Kurt Nelson 0:00 Kurt, welcome to Behavioral Grooves, the podcast that explores the psychological principles behind why we do what we do. I'm Kurt Nelson and I'm Tim Houlihan on today's episode, we have the privilege of speaking Tim Houlihan 0:17 with Abby Davison, co author of money and love, an intelligent roadmap for life's biggest decisions, which recently came out in paperback, which is why we're speaking with her. Yeah Kurt Nelson 0:28 and Abby's book introduces us to a practical 5c framework for making better decisions, clarify, communicate choices, check in and consequences, which she developed with her co author, Myra Strober, a pioneering labor economist from Stanford Business School, what Tim Houlihan 0:45 we found really fascinating in our conversation with Abby was how she emphasizes that all major life decisions involve elements of both money and love that conventional wisdom often has us thinking about money decisions With our heads and relationship decisions with our hearts, creating this problematic and unrealistic split. It's interesting Kurt Nelson 1:06 to think about it that way. And when you say Tim, I mean, it's fascinating. So Abby's book originally came out in January of 2023 and we're celebrating the fact that it's coming out in paperback. Yeah, yay, yeah. And more importantly, the book grew out of Myra, 40 years of experience teaching a course at Stanford Business School that evolved from women in work to work and family, and the class reflected the ongoing development of Myers research and how these issues affect anyone who wants to balance career ambition with a meaningful personal life, and who Tim who doesn't want to balance, you know, career and meaningful personal life. Tim Houlihan 1:52 Duh, absolutely. Now with Abby, we discussed the importance of intentional conversations and relationships, especially about finances. Abby shared research showing that couples who discuss money at least once per week report a higher relationship satisfaction than those who rarely talk about it. Kurt Nelson 2:10 Yeah, so now I need to talk more about money. Then we do want a bit of a big, big thank you, and shout out to our friend Dave Nussbaum, who for introducing us to the very, very cool Abby Davison and for making this conversation happen. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 2:29 again. Thanks Dave, for Abby and for so many of our terrific interview guests. Thank you, Dave. Yeah, we Kurt Nelson 2:36 want to add in that Abby left her corporate career recently to found the money and love Institute where she and her colleagues help people and organizations make better decisions that lead to prosperity and purpose. And just doing some really, really cool, cool stuff, it Tim Houlihan 2:54 is very cool. So if you have need to support her, please take advantage of that. And right now, though, it's time to grab your favorite cup of 5c framework, sit back and relax and Kurt Nelson 3:08 enjoy our insightful, funny and heartfelt conversation with Abby Davison. Tim Houlihan 3:21 Abby Davison, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. Abby Davisson 3:23 Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to have you Tim Houlihan 3:27 here, and we're going to start with maybe one of the most important questions of the day, coffee or tea? Abby Davisson 3:32 100% tea, 100% provided household, my husband is 100% coffee, so we have a lot of beverage containers in our kitchen, Tim Houlihan 3:46 and beverage making machines. Unknown Speaker 3:48 Making machines, yes, is Kurt Nelson 3:50 it because of you don't like the taste of coffee? Is it just like, you know, Abby Davisson 3:54 I never acquired the taste, and so then I just started down the tea path, and there are so many. I'm now, like, deep into the world of making my own matcha and like a milk frother. And I, yes, I do. I have a lot of extensive tea appliances, but never coffee. You Kurt Nelson 4:14 have just endeared yourself with Tim. So there you go. Yes, Tim Houlihan 4:17 we're, we're heartfelt buddies on the no coffee front, because I love the smell like I love the smell too, yeah, right, but the taste, yeah? So I'm Abby Davisson 4:30 happy that my husband is 100% coffee because I get to benefit from the smell without having to then drink it. Oh, Kurt Nelson 4:37 there you go. I love about that. There you go. All right. Second speed, round question, Abby, uh, live a year without a mobile phone or a year without your laptop? Which would you prefer? Abby Davisson 4:49 Oh, um, I think without my phone I am, I am increasingly, um, trying to pay with cash. I am increasingly trying to not look at Google Maps when I am going someplace, and so I'm trying to reclaim the freedom of not being tethered to the phone. So I think if I had to get rid of it for a year, I'd figure it out. Kurt Nelson 5:12 You know, it's Oh, go ahead, Tim. We Tim Houlihan 5:15 asked Danny Oppenheimer back, back when he was at CMU, the same question. He said, I just did it. He and his wife had a year sabbatical in Europe. And he's like, we're not going to, you know, just pay the extra fees to do this. So they literally just lived without it. And we were like, Well, how did the experiment go? He said, fantastic. Like, worked great. Like, I don't know if I could do it. I don't know if there's Kurt Nelson 5:38 a generational piece of this too. Like, like, I, like my kids would give up their laptop in an instant, right to keep their phone, where as I would be, like, no, get rid of that phone. I'll keep a laptop. I can do all that I need to do, and interconnected with with that. But, yeah, get rid of we Abby Davisson 5:55 remember the world before we had the phone and it was okay. It Kurt Nelson 6:00 was, I love that you said, even getting rid of, like, you're practicing, like, not using the GPS, like that, that, I think, is just because that's, like, the the useful thing for me, it's like, you know, not getting lost and being able to, which is the fastest route, and different things. But I think there's something about, like, just not having that and, like, all right, I got stuck in traffic. Okay, all right, that's what you Tim Houlihan 6:22 have, like, an atlas in the car. You know, with maps, it Abby Davisson 6:26 was funny. We were just talking about, like, people are going back to paper maps. I mean, especially with all the issues with the grid, and there was, like, this, I have several friends living in Portugal, there was just this big black, right? And so this idea of like, okay, well, this might not be available all the time, and a lot of people don't know how to read paper maps. So I was just thinking, like, maybe we should introduce our kids to this idea of, like, how do you read a map that is not, you know, navigating with you and you are driving, Kurt Nelson 6:53 you're not the center of the map in every place you know, like, No, you're moving across the map. The map isn't moving with you. Yes, that's very different, right? Tim Houlihan 7:01 Okay, Okay, moving on with our speed round yes or no, do most people underestimate how much their partner influences their financial decisions? Unknown Speaker 7:11 Yes, Abby Davisson 7:13 yes. I think there is a you are most influenced by the five people around you, and if you are by the five people you spend the most time