We’ll be on hiatus for a few weeks until our kids are back in school and we are back from some work travel. In the meantime, keep up with us on Instagram and X. See you soon!

I shared a story at the beginning of Money Together that lived rent-free in my brain for years. On our honeymoon, another newlywed couple sat next to us at a bistro on the Amalfi Coast. Far from the soundtrack we expected to hear in this romantic scene, they started to argue. They were fighting about money, and no amount of Aperol or seafood fra diavlo could soften the tension. The longer we listened—unwillingly, I swear—the more obvious it became that it was the first time they were learning some very important things about each other.

Subscribe now

We were young and naïve and had our own growing up to do, too. But we did know that getting married doesn’t just magically make your lives compatible. In fact, it raises the stakes.

Marriage brings together two pasts, two sets of values, two families, and two visions for what the future looks like.

Surprises around these topics usually aren’t good. Even if you don’t agree about everything that comes up, being transparent gives you the chance to solve problems together or seek outside help before issues become sources of resentment down the line.

So to close out The Joint Account’s summer wedding series, we want to offer something practical for any couples who are engaged or in a serious relationship that might be headed toward marriage. Here are six conversations you need to have before saying “I do.”

1. Your complete financial picture

Before you get married, you should both understand the full scope of each other’s financial lives. This means your income, savings, investments, student loans, credit card debt, real estate, trusts you are (or will be) benefitting from, and any other meaningful assets or liabilities.

We aren’t suggesting you need to hand over ownership or access to everything. You don’t have to combine every account or hand over your passwords. This is strictly for visibility. The person you’re marrying deserves an honest understanding of the financial landscape they’re stepping into.

2. Your outside financial support

Not everyone lives off income alone.

If one partner receives regular financial help from their parents, that’s an important point to disclose. Having a family safety net quite often changes someone’s comfort around spending, saving, and risk. It’s not a problem to have this kind of relationship with your parents—I mean, I think a lot of people would love any kind of support they could get—but it can come with its own set of tradeoffs and unspoken rules. Are you intending to share their support with your spouse in some way? Are there any expectations around their help?

This is one of many reasons to consider a prenuptial agreement, btw. Not just to protect assets in the event of a divorce but to outline expectations up front so they don’t need to be whispering in the background of your relationship.

3. Your values

What matters most to each of you in life?

What do you want your money to do?

This is where the numbers become personal. Understanding each other’s values will help you make important decisions in the future, particularly when there aren’t necessarily right or wrong choices. Your values become your north star.

Now, I know there’s a lot of people—especially young people—who aren’t even sure what their values are. No one expects you to figure it out over one ruminating walk. Seek guidance if you need it from your family, your faith leaders, even a therapist. Self-work is such an integral part of couples’ work, because this is where we ensure your voice continues to be heard in all important decisions you’ll make throughout your lives together.

4. Your personal responsibilities

Are you an only child who plans to help out your aging parents one day? Do you have a sibling or family member who may eventually depend on you? Are there cultural expectations around your financial or emotional support?

Of course, you don’t need a detailed care plan before you get married. Your partner just deserves to understand these anticipated responsibilities so that you can limit surprises down the line. There will be enough things you can’t control about this one.

5. Your first financial decisions together

Map out how you want to begin your financial lives together.

Decide on your first strategy for pooling resources. Will you open a joint account and divert your full paychecks there? Will you maintain your separate accounts and schedule auto-transfers to that joint account for shared expenses? You can slice it any number of ways that make you both feel comfortable, but just know, this goes beyond the bank accounts.

How will you approach each of your pre-existing debts (student loan and consumer)? Will one of you join the other’s health insurance plan? Do you need to update your named beneficiaries?

Again, there isn’t one right answer to these questions. What’s important is that you’ve taken the time to come up with an initial game plan so that you don’t become overwhelmed in those first few months after the wedding, or just avoid making changes at all that could really benefit you.

6. Your long-term vision

Finally, you’ve got to zoom out.

Talk about what kind of life you are trying to build together. How big of a family do you hope to have? Do either of you dream about starting a business? Would you ever move to another city? Is one of you working toward an early retirement while the other can’t imagine leaving a career they love?

