#545: Overcoming Personal Financial Struggles as a Lawyer, with Rho Thomas

Episode Notes

Transcript

Stephanie Everett (00:12): 

Hi, I’m Stephanie. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:13): 

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 545 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie talks to Rho Thomas about lawyers getting out of debt. So Stephanie, we’ve had a lot of talk about flat fee billing. Alternatively structures, you and I have discussed how artificial intelligence is kind of exacerbating this tension between the billable hour and our obligation to use technology and to be more efficient and a little bit quicker. So we’ve got a flat fee webinar or alternative fee webinar coming up soon. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:57): 

Yeah, this will be a fun chance to join me on March 12th. We’re going to do a webinar on talking about alternative fee structures, maybe some basics of why. A good reminder if you haven’t heard me say it enough, but we’ll just do a quick reminder on why we shouldn’t be billing by the hour. But then really kind of digging into, okay, what if I want to play with this? What if I want to test it out? What are some initial steps I can take? How can I think about pricing it and getting started with it? So I hope people really leave with the first couple of steps beyond just, yeah, I know this is a good idea, 

  

Zack Glaser (01:33): 

Right? Because it’s one thing to just say, Hey, you should be doing alternative fee structures, or you should be doing flat fee billing when you actually bring it into the law office. People go, well, that doesn’t work for my office. That doesn’t work for how I practice. That’s great for everybody else, but that doesn’t work for how I practice. I have rarely found somebody that I couldn’t figure out a way to adjust their fee method after talking with them. So I think that’s something that we dig into when we talk about this as 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:08): 

Well. Absolutely. I’m kind of challenge accepted and maybe of course, maybe there is a time and place where a billable hour really does make the most sense, but there’s also lots of places where it doesn’t, and here’s the good news for folks. You can take some steps, you can do something. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing. So I think we’ll talk about that too. And okay, maybe for now you’re not ready to dive in. That’s okay. You can dip your toe and take a few steps and get going because to your point where you started, at the end of the day, the technology exists to make tasks significantly faster. 

  

Rho Thomas (02:50): 

And 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:50): 

So one of the many reasons why the billable hour is terrible is it doesn’t compensate us for the value that we’re delivering to our clients. I talked to someone yesterday who was like, I can review templates, I can review documents, and in 10, 20 minutes if I bill by the hour, I don’t get the value of all the time and expertise and knowledge it took for me to get to the place where I could do it very quickly. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:14): 

Right. Well, so on March 12th, come to the Lawyerist Alternative Fee Structures webinar and listen to Stephanie talk about that, and I’m sure you’ll get some good ideas and learn some nice first steps. 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:29): 

Yeah, we’ll make sure the registration link is in the show notes. So head there. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:32): 

And now here is Stephanie’s conversation with Rho. And as always, if you like today’s episode, take a second while your coffee is brewing and leave us a review in Apple reviews. 

  

Rho Thomas (03:43): 

Hello, I am Ro Thomas. I’m a money coach for lawyers, and I am really excited to have this conversation with you today, Stephanie. 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:51): 

Yes, I am excited to ro because money in personal finances, we see way too many lawyers really struggling in this area. So I’m excited to dig in and learn more about what you do and how you help lawyers get out of debt. 

  

Rho Thomas (04:07): 

Yeah, 

  

Stephanie Everett (04:08): 

Yeah. So let’s start with, obviously there’s law school and it’s expensive. I mean, the costs today are crazy, I can’t even believe compared to what I spent when I went to school. But what do you see lawyers really struggling with when they’re coming to you? Tell me, paint the picture, what’s happening with them? 

  

Rho Thomas (04:29): 

Yes. The biggest thing is hands down student loans followed by credit card debt, personal loans, like the more consumer debt. And I will say, I don’t know how much the audience would be familiar with my story, but for those who aren’t familiar, I am a lawyer as well. I practiced law for seven years and I got into personal finance because of my own journey with my own debt. I wanted to go part-time after I had my first child. So I was working with a firm that allowed for this percentage based salary for people who wanted to reduce their hours so you could do a percentage of the billable hour requirement for that same percentage of your salary. I was interested in doing that, but the student loan debt, all of this debt that we had kept us from being able to do it. We couldn’t afford a pay cut. 

