In this episode, the Conrad Siegel team sits down with bestselling author Carl Richards to explore why our biggest money challenges often have less to do with math and more to do with stories, feelings, and communication. They discuss how honest conversations (with a spouse, family member, advisor, or even yourself) can reduce anxiety, simplify decisions, and deepen your relationship with money… and others.
Episode Trascript
Brian Graff 0:28
Welcome everyone to another episode of The Real Talk Retirement Show. We are Brian Graff and Tracy Burke from Conrad Siegel with you as always. And this month, Tracy, we have a terrific episode planned. I know I’m biased and I probably say that a lot, but this time I really mean it. And it’s one I know we’re both very excited about, as we’ll be joined by a very special guest, who, Tracy, I’ll give you the honor of introducing in just a moment. But to set the stage for our discussion, Tracy, we believe that most of us don’t really have money problems, although it may feel like it from time to time, but we more have what we would call conversation problems. We avoid talking about money with our spouses, with our kids, our parents, and sometimes even ourselves. And in that silence, fear, confusion, and bad decisions grow.
Tracy Burke 1:17
Absolutely, Brian. And today’s guest has spent his career reminding us that money doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be honest. So today we’re welcomed to, uh, or we’re thrilled to welcome, Carl Richards into the podcast. And some of you may know Carl from his sketch guy column that ran in the New York Times for over a decade when he just used simple sketches to illustrate different topics surrounding personal finances. Uh, Carl is a certified financial planner. He built and sold a successful investment firm in the past, and he spoke at many, many financial and investment events worldwide. Uh, as a writer, he has several best-selling books, The Behavior Gap and the One Page Financial Plan are several of them, and have been translated into over 10 languages and continue to resonate globally. So we’re here today really to talk about his new book, which is called Your Money. And it’s just not about, it’s certainly not about beating the markets, really understanding yourself, your values, and how to have better conversations about money that can really lead to better decisions. So, Carl, um, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the Real Talk Retirement Show.
Carl Richards 2:31
Yeah, thank thank you, Tracy and Brian. Really excited for this conversation. Thanks for having me.
Brian Graff 2:36
Yeah, Carl. So your your latest book is titled, like Tracy said, Your money. Very simple, direct, and personal. Why did you choose that title and what does it really try to signal to readers right away?
Carl Richards 2:48
Yeah, it’s gosh, it’s so interesting, all these questions, um, because they’re there’s like the very long story. And it’s true with every sketch and every word in this book. Like there was a ton of thought that went into it. But the the your money title, um, I had been fond of playing around with your money. There’s this great book that made a huge impact in in my life called Your Money or Your Life. Written years ago, and it made a huge impact. And I loved everything about the book, except this one word in the title, or. And it always sort of painted it. And again, uh, I have nothing to complain about with the book because it’s it’s had a huge impact on me and millions of people, actually. But the the painting of or was this, you know, it was this fight. You have to choose. And I’ve always been fond of saying, like, your money and your life, how we use our use of capital and what’s important to us. It’s it’s something entwined and part of, uh, and probably unfortunately, right? Like money is part of the fabric of everything we just we think about and decide to do. And again, we can argue whether that’s good or bad, but it’s the reality. So I was really intrigued with your money and your life. And then I played around with it. I was like, what if I just dropped it to like your money? And and and what I was trying to imply there is some sense of relationship, right? Like a a sense of relationship. And that that’s and I’m always looking to simplify. So that’s why I got it down to just your money.
Tracy Burke 4:27
Yeah, no, that’s that’s fantastic. And and you know, you’ve written about money for years, Carl. So, what what made now the right time for this book in particular? And you know, what problem were you seeing repeatedly that you felt need to be addressed?
