It Was Never About the Money

In this deeply honest episode of Still Choosing Us, we open up about one of the biggest sources of tension in marriage: money. But what we’ve learned after years of ups and downs is this—most fights about money aren’t really about money at all.

Yami shares her story of growing up with financial stability, structure, and control—and how those beliefs shaped her expectations in marriage. When life shifted into uncertainty, debt, and survival mode, fear took over, creating pressure, resentment, and emotional conflict between us.

This episode unpacks the hidden fears behind financial stress—fear of instability, fear of carrying the weight alone—and how those fears silently shape the way we communicate, react, and show up for each other. We talk about real moments from our marriage, the tension between saver vs. spender, planner vs. avoider, and how misunderstanding each other’s perspective nearly broke us.

But this isn’t about perfect solutions. It’s about awareness.

We share simple but powerful questions that helped us start real conversations, rebuild trust, and shift from control to connection.

Because the goal isn’t to agree about money…
 It’s to feel safe talking about it. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we start, if your marriage feels hard right now, you're not failing.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

And if you were, I don't know if I can keep doing this, you're not weak.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You're certainly not alone.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

This pocket is not about perfect marriage. We don't have one.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

We've been married 18 years. There's a 13-year age gap between us. We blended a family young and we raised kids while still growing up ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

We walked through poverty, trauma, and fight we didn't know how to fix. There were times we were not sure we could make it.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

But we kept choosing again.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Again after disappointment, again after hard seasons.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

This podcast is for couples in the middle, where marriage is messy and real.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

We are not here to give you a perfect answer.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

We're just still here and we're glad you're right.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

And this is Yami. And we're excited that you guys are here with another episode of Steer Choosing Us. So we are excited about this one because actually this is gonna be a two-part episode, and this is gonna be about money and finances.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

And so the first part of this one, the this episode, is gonna be Yami explaining how she grew up with money and her view about money and how that affected our relationship. And the second part is gonna be me explaining how I grew up with money and how it affected our relationship and our view about money and how we're able to overcome that milestone in our life. So we are really excited about this, and we believe this is something that I believe every couple goes through.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

And his sense of the subject, if you don't know how to handle it right, we definitely learn the hard way on that one.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah. So I mean, we are really excited about this, and I'm gonna let Yami take over.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So it's interesting because most couples think that they fight about money because of numbers, but the reality is that most couples fight about money because of fear.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So I'm gonna share a little bit about my background and where I was at when me and Omar met. I grew up in a home where my father was able to live the life that he wanted, the splendid life. And he never went small on what we did. Now, in no way we were rich, but we were very well off in the aspect of upper middle class. And so he has always been the type of person that we shopped from the best stores, and I don't think my dad's ever bought anything out of Walmart, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

I gonna see my father-in-law though in that.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

