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About this episode

Money may not buy happiness, but the tension between enjoying life today and securing a stable future can leave many couples feeling stuck, anxious, or even at odds with each other. Are you and your partner finding it difficult to strike a balance between living for the moment and building a financially secure tomorrow? Navigating finances together can bring up deep-seated fears, old money stories, and conflicting priorities—making it a journey that’s as emotional as it is practical.

In this episode, you’ll discover how couples can open up the conversation about money in a way that’s thoughtful, honest, and constructive. Through real-life examples and expert strategies, you’ll learn how to identify and communicate your financial values, create a flexible plan that adapts to life’s twists and turns, and build habits that support both today’s joy and tomorrow’s security. Whether you’re saving every penny out of fear or struggling to rein in your spending, this conversation offers actionable tools to help you play the right “money game” together—and come out stronger as a couple.

Eric Roberge, CFP, is the CEO and lead advisor at Beyond Your Hammock, a financial planning firm based in Boston that serves professional couples in their 30s and 40s with young families. His business partner and wife, Kali Roberge, serves as COO of BYH. Eric & Kali understand the challenges of financial planning around families and children because, as parents of a three-year-old, they’re in the trenches and well-versed in what it takes to build a financial plan that serves every member of the family. Eric and Kali live with their daughter and two cats in Cambridge, Mass.

Episode Highlights

04:12 How Eric & Kali built a marriage and business partnership.

08:54 The struggles of balancing love, work, and parenthood with the same partner.

11:22 How to start honest money conversations with your partner.

13:08 What money arguments reveal about communication styles.

18:11 How childhood shapes our money mindset.

21:18 Redefining “enough” and moving beyond scarcity.

24:38 Simple saving targets without guilt or judgment.

26:02 Planning with flexibility so life’s surprises don’t derail you.

29:56 Why your financial map should keep evolving.

33:51 Systems over stress: Using money rules and systems to create freedom, not restriction.

36:37 Defining the money game you want to play.

40:33 How to nurture your plan, find the right guides, and stay the course.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Take a moment to pause, breathe, and check in with your body and emotions before starting any money conversation with your partner.
• Together, review your current finances—assets, liabilities, cash flow—without judgment, to see where you stand right now.
• Have open conversations about what matters most to each of you, both in daily life and in the future, to uncover shared values and goals.
• Reflect on and share your individual “money scripts” or early financial beliefs, and notice how these influence your current behaviors and stressors.
• Clearly specify what “enough” looks like for your family, so you have a concrete target for saving and spending.
• Create simple guidelines (like saving 25% of your income) to automate good habits and reduce emotional spending decisions.
• Revisit your financial plan regularly to adjust for life changes, ensuring your approach evolves with your circumstances and goals.
• Intentionally set times to have financial discussions as a couple, even when life gets busy, so things don’t build up or get avoided.

Mentioned

Money for Life with Eric Roberge, CFP (Apple Podcast) (podcast)

One page financial plan (link)

Evolve in Love – Next level – Book Your Discovery Call

Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication

Connect with Kali & Eric Roberge

Websites: beyondyourhammock.com

Facebook: facebook.com/beyondyourhammock

X: x.com/beyondfinances

Instagram: instagram.com/beyondyourhammock

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ericroberge

TikTok: tiktok.com/@beyondfinances

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

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Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

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Episode Transcript

Kali and Eric, thank you for joining us. I'm excited about our conversation thanks for having us here.

We're excited as well. 

Yeah, wonderful. Well, I know we're going to be focusing on the topic of helping people navigate the balance of enjoying their lives as it relates to financial kind of health and also setting themselves up for success and how to have practical strategies around that and couplehood. And before we get diving in, what would you like to share for people who are just getting to know you both here? 

Well, we are married, if that wasn't clear, and we are in business together. And so a lot of our conversations that we have about our life as it pertains to us and our daughter, who is three and a half, comes into the conversations we have with our clients about money. So it's. It's very much a sharing of experience and also education when we have these conversations and we're in the Boston area and hopefully they want to end. 

Yeah. I think one thing that excites me about the work that we do is that we are often very much our client, like, we're same age, same life stage.  

And then, yeah, I think that it presents challenges that we're married and that we're. We work together, but it also provides a little bit more depth to our personal relationship, too, which is really exciting to kind of explore that. 

Absolutely. I appreciate you speaking to that. I think when we're in the work ourselves and being able to really speak to the experiences or resonance that people typically can feel, that if we're not living into it's harder to access. So I appreciate that. Now, were you in business together before you had your little one, your girl? 

