Navigating Finances and Relationships

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome back to another episode of the sit down talk dang. Hey y'all, welcome back to another episode of the sit down talk podcast, where it's like an open mouth sneeze. Is it gonna grab your attention? Yeah, but it's definitely gonna give you something to take back home with you.

Speaker 2 0:16

My name is Kare and I'm Noe, and we welcome you today we're gonna dive into something that touches all of our lives managing finances, your significant other. That's right, we're going to dive into something that touches all of our lives managing finances with your significant other.

Speaker 1 0:26

That's right. We're talking money, roles and everything in between. How do you merge your views on finances and how do you share responsibilities without stepping on each other's toes?

Speaker 2 0:37

We'll explore how having open, ongoing conversations about money can not only change your financial game, but also strengthen your relationship. It's all about honesty, flexibility and sometimes even seeking a little professional help.

Speaker 1 0:49

Plus, we'll share some personal stories and insights on how shifting our mindsets about money has made all the difference for us, whether it's leveraging social capital or overcoming old money scripts. We're laying it all out.

Speaker 2 1:02

So, whether you're looking to heal your relationship with money or just want to get your finances on paper, join us as we unpack the complexities of money and relationships. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 1:12

Oh, and real quick, y'all. This is an older episode that we did a year ago, but this is the first time that we're sharing it with anyone outside of our YouTube audience. So make sure that you comment, make sure that you rate and give us some feedback. Let us know what you took away from this whole combo.

Speaker 2 1:28

And we'll also put a link to the YouTube video down in the description.

Speaker 1 1:32

Yes, we'll do that too. Alright, now to the episode, for real. This time we're clapping up for you for popping up in here, pulling up, spinning the block and showing up like you do. You see, I'm in a good mood today he's in such a good mood.

Speaker 2 1:43

I'm getting there.

Speaker 1 1:44

I'm going to get her there.

Speaker 2 1:45

Oh man, guys, do you ever have that situation where it's like you're talking to somebody and they're just like so excited and you're just like?

Speaker 1 1:52

what Come join me in happiness. If this is your first time here, welcome. Stay for the whole episode. Comment a little bit Chill. Keep your shoes on. Don't put your feet on the coffee table. If you are a group of people that I like to refer to as repeat offenders, welcome back. Are we still doing?

Speaker 2 2:07

group hugs.

Speaker 1 2:07

Yeah, let's hug, come on, come on, bring that in, oh.

Speaker 2 2:12

You just grabbed my ass. Oh, jolly mood are we?

Speaker 1 2:15

I am, I'm in a great mood.

Speaker 2 2:17

Why are we in such a good mood? I don't know.

Speaker 1 2:20

I like it Ain't like I'm getting an abundance of sleep out of this joint, but you know what? Hey, this ain't the Complain Train episode. This ain't what we doing here today. Today, we're talking about something that is mad important. I'm going to break it down and bring it all the way back. So I was watching something that the Shade Room posted. Don't judge me, all right. So the name of the article is there's Something in the water today, and it's talking about all of these famous couples who are either splitting or just full out divorce. I'm counting 12 to 15 celebrity couples who are calling it quits, and I was telling Noemi. It kind of reminds me of when you have a lot of people around you who are dying and it feels like death is a boogeyman. It's creeping up on you ever so slowly. When we did Black Love, they didn't put this into the episode, but the first thing we said is we have no idea whether or not we'll be married in 10, 15, or 20 years.

Speaker 2 3:13

Or five, or five. We don't know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 3:15

Yeah, we don't make the assumption that that's just going to be a given for us, but we try to do the work every day to make the decision to stay together a lot easier.

Speaker 2 3:24

We check in a lot.

Speaker 1 3:25

Yeah, at first I thought it was too much, but now I think we're on the right page. Yeah, I think you have to check on it a lot.

Speaker 2 3:30

I mean, even when we think about divorce, it's not something that happens overnight. A lot of the times, at least in my conversations, it starts with something that seems to be small, that's not spoken about, and it turns into this big thing that's irreversible. It kind of is what it is at that point.

Speaker 1 3:47

Yeah, definitely snowballs. And I always wonder if it started out as an issue that it's like ah, this is kind of a big issue for me, but maybe it'll get better, or whether it starts as something that is a point of contention, like I tell you about it, it doesn't change. I tell you about it, it doesn't change, and then I just give up. And then after a while I realized that giving up ain't fixing it and I need to leave.

Speaker 1 4:10

That's terrifying, I think it could be both that kind of led us to a conversation about finances and money, and if you're on Twitter or if you're on any of the socials, you see that when it comes to dating, love and romance, money is one of the only things that people talk about. Who's responsible for what, who's going to pay what, who contributes what to the family? And we was like man. We need to bring this to the sit down, talk and have a conversation about it.

Speaker 2 4:36

And you missed a key point. Finances are one of the leading causes of divorce right now. It's just one of those things where one people splitting up. It's just one of those things where one people splitting up it's just like in our faces everywhere on social media, and two like our financial situation has changed significantly within the past couple of years and all of the financial expectations and even goals that we've had have to be reworked.

Speaker 1 4:59

Finance is for us. I do want to talk a little bit about the way that we manage it. You know what, before we even get to it in the comments down below. I want want to talk a little bit about the way that we manage it. You know what, before we even get to it in the comments down below. I want you to tell me how you manage finances in the relationship you're currently in or the last serious relationship that you had.

Speaker 2 5:14

Or how you would like to manage, because some people ain't never been in a serious enough relationships before where they talk money, because I've never talked money with a significant other before me neither, never. That wasn't even going to be a conversation we ain't had no money to talk about at the time, so it wasn't much of a discussion.

Speaker 1 5:33

I never merged life with a person like I did with you and like I continue to do, but I see expectation when it's like, oh, if you're a man, your responsibility is to pay for 100% of everything. You know how I feel about that.

Speaker 2 5:47

Okay what? I just think that's so funny.

Speaker 1 5:50

What.

Speaker 2 5:51

Because where we started and where we are, I know, I know, I know, I know, and we will get to that at the end of the video. You're right, but y'all, it's hilarious. Listen closely, don yeah.

