"If I was giving myself advice that I didn't follow, it would be to take more vacation... Can't get those days back. We're making up for lost time."

What does it look like when two high-achieving lawyers, each starting over after a first marriage, blend their families and build a genuinely thoughtful financial life together?

Our hosts, Natalie and Dan Slagle, sit down with guests, Theresa and Rob, to answer just that and share the lessons they’ve learned along the way!

The pair attended the same law school, ran the same trails, and frequented the same coffee shop without ever meeting. It took Match.com to introduce them… ten years later. From the start, they were aligned where it counted.

They were family-first, not flashy, and clear on what money was actually for.

That clarity shaped how they raised their three kids. For instance, they built financial literacy from the ground up. They prepared vacation spending envelopes when the kids were little, then a full monthly budget exercise starting in ninth grade!

Living in Pasadena meant navigating serious cost-of-living pressure. Their answer was to earn accordingly, spend deliberately, and stay the course when markets got rough.

That discipline mattered most when the Eaton Fire broke out in January 2025 and swept through their neighborhood. Their house survived with smoke and ash damage, but the insurance battle and weeks of itemizing possessions demanded exactly the time and legal fluency that retirement made possible.

Now in the distribution phase, Rob and Theresa admit the shift from saving to spending is psychologically harder than the numbers suggest.

Learning to actually spend is a muscle they're still building!

Theresa swears by living “a little below your means.” Don't inflate your lifestyle every time income rises. Rob adds, “Take more vacations.” The work, he promises, will survive without you.

Key Topics:

1. Raising a Blended Family (04:11)
2. Teaching Kids About Money (08:29)
3. Making It Work in California (20:24)
4. Navigating Financial Hardship: The 2008 Crash and Staying the Course (22:55)
5. Surviving the Eaton Fire: What Insurance Really Looks Like After a Disaster (24:52)
6. The Retirement Shift: From Accumulating to Actually Spending (31:47)
7. Legacy, Giving to Kids, and Not Spoiling Them (36:00)
8. One Piece of Advice for Your Younger Self (39:20)

Natalie Slagle, CFP® and Dan Slagle, CFP® are the founding partners and lead financial planners at Fyooz Financial Planning — an independent firm dedicated to helping high-earning couples in their 30s and 40s confidently navigate the complexities of managing money together.

At Fyooz, they specialize in turning financial stress into strategy, guiding couples through everything from cash flow and investing to aligning money with shared goals.

Disclaimer: For updated disclosures, please visit fyoozfinancial.com.

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In the past, when it was volatile, we always thought, well, we're net buyers, so who cares? It's actually good at the markets down. We're not net buyers anymore. So we want to have some cash when it's volatile, to not be neurotic and stare at the market too often. I think also

too so it was scary. I mean, I think that because we had stayed the course for so long, it was scary, but it was expected. So then the hard part was setting up new expectations, because now we need to spend it's a little scary to spend the money now because we've been saving for so long,

it's we have to develop that muscle.

Yeah, it's just different.

Welcome to money dates, the podcast that makes money conversations with your partner feel a little less taboo. I'm Natalie Slagle, a certified financial planner, and I'm joined by my husband and business partner, Dan Slagle, also a Certified Financial Planner. Say Hi, Dan, hello. In each episode, we'll share honest stories and practical tips to help you and your partner feel more connected and confident on your financial journey. So grab your drink, get comfortable and join us for our money dates.

Today, on money dates, we have Rob and Theresa. Theresa recently retired after 30 years as a public agency lawyer specializing in environmental and land use law, most recently with the city of Pasadena. She also served as general counsel to the Rose Bowl. Now she spends her time cycling, volunteering and catching up on reading that she didn't have time for when she was working and Rob. Rob spent 30 years as a partner at Munger tolls and Olson, focusing on complex commercial litigation, securities matters and corporate investigation, often advising biotech companies as a medical doctor turned lawyer, now retired, he spends his time training for ultra marathons, working on his green thumb in their garden and taking their dog on pizza walks. Welcome Rob and Theresa.

Hi, there. Hi, welcome, welcome. Well, you two have quite the working history, but I want to first actually start the conversation with your own personal history. How did you meet? How did the two of you start off

well, so we actually met on match. But here's the funny thing, we went to law school together, and we never knew each other.

