Been married forever? Don’t worry, they’ll be something for you in this series, too. Also, scroll to the bottom for Doug’s latest reply to people asking their money questions to the open internet.

We’ve been married for almost 13 years, but once upon a delayed engagement ring, I thought I’d be planning an ultimatum instead of a wedding.

I was on my worldwide summer tour telling everyone I’d be getting engaged for my birthday. In my defense, it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. We had discussed it during more than a few “it’s time to take the next step” convos. But when early August rolled around and Doug suggested I pick out a new fall jacket—his treat—I knew something was wrong.

Turns out it was nothing salacious. The jeweler needed more time to recut his late grandmother’s diamond, and poor Doug was feeling the heat. When the ring was finally ready, he pretty much told me point blank to lock in my outfit, get a fresh mani, and meet him for a carefully timed walk home from work that put us right on the steps of Lincoln Center for a golden hour proposal. It wasn’t the most surprising proposal of all time, but looking back, it’s a valuable example of managing expectations. Amirite?!

Summer is prime time for weddings and engagements. Over the next few months, we’ll tap into Wedding Season a bit on The Joint Account. Because even when you’ve moved past being on the circuit every weekend, there’s so much to unpack around family dynamics, expectations between friends, social etiquette, and of course, money, when you’re celebrating a major life milestone for you or someone you care about.

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For many couples, buying an engagement ring is the first major financial decision tied to their relationship. It’s a purchase that sets the tone. Whether you and your fiancé-to-be have explicitly discussed a ring budget or not, questions surrounding this grand gesture can easily become a metaphor for everything that follows through the wedding and beyond:

How much do we spend?

Where should the money come from?

Whose expectations are we trying to meet?

So, here’s how to land on a number that makes sense. And if you’re already married, stick with me, because much of our thinking applies to celebrating anniversaries and other life events you may want to spend money on.

First, forget the old rule of thumb on setting a budget. You’ve probably heard some version of “two or three months’ salary,” and we’d encourage you to let that go. It’s not good financial advice. I’m pretty sure some Big Diamond marketing mastermind came up with it.

Today, there are beautiful options at every price point, including lab-grown stones that didn’t exist as a mainstream choice a generation ago. An engagement ring shouldn’t compromise your long-term financial stability or goals, which are much more nuanced than the legacy plug-and-play formula.

To determine how much to spend on a ring, take a look at three things: your cash reserve, your existing debt, and your overall cash flow.

On cash, Doug likes to see individuals and couples work toward having at least six months of their living expenses on hand. A one-time purchase like a ring is exactly the kind of thing you might reasonably dip into your cash reserve for, but you want to be honest about how deep that dip goes, and how long it’ll take for you to replenish your reserve.

On debt, there’s a meaningful difference between carrying student loan debt and high-interest credit card debt. Managing a monthly student loan payment is one thing but carrying a credit card balance that compounds dramatically against you is another, and if that’s your situation, you’ll want to be far more conservative. You would be much better served working to pay down consumer debt before you get married than digging a deeper hole with a larger ring purchase.

Back to the “two-to-three months’ salary” nonsense, income alone doesn’t tell you much about your life without additional context. The real question is how much of your income you’re spending each month and what’s left after that. These are the basics of your cash flow. So, if you’re running a surplus, a portion of that can reasonably go toward a ring budget. If you’re breaking even or dipping into savings every month just to live, you need to ask where your money is going, and whether you need to pare back your spending somewhere to save up a little longer.

People also tend to forget to budget for insurance and upkeep. Expect to pay roughly 1–2 percent of the ring’s value annually in insurance premiums, plus occasional maintenance. Protecting the asset is part of owning it responsibly, and to be honest, if that small added cost is what tips the whole thing over the edge, that’s a pretty clear sign the ring itself is out of your range.

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I completely understand how people get in too deep with this purchase. There can be pressure from every angle: your partner, family, friends, the internet. But draining your savings or going into credit card debt to meet someone else’s expectations is a precarious way to begin your financial life with someone else. I get it—trust me, I do—but that doesn’t make it worth it.

