175 | Better Money, Better Marriage with Vanessa and Joe

My clients Vanessa and Joe were overspending—sometimes to the point that they had to put off paying bills—and it was causing tension at times in their marriage.

They came to me wanting to get a handle on their money to put their family in a better position. They achieved that and then some.

In this episode, I sit down with Vanessa and Joe to talk about our work together, some of the things they’ve been able to accomplish, and the impact that their new perspectives on money have had on their marriage.

• • how Joe’s overspending was impacting the family’s finances
  • why Vanessa and Joe decided to get help with their finances
  • Vanessa and Joe’s previous experience of feeling overwhelmed with managing their finances and balancing their financial goals
  • Joe’s concerns about reaching out for help because of gender stereotypes about money
  • buying some things they want for the first time without guilt and stress
  • how Joe is allocating the money from his overtime better to prepare for the birth of their second child
  • how improving their finances has improved their marriage
  • Vanessa and Joe’s money management system
  • how they’re feeling about money now
  • practicing delayed gratification
  • how Vanessa feels buying things she wants and knowing it doesn’t impact their finances
  • Joe and Vanessa’s words of encouragement for anyone who is struggling with their finances and wants to improve them

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey, friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today, I am introducing you to my clients, Vanessa and Joe. Vanessa is an associate at a boutique firm, and her husband Joe works for the railroad. They have an adorable little boy who you will actually be able to hear in the background a couple of times during our conversation and a little one on the way. And their story is truly one of commitment and determination to get a handle on their finances to make a better life for their growing family. I can’t wait for you to hear their story. So let’s dive right in.

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Rho
Welcome to the podcast, Vanessa and Joe. How’s it going?

Vanessa
Good.

Joe
Good, thank you.

Rho
Good. Well, for everyone listening, you guys are some of my now former clients. We were just catching up a little bit before we got started today. And we are going to dive into your money story and the work that we did together. So let’s just dive right in. Tell us a little bit about your experience with your money before we started working together.

Joe
Well, I was the spender. Start off by saying that I was spending and I was out of control. I was very emotionally driven by spending. And there’s a certain line where that’s okay. And I learned though that out the gate, that was a big problem for how we were managing our money.

Vanessa
Yeah, and I feel like our money was getting spent. And then at the end of the pay period, we looked back and we saw we had, you know, no money in our account, or we were negative. And we kind of look at each other and say, you know, where did it go? That was kind of what our, what our experience was.

Rho
You know, I think that’s a really common experience for people too especially if you’re not used to paying attention to your finances, it’s really easy for the money to come in, and then flow right back out again. And you look up like how, like, where am I? why don’t why don’t I have anything in my account? How much did I make? Are you sure? Because it doesn’t seem that way, you know. So I think a lot of people can relate to that, for sure. Tell us about how you decided that you wanted to get some help with that.

Joe
So Vanessa wanted to, she knew, she had wanted to go with a financial coach of some sort for a while. And I was always very much against it. Because I always kind of felt like what was some, some guy gonna tell me, you know, that I haven’t already heard from my wife, from my mother, from my brothers from everyone else, you know? And how could that person who was probably like 20 or 30 years older than me? Who who never had the amount of student loans that we have? I was always saying, how could that person relate? And how could they understand what we’re going through? And when they went and bought a house, you know, they were able to buy it with one salary having a single income household. Right. So then one day, she said, Hey, I think I found someone that meets all your boxes, that meets all your expectations. And I read your, your bio on LinkedIn.

Vanessa
On LinkedIn. Yeah.

Joe
And everything you wrote, I was able to relate to immediately. You must have been surprised.

Vanessa
Well, I mean, I think it’s it’s kind of like when you’re, I don’t know if this is a good analogy, but like when you’re trying to lose weight and you try like every single different type of method imaginable, and nothing’s working. And then finally you’re like, kind of in that phase where you’re, you know, you’re kind of desperate. And you finally find something that works that looks like it’s going to fit your lifestyle and everything.

Joe
Well, it wasn’t desperation it was that I just when I read, when I read her bio, I said, here’s a woman who understands where we’re at.

Vanessa
Yeah.

Joe
And she’s been there

Vanessa
Right. And so that’s kind of where we decided, when we decided to.

Joe
Give you a call and reach out.

Vanessa
Yeah.

Rho
So it sounds like you guys were in a place where it felt maybe overwhelming with your finances, you talked about having a lot of student loan debt, you guys know I can relate to that. I know a lot of other people within the legal profession, and even beyond can relate to that. So what was that like having that student loan debt having the income coming in, but not knowing where it was going?

