Hello, everyone and welcome
back to an all new episode of The Financial Confessions. And this week's video
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see you at the society at TFD. It is I Chelsea Fagan, founder
and CEO of The Financial Diet and woman who loves
to talk about money. And I am, as you can
maybe tell if you've watched other episodes recently,
and are watching on YouTube still in sunny Los Angeles. I have gotten away from what
is very spooky weather back in New York City enjoying that
vitamin D just streaming down relentlessly upon
me and speaking to a whole bunch of
really, really cool people out here in LA. Now, for the most
part, I did want to target people who were either
kind of unique to the industry like in the case of one broke
actress or in a category that we may not have as much
access to in New York City. But I also wanted to make
sure that we were talking to some just straight up,
true blue, down to the bone personal finance people
who can answer all of the personal finance
questions that you guys have and which is at
the end of the day, as much as we're out here
talking about fitness and dividing labor in
the home and acting and all of that other stuff,
the very core of who we do here at TFD. So I wanted to bring
out a guest that we've known here for a while
in Southern California. She's actually
based in San Diego but did make the
trek all the way up to LA, which in and of itself
is just iconic behavior. She is actually a
CFP and a CFA she is all of the experts when
it comes to all things money. She's also launched her
own personal finance app, which she's going to talk
about a little bit as well. But mostly, she is here to be
our little impromptu personal finance advice columnist
and specifically to answer the questions that
you guys sent into us, which are awkward, embarrassing,
unusual, and just generally the kind of thing that let's
just say you maybe don't want to bring up face-to-face to
your own financial advisors whether they be professionals
or just the person in your life you happen to trust with money. This is a safe space. This is our secular version
of financial confessional but without further ado,
let me introduce you to our expert and our
advisor, Tara Falcone. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to have you. Welcome so obviously, I just
gave the little acronyms of what you do, but
could you quickly explain to our
audience who may not. What is a CFP and a CFA? Yeah, so a CFP is a certified
financial planner professional. And that is somebody
who is really trained to look at your
entire financial life in a holistic way, big picture
and help you figure out how to put all of the pieces in
place so that in the next year, next five years,
next 10 years, you're really on the right
path to achieving not just your short and
medium term goals but also your long term goals as well. So a CFP is trained to focus
on everything from budgeting, to credit, helping
you pay off debt, helping you save and invest for
retirement, as well as looking at things like your
insurance policies to make sure that all the hard
work you're doing by earning income and budgeting that income
and investing that income, that it's really protected from
all the elements in Murphy's law that really come
at you during life. And so basically that gives
me like the really big picture view. And then I also became
a CFA charterholder, which is a much more technical
investing designation. Because I really want
to understand how well as a former hedge fund analyst
myself, like how investing can fit more into everyone's
daily financial life outside of just retirement. And so a CFA is
really trained to look at all the different
types of asset classes, stocks, et cetera,
what makes them move, how to look at
recessions and bull markets, and how to figure
out what investing moves you should be
making during that. But then also, technically,
people with a CFA designation can run a mutual fund. So it can be really broad
spectrum, everything from like private wealth
management to the nitty gritty of running a mutual fund. Damn, OK, very bad ass,
I think we can all agree. And as I mentioned you have your
own app that you've created. Can you tell us a
little bit about that? Yeah, I'd love to. So Reason is a goal-based
investing platform that helps you invest towards
your specific financial goals, everything from a spin
bike to home down payment all the way to retirement in a
more intentional and organized way. And so basically,
what you can do with Reason is sync your
existing investment accounts, everything from a brokerage
to an IRA to your 401(k) and actually divvy
up your investments into different
buckets for each goal. And the reason that is important
and you find yourself saying the word reason a lot more
after I tell you about this, but the reason that's
important is because each goal that you have is unique in
terms of the time horizon that you want to achieve it
on but also the risk tolerance or level of significance that
you would have for that goal. So if I'm saving and
investing for a spin bike, and the market
crashes, it's not going to really negatively
affect my life if I don't get that spin bike. Whereas something like a
home down payment that's very important to
you that you want to achieve in
three to five years should be invested
for differently because of its
level of importance and the time horizon on
which you want to achieve it. So we see, I think
it's interesting you see savings buckets
on these kind of internet or online savings apps
that you can create different buckets
for different goals for savings that hasn't really
transitioned into investing yet and as a CFP CFA, that's exactly
what I think should exist. You should have a
different strategy for each of the different
savings and investing goals that you're working toward. And that's what Reason
allows you to do. I love it. Well, so as I promised,
we sourced a lot of questions for you guys. I sourced them personally. We source them on TFD. We got a huge
amount of questions and we will not have
time to get to them all. But I'm going to get
to as many as I can. So and these are off the dome. I have not sent
these in advance. So listen. Your reaction is
part of the fund. So I want to just get your
real honest take on these. And just as a
reminder, this is not like individualized
financial advice this is a disclaimer,
big disclaimer we're speaking in generalities here. We'll start out
with some easy ones. Doesn't the bank already
track your money? Why do I need to write
it down again, which is such a funny question. That is a very funny question. So a bank will track
your transactions. However, in many cases,
there are things that happen or that may happen where the
bank doesn't know if it's a fraudulent move or not. So the bank doesn't
know if you made that transaction or that move
with your money versus someone else. And actually, I'm happy to share
a personal story of where that happened and how my own like
financial vigilance really saved the day. So in San Diego, we have
this amazing apartment that we pay way too
little for somehow. Thank you, Ron, our landlord. And he called me one day. He's much older. And so we sent, well, we
used to, send our rent check in actually write out
a check and mail it in every month to him. And I would always send
it in the 21st or 23rd, so it's due on the first. And he called me on the
fourth of the next month. And it was like, hey,
something happened. You're always so on time. I didn't receive
your rent check. And I was like, that's weird. I definitely sent it, and I
have a record of sending it because you have carbon copies
on your checks and whatnot. And so I look into
my own bank statement and I realized
that it was cashed. But actually, the name that
was written on the back the signature who endorsed,
it was some guy named Carlos. And that is not the
property manager that we send the money to. And so I immediately called
the bank and was like, hey how did you
allow this to happen? And they realized
that had happened. There was also another situation
literally a week later. I don't know why I was targeted
so heavily kind of in this very short time frame were in
my business bank account, actually. I log in, and I check that
every few days actually just make sure kind of cash flow
is being managed appropriately. And there were two
fraudulent charges randomly on that account as
well using a business debit card that we have
literally never used. You get it when you
open the bank account, and it just sits in a
drawer or something. And I noticed it was the
first one was for $100, so they're testing how much
what your limit is on your card. And then the next