Then. Were you there at the same time?

I was a first year student, and Roman Rob is a third year student, and first years and third years don't mix, but we used to run the same trails, and we never saw each other. We still the same coffee shop. Never saw each other, so we met 10 years later. Come on, yeah, now online.

Okay, so what drew you to each other?

Well, I'll cut to the chase. I've married up in life, so I found this beautiful, smart person online, and she she made one mistake, which was to say, yes, you go out. So we met, and we had the young kids at the time. We each had brief marriages, and our kids were little, and we had a lot of great times together, raising, raising the kids. And we've been together since 20 some odd years already. The time has formed, but and we were both in similar fields, but different enough that I think we could enjoy hearing about each other's day, but didn't feel like we were in the exact same field. So Right? And we had a lot of similar interests. Theresa was a runner in college, and I like to run, and she dusted me in the first 5k we did together, and she just had hip surgery at the time, so I thought I might have a chance, but didn't, didn't go so well.

So it wasn't just the the professional similarities, it was kind of the hobbies and interests outside of work as well.

Absolutely, yeah, it was having young children, so we both wanted to be parents and had children similar interests and having a similar, similar career, but not the same career actually really helped.

Yeah, you could speak the language of each other's work day a little bit. Take us back. What was it like raising the kids together?

So we were very fortunate that our kids were all about the same age, so it was very easy to throw them together and treat them like one big happy pack the three kids between the two of us. We also were incredibly fortunate that we got along very well with our exes. So there were times when one ex or the other would pick up all the kids and take them somewhere, because we had to be in 10 different places at the same time. So that was very fortunate. That was also fortunate, because our careers were really busy at that time too, so we had a lot of support raising three kids together. So that was

really wonderful. I think it was your idea, which was, if former spouse ever has a request, the answer is always yes, unless it's something crazy and other great. Had a crazy request, so we actually got along very well and sort of blended families, and everybody was rowing in the same direction. We also had some significant support. We had when I was a new single dad, I remember thinking, I don't want to have an ending for my child. I'm going to do everything that quickly. You know, I was always the last one to pick up the child daycare, what have you. And it's $1 a minute, which is not a huge deal, but it's also your child isn't happy. So I realized, personally, I needed help with driving and cars and especially with the unpredictable schedules. But we were lucky we had, over the years, some folks help us out quite a bit, picking up slack

and and one of the best expenditures we ever made was hiring a nanny on the weekend mornings, on Saturday mornings, because that became our time to go exercise and maybe have some time together, exercising or separately, exercising. But that was our babysitting money. We spent that on Saturday morning, and that was incredibly fun.

And so would you two go work out together? Would you do this? Or did you each of you just got to go do what you wanted to do during that time together, we did a

lot of running together. Yeah, it just

depended on what we were doing at the time if we were training for something similar, or or if one of us was injured, but yeah, it was, it was our time to kind of have a moment together without it being on a Friday night, because we needed to be in bed early when the kids were little.

Yeah, everyone's just exhausted on a Friday.

Yeah, we're taking notes on on our side, maybe even hiring a nanny on Saturday, because at the time of this recording, it is Friday, and I feel like I'm ready for bed as we speak,

three kids in three different schools with three different schedules, it was, and sometimes the two boys would be on the same soccer team, but then one would age up, so we'd have three different soccer teams. And it's the inside joke for kids who play soccer a yso, is all your Saturdays occupied? Yeah.

So absolutely, I feel like you know, for the two of you, as you've talked about how your origin story and being a blended family, it sounds like there was a lot of similar values that the two of you, you had both within personally and within the family life that you had created up to that point. How, how did you two identify as you started coming together, longer term values and goals early in your relationship, and maybe some of those values are even related to your finances. I think

that we were very careful, especially because we had children already to talk a lot before we decided to get married, because you just don't, don't have as much time for we're ironing out some of those things. So we really did. We talked about where we had been financially in the past. We talked about some of our financial goals in the future, particularly saving for colleges. Neither one of us were really flashing. Neither one of us needed to own two homes like a lot of Rob's partners did at the time, and we centered on the family. So it was really easy to say, you know, let's focus on our house. Let's improve our house to make fit our family. So, yeah, a lot of those kinds of conversations,

