Ramit digs into how years of overspending, money avoidance, and relying on future income have left a couple with more than $428,000 in debt, no savings, and a financial life they can no longer sustain.

Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich talks with Addison, 39, and James, 43, who earn around $138,000 a year but have $0 in savings and fixed costs consuming a staggering 154% of their take-home pay. Addison feels responsible for keeping their finances afloat, while James admits he's spent years relying on optimism and money he expects to earn in the future.

As Ramit digs deeper, it becomes clear they are both contributing to the problem through restaurants, concerts, Ubers, shopping, and pet spending that has reached thousands in a single month. He helps them uncover the childhood money patterns behind their behavior, confront what they can actually afford, and make some of the biggest lifestyle changes attempted on the show all in an effort to stop living on future money and build a financial life they can actually sustain.

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In this episode, we uncover:

• Why Addison says they may divorce if their relationship with money doesn’t change

• How more than $428K of debt, $0 savings, and 154% fixed costs have left them financially exposed

• Why James admits he has been “betting on money that’s not there yet”

• How Addison became the financial safety net while increasingly feeling like a caretaker

• Why restaurants, concerts, Ubers, shopping, and convenience spending became part of their everyday life

• How they planned to spend more than $3,300 a month on food and over $1,000 a month on their dogs

• Why Addison’s frustration with James is only part of the story and how her own spending contributes too

• How growing up around financial stress and poverty shaped the way they both think about money today

• Why 30% of their spending went toward shopping and why they couldn’t even remember some of what they bought

• How they radically restructure their spending, savings, investments, and rules around money

Chapters:

(00:00:00) Introduction

(00:03:31) Why divorce is already on the table

(00:08:54) The spending habits keeping them stuck