with, and if one of those people is your life partner, then absolutely, and I think you are, you have such an up close view that you only see the places where you have a difference. But over time, you know you are moving closer and closer together. So I used to not be a morning person, but then my husband had a job where he worked market hours, and it was like the only time that I could see him, you know, if I didn't work out in the morning, like we would lose that, right? And so I have, I have become a morning person. So I'm sure that my spending habits have been influenced by by his as well, because we have spent a lot of time together over the past, you know, 18 years, yeah, Kurt Nelson 8:01 I love that. I love that. All right, last of our speed around questions, Abby, fact or fiction, couples who regularly discuss money have stronger relationships Abby Davisson 8:12 absolute fact. There have been studies that back me up on that, that couples who say they discuss money at least once a week are happier than couples who say they rarely discuss money. So that is once a week. True. Kurt Nelson 8:24 Yes, wow, wow. I mean, I have, I have conversations with my wife about money, but it's, I don't think it's one, so I'm gonna have to make that more. Gonna have to get on that. Well, I'm not saying Abby Davisson 8:35 you have to be like, reviewing your 401, K's together. If you're in the grocery store and you're like, Well, what brand of, you know, tea should I be buying? And you know, you're talking about, well, this one's on sale, like that counts as a conversation about money. So okay, give yourself more credit, baby. Kurt Nelson 8:54 Okay? And then, and then, you know, it's like, no, this brings me joy, so I'm gonna spend the I don't need the discount, right? Yes, Abby Davisson 9:02 exactly. There's some things, and I do not buy the discounted tea, to be clear. My brand loyalties and they are to PG Tips tea, and so sometimes that is actually more expensive because it is manufactured, not here, Speaker 1 9:16 yes, right now, yeah, yeah. Okay, wow. Tim Houlihan 9:20 Well, we're here to catch up with you. Abby, your your book, money and love, an intelligent roadmap for life's biggest decisions just came out in paperback. We're happy for you. This is something to celebrate, not, not every book comes out in paperback. So, so kudos to you. Thank you so but for those who have not yet bought the book to read it, can you give us just a quick synopsis? Give give us why the paperback version should grab their attention and why they should go out and buy it right away. Well, Abby Davisson 9:51 it's lighter and cheaper for one that isn't grabbing your attention already, it's it's really a. Decision Making book, and it's it was inspired by a course that my co author, labor economist Myra Strober taught for over 40 years at Stanford Business School. And in the course and in the book, we talk about all of the big life decisions we tend to encounter in life, and how you should be thinking about them. If you are someone who is ambitious about your career and also ambitious about your personal life, Kurt Nelson 10:27 that is a fantastic synopsis on this. So, all right, labor economist, what kind of insights does a labor economist bring to this conversation about couples and money and everything, what you know, it's not, what was the insight that she brought? Abby Davisson 10:49 Yeah, well, a lot of data, first of all, and her own personal experience. So she is a pioneer. She got her PhD from MIT in the 60s, came out and started teaching at Berkeley and was put on the lecturer track when her fellow male graduates of her PhD class were put on the professor track, the tenure track, and when she asked the Dean why that choice was made, the answer was, will you live in Palo Alto and and so she was kind of like, I don't understand. And then she always says, I became a feminist on the Bay Bridge. Because, as she was driving home that night, she said, it's not because I live in Palo Alto, it's because I'm a woman. I have two kids, and my husband's job is why we live in Palo Alto. And so this is she encountered bias in her own experience that then informed a class that she started teaching called Women and work, which, over the years, evolved into the class called work and family. Because these issues, by the way, are not only relevant to women, they are relevant to people who want to prioritize their personal lives in addition to their careers. And so the course was filled with data, guest speakers, and opportunities to dig into these thorny questions, which I was fortunate enough to get to do with the person I was dating at the time, who happened to become my husband. Just Tim Houlihan 12:15 happened to be, yeah, just happened to Kurt Nelson 12:17 be, you took questions right there. Well, the book challenges Tim Houlihan 12:21 this convention. The book challenges the conventional wisdom that love and money are very different things, right? And I'm curious about how did you come to see these two are really deeply intertwined? Because you make a compelling case in the book that they are deeply intertwined. Well, as Abby Davisson 12:40 you mentioned, the conventional wisdom is absolutely to separate them and to make decisions about financial matters, about our careers with our heads and analyze them, and don't let your emotions get in the way. And conversely, think about relationship decisions with your heart and feel your feelings, and don't bring money into the picture. That's really materialistic. But you know, all of life's biggest decisions have an element of money and an element of love to them, and so if you are thinking about those decisions in a siloed way and only focusing on your head or your heart, you are doing yourself a disservice. You're more likely to make a decision you regret, and so you need to be to have a holistic approach and to think about them in a in a way that allows you to blend the two. But it is, at least for me, that was not what I was taught growing up, and so the class was a real light bulb moment for me, of like, oh, that's why this has been so hard, where I just felt like I was had blinders on to the other elements that I needed to take into account. So I I learned a lot, and I that is, you know what? What prompted my husband and I to have a lot of tough conversations before we felt ready to have them. You know, as we were in the class and only had been dating for about a year. Unknown Speaker 14:02 Well, talk Tim Houlihan 14:03 about that. What were those first conversations like, and how did you get through them? Abby Davisson 14:10 Well, interestingly, my co author, then professor, shared a surprising piece of data in the class, which was that couples who lived together before getting married who cohabit have a higher divorce rate. And that was counterintuitive to us, and it was something we were thinking of doing as we were graduating, getting ready to think about, do we accept jobs in the same city? Do we move in together? And so we thought like, why is that, and how is there anything that could be done to prevent it? And so for our final paper, we dug into that question, and we learned that there is one thing that can be done to prevent those negative effects from happening, which is being intentional. So if you are