you know, I think everybody has a little attention. You want your kids to have a great life and do everything you can for them, but I think we both were of the view that if you do everything for them, it's not setting them up for success in the long run. So we had both growing up, come from a little bit different backgrounds, but we both worked as kids and had jobs, and so we encouraged set things up for our kids to do that, because we're fortunate. You know, we could have been more lavish with them, but we there's nothing like having a summer job. The value of my when they come home with their first paycheck, they've been out in the sun all day, whatever the job was, like, I only got x and you know the taxes, it makes everyone Republican for five minutes. I think it's been helpful over the long run, when they went to college, picking careers that, you know, they found rewarding, but also pay the bills and that sort of sort of thing. And I think that was important to both of us, to be supportive of the kids, to help them through college, but have them appreciate the value of adopting redundant. Did lots of little, seemingly little things that I think made a big difference over the years with the kids on budgeting and finances.

So were you having these open dialog conversations about money of some kind with the kids?

Yes, so we stole somebody else's idea, and it was the best thing we ever did. So when we. Would go on vacation when they were little, and they'd ask us for this thing or that thing. We first started off with giving them just a budget. We're going to go on vacation. Here's your money, and you could spend it however you want. And two of the kids would buy 25 little things, but one of them would use all of his money to buy one big thing. And so then you could see this different levels of satisfaction with their purchases. So they were learning from each other. But then as they got into high school, this is the idea we stole. We sat down with them as ninth graders and said, you put together a budget for what you think you need for everything, books, clothing, lunch, money, entertainment, everything. And we're going to commute commuting expenses, because two of them commuted. And so then they presented their budget to us. We presented our budget to them, and they had low balled

their budget was about a third of an actual they had, which was part of the exercise. They just

didn't, yeah, yeah. For them to, for them to learn that and and try it themselves, and then get the facts from you. So then what happened?

Very happy. What we said, we this is great. Your budget is too small. What about this? What about that?

And then, on a monthly basis, we gave them all their money.

And what they didn't spend, they could

save, they could save, but they couldn't ask us

for more money. And was this cash? Was this just a transfer to their bank account? We were

teaching them banking. So we did start with children's bank accounts. They're joint with the parent, and we taught them about deposits and withdrawals and interest and then budgeting, because they couldn't ask us for more. And they stopped buying lunch. They started taking lunch. No way that was the first thing everybody did, because they realized I can spend $8 a day at school, or I can, or mom will buy the groceries, and I can keep my $8 a day.

Yeah, their clothing budget, let's just say we had to impose a few rules around the edges of that you actually have to buy a garment or

two, because you actually have to buy new socks

when your socks have holes in them, yeah, you can't walk around. And I'm sure some teenagers would be like, No, these are fine. The holes and holes in the shorts are the style or something.

But that worked well. It worked really well. And they learned how to save. They learned how to budget. And then, frankly, we kept that up a little bit into college, you know, we said, hey, look, we'll pay room and board tuition, but there's no asking us for more money. And so they had their own jobs in college, or they just went without that was their choice.

So the two of you did pay for the education, for the tuition of college

that was important to us.

Yeah, talk to us about why that was important to you. Part of it,

I think, is historical. I always felt like that was something just to get that start in life, if you can get through college without big student debt, I think we were also fortunate to be in a position to do it. I was talking to a friend the other day, who's just taken on enormous debt, and he's older now, and it's for five kids in college. I don't think we would have made that choice that we couldn't have. I mean, prioritizing your own retirement, but since we had the ability to spend on some things that was a priority for after saving for retirement, having a house, next step would be kids education for us, just to it sets you up for a lifetime of opportunity success. I'm assuming you do a reasonable job in college. And I think having had to work for some of the money for cons, basically, they appreciated what it cost, what was involved, and they again, sort of picked careers that were such that they, you know, they were going to earn, maybe not fabulous livings, or they weren't looking for the highest paying careers, but they found things that they enjoyed, but would also give my paycheck.

Yeah, I think, you know, having come from myself anyway, a relatively pretty modest background and taking on college debt, we thought the biggest gift we could give our kids was not a free education, that's wrong way to say it, but a paid for education, and they understood that that was our gift to them, right?