Speaker 1 6:00

Listen close. Don't listen that damn close. Back up, move your damn ear away from the device. When we first got together, one of the things that really fascinated me about you is how independent you were. You never asked me for anything, not to get your hair done, nails done nothing. You had that yourself and I love that because I pride myself on being independent. Different men want different things. I know in the manosphere it's like oh, all men are the same. We all want submissive woman, barefoot, half kids, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 6:27

I never even thought about it like that, like maybe I did have friends that did that, but I never asked a man for like those kinds of things, mainly because if my father found out that I asked a man to get my nails done. He was like why didn't you ask me?

Navigating Finances in a Relationship

Speaker 1 6:44

You know what? I would do the same thing to Emory and Sidney. Like, what are you doing? But not everybody has a relationship with their father like that. So I can understand why that desire is there. But that's an unreasonable ask sometimes, especially when people aren't really making. Well, the variance of how much money some men and some women make Isn't that different, even if that's not representative in the larger economy?

Speaker 2 7:06

And also financially, like neither one of us were super secure and I feel like at the time we had enough to take care of ourselves. Like I was in law school when I met you and I had a job at the time, but it wasn't a full time law job, it was like a legal internship that was paid.

Speaker 1 7:21

Because you were still in school. Yeah, and I was still in school and at the time I was working in a community nonprofit.

Speaker 2 7:27

I don't think I was I don't know if it's nonprofit money, man God bless it, but Lord have the mercy.

Speaker 1 7:31

I think I was making about 40 stacks a year. It wasn't really cutting it.

Speaker 2 7:34

We're talking about pre-Emory, so this is before we had this is when we first 2015.

Speaker 1 7:40

Yeah, we were just doing whatever. Our finances were totally separate because we lived in two different places. We had different lives. There was no reason to merge anything. If we went out on a date, of course I'd pay, or she'd pay sometimes, or I'd pay and she'll grab the tip.

Speaker 2 7:54

How did we do it? I think it was whoever asked. It depends. Yeah because sometimes it'll be like I'm taking you out because I knew you loved Mexican food. I'm like I'm taking you to tacos. Meet me at the Mexican spot from where you used to live.

Speaker 1 8:06

That's part of the reason I don't mind going all out for you, because you really did yeah Like, nah, I got you. We were both broke, we in a relationship, let's just be honest.

Speaker 2 8:14

I'm going to take care. We were both broke, big broke.

Speaker 1 8:31

Yeah, we were both like we really didn't go on expensive. Our first expensive date was that time we went to that restaurant in philly. Oh yeah, we stayed at that hotel.

Speaker 2 8:35

Oh man, that weekend, oh, that thing hurt. Yeah, I think I might have got an overdraft fee. We always got an overdraft fee every time we went on vacation before emory.

Speaker 1 8:40

We had a listen, that's the joint where you only got three hundred dollars your account. So you swipe that joint for two. You take out 299 in cash and you just swipe and you just deal with the consequences of your actions they're not going to decline, but you'll get an overdraft absolutely.

Speaker 1 8:54

It was different once we started having a kid and we moved in together. One of the first things we talked about was finances, because the genesis of me moving in with you was money. He was like yo, I'm about to have this baby, I got a car note I'm paying for. I got this rent, we paying for two different things. Let's just merge our finances. Yeah, now to be clear before we even moved in together, we always said if we lived in a place, it'd have to be a place that we got together yeah you can't move into my shit.

Speaker 1 9:22

I can't move into your shit because we two only children, and I don't know how that's going to work.

Speaker 2 9:25

When I found out I was pregnant, I had just moved into my first place by myself. I've always had roommates, ever since college. My bachelorette pad.

Speaker 1 9:35

That joint was nice and it was so nice it was a newly renovated condo right outside of the city. Nice tree line area outside the window it was one bedroom.

Speaker 2 9:44

It had a separate living room, dining room space, kitchen. It was huge.

Speaker 1 9:48

That was amazing.

Speaker 2 9:49

Oh my God, it was so nice and I was in there for what? Four or five months.

Speaker 1 9:53

Yeah, before we had to move to a bigger spot.

Speaker 2 9:55

No, I was there for four or five months before you moved in. And then we weren't dead set on him moving to my place. For long we wanted to try to find a neutral spot, but because of financial history we couldn't get approved for an apartment, and that was the first time that I became privy to the differences in financial awareness between the two of us.

Speaker 1 10:18

So once we joined Spaces and we lived in the same spot, the way we set it up was we had a joint account and we both dedicated a percentage of our paycheck to the joint account and the joint account went out to bills, groceries and other household expenses. If we want to do a date night, boom, joint account.

Speaker 2 10:37

But we did a budget first. So first what we did was we put together how much the rent was, how much utilities were, how much our bills were. We created a budget and then, based on that budget, we figured out what the percentage of our individual paychecks would be. It wasn't like 50% 50%. It was also dependent on how much we made, how much that person made and how much that person made how much we needed per month.

Speaker 2 11:01

And then let's say I wanted to take care out and go to a restaurant. I would pay for that from my account or he would pay for that from his account. But the joint account was for our mutual bills at first.

Speaker 1 11:13

And then we both kept a percentage of our own money to take care of credit card. Looking back, God damn, it wasn't a lot. I think I had like 150, 200 left after the joint account. It was so wild because the house was taken care of, but on the side you don't have a lot of play money Just because we were just jumping into our careers. The bread just wasn't there yet. But it made sense. Everything we did at that point, in my eyes, was out of logic. Whether or not we were prepared to do it, that was the logical thing to do. That was the thing that seemed like it'll lead to the best outcome. So we did it. I don't know if we were going to hold a share of our finances, because I didn't have a great relationship with money at the time and I ain't want you looking at me, Cray. I felt like I was going to be judged.

Speaker 2 11:56

I feel like even talking about it now. We haven't spoken much about this, but I feel like we have two totally different feelings about that. That period of time was the least financially stressful because I had the car note and I think when I got pregnant my first thing was I need to pay off the car. So I paid off the whole car and once we were splitting the rent, I had no money. Shout out to the Honda Civic man I know we shared a Honda Civic for a very long time.

Speaker 2 12:23

I mean we upgraded last year, but that Honda Civic got us through.

Speaker 1 12:26

It, got us through. It, got us through. I'm almost six foot two. And I hatched my big ass out of that Honda Civic every day With.

