Ep 18 - Mady Mills - Why Billionaires Panic, What Men Need to Hear, and the One Account that Buys Your Financial Freedom

The most important financial decision you ever make is who you marry.

An IRA is the most important account that a woman can have because it's individual.

And so make sure that you have that IRA, but also making sure that you know what the finances are.

And I know the great wealth transfer, men die earlier than women.

If you're a woman married to a man, don't wait until the man is on his deathbed to know what your financial situation is.

Hello, friends.

This is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing.

So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be.

Today's guest is someone who makes the complex world of money and markets not only accessible, but actually pretty enjoyable to follow.

Maddie Mills is an on-air host at Yahoo Finance, where she anchors the daily show Catalyst, covering everything from economic headlines and stock market moves to the financial stories that actually matter in your real life.

Before Yahoo, Maddie worked at Bloomberg, co-hosting a daily market show and contributing to Bloomberg Originals, and she's also produced award-winning journalism for the New York Times and The Cut at New York Magazine.

But what sets Maddie apart, and why I'm really excited for this conversation, is her ability to bring human clarity to the complete and utter chaos of financial news.

Whether she's breaking down the latest CPI report or talking about how Gen Z thinks about money, she is sharp, calm, and deeply tuned in to how real-world people are navigating today's financial world.

In this episode, we talk about how she made the leap from politics to finance, what she's learned from interviewing billionaires and everyday investors alike, and why the fear of not having enough money is more universal than you might think.

We also get into her personal story, growing up with financial volatility, how she thinks about money in relationships, and the one financial move she thinks every woman should make.

And she even has some advice for our male listeners at the end.

This is one of those conversations that goes well beyond the headlines, so I am pleased to offer you an extensive conversation with Maddie Mills.

have worked for some incredibly cool companies and big names in the finance sector, right?

You've worked with Bloomberg, New York Times, and now you're with Yahoo Finance.

When did you initially say, I want to be involved in this emotionally hectic and chaotic space of reporting to a mass audience about money on a daily basis?

I knew at a pretty young age that I wanted to be a journalist.

I grew up in a household of journalists.

My mom was a news director.

So I was kind of around that newsroom and broadcast environment.

And it was when broadcast was still really cool, like when local news was thriving.

I was in a newsroom at that young age and just seeing how cool it was to have breaking news happen and everyone freak out.

And so I knew I wanted to do that.

And then I started my career covering politics.

And after you cover politics, everything else feels so easy and so straightforward.

So once, once I, my first election was the 2016 election.

I worked at the New York Times

and election night alone, I was literally in the office almost 24 hours a day, the week leading up to it.

And then completely overnight into the election results, I went home at four in the morning and was back in the office at seven the next day, pretty much like it was a crazy time period, obviously.

And so then when I ended up at Bloomberg and I started to have an opportunity to see that covering finance could be just as intellectually stimulating, but also offer a better work-life balance.

That was very appealing to me.

And also, as nuanced as finance is, and I'm excited to hear your thoughts on that too, it can feel more straightforward than politics, especially in that particular election cycle and time period.

So it felt like a relief to me to be able to cover something that was very, the stocks went up or down today.

That is the news.

And when a market closes, you go home.

I didn't know know that you had actually started with politics.

And that's fascinating because even though I'm refreshed to hear you say that you find talking about finance less political or a better work-life balance or, you know, just a more optimal profession.

But for me, every time that I talk about anything timely in finance, it gets very quickly conflated with politics.

I haven't quite found a way to divorce it.

So when we find that markets are very consistently lumped in with politics, rightfully or not rightfully, especially just after election years, how do you approach reporting to a mass audience about markets when everything

you say feels politically charged?

I got really good advice early in my career that if everyone from all sides of the political aisle is mad at you, then you're doing the right thing as a journalist.

And I have just had that restrain in my head.

Dean Buckay said that, who was the editor-in-chief of the New York Times when I was there.

And I have never forgotten that because it helps you stomach the negative feedback that is a constant of having a public-facing role and your work being consumed by a mass audience, to your point.

I also feel like because I spend a lot of time talking to wealthier, more institutional investors, they do not care about the political environment.

That is noise and my investments are a separate entity from that.

If anything, they just want gridlock because then nothing can change the fundamental story that is driving their investment thesis.

