. I'd love to have a plan to not feel so terrified."

"If the two of you continue on the way that you have with your money, when something comes up in life, what do you think happens the next time and the time after that and the time after that?" "Oh, I will just collapse."

“Here's the scenario. Your partner is suddenly diagnosed with cancer.”

They have to step back from work and your household income predictably drops. On top of the fear and grief that you are both experiencing, would you know what to do financially? This is what Grace and James have been navigating. They're 38 and 37 years old. They live in Ireland with their two children, a toddler and an infant. James has been going through cancer treatment while Grace is on maternity leave.

Their income has taken a hit and like a lot of couples, they're trying to figure out how to make it all work. Now, I know that a lot of people would avoid talking about money until they are forced to. But Grace and James are doing it and they've let us look inside their real numbers. I'm opening up their conscious spending plan or their CSP. It breaks down their income, expenses, savings, and exactly where their money is going.

If you want my help with your own conscious spending plan,

join my money coaching program at iwt.com/moneycoaching. Here's what I'm seeing in their numbers.

Assets 328,000 investments 79,000 savings 42,000 debt 230,000 net worth 219,000 fixed costs are at 48% investments 6% savings at 40% that's quite aggressive. That 40% savings rate tells me something is going on. Maybe they are in a rebuilding phase, maybe they are trying to get ahead of what might be coming. It's not surprising to see a higher savings rate given that they've been going through cancer, reduced income, and having a newborn.

Now, I want to hear from you. Have you ever been through a situation where your income dropped overnight? Maybe it was a health crisis, maybe it was a job loss. I want to hear from you in the comments. I want to know what did you cut back on? And looking back, what do you wish you hadn't cut back on? I'll check out the comments later today. For now, let's get into it.

Here is my conversation with Grace and James. If we just have an amazing 10 out of 10 conversation,

“what would you walk out of here with? What do we start with you Grace?”

I think I really want a game plan for how to build back up what we're currently ratcheting down on. I feel like we've had a huge so many bumps in the road and we've done what we can, but I'd love to get that skyrocketing sort of a big release. I'd love to have a plan to look towards the future and not feel so terrified and I would love to kind of understand how I feel maybe a little bit more and why I feel like that. Okay, James, how about you? Very similar with

the specials of the building back up with me personally to kind of really get my head and my heart back into finances. It's been very much on Grace's shoulder since the past while and I want to be able to kind of help take some of that burden away and get myself more financially this right again. Great, all right, well I'm looking forward to this. I have a lot of questions. Grace, you wrote my husband has cancer and I'm on maternity leave with a four-month-old. I feel like I'm forcing

him to keep working because of our money situation. Can you tell me what you were feeling when you wrote that? Oh, just the horrible guilt for me. So in Ireland we get, I'm going off the concise, but in Ireland we get six months paid maternity and then we get three months unpaid and then I get an extra three months. So in all in all it turns out to be a year, but I have been off sick and I have been unreduced hours because I just had a really rough pregnancy. So we had

saved money, but not as much as I wanted and I really felt a lot of pressure to encourage James to keep working through his treatment. His therapist basically said she's shocked that he's still

ah, the my god. So like the worst wife in the world like I wasn't supporting him through his treatment, I'm constantly looking at the numbers and I'm constantly like, okay, if you can keep working for another month or two, then we can put in another two thousand and savings and then that will keep us going until January and then I don't know. So yeah, I was just feeling incredibly guilty. Do you still feel that way? Yeah, I do. Okay. James, if you're comfortable,

would you mind sharing what you're dealing with from a health perspective? I got cancer first

for the three years ago. It was just a very simple mold that went funny. Melonoma. They fought they got it all. And then I found a lump in my arm of all places and it turned out it had metastasized and they hadn't called it. So likefully they called it early again and surgery to remove the second site and then immunotherapy for over a year. And organosis is looking good though, which is fantastic. I actually finished my last treatment cycle two weeks ago.

Really? Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Wow. That's awesome. How long have you been

“going through treatment? But yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And how do you feel right now physically?”

Tired. It's going to take at least three months. They said to kind of fully lead my system and then there's a lot of side effects and everything that crop up and very enough stuff to them. Did a bit to go. But I think the big, the big kind of mental hurdles that was a way you know. So we are in a much better place than we were when we submitted to come on the show. I'm doing great. I can't cut my blessings. I'm doing really well. I'm very happy to hear that. Very happy. How about mentally

how do you feel? I'm mentally much better. I've been had a lot more mental space to kind of get my head around it and concentrate on getting better. Yeah. I've been off work now for two, two months. My workwork had given me till the new year. Then we'll reassess. That has helped a lot. And it's given me a lot of mental space to kind of heal and it's also given my mental space around things to prop up finances for one and that. What led to the decision for you to stop working?

Looking back at it, I didn't recognise who I was. I was a zombie. I was tired. I was gray. I only just told me how gray I was. I wasn't really working. That's the thing. So many people covering for me doing various aspects. I was doing the bad minimum. But you know, work gave me the option to keep working. Why? It's because I thought I'd be bored. Wait a minute. Hold on.

“Where's your accent from? Are you Irish? I might have waited into it. Where's the accent from?”

The England. Oh, okay. All right. I think it's England. Am I in big trouble right now? I know it's - Oh, okay. - Oh, okay. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

- No. - Sorry, everybody, sorry. Okay, listen, the reason I'm asking is, I would understand if some American, you know, born and raised in the US, all they know is work.

That's our entire life. We go, what else am I going to do? Of course I'm going to work, but the UK excels at leisure. - What's this? - Yeah, it was money.

- All right, if I say it the era,

“it would have to be an unpaid and we couldn't afford it.”

We were always trying to have in a second child,

but our timeline massively accelerated, when the cancer came back, it was bluntly grace was, I might lose you. I want one more of you before you go. - I want just a little bit more of him.

I want a little bit just in case that he vanished from my life. So that was the first thought that popped into my head if this has come back, I don't have enough of him. I don't know if that makes any sense,

but I also, we knew that he would have to have treatment and we don't know about the fertility long-term effects either.

It was basically we try now and be pregnant

and have a baby while you're undergoing treatment or we only have one child and that's it. It was really hard, but we got our beautiful second baby ahead of it, so she's just perfect. - Congratulations.

It's beautiful. - Thank you. - It's beautiful, and the treatment, now concluding, hopefully future health, it's a beautiful end to that chapter of your life.

- Yeah, beautiful. - Grace, you mentioned that you still feel guilty about asking James to work. Tell me more about that. - Yeah, I feel like it made his treatment journey

so much harder than it needed to be. He ended up having to go on to steroids

call the ambulance for him and he ended up having to go into hospital a few times. How would be because he was under so much pressure and he wasn't getting time to relax and.

“- I think I was just expecting a lot of him,”

but I was also caring for a new boy. And you know, when the newborn came along, I just feel like I asked a lot of him and I asked too much of him and it probably did cause him harm.

- Do you talk about this? - Yeah. - Well, what's the conversation like, I'm gonna imagine Grace says, I feel like I'm asking too much.

- Yeah. - And then what's your response, James? - You're not. - I've never felt that.

And I always tell her that she's never felt that.

A lot of decisions I made around work and I think was based around my recovery. Like I wanted to keep working cause it was a distraction and I thought I'd be bored and it wasn't until I got to the very point

where I couldn't, I was probably causing work more harm. That's a good, that I kind of said and they were, because I credit they were great and it actually turns out they can't give him my full salary, but they are giving me three-thirds of my salary.

- Well, I'm off. - Two-thirds. - Two-thirds, sorry. - Wow. - Yeah.

- Which they didn't have to do. - That's very generous of them. - Yeah. - Big shout out to all the companies out there. You know, we usually hear only bad things about companies

but it's quite amazing what great companies can do in tough times. - Yeah. - That's awesome.

- Grace, you wrote in your application quote,

"I'm constantly saving but then I'll blow money on silly things in a (beep) "it life is hard moment." So, what I wanna know is what kind of things are you spending on in those moments?

- Oh, (beep) to me, absolutely, (beep) this morning, I spent 200 euro on T-moo. - On what? - Just like little things, it's all just small things.

It's two o'clock in the morning, I'm feeding the child, the child's gone back to bed, I'm trying to go back to sleep, I'm on my phone, and then an Instagram ad comes up, and I buy skincare things for 60 euros, which doesn't even work like.

- What's going through your head in those moments where you see these ads, you go on T-moo, and you buy it. What's going through your head? - They've got me here, I do look like crap.

I am exhausted, I don't take care of myself. This is one thing I can do to take care of myself. Look at me, blah, blah, blah, blah, self-care, blah, blah, blah, blah, 60 euros. Here's the, oh, I can just don't click, oh, it's done now.

It's interesting the way you describe it, like your dismissive of it, like the way you describe it is, it's a con, but yet you do it over and over. Why do you think?

“- I think that's a sick joy out of falling for it.”

Sometimes the stuff is lovely, so I'm like, maybe this time, it'll be really nice the same as the other times. But other times, it is a total scam, and when I look it up afterwards, I'm like,

oh, why didn't I research into this more and find out that I just read the comments and read the reviews and look it up on trust pilots. - Did you make these sort of, as you put it, mindless purchases before you had kids?

- Yeah, you did. - Yeah, it really needs to stop. - How do money decisions get made in your relationship? - I probably make most of them. - You take the lead?

- Definitely, yeah, yeah. - And before, before James got sick. - Like we would do weekly budgeting and stuff, but we every Sunday, we would sit down together when the kids were asleep and we would kind of look over,

we'd have kind of a set budget of what we would normally spend. And we go for the calendar, but then mentally, I could just take it in grace to kind of take it all. She still does. - No.

- Yeah. - That's all that seems very reasonable, by the way, much more advanced than most, to sit down and talk about money every week. So that's great.

The fact that, as you got sick James, you had to give up on participating that, also seems totally normal. And the fact grace that you took the load on yourself seems like great partnership.

- Yeah, I think we had a good system going into it because I had been doing a lot of the envelope system. And I just really liked watching the videos and I was like, oh, I can do that. - Hold on, what videos did you like watching?

Who watches envelope videos? What? - It's adjectives. - What are these videos?

“That's what I wanna know, what are they?”

- It's people being like, I'm going through my budget for the week and it's like, I just love watching other people's money. Like, I love your show. - I know why you love my show.

I get that. (beep) - Good. But it did help because I set up a whole thinking fund system. So I have automatic money going to.

So we have basically a year's work of the big bills.

Always pretty much saved and that's automatic.

So we had a good system going into it. So it wasn't like too much of a big deal to take it on James, don't we worry about that?

She's obviously taken the time to be curious

about personal finance and it shows

“when she talks about having an emergency fund”

or as she puts it, a year's worth of big bills saved up. But I'm struck by the way she describes her feelings around their financial situation. Remember, Grace said she feels guilty for, quote, forcing James to keep working

because she was nervous about their financial situation. James isn't working anymore, but she still feels guilty. And now, even though she's worried about money, she'll go in mindlessly spend $200 on Timo at 2am.