Speaker 2 12:32

Emery in the car and we shared that car for what seven? Years, Going back to that time when we were living in that apartment.

Speaker 2 12:39

That was financially easier for me because, I had more money in my pocket, but the reason why I had more money in my pocket because I had more debt than you, so I was using that extra money to pay down my car, pay down my credit cards. At that time I was still thinking about eventually getting a house and at that time my thing was let me get my credit as good as it can be. And I think at that time I think I just had more financial knowledge because my parents shared all of the financial stuff with me. The reason why I know how to budget is because my father had an Excel spreadsheet that he literally sent to me that he still uses to this day, the template.

Speaker 1 13:12

Yeah, I remember the first time I seen you work out a budget on a template.

Speaker 1 13:15

And maybe we can get into that the whole difference, because a lot of our financial awareness, or lack thereof at the time was based on our lived experience with money. We grew up two completely different ways and had different relationships with money. I was brought up to fear credit. Credit is the boogeyman. Credit is the way that you become poor. I ended up getting a credit card when I was 19. Last year, about two years ago, I finally paid it off. So I had this balance and I mean the interest rate was crazy 26, 27%.

Speaker 2 13:46

That's real. I mean, that makes sense when you get a credit card that young.

Speaker 1 13:49

Yeah, the money growing up. I don't remember there ever being any or there being a conversation about it. When you talk about money, we ain't got none. And it kind of puts you in this scarcity mindset. Where I was talking to my homie, shout out to Tiffany Aliche, the budget niece there I was talking to her and she was like yeah, because of your relationship with money when you were younger, you probably want to hoard it. You get a bunch of money. You want to keep it for yourself. You just want to look at it because it feels good to sit on that pile. It's something that you never had. But that's not helping you. Keeping that money is not doing anything for you. That's what made me feel good hoarding as much money as possible. And then when I meet you and you got a different money philosophy and I'm like, nah, I don't want to spend. That costs $5. What's that $1? Joint that $1, it got spots on it. It's a little dusty. All right, I'll take that.

Speaker 2 14:35

And then it stopped working after the first time. And then you buy that three more times and now you spent $4, versus the $5 one that you could have just spent, and it would have been still working.

Speaker 1 14:44

Facts but you feel better immediately spending, spending the smallest amount of money. So just coming up with you and the way I look at your relationship with money is you prioritize comfort. Yeah, comfort is paramount to you, so you comfort, but also I pay for my time.

Speaker 2 15:02

Yeah, so if I would rather pay more money, if it requires less effort from me, I pay for the effort, pretty much like if I diy stuff. Ain't for me. It's pay for the effort, pretty much Like if I DIY stuff ain't for me. It's not for me because the amount of time that I would spend A glue gun Me no. I mean, if it's for fun, cool. But if it's like something that I need, like, for example, building these things, I can hire somebody a task rabbit to build it.

Speaker 1 15:23

What things? Oh, these shelves? Yeah, like shelves. So y'all know. It's two gigantic shelves behind a camera, like furniture furniture, for example.

Speaker 2 15:29

I would much rather and especially like Ikea furniture, because I will mess it up. I'm gonna feel some type of way if I build it myself and it's leaning on an angle, when I could have just spent an extra $40 for somebody to build it for me and then it's fine.

Speaker 2 15:41

I guess that's comfort, but for me it's more of like it's my time, that three hours that it would have taken me to do something that somebody else would have taken 30 minutes to do. I can use that time to do something else and make money doing something else.

Speaker 1 15:53

And I can adopt that mindset now.

Speaker 2 15:55

Yeah, back then.

Speaker 1 15:56

But back then that wasn't my thing at all. When you have a scarcity mindset.

Speaker 2 16:01

You don't have the luxury, because it is a luxury. You don't have the luxury to see things that way.

Speaker 2 16:06

Oh yeah, facts and I didn't grow up with a ton of money, but we grew up with enough money to have savings and to budget. I wasn't going on vacations to resorts, but I have family in Florida, so what we would do is we would save as much money as we can rack up on points and I would go to Florida a couple of times a year. I wouldn't stay in a hotel, but I'd be at my cousin's house that lived 20 minutes from the beach and we would still be able to make it work Because we're saving money by not using hotels, not ordering out, like so.

Speaker 1 16:36

I didn't do vacations, I traveled to visit family. That gives you such a different relationship with the idea of money when you can say, ok, we don't have all the money, but we can take the money that we make and we can do this, this and this what. I couldn't wrap my mind around as a kid because I almost never saw my mom work. I don't know how we got money in the house. To be honest, I think my grandmother was working. But when the response to anything money involved is an automatic shutdown, you don't learn.

Speaker 2 17:02

And it scares you. It makes you feel like, even if I were to get it, I need to hold on to it tight, because I don't know if I'm going to get more of it, because you're so used to not having it at all, that's a good point.

Speaker 1 17:12

Can I talk about scarcity mindset? All right? So this is a good comparison to me. This is my personal trainer mind jumping. When I was a personal trainer, people used to come in and be like here, I want to lose weight. I'm like, I ain't bad. How much you want to lose? I want to lose 25 pounds.

Speaker 1 17:25

The first thing I tell people is counterintuitive to what you think. People think I'm going to stop eating. No, if you want to lose weight, don't just stop eating. You want to eat smaller meals throughout the day. And the reason why is because when your body is hungry or in a scarcity mindset, it holds on to fat because it thinks it may starve to death. It doesn't know when his next meal is coming.

Navigating Money Mindsets and Financial Histories

Speaker 1 17:48

And forgive me if I already made this comparison on a sit-down talk before. Yeah, but it's when you feed your body small amounts throughout the day. Your body's not holding on the fact. This is like all right, bet, I'm gonna eat in two hours, so I don't need this, I'm not gonna starve to death, go ahead. The scarcity mindset is the same way with money and material resources. You think you're gonna starve to death, so you try to grab everything and you turn into an opportunist, like those people be spamming pages talking about 4x. Maybe it's a real thing. I don't know. I don't know what they sell, but how do you own a business and most people don't know what you sell? Yeah, and you can't explain, you can't explain.