intentional about having conversations before you move in together, a. Almost as if you were getting married. About, how will we combine finances? How will we divide the household chores, even, whose family will we spend which holiday with? Then, if you control for people who are intentional, those negative effects go away. The problems come in when you slide into the situation rather than decide. And so you say, well, we're already spending most nights together, and your lease is up, and why don't we just, you know, take this next step in our relationship, but you have none of those conversations, and then the situation actually becomes almost as hard to leave as a marriage, but you haven't set yourself up for success, yeah? Kurt Nelson 15:35 Oh, I love that. You guys wrote a paper on that, though that was, this is that's very cool, right? So, Abby Davisson 15:43 and very nerdy, as you can imagine, we get a lot of teasing from our friends and family about Tim Houlihan 15:50 you guys are rock stars in my my heart, Kurt Nelson 15:52 I think it's fantastic. So, yeah, all right, so the book introduces this 5c framework for decision making around these right? So it's clarify, communicate choices, check in and consequences. We're not going to have you go through all five of them. You know, do you? I know they're probably all your kids, but do you have a favorite kid and you want to talk about which, which favorite kid that you want to go into a little bit in depth? Yeah? Abby Davisson 16:19 Well, so first, let me just share a little bit more about why we developed a framework, because it was actually not part of the original course. It was something that my co author and I developed collaboratively in the course of the research and writing the book, and we were the guinea pigs, and we road tested it through the process in our own lives, as well as as the research that we did. And so it's a couple of reasons. One is that when we have a decision on our plate, especially a big life decision, it's stressful, it's uncomfortable, there's a high degree of uncertainty. And so our tendency is to want to, like, get that decision off our plate, and, like, make it as quickly as possible. It almost doesn't even matter what the decision is, it's right. Let's just, like, figure this out. And so most people make decisions too quickly. So part of having a framework is slowing down. It's moving from what Daniel Kahneman would call, you know, system one thinking, which is, you know, quick to access emotional, impulsive, to system two thinking, which is much more rational, logical, harder to access. So that was, that was one goal. And then the other goal is, you know, we don't purport to know. Did not want to tell people what to do, right? We did not want to say, you know, well, if this is your question, you know, this is your decision. Here's how you should make it. Everyone's situation is different everyone is facing, you know, it's different circumstances and nuance. So we wanted to give people something that was flexible enough to fit our wide variety of situations, but sturdy enough that they could rely on it over and over again. And so that was where the concept of the framework came in. And I was a, my first job out of college was as a management consultant. So I love a good framework, you know, I definitely that was near and dear to my heart, yeah, but I, I'd say, you know, sometimes I get asked like, well, which which step in the framework is the most important, and they're all important. And yet, the first step, the clarify what is most important to you. Step is the hardest to do and the most critical for all the other steps to flow and help you get where you're trying to go. And so the reason that it's so hard to clarify what we want is that we hear so many people's voices in our head when we try to answer that question, right? We hear your parents, your mentors, society, right? Like what you see your peers doing, and that is more prevalent than ever since we can, you know, open up LinkedIn or whatever, you know, social platform of your choice, and just see what they're doing every instant that you want, and so tuning out all of the mimetic desire and those pressures and tuning into what are your true values? What would make this feel right? What are those core nutrients that make you you? And once you get clear on that, then it is a lot easier to navigate from that point than if you're kind of listening to someone else's voice. Tim Houlihan 19:21 So let's dig into that for just a minute. How do you let's take the situation of my partner has got a job offer in another city, and so that now we're facing a question of, do we, do we take that job offer or not? How? But the fundamental question that you're asking in the clarify is, who am I, to some degree, right? It's Who am I showing up as, and what do I want to be? Is, yes, kind of part of it? How do I address that? What? How do I go about doing that? Abby Davisson 19:55 Yeah, so I always say a job fits into a life. If not the other way around, right? And so the idea of, if you're thinking about a job decision, you need to think about all of the elements that are in the life that you want. And that could involve living close to family. It could involve how, it certainly involves how much you're spending time you're spending in a car or commuting, which leaves you less time to do the other things that you care about. And there's a lot of research around, you know, people with long commutes having, you know, less happiness, right? And so you know, really looking at, how do I really want to spend my time? And then how will this decision move me closer to those ways of living that I want, or move me farther away from it. And you clarify for yourself what's most important to you. And by the way, this is all for the specific season of life that you're in. Sometimes we do make trade offs. Sometimes we do choose a longer commute. Sometimes we do choose, you know, things that are not going to bring us as close as possible, but the the zooming out and saying, you know, what is the sort of larger elements that are important to me? And then how does this decision kind of affect that in the arc of my career? And and, by the way, then, you know, that's what you clarify for yourself. But then, because your partner is involved, you then take the second step of communication, right? And you talk to them and really listen. It's not like, well, here's how I'm thinking about it. And you know, I've already run, you know, the three scenarios, and so ultimately, we should do X, right? It's like, yeah, no, you're just sharing your initial perspective, and then you're really listening for them to share their perspective such that you might even change your mind, right? Like that's the mark of true listening is you're allowing yourself to be influenced by what you hear. And so many of us do not speak to do that. We speak to right? We communicate to get our point across and try to convince someone, but it's really, you know, and we, my co author, likes to say clarifying communication are a bit of a dance. They're like this double helix where you're kind of, you know, sharing what you think you're hearing what they think that might cause you to change your perspective. And the 5c are very iterative. They're laid out, you