No, so this is my background. At the age of 21, I had a child and I was a single mom. And I went off and lived on my own since the age of 24. But I went to live on my own with the thought that money was no, there was no object. There was no nothing to hold me back. I just knew how to budget myself. So my so one of the things that was always ingrained in us was you needed to have a savings, you needed to know how to manage your money, you needed to make sure that you made money in life, and your credit score had to be good.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Which all those things are a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yes. So you can have credit cards as long as your credit store, credit score stayed well, and you weren't too much in debt. So having those thoughts, going into my 20s, being a single mom, having my own place, I was great at budgeting. Money and finances has always come easy to me. Yeah, he's across from me smiling right now. And so I've always been that I've always had that strength that I knew how to work with money, whether I had a lot or a little, but I never lived a life like if I didn't have. So fast forward, here I am, 34, two kids, my own house, me and Mike's husband, we had our own business. I also worked for my father. We made good money, and we lived that life. We traveled every year, we went on multiple vacations each year, and I managed the finances. But I am a micromanager when it comes to finances. I have a spreadsheet that I keep track of every day. I know what bills need to be paid. I know I know what's in our bank every single day. I it's a form of control for me. So when I met Omar, Omar was only 21, still living at home, working part-time in a Target, and he grew up very different from me. And I'll let him share his story in our next episode. And so in the very beginning, having those very different backgrounds, have being in very different places in our lives, it caused a lot of friction in our marriage. And we we were up and down. We had moments that we were okay. Then we had that 2008, 2009 crash. He lost his job. We had to move to a smaller apartment. Then I lost my job, and I was pregnant. When now we were with three kids, and we we had struggles.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, we live, we live paycheck by paycheck.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, and sometimes even less than that, because it was times even the paycheck didn't stretch enough to the next week when we received a new one. And that for me was a shocker because I had never really experienced that. Now, I'm not saying that in my 20s I didn't live paycheck to paycheck, but it was very different. I didn't have to worry about anyone else. It was just me managing on my own. And then with my ex-husband, again, we never struggled. So I didn't know what that paycheck to paycheck was, and I didn't know about that experience of looking in your bank and only having $3, and you get paid on Friday, and it's only Wednesday, and you have three kids to feed. And I had expectations of what my lifestyle should look like. I knew what my home should look like, and I love to decorate, I love to keep everything nice. And so when I find myself in this situation, even though I knew, oh, we can handle this, or even though we we were making it, I still had to struggle with that sense of control. I needed the control. So I became God, if I was a micromanager, I think this was like 10 times worse. And I made sure that we had every penny accounted for. And then on top of that, we had a budget, we got ourselves into debt because on top of that, I still wanted to live a certain lifestyle. So having credit cards fulfilled those lifestyles. So now we had the stress of debt, we had a newborn, and it was when the economy was really bad. And that affected me so emotionally. And I had to realize that it really wasn't a money situation because even though we were tight, even though we had our struggles, nothing ever went missing in our home. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I mean, our take our kids hear our stories now, and they're kind of taken back because they had no clue. Because we were so good at really managing what we were doing and managing the day-to-day life. But psychologically, that affected me. And most of the conflicts have to do with a sense of safety, a sense of control, a sense of respect, a sense of trust, even a fear of instability. And I think that for me was a big one, that fear of instability, because I need stability. That that is a driver for me. And you can see that in different aspects of my life. So now when we are in this day-to-day trying to figure it out, really struggling, having the three kids, wanting the life I had as in my past, and on top of that, figuring it out on a new marriage. It really caused a lot of conflict between us. And so there was, as I was doing some research for this, there was a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology that they found that financial disagreements are one of the top predictors of divorce, especially when unresolved patterns repeat. And of course, when you're brought up in a certain pattern, it's very easy to be in the comfort and to keep the pattern going. And so for me, it was that pattern of I need security. So I when we started really attacking the situation in our lives, really changing where we were, we moved to Texas for a better life. But because emotionally and psychology psychologically and habit forming, things didn't change. Even making double what we made in Florida, we were still having the same struggles. And we almost lost our home. And so again, here we were in the cycle of instability. And we really had to sit down and start talking about this and getting a grip of it. And what I realized is that money represents something psychologically in you. You have behaviors, but there are hidden meanings behind those behaviors. One of my big ones was saving money. Saving money meant I need security. Avoiding, well, I didn't avoid budgets. I did budgets, and I still do, guys. It hasn't changed. It's it's it just keeps me sane to know that we have a budget. I know what's coming in and out, and I reconcile our bank account every single day. And that for me is a control. I needed the hidden meaning is I need to feel controlled. I feel I need to feel that my life is stable. And so it just we had to really sit and think about what money represented in our lives, what emotions we tied to money, and how can we change this? We started changing our language, we started becoming more aware of what we were feeling, and we started really digging in to this whole science behind money and what it causes in a marriage. And I remember that because I had to have control, and because I do the the finances and you know, and I pay the bills and all that, I know when I can go and spend money. And I have no problem going and buying myself a pair of shoes or buying something for the kids or even shopping for Omar. But where I struggled was when Omar needed something, at least he said he did, and I felt he didn't, then I questioned. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_02 13:46

