This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltsin.
My new podcast What Happened in Nashville tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed.
It doesn't matter how much I fight.
Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this.
It doesn't matter how much justice we get.
None of it's going to get me pregnant.
Listen to What Happened in Nashville on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him.
Gabe Ortiz is a cop.
His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late.
He was the head of this gang.
You going to push that line for the cause?
Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew.
Listen to The Brothers Ortiz on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Who would you call if the unthinkable happened?
My sister was shot 22 times.
A police officer, right?
But what do you do when the monster is the man in blue?
This dude is the devil.
He'll hurt you.
This is the story of a detective who thought he was above the law until we came together to take him down.
I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die.
I got you, I got you, I got you.
Listen to The Girlfriends Untouchable on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I got you.
Hi, Kyle.
Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan?
Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link.
Thanks.
Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you.
Here's the link.
But there was no link.
There was no business plan.
I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.
I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.
Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people the second season of my podcast shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts from tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs.
WebMD's health discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues.
Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow.
It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy.
It's just that people don't know why it's healthy.
And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other.
Hello everybody, I'm Gemma Speck and welcome back to The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
Wherever you are in the world new listeners, old listeners it is so great to have you here back for another amazing guest episode.
If I had to pick two categories that I think I get the most questions about when it comes to our 20s, it would no doubt be love and money.
And although we might view those as separate topics, separate ideas, they are actually deeply linked.
How we think about money.
It affects how we date, who we date, how our love stories turn out, and how we think about love will impact relationships.
What money problems, money issues, money value differences we may overlook?
So today, let's talk about the intersection of money, relationships, and psychology.
Everything from prenups to how much you should spend on a wedding, if and when you should get joint bank accounts, and why you really need to understand your money story to really show up in your relationship.
Of course, I am not a financial expert, but I do have someone joining me today who is and who is not only a financial expert, but an expert in love and money.
Let's get into it.
Without further ado, Jack Howard, welcome to the podcast.
Welcome to the Psychology of Your 20s.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
We were just talking about this.
We have the most disparate time zones.
You're in Detroit.
I'm in Sydney and we've managed to make it work.
So thank you.
The power of technology is working for us in this moment.
It's what, six o'clock, 6 p.m. here in Detroit.
And I know it's morning for you.
So you're just getting your day started.
I'm about to wrap it up.
I know.
It looks pretty good in the future.
I will say the 7th of November, which is when we're recording this, which is tomorrow.
It's a good day.
Before I go any further, because I'm going to just jump into my questions and I need the listeners to know a little bit more about you and who you are and your amazing work.
Yeah, so I'm Jack Howard.
I serve as head of money wellness for Ally Bank.
And I bet you're thinking like, what is that?
What title is that?
Never heard of it before.
And it's a really amazing role that I've been in for about two years.
I've had the pleasure of working for Ally for 15 years now in various roles, everything from our corporate giving, where I focused on financial education for underserved communities, and corporate giving and employee volunteerism.
I did that for a big chunk of my time.
And then I moved to our invest business where I did a stretch role as chief of staff for the president there and decided to stay and help launch our personal advice business, where you work with a personal wealth advisor to help you to think through retirement.
And it was during that piece of my career where I was introduced to money psychology.
When you're better aligned to your values, your emotions, and really understand the behaviors that you have behind some of your money decisions.
It just helps you to stick to the plan.
And I fell in love with it so much because one of the questions we would ask is what is your first memory of money?
And for me, professionally and personally, it was such an amazing question because it answered so much from the work that I had done in financial literacy to even personally the ups and downs that I've had with money, of really understanding the why behind your money decisions, the skills that you try to implement.
A lot of people just have a hard time implementing the skills, even though you know the right thing to do.
So I was in that role for a bit.
And again I fell in love with the money psychology.
So much that I went to our leadership and said you know, I think this is really the future of how people will talk about money.
