Married couple Geena and James don’t always see eye-to-eye when it comes to money. Their main issue: how to navigate a vast income disparity.

Geena, 44, brings home a little over $555,000 a year as a corporate attorney in New York. Her husband, James, 39, is a freelance musician who earns around $60,000 a year. The couple enjoys Geena’s high salary, taking numerous luxury trips throughout the year while still investing around 14% of her gross income.

“I’ve always planned to take care of everything myself if I have to, and I’m happy — I’m so grateful that I can treat us and take care of us. But I hope that one day there will be less of a discrepancy between us,” Geena told self-made millionaire and money expert Ramit Sethi on a recent episode of his “I Will Teach You to be Rich” podcast. The couple’s last names were not used. 

James said he wants to contribute more toward their lifestyle and retirement goals, but he knows he can’t match-up financially.

“Because I’m not able to contribute in the same way or in similar ways, therefore I just feel like I’m not enough,” James said on the podcast. “Doesn’t feel great.”

Sethi listened to the couple talk about their finances, lifestyle and how they both think about money. Here are three ways he said they can address their income disparity to improve their relationships with money and each other.

James is unlikely to get his income up to the same level as Geena’s. But Geena’s frustration isn’t really about the dollar figure.

While Geena gladly contributes more dollar-wise to their household needs and savings, she looks to James for tasks like shopping for home essentials, which he often neglects, they told Sethi.

“Geena is not saying she expects James to make exactly $50,000 a month,” Sethi said. “Geena wants James to be engaged with money. I can understand her paying more for things like luxury hotels, but why is she the one ordering the [laundry] detergent?”

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Steve, 42, and Taylor, 39, faced a similar dilemma when they spoke with Sethi on a different episode. Taylor earns around $144,000 a year, while Steve makes around $36,000.

Steve had been under-employed for about eight years when he and Taylor spoke with Sethi. But from Taylor’s perspective, he wasn’t taking enough proactive steps, like networking and applying to jobs.

“Taylor wants Steve to want more for himself, to become a financial partner in their relationship,” Sethi said.

Though both women approached their conversations with Sethi by saying they wanted their husbands to earn more money, further reflection revealed that for both women, it’s not really about the numbers. They both want their partners to step up, whether that’s in their own careers or with household tasks.

Part of the reason James isn’t earning more money is because he’s hesitant to raise his rates as a freelancer. This frustrates Geena, who is a go-getter who truly believes in James’s talents and abilities.

Sethi identified these mismatched views on money as another disparity causing tension in their relationship. Geena doesn’t understand why James doesn’t simply charge his customers more. James fears hiking his prices will scare off business.

“The solution is to fix your worldview of money and master your own money psychology,” Sethi said.

Geena said she was raised with a scarcity mindset that inspired her to push her career and salary as far as they could go so she would never worry about bills or buying things she wanted.

James, on the other hand, grew up as the “peacemaker” in his home. As a result, he falls into a similar mindset with his business, trying to “keep the peace” with his clients by keeping his prices low — even if that means his personal finances suffer.

Sethi said James is “playing small” by thinking he’s stuck in this financial position. Identifying the reasons behind his money mindset, then taking steps like enrolling in a course or reading a book to understand how to overcome it may help him tackle the problem.

Beyond being the breadwinners in their relationships, Geena and Taylor both also admitted to taking on mother-like roles with their husbands. They consistently remind their spouses to do tasks like shop for the home, apply to jobs or look for ways to increase their incomes, and do it themselves when when their husbands drop the ball.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m Mom. I’m planning things. I’m taking care of all the things,” Geena said. ”[James] is not in his 20s, and I want us to be more equals in this way.”

Taylor agreed. “I felt like a mom disciplining her child,” she said of trying to motivate Steve to work harder.

In both scenarios, Sethi called out the women for allowing that dynamic to continue.

Both their husbands are capable and said they’re willing to do what’s asked of them. But by letting them off the hook when they make mistakes, their wives have fostered the sense that it’s OK for things to continue in this manner, Sethi said.

Sethi recommended both Geena and Taylor set boundaries and introduce actual consequences to give their husbands a chance to prove they can and are willing to make these changes.