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

And so in that questioning, he'll share his side next time how he would feel. But for me, it was like, well, you you're not supporting me. I'm doing this alone. I'm doing the finances on my own. I'm the one that knows what's in the account, I know what we need to pay. I know how to play with the money. I know that if this week we can't, next week we can. And because I I had so much control of everything, then I put a pressure on him because I felt that he wasn't supporting me. And that was a big one for us. And it wasn't that we were arguing about money, we were arguing about what money meant to us at that time. And there are four hidden money fears that couples carry. I'm going to be, I'm gonna be speaking on two of them because those relate to me, and then Omar next week will speak on the other two because they relate to his story and his side of this story. So one of them was we won't be okay. And it says that it's often rooted in childhood's instability, which I didn't really have, but I think it had to do with me being a single mom at 21, trying to figure out life. And I went from a lot of stability to instability, figuring it out, getting back into a stability, and then now I'm in instability again. And so for me, it was that back and forth that really caused me to think, oh my God, we may not be okay. And the truth of the matter is we were always okay. But that just caused me to be tight in the budgeting. I would get sometimes anxiety about spending. And it's crazy because I would get anxiety about spending, but then there were moments that it's like I needed to just lose myself and we would go shopping and spend a crap load of money. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah, those are fun times.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yeah, because those were his moments, right? Those were moments that he enjoyed, and I was very future focused. Well, if we don't do this now, then in the future, will we be okay? Because that was my fear. We won't be okay. So I was always thinking about the future. I and I still do sometimes. I still, I, you know, yesterday we had a conversation, we were talking, and I came to realize that I am very much a forward thinker. And so I need to know that in my forward thinking, we will be okay. The second fear is I carry the responsibility alone. And this came to me for many different reasons. One, I was doing everything on my own. I was. I was running the finances, I knew when the bills were paid, I knew every aspect of every paycheck that came in and every penny that went out. And it was hard because there was a resentment from me towards him. But then we also had at that time we were in church, and there was a lot of pressure for the men to be the ones to run the household that way. And so I felt that whole responsibility, and I kept looking to him saying, Well, why don't you do it? Why are you not doing this? And the truth is, guys, it was it is not his strength. It has never been his strength. And I and for me, it's easy. It's what I like to do. I love to look at numbers, I love to look at our finances, I love to see, you know, if we're gonna save, if we're gonna invest, if we're going to go on a vacation, how you know, is the money there? Like I love doing all that, but because that that thought was ingrained in me, now I was putting that pressure on him. So there was this silent stress and this resentment towards him. And that caused for us to have the this tension between us when it came to finances, this frustration. And then, as you guys have heard him in the past saying that for him, he always felt he had to take care of me. So the moment I made him feel that, hey, well, you're not doing this, you're not taking care of this, you don't have it, it made him withdraw because now he felt like he wasn't doing enough for me. And do you want to share anything? Is there anything you want to add to what I've said? You're right on. So this these conflicts cause patterns in our lives. And there's different patterns that couples experience. And I'm gonna talk about a few of them, and then again, next week Omar will bring out the other one. So you have the saver versus the spender. I was a saver, I was the one that needed to make sure that we, you know, were always saving and always on budget, and Omar was a spender. And when you're experiencing that, there's different things that you hear. See, a saver hears, you don't care about our future. When he just wants to spend, I'm thinking, well, you don't care about our future. You don't care about the fact that I just budgeted this week. You don't care about the fact that we have these bills, and that's what I was hearing. As a spender, he was hearing, you don't trust me. She's on my case because she doesn't trust me. And the truth is, guys, neither the true of the two are true. It is just because we tie these emotions to money. Money is just paper. Money is something that comes and goes. Money is something you can make and you can give away. But the emotions that you have tied to that, that that how can I say it? I'm trying to find the right words. Those emotions, those thoughts, the the stuff that's ingrained in you when it comes to money, right? If you grow up in a home where you're always hearing like, oh, we're so broke, we're so broke, we're so broke, you tend to feel and live like you're always broke, whether you are or not. And so when you have that, and just like we shared our picnic story last time, it wasn't even about the picnic. It's what he heard versus what I heard. It's the same thing with money. So if I'm the saver, I'm hearing you don't care about a future. If you're the spender and you're hearing they don't care, like they don't trust me. Then you have the avoider versus a planner. And again, I'm the planner, as you guys hear. I have a spreadsheet, I check it out, I have tabs, I mark what we've, you know, what has been cleared. I when I know we have a vacation coming up, I've already already set in my mind how we were gonna spend it, where the money was coming from, what we were doing, you know, if we're gonna invest, I've already said, you know, how much we're gonna invest. Like I plan for the future. The avoider come is completely different. They just want those types of conversations, it's overwhelming. Because they don't want to plan. They just want to live life. Do you want to add anything to that?