I think it's the future of how banks will interact with customers.
So less of the skills, yes, you have to know how to save, how to invest.
I can teach you how to do a budget, all those things.
But really understanding that, those emotions and the behaviors that will help you to implement the skills having a better relationship with money, I think is the future of how we will talk about it.
And they said, okay, prove it.
And I was given the opportunity to start this role.
And most recently, we created a free course financial wellness program called money roots, where we teach again having a better relationship with money with four different workshops.
And I'm sure we'll get into that more.
But that's kind of been my journey.
And that's my current role.
Oh, my God, I love how you've just done so many different things and how it's all just linked back to this, what it sounds like, this desire to understand people better through how money is a tool for them, right.
And this real psychological element of it.
And, you know, I think it stemmed from in my 20s.
I was horrible at money and I graduated from college with about thirty thousand dollars in student loan debt and credit card debt.
And from graduating really became passionate about just having a better understanding of the skill-based side of money, specifically with credit cards.
But as time continued, I was in this hamster wheel of making money, creating credit card debt and then paying it off.
So I did that through my 30s.
And it really wasn't until this money, psychology piece of my financial journey and professional journey, where I really got to the root of why do I do this.
Why do I do the things that I do with money?
And now I can put up guardrails to, you know, help me to be more successful.
So it's definitely been a journey and one that I'm so excited to share with everybody else.
I have a question for you about that piece you just mentioned.
You graduated college, you had this debt.
At the time, what do you think your biggest money mistake was?
Hmm.
I think my biggest, so mine is deeply rooted in my money storing.
My biggest mistake then, is just not realizing, specifically for the credit card debt, why I was creating credit card debt.
And for me it was grounded in a lot of emotional spending which we're seeing in young people.
Still, we have this fear of missing out in social media.
You wanna keep up with other people.
But for me it was emotional spending from childhood beliefs that I had learned from society and my parents.
All of those things created this version of me, where I would spend and create debt.
So I think the biggest lesson I've learned that I wish I would have known then is that there is no amount of money that can solve your issues when you need therapy.
Right.
When you need emotional support for things, there's no there's no purse.
There's no vacation.
When you have some root issues that require therapy. additional support, you have to address that.
And oftentimes, like with money or food, we will use these things to serve as a distraction.
So I would tell myself you know, let's get rid of the distractions, really address some of our root issues so that we can now show up better with our relationship with money.
Speaking of relationships, What I really want to talk to you about today is the intersection between money and relationships in our 20s.
Around marriage yes, but also just around financial compatibility and how money actually impacts love in many, many ways.
Let's start with this question.
How important is financial compatibility in a relationship?
OK, so I love this question.
One of the classes that we teach in Money Roots it's, it's really, it's called Love and Money, where we go deep into the very thing you just said.
We go deep into for you and your romantic partner.
What are the beliefs that you have and your partner has?
What are the things that you learned about money from your family and from society?
And then how does this show up in your relationship?
So.
Most people don't have compatibility.
You will have, you know, for whatever reason, opposites attract.
You may have the spender and the saver, a nurturer and somebody who's an avoider.
We all have these money personalities.
So one, it's important to know kind of what your personality is.
But.
I want everyone to avoid shame around whatever your money personality is.
So I'll be honest and say for me and my partner, who I've been with since I graduated from college he is more of a saver, I'm more of a spender.
And I think throughout my 20s I had so much shame around being a spender and I wanted to be frugal like him.
But that's not who I am.
I'm a spender.
I'm a spender.
So it wasn't until I got to a place of understanding through your money story, through really getting very aligned with your money values.
That's where having compatibility can come into play because you can be opposites.
But when you understand your competitors partner's money story, you understand your partner's values.
It creates empathy for the differences.
So it's less about.
You're frugal and cheap and i'm a spender and you know.
You know you're overspending on everything.
The bumping of heads to more of oh, i understand why she is that way, i understand why he is that way and now we're able to come together as a couple and create compatibility.