Vanessa
Well, I mean, we still have the student loan debt. But at this point, you know, I think we have planned for it. You know, and we’re better at communicating what we’re going to be spending our money on, and how much and when, and that kind of thing. And then, in terms of being overwhelmed, and that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, it was overwhelming for us to, you know, we’ve been trying to save up to buy a house, you know, have our own piece of land. And, you know, the fact that we weren’t able to steadily start to save even though, you know, Joe was making more money. I, I did take a pay cut when I went to my new job, not a huge pay cut, but a pay cut, nevertheless, still making a significant amount of money. But you know, it’s it was still overwhelming to see that, you know, we were spending the money and wasn’t going to the places where we needed it to go. The student loans are still overwhelming. But you know, I’m a little more optimistic about the plan that we’ve spoken about, and how we’re going to tackle those. Do you have anything to add?

Joe
Communication. Communication was a big problem, I think, for us before, primarily because I would spend a lot. And I was trying to hide it, because I didn’t want to get into arguments all the time. And I know there’s there’s probably people out there who have the same, you, part of the issue, or part of the part of the whole reason why I think I never wanted to do is because I kind of felt like, if I was going to go and have someone help me figure out how to manage my finances and where it was going. It was sort of like, you’re admitting you have a problem. And in the world that we live in, with, you know, stereotypes, like, you know, gender stereotypes, typically, it’s never the men who have the problem with spending money. And so, you know, part of it was also admitting that too so communication was a big issue. And, you know, I think that now communicating, and even and even still, like I bought, the other day, I spoke to Vanessa about this, she was perfectly fine with it, the money, I put the money aside, ready for it to go. I got myself a nice, you know, Milwaukee, tool chest. And she was like, Look, she’s like the money was there was aside doesn’t it feel good, like she was encouraging you know doesn’t it feel good to go out and buy something and, you know, know that we’re not impacting our finances and know that I’m okay with this, because you planned for it. And it felt great. It felt great to buy something that I wanted, that I needed for the house and not hear anything negative back. So that was more of a high I think, than the actual buying a product.

Vanessa
Well, I think, I think our conversation was really about I had noticed last week when I got paid and when Joe got paid, we got paid within one day of each other last week. I knew that there were, you know, a bunch of bills coming out. And I was getting a little anxious about that. And I happened to look at our Amazon account, and I saw that there were a bunch of items that were in our cart that were no longer in our cart. So I checked our orders. And I saw that there were you know, there were some things that we needed that, you know, were on Amazon, I needed, you know, some pregnancy clothes and that kind of thing. And I saw that they were being ordered and I was like I didn’t order this. So you know, I texted and called Joe and I said Joe we got bills coming out, you know, like we have to spend the money on the bills. Remember all this work that we put in? And Joe said yeah, I know, we did. We took care of it, Vanessa. We had the money for the bills and we had money put in the savings. And we had money leftover.

Joe
So I bought the stuff.

Vanessa
And I got the stuff for you so that you have some new pregnancy clothes that you can wear and it really honestly brought me to tears because before your program, you know, Joe would have just forgotten about spending our money on the bills and just gotten everything and more on the Amazon account. So it was just, you know, it really did bring tears to my eyes, you can, you can ask Joe, I started crying on the phone because

Joe
I thought she was upset

Vanessa
So relieved that, like, he took care that, we you know, all the bills were paid for. And we had money in savings. And we still had some spending money leftover to be able to get some things that I had deprived myself of for a long time. So it felt good.

Rho
And I think that is the power of planning your finances right thinking ahead, looking at, these are the things that we need to pay for. These are the things that we want, right, it sounds like you had some stuff maybe saved in the Amazon cart, which I’m a big fan of right, not just going in buying and having the Amazon packages coming every day, but you had your stuff set aside. And so it’s like, okay, we’ve got these things taken care of, we’ve got this goal taken care of, and we’ve got this money set aside, for the things that we want, I’m gonna pull the trigger and get those things. I absolutely love that.