one was for $1,000. They're like oh, how
high is this limit? How much could we get from this? And then I kid you
not, the next one was for $4,700, a
fraudulent charge on a card that if I wasn't looking at
my statements all the time or looking at my bank
accounts, I wouldn't have caught as quickly as I did. Because I caught
it really quickly, they were able to put a stop on
that card and refund basically give me a refund for that while
they investigated the issue. So those are two
examples as to why you want to keep track of
your charges and expenses even though you think the
bank isn't doing it for you, they're giving you a record like
a ledger of what is happening. But ultimately, it's
up to you to verify that those things
that they're tracking or things that you did, not
something that a bad actor did. Also if you have different
sinking funds and checking accounts and all that stuff
as most people should, they're usually at different
banks in many cases like if you have
business banking. There are many reasons to have
more than one bank account, and more than one bank. You got to have it
all in one place. Yeah. OK, a fun one, how
do you recommend a polyamorous family manage
and divide their finances? That is a fun question. So I think that there's a
couple of different ways you could go with. This you could go
the split evenly depending just
your denominator is the number of partners
I suppose, and divide it that way. Another way that you
could do it is by income. And that's a kind of
more controversial take. I think sometimes is like the
larger earner pays a larger pro rata percentage of whatever
the household expenses are. But I think with
any relationship, whether it's monogamous
or polyamorous or whatever it's just
important to have open lines of communication
about what your expectations are with regard to what
expenses are happening and that they're kind
of like ground rules set for those things. And so yeah, I mean,
depend on the number of partners I suppose,
but either splitting it evenly or coming up with
some kind of pro rata yeah, division would be a
good way to do it. Do you have thoughts? I mean, listen, a couple
of things off top, I do feel like in
general in relationships, paperwork is very underrated. Not enough people get prenups. Not enough people
even have agreements for cohabitation, which I
think are very important. And I think it only
to me every new person that you add to a
cluster, whether that's platonic or romantic
is just going to make it more complicated. Because I think it's the same
thing as roommates in a sense, right? Because it's not just
a question of, OK, all, let's say it's five
people or four people. It's not just one
relationship of four people. It's like whatever four,
it's like 16 relationships. You got all these
different interdynamics, and then you got
clusters and clusters. And you got there's just
so many opportunities for not just like
arguments and disagreements and potential
separations but also just different values,
different priorities. Like you were
talking earlier about how you could be saving
for several things at once, but they're not all worth
the same amount to you. It's hard enough to
get two people to agree on what those things are. So I definitely think paperwork
is the most important thing. And I actually think
that that's something that's also very underrated
for roommate situations. And even just when
it comes to like you were mentioning that it's
controversial for the person who earns more to take on
more of the responsibility. And that's actually
a question we got quite a bit is
some variation of is it the responsibility of
the person who earns more to take on more of the
financial [INAUDIBLE] burden. Yeah, it's a great question. I think I would agree that
paperwork is definitely underrated. And it's interesting
that in business, can be super savvy
and really adamant about certain paperwork
and different agreements that maybe you come up
with somebody that it seems like it's like a casual
project or test or whatever. And it's like, no I
want to write this out because if something
whatever may happen, good or bad down the line. I want to be able to point back
to this document or these notes and say, hey, this
is what we agreed to when we were kind of in
a rational state of mind. Let's keep that in mind
as we're going forward. Everybody knows money is very
emotional and very emotionally driven. And so I think it is
important to be like, OK, let's sit down and
rationally think through this. What do we as
partners however many there want to do
or say that we're going to do now and put that
into writing so that you can refer back to it later. In terms of being wait sorry,
what was the second question? We were leading
to something else. Well, just like is the
person who earns more, is it their responsibility to
shoulder more of the burden? Yeah, I think that ultimately
depends on your relationship and what you really
deem to be valued. So money is just one
form of currency. I think in a relationship,
there are many other forms of currency in a relationship. And somebody who takes on
some more of the household burden or chores or
things that they're doing can be contributing a
significant amount of value to the relationship and your
existence like as a couple or a polyamorous couple. But it may not necessarily
translate directly into money being exchanged hands
from you versus to a landlord or something like that. So I think ultimately,
it comes down to your preferences and
your values in the couple and what is important to you. I would just off the cuff,
think that if you're especially if you're living in a high cost
area like New York City or LA that the person who is
earning more should I mean, at least from a
rent perspective, likely be contributing more as
a higher percentage of the rent for that living area. Or if it's the person who is
really adamant about where they live because it needs to
be close to their work, then that's kind
of the person that maybe should be shouldering
a little bit more of the financial burden. It's kind of like who is making
the sacrifices in which case? And how much more might
you be willing to pay for that sacrifice? Ultimately everything
is about constraints and really balancing the
kind of taking from one and paying for the other. And so just recognizing
that everyone has financial constraints,
and ultimately, you your money should be going to the things
that are important to you. And if living closer to work,
living in a high cost area, having your partner
live with you even though they maybe
earn less than you do is important to you, then
that's kind of a place where put your money where your
mouth is kind of situation, maybe be willing to pay a
higher percentage of those bills than others. I want to take it
a step further here and say first of
all, statistically, it is in a heterosexual couple
far and away usually the man who earns more. And we know that
there's a lot of reasons that go into that, especially
as you start to have children. Because women's labor is and
time is increasingly devalued. Men's are increasingly valued. There's no 100% for
me, and I'm not a CFP. So take everything I say
with a big grain of salt. But I do think there's
an energy, a slight. To me, if you're in a
relationship where you're living together, and
one party earns way more than the other party,
and you're doing 50/50, to me that's a big red
flag about the person. I think that's honestly not
that far off from being I wouldn't go so far as to
say financially abusive, but I think it's
definitely taking advantage at minimum of a complicated
power differential that isn't just about what, for
example jobs they happen to be doing. It's also about,
as you mentioned, there's also all of the domestic
labor that's going into it. There's the time
that's going into it. There's the fact that we
know that two people can be working the same job and be
paid different amounts based on gender, based on race, age
all of that kind of stuff. So I really think
that it doesn't always have to be, I don't
know if any of you guys have seen The Joy Luck Club,
but I love that book and movie. And there's a couple in there
where he earns way more, and they split everything
50/50, and that's just like one of many red
flags that guy was throwing up. But it really had-- I really do think that people
don't take it seriously enough to think that the
concept of fairness or the concept of
equity can be a tool to reinforce an entrenched
power for people who have more. Because if you're coming
from two vastly different starting places, then the
same amount is not equitable. Well, I agree 100%. And I think that there's
an interesting balance to be struck between
