Episode Transcript
Welcome everyone to our podcast. The name of the podcast is Spiritual Relationship. My name is Ken Hanuman and this is my wife, Dr. Anne O'Hare. Hi everyone. Both of us are in healthcare. We're healthcare professionals. Both of us practice meditation. We've been doing it for many years. Myself for 30 years and, Anne for 13 years. So, the, the hope for this, podcast is to be able to apply the spiritual principles to everyday living, everyday life. The topic today is money. I feel like money is really, really important. It is the one, it's the resource that is available to us. We really work hard, it represents our hard work, and it enables us to achieve certain goals in life. And as you know, if you don't have respect and you waste it, it is, there's a saying, fool and his money will soon part. So, There are some things in our life that I would like to discuss and, I'll let Ann start with what we really want to present today to you. Yeah, I think that money is a big, issue a lot of times in relationships. I know that, I don't know if this is still the case, but didn't they say one time that, Money issues are one of the main reasons for divorce or something like They really cause a lot of problems and even when people like are starting families, I know that people They don't maybe decide not to have children because of money or something but What we want to talk about today is Because we're at a certain stage of life. So we're going to talk about our stage of life, but we're going to talk about how, first we'll start off by how my attitude was toward money and how Ken's attitude was toward money when we were coming into the relationship. So for me, I came into this marriage, my second marriage, but I was in my mid forties. So I had plenty of life experience before this. And I, In my 20s got myself into quite a bit of unsecured credit card debt, which is not unusual it was about 36, 000 which right nowadays isn't even that much but but then it was a lot and I at that time I was determined to Get a hold of this money thing. And so I got some coaching from a good friend and I got debt consolidation company and I What did really hard work to get that debt paid off. And then I decided for myself that I was going to live life in a certain way without debt. And what I did was I got an American express card and a debit card. So it was getting, everything was getting paid off at the end of the month. So it's been over 25 years and I have had no credit card debt. In 25 years and that's like pretty significant. So that's how I came into the relationship. So how did you come in? And and that that shows discipline, and and a Conviction. Look, I don't want to live like that. I want to live. Yeah for me money was scarce. It was I really grew up in a From a poor background. I come from a poor background, but um I had qualifications certain qualifications when I moved to America I got into healthcare, and things began to change. And you know, you're in a, you're in a haste. You want to have a house, you want to have a car, you want No, the basic things in life. Which for me at that time represents luxury anyhow, and you ran a business too. Plus I had a business. So there's a lot of hard work there. But the problem I had was I did have many credit cards and you taught me some things about that. Because I came in like, um, this isn't going to work, you know, but we did keep our own bank accounts. This is just interesting. Like we're not telling anybody what to do. It works for us. I like the fact that. We kept a little bit of independence. We came into it. It was a second marriage. We're 20 years old. Let's keep our own bank accounts and it works out nicely, right? Because there's there's like a an equal footing when we make decisions. Like we're going to talk about making decisions next, but how we make decisions about things where you know, okay. Well, I need money for this. Okay. I'll send you money for this or you give me money for this. So it's like we're both on an equal. Yeah, playing field. So we kept our own bank accounts but we did make that adjustment with the credit cards So now we have one credit card and we do the american express and debit card for the rest of it Which I know I think it's much easier. We have one visa card, which we use so it's good It's always good to have one credit card, It's it makes it more simple and then go ahead. Yeah, and the beautiful thing is that We, when we got together, we, you had a house, I had a house, right? And we realized, let's start to consolidate this. We did that. And then we were able to build something. It was a really nice house on a nice, large lot. And it was at a time in a market that it was at the bottom of the market. Luckily we didn't plan it. It just happened that way. And then three years after we were able to sell that at the top of the market. So we did good. The first time in my life that ever happened. I was always, I was always at the negative end of it, but this time was better. Yeah. And it coincided with Joey having to move to a new school. We have a 17 year old son, so he needs to move to a new school. And then we said, well, let's, Moved the house and then we ended up build buying this house for cash Big deal. Yeah, so that was really good. And then We we made that determination that decision that we will try to erase all debt. Which meant that we had to simplify our life Luckily for spiritual life we Because of the simplicity in the life, we never really like Eating out that much or going on a lot of trips. The thing is that we're so happy right now. That we don't have the burden of that debt. Which is maybe how most of the people in America, or most people actually, where They find that difficult to do or they find that maybe You're wasting your life away, or they don't think it's possible to go beyond I mean, there are different kinds of people out there. I know people too that like won't buy a car on on Loan, they will save the money for a car. We have two cars that are paid off. I guess we're kind of advocating for Simplification and get rid of debt is what we're advocating for. Yeah, because spiritually Debt pulls your mind. Debt is a heaviness that you cannot really run away from. And it will be there. There's a heaviness. There's when it's going to go. Then you have the attitude of the people that you borrowed from, if it's not a bank. And you have to deal with those people. I mean there's so many things. And if you want to be happy spiritually, there has to be a lightness inside. In the next episode we'll talk about harmony and relationship But this is where spirituality comes in because without that we probably would not have done this No, definitely not. And so now we're going to talk a little bit about what happened recently because we're getting into a life