I feel like I sometimes hear from people that that's so that can be a worry of paying for the tuition. And I'm going to use the word you didn't want to use because it's this free thing, and maybe there there's not enough skin in the game. But I think what you did so beautifully is you set them up for success. Ever since they were little, like you were teaching them about money. It's not like these conversations weren't happening and they didn't understand. It sounds like they actually still had to make money in college to pay for all the other things that college costs and living in college, you have to pay for any comments on that just of that fear of maybe some parents who wonder, well, am I taking away that skin in the game kind of feeling? So I

guess I'll start with this. US, which is I, so I we pay for half, but my ex paid for the other half, but he made them take out loans from him, because he had that philosophy of skin in the game. In the end, he paid off their debt

for David loans. He or David

loans once they graduate. Kind of had a feeling he was going to, yeah, we had a feeling he would, but he wanted their skin in the game. Yeah, I guess the other part of it is too. We made them have jobs constantly, so if they weren't during, not during the school year, but you know, when they were in high school or even during college, we're like, Hey, I'm gonna sit home and do nothing. So that's your skin in the game too. You can't sit here and do nothing. Either you're going to school summer, school's fine, or you have a job. You know, one of them was a Armstrong's garden center guy for a couple of weeks, and he's like, I hate this. So he went found a better job.

In other words, your camp counselor, my daughter was used to walk dogs.

They got creative in the ways they made money, but they were not allowed to sit tutors. Yeah, they were not allowed to sit at home. So do

you think your strategy is is relative to what the two of you experience with higher education? I don't know if that was similar where you had financial help or what, what ultimately led to that

decision for me, I didn't have help, so that's why I thought it was the best gift I could give, was to give them a paid for education.

I had help. I had a job as a middle schooler that actually ended up paying for college. Longer story, let's just say, but rather a hungry dog got me, and I was his third victim. So that was my college tuition. I was a lasting scholar. Wow, but, but my dad paid for med school. My parents paid for med school, and then, okay, law school I paid for, but that was ages ago, and UCLA was, was a state school, and was pretty the bargain of the century back then. But I do think having skin in the game at that point, it's motivating, you know, it's sort of, you're, you're paying your own dollars, and so it is a balancing thing. I do know some kids, it's just like, I'm going to go to college and play frisbee, or what, you know, my day, it was basket weaving. You could, you could, honestly, it was a college in what was it, Hampshire or something, but people were, you know, you could study ultimate free speech. I'm not sure. I didn't want to micromanage what the kids studied, and I didn't. We didn't know. He didn't, but if they had done something bizarre, there might have been a hard conversation. But, you know, I studied comp, lit and English, so it wasn't exactly like those are necessarily going to lead to financial success unless you get an advanced degree or go into teaching. So it's a tough balance between finding something you like finding something that's going to pay the bills. What if you have an esoteric interest that might be something that gets gets you into debt, but doesn't end up putting like the fellow I was talking about. He's five kids. He also got a PhD himself and something that didn't really earn him much of a living. So he owes a fortune on that, and it puts people in a tough position so well, on a sort of superficial level, it sounds great to go pursue your interest and

do whatever you want, whatever you want, really, yeah,

I mean, college is insane these days, that the sticker prices, it's a lot of money, and so it is. It is really this cost benefit analysis that I think everybody has to do, and then weighing in, you know, how does, how does the impact of how it's getting paid for? How does that impact your experience along the way?

And there's some some phenomenal colleges. You know, we're in California. The UC system is just fantastic. So to think, if your child wants to go to a UC school and can get in great if there's another school that's five or 6x that and doesn't provide much of a better education, if any.

Yeah, yeah. And one of the conversations that we enjoy having, I would encourage listeners and their partner to have, as well as is the conversation around college costs, and in terms of how much you and your partner are wanting to fund, right and trying to solve for that, that answer, because, and I do feel like at least from my experience, your opinion on it, your thoughts on it, might be from from your own experience. You know, from from our experience, I had a lot of my college tuition paid for from my parents. I had one student loan to take out. And Natalie, I know, you know, in your situation, you you also had some financial help. I think you had a parent loan, not like the official parent loan, but you're you had, because

that is an actual name of a loan in this Yes, but I took out a loan from my father.

