Unlocking financial freedom in your home with Cara Macksoud

Cara Macksoud [00:00:00]:

What do we want from the money? What does success look like? And I don't mean success like some job promotion. I don't. I mean like, if you have to think about laying in the coffin tomorrow and you're like, I am proud of the life I lived, or I'm proud of the things I did with what I had, what does that look like to you? And when you can roll that back, can we fund that? Can we not? And if what success looks like to you is totally different than what success looks like to me, we have to have a real serious conversation.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:32]:

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy. And ever since, my husband, junior, and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you, too.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:07]:

Im Tiffany Sauder, and this is Scared Confident Cara Macksoud is the CEO of Money Habitudes. We are going to talk about money today, friends. Alongside her 15 year career as a trader and a stint as a nonprofit CFO, she and her husband had five kids. In the mix of all of that, Money Habitudes focuses on empowering individuals and managing their financial well being. She and her family live in Florida, where they spend their time enjoying the weather and hunting for shark teeth. I want to tell my listeners why I had you on for an episode, and then we'll kind of get into it. But what Cara does, or actually what her work does, what Money Habitudes does, is it helps us better understand our relationship with money. So Cara is not a financial planner.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:58]:

You're not gonna walk away with a new budget. We're not gonna talk about budgeting today, actually, at all. What we're gonna seek to understand is our relationship, what habits, attitudes influence, the way that we react to when the topic of money comes up. And I love this, like, psychological layer of first understanding that before you have to get to whatever it looks like, jump into budgeting, jump into long term planning, because we can't hear each other when we're both just a hot mess of emotion. Usually the hot mess, my husband, usually the rational one. But whatever it looks like. So we're going to chat about that. Cara, I'm really excited for this conversation.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:40]:

Thanks for joining me.

Cara Macksoud [00:02:42]:

Oh, me too. This is going to be a whole lot of fun. And the fact that your listener based writer coupleships that are dealing with money, remember, a lot of it is what our underlying motivation is with money. And sometimes we're not always very clear because sometimes we don't even know why we're motivated to do the things we do. And so that isn't an easy conversation to have. And then we're in this coupleship where we're sharing the same pot of money, right. And so it can feel icky when you think somebody's doing something with money you don't agree with and you've got to pull out of the same pot.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:19]:

You said pulling your money together. My husband and I have shared financial, like we have one checking account and you're not really in the business of recommending what people do. That's not really your, like, craft. But what's your observation in working across lots of financial planners and.

Cara Macksoud [00:03:34]:

Yeah, well, you know, before we jumped on the call, you said you read a statistic, which I'm sure you're going to share with your audience, and you talked about infidelity and money being two of the things white couples break up. And I find it so fascinating that people are willing to be intimate but not financially intimate. Like they're willing to walk down the aisle and say I do, and not be financially intimate and they do keep separate accounts and I don't have a, a hard and fast. It should be this way or it should be that way. I have a. You should sit and work it out. Because if I have x in my account and you have x minus five in your account and you wind up in a situation unbeknownst to the two of us, or a shared situation, your car goes in for an oil change and the second car in the family winds up with a flat tire. So the shared resource account, you just paid the mortgage, we just paid all the stuff, doesn't have enough funds, am I going to not help you out? I just, I don't know where the lines get drawn.

Cara Macksoud [00:04:39]:

I mean, I had a couple that I worked with where they counted the miles. They shared one car. They were a New York City family. And so, you know, you don't have multiple cars if you even have a car in New York City, but they mile counted at the end of the year and then reimbursed. And I thought, I don't know, like there's again. And I know you and I had this conversation when we met last time. In a relationship, there's so many other ways I'd rather spend my time with my partner than calculating miles. But that's me now.

Cara Macksoud [00:05:08]:

There are things my husband and I do that other couples would be like. That seems so boring. That seems stupid. So maybe for them, that was a love language, like, sitting over. Maybe they reminisced about the places they drove. Maybe they were in the marriage and they couldn't wait to get out. So being apart from each other reminded them of all these miles that they went separately. I don't know.

Cara Macksoud [00:05:27]:

Everybody's coupleship is designed so differently.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:31]:

Yeah, that's great. I think it would be really hard to manage. I have enough things to manage in my life, so I'm like, all for one, one for all. That's kind of how we look at it. I think, for us gives us this team mentality, too, where there are times when I'll say no to something that maybe would be income generating for me to create an opportunity for my husband to, like, go close a deal or fly to New York and meet with a banker or something. And so I think if it was this, like, weights and measures, I think it would be hard for us personally.

Cara Macksoud [00:05:59]:

I agree with you, and I'll take it one step further. And then I know we have to move on. We had to redo all of our estate stuff recently, and we met this great guy who I have to say was super impressed. Of all the estate attorneys I've ever met with, I was just super impressed. And so it was, we were sitting at the table and we're doing some new stuff. I mean, we're 25 years into our marriage at this point, so life looks different than it did when we started 25 years ago. And he said, and I'm not going to remember the name of the term, but he said, did you want this thing in the trust where it's. If I.

Cara Macksoud [00:06:33]:

He thought either of us thought that when the other died, that the other spouse would liquidate all the money and run off with someone else or something else and not, you know, make sure the kids or any of the things that we had set in motion would be in place. It's like to split the trust, I guess, in half. I should know these terms, and I don't. I apologize. But anyway, it was really interesting because both my husband and I like our initial reaction. And you could hear the lawyer as he was asking it, like, not that he was egg shelling at all, but he definitely was like, this is going to be a sensitive question. And both of us, like, blurted out laughing, and he was just taken aback. And both of us were like, no, we're so, like, do the right thing kind of people.