Carl Richards 4:41
Yeah, yeah, Tracy, that’s a great question. I have been trying not to write a book for 11 years. So the last book came out 11 years ago, and I’ve been like, there’s almost a month that didn’t go by where an agent or a publisher or somebody didn’t say, like, when’s the next book? And I’ve said never. And um, I was just really enjoying the conversations. I was noticing, and about that time, you know, podcasting became a thing. Like you could, you could 20 years ago, if somebody asked me what I did, I’d have to say I was an author. And the only the only artifact for that experience would be a book. But you know, 10, 15 years ago, we started to have these ability to have in scale um and really low entry costs this thing’s called podcasts. And so I was really enjoying the conversations. So I was like, I don’t know that I’ll ever write another book. Um, because I love conversation. I don’t love writing, to be honest. I love conversations. And then the problem arised where I was like, man, we’re not getting any better at this money thing. And I think, and and I was having these reading conversations in private and very public forums, and people seemed to be so relieved. Like, oh my gosh, I got to talk about this thing. I got to try to make sense of this thing that everybody tells me it’s none of my business, or I’m not allowed to talk about it, and there’s no safe place to do it. And and they weren’t talking about the financial pornography network of money. Like it wasn’t about CNBC and the stock market. It was about like, how am I feeling about it? So then I was like, well, gosh, what if I created just an artifact whose sole purpose was to spything about it, the design, like literally the cover, every single thing about it was designed to encourage conversations. What if, what if, what if the focus was that? And so that’s what we did with the book. I don’t really think of it as a book, I think of it as a conversation grenade, right? Like you sort of toss it in a room and conversations break out.
Brian Graff 6:37
I love that uh that conversation grenade uh phrase that too. That’s that’s a great way to put it. Uh, I think, Carl, one theme that that comes through strongly throughout your book is the money decisions are rarely about money itself. I love that. Uh so what would you say then, Carl, that money decisions are really about?
Carl Richards 6:57
Uh if I had to reduce it to one word, I’d probably it’d either be stories or feelings. And and that sounds so interesting just because I I thought we were talking about spreadsheets and calculators, right? Like if if you if you learned anything about money, you probably learned it in the math or the accounting department, not in the psychology or marriage therapy department, marriage counseling department. And but uh but I think what’s interesting is and there’s a we I mean we could spend days and days talking about why this is, but because money is so closely associated, and in many ways it’s it’s become the organizing principle of our lives. Like it at least in many you know areas in the Western world, we organize our lives around money and work. And we sort of like I’ll fit the kids in, you know, I’ll fit, I’ll fit sleep in. Yeah, you know, I’ll fit health in. And we we get it’s just so easy to get confused. And this isn’t like I I get confused almost every day about it and have to remind myself. So I think it’s about the stories we’ve layered on top of it. Like, if it runs out, I’ll live under a bridge. Don’t be so spoiled. Like you can just almost hear the echoes of things you heard when you were young, stories you watched your parents navigate, and and you watched them navigate, you felt them navigating it, but nobody explained it to you. You knew something was going on. Like the number of almost everybody I’ve talked to on all the public work I’ve done will tell me, like, yeah, there was a moment in childhood where something was going on, but I didn’t know it, and it made it even worse because nobody talked about it, right? So I think it’s about stories and feelings more than it is about about money and numbers.
Why Money Feels Taboo At Home
Tracy Burke 8:53
So, you you know, as you say, a lot of people don’t want to talk about money, right? It’s just something, it’s sort of like a taboo topic, it seems to be, especially with families and couples. So why is why is money such that taboo topic that that people just don’t want to talk about it?
Carl Richards 9:10
It it look that that I have spent, I mean, I’ve spent years trying to uncover the the the the root of that. You know, like there’s some evidence that it was early landowners who were like trying to tell all the peasants, you know, we don’t talk about that, like try like that that idea of like don’t talk about it because it might expose our vulnerability to to what we’re you know, what we’re trying to do, the gilded age, those sorts of things. But I I don’t I don’t know why it happened, but I know why it’s happening now. And why it’s happening now is because the well, first of all, none of us were taught. So that’s the first problem. Like we were just never taught. So when so then the as a result of never being taught or having a model of it, the only model we have I referred to earlier is the the hand wavy TV version of money, stocks going up, stocks going down, economy, like the stuff that doesn’t matter at all. I mean, it does matter, but it it’s not what we’re talking about here. What we haven’t had modeled is this sense of fear or loneliness or success or worry or excitement and joy, even right? Like it so we when we go to talk about this thing called money, because nobody’s ever taught us, we think it’s supposed to be a rational conversation about math. Two plus two equals four all the time. It doesn’t matter how worried or greedy or fearful I’m feeling. But when I go to open the American Express bill and ask my spouse about it, suddenly I’m in a fight. That doesn’t make any sense to us. We’re like, I thought this. So I’ve sort of thought it’s like touching an electric fence that you didn’t know was electric. Right? Because two plus two never equals envy. Right. And so I think we’re just it it’s unmooring every time we go to do it. And because it’s unmooring, we don’t have the skills to navigate it. We’re just like, you know what, never mind. Every time I touch that thing, it shocks me, forget it. I think that’s what’s happening.