Yes. 

Yes. Well, we often joke that the business is the first baby we didn't know that we had until we had an actual baby. And they were like, well, this is. 

A lot to juggle. 

So, yes, we. We did work together before she was born. 

Jessica Higgins
Oh, my gosh. These arenas as we're talking. I'm just aware. I don't know if you would agree, but I feel like intimate relating can activate a lot of curriculum for growing, as I might say on the show. And I think business entrepreneurship also can really show us our areas of weakness or underdevelopment or things that we maybe haven't really looked at or didn't realize. And then parenting is another one. I just feel like these are three really growthful and also ask so much of us domains. 

Yeah, I think there's. I just picturing like this huge echo chamber that encompasses all of those things, and that is our life. Right. And in a sense, like on the. On the negative field, there's no escape. Right. But that's like half joking because it's really great to be able to have that mirror in front of you and learn from everything and see how it rebounds off of that wall, back to this wall. Because we are in business, because we have the daughter, because we're together a lot. 

You know, it's a hide from things that need work. Like, it's. It's very much in your base. I mean, you need to address it. I mean that in a good way. Like, I think it's. You do have kind of an escape route when you don't have all those things right there tied together so you can might delay working on things that you might want to, you know, develop. And here it's like you just have to go at it. 

That's such a great point that you're interfacing with each other in these arenas that it's not as though you leave for work and are like, oh, I get a break. Or conversely, I mean, this also maybe speaks to. I mean. Cause. Yes, sorry, just finish that thought. That we have outlets and that when you're working so closely together, it does require a different level of intentionality and housekeeping or hygiene. If you look at the kind of conflicts that might emerge and will emerge, that how you're negotiating that and the care around it, I mean, it's. I feel like when we avoid, it just cumulates. Right. And that's why I use the word hygiene. It can. If we're not attending to it can have buildup. And then the other thought that I have is pretty probably pacing. 

And this might fit to some of what you recommend with your clients and people that you work with around. It's a balancing act. Sometimes. Sometimes we have to show up and we're not in a place that we can resolve the conflict or can actually do the deeper kind of work around it. And we somehow. Whether or not it's compartmentalizing or putting a pin in it and knowing when to prioritize. And pacing, like, that's a nuance dance. 

Yeah, definitely. And something that were very bad at the beginning. And it's taken many Years to continually try to work on and iterate. And I think that's really it. It's an iterative process because we'll have a blow up where it's like, this is not working. We didn't put a pin in it when we should have. So we come back and say, all right, let's try this next time. So we might try it. And like, that didn't work either. Like, try to tweak this. Yes, I think it's definitely a constant work in progress. We're still working on it, but much better now than I think it was. Definitely learned through experience, largely to how to deal with that. 

Yeah, I think the. The great news is that we got to try it out before anybody was watching, meaning we didn't have a daughter in the house. So it was just the two of us and, you know, let loose, however that argument happens or whatever. But then also in the business, we didn't have employees. It was just the two of us initially. And now we have the daughter and we have employees. So there is less ability to screw up in public because you're never in private anymore. 

Yeah. So you have the training ground, the learning curve that you get to experiment and iterate and also as you develop and really get your bearings and can actually have an impact on others in a way that is showing you're an example. I mean, I do feel like when we're living into these principles, people are impacted by them both positively and also not so positively, depending. And I also. Last thing I know, I want to get into your work specifically by. As we're just kind of addressing all the complexities that can exist when a couple is in business together, parenting and just also negotiating intimacy really mindfully. 

When we're talking about pacing, it seems as though that if we have the capacity to put a pin in it and know we're going to come back to it tonight or tomorrow, and we know how to access different parts of ourselves. I feel like that's helping develop resource or resilience, that there's this other part of us that we know we function really well and we have either it's a partnership, friendship, trust that we can access that even though we're still in process with some other aspects. And I don't know if you've found that to be true, but I think that can be really helpful to feel the positivity while still in process. 

Yep. I was just thinking the. It's hard for me to. Even if I put it on the shelf sometimes I almost forget it's on the shelf and I just move on. And it's accidentally under the rug. 

Right. 

Because everything else is so busy, we don't have time to deal with that thing. Let's just move on. Pick up, you know, as if it didn't happen, and go. Which sometimes is okay, but other times it really is like a landmine that's somewhere in the room and someone's going to step on it at some point and it hasn't been resolved. 

Correct. And it doesn't typically go away. It'll raise its hand at some point and then like, oh, hello, I forgot to deal with you. Okay, great. Do you want to say anything, Kali, here before we move on? 

