Entrepreneur Magazine's Jason Feifer and Author Nicole Lapin on Taboo Money Topics

Published Sep 17, 2019, 4:05 AM

Money: It’s a stressful and often taboo topic that makes many people uncomfortable to even talk about.

But New York Times bestselling author Nicole Lapin and Entrepreneur Magazine editor-in-chief Jason Feifer say that’s the very problem, and one of the biggest reasons why so many people are in debt and suffer from money anxiety.

In this interview, no topic is off limits. Jason and Nicole debate the touchiest finance topics from their brand new podcast “Hush Money.”

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

I think that the reason why people are afraid to talk about money is because we equit money with self worth, and so when we are seeing ourselves struggle financially, we feel like we are failures, and we compare ourselves and how we do financially to other people, and we think that the people who are making more money are simply better than us. Hi. I'm doctor Oz and this is the Doctor Oz podcast. Money, It's stressful, It's offten, a taboo topic that makes many people uncomfortable. They don't even talk about it. But my next guests say, that's the very problem when the biggest reasons why so many people are in debt and suffer from money and zodies so today that no topics gonna be off limits. Will take them all on New York Times best selling author and good friend Nicole that been making it happen an Entrepreneur magazine editor in chief Jason Phife for who just honored Michelle Phife for your cousin or sister who she knows we have no relation. I'm trying to help you. You don't have to answer all the questions, Jason. Anyway, Jason didn't put the shelf Fife for on the cover of his magazine, Right Fife for making it happen. It's making it happen. And I hear the debate to touches findance topics from their brand new podcast Hush Money. It's very intriguing title, what's the problem with money? Why is it such a sensitive topic? I think we will talk about everything at the dinner table before we talk about money. You know, if you go to dinner with girlfriends or your friends, you know, we'll talk about bikini waxes and sexy time and everything. And then all of a sudden, I say to my friends, so what's in your bank account or how much are you making this year? And it's crickets And I'm like, hey, lady, you just told me about your who ha, Why are we so now thinking money is off limits? And so I think it's the language that keeps a lot of people out of the conversation that sounds intimidating. Do you like, in that same circle of girls, would you say, by the way, I just made the X number of dollars on this book, and I got to this investment. You do, yeah, I go first, So I play the game of I'll show you mine if you show me worse, and I do that in my books. I actually talk about what I made for my book in my books because I put my money where my mouth is, quite literally. I knew people would ask reading the book, like this girl talks about money in the book, how much did she make? So I was like, I didn't even ask the publisher. I was like, okay, well here was my advance, Here's how much I made at CNBC. Here's how much I made at CNN. Yeah. I read that and I thought I need to get into television business. Being both businesses, I can assure you're right. So, Jason, difference between debt stress and money and Zodi, what's through dvich Oh my gosh, what you're like? Really just cutting too? I feel like suddenly walking from last year, I toll those from you. I didn't think there was a huge difference a debt stress and money anxiety. Well, let me let me back into that if I can. I think that the I think that the reason why people are afraid to talk about money is because we equate money with self worth, and so when we are seeing ourselves struggle financially, we feel like we are failures, and we compare ourselves and how we do financially to other people, and we think that the people who are making more money are simply better than us. That's something that's been drilled into us, and I think that that drives a lot of people crazy, especially if you're not making a lot of money and if you're in a mixed financial group. Which is the reason why I always have a trouble talking about money with friends, is because I feel like I either don't want to reveal that I am making more than you or less than you. I don't want to either make you feel bad or make myself feel bad. And I think that that drives a lot of the anxiety that people have, because then you look at your own home and you wonder, am I supporting my family properly? Am I good enough? Mother? Father, wife? Husband? And you look, you look at the money that you have or that you don't have, and you start to worry that you are that money. But were telegraph it anyway, And especially in today's society, we're all lying. Everybody's walking around, you know, with a car they can't afford, wearing clothes that they bought on discount, pretending that you know their designers. Whatever. We are all putting out there in the public eye what we want people to think, how much money we have? Yes, yeah, So it's not like it's we're all keeping it. Appreciate America. Another country they give titles maybe the Lord or you can buy one of those on titles exactly the titles, but the in America we give people money, so the titles don't seem to matter. So obviously a nation, we seem