Now we can come together without shame, with empathy, to say knowing that you're this person, I'm this person.
How do we move forward together to create our own value system around money?
And that's actually something that we teach in our Money Roots class, the love and money.
We actually take you through understanding what that personality is, what your values are, and then how do we move forward to create something together?
When you were talking about your partner, I was like, ah, that's a familiar story.
Me and my partner are the same.
Yeah.
It's always been that way for me.
Like money was, again, it's just such an emotional thing.
And so of course it's going to be like reflected and show up in your relationship.
And of course there's going to be times when, like, what is it?
Like money is the thing that couples argue about the most, right?
What I'm hearing you say is like you don't necessarily have to change all that much.
You just have to understand and find the middle ground of, like what are we responsible for in this relationship?
Is that what you're kind of saying?
Yeah.
So, no, I think, yeah, definitely finding the middle ground and guardrails.
So for me, knowing that I am a spender.
I have to deeply attach my spending to my values.
So I'm I'm a huge proponent of values based spending.
And what that means is I know my top values are really beautiful things.
Authenticity, generational wealth.
And really my spirituality.
So when I anchor and that's a part of money wellness and money well-being when you're able to anchor your spending, saving and giving to your values, you get a higher return on what I like to say or higher return on joy.
So for me, I know that.
If a spending, if I'm spending, and it doesn't attach to those values, pause.
Let's pause and give it 48 hours.
You know, is that black pair of pants beautiful enough?
Does it does it meet the requirement of my value of really beautiful things?
Does it meet my requirement for generational wealth?
And that has stopped me in my tracks.
I'll be honest, that has stopped me in my tracks with buying things, because I'll give myself that pause of does this meet my values?
And once you start spending from a place of this has to meet my values.
It increases your well-being with money.
And then on the other side, for my partner, who is more frugal.
Now we're looking at it like money is a tool for enjoyment.
So we got to have a splurge account.
We have a splurge account.
So it forces him to now say, yes, we're going to save, but we're also going to enjoy the money.
We've set money aside to where, if I want to spend 100 on cookies because that's my latest obsession and he wants to spend 100 on Legos because that's his latest obsession, that's okay, because we both have that wiggle room within our budget to do so.
So again, it's creating those structures within your relationship to make that happen.
And it's also knowing how to have the conversation.
I think that's a big piece that people are missing.
Which I feel like we can get into in a second.
I want to ask another question on this though, before we do, which is How do you deal with inequality in earnings when you're in a long-term relationship or you're in just a relationship in your 20s and beyond?
What happens when one partner makes significantly more money or significantly less money?
How do we kind of handle that conversation?
Yeah, I think we have to have transparency.
I've talked to people where they'll do a split based off of percentages and that's how much you put in.
And some people wanted to make it 50-50, because it makes them feel like they're showing up and it may make you feel powerful.
Again, we got to understand the story behind that and what is preference for you as an individual.
So having the transparency, one of, I love to say money date nights.
So I'm a big fan of less schedule money, date nights where we can meet once per week, at minimum once per month, to talk about these things and create these guidelines and go into it having topics of are we going to have joint accounts or split accounts?
How are we going to pay the bills?
How are we going to be compatible with our values and our beliefs?
So I think the first step is to just have these conversations and setting time aside to do so.
Yeah.
And also just being incredibly realistic about like, if this person has a certain lifestyle, could you keep up?
Can you keep up with what they want to do and what they want to spend, with still doing the 50-50 thing or with you wanting to pay your fair share?
I do feel like I have a couple of friends who are in relationships like this.
Specifically, I'm thinking about one friend who she makes a lot more than her partner.
And he was always adamant like, no, we're going to split everything 50-50.
And it was like, well, then we can't do the things that I actually want to do in a relationship.
So it was like this real, it actually got very like complex with them.