If you’re trying to keep the proposal a surprise and can’t exactly sit down to budget this out together, then back into your answer through the conversations you can have about buying a home, paying down existing debt, planning your wedding, and saving for the future. Where a ring ranks among those priorities tells you a lot about the right number. Then, you can ask yourself:

Remember that a ring is just one symbol of your commitment. What actually sets you up for a strong financial life together is communication, transparency, and alignment, the very things this purchase gives you a chance to practice. So do what makes sense for you right now, and don’t let anyone pressure you into a decision that jeopardizes your healthy start.

There will be plenty more to spend on. I promise.

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Wedding season is officially underway. What money questions are coming up for you right now? Let us know!

Just married? Your taxes changed more than your last name.

Brought to you by Gelt.

Combining two incomes can quietly push couples into a higher bracket and a bigger bill, especially for business owners and high earners. Gelt pairs you with a dedicated tax advisor and smart technology that plans year-round, so you and your partner stop overpaying and keep more of what you built together. See what proactive tax strategy looks like at joingelt.com. #sponsored

The breakup doesn’t change the math, but it does remove the deadline.

I think the worst move this guy can make right now is forcing a decision while he’s still dealing with moving out. And the real problem isn’t whether to buy…it’s the $220k sitting in cash earning 1% while inflation eats him alive.

The good news is that it’s a fixable mistake regardless of what he does about a house. He needs to park it somewhere boring and liquid like a high-yield savings account or in short-term Treasuries (earning 3 to 4 percent as of today) and give himself permission to do nothing for six months. He should also stop tying a house to a relationship that doesn’t exist yet, because you buy a home when you want a home and can afford one, not because a future partner might show up someday to help fill it. -Douglas

Want to go deeper? Money Together is everything we’ve learned about love and money, told through real stories with lessons for couples who want to build a financial life together without losing themselves in the process. Order your copy on: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Audible (narrated by Heather!).

Love it already? A review on Goodreads and wherever you purchased helps other couples find us and means more than you know.

Bring us to your organization! We speak on money, relationships, and what it really takes to build a financial partnership that lasts. Available for corporate events, conferences, and private engagements — virtually and 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.

Speaking of renovations, we’re going to be soft launching some design changes in the newsletter. See anything new? Keep your eyes peeled!

Heather and I have decided to take the first steps in a major home renovation. We don’t have any permits yet, but we’ve hired an architect, aligned our visions, and made enough big decisions that I think it’s worth sharing more with you today.

First, I want to tell you how we got here.

Heather, Baby Hazel, and I left New York City for the suburbs in 2016. She writes about this in Money Together, and she does it more honestly than I ever could, but the TL;DR version is that we stretched ourselves financially and took on more risk than we were comfortable with to get into our current house. We were never going to get everything we wanted, but after countless weekends in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a newborn, dragging ourselves through open houses until we were ready to give up, we found a pretty decent home in a town we loved. We were honest with each other about going to the edge of our budget, and we agreed it was worth it. We also agreed that if we kept investing in our careers, and in each other, we’d be able to upgrade someday. We hoped.

Let me be clear: we don’t need a bigger house. We just wanted one. We set a joint goal, and we’ve been working towards it for ten years.

In a sense, we’re just a couple finding new ways to reach our goal when the landscape around us has changed. This is different than solving a problem when your back’s up against a wall, and it’s an important distinction in our thought process.

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As our careers grew, so did our savings and our shot at the next house. But then, the pandemic hit. Rates went to zero (we refinanced under 3%, thank you very much), and home prices skyrocketed. Demand surged, supply collapsed, and people were buying houses all-cash, sight unseen, waiving inspection, and engaging in bidding wars that made little financial sense for us.

What surprised me is how little of that has unwound in the years since. In fact, we sat down with a realtor in March, and he told us that historically, for that time of year, there should be around 130 homes on the market in our town. That day, however, there were a whopping total of nine. On top of that, he had five families sitting in luxury rentals waiting to pounce on the next listing, mostly with cash.

Yeah, no thanks.

This situation isn’t special to us. All around the country, the U.S. housing supply gap widened to an estimated 4.03 million homes in 2025, according to Realtor.com’s 2026 Housing Supply Gap Report, and housing supply growth has slowed significantly in low-density areas, particularly where home prices are higher. Even with mortgage rates well off their lows, demand has stuck around.

Translation: popular towns where families want to live have the least amount of inventory.