Speaker 1 18:22

It come to this event no bro, no hey, hey, if you can't tell me in a 15 second elevator pitch. I don't want to know I don't want, want no parts of it, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 18:30

I just don't. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't want to.

Speaker 1 18:33

No, it's cool. You turn it from a pyramid to a matrix and that makes it okay Moving on. Yes, long drawn out, story short, the scarcity mindset makes you hold on to things that you should probably let go of financially. Whether it be cash, whether it be ideas, whether it be fear, you hold on to those things and you cleave to them tight, not realizing that they're sucking you dry. I don't know if I'm completely out of that. You're not. Yeah, because poverty ain't a financial status. Poverty is most certainly a mind frame. I agree, yeah, and I think I'm still there in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 19:06

I don't think you're ever going to get to a place where I think you're searching for this amount that you think is going to make you feel good and then when you reach it. You're like but I'm spending more money. I'm like, yeah, you're spending more money, and we were just talking about earlier today like the more Kier has this thing. He's like every time we make more money, we spend more money.

Speaker 1 19:24

More money.

Speaker 2 19:32

But it's because, where we're at, we're at a deficit. You know what I mean. We're at a deficit, you know what I mean. We're not eating the best foods, we're not investing the best way, we're not really taking into account that we need more financial knowledge on what to do with money, because you can have cash. Dollars in your hand don't mean anything if it doesn't go to anything. You can get the chicken that's injected with all of the stuff and it's like. You know. Two, three dollars a pack. Want some water? Nah, this was killing me. Are we drinking cheap coffee or good coffee?

Speaker 1 19:55

Nah, this the Nespresso, this the good stuff.

Speaker 2 19:57

Yeah, they jumping you right now.

Speaker 1 19:59

Lord, have the mercy.

Speaker 2 20:00

You said that before Lord have the mercy, and it took me everything to not be like what.

Speaker 1 20:06

I had a supervisor and he said you got the paperwork wrong. Lord, have the mercy.

Speaker 2 20:10

I don't know if y'all caught that, but he said that a couple of minutes ago and it took everything in me to not bust out laughing because I ain't never heard this man.

Speaker 1 20:19

Say that before she also. You say don't fake the funk on the nasty dunk. I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 20:26

But yes, the chicken analogy. When you're eating all the stuff with the pesticides and it's $3 a pack and it comes like with 15 pounds of chicken and you like I bet. But then you realize what's inside of it. And then you get the organic chicken where it's four in a pack and it's $15.

Speaker 2 20:44

And you don't got the bubble gum after you eat it Exactly, it's better for you, but it's more of a like institutional problem than it is the individual who's trying to make those decisions, of an institutional problem than it is the individual who's trying to make those decisions.

Speaker 1 20:57

If we were in a different financial situation, we would only have the option to get the ones with the pesticides, but we're not there. It's funny.

Speaker 2 21:01

What options do for you, it's funny what options do.

Speaker 1 21:03

When you have more options, you take them.

Speaker 2 21:05

Yeah, and if we're really smart, we just buy some chickens and we move to a farm, because that's what I'm saying. It's always an option, so maybe it is a comfort or access thing, like you were talking about.

Speaker 1 21:16

I can't see you with no dad. I can't see you raising no chickens. First of all, I ain't raising no chickens At all. No. So I'm going to pay for the $15 pesticide-free organic chicken. Like God damn we spending more money.

Speaker 2 21:30

You know what? We could pay somebody. That's a really good idea. We could pay somebody to raise the chickens and that way we can sell eggs. We can raise chickens to sell those chickens to other people. Look, I'm in the growth mindset.

Speaker 1 21:43

That's annoying, but it's an amazing idea.

Speaker 2 21:46

I think that's my mentality and that stems from not my environment like not where I grew up but the people that I met in college, like once I started realizing that the way that I thought about money wasn't the only way that people thought about money Like. For me, it was either scarcity mindset or you got a little bit, so let's do a little bit more with a little bit that you got. I wasn't raised around people who had excess. I wasn't raised around people who understood that sometimes you got to spend money to make money.

Speaker 1 22:15

I always heard that, but that never made sense to me.

Speaker 2 22:17

It makes sense to me now, you know, but it didn't make sense to me then.

Speaker 1 22:21

Do you feel like you saw your parents have a healthy divide with money?

Speaker 2 22:27

I don't know what that means, just transparently speaking, like my mother was the breadwinner of the family, like my mother had like the traditional nine to five job and she was making six figures in the like 90s and early 2000s and that was unheard of for anybody that looks like me. But we also had a lot of debt. My mom was very big on putting me in activities in private school. I was in pageants, I was a cheerleader, I, you know, we went on vacation. I mean not vacations but trips to see family and stuff like that. So we might've had a lot more money dollar wise, but we also weren't on any government assistance. Everything that we paid for like we literally paid for out of our pockets. So I feel, at least for me, sometimes when you're in that like lower middle class field and you don't have that help, sometimes it's harder. You don't have anything to lean on because you make just a little bit too much for help but not enough to do anything fun.

Speaker 1 23:24

And that's true that you see people fall between the cracks with that all the time With us. We were on government assistance. So I remember walking it in WIC W with that all the time With us. We were on government assistance, so I remember walking it in WIC. Wic stands for Women, infants and Children. I don't know if WIC is like the welfare or food stamp program. I don't know if those things are all interchangeable, but I remember when the food stamps were actual paper, like little brown. It's been a while but I think they are. Yeah, for me it was embarrassing. Everybody in my neighborhood was on food stamps.

Speaker 2 23:50

I was so jealous. I was so jealous because there were times when we applied and we didn't get it, because we were I don't want to say struggling Struggling is a hard word but it wasn't comfortable Financially. We weren't in a cushiony comfortable place.

Speaker 1 24:12

And I felt like if we just got a little bit more help we would have been okay. And we didn't qualify For me to get kind of accustomed to the way that you spend money, because she and I didn't always have this little agreement that we have.

Speaker 1 24:19

The money just look different now so it hurts less when it leaves. But I'm more comfortable kind of following your lead with the money thing, cause that's not really something that I have the foresight with. Both of our girls are in private school. I'm not accustomed to paying money for schools, but she went to Emory University. I went to a local state college. We both have experiences in private school before high school. You went to private high school, right, you went to private school the whole time.

