#86 Neuroscience Explains 3 Proven Principles for Getting in Sync with Your Money as a Couple

Helen: Hello, friend. I liked that intro of yours last time. Helen, welcome back.

Terry: Hey friends.

Helen: How’s

Terry: everyone gotten? I mean, how are you going, Terry?

Helen: I’m

I’m all right. I’m all right. We’re on our second go round with this one back in the studio. How you feeling?

Terry: Oh, I’m excited today. Yeah, this is,

Helen: it’s it’s probably taken a little bit, bit longer than what we’d hoped to originally

well, it’s probably my fault I booked. Our first crack at this on a Friday night. We’re a couple of, you’re a couple of wines in, I was a couple of beers in, listened back to it. I went Maybe not

Terry: We’ve been, um, experimenting a little bit, haven’t we?

Helen: Yeah, just all different states. We’re in the morning today. We’re nice and fresh. Just come off a run. You’re looking very fresh.

Terry: Oh, thank you very much.

Helen: Um, how have you found the whole process though, going through this. Podcasting producing. What? How have you found it?

Terry: Oh, it’s been awesome. It’s been a new challenge.

I do like new things. I love trying new things. but it’s been, again, a bit harder than probably what I’d originally thought. But, um, in a good way. I mean, you guys are providing incredible value to the community, and that’s what I’ve gotta keep remembering. It’s, it’s not about me. I’m my own worst enemy.

Helen: Oh, you’ve actually done a great job.

Terry: carried

Helen: Oh, I have not.

I have not.

Terry: Anyway. No, it’s good. I’m, I’m excited to be part of it still.

No. Well, look, we’re on our last episode for this series, um, which is kind of sad, but also kind of cool because this is where it all comes together. Like, you know, in episode one we talked about the symptoms, right? The five symptoms of dysfunctional harmony.

Episode two, we talked about causes. Four financial alter egos. And then this is the last one. Now we’re gonna be talking about the cure. So how can we flip the script and change the game for good? So do you wanna just talk through what we’re gonna cover in this episode?

Helen: Yeah. So there’s three main things here that we wanna cover today. So the neuroscience behind better collaboration with cash flow. Again, how we’re partnering, um, together to really to move forward with what we wanna do in our life. And number two, three principles that any. Any couple can use to just flip the script, change things, and change things for good.

And three, the specific practices that we use and teach in the mentorship.

Terry: Yeah. And then that’s like the real tactical stuff. Exactly what we do. So if you do want to do this and you wanna give it a crack, you try this stuff and see how it works for you. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. We’ll give it our best go of explaining exactly what it’s like and, and what we do and, and how we, how we set people up.

Mm. And little caveat before we get into this as well, some of what we’re gonna talk about today doesn’t make logical sense, and there’s an important reason for that. It’s because the problem isn’t logical. So I can’t remember who I heard this from. I think it was a guy called Royal Sutherland.

And I was like, that’s exactly what it’s like with cashflow. And he said, we live in a world that deifies logic. So everything has to be lo has to logically make sense, right? And he says, if, if the dominant tool. That the world uses to solve every problem is logic. Then the only problems that persist probably won’t be solved by logic.

And so that’s why some of what we’re gonna talk about doesn’t necessarily make logical sense, but it just happens to work. Because what we’ve done over the period of the last three years is, you know, when we started with you and Chase, we started with earliest members. We actually didn’t say we have the solution.

We said, we want to understand the problem. Yeah, and we probably sat in that problem I reckon for the best part of two years, iterating our approach, learning, growing, improving. You would’ve seen how much things changed during that time.

totally.

And so where we came to and where we’ve got to with this is the solution emerged.

Helen: From that understanding, it didn’t, we didn’t come to it and go, well, it must make sense to work like this. And I think that’s, I think that’s where a lot of finance people go wrong is they come at it and go, well, this is how money works. This is how you need to work with money. Whereas we say, this is how people work. Yeah. And this is how people work with money.

There there’s a lot of retrofitting isn’t there what people’s problems are in financial advice basically.

And all we knew at the time was what we were doing isn’t working. really had nothing to lose. So, um, There had to be a solution out there. So that was a logical part of our brains ticking over. Yeah. Um, and this seemed like it was a bit unusual, but that’s the point. Mm-hmm. kind of wasn’t logical. We, we, we couldn’t rely on that any, any longer.

It wasn’t working for us.

I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff out there that is supposed to make sense, but doesn’t, doesn’t tend to work.

Yeah. It doesn’t apply to your situation. Um, yeah. It just doesn’t fit where you’re at. Mm-hmm.

And look, you know, from, from, from my point of view, like I just love it when people, I just hear people talk to us about this and they say things like, this is better than therapy. Um, I would hear this has saved our marriage at least once a month, I reckon. And I’ve even had a divorced person say to us, I wish we did this.

If we had done this, then things would’ve been completely different for us. I feel like our lives would’ve taken a very different trajectory. Um, so it’s uh, it works. It does work.

It does work. It’s incredible feedback. And I guess we wanted to also make full disclosure here. things are really tight at the moment. We’ve been having conversations about what’s going on right here and now. So we’re sort of August, September 23. it’s tight. Interest rates have just driven up over the last year and.

Our cash flow on a month to month basis has just been completely eroded. We have less, a lot less money. Like we’re talking thousands of dollars a month, aren’t we? That we used to contribute to objectives or just lifestyle or, uh, you know, what do you call it, Umpo, just disposable income that we just don’t have anymore.

Terry: Yeah. Well, uh, we’re now paying, I think it’s about $2,400 more for our mortgage we were just over a year ago. and that’s a, that’s a hit on the cash flow.

Helen: So yeah,

We’re not, we’re not sitting here saying, oh, look at, everything’s fine and dandy. We’re not facing any challenges. No, that’s not the point.

Terry: The point is it doesn’t mean you don’t face challenges, it just means that you face your challenges more effectively. That is really what we’re saying, isn’t Yeah.

we’re not saying we’ve got it all figured out and everything’s all. Excellent. We’re saying this is what works for us and it happens to be what’s working for the people we work with.

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. And I was telling you before, I can see things a lot more clearly now so that when I have those feelings or we are drawn back into thinking, oh, uhoh, like what are we gonna do now? We’ve got the confidence, we’ve got a lot more confidence to use what, what we’ve learned and and to have better conversations and move forward.