The lock-in effect is very real. A survey from This Old House found that 91% of homeowners said they didn’t plan to sell in 2025, with many citing rising home prices and mortgage rates as their top reasons for staying put. So, people with 3% mortgages aren’t going anywhere, which keeps supply tight, which keeps prices high, and fewer buyers can afford to play the game. Even the ones who can are realizing it looks a whole less attractive.

Speaking with our realtor and mortgage lender, the math did not math. We would be those sellers giving up a sub-3% mortgage to take on a new one two-to-three times the size and rate, while also competing against buyers doing desperate things like waiving their rights to an inspection.

Assuming we could afford the move, would we even get what we wanted? The larger homes with good bones in our neighborhood need a mortgage’s amount of work, and they still cost the amount that a new build did six years ago. And the ship has all but sailed on new builds unless we wanted to move neighborhoods or to the town next door, which we no longer want to do.

We’re not alone in our thinking, because if you drive around town, you’ll see dumpsters in driveways and construction fences on just about every street. Two of our friends are in the middle of whole-home renovations right now. All this is not anecdotal. About 48% of homeowners planned to make renovations in 2025, with a meaningful chunk doing it specifically because they don’t want to sell into this market.

The lock-in effect isn’t just freezing inventory; it’s clearly redirecting capital from “dream house” budgets into “current house” budgets.

In anticipation of moving someday, we’d long sworn off doing any substantial work on our home. We’ve done smaller stuff over the years like painting, adding a dining bench in our kitchen, refinishing the fireplace, and moving some trees around out back, but never anything close to a real renovation. We haven’t even touched our beat-up floors, because we figured the kids would just destroy them. Spoiler alert: they did.

All this prompted Heather and I to make a list of what our current home would need to give us to satisfy what we’d been looking for in a new home. In case you’re curious: we love to cook and wish we had a better space to entertain, so a new kitchen is top of the list. We also need a mudroom, because everyone enters through the back, which spills directly into the kitchen. We want to squeeze a couple more feet into our living room, if possible, and bring the laundry from the basement to the main floor. Then, there’s the attic, which has always been a candidate for a finished office.

By the end of our brainstorm, we realized we might be able to get most of the house we’d been chasing without leaving the house we’re in. We’d keep our mortgage, our schools, our neighbors, and our sanity. We realized, this is worth a hard look, even knowing that a project this size is realistically a two-year affair.

Renovating will let us keep our sub-3% mortgage in place, which is the single biggest financial reason we’re considering it. We can fund the project with a lot of flexibility using a combination of a HELOC and the cash we’ve saved. This would allow us to move at our own pace rather than the market’s. We don’t need to feel the way we felt when we bought this house in 2016, betting on ourselves and praying the math eventually would work out.

This is a great example of what flexibility looks like in real life. It’s not about making the obvious move but about embracing options to make a better one when the planned move stops making sense.

I want to be mindful about how this comes off, because I don’t want you reading it as Heather and I giving up on a goal. We’re not. A renovation doesn’t take that goal off the table; it just changes when and how we might get there. We’re still investing in ourselves, still growing the business, still pushing toward the kind of life that gives us choices later down the road. If anything, putting money into this house builds some equity we can deploy later, but it also gives us a place we love living in while we keep building.

In our book, Heather writes that there are a million ways home.

None of us really know what will happen next in our lives. We try to convince ourselves that we do, but we just don’t. When you embrace that fact, you can be easier on each other when the plan changes.

And this is exactly what’s happening to us now. The version of this home goal we’d been carrying for a decade was one thing, and the version we’re starting to explore now is another. Both can get us where we want to be.

However, I have to give Heather a ton of credit. This goal mattered to both of us, but it mattered more to her. I’m both a simple creature and a creature of habit—the kids are happy, and I like my neighbors. We each took a step off our pedestals of comfort to come up with a new solution, and that, right there, is our hard work paying off.

So, this is our One Big Thing for this quarter. Interestingly enough, between drafting this newsletter and publishing it, our architect gave us a first look at what he’s coming up with. We’re excited, and who knows, maybe we’ll enter our HGTV era soon…

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Are you in the middle of a reno, or have you lived to tell the tale? Share with us your words of wisdom! I’m sure this will all become an ongoing discussion here.

Just married? Your taxes changed more than your last name.

Brought to you by Gelt.