splitting something 50/50 so that you feel like you're
both contributing equally, I guess, to the partnership
or to your household expenses versus like somebody paying
if they earn so much more, pro rata would end up being
like 90% like 90/10 split. There's a weird power
dynamic at both ends of that. Because splitting it 50/50 as
you said, if somebody makes so much more than on a
dollar for dollar basis the person who earns
less is actually getting the shorter
end of the stick because they don't
have as much left over as the person who earns more. So then that may lead to
resentment on the person who's earning less feeling like
the person who's earning more should be contributing more. On the other side and
getting into the heterosexual and inequality of
like women's wages and things is that somebody
who's earning so much more, generally the man,
paying that large of a pro rata percentage
of the household expenses, then all of a sudden has this
sort of power dynamic of well, I pay for your lifestyle. And so I think there's probably
some middle ground in between, and it has to come down to
whatever couple or roommate situation, whatever that
might be as to where you think that is equitable. But as I mentioned
before, there are very intangible
non-monetary ways of contributing value
to a relationship whether it's platonic or not. And that has to be considered
in these arrangements. I mean, I'm a military spouse. And so I have an interesting
perspective on this, especially with regard
to women's wages and employment for women. The unemployment rate for
military spouses is over 25%. And it consistently
stays that way because you move around so much. We have very educated
military spouses who are capable of earning
significant amounts of money. But because you are
moving so frequently and you kind of out of
the workforce ultimately ends up becoming the Navy
that pays for your lifestyle, or in my case, it's the Navy. And I'm grateful that
I have a partner who is completely
supportive of the fact that I'm building a business. I'm doing other things
to contribute value not just today to the
household, but to our future, to our kids future, all of that. And so that's a give and take a
balance that we're striking now is like well yes,
he earns the money, kind of pays for that lifestyle. But over time, as he gets out of
the Navy in a couple of years, that's going to flip. And so I think that's another
piece of this equation to keep in mind is
that whatever agreement you strike today
does not necessarily have to persist forever
and that as things change it's from a financial
planners perspective, it's something you
should be reevaluating on an annual basis. And you should constantly check
in at least annually with OK, this is what worked
for us this past year. Has anything changed? That's the first question a CFU
would ask you when you come in to check in with them. And if it has, how then
might that change the way that you're dividing
expenses or the way that you're going
forward to achieve goals that you've set for yourself
and for a partnership. Love it. How can a two partners with very
different financial situations and upbringings navigate
things both financially and emotionally? Are these-- do we know if
these are platonic, or? These are, I think, romantic
partners, husband and wife, girlfriends,
boyfriends, whatever. Very different values,
very different upbringings, very different pay
structures as well. Probably, sure. So just different
across the board. Yeah, and especially
I would be especially curious to hear about
navigating coming from different
backgrounds, especially. Because I think that's a very
frequent question that we get, and one that I really want
to hear a CFP's take on. Yeah, I think that
the backgrounds piece is really interesting because
having come from a low income background myself, I know
that just in many ways, I feel like I don't
relate to people or that there isn't a
common ground necessarily sometimes when we're approaching
different financial situations, whether it's the
type of trip we may go on or splitting
a bill in some case or something like that. And it's just don't. And it's neither good nor bad. But you just don't
quite understand where the other person is coming
from at a very visceral level. And so I think
that in many cases, this is often not
talked about but therapy or some type of joint
counseling with regard to money can be a really helpful
thing to do in that scenario where it allows
you in a safe space to talk about how
you feel about money, your upbringing with money and
how that has shaped or framed the way that you view money
today and into the future just so that you
can kind of clear the air in a
non-judgmental space and really try to understand
your partner better. Because ultimately,
I think that's what really matters most
is that you just is like this empathy piece. You may not have
walked in their shoes, but at least you can understand
where they're coming from and approach whatever situation
that might get hairy with money from a place of like
love and acceptance rather than just butting
heads because you don't understand each other. So there are a lot
of financial planners that actually
recommend people go to counseling to
talk about money either before or
after they engage with a financial planner. That way, people
are just kind of like on the same page
at least understanding why something may be important
or triggering to someone when it may not be to them. I think in addition
to that, it's really this is really
where the line for me as a financial planner comes
as to whether you should have joint finances or not. Because if your
values are vastly different in how you
want to spend your money or what you prioritize
with your financial goals are really not aligned
with each other, that's OK. We're each our own individuals. That's totally fine. But that may create
a recipe for disaster if you decide to share your
finances because the way that somebody that maybe
grew up in a wealthier family or a family that at least
wasn't worried about putting food on the table
that may like to go spend money or may want to
upgrade to a further in front of the plane or something and
spend the extra money to do that. Whereas the person who
maybe grew up with no money was worried about where
their next meal was going to come from, all
of that may be like, no we can't do that. In some cases, maybe
it's better for you to spend out of
different accounts that are kind of like solely for
you whether it's for fun money or for the things
that you just want to pay for outside of the
joint household expenses. I think in my case,
my husband and I share like all of our
finances are joint. But we're incredibly
aligned on everything that we want to get out
of life financially. And so it makes sense that
even though our earnings have changed and who's earning
more has changed over time that ultimately we're both
together still pushing forward to the same end. Then it works in our case. We don't fight about money ever. And I think we have a really
healthy joint relationship with money because of that. But I think if everything's
vastly different, then there's absolutely no
shame and having joint or having separate finances,
and just figuring out we talked about earlier what the
division is for the things that are sort of joint by
default, where you live and how much you spend on
groceries and things like that. Yeah, I would agree
with all of that. I feel like the emotional
piece is often so underrated. And I think a lot of it
depends on how your in-laws are or your partner's family is. Because I do feel
like it's one thing if you guys have a
good relationship around these things. And it's another if the
other members of the family are maybe not very compassionate
in the way they talk about money, or they
can be very judgmental, or they can have a
lot of assumptions. And I do feel like one of the
things that's very important is that if your partner-- ultimately you and your
partner can't control where you come from, right? You can't control what your
backgrounds are if one of you comes to the relationship with
a way more privileged background financially. And I've been in
those situations. You can't fault them for it. You either choose to be
with them or you don't. But one of the things that
then that partner has to do is a, obviously on their own, be
a lot more savvy and empathetic and understanding when it
comes to their own privilege and never kind of shaming or
ostracizing you or assuming that their way of doing
things is better because they come from more privilege. But I also think they
have to be and this is where I think a lot