  

(05:22): 

That got me into learning more about personal finance. And then in that I found all of these other lawyers who also didn’t know what was going on. I thought it was just us. So being in that position myself, I saw exactly how that felt. I understand exactly how it feels to be a lawyer. You’re smart, you’re this type a person, always been ahead of the game except this one area where I personally felt like I was failing. And so being able to dig out of that and find different resources, I’m really glad to be able to share that with other lawyers who are in that same situation that we were in. 

  

Stephanie Everett (06:04): 

Yeah, I love that you kind of start with, Hey, no shame. A lot of us are in this boat. I mean, law school kind of starts us there and sort of puts us in this big hole, but I would imagine, I don’t know what you see, but just my experience in seeing people that I graduated with, it feels like we went out and we got jobs after law school and we’re making a little money and it was like, oh, maybe I can buy a new car. I can buy a new fill in the blank. Because there is sort of a certain lifestyle expectation that I think we have. I, yeah, 

  

Rho Thomas (06:39): 

I think that’s 100% right. And like you said, it starts in law school. So the average that I see, this is not data-based or anything like that. Anecdotally, the average that I’m seeing is about 200,000 in student loans. Some people have a little less, some people have a little more, but they’re coming out and the minimum payment on that if they’re on the standard plan tends to be around $2,000 a month. So we’ve got this minimum payment on the student loans, and then there is that desire to get a certain house because I’m a lawyer now or to get a certain car or whatever. And so then we start piling on these minimum payments on top of the student loan payment, and we are making more because most of us weren’t making anything in law school. We’re making more, but then we start pulling at that amount. It’s like, oh, minimum payment here, minimum payment there. Until we get to the point where there’s very little cashflow going on, we’re making a lot of money, but we feel like we’re living paycheck to paycheck and many people are. And so getting control of that cashflow, learning how to create a gap between your income and your expenses is critical to be able to progress with your finances the way most lawyers want to do. 

  

Stephanie Everett (07:50): 

Yeah. Well, I mean, how do people, you reminded me, I saw a visual recently and it was talking about what do you have in your buckets? And 401k was small, and then I can’t remember now what the third, second bucket was, but the third bucket was brunch, and it made me laugh because it had the most amount of money in it. And I was like, oh, yeah, that resonates. Someone told me, they called it lifestyle creep where I know for me often I’m like, at the end of the month I’m like, why do I not have more? Where did all the money go throughout the month I’m spending it and I don’t even sometimes realize or I’m not being intentional about where that go. And that idea of lifestyle creep is what I think someone said. I’m sure you probably see a lot of that. 

  

Rho Thomas (08:36): 

Absolutely. Lifestyle creep is something that we all experience. I don’t live the way that I was living when I was in law school now 10 years out. Right. Most of us are not living that same way, and I don’t think that that’s necessarily bad. But the word that you use, Stephanie, that I love is intention because often we are not with any sort of intention. The extent of the strategy for me, before we got on this whole thing and tried to get our finances in order, the extent of the strategy was, is there money in the account? Oh yeah, okay, I can buy that. I can go spend that. And so we end up in these situations where we are making more, but we continue to spend more. We have that lifestyle creep, and then we don’t feel the extent of that additional income. And so one of the things that I tell people all the time is making more is not the answer. 

  

(09:27): 

We often think If I just make a little more money, then I’ll be good. If I could just get to this income, then I’d be good. But it’s not true because the issue is always in how we manage the money that we make and we’re not managing what we’re making now. We’re not going to be managing more any better. And so like you said, that lifestyle creep comes in where I’m not paying attention to what’s going on. I’m not spending with any sort of intention. I’m making more. And now that gets spent and then I feel if I could just make a little bit more, then I’d be okay. And that goalpost just keeps moving and it’s all because there’s that lifestyle creep happening. 

