SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is a book about what people were told to do with their money for 300 years and whether or not it worked and whether or not it stayed the same or changed. So we have this idea that, like, you know, back in the olden days, which by the way changes based on who you are. Like my children think the 90s were the olden days. And that's literally what they call them. Daddy in the olden days before cell phones. But, you know, whatever you think the olden days are, we have this idea that maybe everybody understood what to do, they were wise, grandma knew what to do, grandma wouldn't make dumb decisions. And then we are the people who are having to figure it out. But actually, what always worked was always changing. So financial advice changes over time because the American economy changes over time. And so people are constantly adapting, kind of looking in the rearview mirror, trying to ask somebody else to tell them where the road ahead of them is gonna go, which of course the road ahead of you is gonna go in a different place.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the show where financial planning meets human understanding. As an exceptional financial advisor, you know that financial planning is about more than just numbers. It's about giving clients the clarity they need to align their money with what matters most, which is why each episode is designed with that goal in mind. You'll learn how to uncover the psychology behind client decisions and gain insights and behavioral strategies needed to create deeper, more meaningful client relationships. You'll discover techniques for navigating emotional client situations drawn from conversations with leading industry experts in behavioral finance, psychology, communication, and more. Whether it's mastering discovery meaning handling sensitive client conversations or understanding what is truly keeping your client stuck, you'll walk away with not only strategies that you can use in your next client meeting, but also the confidence to do so. Oh yeah, hi. I should probably introduce myself. I'm your host, Ashley Kwamey, a therapist who somehow wandered into the world of financial behavior and kind of decided to stay. My mission is to help you bridge the gap between financial planning and human understanding. Because remember, finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Let's dive in. Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the podcast where financial planning meets human understanding. I'm your host, and today I'm really excited to have with me here on the show Joseph S. Moore, not to be confused with any other Joseph Moore that is out there in the universe. This is the Joseph S. Moore. And he is here with us today to talk all about his new book, How to Get Rich in American History. And I've read a chapter of it. We are just talking in kind of the pre-recording that I will consume the rest of the book while I'm at the beach this summer because the chapter I read was so good that I need some dedicated time to read it. But Joseph, thank you so much for joining us here on the show. I'm so glad to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

I am so, so grateful to be here. This is actually the first podcast I'm recording, first anything I'm recording after we hit the national bestseller list. So yes, like you are my rollout of that. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Let's go. I'm so pumped to hear that. I think that that is incredible. And I'm also gonna give a shout out to Daniel Crosby, he's the one that introduced us and connected us. So shout out, Daniel Crosby, for making this episode happen here today. Okay, Joseph, we've got a lot of really great things to talk about around your book. But before we dive into all of that, your journey, like here to get here, is I think it is humorous. We were talking before about some feedback about you being a very entertaining, entertaining writer. And when I was reading through just kind of your journey here, I thought that it was very fascinating. And one of the quotes that kind of stood out to me most was that you describe yourself as someone who almost wrote the Titanic. Like you were the last to get off, right? The Titanic of 2008. Can you, you know, before we get into kind of what the book entails and all of the good stuff there, can you talk to us a little bit about your journey here to personal finance?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yes. So it starts with literally no training in personal finance.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Like I have a great place to start.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