Brian Graff 11:20
Yeah. Well, you just mentioned, Carl, opening up that American Express statement and you know, kind of going through it with your with your spouse or significant other. So for couples listening right now, like what’s one small, maybe low pressure way they can really start having better money conversations this week, not just like uh you spent how much on that uh new dress or that boat? You know, boat might be extreme, but you know what I mean.
Carl Richards 11:42
No, I know, exactly right. Or how many, I mean, how many of us are having the experience lately of like another Amazon package? Right, right, for sure. You know, and I I said to the the guy the other day, my wife’s an interior designer, so she gets lots of packages here for clients, so it’s not it’s not about her. I said to the guy the other day, I’m like, hey, uh like no more. We’re all full, can’t deliver anything anymore. And he’s like, well, this one says Carl on it. I’m like, oh, we’ll take that. Bring that one in, yeah. So so any, it’s it’s it’s you know, I’m I’m as equally part of the problem as as my particular spouse in this relationship. Um here’s a conversation you can have. Like, and I and I think of this as like, look, anything we’re bad at, the way to get better at it is practice. When you practice, you make mistakes and you fail. And so I just think like the first thing you can do is discuss like, hey, I’d kind of like to start talking a bit more about this thing called money. You can even blame me, right? Like, I read this book, I heard these guys on this podcast talk about blame, blame me. And I think you first give each other permission to be clumsy. So you just say, look, I and this is what I say, I’m still saying this to my kids. My kids are all adult, all adult kids now. And it it’s still probably once a week where I’m like, oh man, sorry about that. What you just watched was a dad who was never taught how to be a dad and talk about money. That was pretty clumsy. I did a lousy job. Sorry about that, right? I I’m still doing that almost every week. Well, a couple times a month at least. And so I think you can say, can we give each other permission to be clumsy here? And if something comes up, an emotion that we’re like, whoa, we the second thing I would say is like establish a timeout rule where you can just either party can just be like, hey, would it be okay if we shelved this conversation? You know, till later, you know, can I go on a walk? Like, whatever. And then the third thing I would think about is carefully like when and where. Often these money conversations happen, you know, like, man, we just got the kids to bed, there’s dishes to do. Oh my gosh, I should open the mail. You know, like you’re already tired, it’s late at night. Like, so think carefully about when or where. Like, and I’ve got all sorts of suggestions about that, but like when or where. So here’s a conversation. And this I found really, really interesting because it’s it’s it’s it’s pretty safe. And you can blame me. Like, do either of you, let me ask either of you, do either of you know if I were to ask you right now, what’s what’s your spouse’s earliest memory of money, spouse or partner? I would not know.
Brian Graff 14:25
I would honestly not know.
Carl Richards 14:26
And I didn’t know until two, I didn’t know until I, you know, I my wife was a guest on 50 fires. Do you know what I mean? Like 20 28 years into marriage, 10 years of the New York Times. I didn’t know. So I’m not blaming you, but but yeah, do you know? Is that the same answer for you, Tracy?
Tracy Burke 14:39
Like, yes, yes, same, same thing. I, you know, we’ve been married for 20 almost five years, right?