It was like ideas of masculinity and like power and equality, but then also like enjoyment and experiences and like what matters more to their relationship.
Like that they can continue to play the role that they think they should play in a relationship, or they can have fun with each other.
With the cards they're dealt
So like it does get very, very complex.
Yeah.
And I just want to call out everything you just said has nothing to do with money.
Exactly.
It has nothing to do with money.
You talked about.
No, you talked about gender roles and enjoyment.
And how do we want to have experiences together?
Has nothing to do with money.
That's a completely separate conversation.
So the problem is we don't have those conversations.
And then it turns into a blow up about money.
So it's so important when we think of the money, date night and how do we have productive conversations with your partner to say my values are experiences and I do want to travel the world.
And so as a partnership, we should allocate our money in this way to do these things.
But again, it's realizing that those conversations need to take place.
And oftentimes people just avoid it and you're ending up in an argument.
Oh, yeah.
Again, I'm going to pull back that statistic that we said at the start.
It's like the biggest source of conflict in relationships is money.
So it's like when you're in your 20s and you're in a relationship, it's like this is everybody focuses on like oh, let's talk about our attachment styles and let's talk about our future.
Like, do we want kids?
Like, no, you need to have serious conversations about money early on.
It's actually deeply important.
You do.
You know the money the, what I love about the work we're doing here at Ally and just this whole movement that you're going to see within.
I hope to see more within money psychology and money.
Wellness is looking at money as a part of your well-being.
So when you think of your social well-being, so your friendships when you think of your community, where do you live and how do you support it?
Your career.
You think of your fitness and your health.
Those are all areas of well-being.
And when money is off, it impacts all of that.
When you are not satisfied with your money.
We're seeing through our own data that people are up at night.
They can't sleep at night.
It's impacting their romantic partnerships.
So it's so important that, even starting in your 20s, you know not to let money be this static thing.
But it is a part of your well-being and to give it its full attention in your relationship is so important.
Okay, we're going to take a short break here, but when we return, we're going to talk about prenups.
Okay, let's do it.
We're going to talk about weddings.
Stay with us.
I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltsin.
My new podcast What Happened in Nashville tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed.
We have some breaking news to tell you about.
Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor.
In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight, and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos.
I was terrified.
Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever.
At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow.
But this story isn't just about a few families' futures.
It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all.
It doesn't matter how much I fight.
Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this.
It doesn't matter how much justice we get.
None of it's going to get me pregnant.
Listen to What Happened in Nashville on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us.
Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths.
Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas.
32 years total law enforcement experience.
But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy.
He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do.
You're going to push that line for the cause took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.
When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming.
My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about.
Like, my mom started screaming my dad's name, and I just heard one gunshot.
The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way.
Listen to The Brothers Ortiz on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Who would you call if the unthinkable happened?
I just fell and started screaming.
If you lost someone you loved in the most horrific way.
I said through shot 22 times.
The police, right?
But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of?
This dude is the devil.
He's a snake.
He'll hurt you.
I got you.
I got you.
I got you.
I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is The Girlfriends Untouchable.
Detective Roger Golubsky spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing Black women across Kansas City, using his police badge to scare them into silence.
This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down.
I told Roger Golubsky, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die.
Listen to The Girlfriends Untouchable on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
But there was no link.
There was no business plan.
It's not his fault.
I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.
My name is Evan Ratliff.
I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Aldman
There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now it will happen.
I got to thinking, could I be that one person?
I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.
This season on Shell Game.
I'm trying to build a real company with a real product, run by fake people.
Oh, hey, Evan.
Good to have you join us.
I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses.
Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Decoding Women's Health.
I'm Dr Elizabeth Poynter, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City.
On this show I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians, asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you.
100% of women go through menopause.
It can be such a struggle for our quality of life.
But even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it?
The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything.
I never used to forget things.
They're concerned that one, they have dementia.
And the other one is, do I have ADHD?