No, this was not my field. I do not have an NBA. And that's why I wrote the book the way I did it. I wanted it to be a helpful history for everyday people instead of being like this academic thing, right? I wanted people to be able to use it because I needed to figure out how to use it. And so this was more like I needed to figure it out. And in the process, learned all this history. So it's 2005. I'm uh a graduate student. My wife and I are both graduate students. And back then everyone said the lesson of history was clear. You get a mortgage because renting is throwing your money away. And instead of thinking like a historian, which by the way, I'm getting a PhD in history, but I'm doing something completely different, very lefty, you know, humanity stuff. And I said, Well, okay. And then a friend at church in 2000, it's 2005, we bought the house. 2008, a friend at church is leading a personal finance class for families. He wants us to come. I said no. He asked why. I said, I'm too smart. You know, like I just don't need this stuff. And then he said, Well, I'm scared it'll be like an empty room. Awkward. Would you come for basically a crowd? It's like, fine, I'll do this for a friend. We go, we go home, we like us, fill out a budget. My wife falls asleep. I stayed up the entirety of the night. I did not sleep. I paced the house. Who gave us a mortgage? And what idiot signed the oh, I signed the paperwork. I'm the idiot, right? And I could not fathom how I had gotten myself in this. I have no money, we have barely any income. What are we doing? And so we put our house on the market. It sells in a bidding war on a Saturday. The following Saturday, our neighbor puts her house on the market. It's too late. The 2008 crisis had hit. So we are the last people off the great financial crisis Titanic in 2008, by sheer luck and sheer common sense principles taught in a church finance class. And I thought, I was, I mean, I was basically humiliated. Like I thought I was so smart. And I got saved by something completely different. And so I realized the historian in me came out and said, okay, I need to understand not just why did I believe what I was told, but what is it Americans get told to do with their money and why do we believe it? And how much of it's true and how much of it has changed. And that led me down a 10-year-plus path of researching and self-experimentation on like, well, if they did this in the 1800s, can we do it now? And that led to the book.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Let's get right in and talk about the book. Walk us through maybe, you know, without disclosing too much of like the juiciness. Don't spoil it for me. Don't spoil it for me. But like give us just kind of an overview here of what are you writing about? What is it about? Let's start there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah. No, it's great. This is a book about what people were told to do with their money for 300 years and whether or not it worked and whether or not it stayed the same or changed. So we have this idea that, like, oh, you know, back in the olden days, which by the way, changes based on who you are. Like, my children think the 90s were the olden days. Oh, yeah. I that's literally what they call them. Daddy, in the olden days before cell phones.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

But, you know, whatever you think the olden days are, we have this idea that maybe everybody understood what to do, they were wise, grandma knew what to do, grandma wouldn't make dumb decisions, and then we are the people who are having to figure it out. But actually, what always worked was always changing. And so financial advice changes over time because the American economy changes over time. And so people are constantly adapting, kind of looking in the rearview mirror, trying to ask somebody else to tell them where the road ahead of them is going to go, which, of course, the road ahead of you is going to go in a different place. And so this is not a book, bluntly, for people who want to be told that there's just one thing that has always worked, and that's the only way to get ahead. Because actually, the real lesson of American history is there were lots of different ways people got ahead. And getting ahead is actually, believe it or not, getting easier, not harder, which by the way surprised me. That was not the result as a historian that I expected to find.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

And so it's a book about how Americans tried to understand what to do with their money and how to get ahead and how that changed over time. And then what can we learn from that? Can we apply lessons from the past? Can we take what they did and use it in our lives? Yeah. And hopefully it's a fun read because I did a lot of the, I tried a lot of the things that they tried in the past in the present, which was quite, you know, straining on a marriage. There's nothing like going to your wife and saying, hey, you know how people paid off their house in the 1800s? They rented out all the rooms. So there's this thing called Airbnb. And what if we rent all the rooms in our house? The line that was drawn at the stand was basically I would try anything that they tried in the past, in the present, until my wife told me under no circumstances. And like that was the line. It was ill-defined, but you knew when you'd hit it.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

We would not do that.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Right. I love that. I one shout out also to your wife. Yes, yes. What an amazing woman. But also, I just think it's I'm in awe of the boldness and level of risk taking right here for you. Of like, let me just let me experiment and try all of this to see. And you know, when we talk about myth busting information, some of what prompted your own, like, you know, buying the house, right? That renting, you know, you shouldn't rent. That's throwing away money. You should only like get a mortgage. Bye. Like, there's a lot of these myths, these messages that we hear growing up for family. And a lot of them are well-intentioned, these messages. I don't believe that it's with any intent to have people make bad financial decisions, but it's it's not informed. So I want to talk about the latte factor one.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Oh, okay. We're going.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

We're going there because I don't know if I've shared this with you. Many who are listening probably know this. My husband Clayton is a CFP. He started taking his CFP courses while we were in college. We dated in college. We were at App State. Oh, yes. Up in Boone, North Carolina. Yep. So he was taking his CFP classes. And I remember the day he told me about the latte factor. And as an avid coffee like consumer, this pissed me off.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