It's all a bit contradictory. Those mixed signals tell me there's something going on here. Something deeper she has not worked through yet. And you can hear it in this one moment. She said, I might lose you.

I want one more of you before you go.

Can you imagine your partner saying that? Can you imagine feeling that way? There are a lot of layers to unpack here. We're not just talking about a savings rate. We're talking about mortality and love.

And we don't even know what's going to eventually happen. So listen, as I gently probe Grace, about this explosive line from her application. Grace, you wrote in your application that you feel like, quote, a pressure cooker

about to explode. What do you mean by that? Having the sole responsibility of organizing the money and putting it where it needs to be. It feels just a huge amount of pressure.

And then just the thought of not having any money coming in with the maternity leave and then things are just a little bit

complicated and I'm looking at all the small fine points

and like, hoping they all slot together. And if they don't, then, oh, I don't know. I might explode. And I tend to get quite cross.

“And I think that's why I was putting a lot of pressure”

on James as well to kind of keep working as well because my systems don't work. If the money's not there, if the money's not coming in, everything could fall apart. When you would put the pressure on him as you put it,

how would you do that? I think I would gently prompt. You were having surgery in September and you took the month leading up to it off. Oh, yeah.

That really, really stressed me out because I was like, you are going to need a lot more time off than this. We can't have this. Because, yes, we get sick leave here in Ireland.

We get sick pay. But we only get a certain amount of it and you're going to need a lot of it. And then we're not going to have the money. So I remember having this discussion with you about us.

Do you let James know? Yeah. Tell 'em, we can't do this. What about that? I try, yeah, so I try and lay it out

and say, oh, well, I'm worried about this and then James is like, well, I need to take it off. So, need to take it off and I say, okay. But then I would hold onto it, hold onto it and then it would burst out of me again a week later,

because like, are you sure you can't go back to work right now and work for another week? And what did that dynamic feel like when the two of you were having this? In the thick of cancer treatment?

I was feeling so stressed. I was feeling like there was a baby on the way. I knew I was going to start feeling sick really, really soon. So I was trying to do all of my overtime really early on. So I could do nights and do this before my sickness started

and I had to stop working. So there was such a time limit and I just felt like, you know, you just needed to push through. Like, I was pushing through and he wasn't. And James, how do you feel when Grace would share this with you

and feel anxious and stressed out? Maybe, like, you know, it was, I felt selfish because remember this time, it was a toddler as well. You know, she was too, and so once even, you know, we were trying to raise her at the same time

and it's just so much, so much pressure. Yeah, she would, even now then, she would explode like that and she'd come out and admit it. But then, you know, between those, it was a lot of little microaggressions, I guess,

you could call them in that, you know. But for her, it was very, Grace is very practical in every sense. Like, you should see our cupboard. So her full of jam and pickles and hand to my eyes

and stuff, she would, she would find farmers,

“and you should go to the market, the venture market,”

the end of the day, wait until the very last with a farmer had, you know, whatever, X amount left, haggling down by, oh, spend a whole day chopping them and then we'd have just loads of cans of food. The idea was that if everyone tits up, we'd have, you know,

it's food. And then that was so stressful for me because I would, you know, I've come back from treatment

and I would have to take the sports front to be is parenting and work and everything because Grace was in this manic mode of, we have to have, you know, 17,000 tenses tomorrow, just in case. This is a very good example.

“What do you make of this example now that you are looking back?”

- I'm really ashamed, actually. - Okay, why? - I think I was just trying to do something to control the situation and like try and preserve, you know, something for the future.

The future was so uncertain that I just, I felt like I needed to at least feed my family. - Yes, wow, layers of perception in your answer just now. I feel ashamed, I love the acknowledgement

of how you feel that's powerful.

The need for control, I totally agree. Because if you look like going and waiting and haggling with the farmers and then then then then then then then and then finally, this idea of at least I'm feeding my family. I can't fix what's going on with my husband's health.

Work is work, I'm trying to get as many hours as I can before I get sick, I'm pregnant, I got a little one, but what can I do feed my family? - Yeah, and I've spent hours, and hours, and hours, meal prepping and having food there.

And I don't know if it actually made any sense. - He really did, he still does. We still got loads left, we're anxious to pause the end of practicing, we're starting to get back to her, and I was kind of having

to, you're a goddess of how I felt, or how I was feeling. I had to look after the toddler, I had to feed Grayson, and it just made life so much easier that I could just take a kind of a pre-made glass jar of epicent amount of stuff and throw it in,

“which is some rice and a bit chicken or something, you know?”

- Wait, was it a good decision or not? I'm trying to figure it out now. - I don't know, I think that we also could have just bought - But it was. - It could have saved ourselves so much stress.

- Let me see this. First of all, do you know how much you've been through as a family? - It's a lot. Have you grappled with that?

Have you talked about that? - People say it's me all the time, and I'm like, oh, yeah, but like, you just have to do it. There's no other option need to have to keep going. - That's exactly what my mom said.

I asked her, how did you stay married for so long, and how did you raise all these kids? And her answer was, there's no other choice, you just do it. And I love that answer. I respect that answer.

And I think that maybe when we have that approach, we also don't take time to pause and grapple with the enormity of what we have done. But we have accomplished what we've gone through, exactly, Grace, as I just saw you take a deep breath.

I think that many of us are raised to like, what do they call it, stiff upper lip? Look forward, check the box, and I agree. There's power in that, but there's also power in the softer side of saying like,

hey, have we actually talked about what we went through? What did it mean to us as a family?

Because trust me, two powerful things

you're gonna come out of that. One, you're gonna gain a deeper appreciation for each other. This tomato example is actually much deeper than either of you are letting on. There's something really beautiful,

and something really haunting about this example to me. The idea that Grace, you just want to feed your family. Let them know you're gonna be there, and it doesn't matter that it took hours. It was irrational to spend that many hours,

but you still did it. And yet there's something that perhaps is not that adaptive to your situation, the idea that you were very, very busy, pregnant mom, and you were spending hours. Why?

If you look at it that way, it doesn't make mathematical sense. So there's something beautiful. That's the first thing you're gonna get out of is an understanding of what actually happened.

Most of us never pause and look back,

so we just keep marching forward. The second thing it's gonna do is the two of you talking about it, is gonna allow you to create stories for your family. Your kids need to know this story, they need to know it. Just the same way your parents passed down their stories,

your kids need to know what the two of you did. And how can they learn if the two of you have not decided what happened?

“You know, you have to feel for grace and james.”

They have had a really tough few years, and my heart goes out to them. One thing that makes it all a little bit more bearable is where they live. In Ireland, there are systems in place

that help people when things go wrong, especially when somebody gets sick. Of course, it's not perfect, but it is a safety net that works. Like when James got cancer, they didn't have to worry about going bankrupt

on top of everything else they were experiencing. Now compare that to what we deal with here in the US. In 2024, 31 million adults incurred medical debt,

And the American Journal of Public Health found that roughly

“two thirds of people that filed bankruptcy say”

that medical bills and illness related income loss contributed to their bankruptcy.

This is why I always shake my head

when people tell me in my comments, stick to personal finance, don't bring politics into it. That's like me telling you, keep ingredients out of cooking. You cannot separate the two things,

just as you cannot separate money from politics. Politics is why your health care is so expensive. It's why millions of Americans couldn't even get health insurance before the ACA, also known as Obamacare. And it explains a lot of why people declare bankruptcy

rather than the common belief that people bought too many luxury cars they couldn't afford. I want you to be able to know that if something horrific happens like a car accident or a cancer diagnosis that you will be taken care of and you won't lose your house.

That is where I stand politically and that is what I stand for. After this break, we're gonna learn more about their individual relationships with money. I absolutely love this story.

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Notion.com/remete. Who else has had the experience where you put off something for a week, a month, three months,

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Find your favorite element flavor or share it with a friend. Try it totally risk-free 'cause if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back, no questions asked. Now, are the two of you similar in the way you think about money,

or do you think about it differently? Wow, okay, I already know the answer based on James's smile. James, go ahead. It's some sense, I think.

“Yeah, quite, I think kind of big picture stuff.”

I think we're quite very similar. Just tell me the differences 'cause neither of you believe you're similar. I can tell by your faces. Tell me, James.

If she has fun money, whatever. She'll spend a little things. I'm more of, if I buy something, I'll probably buy something big, maybe once a year. What's an example of a big thing once per year?

My watch broke a year and a half ago, and I finally replaced it. It's how much did it cost? 400 per year, okay, all right. And Grace, how would you describe

your relationship with money?

So I say first, I always put as much the maximum

that I can think to save. I earn a little bit more than James, so I always have a little bit extra, so I think, oh, well, I can spend rest of it now. And when the stress goes up,

whether through James's illness

in your relationship with money?

I think I spend more. And I wouldn't really tell James too much about it. What do you mean? I suppose they do hide a little bit from him.

“Like, what's an example of something you have hidden from him?”

I think I hide how much food I eat out when I'm out in the bush. I often get absolutely ravenous when I'm out doing jobs or I'm like, taking the girls to events or whatever, be so hungry and they'll both be asleep in the car and I will drive into a drive through

and buy a huge meal and eat it all on the way. But I don't know, I think I got a bit of a weird thrill out of hiding a little small thing. Do you take the bag and throw it outside before you go inside?

Yeah, I do. How old are your kids? Our eldest is three and our youngest, well, we don't have two, but she's six months. Six months, okay, all right, all right, all right.

What would you say the primary thing that changed

financially speaking was when you had kids?

Well, to this childcare cost, but you're not in terms of the other rational knel. Well, there, there are nowhere near what it is in America, James. It's weird, it's just eight and number. So everybody in the U.S. can get it.

Sorry, yeah, yes. Oh, don't get angry at us, I'm sorry. It's gonna happen. What is it? 300, 300 and 55 per month.

- Okay, Americans. - Yeah, I had. - Roast them. - A little bit of socialism for you. The government pay 25% of it. (laughing)

- God, this country is so (beep) sometimes. I'm sorry, parents. I just want everybody to understand 'cause I don't think people actually know.

- No. - They don't know. - How policy affects their actual finances. Things like child care. The government can assist with those.

They can subsidize them. Maternity and paternity leave. Taxes, yes. Many other countries charge equivalent or higher taxes. But imagine getting subsidized child care,

paternity and maternity leave. The ability to get health care and not have to worry about a $78,000 bill and on and on, of course, they're trade-offs. Of course, they're a trade-offs.

But just want everybody to understand when we're sitting here looking at these numbers, these numbers are not just picked out of thin air. They are the result of who we voted for, the result of our political systems,

the result of what our culture will put up with. So anyway, I appreciate you all coming here. In fact, now that we're talking about it, why don't we take a look at the actual numbers? - Yeah.

- All right.

“- What was it like to do this conscious spending plan together?”

- Oh, I love to see who I love to see. - All right. I know that James, what about for you? James got a weird look on his face like, oh God. - I was surprised at how well I was.