  

Stephanie Everett (10:05): 

Yes. Okay. I suspect, because maybe I feel this a little bit, that one of the things you might run up against is because I agree with everything you just said, and what I heard in that is, so that means, Stephanie, you need to spend a little less, right? Is that fair? That’s part of your message 

  

Rho Thomas (10:24): 

Possibly. 

  

Stephanie Everett (10:25): 

Okay. 

  

Rho Thomas (10:25): 

It depends. Yeah. So spending less could be part of it, but not necessarily. Right. It could be making more. Maybe there are things that you could be doing to bring in more income. The goal is to increase the space between the income that you’re making and what you’re spending out. For many of my clients, it is spending less. They don’t want to bring on another job or have a side hustle or that kind of thing. That is something that my husband and I did. He got a second job for a little bit. I had a side hustle selling stuff around the house. All of that was money that we were not used to having. And so we were able to use that for our goals. But a lot of people don’t want to do that. And so if you’re not going to bring in more income, then yeah, you’re going to have to spend less. However, it does not have to look like what we often hear, which is like, stop buying lattes, stop going to brunch. Just sit at home, stare at the wall, eat ramen. So 

  

Stephanie Everett (11:17): 

I tell my clients that I was going to go, I was like, because people kind of feel like I would imagine people come to New York, they’re like, but I want to live. I want to go out to eat. I don’t want to cook every meal. I enjoy doing these things. I want you 

  

Rho Thomas (11:30): 

To. Okay. And so what I tell my people is, let’s look at what’s important to you. What is it that you actually value? And let’s make sure that we’re spending on those things. Because what I have found is a lot of lawyers spend a lot of money on stuff that they don’t actually care about. And like you talked about going out to eat the brunch bucket, all of that, that’s so real. And often people are spending thousands of dollars going out to eat for just one person or just two people, and they don’t realize that they’re spending that much because each encounter each time going out isn’t that much. But it all adds up. And so it’s going back to that word that you used. I love that you use the word intention. I am all about intention. When you can use your money intentionally, you can say, yes, I like going out to eat. 

  

(12:19): 

I’m going to go out to eat this much. But I also like this thing. I also like shopping. I also like whatever it is. And so I’m going to allocate money for that as well. And then I also like having some money. I also like being able to have savings for when those emergency things come up. And I don’t want to have to put it on my credit card, so I’m going to allocate money to that as well. And it’s all about planning how you’re going to use that money on the front end instead of looking back, wishing that I had done something differently, wishing that I had more money in my account. 

  

Stephanie Everett (12:50): 

I once read, I think that a lot of people think of a budget as a limiting word. It’s constraining me. And to flip that around and say, actually your budget can be very liberating because it’s giving you permission going in. I have permission to spend this amount of money. I am going to try to stay within that parameter. But I think that mindset shift probably could be really impactful because I think people hear the budget word and shy away. 

  

Rho Thomas (13:18): 

Yeah, 100%. I’ve actually stopped using the word budget as much early on when I first started my business, I was always talking about budget, budget, budget. But as you said, a lot of people don’t like that word. And I think it conjuress up this image of the deprivation, the eating ramen, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. And so I just talk about planning your spending, which is really what a budget is, right? It’s about planning your spending. If saying spending plan feels better for people, that is perfectly fine. The goal is to make sure that we are being intentional with how we’re using our money. And that way we can spend on those things that we enjoy. We can still make progress on our goals, still make sure our needs are met, but we aren’t running out of money. We’re not feeling the squeeze all the time. 

  

(14:03): 

And one of my favorite things, I teach my clients to have a fun money account. So you’ve got your main account that you’re paying your bills out of, you’re buying your groceries, whatever. We’re going to open up a separate account just for fun money. And this is money that you’re putting in there for you to spend on fun, on things that you enjoy and you’re planning it. So it’s not just like, oh, I’m just going to put half my check in the fun money and just ball out. We’re not doing that, but you’re able to have this set amount of money that you have planned on spending on these things that you enjoy. And so that way when you’re spending on those things, you don’t feel guilt or shame. That comes up a lot of times for people where they spend on something that they want, but then they feel bad about it because I should have used that for something more responsible. I should have done this, I should have done that. When you plan for it on the front end and you’ve got this set account over here, you are giving yourself permission to spend this money on whatever you want to spend on. So then you don’t have to feel guilty about it that your needs are still going to be taken care of. Your bills are covered, you’re saving or paying off debt or investing or whatever goals you have. And now I can use this money however I want to. 