And part of what I've tried to do on my social media content is like break down that barrier for folks.

Cause of course, as normal everyday consumers and more retail investors, it can feel like the politics is everything because it is such an important part of our lives.

But then when when I talk to you kind of whale investors and they're so dismissive of that environment, I feel like I kind of have a desire to express that disconnect to folks, especially because if you don't like the current political environment, well, maybe it's a good reminder that institutional investors, they're not worried about that.

So maybe it's a sign that you shouldn't be either, that you don't have to worry that your 401k is going away overnight because someone won an election without invalidating how people feel about politics and the economy.

I see that and understand what you're saying, that validation becomes such a key part of talking about finance is I have this old belief that nobody ever wakes up and thinks, today I want to be wrong.

I want to be wrong about my beliefs.

I want to be wrong about how I feel about money.

So are there any ways that you talk to a general audience as part therapist, part kind of everything's going to be okay?

How do you adopt that tone when talking to an audience?

Or is that even in your mind at all when you report on this stuff?

That's where I feel really lucky that I have had a very varied personal financial background and a lot of financial volatility because I do think it helps me maintain an empathy-first approach to that storytelling.

Like, I don't know that every single content creator or business journalist feels the need to throw a line into their videos where they say, and this may not feel true to you, just throwing a line in like that where you say, I understand that the fact that inflation actually hasn't gone up that much in the past couple of months, that might feel crazy to you.

Or the fact that we're not actually in a recession yet, that might feel crazy because in your household, you may feel like you're in one.

It's important to me to add those lines in because I know when I was in a tough financial spot, I would have really valued hearing a quote-unquote expert throw in a line like that.

Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense.

And I appreciate that.

And it leads me to question this idea of you've established yourself, unlike many I talk to, you've established yourself both in traditional media and in social media.

And I kind of view the two a little separately.

When you're with Yahoo Finance or when you're with Bloomberg, do you come at that type of reporting and conversation differently than you come at your own social media style?

And if so, how do the styles differentiate themselves?

The similarity between the two is always the tenets of journalism, truth first, asking good questions.

You know, you are the conduit for information for the audience.

It's not about you.

The you is me in this scenario.

It's not about me.

It's about getting information that people need.

And so I try to keep that as kind of my core regardless.

I do notice that, especially now as I'm anchoring, I anchor two hours of live programming in the mornings and I find that I have kind of an anchor voice that I end up with by the end of those two hours that I don't love to have in the social content because it really ruins the kind of relatable.

We're just talking.

I'm just a girly in New York City when I'm like very anchor mode.

So I try to code switch my personality a little bit just to make sure that I'm maintaining kind of a relatability and that the content is accessible.

Cause if the goal of spending so much of my personal time on the social part is to reach people with information that's helpful, I don't want to block people from that by being a little bit too buttoned up professional.

I want to try to be a little bit more just like my normal self, but I don't know if I always accomplish that.

And you do not have to answer this.

I'm putting you on the spot a little bit with this one, but are you allowed to be your normal self or be as authentic as you'd like to be when you're working with the traditional finance outlets?

Like, are there times when you'd like to be able to either ask somebody something that's on your mind personally and you feel like it would be good for the audience, but you know that that might be a challenge to that network's political alignment or values.

You're always thinking audience first.

If I have an interview with a lawmaker, you know, and my particular audience on Yahoo is a more institutional investor.

So what does that audience need to hear out of this conversation?

And then if time allows and you have more time, then you can throw in questions that are a little bit more general consumer as well.

But I also do think it's really important for journalists to maintain a lack of bias across the board.

And so I don't really feel compelled to change that or be more upfront about my personal beliefs on social media or anything like that, just because it's important to maintain that credibility.

And you kind of put yourself to the side ever so slightly in effort to put the truth and the story at the forefront as your main goals.

How much time, and this is a selfish question, because obviously, like, as I'm starting to go into the podcast space, especially when I get the opportunity to interview somebody like you and when I get to interview somebody like you for an audience, I get very particular, obviously, about the questions.

And you start to think a lot about, okay, we have X amount of time and I only get to ask a certain amount of questions.

And my guess is that you get far less time in either of these spaces to speak and connect with certain people.

What is your process for coming up with the right questions for a subject of an interview?

I mean, I would love to hear your process too, because these are such great questions.

