What were like the financial considerations that went into that?

So you bring up a great point about how dynamic things become, right? Once you have a child and any time in personal finance, you are entering a phase of life where there's big change, change of job, moving, right? A house in this case, having another life in your lives.

The number one thing you could do at that moment is be as organized as possible, right? There's two stances.

There's being proactive and reactive.

The more reactive you are, the harder it is to make clear, thoughtful decisions about what you need to do, especially around money.

Being proactive means, hey, I acknowledge life will be volatile, that I'm going to have to change, and I'm organized enough to be in a position to make the decisions necessary to accommodate those changes.

So we've been on a journey in our own personal financial lives ultimately to the point of writing a book about it.

Yes.

What were like the financial considerations that went into that?

So you bring up a great point about how dynamic things become, right? Once you have a child and any time in personal finance, you are entering a phase of life where there's big change, change of job, moving, right? A house in this case, having another life in your lives.

The number one thing you could do at that moment is be as organized as possible, right? There's two stances.

There's being proactive and reactive.

The more reactive you are, the harder it is to make clear, thoughtful decisions about what you need to do, especially around money.

Being proactive means, hey, I acknowledge life will be volatile, that I'm going to have to change, and I'm organized enough to be in a position to make the decisions necessary to accommodate those changes.

So we've been on a journey in our own personal financial lives ultimately to the point of writing a book about it.

Yes.

Right.

Let's go to the stuff you know.

This is the part they're going to like, right? This is where, all right, first, let's get a relative measure here.

Are we talking about, you know, living in a two-bedroom in Brooklyn and dealing with the high cost of living and raising kids there? Or are we talking about, I don't know, Missouri in a five-bedroom house where cost of living is a lot cheaper, right?

Mm-hmm.

And start thinking about what are the big decisions, sacrifices, changes you're gonna be making in your lifestyle.

If you are adamant that they need to go to the good preschool around the corner Well, what are you gonna trade for that if you can't make the numbers work?

Where should you maybe pull this from?

Yeah.

So typically there's an order of operations depending on how much planning you've done.

This is why I'm such a big fan of the cash reserve, right? Is that you don't need to go into debt or sell assets that are earmarked for other purposes like your retirement or your kid's college just to handle an emergency or opportunity for that matter.

So if you have cash, clearly that's the first place to go.

If you have the opportunity or investments outside of retirement accounts, assets, yes, unfortunately you'll be selling them, but you'll want to do that in the most tax-advantaged way.

Be mindful of your gains and save those retirement accounts as kind of the option of last resort.

If

Why is that an empowering message to, for investors to internalize, that there is no normal?

Yeah, because if there, if there was a normal, everybody would be doing the same thing, right? Like, there wouldn't be marketplace...

If we think about investments, right? There wouldn't be marketplaces of ideas to shop around and test theories, make money, lose money, and all, and all of that stuff here.

But when it comes to, you know, individuals and couples, you know, look, it's, it's kind of the spice of life in the relationship.

But what you have to remember is, you know, this is two-part work every step of the way.

Um, Heather just talked about the self work that needs to be done to know what your own story is.

You need a partner that is able to listen to that.

Like, time is the greatest currency that we have, and I think a lot of people don't realize that until it's, unfortunately, something makes them realize it.