Joe
And, you know, it felt good, because I knew what I was doing, you know, throughout the course of our program, with, with Vanessa being pregnant, now with the second child, she wasn’t always able to make it. So we, you and I spoke a lot. And the reality was that, you know, she did this with me, but it was really me, I was the one that needed the coaching more than anything else. So, throughout the time of us working together, we spoke a lot a lot about my overtime and where the money was going. And, you know, if you could go back and do it all over again, you would reallocate the money now with the knowledge you have, and absolutely 110%, I would. So I started working overtime again once a week, which is a far cry from what I used to do. Vanessa will tell you I used to be out of the house three, sometimes four days a week on 16 to 20 hour shifts, because I wanted, I was working to make as much money as I could to be able to live the way I wanted to live, so. You know, I started doing that again, and the checks started coming in with that extra amount which helped. And I told Vanessa in this month, here in August, I plan on going back to those days for one month, to you know, as best I can to work two or more every week, because I really want August because we have an extra, I have an extra pay week in August, I really want August to to be the month that sets us up for September, October, you know for when Claire gets here, because then I could take you know some extended time off of work, knowing that I have all this money, you know, saved up. And that if I want to I can just take this money I have planned for bills or whatever food shopping, you know what have you and just be home with my little girl and my wife, my boy and spend time as a family the first you know few weeks that she’s around. So you know, when you talk about planning and understanding where your money goes. That’s a big part of it. And I say that for anyone who listens to this thing, planning and effective planning is important. Because if you want to spend money like that, you have to know where the hell it’s going first, you have to make sure your priorities are taken care of

Rho
Everything that you just said is a testament to the way that you have shifted your mindset. Because like you just said, like you did a lot of overtime before, but you weren’t utilizing the money the way that you’re thinking about it now, right? You were able to use that money to like buy some things, to do some things, you know, all of that, versus being able to use it now for the savings goals that you have to set yourselves up to be able to spend time together as a family once the baby gets here. And I think we really cannot underestimate the importance of the mindset shifts that you two have undergone in this time.

Vanessa
Yeah, for sure. I mean, especially, I see the difference, especially with Joe, you know, we talk about our finances

Joe
Every day

Vanessa
A lot more often. And it’s a much more positive experience, as opposed to me approaching him and saying, you know, where’d all the money, where’d all our money go?

Joe
And I bring it up to you more than

Vanessa
Yeah, and us getting frustrated at each other because of that. Now, you know, the mood has definitely shifted, and it’s much, much more positive, much more positive communications. And honestly, it’s helped our marriage too.

Joe
Oh yeah, 100%.

Rho
Money tends to be a big stressor, point of tension in marriages when you’re not on top of it. So I love that you guys have gone through this process together, and you’ve been able to open those lines of communication. And you’re both working together toward your shared goals.

Vanessa
Right, which is why I really wanted, I really wanted to do this program, because I definitely know and I think, I know, Joe recognized that money and finances were a huge are a huge sticking point. And, you know, huge cause for

Joe
Divorce and

Vanessa
Well, for at least frustration and, you know, resentment, areas where couples tend to harbor resentment towards each other in marriages and in relationships. And I knew that if something didn’t change, that we were just going to keep heading down that road, and it wasn’t going to be happy. So I am really grateful that Joe, I think he recognized it before, but he acknowledges it. And we both make a bigger effort now, yeah, to acknowledge and to communicate and to be positive and to really, more than anything to really work at the goals that we set together.

Rho
One thing that I have heard a lot in this conversation is the clarity of what’s happening with your finances, it seems like you both are like very clear on what’s going on on the day to day, and then where you’re going. And I think that’s so important.

Vanessa
Yeah.

Joe
You need to have it, I mean, if one person is going to be, and this is kind of how we have it set up, I do handle all the billpay, or at least most of it. But I do have Vanessa hand, like we have a credit card, you know, joint credit card together. And it’s the one with our highest limit, what we wanted to use for the majority of our of our bills, right? So I tell her all the time. And this is not because, it kind of worked out this way where it was really good. I do everything through online bill pay. But I don’t have access to pay the bill, like through an app. But she does. So I’m like, Listen, this is your responsibility, we coordinate the money. And we could work as a team effort, I’ll take care of everything else. But the credit card, you have keep the payments up. And it’s good because there’s the mindset of like, you know, it should only be one person in charge of the bills, but in this situation, it keeps her engaged. So even if it’s just this one bill that she has to make sure it’s paid every month, that she has to set the payment herself for you know what to me that’s worth it. Because now I know for a fact, at the very least she’s getting onto the app to logging in. She’s checking. So if she has questions about a bill or questions about money or whatever, or what a charge is, I expect that now. Whereas before I never wanted to hear about it. I have the expectation now that she’s going to log on, to take care of this bill. And that on a daily basis, or at least some idea we were going to have a conversation about what we did that day, the day before where the money’s going, what’s going on. That’s kind of why I got the book, because I wanted her to say, Oh, I have to go to you know, whatever, say, Look, I have that one sleeve in there specifically for her beauty products.

Vanessa
And actually, I do, I did want to talk to you about that this morning. Because I do have to go to Sephora and get some things.

