Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Does Getting Married Help You Earn More Money? Earn Your Leisure's Troy and Rashad on the Marital Minimum Wage, Tariffs, Financial Trauma and "F U Numbers"
Fri, 30 May 2025
This is the crossover episode we’ve been waiting for! Today Nicole is joined by the trailblazers behind the financial literacy empire Earn Your Leisure, Troy Millings and Rashad Bilal. This conversation was just as deep and far-reaching as we knew it would be. They talk about the U.S.-China trade war, the insider trading mess in Washington and whether finance can really be democratized. And they get personal; they cover financial trauma, money dysmorphia, and the push-pull of relationships and money. You don't want to miss this one! Get Troy and Rashad’s awesome book You Deserve To Be Rich here!
Chapter 1: What is the crossover episode about?
I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Well, well, well, this is the crossover episode we have all been waiting for. Today, I'm joined by the trailblazers behind Earn Your Leisure, Troy Millings and Rashad Bilal. If you don't already know, Earn Your Leisure isn't just a financial literacy podcast.
It is a full on empire. Troy and Rashad have been hosting their show for years and bringing on guests to share advice on building wealth. And so when their team reached out to us and asked if they could be guests on Money Rehab, it was a fast hell yes. And the conversation was just awesome, nerdy, and actionable as I knew it would be. We dig into a lot, so get ready.
We talk about their predictions on the U.S.-China trade war and what it means for your portfolio. We also talk about the insider trading mess in Washington and whether finance can really be democratized. Also, we go pretty deep talking about financial trauma, money dysmorphia, and the push-pull of relationships and money and what it actually means to feel like you have enough.
Oh, and if you have a crush on Rashad, you will get the answer on whether or not he is single. Kind of. Welcome to Money Rehab.
Thank you for having us, Nicole. It's a pleasure to be here.
So I've been such a fan for such a long time. Got to throw some financial flowers your way. Since the beginning, have been such a big fan of what you do. We're all in the financial literacy party. I think what really struck me is you're so calm. I love your voice in a crisis. It even makes me calm.
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Chapter 2: How do the U.S.-China tariffs affect your portfolio?
Everyone relax.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Have you always been chill?
Nah, you got to keep the composure. I think that we've always had a calm Demeter. He's a little bit more outgoing than I am. I'm very chill, laid back, reserved person. But I feel like in a day and age where everybody's trying to be somebody that they're not, and I feel like a lot of times when you get online or get on social media, it's almost like wrestling. You have to adapt to a personality.
So you have to change your name and you got to change the way that you dress and change the way that you talk. So I think it's refreshing for people to just really feel like it's an organic vibe. And that's what we did. We haven't changed our personas. or changed our name or changed too much about ourselves. We're just the same people that we were before.
So even if people don't know us or haven't knew us for 20, 30 years, they can feel like it's an authentic person that they actually grew up with, as opposed to a celebrity or a talking head that they're listening to.
Maybe with some fancier stuff.
A couple of trinkets.
With the tariffs going on, not necessarily on my bingo card, although it probably should have been because with Trump, he tells us what he's going to do. It just wasn't on the bingo card with how aggressive it was. So everybody's freaking out. Your audience is freaking out. How do you tell people to stay calm?
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Chapter 3: What is financial trauma and how does it impact us?
I was like, man, I can't really contribute. I don't know what they're talking about. And so I took on the liberty to say, all right, I gotta go educate myself. So the next time they have a conversation about money and finance and real estate, Yeah, I'm well in depth. In fact, I'm going to add to this conversation. So it was like a challenge for me from that point on.
But that all happened because of losing a house and figuring out how you're going to move on as a teen and how you're going to correct those mistakes in the future for your family.
And you own a house now?
I own a house, I own two homes, yeah. So I own, my parents, we live in a home now. And that's interesting. During the pandemic when interest rates were really low, I remember like, hey, we gotta refinance this house. And my parents were like, we can't do it, we co-own it.
They were like, psychologically, just going through the process of interest rates, that trigger word again, they couldn't do it. I'm like, look, it's 2.75. We may not get to this point again. Right now we're at four and a half. That's two points on your interest. And just the fear and the process of them going through something like that again, they didn't do it.
And so we stayed at that four and a quarter, four and a half. And now you see interest rates up at 7%. So we missed a moment where they could have saved money on a mortgage, but that fear kicked in again. So I own that home with them. And then I just completed a home that I just built with my wife. So that was a process too.
Yeah, I remember my family's house being foreclosed on when I was little. And no matter what I know still about finances, it's always going to be an emotional conversation. And I think a house is a home. It's not actually a great investment over time compared to the stock market. But I think it's hard to divorce yourself from those early emotions and that early trauma.
Rashad, do you have an early story that has affected the way you look at it?