Carl Richards 14:45
Yeah, and so it’s it’s just not something we do. Yeah, but here’s my challenge to both of you and to listeners. Like, next time you’re on a road trip or on a walk or at dinner, just blame me. I read this book and just be like, and then and you can say it got me thinking like like what’s your earliest memory of money? And then and then lean into if you can, right? Like, you can just be like, oh, that’s amazing. Thanks for sharing what do you think of the weather? Like, and just be like, Cool, we did it, right? And then come back, like just count it as a win, but you can also lean in to just be like, oh my gosh, tell me more about that. Like, how did that feel? What was that like? And you’re gonna hear words like, Oh yeah, it was when my dad said this and I felt shame. And you can say, like, oh man, tell me about the shame, or you can say, or if you hear words like, oh, we were here’s one of my favorite questions. Were you one of the rich kids or poor kids in junior high? Because junior high is like that moment, you know what I mean? Like we oh yeah, yeah. So rich kids or poor kids in junior high. And what you’ll get is, oh, we were solidly middle class. Great question is hey, how did you know that? Like, is that something you’re making sense of now, or did you know at the time? Oh, I was one of the poor kids. Oh, how did you know? And then you’ll probably get a story. Like one day I showed up with one pair of jeans and they they were grass stained from the day before, and the girl I liked was like, hey, didn’t you wash your clothes last night? Yeah, no, like you’ll get a story, and you can just be like, gosh, and it’s just that’s one place to start. And then the last one I know is long-winded, the other one that I think is really interesting is some sort of values conversation around money. Like, like, why is money in like I’d like to go through an exercise? Can we just take a minute? Like, why is money important to us as a family? Like, what what’s the value? And you might come up with things like time together or experiences. And if you can get a word like experiences, which is pretty common, like the research is pretty clear, then you can go say, you know what would be fun. Let’s look, let’s let’s actually count up, let’s look back at our spending. And instead of beating ourselves up, let’s look at the money we invested in experiences this year. Oh my gosh, we spent X on experience. Like, hey, should we spend more or less next year? Gosh, what if we could double that number? Like if it was possible in our budget. Well, is there something we don’t love that we could cut? Like you can start to start aligning your use of that money with the stuff that was important to you. So those are the two conversations. Enter gently, be clumsy, please stick with it. Right? Just like try again. Yeah, try again, apologize when you’re wrong. Call me, I’ll I’ll help you with apologies because I got five million of them.
Brian Graff 17:36
I love the idea. I love the idea of the timeouts too. Do you have to limit it kind of like a sporting event on you only get three perhaps unlimited?
Carl Richards 17:43
It’s part of the rules. Like everybody’s got to feel safe. You’ve got unlimited timeouts, and you get to determine how long they last. Okay.
Why We Overcomplicate Personal Finance
Tracy Burke 17:48
Yeah. No, that’s that’s so powerful, Carl. And uh so changing gears here a little bit. We you know, money sometimes comes across as being so complicated. Um, you know, one of our big jobs at Conrad Siegel is to try to we we have this phrase, simplify the complex, right? Um, so you you’ve you know done that throughout your career, especially with a sharpie in hand. And one of the great things about this book, uh, your sort of little essays and your little, you know, the the sketches that go with it really, really bring you know those words to life. And and so your work with a sharpie is is fantastic on that front. But why do you think we tend to overcomplicate money so much? Why why do people do that?
Carl Richards 18:33
Yeah, I I mean I think we tend to do it with most things. I think money, so like let’s give ourselves all a little grace. Like we just tend to uh let me tell you a funny story. I’ve got a friend who is a a uh physician, and he likes to tell this story of how cli, in fact, this might be in the book, um, how clients or sorry, patients would come in and want to argue endlessly about the high which high blood pressure medication to take. And then he would have to say, you still smoke. Right? Like, like we don’t need to be debating the merits of the detail. Like you need high blood pressure medication, it doesn’t really matter which one. Yeah, but this thing matters, and I think so that’s like we we tend often complexity is a place to hide from the harder problem of just behaving correctly. Like it turns out that there’s very you have to get very few things right to be you know in the top five percent of money management experiences, right? Like on a broad scale, you have to get very few things right. You just have to do it consistently for 20 years, you know, and and and the reason that the reason simplicity is so hard, and I I’m talking about elegant simplicity, the the kind that exists after you’ve think thought you thought of everything. Elegant simplicity is so hard is be I think investing, one of the reasons investing and behavior with money is so hard is because it’s so simple. We think it should be more complicated, but like with young people, I’m always like, man, if you could get a 10% uh bump in your income, that’s worth way more than trying to figure out which exact investment to find. You know, and so it that’s the I I think we just overcomplicate it. And oh, last thing that we should give ourselves all a bit of grace is there’s a whole industry, speaking broadly, whole industry built around complicating it, like telling you it’s supposed to be complicated. And and I I think they’re telling us that it’s supposed to be complicated for the wrong reason. The complication is more our own human issues than it is the specifics of investing. Yeah.