And I know you've done such a great job of kind of threading in my bio to your questions, which also helps lead the conversation.

So I think there's a lesson in that too, in the way that you're approaching it.

All unintentional.

All unintentional, Maddie.

I'm just, I'm just winging it.

I love it.

No, it's awesome.

It's awesome.

It's like a perfect, it's a perfect way to give the audience context without making me say like it's awesome.

But

yeah, that's the majority of my job and like what my brain is constantly thinking about is how to make every single question as good as possible, as concise as possible, as useful to the audience as possible.

That's the only thing that I really am spending time on.

We have our morning meeting at 6 a.m.

and go over what's going to be in the shows.

And then from 6.30 to 9, it's just writing the questions.

And I know who's going to be on the day before.

So I can do some prep in the afternoons when I'm just constantly reading research and everything.

But I try to structure my interviews.

You have usually six minutes.

So I try to go, I have like a big to small rule.

So you try to start a little bit more broad and then get more and more and more specific as it, as it goes down.

So you start, where's the Magnificent Seven going?

And then, well, what about Amazon?

And what about this very specific thing about Amazon's retail business and their exposure to China?

And then you kind of end tighter.

I have little tricks I use for when I don't have enough time to prep that I can rely on of like.

a good kind of format for a question is to say, to what extent is this true?

That I noticed has made people be tighter in their answers because if you just say how are the magnificent seven doing they could talk for 20 minutes and i only have six minutes so i have to get specific if i say also what inning are we in of the trade war that's what i spend the majority of my time thinking about is just how to ask the best possible question well and to what extent do you work as a team and yes yes yes i did that yes

see look at that and it's such a learning you've got to learn you've got to learn quickly perfect for broadcast i love it i really love that element of the job.

I love talking through my questions with other people.

And in particular, I had.

a mentor at Bloomberg, Scarlett Thu, who's one of their anchors.

And she was the first business anchor who I worked with.

We had a show during the pandemic at Bloomberg, which is where I learned all of this because also I was so political.

So I wasn't as much enmeshed in markets as you need to be to anchor finance shows.

So she taught me everything I know and also how to ask good questions.

And her and I would would go over every single guest, every question.

What's she asking?

What am I asking?

So that you know where the segment is going.

Now I also work with my executive producer has thoughts.

The producer on each segment might have thoughts on beats to hit in the interview.

Another thing that may be interesting, the graphics that get pulled up are tied to a specific question.

So if a producer made a specific graphic, then I want to make sure that I ask that question because they spent all this time making this graphic.

But then if the interview goes in a different direction, sorry to the producer, we maybe didn't have time to get the graphic in.

So all of those little things go into what you're asking and when.

And then the clock is ticking and you have to hit a commercial break in a certain time and all of that kind of plays into what ends up actually happening live.

And you mentioned that Scarlett taught you a lot.

What specifically did she teach you?

What are some things that you have taken from her that you still embody in your work and your approach to your work today?

The biggest thing was making markets and finance really feel accessible to me.

I remember one of the first stories we really worked on together was the downfall of WeWork.

And that was such a great intro to covering finance because it felt like corporate gossip in a way.

So that kind of got me hooked, like, oh, this is interesting.

And then I'm learning about EBITDA and 10K and going public and a unicorn company and all the different things that come out in an earnings release through that nugget of a story.

But she always made me feel like, oh, you can understand this.

This is just a story.

This is just a company that had a downfall.

Like this is, this is just as much a story as an election.

And that accessibility was super helpful.

I was looking at some of the interviews that you personally have done, and you've got some pretty big names and you've gotten to speak to some really influential people, both in politics and in finance.

Are there any that you remember that were particularly useful either to you or to your audience.

It reminds me of a little bit of some of what I've heard you talk about in your work, Tyler, and on the podcast too, where sometimes the richest, quote unquote, most powerful people can give the most direct and seemingly simple advice.

So I interviewed David Booth, who's a billionaire, a couple of months ago, and he was like, stop worrying about the stock market crash, guys.

Just ask for a raise.

Have you asked for a raise recently?

And I was like,

you know, that is not what you would expect.

you know that's that's not what you would expect you know i i'm thinking that he's going to be like

you should have a triple levered play on european defense stocks because of the trump administration pulling back on government spending you know and he's like yeah maybe you should try to get a side hustle you know and this is like a guy in his 70s you know that was another moment for me where it clicked on the one hand of course it's complicated it's serious like it's your financial future you should take it seriously but on the other it doesn't have to be so hard sometimes.