of people kind of falter is they have to also be very-- they have to be
on your team when it comes to their own families. Because I do feel
like we'll hear a lot, and we have some questions
in this kind of space, but for example, when it
comes to family functions, when it comes to weddings, when
it comes to bringing children in the mix. Then there are all
these expectations about the kind of
place that you live, the kind of gifts that you
give, what you're expected to be able to afford
when it comes to travel, when it comes to
all of the things that people have their
own idea of normal for. And if your in-laws
are pressuring you to a certain lifestyle
or a certain decision, and if your partner is not
standing up and being like no, that's not OK with us, or
this isn't realistic for us, then I think that's where we get
into super red flag territory. I 100% agree with that. And I am married
to an Italian who's an only child from Jersey. So I have-- I love my in-laws
if you're watching this. This is great, but
there have been moments where we've talked
about money where it's either like where are we going to live? Where are they going to
live as they age and retire? Because he's an only
child, and there's some expectations of like
what that's going to involve and how close they could
be to their grandkids and what financially
we may contribute to try to make that happen. And those are things that
you have to talk about. But I do 100% agree that it is
so important that your partner is on your side. Because ultimately, it's not
like them being on your side. It's being on the
partnership's side, right? And so it isn't-- we've had these
conversations like John, my husband is not
taking my side. John is standing up
for what he wants, which is what our
joint unit wants. And sometimes, that's
causes some friction with what in-laws
or other family members may want as well. I think what's really
important to understand from the financial planning
perspective is that ultimately, you as an individual
and then as a couple are sort of a microcosm in
your own bubble of what you are trying to achieve. Maybe there is some money that
flows or exchanges hands like between family, or there's maybe
like an inheritance on one side but definitely not on
another, et cetera. But ultimately, you're
running your own race. And I try to really
impress that upon people is that I think there's
so much emphasis put on what other people are
doing through social media or how other people
manage money, et cetera. But really what it
comes down to is when you walk into
your home, whatever that is at the end
of the day, it is you and it is in that partnership. And you have to be the ones
that are happy, fulfilled, et cetera with the
decisions that you're making in your financial life. And so standing up
for those things to me is just an act of existence
and advocating for yourself. My husband takes the
partnership side as well. But let's be clear
that that's my side. I'm the CEO. Oh this is just a funny one. I'm sure there's no
real answer here, but how do how are people
affording these weddings? Are they taking
out personal loans? Or what's going on here? That is a great question
and real serious question. So give some background, we
were the first in our friends group to get married. We were 25. We had been together
since we were 18. So for us, that was a long time. I had just left Wall Street. He left Wall Street
to join the Navy. So I was actually the
higher earner at that point. And we, I come from a low income
background and so does he. So there was no expectation
of parents or family contributing to the wedding. In some cases, there
was we would really like to pay for the
cake for example. So they were like whatever they
could afford and contribute, they did. But otherwise, it was all on us. And I think all
told, I don't know if I've ever told anybody
this, but our wedding costs like $35,000 to $40,000 total. Ooh! Damn, girl. Yeah, which like compared
to other weddings that we've gone to though, that is probably
one of the cheapest weddings that I've ever been to. You've probably been to a lot
of weddings in New Jersey, so. Yeah, New Jersey
we were just at one in another country,
all these things. And so I think
that in some cases, there's a lot of families
that are contributing. I think that at least in the
kind of our circle at least, there are a lot of very
high earners in our circle. And so whether they're paying
for it out of cash or what, I'm not sure. But I do unfortunately
think that a lot of people go into debt to pay
for their wedding. And it's generally
credit card debt. Because they aren't
financially savvy enough to know that
something like a lower cost personal loan may
be a better way to pay for something like that
than a high cost interest rate credit card. But yeah, I think a lot of
people go into credit card debt or debt in general to
pay for these weddings, which is just one day of one
year of a year in a life. I know it's an important
day, don't get me wrong. But it's kind of
crazy to think about. And having cash flowed and
paid for our wedding using the very strict
budgeting method, I'm really proud of
the fact that we didn't take on any debt to do that. And we saved up for
it, and we're really like savvy with how
we were affording it. I think that just brings
up a larger question, which is that you never
know somebody's real financial situation. You can only make assumptions
based on what you see. And I think a lot
of times having seen a lot of people's
like under the cover of personal finances
because as a CFP, you kind of have to share your
bank statements and your credit statements and all that stuff. That mirage that a lot
of people like to create is a lot of times just
the best possible picture they could paint. When in reality, once
they step into their home, it's like an absolute nightmare
of financial worry and concern. So you never know. I mean, if they come from
means, then it's maybe paid for. Maybe there was a
fund for it that was set for them when
they were much younger. But if they don't
come from means, then it's really extravagant. Then it's quite
likely that they're putting it on credit cards
or other forms of debt. Please do not put weddings. Please don't. Credit cards, or
I'm sorry, I know they're savvier
and by the way not savvy enough to know that
the personal loans are better drag them. But also, even if you get
better terms on a personal loan, don't take out a personal
loan to pay for a wedding. Maybe this is
controversial, but there's no party in your goddamn
life that is worth putting yourself into debt for. I really feel that way. I agree. I just I think people,
and we've talked about this on the
channel before, but the wedding industrial
complex is very real. And as an industry, we have seen
the extent to which the wedding industry and everything
that goes with it, and we're having bridal showers. We're doing bachelorette trips. We got the gender reveals. We got the showers,
we got the sprinkles. We got, this didn't always
exist, and certainly not in this way. These things have blown
way out of proportion because a, through social media
and other levels of visibility. We're now able to normalize
a much higher level of what is expected for these kind
of things and see into. We don't just see the
weddings that we attend, we see the weddings
of everyone we've ever known, including celebrities,
including influencers, including people who have
nothing to do with our lives or budgets. But also, these
industries are savvy, and they realize that as
this starts to creep up in our cultural
conversation, everything is an opportunity to monetize. And it goes from being this
sort of new exciting very extravagant add on to
something that everyone is expected to have. It didn't used to be like that. And I really do think that
it's people often, I think, really delude themselves with
the whole spend on experience is not things. That's true to an
extent, but you shouldn't be going into debt
for experiences, either. And also, it's one day,
girl. , It's one day and then it's over. I agree, and I've experienced
the exact same thing of our wedding being the first. And I think looking
if I were to look at all the weddings
we've been to since, I would say that hours. It was probably on the much
lower end side of how much-- It's $40,000. I know, hey back,
yeah, and this is 2014. I'm very proud of that. And you should have
heard some of the people that we contracted with
being like you must come from a place of where
you've done negotiating or something before. Because we've never done for
this amount of money before. And I was like, that's
right, that is right. But yeah, I agree. I think that there's