- Okay, I was off, and normally I'd be able to tell you what we make, what we spend there, if you'd buy, I was quite bad off. And then literally a year, but he lessen a year away from it,

and I was the numbers of change now, I was didn't know it. - Wow. - Now, can I ask you, were you off because you forgot and/or were you off because the numbers have changed so dramatically

in the last 12 months? - A bit of both, wage-wise, I got that right, thought we were making a lot less than we were, and then the savings, I didn't realize how much we were actually putting in.

I didn't realize we had so much. - Ah, fine. - Okay, wow, great. Well, let's take a look. I think this is a great lesson for all of us

is that knowing your numbers is a skill. And if you stop looking at your numbers, which in your case it makes perfect sense while you did, somebody gets sick. They have cancer, they're going through treatment,

of course they're not gonna be sitting there, looking at their CSP every week. But it just simply shows us this is a skill, and the more we remove we get, the more we lose touch with it, but we can also get back in touch.

All right, let's take a look.

“Okay, let's see, James, can you read the word in bold?”

And then the number in full next to it for this entire box, please. - Yeah, so assets, 328,000. Investments, 179,000, savings, 4 to 2000, and debt, 230,000.

We totaled net worth of 219,000. Great, what do you think about those numbers? - Great. - In my head, if I took three months off, we would be able to pay the mortgage

and we would be at money and we'd be on the street. - And obviously that has not come true. - Nope. - Hmm. - What do you make of that now in retrospect?

- I think a lot of it was, it's like usual for what I was going through. You know, the idea is, it's that whole kind of being provide a thing, even though I make a little bit less than there,

it's still like kind of holdover being the man of the house type thing, you know.

And we've always talked about how,

'cause Grace's wage has kind of set, she's hit a max really, 'cause the agency in Ireland is a set wage ban,

with our moving jobs or being promoted, whereas obviously I being in the private sector, I have a much more higher threshold that I can reach.

And we always talked about before,

while I was starting out, Grace was kind of up here already, that eventually I would catch up, which is kind of where I am now, and eventually I would overtape her, so she would be able to kind of drop down to me part-time,

or just like I'm calling everything, and I would be able to pick up the difference. And that's always kind of been in my mind a little bit. And I know in the grand scheme of things, like it's year, less than a year,

I'd be off of you. I'm gonna work until for another 30 or G as well. But it's still without like some massive setback. - It's quite perceptive. The idea that, first of all, congratulations for talking about.

That is a very rare. The fact that two people would look, as objectively as possible at their careers and say, "Okay, here's where you are, here's where I am." Based on our trajectory, there'll be a certain point

where we're gonna intersect,

and then I'm probably gonna make more,

that's very forward looking. I wish everybody had those type of conversations. So, well done. And then, this is the hard part. You make a plan and then life gets in the way.

And something goes or life. Family happens, illness happens. Layoffs happen, whatever. And I know because when I make a plan, I want that plan to happen.

Like if I tell you, I'm gonna be somewhere at six, I'm gonna be somewhere at six. And if somebody goes, "Oh, let's actually switch at this six, 45." I'm like, "Ah, it's annoying."

And I've had to train myself like, it's not the end of the world, but given my own plan fullness, I just want to follow the plan. And I see a bit of that in you, James.

Even though, when you look at the numbers, you realize it certainly did not put you on the street, and not even close.

“Okay, I think there's such a valuable lesson.”

I'm really thankful that you're sharing with all of us. The idea that if I don't get this plan exactly right, I'm a failure, but what I can actually see from the two of you is the two of you working as a team.

And at any given time on a team, someone is stronger, someone is less. Someone may be injured, someone is picking up the slack, and it rotates, and that's a team. And teams also are not only rated on how much money

they make. And a lot of men look at themselves like that. It's not just that we absorb the lesson that we need to be providers. We actively encourage it.

It's like if I'm not making money, who am I? There are lots of ways to contribute to a relationship beyond making the incremental dollar. Grace, what did you think about those numbers? When we first got pregnant, we had to stop.

I was putting, well, we were both putting 500 euro into like a long-term savings, or like a long-term investment fund, and we had to stop that. So we haven't done that in like three years,

and it's actually killing me now to have enough to be doing that, but we just can't really afford it now. And I'm really glad we didn't, 'cause we didn't have to take it out then, to cover this situation.

But I would love for those to be higher. It's making me a little anxious. But I am really, I didn't expect it to be that big, either. - Take a look, investments are 79,000. - Oh, gosh, actually, that's including our pensions.

So yeah, and then our savings is separate. - To say that word again for all the Americans

who have never heard it again, just say it was a--

- Shen, pensions. (laughing) - Well, all the boomers on the call, by the way, they're like, what are these guys talking about? I have a pension.

My pension pays me 130% of my income. What are you talking about? Everybody has a pension. - Oh. - All right, let's continue on.

“Grace, will you read off your combined gross monthly income?”

What's that, number? - Nine thousand. - Okay, nine thousand bucks, or nine thousand euros, I'll just call it dollars for you for you. Nine thousand bucks, which means that combined

two of you make $108,000 per year, by a show of hands, who knew that number? Okay, only Grace has her hand up. Thank you very much. All right, thank you for continuing my statistic.

50% of people do not know their own household income. And James, you thought it was lower? - Yep. - Okay, let me just for kicks. How much did you think it was?

- Eight, five. - 85,000, it's actually a hundred and eight thousand. So now that you're making like tens of thousands more than you thought, do you feel any differently? - No.

- Does it doesn't show like enough? - You know what? Let's change the name of this show. Forget the money for couples. Let's just call it, "Remete was right."

That's it.

“That's what this entire show ends up becoming.”

Nobody knows their income, at least 50% don't. Then they go, if I made more money, I'd feel better, then they make more money, then they don't feel better and on and on and on. I'm gonna tell them I produce her right now.

We're gonna switch to the name of this show.

what do you think about that household income?

- To be honest, for me, it's more because I didn't include any of my overtime, which is normally an extra 10 to 15, okay? - Wow. - Which is where all the savings comes from.

- That's great, okay, so let's put it in that. So it's even more than that and how do you feel about that overall household income? - To be honest, really good, it's not a very common wage to get an Ireland at all.

- You make more than the average? - The average is about 60,000, fine. - Okay, wow, great. And James, it sounds like you feel good about the income as well.

- Yeah, 100%, and then you get the whole, you feel so good because you look at it and you think God, you know, doing so much, doing really well compared to so many people.

And so you feel like you can't feel bad,

you can't feel guilt about you can't feel that I need X amount of Y amount, you know,

“because you should be, you should count your lessons”

that what you have, you know? - Well, I will say that's one of the reasons that I really love speaking to guests on this show is that until now, all of this has felt like it has to be shrouded behind closed doors.

You know, there are people making considerable incomes. And they're just like, why do we feel behind? Why can't we actually save as much as we thought we would making six figures? And until now, you couldn't really talk to anyone about it

because it's like boo-hoo, wealthy people shut up, but I actually think that there are some legitimate questions. Sometimes people don't realize that their child care costs are temporarily very high or they have not actually been automatically investing.

And that's why they have no investments. So I'm grateful that we get to chance to talk about them. Do you have a question about the incomes? James, I believe your income was reduced. Is that reflected on the CSP?

- No, that's if I was into which. - So can we update it to reflect what you currently make? - Mine's the 35, some might be M. - Probably 210, something like that. - 2100? - Yeah.

- Yeah. - 2100. - Okay. - 2100 is said of 3500 for gross.

“And then what would that take your net down to ballpark?”

- 15, probably. - What's it? - All right, let's say that. Okay, wow, so quite a considerable difference. What just happened was your fixed cost jumped from 48% to 58%.

So just for some context, your fixed cost originally were 40% which is at least for the US quite low. And it jumped to 58% because of the reduction in net income. Still not bad, not bad at all. Why don't we continue on and go down the rest of the numbers here?

We're gonna-- - And I add something actually as of this month, I am making 280 euros a month. So I have gone from full maternity pay, which was my 550 to 0. So I've three months on paid currently and then we get the child allowance of 280 or as a month.

So we are currently on zero money coming in from me for the next three months. - And then what? - And then it goes back up to 550 and then I go back to work. - Just to everybody knows when she says 550,

the way we say it is 5500, just for everybody. - That's what I meant. - That's totally fine. - All right, you have a temporary reduction to essentially zero for three months.

Okay, I'm not gonna reflect that on the CSP, but I'm gonna put a pin in that. And I'm also gonna put a pin in the fact that you make approximately $10 to $15,000 more in overtime, which they sort of equal out.

- Yeah, yeah.

“- That's why I'm just gonna, they're a wash”

and it will just confuse things. So we just put them to the side. - That's fair. - Can you confirm that you will be going back and making the same wages after three months? - Yeah.

- When I go back to work in April, I'll be working four days a week and then doing one or two overtime shifts, which will get me back up to that. - Great, that level.

- What I wanna reflect for everybody listening and watching is when we are living this, we get caught in the weeds necessarily. It's like this thing is happening, but in June it's gonna be this,

and then it changes after two weeks, it's very, very detailed. That's how we have to live our lives. What the CSP allows us to do is to zoom up and focus on the key levers.

Like in the grand scheme of things, having a three month reduction in wages for one person, even though it seems extreme, actually doesn't even need to be reflected on here, because we have the overtime.

So you can basically say it's a wash,

we can get a little bit more precise, but in general it's a wash, and that allows us to focus on the big picture. For so many of us, we immerse ourselves in the weeds, and we get paralyzed.

And it is imperative that we zoom up and look at the big picture. You can just focus on the key levers, get 85% of the way there,

So we're gonna keep it as is.

We're gonna continue moving down that CSP, we got 50% on fixed costs. What's the percentage on investments? Can you read that number? - Step 10%.

- Step 10%. It's in addition to a pension. - Yes. - Okay, 7% or $380 a month. Savings, whoa, what's that number?

- 49%. - 49%, you American freaks, complaining you can't save 4%. - 49%, I'm coming back to that category. - Oh, wait, wait, wait, that hold on.

Before I get too excited, what's this number under guilt free spending? - Oh, yeah, minus 14%. - So negative 14%, all right, so obviously the (beep)

- No, it's messed up. - In general, I can see what your priorities are. And I love that. A CSP is the fingerprints of your life. If you looked at my CSP, you'd be like,

this (beep) guy likes to travel. Like it's very clear, okay? But what I can see here is you like to save money. It's very obvious. Even if the math isn't quite right,

we'll fix that. I can see what is important to you. When you look at the CSP, what do you notice? Grace, first, then, James.

“- I think that it's off because I basically”

put all of my overtime into savings. And it's normally about 2,000 to month extra. - Why do you do that? Just out of curiosity. - Because I want to,

we're saving for a lot of things. We're saving for a renovation on the house, but I'm also really, really keen on saving for owning a house.

There's always stuff that comes up.

So I'm trying to make sure that we're saving into high yield savings and also an emergency fund. - Sometimes people save money purely out of fear. It's what they were taught. They're afraid.

