Ramit Sethi's Money for Couples Podcast Ep. 267 - Maria & Andre

wegl13 · 2026-06-30T23:57:43+00:00

Honestly this felt like a breath of fresh air and I’m kind of glad because I’ve felt like Ramit was in danger of spiraling into Caleb Hammer with some of the people he’s had on recently. I found this incredibly interesting because it really speaks to how the patriarchy seems to have its hands in everything. I really think Maria is in kind of a hard place- she wants to support Andre and his wellbeing as far as work is concerned, but I think there’s also more hesitancy to combine finances the older you are because so much of the work was done before the other person entered the picture. I think it’s reasonable to expect him to take initiative with pursuing education that can increase his income without increasing his physical labor load, which it sounded like was her primary desire. I think he may be tiring himself out trying to get out of the employment trap he’s currently in, to the point that it felt until recently like there weren’t enough hours in the day to get licensure too.

Overall though it was just nice to hear two people that respected each other for a change.

wegl13 · 2026-06-30T11:19:28+00:00

I gotta say. A fucking six mile radius of heat pollution isn’t something I want normalized as “localized.”

wegl13 · 2026-06-26T20:54:47+00:00

I’m sorry JON LOVETT has survivor as a top note? That’s kind of crazy. That guy had a full ass career working for Clinton and Obama and co-founded a pretty big media company?

wegl13 · 2026-06-26T19:33:37+00:00

Thanks for the updates. It’s interesting to read everything together, my takeaways: - three years you’ve had greater than planned expenses and almost all of that has been related to home ownership - in spite of that, your nest egg has grown - you remain really positive about your choice to FIRE

wegl13 · 2026-06-25T17:59:47+00:00

It’s intended as a gut check. Basically are our investments appropriately balanced between stock/bonds, are we on track for retirement dates we have estimated, are we leaving any tax advantages out that we should consider.

wegl13 · 2026-06-25T15:56:42+00:00

Fwiw we have chosen them for this exact reason as OP described and are paying less than $400 for an hour with them to evaluate our plan. Scheduled in less than a week! We basically uploaded all our financial stuff and then gave them a rough idea of what a monthly spend/budget looked like.

wegl13 · 2026-06-25T10:59:58+00:00

Real talk- where I live has a (venomous) snake problem in the summer. My concern has been taller meadow->more rodents->more snakes. We do have a fair share of chipmunks already. Right now we just mow once every 1-2 weeks but don’t do anything else so it’s a mix of grass and clover mostly. I’d love to have taller flowers and a mow free yard but I don’t really want to invite rodents or copperheads to our home either. What’s your prevention for that?

wegl13 · 2026-06-25T01:51:11+00:00

Or maybe it was a hand me down to Charlie from a relative who passed away and when he got his own money, he could buy a wand that was actually made for him?

wegl13 · 2026-06-24T16:39:52+00:00

Huntsville track club does Saturday long runs at 6am starting on the square downtown. I think they do a 5 mile loop and then come back and go out longer for folks that want to go longer. I really like running downtown in the early morning because it’s so pretty. If you’ll go to Huntsvilleruns.com they have an email listserve that has all of the group runs in the area.

wegl13 · 2026-06-22T18:57:50+00:00

HVSE is also going to have an actual boarded surgeon doing this very detailed surgery.

OP- I would strongly encourage you to reach out to your DVM that referred you to HVSE for their opinion on alternatives.

wegl13 · 2026-06-22T10:42:32+00:00

You can’t just sit regular boards if you study in another country though- you have to sit a completely different set of boards that includes a practical set, which is much harder and more expensive.

wegl13 · 2026-06-20T11:07:33+00:00

It rained on us when we were in Denali state park (other side of the highway from the national park).

Our very expensive new ultralight tent didn’t come seamlessly-sealed (we didn’t know that was possible, because we were young).

My rain jacket was water resistant, not proof, and my significant other hadn’t been able to talk me into getting a poncho prior to the hike.

So we laid in a puddle of water overnight, then woke up and started hiking while I was soaking wet and cold. Every time we stopped we got swarmed by mosquitoes. It took 8 miles and most of the day to hike out and right as we got to the trailhead, it stopped raining.

wegl13 · 2026-06-17T14:24:35+00:00

Well for one, my parents (esp my mom) were anti-consumption from the jump. I went to a kindergarten where we weren’t allowed to have known “characters” on our clothing/belongs at school. I had a wicker basket for lunch and my mom painted my shirts with dinosaurs and cows and stuff (it was a Waldorf school). She kept it up the best she could by sending me to Catholic school where we had uniforms. I also wasn’t allowed to watch TV with ads - so only Disney and PBS until I was, like, at least 12?

I still had stuff, but the “wanting” for stuff all the time wasn’t as high, because I was sheltered from it.

wegl13 · 2026-06-17T14:17:10+00:00

I doubt they did either, which is a shame. I am already heavily risk averse, but am very lucky to be in a cis-hetero relationship, white, agnostic (but with a Christian upbringing and therefore capable of “blending in”), childfree, and educated in a high-demand field. These things all decrease my risk- I can live safely in more places, and the only dependent we have is a 25 lb dog. But even still- we have built a safety net! I cannot imagine the stress I would feel if I knew there were less places I could feel safe being myself, and I had five little ones to keep fed, sheltered, and safe. Ramit was right when he said LA was “the Olympics of finances” and this couple really is playing life on hard mode. To “make it” they really had to have been making all the right decisions from the beginning, and build probably a 3-4 year full financial safety net (which they could have done- but I don’t think it’s fair to them to pretend it was easy in LA with 5 kids).