Again, you definitely don’t need a 20-year blueprint. We’d be the first to tell you that the plot of the story can change, and so can you. But starting to work toward your initial shared vision will give context to the everyday decisions you’ll make with your money. These are the early building blocks of your teamwork together.

None of these conversations are one-and-done. They should be the first of many that will happen as often as your lives will change.

But what shouldn’t change is your commitment to telling each other the truth.

If you discover areas where you need to compromise, surprise! That’s marriage for you! But when one person hides the ball, you end up building on assumptions. You end up facing the wrong kind of surprises. And we certainly wouldn’t want any of you ruining a fine meal on the Amalfi Coast.

Share

Did you talk about all of this with your partner before getting married? Don’t be shy!

You up? Good, because we’ve got a question for you. This mini-series mixes conversation prompts from Money Together with fresh ones we’ve been thinking about, all designed to spark real, honest money talks with your partner. Apropos of this week’s newsletter, ask your partner:

Want to go deeper? Money Together is everything we’ve learned about love and money, told through real stories with lessons for people 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 + Douglas A. Boneparth

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.

Here’s the trap: you hire a “mow and blow” service for a set monthly cost and assume your yard is pretty much taken care of. But then, you quickly learn that affordable monthly cost buys you fresh-cut grass and cleared clippings and almost nothing else. All the other stuff that keeps your yard from getting side-eyed by your retired neighbor shows up unexpectedly; and boy, does it pile up.

When we first moved to New Jersey, we had one young kid, and I had all the time in the world to tend to my little patch of earth. I liked it, and to be honest, I still do. But Kid Number Two was the beginning of the end of our free time. The hours I used to pour into the yard now get poured into playing catch, riding bikes, drop-offs, pickups, you get the idea.

Subscribe now

So, I outsource most of the work to keep our yard in shape. Plenty of people still do it all themselves, and honestly, good for them. I wish I could, but my time just isn’t there right now, and I still want the place to look good. That trade—my time for someone else’s—is where most of these hidden costs sneak in.

For this edition of The Invisible Costs, let me walk you through everything the mow-and-blow guy skips on his way out to the next house.

Seeding. Grass isn’t permanent. You’re basically renting it. Between aeration, dethatching, and overseeding to fix the thin, patchy, and bare spots, you’re looking at anywhere from $300 to $1,350 to reseed an entire lawn, per HomeGuide. And this is not a one-and-done thing. Cool-season lawns like ours want it in the fall and sometimes again in spring. And of course, there’s always one patch in the shade that never takes no matter what you throw at it.

Fertilizing. A green lawn is an ongoing chemistry experiment. Most lawns need three-to-four feedings a season, and a professional fertilization and weed-control program runs $400 to $800 a year. Anyone who read last month’s oil edition of The Invisible Cost series will enjoy knowing that fertilizer leans on fossil fuels (esp natural gas), so the same energy costs I just complained about are affecting your grass, too.

Weeding. Most mow-and-blow service contracts are for grass only, so weed control in your beds and borders is either a paid add-on or entirely your problem. A broadleaf weed treatment runs $50 to $125 a pop, and even then, weeds are relentless. They always find their way back, which means you’re either paying for that treatment again or spending your one free weekend day on your knees in the mulch, pulling them out by hand. Fun!

Leaf cleanup. For those of us who have a fall season, this one that sneaks up every single year, right on schedule. When the whole canopy comes down, you’re beyond a quick pass with a blower. You’re paying for multiple visits, because leaves don’t have the courtesy to fall all at once, plus it needs to be hauled away. A single fall cleanup averages around $525 and can run up to $850 depending on the size of the property, per Angi. And it commonly costs two-to-three times your normal mowing price when the leaves really pile up! “Mo’ trees. Mo’ problems.” It’s a lyric. Look it up.

