Today as our guest, we are so thrilled to have Dr. Marina Rosenthal, a licensed psychologist dedicated to helping couples navigate high-conflict problems. In other words, she can help you get through some pretty heated fights. She shares practical thoughts on the “mess (and magic) of lasting love” in her weekly newsletter, Love Notes for Real Life, and with her many followers on Instagram. She also has a book coming out next year, which I cannot wait to get my hands on!

I previously interviewed Dr. Rosenthal for Money Together on a tough topic: careers, ambition, and the inherent sacrifices some people end up making for their spouse’s career. But today, she’s here to share evergreen insights on working through patterns of conflict, de-escalation, and repair in our relationships.

Here’s our conversation, edited for length and clarity:

Share

Heather: You work with couples in high-conflict relationships. If you had to rank “money” on the list of issues that arise in your office, where would it fall?

Marina Rosenthal: Very often, it’s not labeled as one of the issues that high-conflict couples are struggling with. Sometimes it is, of course, but more common is that while it’s not being labeled as fighting about money, money lies underneath the problems that they’re fighting about. It’s implicitly there a huge percentage of the time.

H: So, what are couples fighting about?

M: Sometimes, they’re fighting about power. Sometimes, they’re fighting about worthiness and value. Sometimes they’re fighting about autonomy and the right to be your own person. These are big, deep themes that go right down to identity and our own upbringings, and that’s what they’re grappling over.

H: Is there a difference between passion and volatility?

M: I sure hope so. Because I think what people want is passion within safety. We want to feel loved and desired and like there’s that spark, but we also want to feel safe and cared for. Those things don’t always play well together.

Volatility is sometimes referred to as a cheat code to passion, and it can give the semblance of passion, but it’s not the real deal. You’ve gotten there through an illegitimate route. So, people who might think they enjoy makeup sex, they might feel so in love, but that’s not the real deal. They’ve conflated the two concepts to believe that the roller coaster is a healthy part of their existence as a couple.

H: I can see how that happens.

M: I think especially if you didn’t have the greatest modeling of what healthy relationships look like, you can assume that if you’re fighting, it means you’re okay. People do get almost addicted to the makeup cycle. That can be part of an abusive relationship: where there’s repair and a honeymoon and then back into the abuse.

But it also happens in non-abusive relationships where people like the dopamine rush of having a terrible fight then feeling closer than ever, because they put everything on the table. That can be weirdly compelling.

H: Does that mean some couples are just more prone to destructive cycles?

M: Absolutely, but I don’t think anyone consciously enjoys it. I think that it always kind of hurts. It’s kind of like pressing a bruise when it feels bad: there’s something comforting about it. Often, people are replicating things they saw growing up or running from things they saw growing up.

But not all two people, if put together, will have a high-conflict relationship. Some combinations of partners are just not going to bring that type of intensity. And then there’s other partnerships where the context or what’s going on in their lives can just be a magic recipe that brings forth a certain level of intensity.

Share

H: So, let’s say you’re just starting to ramp up into the same pattern of your heated argument cycle. You’re thinking, oh, we’re about to do this again. I know Douglas and I have been in that space before. Is there anything couples can do to lower the temperature?

M: Well, that “meta-awareness” you’re describing—that “oh, this is the moment before we have a bad fight”—just pausing there and naming it is incredibly helpful. We often have that in retrospect, but we don’t always articulate it as a preconscious seed. So, pausing enough to say, “this feels like the point in the conversation where things usually fall apart for us, and I don’t want it to go that way this time,” can be really helpful. Not “this is when you say all the terrible things about me,” but naming the crux in a non-blaming way is a helpful tool.

Something else I teach and talk about a lot is very basic deescalation: pausing to take a break separately, say 10 minutes, splash some water on your face, just do things that bring your temperature down. People resist this so hard. We’re like, no, that won’t work! I’ll be just as mad! No, you won’t. Your body will not let you be just as mad in 10 minutes if you actually engage in regulating strategies, but we kind of don’t want to do it. We want to stay mad. But having just a short pause that you can agree upon to bring the heat down is really helpful.

H: Where is the line? I don’t want to say the line of “no turning back,” but where is the line in an argument that once you’ve crossed it, you’re doing real damage to your relationship?

M: I think it it’s when you start attacking your partner with your words and saying really harsh things about them. Not just their behavior but about their identity, their personhood, things that you can’t take back, right?

When it comes to money, I think threats to remove or control resources create a fundamental change in the power dynamic in a problematic way.

H: Let’s say you’re coming off a blowout fight. It’s understandable that you might want to avoid talking about that topic again. I think that’s how a lot of couples find themselves avoiding conversations about money, because they associate them with fighting. How do you get back to the table when your last attempt was so painful or difficult?

M: I think it’s good to set aside solutions, at first. Money is a great example of where people want to solve the problem, but that could lead to finger-pointing. So just talk about how you feel about this hard topic. Talk about the fears, the worries, the negative thoughts, and you’re not going to offer a single solution. The whole first conversation—or maybe multiple conversations—is just emotion-oriented. And when you feel really heard, then you can decide together to have a brainstorming conversation and discuss options.

H: We’ve talked a lot about fighting, but how important are apologies?

M: People have baggage about apologies. Maybe it comes from childhood and being made to apologize and viewing it as a sort of transaction. But apologies are an important part of the repair process. Some people really crave apologies while other people could care less and just want to know what you’re going to do different in the future. For most people, we need both, but you might weigh them different depending on the situation. So, apologies definitely matter, and I always encourage people to apologize for whatever you can authentically apologize for, because you might find that it’s enough.