  

Stephanie Everett (15:12): 

Yes, agree. We have a travel budget for our family and we agreed travel is important to us. And so we put a certain amount of money in a separate account that’s an interest bearing account every month, and that’s the travel fund. And we use that to plan on vacations. And the reason we’re able to do as much as we are for that budget, and this is kind of where I’m coming a long way to my question. We decided a couple years ago, we really took a hard look at our house. We had bought a house when I was practicing law, it was downtown. I didn’t have to commute, I had to commute to the office. And all of a sudden during the pandemic, we were like, I work from home now I don’t have to travel and have this commute. So we ended up selling our house moving out a little bit into the suburbs and we cut our mortgage in half. 

  

(15:59): 

I mean, we paid less than half for the house we sold. We said when we did that, now we’re going to put some money in this travel account. We’re choosing to travel over having a nice big house in town. And that was the first time for me that I thought about really making a big decision. Sometimes we talk about lattes, okay, a couple dollars here or there. That was a big money decision. And I was curious because you said you and your husband decided to do some side hustle. He took a second job that also feels like that could be bigger and needle moving. So I’m curious, what kind of big decisions do you see folks making that can really maybe accelerate or make a dent in what they’re doing when it comes to their cashflow and how they’re spending money? 

  

Rho Thomas (16:50): 

I love that you shared your personal experience with downsizing, getting a house that costs less, I don’t know if the actual house was smaller, but getting a house that costs less because you’re absolutely right. Those big things like your house, like the car you drive, the activities or maybe the schools that your kids are in, if they’re in private school versus public school versus something else, all of those things are going to move the needle a lot more than not buying a latte today than not having avocado toast if that’s still a thing. And I think the housing one especially is big because I have seen people get into situations where their housing is taking up half of their income, 70% of their income, these really huge chunks. And when you’ve got a big expense like that where 50% to 70% of your income is going just to this one bill, it leaves a lot less for all the other things that you need, all the other things that you want and your goals. 

  

(17:48): 

So one of the things that I tell people with respect to housing is if you can keep your housing cost to say like 25% or so of your take home pay, if it’s a little bit more than that, it’s not the end of the world, especially depending on other things that you have going on. Let’s say you don’t have student loans, you’ve paid your student loans off or you don’t have credit card debt or things like that where you’ve got a little bit more wiggle room, you might be able to go a little bit beyond that. But when we’re getting to 40, 50, 60, these really large chunks of money, it makes it a lot harder to be able to do things like have a vacation fund or even to have that savings for unexpected expenses. So housing is definitely one of the big needle movers. I think the same is true of what the car you drive. 

  

(18:33): 

If you have a car payment that’s a thousand dollars a month, well that’s a thousand dollars that can’t go to something else. And then often a car that has a thousand dollars a month car payment has much higher expenses with respect to the maintenance, with respect to gas, all of those kinds of things. So it’s not just about this single purchase, it’s all of the ancillary purchases that go along with it. And then the third one, that tends to be big, actually, there are two more that tend to be big. The third one that tends to be big is food, which we talked about the brunch bucket, the spending oven, oven, that avocado toast is 

  

Stephanie Everett (19:05): 

Expensive, 

  

Rho Thomas (19:06): 

Right? It’s ridiculous. And so it’s looking at the food costs. Do I want to get all my meals out or could I cook at home sometime? Maybe instead of doing Uber Eats, lemme tell you this story. I’ve told this story recently. I went to order a pizza one time on Uber Eats from a place up the street. The pizza itself was $20, but then after fees and stuff, it was like $40. And that wasn’t even including the tip. I was like, I’m going to just drive and go get the pizza. So sometimes we can save money by doing things like that. I’m not going to get it on the app or I’m not going to get it delivered. I’m going to go in person. I can still have that meal out, but I’m able to do it in a more efficient way, if that makes sense. 