Cara Macksoud [00:07:19]:

Like, that's just who we are, and we're stamping our feet as we're doing the right thing. Like, I don't want to be doing the right thing, but I'll be doing the right thing. But I think it's really good to know your person at that level. Like, I'm not saying don't be with the person that won't do the right thing. That guy might be a whole lot of fun, and you might have. Or, girl, you might have a really good, fun marriage, but if you want to make sure your kids wind up with some cash, you might need the rider. Right? Like, I don't know that I think that anything is right or wrong. I think it should be exposed.

Cara Macksoud [00:07:53]:

So just, like, we have calorie contents on food, let's just know what we're consuming.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:58]:

Totally. Okay, well, let's actually use this as a bridge. I'm going to read a couple of stats because I knew these things intuitively, but I did a little, you know, prep peer research, and I think these are interesting. So, Ramsey solutions found that money fights are the second leading cause of divorce, behind infidelity. And high levels of debt and lack of communication are major contributors to stress and anxiety. So that's data point number one. And a study by the national Marriage Project found that couples who argue about finances at least once a week are 30% more likely to divorce. You think about that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:32]:

If I told you there's one thing that you can do to give yourself a 30% less chance to divorce happening, this is it. Like talking about money. It just said it's 30% more likely to divorce. So we give ourselves a 30% chance. More like higher chance of being successful if we're able to have productive vocabulary around our financial health, our financial priorities. And I think it starts with understanding ourselves. I told Cara before we jumped on Jarrah and I have been in seasons of our marriage where we knew how to fight about intimacy more than we knew how to have productive conversations about it. And I think financial things can fall in that same category where it's like if you go and would create tally marks on unproductive or productive conversations, like proactive versus reactive about financial situations, they accidentally somehow all become reactive.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:20]:

They become reactive to a big accident. They become reactive to wanting to put an audition on. They become reactive to a kid going to college. They become reactive to a big peer pressure mall event that happened or whatever it is like it all becomes reactive, I think accidentally. So.

Cara Macksoud [00:09:38]:

Well, first and foremost, I always say to people, and this might be my silliest, worst, best advice, if you can have infidelity, go for the real kind and not financial infidelity. Financial infidelity in a relationship, right. Somebody's unfaithful, it sucks. You may break up. You might even wind up with some sort of an STD than an antibiotic can clear and most likely clear up financial infidelity leaves the other party for years with messes on their credit reports in court. And that is legitimately something that can destroy. What are the two biggest destroyers of wealth?

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:20]:

Debt.

Cara Macksoud [00:10:20]:

Addictions and divorce.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:22]:

Oh, addictions and divorce.

Cara Macksoud [00:10:24]:

When you think about those things at large financially, like, you don't. Divorce is a disaster. Stay dating. Like, if you are not 100% sure, and I'm not a big lovey dovey kind of girl, but I say to people all the time, like, when you walk down that aisle, if you don't think that this is a person that you want to, like, dig your way out of like a hole to China with, then run for the hills. That's because you're not going to wake up in love every single day. And you cannot call the bank and say, we weren't in love this month. So I don't feel like paying the mortgage. Like, that does not compute, right? The mortgage needs to get paid.

Cara Macksoud [00:11:08]:

The lights need to be on, the water, the electric, and that means you worked together to get that stuff done. Even if one person's a breadwinner, you've worked together to keep everything in order. Somebody's got to get the mail, somebody's got to file the auto pay. Like, what it takes to manage households. Like, just the busy work is a business partnership. That's what you're marrying. You're not marrying flowers and butterflies. You're not marrying somebody to, like, make you feel nice every day.

Cara Macksoud [00:11:36]:

Sure. You're marrying someone so you have somebody to help you do all the things that need to get.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:42]:

Totally. So how does the Money Habitudes fit in? Is this a personality profile thing? Like, most people who behave like this, like their financial Money Habitudes, are this, what is it? Is there 40 of them? Are there six of them? What does that look like?

Cara Macksoud [00:11:56]:

No. So interestingly enough, unlike most of the other personality assessments that are on the market, where you kind of, you're either in a quadrant or you get some sort of a type money aptitudes is the idea of it is that it's a 54 factorial, meaning that there's 54 statements in the deck, and there's six habitudes that we've researched where habitude represents your money motivations. So are you motivated with your money to be a giver? Are you spontaneously driven? Where you want to indulge moments? Are you planning driven? Now, you know, different habitudes show up differently in people's life because of their family system, because of their cultural system, because of the community. Think about. So let me just give you a visual. When we talk about wealth in Texas. A Ford 150, a farm with some cattle on it, right? And a house that's not touching any of its neighbors would probably define wealth in Texas. When you talk about wealth in New York City, you want the highest floor of an apartment that you can, right? Wealth looks completely different in different places.

Cara Macksoud [00:13:09]:

So to think that you can put somebody in a category is really difficult. So what the money ambituity assessment does is really make you the person. And if you're working with a financial professional, give you some self awareness about what is motivating you. When money is in your picture, whether it's money you're earning, whether it's money you inherited, whether it's money you don't have yet, you still have beliefs and behaviors around that money. And then being able to then bring that into your coupleship, where it's less about who are you and who am I? It's. How do you define each of these six habitudes? So we always give couples. You know, it's so interesting when couples come and I don't get to work individually with people. I work with a lot of the practitioners, but when I talk to them, right.