It's a rather interesting way to try to woo a woman is to say, I want you to look at that latte in your hand. I want you to never drink it again and also marry me.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Your husband has boldness. I respect it.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Oh, he is. Also, I probably was wearing, I don't know, he charmed me and he's an amazing man. I don't regret it. But also.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Does he work with the latte factor? I'm already in all of this man.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Also, this is a when I was reading this, I was, I felt hot. Like there was a heat that I was feeling. I was like, oh my gosh, you triggered some, you know, very like long memories there. But I want to talk about this. You know, the latte factor is something that we hear, we hear a lot. You've traced versions of this idea all the way back to, you know, tobacco and beer, like the 1800s. What is it about that give up this small thing and become rich framing that keeps just kind of coming back? And I'd love to hear just kind of your thoughts around that.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, no, it's one of the more interesting, surprising finds. I remember when I discovered it. The first one I discovered was about beer. And this is like in the 19 teens or 20s. And what you need to know to make sense of this is like beer is a lot cheaper than it used to be. Alcohol used to be quite expensive. Americans used to spend roughly 2% of GDP per year on alcohol. It was really not cheap to drink. And yet people still were drinking. And so somebody had a book that floated around, kind of industrial workers, but like, look, if you stopped drinking three beers a day, which again should tell you how much they were drinking, look how much money you would save if you invested that instead. Now, they actually weren't talking about the stock market, by the way. They were saying invest it in your bank and get interest on that, which used to be four or five percent. And it was four or five percent against zero income tax. So, like the math is not the math you and I would use today. Sure. But nonetheless, it was like, wow, look how much, and now it wasn't you'll be a millionaire. It's like you could maybe afford to buy a farm. Like that was actually the pitch. Right. Then I found it again in the 1860s with tobacco and also with lottery tickets. Now, let's be clear, there is a certain like actually, if you're not drunk at work in the industrial world, you will probably go farther, faster than if you're you know, drinking three beers a day is also a very good way to need your insurance policy. Right. So there's there was some logic to this. So it's just this old idea of what can I look around that I'm spinning on today and find that little bit of margin. Because at the end of the day, we kind of move our goalposts, we move our goalposts out to fit however big the field we have. And so if I have a paycheck that's this wide, I quickly find a way to make my lifestyle be that wide too, right? And now we then we look around and realize we're not saving, we're not investing. And so now we're trying to find those incremental improvements at the margins because none of us want to make the hard work of doing something in the middle. And so that's a universal human experience. Now, there's two takeaways there. Number one, I'm not disparaging the latte factor, and I'm not saying that people who are willing to cut out some whatever the thing is and invest that money, that's great. If that's how you want to find the way to actually put money in your 401k and that helps you flip the switch, all for it. But understand that what you're talking about are very small marginal improvements, and that may help you stay out of a ditch. It may keep you from going broke. It's not how most people got rich. Most people got rich not solving their own personal financial problems of their spending. That's how you avoid going broke. They got rich solving somebody else's problems. The really big money, I'm I would much rather you drink the latte and invest the money in your career so you get two and three promotions ahead, so that you can leap ahead by two and 300% of your current income and keep the latte. And again, I'm not disparaging the latte, but David Bach did a lot of good for people by getting people to think about their spending. But at the end of the day, if you really want to leap ahead from where you are to where you want to be and you want to get there before your 65th birthday, then you're gonna need to solve somebody else's problems, not just yours.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Yeah, I definitely need to let myself cool down a little bit, but I do intend on sending part of this clip over to Clayton and part of like that section also, also to him. I should cool down first so that I I frame it well-intentioned.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

This is not passive aggressive, it's just aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Right, right, right, right, which is also fun.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

No, I think, and so one of the things that I talked about in the book is at some point in American history, we started converging retirement spending with wealth building.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