  

(19:50): 

But just watching how much we’re spending on those things. And then the fourth one is the minimum debt payments. I think it’s really easy for those payments to start adding up. It’s like you can get everything on payments these days. You’ve got your house, you’ve got your car, you’ve got your student loans, but then I’ve got this credit card. Maybe I took on a personal loan for something I did the Afterpay or the Klarna and those things like, oh, it’s only four payments of X. But if you do that over and over again, all of that starts adding up. So I think those things are much bigger needle movers than not going to Starbucks. 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:27): 

Yes, one dilemma I think sometimes people face, especially when they’re kind of just coming out, but maybe even now the struggle of do I invest or do I pay off debt? And at what ratio should I be doing those two things because, and so I’m just kind of curious how you address that question. 

  

Rho Thomas (20:51): 

Yeah. So I must caveat this by saying I am not a financial advisor. I’m not licensed to give you any specific financial advice I want no problems with the SEC 

  

Stephanie Everett (21:01): 

Fair. 

  

Rho Thomas (21:02): 

My thoughts on the investing versus debt question. I like to look at the math, looking at the numbers of things. So typically if we’re talking about investing in the stock market, on average you’re going to get an 8% return. Eight to 10% is what we typically see. A lot of times people have credit cards that have 20%, 30%, stuff like that. So when you’ve got these really high interest debts, then it might make sense to pay those off before you focus more on investing with the caveat that if you are in a firm or something where you’re getting a match on your 401k, being able to put that money in to get the match might make sense. It also might not. I’ve actually had situations where clients had so much going on in terms of the debt payments and all of that that was coming out. 

  

(21:51): 

They were kind of overinvesting and it was making them go deeper into debt because they didn’t have enough money coming into their checking account to cover their expenses. It’s like it’s all a math problem. Looking at what’s happening, looking at these numbers. I’ll say in my own personal experience, my husband and I maxed out our retirement accounts the first year that we were working the first two years maybe. But then when we got into this whole money journey where I wanted to go, we couldn’t afford it. We’re looking at it and we had $678,000 of debt and the majority of our student loans were at 6.9 and 7.8%. So it was these huge interest rates and like I said, you can expect about 8% on average to be your return in the stock market. So we didn’t realize that what we were doing with our retirement accounts was basically getting canceled out by the interest that was accruing on all this debt. 

  

(22:49): 

And so we decided to drop our contributions to just get the match. It was like 3% or so, and then we used the rest of that money to start tackling the debt because our debt was just kind of growing. It wasn’t because of the way that the math worked out, the interest rates were about the same. It wasn’t exponentially better to put it into the retirement account versus paying on the debt or vice versa. So that was a decision that we made. But again, it comes down for me to the math of it. So I like to look at, okay, if I’m getting about 8% in this investment and I’m paying 30% on this debt, maybe it makes more sense instead of putting that money into the investment right now to pay on the debt. If it’s something where things are kind of awash in our situation, it kind of depends again on your numbers. 

  

(23:41): 

For us, because of the amount of debt we had, our minimum payments were like $3,500 a month. That was a lot of money, like a big chunk of change coming out every month. And we wanted to not pay that. And so we decided to decrease the retirement contributions to be able to pay that off and decrease the amount that we were having to pay out each month. So that’s how I think about that decision. I do think that it is deeply personal. It is situational. Each person might have a different outcome or might have a different situation that makes more sense for them. And so definitely reach out to a financial planner or someone like that who can help you if you need professional help in making that decision. 

  

Stephanie Everett (24:20): 

Absolutely. And I know because read your story, you and your husband were able to get out of your debt. I think the only debt you really have now is your mortgage, which is fair. Most people do. I’m curious, how long did it take you guys? It sounds like you got really focused and you said, okay, we’re going to do this. How long did it take for you to knock that debt down? 