Brian Graff 20:56
Carl, if there was, I’m gonna put you on the spot here, if there was one particular chapter or idea in your book that kind of made you feel vulnerable, you felt especially vulnerable writing it or personal, um, which one of those chapters or segments would that be? Which resonates with you the most?
Carl Richards 21:13
Yeah, there’s and I I before the holidays I had these all memorized and then I forgot everything over the holidays. But there’s um, so I can’t remember which one it is. Oh yeah, number, just looking here. Uh essay 29, When Values Collide. Um that was the result of a of a final, like if I had to write, if I had to go through the whole 11 years of writing this book again, to for me to learn this one line in that essay, number 29. In the second page of that essay, there’s a line Um, your values are not at war, they’re in conversation. And that was the result of a really um meaningful conversation I had with my. Wife and two of our kids on a road trip, where one of my one of my kids, and and I love all of my kids for this, is they’ll typically challenge my thinking and ask me some release. But you know, they’re they did this as kids and now they’re adults and they’re even better at it. And one of my kids in the middle of sort of a discussion that was starting to get a little heated around money and tuition and future and worries and fears, said something like, because I could, I was driving, we were up in the mountains in the Tetons, not far from here, and I could feel myself, I had sunglasses on and my hat on, and I was driving, and I could feel myself wanting to check out of the conversation. Sort of like I we were driving to a hike, and I was about to just be like, I’ll get out here, you guys go on, it’ll I’ll by the time you’re done with the hike, I’ll have made it over this pass and now I’ll meet you. And I just kept and my one of my daughters said, Dad, I don’t understand why you’re you seem to be upset. Isn’t this your job? And I was like, Yeah, actually it is, and you’re right, and and that’s amazing. And and I was like, Yeah, but this is like you’re talking about you know, like eight-year-old me and twelve-year-old me, and all my own memories, and I don’t know how to sort this out. And are are you spoiled and you’re not because you work so hard, and like all these kinds. And I was like, Oh my gosh. I just remember thinking, stay with it, stay with it, stay with it. Don’t, don’t turn this, and then that line, this isn’t a war because it had always been a war. It’s like it’s not a war, this is a conversation, and that tension keeps bridges up. You know, like that tension’s it’s not a problem to solve, it’s a conversation to live in, you know, future, present, spend, save. Like we’ve got all these things that are at tension. Equities, fixed income, you know, like like all these things that are at tension. So that’s the one line in the book that if I had to write the whole thing over again, became really meaningful to me. Like it’s a conversation, it’s not a war.
Brian Graff 24:08
Yeah, I love it. I got two kids in college now, too. So I know all about those tough tuition conversations and sure.
One Behavior Change That Matters Most
Carl Richards 24:15
Yeah, and I worked my way through it, and you got like all those stories, all those stories.
Tracy Burke 24:20
Yeah, and and Carl, so so much of money is based on behaviors, right? And a lot of your your work in the past has been focusing on behaviors. And if if you know uh somebody reads your book and finishes it and they can change one behavior or or you know, sort of buy into one behavior, what would you hope that that behavior would be?