Watering. This one hides inside a different bill altogether: your water bill. If you’ve got an in-ground sprinkler system, congrats. I am jealous. But that convenience isn’t cheap. Installation runs roughly $2,500 to $4,800 for a typical yard. If you’re not in a warm weather environment, you’re also paying $50 to $150 every fall for a blow-out and again every spring for startup (so the lines don’t freeze and crack over winter). Add that all up and a $4,000 system really costs $6,000 to $10,000 over its first decade. No system? Then it’s you, a hose, and a sprinkler you drag around like it’s 1994. Note: I bought an OtO sprinkler system to make our non-sprinkler system life easier. Check it out.

Mulching. Here’s one that crushes me. Mulch. It disappears! Who knew? So, you end up buying it again every spring. At $50 to $150 a cubic yard delivered and installed, per HomeGuide, and a typical property needing several yards, this “finishing touch” is a recurring line item forever. Longtime readers know I’ve called mulch the most expensive confetti you’ll ever buy, and I still stand by that claim. Oh, apparently brown mulch is cheaper than black mulch. You might want to keep that in mind.

Moving or removing plants and trees. Now the big one, because trees don’t live forever and dead ones aren’t free to deal with. Tree removal averages around $750 to $900 and climbs past $2,000 for anything super big or hard to reach. But here’s my favorite invisible cost of all: plants you choose on purpose that create expenses you never see coming. We once put in some lovely pollinating bushes and moved some fruit-bearing trees, feeling very good about ourselves for supporting the local ecosystem. The local ecosystem showed its gratitude by sending a parade of birds to feast, and those birds, in turn, redecorated our outdoor table with a level of enthusiasm I wouldn’t describe over a meal. Nature’s beautiful like that!

As with every edition of The Invisible Costs, the yard is just an example. The real lesson is that the cost of a thing is almost never the number you’re quoted. It’s the trail of smaller expenses that follow it home and arrive one season at a time.

Where has your yard drained your wallet?

Got an idea for the next edition of The Invisible Costs? Let us know.

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.

These core family memories don’t come cheap. According to NerdWallet’s 2026 Summer Travel Report, 45% of Americans expect to spend an average of $3,940 to take a trip that requires a flight and/or paid lodging this summer. But before you spiral down an “everyone’s in Spain but me” rabbit hole, let me share some cold hard financial truth that might make you feel better—or not, depending on whether this is you.

Out of the 2025 travelers who put their travel expenses on a credit card, only 26% paid off their balance on the first statement. Six months after summer, when this year’s travel report was published, more than one-third of vacation credit card users had still not paid their balance off. What this means is that many families are holding onto the financial consequences of their decisions long after their tans fade away, allowing high-interest debt to bleed into this year’s vacation planning. You may feel like scratching the vacation itch is worth it, but the perpetual cycle of “book now, worry about it later” is the type of hamster wheel behavior you can’t pause with an OOO message. The stress and insecurity move in like a rain cloud over your all-inclusive resort—if not this time, then next time. If not for you, then your partner.

Subscribe now

Doug and I get asked all the time how couples can get better at managing money together. Not just the theoretical stuff I love to wax poetic about, but what you can do this very month to become a stronger financial team, especially when one of you would rather do literally anything else than talk about money.

Don’t start with something you dread.

Start with something you both want.

Like a vacation!

When you have a shared goal that you’re excited about, you naturally begin practicing the behaviors that make every other financial goal possible. You communicate. Prioritize. Make tradeoffs. Save consistently. Adjust when life gets in the way. The muscles you’ll use to plan a vacation are the same you’ll use to buy a house, pay for college, or invest for retirement. The vacation is just a practice run with a very tangible, near-term reward.

The key, of course, is making sure the vacation fits in your financial life instead of derailing it. We want it to feel like proof that the two of you can work toward something together and enjoy it without sacrificing your stability and sanity in the process.

If you’ve been thinking about planning a vacation, run through this exercise at your next money date. And if you’ve never had a money date, well…maybe planning for something positive, like this, is the place to start.

1. What is our goal for this vacation?

Before you dive into any research or logistics, sit down together and talk about what you’re trying to get out of this trip. It’s kind of like a vacation thesis.

Does your family need rest, or are you looking for your next adventure? Are you hoping to spend time with the grandparents or reconnect as a couple just the two of you? Is this a milestone celebration or just some respite from cold weather?