And I'm always trying to figure out where I land between those two.

Is it this complicated thing where I need to treat it like a really complex and important part of our investor audience's lifestyle?

Or is it something that's a little bit more accessible and not scary and really anyone could do it?

Yeah, I am always so torn on that one too, because what I, well, I'm not torn in the view.

The view to me is very clear.

And it's just like Booth was saying of this actually can be as simple as it sounds.

And even though it's cliche, there is a reason why Buffett's estate plan is to direct the trustees to leave 90% in a low-cost SP 500 fund and 10% in a money market fund.

Like if one of the wealthiest, single greatest investors ever to walk the face of this earth is directing that the entire estate be left in two funds, the equivalent of two funds, risk on and risk off, I will never advocate for making it more complicated than that.

But where I'm interested to obviously hear your take on this too, is I do empathize deeply with the fact that money has always been treated as a very serious topic in our world.

Like, we can't like people don't like laughing about money.

Like, we don't like joking about money.

We don't like taking it lightly.

Like, it's a big deal and it affects people's livelihoods.

So,

the more people with whom I connect, the more I realize like it's a real fear.

It's a real desire to make it as complex as I think people believe it needs to be.

Because as I know you know from being in this space a lot, this is also what the wealth world is telling us very frequently is there are so many people that daily are saying, look, it is that complex.

And we do need private equity and we do need better asset allocation and you do need to have access to commodities and crypto, et cetera.

So are there any ways that you can think of where you or the media outlets for which you've worked have really kind of tried as a mission to make this more accessible or dare I say, more fun?

Yeah, the fun part, the fun part, who's to say, you know what I mean?

That's a good, that's a good one.

You know, maybe, maybe that's the podcast, Tyler.

Maybe that's,

you know, maybe that's a podcast, but it's such a great point that I have honestly never thought of.

I've thought, how can I make this more engaging and understandable?

But I don't know if I've ever bridged the gap to making it actually just like entertainment and fun.

Yahoo Finance does such an incredible job at that, of making content that is really accessible, engaging retail investors.

We have a great community platform where retail investors can log on and talk to each other about, you know, their investments and ask us questions about what we're hearing from sources, which is helpful.

And we also have a really large personal finance arm, which not many business outlets have.

And I think that is nice to have like the duality of both.

And they're obviously separate teams, but other outlets that kind of cater to a very small niche group of professional investors don't feel the need to have that kind of personal finance content because that's not their audience.

Like when your audience is the richest investors in the world, they don't really click on the personal finance content as much and i think this ties this idea together is that one of the reasons i think the mass audience of listeners is looking for more complexity is that and you know this as well as anybody is that not just traditional media but social media especially now is bombarding people with here are the secrets of the wealthy.

Here are the secrets of the rich.

Here's what the rich are doing that you're not doing.

And it sells, right?

Everyone gets really excited about this idea that they're missing something and there's some wealth secret out there.

And I mean, this has obviously been existent as long as the concept of greed and fear have been existent.

But do you notice throughout your connections, throughout your interviews, throughout your network, do you notice anything that wealthy people are doing differently that transcends the basic contribute to your 401k and make sure you get that company match?

You know, spend less than you make.

Have you noticed anything that you say, well, you know, they are on to something here?

How similar the money fears are, regardless of the net worth of the person I'm talking to.

So that's the similarity that I hear throughout is that there is sort of a level of fear from everyone, that they're a decision away from losing.

everything.

And I can only imagine how true that feels to you, Tyler, after like the hundreds of thousands of conversations you've had with people throughout your career.

Well, I was just going to say you hit upon a universal truth.

So just know you're, you're already on to it that, and I hope everyone hears this one loud and clear that, you know, Maddie is pointing to probably the single deepest truth I've ever heard about money is that even when I'm talking to people with billions of dollars, quite literally, billions of dollars, the fear still exists.

And it might not be a fear that the money runs out as much as the lifestyle that someone has come to know and want to secure at all costs somehow expires, that something happens where that person has to say goodbye to it.

And again, that can be with 100,000 or 100 billion, and there's still that same fear exists.