Combining two incomes can quietly push couples into a higher bracket and a bigger bill, especially for business owners and high earners. Gelt pairs you with a dedicated tax advisor and smart technology that plans year-round, so you and your partner stop overpaying and keep more of what you built together. See what proactive tax strategy looks like at joingelt.com. #sponsored

Want to go deeper? Money Together is everything we’ve learned about love and money, told through real stories with lessons for couples who want to build a financial life together without losing themselves in the process. Order your copy on: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Audible (narrated by Heather!).

Love it already? A review on Goodreads and wherever you purchased helps other couples find us and means more than you know.

Bring us to your organization! We speak on money, relationships, and what it really takes to build a financial partnership that lasts. Available for corporate events, conferences, and private engagements — virtually and 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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Except when it didn’t.

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

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Ready to talk taxes? Buckle up!

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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…

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If you ask me, we’re long past the time to wag our fingers at anyone and cite personal responsibility for a system that leaves so much room to destroy lives. People end up exposed in any number of scenarios. Imagine you receive a diagnosis while you’re between jobs and can’t afford the full cost of premiums under COBRA to keep your decent insurance coverage. Or your partner’s been hospitalized, and even though you’ve got an out-of-pocket maximum, you don’t have $9,000 in cash to spare.

In this season of The Pitt, a father suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis revealed he was insulin rationing, because he couldn’t afford his prescribed dose. Instead of accepting help from a GoFundMe campaign that his daughter started to support his hospital stay, he was ready to walk out and risk his life, in a classic illustration of how money is more than money. Even just the emotional impact of accepting help can bear down on you long after your medical needs are met.

I could outline a hundred more examples, and I’m sure you could offer them, too. This is more than an isolated problem—it’s a moral failure that highlights a gaping hole in our societal infrastructure. What a beautiful thing to financially have your neighbor’s back. But what a disgrace that we need to.

On The Joint Account, I’ve covered many angles of healthcare and insurance, but what I’m sharing here today is for everyone.

Before you turn to crowdfunding for your medical expenses, you deserve to understand—and exhaust—the resources designed to carry this burden in the first place. Hospitals, insurers, government agencies, and even targeted non-profit organizations have the scale and capital to absorb the appropriate costs of your care. You need to know how to make them. These are the steps to take first.

Let your community carry you through meals, childcare, love, and support. Not the full costs of bills dropped on your shoulders.

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Ask questions before testing or treatment

Under the No Surprises Act, if you don’t have (or don’t plan to use) health insurance to pay for your care, you have the right to request a good faith estimate for medical services. You just need to make the request at least 3 days in advance. You may be able to contest your bill if the difference is greater than $400.

Even if you do plan on submitting a claim to your health insurance, asking for more information helps you identify where the sticking points might be. I’ve previously shared the recurring issues I’ve had with billing for breast cancer surveillance. By raising past coding issues and discussing the potential for uncovered services beforehand, you might be able to lock in a price for services that’s lower than whatever the bill looks like after it’s been passed through several departments of a major medical conglomerate.

You may not be able to get every answer you’re looking for, and remember that estimates (as with any service) have a right to change. But asking for them is very important. It holds people to a standard deviation. It creates a record. It’s the beginning of a story you might need to tell later.

Request itemized bills

Have you ever logged into a patient portal and seen the words “YOU OWE” with almost no explanation offered? That’s unacceptable. Don’t settle for whatever appears on a portal dashboard or the cover page of an invoice. Request an itemized bill, because you never know what you’ll find.

Some things to look for include:

• Duplicate charges

• Incorrect services that weren’t even rendered

• Inapplicable fees

• Incorrect billing codes

• Out-of-network charges at in-network facilities

Note that some of what you’ll find on an itemized bill may not be right or wrong. As was the case with my annual mammogram, some services can be billed under multiple codes with different outcomes. And some out-of-network services exist at in-network facilities, but the patient should be asked to consent to those services beforehand or not be charged the uncovered balance for them.

At this stage, your goal is to learn as much as you can about the story of the costs you’re being asked to pay. You can even compare your costs to industry standards using resources like FAIR Health Consumer. You’ll need these details to appeal and negotiate.

Appeal, appeal, appeal

If you’re unhappy with your health insurer’s handling of your claim, appeal. Appeal like you’ve got nothing to lose, because you don’t.