And that's actually fairly new. At the very oldest, 100 years old. I'm not even sure it's that old. We started to tell people the only way to get rich is slow and steady. Actually, getting rich slow and steady is extremely new in American history. Why is that? Okay, you know the famous stat 99% of Warren Buffett's wealth came after his 65th birthday. That is a you know, because of the power of compounding interest. Okay, great. Love compounding interest, big fan. Here's the problem most Americans never live to see their 65th birthday. The average age in early America was in your early to mid-40s. It doesn't crest into your 50s until closing in on the 20th century. No one is expecting to live that long. So compounding needs time, and time is what Americans did not have. So that was not their strategy. And then, secondly, most Americans' wealth was in something other than the stock market because the stock market used to be very dangerous, was not a steady way to make returns. And so their wealth was in land. Well, land doesn't compound. So compounding interest for the long term is a really, really new phenomenon that we tell people is very old. And it's just not true. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't work. Don't hit me. I mean, you obviously, you know, they used to go to church in wagons. Maybe, maybe we should update some of our thinking. But just understand that just because it's been happening for the last few decades doesn't mean it has to happen for the next few decades. There are other ways to leap ahead. And I'll just round this out by saying the single greatest way to go ahead is to take some risk on yourself. And usually in the modern economy, that means putting a risk on your own personal growth in your career. Because if you give me somebody who's making 45,000 a year and they cut out lattes and they retire making 45,000 a year, I would much rather deal with the person who drinks the lattes and in a few years is making 90 and then 120 and then 150 and then 200. Because we should do a lot more with that money.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Yeah. And those lattes, I am here to attest, fully like support and are helpful in that career progression too.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

That shot of espresso, it is, I don't know if it's been proven. Maybe you can tell me the history on espresso and how beneficial it is for career progression. Hoping that my hypothesis is right, but I'm willing to bet that it is absolutely helpful.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Especially for your medical sales, because you're expected to show up with everybody's lattes when they show them.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah. So no shade cast on David Bach. He's done a lot of good to people's lives. Correct. And yet I want people to understand like the really big money is made solving big problems.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah. And I think that that's important for our listeners who are primarily like advisors, is that when we're communicating messages to our clients, right? There's a lot of just myths, right? A lot of history, you know, and there's some other ones that we've been into on the show with Dr. Jim Grubman talking about the great, you know, wealth transfer and like the shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve, the three generations kind of myth, like dispelling some of those. So I think like it's really good for advisors to be aware of like, hey, these maybe phrases or these expressions that like I use or to like talk about, like, where do they come from? How accurate are they? So whether that's you know, the latte factor, compound interest, or how to get rich in modern day, like I think that these are just all important things to be mindful of. So if we move on to my favorite topic, marriage, marriage, money, budgets. There's a line in this chapter, like it opens and it's kind of stuck with me because one, it's just very simple, but it's also like very true, right? And it says budgets are new, hating them isn't. Like so simple and so truth. That alone, I think, is gonna land a lot for you know, advisors who are listening who have watched like clients try and like fail at like budgeting, especially for like younger couples, if they're working like with younger couples here. But walk us through like maybe what's changed in the early 1900s and how did we end up with talking about monthly budgets?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yes. I say budgets are like cubist art, about a hundred years old and really hard to understand and follow. Like, really hard to follow. Like you're staring at it, I don't get it, but I'm supposed to, and like there's the social pressure of I should think this is cool. Right. Or in the case of budgets, like I should be doing this if I'm responsible. Okay, let's talk about where they come from. No Americans kept budgets for most of American history because it didn't exist. All accounting was backward looking, not forward looking. You tracked what had happened, you never projected what would happen. And then in the 19 teens and 20s, around that period, a group of progressives kind of start founding what's called home economics programs. And there's this obsession in the progressive era with accounting for everything, moralizing everything, and especially counting for things that are moral. Like if you can count everything, then you can moralize it, right? Even better. And so they come up with this idea that if the family, what's wrong with the working family today? They're not tracking everything. And so they create these things called budgets. They're called spending plans originally. Some at some point we transfer the term to budget, but it's the same thing. It's like, here's how much you make or project you'll make, here's everything you'll spend on. And they're god-awful complex. And it's like got 60 some odd categories and subcategories, and some had subcategories. And I kid you not, because I have held both in my hands. They are more complex with these budgets that are for the average working family in Pittsburgh steel mills, they are more complex than the actual accounting book ledgers that John Rockefeller used to become the richest man in the world. I mean, I've seen both with my own eyes, and one is very simple and one is very complicated. And so one woman famously complained that these people expected her to account for everything down to her last string beat. And by the way, they're doing it with pencil and paper, and they're doing it, doing the arithmetic on the side. So this, these poorer women who were, by the way, expected to do all this, she's a hried human spreadsheet. She's just like, she's got kids pulling on her, she's got food on an actual wood-burning stove, and she's supposed to account for all this. Okay, and these progressives are like, well, once they quantify it all, then they'll know what to do. What they found was when they ran flush around to the families who were keeping a spending plan and those who were not, there was almost no difference in how much they would save. In fact, the most common reason people said they would save money was avoiding liquor in both whether they had a spending plan or not. Okay. So this idea that this drop-down menu on your QuickBooks screen is going to be how your family gets ahead. It's draining energy from you. It's at now, there's some benefit to like the family getting on the same page. Like a husband and a wife sitting on a going, I believe we should spend this, not that. And having those tough conversations is that is the value of those documents. Here's the thing, you don't have to have the documents to have the value. The thing that works over and over throughout history the best was something exceedingly simple. The simpler the system, the more likely people were and are to keep it. And so the system that I personally prefer, and it's not necessarily what everybody should do, I'm just telling you what I prefer, is three buckets and three buckets only. There's bucket one is debt repayments slash investments wherever you are. Like if you're on the debt side, you got to pay off the debts. If you're on the investment side, but that just happens first and preferably in a way you never click a button. The money just goes where it's supposed to go. It's on autopilot. It comes out the day you pay get paid or the day after, you never see it. You know, if it's your investments for 401ks or if it's your debt, whatever. Pay it off. However, you're going to set up to pay it. You don't touch it. The second thing is long term spending and savings. Your mortgage or your rent, which you know is coming out on a certain day, your insurance payments, those kind of those bigger things, those ticket items that catch us by surprise because somehow the rent was due like the same day it was due last month. I didn't know that was happening.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

