Who Should Pay On a First Date? Ft. Ramit Sethi

Are there any that you're like, these are the deal breaker questions that you really need to ask about money in the early stages? And what do they relate to? Welcome everybody to the Love Life podcast. I am here today with a dear friend of mine, someone who is an inspiration to me, someone who has created an incredible world of his own with I Will Teach You To Be Rich, the website, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, the book, and now the podcast by the same name. His name is Ramit Sethi. We go back years now, and this is one of many collaborations that I'm excited about, where I get to bring him into our world, especially because Ramit, if you don't know him, is a personal finance advisor, someone who has made this incredible path teaching people about finance, about money, about their relationship with money, and now the relationship they have with their spouse as it concerns money. And that brings him into our world and something that I know a lot of people are going to be really interested in, because one of the most common things I come across in early dating is people just are sick of wasting their time. They don't want to go down the rabbit hole with someone who has different intentions than them, and it could be different intentions mean they want to fool around and I want a relationship, and I want to find that out sooner rather than later. Another conversation of difference in intentions is kids. I'd rather know now if they don't want kids. And another one is money. I'd rather know now what their position is, how much debt they have, if they're in a position to be able to contribute at the level that I would like a partner of mine to be able to contribute or do the same things as I want to do in life. And I suppose what all of these conversations have in common, the commitment conversation, the kids conversation, the money conversation, is that it feels like a very difficult thing to bring up early on. We would love to know on a first date if someone was like us and wanted a family one day, but it feels like a very intense thing to ask someone on a first date. We would love to know if they want a relationship, but we're worried that by asking them if they're in the market for a relationship, we're already somehow signing them up to a relationship with us. And similarly, I can imagine it feels for people like talking about money early on has a whole set of what feel like kind of stereotypes they want to avoid, which is, well, I don't want to seem like I'm asking because I need someone to be rich. I don't want to seem like I'm asking because I'm money oriented or that that's what I value more than anything else. So we know these issues do matter on some level, but we're also afraid to bring them up. Have you got into the world of when in dating should this be brought up and how should it be brought up? Yes. And that's also why I'm excited to talk to you because I want to see where we both stand on this. Okay. First off, I think we should all acknowledge that it's difficult to talk about money in dating for a variety of reasons. First, we're operating with one hand tied behind our back because of these gendered and cultural invisible scripts. If I bring up money, am I being seen as a gold digger? I don't think so. I don't think so, but I can understand that that is a very real concern. If I ask a couple of questions, am I being seen as aggressive or too domineering? That's one. And then what about if you flip it? If you happen to be a particularly high earning person or if you flip the gender, there's so many different scripts that are not written anywhere, but they're nonetheless real. And we have to acknowledge those. I'm not going to come on here and be like, just say these 10 questions and then pull out their financial statements. It doesn't work because we live in reality. The other reason that we have another arm tied behind our back is that most of us are not particularly savvy with money. Do you know most people I know who are in debt, 90% of them do not know how much they owe and 95% of them do not know when their debt payoff date is. Most people watching and listening to this do not know what the average return in the stock market is. This is something that's not taught and that's why I get passionate about it because I find money to be incredibly inspirational. It's also woven into our life. It's where we live. It's what we eat. It relates to our children. It's even who we are. And so I want to be able to shine a light on this and say, hey, there's no shame in talking about money. We all have it. We all want to know how to use it. We should all be able to spend guilt-free on it, be able to be generous. And so if we start from that frame of, yeah, money is important to me. It's going to allow us to travel, take care of our families, maybe send kids to tennis camp. That is going to allow for our security. Then suddenly it takes this less of a, I have to ask this odd question. And this is an important thing to me. Just as I would ask a potential partner, what kind of food do you like? And then if they said, I only like to eat boiled potatoes and no spice, I'd be like, get the hell out of here. This is over. In fact, if I found out I was dating someone for like a year and then they told me they like boiled potatoes, I'm like, we got to go. Wasted a year. But just the same, money is important. Now, how do you talk about it? That's a separate question. But I just want everyone to get comfortable with the idea that it's okay to care about money. I care about it. I'm not obsessed with it, but I care about it. And just like food, children, living situation, travel, it's an important part of life. I absolutely agree. And that they are 100% going to be the questions that come up later if they don't come up now. Are there particular things that, I'm almost wondering like, A, is there a certain date by which it's worth having these conversations? Do you want to be six months in and have not had any of these conversations? Is that too long? And which are the ones that you think are the kind of, almost the baseline