All they know is fragality, which in their mind is seen as, I gotta save and essentially hoard. And you can tell because when you ask them why are you doing that, they just go like,

"Well, yeah, you never know what could happen." And it just, it traces back to something that their dad said when they were five. What you have told me is look, I have plans. Forward looking, we're saving for the house,

we're saving for this, we're saving for that. That's actually very important because what we do is determined by why we do it. And if your reason is, hey, I have key things that we are saving for as I can see

in your CSP, then it becomes more constructive. It's not simply done reflexively out of fear. Under your savings category, you have vacations, 100 bucks a month, gifts 50, house renovation fund a thousand a month,

long-term emergency fund 1000 a month, and sinking funds 550 eight per month, for a total of $2,700 and eight dollars. Now, it's quite interesting because you have 13 months of savings already.

Were you aware of that? Wow, look at Grace's proud laugh. Tell us, Grace, how do you feel right now? - That's so great. (laughing)

- Did you know that? - Yeah, and I've actually stopped putting it into the long-term emergency fund and I'm putting it into sinking funds now instead. Now that we've got that year of savings,

I want to start putting it into the investment again. - All right.

“James, what do you think when you see this conscious spending plan?”

- I don't know, I don't know. So I can, I could believe it. I don't trust investments, I don't trust banks, I don't trust stocks. But at the same time, I was like,

it's like I should feel good. And then like, I get so annoyed on myself. I'm like, why am I not happy about this?

This is incredible, you know?

Why am I still so nervous about this? This is, you know, the fact that we can, I can go down in terms of wage and Grace can have their wage and we're going to be absolutely fine. - Yeah, I mean, that's incredible.

How many people can say that, honestly? Like, and yet, it still doesn't register really for me. And it's for you to know. - How connected do you feel to these numbers when you see them? - My whole wage goes straight into the joint account.

But why do I need to cover my bills? And that pays for the kid's school mortgage. - Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm not asking about how the money flows. I'm asking how connected do you feel to these numbers?

- It doesn't feel like it's my money, my money. - That's what I thought. What do you think was behind your answer

“where you started to give me all the money flows, just now?”

- 'Cause literally, I get my paycheck, I move over the X amount to my joint account and then that's it, it disappears. And then we have savings that we have taking funds and we have roof over our head.

- Yeah. - It's just like mechanized. It's like asking like, how do I feel

I don't know, I just get in there and turn the thing and it turns on. I don't feel anyway, it just works, it's a machine. Just to give you a point of comparison, when I see our numbers, I feel extremely connected to them.

Not that I love looking at numbers, it's not that. It's that when many people see a spreadsheet or an investment portfolio, they see some zeros and sometimes they see their own failure. They will see things like I should have started early, et cetera.

When I see it, I see the ability to take a trip. The ability to not have to look at prices if we eat out once in a while. I see the ability that if somebody in our family needs help, we can help them.

It's much deeper than the numbers. It's about the kind of rich life that we wanna create for ourselves.

So if I can ask you just for a second,

if to put on those lenses of not the logistics and the money flow, I get that, but rather what the money has allowed you to do, what do you see? - If I look at the honestly, we are, and we are creating a life for our kids that I know about.

“I remember I filled the car up, oh, about paying attention.”

I just paid it, didn't have to look at the price, just had a full tank gas and I paid it 'cause I'd be able to afford it. And I got back in the car and I was just like, I kind of just struck me, like, you know, that's, you know, I didn't look at how much that,

these are was for that particular gas station. I just pulled in 'cause I needed it. I didn't go down to the cheapest one, which was a bit further down the road, you know, just stood up to it stopped

and I paid it and I drove off. - What is the length? - Freedom. - Freedom. - What a beautiful example.

Freedom is in the simplest of things. It's in filling up gas. It's in going to the grocery store and buying something because you can rarely about the fancy as vacations

and flying on first class.

It's literally about being able to go to the restaurant and get a lemonade because your kid asks you for one. It's a beautiful example. James, this is part of what I want us to be able to do is yeah, of course we're gonna analyze the numbers a little bit

more, but actually to go away deeper beyond the math and to say like, what does it mean? Grace, I see you refutting on what you just heard James, what's going through your head right now. - I just, I'm just really proud of us.

Yes, I'm just so glad that all the work that we've been doing and all the work that I've been doing to kind of automate and make sure that our family safe and happy that it's working and you feel grace.

- I love that so much. - I love this, and big kudos to you Grace for picking up, picking up the load when James had to focus on his own health and for you continuing.

And I have to say on a personal level, one thing that really impresses me is that you made trade-offs. That's not easy, you said we're gonna stop contributing to our investments, even though as you put it, it kills you.

- Yeah. - That's what a leader does. You said, "Look, I have to take over this decision "making right now. "What has been a sick?"

- Yeah. - And he did it.

“- So I think the two of you should be commended.”

That's true teamwork. This also, you know what's interesting is maybe today

is a chance for the two of you to really take a second

celebrate how far you've come and then to reflect on the next chapter. - Yeah, yeah. We can't stop bad things from happening. That's life.

But what we can do is make a few smart decisions when things are going well so that when something unexpected happens, we can lean on our planning. In other words, we can plan for the worst

when we are at our best. I have a friend, just the other night, she got to note that her mom is sick. Her mom lives in a different country. She had to get on an international flight last minute.

She booked the first ticket she could get her hands on. She didn't check 20 different prices to get the best. She'll just said, "I have to go now." And that is the level of focus I want you to be able to have in a crisis.

To be able to say, "I don't care about anything else right now." My field of vision is narrowed to the one thing that matters, getting on the next flight. Money is not my primary concern. I actually love this idea of money not being the primary

determinant. I love it so much that I extended it to a personal money rule that I use for myself, not just for bad things, but also for good things.

“So my personal money rules that for the big important things”

in my life, I'm going to plan ahead so much that money is not going to be the first concern, the second concern, even the tenth concern. And that includes our wedding, our honeymoon, housing,

Is this rule practical for most people? No, is it right for me? Yes, that is the point of a rich life, which fits you like a bespoke coat. It is meant for you to live your rich life.

And the more you turn that dial,

“the more your rich life is increasingly confusing,”

even bewildering to other people. Now, the simplest way to start applying this concept of freedom when something bad happens is to start aggressively building your emergency foot. So when something bad happens,

and it will happen at some point in your life, you will be ready, and money will not be your first concern. Now, for James and Grace, they made a series of money decisions during their journey. These decisions were not arbitrary.

They were shaped by what they saw growing up. And we're going to get into that right after this break. Okay, I got a question for everybody. Why in America do we ignore all the infrastructure, all the invisible systems that make success possible?

Like, I have shoes with shoelaces, of course. I know those shoelaces are going to become dirty one day. You think I'm going to wait until I see some dirty ass shoelaces before I walk outside? Oh, look at my dirty shoelaces, hello, no!

I have extra shoelaces and not just one, I have two. That's called logistics. Think about all the other invisible things in our life, our Wi-Fi, the pipes in our house, that make our daily lives possible.

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Policies issued by Western Southern Life Insurance Company non-available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. All right, I have these money rules that I developed. You may have heard me talk about them.

Like, save 10% invest 20% or I give myself unlimited spending on certain areas of life that I love. But a lot of people don't realize that these rules change over time. Like the same rules I had in my 20s

are not relevant for me.

“This is why I am so big on doing a rich life review.”

Now, part of this is looking at your numbers and figuring out your options, which is something that our friends at facet can help with. Facet charges a flat membership fee

for financial planning, never a percentage of your portfolio.

You get access to a team of CFP professionals, always a CFP, always a fiduciary, who help you create a personalized financial plan for your rich life goals. And they handle important things

like investments, retirement planning, starting a family, becoming empty nesters, estate planning, all of it. Your financial plan needs to adapt as your life changes. Facet makes getting professional financial advice

more accessible without charging hidden exorbitant fees. As of the date of this recording, facet is waving their $250 enrollment fee for new annual members. And for my audience, facet is offering $300

into your brokerage account if you invest in maintain $5,000 within your first 90 days. You can head to facet.com/remete to learn more about which membership option is best for you. Facet is an SEC registered investment advisor.

I'm not a member of facet, and I have an incentive to endorse facet as I have an ongoing fee-based contract for cash compensation based on this endorsement. All opinions are my own and not a guarantee of a similar outcome.

I do want to know a little bit about how you grew up with money. James, I'm very interested. Just from what you told me about your gas, I have my suspicions about how you grew up.

But what do you remember your family saying about money when you were young?

- I've never really talked about it all.

We always had enough as long as we had enough for sharing grumble. You know, we had food. - mustn't grumble, that's very English. - Is that right?

- That's a grumble. - Oh yeah, that's grumble. - Yeah. - Just a proper lip, you know, my grumble. - And would you say, how would you describe

socioeconomically were you middle class? How do you describe that? - When you think about this, does it matter how poor you are? You always say, well, we're just about middle class.

We're always just gonna be a bit, you know, your dollars. We never went hungry, we never, you know, we had Christmas business stuff. We didn't have holidays, we didn't have anything, any new cars or anything like that.

But it was always enough.

but that doesn't answer my question. Trust me, we do the same thing in the US. Everybody lies about being middle.

I talked to people who have $5 million,

they're like, well, we're just kidding, boy. Well, we're comfortable, I go shut the fuck up. Tell me what you were, you're rich. So, now, looking back, how would you characterize your family socioeconomically?

- When I got my first proper job, I was making bull money that my mum and dad combined. - Wow, that explains a lot. That explains the feeling of freedom from filling up your tank in the car.

That explains a lot. When you got your first job and you made that much,

“did you ever talk about money with your parents then?”

- We talked about it about now. - Now that they've retired, and you know, they, my dad was in the full, my arm forces, so his pension's actually pretty good. - What do they say to you now?

What are you talking about? - I hope that I worry that they don't have enough. I worry that they spend too much on our kids.

I worry that, you know, they shouldn't be buying stuff

for our kids, we can do that. I worry, when my mum asked me, what do I want for Christmas when I know she's gonna put it on a credit card, and I'm glad you didn't get it from you, had enough.

- And can they afford it? - They must be able to live and lost the house. - Wait, that's, that's a bit dramatic. - I suppose they must be able to buy toys, they're not homeless. (laughing)

- I honestly don't know, I don't know. I know my mum worked on jobs part-time, and her pension is very small. - Do you ever feel good about money? - I don't know how to answer that.

- I think that's the answer. - I like to look at my account, and I know it won't be the negative. I like that I can take up a hobby if I want it.

“I think my biggest worry is I think my liked money”

I'd spend it all, like I think if I got, I think I have quite a bad habit if I was to kind of really unleash myself of why I really wanted to do it all the time. - Let me translate, tell me if I got this right.

- Okay. - I don't feel great about money, and that's actually a protective mechanism, because if I let myself uncaged, feel good about money, I would just spend it all.

- Yeah. - Okay. - Yeah, that's a very common feeling that people who are ultra-frugal have. They'll use certain phrases, like I don't need to eat it a fancy restaurant,

like I'm perfectly fine with Taco Bell. Nothing wrong with Taco Bell, but what's really said beneath that phrases, I'm worried that if I go to this nice restaurant or nice hotel that I might like it,

and then I might find myself actually needing to eat there every single day for the rest of my life. It's obviously absurd. To me, what it shows is a lack of self-trust. I can eat at a nice restaurant a couple times a year.