Carl Richards 24:41
Yeah, if you’d asked me this like 15 years ago, I’d say dollar cost averaging or systematic advantage, say 25 bucks a month. And I and I think that’s really important. But now there’s a meta-level, like super important stuff. Like it’s really just start paying attention. Just just start. Yeah, we are so unconscious with our use of money, you know, our spending, our savings, the way we invest it, the reason we’re invested the way we are, like we’re so unconscious with it that if we can just start to make it a little more conscious, not from a shame or blame perspective. That’s why I think we mostly avoid it because we’re like budgeting, shame, bad. I’m just saying from an interesting like, oh, that’s interesting. Look what we did last year. We spent this much on this thing. Do we actually like that? Oh, we do, cool. Oh, we don’t? Hey, maybe we should think about like just I I like to think so, just start paying attention. And the place to do this, the best place to practice building a better relationship with money is with your spending. Because it’s the first relationship you ever had with money, and it’s the most frequent experience you have with money, three to five times a day, probably for many of us. So if you just start saying, even as simple as at like Jimmy John’s when you’re going to get an unwitch, number nine, the number nine unwitch. If you can just simply say, Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. I just spent five dollars or seven dollars and ninety-two cents on an unwitch. Isn’t that interesting? No shame, no, no trying to fix it. Just start noticing.
Brian Graff 26:20
I love it. Carl, before I get to our last question, I gotta tell you, my my favorite essay, I wrote this down, was uh number number 32 that talked about micro actions. Oh, because this is a huge for me, too. I get overwhelmed so often when I want to make a change. I think about all the different things I got to do to get there. You mentioned in the book that uh, you know, when you go on vacation and you want to, you know, be healthy and and go to the gym, exercise, go to the gym and for work. When I go on work travel, yeah, for work travel. And you say you make yourself what one promise that you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna put on your your gym outfit, right? You stuck with that one the even promise.
Carl Richards 26:53
And I don’t know if I got it into the book, but it’s just to make it even like the real promise is I’ll set my gym shoes out by the side of the bed.
Brian Graff 27:00
Okay, yeah, right.
Carl Richards 27:03
And and that to your point, um, right? I I noticed that if my gym shoes were out by the side of my bed when I woke up in the morning, I tended to put them on. If I put them on, I noticed I’d be like, Yeah, you know what? I’ll just walk down to the gym. There’s a gym in the hotel, I’ll just walk down to the gym. I noticed if I walked down to the gym, I’d typically I’d either lay down on the floor with the foam roller or I’d jump on the bike. I’ll just spin my legs for a minute. And then I’d I’d notice an hour later, I was done at the gym and I felt better. And then I noticed the rest of the day, like my breakfast choices were better. And but it all was because of the shoes by the side of the bed.
Brian Graff 27:45
Yeah, I I love that one. That just really resonated with me, not only in just life in general, thinking about my health and dieting, but we tell people all the time it’s saving for retirement, the most important thing to do is start. Don’t get overwhelmed by putting in 15% right away, just put in one percent. And that was what that reminded me of. I loved that lesson.
Carl Richards 28:02
Let me just mention, I and we’re fine on time here for a minute, but uh for I am at least. One thing that’s interesting, BJ Fogg’s work on tiny habits uh had a huge impact on me. BJ’s at Stanford, and he was like, Look, you want to create a habit of floshing your teeth, just make a commitment to floss one tooth. Like, because you typically will start, you’ll be like, ah, that’s kind of silly. Like, but even if you just did one tooth, it’s okay. Right? Yeah, tiny habits.
What To Do With Money Anxiety
Brian Graff 28:31
I love it. I love it. All right, so anyway, yeah, last the last question we have for you today, then, is this uh for somebody listening today that that’s feeling anxious about money, and I’m sure it’s several people. What’s the very first conversation you’d encourage them to have, and maybe more importantly, with with whom?