It's amazing how that happens.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

And so just move all of that money into a high yield on. Savings account that allows you to pay, you know, automated bills from it. And so, and again, that happens with that. You set it up one time, you never see it again, and the money just goes out the way it's supposed to. And also you're getting interest on it while it's sitting there. And then everything else that's left, just spend all of it because you've invested or paid down your debt, you've put away your big bills, and whatever is there, like just spend it. Now, if you get to zero, you need ramen noodles. That's why we have ramen noodles, and so keep them. But the family should be able to look at their account balance and say, this is what we can spend this week or two weeks or month or whatever, and not be stressed by it. And the simpler it is statistically, the more likely people are to follow it, the more likely it is to last. And honestly, you know, you probably get paid every two weeks to every month. So there's only so much damage you can do in 14 to 30 days. Yeah. And if you do go down to zero and there's more days left, that's a good point for clients to have a conversation with themselves, with each other, with the advisor to say, okay, what went wrong? Like, why is it the 17th and we're out of money? Okay, well, maybe we shouldn't have gone on that trip or those concert tickets or whatever. But I'd rather have that intervention point mid-month with the investments are already in place and the debts are already paid and the bills are already set up, then have this 17-line drop-down menu subcategorization that you're never gonna follow. And neither are your clients.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

No, they're not. And I think from a behavior change standpoint, like when we look at just the relationship with money, when we look at in addition to how we interact, like how we do money, you know, the simpler systems are, the more likely, as you said, it's true. Even when we look at things from a psychological standpoint and behavior change, we're more likely to follow simple processes and simple habits, especially if it's new, especially if it's new. So you talk about something that I also say to my kids, to my clients out in just the world. And that is marriage being one of, not one of, marriage being the most important financial decision. And you say in history, Joseph, I've been itching to get to this point in our conversation. Tell me all about it. Why is marriage the most important financial decision in history?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

You do not choose the family you start with. So the family you start is the single most important financial decision of your life. The oldest financial advice in American history that I can find in every era and that does not change. It's one of the few pieces of financial advice that does not change over time, is that the most important decision of your life is not picking a stock, it's picking a spouse. We seem to think today that somehow that is out of order and that we should get our financials and our careers and everything going and then look around and decide if we want to get married or not. That just flies in the face of all the evidence. It's not to say that some people don't get ahead that way. It's just to say that that's not actually what people did that worked. There is a card game in the 1840s that families would play together. Families would sit around the table and play this card game. And it was basically a card. You would pick out qualities for a spouse, and the cards would have different qualities, and you were like trading in and trying to get the best qualities. Now, why are parents playing this game with their kids? They're trying to teach them that like maybe the bad breath card is okay if you're also able to get the work ethic card.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Right.