No, I think that's. It's a fine line between that because I think sometimes it is helpful to have to set it aside because sometimes that's actually the answer. It's just like everybody just needs to drop this. It's not that big of a deal. And locking horns over it and not letting go is only making the situation worse. But like I said, where do you find the line between letting it go and. No, it's just festering now. Like, I wish I had a clear. Like, in hindsight it's very obvious which one it was. But going forward into it, I think that's still something I work on is trying to figure out what is. Is this a let it go thing or is this a no, really gotta resolve it, just not right. The second thing. 

Oh my gosh. And I so raised my hand with you around the attunement to the process, both individually and then relationally, like, having been with my husband all these years, I can read his cues. Even if I don't like it. I'm like, oh, okay, so I know where we're going now. He might not have a lot of capacity to resolve where I typically will want to resolve more anyway, so. But if the goal is really to have resolution, to have regulation and approaching with real positive, constructive outcomes, then I am willing to postpone. Or. And then sometimes I can tell, like, okay, this actually needs us to kind of dig in a little or lean in. And then what the situation asks of us. 

Last thing I'll say, my husband is in a position of leadership and he came across and it's not a new thing, but it's just a question that was really sticking out to him. It's like, what does this situation ask of me or require of me? Sometimes it's a different angle to think about less of, like, what Do I want. But also, like when you have these, your child who you care deeply about, or your business, it's like sometimes those interests, if we can be aware, can help us orient a bit. 

Yeah, definitely. I like that a lot. I kind of steal that from him. So please thank him. 

Well, it wasn't. He didn't. I will ask him if I can where he got it from and I'll put it on the show. Notes to just give credit. 

Okay. 

So as you support people and building success both in present time and then also for future in their financial health or aspect of their lives, when specifically working with a couple, where do you start? If you're willing to share? Like, sometimes couples haven't even really talked that much or. Yeah, where. Where do you start? Eric, you were about to say. 

Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's not always obvious how good or bad at communication, generally couples are when you start to speak with them. And even if they are good in certain places, maybe they're the same or different in their financial life. And so it's really an exploratory conversation to start. And we know that if we start to have a conversation about your financial foundation, which is essentially popping the hood of your financial life and saying, how are things running right now, technically? What does your balance sheet look like? What does your cash flow look like without any judgment on it? Just like, what's going on today if nothing else changed, like, how's it going? And then starting to go into conversations about what are you actually trying to do with your life? What do you want from the next five years? 

thereof, and how people communicate and where the sticking points are for certain topics as we go through the conversation. 

Great, thank you. It sounds like a bit of an assessment and just a check in that doesn't have to be super intimidating, but that it's just, hey, how are you? Let's look at how things are. And then also from that, how they relate to one another, how they relate to what they're sharing with you. And also the information that you're gleaning gives a lot. Is that right? 

Yes. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you show up to a zoom meeting. A lot of our conversations are on zoom, and there's an unspoken something going on, you know, like, just like we said, like, there could have been an argument right before the call and you just don't know. But I'm like, something's there and you know, you don't have touch on it, but, you know, just asking maybe, like, how's everything going? Is there anything on your mind right now? Are you feeling okay about this conversation? Is something stressing you out but not saying, like, you look stressed, but like, saying, is there anything stressful going on right now that we should know about so that we can actually get ahead of that in the conversation instead of running right into it without knowing? 

Money is really emotional for people too. Like, so I think it's interesting. Eric's good at what he does and communicating with people. And I often joke with him. It's like you're more of a financial therapist for people sometimes than financial planner, just because it brings out these things that couples maybe haven't talked about before. And I think that's part of the value of having that third party in the room. Because, yes, we're talking about the money and el literal. Here are your assets, here are your liabilities, here are the goals. And let's reverse engineer them, which is, oh, you can crunch that through a formula on a spreadsheet, but we don't really live in the spreadsheet. So we have to be able to map those numbers onto real life. 

And that requires iterative conversations and getting how you feel about it out on the table and understanding what's important to you, like Eric said, the core values. And I think that's why we start there, of just knowing, like, what is it that makes you tick and what is it that you're trying to get to that is really important to you, not just long term either, but in your day to day life. Like, what do you want that to look like? 

Oh, my gosh. There's so much in what you're both describing. And I appreciate just the ability to be present and aware of what's happening with people as they show up. And even if the argument that might have happened prior is unrelated and just to even name it, there's something in neuropsychology, I'm sure you've heard, a lot of people have heard this idea of name it to tame it. So even if it's unrelated, it doesn't have anything to do with the financial aspect of life. But just to say, yeah, we had a little bit of some tension and that just can create some safety, can help some organization as people approach Things that are tender or maybe bring up. 