Cara Macksoud [00:13:59]:

It's really interesting because when you get two people that look totally different, you know, and if the marriage is. If they're not coming in under the guise of, like, on the brink of divorce, like, if they're coming in for debt management or, you know, they're trying to buy their first home, or they just inherited money, whatever it might be. The two differences, actually. Usually you can see how each person is utilizing their partner's habitudes, right? For good and for bad, they can let one another lead. What's interesting is when you see people that have similar reports and they're coming in and they're, like, bickering and they, on paper, like, but we look the same. And here's what we give them. Think about planning. When you think about planning, are you five days out? Are you five years out? Are you 15 years out? Because we know we have short term planners and we have long term planners.

Cara Macksoud [00:14:50]:

We know we have the people that go to work every day in a job. Let's pick like a firefighter who has to do 20 or 25 years to get their pension. That person, if their habit user, let's say, very strong in planning, they may be the person that's like, I'm going to go to job. I'm never going to take a vacation. I'm going to save, save, save, save, save. And I'm going to retire the day I can retire. And then it's smooth sailing Margaritaville, rest of my life. Now, someone else who they're married to doesn't have this pension type job.

Cara Macksoud [00:15:18]:

So they're not on this calculated calendar that this person's on. And they're like, oh, in 52 weeks, my company gives me four weeks off. And so I'm going to figure out my budget and I'm going to plan for my four vacations per year. Because why wouldn't I live my life and enjoy it while I'm living it, right? And so both of those people are dominant planners, but one is very far out and one is very short term in the moment. And so think about that as a couple. Now, one person goes to spend money on the next, you know, Cancun Fiesta americana, all inclusive. And the other person saving to buy this condo in North Carolina on the golf course for 30 years from now. So you can understand by not having those specific conversations, right? We have very broad stroke conversations around money.

Cara Macksoud [00:16:13]:

Oh, we want a house. We're going to buy a house. We're going to pay a mortgage. Or, oh, we want the kids to go to XYZ school. We got to live in XYZ neighborhood. We're gonna have three kids. We need an suv. I need you to go one step further.

Cara Macksoud [00:16:26]:

Oh, I need you to go to the next level down. The next level down. Like, why are we putting the kids in this school? Because we want them to be part of this community. Or is there some program where career and technical training. I'm a mechanic and I know this has a great CTE program and I what's the next level? And what's the next level after that? And then what's the next level after that? Oh, you love this house, but it's got grass on an acre of property. Who's mowing that grass? Oh, I was going to buy you a lawnmower. Well, why did you think I loved him? Like, we don't have those, right? Because if I hate mowing and you thought I was going to do it so think about that in a family situation. My dad mowed grass.

Cara Macksoud [00:17:06]:

Now I marry a husband, and I just assume he's going to mow grass. He grew up in Manhattan. There wasn't a blade of grass on the whole damn island. Right? So, like, you don't have maybe these specific conversations. And so I'm like, okay, no big deal. You don't have to move the grass. We'll hire somebody now. Tack another $5,000 onto our budget.

Cara Macksoud [00:17:26]:

But we loved the house. We thought this is where we were going to raise the family. Nobody was talking about the blades of grass, right? And so that's where you gotta go one step further or ten step furthers, really.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:38]:

Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while and find yourself thinking, I just wish there was more good news. You can sign up for my newsletter. It's filled with my favorite products, recipes, tips, stories to help encourage you as you build your life of. And the link is waiting for you in show notes. See you there. So when you talk about the planning horizons, because I took this test. So say the six again.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:02]:

So it's giver, spontaneous planner.

Cara Macksoud [00:18:06]:

It's giver. It's giving carefree, spontaneous status planning and security.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:12]:

Okay.

Cara Macksoud [00:18:13]:

And we often refer to it just so you know, as an assessment, because when we tell people it's a quiz or a test, we think that there's a right or a wrong. And our financial planning community is probably our biggest offenders because they see eights, nines in planning, and they're like, yeah, I got 100. And that's no one's fault, other than it's the language we use. Financial planning, the word, it's in that realm. So what we've realized is you can have a plan for something that's not a good plan, but it's your plan. So in behavioral finance, what we know is when something is yours, you have endowment bias. Once it's yours, it's worth more than anything else that looks exactly the same, or anything that's different is wrong because it's yours. So if your plan and your spouse's plan are not the same plan, all of a sudden now here starts to fight about the money.

Cara Macksoud [00:19:14]:

Because how do we execute our plans? We fund them with money. So money itself isn't the problem. So if our plan is to go to dinner with the neighbors, right. We make the plan, we both agree to the plan. You're a bit more carefree, so you defer to the neighbor Lucy, to pick the restaurant. Your husband had spoken to Lucy or her husband the other night, and they were talking about trying the new restaurant on the other side of town. And now they're talking about this $600 bottle of wine that they had at this restaurant. Now your husband comes into the house and he's like, hey, we're going out with these people next week.