Joe
But it’s things like this, that I’m like, Okay, now that I have this book, the plan is going to be every week to take $200 and allocate a percentage of that 200 to some envelope in that book, right to some or multiple envelopes in that book. Because now that’s just extra money that we that we have, that’s not going to come out of our savings. It’s not going to interfere with our bills, that’s just cash that we have for whatever the hell we want. However we want it you know, it’s like a modified version of what you were talking about the money to do whatever you want with like the the

Rho
Like the fun money?

Vanessa
Fun money.

Joe
Yes. It’s sort of like that, that’s like our fun book.

Rho
And the biggest thing there and this is something that we’ve talked about a lot is the goal with the coaching program is not to make everybody manage their finances exactly like me. I give you kind of a foundation, but you make it your own because you have to manage your finances for your lifestyle. And so you guys have developed a plan that works for you and is going to make, going to ensure that you actually look at it, that you actually are managing your finances to achieve your goals. I think that’s really good.

Joe
Because you know want now it feels good to just be able to like to think to myself like, oh, we just did all this. And I still got money in savings. And, you know, like this week, I had to pay all my union dues. So I took a big cut out of my check, as per usual, right? But it doesn’t affect us.

Rho
That sounds like a really nice place to be in to have a lower paycheck, right with the union dues, and it doesn’t affect you. Right. So tell us about how you’re feeling now about your finances versus how you were feeling before.

Joe
I would say that, I feel a lot better. I feel like I’m in control more of my finances now. And I feel like, I’m no longer in a position where I, I’m like, oh, I want to buy this thing. And I have to buy it right now. I feel more like, I want this thing. I can I can now have a conversation with my wife about it. And she’ll say, Yeah, let’s, let’s plan for it. Great. And I can say, okay, cool. So it’s not a, do we have to buy this thing. It’s a, we’ll plan for it. And I get to, because you know what, at the end of the day, doesn’t matter what the what a book tells you, what the spreadsheet tells you. When the time comes to you to hit purchase or not purchase you have to know like, in your mind, like, can I legitimately buy this? Or am I going to hurt myself and my family by doing it? And I’m like, You know what, I can make that call now. And not think, Oh, I’m gonna buy this thing. And I’ll just figure it out. But no, like, I will say, I’ll wait another week. Or maybe this thing is on sale right now. But it’s, even though it’s on sale, I don’t have the money for this thing on sale, I’ll wait and I’ll just buy it full price, even though it’ll cost me more. It’ll, I’ll be in a better position down the road to do it.

Vanessa
Yeah, like a good example of that is when Amazon Prime Day came around, and we had, there were a bunch of things that I wanted to get. And you know, Joe and I were having a lot of conversations about it, because it was good. They were good deals. And you know, we kind of looked at our finances, and we looked at what the deals were. And we said, You know what? We’re gonna hold off. Yeah, because we can, we can wait until there’s another deal, maybe it won’t be as good of a deal. But there’ll still be some sort of savings, you know, we can wait for that to come around again, or, you know,

Joe
Prime Day comes every year.

Vanessa
Once every, twice a year. Yeah so.

Joe
It’s not like it won’t be there again.

Vanessa
Right and I was fine with that, you know, whereas like, I would have been harboring before, I would have been harboring resentment towards him. Because I would have felt as if he would you know, was going out and buying all the things that he wanted to get. And then there was no money leftover for me to like, get deals on, you know, Amazon Prime Day or something like that. It was a much more positive conversation, where we were both looking at our finances and how much we were spending on things that we actually needed instead of things we wanted. And having a much more positive conversation about, you know, waiting until

Joe
And here’s the thing

Vanessa
We were in better

Joe
Had the money to buy some of the things she wanted. And I told her, if she wanted to buy those things, I was okay with it. And I said, Look, I don’t mind because the stuff that I want to buy, I can wait for. But if you want to buy it, especially because in the past, she hasn’t been able to. Or we can just keep it so it’s up to you. I said, if you want to do it, I said we’ll pull the trigger right now. We had the money ready to go. We just couldn’t buy everything we wanted, you know, between the both of us.

Vanessa
And I didn’t want to be in that position where we then we were just tight on money. You know, so I, we made the decision together to just hold off until a different time. And I was happy with that. And I was proud like I felt confident and proud of us having that positive conversation together.

Joe
Which is something that she hasn’t felt with me with money for in an extremely long time. Not since she was in law school, and I was working a lot to save up for our wedding. I think that was the last time financially she probably felt confident and proud of us.

Vanessa
And that was almost 10 years ago.

Joe
That was almost 10 years ago.