For example, he suggests James and Geena set a dollar amount that James should reasonably be able to contribute to their joint account each month. And if he doesn’t hit that number, he may have to skip a vacation in order to stay home and work.

Sure, Geena could afford to bail him out if he’s had a bad month and still pay for both of them to go on vacation. But neither spouse would feel good about that.

“You sticking to your guns and following through on your commitment would engender more respect than anything else,” Sethi told them.

Check out Steve and Taylor’s episode here and Geena and James’s episode here.

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When Jay Chaudhry sold his first company for $70 million, he focused less on his own riches, he says — and more on how the deal could turn dozens of his employees into millionaires.

Chaudhry, 65, is known today as the billionaire founder and CEO of Zscaler, a cloud cybersecurity firm valued at roughly $28 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon. Back in 1998, he was a first-time entrepreneur selling the startup he launched with his wife Jyoti, SecureIT, to VeriSign in an all-stock deal for a huge windfall.

Nearly two years after the deal closed, as VeriSign’s stock price soared, more than 70 of SecureIT’s 80 employees “on paper, were millionaires,” Chaudhry tells CNBC Make It.

“People were going crazy in the company, because they had never thought of so much money,” he says. “A lot of them were buying new houses. They were buying new cars. I know one guy, he took six months off, rented a [mobile home] and went around the country. They could do what they wanted to do.”

Between the time of the acquisition and February 2000, VeriSign’s stock increased by more than 2,300%, closing at a high of $253 per share, helped by two stock splits and a temporary bubble for tech stocks. The bubble burst later that year, and VeriSign’s stock lost roughly 75% off that high point at the end of 2000, sinking to a low of nearly $4 in 2002.

Chaudhry recalls advice from Jim Bidzos, VeriSign’s then-chairman, on what to do with his shares: Sell some of the stock little by little “on a regular basis.” The strategy helped Chaudhry reap some benefits of VeriSign’s soaring stock before the market cratered, he says.

SecureIT employees who held onto their VeriSign stock were likely rewarded by their patience: It closed at $254 per share as recently as January 2021. The price currently sits at roughly $175 per share.

Chaudhry says he doesn’t know if or when his former employees cashed in their own shares. When he left VeriSign at the end of 1999, his former employees threw him a party — but it wasn’t until later that he fully understood the impact the decision to sell SecureIT had on those employees, he says.

“I went home that night and looked at the spreadsheet of all the [stock] options they had, and I multiplied by the stock price of VeriSign. That’s when I realized that the math was about 70 or 80 millionaires, with stock options,” Chaudhry says. “It was impressive.”

Chaudhry himself already had enough money to be happy: He and his wife had a “nice, typical middle-class house at that time, and we didn’t have any fancy cars or fancy payments,” he told Make It last week.

He credits his ability to give employees so much stock to his bootstrapping approach. Chaudhry and his wife funded SecureIT themselves, emptying their life savings of roughly $500,000, instead of taking on outside investors.

That freed up more equity in the company to distribute, which was “good, because those employees make the difference — they [were] working day and night,” he says.

The story is reminiscent of fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, who recently noted that he handed out employee bonuses after selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999. The act turned hundreds of his employees into instant millionaires, Cuban said.

Cuban has paid out bonuses to employees at every company he’s sold, starting with CompuServe’s acquisition of software firm MicroSolutions in 1990, he told Make It last month. That includes sales of his majority stakes in HDNet, now known as AXS TV, in 2019 and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks last year, he wrote on social media platform X.

“And only HDNet had any layoffs right after the sale,” Cuban added.

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Dale Haley and Ricky Watkins have been at their jobs longer than some of their co-workers have been alive. 

Both men, now in their 60s, have worked at the same Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Franklin, Kentucky for 50 years.

Haley, the store’s manager, celebrated his 50th work anniversary on May 11, while Watkins, the store’s meat manager, will hit the same milestone on Sept. 6.

Many of the employees they work with are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, but some are as young as 16 — the same age Haley and Watkins were when they started at the store. 