There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood and also to have better day-to-day life.
Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr Elizabeth Pointer on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening now.
Something that I am so fascinated by is prenups, why people get them, what they really mean.
I genuinely, I'm going to be completely transparent.
I have no idea what a prenup is.
Can you kind of give us a little bit of an explanation?
Yeah.
So essentially it's a legal document that outlines your finances and your assets.
What happens to it should the marriage end?
So we're no longer want to be together.
What do we do with the house?
What do we do with that bank account?
All of those things helps you to think about this before you get to a place of divorce.
So I look at it as almost insurance for your love.
I really want people to shift their mind. perspective about prenups.
And we're finding that in some of our data that it's becoming less of a taboo topic and more of a way for couples to be transparent.
Yeah.
So I'm going to ask some really naive questions.
Do you only need a prenup if you have existing wealth?
No.
And here's why.
Here's why.
So for everybody out there in your 20s, My question is do you think you will have the same amount of wealth in your 40s and 50s that you have in your 20s?
I'm hoping for most people, the answer is going to be no.
So the person that you are in your 20s, the amount of assets that you have in your 20s compared to when you're older, it changes.
So I think when you set those guidelines in the beginning, when you get to a place of, it didn't work out.
As you mentioned earlier, money is one of the highest sources of conflicts in marriages.
So if you get to a place to where this didn't work out and we want to go our separate ways and.
You're doing it in the beginning.
And I have experienced this and seen it with friends.
The person you are at the beginning of your marriage, when you're in love and not emotional, is a very, very different person than who you are when you are at the place of divorce.
It's two different people.
So if you're able to do this at a place when you're still kind to each other, where you still have best intentions for each other and you're really I want to say rational, do it then to where you don't have to.
You know you're battling with someone later when a lot of emotions are involved.
So this is my second naive question, because I totally agree with you.
I feel like my parents have always said and they're still together, but from seeing friends of theirs get divorced, the person you marry is not the person you divorce.
They're two different people.
Does asking for a prenup put pressure on the relationship?
You know, there's definitely like a skeptical part of my mind and please correct it if it's wrong.
That says isn't that just saying like a part of me doesn't think we're going to last?
No, I think we need to shift that, that mindset and really look at it from.
We're at a place now where people are more transparent about their finances.
People have especially in your 20s and 30s, you're coming into your relationship with more assets.
So you may have children, all those things.
So really understanding that this is, again, insurance should things not work out.
And it's a way for us to be transparent.
And it's also it helps.
I love that it creates a level set of where are we with our finances?
Because in order to have a prenup, you have to understand your assets and liabilities.
You have to get all these things on paper for both you and your partner.
So you're it allows you to do that level set.
So I don't think I want us to shift that and look at it as less about we're doomed and all of that.
And be realistic with the stats of what divorce and all those things are, and saying that, while we are kind to each other and have sound decision making and not high emotions, let's just do this now to ensure that it's not a problem later.
Yeah.
And I bet that you won't need it.
Let's say that.
It's just insurance.
Yeah, I like this idea.
Insurance for your love.
Like you don't buy house insurance thinking that you're going to set your house on fire.
You know what I mean?
You don't.
But you still have it just in case things happen.
So and I'm hopeful that all marriages last.
But, in the event that they don't, just having that as a backup so that you're not fighting over things later creates.
And, you know, I also think it creates a better relationship post the divorce, because you didn't have to fight for all of those things.
So definitely let's shift how we think about it and allow it to be a place to create transparency.
A great topic for Money Date Night.
Yeah, very good topic.
It's made me think.
So I have a bunch of friends who are getting married.
I'm like, I feel like you get to this point in your 20s where it's like a wedding every weekend.
Some of them are getting a lot, some of them are spending a lot of money on the wedding.
And I saw an article that said, this is with no judgment.
I really, I don't know enough.
But this article that said the more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you are to get divorced.