I can enjoy it, and then I can come home and say, that was nice, and I don't need to go back there for another six months. I trust myself to make the right decisions and to indulge occasionally,

knowing that I can afford it. But this idea of, like, let me keep myself cage 'cause I'm a wild animal. And I'm (beep) wild. We can work on that, please say.

Grace, can I get in this right? Yeah, 100%, 100%. But then, like, here, when we say, but we're looking up a holiday or something,

I always look more expensive things than you do.

Yeah, it's true. Why is that? I think you're a bit of a dreamer.

“I think you, you're constantly thinking, oh, well,”

when we have a million euro, when we win the lottery, we're gonna do this. And when we did this, and I think you love the idea of thinking about having this money and what you would do, and then when I could,

like, so you look up the expense of holiday and I'll come back with the actual price 'cause I'll do a little bit of research, and then you'll be like, well, obviously, we're just going to wait for it.

Oh, wait a minute. That was my question. So he looks up the expensive things and then where do you actually stay? Oh, we don't go.

I don't, we don't. Oh, wow. Okay, what the hell kind of story was that? I look up the expensive things and then we don't go. What is that?

Yeah. All right. Sorry. No, that's actually extremely insightful. And I think the characterization of potentially dreaming

a bit, I don't mind dreams, like I like 'em. I like saying, like, ooh, wouldn't it be nice? I love that, but I like to go one step further, which is, hey, do you actually wanna stay there? 'Cause if you do, we could.

We might not be able to do it this year, but we could put some money aside, and we know exactly mathematically, how long it's gonna be. It might take two and a half years,

and then we could go there. We'll literally put it on the calendar right now. This is what I say to him. This is what I say, and then he, like, no, no, no, it's crazy to count them out.

And do you know why? Do you know why he says that? No. Ask him.

Why do you... 'Cause it's a time pass, you know. We can't afford it, really. But we can't look at our savings. What am I gonna get sick again?

Hmm.

“You know, they said it was gonna be gone the first time”

and it came back. Yeah. What if it comes back again? What if I can't work for another year, and this time, work won't pay for it.

Then you do the childcare, and I work, and it's all fine. I would mind that too much, and it's kind of... Yeah. What I'm hearing is...

We're having fun. I love talking to the two of you, but I really love peeling the layers and going deeper. And beneath the jokes about the gas and the hotels, there's actually pain,

the idea that look at what we've been through together. It has been hard, yeah. And what if we have to go through it again? What are we going to do? We did it once.

I don't know if we can do it again. Let's acknowledge that. We don't have to fix it this very minute. But what I can tell is money is deeply emotional. We try to nibble around the edges.

We try to ignore it. We use logistical answers, but actually, the logistics are fine. We can fit, fix some things here and there. That's not what you're coming to me for.

It's because there's something much deeper here, much deeper.

“Grace, can you tell me what you remember growing up?”

What did your family say about money when you were young? Both my parents come from really big families. They would have been middle-class in the '50s in Ireland, which was very, very still quite poor compared to the rest of the world. My mom was a nurse, and she was what they call the laying hen.

So she would be the one with consistent money coming in and my dad started his own business, and it worked super hard all his life. But we were, to be honest, probably, upper middle class. They did a huge amount of work, they invested in properties.

They were very smart with their money.

But one of the things that always sticks out in my mind is my dad.

He had a business at one time where he made automatic gates, and we had an automatic gate installed in our house, and that was seen to be really rich. And then my mom called me a side, and I think it was in primary school or something, she said,

"Don't tell anyone we've got automatic gates, because there's a think we're rich and we're not." Wow. When you remember this story from decades ago, yeah, why you remember this story in particular?

“I think she was a bit frightened about money.”

I remember coming home from Irish College one day, and they had a hot tub in the house, they had a hot tub in the, and I was like, "Where the hell did this go?" They were like, "Well, instead of buying a new car, we got a hot tub instead." And I was like, "What?" They're doing really, really well,

but I always had the feeling that it was like a secret that we couldn't tell anyone.

In what ways do they downplay their success publicly? It would never show off. We'd never buy expensive cars or anything like that. It was all very practical, normal. What if I met them and I asked them, "What do you do?" What would they say? It's a very American question, by the way.

Yeah, they would say, "All sure we're retired and enjoying us, and we're traveling around the world now, and have a great time." Okay. What are they going to do with the money when they pass? They're very generous with it, and I think it'll go to us. There's three of us in the family, and they're going to split everything equally,

and we had conversations about it, and kind of four, like, they don't want us fighting over anything, and I'm like, "That's fine." It's like we're all quite successful, which is really brilliant. You know, it's kind of a striking example for everyone listening and watching that you can see parents who learn about money, and talk about money.

Between themselves, they tell their kids about money. Yeah. They have set you grace up with a very good financial education, and they'll say things, "Hey, don't tell everyone at school. We're not rich." Well, you may have been rich, or certainly upper middle class, but I can understand parents not wanting their kids to go in the lab, you know, I understand.

But it's not a surprise to me that siblings often turn out similarly with money.

Not always, but they grow up with the same money messages, and to me, the big takeaway from this is,

you better get good with money, and you better talk to your kids about money, because it's not an accident. If you want your kids to grow up, equipped to deal with the world, you talk to them from the time they are three, four, five. Otherwise, some sh*thead selling whole life insurance is going to be taking over that role, and you really don't want that. So let me ask the two of you. The two of you grew up quite differently with money.

Australia. Yeah. It was actually kind of a bit of a kind of rough, that's kind of really big fight, because Grace went to Australia, but she went out and met her. When I first met, she'd already planned to move to Australia. And I didn't really have, I was kind of working part-time,

“wasn't really making any money living at home, still. I think she left to there now for three months,”

I was like, "I can't let her go." So I quit everything, and moved across Oliver. And to me, this is the first time that I travelled, really, ever. And it was the other side of the world. Hold on, it's very romantic. What's that? I'm like, "Oh, this is a good story." Sorry, go on. We bought camp of Ann. We traveled down the West Coast, Australia for six months, and then Grace got a very dog for job. And I was doing alternate. We had a small flat,

which was dirt cheap, because it was right next to the airport in the flight path. So Best alarm clock in the world is a bow in land and overhead in six and a morning. So I was making money, so I could enjoy Australia, whereas she was taking care to make money, so she could save, and then her plan was to maybe go back or stay. There was a ice cream shop around the corner that I really liked. And if Grace's having a bad day, I'd get her some, and she would just get so mad,

“that I was spending money on ice cream. And I think that was the first time we kind of really”

talked about it. And we hadn't talked about it. We hadn't talked about what I kind of idea and goals were running out there. And it was kind of a video. And it should be because I meant big name Grace was talking, she wasn't talking about what she wanted to, the money she was making, it was what about the money he's going to do for us. It was we. And I hadn't been thinking like that all. Honestly, I'm very impressed. I actually shocked in a pleasantly

shocked because that story tells me so much. And I really appreciate you sharing it with me.

The idea that James, you had never really traveled before. You get on a plane, you go across the

world to chase a girl. The two of you, living a very frugal life, living under flight path, just like, we got to make it work. But what really strikes me is the way that you looked at money differently. I can just imagine James the way you grew up, like not thinking much further ahead. Most people, at least the ones I talked to in the US, they are literally thinking about that month, maybe next month and that's it. And I'm begging people to think further ahead,

six months, a year, ultimately 20 years. Because when you looked at far ahead, you can actually achieve amazing things. You can take the trips you want. You can buy the car you want. It's awesome.

What's amazing is Grace was already doing that. Grace has been thinking about money talking

about money and her family since she was a kid. The fact that the two of you got in a fight about freaking ice cream cones is hilarious. This is a great example where sometimes the most substantive conversations can come from what seems like the most trivial purchase. Ice cream. And look at what happened. You built a life together as a team. Yeah. Starting way back with the freaking ice cream purchase. Now, I want to ask you to, there's a reputation for people in Ireland.

Let's just say the UK for feeling guilty about money. Is that true? 100% or 100%. Like you feel guilty about making it, spending it, talking about it. Yeah. So how are you two so open? How come you're so comfortable talking about it right now? I think it's because it clicked with me. I was in work one day and I had a meeting with one of these pension guys and we have a system in Ireland. I didn't know about it really.

“Called the additional voluntary contribution. It's a pension. It's kind of the only way you can save”

money with benefiting with tax. But I didn't really know anything about it. But I made a me, I had a, a meeting with this guy. And I said, listen, I know nothing. Tell me about this. And he walked through if I did nothing, how much money I would have when I was 65, 70. I think on my contract. It says I've to work until I'm 70 before I get a pension. But it was something like 8,000 euros a year. And that number stuck with me and I was like, a bad cannot happen. A,

I'm not working until I'm 70. I can't be hauling patients around when I'm 70. So I need to retire earlier than that or do something different. And I can do something now. And he was like,

right, if you start saving now, you can have this much or whatever. I think it was like a million

and I was like, well, okay, let's try. And so I started learning all about it. And what I really

what are you doing talking about pensions? You know, because I was like, no, you need to go and learn about this because you don't need to be getting 8,000 in a year. And everyone was like, oh, I'll deal with that when I'm 50. So it was really frustrating me that people were just weren't talking about money and especially women. Yes, we get a fabulous maternity leave, but it also affects our pension and all the sort of stuff. And as women, for me, I feel like it's,

“you have to have your own something, something to fall back on, because we are in a more vulnerable”

position. It's certain time that I live, so we're having children all that sort of stuff. So I started being sort of militant about it. You looked ahead decades ahead and you said, that's not going to be the future for me. I'm going to make changes right now. And you did. I love that. And it's reflected, by the way, in your CSP, I can see it with a 49% savings rate. It's obviously very clear. When you both think back to the messages that you grew up with around money,

which of those messages do you think you bring to this relationship today? Yeah, I think. And credit cards and anything that isn't like this, this is actually the

be or an end or you should never, ever, ever own. Like we don't, we have, like our car,

we just, we saved up, we bought it outright. But our old car has got a 13 years old.

“Your lesson is you bring an aversion to debt to this relationship. Is that right?”

Yeah. I think so. Okay. What else? Yeah. Gifts, physical things as, um, showing love. Ooh. That would explain the ice cream. Yep. That you could not afford, actually. Yep. And I think if there's one thing I actually spend my money on, it's toys for the kids. Because I remember the Thunderbirds, there was a big toy island that every kid had to have. And I couldn't have it. And instead, mum made me one out of plasticine and I have toilet roll and

stuff and paid it in her food. That's a good idea. That's super kind of adorable and like sad at the same time. I kind of love it. Yeah. That's really beautiful. Do you have a bunch of toys in the house? Yeah. There everywhere. No credit card debt? No. I have a thinking fund for kids, toys. Every week, there's about AC yours that goes into the thinking fund for like stuff they might need. 80 a week? I know. I'm not in touch with kids' toys prices, but that seems like a lot. No, no.