Begin with an internal appeal through your health insurer. And lean on your doctor for support: request they submit your claim under a different code or prepare a letter of medical necessity. Be courteous but specific and direct in what you’re asking for.

I wouldn’t give up after one shot—try twice.

If your insurer upholds its denial, you have the right to file an external appeal. This would place your claim before an independent panel of medical professionals, and their decision would be binding on your insurer. The procedures vary by state, so be mindful of deadlines.

Negotiate the remaining amount

Here’s a lesson much bigger than bills: ask for the things you want. In a study from the USC Schaeffer Center, 76 percent of respondents who reached out regarding an unaffordable medical bill were offered some form of financial relief. Out of those who negotiated, 62 percent said their price was lowered.

When you do reach out to the billing department, find out your options. Ask what happens if you paid the bill in full today. Many providers are willing to negotiate a significant prompt-pay discount. If that’s not an option for you, ask about a no-interest payment plan. Yes, you read that right: zero percent, which means you can spread the payment out over months and ease your burden without owing more. Also, discuss whether you qualify for financial assistance and charity programs that might be available.

I know it’s scary to have a big outstanding bill, but please don’t charge it to a credit card because you’re afraid. As of 2023, the three major consumer credit reporting agencies stopped including medical collection accounts under $500 on credit reports. In 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was set to enact a rule removing all medical debt from credit reports, but you can bet who put that rule on ice. Some states still offer protection, but what’s important for everyone to know is that medical debt likely won’t appear on your credit report until 365 days after your payment is delinquent.

In other words, you have time: time to regroup, time to negotiate, time to set a budget, and time for a plan. But you won’t have that leniency if you put it all on a high-interest credit card. Then, it’ll just be another bill.

Ask a professional for help

You don’t have to sort this out on your own. Many states offer consumer assistance programs. Here’s a map to look for yours.

A nonprofit called Dollar For helps individuals apply for medical debt relief from hospitals. You can find out if you qualify for their assistance.

And if you’re just too overwhelmed by medical jargon, a complex bill, or the continuing stress of an ongoing illness, consider hiring a medical billing advocate. Just be sure to do your own research to find the right person and understand how this person gets paid. Some have hourly rates and others operate on contingency; meaning, they take a percentage of the money they are saving you.

Exhaust all prescription discount options

If you’re being prescribed a medication that isn’t covered by insurance or comes at too high a cost, you’ve got options here, too. Start with your medical provider and your pharmacist, because they’re probably the most familiar with the avenues you can take for the drug prescribed.

You want to ask about:

• Discount cards and coupons

• Manufacturer assistance programs

• Generic alternatives

• Price breaks on 90-day refills versus 30-day

• Using a mail-order pharmacy

When I was pregnant with our second daughter, our health insurer tried to tell me that my weekly progesterone shots to prevent pre-term labor were only available in their preferred manufacturer’s new auto-injector, which even with insurance, would still cost more than $4,000 per month. (My mom took progesterone shots in 1985, so it wasn’t the meds—it was the injector.) Though it took a few wrong turns, a scathing email, and one emotional plea to the manufacturer assistance program’s patient advocate, they ended up asking how much I could afford to pay. I said almost nothing, and that’s what they basically charged me. Don’t give up.

Search for grants and foundations

In the same sense that smaller scholarship programs can end up underutilized, consider that there may be a whole host of organizations with resources to help people in your position. They can offer financial assistance, travel grants, lodging support, and even childcare support.

Look to state and local programs, disease-specific foundations, religious-based grants and assistance programs, veteran’s programs, employee hardship funds, and even programs run by industry associations you belong to. There could be more help available than you realize.

If you’re going through something that makes this far too relevant, I’m sorry.

But before you click “start fundraiser” in a panic, take a breath and work this list. Screenshot it, share it with your partner or support network, divide and conquer. If you know someone who needs help, forward this to them. We can carry each other in many ways, but we don’t need to stand on the front lines.

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Have you managed an unexpected medical bill? Let us know.

HWYS $1,000?

Welcome back to our mini-series, How Would You Spend? This time, we’ve upped the ante to $1,000, an amount that proved meaningful to many but still left the door open for impulse spending. Notice the “weather-related skew” - maybe we shouldn’t have asked during a massive blizzard! Anyway, here’s how you’d spend it:

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 at 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.