Cara Macksoud [00:19:55]:

And you're like, yeah, I'm so excited. Well, where are we going? And you're like, I don't know. I told him, pick whatever. And he's like, what do you mean, pick whatever? Because. Right. He's just heard that they went, right. Because we don't know what their financial situation is. We don't know that they're put everything on a credit card and don't.

Cara Macksoud [00:20:10]:

We have no idea. Right. But we just deferred. Now all of a sudden you guys are in this conflict of, well, we don't drop $600 on wine when we go to dinner. No, this is a total made up story.

Tiffany Sauder [00:20:24]:

Yeah, but it happens how realistic it is.

Cara Macksoud [00:20:27]:

So it's. Now do you go back over and say, hey, Lucy, could you send me the list of restaurants? Because we're loud budgeting. Which, Ellen, let's call out the kids in the world today that are loud budgeting, but our generation, that's not what we did. We would just figure out where we were trying to go so we knew what it was going to cost. Do you go over and say, well, this is our budget for dinner, so pick a restaurant. Does he go back over? Do you come back and say, you know what, Lucy? I said, pick whatever, but I really want to try this. Do you get sick that night? And don't go, what? Now you two are in a situation where you're protecting your pot and you don't want Lucy and her plus one to have access to your pot.

Tiffany Sauder [00:21:08]:

So what's the resolution on that, Cara? I mean, that type of thing plays out in all different kinds. Like, hey, we're going to go to a concert with them. We're going to sit with them. They picked vip tickets. We were thought everybody was going to the lawn. Or like, we've had, like, where we got invited to a trip before. And then it was like, oh, they're chartering a plane.

Cara Macksoud [00:21:27]:

What?

Tiffany Sauder [00:21:28]:

Huh? I was like, I don't mean to, like, raise the poor flag here, but what is happening? Which at some level, you can sort of, like, be funny about it, but what if you're not socially on the same level as them? Even if you aren't financially, it can get very awkward so what do you.

Cara Macksoud [00:21:46]:

Do if you're not aware of who you are with your money back to money? How much? You're right. Like. And you and your partnership have not both been really straight about who we are. We're confident in this. It's. We're not chasing the Joneses. We're not fomoing. We are who we are, and this is where we are.

Cara Macksoud [00:22:05]:

Then the narration, because you're a team doing it, right. It's always easier to do something as a pair than it is to singly stand. And so I cheekily told that story. But that. It's funny because my husband and I, we have a very healthy money relationship, but it's because we're both so vocal. I would say other people don't find it healthy because we're so vocal about it. And he is a believer. Like, he believes he can just plant another money tree somewhere and help figure it out, work another.

Cara Macksoud [00:22:35]:

Like, he doesn't want to say no to anything, and he will let other people make decisions, and he'll just figure it out. Whereas I'm like, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. And I'm always like, I don't value this and I don't value that. And he would get into these moments where he'd be like, oh, my God, Carrie, you're not going to say that. And finally, we got to a place where we communicated enough that he was like, you know what? It means more to me to be in harmony with you than to be arguing with you in these situations. So it doesn't really mean. And for us, it was wine. We're both not drinkers.

Cara Macksoud [00:23:08]:

And we were on Wall street for 1520 years. So we'd wind up in these restaurants with people that were ordering six, 7800 bottles of wine. And I'd be like, I am not splitting this bill. I'm not. This is stupid. I don't even drink alcohol. I drink water the whole night. Like, the food, no problem.

Cara Macksoud [00:23:25]:

And he would be like, Cara, people are gonna think we're, like, poor. And I would be like, I don't really care what they think. Like, I'm just. That's not how I'm spending my money. And finally it got to the place where he would just be like, we're gonna defer. If you want to make plans with us, you gotta call Cara. Like, he was like, I'm not even gonna engage. Like, I'm not going to say yes to people anymore.

Cara Macksoud [00:23:46]:

I'm going to do that because that's the easiest and part of it. Then I was annoyed because I'm like, crap, everything's falling on me. But I think I had to step back and realize it was better to fall on me because then I was able to kind of gatekeep what I was willing, situations we were willing to be in and which ones. I was like, you know what? These relationships aren't really worth it because we're uncomfortable. I don't see this relationship, like, friendship going long term. It's very, you know, it's just for the now and then we're arguing about this money that we both have other value for help follow the flow more. Right. And so personality does play so much into the way we handle our money.

Tiffany Sauder [00:24:28]:

Totally. And there were seasons where I would have felt much more social and peer pressure to like, yeah, just pick up your percentage of it or whatever. As you get older, I think you start to, like, have. I don't know, but can you say what loud budgeting is? Because I had not heard that term before I talked to you, and now I see it more, but it's interesting.

Cara Macksoud [00:24:50]:

And it's a younger generation thing, and I actually don't know a ton about it. I've heard it a few times. I've watched a few videos, so I can understand what's going on. But I believe, and I haven't talked to the creator of it, but I believe it's kind of this younger generation call out to, like, don't call me cheap. Right? Let's go back in a situation, right? If Lucy and her husband come knocking on the door and they're like, hey, guys, you want to go to dinner? And you're like, no, we've got this and this. No big deal. Next week, they come again. Hey, guys, you want to go to dinner? Now you guys are saving because you're putting a new roof on the house.

Cara Macksoud [00:25:25]:

So right now everything is locked down. We know those seasons of the relationship where, like, money goes into the vault. We're saving for something, and we're all not going to like, you know, we're gonna eat peanut butter and jelly until we can afford the thing, right? And so they knock again. And you're like, no. Are they really gonna knock again? Probably not, because they're probably like, well, we saw them having a barbecue outside. They didn't invite us over, and they seemed. They got in their car the other night, it looked like they went to dinner. Right.