It's not just for toys. It's for like swimming lessons and trips away and things like that. Sorry. All right. Can you say no to your kids? No. Okay, grow. You both admit it. All right. Grace, what messages do you bring from your childhood that you bring to this relationship with money?

I think communication. I always saw my mom and dad have conversations about money and

Mom always did the books for dad's business, so they'd always just have them have the book's out and Mom would be talking about taxes and returns and it would just be like in the air, like the conversations and they never thought about money. It was always just a discussion or,

“you know, and I think that's what I've almost forced you into, James, because it was one of the”

things that is essential to me in an relationship is to be honest and open at that money. And then I'm the one that's hiding stuff. I don't know. Well, let me say that I really appreciate what you just said about your parents and I hope that the children of every guest that I speak to on here say the same decades from now that they will say

my parents didn't fight about money, but they talked about it. It was always a discussion.

It was always in the air. That's actually what I want. I don't want money to be hidden. I don't want it to be a source of tension. Although sometimes it will be and that's okay. I want it to be an important part of the family. Just like food, just like respecting your elders, just like studying and having fun. Money is one of those core parts of a family. It has to be in the air. And when we shine a light on it, instead of hiding it, then we can build a healthy relationship

with it. I love that Grace didn't sit back and hope things would improve. She learned how pensions work. And then she made a decision that is going to have a huge impact on her future. That is what's known as having an internal locus of control and internal locus of controls, the belief that you can control your future. Compare that to someone with an external locus of control who believes simply that life happens to them. So which one are you? Do you have an internal locus of control

or an external locus of control? To answer that question, take a look at your own behavior with

interesting question to think about. This has actually been one of the biggest questions that I have

come back to throughout my career. We all know intuitively that if we eat better, we will be healthier. We know that if we save an invest, we will be more secure. So why don't we do it? This is the question I've been thinking about since the year 2000. One reason and it's a big one is that a lot of people don't actually believe that they can control anything around them. A lot of them have tried before or they've been told it's out of their hands or they have tried and it failed over and over and so

“they simply stop trying. That can lead to an external locus of control. And I think this is one of”

the most overlooked reasons that people stay stuck. These beliefs are shaped by a lifetime of experiences, even multi-generationally. A lot of you watching this right now had some great grandfather who something bad happened to and that story that myth or legend was almost passed down your family tree. And today you think you cannot affect the way the world works because of what a great

grandfather somebody you never met experienced a hundred plus years ago. If you're listening to

this and you're starting to realize, oh my gosh, I want to have an internal locus of control. I want to take control of my money and make rapid changes that I can help. Inside my money coaching program, I'm going to walk you through the exact systems that I use to take control of your money and start seeing real results. You can join the program at iwt.com/moneycoachie. Now Grace believed she could make a difference in her own life. She saw the lever, she pulled it and she got results.

Up next we'll take a closer look at the other changes Grace and James are considering as they build their rich life. My best tip for new business owners, nobody cares what font you're using or the alignment on your website. None of that matters if you don't have customers. If you are starting a business this year, focus on making sales instead of all the ancillary stuff like setting up the perfect font on your website. And that is why I recommend

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with Shopify on your site. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/remete. Go to shopify.com/remete shopify.com/remete. If the two of you continue on the way that you have with your money. When something comes up in life,

“what do you think happens after the next time and the time after that and the time after that?”

What do you think will happen? I will just collapse. I'd worry for us as a as a couple. You know what, it just becomes too much. What if we can't pull the other one into more all? It just sounds crazy but I don't think that would ever happen. It does sound crazy. I mean, you have such a beautiful teamwork here. There's no doubt about it. It's so obvious. But I also think the two of you are very good at putting your blinders on and moving forward.

And what a shame to live that way. When you actually have all the ingredients for a true rich life. What I see in you versus what I see when I talk to other people who perhaps were not raised to save money, who did not have a healthy education about money. They didn't have those role models. I'm having a different conversation with them. I'm actually trying to show them

“why it's important to save money at all. The two of you have the ingredients for greatness.”

And in many ways, we can see it on the CSP. It's reflected. Wow, what a savings rate. It's incredible.

Maybe the way that you talk about money and behave with money could be tweaked a bit. I just want to reflect. The two of you went through an incredibly stressful situation. I don't think anybody can give you feedback on how you did. Who the hell knows what it's like to have one kid on the way, a young kid, husband who's going through cancer treatments, morning sickness, like nobody.

So what we can say is, I think you handled it the best you could. I think you've done a

And what I want to do is I want to equip you so that you can continue to get closer together

“not let these stressful situations tear you apart. How does that sound? Yeah. That sounds”

great. Wonderful. Awesome. Have the two of you talked about what your rich life vision is. The tiring early. Okay, retiring early. Great. Any idea what age? 50. 50. Okay. All right. So that's like about 12 or so years away. What else? Grace, what's in your rich life? I would love to be able to go on two or three holidays a year. One back to the UK. And I would love to be able to bring your parents, James on holidays somewhere because they had really haven't been on many.

And I would love to be able to help my kids the way that I was helped. You know financially, go on into college and stuff. Oh, I really want to do the renovation on the house. That'll be so incredible. Oh my gosh. I want to have my own craft room upstairs with the life. I would love to probably go down to maybe two days, two or three days a week working. And then the other two or three days work on my own businesses. I love creating community and hosting events. Cool. All right.

So here's what I'm what I'm hearing from both of you is you want to live a very rich life.

Like these aren't, oh, I don't know. Like when we're 70, maybe we want to take a trip to the Grand Canyon. No, it's like we want to retire early. Want to renovate the house. We want

“to travel three times a year. There's a lot. I love it. Right now, how do you feel about money?”

Just nervous about if something like this is going to happen again, are we going to be okay? Are we it going to be able to manage it because we actually we had a series illness cover in addition to life insurance? How much did they pay you? Per 2000. Wow. That's great.

It was really, really amazing. So that really saved our *** and it helped us. That's where a lot

of the savings have come from. So when I think about your rich life, I'm thinking first, can we set things up so that you are safe and resilient? First, we can get to the home renovations and the travel second. Yeah, of safety first. How do you feel about that? Yes. Okay. I want to know that if James gets sick again or grace for that matter, yeah, that the family is financially safe and yeah, wouldn't that feel good to know that you have the

math that you both understand it. And most importantly, you are both connected to it. It's like wipe away these blurry lenses. In fact, throw them away. We know that we're safe and now we have earned the right to talk about the next part of our rich life. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to put the CSP up on screen and I would like to get your help to try to figure out what needs to happen in order for you both to be safe. Quick recap here. Your assets 328k investments 79k savings 42k

and debt 230k. That's a total length worth of 219k. income is 91,200. That will go up when you go back to work, James. James, when is that happening? Generally done at first. Generally, our February, I'd say. All right. Let's leave it for now, but we can change it. Fix costs are at 58%. Again, things are a little bit different where you're living because of pensions and et cetera. I just do want to reflect on some of the numbers in this fixed costs because

they're quite, they're quite amazing. So your mortgage is $997. What the f***? $997. There's

not even 4 digits in your incredible rise. This is another one. I just want to say it again, just so people get even more pissed. Childcare is $355. Again, there's only three digits in that number. This is not a saying. That's for 14, five hours a week and they feed her and they include, yeah, it's unbelievable. I love it. I want easy child care for all parents. Like, how can you expect parents to have kids and to work if there's $3,000? Okay, let's go on.

“I'm getting mad right now. All right. Car payment, $200 debt payments, $200. What's that for?”

Oh, it's by accident. Oh, okay. How much is your student loan? The $20,000. All right, fine. Groceries are $600 a month. Oh my god. I feel like I'm living in like

year and I'm like, I want to move down to Tesco Mobile, which is like the super super budget and they're like,

oh, we can do that for blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's fixed. I'm currently being 15. You're like, I see so many CSPs. The thing about the CSP, I feel like some formula got messed up and every number has one zero dropped off of it. Like literally every number is missing a zero. This is crazy. 30 for phone should be 300 in the US. All right. So your investments, again, just to sum it up, you are doing $960. Let's call it $1,000 bucks a month plus $300. So roughly $1,300 bucks a month

for your investments. On a salary of about 91th out gross, 49% on savings and negative 14% on guilt-free spending. Obviously, that doesn't work. And you mentioned that you feel stressed out about money. Yeah. You see why? Yeah. If you don't have any money to eat out or to do anything, but yet you are still buying all these toys. I know. Actually, we're still, we're still both worlds. Yeah. But as well, just be honest about it. And maybe Scott buying so many toys. I don't know. That's up to you.

So what do we need to do in order to change these numbers? Because they actually need to be rationalized. We need to pick appropriate numbers. You can choose based on what you want for your

“rich life. But then you actually got to stick to them. If you want to change them later,”

you could change them six months from now. But one of the most important things is, hey, let's pick

numbers together that match up with our vision. And then let's both agree to stick to them. And after six months, we can re-evaluate. How would you change these numbers based on what you said your rich life vision was? I think we're saving too much. Definitely. I would like to save a thousand per month. Okay. You're doing that right now into your emergency fund. Keep in mind, you already have 13 months of emergency fund. Yeah. So I'll stop the emergency fund

with just keep for the house. Maybe. Yeah. Okay. So let's drop. You're saying drop the long-term emergency fund off. Yeah. Okay. Watch what happens. Okay. You're saving's drop down to 31% and your guilt-free spending is now at 4% or 216 dollars per month. I spend more than that. But it's a good directional change. So it's interesting because you do have 13 months of savings,

“which I think is great. When James you got sick, I'm guessing you burned through your savings”

pretty quickly. Sorry for this question, but what's the likelihood of this happening again? In theory, it should. Okay. Because you have gone for a treatment, pad surgery, scans the good. Okay. But there is no off the exam. Are you concerned? Financially speaking. Health wise, obviously, but financially speaking, are you concerned? We're not going to get that extra. We're not going to get that insurance pay out again.

No. Because he's uninsurable now. Yeah. Can I say this? If I were in your situation,

here's how I would approach this. I would say, look, I think we've done an amazing job,

especially Grace done an amazing job of shepherding all this stuff while I had to focus on my health. We have 13 months of savings. That's incredible. But I'm in a high risk situation. Yeah. If I get sick again, we do not have the same benefits that we had last time.