Now, when you’ve taken away safety with your words, I don’t think a verbal apology is ever going to be enough. We need action to restore safety and often quite a bit of time living with that action to demonstrate that it’s not something you’re just going to take away whenever you’re angry or hurting. I’ll just take away your financial freedom. If that’s something that happens repeatedly to any extent at all, that’s really a sign the relationship isn’t safe.

Thank you again to Dr. Marina Rosenthal for helping us go Above Our Pay Grade! Please don’t forget to subscribe to her newsletter and follow her on Instagram—she’s amazing.

If you’re enjoying the Above Our Pay Grade series, paid subscribers have access to all archived posts, a monthly AMA, and they will soon have access to full video recordings of these expert conversations!

Subscribe now

What a week!

We’re not running a mini series this week, because I’d rather tell you about last week. It felt like every area of our lives came together in a very poetic, chaotic, great-yet-how-are-we-still-standing kind of way?!

Where to start…well, I recorded a podcast on navigating money in friendships that was so thought-provoking, I might write a newsletter about it (stay tuned). Then, my manifesto on the memoir Strangers resulted in a feverish DM convo with Farnoosh Torabi, who graciously invited me back on her hit podcast, “So Money.” Here’s a clip, but the whole ep was great:

On Wednesday night, Douglas and I presented Money Together to an intimate group of 15 couples, and our knowledgable sommelier Alfredo paired a different wine with each section of our book. For example, Mistakes came with champagne, because champagne was created by accident (OMG)! Couples opened up, leaned into conversation, and connected in ways that just can't happen in a conference or Zoom room. I'm sure the wine helped, too. Anyway, it was incredible. Book events hallelujah!

Thursday was Take Your Kid to Work Day. Usually, we plan a fun city day that’s more “work-adjacent,” but as fate would have it, I previously scheduled an in-person podcast hosted in partnership between Babylist and my dear friend Lindsey Stanberry of The Purse. So…we took the girls to work! They were wonderful stand-ins for lighting and sound, and honestly, it warmed my heart for them to finally meet Lindsey and catch a glimpse of us in action.

Finally, in a move that makes me feel we’ve earned our summer Fridays this year, we snuck in one more virtual book talk on Friday afternoon with the Colorado Therapy Collective. We were there as guests, but we could have just as easily been the ones seeking guidance from them! That’s how you know the work between financial advisors and therapists is truly symbiotic.

I’ll speak on my own behalf here and just say that I am forever grateful this work brings me into great rooms, great partnerships, and great friendships. But damn…it also felt great to have the weekend off!

We’d love to bring Money Together to your podcast, org, or next event. Let’s chat!

Money Together is here. If you find value in our newsletter and want to support our work, please order a copy today: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Audible (narrated by Heather!).

Love it already? PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE leave us a review on Goodreads and wherever you purchased.

Want more Heather and Doug? Have us come talk about love and money with your organization—virtually or IRL. Reach us here.

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

The content shared in The Joint Account does not constitute financial, legal, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their respective professionals for specific advice tailored to their situation. The information contained in this post is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It should not be considered as investment advice or as a recommendation of any particular strategy or investment product. This post is not a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any specific security. Bone Fide Wealth cannot guarantee the accuracy of information from third parties.

I’ll wait.

If you’re anything like the couples I work with, you’ve got a whole lot of those charges, and they tell you almost nothing. They’re an incomplete story.

What “AMAZON.COM: $263.47” doesn’t tell you is that you just spent:

• $30.10 on a trifold board and glue sticks for your kid’s science project;

• $75.17 on soap and paper towels and a new mildew resistant shower curtain liner;

• $100.15 on a sweatshirt and two pairs of CRZ Yoga shorts (IYKYK);

• $25.05 on a book you’ll read next year;

• an air fryer accessory you definitely won’t be using; and

• something your wife ordered at 2:24 a.m. called a “silicone garlic peeler.”

One charge covers at least four different categories of spending, and you’ve got almost no visibility into it whatsoever.

This is the Amazon black hole, and it might be the single most under-discussed budget problem in American households.

Subscribe now

Amazon didn’t become the biggest retailer in the country by accident. They engineered the most frictionless shopping experience in human history. One click. One swipe. Two-day delivery. You can buy a car battery, a birthday gift for your cousin, a bag of rice, and a set of bed sheets inside of ninety seconds and go right back to spacing out on the couch. There’s a good chance you’re watching a new show on Amazon Prime. Maybe you saw the ad for bed sheets during the show.

Man, they really got you.

IMO, this is Amazon’s entire business model: the less you think about each purchase, the more purchases you’ll make. The more purchases you make, the harder it’ll be to see what’s happening with your money.

Since all those packages arrive in the same brown boxes with the same smile on it, your brain stops categorizing. One box stacks upon another box with a soft-pack envelope in between. Everything’s just “stuff from Amazon” now, collapsing into one amorphous blob on your credit card statement. The more you spend, the foggier it becomes.

We need to lift the fog!

But before you start scrutinizing the contents of every single box like you’re the receipt reader at Costco, I want to caution you. In most households, and this is backed up by Pew data and basically every study on division of labor ever conducted, women carry more of the caregiving and housework responsibilities. They’re more likely to track what the kids need for school on Monday, whose birthday party is Saturday, and why the bathroom is suddenly out of three different things at once. Their work is too often invisible, and a meaningful amount of it gets executed through an Amazon cart.