Terry: It reminds me of that point. I’m not sure if I’ve already said it in this series, but you don’t. Rise to level of expectations, you fall to the level of your training. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you’ve got a stack of evidence in the past that you’ve been able to work through various challenges, then your confidence meter is higher. Yeah. And so you can actually pursue a little bit more. I. Challenge and deal with a little bit more chaos on the way through. So I think that really, really does matter because what it means is you slowly can expand that comfort zone and that’s when you start making bigger moves, which is what we talked about earlier on in this series. Yeah. making bigger decisions,

Helen: big moves, Hey, yeah. That’s what we’re all about. So anyway, let’s get stuck into this today. So now number one, we are gonna be talking about the neuroscience behind better collaboration. Terry, take me through what, what do you mean by this?

Terry: what I’m talking about is this concept called psychological safety. And when we are discussing, we’ve talked about symptoms and, and causes. We talked about symptoms being like, you know, Dysfunctional harmony, um, you know, an absence of trust, not willing to talk about it, that sort of thing. It, it’s usually happening because we don’t feel psychologically safe. And, and what is psychological safety?

It’s just the ability for you to feel safe and comfortable, to share your thoughts and ideas without being afraid of getting in trouble or feeling judged. It just needs to be a safe place where you can be yourself. Express your feelings without fear because you are. Together in this, right? It’s, you’re not reacting to events, you are responding together.

Yeah, definitely. And there’s a really good model that helps us explain this, isn’t there?

Yeah, there is. Yeah. It’s called the scarf model. And I think this is probably the best way to understand like what needs to be true for psychological safety to happen. And it’s from a neuroscientist called David Rock. And he’s really just codified it and said, well, look, when these things are at present, then psychological safety will be the result

Helen: Okay, let’s Go through each of them in order. And the first one’s status. Tell us about that.

Terry: So status is all about how you are seen and how you see yourself in the relationship. Are we peers or is there some kind of power dynamic? And if you feel like you are held in high regard, Then you are much more open to sharing what you know, what you feel, what’s happening for you. That’s really all status means if you’ve, if you’ve got a, uh, a really a level kind of playing field. That’s where you wanna be.

Helen: Yeah. Nice and certainty

Terry: certainty is just about your ability to predict the future, what’s coming up and what the other person’s going to do. If things are very erratic and you’re not at all sure, and things are very volatile, then it’s very, very hard for you to feel safe enough to be able to, speak your mind. share your thoughts. Um, and then even just act effectively.

Helen: Yeah. What about autonomy?

Terry: Yeah, so autonomous is your ability to make your own decisions. It’s agency in your own life. It’s your ability to to govern where you’re going and how you wanna play the game. Basically, if you are in a relationship or you’re in some kind of collaboration where there’s no room for you to be who you are. You have no autonomy. Yeah. Yeah. So you don’t feel safe. Yeah.

Helen: And then relatedness,

Terry: Yeah. This is a big one. So how much are we feeling like we’re in this together? How much are we feeling like it’s a mission or a quest that we’re on, uh, that we’re sharing and there’s a bigger purpose,

Like you understand each

Yeah. Yeah. It’s not like you way versus my way. It’s our thing that we’re doing together.

Helen: Yeah. Nice. And then last of all, fairness.

Terry: I mean, it is what it says on the tin. Is it fair? And fair by the way, doesn’t mean equal. Everything’s 50% fair is what we decide it is. Yeah. given our circumstances. So it’s very different for every couple and it should change. It’s a moving feast and it needs to be a continuing conversation. So those are the five things, status, certainty, autonomy related, and fairness. That scarf model tells you what has to be true for you to collaborate effectively when it comes to money.

Helen: So now we wanna go on and talk a bit about how does this actually apply to money? and there’s three key principles is isn’t there? Here,

Terry: there is, yeah. So when we kind of thought about it and we’re like, okay, so psychological safety with money, we know it has to be true. When I looked back over, I guess, what we teach and the tools, the methods and everything in, in the program, and tried to map it to psychological safety and those principles of scarf, what I really came up with was just three things that matter.

Yeah. The first one is you need to create a common cause. The second one is you need to structure your accounts for trust and transparency. The third one is you need to master a shared way of working. Key emphasis there on shared, and we’ll get to that. So I think what we want to do is let’s go through each of those principles in a little bit more depth, but also talk about the exact practices within each of those that we do.

Helen: That sounds great. So number one was all around creating a common cause, and I love this. foundation, isn’t

Terry: This is the big one. Yeah. change doesn’t happen without commitment and you won’t get off your ass and do something new unless the juice is worth the squeeze. So you really need to craft a vision based on shared values.

And for us, this, this, what this means is sitting down, taking 90 minutes, sometimes two hours, sometimes even longer, to really actually understand. What does the money have to do for me? Yeah, what does wealth look like to us? It has to be a self-determined definition of success because you cannot optimize effectively until you know what you’re optimizing for. Yeah, definitely. I like I say it all the time, but it’s so true,

Helen: I know. And we get a bit of skepticism here, don’t we, about when when people stand the mentorship about what to expect here and, and, and there’s been a few times where people have wondered whether or not this step is worth it.

But I think, would you say it’s fair to say once people have been through it, they’re the biggest convert? Yeah. And they realize this is exactly what you need to do first, isn’t it?

Terry: I remember sitting in a meeting with one of the early guys, and he is big concreter type, big, strong guy. And he’s sitting, there he is, got his arms crossed, his body language is telling me he thinks this is bullshit. And I remember calling him out saying, you reckon this is bullshit?

Hey? And he’s like, he goes, yeah, what are we doing this for? Like, just, let’s get into the, let’s get into the meat. I said, mate, like we can, we absolutely can. But here’s what you’re gonna find. You’re gonna run outta steam probably within a couple of weeks. and you won’t be connected in terms of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

And. By the way, what we’re doing here isn’t magical thinking. What we’re doing is we’re using the way things are actually created in the world. If you’re listening to this, look around the room that you’re in right now. Look at the chair you’re seated on.

Think about the earphones. You’re listening to this from all these things were first created in somebody’s mind before they were created in the real world. So all we’re talking about is saying, let’s do that. Let’s be for life. Yeah, and then give money the job of making it happen, you gotta start with the end in mind and then sort of figure it out from there.

And reverse engineer what you actually want from money. Because money isn’t wealth and wealth isn’t money. No no. Wealth is having more of what you value. So you need to start with what you value

Helen: Yeah. And I love this because this really draws out the relatedness. So not only are you talking about vision, maybe vision for yourself, you’re doing it together. As a couple.