to value it. And you really can't get around the reality t that you are short of valued by others and by how much money you make. That does it doesn't come up. It's a barometer. It's not fair, but it's a barometer that people used to. It's a quick scale, you know, it's like a Phyco score, right, there's a quick idea. But but not just how much money you make, but how how disorganized and out of control you might be. So if you're bankrupt and much credit cards in debt, and every family members as there's one people. If you have enough kids, one of them is going to be in that bucket. They're not a bad person, they just don't understand money, which is why I wanted to have both of you on. They don't appreciate that money is a weapon. Family well not o. Our kids aren't old enough you have to have that much debt. But we have family members that have issues, and so we see it. And again I'm not making values. I don't see them as lesser than I know that they feel lesser that because they couldn't organize themselves. But that's your own issues, right, So Jason and I disagree shocking that's what makes us such a great cost hush money. Nothing is hush hush nothing. But Jason doesn't want to talk out his salary or what he got for his book advance or anything like that. But you equate it with self worth, I don't. I've met many very very wealthy people who are not happy. So we know that money doesn't equate happiness or self worth. You have to look inward for that. So I know my self worth doesn't equate to money, but that's from my own journey, that's the own and I think it's important to demystify it. I think that if we put so much emphasis on it being taboo, I think when you talk about it and address it, it takes away some of that power, just like anything else. I mean, I have more issues than Vogue or Entrepreneur when you talk about your problems. If you talk about your issues, it it takes away some of the power over you. Don't you think, I don't know. I think I'm I'm more in the Jason camp um, I'm not a topic I like to talk about. I understand why you would want to. I just I think it's more binary. I think if you have enough money that it's that should not be causing you a problem, then your issues are separate. People always say it's thought about the money. Well it's that's true after a certain point, but there is definitely a place where money makes a difference. And you know, we we've had enough a couple of guests on the show who have grown up an abject poverty and it absolutely affects how they see the rest of the world. If I can's talk about how people manage money, which nicol and your experiences you try to get people to to manage money more wisely. There's some common pitfalls you probably witness that take them in the wrong direction. Of course, I think that when people say they blew their budget, the first question I say is did you even have a budget to blow? You know, I came up with the Money School because I felt like there was such a void in financial literacy, and so I asked people to first write down their goals. It's really important to reverse engineer your goals, you know, figure out the life you want, and then figure out how to get the money to live the life you want. So, like you said, moment, you know, it's not about all the money, all about the money, and it's not about not about the money. Is there somewhere in between? You know when people sat down with me a couple of weeks ago and we did a boot camp around this, and people said, you know, I just don't work for the money. I was like, I don't know what I can say here. You have to pay the bills. You can't be so self righteous about it. The answer is somewhere in between. But I think coming up with a plan and figuring out how to get the money to live the life you want is the first step. Because people will say, hey, I just want a million dollars. If I just had a million dollars, like life would be great. Like what do you want to do with that million dollars? Maybe you need more than a million dollars. Maybe you need less. I have no idea someone that seems so obvious almost, But people, there's kind of financial advice floating around that I know you disagree with, and sometimes it's inadvertent. The undermining. People can give me an example, something that you would not do. I would not cut out the morning latte. You know. You hear financial experts say this time and again, just cut out the cut out the coffee, and you'll saves a year. And I say, a financial diet is a lot like a regular diet. You talk about this all the time on the show. If you allow yourself all indulgences, you won't end up binging later on. So when people say to me at the first sever year, hey, I cut out that latte, lap and making it happen, I'm making it happen to come April, come June, you know, you know, But then I bought this Gucci purse because I was so starved and so deprived. But I cut out that morning latte. I'm like, well, if you just allowed for that small indulgence the equivalent of a financial Hershey's kiss and a diet, so you don't end up binging on a big old hunk of chocolate, cake in the middle of the night because you're so hungry and so deprived. You know, though, I mean, I do agree. I I like what you say there. However, I like that morning latte thing because I think that what it's really saying is think about how you're spending your money, because then people often don't. They