SPEAKER_01 22:11

No, you're it is true. All those things actually it's pretty much one describe you, one describe me. Yeah, I mean I those conversations when you're trying to avoid those type of conversations that become overwhelming, you don't want to listen to it. It's all the things that you can worry about besides that. And it just creates tension in there. I think even though now what helps us is I see your point of view and you see my point of view. So that helps a lot now in in this time that we are right now. We think we understand each other better. And that is a relief in our marriage right now.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah, we really had to sit down and I had to tell him how I felt and explain to him if you go, because guys, Omar is a shoe buyer, he loves shoes, and he's always talking about shoes. And so I tell him, I say, the problem is I don't care that you buy shoes. We have the money for it. The problem is, again, because you don't know, and I've already planned, then when you want shoes, it throws me off because the control is lost. And I really had to sit down and realize that that was a thing for me. Because unfortunately, I drove him to the point that every time he wants to buy something, or every time he needs something, it he starts to tell me. And I want him to experience the freedom of just doing it. And now, guys, look, don't take me wrong. It's not that he's terrified of me and it's not that he doesn't shop. We shop all the time. We we love to go shopping and we love to do all that. But because in the beginning of our marriage, it was so hard and so tight, and I was in so much fear of losing that control and so much fear of us not being okay, that I ingrained this in him. And so now we've had to work through it, and I think there's still moments that you feel that way.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

A little bit.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Not like you used to, but I think there is those moments, especially with the shoes. He'll start with, like, oh yeah, look at these shoes, they're not good. They're they're like breaking. I need new shoes for work. And I always laugh because it's like, oh gosh, there's still those moments. So even though we're more aware, and we've oh my god, we've had great conversations when it comes to money, finances, how we feel. I mean, so many things have changed in our lives. But there's still those little moments that it appears and it pops up. And so the conversation has to be constant. The conversation has to be all the time understanding the awareness, knowing that, hey, we still have this situation. Hey, there's still a fear. Like I said, yesterday we went on a walk and we actually had a conversation because there was something about money that I was fearing. And I needed to get that off my chest and let him know. And so there's I always laugh because I feel like we know we're gonna talk about a subject, and then something happens in our lives that we have to prepare for the episode and for the for the subject we're speaking on. And so there's there's practical exercises that you can do. We have a series of questions that you can go through. I'm gonna go through two of the questions and then next week he'll introduce the other two. But this is something that you can do together with your partner. And it it's it's these questions to just really start becoming aware. So, question one is what did money feel like growing up? And like I said, for us, it was spend, it was live the good life, have the best furniture, have the best cars, have the best clothes. That's what money looked like for me. I may not always see things that way, and I don't actually live that way all the time, but that is how it was always in our lives. And I remember never thinking any different about that until I as I got older, and some of it was like, well, okay, this is really necessary. But that is how I was brought up. And so the feeling for me was it made you safe, it made you, you know, things were predictable, it gave you the life you wanted to enjoy, it can be fine. So that was the emotions that I felt. So, question one again is what did money feel like growing up? Question two is what scares you most financially right now? And this is a conversation that we actually had walking yesterday. I had to share how I have moments that I'm like, oh my gosh, are we saving enough? Are we investing enough? Are we thinking of our future? What are we doing? And I realized that some of the decisions I make has been because a fear creeps in every once in a while into our lives. And so that affects my decisions with what I do or how I do it. And the biggest thing that's happened to me is when I start feeling that way, that's when I make the big choices, or I plan a big vacation, or we one of the examples was we were in this fear, we were trying to change the way things were at home and the way we saw money, the way we thought about money, and we were renovating our house, and we had spent some money renovating, but we needed new furniture. Do you remember that? I do remember that, and we had our furniture in the garage, and we wanted new furniture because the house was practically new, remodeled. And what did I tell you to do? We get rid of everything, we got rid of it all. Like we had fresh, we were eating. Remember sitting on top of the kitchen counters? That was funny because we didn't even have a table. We had the kids, we had the two girls, we had our two girls, and we would sit on top of the kitchen counters and eat.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