Cara Macksoud [00:25:54]:

Their interpretation of what's happening is you probably don't want to be bothered with them, whereas what's really going on is you did go to Costco and buy some food so you could have a barbecue, or you did pack a picnic so you could go sit in the park and have food, but that falls in your budget because you're saving for your roof. So this loud budgeting, I think, has come from a place of. I can tell you I'm loud budgeting. So, you know, it's not you that I don't want to engage with, it's I'm doing something else with my money. Don't call me cheap. Don't think I don't want to, like, do something. And maybe then if I say I'm loud budgeting, you'll say, oh, well, we'd love to still have dinner with you. What if we grab our leftovers in our fridge and we all sit out back? Right? Because if the goal.

Cara Macksoud [00:26:35]:

If the motivation is to spend time together, does it have to be over a $300 dinner? Or can it be over a 799? Leftovers from Publix. Right. Like, that goes down to that next level. What's the real motivation of what we're trying to do? And because we live in a consumerism society, because we live in a place, like, things don't have feel valuable unless somehow we spend more money on them, right? Like, there's some weird thing that happens where we think we've had a better experience because we spent more on it. Where I would, you know, I'm not one of these believers in, like, life is free or everything good is free. I'm not that. But I do believe we miss a lot of things that can be less expensive and you can still enjoy yourself.

Tiffany Sauder [00:27:24]:

Totally. I think of a scenario in my mind when you were telling that story of a young man who just got out of college, lived with his parents for a while, and I was sort of, like, weird. Like, he had a good job, and, like, I was just. I don't know. I was like, okay, whatever. And then I found out he paid all of his student loans off in, like, 18 months. That was his plan, was to, like, be able to just live debt free. And so he, like, didn't buy a single article of clothing for 18 months.

Tiffany Sauder [00:27:52]:

Like, literally, like, what you said was, like, about it. And I think about what grand freedom he gets to live in now because he was able to do that. But I was like, yeah, that just story popped into my mind. I was like, oh, it's crazy.

Cara Macksoud [00:28:08]:

Okay, so let's give this man that he happened to, like, fall in love on his way out the door of college, and he's like, I'm gonna take this person on this journey with me. And this person's like, whoa, wait a second. Right? Like, I wasn't thinking we were living with your parents, right? I think we don't realize how decisions we make around money once we couple up, how they then affect. So one of the biggest things we see with couples a lot is culture. It's great when you both come from a similar place. And that's why marriages that do, you know, people like to rip on, like arranged marriages or whatever. But we do know, statistically, when you come from a lot of the same family system or cultural system values, you're built the same way. So.

Cara Macksoud [00:28:55]:

And I'm going to put quotes around this. Your rights, what you think is right or similar, when you come from a different cultural setting, you're inherently then conflicted about rights and wrongs, even though you might agree with certain situations. For somebody who comes from, like, a traditional, let's say, family, where mothers or parents, older parents, come back to live with kids as they age so you can care for them. Let's talk about a korean culture or jamaican culture. And now you marry to an american, somebody who's, like, fully american. That's not our culture. Now, all of a sudden, nobody was having a deep conversation about, like, well, we're buying a three bedroom house and we have three kids. The two boys are going to share.

Cara Macksoud [00:29:42]:

The daughter's going to share. Oh, mom got sick. We got to move somebody out of their room because mom needs a room. And one part of the couple, it's not their mom. Even though you might love your in law, you might not love them enough to displace your own bloodline, right? So that's where we see those moments of, like, if you didn't have that conversation really early on, you might have now. For the person who's bringing their parenthood into the home, that's equal bloodline. It's their children and their parent. And if they're logical, right, they may do the math and say, I only have x number of years with mom or dad.

Cara Macksoud [00:30:20]:

I have x plus number of years with my child. For argument's sake, the other spouse, that mathematical equation does not work because they're.

Tiffany Sauder [00:30:29]:

Saying, I don't have that much time with mom. I need to do this. And the spouse is like, this is my actual life, and I'm living around, like, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, right?

Cara Macksoud [00:30:37]:

Now throw in what really happens in life. Mother in laws and right in laws don't always play nice in the sandbox. Who's affording that? Mom or dad came. They don't have a nest egg. We're putting another mouth or two at the table. That's an additional cause. Right. So, like, these are things that don't really, like, I see a lot of dating, and I don't see these, like, deep rooted.

Cara Macksoud [00:31:03]:

I see a lot of, like, surface flowers and butterflies. Right. And I'm like, no, we need some, like, real deep, deep, deep, deep questions.

Tiffany Sauder [00:31:12]:

So what are those questions? How do we have that conversation? And I don't know if we want to reference my habitude of planning or if we just want to say, like, if you're in a relationship, what are the questions that you start with? How do you get to the place where you're willing to trust each other with? I'm thinking through financials. Like, I know I was the firstborn, and I have a different relationship with money than my youngest brother. There's eight years between us and the season, and my dad's career that we grew up in was very different. I'm an entrepreneur, and so my comfort level with risk and, like, delayed gratification is, like, a very formed muscle, because you're, like, putting all this time and capital in, like, knowing it. If I wait and sit on the egg like that, all of that is very well formed. So where do you start, and how do you get.