Terry: Massive. This is where people say this is like therapy because it is right. Like a lot of couples, I reckon have these conversations in passing, but like I call ’em corridor conversations, there’s like moments in life where you kinda look at each other and you go, oh, wouldn’t it be great if X or Y or whatever.

And you don’t actually sit down, collate this stuff, formalize it, and turn it into a clear, compelling vision. And if you don’t have the vision, Then. You don’t have direction. Yeah. Right. So you’re optimizing for what? For, where are you more going? Yeah.

Who, who’s motivated inherently by more money. No one. Even the people that think they just want more money, what they want is probably more security. Yeah. because I’m scared about what would happen if I didn’t have money and I didn’t have choice. It’s really actually getting underneath that and figuring that out first. You’re right, though.

Relatedness is huge for this. Coming back to that scarf model, the second one for me is status. This puts two people on the same

path. Mm-hmm.

You know, I had a conversation with a couple, two weeks ago, and I knew that they were having trouble, like they had delayed this first session. And I was like, come on guys, let’s get straight into

And I could tell at the start of the session they were on very different pages and there was a lot of kind of, apprehension, from both I. And I was like, it’s okay. It’s totally fine. You’ve been operating like this forever. You dunno a different way. we don’t need to figure out the way yet.

We’re gonna figure out why. And, um, by the end of this session, I could just see that the assumptions that she had made about him had totally been invalidated and she understood where he was coming from, but also in the same vein, he understood what she really, really wanted. and And he wasn’t completely sure either.

And so one, once it was clear that they could both have more of what they wanted and they wanted that for each other. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I saw the next week just tick, tick, tick, tick. I can just see them moving through all the modules. I’m like, you guys flying now. You delayed this first part. But now, because they were now peers and I had that sense of belonging, that sense of relatedness, they were just flying.

Helen: Yeah. And I mean, you give each other permission to be really open here. And I think as you said, the important part is not about trying to work out how Yeah. And you completely avoid any of those habits or missteps and, and points of tension. And you can start from scratch and just, just listen to each other about what’s important.

Huge, huge.

Terry: The second part of this, uh, if you’re gonna try to create a common cause in this vision, is you need to label your pain. And we live in a society where we’re sort of taught that negative feelings are negative and we should stay away it. Mm-hmm. That you need not just direction, you need purpose as well.

And purpose comes from pain. If you think about any big thing you’ve ever done, It first comes from a place of pain, so you don’t want to move away from that. You don’t wanna numb yourself from that. You wanna feel it, use it because it’s that that drives you. It’s what keeps you going through the challenging part that comes with change.

So if you don’t actually connect with it, and you don’t connect pain to that picture of the future, then you actually don’t have commitment. And if you don’t have commitment, then you won’t have the courage to move through that challenging part of change.

Helen: Yeah. And I, I, this has been so important for us as a couple, I think because it’s, we live in a society where we are constantly told to think positively about things or understand our motivations.

And our motivations almost need to be, angelic. And so, um, I don’t know. So positive, just generally, however, At the crux of it, there’s, there’s, we are moving away from something. We, we don’t want to be like something, or there’s, there’s this fear here that is equally important. We need to understand it. And, and athletes understand this, don’t they,

Oh, a hundred percent. and they use this to their advantage and we talk about that a bit.

Terry: It absolutely. And this, you know, coming back to that scarf model again, relatedness. Once you understand what is driving somebody and where they’re coming from, you get a whole new level of empathy for that person.

 coming back to the couple I talked about, you know, he was talking about, I just really wanna make sure. That I can be there for my kid in the moments that matter. And right now my business isn’t a vehicle for that and I need to make it a vehicle for more of these experiences. So I’ve gotta work hard to make that happen before it hits this age.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I reckon she was looking at him going, you’re just at work all the time. And he is like, yeah, I am. And I’m trying to figure it out. I dunno how to figure it out. I’ve gotta figure it out. And so we actually mapped out, well how would you make that happen with your business? What would need to be true to, to make that sort of. Actually happen. What are the investments you need to make in your own personal skills to make it happen? Yeah. And I think that changed things completely.

Helen: This is where I think we also have seen members, we get to the point where we’re asking why, you know, what’s underneath this for you?

What are those things that you don’t want to have repeat? What were those painful points in your upbringing? . I think as a couple you see this and you, you know, it’s there in the couple, but once it’s called out, you realize how big a part it is of somebody and, and why they think the way they do, why they believe the way they do, and why they’re acting the way they are.

Terry: I can’t overstate how much this connects couples because once you’ve stepped into someone’s shoes and you can see where they’re really coming from. Then you want the best for them. ’cause that’s why you’re together. So the last part of this when you’re creating a common cause, is you need to empathize with your future selves. And that’s really just about future pacing, actually walking forward into that life.

And looking backwards from it and talking to your current self what that’s like. Yeah. creating a connection with that version of you. Because what all the research shows is that the more you can empathize with that future version of you, the more your current decisions will reflect their wellbeing. Yeah. And so a big part of this practice is something we call future authoring. Where we are doing that, we’re getting that vision. Sort

cool process,

Yeah. you actually write a letter and you write a letter from that, from that place and you say, this is how we’re living now. Thanks to you.

These are the choices we have now, thanks to you. ’cause you’ve done the work to know what the money’s got to do for you. every time you do that, what you’re essentially doing is you said is like building that empathy and you’re calibrating your brain, calibrating your brain to figure out. How am I gonna make that happen?

How do I need to calibrate or how do I need to change my decisions? What do I need to start doing? What do I need to stop doing? It changes. drags your identity in this completely different direction. And what we see is that couples start doing things they weren’t doing. Yeah. they stopped doing things they were, that don’t make sense anymore. cause everything that’s not in line with that is now a distraction.

Yeah. And

Helen: I love this exercise, future authoring. It’s, again, it’s a really important, it’s a quirky part I’ve never experienced before. and again, it might’ve been one of these activities that previously I think we would’ve sat down and thought.

It’s illogical. It’s illogical. Why would you do that?

do we really need to go to where we’re writing letter?

Yeah. Yeah. But again, it’s giving it a go and seeing what it does and how it shifts things for you and, and empathizing with that future self.

Terry: I always say to people, if you wanna bottle this feeling of what it feels like to be on the same page right now, write the letter and keep coming back to

Keep reading it, keep going back over

Helen: Keep coming back to it.

Alright, we’ve just covered off there how to create a common cause. And we’ve got two other things. So the second one is around structuring accounts for trust and transparency. And there’s a, there’s a few things again that, that sit underneath here, isn’t there, Terry?

what’s the first one?