Speaker 2 24:46

Yeah, kindergarten through high school.

Speaker 1 24:48

Yeah, and I went to private school for seventh and eighth grade, so I got out of the frying pan, back into the fryer you know what I'm saying. And it was, it was bad, but it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how much we shell out for these things. For the girls, the ballet the activities.

Speaker 1 25:07

Sometimes they have like even clothes. Emory has a whole closet full of clothes and sometimes you'll buy clothes. At least you're used to it. I'm like damn why she need t-shirts. She got some upstairs. But the more I live and the more I kind of see how the money works, it's easier for me to adopt your mindset a little bit more and be like I can't see the vision. But what I'm not going to do is let my relationship with money interrupt the opportunity for my daughters to go and get the best possible education they can. So I'm leaning on you like hey, this look crazy, but I'm trusting that you know what you're doing. And in 15 years we're going to look back and be like, damn, that was a great investment.

Speaker 2 25:45

And I feel very confident about the financial decisions that I've not made, but I've led in us making decisions together when it involves the kids, because I think this is a key moment where, if you have it, spending the money to make more money or to put your kids in better situations later helps. Like he said, I went to Emory University. It's in Atlanta. If you know anything about Emory University, you know it's not diverse, like I'm not even going to lie about that and there is a very specific demographic socioeconomic demographic of people that attend school there.

Speaker 2 26:17

I wasn't a part of that group, not even a little bit no-transcript when it comes to access, when it comes to even like internships, for example we were talking about this the other day I was not for internships in college. If it wasn't making me money, I wasn't doing it. I was in the work-study program. I would have worked at the mall, like whatever I could do to put money in my pocket. I was going to do. I knew nothing about the academic investment in doing an internship and just having like job skills. Nobody told me that. Can we talk about that real quick? Of course, of course.

Speaker 1 27:18

So Dame Dash is the former CEO of Rockefeller Records, the record label that Jay-Z was a part of for the majority of his career, and Dame Dash talks a lot about money. It personally never resonates with me the way Dame Dash talks about money, because he has a very. If it ain't about the money, if it ain't about the growth, if it ain't about this financial wealth building, I ain't trying to hear it. I hear people all the time with if it ain't about the money, I ain't picking up the phone mindset. To me that is a poor man's mindset. Let's just take social media, for example. People walk up to me all the time hey bro, how I get brand deals, how I get brand deals, how I get brand?

Speaker 1 27:53

deals I'm trying to quit my job. I'm trying to quit my job. I'm trying to get these and they're too proud to take less money or they're too proud to do a free opportunity. I still speak for free. I still take free opportunities, because it's not always about the money, it's about the leverage, it's about the experience, it's about building the relationships, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 28:16

It's going to take you from point A to point Z, honestly.

Generational Financial Planning Perspectives

Speaker 1 28:19

If you focus on the money, you're hyper fixated on the end goal, to the distress of everything in between. One of the turning points in the way that I think about money and financial planning for the future, which are two different things in my mind, like family planning and money what changed my mind was when I said, oh, my daughter to work at Fast Food so she can know the value of hard work and no one even looked at me. She's like why do that when your child can have a great internship, with all these connections you have, can have an internship at, like a federal government agency that specializes in the thing that she wants to do, where she doesn't just get money to learn the value of hard work, she gets real live work experience with people that can get her some type of social leverage to slide into a career field after she graduates from college. What's the point of flipping burgers and fries and, oh, job well done. I sweated to death when you leave your college education to a vast nothingness of employment?

Speaker 2 29:14

That's exactly what happened to me. Luckily, it worked out. It worked out for me because I ended up being a part of a program called Teach for America.

Speaker 1 29:24

TFA. Shout out to TFA.

Speaker 2 29:25

Yeah and shout out to Miami cohort. I think being around those people and just giving me a couple of extra years to figure life out really helped and changed the trajectory of my life completely. There's nothing against like flipping burgers if you have to, but my kids got aunties, uncles, who are scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, fashion artists every field that you could think of. We have people in those fields and I feel like one of my biggest hindrances as a kid is that I had all of these ideas of what I wanted to do, but I had no idea what it actually took to get into those fields. Entertainment law, for example. I always wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. Yes, I am an entertainment lawyer. Yes, I am an entertainment lawyer now. But all the things that people told me to do to get in the field weren't what got me in the field, you know what got me in?

Speaker 2 30:10

entertainment law Connections, connections, yeah, doing a good job.

Speaker 1 30:13

Walking up to people you don't know and was like hi, my name is Noemi, this is what I do.

Speaker 2 30:17

It was my social skills. It was my ability to be in a room with celebrities and not act a damn fool. It was my ability to shine in spaces where everybody's shining. Everybody in the room knew somebody to get in the room, but how do you stand out? And I don't feel like I would have learned that by working at Burger King. I feel like I learned that by being in spaces where I was uncomfortable, by being in spaces that pushed me to speak, by being in spaces that push me to have conversations with people that may not look like me, that may not come from the place that I come from, and to be confident in my interactions with those people. And I feel like that comes with those internships, that comes with those girls being in ballet and doing a performance in front of all the mommies and daddies. But you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 31:00

But those little things matter. I didn't see that at first, but if I would have walked into this relationship with a man, I'm the man. I got to be the breadwinner Just real quick. I never cared about being a breadwinner.

Speaker 2 31:12

We thought I was going to be rich. I'm the entertainment lawyer Shawty was talking about me.

Speaker 1 31:20

I'm going to buy you a Dodge Charger. I'm like, hey, flew me out. I have no problem with that Flew me all the way out. My ego ain't attached to how much money I make.

Speaker 2 31:26

When I met Kier, I knew he was going to be a star. I tried to tell him there was just something about him that I felt like we would go to all these law school events.

Speaker 1 31:37

Barristers.

Speaker 2 31:38

Barristers ball and networking events. And he was like the dude on my arm Like, yeah, this is my boyfriend, blah blah, blah. But he just had a way of speaking with people and he had a way of connecting with people and I'm just like all the things that I had to learn by going to Emory and putting myself in these situations, he just knew innately. And I'm like you just haven't been in the right room. And ever since then, like that moment that I met him, I'm like what do you want to do? And I was very big on pushing you to do that because I saw everything that I had to work so hard to learn that he already knew and if he was in the right room with the right people, he would take off and look at him now.