We wrote about this in Money Together. Heather described the time during COVID when she was running what she calls the Boneparth Cruise Ship to Nowhere: food, entertainment, housekeeping, health, education, risk management, she handled all of it. Me? I was tweeting dad jokes (absolute bangers, btw) while stepping over bins of clean laundry and barely recognizing when we were running out of paper towels. You can bet her version of events is more colorful and probably more accurate than mine.

So, before you start raising eyebrows at the Amazon bill, be sure you’re taking the time to understand what’s in those packages. Your partner could be supporting the household inventory and a whole lot more in ways you cannot see.

Nevertheless, even if you fully acknowledge that one partner’s responsible for handling more of the household responsibilities (and thus spending to accomplish those responsibilities), the lack of visibility for both partners is still a legitimate issue. Two things can be true.

In these situations, what usually happens is that an argument erupts, neither person wins, nothing changes, and the same argument erupts again six weeks later when the credit card statement comes in. These really aren’t even disagreements about money—they’re mismatches of information. Two people have different pictures of reality in their heads, and they’re arguing about their pictures instead of looking at the actual data.

You can’t gain fair perspective over a situation neither of you can see.

The good news is that Amazon does give you the data. It’s just slightly buried, which again, probably isn’t an accident. But you can find it two ways:

One thing Amazon will not do is categorize the items for you. That part is on you and your spouse, and it’s the most important part of all.

Share

Sit down together, open that CSV file, open the credit card statement that just says “AMAZON,” and reconcile. Figure out which charges on your statement correspond to which items in the CSV file. Once you’ve matched them up, tag each line with a real category from your budget.

What you’re going to find is a much clearer picture of where your money is going. You’ll find some stuff that was 100% necessary and you’ll find some stuff that was pure fun. You’ll also find a few things that will make one or both of you laugh and a few things that will make one of you a little annoyed. This is all normal and an indication that the process is working.

Again, I want to be clear about something: you don’t want to turn your marriage into a forensic accounting firm. Reconciling your Amazon expenses can be a real time suck, and the whole point of money management is that it should free you to live your life—not consume it. Therefore, I only suggest you do this exercise quarterly at most. You can fold it into one of your quarterly money dates, or just order takeout, open a bottle of something, and make it a one-to-two-hour project twice a year.

If you are reading this and thinking, we trust each other, we don’t need to do this. I hear you. Our sentiment’s the same, but we still do it.

Trust and transparency are not substitutes for each other. Trust is the belief that your partner is acting in good faith. Transparency is the practice of showing your work.

When you sit down and review your Amazon spending together, you can not only make more conscious decisions moving forward but stop arguing about what’s going on with all those smiling packages.

*ding dong*

Now if you will excuse me, my daughter’s Insect Lore™ Ladybug Land Hatching Kit just arrived.

Subscribe now

Be honest: when’s the last time you’ve examined your Amazon expenses? Let us know!

The Sub Edit: Canva Pro

After what felt like a lifetime of wading through free templates and second-rate images, I finally bit the bullet and signed up for a year’s subscription to Canva Pro. I’m honestly embarrassed it took me this long, and it’s probably a testament to how stubborn and principled I am about certain things. But we are working with a good friend to level up the design elements here on The Joint Account, and investing in a tool I can carry the torch with was absolutely necessary. I’ve had it for a whole two days and can already tell you, it’s like night and day. -Heather

We’re in the news

Douglas shared his insights in an excellent Bloomberg piece on retirement planning at any age. It’s an incredible resource that takes a multidisciplinary approach to preparing for what you know and all the stuff you don’t. We’ve always believed these conversations should start way earlier (and feel way less intimidating), so it’s awesome to see our message from Money Together included as “life advice.” We agree!

Friendly reminder to our free subscribers: all new posts arrive in your inbox. After 14 days, they will be placed behind a paywall on our site. If you love The Joint Account and want complete access to our archives, a monthly AMA with us, bonus video content, and more, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Money Together is here. If you find value in our newsletter and want to support our work, please order a copy today: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Audible (narrated by Heather!).

Love it already? PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE leave us a review on Goodreads and wherever you purchased.

Want more Heather and Doug? Have us come talk about love and money with your organization—virtually or IRL. Reach us here.

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

The content shared in The Joint Account does not constitute financial, legal, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their respective professionals for specific advice tailored to their situation. The information contained in this post is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It should not be considered as investment advice or as a recommendation of any particular strategy or investment product. This post is not a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any specific security. Bone Fide Wealth cannot guarantee the accuracy of information from third parties.

She said, “It’s okay, Mama. Amazon Prime can bring us another one tomorrow.”

I’m sure some of you think this was an adorable thing for her to say. But given what we do for a living, coupled with my millennial agita to raise good humans, I felt a sense of existential dread over what our girls were learning from us.

April is Financial Literacy Month for adults and kids alike. The moment our children are old enough to observe our behaviors, they are picking up messages that form the foundation of their beliefs about money. I know this, because I spent nearly two years asking people about their earliest memories of money for our book. You didn’t have to stretch to see the throughlines between their childhood and what they believe now. Almost everyone had something to say about when they were young.

As parents, we are part of their origin story—for better or worse.