“I think that we should save what two others might seem like an irrationally high amount of money,”

but for our high risk situation, it makes sense. What number should that be? I don't know. Let's talk about it. Okay. Let's settle on 18 months of savings. Yeah. Yeah. I think that sounds good. And once you have that, it's locked away, and you know that that's your break-in case of emergency, but 18 months gives you time. You can adapt. You can cut your spending. You can extend it. You're not going to count on all these subsidies and things like that pay out,

but it gives you time. What do you think about that? That's the point. Yeah. The point is we need to pick a number that's reasonable and we'll serve the needs financially speaking in case one of you get sick. Yeah. Okay. I don't think I've recommended to anyone. 18 months of savings. Like my own personal thing, I like to have a year, and that's quite aggressive already. But 18 months in your situation, considering all the things we've talked about could make sense. Yeah. Okay. So if that is

the case, then can we go back to the CSP? And let's just take a look. We actually just took that

and move the long-term saving fund into that. Wow. Okay. So now we're back up to 31% for an emergency fund. We're putting $1,000 a month away. You have zero towards the renovation fund. Anything else? Vacations. So my hundreds, you're already making a difference to cut that. I don't really want to stop going on holidays. At $100 a month. Yeah. It's not really going to make it. It's not going to make a difference. And you both told me you like vacations. Yeah. And like

“you've gone through a lot, I don't mind it. I think if you wanted to save 100 bucks a month or”

other places, you could do it from. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now that we have rationalized this a bit, you have 31% going to savings, which actually seems, I mean, it's a little high, but it's appropriate. You don't have enough in guilt-free spending. No, I don't. I understand that for the next three months reduced income, but it's going to go back up. I'd like to just plan for real life. So tell me the numbers and I will adjust them here. So my room back to 35. Sorry. How do you say?

3,500. Yeah. And your net income will be what? Two, six. That's been trained. $2,673. Okay. Wow. Let's see what just happened. Fixed costs are down to 48% amazing. A total reflection of your core values right here, which is like, we don't need a big old fancy house. We don't need a big old fancy cars. It's all quite modest, which I like. I really like that. Next up, investments are at 6%. Oh my god. Savings are at 26%, but all the way down to

guilt-free spending. Look at Grace's face. Look at that big old smile. She goes, yes. Okay. And James is smiling too. Guys, I love this. Yeah. So you're at 21% or 1,389 dollars.

Now, what do you think about that number? But we always overspend on guilt-free stuff.

And then in our heads, we said, "Well, we can only spend X amount and then we beat ourselves up because we spent over it." But now, looking at that, actually, what we have been spending has been reasonable for a further amount of money we do make. And we shouldn't be doing, being ourselves up because, I mean, we go out to dinner, maybe once every other month. And we have to take away probably every month, three months or so. I love the lies already. Oh, everybody notice the

f*** eyes. Yes, rewind five seconds and look at Grace's face. Yes. This is the favorite time of Remix 80's life. Oh, god. Okay. Why don't we just discuss where you all have been spending guilt-free spending money? Yeah, let's do that. So I had Grace. This September, I have it on my

“little spreadsheet. We spent 250 euros on dining out. Wait, can you just put this on screen?”

I love to get it myself. Oh, great. Okay. Hold on. Let me just describe what I see right now. So this is a nice looking spreadsheet and it's got some different category scroll up a little bit if you don't mind. So we have cash flow overview bills, expenses. I can see at the bottom tabs, we have August, September, October, November 25 and on and on and on. Okay, very good. Let's go down a little bit. What's nice? So I see the dates do the budget amount. For example, the mortgage

996 and then the actual, which is 996, that's great. And then the expenses on the in the orange is the, like, everyday, day to day. Read out the kids for me. Oh, god, the kids want the budget was 100. And I actually spent, we actually spent 1000, 133. What the **** on what? Now, let me see.

Let me see. Oh, my god. Amazing. Stop right here. Stop right here. Okay. Everybody remember what James

“said about 45 seconds ago. He goes, whoa, we, you know, what, once every three months or some BS?”

Okay. Look at this **** September 3rd, dining out off the bone lunch. I don't know what that is, but it sounds expensive. Next day, McDonald's, 525. That's quite modest. Moving along, kids. What are these, I don't even know what any of these words are. Knit, home and dodees. What does that mean? So it's just pacifiers and stuff. Just to get, there was, there was a head life in the, in the, in the crash. So I just wanted to prepare it. Okay. More words, I don't know. I thought I spoke

flu in English. All right, moving along. We got Starbucks. This is all on the fourth. Dining out the next day, $20 and 90 cents for coffee. Next day, dining out $20 at McDonald's. Okay.

And on, on, on, on. Okay. You can take this off screen for a second. Wait, I, hold on. Just look,

look at this. Look at it. Road number 95. Teamu ****. Like, this is the only, this is the only

oh, we're like ****. What does this? Everyone should do it. It's great, crap. All right. Take

“this off screen, please. Okay. First of all, how the **** are you going to tell me you only,”

you know, once every three weeks or three months or whatever, James? It's not, none of that is me. It's true. It's me. It's all me. Oh, yeah. So we're, we're a team except when it comes to eating out. Yeah. All right. Do you have, and because you have this sort of well constructed budget, you know, it has all the stuff in it, but when we go to the actual discretionary stuff, you're behind on, on, on, on many of the things. Yeah. What do you think about that? I actually

find it so hard to stick to the budgets. Bills are fine. I can argue down bills. I can argue down

everything. But when it comes to like sticking to the budget that was assessed, it's more of like a tracking expenses rather than like sticking to the actual budget. I don't know how to explain this. I'm not doing it very well. It's easy to track. It makes us feel like we are doing something. But the one thing you are not doing when it comes to changing your behavior is changing your behavior. Yeah. It's a distraction for us. We track it. We go through it. We tell ourselves we're looking

for patterns. You know the pattern. It's very obvious from looking at it for five seconds. The real energy should be spent on saying, what is the overall vision of our rich life, which we've done some element of today? How much do we want to apportion to different four key buckets? Okay. We've done that. Now we know those numbers. We know what the finished puzzle looks like. How are we going to get there? That's where the energy should go. Tracking is irrelevant.

“Yeah. You should track a couple of discretionary things like eating out one of you should”

own that number and you can track it through your credit card debit card whatever. But the level of tracking here is actually not getting you what you want. It's getting you a distraction. How does it feel to hear that? I know this. I know this in my soul. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay. Great. I personally think that you are destined for something bigger than tracking 100 rows of expenses on a spreadsheet. I just do there's got the stuff that the two of you have been through. The way that you have done

it together. You've tackled really hard stuff and it would be a shame to focus your energy in this small of a way. I think it's the same thing that I was doing with the tomatoes. You know, it's the control if I can just get it down on paper then I can make sense of it. But actually I know what's wrong. Yeah. What do you think might be a different alternative to that approach that you've taken with the tomatoes and with the budgeting? Zooming out a little bit more and

seeing a little bit more about the importance of us. Really. I enjoy process. I always have. I

enjoy knitting. I enjoy spinning. I enjoy, you know, the meticulous details. I really like that. And I find that I can't do my nails spinning blah blah blah blah because I'm mining children. So instead, I will focus it on things that are for the family, like meticulously tracking the budget or making food for my family. But I don't need to be doing it in this way, putting it so much effort. I'd probably need to just relax a little bit. Wow. One of the, one of the most

profound things I've heard on this podcast, your level of self-proception is really high. And you just mentioned something offhandedly. I probably don't need to, I think you said something like work as hard or put the amount of time in. Yeah. Can you say it a different way? Would you be comfortable putting less work into this? I don't know why that's hard because I love like but yeah, I think I need to, like, put less work into, to do, to wash them. Isn't that the

“key question that so many of us ask if I stop doing this? If I delegate this, then what will I do?”

And on a deeper level, who am I? Yeah. Who am I if I'm not canning tomatoes for the family and tracking this detailed report that's available for the last three years of expenses? Who am I?

Yeah. You know, moms are not loved because they have the most extensive spreadsheet in the world.

Wives are not loved because they track every single expense. That's not why they're loved. None of us are. Part of getting to the next level of where you want to get is having a crystal clear vision of where you want to go and both of you as a team working to get there. You already did the easy stuff. Then you got stronger. You had to because you had to go through tougher stuff. You went through illness. Very difficult. Most of us cannot

understand what that's like. You did it. And now to get to the next level, the level where you are safe as a family with 18 months of saving setup where you are showing your children a healthy relationship with money. That probably requires not doing some of the same things you used to. And actually saying, I choose not to because in order to get where we're going,

“that's not my future anymore. James, what's coming up for you as you hear this? What you should”

be talking about is just there's just been in the background for so long that we haven't been able to kind of express it. Sometimes I feel like she's so focused on the saving money

that kind of tomatoes, but we never get to eat the tomatoes, we never get to spend the money,

we never get to process and then once it's done, it's put on a shelf, it's put into savings and then we're on the next one. And so to be who she'll be, she doesn't do that, she'll still be the best mum, she'll still be my perfect wife. That's not going to change. We'll just maybe have a bit more time together, even enjoy our rich life, as you say. And so I hope a big part of her not be held to take on all this is that I will be able to come back on board and that we can

start being a team again. Now that I'm hopefully out the end of this, that I can start taking on some of that burden and she can maybe relax a little bit. Let the steamer off that pressure cooker

turn to the, you know, James, you were always a team. Didn't stop because you got sick.

Yeah. No, once have I heard either of you insult the other, haven't heard it. If anything, bending over backwards to support each other and you were a team always, I think the way that the two of you talk about money reveals so much, the idea of James that you, they'd be deep down, think that you've let down your partner, but of course you have not. You got sick. Now you're better. You put in a lot of work to make that happen. And now you can come back

and you can participate in the numbers more than you were able to. Perfect. Amazing.

“Grace the idea that you have to control everything. That you may not be a good mom or wife,”

if you're not tracking numbers reveals so much. What I love, what I'm seeing the two of you get is, hey, we've made this work. We've made it work. We're actually very grateful. I will have been able to go through, but now perhaps there's a new way to look at our money together. Maybe it's not about going way down into the weeds. Maybe it's about coming up with a few key levers. Those four key numbers. And like actually creating a vision for ourselves that let's

us appreciate living. Let's go out. Let's actually go out as a family and go eat out once a week. Fine. We'll find a way to do it within our numbers. But that's important to us and trust me when you go out to eat on Saturday with the whole family, you are going to really appreciate it. That's actually the best part of the whole thing. How do you feel? Do you feel confident

“that you could change the way you relate to money together? I think we can change the way we're”

going at it. I think we were going at it from a survival point of view. And now that now that we are at this place, even though we're at a very sort of precarious place, but we both have jobs that we can go back to. We both can build a backup in no time really. Once I'm back doing overtime, that can go into fun stuff and go into the extra savings and you get bonuses as well. So that's extra money that we can do. So we're actually fine. And I think I just need to

sit in this and enjoy the fact that we're sort of almost made us. Yes. No, you have made it. You

and it's interesting. If anything, when I look at it, I feel gratitude. I feel gratitude towards your employers. I feel gratitude towards the government. You know, we're exactly. I feel gratitude towards that insurance payout. Yeah. And then you had the vision to choose to get that a lot of gratitude. And what you said was so beautiful, going from survival to the next chapter. What

“word, what's the theme of the next chapter of your life as it relates to money? James, what would you say?”

