214. “I’m 45 but my parents still control my money”

Money For Couples

Ramit Sethi

Relationships, Society & Culture, Investing, Business

4.6 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kate and Keith have spent years afraid to spend—until now. In Part 2 of this conversation, Ramit investigates the $5 million missing from Kate’s trust fund and uncovers decades of poor returns, excessive fees, and emotional avoidance. As the truth comes out, Ramit challenges them to rewrite the money scripts that have shaped their lives: Kate’s shame around wealth, Keith’s fear of being seen as dependent, and the confusing messages they’ve inherited about what money should mean. They imagine a future with travel, community, and purpose, if they can confront this question: What’s the point of having money if you never use it? This episode is brought to you by: Facet | Facet is waiving their $250 enrollment fee for new annual members, and for my audience, Facet is offering $300 into your brokerage account if you invest and maintain $5,000 within your first 90 days. Head to https://facet.com/ramit to learn more about which membership option is best for you. Ramit Sethi is not a member of Facet, and has an incentive to endorse Facet as he has an ongoing fee based contract for cash compensation based on this endorsement. All opinions are his own and not a guarantee of a similar outcome. OpenPhone | Get 20% off your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/ramit. Shopify | Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ramit. LMNT | Right now, LMNT is offering 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. Get yours at https://drinklmnt.com/RAMIT. Superhuman | Get a free month of lightning fast email at https://superhuman.com/ramit. Links mentioned in this episode • Get detailed breakdowns of my readers' spending every Saturday in my newsletter at iwt.com/podcastnewsletter • Order my new book: Money for Couples Connect with Ramit • Get Money Coaching with Ramit • Download the Conscious Spending Plan • Listen to my book—now on Audible • Get my New York Times best-selling book • Get my no-numbers journal • Other episodes • Instagram • Twitter • YouTube If you and your partner have a money issue and you want my help, I occasionally select a couple to work with, free of charge. Apply for my help here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you want to see examples of more people's real spending?
0:04.3	I do detailed breakdowns of anonymous readers spending every Saturday in my newsletter,
0:10.8	not just for couples, but for single people too.
0:13.7	I've recently answered questions like, can we remodel our house and retire early?
0:19.5	I've cut everything.
0:20.6	What else can I do? Or should we save for
0:23.3	private school or pay off credit card debt? If you want to get the next one, make sure you're
0:28.4	signed up for free at IWT.com slash podcast newsletter. My parents have always taught me that money
0:35.7	is evil. So there's a lot of shame and a lot of
0:38.2	emotion wrapped up in my parents and their expectations. I started just doing math. I couldn't
0:43.8	understand why we weren't looking at $5 million. Overall, looking at this trust, I am absolutely
0:49.6	flabbergasted at the returns over the last 30 years. It's cost you millions. I still don't feel like
0:55.8	I have control over it. This power dynamic has her acting as if she's a 12-year-old girl.
1:01.8	Kate, do you know why? You don't have millions and millions of dollars more? I don't know.
1:05.5	You know, you're an adult, fully-fledged adult. You run a business, but the minute it comes to this,
1:09.6	you revert back into
1:10.9	childhood. I discovered something shocking last week when we met Kate and Keith. They earned $30,000
1:17.5	a year, and Kate recently got access to a trust fund that was set up by her parents. It's worth
1:23.4	roughly a million bucks. That trust fund was set up when she was a teenager. And if that
1:29.9	money was invested in simple index funds, it would be worth around $6 million. But today, more than
1:38.1	30 years later, it's only worth $1 million. What happened to the five million?
1:45.2	In order to help this investigation,
	...

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