"I'm Mad at My Fiancé for Not Including Me in a Business Opportunity!"

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:59Have you ever not included someone in something, let's say someone like your partner, your spouse, and then they felt really excluded and then they were upset and then you weren't exactly sure why you excluded them and now let's make it a little more complicated. what if there's money involved and business? That is the situation that came up on another podcast that I host. And today I'm gonna play you that episode. Actually, let me just step away from this setup here and just tell you this. I co-host another podcast. It is called Help Wanted. On Help Wanted, me and my co-host, who is Nicole Lappin, best-selling money expert, we bring listeners on who have tricky work problems and then we talk them through it, or we share our own tricky problems and then help each other through it.

2:52It's a different kind of problem solving, and I really think that problem solvers listeners would love it. So as we end the year here, this week and next week, I'm just gonna be playing for you two of my favorite episodes from Help Wanted. And this is the first one. So now back to the setup. Imagine that you have excluded someone, that person is very close to you, also there was money involved. Oh boy! All right. The setup for this is Morgan is our producer and Morgan was excluded from a business deal arranged by her fiance, Jack. And so Morgan dragged Jack onto the show to air this out in public and have Nicole and I talk through who was in the right, who was in the wrong.

3:41And we learned a lot, especially I think about how to be mindful of including people and how to navigate really tricky moments in which business and money and relationships all get intertwined. That's the show on Help Wanted. You can find Help Wanted wherever you find podcasts, just like Problem Solvers. I'm going to just dive into it right now. You're going to hear some music behind... Morgan, I will say, Morgan is the first voice that you'll hear in this episode. You'll hear music behind her for about a second. That's because it was coming out of the intro that we play before every Help Wanted episode.

4:19You don't need to hear that, but you'll hear just the tail end of that music because I'm just plopping the episode down here. Okay, here is Help Wanted. And Morgan. Jason, Nicole, I need help. I'm mad at Jack. Oh, this is gonna be great. First of all, we should establish hello, you are Morgan. Hello, I'm Morgan. And with us is Jack. Hello, I am Jack. The object of her anger. Morgan's amazing fiance. And just to give you the overview for why I've brought us all here today is that Jack and I have a problem, which is that I met a Jack for something that has happened somewhat recently. And I would like you both to play Judge Judy on who's right and also what should have happened and what should happen moving forward.

5:16And then a little bit more framing I'm going to do is that I'm going to let Jack explain what happened just to be totally fair and unbiased because I'm the one that's mad. But just to give the broader context of why that's interesting for anybody listening at home is the question here that we're really going to be exploring is how to talk in relationships about bringing your significant other into a business opportunity. Ooh, okay, that sounds great. So wait, Morgan is mad at Jack. How mad are you at Morgan that she is forcing you to talk about this on a podcast? I'm just as mad back. However mad she is at me, I'm the same amount back.

5:57So I am an amateur investor. And every now and then I'm in an investing syndicate. This is beyond just playing around on Robinhood. It's a little different. It's a little beyond that. What's a syndicate? Is this like a Wall Street bets situation? Pretty much. But we try to make money, not lose money. Real shade towards Wall Street bets. Well, listen, our check record is probably similar. But it's a sector-focused syndicate. Basically, a very close friend of mine is in the investment world. He's in the VC world. And every now and then, he comes across a deal that he thinks is investable. And there's a group of maybe 10 of us who loosely know each other through this syndicate.

6:40We don't have much of a relationship other than that. We're all in this as business people. Basically, it's a collection of people who are receiving deal opportunities at roughly the same time and deciding whether or not they're going to go in. You have no obligation to go in on every deal by being part of the syndicate, but it is like a little bit of a community that you're a part of and you're going in on some deals. And so you're investing in what? Like startups? It's a logistics-focused investment syndicate. So we focus in the logistics space, supply chain technology, that sort of thing. But it all has to do with supply chain.

7:13Right, so it's a syndicate with a thesis. Yes. So the person who runs the syndicate came to me and actually my brother and said, hey, Jack and brother, I have an investment opportunity. Do you want it? And we looked at it, we talked about it, and I said, yes, I would like him. In my mind, that was where it started and where it ended. My brother, who is extraordinarily generous, invited his girlfriend to invest as well. And she has not previously been part of the syndicate. and didn't really share with the rest of the group that he was going to ask her if she wanted to invest as well. Now, that's his prerogative.

7:54I had my feelings about it. He and I spoke about it. That ship had sailed and she is in the syndicate. But just for context, can you summarize in 10 seconds each the pro and the con arguments for this? Like, why is this a problem and why is this okay? The follow-up, the pro and the con, is the follow-up. Morgan and I talked about it and I basically said, Morgan, I don't want you in on this. And that is why she's mad at me. Why didn't you give her the choice? I didn't realize we were so close to landing the plane on the problem here. Just to be clear, the problem isn't that your brother brought his girlfriend in on the deal.