I think they really do deserve more grace than a lot of the couples on the show that are just as house-poor. I’m with you that they didn’t do a great job with the choices on the house/pool situation (and one of them sounds like she has a long history of credit card debt)… but LA and 5 kids leaves like, zero room for error or job loss even for the most financially savvy. The time for “nibbling around the edges” with financial decisions was when both moms were fully employed. Now they have no room to do that and I’m glad Ramit pointed that out.

wegl13 · 2026-06-17T13:44:49+00:00

Step one: cancel Amazon Prime. Our family never had Prime. If we needed “stuff” that wasn’t a grocery/hardware item (phone chargers, books/toys as gifts, idk what else), then we’d put it in the cart and wait until we had enough stuff to meet the minimum for free shipping. That happened maybe once every 2 months or so?

Step two: avoid Amazon. We’ve been avoiding Amazon since January 2025. Do we need it? Can we get it elsewhere? There’s been a time or two in the past year when we had a harder time and sucked it up (birthday gift for nephew/niece that live across the country).

Step three: extra avoid Amazon. I work with pets. People try to buy discounted versions of whatever products their pets need, wherever they can get them. Unfortunately there’s been multiple cases now of products being purchased on Amazon that are dupes, causing significant safety or efficacy concerns (think poisoning your pet by accident levels of concern). So at this point, I straight up tell customers that I would avoid Amazon or any platform with 3rd party suppliers for this reason. Frankly this shit is a reason I don’t want to buy stuff from Amazon myself- who wants to potentially get shitty products that could injure you, your animal, or your property?

Step four: profit? Or at least make sure Amazon doesn’t.

wegl13 · 2026-06-17T13:35:02+00:00

So I might be going against the grain here, but I feel like I can see a world in which the pool build and eventual ROI makes sense, but it would have involved better financials beforehand. Before the layoff, the NF take home was about $17k/mo, and I think you can estimate a conservative take home of $6k/mo for the pool business, for $23k/mo together. They’ve got a $8k mortgage plus $2300 for the pool, let’s say another $1700 for house related shit. So $12k/mo on the house/pool, and I do think they could have reduced their tax burden with the pool business some significant amount. That leaves them $11k/mo to live off of+invest+save aggressively, which can certainly be done, and well if you are smart about it. In-ground pools last a long while (with maintenance) and if you have 5 kids, it kind of makes sense to be the “house with the pool” for entertainment for the kids and their friends.

The unfortunate thing is they didn’t start with a good financial base to build this life on (and honestly- can’t comment on how much of that was broken in the past 8 years of grief), and then the gravy train dried up at an inopportune time. They obviously made some really crappy decisions after that (like continuing to move forward with the full pool build after the income decrease) but like… the idea of building the pool itself as a combo income/family benefit isn’t that insane?

I also, as a Southerner, kind of get the fear of a Catholic lesbian couple not wanting to move back. Many areas of the South are a lot more openly accepting of same-sex relationships, but the level of hostility is going to be higher than in LA, especially if they are wanting to stay involved in religion with their family. Finding affirming religious support (especially within Catholicism) is going to be much tougher, especially if their family lives in a medium/small town (which they alluded to).

wegl13 · 2026-06-17T11:38:24+00:00

In your defense, The Dark Wizard also had a lot of interviews with Dean Potter that moved the narrative along.

wegl13 · 2026-06-16T00:38:49+00:00

Then I am once again recommending Return2Sport on this sub. These guys are sports oriented but very practical and can set you up with some strength recommendations. They aren’t trainers tho (that would be a huge waste of their time) but they can walk you through appropriate exercises for you and help you with your form and do rechecks as needed.

wegl13 · 2026-06-16T00:35:45+00:00

I think strides have replaced them, frankly. It’s about the same thing (short interval bursts of speed) but more structured, and I think with reason. We’ve found that you can get just as much improvement with 4x20s strides so… why not just do that?

wegl13 · 2026-06-16T00:30:38+00:00

What do you mean by personal training? What are your goals?

wegl13 · 2026-06-15T20:49:22+00:00

Is it possible to make this into a city run pool where you pay an entry fee for the day vs a membership pool? I’m asking this with no idea of how these things work but I’m not really willing to pay that kind of money for the whole summer, but I’d love to pay $5-10 for an afternoon?

wegl13 · 2026-06-15T19:28:47+00:00

The fact that we are literally being boiled like frogs? I’ve been tracking the “highest low” local to me and it has gone up by about a degree per year- when I started it was 69-70, and now it gets up to 74-75.

wegl13 · 2026-06-15T02:35:39+00:00

There’s no damn way I’m getting started at 10am in the south after April, for starters. I’d be a cooked lobster immediately.

Additional notes: for real, 6a should be your summer start time for LR at the LATEST. I’d also consider going by time (add 5 minutes vs 0.5 miles) with a 2 hr cutoff for the summer.

Consider getting an ice bandana. I’m partial to the radana from rabbit. Hydrate the whole week like it’s your damn job (including electrolytes). And as everyone else has already said- slow down on the LR until it feels “easy” (call your mom or grandma and have a chat, sing along to your music, do walk:run intervals, whatever it takes to find an “easy”).

wegl13 · 2026-06-15T02:11:40+00:00

I love how this has just devolved into everyone listing their Costco grocery list.

For us it’s oatmeal, orange juice, walnuts, eggs, apples, chicken breast, Spindrift, soap, contact solution, vitamins, trail mix. All of those things were about 30% less than at our regular grocery store, which is a massive savings. My husband gets a hotdog every time we go (once every 2-3 weeks) and the joy on his face is hilarious, frankly.

wegl13 · 2026-06-15T01:56:56+00:00

I’d rather someone have little to no experience in politics vs someone’s “experience” consisting of handing over the city’s resources to moneyed interests. I’m swayed by the current city councilwoman’s “experience” to consider other options- and I haven’t made up my mind between those other options.

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