This is an entry point for me to ask you how much do you think couples should spend on their wedding?
Which I know you might not have an answer for, but do you see maybe a correlation between spending more and that putting strain on the relationship?
Let me say this.
I think that from my personal, I'll just use my personal experience and what I think people should do and, having this, get back to your values.
As a couple.
As a young couple, I think it's so important to get very aligned on what your values are individually and what your values will be as a couple.
And that includes what do we want this wedding to be?
So I'm not going to shame your values.
May be having a large wedding because you have a big family and it's celebratory.
It may be a part of your culture.
But for someone else it may be that they're having a smaller wedding and more intimate ceremony.
Is who they are.
Really honing in on what you want as a couple I think is so important and not getting pulled into what you mentioned.
Like, you know, I think a lot of this is like foreshadowing. fear of missing out.
You want to keep up with what your friend, all of your friends are having big weddings, so you should have a big wedding.
We tend to follow what other people do mindlessly, without really understanding who we are and what we want individually.
So, with that in mind, I'm not going to say a dollar amount, but I do want to say that I think it has to deeply align to what your values are as a couple.
And when you spend, from that point of view, it will be affordable, because you will not do things that are not affordable for either of you.
You'll do things that are that are affordable for both of you, shall I say.
Yeah.
And I like this idea of like, see, when I get married, I'm keen for a big wedding.
And I have a huge family.
I have a huge Italian-Irish family.
There's no avoiding it.
And my partner also has a huge family who we love.
But yeah, it's just so interesting when you see these lavish weddings and you think that you need personalized gifts for everybody and you think that you need everybody.
The wedding becomes more about other people than about you.
That's what a lot of my friends who have spent a lot of money on their wedding said, that they regretted.
And again, I like that you're bringing it back to values, right?
It's like, this is about you two showing your love for each other.
Yes, like your family and friends are involved, but like it's not their wedding.
Like, I think, the more you can spend on the enjoyment for yourself and the things that you like.
This is what I'm seeing for my friends who are planning weddings, who are having a good time, versus those who are having like a bad time.
Yeah.
And you're you're doing it for love.
We got to get back to that.
You're doing it because you're marrying your partner, who you love, and you want to have an amazing experience with the people who support that love.
And that could be as simple or elaborate as you want it to be.
But again, like you mentioned, understanding specifically for you what do you and your partner want, and not just following the crowd.
Yeah.
Because that becomes expensive.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Yes, I've seen it.
It becomes so expensive.
And I was like, I had a friend and she won't mind me talking about this.
She was like, we spent all this money on like extra desserts for the guests.
And then they didn't eat them.
Yeah.
They didn't eat them.
And she was like oh, like this was such a big detail that I really I was so stressed about coordinating how these were going to get there and like.
And she was like, and I asked her I was like how much, tell me truthfully, how much did you spend on food?
Like, I think she was like the cocktails and the dessert.
And she was like over $3,000.
And I was like that's and she's like I just wish we just like that's.
That could have been like part of our honeymoon fund.
You know what I mean?
So yeah, it's, I like that you brought your brain back to values.
Yeah.
I think also as brides or in life.
In life, we can get so caught up in perfect moments and Yeah, you have this.
You know, you envision what this day will be, and it should be perfect.
But we all know life is not perfect.
Things, something's going to go wrong that day, big or small, you know, and just creating space for that day, going into it to know that.
Why am I here?
Why am I here and what are my values for doing this?
And it helps you to not really sweat the small stuff of the day because those things will come up.
You know, you spent more on that and your guests won't know.
That's the other thing.
Your guests will have no idea that you didn't buy more dessert, you know, or you didn't have that extra decoration.
They'll never know.
Again, they're there to support your love.
So let that be the focus.
Yeah.
I love that.
One final money dilemma that we see in relationships is shared bank accounts.
What do you think about people who are in early stages of their relationship?
Maybe they've just moved in together, getting a shared bank account.