this interest, I mean, there's a
dynamic that's happening, which is that as people start
to get married later, generally, they are earning
a little bit more. Maybe they have more saved up. And so it's not crazy
to think that they are they're means to afford
a more elaborate wedding are higher, right? But that has absolutely
no bearing on how much they're asking you
as a guest to do. And this comes back to my kind
of mantra of run your own race. You should really
be focused on what it is that you're trying
to achieve and not place any judgments on anyone else. And I wish that it was more
acceptable to just be like, hey I'm sorry. That's not in my
budget right now. I think there's a
better way to frame it than it's not in my
budget because that feels a little bit restrictive
like oh, my money's in jail, and I don't let it come
out to play very often. But I think it's more
of like that's not aligned with my current
financial goals is one, or unfortunately, or that would
negatively impact my ability to achieve these other
things I'm working toward. You should never feel pressured
to go to someone's wedding where if you're a couple, you're
having to spend a few thousand dollars or something just to
get there and stay in food and whatever if that few
dollars could be better spent on the house you want to
buy, which is like for you as an individual and a
couple more important, longer lasting, has much
more to do with your ability to live than this one
weekend in, I don't know, Europe or whatever for
somebody's Italian wedding. I don't know, I think
that we all as a society need to be just so much
more open about claiming what is important
to us and just being frank and honest about it. And ultimately kind of not not
caring what other people think doing it in a tactful way if you
can, but I think as, at least, I tried to be this
way of somebody said they couldn't come,
I didn't press as to why. Trust that other
people are doing what's in their best interest. And try not to place
your judgments on them about whether you think
they should be there. And they should be willing to
foot that bill or whatever. You have no idea what's
going on with other people's financial lives. And if they say it's
not in their budget or not align with their goals,
don't ask me other questions, I guess. I would agree with that. Also, I'm getting
to another question. But I just have to give
this one last thing. I'm done with these registries. Listen. Oh God, the registry was a
nightmare for our wedding. I am what-- you guys were 25. You were more legitimately
starting out your life. I'm going to these
35-year-old weddings who live in a nice
house apartment who I know can afford to
go to a Williams-Sonoma and get their own knife set. And I'm like, how impersonal
is this that I'm just like going to some
random website and be like, OK what dish
towel set is left that I can. You're not even going
to know who sent this. Let me just give you-- let me just give you some money? Why do I even have to go
through this rigmarole? Yeah, I think that I
definitely agree there, too. I think there's another
interesting dynamic with the registries
that's happening, which is when I
first got married, we had literally just
moved in together. And so we did need
a lot of things. We needed like a
pots and pans set. We needed a knife block. There were things that we
needed to sort of establish our life together I guess. We can dive into
the nightmare that was our registry and
issues with in-laws for example of them
doing something that I was not OK with. But I think that,
yeah, juicy, salacious. Anyway, I think that
now what's happening is that as you get from
let's say a marriage at 25 or a wedding at 25
to now in the mid 30s is that the things that maybe
they bought for themselves when they first established
their place or maybe getting worn out. So maybe there are some things
that need to get replaced. But that shouldn't necessarily
be your burden as a guest to be the one to do it. I always try my
thing is that there's lots of questions
about oh, how much do you think this might be--
are per plate as a guest and trying to figure out
how much cash to put it in an envelope for that. And that's like the Italian
side of my family, which I've never understood. I don't get that the whole
cash for weddings thing. How do you know how much to
give if it's not like based on your affordability? But you're trying to guess
how much your plate costs. That's a whole, I hate that. I hate that so much. So what I try to do instead
is I think of the couple. And I think of,
well, how much am I spending to go here, right? How much all in am I willing
to spend on this wedding? OK, how much does travel cost? What amount of that amount we've
budgeted for weddings this year is left? And what cool, creative
very custom thing could I do with that
money that would be really meaningful for the couple? So there are
examples I've done is I've gotten travel
blankets embroidered with their the monogram they
created for their wedding for example. And that was their gift. Because I knew they were going. And it was like $50. But it wasn't expensive. But I knew they were
going on a big long trip for their honeymoon and that
having a nice travel blanket was going to be, and it
had a pouch in the front to keep snacks and stuff. I know, right, was
going to be really nice, and they loved them. Or there's another one where
we had the place that they got married, they were these
bathymetric really cool custom things on Etsy that
you can get made of like a location and the
depths of the water and things they got married in the lake. And so proportionally,
that wasn't that expensive of
a gift, but it's super meaningful to
the couple because it's like their favorite place ever. So that's how I like to go about
gifts whether it's for weddings or Christmas or anything else. And ultimately,
it's your budget. What can you afford
to spend on this gift? And how can you
maybe make it more personalized than a cutting
board and a spatula? The word meaningful, truly
lost in this experience. I don't need to be buying
you an 1/8 of a couch. I can just send you-- That's weird. Send you a check. OK, so we've got a couple
versions of this question. So to synthesize basically, I
come from either a low income or first generation
background, perhaps both where essentially,
the parents are very resistant to the
concept of investing, very either don't have
anything for retirement, or have very little
for retirement. And then now adult
children are basically trying to navigate this in a
way that won't offend them. Ooh, you're preaching
to the choir here. So I am-- I was a first gen low
income student at college. I met my husband there. He was also a low
income student as well. And he's an only child. And now that as his
parents are aging, there are lots of
questions and conversations about how we are going to
navigate them as they age and how they're
going to continue to be a part of our life. We're in California. They're on the East Coast. They are getting
closer to retirement. They have not invested much into
401(k)s one case or anything. So their largest
asset is their house as we are in this very
inflationary environment with interest rates
going up significantly. Housing prices were
on an incredible tear, but now they're going to
have to start coming down as the Fed is essentially
trying to force affordability by kind of personally
kind of screwing over some of the people who
own houses by sort of making houses less affordable
by increasing interest rates. And so that's a conversation
we had recently was like, hey, this is before the Fed
raised rates this summer or late spring, summer, and we
were like you guys financially should probably consider selling
your house a couple of years earlier than you
were intending to and start thinking about
retiring maybe earlier. Because you're going to get the
most for this asset than you probably ever get for the next
potential cycle of 10 years. We don't know, and
incredibly resistant. They're like, no. You told us we don't
have to do this until John is getting out of the
Navy and/or you are pregnant. And I was like, ooh, please
don't make your financial plans based on my womb. I really don't want
that happening. Oh God. Yeah, but so that was a really
interesting conversation where we tried to find a
suitable alternative, which was like hey, there's
this place in California we love to go to
that weirdly buying a second house would be
significantly cheaper than buying a primary
home in San Diego. So we could continue
renting there but actually afford like a small
cabin or something in this lake town. And we're like, what
if we bought that, and we split the mortgage? So it's like you