unknown 25:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

So like parents are trying so hard to be cool in the 1840s, right? That they're trying to teach their kids this new way of like, oh, we could talk about it this way. It was so important to get your kids to understand the financial implications of a good marriage. Okay, does that hold today? Yes, it does in spades. Marriage confounds absolutely every category you can throw at it for most important financial decision. Married black men earn more than single white men. Married women earn two times what single women earn. Married men at retirement are worth 10 times what single or divorcement are worth. Now, let's go back and look, if some of that's commonsensical, right? So let's think about women. The number of times that my wife has had to call me, by the way, including last night, and said, I hate to make this call, but we had this thing come up at work and I need to go over to this other location and solve this problem. And I was like, okay, I'll go get the kids. I'll do this. We're gonna eat Chick-fil-A, just so you know. Yeah, you will. Let's understand, you know, the cost-benefit analysis of this decision is gonna involve dad is a really bad cook, but I will feed the children and I will get them to bed. And believe it or not, when she showed up, the house is handled because that's what I'm allowed. Having someone there for both of you to say, hey, I need this moment that is sounds really small now, but when you compound those out over my career, they're gonna pay out in the long term. That's why married women make more than single women. And the same for married men, right? Married men earn more. By the way, this holds up for same-sex couples too. So marriage is a superpower because capitalism is a team sport. And the more we see all these statistics about how young people aren't buying homes at the same rate they used to, they're not saving at the same rate that the these kinds of things. Well, guess what? That actually corresponds to the delay of marriage. Because, and I was I had a wonderful, I was on a podcast with some millennials, super smart, sharp young people, and their audience is all millennials. And they said, Look, like we got married. This is a husband and wife couple doing it, and like that's how we were able to afford a house. But a lot of their audience are singles. And so one of these things leads to the other. And so we need to understand marriage is a vital part of your finances. So, number one, if you are married, you should invest in that. Like you should make your marriage starting today the best marriage it's going to ever be, whatever it was. And then, secondly, if you're gonna get married, take that investment very seriously, but don't like look for optimal, look for look for the right kind of person with the right kinds of characteristics that can go in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

There is no perfect play the card game. Yes. We need to bring this card game back to life.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yes. I mean, there's your million-dollar idea.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

No, you and I, I'll share in that. Like we can jointly do this like together. So there's the follow-up to the book, is the card game.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Yeah, I love it. How to get rich with a spouse card game.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

So, anyway, all that to say, it's really, really important to take it seriously. And I understand that for financial advisors who are talking to people to help them understand the importance of their marriage, because there's a lot of wrecked finances that spring from wrecked marriages. And so maybe the best financial decision some of your clients can make is getting their marriage on a good track.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Yeah, listen, I mean, I'm throwing my hands up like preach over here. So Clayton and I, we got married 22, 22 years old. And same story. Like we afforded a house very young because we were married. It was both of us. And we have talked to both of our kids who are 12 and 13, like along the way. Yes, Clayton earns more than I do right now, but we have talked about it's not like about who earns more. Oh, well, this pays more. Like we've been able to get there, each of us in our own careers, because we've had the other supporting, you know, supporting us. Myself, it's been, you know, me supporting Clayton at times, and vice versa, him, you know, taking some steps back and allowing me to pursue different paths. And so I think just that awareness, like that realization, it's not like, oh, you know, the husband has a better job. He's in like the tech industry, he's an exec and he's just got a better job. Well, what allows him to, you know, be able to go and pursue that, it's likely because there is somebody on the home front supporting or a partner that is supporting the ability to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