Yeah, yeah. So I think just, you know, I. Our own experience, we've sat down and thought about how amazing would it be to provide 100% of our daughter's education to be covered. And again, I think a lot of that stems from just our own experiences of working in school and knowing the hardships of balancing it all out. And two of you in your point just what an amazing start of a professional life you can give to your kids. That's incredible.

Yeah, now you two have mentioned you're, you're in California, and for people who are not in California, everybody thinks that's one of the most expensive places in the US to live. And you're, you're also in an expensive city. So how have you made it work?

Well, I do think it's extremely expensive and it's staggering. You know, my sisters lived in Texas and New York, and my mom's in New York, and your mom is in New Mexico. Housing here is even compared to other expensive places, two or 3x it's just not nutty. I think it's worked because we also work here, and so we receive compensation consistent with the cost of living here. Yeah, if you lived in a different part of the country where you hadn't made that kind of income, try and move to California for retirement. Would be a head scratcher to me. Now, this is our community, but if one we're sort of picking from scratch, it's pricey. Then again, we have beautiful mountains and it's 70 degrees outside, so it's sort of, you kind of

get what you pay for. Yeah, and

you know, it does have good public schools at the university level, not at the high school level.

I think we also, particularly facing retirement, sat down and did the math and said, Are we going to stay. And we decided that, yes, we were going to stay because we love it, and we we can. But we actually sat down for a second and said, Hey, do we need to move away in retirement? I think another way that we managed to make it in California was, I won't say budgeting, because we, we didn't, you know, to sit there with the spreadsheet, although now we have a spreadsheet, we had sit there with a spreadsheet and do expenses, you know, down to that level. But we did talk about, what do we want, what do we need, and how do we make that work in California? And we actually, none of our kids actually live here right now. One of them left because he said, I need to go somewhere cheaper, given his starting salaries, but we did have to talk budget and make sure that it worked in California. Yeah.

Now I imagine that you know, with as Dan shared in your intros, you're with the type of work that the two of you were in, you had good income, but I'm sure there was still financial hardship along the way. What kind of obstacles have the two of you faced together financially?

You were just Rob was just talking earlier about the awake crash.

A lot of our clients. My clients were financial industry clients. I was thinking back in Oh, eight portfolios dropped virtually 50% 48% and Waco via Golden West financial, Merrill lamp, everybody was blowing up. I'll never forget the day in our lobby. I was fortunate. My firm never took debt. We paid ourselves a lot less than we earned throughout the year. So we always so when we had a crisis like that, as will happen, we were okay, but we had a large multinational firm in our building, five or six floors, and one day, just seeing the lobby full of people with boxes full of their desk stuff that's you sweat that when your clients are suddenly facing financial distress, office buildings are empty. And it was just, you know, it was almost a Great Depression. It was great recession. It was pretty brief. And ultimately, oddly, as a lawyer, most of those crises and it got, kind of got a better flavor of this longer practice. Whenever there's a crisis, there was five minutes of panic and anxiety, and then there was actually more legal work. So the pandemic, bizarrely led more work. The away crisis probably kept half the law firms busy for the next 10 years, mortgage backed securities. I think what we did well was sort of keep try and think of ourselves as long term investors. So when the market had gone cut in half while we weren't rejoicing. We were thinking, Okay, we're buying in the long run. So it's actually not bad. We need it to be higher in 30 years, not in 30 days and not not look at it on a date. We used to look at our finances once a year, the end of the year. So what's the market done? If that so that, and then you look back and say, oh my goodness, it's pretty ball.

And I think we weathered that crisis by not changing our approach. We had a good approach to begin with. Don't panic, don't spend extra. Maybe we cut back on a vacation, maybe we cut some optional costs out, but we didn't change course. And so then, I mean, we're survivors of the Eaton fire, so when that crisis came along, we had funds. Thank goodness to weather that crisis and take on some scary expenses, because we had weathered prior storms by just staying the course. Don't panic. Stay the course,

having some resources. Yeah, talk

to us a little bit more with the Eaton fire. How did that impact you? You say your survivors? Do you mind just talking about what unfolded with that I used to call

as victims? Rob said, no, no, no, no, we're survivors, which I really

liked. Yeah, absolutely

participant, and they do. We're not the first to have survive a natural disaster, but it's crazy when it happens to you. Actually, we're fortunate to be retired because we had time then to take on the battle with the insurance company, the time to hire contractors to get our house back in order. Our house didn't burn down. It was smoke and ash damage, and our property had some fire damage, but we were fortunate to have the time to do that and the resources to do that. We were also fortunate to be two retired lawyers take us on, deny as coverage. We'll fight you. But then that's not fair. That's not fair to everybody, though, you know nobody should have to do that.