Terry: The first part of this is we need to create shared accounts and we need to create personal accounts right now. Shared accounts, goals, living and lifestyle. That is all about creating that sort of sense of status, that sense of we’re, we’re all together in this, we’re peers. it’s also certainty how we are, how we are handling things together, what, what plans we’re actually making.

And it is related and it’s because I. The goals part of this is critical, so we just have these three different, I guess, categories, right? You’ve got yours, mine, and ours. So yours, you’ve got your own lifestyle. You’ve got your own goal accounts if you want them. Mine, I’ll have my own lifestyle, my own goal accounts as well.

And then we’ve got ours, and I’ll have living lifestyle and our goals as well. So our goals always take precedence. For us as a family, that’s what we do. We put our goals first. And any overflow, any anything superfluous is you’re funding it like a personal goal.

totally. that’s something for you. So that’s just how we do it.

But there isn’t a rule, and this is I think what’s critical, right? This isn’t a prescription. You actually choose how you wanna play the game, and this is what makes it sticky. Yeah. You might remember we talked to you, Kai Chow, the, the guy who came up with the, the gamification framework of lysis. there is a concept in his framework called, creativity of feedback.

Yeah. And what that means is if you choose how you play and you want to, and you get to play your way, then you’ll keep Yeah. Whereas if you have to play my way, ’cause I told you what to do at every step of the way, then you feel oppressed. You’ve got no autonomy in So for me, Coming back to the scarf model, huge for autonomy.

You have to figure out how you’re gonna use this sort of stuff. Yeah. and huge for fairness because we know exactly where the money’s going. We want, we know what it’s for. and it’s very obvious and open to everyone,

it?

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve, we’ve played around with this structure a little bit to work out what works best for, for us as a family, and not just even who we bank with and who we decide to structure the accounts with, but about how many accounts we have and whether or not it makes sense. And the good thing is banking is becoming, Easier and structuring accounts they’re having to, they’re having to move with the times and make these products a lot more user friendly, which has meant that we, we have had this autonomy, this flexibility to give it a go look.

If we’re not, if we’re not using something or if we find that we are using it in ways that we didn’t think possible, you can just change it. a great thing about it. It is, us the autonomy, it allows us to have a conversation. Again, that relatedness part of it coming up

Terry: And you know, I hear people say, oh, there’s so many accounts, and like, that seems so complicating and that

sort of thing. Yeah. And I think what’s your alternative? You’re gonna earn and spend out of one account. You dunno where every dollar’s going. It doesn’t have a job. It’s not clear when you’re making these trade-offs. I’m pulling from this goal account to fund this short term thing. I can’t see that trade-off when it’s all lumped in together. And for me, that’s complicating. Yeah. Yeah So, and that’s stressful. Yeah.

the unknown question of like, where’s my money going? What’s it doing? So, To take a little bit of time to set up some goals that are specific to you, geared towards the vision that we together. It like you say, like it’s not like it was in 1980 where you got to go into the bank, got to listen, you got to line up and like you can literally just get on the internet, open up an account, make an online save, whatever it is, it’s simple.

Helen: and it is like transparent and the way this links into autonomy. We’ve seen with members, they often do have separate accounts or, you know, at times they do have their own personal account.

This just makes it transparent. Between you as a couple, and you can see what you’re allocating. And I think I brought up this with you the other day. It allowed me to make better decisions, not in isolation. So if I wanted to put an amount in my personal account, let’s just call it five grand, let’s be a bit outrageous.

Yeah, just five. I’m gonna buy a really nice handbag this month. Okay. And then I see Chase put $200 in his. Yeah, like that allows me to temper my expectations as to what I am going to put in. Look, I’m not gonna put five grand in, especially when the most common thing that we have a conversation is coffee.

Yeah, This comes up, how much are we gonna spend on coffee? Like, are we gonna go out for breakfast together? Are we gonna put it in our joint account?

This is a good point

Terry: Things like that. The difference between, so you’ve got your own personal lifestyle account. Black box, do whatever you want with it. Yeah. But we have a shared lifestyle account. This to me has been a game changer because it is a cue for us to invest in us.

Yeah, know, so for us, I think we put about 150 bucks in there a month, something like that. 150, maybe 200 bucks. And that might be our night out. It might be it’s date night, isn’t it? Something like that.

that, but, Because the job of that money is clear. It’s for us to invest in us. I don’t feel like I’m taking from the amount of money all in one account, and I don’t, I’ve ever asked myself the question, can we afford it?

Should we do it? That question is not a question that I ask anymore. And so we have a lot of people who come into the program and one of the big revelations is, guys, we’re doing date nights. Again, we haven’t done date nights in years, and it’s you haven’t actually given that money the job of helping

invest in the relationship. People say to me all the time, oh, that’s a bit of money. And I go, well, actually this is, I’m not gonna make this point as my own. This is Elisa’s point. She goes, this is cheaper than a divorce, Terry. And it is. You’ve you’ve got one totally is. like, cheaper than a divorce. and it’s true, right?

Like if you are not investing in the relationship and you’re actually not allocating for the relationship, number one, what does that say? say? Yeah, it say to your partner? I don’t care enough. I don’t care enough about this to spend any time or money on it.

Helen: And I think there would be very few couples that wouldn’t wanna do this if they could. And this is the, this is why it’s so important is when we’re creating that shared vision. So going back to number one, we are hearing people say, this is what’s important to them. So again, like the, the structuring of the counts helps them execute on that vision, doesn’t it?

Terry: Huge. Yeah. I can’t, yeah.

Again, just people are like, oh, I’ve gotta mess around my structure. I’m like, listen, doing a lot of messing around. It’s all in your head right now, and there’s a lot of mental accounting happening going on, and you’re, you’re not investing in these areas. It’s not clear where you’re going, like you’re doing work. You may as well do work one time. To benefit from it for the rest of your life.

Helen: Yeah, that’s it. And once you’ve got it set up and done, you, you often don’t need to touch it. You don’t need to make these big, big moves again, with the structure of just change the names of the accounts when the just change the names. Yeah, that’s So that’s structuring accounts, that’s number two. Then number three. Mastering a shared wave working,

Terry: Yeah, so this is the third principle and. I guess the first two really set us up for this one. And this is the most important thing, and I said it before, but the emphasis here is on shared way of working, shared, frequently, and this has been me, this has been, I think a lot of people, you’ve got one person who’s more engaged in the topic of money and said they’ll take a lead. Yes. And what ends up happening is they do a lot of learning on their own, and then they’ll come to a conclusion on their own. They’ll make connections and they’ll start to come up with ways and means of doing things. And the other person hasn’t gone on the journey with

Helen: Yeah. This is where you’ve got one person saying, great, I’ve worked it out. This is what I think we should do.