Is it safer at the beginning to just continue to spend separately, or is it wise to kind of, you know, get that extra interest or combine finances for convenience?
What have you seen that kind of works for couples?
Yeah.
So I'm going to give you a little bit of data and then a little bit of just what I'm seeing from the world we live in.
So I've had the pleasure.
I did a graduate certification in financial health and wellness from Texas Tech, the financial planning school.
And there I learned through one of our literature reviews that technically, relationships where you share bank accounts are better because of the transparency.
So you just have more transparency within the relationship.
You're more aligned.
However, I think we also have to take into account that people are getting married later.
They have more assets.
So it's it may be difficult to come in and share everything.
So again, I think this is a conversation to where do we have, depending on your assets and the level of comfort that you have?
I think you want to have I think the key here is transparency.
That's what I think the key is.
So is it that we have certain views of each other's accounts when we have a money date night?
Do we talk about our accounts if they're separate?
But I do want to take into account that some people just come into relationships with more assets.
So separating things may be difficult.
So, keeping that in mind, the key again is the transparency to where we're not hiding money, where we get into financial infidelity, things like that.
So we wanna have that transparency to ensure that we know what the assets are, we know we've agreed upon if we're gonna share or not.
I personally am a fan of.
I have my own account, my partner has his own account and then we have one account where we share our expenses, our shared expenses.
That works for me.
But again, have that conversation So that you can go into it knowing what each person feels comfortable with.
But according to the academic data, when you share it, it helps your relationship.
I love how I love this this conversation.
And I'm so grateful for all the advice you're giving us on, like the more juicy, controversial parts of money and relationships.
I have one final question for you.
It's the question we ask all of our guests, which is what is one piece of advice you have for people in their 20s?
That has nothing to do with what we talked about today, though.
Nothing to do with money, nothing to do with relationships even.
Oh, my goodness.
What would I tell 20-year-old Jacqueline?
Life is short and enjoy the people that you love.
Life is short and enjoy the people that you love.
Cause you know, I'm 44, I'll be 45 in March.
And over the years, I'm also a breast cancer survivor.
So there's layers to that too, of um you get to a place of.
For me in my twenties, a lot of my twenties was about checking boxes.
So it was graduate from college check, get married check, have kids check um, you know, have my retirement accounts check.
And then when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 30.
And with that it really reset who I was as a person, to really understand that I'm here to have experiences with the people that I love.
And when you, when you live life from that standpoint, a lot of these small things, like we're talking about decorations at a wedding, or did I get enough desserts?
When you look at life through that lens, it becomes so much more joyful.
And that's one of the reasons why I love my work at Ally, because I'm in a position to help people to use money as a tool to have joy, to have a return on joy, as a tool to have experiences.
And use it to, you know, love and enjoy the people around them.
And when you look at life through that lens, it becomes so much sweeter.
So stop checking boxes and enjoy life.
Enjoy those experiences because life is short.
That's phenomenal advice and advice I probably need to take myself.
So definitely, definitely a good piece there.
I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Jack.
Honestly, you are so wise and just so lovely to talk to.
I feel like our conversation was just like effortless and I so appreciate your time.
So thank you so much again.
Thank you.
And check us out, allymoneyroots.com.
The sessions are all free.
Yeah.
I know.
I was just about to say that.
I was like, I feel like I need to do money in love.
I'm like going to make Tom do it with me.
You're going to make him sit down.
It would be, I think it would be like super helpful for us.
So I appreciate it.
I'll make sure that I leave links in the description below for where you can find Jack and all her work and where you can do money in love.
But if you enjoyed this episode as well, make sure that you subscribe.
Make sure you give us a five-star review and check us out on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast.
If you want to suggest some episodes, have some feedback, have your own questions of how money and love have intersected for you.
Prenups marriage, any of those things I would love to hear it.
Until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself.
We will talk very, very soon.
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