Subscribe now

Before I got into this work, I had a very limiting view of what it meant to become “literate” with money. I thought it just meant learning basic financial concepts like budgeting, understanding your cash flow…the kind of things you should be learning in a foundational classroom setting. According to Next Gen Personal Finance, 30 states now require coursework in financial concepts to finish high school, which is awesome. But I would caution any parent of young children against kicking this can down the road until then.

We can help our kids establish strong foundational beliefs long before they can grasp advanced math concepts. We can help them create good habits, build confidence, and learn how to be critical about decisions that impact their futures. You don’t need a lesson plan for this work. It’s rooted in how we’re speaking to our kids at Target, and how we talk to each other around the dinner table. It’s holding the line when giving in feels easier, and creating friction in a world designed to make spending as easy as possible.

Douglas and I have written about money and parenting before (like, many times before). But in honor of Financial Literacy Month, I want to offer you some big-picture ways to think about leveling up your kids’ understanding of money from a young age through early adulthood.

If they’re old enough to speak, you’re old enough to start.

Let me show you.

Share

When it comes to your kids’ earliest understanding of money, focus on instilling values. The financials and vocabulary will come later. You want to show them through simple, real-world examples that we make choices every day, and we put careful thought into what they are.

Life is not one big trip to the all-inclusive Amazon Prime resort.[1] Three-year-old Ruby once believed it was, but she now knows that things do not just “appear.” We choose to buy them, either because we need them or because we want them and have decided it’s an appropriate time to purchase. Waiting is normal. You can get your kids comfortable with the fact that you’re making decisions based on what something costs, even before they have the context for what “expensive” means.

The grocery store is a great place to practice. I used to read Ruby the prices of produce, like avocados or apples. Then, I’d have her physically hand them to me while counting. Once we got close to how many we needed, I’d ask her, “Do you think we need another? Do we need five or is four enough?” I’d suggest to her that if we got three, we could get strawberries, too. We were making choices around spending in a way that didn’t make money feel threatening or scarce.

One of the earliest connections we drew for our girls was between money and work. When I was a mega-commuter, Douglas would drop me off at the train station before taking Hazel to preschool. She asked him why they always had to do that. He’d explain to her that the reason we got to enjoy many of the things she really likes—Presents! Disney World! Trips to the ice cream place!—is because we earn money that pays for these things at our jobs. And even though Mom would much rather be driving you to preschool, she has to take the train to work.

In other words, we earn money by working, even when it’s not the most fun thing to do, and then we use that money to live and enjoy our lives. It’s not a hard concept for them to grasp but an important one.

One more point on values: having kids is a great time to revisit yours.

Giving is very important to me, but to be honest, it wasn’t a priority in the early and expensive years of our careers in New York City. Once the girls’ preschool introduced the concept of tzedakah (charity) to them, I knew it was time to find new ways to begin to embody the generosity that always lived in my heart. So, we volunteer. We donate money. We’ve held board seats and pro bono positions for non-profit organizations. Many of the activities centered around our values involve our kids, so they really do begin to form not only the connections between what you believe and what you choose to do about it, but they start to gain context. More on that later.

By the time kids arrive to grade school, they’re starting to learn basic math. They can listen and comprehend more complex ideas. They’re also expected to begin taking some personal responsibility for themselves. But what’s hard about this phase is that kids don’t really grow in a straight line. Recently, a friend said to me that she feels like one day she’s parenting a teenager, and the next, she’s parenting a little boy. I’m right there with her.

As our kids mature, certain concepts might kind of make sense to them, but that doesn’t mean they’re emotionally or developmentally ready to execute on them all the time. So, don’t be discouraged if you read this and think, there’s no way we’re ready for that. All good.

We’re also putting allowances aside for today, because the question of whether your kids should have them (and if so, how much) is complicated. My close friends tie the money they give their kids to expectations around personal responsibility rather than a list of chores, which I really like. But because this topic requires a longer discussion, let’s just hold true the fact that our kids may start to acquire money around this time, whether it’s from an allowance, the tooth fairy, birthday presents, or their grandparents giving them a dollar for no apparent reason.

The core lessons at this phase are still about choices, but they’re much more meaningful to them than a trip to the grocery store. There are things with price tags that school-aged kids really want.

This is the time to show them how to:

• earn,

• save, and

• spend money with purpose.

They can learn about prioritizing when there’s several things they’d really like to have or do. And they can begin to understand real value—what’s worth it and what’s not.

Elementary school is a great time to encourage your kids to save for their first financial goal. Hazel, for example, really wanted an iPad that wasn’t whatever first-generation brick she inherited from us. At the start of the year, we showed her how much it cost, and we counted how much money she had. We discussed her paths to get there and offered for her birthday to match whatever dollars she could save that year. When it came time for her to hand over her roll of cash to us, she was proud, and we were impressed. She really had her eyes on the prize.

Budgeting can also become a powerful tool. For special outings to the toy store or Sephora (eek), I like to set budgets and give them the freedom to make decisions for themselves. Sometimes, they have to make hard choices, but they’re less upset when it’s their choice to make. My only caveat to an exercise like this is to be careful you’re not imparting fear or stress on your kids by telling them they only have X, because we can’t afford more. Parentifying your children by infusing your money worries into their special moments is something they’ll remember for a long time. Again, I’ve seen some things. Just do your best to avoid it.

Welcome to tweenhood, a brief pitstop when everyone’s growing, smelling, yelling, and crying.