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.

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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

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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 to our financial lives, and why we’re making it.

If you’re wondering why every quarter, that’s how often we hold our scheduled money meetings. Heather and I try our best to practice what we preach. We want to show you where we’re getting it right, where we’re getting it wrong, and where we’re not quite sure so we’re testing the waters with something new. In our book, we share whole lot about our lives, because it’s meaningful to see someone else go first. Consider this an extension of that, and hopefully, the start of some incredibly meaningful conversations.

So, here’s our first One Big Thing.

For the past several years, we’ve been contributing $450 per month to each of our daughters’ 529 plans. The number wasn’t random. It was the number that felt doable and responsible at the time for us to meaningfully save toward their college educations. But during our year-end money meeting, Heather and I admitted to each other that even for a financial goal with so many unknowns, their college savings felt a little lighter than we’d like. So, we made a simple change by increasing contributions to $650 per month, per kid.

Importantly, we can afford to increase without derailing our other financial goals. Though we can’t predict the schools, costs, or paths our daughters will take, we just want to know that they will have options to work with. Heather and I are aligned on the fact that we don’t feel compelled to hand our kids over a blank check for college, but beyond that, there’s a lot of blanks we can’t fill in.

Flexibility is the key.

You know that I’m a financial planner. I like building models, mapping out scenarios, working the numbers, and finding answers. And yet, when it comes to college planning, it’s still one of the hardest financial goals to solve for. When people ask me, “How much should I save for our kids’ college education?” what I honestly hear is, “How do I make a plan for something I can’t see clearly yet?”

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To pressure-test the decision, I ran projections on the cost of a four-year degree based on blended averages across public and private, and in-state and out-of-state tuitions. I landed around $35,000-to-$38,000 per year as a planning range. When solving for what we would need to save each month to make this goal a reality, I used a 4% inflation rate, and a 6% rate of return (for those of you interested in my math). Is this what our kids will pay? No clue. That’s the point. It’s not a forecast—it’s a reference range, and a way for us to check whether we’re building options or if we’re living in denial.

Math is easy. A moving set of assumptions is hard.

Right now, Hazel and Ruby are 10 and almost 7. If they take the traditional four-year college route, they will graduate 12 and 15 years from now. The only thing we know about what will happen 12-to-15 years from now, is that we don’t know. The costs of higher education, the economy, the labor environment, our own financial situation, and our evolving beliefs about the role parents have in jumpstarting their children’s adult lives…these are all living, breathing concepts. We can hypothesize (and I will for a moment now), but we just don’t know.

Heather and I have been questioning the ROI on higher education for years. In our first book, The Millennial Money Fix, we explained how the trillion-dollar student loan debt bubble built a perfect storm through the college marketing machine duping families into believing everyone deserves to be at their universities of choice, studying down their niche rabbit holes of choice, by offering them unfettered access to student loans (many of them private at high interest rates) to enable them to do it.

That was in 2017. We thought, it can’t possibly stay like this, and it’s true that we’re seeing marginal change. According to the latest findings from the Education Data Initiative, tuition inflation slowed in the 2020s, but still, the overall tuition costs have increased 36.8% since 2010. In terms of enrollment—and we find this very interesting—you’ve got community college to thank for growth in the sector. The National Student Clearinghouse reports that last fall, a 1.2% growth in undergraduate student enrollment was largely driven by a 3.0% increase in community college enrollment, along with a 1.4% uptick at 4-year public institutions. Enrollment decreased at private institutions.

I’m painting with broad strokes here, but maybe the “value grift” is starting to show its true colors, and we’ll see a meaningful shift in public sentiment by the time our daughters have their own decisions to make.

In terms of the labor environment, who knows. Somewhere, there is an AI chatbot training to take our daughters’ entry-level jobs. Heather thinks we’re over-relying on AI to replace human capital in certain sectors and functions; but clearly, we’re just beginning to understand what an employment landscape that fully incorporates AI will look like, and how people will actually earn money once it does. Maybe this will push more young people back into vocational and trade work. But my point is, again, we are too far out from that moment in our lives to waste much time guessing about it.