8:36The problem is that your brother brought his girlfriend in on the deal and then you very explicitly did not make that same opportunity available to Morgan, your fiance. But sounds worse when you say it. These are just the facts, but I still don't understand. I think we need to hear the pro and the con here. Maybe there's something that impacts the syndicate by having some outside person come in. We don't really know the dynamics here yet. So that was pretty much it. There were two things. One of them was that I felt that the syndicate was an established group of investors. We had an understanding that this is the group.

9:10This is the group that invests. It is not up to individual members to invite other people in. At a very high level, that was my thinking. On a more personal level, and this is really more the crux of where it comes from, is that I come from a family where my parents are divorced. And I have seen how challenging it can be to have shared investments when a relationship unfortunately doesn't work. Now, Morgan and I are deeply in love. We're getting married. We will be together until our very last breath. We'll stop. But I think Morgan and I are both practical people. We're pragmatic. And we understand that sometimes things happen.

9:46And my parents went through a very long five-year divorce. It was how do we split up these sort of difficult to split up investments? If we're both in the same investment and it requires unanimity, it's challenging. Because if you can't be married together and you can't get along at a personal level, it's challenging to also get along on a business level as well. Do you see what he did there? Morgan and I are so in love, but we're also both practical people. for me practical yeah i'm enjoying hearing jack walk through this and for what it's worth i so far am very eager to hear what nicole has to say about this but i can definitely appreciate jack's in the morning we haven't even heard your perspective yet but what jack is saying i'm not rendering judgment on it yet but i am going to say it is coming from a true place from him.

10:35He saw a bad thing and that has scared him. And so I get where you're coming from. Whether or not that's the right decision for the two of you right now, we can get to that later. But I just want to acknowledge, I see where you're coming from. I see-ish where you're coming from. I also come from divorced parents. So does Morgan. We've seen a lot of trauma. But as a newly married person, the second most senior expert of marriage on this call. Marriage is a great opportunity for divorced kids to break the cycle and change and say, just because I saw things a certain way and they were fucked up doesn't mean that's the way I'm going to do it.

11:16I'm going to do it differently. Jack, is there anything else we need to hear from your side before the prosecution rests and the defense takes it? The part that Morgan will bring up is that we did just get an update from the investor, from the syndicate and it's doing very well. Okay, hold on. But Morgan, this sounds so boring. Did you even want to be part of this? Did you want the choice or did you really want it? To be honest, I think that I probably wouldn't have felt as strongly about it if the following thing didn't happen, which was that Jack shared with me when he talked to his brother about why he let his girlfriend in.

11:57Despite them both, Obviously, Jack and his brother come from the same household, saw the same things. Like, why did he let his girlfriend come in? Jack's brother was like, I just really want her to have great financial opportunities, no matter what happens between the two of us. And I was like, nice. You had thought the same thing about me. And so really, I think that it was that there's something about the principle of the thing for sure. but it did for me get a little bit more my conviction got a little stronger after hearing Jack's brother and then being like what about me that was my honest response to it I think I understand where Jack is coming from and I know that it's been a very my parents didn't have a lot of shared assets together when they got divorced so I also saw a very different type of divorce than he did.

12:49So that is also coloring my perspective for sure. And then Jack has also made the point that we are getting married, his financial success will be my financial success, and mine will be his and whatever, like we all went together, blah, blah, blah. But I know that this is not where the decision came from for Jack, but the spirit of let's look out for each other's financial opportunities. And like, that's just where it's coming from. For me less about the actual, oh, I'm missing out on money. Good opportunity. Wait, is it that though? Is it really? But wait, let me in. You left me out and therefore let me in.

13:21Or is it that this is a proxy for bigger conversations about your future together and it's wrapped up in trust and expectations? Where do you think this really lies? Is this a singular thing or is this some part of a bigger conversation that just hasn't been explored between you guys yet? It's always about the bigger thing. Yeah. But I would say that the bigger thing isn't that, and let me know what you think, Jack, but I would say the bigger thing isn't that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to figuring out what our finances look like together. And the bigger thing is actually just that we need to unlearn some of the financial baggage that we have from our parents, probably, and not bring it into our own relationship.

14:05If we could go back in time, not knowing that this investment is doing well, what do you think the probability Morgan that you would have maybe done your due diligence and wanted in on this that's a great question and honestly one that I haven't thought about on a deeper level beyond just the sort of gut reaction of wanting to be in it because I wasn't allowed to be in it or wasn't invited yeah and I also think that I would have felt this way even if the investment had not gone well I would have been like ha karma if the investment had been lukewarm I still would have been like, come on, why don't you?