guys are paying rent that's at an affordable
rate for yourselves. You have this cash
that you can then invest and live
off of because you sell your house in New Jersey. And then you're closer
to us, and it seems like it would be whatever. But it was like, no,
they're not into that. They're not ready for
that, all of this. And I think that again,
this kind of unfortunately kind of comes down to the run
your own race thing again. There is this pending
potential looming burden that aging parents may
have on our generation, especially if they have not
invested or saved enough to support themselves
in retirement. And it's scary. I literally, this is my life. I worry about this. I don't worry as much
as on my family's side even though I know the
situation is sort of similar. But just there's a
different support network where my family is from
then and the cost of living is significantly cheaper
in rural Michigan than it is in a nice
area of New Jersey. I think that all that you can
do is as the children, voice your concerns. Try to have open conversations
with your parents about what their plans
are so try to focus it on what they would like to do. And then help them figure
out if what they have is sufficient to make
that happen or not. Because ultimately, you're
going after your goals, but they may have goals,
too that perhaps they haven't shared with you. Money is something that's
taboo to talk about I think in a lot of families. And there may be
things that they're hoping to do, leave you
something or contribute to a kid's college fund in
the future when you have one or whatever that might be. And where that
tension comes from is when the lines of
communication are not open. And so the best things
that I think you can do is just have these open
and frank conversations. Express your concerns
as children about it. Have them share with you what
their hopes and dreams are. And then figure out if there's
some way to work together maybe to make that happen. I think unfortunately in
a lot like certain cases, if you're really that
close to retirement, and we're in a certain
investing environment that we're in right now
and potentially heading into even further
of a downturn, I don't have a magic
ball, that trying to be like, oh, let's just throw
a ton of money into the market right now and hope
to make up the time that we did not invest
the last few decades is not probably not the answer. So it's really kind of looking
at their financial life today and saying, OK, what
do you want at minimum? And how can what you have
right now make that happen? What changes might you
have to make in your life to actually afford that
or bring it to life and then really
just helping them get comfortable with the
changes they may have to make. I think that is the transition
from working into retirement is a really difficult
transition for a lot of people who are blue collar
folks that have just worked their entire life and
can't imagine never not working or maybe feel like
they haven't earned it. And so those are really
tricky things to navigate. And again, I'll bring it up. I think going to a joint
counseling or therapy session with those
people can never be a bad idea, just having kind
of like a neutral third party in the room to help you
iron out those things and to allow that person
to voice their wants and desires and concerns and
other party to do so and then try to come up with
some resolution. Yeah, I mean, I
definitely this resonates a lot obscuring the parties
but like I do what I do. I've been doing what
I do for eight years. I still have many
people in my life who don't believe investing. I mean they believe it's real. I think but they just
like believe it's a scam or that it's like not a good
idea for building wealth or who won't look into it
all that kind of stuff. And I do think I mean, a
lot of it is generational. A lot of it's cultural. A lot of it is the
background that you had the personal experience
that perhaps your family had growing up, whatever it is. But at a certain point,
as you said, you are not-- all you stand to do what I
think a certain point if you try to drill down too hard on it
is alienate that relationship. I don't think you're going
to browbeat someone 30 years your senior into
completely changing their financial strategy. But the real, I think, question
mark for a lot of people, and this takes me
into a question that we got is basically
what happens when you have essentially insolvent parents
who maybe have maybe they have a house, maybe they have a
little bit of cash in savings. But they're definitely
not able to have a comfortable retirement. And so this person
says my husband wants to have his parents
come live with us soon because they're just not
really able to afford to live on their own. For me, this goes
completely against the goals that we have for ourselves. And I would rather they keep
working if physically capable. What should we do? Yeah, I resonate with
that question, too. I think again,
it's really having a conversation with
that party about what might they expect from you. Because I think
that sometimes we place these burdens
on ourselves in terms of what the other
party may need from us. And I'm guilty of
this 100% especially with these familial
relationships of just sort of assuming well, if my
perception of that situation is not so great as
and maybe that's coming from I'm just
overanalyzing all the time about this
stuff but not so great or I'm at least somewhat
concerned about it. They may be completely fine. Your idea of insolvency
as an individual may be very different
from theirs. You may, especially if you
live in a higher cost area than you do, you may look
at their financial situation and be like, how could they
possibly afford to retire. Well actually, their
goals in retirement may be significantly less
than you think or cost less than you think. So perhaps like your
vision of retirement is oh, you go on a trip every
a couple months or something. Or you go on a few trips a year,
and you visit your grandkids all the time and you're golfing. And I don't know,
play shuffleboard, or whatever it is that
you might be doing. When in reality
all they want to do is just spend time together
in their house, which doesn't cost a thing
really except for the roof over their head. I mean, that's like
a real conversation we've had with family members
is my sort of assumption was that while you want
to live closer to us, that's going to
be more expensive. You're going to want to
probably come on trips with us and the kids once we have them. You're going to want to
actually enjoy life and pick up hobbies that you've never had
time to do and everything. And it's like, no actually
that's not what we want. For at least for
the first few years, we just want to enjoy just
spending time together because we've both been
working so much that we've been like two ships
passing in the night, and we just want to spend
quality time together even if that's just on
the couch in our house. And so that doesn't-- I know it's cute, right? That doesn't cost much. And so your perception
of them being insolvent may not quite be right. It really comes down to
the numbers, I think. Go ahead. But I was going to say
for argument's sake, let's say there is a
partner in a marriage where their parents are not able to
make ends meet in retirement. They theoretically
maybe could work. But the child of this
couple is like, I don't want them to
have to work, which is a very understandable impulse. And I want them to live with us. But the other partner's
like, what the hell? We were saving up for x or y. We wanted to maybe
get a down payment, or we wanted to have kids. We want to do other things that
this is going to put a real wrench into if we're
having to support, , if in this capacity we're having
to support your parents what? And it's horrible to say
like who wins in that sense, but it's one of those
situations where someone at least in
the majority sense has to kind of get their
way a bit, you know? Yeah, I can appreciate that. I think that especially
like in our case, the goal for us is to potentially be
able to afford like a place that has a Granny flat or some
kind of like second space where my in-laws could move
into and that would maybe ease their transition
into retirement and get them close to our kids. We have in-house daycare, a
whole bunch of other benefits there, too. I think that there
are a couple of ways from a financial
planning perspective that you might try to get-- might try to make that
situation a little less risky. And so the first
thing that comes to mind for me is well, what are
the parents' health situations look like? Because if they're one of the