Then, of course, we have to consider how we’ll feel as parents. In Money Together, we write about parenthood as only knowing what you know. I think it’s hysterical when people without kids pass judgment on how parents treat bedtime, screen time, or public etiquette, when they’ve never experienced it themselves. Heather and I have thought we’d handle things a certain way only to learn when the moment arrives that we were totally clueless about the reality of the situation.

Right now, we both agree that we want our girls to have financial “skin in the game” for college. We met at a public university, where we had some of the best times of our lives. We want our kids to create those moments, too, but we also both worked our asses off in and out of the classroom. We both earned money throughout school. We don’t think we’d be doing the girls any favors by perpetuating a message that four years of studying, say, The Classics on our dime would set them up for a lifetime of prosperity just because they were interested in it. Or that being a mediocre student without much drive warrants us paying for an exorbitant private education at a low-tier university just so they can “go somewhere” and “experience something.” Our values tell us otherwise.

But we’d be lying to ourselves to think this all can’t change. For example, would we really have our children take on student loan debt if: (a) one of our daughters is a literal genius who wants to become a mechanical engineer at an Ivy league school; (b) we are in a financial position to pay for it; and (c) what about the other child? Can you really give to one and not the other? On the other hand, an Ivy-league-caliber student could ostensibly get a full-ride to our public alma mater, and we could all ride off into the swampy sunset.

My point is…we only know what we know. We are not so arrogant to believe we know much more than that.

With a goal as uncertain as college, we’re not trying to chase certainty. We’re trying to buy flexibility.

We want as many levers as possible for when the future arrives. While we know we want to cover a meaningful portion of the cost, we still want to leave ourselves enough room to make smart choices in real time. From choices about the school itself and how much we’re willing to stretch ourselves financially, to what’s reasonable to expect our kids to contribute and what we’re not willing to compromise in our own financial lives.

And if you’re thinking of increasing your own 529 plan contributions, start smaller than you think you’re comfortable with. Consistency beats intensity. If don’t think you can sustain $200, increase by $50. Automate it, so it doesn’t compete with other decisions.

Then revisit when your life changes: getting promoted or finding a new job. No longer needing paid childcare. Paying off your own student loan debt. These are the moments when you might reevaluate whether you should do more.

In the end, college isn’t the ultimate goal we’re saving for. We just want to give our children the best shot to thrive as adults in an ever-changing world.

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Parents with younger kids: what your plan? How are you thinking about college savings for your kids? Let’s talk about it.

We Reddit online

Okay. I believe most bonuses should be allocated toward your joint financial goals, but you can’t ignore what they actually represent. As I wrote last month, bonuses aren’t just numbers. They’re a recognition of your efforts. A tangible “you did it.” So, if one partner’s first instinct is to toss both bonuses straight into the shared pot without acknowledging what they mean? Yeah. That’s not fair. It sounds like they’ve built a solid system for monthly expenses (for now), but bonuses really do live in the gray.

Here’s what I’d try. First, celebrate the win. Before splitting anything, acknowledge the bonus for what it is. Go to dinner. Take a weekend. Buy something you’ve had your eye on. Doesn’t need to be wild. It just needs to say, “This mattered.” Then, talk about your shared goals. What do you want to build together? Bigger emergency fund? First home? Career cushion? Once you’ve aligned on that, you can allocate what’s left with intention. -Douglas

Out and about!

Already, it’s been a busy month. We celebrated the relaunch of The Purse (congrats, !) - and if you’re not subscribed yet, it’s only getting better, so don’t wait. Catching up with friends in financial media was just what we needed to push through another arctic blast: , , , , and more we can’t tag :) Good times. Thanks again to The Purse for giving us good reason to gather.

We also hosted a lil shop and sip at Theory in the city. Thank you to the friends, colleagues, and clients who braved the giant snirt (snow+dirt) mountains to spend time with us after work.

We also joined Kanika Chadda-Gupta on her podcast, That’s Total Mom Sense, for an enlightening conversation on money, parenting, responsibility, and values. We’d REALLY like to talk more in the parenting space, so if you have any ideas or colleagues to connect us with…let us know!

Volatility’s the theme this week, as Douglas spoke with CNBC about tech, AI, and Bitcoin’s fall.

HWYS?

Your response to our first one was awesome, so let’s up the ante.

For our next How Would You Spend, the amount is: $1,000. HWYS $1,000?

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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.

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