14:40And I think that it's just the moment at which there was an opportunity and we didn't know what kind of opportunity it was going to be. And in that moment, the decision was made for me not to be a part of it. That's really, it feels a little independent of the success of the investment, to be honest. And it's more like the principle of that decision to not have me be a part of it. So Jack, this moment of you deciding. I feel like game theory suggests that you had a probably good chance of giving her the option and her not wanting it and you ultimately getting to the outcome that you wanted. Now that we're here today, what would I have done?

15:22Understanding that Morgan is furious with me about this. Is it furious? Are we at furious? I wouldn't say furious, but we're still definitely at a point where Jack will be like, oh, can you pass the whatever? And I'll be like, I don't know, can you invite me into this? I think there are two things that kind of came out of this. One is that it really got us talking about finances and what our marital finances would look like. So that to me is actually a benefit that came out of this. I think a con that came out of this or something that perhaps I would have revisited is if I had known how much it would have struck Morgan in the way it had, I probably would have handled it a little bit differently.

15:58And if I knew she felt as strongly as she did, I probably would have just said, you know what, it's not worth upsetting our relationship. She has every right to be included in this. Who am I to keep her out? And like she said, the decision was made for her, which was not fair. And if we could go back in time, it probably should have been and would have been more of a dialogue. Do you think you would have felt the same way that I felt if the roles were reversed? For sure. No hesitation. We're going to take a really quick short break and then be back with more of the conversation. All right, we're back and jumping into that conversation from Help Wanted.

16:37I think from a financial perspective, I'm glad that you guys had these conversations. It probably doesn't truly, Morgan, I'm always on your side, but it doesn't make sense for both of you to be in it. If you are married and you're gonna share assets, like I think that you'll share in the winnings or the losses. And I don't know if you need to double up Unless he was like, this is such an amazing opportunity and I want to put more money in than I have available. Can you contribute to it? Because it's like yours too, in essence. And so I guess the psychological part of it, Jack, you totally should have given her the choice because she could have chosen not to do it.

17:17And then everybody would have been happy and married. But I don't think from a financial perspective that you need to be in it. Yeah, this is interesting because what we've done here correctly is we have untangled a problem that was really two problems. Problem number one is a question about finances and family and your experiences. And then question number two was really a question of inclusion and the creation of choice. And we've separated those out and identified how each of them have impacted both how you both felt about this and then the learning going forward. So it seems to be very clear that a big learning on the inclusion slash choice side is simply that you can never go wrong with more conversation and communication and making sure that both parties in a relationship feel involved in decisions big and small.

18:18And that's a good learning. And then the second one is this thing about what to do about the actual finances. and Nicole's response there made me wonder if you guys have a decision about exactly how you're going to do that because we haven't heard that yet. You're going to get married. What is going to happen with your finances? And I will say, whatever your answer is the right answer for you. I don't think that there's a right answer for this. I'm happy to share what I've done with my family. But out of curiosity, what are you guys going to do? Yeah, I'll start to answer that question and then Jack, you've done your duty of explaining the problem.

18:51I know you have a meeting. So if you have to hop off, that's okay. And I'll just let you know what they decide afterwards, as long as they vote that I'm right. Fair enough. And if you need any pickups, you know where to find me. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Bye. So what we've decided so far with how we're going to do our finances is we've gotten a couple of good recommendations. You're going to hear like a little bit of verbal vomit because we haven't fully decided. But right now we keep everything separate and we split all shared costs, but we just individually pay 50-50. There was a time when we moved into this apartment where we are now, where our incomes were, there was more of a gap between how much we were making.

19:34Jack was making more than me. So he paid a little bit more rent than I did at the time. But now our incomes are more the same. I'm actually making more than him. And so we're paying 50-50. and so we think that what we're gonna do is keep most of our finances separate still just because that's been working well and it honestly comes down to a weird question of credit card points, both use credit card points for travel. We just don't really know how that works. We should do a little bit more research about if we have just a joint credit card, can we both use the points? And like, how does that work?

20:06We need to do a little bit more research, but I think we're gonna do what Nicole recommends couples do, which is having the yours, mine and ours fund. where we each contribute a percentage of our income to a shared account, and then each continue to have separate accounts as well. You mentioned how you're going to split up your expenses and like credit card points, but you didn't talk about your investments or your like wealth creation and what that looks like. Have you thought through that? Because this would be less in who pays for groceries and more in like a family asset. But we haven't thought about that.