Have you noticed any other similarities across demographics that you said, oh, like I didn't think the rich thought about things this way, or I didn't think someone with only this amount of money would have thought about things this way?

Everyone's afraid that their call is going to be wrong.

That, oh, yeah, I shouldn't have bought the Tesla dip.

Whoopsies.

I didn't realize that Elon Musk was going to be a member of the White House.

Or, oh, darn, I didn't buy Tesla.

See,

you cannot, you know, see, you can't dissociate politics from personal finance.

There we go, right?

Right, right.

But then I don't know.

Then I talked to some people who are like, I talked to a guy the other week who was buying some triple-levered Chinese tech ETF.

and had made a ton of money off of it.

And I was like, well, that's, that's great that you did.

You could have just as easily really lost a lot, but it's great that in that particular case, it worked out.

So those are kind of like the very idiosyncratic examples of things that I hear sometimes from wealthier people.

But the wealthiest of the wealthy, they're also like not telling me the very specific things that they're doing, you know, like David Boots not coming on and being like, oh, here's a cool thing I did last week.

He's telling me to ask for a raise and telling the audience to ask for a raise.

I don't know.

I think that's pretty good guidance overall.

I think, I think that's one of those truth bombs that nobody really wants to hear as much as like it really can be that simple.

Of if like the national average right now is that if you job hop, it's 10 to 20% raise versus you're sitting there year in, year out, trying to get just a cost of living adjustment, aka what some companies call a raise.

So that, I don't know, I like that.

I think that's a pretty good secret of the rich, if you ask me.

Yeah, I guess maybe it's the idea of things you can control too.

I've heard you talk about that, and that's resonated with me in your content.

There is something nice about not worrying about, you know, the SP 500, because unfortunately, I don't have control over that, but I do maybe have control over my career to a degree.

I don't know.

I'd like to think we do.

So going beyond kind of the people to whom you've already had access, if you could right now have your dream interview and you could have access to any one person for half an hour, whether it was in politics or personal finance, who would that be?

What would be so cool to me is to be able to have a panel where I bring together 10 random people, small business owners, like mom and pop style, just regular people, and Warren Buffett.

And that's it.

And we just talk.

And that's it.

Because of exactly what we're talking about, the advice that you would hear from a small business owner and Warren Buffett may not actually be that different.

That type of discussion would really highlight.

that it's just maybe not as hard.

And I think maybe Buffett will learn some stuff from small business owners and vice versa, you know, and I think that would be really cool to see what it sounds like you should get in touch with Mr.

Beast and have him fund a new reality TV show that brings Buffett with 10 small business owners because I have to imagine that that show would be watched by many of kind of bringing together like this great wise oracle of Omaha.

and letting him loose on people.

But I love how you phrase that too, that there are things that you think Buffett could learn from people as well.

So bridging this gap again between demographics of saying just because someone has funds and has access to this great amount of capital doesn't mean they necessarily are an oracle, right?

They can get put up on a pedestal as if they are one, but doesn't mean they are necessarily one.

Let's say that you had access to the funds that Buffett does have access to.

And you were in that position, whatever number it would take for you to feel like you don't actually have to think about money again.

So you've kind of transcended this fear of not having enough money.

How would you go about spending a day?

How fun is that to think about?

Oh, it's fine.

I love thinking about that.

That's fun to daydream about, you know?

I've always had the creativity bug.

I grew up doing theater and going to art school.

And that's how I got into college and was able to pay for school.

And then the journalism degree came along with it.

But to have the opportunity to lean into the creative side of what I'm already doing, I would love to be able to launch a YouTube channel or do a podcast or have a little bit more of the freedom that comes with financial stability to just invest in those creative outlets and then see what comes of it and see if I can reach more people, especially if I could get one more young woman invested early on, then I'm good forever.

That is the whole point for me.

It sounds like you just kind of hit on something that, yes, there's the creative creative component, but it also seems like deeply rooted within the creative component is that's actually the means to the end.

And the end for you might be female empowerment and education with investing.

Can you talk a little bit more about why and how that became kind of part of this mission for you?

I grew up in a home that had alcoholism and financial challenges that come with that and just saw the degree to which that really to this day impacts my mom's finances.

And I wish that I had been older and had the financial insight that I have now to jump into the room as an adult and help with some of that before it got worse.