just spend. They spend, and they don't break it down to the small expenses and the way that money just disappears. Because I think for a lot of people, money just disappears. They don't know where it went. And the thing is that sometimes it went to the latte, and sometimes you can't afford the latte, and sometimes you can afford the latte if you're not spending in other ways. But when you start getting really granular about it, you start to recognize the habits that you have and how changing some of those habits can make you more financially responsible. So I like, I like pointing out to people that they are spending their money in ways that they might not even be thinking about. So would you keep a financial journal, so to speak, so that you know every penny that goes out of your location? Sports well, no, maybe once a week, not every day, but you need to know how much you're spending. This is really just because caffeine really gives any problems. Uh No, I do. I I mean I think that if you are having that kind of challenge where you really do not know where your money is going, then yes, creating a journal just to see it is really valuable. It's not like you have to do this for the rest of your life, but just to track it and understand where it's going. I mean, I I think about this so, I mean, I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford the lots every day if I wanted it, though I don't. But I do think about it in terms of time, because I think that we we we spend time and money, uh recklessly, both of them. And I found that blocking out my time in my calendar in really really specific ways it allowed me to manage my day and manage my time so much more effectively. And I think that you could easily translate that to money as well, that if you're just being very conscious of how you're spending it, you will have more control of it. More questions after the break, So what's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Excluding with the cold lapp and making it happen by the the best financial you know what, the best financial advice. And this this, I mean, this is this is It sounds like a recipe for spending. But this is the line that that always rings in my head. So my my dad, my dad came from a poor family. He is he was a dentist's retired now and made made a good money and supported the family. And I am very grateful for that. And uh he he always said he has this line which he has said to me so many times throughout my childhood, which is what's money for? What's money for? Right? Like don't deprive yourself. I mean this kind of goes back to the latte I guess in a way. But like he spends, yes, yes Popififer has been on the show, um he he he talks about it where like you know, save and then spend for that great vacation, right um um save and then and then support your family in ways where you know your your family is happy and feels cared for. What's money for? Money is for spending so long as you're spending it responsibly. And I I bring that up a lot with my wife because my wife is more concerned than I am about the way that we spend money. Um, like I feel like we're making enough we can go and enjoy the expensive dinner. We can go and enjoy this vacation. Should be like I don't know, should we? And I always say, what's money for? Why are we working this hard to make this money if not to spend it? Nicole, you've taught me over the years that there are things we can goociate for that I did not think we're negotiat a bowl. Everything is negotiatable because again in Turkey, if you walk into a store to the bazaar and you pay what they say, they're insulted. Now that they're insulting, not you, because many things you can do that at Sex, well we've done that for Like you go to hotel. I don't think you can know you do? You go to hotel its tet night, you're gonna check in and you said you have what you know, what rooms do you have? But who's in the suite? Nobody? So that you have partial inventory there because no one's coming in at ten o'clock tonight. So I'll pay you half what you normally charge, which is more money from me than you would have gotten for the room you're gonna put me in, and everyone's happy and there's no hurt feelings. And in Turkey again, if you negotiate, you make friends with people you negotiate, you don't call them an idiot and insult them. So what we be negotiating it? How do we do? Lessons from the Bazarez real negotiator. Yeah, you know it's it's your hard earned money. You might as well fight for it. So while I say get that latte or the equivalent of a latte, it's not about the latte, it's whatever does it for you. Nobody at a coffee shop. Jason is so literal? Is it drive you crazy? He's like the hardcore I have kids, I am, you know, more concerned the normal family guy. She talks about it like it's some foreign things in Chile and having all sort Is it called hush money because you say, Jason, hush frequently time. Do you guys have that at home too? You have your own burden? Hush? Yes? I get that quite There were eyebrows raised there. You know. She calls me the Meddler. She bought me a Medler cape superhero villain and love that someone came to me and said, oh, just said that you wanted the downstairs cleaned. All the boots are gone, all the coats are gone. You basically, I can't wait for him to go back to work. Frankly, amazingly, this is gonna catch you. But the winter boots and the