It was I feel fortunate by comparison of our neighbors, because you see, if you look, well, most of the homes are gone, actually, but the homes that are still standing, people have trailers in front with their possessions in and they're still trying, and it's now a year plus past. And you know, the whole idea with insurance should be, I think that the insurance helps pay for this and deals with it. It's not quite the way it works, at least when there's a national disaster, whether through bureaucracy or inertia, what have you, they don't move very fast, obviously, time value money, so the slower they pay out claims. And we were lucky. I'm a malign bar insurer. It's better than most, but I can't say that I'd ever read the homeowner's policy at all, let alone multiple times until we had the fire my first Theresa, did you pay the insurance? But Theresa, where I'm the disorganized one in the relationship, and we divide and conquer, and Theresa keeps things going, and she's like, I'm sure I paid it. Let's see the policy. Let's see the check, please. And the carrier actually called us up and said, Your home is gone. They showed us this picture of an empty lot that was burnous. I love our home, but that must have been terrifying. It was terrifying. It was terrifying. And then our president had that the tariff war in April, so the markets had kind of retreated a bit. So that combined and you both semi recently retired. So I remember thinking it would have been nice to have a few more years income, or might have been, as it turned out,

but you had the time. Like you said, you had you had the time. I because it sounds like you there was a lot of administration work post fire, which I don't think everybody heard about the fire in the news, but I don't know if it was as talked about what you two and all of your neighbors and all of your community had to do after and all of the time. And I wonder if your outcome. I hope it wouldn't be different, but I wonder if it would be different if you were still working, and you didn't have the time like you did because you were retired, which hugely different? Yeah, hugely different. Not something I think anyone dreams about when they go in retirement, but at the same time, that was a leg up compared to maybe some working people in your situation,

our good friends down the block who lost their home, they just finally finished the list. Because you have to list everything. You've lost, 7000 items. You wouldn't imagine, and they have to link. You know, how much it cost, where you bought it. It just took, took them a year to put the list together. We had the luxury of having known what we lost, because they hadn't burned but they had to throw out lots of things, so we had sort of a starting list. But then we probably spent three or four weeks, five hours a day, just going through items that you accumulate over a lifetime. You know, where do we buy this? What it costs? So it's tedious. It's not like you have contents insurance for x. Here's your check. It's okay. X is the maximum you're going to get. Now tell us how we get there, and it's how many salt shakers, which is the tedium is unbelievable,

and you're not getting compensated for that time, right as well, right?

And truly, I would recommend any homeowner to try to as best you can understand your policy on. Understand the coverage you have and review it actually every five years or so, we got lucky in that our house didn't burn, because we think we would have been under

insured had we burned, particularly the whole neighborhood goes because all the contractors are busy. So the housing, the building costs come up. The other thing I'd recommend, and this is in the rabbit hole. What taking pictures or video, you just walk around your room, because you will forget what you had if you do have a misfortune, and then put that somewhere else, not in your house. Because, like this fellow I was mentioning, he had backed everything up on the server in the house, in the house, so that it's kind of gone, so put it in the cloud, yes.

So he did all the work, but then the work disappeared. I mean, you hear about that too. People always say, take pictures of but all of us get busy and then, but then, for the two of you, you, you, when you actually, like you were saying, Theresa, when you actually live through a natural disaster, it just changes your whole mindset on, like, the importance of doing these things.

Yeah, and this was my second one. So I had some some pro tips from the first

one. What was the first one? The

first one was the Northridge earthquake.

You jinxed. You didn't put the Northridge earthquake too. Were you two together?

When was this? I had like, 50 bucks to my name, so it was I was working, but I just started working.

So we didn't have anything back then because we were bunch of in law school or no crate. But you learn things like, get housing right away. Take stock of your possessions right away. Be sure that you can continue to do your job or your school or whatever it is even in the middle of the disaster. So, so unfortunately, yes, this was our second natural disaster. Wow.