Certain emotions and you never know what it's going to be. You never know what the topic's going to be that they reveal if they say something. But it's exciting that they say something because they're getting it out there. And then we can either go at it or. Got it. Thank you. And we'll just move on by. 

Right, right, right. Oh, my goodness. And I don't even know that maybe people are fully aware of how they're feeling about their financial. Because it is such a private thing. We're not necessarily like walking around with our vest that has all our information and we're like have the identity around it. I mean, sure, actually, as I say that we have certain signals that show maybe that we're have a bit more means than others, but our identity around it and how we're actually feeling about money. And to be witnessed. To your point, a third party. I remember years and years I was still in grad school and my husband and I met with a financial planner and I knew I felt crunchy about student loans, but I kind of had my. 

The approach of like the ostrich with the head in the sand type of like regretfully listen to some of this. Some of the mentorship for people that were like, don't worry about it's just something you pay and like good debt. And anyway, I won't get into that. But I actually, when the financial advisor was talking, we just put it all out. I like started crying. I didn't feel like I was gonna have that much shame or emotion about it. But being witnessed, really fully looking at it was like, oh, hello. And it was a lot to confront. So I do think it is tender and you don't know what's going to come up and be able to hold that space and have skill to hold that space is I think really important, especially in relationship. 

Because I'm sure you have found, and I would love to hear your voice on this around different, perhaps money stories, ways in which they approach spending and saving or how comfortable they are with risk or what they need to feel comfortable, which relates to feeling secure. Like, do you see these things show up? And I think a lot of times partners aren't on the same place always. 

Yeah, definitely. I think everyone has, like you said, money stories.

 I mean, this stuff gets laid down when you're three to seven years old and it becomes very subconscious. It's not like you sit and think like here is my story about money. You don't trot that out. It's just kind of ingrained in you. I mean we have it too. So I think we can speak to our personal experience. But you can also change that over time. So that's what I was thinking about on my end of when we first met. I think we are similar and it worked out, it helped us at the beginning and that we're both like on a saver kind of side. Like we prefer to save money. We're not like super spendy people. 

We're still not. But I was extreme about it was very much a fear based scarcity, like I am not going to be okay kind of thinking which I feel like probably drove you nuts at the beginning because you're like this doesn't make any logical sense. The math is not behind you on this. Like what I was catastrophizing all these things that could go wrong. So yeah, I think that was the challenge that we had to overcome was Irrationally afraid of running out of money, of never being able to work and earn money again. So I wanted to save huge amounts of my income to the point where it was impacting our life today because I was like, no, I have to squirrel all this away. But now we don't have anything left over to just live our lives in a reasonable way. So I. 

Having our daughter changed. I don't know what it was about that changed it other than maybe making me more present and more in the moment. But that was something that shifted just for me in the last couple years of I need to try to stop gripping this so much and trying to control it so much because the future is unknowable. And you know, focusing on today is not necessarily a bad thing. It's about finding kind of the balance between the two. I don't know if you want to add on. 

Well, if I can just comment right before because this is something that I feel like maybe you both have a brilliance in. Because what I was hearing, Eric, you speak to earlier and I feel like it's partly in your questions that you had given to me as potential talking points that to be creative, what would you love to have this sense of what gives you joy in your experience both presently and five years, ten years with the future holds and that's sometimes difficult to generate when we are in uncertainty or are in fear or old maybe even unconscious habitual money stories. So I just wanted to comment on that and I don't know if that resonates, but. Eric, would you like to respond? 

Yeah, I was just thinking of. This is where it's much more of an art than a science in part of the conversation, because it isn't about a spreadsheet. It's about emotions, it's about feelings, it's about beliefs about money and identifying them and then building a plan around them or changing them as necessary so that you're not just going extremely, to Kali's point of let's save everything, do nothing now with our lives, and hope that we can use it down the road. But in reality, you'll never do that because you're always going to feel that you can't use it. So you can have this big pile of money and still never use it. So there's that or the other extreme of I can't spend any money or I can't save any money right now, I have to spend it. 

And those two extremes are not a healthy way to go about balancing your financial planning with your actual life. 

Yeah. And would you agree that in this discussion that it's a balance to be able to hold, that there's something that might emerge when we can support the parts that are afraid and also support the parts that want to be creative and can actually. Maybe that's something people haven't really given themselves space to, which is to really envision or what do I want this to look like? If I got to craft this or engineer this? Like, what would the design be? Is that part of what you both are offering?