Choosing your destination comes second to making sure you’re on the same page about the purpose of traveling, because once you are, you will back into more mindful decisions that align with that purpose. It’s also a great time to understand how everyone’s feeling at home and level-set your lifestyle expectations.

For example, we take the girls to South Florida during winter break every year to see Doug’s family. Over this peak week, hotels and flights are astronomical, and the weather is a crapshoot, but our purpose is really to drive around and see loved ones and friends. So, we don’t book an expensive beach resort, because we probably won’t get to use it. We stay in a corporate hotel in the middle of the action that’s convenient to the places we need to go. It just makes more sense.

A more expensive vacation isn’t automatically a better vacation if you’re paying for things you won’t use.

2. How much will it cost?

Okay, now it’s time to DYOR (that is, do your own research). You want to make a reasonable effort to understand the full cost of your desired vacation.

This warrants more than a quick scan of your airline app. If you’ve got flexibility, check multiple arrival and departure dates. If you’ve got optionality on hotel or room type or even the destination itself, understand the price differentials. The goal of this isn’t to race to the bottom for the cheapest trip possible but just to understand how much you’d be paying for what you’d be receiving.

Don’t stop with travel and accommodations. Think broadly about other costs and less visible expenses that will arise, depending on where you’re headed. Will you need to dine out for every meal, or are you looking for accommodations with a kitchen? Will you be walking, renting a car, ride sharing, or never leaving the resort? How about activities—are they included, or do they deserve a separate line item? Will you be shopping? I mean…shopping shopping?

For a host of reasons, you may wish to purchase travel insurance, and that comes at a cost, too.

If putting this much effort into researching a vacation is overwhelming, you’ve got options. Cruises, all-inclusive resorts, and pre-fab vacation tours will be more straightforward from a cost perspective, so at least you know what you’re biting off. You can also review your existing membership programs for travel packages (i.e., American Express, Costco, AAA). Lastly, you can consider using a travel agent who probably has insight on these cost-to-value decisions and might even have access to exclusive rates and deals.

Again, the point isn’t to value-maxx yourselves into the cheapest option but to understand how much the trip you want to take will actually cost.

3. When do we want to go?

Timing is everything, and when you travel is as much a financial decision as where you travel.

If you are beholden to the school calendar or a particular work schedule, there might be less you can do to avoid peak travel windows, which means higher costs overall. This is why timing matters not just in the context of how expensive flights and how busy the airports will be, but how long you have to financially prepare for the trip.

Let’s say you’re planning for spring break next year, so you’ve got about seven months. Assuming you’re within the realm of reason around what kind of trip you can afford (more on that next), you’ve got runway to implement any changes you’d need to make to have the funds available when you need them. In other words, putting the vacation on the calendar creates a time horizon for your financial goal. Then, you can begin to figure out what you’ll need to do get there.

4. How will we pay for it?

This is where the teamwork really happens.

Start by asking whether this vacation already has a place in your financial life:

• Do we have cash set aside specifically for travel?

• If not, would using some of our available cash reserve leave us comfortably prepared for emergencies? (Remember, we aspire for you to hold at least six months of living expenses in cash!)

• Where does this vacation fit alongside our other financial goals?

These aren’t questions with one right answer. We’re not here to tell you that you should never reduce your 529-plan contributions for a year so your family can take its first meaningful vacation together. That’s a values decision everyone needs to make for themselves, which is why talking about it from an educated standpoint, with the numbers right in front of you, is so critically important. As a couple, you want to make conscious decisions together. One of you can’t just trip and land on a lounge chair with a $7,000 price tag.

When you don’t have enough cash available for the vacation you’re looking to take, turn to your budget.

If you’re consistently running a surplus every month, awesome. How much of that do you want to direct towards this goal? If you’re just breaking even on your living expenses or running a deficit, that’s a different conversation. You can’t build a vacation fund with money that doesn’t exist.

This is when you discuss what’s within your control. Are there areas of spending you can temporarily cut back on? Is there a way for you to earn additional income specifically for this purpose? Maybe you just need a longer runway and should aim for 2028. Whatever you choose to do, make the plan together so that you can always remember you’re working toward something you both agreed on and want to happen.