Enjoy it. Enjoyment. I love that. And what about you, Grace? I'd love to thrive. Thrive. Yeah. These are very positive forward looking words. Yeah. Like, nobody, look at, look at my body language. Nobody thrives like this. I'm worried about how much nobody thrives like that, right? They thrive, standing up straight, sitting up straight, leaning forward and saying, what is it we're going to do in this chapter of our life? We are so grateful we're here. Yeah. Go to thrive. I really want to

enjoy and enjoy our kids and see them grow and gosh, they're just incredible. You know, I can

say when the two of you are talking right now, I can almost see the family stories being created.

“I can see them like a spider web. They're almost unraveling in front of me. It's the story”

when we first started talking today of Dad was sick and it was hard and he got better and were happy. It's nice. It's a nice story. But this story is so much more detail. It's the difficulty we had to go through. It's the fact that we didn't know it was going to happen. We had to stop working. Dad kept trying to work because he thought he would get bored, but actually maybe he was scared of just coming home. Who will I be if I'm not working? Mom over here, going to the farmers market,

canning tomatoes because she was afraid of who she would be if she couldn't feed her family. And we were so grateful we had the help of our employers and our friends and our family. And once we got that final check from the doctors, we celebrated. How did we do it? We sat

at home. We watched TV. We cried. We hug. We did it all. We went to like a land. There you go. Amazing.

Yeah. Exactly. These are the stories that your kids remember. But secretly, they're actually not for your kids. They're for you. Grace, before we wrap up, you mentioned that it'll be 2 a.m. 3 a.m. And you find yourself purchasing something off of Instagram. Yeah. Can you tell me what you might do to change that? Not out of judgment. I'm not judging you for it. But now it seems to me you have a powerful vision that is perhaps more powerful than

whatever item is offered on Instagram. Yeah. What tools could you use to change the way that you

“relate to spending? I think I need to take my cards out of the back of my phone. Great.”

I love that. Very simple, but very powerful. I just connect the apple pay from my phone as well. You want to do it right now? I do. I do. I do. I want to do that right now. I'll eat there. So he or she took the credit cards out of the back of her phone. And I could have left my wife and license in there now. Okay. Great. That's gone. How does it feel to remove them? I feel like it's going to be hard to do the normal things that I'm doing.

But maybe that needs to happen. That's good. Important things are always hard. Yeah. Goodbye.

And what's it like for you watching this? I have a photo set. They're gone. All the cards are gone. I see that she held it up to the screen. Well done. Let's do a round of applause because that's very impressive. Well done. Great. Many of us find it silly to have to do something like this. You know, I have to remove cards for myself. I'm a grown adult. I should be able to control myself. But actually, once we accept that human nature is very responsive to even the smallest of barriers,

then we learn how to deploy those barriers on purpose. Yeah. As an example in the US in California a few years ago, they started charging like five cents for bags for grocery bags. The amount of grocery bag consumption went down dramatically. Like huge just for a nickel using these barriers in

you do not want to actually spend on very effective. And how about for the two of you? One thing that I heard is this feeling of guilt, this feeling of being behind with your money. What's a way that

“the two of you can change that relationship with money? I think having our amazings again. Yeah,”

definitely not hiding anything. You know, if you come home and there's a Donald's cop in the thing you'd be like, yeah, kids with tough money, it's something on the way home. Fine. I love that,

you know? Honesty. Always. I love that. It's not that wrong with getting McDonald's once in a while.

There is nothing wrong with it. It's totally fine. There's no need for shame. In fact, you can actually build it into your plan. Yeah. That's the way to do it. Hey, once a month, maybe twice a month. I'm going to have to set some money aside from McDonald's. Fine. You can certainly afford it. I want you to live a full rich life. And that involves eating out once in a while. Yes. Getting something for the kids. Yes. And building up a sizable savings just in case also. Yes.

“You can actually do all of those things with planning. Yeah. What surprised you about today's conversation?”

I think that that control aspect that surprised me that I thought I was going to be just a really mean woman making my sick substance work. And dare I. But actually, it was it was really emotional. I just I really appreciate that you saw me. You saw what was going on and I didn't. You know, Grace, I saw a different story than you saw in your application. There were multiple references to making your husband work. 15 minutes into talking. I didn't see any evidence of that.

If anything, James himself said, what would what else would I have done? But work. And so sometimes the way we see ourselves is not the way that others see us. And it is so rare that we get the chance to see ourselves reflected through somebody else. And maybe we're somebody to give us honest

“feedback. Yeah. And I think you were very open to it. I say all of this because it really shows you the”

power of how you can craft your own story. Your story was that I'm a bad wife forcing my husband to work while he has cancer. That's not a story I heard. Meaning you have the power to shape your own story. James, what about you? I have surprised how easy it is to talk about it. My expectations for this is that, you know, it would be that we would beat around the bush and not be honest about it. Or we would hide things. But then once we kind of got into it, the idea of hiding and not being honest

about it was just the ridiculous like, how are we ever going to get better if we if we don't talk about it. If we're not honest about it, honest with ourselves. And I think let me about something that we have been kind of holding back on me. And it's purely because we just don't want to hurt the other one or don't want to burden the other person. But in some ways we've actually been making it worse because we haven't been in talking about it so openly. And so I'm just surprised how

good it feels and how easy it is to actually talk about money so openly. And even the stuff around

money and how it affects us all. Amazing. I appreciate you for really showing up and being so open,

being so honest. I feel, oh poor. Great. Grace. I feel a huge sense of release. Amazing. And I really commend you for what you've been through, but how you have done it especially. Tough things like this illness can really cause fractures and relationships. Not only did I not see any of that, I actually see the way that the two of you showed up for each other. It's very, very impressive. And what an example you set for the many people that will watch this. Well, we're very lucky. We're so lucky

that we have so many supports. Like, you know, the financial cost of a concert diagnosis in the states is a totally different story. Yeah. What are the stories that you tell yourself? We all do it. We tell ourselves stories. In fact, we tell them so often that they start to feel like facts. I'm just not good with money. I need a big house to be successful. People like me don't wear things like that. You know, I once remember I was reading a financial forum and people were talking

about when you have $x million what you're going to do with the money. And there were hundreds

of posts in this thread and I read them all. And I have to tell you, after reading them, the feeling

I would get a house. I would renovate my house. I might get a car. Now, I was thinking, these are people from all over the country all over the world. We're not talking about having $10,000 or $25,000. Talk about millions of dollars. And everyone's answer like something like 85% of the answers are all exactly the same. You independently decided that you just want a house.

“That's it. And I thought to myself, where is the creativity? Now, one person said, you know what?”

I've always wanted to learn how to dance. I'm going to hire a dance instructor to come to my

house and teach me how to dance. Not one person said I've always wanted to learn how to act. I'm going to go to an acting class and I'm going to get really good at acting. Now, one person talked about hiring a chef to come and teach them how to cook. It was just a house. It was literally inanimate objects that they wanted. I don't find this cool. I think that each of us is different. I think that each of us has something that we would love to do, but a lot of times we don't think

people like us do it. I think that we think that's for rich people. I think that we tell ourselves all kinds of stories. And I've told myself stories too that I'm just a skinny Indian guy that I can't express my emotions that experiences are better than things. And for a long time, I believe

them. I never even thought to question them. Most of us never stop to ask. Wait a second, is this

even true? Like some of you believe you don't even like to eat lamb, but you never had Indian Kima, you believe you don't like opera, but you've never seen an opera that you understood or

“one that connected with you. So that's what I want you to think about today. What is your story?”

What is your story? The story you've been telling yourself about health, about money, about relationships, about where you live, about anything. Take a second, think about those stories, write them down and interrogate them. Why do I believe this? Is it true? Who told me that? Keep going, ask why, ask again. Sometimes you'll get to the end of that chain and realize, I don't even believe

this. I just picked it up somewhere and I never put it down. And on that note, let's now hear

follow-ups from Greece and James. Hi, I'm just a little update. It's been about two, three weeks, and we've just got back from an amazing holiday in the forest up in Lankford. It was so much fun. We had a budget and we hadn't spent it all by the last day, so we just kind of went wild on the last day. It was lovely actually to just have that guilt-free spending and just be like, no, no, this was the money set aside for it. So that was really nice. We are also James's taking the lead

on the money meetings, which I'm really enjoying because it doesn't just fall to me, which is nice. And also it allows me a little bit more space in my brain, which is lovely. We haven't really started the big savings. Well, we're not nothing's coming in, so but we are kind of reducing down the silly spend. I'm finding it hard. So I need to realign now after the holiday and have a little plan in mind for what I actually

“want to spend my money on. Yeah, I think we have a meeting tomorrow now and we're just going to”

kind of lay out whatever is ahead of us. We're already planning next year's holiday, which is really exciting because we haven't gone on any sort of holiday in about three years. Well, apart from, you know, we've just that's been our first one. So, yeah, it's all looking positive and I can't tell you how much better I'm feeling, so I hope James is feeling better as well. Thank you. He's tired after the holiday, but so yeah, thanks so much.

Positive changes. Very positive changes. I feel from it. A big thing of the going back and involved with the finances again. So after the show, after the interview we did a, we did have a kind of catch-up, Grace showed me her, went through a room for the spreadsheet that we kind of been looking at. We sat out some kind of big goals. Me and one being to get our, we've tried. We figured out how much of our savings would have to use over the next two months

while we're both on no paying low pay. And then we kind of tried to figure out how much we would need to where our savings would go next year to kind of build that back up that most of them back up. So I've got, and then we've got our first kind of catch-up tomorrow and then we'll meet once a week

you know, if something crops up another part, we'll go to or we've got to go somewhere extra

than I need a bit more fuel wherever it is. I found being involved in the money more, the ability to just kind of call Grace up on some of her spending. I'm loving that she's being a lot more open than we've been out about it. But because she knows something that is really good. Like she even

“says, she comes at me with how ridiculous it isn't. You know, and I have to, because I think before”

I'd be like, you know, she was in charge of the money, which she thought was a good idea,

then great to go for it, you know. And that is kind of, definitely that's up to the lot. And being more involved in the money has helped me a lot as well. I'm feeling a lot more secure in

“this. There's a family and there's our finances. I mean, let's worry. I feel like I'm getting”

not this worry about my needs to there, obviously. But kind of seeing it all, being more involved

in it again is helping a lot with the kind of anxiety that I was feeling about it, you know, we probably won't go completely bankrupt. I'll take it sick again, you know. Small things like that. And, you know, I'm trying to, similar to great. I'm getting more, trying to be more involved with what we're in about it and being more involved with the family. Like trying to not spend money on things for the kids, but more in stuff to give us a family,

not just, you know, toys that they can play with and that I'll end up throwing away or giving away or something, try to create more memories and more. All the things to give us are family. We've been through a lot. A lot, a lot. And, you know, we're coming out on the side of it. It's time to enjoy it a little bit.

“You know, so yeah. So that's what I'm about. You know, it's early days yet. But we can stick with it.”

I think we'll be in a much better course moving forward. So, and thank you again for the sometimes you just need someone else to kind of listen in and, because I think deep down we knew a lot of it. Sometimes you just need someone else to kind of point out, someone from the outside just to be there, you know, you're not crazy, you know. So, thanks again. You know, maybe we'll see each other again soon.