To me that I just thought of the financial planning software that we use. Right. So we actually model out the. All right, if you're saving at the rate you're saving today and we just go straightforward into the future, how much money do you have and how much money do you need? And is there a huge discrepancy between the two? And if there is, and you don't actually need to save as much as you're saving right now, and you back that off, what does that look like for today? How does that allow you to expand your lifestyle and start to enjoy yourself right now and not say, oh, I'll do it when I'm 60, and I think that's where there's a very much a balance. But we can look at the picture and the projections of the money because the calculation doesn't Lie. 

The assumptions are guesses because it's about the future, but the calculations don't lie. That's why I love math. And then we can overlay that with your life and say, wow, maybe there's some freedom here. Maybe I can loosen up a little bit. And if I could loosen up, what would I do? How would I change my life right now to make it better for me? And that's where it's an amazing conversation when I can start to realize that. 

Yes, Kali, do you want to respond? 

Sure, yeah. As you're talking, Eric, with those two extremes, I think the kind of strategies or tools that we use for someone who is on or my end, where I was of feeling afraid is defining like, well, what is enough in the first place? What is enough money for what you want to do? Because that was part of my problem, is that I didn't have anything to find. It was just, I'm afraid of the future. It was really like, that was the overarching thought. But when I actually had to sit down and be like, well, what is it that I want to do? And what is required to do that? Putting some more concrete numbers in place helped me realize, like, okay, that's actually attainable. I don't have to go to these extremes and defer a living for some distance. 

Someday that may or may not happen. And to Eric's point, is unlikely to happen because of the habit that I'm building now of over saving. Because that is. That's a track you're laying down in your head of like, this is what I do with money. This is what I do with money. So even when someday, again, whenever that is or whatever that is comes, it's not like you flip the switch and you can suddenly change this habit that you've been building now for decades. So that's helpful. On the. If you're saving too much side, understanding what enough is, you kind of get grounded. And then on the overspending side, which I do think is more common, we see people. I think a lot of it is digging into the well. What's important to you and why is it important? 

Because you start seeing a bigger picture beyond just the surface level. Like maybe, like 

So when you can start laying out, well, this is what's most important, and then aligning your money with that and just looking at, you know, what is it that you're spending your money on, now, does it align or not? No judgment, but just does it align? And if it doesn't, do you want to make a change? I think that's helpful. And then also put getting some groundedness in on the overspending side, too. I think what we do is we offer kind of a guideline. So saving 25% of your income is a very common piece of advice that we give to clients. 

And again, it doesn't come with any judgment. It doesn't come with anything about saying your current spending is wrong. It's just save that percentage of your income first and then do whatever you want with what's left over. 

Yes. So, so helpful. And what a beautiful compliment to really look at how the numbers, the calculations, the speculation based on what we know and what that projects and that data or those numbers, and also the significance. Right. Because when you were talking, Eric, I was like, is that enough for people? Will they be like, okay, now I can start spending and kind of doing my thing? Like, I. I'm wondering if it's sometimes for some, it maybe be that simple that they just needed to look at it and really have an honest recognition around what's happening. Where for others, they might say, if they're living in this place of fear and it's not clearly defined or grounded in a what is enough that might not be enough to be like, okay, now I can live a little, right? 

Like, it just might to have a sense of what is enough and then conversely, what is of highest value or significance. And sometimes when people are overspending, they feel on the front end that they're prioritizing things that matter, but maybe the consequence is actually negatively impacting them that's affecting the things they really want as well. So it seems like a really nice compliment. Do, do you introduce these together or is it just, again, seeing where they're at and what they need? 

I think it's more of a flowing conversation. I don't have, like, a specific organized process touch on these things at the exact right time. It's more about sensing the conversation, where it's going. And as Kali was saying, it just like you can't just flip a switch and change from being a super saver to a super spender. Like, it's going to take some time. I've said certain things to clients for years now, and they finally get it. For example, a client couple, that's really great savers. They have been saving 30% of their gross income for like, seven years. And initially it was, let's save a little Bit more than we think. Because I have these student loans and they may or may not be forgiven through the process of the public student loan forgiveness program. 

And if they're not, I want to have the money available to pay them off and not get stuck with all this debt. Well, they luckily got them forgiven and moved forward and continued to save at the same rate still, because why not? Because they were still feeling like they could spend freely and they had extra money, so save it. And now we're getting to a point where we're having a conversation about, all right, moving to a different place. And maybe the house is more expensive than the one we have now and maybe just our lifestyle is just more expensive and we're going to have to, in order to do that and afford that, we have to back off our savings. And they're like, can we do that? I'm like, do you remember we're over saving so that never. We have to stop. We can. 