In terms of mechanics, we don’t believe you necessarily need a separate high-yield savings account to earmark your vacation funds, but if it creates more visibility and helps you stay motivated, go for it. This might even be a really good idea if one of you has historically been disengaged from money conversations in your relationship. Consider it a baby step toward more meaningful work in other areas of your financial life.

Planning a vacation might be discretionary but it isn’t trivial. You’re learning how to work toward a shared goal. This is a chance to practice handling money together by: identifying what you want; estimating the true cost; agreeing on a timeline; and making intentional tradeoffs about where your money should go.

Next time, the goal might be bigger, and the stakes might be higher. Hopefully, you’ll rely on these same practices no matter the destination, because the teamwork comes home with you every time.

Share

How do you save for your next big vacation? Share your best tips with us!

This was a big one for me. For the past seven years, I had been paying between $1,600-$2,400 annually to see a concierge primary doctor with MDVIP in our town. Though we neither had a strong nor trusting connection, the convenience of having a doctor return my calls, run bloodwork, and fit me in for same-day visits was very important to me, as someone with a history of chronic and sometimes scary autoimmune issues.

But over time, his annual membership costs rose, as did our health insurance premiums when I left Corporate America and joined Bone Fide Wealth. I began to feel like my chapter of extreme health anxiety was coming to an end, and I am in a much better place to navigate traditional healthcare systems with confidence. I also want to build a team of healthcare professionals that can help me navigate midlife as a woman. So, I’m taking my chances with a new female primary doctor who is in-network. Physicals are free. Sick visit co-pays are $20. Her office staff seems lovely and responsive, and that’s half the battle. We’ll see how it goes, but I am feeling very confident for now. -Heather

Want to go deeper? Money Together is everything we’ve learned about love and money, told through real stories with lessons for people 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 +

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.

Read more

Read more

Read more

Right away, I could tell this had nothing to do with etiquette. It was about what happens when someone you love starts to change.

Share

I spoke with Rachel Goldman, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of When Life Happens, about what’s really going on here. She told me that “relationships exist within a system, so when one person changes, the dynamic often changes, too.”

Now, your gut reaction might be the same as mine. I thought, even in the case of close friends, someone else’s body and lifestyle choices are not really our business, so beyond an acute bill-splitting issue, there’s nothing more for us to say or feel. And yet, we all know that’s not really the end of the story. We whisper. We vent to the wrong people. Frankly, we project. Even when someone’s evolution is objectively good for them, you still might not know how to feel. This is the side of human behavior that’s not only difficult to talk about but makes relationships hard to sustain.

Don’t worry about over-moralizing. Just consider it all data.

“You can feel happy for someone AND simultaneously feel sad, left behind, uncertain, or even jealous,” Dr. Rachel said.

To some extent, we are all creatures of comparison. We cannot help but view the decisions and happenings of our loved ones as a mirror back onto the decisions and happenings in our own lives. We wrestle with why we have not, or could not, or would not. Maybe we would. Maybe we had never thought about it, until we saw them go first.

We also begin to worry that someone who held a certain place in our lives may no longer fit there. “Our brains generally prefer predictability, so any shift, even a positive one, can trigger these feelings,” Dr. Rachel said. “All situations are neutral until we interpret them.”

No, we are no longer talking about a restaurant bill.

Behind all the hissing in my DMs, I understood there to be a deeper outcry. It felt painfully familiar to me as someone who regrets casting negativity upon people I cared about AND as someone who intimately knows what it feels like to have friends drift away. They are really saying:

How dare you change without my permission? How dare you leave me behind?

Many people experience this the hardest as young adults. For the first time, you’re no longer tracking milestones alongside your peers. You don’t just graduate onto the next phase of life together. You’re moving forward, sideways, and standing still . . . sometimes all alone. I moved to New York City with tons of good friends from college, but I went to law school while many of them started their first jobs. For a while, we didn’t see eye to eye—I was phantom human working around the clock for the chance to find work, while they navigated adult pressures, workplace politics, and low starting salaries. Looking back, I know I took it out on everyone, but I don’t think I was angry with them. I think I was scared for myself. But I also can think of times when a friend took change out on me: when I got a better job; when I moved into a great apartment with Doug; when I got pregnant with our first child.

