In millions of homes around the world, we’re having the same fights about money. One partner feels anxious, the other buries their head in the sand to avoid talking about it. One agonizes over the budget, the other spends on whatever they want.

We avoid discussing finances, and in the process, we allow money to drive a wedge between us. But in my new book, “Money for Couples,” I offer a 10-step program for building a shared vision around money, even if you and your partner see money completely differently.

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One core component of this involves combing through you and your couple’s spending habits. And for 90% of the people I talk to, food — whether eating out or ordering in — is the biggest category where there’s money to free up and redirect into something that matters more.

There are lots of reasons that restaurant spending seems to slip through our fingers. Food is emotional — buying dinner is about a lot more than just hunger. It’s about convenience, impulsivity, reward and more.

Tracking restaurant and takeout spending as a couple can be fairly complicated: One of you might buy lunch at work. The other might have a monthly dinner with friends. You pick up a pizza for the kids and pay with the $20 you have in your coat pocket. You grab something on your way home and don’t have the right credit card with you. Maybe you’ve got bigger kids, and you’re Venmo-ing money to them so they can get food with some friends.

It’s a mishmash, and it can easily get away from you.

For tracking, be vigilant about using the same shared credit card for anything that counts as eating out. That will help. Second, be kind and supportive of each other — changing habits around food can be tricky.

Here are some ways people I’ve worked with slashed funds on eating or ordering in — and redirected their money:

“During the pandemic we found a butcher that started delivering to homes, and we’ve continued to place a monthly order. We freeze it, so we always have delicious cuts of meat ready to cook every weeknight. Because we now do weeknights at home, we don’t worry about eating out on weekends.” -Mary

“I think the hardest part of not eating out is missing out on the vibe. I’m still figuring out how to get the energy of being in a crowded restaurant — that’s what I love most about dining out. One of my goals is to start a themed potluck dinner party with friends where everyone brings something — still economically efficient, food is fresher, and you get all the social vibes.” -Lauren

“We were eating out at least five to six days a week; the only meal we were making at home was breakfast! Now, we cook every Wednesday and Sunday and we eat leftovers at least one night, which saves us a ton of money. I allocate my part to credit card debt. It’s hard after a long day to cook and clean up afterward, but watching that debt go down is rewarding.” -Rosana

The goal is to get honest about your invisible spending and overspending. Start by having a candid talk with your partner: What are you spending too much on? Where can you cut back?

The more you have open, honest conversations about these things, the easier it will be to spend meaningfully.

Ramit Sethi is the host of Netflix’s “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” and bestselling author of “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.” For more than 20 years, he’s shared a unique blend of money and psychology with an audience of millions. His new book, “Money for Couples,” is out now.

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Excerpted from “Money for Couples by Ramit Sethi,” copyright ©2024 by Ramit Sethi.  Used with permission of Workman Publishing Co., Inc., a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Victoria Chege started her federal government job just seven weeks ago at the end of 2024. For much of that time, she’s worried about being laid off.

Chege, 24, joined the Department of Health and Human Services as a program and management analyst in Washington, D.C., in December.

After taking office in January, President Donald Trump has worked quickly to slash the federal workforce. Many of those efforts are spearheaded by Senior Advisor Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency.

Chege’s layoff fears were realized on Saturday. She says she received an email around 2 p.m. stating she had been let go due to performance reasons.

She hasn’t been in her job long enough to have had a performance review, Chege says.

She’s one of roughly 10,000 workers who have been fired from their federal government jobs since Trump took office. In addition, roughly 75,000 staffers took the Trump administration’s buyout offer.

Chege had been checking her email all weekend after a frenzied Friday afternoon, when she says she and many of her colleagues were briefly locked out of their work accounts. Some of her peers began receiving termination notices that day, she says.

“It was really chaotic and frustrating,” Chege says. “At that point, I hadn’t heard from any of my managers or supervisors. I’m pretty sure they were blindsided, in the same way that the people who were actually terminated were blindsided.”

Chege says she didn’t hear from her own manager until Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend: “I think he was calling me to see why I wasn’t logged on for the day, and I mentioned that I was terminated this weekend.” She says she suspects he didn’t know of her layoff until she told him.

Chege hasn’t had much time to grieve the loss of her job. Instead, she says she has spent most of her time trying to track down answers to basic questions like whether she’ll get severance pay or if the mass firings are even legal.

“We don’t even know when or where to turn in our government-issued devices,” she says.

She’s part of the Pathways Program, a yearlong initiative that encourages young people to join the public sector. That makes her a probationary employee, which includes recent hires as well as long-time staffers who have moved to a new position within the federal government in the last one to two years.