And that, by the way, is exactly how it has been for most of American history. So we have this very wrong view of history that women started working very recently. That is absolute malarky. It is not true. I am, I will die on this hill. Women have been working for all of American history. Now, here's where we get mistaken. Dual incomes are not new. What happened though was that much of women's income was what we would call today self-employment income, what would be 1099 income today. So they're basically making money in ways that aren't from an employer for most of American history. And so there were all these, I was talking about these progressives earlier, and they would go investigate families that supposedly, based on the husband's income, should not be able to survive. How are these workers in these factories? We know what they earn, we know what it costs to buy food, we know what the rent is, they should basically be able to pay their bills and nothing else. And they would go through and find that some many of these families were saving money every month. And they were, how? And they found out it was the women's income. What the traditional family strategy for most of American history was the husband would earn enough for the family to survive, and the wife's income was how you would thrive. So it's like one's job is to survive, the other helps us thrive. This is how we're gonna leap ahead. Her income is how we're gonna afford to pay down the house. Her income is how we're gonna afford to put the kids through school. Her income is gonna get us from where we are to where we can go. And that was normal. And by the way, when the stay-at-home wife movement got started, it was husbands writing angry letters to the newspapers saying, Who told my wife to stay home and not work? Because we need her income. This is how our family's gonna get ahead. So we have this illusion that something in the 1960s flipped and now women work. No, women were always working, always earning. And families, because we have this wrong idea that America is this place of wild individualism. It may be true now, it was not true in the past. Individualism meant us incorporated. It was about getting ahead for me and my spouse and our kids. And Americans were obsessed with keeping their families moving forward. It was not about me and I incorporated, it was about us incorporated. And so I hope we will help people return to that idea of like, this is both of your income. This is both of your investment portfolio. This is the two of you together building something. And that was the norm in American history.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, I always tell Clayton and sometimes the kids too. And Clayton, he'll echo this. He does a good job, but you know, we'll say, like, yeah, your dad might earn more, but it takes mommy not spending all of it in order for us to get ahead, right? You can earn as much as you want, but if and it's true, like if one or both parties are like spending also like all of it, it really doesn't matter. Like you're not gonna get ahead. So every now and then Oracle will be like, yeah, but your mom doesn't spend it all. And that matters. Like that's equally as important as the earning piece, you know, as well. Okay, hey, so I want to talk about joint accounts before our time is up. There's a study that you referenced about couples with joint accounts being happier and less likely to break up. And that the effect gets stronger the less money really the couple has. Can we talk about this? Like, what's going on here for these couples?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Believe it or not, joint checking accounts are a reform movement from feminists. So if I told you what is the feminist view of finance, you would say his account and her account, because I'm my own person and I don't need a man, or whatever layer on whatever cultural conversation is going to happen there. That is not true. It was feminists in the early 20th century who were demanding, making it a big moral reform movement. Husbands, you better get in a joint of checking account with your wife because what the older system was that men would have accounts in their names, then the wife would have money over in her account, either in an account with her name or just keeping it in cash. And what women's rights reformers were demanding was that husbands and wives have joint accounts so that the wife could see what was going on. She could understand what was coming in, she could see what was going out, and she could see all of the financial picture, not part of it. And believe it or not, men kind of went along with this. Like in the early to mid-20th century, men started going, that's yeah, that's a that's a better system. And so by the middle of the 20th century, men and women families are having joint combined finance accounts. Then in the 70s, there's uh, you know, kind of post-Betty for Dan, there's this, because of the credit, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and all of these very true idea that women could not, once they were married, get credit in their own name. Some of these reforms somehow got bundled up with the idea that if they're earning their own money, they should keep their money separate as a rights issue. But like two generations before, women's rights advocates would have been screaming, What are you crazy? You need to join this money. This is how both of you work together to get something accomplished. And so I would say over and over again, and I would struggle to come up with a study that shows that it's better for husbands and wives to keep separate accounts. Even today, men and women in marriage relationships, and I think this is actually, I have to go back and check it, may be true for same-sex couples as well, who have joint finances, they save more, they have higher net worths, they are less prone to divorce, and it's noticeably different. It's not like barely different. There's a strong correlation. I can't prove that it's causation, but at some point you get enough correlation you start to wonder if you even need to, you know, press that case. Why? Because I go back to my statement from earlier. Capitalism is a team sport. And having a team that's on the same page that knows this playbook and knows if you're gonna go that way, I'm gonna do this, and that's gonna work together as opposed to doing things that work separately. Sometimes separate accounts can look good for a long time until you start to realize where the mistakes are. And sometimes it's too late to solve it then. Joint accounts, over and over, overperform in history and in the present for successful marriages and successful finances.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

So I can validate some of that from just on the therapy side of things, like working with couples, those that have joint accounts, there's greater transparency, greater visibility. That's usually going to impact the level of trust that partners have with each other. We're not having to guess or wonder. Going back to also what you said about simplicity, it also helps to keep things simple. And when things are simple, there's likely going to be less tension.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