Part of it is definitely a trauma response to some of that, but hoping to be able to help people through those moments so that they can have the ability to retire someday, the ability to not not have to stay in a job that's unsafe for too long, the ability to leave a marriage that's not safe.

I remember one of the TikToks I made was about an interview I did with an economist, Claudia Golden, on how the most important financial decision you ever make is who you marry.

Reaching people with that message is really important to me because I've seen directly that one decision can really define your entire financial future.

Even if you were saving your whole life for your retirement, one decision can derail things in a way.

And so it's my hope to be able to prevent that that in any way that I realistically can.

Please stop me, obviously, if this is getting to any point where you want to kind of come back out of this space.

But I'm curious if right now you had a platform that was dedicated to helping women who are currently in a marriage or a partnership.

that is, we'll just say, financially toxic.

What might you say to those listeners?

To somebody who really feels stuck, not because of something they're necessarily doing or not doing, but because of the environment or partnership in which they find themselves?

As you know, Terry, I'm a journalist.

I don't have the, you know, I'm not a CFP.

I'm not a financial expert in that way.

So I wouldn't want to propose that I have the skill set required to really give someone advice on that.

But from an emotional level,

it's not your fault at all.

And there is a way out are themes that come to mind.

And also something that I think about a lot is it's a beautiful thing for people to see women make choices where they are picking their own happiness and their own future instead of kind of quote unquote surviving things that maybe there can be a path to working toward getting out of, but also in some cases, tools that people can use to start to build that path out.

And I have had conversations with women who, and especially earlier in my career, I also covered gender specifically for a little bit.

So I touched on this a lot with some of the women I would talk to.

They had this feeling of a burden to their families, like I have to stay in it for my kids.

And then when they're 18, then I'll get out.

And I can say that for me, the best thing I ever saw in my childhood was my mom make a choice for her and not for the kids.

Do you mind my asking what age you were when you saw that?

Because obviously I know that, you know, in our childhood, so many of these moments sit with us well beyond that moment specifically.

But how old were you when that happened?

It was kind of forever.

The financial volatility was from a super young age in a way that's interesting and mirrors what I do now.

We had times with extreme wealth and then extreme on food stamps, not able to afford anything type of time.

So that's given me a lot of really good context about both lifestyles, which is interesting.

And then the decoupling came a little later on when I was in high school, but definitely saw the impact that financial volatility and having and then not having can have at a really young age.

And part of it was the global financial crisis, too.

I mean, like seeing that play out at a young age, between obviously in my own home, but with friends.

And it's a good reminder to me, going back to what we were talking about earlier, to never talk about, oh, we might be entering a recession.

That impacts people, which is the most obvious sentence I've ever said, but just to always remember, we might be entering a recession, you know?

Let's say that you were able to connect with a group of young women who were trying to figure out a few very early practical steps in their lives to take.

Like, what are, are there any very small, very accessible components or tenets that you'd say, look, let's start here.

Just start by doing X and Y.

What are some of your favorite principles to make this really accessible and simple for that audience?

I remember a source telling me once, an IRA is the most important account that a woman can have because it's individual and so make sure that you have that IRA make sure that having an ethos fund for if you ever

I appreciate your censoring your language for my clean podcast

I don't know you know maybe the kids are no you're good no I have actually labeled it clean and I felt bad I thought Apple might take down my podcast because I said the F-word in one of my first episodes and I'm like, uh-oh, they're going to take this down because I labeled this as not explicit.

So anyway, you're good.

And then did nothing happen?

Nothing happened.

I got away with it.

I I didn't even get an e-negot.

So, apparently, nobody's listening.

We're good.

But, like, I think that's super important.

And not only a basket of money that is yours if you ever need it and no one can touch it, but also making sure that you know what the finances are.

And I know you know this so well, Tyler, but the great wealth transfer, men die earlier than women.

If you're a woman married to a man, don't wait until the man is on his deathbed to know what your financial situation is.

In my relationship, we have like a couple's credit card for our wedding and a joint bank account and I'm on all the accounts.

Even if he opened a new Chase credit card because we wanted to get the 100,000 new points and I already had one, but I'm on that login.

I see everything.

Has that ever been, and again, always, always feel free to just say, next question, please.

Has that ever been complicated for you personally?

Has it ever been complex?