winter parkas are all hanging at the h as they walked by it every day. You're called nagging unfinished tasks. Now there's a task. There was never a task. Great raincoats and mud puss anyway, Yes, so he's a meddler and they're all sold. By the way, this is what happens in our house. I feel like we're witnessing something else, by the way. And there's great Turkish food there too, people, Turkish people, Turkish food, all the best things, you know, what you learn, you know in Turkey and in a lot of the Middle East. I mean, my family's first generation American too, and um, you know, my family grew up in Israel and immigrated here, and that's that's sort of the culture. But if you don't ask, the answer is always no. Right, So just while you should allow yourself whatever that small indulgence is for you, because that's why you work. I mean, it's there's a middle ground between thinking you're gonna live forever and thinking you're going to die tomorrow. There's that sweet spot, right, and that's where your money philosophy, I think should live. So when you're negotiating, you know you miss hundred percent of chances you don't take. I don't know who that was, Wayne Gretzky or Marilyn Monroe or whoever that's been associated with, but just like you can negotiate for that hotel sweet because you had a lot of leverage in that. Actually, Wayne Gretzky was don't be where the puck is, be where it's gonna be. You tell me that the urinal once, by the way, true story and true story and what the what that was Jordan was, wasn't what Jordan said that I missed every shy I didn't take. That's right. And you know when I was on the show, I negotiated a woman's APR. I was in her ear as like a Serrano diverse rack type character, negotiating her cell phone bill at the store, telling her what to say, being like a dog on a bone, trying to get more and more. Because there's services that do that because some of us are just wretched. Like I will go to the bazaar and then I'll ask them tell me the price, and I'll say, is their tax with that? So the opposite of a negotiator are then' see you, I'm sure the worst, the worst negotiator that's actually a really good big I'm just wondering, is there someone who can get down or you know, call me start up a business. No, there should be someone who could, because a lot of people don't know how to negotiate their bad I've done uncomfortable. I've done that for people that we know. I've called up the different the five credit cards they've gotten dead on, and I said, this person of default and uh, or I'll pay you half what you got. I'll pay you what they actually borrowed, not the user interest rates that you've been charging when they bought their textbooks for water Dodgers, and not nine thousand dollars to debt. And they negotiate. So what you're saying, you do not have time to open this business. What you're saying, this business does not exist at the moment. I don't know about the just pure negotiation, but certainly, I mean there's a million types of financial advisors. And also there's a lot of technology entering this field now, where there are apps that are intelligently analyzing your spending and identifying ways that you can improve that will budget for you. So there's a lot that you can but they won't get on the phone and how do you do that? But that is a great tactic. You'll say I have a certain amount of money, take it or leave it, basically, and this happens for medical debt too. In a lot of cases you can say like, hey, I have half like smelly later you want money or you don't want money, And so in a lot of times they'll throw you a bone versus losing you as a customer, or they'll throw you a bone versus getting nada. How do you know how much to ask for? You used to based on what you got to start high? Start high, Yeah, and I think that you know. You can also get other features, So you can call your bill collectors, your cell phone provider, your cable provider, you know, once a quarter, twice a year, whatever it is, and you can get better features if it's not actually money off, so you can get higher speeds, you can get an iPod. I just talked to someone who got an iPad and you know whatever, if you don't ask, then you don't get another That's true. You know. That was the very first thing that I ever did to just experiment with this, to see if you can just go out into the world and say, actually, I would like to pay you less money and that they will say yes. Um. I called my my cable TV provider and I said I would like to spend less money. Then I was I was just like competitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I did. I was, I was like, I think that I'm spending too much on you, and I know that I can go elsewhere and get less or I could just live with less because I don't really need this service, So what can you do for me? And what they always do is they like disappear for a few minutes and they come back with some special that they happen to be running and they offer you that the manager does and they could just you could just keep doing that. I do it like once a year now. It's amazing. Yeah. There was actually an awesome class at Stanford Business School, I believe, and I'm all about the n b A of the School of Hard Knocks, but they actually had a class where you would have to go into a store wherever, I don't know if it was Sacks, but you had to leave with something for free. And I