biggest expenses that people have in retirement and
as they start to age becomes their medical expenses. Even if they're on something
like Medicare or Medicaid, it can start to
really balloon out of control depending
on the issues that they start to take on. And so one of the things
as a financial planner, you always start to
recommend is if they don't have long term
care insurance already, and they are
predisposed or there's family history of anything
like dementia or Alzheimer's or anything that would
require significant support, whether it's like them living
in an assisted living facility or receiving like in-home
care or something, then long term care
insurance should be something that is looked into for sure. Because that can really at
least allow you to have a sigh of relief that if anything big
medical comes into play where they really cannot physically
live on their own like they need help with that, then
something like a long term care insurance policy LTCI would
be able to support that individual. So that is a big thing that I
just advocate for in general if there's any family history
of anyone ever needing kind of care as they age. I think outside of
that, it's difficult. I mean, this is a situation
a lot of us are in. You as a partner don't want
to not support your partner. But we were talking about
earlier that in some cases, you need to advocate for
the unit not necessarily for the entire familial kind
of generation and group. I think the question is
really how far is there a compromise that you could come
to where it's like how far, how much of a setback might it
be for you to support them or for them to
come live with you? Are there, we talked about
earlier, intangible pieces of value that actually having
them nearby or living with you may provide to you
as a couple that actually makes it
more affordable to do certain things. So thinking of somebody
living in their home and they have children,
you don't necessarily have to look for
daycare necessarily if your parents are capable of
taking care of your children. You may be able to travel more
often if you have in-home care. There's lots of different
ways of taking that, which may feel scary and
negative and thinking about how actually might this
make things better or easier for us? I don't know. It's a really-- I don't
have all the answers. I'll be the first
one to admit that. But I think trying to
figure out are there insurance policies that
can help with some of this? Are there ways of looking
at their situation through their lens and
eyes rather than applying whatever perspective or opinion
I have about their situation to their situation? And again really just
having those open lines of communication, I
think that sometimes you think what people
want, and you have no idea until you ask them. That's so true. We just bought a home, and
we're already overleveraged. How do we best ride
out the next few years? And could you just quickly
explain what overleverage means in this context? Yeah, I was kind of making
a slight face because I was like there's a lot of
people that are already finding themselves in that situation,
are going to be finding themselves in that situation. Overleveraged essentially
means that you have taken on more debt
than you can afford or a higher amount of debt
than your debt to income ratio would generally recommend. In layman's terms, it's you
feel stretched very thin financially just to make
your minimum payments on your mortgage and
some other things. And so what I've seen
happen in the last few years has been this very exuberant
rush to become a homeowner and to pay whatever price
is necessary to do so. And for a long time, the Fed
kept interest rates very low so that affordability was higher. And I think a lot of
people don't quite understand why that is. When rates are low, why can
you afford more of a home versus as rates go up why can
you afford less of a home? It's because the banks make a
lot of money off of interest. And so the largest portion
of your mortgage payment starting out is interest. So if the interest
rate is higher, it means it's taking up a
larger portion of your payment of the amount you can afford
to pay each month, which means less is going to principal. And if less is
going to principal, then you can afford a smaller
house or a lower priced house than you would have been able
to when rates were a couple percentages, which is crazy to
say, a couple of percentages lower earlier this year. I worry that is happening
a lot more than people are talking about. I think that I don't want to
be like a predictor of any sort or try to doomsday, the
sky is falling anything. But I think when
Warren Buffett is somebody that I've
always looked up to and the investing space,
personal finance space. And one of the things
he says is to be greedy when others are fearful and
fearful when others are greedy. And I think that we saw
a lot of greed happening in the last couple
of years, especially in the housing market. And that ultimately
unfortunately that's going to start negatively
affecting a lot of folks. whether they're going to go
underwater on their mortgages because they paid a certain
price for an asset that seemed reasonable or maybe a
slight stretch at the time, but as interest rates go up
and affordability goes down, if they were to try to
sell that asset today, they would lose
money on that asset. I think that's just inevitably
going to start happening. That's just how the dynamics
and the economics start to work. What to do about it is
there are a few things. So really look at
your cash flow. That's the first thing. That's the thing that
you have control over. So if you're locked
into a 30 year mortgage. And if selling would mean that
you lose a lot of money today, and you want to
stay in your home, then you need to look at
the rest of your spending and be like, are
there other areas that we can cut that
are lower priority. And again it's all
a give and take. So we have constraints. You only earn a certain amount
of money every month, right? And if one of your number
one priorities are very high priorities is to
stay in the home that you bought that now
makes you feel overleveraged, then you need to
figure out where you're going to take from
other places in order to continue fueling that goal,
which is what it is, right? Home ownership,
I think, extended home ownership is a goal. So that's number one. Look at any other
debts that you have to see if you may be
able to reduce your rate or do some kind of
financial engineering where you get a lower
rate on that thing. So if you have credit
card debt for example, there may be ways of pushing
that on to a personal loan or even on to a zero
rate interest card but then with a very
strict payment plan. But ultimately, if
it's a house, those are really big illiquid
heavy assets to unload. You can't just get rid of that
like you can some other things. And so I think that if you are
feeling that overleveraged, then you may need to have a
real conversation with yourself, which is is this really my goal? Was that a smart
financial decision I made, or did I make a decision perhaps
that was emotional in the time because it felt
like I had to or I was pressured because
rates were going up, and I had to afford this. Or there were 20
offers on this place. And so I had to put
more down or do whatever it was that I was going to do. And sometimes, it's OK to
say that I made a mistake, or I need a reset or
whatever it might be. So if you're really
in a position where it's like it's feeling
super crunched, and you're starting
to get very concerned about your financial health,
and your financial life going forward, it's OK to assess
whether that home or whatever it was that you bought is
still in your best interest. Because it may not be. I think a lot of people
hang on to houses and things for longer than they should when
sometimes the best thing they could do is sort of like
cut their losses now and look at alternative
places to live for example. It's not the thing
you want to do. It's probably going to
hit your ego in a way that you're not happy about. But ultimately, you have to keep
your financial house in order and make sure that
the foundation of that is very strong really going
into these house analogies. But that's really it. So if you are in a place where
you cannot cut from other places to feel a little relief,
then you might need to look at the thing that's causing you
the most pain and ask yourself whether it still serves you. Well said, and I
will say, this is why we're always going on about
how it is not always the best decision to buy a home. I don't own a home
on purpose right now. There we go. Yeah, I love renting
my home, love it. If people were overleveraged,