Knock on wood that it's the last. I want to switch gears a little bit, and in the the two of you, you've talked throughout this episode of being retired, and I want to ask the two of you how the shift has been going from your accumulation years, you know, making a healthy income and saving of your overall wealth to now the distribution of your wealth. What has that journey been like for the two of you?

Well, scary, a little bit and counter intuitive, because I think typically, I was always looking at, okay, how are we going to keep increasing the size of our net worth and adding to the pile of whatever we've invested in. And so turning off the spigot in the first place of my job and your job was somewhat little bit like jumping off a cliff, particularly because I think we both really liked what we were doing. We weren't folks who were like, can't wait to get out of our jobs. I love my office, great colleagues, great clients. Was having a ball. Sort of viewed it as sort of your part. You're at a house guest and having him all his time to leave after 30 years, it's just you got to pick a number. I had always had in the back of my 30 years, a long time to work somewhere and but it was completely arbitrary. And I could have spent another 20 years, 10 years, 15 years. And so the first jump of leaving, and it's when you meet people, what do you do? Is like No, actually, nothing. Do nothing now, from being ostensibly gainfully employed person doing important stuff for clients, whatever, but then to spend money when there's nothing coming in. It's been helpful, because the last two or three years the market has gone up. So it's sort of nice to see the financial plan is working. The assets are accumulating, and it's going to be volatile, but at a pace that more than exceeds our need for them or desire for them, so it's somewhat comfortable. It's still funny to think, yeah, because when it's in the past, when it was volatile, we always thought, well, we're net buyers, so who cares? It's actually good at the markets down. We're not net buyers anymore. So we want to have some cash when it's volatile, to not be neurotic and stare at the market too often.

I think also too. So it was scary. I mean, I think that, because we had stayed the course for so long, it was scary, but it was expected. So then the hard part was setting up new expectations, because now we need to spend. How much do we spend? We'd love to have a lot of fun in the years when we can have a lot of fun, and we're very physical, so we like to do physical activities, physical vacations. We go cycling. Rob goes on running vacations. So how do we do that yet still recognize that we have years where we're gonna years in the future where things are going to be a little more quiet, and how do we budget for that and long term care and those kinds of things? So it's a little scary to spend the money now, because we've been saving for so long,

it's to develop

that muscle. Yeah, it's just different, and Dan and I aren't going to experience. Is it until we're done. And it's just interesting in our role working with clients who are in their retirement years, and they're they're experiencing something that we'll never we truly won't understand, because otherwise we won't be working with them, right? So it's, I'm just always fascinated by the psychological shift that has to happen for folks who do even if the numbers say you can do it, there's something about like, there's still some proof that that I think everybody needs, and I don't even know how they get it, and that that comfort, but I don't think looking at spreadsheets and numbers are always I think it's helpful, but there's other parts that I just imagine folks need, because at least in our experience talking to our retirees, like we look at the numbers and we said, hey, this is going to work for you. Like we're really confident. We've been seeing and doing this for a long time, but I've just sensed that, I that the spreadsheets are the only thing. And I don't know if it's just time or or what, but

it is. And then I think, you know, you kind of, you also pointed out that, you know, we have a family, and so we're thinking about, how do we not, how do we provide for them without, you know, back to the kids issue, without spoiling them. And, yeah, you know, save enough for us. And we don't really believe in, this is another good, shared value. We don't really believe in giving them a bunch of money just because we have it here, it's like, no, that's my money. You can have it later, yeah, or you can have it when it would be a good time, like when buying a house or something. But not just, not just because, right,

being a litigator and seeing, I saw financial crises, financial frauds, so I'm used to volatility and disaster. So it's like being a pathologist. You'd see bad things happening to people all the time, and I think you get a little not paranoid, but your slice of the universe is such that you don't appreciate that most of the time, things just work out fine. People don't come to the lawyers and say, my life is going great. I want to bring a lawsuit I've been defrauded, or Enron has blown up, or global crossing has blown up and or there's been a gulf the pipeline break in the in the Gulf of Mexico or America, whatever you want to call it. And I mean, those are the things we saw. And even, personally, the people who had great wealth and gave a lot of it to their kids early, often raised, sadly, depend people with a lot of challenges, because they just didn't develop independence, what have you so, sort of balancing that but, but to answer your question, it's, it is funny. It's a, certainly a quality problem to have. But when you say, you know, numbers show that things will work out. You want to be not just confident. You want to be close to positive. There's nothing positive. And the more time that goes on, it's like, okay, it is looking pretty good. I mean, that's fun. Then it changes from, at least for us, I think, thinking about finances at all, to just putting that aside and then giving you the luxury. What do you really want to do? It's often not money related. It's where do you want to spend your time volunteering? What organizations do want to support? You know, where you adopted a dog from a rescue, and that's