I kid, but there’s a whole lot of truth to how challenging these couple of years can be. Between the hormones and the added sense of self-awareness, tweens have a lot to be emotional about. Small things feel like big things. Minor problems feel like the world is ending. Without belittling their very real feelings, this may be the perfect time to introduce some more context into their lives.

I think most young people tend to fixate on what they don’t have before they consider what they do have. It comes with the territory. Some of the people we interviewed said that their earliest money memories came by comparison—by realizing they have less than someone else. It’s okay to acknowledge how frustrating that might feel and not gaslight them into believing we all just operate in our own financial silos, immune to the weight of how unfair the world is.

Privilege shows up in visible and invisible ways. You can, and should, begin to talk about it. Your tweens are old enough to hold two truths: they can wish something was different, and they can be grateful for what they have. But they’ll need your example to begin to see it that way.

In terms of hard dollars, this could be a great time to advance the concept of budgeting into the early stages of cash management. As they socialize and spend more independently, consider letting them manage a small monthly budget for things you used to just give them, like clothes or after-school snacks in town. You’re obviously not going to hand the reins over to them entirely, but you’ll all learn a lot from giving them a bit more agency.

I would also consider opening a debit card for them, not only to simulate how money realistically changes hands in the real world but to give them visibility into banking systems. There are so many cash management tools out there to help them begin to understand their spending habits even at this stage. Don’t sleep on the chance to start them out before you really need to.

Share

This is the main event. It’s where you pair the values, attitudes, and behaviors you’ve been working on with hands-on lessons from the real world so your kids can become independent and financially literate members of society. No pressure, though!

Bearing in mind how long this manifesto already is, I will touch on all the important concepts but keep it high level. This is work to be done over years; not months, and certainly not in one sitting from reading our newsletter.

1. Taxes, withholdings, and how money flows

Part-time employment during high school or college is the perfect time for teens and young adults to familiarize themselves with how paychecks work, and how money flows in and out of their financial lives.

How much you make is not how much you take home. Teach them how to read their pay stub and learn the difference between gross and net pay. Have them see how much money is withheld for taxes and other types of deductions. They need to learn that the take-home amount is how much they are left to work with, and only then can they begin to understand what they truly can and cannot afford.

On cost of living, most young adults can easily find out how much rent would cost in a place they want to live, but rent is just the first expense. Utilities, internet, and transportation costs are musts. Then, there’s the more invisible costs, like insurance (including maybe renter’s insurance), deductibles to even use that insurance, and memberships and subscriptions that feel critical to their lifestyles but really add up. This is not including food and groceries, which will eat up more of their “adult” paychecks than they probably realize.

You may not be able to simulate the true feeling of “leaving the nest” for them. They may just need to see for themselves. But if you need to start showing them what your life as a family costs to make this all seem realer to them, don’t shy away from it.

2. Credit and consumer debt

While credit itself is not a complex topic, teaching teens the correct way to use it might be. On one hand, you want to build credit as a young adult—your credit score can make or break your ability to rent an apartment, buy a car, or even start a business down the road. You build credit by using credit and then paying off your monthly amounts owed in a timely fashion. I’ll never forget my first American Express Blue for Students card. In fact, I still have it!

Unfortunately, Buy Now Pay Later options are being marketed directly to young adults to finance everything from groceries to clothing. It’s a dangerous game to believe you can make minimum payments on a burrito, because financing small expenses is a slippery slope into losing control over your consumer debt and destroying your credit. While you can, teach your kids that these are not viable options for financing your lifestyle.

3. Investing and building wealth

Investing early can give young adults an enormous head start, but our concept of what it means to invest is likely not the same as theirs. Young adults are being taught via social media and tech-forward investment platforms that investing is more like gambling—that it’s a risky, short-term game with winners and losers. For most, the gamification of investing works against building long-term wealth.

Teens should be learning about compound interest, appreciating assets, employer matches, and setting automatic transfers into investment accounts. They should be learning about having their money work for them through patience and discipline, not doing “the most” work while risking too much.

4. ROI (return on investment) in higher education…and everything else

It’s true that higher education is an investment in yourself, but how do you measure the return on that investment? You would think that because so many millennials are still saddled in student loan debt, higher education would be dramatically different by now. But striving culture still exists. Encourage your teens not to chase clout but to critically understand whether the career they want warrants the cost of the degree.

Teens need to learn about interest and how it compounds on top of principal amounts borrowed. They need to learn the difference between federal subsidized, unsubsidized, and private loans. And in my opinion, they need to understand just how opaque and impossible it is to deal with student loan servicers after they graduate. There is virtually no safety net in that system, and they will need to know how to advocate for themselves to get anything done.

You can show them how this concept will continue to apply throughout their lives. When you invest in something—whether it’s your own advanced degree, an idea, a publicly traded company, or even another person—you should be doing your own research to determine whether you believe you’ll get what you want out of it. Things don’t always work out, of course, but due diligence lessens the chances of making ill-informed choices they’ll come to regret.

Subscribe now

Lessons about money are lessons about life. The conversations you have now will compound over time, shaping how your kids think, feel, and act long after they leave home. Let Financial Literacy Month be your starting point, because the way we talk about money today becomes the voice our kids hear in their heads tomorrow.

Parents, let’s support each other. What’s worked for your kids? What hasn’t?

Comment below or reach us here.

