Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Chicks on the Right podcast.
Today we are talking with friend and sponsor of the show,
Zach Abraham from Bulwart Capital Management, and we're going to
get a little.
Speaker 2: Girly with you, Zach, because we want to.
Speaker 1: Talk about weddings and the finances of them. Apparently, there's
this viral post that's one of those am I the
asshole posts on Reddit.
Speaker 2: From a woman.
Speaker 1: Who's actually the sister of a bride who wanted to
have a destination wedding, and because it was a destination wedding,
it was very pricey. Her parents, not particularly well to do,
couldn't afford it. The sisters, in a much better financial position,
offered to pay for the parents to get there, but
not much more than that. So once the bride found
out that the parents were going to come, she was
mad enough at them for not paying for the wedding
but still wanting to come that she disinvited.
Speaker 2: Them, which is so crazy. So now old do we
know how old this bride is? No, there's no.
Speaker 1: Age, say, but like the sister's like, listen, I'm willing
to help get my parents there, but I'm not willing
to pay for my sister's wedding and they can't afford it, right, Like,
am I the asshole for not just paying for the wedding?
And of course most everybody was like, no, you're not
the asshole. But it did lead to a huge conversation
about weddings and paying for them and what the typical
advice is, maybe from a financial planner, like, yeah, do
you ever hear about this from your clients, and like
who's responsible? Like traditionally, what's happening now, and who's responsible
for paying for it? And why is her sister the
bride such an asshole?
Speaker 3: I was going to say, there, yeah, there clearly is
an asshole involved.
Speaker 2: In clearly, and we all know who it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't have to work that equation too much
to solve for X. We know who the asshole.
Speaker 2: Is pretty much. Yeah, pretty sure.
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, no, no, I We've dealt with it
a little bit. Not a whole lot I've heard about,
but I've heard a lot of consternation, especially as everything's
got more expensive, right, so the weddings have gotten more expensive.
What what I've seen the most of is that kind
of that traditional role of the bride paying for bride's
parents paying for everything, the groom's parents kicking in as well,
but to their own. Like I So, when my wife
and I got married, we were you know, I knew
that my pant family would help out, that would help out.
I knew that her family would help out. But the
whole attitude that we had was, well, what works for you,
and anything that you can contribute to the wedding is
greatly appreciated. And it goes to this kind of like
expectation that these kids have today, right, And you can
lump it in the same thing with well, you know,
two years out of college, I want to be making
one hundred and fifty grand a year, right, Yeah, well
trying to Yeah, you're like, well, you know, I'd like
a hundred eighty foot yacht, but you know I don't
have one of those either. So yeah, I think that
it is molded or it has changed and evolved a
little bit because the expectations for the weddings. I think
you've grown, the expense of the weddings has grown. I
mean back when we got married, I remember thinking, you know,
twenty to twenty five grand on a wedding was a
big number. Yeah, you know what I mean nowadays, that
isn't anything.
Speaker 2: Done a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh it's madness. And I've heard of people refining
houses rights all one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: That's such a bad idea.
Speaker 3: Why would you? Why would you drive one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a car when you make two and
a grand a year?
Speaker 2: Agree, Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You see it everywhere and I get I tell people
all the time, like anybody that will listen, be like, hey,
do not spend a bunch of money. I had a
conversation kind of goes. One of my buddies was like, hey,
I'm getting a new car. Da Da da, And I
was like, what are you getting? And he's like, well,
I really wanted an escalade, But he said, after or
I realized that your family didn't have an escalade, he's like,
I thought it was kind of hard to justify me
getting an escalate. And I was like, and I go,
you know what, man, good idea. He's like, why don't
you have one? And I said, because it's the exact
same car And this is no knock on escalades. I
love them, but I was like, it's the exact same
car as the Yukon, right, But you're paying twenty five
grand for your ego, So like, what does your ego cost? Right?
Speaker 4: Mine?
Speaker 3: Thank god, isn't twenty five grand. It's something, right, I
didn't buy a used minivan, but but is it? You know, like,
be honest with yourself. What are you doing? Why are
you doing these things? Why are you refinancing your house?