Their first job was bagging groceries at the front of the store and organizing the stockroom in the evenings after school and on weekends. In the 1960s, that job paid between $1 and $2 an hour, Haley says, depending on your weekly schedule.

Haley didn’t meet Watkins until he started at the store in September 1964, but the two quickly became “fast friends,” he says, and would often play pool together after their shifts as teenagers.

Those after-school jobs quickly evolved into fulfilling, lifelong careers for the Kentuckians.

Haley and Watkins each started working at the store full time as associates after graduating high school. As Watkins recalls, many of his classmates and friends pursued careers in manufacturing and farming, neither of which appealed to him. “Plus, they paid less,” the 65-year-old adds. 

Haley came to the same conclusion. “I didn’t know I was going to make a career out of it when I started at the store, but I just kept getting promoted,” the 66-year-old says. “When I turned 20, I got a nice raise and became the assistant manager … I had more reasons to stay than to leave.”

Watkins was promoted to meat manager in 1986 and has held the same job ever since.

He works Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 4:30 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., while Haley works Monday through Thursday and on Saturdays from 6:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. 

The average salary for a store manager at Piggly Wiggly ranges from $34,000 to $109,000 per year while the pay for a meat manager ranges from $42,000 to $76,000, according to Indeed.

“There’s something different to learn every day, whether a machine is breaking down or there’s a new product we’re putting on shelves,” says Haley. “The job keeps me on my toes.” 

But his favorite job of managing the store is the people: helping the customers and shooting the breeze with his co-workers. 

“We’re just like family here,” says Haley. “Coming to work just feels like coming to another home.”

The staff has seen each other through birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and other milestones, he adds, but his favorite memories at work are the spontaneous cookouts he and his co-workers have at the grill that’s permanently parked in the store’s lot. Watkins says those are his favorite afternoons, too. 

Neither man plans on retiring any time soon. “I’d go down to part-time, but I wouldn’t retire completely,” says Watkins. “I couldn’t stand just staying at home and doing nothing.”

The Piggly Wiggly veterans are in good company — older Americans are working longer. Last year, the average retirement age was 62, up from 59 in the early 2000s, Gallup reports. Many Americans are working into their 70s and 80s — or longer — because of longer life spans, changing attitudes about retirement and insufficient savings. Others simply say they enjoy what they do, and never contemplated giving it up.

The secret to a long, happy career is simple, says Haley: Keep your nose clean. 

“Don’t get caught stealing or shoplifting, don’t show up to work late and do your best to do a good job,” he adds. “If you can do that, you’ll probably have a job for a long time, and you might learn to love it.”

A lot can change in nearly half a century — scanners replaced ink stampers, people use their phones to pay at checkout — but Watkins says his 50 years at the store have flown by “in the blink of an eye” — and he enjoys working at Piggly Wiggly as much as he did on his first day. 

Haley echoes the same sentiment: “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

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Although the thought of saving $1 million or more by the time you reach retirement age may seem overwhelming, the process doesn’t have to be — especially if you start early.

Instead of focusing on the total, try paying attention to your savings rate, which is the percentage of your annual pre-tax income you’re contributing to your retirement investment account.

While it can be helpful to have a goal in mind when you begin saving for retirement, it’s also important to remember that your retirement account balance can be impacted by factors outside of your control, such as market volatility. But your savings rate is something you can control.

Fidelity recommends a savings rate of at least 15%, inclusive of any employer match. However, it’s OK if allocating that much of your income isn’t feasible at first.

“Starting out with smaller amounts is always the winner, because you can always invest more later, too,” James Royal, Bankrate’s principal investing and wealth management writer, tells CNBC Make It.

To that point, you can begin your retirement savings journey by setting aside just $10 a day, or $70 a week.

Say you start at age 21. By allocating about $70 a week into a retirement investment account that generates a 7% annual rate of return, you’d have just over $1 million by the time you reach age 65, according to CNBC’s calculations.

CNBC calculated how that same $70 weekly contribution may grow if you started at ages 21, 25 and 30. These calculations don’t account for unpredictable factors such as raises, periods of unemployment or market volatility.