event So we kind of went over how we are and decisions and everything But now we'll get a now we have an episode we could tell you what actually happened. So Ken is retired As of today, today is January 1st. We're recording this on new year's happy new year to everybody in 2025. And, Ken is retired as of today. So I was encouraging him to retire because he was a little bit worried about the money at first. He was like, I don't know if we can afford it and everything. And I goes, we can, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry. It's going to be fine. So he went forward with it. And then like a few weeks ago, I was. I don't know. I was a little bit concerned. And I was mentioning it, because I didn't know when we were going to get the checks, and I didn't know how much it was going to be, and it was a little bit concerning. So, I was kind of sitting on the couch, and Ken, like, kind of noticed. So you want to say what happened? Like, I was like, concerned. Yeah, because, the final numbers. Um, so you don't know how much you're going to actually get. When, at the end of the month, now that you don't have a job, you're going on a fixed income. So I was a little uneasy, but I was a little hopeful that maybe I should give it some time. Oh, and by the way, he's more like, Oh, don't worry about it. Wait, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. And I'm like, let's figure it out. Let's figure it out. Let's figure it out. Which maybe some of you have that kind of a relationship with your partner, like complimentary personalities. So this is, this is also where spirituality comes in. You'll see like when we interacted, it's important. How you treat each other is very important. So. Yeah, it's the one, it seems like you need to be sensitive to each other's state of mind from time to time. Because there's something that's gonna trigger me, something's gonna trigger, you. And we need to know that, and can I do something about that? So when I saw, you mentioned it a couple times, and then I'm realizing, like my attitude is to say wait until January. Wait until, later, then we can really address this. But I didn't say that, I said no. Now, if it is worrying you a little bit now, many times confusion in our mind or anxiety comes from the fact that we're not clear about things. Maybe we don't have all the information. No, we don't have all the information. And therefore, don't let one person suffer while you were, oh, you know, we'll see if it'll happen. No. So we did talk about it. So let's talk about it. The great thing about that is that. You discover Something that I didn't, I wasn't even thinking about. Yeah, because when we were looking through the options, because in my mind, I was like, let's find out what the scenario is. Because we have an upcoming trip and we have, we're glassing in our lanai, we're enclosing our lanai, which is quite a bit of money we have to come up with. At the middle of February and I'm like, where's his check? When is his check? When is it going to come? And we have this bill coming up. What are we going to do? Cause like I said, we don't live on debt, we don't charge. So we have to save that money or have that money, or we don't plan unless we have that money. So. We went through everything and then I realized wait a minute Let's check on your IRA and it turns out he can take money out of the IRA and for some reason I didn't even think Of that. I mean obviously you'd have to pay taxes, but yeah, we have it But but I'm at an age where I can take it out, but I you know, so So that brought so much peace to my mind, but also to your mind. Yeah. And, it was soon as we figured out, like we had it, I was like, okay, we got it and that was it, then I was okay. But it was like, but I think what helped me so much and, and I'm used to it from you, but maybe what we're sharing in terms of relationship in this, this Instance is that we didn't allow the other person's personality to stop us from Interacting or dealing with the problem or you don't go away from each other when those happen when that happens Unless it's abusive. We're not talking about abuse here. None of this is abuse abuse is abuse, but not abuse It's just the personality. It's just the way the person is but don't go away from them Don't attack or move away You Yeah, because these are real problems. And if you have one person who think that they're the only one thinking of the problem and the other one is not, then that's not good. And I've seen, I've grown up, I've seen people scream, fight, and say mean things to each other, all because there isn't enough money and one is perceived as wasting it or being lazy, and The other ones seem to have all the burden on their head trying to figure things out and that's not good. It shouldn't happen. It should be something shared. I'm not saying it's a perfect, um, That is Scenario. Right, it's a perfect scenario, but I'm saying together if you share it and you help each other through it, even when you have little, There's not mental suffering. As you're sharing, and maybe this could be our last point, as we're sharing, in this podcast, we're gonna be, I don't know, defining a couple of things, we're gonna be talking about different scenarios, but mostly, what we want to do is share The benefit of having a relationship that works And having a relationship that's spiritually based meaning That we are basing it in virtues in spiritual laws Which you will hear as we go through these episodes, you will hear us talk about them today We talked about patience. We talked about not abandoning the other one We talked about being able to know what the other one's personality is and not react to that and actually work together to deal with a problem. I grew up in a house where the, you know, there was a lot of fighting going on. And I, it's, it, it doesn't have to be that you're against each other. Yeah. You can be together dealing with the world. And I think that's the main thing. And, and to feel safe and to be together is really a blessing with life. Yeah. And karma, I like this word karma. It's that if something is done. You don't have to be perfect, like I say. But if you are conscientious, if you address something in a sensible way, where you, where you care for the other person's feeling, you'll find that your conscience will guide you, and you will be able to, the, what karma state, is that if you do something properly, the best of your, even when you make a mistake, you will see that you'll be able to correct it easy because you're not making it worse by getting angry and upset, depressed, this is a spiritual value that underline this episode on money. Wonderful. Alright, so we'll end it there for today and hopefully you got some benefit out of that and we will see you next time. Yep. Okay. Bye bye, everyone.