Cara Macksoud [00:32:00]:

First of all, I think you start with defining what money is. So, is money freedom? Is money ego? Is money success? I asked one of my kids, actually, funny enough, the other day, there's a lot going on with money in our house right now, because I've got two kids. That one just went to college last year. I got a second one going. She has a lot of conversations around money. I've been very adamant with my kids that the minute they turn 18, they have to be out, and they have to be. They cannot come back home. That's not an option.

Cara Macksoud [00:32:32]:

Most people think I'm, like, super mean, but I'm like, honestly, I really would like my life back. Right? Like, I'm happy to come have dinner with you. I'm happy, but, like, I don't want to be managing you anymore. This was unenjoyable. This was my least favorite job. I would like to just be at a distance. So it's been very interesting because my older daughter's been asking a lot of questions about, like, buying a condo and how do I do this and do that? And so my son, she showed a listing, and my youngest son said, you think that would be a good one. And I think he was just asking, like, just.

Cara Macksoud [00:33:05]:

I think he just prompted the question. But then my other kid was like, well, I think that's a good starter home. And I think. And I said, oh, how fascinating is this? I said, so, guys, what does success mean to you? And so they were like, well, success means that we could do exactly everything that you and daddy do with us, but we don't have to ask you for a nickel. Thought, oh, shit, these kids are in for a real peach because they really, like, this is a five times multiplier. So are they doing it for themselves or they. So then I said, well, a success, you could do it for yourself. What if you've met someone and you wanted to do with them? Oh, if they can't afford it, then they can't come.

Cara Macksoud [00:33:40]:

I'm like, okay, so love has a dollar value. You're not gonna love somebody who can't afford. And they were like, well, so then they know, right? They know what barrel they're going down. But for them, they like the life they're living, and they want to be able to replicate that. For someone who's been brought up, let's say maybe they lived in grandma and grandpa's house because parents were struggling or parents weren't around when they measure success. Success might be we could have debt as long as the bill is paid and nobody's foreclosing on us, or as long as the rent is due and we paid it. So, understanding what legitimately defines success, you made a comment earlier. You said, when I have something going on, I need to ask eight questions before I'm comfortable.

Cara Macksoud [00:34:24]:

You were like, but if you ask my husband, he needs to ask 28 questions. Now I'm assuming. I don't know for sure. I've been married for 25 years. After I'm done with the questions that I need to get myself satisfied when my husband keeps going because he's also a 28 question kind of guy, but for very particular things, like, he won't ask questions for things I think we should be asking more, but these other things, he'll ask too many. But then I'm aggravated. I'm like, why do we need to go there? Like, I'm satisfied, so why isn't that enough? And so once I got to the place where I understood what he needed to be comfortable, what it did for me as a whole was it allowed me to be like, oh, I should either come in at the end and get what I need so I don't lose my patience or get what I need. And then I can step away.

Cara Macksoud [00:35:12]:

Let him finish. Right? Like, all that extra toxic y, like, bickering. Like, you know what happens in relationships. That was all nonsense. Like, why is it okay that I need to fill my little cup? But I think he should pull his cup away before he feels full and going back to the family systems we grew up in. He grew up in a single mom household. Things were up, down, left, right, right. So he has a different level of comfortability than I do.

Cara Macksoud [00:35:42]:

I grew up in a two parent household. It's 57 years. My parents are still married. Right. And so there was a different level of security. And we don't take all of that into account. And we think, like, once we know it, but we don't realize how it plays out in every single decision that's being made on a regular basis. Because as Money Habitudes, does, pulls out what you subconsciously think.

Cara Macksoud [00:36:07]:

These are all subconscious things that we know. Remember, by the age of seven, the American Psychological association says you understand currency and you have a relationship with money by the age of seven. And it's all nonverbal. It's not because you went to work, paid taxes and got a paycheck. It's because you heard mom or dad argue about the rent that was due. You asked money for the book fair and somebody told you no. Or yes, you got no for the book fair. You went to school and little Susie had $20 for the book fair.

Cara Macksoud [00:36:38]:

And then somebody at school was like, oh, well, Tiffany, you must be poor because Susie has $20 and you have none. That's your lived experience. Now you're in a relationship. You're not going to a book fair with no money. Nobody's ever going to say that about you again. So now all of a sudden, you define successive. When I can buy stuff for my kids at the book fair because you had your experience as a kid. Now your husband's like, what do you mean? We're giving each kid $20 for the book fair.

Cara Macksoud [00:37:02]:

We got four kids. That's $80, right? Like, you can see how these little stupid things snowball if we're not in constant conversation, in constant communication and constant like, give me more, give me more, give me more.

Tiffany Sauder [00:37:19]:

So, Cara, would you say that you and your husband have gotten to a place where I. You're talking about financial stuff all the time, and it's all the time, in a way, almost too much. Okay. Because it's, like, episodic. I would say for us, like quarterly, we have a. Like, Jr and I will go away for a night or just go for a dinner. And we usually try to do something fun. And then we.

Tiffany Sauder [00:37:40]:

I say we talk about the business of the relationship, like, what's coming up, what trips do we need to plan, how are things going? And we have, like, a balance sheet for our family. We both have access to it. And so we'll kind of, like, talk about what's going on, what in vet, blah, blah, blah. But we've been in our house for a while. Our kids are getting older. You know, it's like, okay. The little conversations we're so good at, like, we're on the same page. You said, like, spontaneous and giving is one.