TJA’s Couple of the Week

Speaking of Mother and Father, my Couple of the Week goes to the Biebers, the prom king and queen of Coachella this past weekend. JB set the internet ablaze with his headline set that gave us the classics, while Hailey turned the desert into a Rhode playground with brand activations that flooded my social feeds. They even had Kylie acting basic—an outstanding circus to obsess over from my Couchella. -Heather

Friendly reminder to our free subscribers: all new posts arrive in your inbox. After 14 days, they will be placed behind a paywall on our site. If you love The Joint Account and want complete access to our archives, a monthly AMA with us, bonus video content, and more, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Money Together is here. If you find value in our newsletter and want to support our work, please order a copy today: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Audible (narrated by Heather!).

Love it already? PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE leave us a review on Goodreads and wherever you purchased.

Want more Heather and Doug? Have us come talk about love and money with your organization—virtually or IRL. Reach us here.

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

The content shared in The Joint Account does not constitute financial, legal, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their respective professionals for specific advice tailored to their situation. The information contained in this post is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It should not be considered as investment advice or as a recommendation of any particular strategy or investment product. This post is not a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any specific security. Bone Fide Wealth cannot guarantee the accuracy of information from third parties.

[1] BTW, we just went to an all-inclusive resort with the girls, and I was very proud to hear Hazel correct Ruby after she said, “Everything here is free.” Hazel told her, “Everything here is not free. Mom and Dad paid for it before we came.” We love to see it!

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage is Belle Burden’s deeply personal account of the unraveling of her two-decade marriage. Set in the early days of the pandemic, her memoir begins with the jarring revelation that her hedge fund husband is having an affair and leaving her. What follows is a painful autopsy of her family history, her relationship, and her willingness to be subsumed financially and emotionally by someone else.

The book became an instant bestseller, and supposedly, Gwneyth Paltrow will star in and executive produce the film adaptation. But it’s also drawn mixed attention online. The writer circles I float in seem angry that a debut author of incredible privilege gets the chance to have her story told (one writer I follow refers to Burden as part of the “Epstein class”). My lawyer friends are hyper-fixated on the prenuptial agreement that should have never been changed. Others have expressed grievances ranging from anger at her family’s behaviors in the early days of the pandemic, to disdain for how a corporate lawyer could allow this to happen to herself, to disbelief that she was really that blind to her ex-husband’s true colors. I don’t know. I noticed some of these things, too, but they weren’t what I came away with.

What struck me most about Strangers wasn’t the unraveling of a marriage but how so many of the dynamics we wrote about in Money Together could happen to one person. It’s an example of how financial betrayal can happen at every income level, and even someone with the utmost privilege can make costly mistakes that are incredibly painful to recover from.

To accept what I am offering as the evergreen lessons from Burden’s life, you do need to possess a certain kind of empathy. Our book begins with the concept that “your story is your story,” meaning that not a single human on the planet—not even your sibling or your spouse—has lived your life. The way you perceive what has happened to you drives the way you feel and the decisions you make.

You may not like that Burden’s version of pain seems less painful than your version of pain, but we could play that game forever. We interviewed couples with an eight-figure net worth and couples who have needed government assistance, and you’d be shocked by the parallel themes underlying their conflicts over money: identity, legacy, trust, and freedom. But when you—as a reader, friend, or spouse—hold yourself out as the arbiter of who is allowed to feel what, you’re stripping yourself of an opportunity to view life through another lens and gain context for an experience or relationship you may not fully understand.

Subscribe now

To me, Belle’s decisions were clearly influenced by where she came from. The granddaughter of Babe and William Paley, the daughter of Carter Burden, and a descendant of the Vanderbilts, Belle is New York royalty. It’s true. In her early days with James (as she calls him in the book), she pondered the long shadows of these famous names and the type of family structure she wanted to build for herself; but ironically, she built something similar to what she observed. So did James. I’ve been told by family therapists that people either run in the opposite direction from their parents’ dynamics, or they repeat them. Sometimes, they think they’re running, and they end up becoming.

The wealth disparity between Belle and James plays an unspoken role in their relationship. She all but admits that using her trust funds to purchase their communal properties felt like a demonstration of her commitment to their shared future. Perhaps she carried a layer of guilt around how they each respectively came into having what they had. Perhaps he carried a sense of distrust around marrying into generational wealth, and that’s why he insisted they keep their marital earnings separate. In the end, there is a sense that he believed, rather callously, that she’d be just fine no matter what.

The reader doesn’t know what he was thinking, and I’m not sure she knows, either. Discussions around money, privilege, and family wealth are hard to put words to, because in some ways, they are larger than us. They are the whispers of loved ones we can’t speak to anymore. They are voices that tell us what—and who—will be enough.

When it came to work, Belle’s decision to step away from her law career felt eerily relatable to me. As she wove through details of her demanding job, I recalled my own experience as a young woman in private practice, feeling like I’d lost agency over my own life in service of something I never intended my career to become. When the tide pulls you under, you fantasize about getting away however you can, even if it means becoming financially dependent on someone else. Foregoing a paycheck wasn’t an option for me, but I can’t tell you that I didn’t dream of it. It’s quite ironic, considering how hard I fought to keep my career as a young mother. But these competing feelings are tragically normal for women left unsure of whether the unsustainable conditions we face are conditions of our own making—as we are often told—or symptoms of systems meant to push women out of important conversations in every area of their lives.

Stepping away from the workforce for a season of caregiving is nothing to look down on. But ceding control to your high-earning spouse with no visibility into your finances is a risk too many women are willing to take.