Speaker 1 32:15

That's what happens. Look at him now Okay. Was I right or was I right? Toot toot, you're right, but that brings home the point. What would happen if, instead of flipping those chickens at Popeye's like I did, I had an internship at a place where I could gain some real social capital and I could see some people who ain't look or sound like me and get a different lived experience? And that's definitely what I want for my kids. There's nothing wrong with working at Burger King by the way.

Speaker 1 32:44

Absolutely. It's a generational thing. Didn't your mom work at McDonald's?

Speaker 2 32:47

Yeah, my mom started off at McDonald's, ended up working for a prudential financial company, making six figures within like 10 year time span.

Speaker 1 32:57

Do you think you would be here right now if she didn't do that?

Speaker 2 33:00

No.

Speaker 1 33:00

It's a generational thing. This may not be comfortable to hear, but you know I'm not here to tell you the comfortable thing. I'm here to tell you the truth. Sometimes it takes generations to get out of poverty and sometimes it's not your generation's time to enjoy all of the fruits. You are still the working generation. My grandmother I don't think she ever finished elementary school. My mother didn't finish college. I got my master's degree. My daughter should be able to leverage themselves higher if they wish to.

Speaker 2 33:29

Or at least put themselves in a financial place where they might not have to do it. I mean, I want them to be financially stable. I know that's really hard to hear, because I feel like at least in the Haitian community the kids kind of stay home until they're like, financially stable.

Speaker 1 33:44

Well, really until you get married and then you move on, which is so different from the African-American community, where there's extreme pressure on you to move out of the house as soon as you become an adult.

Speaker 2 33:55

And I was just about to get to that Like, even though that's the Haitian mentality, my mother never did that. My mom was very big on you figure it out. I don't want you to have to call me and ask me for $50. Me and my mom just talked about this the other day and she was just like that was my goal for you. The whole Burger King flipping burgers thing that was an argument between my parents. My dad wanted me to work at Burger King. My mom was like, nah, she's not doing that. I'm going to take her to my meetings. My mom had opened a business by that point which was the first Haitian satellite company, hstv but she made me sit in all the meetings which were boring. I was like 15. I didn't want to be there.

Speaker 1 34:28

Oh, that had to be awful.

Speaker 2 34:28

Yeah, but I saw my mom, who was a woman in a male-dominated space, interact and make moves Like even now, the way that I handle business, even though mommy I love you, but I'm more like her than I think and I'm definitely like her Be quiet, I ain't saying nothing.

Speaker 2 34:47

I'm definitely like her in business situations and I think it's because I saw her move, I saw her bigness, I saw how she demanded people's attention and she knew what she was talking about. And I think, for me, what I took from that is, if I ever have something to say, I need to know what I'm talking about. That's where I get that from, and I think, for me, what I took from that is, if I ever have something to say, I need to know what I'm talking about. That's where I get that from, and I just feel like that is why she's in the financial situation that she's in now, and that's what I want for my girls.

Speaker 1 35:12

I wish that I could have seen my mom be more industrious, but instead of following her footsteps, I actually worked very hard to be the opposite of her. I've had a job consistently since I was 14 years old. I'm 36. Yeah, I've never been more than five months without work since I was 14 years old. I worked throughout all of high school, all of college and everything. I definitely worked harder than I would have had to had I had some social capital. But my lesson becomes the blessing for my kids.

Speaker 2 35:40

Work harder, work smarter.

Speaker 1 35:41

Man work smarter, I still be working harder sometimes I know. Because it's something about like getting your hands dirty and looking up and seeing how far you've come and like, oh man, I really did that.

Speaker 2 35:52

But none of that is appealing to me.

Speaker 1 35:53

I like the rest. It ain't gratifying to me. No more at this big age. I'd be too tired, I'd be like baby.

Speaker 2 35:59

Let's pay somebody to do this. The road leads travel.

Speaker 1 36:02

But sometimes I'm like nah, we can do this ourselves. You're right Because there has to be a cap on a let's pay somebody to do this.

Speaker 2 36:09

If it's up to me, I will do nothing. If it was me alone, we'd probably be broke. It is what it is. I am super proud of you for even putting that out there.

Speaker 1 36:19

That came out of nowhere. Sit down talk.

Speaker 2 36:20

But also I feel like if we followed your thing, we'd be working ourselves to the bone. We'd probably be in here braising chickens.

Speaker 1 36:28

We had $300,000 in the bank account.

Speaker 2 36:31

I ain't paying $15 for that chicken. Let's go buy a chicken and make more chickens.

Speaker 1 36:36

It's such a tug of war with me because sometimes I feel like, ah, let's just pay the money and just outsource it. And sometimes I'm like, ah, let's just pay the money and just outsource it. And sometimes I'm like, ah, why are we paying money to outsource it like we can do?

Speaker 2 36:47

this ourselves, but we meet in the middle, at least right now. Correct me if I'm wrong. I feel we're in a very comfortable place financially. I think the weariness comes from the what's next conversation, and I think that's where we disagree. I think we're both good where we are right now today.

Speaker 1 37:04

Yeah, I'm high over yet.

Speaker 2 37:05

But I think In terms of spending.

Speaker 1 37:07

Yeah, I'm high over.

Speaker 2 37:07

Yeah, you probably wish I spent less on certain things. I probably wish you spent a little bit more on certain things, but for the most part, I think we're in a good place. I think the problem is going to be what does savings look like? We're in the process of building our new home and one of the biggest pieces of contention between us is, like, what is our savings account gonna do after we close?

Speaker 2 37:27

And for me, I feel like you spend your savings on this. You save money so that you can buy a house, you save money so that you can buy a car, but it's not just to hold, just to stay in the account. It's for something, whether it's emergency fund or whatever. And I think with you, you're like're going to walk into this house and we're going to have nothing in savings. First of all, we smell like we're going to have like $0 in savings, but we're not going to have what we had in savings before closing, and I think that scares you, whereas for me, it's like this is what this was for, and I think that's the-.

Speaker 1 37:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2 37:58

The tug and pull.