These workers have fewer legal protections and job security while the government evaluates their “conduct and performance on the job to determine if an appointment to the civil service should become final.”

Five unions sued the Trump administration last week hoping to block mass firings of what they fear could be hundreds of thousands of federal employees who did not accept buyouts.

As Chege applied to a few jobs over the weekend, she was reminded of her exhausting job search only a few months ago. “It’s so frustrating right now — just going through the job search process again is really not something I envisioned myself doing anytime soon,” she says. “I was really hoping to get into the federal government and stay working there for a long time.”

Chege has spent the last few weeks documenting her experience via TikTok, sharing information about what’s happening in the federal workforce and correcting misconceptions about working in the public sector.

She often sees online comments from people confusing probationary workers as being low performers.

About 220,000 federal workers ‒ out of a workforce of some 2.3 million ‒ were probationary employees with less than one year of experience as of March 2024, USA Today reports citing the most recently publicly available data from OPM.

“A lot of people I’ve been seeing think that the probation-year period means we were already doing something wrong,” Chege says. “That is not the case.”

She also worries the public doesn’t understand the size and scope of the federal workforce. “There’s federal workers all over the country,” she says, “not just those within proximity to D.C.” More than 80% of the federal workforce lives and works outside of the D.C. area, according to the Partnership for Public Service, including across the U.S. and around the world.

Recent job cuts have hit people across the departments of Interior, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Health and Human Services. Federal government workers account for 1.5% of total civilian employment, according to Pew data.

TikTok comments Chege has seen describe federal workers as “lazy” and declare “that we can now go get a ‘real job,’” she recalls. “I’m not really sure what that means,” she says. “I chose to work in the federal government because the work we do helps people every day, and not just working to make a singular person or entity richer.”

“The people I have met while working in the federal government have been extremely passionate about the work they do as a public servant,” Chege adds. “They are some of the nicest people I’ve met. And so these are just really great people who are now being affected by this.”

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Most couples think they know each other well, but real intimacy is a lot more than just being able to name your partner’s favorite food or TV shows.

As a psychologist, I’ve found that people in the happiest, most successful relationships see in their partner what others can’t or would normally overlook.

If you can answer these five questions below about your partner, your relationship is built on a highly coveted level of understanding and connection. (And if you don’t know the answers? It’s the perfect excuse to start asking.)

We all have those moments that stick with us for life — something a high school teacher said in passing, a compliment from a stranger or a minor rejection that still stings years later.

These events might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but they can radically alter the way we see ourselves, and they rarely come up in casual conversation.

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If you know about one of these small core memories in your partner’s life, it means you’ve had the kind of deep conversations that reveal the invisible threads of their personhood.

When life gets hectic, everyone has their own way of mentally checking out. Some fantasize about quitting their job and moving to a remote island. Others scroll real estate listings for cities they’ll never move to, or envision alternate versions of their life.

This is so much more than just a quirky habit; it’s a window into how your partner copes with stress. If you know the answer, it means you understand their inner workings, and that’s a rare kind of closeness.

We all have social scenarios that make us feel uneasy. Maybe your partner dreads small talk at parties, or they hate ordering at a restaurant in a group setting.

Knowing what makes your partner uncomfortable means you can be a source of support in situations where they might otherwise just grin and bear it. This is a sign that you’re truly attuned to their subtle mood changes — something that the untrained eye wouldn’t notice.

Whether we like it or not, we inherit certain habits from our upbringing — some good, some bad. For example, maybe your partner has a hard time accepting compliments because they never got any growing up.

If you know what habit your partner struggles with, it means you’ve had the vulnerable conversations about the family dynamics that shaped them into who they are today. These are the kinds of details most people don’t get the chance to learn, or simply don’t care to.

Everyone has accomplishments that they’re secretly proud of, but refrain from announcing to the world.

Maybe your partner once helped a stranger in a way that changed their life, or they pushed through a health, family or finance-related struggle that no one knows about. 

If you know about any of their unsung victories, it means your partner feels safe enough to share their most humble, meaningful moments with you. That kind of trust is invaluable in a relationship.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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For a long and healthy life, what you eat, and how, is what’s most important, says Valter Longo. “Some dietary interventions are much more powerful than we had imagined,” he tells CNBC Make It.

Longo has studied longevity for about 20 years in Italy, but began researching the topic in 1989. Using animal models, like mice, he and his fellow researchers found that certain diets can repair cells, reduce inflammation and increase the efficiency of cancer treatments like chemotherapy.