For me, it's just a matter of understanding entrepreneurship at a high level. My dad was an entrepreneur. My mom was a schoolteacher. She's always from a standpoint of, like, security. And he was on a standpoint of making risk. As an entrepreneur, you take risks.
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Chapter 4: How does marriage influence financial success?
Okay, okay.
Are you on dating apps?
No, I'm not on dating apps.
I had more time because I wasn't on the dating app anymore. Now we talk about the app being like Zillow.
Social media is a dating app. Instagram is a dating app now.
Is that how you're starting to date? No, I just... I'm not going to let you go. Don't know about what's going on with you.
We don't know. We never really got the answer on that.
You're such a politician. So most, I'll get us back to financial news, but the people want to know, what are you looking for?
Good energy is extremely important. That's the number one key in life. You got to have good energy.
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Chapter 5: What is the marital minimum wage?
Yeah, you know, I'm not really a person that really checks somebody. I'm not one of those people that's like, on the first date, what's your credit score?
That's not cool or sexy.
But some people in the financial literacy community, they're like, that's the first question you should know.
No, but you can pick up on cues for how responsible somebody is.
For sure. Definitely. That's important. I think positive cash flow is important. You don't want to be with somebody that's a liability. You need assets. More assets than liabilities, for sure.
She's 10 for 10 right now, Nicole. You are. Are you? When's your birthday? March 7th. Wow.
You thought I was joking. You did some due diligence. I know who you are. Oh, my God. I know your birthday. I know your Social Security number.
That's next. Later on.
Okay, Rashad, we're just trying to get you married here.
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Chapter 6: How does insider trading affect the market?
From New York.
From New York. And senators, actually, I think it's all Congress, beats the S&P 500 by 17%. Unless somebody is like, Warren Buffett in disguise in Washington. It has to be knowledge.
It's like COVID. They all sold their stocks two weeks before the official lockdown happened because they got briefed that we was going to get a lockdown. It's human nature. If you know something, you're going to act on it. And it's not illegal.
It's not. SEC Chair Gary Gensler came out and said it's not illegal to act on non-public information if you're in Congress. Yet. Maybe when you're a senator.
They know who's getting contracts. They know who's about to get on the investigation. They know when... They know everything. They get briefed on things that we're not privy to. So of course, if they're smart, they're going to use that information to make money. And now we've seen it even go a step further with meme coins. President has a meme coin, right?
So now you actually have political people that's actually endorsing their own
coin investment to push to the public marketed from the bully pulpit that they've been provided from being elected officials that's unprecedented pretty much yeah and incentivizing it too you think about trump coin because i think it was like 58 people made a ton of money 10 million yeah and then everybody else lost everything yeah it's a scam any of those coins are scams they're not tied to anything the whole point of that is just to pump it up real quick get
a few people rich, and then it's gonna fall apart. So that's happened with anybody that's done that, with celebrities when they've endorsed to the coin. We just never seen a president do that before. But there's a lot of things that we've never seen happen. Or First Lady. She had a coin.
Everybody gets a coin. Granddaughter's gonna get a coin next. I don't know. I think what worries me, and you guys do such great work on democratizing financial literacy, and I try to do the same work, but when you have this going on in Washington, can it ever actually be democratized when there's such an unfair advantage?
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Chapter 7: What are the challenges of financial education?
Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab. How often do you check your brokerage?
I mean, you got to check every day. Every day.
I check twice a day. How much are you up?
Let me check.
Can we check?
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Chapter 8: How can you participate in an unfair financial system?
Yeah, I'm going to check right now.
Should we all check?
My E-Trade is up 79%. 79%? We got down to 11% earlier in April. So yeah, since April. So we're up about 60% since the tariff thing.
From where, primarily?
So that's my options trading account.
But it's all relative. I think sometimes people get discouraged with numbers. Numbers is an infinite language. There's no ending or beginning in mathematics. So we have to look at, okay, where are you up since... We started the year. Where are you up since you started your brokerage account? Let's say I'm up 500% since I started my brokerage account, but I'm down from the start of February.
I think sometimes this can be misleading and it can have some level of discouragement for the average person. I just tell people, just invest. If you invest in quality companies, ETFs, index funds, you're going to make money over the course of time. But in pockets, you might have a good season where you're up. You might have a bad season when you're down.
But if you look at it too much, then that's going to cause you either a comparison analogy where you're actually comparing yourself to other people, then you start to gamble. then you start to make bad decisions or you get discouraged because you're like, why am I doing this? I'm only up 5%. I might as well just gamble.
Online right now, there's more money you're putting online gambling in the stocks. That's a problem. So we really have to be cautious about how we're curating these messages because the reason why people are putting more money into online gambling is because they think that they can have a quicker opportunity to make more money.
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