“I guess I just trust him,” they would say to me in interviews, as if one person’s trust of another could answer for every what if. Trust is not why women disengage from their finances. They disengage because they are either made to feel like it isn’t their place, or because they are responsible for so much more of the physical, mental, and emotional load of carrying their family that money feels like the only thing they don’t need to do. In Burden’s case, it seemed to be both.

The cadence she fell into is common for any household with enough financial stability. People can fall into a “things are good” trap. They don’t think they need to know the details, because they believe they know enough to know that things are good. We live in a nice home. We go on vacations. Our kids can participate in all the camps and activities they want. My partner and I will keep doing everything the same, and everything will stay the same—or get better.

There’s comfort in that lie.

Share

Burden enjoyed the comfort of operating within the echo chamber of her life as it stood. She cared for their children, their homes, their social plans, and their oversized dog. She didn’t ask questions about the money or how James spent his time, because things were good. In falling into the trap, she stepped back from her most important role of all: being her own person.

When people ask which chapter in Money Together makes me the most emotional, I tell them about the first in our section on power: Our Tiny Rebellions. Coming out of the pandemic, I had realized that my desire to magnify joy in little nothings was to cope with the fact that I was too afraid to ask for what I wanted. I wasn’t appreciating the small things—I had actively made myself small.

Before you try to address the power dynamics in your relationship, ask yourself this: how empowered are you? How much time, attention, and effort have you put into identifying your values and goals as an individual? You cannot just view power as mine or yours. The whole of two empowered partners is greater than what one person could do alone.

Burden deferred to how James liked their homes to look. She adopted his tastes. She got lost in the sauce of her husband and kids. For many women, the easiest thing to do is to live a life in service of everyone but yourself. Sticking your neck out feels like too great a risk. Not when “things are good.” This is how you end up making a sandwich for the man who just asked you for a divorce: because you truly don’t know what else to do.

To me, the most heartbreaking moment in Strangers came with Burden’s use of a word that Douglas and I are so adamantly trying to redefine. She said, “It is what he made clear within weeks of leaving, that he believed my contributions to his career, to our family, over twenty years, amounted to nothing.”

What does it mean to contribute? Our society has viewed this word with too tight a lens, focusing too much on who produces and not enough on how we provide. We contribute in more ways than earning money. We contribute with our care. With our time. With our love. When your partner doesn’t see that, it can feel like the most devastating blow of all.

Following the low of this realization, Burden unwinds her financial affairs from James and begins looking for footing to stand on her own. This honest and vulnerable story was hers, and I think there’s much to gain from reading it. In the end, she starts see what we hope our readers, and all of you, will see. She wrote:

“Slowly, over many months, as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in—joy born of replacing the not knowing with knowing, the nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control. All made easier, of course, by the fact that I had enough to feel secure, to make my children secure. I thought, This is better than everything I lost. This is better than the life I thought I wanted.”

Knowing will always feel better than not knowing. When it’s all said and done, facts are always better than selling ourselves fiction.

Share

I need to know if you’ve read Strangers. What did you think? Let’s chat.

You Up?

You up? Good, because we’ve got a question for you. This new mini-series mixes prompts from Money Together with fresh ones we’ve been thinking about, all designed to spark real, honest money conversations with your partner. Here’s a doozy:

Do you feel free to spend?

Money Together x Wyndham Hotels!

We such a great time hosting a virtual session on Money Together with the incredible team at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts this week. Doug I brought our no-filter conversation about how couples can communicate better, align on values, and build a stronger financial life together. These are the kinds of discussions that galvanize the power of your voice at home and at work. Thank you to everyone at Wyndham for making this happen and showing up in numbers!

If you’re part of an organization looking to bring meaningful financial wellness to your employees, we’d love to chat.

Reach out here

Friendly reminder to our free subscribers: all new posts arrive in your inbox. After 14 days, they will be placed behind a paywall on our site. If you love The Joint Account and want complete access to our archives, a monthly AMA with us, bonus video content, and more, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Money Together is here. If you find value in our newsletter and want to support our work, please order a copy today: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Audible (narrated by Heather!).

Love it already? PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE leave us a review on Goodreads and wherever you purchased.

Want more Heather and Doug? Have us come talk about love and money with your organization—virtually or IRL. Reach us here.

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

The content shared in The Joint Account does not constitute financial, legal, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their respective professionals for specific advice tailored to their situation. The information contained in this post is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It should not be considered as investment advice or as a recommendation of any particular strategy or investment product. This post is not a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any specific security. Bone Fide Wealth cannot guarantee the accuracy of information from third parties.

For as long as I could remember, I watched her navigate a hodgepodge of credentials scattered across her memory, saved in Google Chrome, stored in different password managers, and logged digitally behind fingerprint passkeys. Inevitably, her password chaos became my pas…

Read more

Except when it didn’t.

Like many of you, I’ve been through the ringer at comp time. I’ve been slighte…

Read more

Read more

Ready to talk taxes? Buckle up!

Read more

Read more

We’re writing with an important update to The Joint Account.

Since Fall 2023, we’ve published more than 100 newsletters here. We published while interviewing real-life couples and best-in-class experts; while drafting, editing, and launching Money Together; and while seeing our wealth management firm, Bone Fide Wealth, through massive change t…

Read more

Read more

Today is supposed to be the most romantic day of the year, according to Hallmark and the internet. But when I think about the most romantic gestures that I’ve ever received, they rarely had to do with commercial transactions in the middle of winter. That’s not to say money can’t buy romance. The way we communicate around, plan with, and use our money to care for the people we love can be romantic. It can mean more than you realize.