think that's just a great life lesson, right, because you have to get something, whether it's you talk your way into that, and that's what so much big. Would you buy something and get a free gift with it or did you have to come first something free? That exactly the paper with a bill in it, all right, So Jason was a a nice survey for forms recently. Yeah, that looked at I don't I don't discuss my competitors. I just provide masking so you can you can diss magazine that different and arguing that millennials the worst than any other age group of managing their finance. And think we're talking to two millennials right now. I'm a little older, I think than a millennial. I'm thirty eight, you're millennial. But what is the deal? What is the problem with late mortgage payments and not paying the credit cards and overdrawing accounts? What is what's a disconnect amongst the millennials and finances? So I have to mount a vigorous defense for millennials here, I absolutely despise any any articulation of millennials as some kind of different, weird species that acts and thinks unlike any previous generation. In fact, if you go back throughout history, I have a podcast called Past My Archive, another one where I dig intoitive pest archive right where I dig into repetitive fears throughout history. We look at why people resist things that today we think of his commonplace. I just did an episode called Kids These Days in which I tracked back things that people say today about millennials to at least ancient Rome. So it is that repetitive, So listen. There is But but if you if you are going to look at some hard data, and there is an actual data set which I haven't seen here is saying that millennials are more in depth than previous generations. Well, let's not think about this as being some kind of flaw in the brains of people who happened to be born in a certain year. But instead, let's look at the economy that they happened to come into. Because millennials entered the workforce in a recession, in a terrible recession, and that changed not only I think the way that they had to think about money and the access that they had to money, but also the way that they approached their careers. The reason I mean, I'm at Entrepreneur magazine and I see an unbelievable boom in entrepreneurship and that spirit, that spirit of self reliance in young people, and I think that's because they graduated in to a time in which that world of getting a job at one company and they're just rising to the top for an entire career just didn't exist anymore. You have to go out and build things yourself. But you know what, when you build things yourself, everyone at this table knows it's rocky and it's hard for a while, and you're not gonna get it right, and you're gonna end up in debt. A lot of you are going to end up in debt. And I think that is what explains it. It is not the people, It is the economy. Social media that could be part of it as well. Nicole, Yeah, it's certainly there's a lot of envy on social media, and we've done a ton of stories around that. But I also go to the defense of millennials. Tracking like Jason and I agree on this one, you know, going through that rocky time. I think investing in yourself ultimately will pay more dividends later on. And sometimes you have to get into the you know, the red, so to speak, to get into the black. And I think that millennials are actually given a bad rap. And I think growing up through the recession or seeing you know, our parents generation and having less equity in their house than fifty years ago, going through joblessness and unemployment and underemployment, I think that instilled the fear of God and a lot of millennials, and I think that there's more caution actually of not getting into that situation and repeating their parents history. There's lots more when we come back, all right, So talking about money is often uncomfortable conversation. You guys would go on there, you're not gonna hush up. Now we're gonna let's get uncomfortable. People get uncomfortable to the biggest many questions from our viewers are we ready ready? Should marry couples really combine their finances And if you're gonna do it, is there a good way of doing it? Yes? I think yours mine and hours and then having the hours account be waited. So if somebody makes, you know, hundred thousand dollars, and somebody makes ten dollars, you're putting ten percent or whatever, and that's a different actual dollar amount, So it feels though the same. All right, what would expends though? Because if you're married and you have a home, I don't know what your wife does for a living, but she's she's a freelance writer. I make more money than her. Okay, so are you gonna make Are you gonna divvy up the housing expenses accordingly? No? I mean, I'll tell you what we do. We came up with this crazy system that just happens to work for us. We maintained our own individual bank accounts, but we put each other on those bank accounts so we can have access to it if we needed to. But we don't like I don't go into her bank account. She doesn't come into mind, and so we treat those checking accounts as functionally separate. But we don't itemize. So I will buy things, she'll buy things for the house. Whatever it is. We don't like track it. So we have what are really separate finances in a way, except that we're treating them sort of like the same money. It's