Terry: Yeah. Here’s my spreadsheet. Just figure it out. Uh, jump in here and do it with me. And because I haven’t gone on the journey with them, it just doesn’t, like, they haven’t made those connections at the same time. And so it falls flat and then the person’s like, oh, it’s not. You don’t wanna do it with me. You tell, you, tell yourself these stories about my partner doesn’t care about this as much as I do. None of it’s actually true. Because if you do have the common cause, you do care. So this is why you have to start with these first two steps, right? Start with a common cause, start there, and then reverse engineer everything backwards as you’re building the structure.

And now you start to figure out how are we going to use this structure together? Yeah. And you’ve got, you’ve skipped a whole bunch of steps and that’s what’s, what’s hurting you. So there’s a few practices here that I think are. Completely game changing. Completely game

Helen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the first one’s about making decisions together, isn’t it?

Terry: It is. Yeah. So we talked about this before with status and certainty. it helps, but when we say make decisions together, what we’re talking about is actually. Creating a space where you’re sort of saying, we are going to be using our money, the money that we actually have to the month coming up. That’s why we call it money mapping. Mapping our money to the month and we’re deciding together what we’re gonna do with this money. Yeah. What we’re gonna prioritize for this month. Yeah.

It’s so important because. If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation where you’re like, I just saw an Amazon box at the door, and I dunno what it’s about, and now we’re now we’re in a money fight.

That is because there’s been a violated expectation is surprise that you didn’t actually know was coming. And now because there’s no. There’s no understanding, there’s no goal setting. You haven’t had this conversation. You’re like, is that money gonna cost come at the cost of our long-term goals? Yeah. this gonna hurt our progress for the future? And now all of a sudden you’re in this like loop. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

And you bring all that stress and pressure into the conversation. So you’ll ask your partner the question. What’s that box? And it’s laced with judgment. I, I’m putting my hand up I’ve been here doesn’t it? You’ve, you’ve got, you’ve got a really tense tone even with it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you can get rid of that by making the decisions together. So when the Amazon box shows up, you know what it is. You’re like, well, I ordered that. It’s a health supplement or whatever it is we talked about that we allocated for it. It’s part of our plan and we know that it’s actually not coming at the cost of our long-term goals. I don’t need to stress about that. need to be an argument.

No, no, no. And I think

Helen: we even had one last month, and again, just to bring it right back to reality, like really boring stuff. It was about maybe car service versus chase was like, I really gotta go to the dentist. It was like, this, I mean, Again, you’re proactively having the conversations, and again, I’m not saying these are big dream goals or something, but it’s about like going, oh, well we need to allocate a bit of money towards the, the car and we really need to get that sorted. And it’s about knowing that we’ve got it in there, we’ve got confidence to cover it. Yeah. We’re not being surprised anymore. And yeah, get, get a checkup too. Yeah Yeah. Like exactly. both pretty important things.

Terry: Yeah, and it’s, it’s, this is where I think I love having these onboarding calls with, with couples and asking that question. We talked about it before, but like, what’s your partner good at when it comes to money?

Helen: Oh yeah.

Terry: This is where you get to make the best use of each other’s strengths. I was on a call a couple of nights ago and the couple was like, one person was bigger picture, future focused.

Helen: Yeah.

Terry: The other person was more present in the weeds and I was like, cool. So, you, information and insight do you have that your partner doesn’t have?

Mm-hmm.

And he’s like, well, I’m seeing that, you know, these are all the things we’re capable of. These are all the choices we can have with what we, with what we actually earn. She’s just not seeing

Not seeing it.

And then I said, same thing for you. What are you seeing? That he doesn’t see. And she’s like, well, I know what life costs and know that this, this, and this are the things that are costing us money. And he’s asked me about these things. He’s so far off the mark it’s not even funny.

And that is a great example of when you’re operating in silos, making decisions separately, holding mental load, but not sharing it, what the true cost of that is. Because we’ve said it before, two brains on problem may way better than one brain on two problems because we’ve got complimentary strengths.

They, they were seeing. Those are differences. And I said, guys, yeah, you put your strengths together, you make better decisions. Yeah.

Helen: To me, like not one person is wrong. There are they, they’re both seeing different versions of reality, and it’s about how you bring that together so that you’re actually making those decisions together. together. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, there’s a, there’s a few more really important points here, and the second one’s around this process. It allows you to separate those decisions from the actions, doesn’t it?

Terry: If there’s one thing that you could do to eliminate financial stress for the rest of your life, I know that’s a big call, but this is it. Woo. It’s a call. But if you are separating the decisions from the actions, then what happens is because there’s the level of stress that comes from deciding and acting in the same moment. Because if you, you haven’t actually mapped it out and seen, well, what does this mean for our long term?

And you can’t, you can’t answer that question, then you’re always gonna ask yourself. Should I be spending this money? Yeah, and there are so many occasions where it’s absolutely fine. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

the classic one for me is like clothes. I would just never allocate for clothes or anything like that. Yeah. And because you haven’t got a practice and you haven’t actually looked at it within the plan, you start to go, well, I don’t need new clothes. Mm-hmm. and look, you don’t have to buy clothes all the time, but sometimes you don’t. But, but the key point is here, like it would be a stressful exercise for me if I didn’t actually have the plan, look at it and go.

It’s fine. We’ve allocated for this much for close throughout the year. That kind of makes sense. And when I look at it in the context of our long-term goals, it isn’t a cost. Yeah. Like it’s not an, it’s not a material thing. Yeah. So if I need the new close, then I should get ’em. Yeah. Yeah. And um, that helps a lot because the further that decision happens from the action.

Then the more enjoyable that purchase, isn’t it? is how you enjoy your money.

Helen: Well, this is how you enjoy your money, but I was just thinking through as we go through that scenario. a situation which I always get drawn into and where I potentially previously got tripped up is a last minute online sale KIPP and CO has having their yearly 40% off sale. plug for you, KIPP and co. yeah, it’s till midnight tonight. Like this has allowed me to be much more controlled in those situations.

Yes, because I’ve actually at at least. Stops me. Like I would say I, I still potentially will go for the sale, but I stop and think about like, what money have I allocated for something like this? Have I got homewares in for this month or next month? Um, can I delay that? Do I really need that?