And we just eat because waiting for the furniture to get here.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

I had to push myself. Now, guys, this is not for everybody. I'm not saying that this is your solution, but because of the awareness in my life and the constant reminder that we are okay. Sometimes I do drastic things just to remind myself that it's okay, we will be okay. This awareness, understanding my emotions tied to money, understanding how I was raised, understanding where the fears came in. And there's so many different examples. We're just talking about like things that happened in our marriage in the beginning, but unfortunately, even in our church, I learned certain things that I had to feel bad about money and I had to change that. Like there's, you know, culture teaches you a way about money, society tells you a certain thing about money. Faith. Your faith tells you something about money. And so we're constantly bombarded with all these ideas of money. And then, of course, that just seeps into your fear.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

I mean, money's everywhere. Everywhere. It's something that you need every day. You cannot go out, and I don't think it's one day that you just go out and be like and go back home and be like, hmm, did I spend no money at all?

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

So he's just constantly moving. It's just it's it's a moving thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah. So understanding each other, like Omar, that he's a spender, I had to understand why that was important to him.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Well, my background, when I next week, when I go in detail of why, it's you guys understand why I see money way different than her.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Yeah. Yeah. And so once we got a grip of what we were feeling, why we had fear, and really stepped into those conversations, and a lot of it was those two questions. What did money feel like growing up? And that was a big one for us, and very different for both of us. And what scares you most financially right now? And even that fear was very different for both of us. And that awareness just opened up the conversations for us to start talking. And so, like I said, now when we start seeing these fears seep in, we can actually sit down and say, uh-oh, something's going on. There's a situation that we got to get a grip on because we're feeling fear. And rather than us start arguing or start resenting each other, or start feeling a certain way because of money, thinking that it's because of money, it really is the emotions and the fears that we have tied to money.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

So, do you want to add anything?

SPEAKER_01 32:06

No, I mean pretty much you explain everything. I mean, you just it because in the beginning of our relationship, it was just two people with two different backgrounds coming together and trying to make this marriage work and successful the way it is right now. So I think that's one of the topics that I think most couples argue with. It's one of the most arguments that we have in the beginning of a relationship. And I think, and one of the things I'll I'm gonna explain in the next episode more about the choose situation and why I got the way I got with it. It's not that I was asking for permission, but it's because we brought it was because so much disagreement was happening in that time of our life, you're trying to navigate certain things. Yeah. Even the way that you see money or finance or spending money, you had to learn how to navigate those things because it's either you push your marriage to be better or you just let it go.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Yeah, and something I've noticed that just it just hit me. It's when the fear starts seeping in about money, you start realizing what the your partner is doing. So when I started stepping into fear about money again, and this was probably re pretty recent, then I started going, oh, now he's spending money on lunch every day. I can just cook for him and he can just take food. And I mean, something as simple as that, I had to step back and go, wait a second, what am I afraid of? I think we've even talked about being on the highways and paying tolls. Yeah. I mean, it can those fears can seep into every thought you have what car we use, because he has a big truck and the gas is not economical. I have a hybrid and mine is.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Oh, the gas is hurting everybody.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

And so even with that, sometimes we're like, oh well, I, you know, I start going, well, we can use my car, we're gonna use a gas guzzler, you know. And I had to realize seriously, when we put gas, it doesn't even affect us, whether it's the truck, whether it's my car. But there was a fear that was affecting me. And guys, I'm just being really real right now. These are my thoughts with poor Omar. I even argue with him about what car we use because really is I'm just thinking about like, oh my gosh, $80 to fill up his tank versus $30 to fill up mine.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Well, for the sake of the argument, you have to look at it this way, right? Even though I understand where you come from, and I'm still learning on the spreadsheet thing, and I have it in my in my phone, and I look at it and everything once in a blue moon. Well, you have to see the point of view of the other person, right? The one that is doing the budget all the time, the one that is just paying the bills. That's not my strength. I am not responsible whatsoever when it comes to that. I'm not gonna make it like I'm the greatest man in the whole world. I'm not, I'm still learning, and I still need to understand where you come from. But I do believe when you see it every day, and it's something that it you have to deal with it. Your point of view is way different than mine.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

To me, because I don't look at it every day, it made no sense if I grab my my keys for my truck or just grab the car, the keys. It doesn't matter, it's just a car. We're just gonna drive it. Anyway, it had to be drive. We need to drive a car. Yeah, but when you look at it from that perspective, the use planning, you know, you do the spreadship, you do the planning and all that kind of stuff. It's important to you because you view things especially when you see into the future, right? When you start seeing where the future what the future is gonna bring, how we're gonna do this, and if it's a vacation, like we have a big vacation coming, and you know, I'm just like, okay, let's go on vacation. And you are like, okay, but we need to put all of this in place.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Yeah, well, what are we gonna say at?