know, linearly, because that's how we put words on a page, but they are absolutely an iterative process. And when, when we were testing this framework, we both made decisions about where to live and when to move. Myself and my co author and I used the framework and decided not to move to we decided to stay in our current home, and my co author decided to move and so, you know, you can use the same framework come out with a different result depending on all of the specifics that are relevant to your situation. Kurt Nelson 22:52 So, so Abby, this book isn't just for people who are starting off down that like younger you know, just graduating in a relationship, just trying to figure things out this, it sounds like this can be used for anybody, regardless of where they are in their a, relationship, B, financial kind of fortune. Is that true? And how does that work? Give us some examples of different life stages where this could be possible or useful. Yeah, Abby Davisson 23:22 it is true, and it's, it's something that we were really delighted to discover, because the class was taught primarily at a business school, and so it was really people in their, you know, I'd say 20s, maybe some early 30s, who were, you know, the ones taking the class, and they would come back to my co author years later and say, you know, your class changed my life. It taught me, you know, the rest of my classes taught me what to do, and this class taught me how to do it, right? And so we knew that it had made an impression when people find it, you know, early on in life. But what's been so wonderful is, you know, to hear from readers that, like I thought this was, I bought this book for my grandchild, and I thought, you know, let me just take a look at it before I send it off to you know, them for their engagement or their wedding or their graduation. And then I started, you know, reading it. And actually, we did a session for a financial advisor and our clients a firm. And we had someone who was in her early 90s, who said, I am actually using this framework to make complex end of life decisions that my adult children do not want to talk about. And I realized by reading this book that they absolutely need to discuss this with me. I'm using the framework. We're walking through it, and it has been so helpful to me to wrap my head around this money and love decision about, you know, how I want to spend my days and how I want to think about passing on resources and and so it's just been wonderful. And my co author, actually herself, has been navigating this because now she's in a new relationship. She's in her mid 80s, and they are talking about opening a. Joint credit card together. I think they did open a joint credit card together. They're traveling a lot together, and so really, we have money and love questions at every stage of our lives. Tim Houlihan 25:08 Did you anticipate that early on in the research? I think Abby Davisson 25:12 we hoped, but because our research really focused on, I mean, we started with a large survey, and, we used the cohorts of graduates of the class to get the word out. So we wanted voices beyond just those who took the class in Stanford Business School. But I don't think we anticipated how widely applicable the questions would be at how much energy people from all ages would have to talk about the different life decisions they've made, and how they made them. And the number one question that everyone wanted to talk about in our research was where to live and how to decide when to move, because that is a question that comes up over and over again in our lives, right? We We can probably count on, hopefully, one hand, the number of people we decide to spend our life with, or, you know, like, how many times you're answering that decision of who should I spend my life with? Kurt Nelson 26:03 It one hand is a good, good, Tim Houlihan 26:07 good rule of thumb. Abby Davisson 26:11 But this question of moving, especially in this era of remote work, and then return to Office mandates and all of the I mean, we started writing the book. We got our our our book deal in the fall of 2020 and so, you know, this was an interesting time that we were, you know, surveying people and talking to them about this question. And that was, no matter where you were in 2020 it didn't feel like you were in the right place. So that was certainly an interesting discovery through through the research. That's cool. Kurt Nelson 26:44 Hey, this is Kurt, and we want to say thanks for listening to Behavioral Grooves, and we hope that you're enjoying this episode, but it feels a little bit one sided. You're hearing from us, but we're not hearing from you. Tim Houlihan 26:56 This is Tim, and we have two suggestions to remedy that. The first is join our Facebook page and engage with us. We want to talk Kurt Nelson 27:05 with you. We want to hear your perspectives, and hopefully our Facebook page might be the place to have some of that interaction. So please, please come and join us. The other Tim Houlihan 27:15 recommendation we have for you is to leave us a quick rating, you know, the little five star thing at the bottom of your app or a short review. Just leave us a few words about what you like, about behavioral groups. We very much appreciate it. Kurt Nelson 27:27 Thanks, and we now return you to our regularly scheduled programming. I find it so obviously, there's the big questions right where you're you know if you're going to move, if I'm going to take a new job, different things. But, you know, in reading the book, there's also an aspect of this that's more mundane. It's the the everyday, you know, oh, you're going golfing one more time, you know. And different pieces along that line, how help us understand how it gets used in both kind of, in that kind of more mundane, everyday piece and what we should be thinking about, yeah, Abby Davisson 28:04 well, I mean, it's the Annie Dillard quote, right? How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. And so we absolutely have ramifications from the big decisions that filter down to every day. And you know, this question of conversations to have with your partner so that you set yourself up for success. I mean, I think what the course did for me and what we hope the book does for readers, is give radical permission to broach topics that feel taboo, that feel like, oh, maybe this is too early in our relationship or too late, right? There's sometimes people who say, like, I never had any of these conversations. In fact, when I gave the early manuscript to my father, he said, you know, if your mom and I had this book, you might not be alive, Abby Davisson 28:56 Back to the Future moment. So So I think there were a lot of people who didn't have these conversations early on about career and ambition and money and how that, you know, gets threaded into a relationship and and, and I'd like to say it's not too late you can, you know, have them at any age or stage. You can blame the book. I always think it's great to be like I listen to this podcast. My favorite podcast, had this author on, and you know, she was encouraging us to have conversations about money, because apparently they make you happier as a couple. And I realized, like, we don't do that regularly, so please use this as an excuse to broach the topic. But