• Earning a 5% annual rate of return: $585,651
• Earning a 7% annual rate of return: $1,079,289
• Earning a 9% annual rate of return: $2,072,512

• Earning a 5% annual rate of return: $466,418
• Earning a 7% annual rate of return: $803,588
• Earning a 9% annual rate of return: $1,435,563

• Earning a 5% annual rate of return: $347,239
• Earning a 7% annual rate of return: $551,394
• Earning a 9% annual rate of return: $902,121

While your 401(k) can be a great place to start building your retirement savings, if your employer doesn’t offer one, you could consider a Roth individual retirement account.

With a Roth IRA, qualified investors make contributions with their post-tax dollars. This means that those earnings grow tax free and withdrawals made in retirement won’t face taxes and penalties as long as the account has been open for at least five years.

In 2024, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,000 for those under the age of 50 and $8,000 for those age 50 and older.

Additionally, the income limit in 2024 for single and head-of-household tax filers ranges between $146,000 and $161,000. Married couples filing jointly can earn between $230,000 and $240,000.

“That’s the perfect setup for young workers who expect to be earning more and paying higher tax rates in the future,” Royal says. “Paying low tax rates on your Roth IRA contributions makes the most sense, and then they can enjoy tax-free gains forever.”

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The summer is a good time to take stock of how your kids are faring. Are they doing something that excites them? Do they wake up every morning eager to get going? Are they happy? 

I did not ask about their grades, because if you answered “yes” to those questions, their GPA truly doesn’t matter. It matters if they are thriving. 

For my book “Raising an Entrepreneur,” I interviewed 70 parents who raised highly successful adults about how they helped their kids achieve their dreams. It was a diverse group, and the cohort included people of different races, religions, incomes, family structures and educational backgrounds.

While many of these young people were not great students, all of them excelled because they found interests and communities that lit a fire in them.

Here are the four things that the parents of the most successful people always did when their kids were young: 

Every successful adult I spoke to had a passion growing up. With the exception of the artists, who maintained their practice into adulthood, many of these leaders pursued careers that have nothing to do with what they loved as kids. 

So why was it so important that the parents encouraged whatever passion their children had?

Since the activity was something they chose for themselves, they were excited to work hard at it. They learned grit and perseverance and became quite skilled. These experiences taught them to believe in their ability to succeed when they put their all into something.

Although many of the parents didn’t understand their kid’s passion, they supported them, because they saw the joy their child got from it. The most successful adults grew up knowing that their parents would always be there for them, no matter what they tackled.

The most successful entrepreneurs I profiled in my book are risk takers. 

In my research, I found that the people who are most willing to take risks are the people who weren’t punished for, or taught to fear, failure when they were young. This approach reminds me of a Billie Jean King quote I love: “We don’t call it failure, we call it feedback.”

Their parents always taught them that while it’s good to compete, to fight to succeed, and to win, it’s also good to lose. Setbacks are a chance to learn, grow and develop a sense of resilience.

The parents I interviewed always cheered on their children’s efforts, rather than only focusing on their achievements. 

Children who are invited to be curious learn that if they keep exploring, they will figure out a way to improve, or expand, or reinvent something they love and know a lot about. 

The future entrepreneurs in my book were taught by their parents to ask, “Does it have to be this way? How can I make it better?” These questions are often how the most successful companies get started. 

Many parents told me that they didn’t want their kids to be satisfied with something “because that is the way it is.” 

As their children grew more capable, the parents also resisted the temptation to do or fix things for them. Instead, they give their kids the tools to solve problems themselves.

Most of the entrepreneurs in my book were taught early on to empathize with others, and they grew up wanting to solve the concerns and problems of the people around them and in their communities. 

They were raised with a genuine desire to improve people’s lives. Their parents never told them that the goal was to make the most money, although that was often the result. 

This sense of compassion is what led them to want to create that piece of art, or product, or service that could bring people a sense of ease and joy. In turn, that foundation helped them build successful careers and lives. 

Margot Machol Bisnow is a writer, wife, and mom from Washington, DC. She spent 20 years in government, including as an FTC Commissioner and Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and is the author of “Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dream.” Follow her on Instagram @margotbisnow.

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