SPEAKER_01 36:24

And when it comes to investing, I mean, I'm like, okay, how much are we gonna invest? Let's put the money in the investment. You're like, okay, but we have to think about, you know, where is the time and all, and to me, it's just like okay, we're gonna invest, let's invest now, let's do it right here, right now. So I think with this is you have to understand each other, right? Because this is a partnership. Yeah, this is not, you know, in in marriage, one person has one strength, the other one has another strength. I wish that I have grew up with the strength that you have that you can just understand and express shape, and you and I would love to see that in front of the computer and figure out the numbers. I'm not good with math.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

That's but I'm an accountant, so it comes very easy to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Now, when you look at it from another perspective, like when she wanted to remodel the house, we got quote to remodel the house, and I'm like, okay, I can. I was, you know, that's I grew up pretty much in construction with my dad and all that, and I learned all those things, codes in the house and all that. So you cannot do that. You know, that's not your strength. Remodeling the house, remodeling the bathroom, seeing the final picture of it, seeing the side the final product, that's not your strength either. So it's different views and different perspectives and how you see things. But like I said, you know, it's this is a partnership. So you have to understand each other, you have to have a middle ground, you have to have communication is key when it comes to those things. Because, like I said, you spend money, it's not a house in this world that I think that they're gonna spend money every day.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

There's this quote from a guy named Ronald Blue that says, Money is a magnifier, it reveals what is already in the heart, and that is so true. Again, we always blame the money, but money is paper.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

It's a tool that you use.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

What money does is psychologically, it pulls all emotions, all fears, everything that you feel, it pulls it out.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Yeah, it's funny because you they can be really good until you get a notification in your phone that you have a charge that you don't even know what is coming from, and you can feel like somebody took something. And it's just not because even you can be okay and you can be, oh, it's not a big deal. It's a certain amount of money, but that just it's magnified something in you.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

And I think it's crazy when you hear that money has caused divorce, but because really it's your emotions. You can be divorced, right? You and me can get divorced right now about money, but you're still gonna have your situations with money, and I'm still gonna have my fears about money. Yeah, and they're gonna continue.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

I'm gonna go out my way, and I'm just gonna have to learn how to do budget and buy a whole bunch of shoes. I'm gonna buy all the shoes from the world.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

And so we, you know, we just really wanted to touch the subject, and this is why we're doing a two-part because this is a big subject in many couples, many marriages. We can talk about this multiple times. And we may in the future come back and talk about how we broke some of those fears that we had in our lives and how money just started manifesting for us. And so we we just really, this subject is dear to our hearts because of all the struggles we've had and where we are today. And really, I just want to take this time to say thank you to all of you that are listening, to all of you that continue to support us. We really hope that these moments, this truthfulness, sometimes it's not easy to be this open about your situations or the truth of you or having to put it all out there. But it's important to us to know that we can help somebody and that we can just make you guys aware.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

So next week, it's my turn. Yes. To explain all my messiness.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

Yes. So just remember the goal isn't to agree about money. Me and Omar are always gonna agree. The goal is to feel safe talking about money.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

And we thank you guys.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Into the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Still choosing us. Before we end, take a breath.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

You don't have to fix anything tonight.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

If something in this episode stirred emotions, that doesn't mean something is wrong with you or your marriage.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

It means something matters.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

You're allowed to take what helped and leave the rest.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

You are allowed to go slow.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

If staying feels heavy right now, you're not alone in that.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

And if listening brought a little bit of clarity or relief, we are honored to see here with you.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Thank you for trusting us with your story, even the parts you didn't say out loud.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

We are still here.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

And we're glad you are too.