Tiffany Sauder [00:38:09]:

Like, somebody's not just gonna randomly go make a big donation, but we both have, I would say, a pot of money that we know about that we can randomly give away. So it looks random, but it's like, plant.

Cara Macksoud [00:38:21]:

That makes total sense.

Tiffany Sauder [00:38:22]:

Yeah. So it's. But it's. The purpose is to be spontaneous. You know what I mean? Which is not spontaneous, but it is.

Cara Macksoud [00:38:29]:

It gives you that flexibility to be spontaneous when something. Cause you know that you're touching enough things that there'll be an opportunity and you don't have to figure out where it's coming from totally. When the opportunity comes.

Tiffany Sauder [00:38:41]:

Yeah, we do. I was like, when you were kind of going through the different categories and I saw my results, I was like, well, some of those things, like, we are very generous, but it's not accidentally. It's not like, if we don't do it at the detriment of our ability to, like, fulfill our responsibilities, I'm not gonna, you know, whatever. Somebody's gotta be there to. Yeah. To catch others when they're in a situation. But you do have to make sure that you have your own. Yeah.

Tiffany Sauder [00:39:07]:

Kind of like foundation built, for sure. So anyway, as we start getting into some of these bigger conversations about, do we put in a big backyard? Like, do we do that? Do we move? Do we what? I would have said we were, like, nine out of ten aligned. And this has brought up, like, when is tomorrow? Are we at tomorrow? Is this what we were saving for? Is it ten years from now? Is it 30 years from now? The time value of money, like, if you invest it right now at 40, it's a lot more at 60 than if you wait for 50. All those kinds of things. So, anyways, it's interesting, and I think.

Cara Macksoud [00:39:45]:

It'S also the bigger conversation is. So I always joke, but when we were young on Wall street together, and so we did well, and obviously Wall street, late nineties, early two thousands, right? It was covered in indulgences, let's say. Not just drugs, alcohol, but, like, fancy cars and fancy jewelry and. Right, like, it's Wall street. It's indulgent and fancy golf memberships, right? Like, private jets. And so I tell two funny stories. One was, I remember as my husband was, like, moving up the ranks, a lot of the guys were starting to buy these, like, private jet membership cards. So you didn't buy the private jet.

Cara Macksoud [00:40:26]:

You bought, like, hours to private jets. And you and I spoke about this a couple of weeks ago when we first meth. And he came home and, you know, just got that. I mean, it's typical mal ego, Wall street, the whole nine yards, as I used to call it, store bought confidence. He must've had a good month and comes home and he's telling me about this thing. All the boys are buying it. And I said, I gotta be honest with you. First of all, we're seven, right? Like, so the amount of, like, do the math on the hour.

Cara Macksoud [00:40:51]:

Like, we don't need the mini jet. We need, like, the bigger one. Cause if we wanna actually enjoy the vacation, now we got a babysitter or two coming with us. We're big group. I said, so what is that going to cost? And he runs the numbers again, I'm cheap. So this is already outside my comfort zone. I said, I got to be honest with you. I said, you know how to make money.

Cara Macksoud [00:41:10]:

Making money is not hard for you. I've seen you do it six ways to hell. What would be attractive to me would be if you could fly that plane. I said, because anybody could buy anybody a membership. You can figure out ways to make money. I said, but I. Learning how to fly a plane is hard, and that takes effort, and it takes energy, and it takes time, and you have to, like, work at it. And so obviously, everybody knows what my love language is, right? Like, I'm somebody who wants people to, like, put in the hustle.

Cara Macksoud [00:41:39]:

Anyway, lo and behold, he wound up getting a private pilot's license, which is a funny thing, but in the end, he loves it. He and my son go out flying. My son's in aviation at this point. But what it led to, and it probably, in the end, costs us, I would say close to the same. It actually cost us more because we still have to pay to go on vacation on commercial planes because we don't own a plane, and it costs him all this money to fly, right? Like, in the end, we didn't save a nickel. But we reallocated the money to have an experience and think about the level of what I would have been showing my kids if I took my kids on a private jethe, what I'm showing them is that and when they have to go united in steerage, they're stamping their feet, right? And so I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to set those standards, but I also recognized his need for he had accomplished something. He wanted to, like, puff up his peacock feathers. And so I don't think we can deny that when there is money and you want to do something or you want to go into that next phase of life, what does it look like to be successful? You can put in a 40 year, 30 year career.

Cara Macksoud [00:42:55]:

And then if I'm asking you to live in a trailer on the border of South Carolina, somewhere in the middle of, not near the ocean, not near a mountain, not near, you might feel like that's failure. So we have to not just save the money to build it, we have to figure out what that money is meant to represent, to give ourselves sense of accomplishment. And that's the conversation I don't see getting had a lot. I work with couples, let's say, on the, you know, right as they're entering retirement, and I'm hearing a lot of first conversations around, oh, but I want to give the kids this, or, oh, I want to pay for a wedding, or, oh, and the husband or the wife, one person, one part of the coupleship will say that, and the other person will be like, wait a second. I worked 30 years. I ain't paying for their wedding. Nobody paid for our wedding. I thought we were going to do XYZ.