Speaker 1 37:59

The whole concept of savings is new to me. I am 36 and this is the first time in my life that I had savings. I've always had to spend outside of my means because I lived on my own. Most people I know who had an opportunity to save money, live with a parent for a little bit or cohabitate with somebody and save cash. I never had those opportunities for real. So this is my first time having savings, and to think of just this nest egg that I built, just dropping it all in one place, it makes my stomach hurt because I still operate out of that scarcity mindset.

Speaker 1 38:31

When it comes to finances, I operate from the worst possible case scenario. I'm a business owner now I ain't got no paycheck coming. If I don't work, what happens if I get sick? If I fall off my one wheel and I get paralyzed? I don't work. What happens if I get sick, if I fall off my one wheel and I get paralyzed? It's the worst possible case scenario. But the worst possible case scenario has happened to me so much in my life that I like to at the very least operate from that point, because it can't be worse than that. That's the most devastating turn of events that can happen out of everything that's on the table right. I like to operate from that mindset, and not having that money scares me because if something goes wrong, my main concern is how I want to financially take care of this family, because it's not like it was before. We split the bills. I pay for everything now.

Speaker 2 39:11

Which is so wild, because that's can you imagine if we talked to ourselves five years ago, six years ago, and we were like this is what your life going to look like?

Speaker 1 39:21

I'd be like where, where you get that money from.

Speaker 2 39:25

I was like this is what your life going to look like I'd be like where when you get that money from. I was like you do what. I would have snuck up behind me and put me to sleep. Boy, what's wrong with you? Can I challenge you real quick? You were talking about looking at things from like a worst possible scenario mindset. I think it's deeper than that. I think it almost cripples you, because you get to the worst possible case scenario mindset and then you live there and you stop there me. I'm like all right, let's entertain the worst possible case scenario. I have a law degree, you have a therapy degree. If something happens to one of us, we're both in a situation where we can get a job tomorrow. Of course, you know what I mean. We also have family support. They're not ideal, but we're not going to be on the street oh, that's worse than not ideal, but ideal.

Speaker 2 40:01

But that's what I'm saying, like, even if it's worst possible case scenario, we're not going to die. If it's like you just don't want to be there, then we won't buy the house, then we're stuck here. For me, it's just like do we want to think about worst case scenario and sit there and be sad about it, or are we looking at worst case scenario, whereas if we are there, how are we going to get ourselves out of it?

Speaker 1 40:20

Well, I don't think I'm ever just sitting sad about it. I entertain it because I want to prepare my mind for if that happens or have some type of escape plan.

Speaker 2 40:29

Do you think? I don't.

Speaker 1 40:30

No, I think you do. I just think we have different levels of comfort with sadness and different levels of comfort with the unknown and what's uncertain to us. I can sit in that moment and I'm not. It doesn't really affect me that much, For her sitting in that moment is really an anchor that brings her down in every possible way, like emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It drags her down. So we attack that thing from two different angles. But either way, I like to be prepared.

Speaker 1 41:00

I remember when I was younger, when I was a teenager, our house was so f***ed up we didn't even have company. Sometimes I used to open the front door and roaches used to drop out of the door sills, like between your front door and the framing. They just bloop, bloop, bloop roaches all the time. I spent a majority of my adulthood saying I'd rather be dead than to be that broken. Can I can't imagine my daughter living that way. So maybe she never will. Of course You're saying she never will because you're like look at our circumstances, Look at the social capital we have, Look at what we built. We can't fall that far, I agree. But in my mind it's like she never will because I have this fear of this thing, and I'm going to always go dumb hard to make sure that it never happens. It's the same mindset, it just comes. It's birthed from two different places.

Speaker 2 41:43

We all know that this series is about couples counseling and kind of how we work through issues, but I think there's something to be said when you work ahead of things that you know are going to come up soon. I don't even think we've ever set financial goals for our family, because we didn't know this was going to be a family.

Speaker 1 41:59

I think moving too quick.

Speaker 2 42:05

First of all, I don't believe in an order. I'm so glad you didn't say that Nothing has happened in the stereotypical order where usually before you get married and before you have kids, you have these financial conversations. We had none of that and we are learning as we go yeah, definitely, and for a very long time to be completely a buck with you up until 2021, we were at a deficit. We didn't have the financial comfort or ability to have any financial goals. We've been playing catch up. We just caught up y'all.

Speaker 1 42:29

And what's funny is in all that time we still bought a house.

Speaker 2 42:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1 42:32

We still did all of these things because every time we made more money or got a higher promotion, we elevated our quality of life.

Speaker 2 42:39

And it made sense.

Speaker 1 42:40

It always made sense.

Speaker 2 42:41

The apartment that we had, if we stayed at the apartment it would have been more expensive than the mortgage now. Absolutely so for us. We've made pretty financially sound decisions, but it was always necessary.

Speaker 1 42:55

It was a necessary decision.

Speaker 2 42:56

I feel like, for the first time, we can breathe and we have the comfort to be like all right, let's sit for a second and let's think about what we want to do. Number one thing was this house. This house could be a forever house, or this house could be a house that we're going to be in the next house we're about to move into yeah, the next house that we're moving into.

Speaker 2 43:12

It could be a forever house or it could be the house for the next five, six years. Either way, we're set up to where, if we got to stay here, we can afford to stay here. If you want something bigger, better, whatever, we can do that later down the line. But that's number one. We have everything that we need for our kids. We have enough room for our business. We have enough private room for ourselves. That makes sense right now. So that was really the biggest thing, because we've outgrown this house. But aside from that, what do we want to do?

Speaker 2 43:39

You said something before about how sometimes people make money and they realize that, like, that money isn't necessarily for you, it's for your descendants, it's for your kids. I don't see the money that we're making right now as a chance for me to finally go live my dreams and do everything that I want to do. I look at it first like, let me make sure my kids are set up, let me make sure our debt is paid off, let me make sure that we did what we have to do to make sure that we're good so that we can set our kids up for whatever they need, and then after that, that's my spending money and my fun money.

Speaker 1 44:10

When we talk about financial planning and goals and investments, I've always shied away from that conversation because I never felt like I had enough money to have enough knowledge to know what to do with something I don't have.

Speaker 2 44:22

But now, a lot of us are there.