And greater follow through with whatever it is, you know, from a goal standpoint. So I love that from a history standpoint, you're able to name that, you're able to, you know, highlight and talk about that because it is something that when working with couples on like the practitioner side, that's something that I feel that like I see, right? Is that couples that have joint accounts, they work better together and for a multitude of reasons. So I'm all for like the feminist movement. I would never say, like, oh, Betty Ferdinand and all those that came after, like that was like terrible. It's just one of those like taken out of context.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

I think it's one of the, yeah, I'm all for like I'm so glad we have most of the reforms of the 70s around women's rights and finances are all good. Yeah. I'm all for all of them as a father of two daughters and as a historian and as a person. But that's one where I hope your audience can tell their clients, especially for women who are struggling with like, well, shouldn't I have my own money? Shouldn't I have my own accounts in marriage? Well, actually, do you want to do what the women's rights movement argued women should demand of their husbands? It should be full transparency and accountability. So we're, if you're in this marriage, you're in this marriage. This is an us incorporated. This is not a temporary partnership between two separate companies. You know, we are forming a joint corporation here, and you are an equal partner. And part of being an equal partner is everybody gets to look at the books. And so I just want to really emphasize for people that the true women's rights history of this is that is joint checking accounts. And there's a reason it works, right? Because it's better for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah, I'm with you. We'll get on that soapbox. We can die on that hill together, Joseph. I'll be right there, right there with you. All right, Joseph. So wrapping things up, sadly.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Well, we can do this again. I'll do it again.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

We won't just have to do this again. Let's talk a little bit about where can listeners, where can they find you, where can they purchase your book, maybe even like a little bit of what's next. You working on anything? Are you allowed to are there any secrets there that you're allowed to spill? How can our audience connect with you and learn more about you?

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Well, thank you. And this is a wonderful conversation. Uh, so the book is called How to Get Rich in American History. It's about 300 years of financial advice. Very excited that it's hit the national bestseller lists now. Uh, and we're hopeful to keep that momentum. If you want to find more about me, josephmorebooks.com is my substack, which is kind of my website. I'm on all the social media platforms at that handle, Joseph Moore Books. The book has 25 lessons from history that kind of stood the test of time, like what really worked in every era, and seven things that failed in every era to avoid. And hopefully people can find in the book, which is available for sale everywhere. Although I will say we've sold out at one point on Amazon, Barnes Noble Books A Million, and Bookshop.org. So we were scrambling to get supply during launch week. So thankfully we're past that. It should be available on Amazon and most other booksellers now. But if your audience wants to check it out, it's available in all the places books are sold. And if you are curious about the book but not ready to commit to that, josephmorebooks.com is my Substack, and you can get chapter one emailed to you free in your inbox just by subscribing. There's no cost, totally free. And that way you can read the first chapter and see if you want to want to read more.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I love that. We'll make sure that we include those links in the show notes to make things easier for everyone who is listening. Thank you, Joseph, so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing all of your research, all of your wisdom here today. We're so, so, so grateful for you. And thank you to all of you who have been listening. Thank you for allowing Joseph and I into your ears and into your mind today. I hope that you found this conversation equally as interesting, valuable, and maybe even a little entertaining, just as I did. If this resonated with you and if you'd like to keep the conversation going, Joseph shared where you can find him or you can connect with him. You can connect with me if you want more Ashley Kwame in your life. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, one of the, I think maybe one of two Ashley Kwamis that are there, at least as of right now. But connect with me where I share weekly insights around the human side of planning. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at www.beondthefp.com or check out our YouTube channel at Beyond the Plan Solutions. We'll make sure that we include those notes there. And make sure, more importantly, make sure that you follow the show, Planning and Beyond, wherever you listen, so that you never miss an episode like this one. Remember, my friends, as you go out into your week, that finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Planning and Beyond. I hope you found today's insights valuable and inspiring for both your practice and your personal growth. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more advisors like you who are dedicated to making a difference. For more resources, tips, and to continue the conversation, visit our website at beyondthefp.com. You'll find articles, tools, and information about upcoming episodes designed to support your journey and practice. Stay connected with us on social media and never miss an update. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. And remember, the best way to grow is to keep learning and sharing. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going.