one of the things, you know, we started talking about early on, my husband and I, I was graduating and going to work in a nonprofit. He was graduating and going to work in a hedge fund. And so one of the things we talked about is like, should we pay the same amount of rent, like we were getting wildly different salaries, but that was, you know, something we had to confront also, what percentage of our income to contribute to a shared account? Like, should we have a shared account? What you. How do we, you know, have different stage gates over time of how we should increase that as we got married and we got engaged and married. So, you know, I would say this is a muscle that when you start to have these conversations, you build and it actually gets easier, even it's uncomfortable, right? You go to the gym, you do some weight lifting, and you're sore the next day, like it's not, it's all, it's these are not easy conversations. But then over time, you build the muscle. And now, you know, after nearly 16 years of marriage and 18 years of being together, we have this shared muscle build. And so, you know, I don't raise my eyebrow and say, Oh, you're, you're going golfing again, because we've had, we've had these. He doesn't golf at all. But, you know, trying to think about the equivalent, like you're going to like you're going to a conference again, like I just was solo parenting last week because he was at a at a conference for work, and it was, it's a non a non event in our house, because we've had those bigger conversations about how to support each other. We Kurt Nelson 30:54 interviewed Scott Rick A while ago, you know, talking save or spend, you know, spend, thrift and all that kind of piece, and the different personalities that people have around money, is that part of what is really good about the idea of the communication around that so you're clearing and that clarification on that piece help us, help me understand that a little bit better. Yeah, Abby Davisson 31:15 no, I love Scott's book. I think it's brilliant, and I love his notion of financial translucency, because I absolutely believe in that as well. Like you don't translucency, not transparency, not parents. Like you do not have to have a shared like we have a joint account, and then we have, you know, each of our own accounts to use, to spend on the things that we like to spend reckless amounts of money on that the other person doesn't need to support. So, so, yeah, I think it is about knowing your own values around money, understanding the money stories you absorbed growing up, and then making sure you're talking about those and making them visible to each other, so that you're not kind of like us, making assumptions, and I think early on, certainly, in determining who to spend your life with, as much as you can get those out on the table to understand, like, are we, you know, we might have very different habits or different upbringings and different, you know, financial experiences, but are we? Can we find a path forward that feels acceptable to both of us when money is involved, I think, is the answer. It's not that you have to both be spenders or both be savers. It's, you know, can we agree in a way that feels okay? Unknown Speaker 32:26 Yeah, yeah. So Tim Houlihan 32:27 assuming that most people are erring on the lower end of the scale and not engaging enough, is it possible to engage too much? Is, is, is there a Goldilocks kind of area in here that that it's possible to go way overboard on this and over index on it? Yes, Abby Davisson 32:45 absolutely. I think, you know, we have a quiz on our book website, which is money love book.com to ask about people's decision making styles, because we all have kind of an innate style. And some people really like to analyze everything. And other people like to go with their guts. And some people are in between. And I think this idea of analysis paralysis, or, you know, kind of getting stuck in the conversation, of, like, talking about it over and over again, so that you're not actually enjoying your life. You're just sort of like spinning around, you know, a question, or, you know, particularly about money, like, when times are stressful, and so thinking about, like, what are those scheduling time to have regular conversations? So maybe it is, you know, once a week. But then when you're not having those conversations, don't talk about it like, don't, you know, put it aside. That was one of my husband and I were trying to make this decision about whether to move it would like, come up when we were brushing our teeth at night, getting ready for bed or trying to get the kids out the door in the morning, these are Tim Houlihan 33:46 not optimal cognitive times to have discussions. Exactly Abby Davisson 33:50 So part of communication, like the step two, is really thinking about where and when is the right time and space to communicate, and not bringing it up at those other times, because that is not a recipe for success. Shall we say? As I learned from experience, Kurt Nelson 34:06 I can understand that. I think there's and again, I my wife and myself, I think we probably need to do a better job of upfront in doing this communication, which we're going to be doing now, since I've learned this, but there is this aspect where I'm just a GO WITH IT person, where she's much more of the planner and various different pieces. And so there is that kind of times where we're butting heads. It's like, we'll figure it out. And it's like, no, we can't just figure it out later. We need to figure it out in advance. And so, and I find there's, there's often that I just get tired of having to have that conversation, but realize that it's important for her. So it's kind of that give and take, I think, on both of ours that we're gonna have to do as we're moving forward. So no question there. But yeah, this Abby Davisson 34:54 is, this is, like, you know, interesting, because my husband are both planners, so we don't mind having. A planning conversation, although we, like, I'm probably more of an extreme planner about certain things. Do you have any time that you regularly come together to talk about, even, you know, the next vacation you're gonna do, or, like, the week's logistics? Like, is there any, any regularly scheduled time there Kurt Nelson 35:18 is? It is no, it is very ad hoc. It is the, it is the Oh, toothbrush. I would this. I remember now I were, I was thinking about the vacation, and let's talk about that now. And it's like, Oh, I'm not, yeah. So no, we don't. So yeah. Well, Abby Davisson 35:33 so maybe as an experiment for the next couple of weeks, you pick a time, and it could be like, over beers on Sunday afternoon. It does. You can make it fun. It doesn't. You actually, you know, as you know from behavioral science, the strategy of pairing can be very helpful in this right where you think of what's a restaurant you like to go to, or like a park that you both enjoy, and put that on the calendar and say, at this time, you know, we're going to be at this place and we're going to, these are the three things that we want to talk about. And so, you know, it's something that you're looking forward to, even though, like, you're not psyched about having the conversation about the specific things, but that you're both, you know