he's been expensive,

but also rewarding, yeah, but you want to be in good shape. Get a dog that likes to run. There you go.

When you said pizza walks. Natalie and I were very curious about what is a pizza walk in your

pizzeria a couple miles down the block. So and I like taking him there, because there's often other dogs. And one of his challenges, he's a little bit high strung when you see the dogs, but if you give him a little bit of pizza, it takes his mind completely off pooches in the neighbor. So he's very well trained.

Rob has taught him how to sit there and put his paws on the ground, like, sit there quietly, put your paws on the ground, and he puts pizza on top of each paw. Oh my and then the dog has to watch him. And he says, Okay. And then the dog can eat the pizza.

Oh my gosh. Truly a pizza walk. He also

gets pastry paws at the bakery, but he'll do seven miles on the trails and wear it off. So he's, oh, he

deserves it. Then he does, yeah, he's earned it. Yeah. I want to round out the episode with with one final question. And love to hear from each of you on this you know you're at a different life stage than than we are. I would be curious, if there was one piece of advice money related or not, what would that be that you would give your younger self?

I would say live a little below your means. So you, you save. You're always saving. Max out your 401, K, max out your whatever your savings vehicle is, max that out first, then pay yourself. I think if you do that, you know, obviously pay all your debt too. Never carry debt, if you can help it. Particularly silly debt, like credit card debt, you're going to have a house payment. You're going to have a car payment. That's fine. So always live. A little below your means. I think a lot of people don't, and then, as your means increases, don't always increase your standard of living immediately, stay the course for a little bit. As your standard of living, or your ability to have a higher standard of living, increases, stay the course a little bit and see where you are. I think that by doing something like that and sticking with the plan. You see it pay off slowly but very surely over time, and that payoff increases every year a little bit. So it gets a little safer. First, it's not so safe. Maybe you're living, you know, at your means, but it gets a little safer over time. Rob and I used to joke that I had when we met, I had bum syndrome. I was afraid that everything was going to fall apart tomorrow, but the more and more that our savings increased, but we didn't quite increase our standard of living, my bum syndrome went away. So now i Hey, man, I can spend some money.

Yeah, you get to reap the benefits of those decisions, of of staying within your means. What about for you, Rob? What would you tell your younger self?

Well, I agree with everything Theresa said, and I will say that it made for me work a lot more enjoyable when I switched from needing the income to having the option to whether to leave or not, because I stayed a long time after I could have left so and that was just having a ball. But to answer the question, this will be a maybe unusual answer, but if I was giving myself advice that I didn't follow would be to take more vacation. Oh, because when work was slow, you were nervous of work slow, so you got to drum up more ambitious works. Basically you can't take a vacation. So I was just bad at taking vacations where just turn off the phone, unplug, go somewhere, something's always going to be happening at work. When you leave work, you realize that the world continues on, and the clients who thought you walked on water find someone else the great you need colleagues who can back you up when you do that if you're in a service industry. But no one begrudges you that week, 10 days, three weeks, whatever it is, go for it. Unplug nothing like it. Can't get those days back. We're making up for lost time, but that would be my advice to my note or so, excellent.

Well, Rob Theresa, we really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your stories. I took away a lot from this. So thank you.

Thanks for inviting us. Thank you. Hey, if you've enjoyed this episode and are looking for personalized financial guidance, schedule a free complimentary consultation using the link in the description below Natalie and Dan Slagle are the founding partners of Fyooz financial planning a registered investment advisor. The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Advisory services are offered to clients or prospective clients where Fyooz financial planning and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. For more information, including our disclosures, please visit our website at WWW dot Fyooz financial.com