Where does that fit in? And then sometimes I go, ah, fuck it. Yeah, I can do it. I do it because I know that it’s not gonna have an impact

Terry: This is where the, the accounts comes really important too, right? Because you know that if you’re gonna have to pull the money from somewhere, what it’s coming from,

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

did I pull it from shared lifestyle? I just pulled it from the investment we’re making from in each other. To me, what am I saying with that decision? Right? Or did I pull it from our essentials? Maybe it was the kids. Maybe it was the kids’ clothes, but it’s going to me, you know. You,

Helen: sorry kids. You’re gonna have be a cold this winter.

Terry: So I, I don’t know, but you might also make a mindful decision and say, well, you know, I had homewares in this month. Maybe I can get the homewares next month because this is a great opportunity, so I’ve got money allocated, but I’m just gonna shift what I’m gonna allocate. That’s right.

Yeah. So it’s not, you’re not good or bad or anything like that. It just, it makes those unconscious offs conscious.

Absolutely. And I think

Helen: I’ve had the most questions from my friends about this as well, like about the, does this remove all spontaneity like, how can I possibly map out every single thing that I’m spending money on? Well, you don’t, you, you actually don’t need to do it to that level. but it absolutely helps. helps.

Terry: The point isn’t that you stick steadfastly to your plan. The point is that you have a plan. Yeah, that’s right. Because you can adjust and respond to sort of events and go, okay, cool, so you know what? What makes sense given this, this, and this, is that we shift our focus, shift our priority right now to this ’cause that can actually move. But that again, key point. Shared decision. Shared conversation separate from the action.

Helen: And talk about something else that’s shared. This is all about developing up and getting really good at speaking a shared language together.

That’s right. Yeah. This is the third practice. If you do

Terry: have these structures that you’ve defined together and you do have kind of the decisions you’re making together, that shared language is huge for relatedness. And huge for certainty because it eliminates or at least massively decreases the chance that I could misunderstand you.

Yes. Yeah.

If I use the word essentials, you know what I’m talking about?

Helen: Lifestyle. Yeah. Join accounts. We’re using it here. You’re becoming familiar with the way we are talking. Yeah. that language that we are using. Yeah. And we, we are looking at each other nodding because we’re talking the same, about the same things.

Terry: Yeah. Cannot misinterpret each other, cannot make assumptions that don’t make sense. Helps us to be on the same page. And if you think about any profession, they all have their own lingo. What does it help ’em do? It helps ’em cut down on communication overhead, get on the same page very, very to make better decisions.

Helen: Yeah. You’re not spending time debating the definition of things, are you anymore? You’re not wasting time on, or

Terry: is that a need? Is that a need or is that a want? Do we need that? We don’t have those conversations.

Helen: No. No, no, no. Oh, the next one’s one of my favorites actually. So as a very goal orientated person, I love to track progress.

Terry: Yeah. So many people don’t do this. and it’s a real shame because progress is where you get a sense of certainty of how you’re actually going. And again, it’s your opportunity to to have that relatedness because when we’re winning, we get to win together, right? Yeah. But so many people walk past their wins because there’s so focused on what they don’t have shooting for the ideal. And I think I wanna make a distinction here and talk about why the vision matters.

And where you need to be careful of it. The vision is important because it guides your directions and actions. Sure. But you should not measure yourself against that vision and feel less than What you should do is look backwards and measure from the start to see how far you’ve come. Yeah. Yep, Yeah. If you’re always looking forward at the vision, You’re always gonna look down at your feet and look at the gap between those two things instead of looking backwards.

Yeah. And seeing the gain from where you started. If you can focus on the gain, guess what you do? You keep going. you’re forever focused on the gap, at some point you’ll give up.

Helen: Yeah, at some point you do give up. And also, let’s be honest, uh, to be realistic with this, visions also change as well. So you may not even be satisfied even if you were to get to that magical thing that you thought was the end point your, your amazing vision. But this is where tracking progress over time.

So I think os well, like a trip up is. Too many people might just see a point in time and that’s it. This is something you keep coming back to. and you’re seeing it, you’re seeing the same markers. You’re not, you’re not jumping and changing what you’re measuring. You are actually being able to see it graphically if you wanna see it graphically in the way you wanna see it.

Over time.

Terry: And we’ve, we talked to BJ Fog on this, on this podcast, and one of the things he said, his biggest insight is, we don’t change by feeling bad, we change by feeling good. You want to create positive dopamine loops in your brain that you wanna keep going too. And reinforcing the behaviors, turning those into norms and habits through the wins. you don’t, if you don’t have a mechanism and you don’t have an operating rhythm that allows you to look backwards, track that progress and celebrate success, then. It’s just so much easier to always be looking at that gap and just feeling like, oh, we we’re not doing any

Yeah. And

Helen: celebrating success, that another thing that like we, we just don’t do very well in society, I don’t think. We don’t do well in teams. It always comes up at work, always comes up as something people, you know, to feel valued to, to be able to relate to each other, isn’t it?

Terry: Yeah. It’s interesting. We, um, we’ve started to bring this into our meet meetups, our monthly meetups for the guys in the community. And, uh, first thing we do is talk about like, what are the wins? What have you guys accomplished, uh, throughout this month? Because straight away, the, the purpose of that session is to solve problems, but it’s not to say that everything’s a problem,

Mm. because frequently, like there’s a, there was a, a guy last night who was like, Yeah. Like, this is not working. This is not working. And I was like, but you just walked past like five big things that you are funding. Yeah. You you’re focused on one thing. Um, and it’s not to say that we’re not gonna solve for that thing, but like put it into perspective. See how far you’ve give yourself actually pat yourself on the back. Yeah.

Helen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s a bit of a cultural thing, I think built into our society that we, we, we don’t wanna boast too much in front of other people. The thing as well, we’ve had to break around celebrating success and maybe some of that, that baggage that we’ve brought in around it with this, you a hundred percent know that it’s actually your, your goals that are specifically tailored to you. Why should you feel bad about celebrating it? You are not celebrating what somebody you know, Yeah. like you can just be you’re running your own race.

Yeah.

You’re running your own race and also it means that you’re more likely to be able to be happy, happy for other people when they achieve their own things. You know you are confident about what you are doing. Yeah. So then you’re able to celebrate what they’re doing go Great, because that is what, what is important to them.