Cara Macksoud [00:43:51]:

And that conversation needed to be had 20 years ago, because if we're paying for people's weddings and we're going to retire in the style we want to retire in, sounds like we needed to save another separate stash of money. And so those are those big long term conversations. I say, get out a piece of paper. And I say to people all the time, draw me what retirement looks like. And I always say, I always use, like, a palm tree or a pine tree more to symbolize a beach or like mountains, you know, just to be silly, let's say. But if you draw me a palm tree and now I'm like, where is this palm tree? And you're like, it's in Barbados. And I'm like, oh, great, you live in New Jersey. How many flights a day are from? And you have three kids.

Cara Macksoud [00:44:35]:

How many flights a day from Barbados to New Jersey, and you're like, why does that matter? And I'm like, I don't know. Did you plan to have a relationship with your adult children? And you're like, oh, yeah, I want to take their children to my gym once a week when they. Oh, you're doing that from Barbados. Sounds like you're staying in New Jersey. Oh, well, yeah, all right, I will stay in New Jersey, but I want a beach house in New Jersey and check the taxes on that thing. So we needed to be having these conversations mounds ago, because if we're buying a beach house in New Jersey in retirement and our taxes are going to be 40 grand a year, where is that money coming from? And it's so you could have the grandchildren over so we can be playing with them. Is that what both of you want? I do see. What do they call it? The silver divorce? Like, I see a lot of that because depending on who's who in the relationship, if you're not on the same page about how you plan on doing, and it's funny, I see the reverse.

Cara Macksoud [00:45:31]:

I see a lot of couples that got divorced young when their kids were young. I have three couples that we know personally that are in their seventies, and they're all hanging out together with their new significant others because they are like, well, my grandchildren are not gonna not have both of us. And I'm like, well, why did you get divorced in the first place?

Tiffany Sauder [00:45:50]:

I have an aunt and uncle that were divorced for 20 or married for 20 years, divorced for 20 years and got remarried for crazy for the grandchildren. Yeah. Well, yes.

Cara Macksoud [00:46:01]:

The underlying motivation is you want to be with your people and you want to spend time, then that's what you got to use your money to do. I think that's what the conversation that needs. So forgive your listeners anything. What do we want from the money? What does success look like? And I don't mean success like some job promotion. I don't. I mean, like, if you have to think about laying in the coffin tomorrow and you're like, I am proud of the life I lived, or I'm proud of the things I did with what I had, what does that look like to you? And when you can roll that back, can we fund that? Can we not? And if what success looks like to you is totally different than what success looks like to me, we have to have a real serious conversation. I have one couple that we recently like, friends of ours, who are on two separate retirements. She hit her 30 years.

Cara Macksoud [00:46:52]:

She had the 403 b at her job and she's starting to take her disbursements. He was a construction, he was always a project manager. He never participated in a she's like, I'm retiring without him. And I'm like, far be it for me to judge anybody else's relationship. But I was like, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Wouldn't you want to have experience?

Tiffany Sauder [00:47:15]:

Totally. Cara. I think my big takeaway from this is that we can't leave tomorrow to tomorrow. We have to bring it into the present and we have to have a vivid understanding not only of our spouse's desires, but maybe even more importantly, of our own. And taking the time to sit and do that so that we do understand what are my motivations, what am I working towards? And having the courage to slide that across the table to the person you're married to and say, this is where I want to end up and I need to see yours so that we can have a conversation that sets us up for success, not only now but in the future. It follows with us and it doesn't.

Cara Macksoud [00:47:55]:

Mean there's not compromise. Like that doesn't mean there's not compromise of you want this and I want this. How do we do it together? And back to a conversation you and I had a while ago. Sometimes it's money that can actually solve that. Like if we want, I want to live in Barbados, but I want to see the grandchildren at least once a month. Sounds like it's just extra plane tickets. That's a money problem, right? Like if it's I want to be sleeping in the house with my grandchildren and wake up and have breakfast with them every day, that's also not just a money problem. That is.

Cara Macksoud [00:48:27]:

Is that really what you want? Like the other person wants for their life. So that's where the nuance has to come in and having those deeper conversations. But I think that when couples look at their money, if they can put really what they want their money to do or represent for them with them and be honest about it, I see a lot of people just say what they think is right or what the other people want to hear and that's not going to get us anywhere because eventually it comes out totally well.

Tiffany Sauder [00:49:00]:

Cara, I know that people can't necessarily take the Money Habitudes test directly from you, but if they want to find somebody in their area that has access to this, it's a financial planner. Where can they do that? What's the best way to go about that?

Cara Macksoud [00:49:14]:

So they can obviously come on our website and send a message or whatnot. And if they're working with an AFC, which is an accredited financial counselor or a CFP, a financial professional, or if they're working with a HUD counselor, we distribute our assessment to a lot of anybody who working with anyone around money so it gets used all over the place, but they can always reach out to us and we can get them in touch. Maybe your financial coach if you're working with one. There's not a one size fits all money touches every single part of our life and having understanding your relationship with money is by far the most important thing you can do.

Tiffany Sauder [00:49:51]:

Awesome. We'll put that link in show notes thanks for joining and sharing your experiences and advice. I definitely have been encouraged to have even more vivid conversations about the future with Junior, so thanks for coming on. Cara.

Cara Macksoud [00:50:04]:

Absolutely. This has been fun.

Tiffany Sauder [00:50:07]:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear you will not decide what happens in my life. I will.

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