We’ve all lost people moving through big transitions. Especially when you’re young, it can be hard to access the emotional maturity to untether a friendship from the shared experience of it. Not at a time when you might need those shared moments to confirm you’re doing things right.

It made sense then, but what about now?

As of this summer, I’ve been living in the suburbs for a decade. My husband and I have built a life around our children, our profession, our culture, and our individual interests. Most of those stereotypical adult milestones are far in our rearview mirror, so I thought we’d reached cruising altitude and could float through the season without falling out of orbit from people we care about.

I should have known that midlife has its own set of transformations.

Here you are, thinking you’ve arrived. You know who your people are and what you’re all about. And then, a friend gets sober. Someone loses 100 pounds. Someone leaves a 15-year marriage. Someone sells their business and gets rich.

The big things never stop coming. Because of that, life will keep introducing us to new versions of the people we thought we already knew.

The key is recognizing that the personal meaning we assign these changes is ours. Not theirs. Dr. Rachel suggests that “instead of assuming the other person has done something wrong, ask yourself, ‘What is this emotion trying to tell me?’”

You might realize you’ve got something to process on your own rather than a problem with someone else.

But if you sense the distance between you is real, you might want to address it. Just proceed with caution and be sure you’re clear on the reasons why you’re doing it. Dr. Rachel says you don’t want to make someone feel guilty or responsible for your emotions. But if you need that reassurance or want them to really understand your experience, there’s a way to approach it. She gave me three examples of what to say:

Statements like these welcome connection rather than pushing someone you care about back on their heels.

The reality is that friendships, like all relationships, change. They evolve with whatever else we have going on in our lives, and that might mean growing apart. But that does not mean you need to put a period at the end of your sentence together.

In fact, maybe this is what friendship really asks of us in adulthood. Not that we stay the same or occupy the same space in each other’s lives with stellar consistency, but that we are supportive enough to leave the door open for someone to walk back through it with a new look, new perspective, even a new life, and for us say, “I can’t wait to know you now.”

Share

Have you ever felt confused about a friend’s life changing in some way? What happened next? We want to hear about it.

Thank you to Dr. Rachel Goldman for sharing her wonderful insights with us! Please order her fabulous book, When Life Happens: The Mindset Shift You Need to Manage Stress, Build Confidence, and Break Free.

You up? Good, because we’ve got a question for you. This 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 one:

• For CNBC Make It, we explained why Gen Z is rethinking the role of marriage in their American Dream. Our take? Treating your finances as a team still matters, regardless of when (or whether) you get married.

• Doug broke town Trump Accounts for CNBC, and how families can weigh their options on where to invest for their children. (More on them here).

• I appeared in The Purse’s mid-year check-in, offering my thoughts on the accounts and systems that are worth a quick peek now that we’re halfway through the year.

Want to go deeper? Money Together is everything we’ve learned about love and money, told through real stories with lessons for people 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.

Read more

Read more

Read more

Been married forever? Don’t worry, they’ll be something for you in this series, too. Also, scroll to the bottom …

Read more

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.

Subscribe now

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…

Share

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.

There are things you need t…

Read more

We’ve traveled to some beautiful places, but I’ve never been immersed in such natural beauty as Alaska. I was stunned by the enormity of it: the snow-capped mounta…

Read more

Read more

Read more

I’ll wait.

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

What “AMAZON.COM: $263.47” doesn’t tell you is t…

Read more

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

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

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

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

Subscribe now

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

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

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

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

Let me show you.

Share

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the time to show them how to:

• earn,

• save, and

• spend money with purpose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Share

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

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

1. Taxes, withholdings, and how money flows

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

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

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

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

2. Credit and consumer debt

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

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

3. Investing and building wealth

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe now

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

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

Comment below or reach us here.

TJA’s Couple of the Week

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s comfort in that lie.

Share

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Share

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

You Up?

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

Do you feel free to spend?

Money Together x Wyndham Hotels!

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

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

Reach out here

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

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

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

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

Connect with us on social: @averagejoelle + @dougboneparth

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

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

Read more