This is an norm I really wanna

Terry: challenge, uh, I wanna challenge in our community. I wanna challenge, if you follow us, if you’re a part of what we’re doing, you’re in the, you’re in the passive income project community as well. If you follow us on socials, you’re gonna see this more a lot from us. and it’s this concept called wealth is. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And it’s going to be you declaring and defining what choices you have now because of what you’ve been doing. And, uh, wealth is underscore whatever you want it to be. So the one that I put up the other day was wealth is, A mid-morning run in the sun. ’cause I can, um, wealth is never having to ask my boss if I can go pick up my kids from kinder four o’clock. Mm.

It’s those things where you, like, you’re celebrating, this is what, this is what it is for me. Yeah. Um, so look, if you are listening to this and you have those choices and you want to kind of talk about it, please do. Yeah, please do. Just you, you’re gonna see it a lot from us on our socials going forward.

It’s, and, and our, our socials have actually changed, so it’s now at passive income project.

And um,

and we’ll be putting up, um, some pictures along way, all the way along, talking about that to sort of change that norm, because I think it’s, it really does come at the detriment. There’s this real tall, poppy thing and um, you know, we need to stop it. We need to just cut it out because it limits everybody.

Helen: Yeah. So let’s be your cheer squad. be your squad. I’m number number one fan for all of you.

Terry: So we’re the last one. embed and operating rhythm. This is big for certainty. Coming back to that scarf model, huge for certainty. You need to know. What to expect throughout the month. And you need a kind of operating rhythm that shows you, okay, this is when we’re gonna be making these decisions together. For us, it’s money mapping. We actually did it last night, and it’s like the two days out from the next month. We map for the month coming up.

early on in the next month we do tracking and actually look at our last month and then, Toward the end of the month, we’re actually kind of looking at how we’re tracking with our spending as well to sort of go, do we need to tighten anything up? How is it all kind of looking? that’s really, really important so that you can predict what’s gonna happen. Yeah. And it’s not like, Hey, Helen, we need to, we need to sit down and we need to get on our finances. And I just like, just pulled it outta nowhere. No. No, no.

So what do you do? You go, why? What’s wrong? What’s

Yeah. What’s,

yeah. Right. But now, is a standard practice.

You go, it’s money map. It’s a conversation we have every single month.

It’s not a surprise, it’s actually just the way we do yeah. The 28th, 29th rolls around we, it’s time we, we do it for the next month and we actually, it’s not a chore. You actually look forward to it. This rhythm, this certainty, you know, it’s coming up. It’s a, it’s a good time. You go. Great. I, I now get to plan the next month ahead. This is good.

Yeah. I would, it’s, it’s, it is really, really important to, to explain why that is, because it’s the very active setting, intentions and planning. It calms the monkey mind. Mm. Um, this is another principle from neuroscience is a guy who wrote a book called The Upward Spiral. His name’s escaping me, but one of the biggest things he says in that is like, Look, if you just create one goal or prediction for the day, then you actually prime your brain to be in a dopamine loop yeah. I can now achieve that. And so by setting the plan, you actually get to calm that monkey mind.

And one thing I wanna add to with this operating rhythm is this isn’t like a money date. That’s not what we’re talking What we’re talking about is actually. Using a tool to facilitate that conversation for us, it’s a money mapping tool. it’s a forecasting tool. It’s these kind of tools that facilitate the conversations

categorization.

like, I don’t want to go out on a date and just talk about money. How are we going with our money? I actually want to, I want, I just want some, like the conversation to actually mean something. ’cause we’re problem solving and we’re actually working together to make it happen, not just talk about money.

Helen: Yeah. And how many times have we also said, this is not just about money. This is not about money. It’s what the money does for us that’s right. right. And again, I would say it over and over again, but yeah. Embedding an operating rhythm. Something you said there reminded me, the dopamine’s going. Yeah. You’ve also got, once you’ve set this up and you’ve had few positive experiences, again, you’re building on positive experiences between you as a couple.

Yeah. Yeah. You now want to do this. You’re now starting to change what’s happened in your past and the tension and the, and the, conflict happened into something else, into new, into new neural pathways, aren’t you? Where you’re actually, you’re actually just. Changing everything then going forward. So it’s a successful thing that you want to do.

Terry: Yeah. So look, these are the three principles, right? Create a common cause, structure your accounts for trust and transparency, and master a shared way of working. Now, I was really keen to just pull out a couple of observations from your point of view. You’ve been doing this for probably longer than anyone.

In our community now. Um, and you had a couple of, a couple of points that you’ve kind of come to over time in reflections, haven’t you?

Yeah. And one of them, as good as like this is, this is brilliant. It is absolutely a hundred percent changed things for us. The thing is, we, you need to keep working at it. You need to actually keep investing in doing it and the commitment to keep getting better over time. So, yes, I understand it. I always find that when I go back to the modules or go back to mentorship, I learn something new each time. I think it was only a few months ago, I said, Hey, I’ve actually, I actually hadn’t completely optimized the account structure,

Helen: Right. And I was like, can you

Terry: there’s been, there’s probably been a lot of changes since you last that There has, yeah,

Helen: But I couldn’t, I, I guess the thing is, Don’t aim for perfection. Like once you’ve got it set up, we just wanted to make sure that we were giving it a go. Yeah. Building on it over time and just giving everything a chance to succeed and just knowing that we were, we would keep adding to it and it would get better over time.

Terry: Um, I think one thing I’d add to that is I think the insight you’re hitting on there is this is a skill. This is not a one time thing. This is actually something you keep expanding.

Yeah. Yeah. And you, it’s a skill you’re developing together.

Yeah, and I think what

Helen: we see from members when they’ve just started this, like once they’ve set up the accounts, they’re getting used to it, it might feel a bit clunky. Yep. My only advice. I give, is like just, just persist with it. Give it a few months. See if you can embed that operating rhythm, get used to it and just see if then that makes a difference. And things come down. Once you’ve got that new habit formed,

It’s just change.

Terry: It’s actually, people get embedded with status quo and the status quo equals safety. And anything that’s changed feels like not safe. so I think half that experience is you’re just feeling not safe as you make change. And if you just don’t let that what happens, you’re actually fine. actually a hundred percent fine.

Helen: And the other thing is we, we touched on this before, it’s not going to fix all your issues in your life like this. This definitely removes a lot of uncertainty. It removes a lot of the conflict around money conversations. Like, we still have very challenging yeah. I would say, around money.

Terry: They’re different. Yeah. Especially so you got, you gotta smarter about where it’s going. And sometimes you have different, you know, you have different kind of priorities and you got to reconcile that stuff. But guess what? That is a relationship. Yeah, that’s that what it is.