Subscribe now

A few weeks ago, The New York Times asked readers to share their grand romantic gestures, and one specific thing came to mind right away. It wasn’t the time Doug gathered all my college friends for a surprise birthday dinner, or how he used to send me letters and videos when we lived in different states, or even when he proposed on the steps of Lincoln Center. I loved all those moments.

But a few years into our marriage, Doug offered to do something that completely altered the scope of our commitment to one another (or at least, it felt that way). He signed his name next to mine and assumed equal responsibility for my $200,000 in student loan debt from law school.

The whole story is a long one, and today (a day of love!) is not the day for me to drag you through it. But I did explain some of it in Chapter 9 of our book, “Diablo,” where I wrote about how heavily the debt weighed on my heart:

“My debt wasn’t a villain. It wasn’t some monster like Godzilla that I could plan to attack. My debt was me. It was everything I wasn’t: the jobs I couldn’t get. The approval I desired. The love that felt an arm’s length away.”

I was ashamed of it. Debilitated by it.

The first years of my career were some of the darkest of my life. Doug actually put off proposing because of the state I was in. He told me he wanted me to “rediscover the hope I could become the person I wanted to be,” and even in a fog of shame, I understood what he meant.

In the interests of brevity, I’ll just say that things got better. We got married. We had our first daughter. We both got our heads above water, thanks in large part to the now-shuddered First Republic National Bank, which had started a program to refinance graduate student loan debt for high-potential graduates at certain universities. Doug’s MBA qualified. My J.D. didn’t.

So, he refinanced his loans, but he kept pushing until they considered mine, too. When they agreed, it came with one stipulation: he would have to co-sign.

He didn’t even hesitate. What was mine…was his.

From a financial standpoint, it was an incredible opportunity. My interest rate dropped from above 7 percent to below 3 percent. It was a no brainer on paper, and Doug is such a fixer that I wasn’t surprised he pursued it. But the impact was far greater than either of us realized at the time.

As an only child with inherent trust issues, this financial step tethered us together in a way that may have meant even more than our wedding vows. Doug’s gesture said, I will always be here. Your burdens are my burdens.

Most of all, I believe in you.

For all the conflicts we tend to focus on in the study of relationships and money, we should also recognize that choosing to share financial burdens is an inherent act of trust. It puts you in the trenches together. It can be the thing that says, I see you. I’m not afraid of your mess. I’m building with you, anyway. Without question, it’s not the right move for everyone, but I look back on this as a defining moment in our love story.

So you see, romance isn’t limited to just giving gifts. Sometimes, it’s signing your name on a dotted line, and all that becomes possible after.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Heather <3

Share

Have you or your partner ever made a gesture that felt unexpectedly romantic? Let us know!

Lots of love and money chatter this week!

We are so proud to share our episode of Masters in Business with the great Barry Ritholtz, which came out today. Our thought-provoking convo covered everything from prenups, to marrying into money, to what we’re reading right now.

We also joined our friend Joe Saul-Sehy for a special Valentine’ Day ep of Stacking Benjamins, where we shared some hot takes on financial infidelity.

Keep an eye out for this one to drop today: Doug gave dating advice in CNBC Make It, sharing the questions you can ask someone to find out more about their money mindset! It’s a doozy! He also weighed in about how people are planning to spend less this Valentine’s Day.

For Market Watch, I spoke with our friend Beth Pinsker about showing your partner “where the money is” as the ultimate act of love.

And finally, for Financial Planning magazine, we spoke on one of our favorite topics: bringing both partners to the table. Advisors: don’t miss this one.

How Would You Spend?

For the next issue of The Joint Account (which will be the week of 2/23), tell us:

How would you spend $1,000?

Reach us here.

Money Together is here! Order now in your format of choice.

Love it already? Leave us a review wherever you purchased!

Want more Heather and Doug? Have us come talk love and money for your organization—virtually or IRL. Reach us here.

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

The content shared in The Joint Account does not constitute financial, legal, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their respective professionals for specific advice tailored to their situation. The information contained in this post is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It should not be considered as investment advice or as a recommendation of any particular strategy or investment product. This post is not a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any specific security. Bone Fide Wealth cannot guarantee the accuracy of information from third parties.

I’m very excited to introduce you to another new series from The Joint Account. We’re calling it One Big Thing, and it’s probably the most personal material we’ve ever offered you here. Every quarter, we are going to share with you one meaningful change we’re making t…

Read more

Read more

Read more

It may sound cliché to suggest you “work smarter, not harder,” but not if you’re not doing it. In the past, we’ve been gu…

Read more

After a month off, we are thrilled to be back in your inbox. Welcome to our new subscribers, and thank you to everyone who participated in our reader survey. As a result of your feedback …

Read more

Our partnership has taken on a whole new life.

2025 was not subtle. It was full throttl…

Read more

Anyway, I’ve missed you, and I know how much you enjoy my more technical persona…

Read more

The holidays already feel a bit imposing this year. Maybe it’s my emotional downward slalom from releasing a book, or the fact that Target put out its Christmas décor in October, or that some of my favorite internet spaces have turned into AI slop bowls where everything tastes and reads the same and right now …

Read more