  

Rho Thomas (24:47): 

Yeah, it took a little under six years, maybe about five years, something like that. And a big part of that honestly was the pause in the pandemic where interest wasn’t accruing. That was the thing that was really killing us. We had this multiple six figure debt. We were accruing all this interest and you make a payment, but this little bitty portion went to the principal. So being able to make payments where they were all principal only really accelerated that. But I think before the pandemic, we were on track for something like seven or eight years. 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:18): 

Well, congratulations. I feel like we should acknowledge that because that has got to feel amazing. I guess the last thing I’d love to talk about in the time we have left, I’m just still kind of fascinated by the fact that you guys decided to try to increase your income to pay off your debt with additional jobs. And I’m imagining if I’m listening right now, I might be thinking, do you know how hard I already work like Rho now you want me to do more or take on a side hustle or a second job? And so I imagine you hear that a lot from lawyers and I’m just kind of curious if you could give us some more thoughts around what is actually reasonable or possible there? 

  

Rho Thomas (25:58): 

Yeah, I think it really depends on each person. So in my situation early on I was selling things around the house. It was a very light lift, like okay, there was an app, I don’t know if it’s still around, but it was called Offer Up. And I would take pictures of these items. We had an infant who was outgrowing things before we even had a chance to put ’em on ’em, that kind of stuff. And so I would take pictures of the items and then if someone wanted the item, then I would just bring it with me to work and I would have them meet me somewhere around my firm. So it was very easy. They would just either pay me in cash or pay me PayPal. And that was that on my husband’s side. So he was a resident at the time and he took on a job at a clinic on weekends, and that really sucked. 

  

(26:43): 

I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. He was gone every weekend and he was already working a lot during the week. And then I’m a junior associate and we’ve got this baby. It was tough, but the thing that was helpful for us was bringing in that extra income allowed us to make initial progress. So we didn’t have that income before, and so we’re able to use that income to start paying off some things. And once you pay off a debt, now you don’t have that minimum payment anymore. And so then that started opening up cashflow for us. Him taking on that second job was not all about personal finance. Part of it was he was going to be graduating from residency soon. He wanted to have some experience with handling patients without the supervision of his attending, that kind of thing. 

  

(27:32): 

So there was some professional parts to it, but having that extra income coming in definitely accelerated our journey on the front end. I’ve had people do things like teach classes at their local gym. There was one guy who was really into smoothies, and so he took on some shifts at Smoothie King and he got these discounts. Smoothies. It doesn’t have to be something that is super time consuming or something that’s completely different from what you’re already doing, but if you don’t want to make extra income, that’s okay. You don’t have to. It could also just be managing your expenses differently because the cashflow equation goes both ways. It’s making more income, spending less. 

  

Stephanie Everett (28:15): 

Absolutely. And we’re not going to be able to cover it today, and I understand the limits of what you can advise on, but I think the follow up to this show is going to be okay, now we need to know what to do next. So we’re paying off our debt, we have more income coming in and we want to build our net worth. That should be the goal for most people. And I don’t know that we always talk about that, but really kind of building up all the buckets. My financial planner always talks about the buckets. So it’s like, okay, and now building in things that eventually we’ll be investing in things that could be income producing so that we’re not just planning for retirement, but we’re planning for lots of different options. So I appreciate this conversation. I think getting the debt under control is kind of step one. And then I want to let people know stay tuned. So start working on that if you haven’t already. And then we want to work on how do we really build your net worth 

  

Rho Thomas (29:18): 

If we still have a minute, can I speak to that a little bit? Please? There is a lot that comes from managing that cashflow better, putting more of it towards your savings, putting it towards your debt. Those things are still things that increase your net worth because your net worth is how many assets you have, the value of your assets minus the debts that you have. So when you have less debt, that increases your net worth. When you’ve got more in your savings account, that increases your net worth. And when you have more cashflow, then you’re able to put those things towards your investments. So in my personal experience, I mentioned that we had $678,000 of debt. We also had a negative $342,000 net worth, and we went from that negative $342,000 net worth to a positive $500,000 net worth, mostly just focused on the getting out of debt, the making sure that we had our savings. 