Rho
One it’s beautiful that you’re getting back to that place. Right that you are able to feel proud of the choices that you’re making financially. But to I think the skill of delaying gratification is going to serve you so well going forward in your finances. It’s something that a lot of people have trouble with. And a lot of people would have just been like, Nope, I’m gonna get the stuff. It’s Amazon Prime Day, I’ve got to get it. Right, versus you guys sitting down looking at your finances and intentionally deciding No, we’re not going to use our money for this, we’re going to use it for these other things, and we’ll get these deals later. Right, that skill is gonna go so far for you financially.

Vanessa
And honestly, it makes me feel, like I don’t know if it’s because I don’t know that I’ve ever been this way or you know, through like schooling and working hard to get, you know what I wanted, and then having that gratification at the end of the process, but I don’t think I’ve ever been like an instant gratification type of person. So for me, and I think Joe is realizing this too going through the program, it’s like even more exciting to think about having the money in the future and saving up and towards that goal in the future. And being able to just pay for something outright without your finances being negatively affected at all. And having that gratification, having the feeling of the instant gratification in getting the item that you want plus the gratification that it’s not going to affect your finances. I think that just makes it even better you know as opposed to doing the instant gratification being happy for those two minutes that you get the what you want. And then seeing your finances going oh crap, I don’t have any money left for anything else.

Joe
And not having buyer’s remorse.

Vanessa
Right and then not having buyer’s remorse. Yeah, like I don’t have buyer’s remorse now that Joe, you know, went out and surprised me with all these Amazon products. I don’t have the buyer’s remorse and it feels great.

Rho
That’s what I talk about all the time. Like not feeling guilty spending money. That doesn’t feel good. It sucks to spend money on things that you want and then feel guilty about it. And you know, think that maybe you shouldn’t have bought it.

Vanessa
Yeah, just it feels great to like, Wait, have a little bit of patience. Wait that little bit of time, not saying to wait forever and deprive yourself forever, but to wait that little bit of time so you can be where you want to be financially and then get the thing you want being happy about that and then having that extra boost in happiness for for not slamming your budget.

Rho
Well, you guys have shared so much already of your story. What words of encouragement do you have for other people who are where you were before we started working together?

Joe
Get yourself hobby that takes time. I grew up in a farming town. Single income household. My father was railroad union worker. My mother, at one point she had her own business, then she sold it because she was not home much. So she wanted to be home to raise me. I was her youngest kid by 12 years. So she had like that one more chance to be a mom and go through all the phases again, after not having been able to do it for over a decade. So she opted to do that. And my father loved his his garden, might as well be a small farm was how much we grew together. And let me tell you, if you want work on how to build everything we just spoke about, not having instant gratification, working towards something, having the gratification when it’s all done when you’re able to have your harvest, right. That’s the equivalent of growing a garden. Because think about all the work you plant into it. All the work in building your if you do the raised bed, build your bed, turning the soil, making sure everything’s properly done the right way. So you can have a great harvest at the end. This is very much like that. So my words of advice are aside from obviously, if anyone’s on the fence about working with you now, work with you because you offer a lot of insight. That’s for starters, but on a personal note, you know if you have the ability to do it, get into that hobby. Get into growing your own food because that type of patience, that type of time dedication you need to have that with your finances is the same thing you have to have when you’re growing your own food. I found, I got back into it around the same time we started doing this program and it’s been working together. I never really saw the similarities until the other day when I was out Vanessa was able to go out there and pick 1015 10 to 15 tomatoes I only have like two trees. That’s it. And but that’s the amount of work that you put into it every day. You put the work into your finances every day. It’s not just magically fix itself, doesn’t happen overnight.

Vanessa
And I would just say, if you think you can’t do it, you can. You know, Joe and I have overcome a lot. We’re still overcoming. It’s always our, you know, relationship around finances is always a work in progress. But if you stick to it, and focus and remain confident in yourself, you can reach your goals.

Rho
Love it. Well, thank you both for coming on and sharing your story. I know it’s going to be so helpful for everyone who’s listening, and I appreciate your time.

Joe
No problem rho.

Vanessa
Thanks rho.

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I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Vanessa and Joe. They were truly a joy to work with. And I’m honored to have played a part in helping them get a handle on their finances. If their story resonates with you. If you’re feeling like you don’t have a handle on your finances, you don’t know where your money is going, I would love to help you too. Come join us in Money Mastery, where I teach the same principles that I taught Vanessa and Joe and help you apply them to your specific finances. Just head to rho thomas.com/join to get in there. Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second and leave a rating for the show, leave a review, those things help more people to find the show. It helps it to get pushed out to more people. And I want to get this information in the hands of as many lawyers as I can, so your help is greatly appreciated. All right. As we close out friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently. Week after week, you will continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.