Are you trying to set an image for a bunch
of people that you actually don't care what they think,
but yet you're going to financially compromise yourself to impress.
Speaker 5: Them, and you want to go into debt for a webbite.
Our anniversary was this past weekend, and so I had
I was able to reflect on our wedding and our marriage.
What you do every you reflect, and so in our
looking at our web wedding out them in our wedding
I put it in air quotes and our reception in
air quotes, because our reception was like at our house,
which we had just bought a house like a couple
months prior. And and you know, we had our entire
wedding excluding my dress, which I had my dress made.
My dress probably cost one hundred bucks. My entire wedding
was six hundred dollars. Wow, with six hundred dollars for everything. Yeah,
because when we got married in a little church and
there were maybe like ten to twelve people there, and.
Speaker 2: So it was very cheap. And I look back and
I'm like, that was great. I have no regrets.
Speaker 5: And I'm not saying everybody has to do that, but
like at the time, we were like, why would we
spend a bunch of money on or we would never
go into debt for it, Like if we had ten
grand or twenty grand or thirty grand to spend on
a wedding. You know, maybe if we had a lot
of money at the time, which we didn't because we
were a blended family. We were both we had been divorced,
we had we had debt, we other debt we were
trying to take care of at the time. We didn't
want to go in debt for a wedding, and so
we just to be married. We just loved each other
and wanted to be married, and so like we were like,
we're just gonna get married, and we wanted some of
the favorite people that we had around us there. I
can't believe Mariam wasn't there, and met her like six
months later, it's a travisy.
Speaker 1: She wasn't.
Speaker 2: But I mean, like I look back on that time
and I think I don't.
Speaker 5: Regret that at all, But I do see like other
people that go into debt for a wedding, and I'm like.
Speaker 2: I feel like those are the people who are going
to end up.
Speaker 3: Divorced for sure. Well you know, of course, what's the
number one reason for divorce ansership. So yeah, so we're
going to start right out of the gate with that
ends of thousands of dollars behind the e ball. Right,
it's not it's just and that's what you want to
The other thing you want to tell these people is
just it's just like with anything else. I remember. It's
a line out of that movie Cool Runnings. My college
football coaches say it all the time, and it's so true.
If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough
with it.
Speaker 2: I love that quote.
Speaker 3: Yes, whatever you think it's going to add to you,
whatever you think it's going to add to your love
or your special day, it won't. It's just a bigger hangover,
that's all it is, right, And you don't need it,
and just that and if you can get to the play, Look,
it's not all just intelligence and smarts too. I've been
a very very lucky, blessed person and I know that,
but there's also decisions that you can make along the way,
and being financially free and not in debt let me
just I remember my mom used to have this saying
back back in the day that she said, being skinny
feels better than food tastes, right, And I think the
same is true, Like being debt free is ten times
better than any short term dopamine hit you get from
putting on airs or flashing or whatever the case may be.
It just it just is.
Speaker 1: And you have you had like an opportunity where you've
been able to change somebody's mind who came to you
and they were like trying to plan for how they
were going to cover maybe the wedding of a daughter.
Speaker 2: Have you been able to be like you need to
not do that? And did they?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Usually people don't, right, they don't listen well, because right,
they'll come to you for advice. But about three minutes
into the conversation, what you realize is they're not looking
for advice. They're looking for affirmation, validation.
Speaker 2: Because there's a validation, it's emotional.
Speaker 3: Right, right, right, Yeah, they just want you to agree, right, yeah,
they want you to give your stamp of approval. But
there there are a couple funny stories where I did
make and at the time seemingly innocuous comments not they
weren't a big deal that they asked me a question
I said. When I find out months later a couple
of them, I had to go back to them and
be like, hey, you're doing a great job, but you
I just had one with my younger cousin. He came
to me for financial advice many times, and he's a
hard working guy, ex marine, and I just had to
have a conversation with him where I was like, Okay,
your wife's getting a little frustrated because you've done an
amazing job. You could spend a little, right Like. I
had to talk him back the other way and he's like, well,
you said, Nigel, I know, no, you're you're you're great,
but man, you've got you got a lot of money
in the bank and your truck has a hole in
the floor. You can get a new you can get
another truck. You're not right, so you're running in yeah, right,
But but there's another one. They did the same with
their wedding. They did a family wedding, kept it very
small for those reasons. They are in their early thirties
now they have they own four different rental houses almost outright.