Key Takeaways And Book Giveaway
Carl Richards 28:50
Well, first clean the garage. You know, like and I’m I actually kind of mean that. Like, like if you’re feeling anxious, I’ve noticed that’s probably not the right time to have the conversation. So I have found, and uh this you can have other substitutes, but I found it to be relatively universal universally true that if I can organize a small space, vacuum, clean, organize the desk, maybe the gar if it’s man, if it’s summer and you can go out and do 10 minutes of weeding, like whatever there what happens is you get this small sense of control, and that small teeny sense of control gives you makes you feel a little better. And then once you feel a little better, you can say, okay, what what kind of conversation should I have and with whom? And and the conversation might be if you if you’re in the exact moment that you’re saying, like, I mean, there’s so much to talk about here. Like, well, I would want to identify where the anxiety was coming from, and it probably is coming from the TV or the phone, and I would say, like, turn that thing off. But if I’m feeling anxious, I wouldn’t mind just having a conversation with somebody to name that, you know, just to say, hey, I don’t I don’t need you to fix anything. Like this happens a lot at our house. I don’t need you to fix anything. I just need, can you just listen for a second while I name like I’m having this concern and it’s not reflected of you, it’s just my experience. And just practice noticing that feeling and naming it. Because with money, the more we can get, like, think of like the investment process. Are we gonna get on the market? Like, if we could learn, the body will tell you long before the mind will catch up. Right. So if we can learn to notice, like that anxious feeling is genetically wired, you better do something. Because in the old days there was a lion, and you don’t have time to think about whether there was a lion or not. You notice wrestling in the bushes, and if you didn’t move, you’re gonna get eaten. And if we can unthat’s that was very helpful to keep us alive, it’s maladaptive now. So if we can start to learn to, oh, there’s that feeling again, oh, that’s right. Like, okay, let me go do rewire the response. Let me go do a thing, then I’ll call Brian, then I’ll call Tracy. And hey, can can we chat about this? I noticed this feeling. I was on the news and I had this, and like, can we just have now we’re having a different discussion than aren’t we getting out? So that’s that’s what I would do is create habits that create a little space between the I need to have a I’m having an anxious feeling and I need to act, just a little bit of space. Yeah, with that space, we can decide how to act a little differently.
Tracy Burke 31:36
Yeah, and and that’s in a lot of ways, sort of giving ourselves permission to be human with our with our money and our feelings, right? The idea, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that’s the one thing I I really love about this book. It it gives you know people permission. Uh it’s you know, we don’t have to be perfect, right? It can be messy, that’s perfectly okay, but it’s really just be permission to be human and and sort of natural with money. So um, sort of in wrap-up here, you know, as listeners, if listeners don’t take anything else away from today, you know, uh, I would say it’s maybe this one thing. Better money outcomes start with better conversations, right? You know, conversation with your partner, whether, you know, also your kids, your advisor, and and even, you know, talking to yourself about these things, of course. So uh your book, Carl, you know, reminds us of the again, clarity beats complexity. We talked a little bit about the you know, things sometimes become uh too complex. And and values beat formulas. You mentioned spreadsheets, you know, it’s it’s it’s the innards, you know, all those type of things. And honesty certainly beats silence every single time. So, Carl, we can’t thank you enough. Thanks for your wisdom. Thanks for being here and help us talk you know talk about money in a healthier way. Thanks, Tracy. Thanks, Brian. That was fantastic. Thank you.
Brian Graff 32:50
Yeah, thanks so much, Carl. Listeners, by the way, if you’re like me and you’re not a great reader, uh, you’re not a bookworm. I wish I were. I my my wife reads all the time, my old one of my daughters reads constantly. And when I grew up, I felt like I lived in a public library. My mom surrounded us with so many books. But I unfortunately have the attention span of a goldfish. But even if you’re like me, this book is for you, I promise you. Because if you can pick it up off the you know, the coffee table or off the dresser by the bedside, open up to the middle. Look at number 45, look at number 82, and you know, within a couple of minutes, you’re gonna get some great advice. You’re gonna probably gonna tell your spouse, like I was doing quite a bit yesterday, even during the Super Bowl. Hey, look what Carl said in this uh this note here. So even for you non-readers out there, it it’s a perfect book. Oh, thank you. Sure. So, you know, we absolutely loved having Carl on today, like Tracy said, and we do want to give away a few of his new books to our loyal listeners. So, to do that, to get yourself a copy, all you need to do is write a review of the podcast, take a quick screenshot of that review, and email it to us at podcast at conradseagle.com. And we are going to give away 10 copies of this book to the first 10 people we hear from. Uh, if you can’t leave a review, just shoot us a quick email. Uh, let us know what you thought about today’s episode. And remember again, that’s podcast at conradseagle.com, which is also a great place to send Tracy R any general questions you may have. So thanks so much, everyone, for staying with us on your journey to and through retirement. We’ll see you next time on the Real Talk Retirement Show.