  

(30:12): 

There was some investing, like I mentioned, that we were doing about 3% in our retirement accounts. And then we also were putting about a hundred dollars a month into a separate investment account. And that was a compromise. My husband wanted to continue saving, and you mentioned having a high yield savings account. Back when we started, the high yield savings account was paying like 1%. And so it didn’t make sense to me to put money into the savings when we’ve got all this debt at these 9%, 10% interest rates and such. And so the compromise was investing that a hundred dollars. So we did a hundred dollars a month and 3% in our retirement accounts, but the rest of it was directing that cashflow towards building up our savings and then paying off debt. And that took us from negative 342,000 to positive 500,000. And then once we were done paying off the debt, we had all of this money that we could just start piling into investments. Love it. So don’t discount the power of focusing on getting your savings, getting yourself into a more stable financial position and paying down those debts, because then that’s going to just accelerate your investment trajectory. 

  

Stephanie Everett (31:16): 

Absolutely. And the last thing that I heard there, and those of you might remember the episode I did with Aaron Thomas who talks about healthy financial relationships, which is what you just said. You and your husband, you guys were lockstep talking about this, and I’m sure those were some hard conversations at times, but you got on the same page, you came up with a plan that you both agreed to, and then you both make the commitment. I think that’s so important even now. We’ve done that in our family and we’ve included our almost 14-year-old with it, and the other night after soccer, they were like, can we just stop and get some takeout on the way home? And I was like, no, you know what? No. We have a plan. We’re going to eat out this weekend. I’ve got dinner. Let’s go home and eat what I already have purchased. And that’s like a small victory, but that’s what you need that accountability for each other. It could have just as easily been me that was like, let’s just go out. I don’t feel like cooking. And then my kid would look at me and be like, but mom, we said we’re not eating out until the weekend. And I’d be like, W, you’re right. 

  

Rho Thomas (32:19): 

Yeah. And one of the big things, especially if you are in a partnership or romantic relationship where you’re managing money with someone else, the thing that I always tell people is, don’t make the mistake that I made, which was talking about what we need to do. If we just cut this, if we just start doing this, then we could pay this off. This person says that we could do this, and that person did X, y, Z. Don’t go tell your partner that Rose says we should, blah, blah, blah, blah. Your partner does not care. They don’t know me. They don’t care what I did or what I have to do. So what helped was when we got in that situation where I wasn’t able to do the part-time thing because of our finances, that got me thinking about the vision that I had for our family, what I wanted to be able to do, the kind of mom that I wanted to be for our kids and how the finances impacted that. 

  

(33:09): 

And so we started dreaming together about what our life could look like, what his vision was for our family, what if we did this, that, and the third. And that conversation then backed us into the financial conversation, and that helped us to get on the same page. My husband did not care anything about this, like paying off student loans. He’s like, everybody has student loans. It’s fine. He was ready to live his life and I was trying to tell him about these things that I had seen. But when we came more from the life that we want to live, what could that life look like? All of that stuff. Then we were able to have much more productive conversations about our finances and get on the same page. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:45): 

That is amazing advice, and I love that. Start with your vision. Ro, thank you so much for being with me today. I know that this has helps so many people and the work that you’re doing, we’ll make sure we’ll put how you can get in contact with Rho on the show notes and go to her website. She also has a podcast where she’s digging more into financial matters, so I encourage you to check that out as well. So thank you. Oh, wait. And Rho, you have a special gift for our listeners, right? 

  

Rho Thomas (34:14): 

I do, yes. If you head to Rho thomas.com/ Lawyerist, you can get a free copy of a guide that I put together on the top five mistakes that I see lawyers make when they’re trying to get out of debt. So you can correct those if you’re making them and start moving yourself forward to getting out of debt and getting your finances on track. 

  

Stephanie Everett (34:33): 

Awesome. Thank you. 

  

Rho Thomas (34:35): 

Thank you so much for having me. 

 

 

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