20:43How do you both married veterans think about both just splitting finances, but also creating wealth as a couple, as individuals in your marriages? Do you want the elder to speak? Yeah, I shall speak first. I'm very interested in what Nicole has done because you're far more educated in this space than I am. But here's what we did. Jen, my wife and I, when we first got married, we were uncomfortable with the idea of just merging everything into one account. And a little bit of that was the anticipation of what happens if things go wrong and it's hard to unwind. A lot of that for us, and this is why this experience actually was part of the reason why I came to the conclusion that there's just no one right answer.

21:34It's whatever makes sense for you because money is a complicated subject for us. For us, it was a little bit about privacy. There was just, like, I remember Jen saying, she's like, I'm not buying anything weird that I'm hiding from you, but I also think it's just weird for you to be able to see everything I'm buying. I just want to be able to go out in the world and not feel like my husband is able to monitor my spending. I feel the same. There's one of the weird things about getting married is drawing these lines, which will naturally in some way or another evolve over time of who are you and who are you together.

22:07I think that some people really want to just be a unit and their identity is going to become the unit and the family. And then there are other people who are very individually oriented, very individually driven. And the idea of taking something that felt individually controlled and then just making it a joint thing felt very weird to me in a way that I know is not logical, but that mattered. So we came up with this system. And the system was, roughly speaking, what Nicole is advocating for, but a little bit different, which is that I kept my checking account and savings account and credit card.

22:49And then Jen kept her stuff too. We put each other on the accounts, specifically in case something terrible happens. If one of us is injured and comatose and we need access to the funds, we need to be able to get into each other's things. But the idea was basically leave it alone. Like those are her things and these are my things. And then we created a joint investment account originally at Fidelity and now it's with a more boutique agency. And so our savings would start to go in there and then we started to build and have an investment manager for that. That is roughly where it still is now. We don't track spending.

23:29So we don't say, oh, this is the expenses for the month that we're going to split it 50-50, 50 out of yours and 50. We don't do that. Instead, we just roughly think about it. It's how you have those expenses and you have those expenses and it's just whatever, it all washes out. And at this point, we basically treat each other's accounts as family accounts, but I only spend out of mine and she only spends out of hers. And that's where it is right now. And I'm very happy with that. Do you guys talk about in that savings account, because this isn't something that Jack and I have talked about, but I think it's an important conversation.

24:03Do you guys talk about for that savings brokerage account, how much do you have expectations around how much each person contributes? We don't even have numbers to this. Nicole could say write me a book, but probably hand me a book because I'm sure that all the instructions are already about what we're doing wrong here. But when somebody's checking account grows large enough that we feel like we should skim some of this off and just shift it into the investment account, then we just do that. And it happens in a very ad hoc, oh, I just noticed this kind of, hey. And the only time we really are more intentional about it is if we have a big amount of earnings coming in.

24:37So for example, when I sold my book and I had a book advance that came in, suddenly there was a chunk of money. We thought, okay, how much of that should sit in available cash and how much of that should go into the investment account? But otherwise, we just do it very ad hoc. But at this point, the investment account is quite significant. And in there is money from all sorts of places, from big projects that we've both done from just earnings over time. We have no intention of getting divorced, and I hope we never do. But if we ever did, I don't know how the hell we would ever unwind that. But at this point, I don't really care because we're many years into our marriage and it feels very stable.

25:11And so some of the dividing lines that were more important at the beginning of our marriage feel less important now. Yeah. And the way that it gets divided, if God forbid something happens, is like the state decides. And if you're in a community property state like it is 50 50. And that's just what's gonna happen. If the situation was in my relationship, and Jared had an investment, I wouldn't want to put money in, because I feel like he's got it covered. And so we look at our investment accounts. Similarly, like it's now I guess it's like everybody's account. And he has like the shit ton of bonds.

25:43And I'm like, Okay, cool. Have your boring bonds. If I'm going to invest, then I'll invest more equities because like together, then it will balance out. And so he's done his own little investments. I've done my own little investments. But at this point, it's like the couples, it's ours together. And from a practical standpoint, when you're thinking about the wealth component of it, it's going to be both of yours regardless. And so where it comes from doesn't really matter. That's a very interesting point. Actually, Morgan, I'm curious. How do you think you would have felt in this situation when you guys are already married?

26:20Like fast forward, you're married. Whatever financial structure you're thinking of has now happened. And Jack says, hey, I invested in this thing. Do you think that it would even occur to you to say, but wait a second, why didn't I get to invest in it too? Or would you just thought Jack investing in it is both of us investing in it? What a good question. I think that it would probably be if it was the exact situation that you just laid out, I think that I totally would be would feel like, cool, hope it turns out great and not like, why didn't you ask me if I wanted to invest? I think that part of the piece was there were two things that were quickly for me.