“The human data is starting to indicate this is probably true also [in] humans,” he says. “But there are more clinical trials needed to know what the mechanisms are in people.”

Still, he says it is possible to eat in a way that promotes good health and longevity — and even help reduce your risk of developing cancer.

1. Fasting-mimicking diet

Longo is the director of the Longevity Institute of the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California-Los Angeles, and developed the fasting-mimicking diet. The FMD is a 5-day diet “high in unsaturated fats and low in overall calories, protein and carbohydrates.”

Adhering to the diet involves fasting for 12 hours a day, for the five days: “You eat, say 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and you fast 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.” Longo says.

Longo suggests cancer patients fast for about 14 hours a day, in five-day intervals. A 2017 study published in JAMA Oncology found that women with breast cancer who fasted for 13 hours or more had a lower risk of breast cancer recurrence than women who didn’t.

“The 14 hours should not be combined with the actual cancer treatment,” Longo advises. “Let’s say they get chemotherapy once a month, then they should stop a few days before.”

Wait a few days after treatment before starting the diet again, he adds.

Practicing the FMD just two to four times a year can greatly benefit people who follow the standard American diet.

2. Longevity diet

Longo’s “longevity diet” draws from a lot of different things, most notably the Okinawa and Mediterranean diets.

He says adhering to the diet means your daily meals include the following:

• Mainly vegan ingredients
• Generally low in fruit, but high in vegetables
• Tree nuts
• Whole grains like brown rice and quinoa
• Legumes
• Fish (3-4 times a week)

A longevity diet should have protein, but no more than the recommended daily serving, and consist of “very little cheese,” Longo says. He also suggests avoiding red meat and white meat, like chicken and turkey, and to generally go light on animal-based products.

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The youngest players in the WNBA are some of the league’s biggest draws. But their popularity doesn’t match their paychecks.

In an appearance on the “Richer Lives by SoFi” podcast, Los Angeles Sparks star Cameron Brink says she’s heard the criticisms of WNBA salaries, including complaints that ”$70,000 is nothing.” The 22-year-old took issue with that framing of her paycheck.

“My mom was the first to go to college in her family. My grandma worked three jobs as a single mom. I do not take that money for granted,” Brink said. “That is good money. That is a salary that we work very hard for.”

While she noted that it “would be nice” to see WNBA paychecks get bigger, she added that she doesn’t expect to be making as much as her NBA counterparts any time soon.

Last season’s top drafted rookies like Brink, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese earned a little over $70,000 each. They’ll be paid a few thousand more in their second season. By comparison Victor Wembanyama, the NBA’s reigning Rookie of the Year, made $12.1 million his first year in the league.

The WNBA’s highest paid players earn just over $250,000, while the NBA’s biggest earners make more than $50 million per season.

“Realistically, we’re never probably going to get where the NBA is,” Brink said. “Maybe in 20 years, 30, 35 years. As women, we have to work so hard for the money we do make. I do think that we could get to the same level, but it’s going to take a while.”

Growing up, Brink said she would hear from friends and classmates who warned her about how much she’d make as a pro athlete, suggesting that she pursue a career in modeling instead.

“I can tell you right now, I’ve modeled, I will not make more money modeling,” she said on the podcast. 

Instead, Brink is realistic about her WNBA pay, understanding that her partnerships and endorsement deals are how she’ll build her wealth.

As a college student she signed an endorsement deal with New Balance to become the brand’s first female basketball player and has quickly seen her star rise since graduating. Her 1.3 million Instagram followers make her one of the most-followed players in the league.

“I jumped right in. I signed with an agent the day after [NIL was legal],” she said. “I was like, ‘Why not capitalize? Why not profit off what I’m doing?’”

She’s careful about her spending, telling CNBC Make It last year that she saved 90% of her WNBA income. In her conversation with SoFi, Brink credited her dad with imparting the importance of saving.

“I would love to spend more, but I definitely know the importance of saving and putting away that nest egg for me later in life,” she said. “You only play basketball for so long. I’m definitely trying to capitalize on the money I’m making now.”

While Brink doesn’t have the ability to negotiate her WNBA contracts, she is trying to maximize her earnings while she can.

“You really have to learn how to advocate for yourself and not be afraid to step on toes. At the end of the day, it’s a business and people are gonna lowball you,” Brink said of the world of endorsements. “If you think you’re worth more, speak up.”

Want to earn some extra money on the side? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Start a Side Hustle to learn tips to get started and strategies for success from top side hustle experts. Pre-register now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $97 (+taxes and fees) through April 1, 2025.

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