that you're going to dedicate time to it, just as you would a conversation with your manager or, you know, and I think sometimes in the workplace, we understand that we have to plan in advance. We have to have these strategy big picture conversations, and then we sort of that idea goes out the window with the people who are most important to us, right? Which is our life partner. I Kurt Nelson 36:33 like that. It's scheduling a one on one on this. We have a regular one on ones. There we go. That I didn't expect this to be a counseling therapy for me, but thank you. This is really great. Tim Houlihan 36:45 We're, we're, yeah, we're kind of leeches on that. We'll, we'll, we'll take great ideas from wherever we can get them. Abby, what are you working on now? What's, what's, you know, I mean, it's congratulations. The book is coming out in paperback. We're absolutely celebrating that, but I, but you're not still living in in love or money soup or love and money soup. You're, you're, in Abby Davisson 37:08 a way I am, because I actually started the money and love Institute. So I, I left a, you know, 20 plus year career working within organizations the last decade or so, was at Gap Inc, the global retailer, where I led the corporate foundation and I started the Employee Resource Group and applied the framework I was writing the book while I was in that full time job, applying the framework to my own life, because I was feeling really pulled towards this area and and I did make a leap. I left that dream job, started the money and love Institute, and the goal is really to help people make better decisions that lead to prosperity and purpose. And so now I teach and I advise and I speak about how people can make better decisions, mostly for employers who are helping their employees navigate all of these things, because, as we know, people are now looking to their employers to help them provide, you know, the the right kind of work life, integration or balance, or whatever term you want to use, let them live holistic lives while still, you know, being as productive and effective as as they can in the workplace. So I've been having fun doing that, working with everything from Wealth Advisors to to lawyers to tech companies as they as they think about how to bring people together to help them make better decisions. Tim Houlihan 38:35 Oh, that's fantastic. So you're you're not just dealing with people individually. You're dealing with sort of the people who deal with people as well. Yes, yeah, that's fantastic. Okay, I'm I'm Kurt. Do you mind if I hijack the conversation now for I know, Kurt Nelson 38:49 I know exactly where you're going. Tim, yes, you can go ahead and run with your your next questions. So, Abby, imagine Tim Houlihan 38:58 that you were stranded on a desert on a desert island for a year, and you have a listening device that that will only take two musical artists now you get the whole catalog. You get everything that they've ever created, recorded, partnered on, sat in on, co wrote, whatever, everything but, but you only get two, which are the which would be the two that you would take with you? Abby Davisson 39:23 Ooh, this is a great question. And I think I go back to the classics, because then I would get to remember my childhood and remember kind of like discovering music for the first time. So I think the Beatles, because that was a very early influence for me. And I actually my older son, who is in sixth grade, takes piano. And one of the things that makes me so happy is, you know, he's learning, here comes the sun. He's learning, you know, some other Beatles songs. And like hearing him, like. I get to discover this on his own and play it. That makes me so happy. So I think there's a lot of memories wrapped up in that. So Tim Houlihan 40:07 your parents played that. Played these. You didn't you weren't alive when the Beatles were together. Abby Davisson 40:12 No, I was, I was not, but I I did hear them through my parents and through other I remember being in like, other people's cars, and they would like, pop in the cassette tape, and we'd be like, driving to gymnastics and listening to that. So, so I think they beat Tim. Kurt Nelson 40:30 Tim clarification question, so Beatles does? Does Abby get every like John Lennon and Paul McCartney wins afterwards, and all of that as well. So this is, like, a ruling on the field, is that, I'm just trying to clarify, like, what are the, what are the memories of, you know, it's Tim Houlihan 40:47 like, I think that Beatles could include that all of you know McCartney with wings, and, you know, all of his iterations, and George Harrison's and John's, and goes, Yeah, I would think so. But even, Kurt Nelson 41:01 even larger. There you go, okay, just because it could, it could impact the next question, right? So it's not Abby Davisson 41:08 Yeah, well, I wouldn't choose the Beatles, and then also Paul McCartney solo career, right? Like, that's yeah, I feel redundant, okay? And then who is my second pick? This feels like it needs to be complimentary, like it would be jarring if it were a completely different form of music, like, so Tim Houlihan 41:26 you're novelty seeking, but not radical. I am Abby Davisson 41:31 novelty seeking, yes, and I know, in fact, in our book, we talk about the idea of being a tempered radical, which is a term from Deborah Myerson, which is people who try to make change from the inside of organizations and institutions. So I identify as a tempered radical, not as a radical. So I think, but you know, I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna depart from my childhood into I think, if you're on an island and you're by yourself and nobody can see you dancing, and it's just like you're going to be need to just rock out. Sometimes. I'm going to go with Beyonce. Speaker 1 42:09 Oh my gosh, I love it. Yeah, that's and they Abby Davisson 42:13 both start with B as you know, I love alliteration from my five Cs, so I think I've been keeping my theme. Tim Houlihan 42:21 Well, that's, that's fantastic. I couldn't I mean, there's nothing to disagree with there. Those are both fantastic choices, and Beyonce is catalog just keeps getting bigger and more, like Abby Davisson 42:31 you get now, the country version with that one artist. So I love, I love her reinvention. I mean, I have done a personal repotting in the last couple of years, leaving a corporate career to launch a book and to do more writing and speaking. So I love the evolution of her career. It's really inspiring. I love how you Kurt Nelson 42:52 put some parameters around the choice of that though, like nobody's on that desert islands to watch me dance and different pieces. Like you had to clarify that I I'm going to be dancing to this and I'm not going to feel bad, you know? I'm not going to have any kind of, well, Abby Davisson 43:07 I live with tweens who judge a lot of things right now. So that's what's in my mind. It's like, you can't dance like that. Kurt Nelson 43:18 The eye rolls that happen. That's like, Mom, yes, we've been there ourselves, so yes, Tim Houlihan 43:25 all right. Abby Davison, thanks so much for being a guest on Behavioral Grooves Abby Davisson 43:29 today. I had so much fun talking to you both. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Kurt Nelson 43:41 Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Abby. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our money and love brains. Tim Houlihan 43:52 It's both. It's just both. You know, this, this is sort of it reminded me of the conversation with Scott Rick about, you know, spend thrifts and and Kurt Nelson 44:03 tight words, tidewads and like we, we can't Tim Houlihan 44:06 just take money decisions out of emotion, and we can't just take relationships out of money. And, you know, system two kind of thinking. They're they're both. So let's and this is, I think, one of those great insights from behavioral science, this is just the way things are is sometimes intuitively different than the way that we think it is. And that's okay. Kurt Nelson 44:31 Are you saying intuitively we think that we can separate the two out, because I don't know if I would align Tim Houlihan 44:36 you with that. No, well, you're not very intuitive. No, Unknown Speaker 44:42 that's true. I think Tim Houlihan 44:43 you're, you're Abby, normal, as Frank as I would say, you wouldn't. You would you actually don't think that money decisions were Kurt Nelson 44:55 no. I mean, I think a relationship. I think relationships inherently. They have a monetary underpinning to them, right? I mean, even friends, it's like that you've ever, have? You ever had that friend where you go out and conveniently, they're the one who never pays or or is so, like, we got to get this down to the penny. Tim Houlihan 45:22 Of I ordered something less than you did, and I only had one beer. You had two beers, so I owe less. And right that it gets very, Kurt Nelson 45:31 very Do you know that that's, that's a part of, like, you know, big piece, and I understand that. So, yeah, I see this as a part of the human connection. I mean, it's crazy, right, but that's how it works. And I do think, though, that oftentimes people go, Yeah, but we should be able to write the the Yeah, you know, ability to separate money and love shouldn't overlap. But I don't know if that actually happens. I think Tim Houlihan 46:08 in after I got divorced, I started looking, you know, dating and sort of looking for partners. And over the course of the, you know, several years that I was many years it was dating, I found that money and a person's relationship to money was an important element of a healthy relationship. It absolutely was, for some reason, though, it wasn't top of mind. I think that it was more in the background for me, that it wasn't so much a conscious but more of an unconscious thing. I Kurt Nelson 46:42 think there might be some people where it's more front of mind, but for most of us, it probably is more, yeah, it's an underlying, it's a table stakes. It's some of the other aspects of how we view the relationship. But yeah, it's there. The Tim Houlihan 47:02 there, the here's, here's, what I would like to focus on, from a grooving perspective, is the in the five C's, Abby did reinforce in our conversation that clarity, or clarifying, this clarification aspect was really I'm getting all of them in, and that that was a really important part of, maybe the most important part of the five C's, and I, and I really took that to heart, because I think what you're talking about, and what you and I are already talking about, is it's not enough to just have the financial part of our romantic relationship In the background. Yeah, that it needs to be upfront. There needs to be this clarification. And she even said that it's psychologically the most difficult, but that it's also arguably the most transformative when it comes to really making our lives better. This Kurt Nelson 47:54 is interesting, and so this struck both, I think both you and me and correct me if I'm wrong on my assumptions about what you thought about this too, when we talked with Abby. This is also a key part when we're working on our on our book, finding your groove. And part of finding a key element of finding your groove, our perspective is, about uncovering your true values. It's clarifying your true values. So this meshed really, really well with some things I think you and I are already thinking about and looking into and trying to uncover, and I would agree that this is hard, that there is a lot of noise that comes into our true values, and sometimes we add into this supposed value that I have, maybe we mistake societal expectations or peer comparisons or familial conditioning as our own, when that's not really the case. That's not how I feel. But I know I should feel this way because all my peers do this, or this is the way my family brought me up, and you have to be able to kind of cut out that noise and really get a good view of who you are, and that's tough. Tim Houlihan 49:21 What you're revealing there Kurt is great because it reinforces, to me, the challenges that we have in really understanding our true self, like getting to who we are is really, really difficult for all of those kinds of things. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I just you know, if we've got these different feelings about about the way that the world ought to be, then we can sort of misconstrue them into trying to say, you know, these feelings are absolutely a part of who I am, because my feelings drive anything, or my values drive everything. And of course. How I feel influences my values, yes, but I would argue that our feelings are kind of blunt instruments. We're not it, is it? We're not carefully tuned pianos, like where you just know that that when you when you hit that that C note at middle C, that you know you're going to get that tone or you hit a 440 and you're going to get 440 hertz per minute. Well, Kurt Nelson 50:26 and many of us are tone deaf to begin with. So, so that, in and of itself, adds to a whole nother level of this. But I, I love that analogy. I love this idea of thinking that feelings are blunt instruments and they're not this finely tuned piano, guitar, or whatever you want to call it, it's, it's, they're, they're bigger and broader, and we need, not need, if we can better tune those feelings, train our feeling ear to hear that middle C, as opposed to, oh, that sounds kind of whatever. Or at least be aware better, Tim Houlihan 51:10 yeah, at least be aware that when we hear something that sounds like middle C, we can go that sounds like middle C, but I'm not really sure if it is, yeah, maybe I, maybe I need to go check that it's this is something you and I have talked about over the years, like the feeling of being in a risky situation or an uncertain situation, like anticipating risk and anticipating uncertainty feels the same. My body doesn't differentiate between those two, and yet, they're really different. They're really, really different. A risky situation isn't necessarily an uncertain situation, Kurt Nelson 51:44 right? And the way that we can reframe those pieces in our head because of that changes our response. And so to your point, the better that we can understand this feeling. I might not actually know what this feeling is, and so I need to re examine it, and that re examination can actually change how we respond to it. So, yeah, and I like so again. So what we're saying here is don't always react to that first response, you know, right? Don't pay attention to your first reaction or first