And I would. I. The image I use is hand gliding, right? You stack up the money, you get to the top of the mountain and then if you have to stop saving for a while, you just hand glide through those years and then pick it up on the other side. And so they have the room to actually stop saving totally for two or three years to get themselves together and then rebuild. And they aren't freely saying, like, yes, let's do that, because again, you gotta learn that, you gotta practice. But they can do it because they were intentional to begin with about the whole thing. So you have to remind them about why we do the things that we do. 

Well, again, this speaks to perhaps the five years, seven years, 10 years down the road and what things afford. I think sometimes it's harder to think what it's gonna look like and the long term, like being in service of more of the long term and to be able to help them build the habits and then also recognize how things can work for them. If they've been in a certain place where they've been able to spend, I mean, hang gliding. That just sounds like what a beautiful opportunity for them to get in touch with what they would love or what feels high priority and have the support and the means to be able to do that. That seems like what a gift. 

Yeah. And we've experienced that in our own lives too. Like when our daughter was born and were a little unprepared on the business side, we just did not anticipate how much of hit on my. 

Like, I don't. This sounds so silly to Say like looking back, I'm like, how did you not think a baby was going to like change things? But it really impacted my role in the business and it impacted like our personal expenses. Like we save less now than we did before, but we did the same thing like were trying to over save. So it did give us a little bit of room to come down without throwing off our long term plan and some breathing room to figure out. Like, okay, we just got, you know, rocked over here, like let's figure things out. And I think that were able to do that. And that's what the beauty of having some financial flexibility can give you is just like you can take a breather. 

And that's why we have the rules of thumb that we do is not to chastise anyone about saving or spending. It's just to set you up with financial flexibility so that you can have some freedom and choice down the road for whatever happens or doesn't happen. 

I love the. I was thinking of the word flexibility as well, that sometimes when I think of financial planning it's like, okay, it's this or it's that. And it's just you're kind of in that zone and you kind of keep. But I mean it is something that I think probably in this world you would want to be reevaluating and looking and compare, not comparing but matching that or grounding that with what matters, what's of high priority, what's enough, what do we want? And that is, I'm sure, always evolving and have the flexibility to do that. Sounds really wise. 

Yeah, I think planning, like financial planning is a bit of a misnomer because it's more like let's build out a panel of levers that you can push up or pull down depending on what's going on in your life, depending on what's important to you, depending on what you are willing to trade off and what you're not. And you have this whole little control panel here and you adjust it however you'd like. You have the power to do that and we're giving you kind of the strategies of how to do it. But also I think Eric is really good at pointing out to people like, you can do this. Here are the potential consequences of that decision. Are you good with that? And sometimes people say, oh no, nevermind. And other times people are like, you know, yeah, I'm willing to make that trade off.

And you're really good, Eric, at really making them confront that. 

Yeah, I think it's important. Two things. One, on that note the for people to acknowledge that there is a trade off happening is super important for me before moving forward to advise them on the decision that you're trying to make. Because if we're just pretending that there isn't a trade off and like, yeah, we'll just do this thing and we'll figure it out. No, there's actually a choice you're making right now before you do the thing that there is no turning back here or if you do this, you cannot do that as well, which is often the case. You can. A lot of our clients can afford anything, but they can't afford everything. And so if you're fine with the trade off and you admittedly say so out loud to me, I'm good to move forward. But if you don't. 

Yeah, I never feel comfortable giving them the advice that they want to hear because they haven't acknowledged that they can't do this other thing that they also said was important, you know, last year. 

Right. Let's have an explicit conversation and real consent and understanding around what this entails. And I don't again know that we're always, or not everyone's always in the habit of being really conscientious around what things mean and having advice or support from someone who knows the territory, knows the landscape, can advise around this is I can tell you what this looks like or what this will mean because sometimes we're anticipating or guessing. So one of the things that it seems really true is that money's a tool. And I know we could kind of go off on a tangent around that and you also to a tool to be able to support. Tell me how you view a tool because I have lots of ideas but I would love to hear a little more about that. 

Actually as I'm saying how money is a tool. 

Yeah. That's something you had prompted as potentially a topic. And I know you also talk about strategy and I would love to talk about strategies as well, so. But how do you both view money as a tool? 