and they rented, they could move. This they would not
be in this situation. That's exactly it. I think people, I could go on
and on about the American dream and how that's really
transformed over time and what that even means. But I think that this
is the social media piece where it's like you're
supposed to have that first. I'm a homeowner now. Put a picture on Instagram. And no you don't. You don't need that. If that doesn't serve
you, that's totally fine. I love the fact that I have
control over where I live. If I want to move at the
drop of a hat, I can do so. And I do. My net worth is not impacted by
this massive 15 to 30 year debt that I've taken on, which
in some cases totally fine. Again, it's all about your
personal financial priorities. But if someone were to come
to me as a CFP and be like, present all these things. And I look in their
mortgage payment is like over 40% of
their take home pay. I'm going to be, and they
have other debts maybe in other priorities, the things
that they want to achieve, I'm going to question
them very heavily as to whether that is an asset
that is serving them or not. And really try to get to the
root of why they bought it in the first place and
if there's another way to feel the same way or
to accomplish the goal in a similar way that
is more affordable. OK, last one for a
little quick hit, and this is my heart goes out. But I've been hiding credit
card debt for my husband, and it's getting out of control. What do I do? Oof. Just a light, breezy question. Yeah. And oh boy. First of all, know that it's
going to be OK regardless of whatever it is. If you're afraid of bringing
this up in a relationship, I think that's a
different red flag perhaps than just the credit card
debt that you may be in. I think that financial-- I think that there is this
idea of financial infidelity or financial abuse
in some cases. And sometimes having something
like hidden credit card debt can be kind of considered that
because you as a partnership, especially if you
share finances, that is something that is
affecting that other person without them knowing. And I think that's really
unfair for that other person. And it's not something that
you want them to discover later when you go to apply
for a mortgage, or you go to try to
get some other type of financial instrument. And then it comes up. I think that the best policy
is always open, honest policy and communication. Bring it up, be
like, hey, I have something to talk to you about. It's going to be
unpleasant, right? Set the stage, set
the expectation. But don't just come to it
with I have this problem. Make sure that you're
going to that person with and here's how I want
to solve it together. Because just kind of like
offloading something like that onto a partner when
you've not been honest about it whether it's
money or anything else, I think is just kind of
a recipe for disaster. Own up to what you've done. Talk about why you did that. There may be therapy
or counseling that needs to happen to make
sure that doesn't happen again. And then try to create
a plan forward where whether you're
working on your own or together to come up
with a resolution solution. You have to do that. I think that there are
certain pieces of us as individuals that we
need to work on alone. And there are other pieces
of us where we actually need help and assistance to do that. And so figuring out which
one of those it, is I think that there can be there's
a lot of addictive tendencies in spending. And so it may be something that
you may need external help for. You'll have to, I don't
know your situation, so you'll have to
assess that yourself. But just be honest about it. It's not something that you
want to continue hiding. No, and I have to say
this is like a strategy that I pursue in my own life. There's a real
possibly in my own life a couple that's gotten
divorced over this. It's real. Your partner may say this
is a massive betrayal. This is not who,
I, love you but I don't want to be your
life partner depending on the scale of it. In this case, that
I'm familiar with, it was a pretty serious level. So I definitely would understand
that from just a purely I'm never going to own a home. I'm never all that
kind of stuff. So there's that. But I do think it's
important when you're going into any very high
stakes situation like that to, because obviously this
person is very anxious, what is fear worst fear? Create a plan for yourself
based on that worst fear. For me, any time I
go into something where there's a potentially
very bad outcome that really upsets me, I create a very
specific plan around the worst outcome. So that if that happens,
I feel like at least I'm not just floating
through space. And obviously you would
hope that your partner is understanding and
willing to work with you. But I also think people
do need to remember. I think not enough people
treat marriage as first and foremost it is
a legal partnership. You have formed a legal unit. And you are in the
eyes of the law, above, all like a financial
organization essentially. You guys are tied up to
each other in that way. And that is one of the
big tenants of a long term partnership is that you
guys are compatible that you can trust each other in that
way that you share goals, that you share strategies
and all of that stuff. And so I do think
it's fair for someone to say based on
certain financial like if someone were completely
spending their partner out of the ability to
have a future, it would be totally within that
partner's right to say I'm out. So I would say base
a plan on that, but. I agree with that. I think that heading into
any scenario where you've thought of what the
worst case outcome is and just prepared
yourself for whatever that might be because ultimately
all that you can control is your reaction to something. You can't control how the other
person feels about something. And so creating a plan that
is perhaps self sufficient if it needs to be depending on
your partner's reaction to this is really important. I think that also just
recognizing when and how to ask for help if you need it. I think that there are so many
support organizations for when we go overboard with alcohol or
drugs or other vises in life. And there are not enough of
those when it comes to money. And if this has
been your outlet, if spending or doing
things that are kind of outside of the realm
of what you and your partner had initially talked about or
hiding those things from them is whatever emotion
you're channeling into that may need to
be tapped into more. That's probably
the healthy thing to figure out how to make
sure that you come out of that in a healthy way. But I agree. I think that from the
partner's perspective, it's like, well, if you've
been hiding this for me, what else might you hide? And that's a really
big question. And really kind of
coming full circle on this, if you have goals
that you've all established together, and one
of those parties is doing something that is
not in line with those goals, whether it's financial, whether
it's with their job or I mean, there's lots of different
things that you could do to jeopardize your joint goals. It's something that
has to be addressed and either course
corrected or perhaps realize that maybe this union
is not going to work anymore. Yeah, but again, honesty
is the best policy and prepare for the
worst case sadly. This is a bad place to end. You know what? Listen, at the end
of the day, we're all going to meet the
worst case of all, which is that we're all going to die. So and that's why we
need a will for example. You know, you've got to plan
for that worst case scenario. But no, I think your advice
has been super sound, very reassuring even the delivery. For me, I'm like, I can see
you being across the table from your clients like
it's going to be OK. I'm a very rational actor. Yes. I am always on the side
of rationality and reason and just what always
whatever is in the best interest of the person
I'm trying to help. So however I can do
that, I'm here for you. Well, speaking of
reason, where can people go to download
your fabulous app? Oh, thank you. The easiest place
is in the App Store. You can type in Reason Invest,
and it'll pop up there. It's a little teal
icon with an R. Or you can go to
reason.app and check out a little more information there. But if you're really interested,
just want to get to the app now, go to the App Store and
look for a Reason Invest. Love it. Well, thank you so much,
Tara Falcone, CFP CFA. Wow, how fancy. I thank you all for tuning in,
and we will see you next Monday on an all new episode of
the financial confessions. Goodbye. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING]