Because I think that everyone listening, again, theoretically appreciates everything that you just said and everything we are kind of trying to stand for here of understanding that you want to have agency within these relationships.

But we also know going back to the beginning of this conversation that just talking about money and finance in general is hard enough.

And then when it's with a partner, when it's with the person that you're kind of connected to, it can become one of the hardest conversations you ever have.

So have you ever run into difficulty in broaching the subject of money with your partner?

I have run into difficulty when I was with the wrong partner.

Now that I am so beyond what I thought could ever be possible in the best relationship, like found this angel perfect gem of a man that I'm so lucky I get to marry.

Congratulations, by the way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And like, thank God with him, it's so easy.

And he understands.

He knows my history.

And so he's so compassionate about the context that I come to financial discussions with.

And he also has some similarities in his background.

So he gets it from that perspective too.

He knows it's not about him or it's not a commentary on the relationship.

It's just a commentary on the statistics and of, you know, wanting to make sure that we set ourselves up to not have to have any conflict about these things in the future, that we're doing everything we can now to make our future selves be.

Well, then let me reframe, are there any pieces of guidance that you would offer to men listening to say, look, like this might be a blind spot in your current relationship with money, with talking about money.

Here's something just to just to keep in mind when you're talking about money with a partner.

This is fun.

This is my favorite question ever.

This is what I get to tell men.

How exciting.

Let me go on.

No, I always just ask good questions and listen.

Make sure you're asking your partner.

What was the earliest memory you have about finances?

How does that inform how you think about finances now?

Do you remember your parents talking about finances?

What was it like?

What was it like for you to hear that?

How did you experience it growing up?

Like learning about your partner's context around finance, I think, is a helpful framework for the conversation.

I guess I would just say this for everyone, and I say this all the time, but a pre-up is a way to set yourself up for the worst possible thing that could happen to be ever so slightly less terrible.

If something ever happened where the relationship had to end, that's already going to be the worst thing ever.

So if there was a way to prevent what will never ever happen, but God forbid it does, from being as horrible as possible, go ahead and do that.

It does tie into kind of everything we've gone over so far, too, is that everything you said on the surface is simple.

And I know that you mentioned that you've never necessarily finished a personal finance book, but which one have you gotten the furthest in at this point?

Is there any that you say, This is one that at least some of the ideas have sat with me and I do think or would encourage people to visit this if they were looking to get a little more information about investing or personal finance.

Actually, now that we're thinking about it, and since I mentioned Claudia's book, I don't think of that as a personal finance book.

It's called Women and Money, and it's about women and money.

And that I finished.

because that was filled with tea.

That was very good.

And it's not that the other personal finance books are not filled with really important context.

It's just I start to sometimes feel like it's filled with a lot of things that I am very lucky to already have information about.

Like we get to the health savings account chapter and I'm like, yeah, I already know that one.

Like, and then I get a little bored and I click out.

So I apologize to the personal finance.

Okay.

So note to self, Tyler, don't include chapter on a health savings account or Maddie won't read it.

Okay.

But you know, Tyler, you're the reason I have a health savings account.

I just happened to see your video several years ago.

So also don't listen to me because I'm not sure.

Note to self put HSA chapter back in book.

Okay.

Yes.

Excellent.

Yes, exactly.

Yes.

Yes.

Awesome.

Well, Maddie, I know that A, it is an incredible day outside.

I know B, that you now are able to find hours to go be a resource to countless people online.

And this is kind of the creative hours of your day.

So I appreciate endlessly your choosing to spend some of those hours with me and with this audience.

And I thank you for that.

And I know that people are going to take away a ton from this conversation.

As you know, my entire household is a big fan of your work.

So this is my career peak at the moment, and especially in my house, because they will consider listening to this entire podcast, which doesn't always happen with my show.

So I'm honored to have the conversation.

And I think you're such an incredible teacher and wealth of knowledge.

So I really appreciate you.

Likewise, Maddie, thank you very much.

Thanks for tuning in to your Money Guide on the Side.

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to visit my website at tylergardner.com for even more helpful resources and insights.

And if you are interested in receiving some quick and actionable guidance each week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter where each Sunday I share three actionable financial ideas to help you take control of your money and investments.

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Until next time, I'm Tyler Gardner, your money guide on the side, and I truly hope this episode got you one step closer to where you need to be.