right. It's like it doesn't really make sense, but it just makes us little good check for the mortgage or the rent um that one comes out of the mortgage, that one comes out of me that I'll look up gonnave this. She's gonna pick up childcare. She often gets the groceries. I often get the utilities. Yeah, we just sort of like split it up like that, and then we and then we we opened up a Fidelity investment account where we put our kind of excess money and then that's our that's our growth, that's ours in Nicole's parlance. No, I was just gonna say, what do you do with kids? Because that as a whole another expense, the trust account, the trust accounts for the kids that they've created. I think what Lisa's is Lisa's in What's moments as Lisa's Yes, old school. Actually, it's just I'm gonna say this. We have talked abouts of the air. So a couple of years ago, I was giving Lisa a hard time because you know, she never actually deposited money, I said, into the account, and I asked her. I was trying to query her about if she knew how to deposit a check. That's so happy now. And then all of her daughters jumped on me and said, you have no idea how to withdraw money from the account. You don't even know how to deposit. Your secretary to deposit. But actually they're true, they're not not. Neither of those are true. My checks and your checks are both deposited by Donna. Yes, so come on. But the dup shot was I didn't know the code. That couldn't you know, I didn't know how to do it. Thanks me for money. He's like, too many cash do not know how to use an ATM machine. But in our generation we married thirty or four years. Now it comes this next question, so I'll get to it in a second. But the money was always together. I never I never tried to, never thought about it because it was only one account. Didn't matter what checks. This would almost always right to checks. She had no money, negative money. He was still in school, but but she was always right to check him in today and so but it was a different culture. That's why the mindsets are. And I took my own kids wore millennials. Some of them are older to be millennials. But I think that the other person regardless of who's actually writing the checks. Needs to have some transparency into the past words and knowing where accounts are because God forbid, if something happens to your spouse, regardless, you just want to know where the you know where the bodies are varying. Has time to talk to your partner, your upcoming partner about finance after sex? After sex? Really right? I would think before sex, because if guys distracted interesting and you control all the okay, that's how I man gonna happen. When to talk about I think that having the talk is something that makes a lot of couples uncomfortable. I think you frame it around what your goals are, so it's not an interrogation around like what's your credit score? By the way, I've had first dates in my life where men think that I'm somehow attracted to this, and so they'll ask me to write credit score. That's like, not, that's too much. But if you say, hey, baby, you know, grab a glass of wine. What are your goals? They don't need to be the same. They just need to be compatible. Do you want to vacation every winter? Do you want a housekeeper? Do you want these types of things out of your life because those things cost money. So alcohol I think it's it's a rolling conversation. Um I really I like saying you don't want to you don't want to raise the temperature, you don't want to say Okay, now this is the moment where we're gonna have the serious conversation, because then everyone gets tense and you feel like there's like cards that you have to put on the table. I think that this is something where I mean, listen, there are times where people will have a piece of information that they're very nervous to share with their significant other. Like for example, on our show, we talked to this this woman who had like a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt that would reveal that yet to her her boyfriend now husband. She was very very nervous, like in tears nervous to tell him that. And so at that point, you just have you have to find a moment in which I think both of you are feeling comfortable and close and like it's you know, it's like you know that time when it's when it's time to like you feel like you've built trust. There's an opening in this conversation where I can tell you something. I think that's that's that moment, it's quiet, it's at home, that's right, throw some of that on. But if you don't say it, it's financial infidelity. I mean, that's infidelity. Yeah, if you're not disclosing that, or if you owe somebody money and you're getting into a relationship to see yeah, I think that you need to do it in a way in which you don't feel to yourself that you are holding something or hiding something that you know. We all know when we've reached the time where something should be released. And if you have that internal feeling like you know what, I'm holding onto this too long, it's getting to like the red zone here, say it, find the time to say it, just text to enter your phone off. Thank you very very much. Hush Money name of the popular podcast. We're joining it ourselves least and I will be there sharing your intimate secrets. Thanks very much, guys, thank you, thank you,

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