They can live off that income. He's also involved in
a family business and all of it has been self made.
They have no debt and they're financially free in their
early thirties.
Speaker 5: And it was funny because we have one kid that
we have two older kids. One is more of a spender,
but we have one kid that's like that, and we
almost have to remind.
Speaker 2: Him you got it. You know, you can have a
little fun.
Speaker 5: With life, like it's okay, you can let loose a
little and you can have So it's funny the different
mindsets that people get into, because when you do raise children,
you're like, okay, you gotta make sure.
Speaker 2: You save, you gotta do this, you do that. You
gotta like.
Speaker 5: A tone for the sins that we made when we
were growing up and we made mistakes, and here are
the mistakes we made, and please don't make those same mistakes.
And you know, yes they listen. The ones that listen
are like, oh my.
Speaker 2: Gosh, I don't want to make those mistakes.
Speaker 5: And so they almost overcompensate. And so it's funny because
we have one that does that too, and we're like, okay,
but you can actually live a.
Speaker 2: Little and go on vacation and you don't have to
work so hard. You know, it's funny, Yeah, it's not. Yeah,
the kiddo never breaks the rules, like, break the rules
a little.
Speaker 3: It's okay, you know, sneak out for God's sake.
Speaker 2: Right, right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, press an edge, buddy. Yeah. So yeah, like you said,
it's about balance, right, and but but I think financially,
especially early on, it shouldn't feel balanced. It should feel
a little bit spartan, right, and build up a pad
and it just it's worth it. Man, Digging out of
a debt hole is not fun. You're right, it's possible.
I did it too, But yeah, it just it's never.
It is never when you're looking back on it, like Amy, Joe,
you said it, right, you look back on it. You
remember that time, the moment, the people that were.
Speaker 2: There, peple that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we threw twenty grand more at that day,
it wouldn't mean any more now than it did that.
Speaker 2: If I didn't care about the flowers, I didn't care
about it.
Speaker 1: I did care about the food. I cared a lot
about the food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our priority, our priority, without question. We started off going, Okay,
we're gonna go with wine, food, and we will deal
with expenses in that order. Right, that starts at the top,
totally right, Like throw a good party. Throw a good party.
Speaker 2: Yes, listen, after party was great.
Speaker 3: We were all there.
Speaker 2: Foot in our house. It was great. But I mean
it's like it was beer and like chicken nuggets. Man,
that's how But I'd still do it. I would do
it over.
Speaker 3: That's a good time. That's a good time. Good. We
could even throw some Costco burgers on the grill, you know,
some dogs.
Speaker 2: I did. But it doesn't take much with me. I'm
very low bar. Okay, at least you know that going
in right, Miriam tastes a little bit more. She's a foodie. Yeah. Yeah,
and I still remember me. I still remember the whole.
I mean it was really good. Yeah, I really love it. Okay,
I'll good advice, great advice. Always get great advice with Zach. Yeah,
you really really do.
Speaker 1: And you can get it actually personalized by having a
sit down consultation with you tell people how you do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So easiest way to just go to our website.
But we're Capitalmanagement dot com. Uh, and then we do
our daily show. Our daily dots give a full update
and a summation of everything that's gone on that day.
And that's uh. You get that at Know your Risk
Radio dot com or just Know Your Risk podcast on YouTube,
on instat raw on TikTok now too, Oh my gosh, Look,
we're all over the place. We got a social media
manager and he's cleaning things up for us and actually
making us up to par here son, you.
Speaker 1: Go, okay, I'll have to go follow you out on
all of the things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, thank you, thanksach,
all right, thank you, ladies, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Investment advisory services offered through Trek financialc and SEC Registered
Investment Advisor. The opinions expressed in this programmer for general
informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide specific
advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security.
Any references to performance of security so it thought to
be materially accurate and actual performance may different investments involve
risk and are not guaranteed past performance doesn't guarantee future results.
Trek twenty fourth three Zeroly