questions? There's always going to be very particular nuances in the way we do things, which are not going to be deal breakers for either of us. It's just a difference in what you like to do with your money versus what I like to do. And as long as they're not completely and utterly clashing in our values or in the amounts of our joint money that we want to spend on those things, then we can negotiate and navigate those. But are there any that you're like, these are the deal breaker questions that you really need to ask about money in the early stages? And what do they relate to? Okay. So is there a specific date? No. Just the same as, I wouldn't say there's a specific date where you want to be physically intimate. You want to feel that out and what's comfortable for you and your partner. But for me, when there are natural moments in a relationship to talk about this, that is a great time. So certainly at a one year anniversary, obviously that's like, hey, this is like an amazing, let's take stock of where we are. What have we loved about the last year? What do we want to do in the next year? This is a moment. Certainly when you are considering a serious step, whether it be getting engaged or moving in, and then of course engagement and the lead up to marriage. Those are obvious ones where it's a given. Nobody's going to think it's weird to talk about money. I think sometimes people fixate on that first six months because as you pointed out, they don't want to waste time. And that's totally fair. I get that. I think there are ways to ask questions there that don't feel intrusive, but still give you a lot of insight. Those would be questions like, I was just thinking, how did you grow up around money? What did your parents talk about? Mine, they would say things like, we can't afford it. And that actually, I'm still trying to work through that because I started to make a little bit more money, but I still worry about spending. How about for you? Notice that that question has nothing to do with what's in their bank account, but it's really telling you about them and it's meeting them where they are. And I can imagine a partner saying, oh, we never talked about money. It's very terse because people are nervous when they start talking about it. They get very nervous and short. And so I would go, if I'm the curious partner, I would say, oh, so do you talk about it now with them? Oh, no, no, no. Parents, they don't. They're Midwestern. It's a Midwestern culture. Oh, okay. And how has that seeped into your life today? For me, my parents told me this and it was awesome. My parents are immigrants from India and they taught me X, Y, Z. That's been super helpful. But I think by the time I was 23 or 24, I also realized I had some other ways of looking at money. What about for you? It's this beautiful back and forth. Notice that I'm volunteering a lot of information about vulnerability to it. Exactly. And a lot of it is me admitting, gosh, there's stuff I don't know yet. And when you admit that to your partner, they're going to receive that. They may want to help you or they may just feel open and willing to share because I guarantee you every single person, including me, has vulnerabilities about money. Whether it's where we came from and what we learned or our credit card debt today or not knowing how to properly allocate our investments, everybody on this planet has some vulnerability. What a beautiful place to start. One of the things that it seems to me there's a theme of here is there are certain moments that provide really good stopping points for, hey, you don't even have to have it explicitly or directly. You can find those moments, whether it be a one-year anniversary, whether it be you're about to move in together and so there's the question of rent, whether it's you're about to get married and there's the question of a possible prenup. These are all moments where the money conversation becomes possible. And to that extent, even earlier, I think when you're eating out at restaurants, it's a great moment to talk to someone about their relationship with eating at nice restaurants and do they enjoy also eating at home or are they just as content eating noodles on the side of a street as they are in some five-star restaurant? I feel like those moments are just as valuable in starting to get an early sense. Yes, I love that example. Eating out, perfect, perfect way to create an opportunity to talk. And I think what you're really revealing for people is that we often think about money as this separate topic. So there's our relationship and then there's money and money is just really nervous and we're all insecure about it. But the way I see it is, it's all woven together. Money is a critical part of your life together. So when it comes to eating out, yeah, absolutely. You go out for the fifth time, you go, oh my gosh, I love this place. I remember when we grew up, we went to India, we'd eat street food. Sure, we'd get sick once in a while, but it was amazing. And the first time I had sushi was in my 20s. What about you? And you're actually learning a lot about, oh, well, we grew up, we ate at a hotel every Sunday. That was a very fancy, oh my gosh, do you like that now? And you start to connect over those things. So money is not this separate thing. It's actually deeply woven and there's nothing to apologize for when it comes to learning about how your partner sees the world. Because it's exactly that. It's how you see the world and the volunteering information about yourself in that way is a way of explaining your journey. Wait a minute. Before you go, what are you about to click on right now? I'll tell you the one that's come up on mine. Wasps in figs. Figs have tiny dead wasps inside them. Now, is that changing your life? No, no, it's not changing mine. But I have something that will change your life. If you go to YourDatingSolution.com, you can put in your name, select the dating challenge that most applies to your life right now. And this tool will recommend one of my solutions that best fits your needs where you are in your love life right now. Check it out at YourDatingSolution.com.