Speaker 1 44:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people talk about crypto Like I still don't really. Hey, bro, you need to buy 120 shares of Sheena Eboo. And I'm like bro, I don't speak Mandarin, I don't understand.

Speaker 1 44:34

And when people start talking about finances, they start speaking above your head and going into this lingo, like, explain finances to me Like you would explain them to a three-year-old we knew, to the club yeah, we were ready and willing, but give me a second to catch up we weren't ready to buy a house, but we ran into a house that was an amazing deal for what we have and we knew we want to outgrow this during the next two years. We had to leap, so you can't do everything in the same season and I don't know maybe you're a financial guru Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't feel like we could save for this big ass house and be playing in the stock market and buying investments. I wouldn't feel comfortable.

Speaker 2 45:12

I wouldn't feel comfortable either. There's too much of a risk right now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 45:14

So I think we're moving at a pace where next year we'll be in a place to start investing in these things. It's just not the time to do that right now, and I'm okay with that.

Speaker 2 45:23

Me too, I'm okay with that We've never talked about that before. I'm glad we're on the same page though.

Speaker 1 45:27

Now.

Speaker 2 45:27

But now's what matters.

Speaker 1 45:29

Now is what matters.

Speaker 2 45:30

Now is what matters.

Speaker 1 45:30

What are you doing now? Let's summarize this whole thing, because we didn't talk about financial cheating, like when you hoard money from from your significant other. That's a thing in some people's relationships.

Speaker 2 45:41

it's a language thing, because I think people can look at what we're doing and consider that cheating because we still have our own money. Like, even though you pay all the bills, we make a lot more money than the bills cost. And it's shoes coming in often that I don't ask anything about. You also don't ask anything, but there's going to be a point where do we have to share with each other everything that we buy, like whose money is what money?

Speaker 1 46:05

and all of those things I'm never going to.

Speaker 2 46:07

I don't think we have that.

Speaker 1 46:08

Yeah, I don't care about that. I don't have to sneak shoes into the house. You don't have to sneak purses. I'm not turning into you, but I think that you've rubbed off on me because I wasn't going to buy the BMW.

Speaker 2 46:18

Well, the reason why you didn't buy that car was because people in the car dealership no, that was a Jeep. Yeah, that was a Jeep.

Speaker 1 46:25

I walked into a Jeep dealership and I asked how much a Wrangler was and the dude looked at me he's like, oh, you can't afford this. And then I went and I was like, okay, and they made the BMW easy choice, I was going to buy a Ford Explorer. And he was like, man, get the BMW, why not?

Speaker 2 46:40

I said get what you want, get what you want. And I was like man, that's too expensive. But I budgeted. I had my Excel spreadsheet. I put in the amount of money that we were making. I put in what the monthly payment would be. I'm like you can get a car that costs up to this much a month and be good.

Speaker 1 46:57

I'm glad you did because.

Navigating Finances and Relationships

Speaker 2 46:58

I really enjoy the BMW girl.

Speaker 1 46:59

That goes to show how the mindset is just completely different and how it continues to be different.

Speaker 2 47:04

So I would say, if you are somebody who does live from a scarcity mindset, I think one thing that would be really good to do is a budget. It's for you to look at how much do you spend, how much do you need, how much do the things that you want cost? What do you want to do and really put it on paper, and you don't even got to do. The things that you want cost what do you want to do and really put it on paper, and you don't even got to do the math yourself. Excel spreadsheets do it for you. Or go on Google, type in Google Sheets budget template. For someone like here, just as your wife, you need to see the numbers. You need to see it make it make sense.

Speaker 2 47:36

Yeah, and I think if you're someone like me that is real big on the experiences and stuff like that, really analyze the amount of money that you're spending. Is this experience worth it? Like, if you're looking at private schools, can you actually afford the tuition? If you can't afford the tuition, do they have financial aid programs? See how much you can get based on that financial program and then look at all of the schools that you put all the prices together and figure out what makes sense for you If the variance of cost?

Speaker 1 48:04

is worth it? Is the school $800 better than the next best option.

Speaker 2 48:09

Regardless of where you're coming from, I think the key to dealing with any kind of like financial insecurity is to put it on paper and really see what it is, because I think a lot of times, as you've seen with us, it comes from our financial upbringings, it comes from our parents' relationship with money, it comes from our own deficits when it comes to our financial situation. The majority of people aren't coming from a place where they got millions of dollars. Everybody is trying to make it work and I just think that the bigness of it can feel really scary. But if we just chip it down to little things and get down to the nitty gritty of it and put it down on paper, we'll be able to see a lot more clearly what those issues are.

Speaker 1 48:49

Well said, I don't know if I got financial advice, man, I think for me is. I think it's going to be more about mindset and walking into a relationship, taking the gender out of the money If you walk into, regardless of your financial situations. Let's say I make $30,000 a year, you make 80, but I feel, because of my gender, I have a responsibility to take care of everything, even though that's not my reality. So I would say, take the gender out of it and try to figure out what works best for the both of you all, what works best for the collective, because sometimes what's going to work best for the collective is going to really not work for one individual or both.

Speaker 1 49:29

And that's a conversation, because if my pride is attached to what I take care of in the house and I'm unable to, then I'm not being my full self. I don't feel like a full or whole person, and everyone deserves to feel like a full or whole person, regardless of how much cash you bring in and also separate your worth in a relationship from the dollar amount. I have a lot of conversations with men where it's really hard to do that because with being a man, it's about utility. If you're not useful. You're not worth anything If you're not bringing in money or you're not providing for the people around you. You're not worth anything, which is really f***ed up, because that's not everyone's reality. But just because it's not, that doesn't mean you deserve to feel worthless or you haven't run into an income or economic situation that allows you to do the things that you will ultimately like to do.

Speaker 1 50:18

So to me, I just think just stepping back and taking that piece out of it the responsibility. I need you to pay all the rent. If you don't have all the rent money, maybe we need to pivot. Yeah, maybe we need to try something different right now. I think that's really helpful. I see a lot of people nosedive with that. All right, so we about to get out of here. Moral of the story Finances are complicated. They're as complicated as love. I want you to tell me in the comments below what's your biggest takeaway from this conversation. What do you think you can apply to your relationship, your situation, or tell a friend for them to apply to their relationship or situation. It's always a pleasure. Till next time.