Look, I just think about what Kali was just saying about the control panel. Right. That is very much the tool panel of saying like what are all the tools that are available to me based on my financial circumstances and regulations and everything else that's out in the financial world and then which ones make sense for me to focus on and then which of those should I be pulling or pushing the lever on? So tool being like if you build in buffer room around a plan, which means that there's, there is financial flexibility because life is never so specific and linear that you can actually nail that before it happens. You want to be flexible. If you can build that into the system, then you're already using it as a tool because you can flex or pull back as necessary. 

You can spend more or save more as circumstances require. For example, like someone might own a house and they are saying, you know what? I want to leave and go somewhere else. I don't know exactly how long I want to stay in this next place. So maybe I shouldn't buy a house, maybe I should rent a house instead and maybe I should rent out the place that I'm leaving at the same time. So now I own my current house, I'm going to rent it out and I'm going to rent another place. And there's a month of overlap where now I'm paying rent on a new place. I actually didn't get a renter in my old place and it's going to cost me X amount of dollars to double pay this place. 

And so for someone who can do that, it's not ideal, but they have the flexibility to make a move to a better place for their family and do it in a maybe a unconventional way because they can afford it like that. That to me is using money as a tool to live the life they want to live versus being restricted by your finances and feeling stuck like, well, I'll just deal with it. 

Yeah. 

Thank you. Thank you for speaking to that. And I love how clear you are. I usually don't use such exact language of like, you can't do that. And I think if someone's responding to that, then maybe that does spawn cure creativity to think of other ways that maybe do afford it. But it's again, doing it with real clarity rather than how did it all work out? Right. And not having a plan. 

Yeah. And when I say you can't do that, it's more like you can't do that without going into debt. That you shouldn't go into. 

No, I think it's needed. These structure, the structure, the boundaries, the clarity is what I think is often really helpful. How do we get in touch with our values, what matters, what we want and possibility, like these things also matter too. It's a both and. But sometimes we're not as clear around the no's and the yeses. And I just love your voice around that okay, great. Do you guys want to share or. Kali, do you want to say anything about money as a tool or do you feel like we're covering it here? 

I think we covered it mostly. I think the one thing I would add is that it's a good reminder again, because like we talked about, 

It's a good reminder that having a rules based system, whether it's with your like day to day money management or whether it's like investing, having a rules based system that allows you to step back away from your reactions and your emotions is a good way to go because it is such an emotional thing. And we can also often be led astray by just doing what our feelings are like, prompting us to do. Especially when it's something. I think this happens a lot when people are overspending. 

Like that's almost always an emotional sort of problem. And a lot of the times it's a way to try to exert control over our lives, even though it sounds kind of backward because it's actually taking control away. You're giving up that financial flexibility if you're letting the money go versus investing it to grow for the future. But it's just, it's a way that in the moment we can feel in control. Like I made that decision, I did that I can do those things. So remembering that money is a tool to build whatever it is that you want is to me a good mental shortcut to just get back to all those things of like having a system, having a unemotional strategy to guide you along the way. 

I love it. And it sounds as though, based on what we've already talked about, that the plan is in service of what we would love or what matters to us and is of high value and priority. So it's not like someone else is just imposing this formula and I have to follow these rules. It's in service of what I truly want and have looked at really clearly. So in a momentary, I want to say compulsion or impulse to buy something or some feeling that we can check in of, we have a guide for this. We have some real clarity around what I'm in service of and it's more of the long term or typically what's going to matter more. Great. 

What game are you playing is really the one that we constantly are asking ourselves and our clients, because not everybody is playing the same Game. In fact, everybody's playing a different game, and the game is your life. And what you want for your life is going to be different than the next person. Even if your demographics or your financial circumstances are similar, you might have different goals, and therefore you're going to use your money as a tool differently or use a different tool than your neighbor is, and that's okay. But we've. Because we've defined it, we've built the arena within which we're going to play, and we're playing the game that we want to play. 

What kind of responses do you get? I'm curious, like, do people answer or give names to their game? 

I think I. It's more of a general question. And they look like. Then I explain what I mean. 

Yes, yes. 

They look at me with, like, a deer in headlights first. Then I say no, really, like, what do we want? What are we trying to do here? And then that we kind of drill down into the specifics. 

Yeah, Well, I mean, it occurs to me that if we're unconscious to the game that we're playing and we get awake and we really look at it and reevaluate it and then get it in alignment, that actually having some awareness of, like, a short name that might even be plain, playful or silly might actually be a little reminder of, like, okay, this is what I'm doing. And there can be some playfulness around it. I was just curious if you actually got, like, really had people talk through that. What were you gonna say? Kali? Sorry. 