feeling, because it's often maybe not wrong, but maybe not as precise as it needs to be. Well, well said, Tim Houlihan 52:32 this also kind of gets back to system one, system two, thinking Danny Kahneman, and of course, we love the way Annie Duke framed all this. Right? It's not so much about that we shouldn't rely on system one for that quick, intuitive response on a lot of decisions, but sometimes it's really good to say, Well, wait a minute, I've got this initial feeling. I've got this initial desire to just resolve and just let system one just zip zaps up, make the decision when really it's better to take time and let it ferment and give it some close analysis to think about what's the best way to act in any situation. Leverage that system too. Kurt Nelson 53:13 Yeah, I think you just nailed that. This idea of using the right system in your decision making, you don't need to activate system two when you're determining fish or chicken at a restaurant. You definitely need to activate system two when you're making financial decisions that are going to impact you and your spouse or loved ones. And too often, we just get in rote decisions about that. And, you know, fall back to system one. This is, I always go out and spend huge amounts of money on, you know, birthday gifts and different things. And maybe that's maybe we can't because of financial decisions or how that impacts others or various different things, which goes into identity, right? And we think about who we are as individuals. There is this aspect of money and love that is based on who we think we are. It goes back to understanding our core values, the true self, right? But, but we wrapped so much of our identity around this, right? And is it Daphna Asana? Man, yeah, definitely. Right. Who, who kind of integrated? Did this integrated review and how identity based motivations activate both contents and processes for making sense of the world. So in other words, it's like the here's the content around what what the world is, and here's the process for how I then examine that. And there's this. Idea that this salient, psychologically salient identities serve as these organizing schemas. So when we talked about schemas right for right and but they're organized as schemas for integrating new information. So because of myself, yeah, right impacts how I view and experience and how I bring that into my self concept. And I think that has a something to do with what we're talking about here, Tim Houlihan 55:29 right? Well, and I love when we, when you and I first started talking about self concept, self identity, and how that really I think, as you explained, it was, was basically sort of a an umbrella, sort of sitting on a whole bunch of pillars of self schemas, right? Yeah, because there's not just one, but we're like, but like you said, when it comes to looking out at the world and taking in new information and making a decision, we're kind of comparing to what those pillars look like for us, Kurt Nelson 56:02 and if we're in a relationship, we're looking to try to understand, what are the pillars that that other person has? Yeah, and how well do those mesh with mine, or do they conflict, or are they in different arenas? And so it doesn't matter, but there's an interesting piece. It's this idea that this is the the hard part, I think, for many people, is that we, we tend to view ourselves as having an identity. I am this type of person, right? But you show up differently. You have schemas around how you show up. It the timberwooves game I went to last night versus the Memorial Day dinner that I had with my family and guests and different pieces up at the cabin, versus how we're showing up here, and if we don't understand those different schemas, And I just assume that this overarching, that umbrella identity, as you said, is who I am, I might make some false comparisons or some false judgments based upon how I'm seeing you, and it's like, oh, but then you go, Yeah, but I'm like that too in these types of situations, maybe they are as well, and it doesn't necessarily pertain to their overall character. So, Tim Houlihan 57:24 yeah, okay, so what can we do about it? Let's, let's just, there's a couple of practical takeaways, I think, in this. And the first thing that Abby teed up, that I really love is this idea of a values audit. I know I love it. Write down whose voices you're hearing when you're considering a decision, like, write it down, what? Where is that voice coming from? Maybe, maybe it's actually alignment with the self schemas. It's what does this align with? When I'm I'm saying I value this, what part of me is that activating? Sorry, yeah, Kurt Nelson 57:57 is this is this voice? My mom is this voice? My dad is this voice, my friends? Is it my teacher from when I was in eighth grade? Yeah, and that's not saying that those voices aren't important, right? But are they yours? Have they? Have they become you? And if they have, that's fine, but make sure that they are you and that they're not just sitting on top of the real you. That values audit, I think is really key and a really cool kind of experiment or exercise that you can do. The other thing, Tim, and we talk about this all the time, context matters. Context matters. Context matters right clarify whatever the decision is based upon Tim Houlihan 58:43 the context that you're in. Again, this goes a little bit to the self schemas that we just talked about. I show up differently at Memorial Day dinner than I do dinner with, you know, friends versus dinner with coworkers. So yeah, and then the third thing I think we should talk about is just having rhythms and routines in a relationship, whether it's your own financial relationship to yourself and how you spend and save or with your partner. Have space for for making these decisions, have a space where it's safe to just say, this is how, this is how I'm thinking about spending this, this money that we have, or I'm concerned about this, and so that it's not combative, Kurt Nelson 59:31 well, and I love this idea of like, setting up these dates to have financial conversation dates, right, Tim Houlihan 59:37 right? It doesn't sound sexy, but it's really valuable, really important. I've Kurt Nelson 59:42 scheduled some of those with my wife already, so yeah, we'll see how that goes. It's an experiment. I am truly embracing this so good. Wrap up this grooving session. Mr. Houlihan, good Tim Houlihan 59:57 by me. So yeah. If you're facing a big decision or you're just reevaluating the daily rhythms of your life, take a moment to ask what truly matters to me now, Kurt Nelson 1:00:10 and remember those voices in your head aren't always yours, and so you don't have to listen to them when they're not well, I don't know anyway, just make sure. And if you hear multiple voices all the time, maybe go see some some get some help. All right, I'm talking to you, Tim. Anyway, with that clarifying values is hard. It is, as Abby said, it is one of the hardest things that we have to do. But the values, the outcomes of that are just huge so so Tim Houlihan 1:00:43 take a breath. Set aside the spreadsheet or the impulse to move. Use whatever insights you're getting from this conversation, hopefully, and use them this week as you go out and find your groove. You Transcribed by https://otter.ai