Helen: yeah, and we’re living in a world keeps changing and we cannot stop it. We cannot control a lot of things around us, so it just allows us to, to have better quality conversations that we actually know that we can work through. I said, I went, we were doing money mapping the other night and I said to Chase, look, we’ve got a couple ways we can deal with this now, don’t we Like. We, we either need to cut back on what we’re spending, we need to look at the categories, or we need to earn money and we can divvy it up. So how much do you think that realistically we need based on what you saw? it, that is such

solve the problem.

I just could not believe, and again, From where we’ve come to, to from, and now where we are, and these sort of measured, balanced conversations that are not like flipping into like complete, fights anymore. You know, that’s, that’s a big thing.

Terry: This is big. Right. I’ve heard that conversation in a number of ways. Like people will come through and they’ll get a handle on their money and they’ll realize, hang on, we’ve been living beyond our means. And so what do we need to do? Do we need to actually change the way we’re behaving or do we need to expand our means?

And that’s a conscious decision. And I’ve had people say, listen, I don’t think I’m living. Extravagantly. I want to live like this. So that means now if I wanna hit my goals, I now need to earn this much. And now my brain is focused on solving that problem. Guess what happens? problem gets solved. Yes, it gets solved.

Helen: That’s exactly right. right.

Terry: You get a pay rise, you change your job. Like that’s the kind of decisions we see people make. And and and you turn around two, three years later and they go, oh, this is amazing.

Yeah, it’s amazing. And you are

Helen: using that shared language again. You’re using the language around, well we can, we can take money from this account or we can look at this objectives. Are we gonna cut back on our lifestyle? It all helps. It gives you the framework to just move through an issue or a challenge that you’re having and

wait before you go on. Yeah. One thing I wanna add to that point, pressures don’t stop.

Terry: I think the search for a life where you have no pressure, it’s an empty life. And the thing, the challenge for me is actualizing yourself to get better at handle handling bigger and bigger things. Right. So for me, I’m like, I’m not trying to like not see pressure ’cause I just, I actually just don’t think that exists. I think everyone faces pressure in some regard. So. it’s it’s a fruitless kind of pursuit to go. I never want any pressure. What I wanna do is I, I only become bigger than my pressure. So that it doesn’t actually crush me. Mm.

And, and the goal. And so if you can keep having those conversations, you can always become bigger than your pressure.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. And again, you’re refocusing, you’re spending time on the things that matter you, your true priorities, your vision, your vision of the future that you’ve built together. Yeah. And how do we know it’s actually working? Like this is a really clear one. This is, I keep thinking about how do we know on a month to month, year to year basis, it’s working

Terry: well. I reckon there’s three things. If you’ve got this sorted, And you are really collaborating effectively with your money. You will be making bigger money moves with time. be taking on more risk. You’ll be making bigger decisions with your time, your money, and your talent. And you’ll be backing each other in to make those moves.

You’re not gonna be pointing fingers if things don’t work out. You’ll be saying, we’re doing this together. And the third thing is you’ll be finding join the journey. And as distinct from happiness. ’cause happiness is a moment to moment thing. Joy is something that can compound. When I look back and I see what we’ve actually gone through, you know, Elise and I, we had twins.

We had, we went down, um, like I started the business. She runs a business. We went down to like no fixed income, no predictable income. As we were starting this business, she backed me in. We moved through that challenge together, and we’ve done all these things in the meantime that now, is really, it’s just so fulfilling to look back at that.

And I get joy from that experience Happiness, it comes and goes, know, you know, it’s a slippery thing, but joy, joy is a different thing.

Helen: Yeah. And Joy, you’ve actually moved through a challenge successfully, haven’t you? Yeah. To be better, yeah. Isn’t it? when you talk about making big moves, anyone can make big moves, but in this situation, we are talking about being, confident.

Yeah. You’ve got the right support around you to make those big moves, and you’re making decisions with the right information, aren’t you? You’re not just like, Blindly pursuing something or, or some fantasy world. and that’s how we know it’s working. and as you said, backing each other in Yeah. That, that’s what we’re here for. We’re we, we’re social beings, aren’t we? Yeah. wanna make a difference in the world. This is all about working tobe better together. Yeah.

Terry: Yep. Totally, totally. Look, so this brings us to the end of this series. this has been really fun.

Helen: It has been fun. It has been fun. I would love, my children to one day listen to this. And again, this is this legacy piece. I would never have thought I’d do this with you. Yeah. But it’s brilliant and I hope one day they think, God, mom, mom’s a bit cool. oh no, that’s probably a bit

Terry: It’s rich. No, no. No, no. But it is. I I think about the same thing now. Um, I think about, uh, if my kids ever stumble on this, I’ll never force this upon them. But, um, it’s something that I do think about because it’s not like getting on the same page and, and collaborating well with Elise. It really is for me, partly about that next generation and showing them something different because it’s not what I saw, heard, or felt. and it’s not my parents’ fault, it’s just the way it was.

And, and I know that they’re gonna have a different relationship if we, if we can show them how, what this can look like, and model that for them. So look, if you’ve been listening through to this, and you’ve really started to think, I really wanna shift and change things for me, but I don’t even know how to start this conversation.

I’ve talked about this in the last episode. We actually just put up a free course in the community, that’s going to show you. Word for word, how to have this conversation with your partner to open it up. To actually just open it up and just get them curious to potentially changing things and look.

This can happen. We just had a couple start with us, uh, two nights ago who actually just watched that. And he, he, he said to me, that changed everything for me. I’ve never been able to have that conversation. Now I’m on this call now we’re on this journey. And he is like, thank you so much for what you’ve already done.

And I said, I didn’t do it, man. You did it.

Helen: So the resources are there, aren’t they? gotta be willing to take that next step.

Terry: Yeah. So look, all you need to do to get that course, as I said, a hundred percent free, just go into the community, join the Passive Income Project community. Scroll down in the episode description, and you’ll see a little link that says, join the Passive Income Project Community. click on that link. You’ll see it straight in there when you jump in. there is one episode left in this series, the, the actual content of this series has done. But we’ve got a great story to tell. We’re gonna be bringing on one of our coaches, Mitch and his wife Brooke, talking about their journey going through this and, and what it’s all meant for them as well. So really looking

Oh, they’re legends

Helen: and they’re making some big moves now, aren’t they?

doing some big stuff in

Terry: 2024, cannot wait to so, um, excited to share that with you guys too in the next one. And, uh, I hope to see you there.

Helen: Thanks so much for having me.