No, I. I was thinking when you were saying, like, that's actually a good idea to force people, like, all right, name this name. Name your game. Because you're absolutely right. Like, it's. It's just. You don't wanna end up, you know, climbing this ladder to realize that's not the place you wanted to go. Like, that wasn't the wall you're trying to get to the top of. So I think having the name. Yeah, that'd be a catchy, good little mental hook for people. 

Well, especially if it resonates, right. If it's got a. A little bit of a. An anchor to it that they can just have a real clearer. It represents a lot. Okay, great. Any strategies you want to kind of share with us before we start winding down here? I know you've given us a couple, but just. Anything else here? 

Yeah, I mean, nothing. No specific, like, you know, hidden strategy that's going to change your life forever. It's more about

And tending to it is just being intentional about having conversations, making the space to have conversations together as a couple if you're married or with a significant other, but also with your objective third party advisor if you have one as well, to hold that space. 

And you know it's planned out so that when life is really busy, you don't end up going three years without checking in. You know that in six months you're having that conversation. So you can maybe, hey, here's some things to put on the agenda so we don't forget advisor. And we put them on the agenda and then we have that conversation when it's ready. 

And what good care to take care of. Like it's being in contact and being connected to these things. It just feels like I feel just such a sense of care. And I know you talk about wealth, but just. Yeah, the word that's really coming up is that I'm really taking good care of this part of my world that really supports so many aspects. So. Okay, wonderful. Well, I know there's lots of ways to approach this. And for people that are really resonating with the two of you and what you're speaking about here, what would you like to share as far as how people can get in touch with what you offer, what you have to share? 

I think the best place to go is our website. So our firm is beyond your hammock. We're based in Boston, but we work with people all over the country. And beyond your hammock.com is the One Stop Shop for all you need about, like more about us, what we do, we have a blog, we have a podcast. So if working directly with us isn't for you, there's so much content that you can get into. If this kind of conversation and these topics resonate with you and kind of the approach and philosophy sounds good, there's lots that you can dig into, you know, on your own, through the blog, through the podcast. And then if you are interested, we do offer one page financial plans for folks. They can request that again on our website BeyondYourHamback.com, easiest place to go for all the above. Okay. 

So the one page they would request that is like a. Is something that is visible on your website? 

Yeah, there's a little blue button at the top right that says work with us and it explains the whole process of what that looks like, what they would get. And then a button to schedule, to request, to schedule. Great. 

So you work with people all over, based out of Boston. It sounds like there's opportunities for people to find that online. You also have articles and blogs and lots of content to engage with. It sounds like you have a podcast and people can access more there. Wonderful. Anything else do you want to share before we sign off here? 

I mean, there's so much out there's so much noise and it's really overwhelming for a lot of people, especially if you're not in the business. Even with a business degree or a financial degree or if you're a cpa, you still don't need to. You don't necessarily know about personal finance. So if you're not in those fields and you don't know about personal finance, that is so natural. So I think it's more about just educating yourself and understanding who to listen to and why they are worth listening to. Is it experience, Is it knowledge on specifically about your situation? Because there's an advisor out there for everybody. Whether you're a certain age or a certain wealth level or a certain demographic or where you live in a certain place or want a certain thing, they're out there. And so don't think that they're not. 

Just go out there in search of education. And then if you find someone that you're comfortable with, you should work with them. And if you don't find that person, you should not work with a financial advisor because someone says that you should. 

Well, thank you for being specific. And it makes me realize you both have a specific population that you work with. Do you want to describe a little bit more about that? Because I know that many people listening might want to understand a little bit more about your particular niche. 

Yeah, I mean, so mid career professional couples, so both working dual income, typically have a child or will have a child soon. So growing families. And because they're in that middle ground, there's many years to go before retirement, probably at least 10. And there's a lot of things to do today because you have this growing family and there's a very delicate balance between the two. And if you layer in good income, I mean our clients typically make 500,000 to a million dollars income combined because they work in tech or biotech or healthcare or something like that, there's a lot of power there. 

And we want to make sure that the people that we work with understand that and they want to do better for themselves and they want to engage with someone that can help them be intentional with their money because they are coachable and they appreciate outsourcing the things that they are not good at because there are many things that they are and they want to focus in on those things. Great. 

Wonderful. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I'll make sure to have the link to your website on today's show notes and it's been a pleasure to meet with you both and have you on the show. 

Yeah, thank you so much for inviting us out. This was a fun conversation. I appreciate it. 

Yeah, really great questions. Very natural conversation. So thank you.