Apr 16, 2024 · 52m · bigdeal
What They Don’t Tell You About Money and Marriage (feat. Bill Perkins)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Big Deal Podcast, host Codie Sanchez, co-host Rachel, and entrepreneur Bill Perkins explore the financial, emotional, and behavioral dynamics of marriage and divorce. Blending statistical data with candid personal stories, they present practical tools and communication rituals designed to help couples build resilient, long-term partnerships.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Codie holds 67.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Codie as informed peer 6.6 Guest teaching 1.3 Guest disagreement 0.6 Codie pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Codie, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 20:15 Bill Perkins rejects soulmate fairy tales
Bill aggressively dismisses the popular narrative of finding a magical soulmate, bluntly stating they did not find anything ready-made and had to build it brick by brick.
Hardest push from Codie ▶ 22:33 Codie Sanchez reframes correlation versus causationCodie resists Rachel's speculative rationalizations around divorce data, steering the dialogue back to first principles and statistical odds.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 14:40 Perkins educates on the necessity of relationship coachingPerkins dismantles the common view that marriage counseling indicates failure by arguing that elite performers across athletics and history never achieve greatness alone.
Codie holds their own ▶ 31:30 Codie outlines partner spousal waivers and enterprise equity riskCodie leverages her private equity background to break down the exact legal documentation required to insulate businesses from founder divorces.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Codie as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Codie pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analyzing Divorce Rates, Billionaires, and Behavioral Data | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Codie Sanchez unpacks behavioral data, billionaire divorce statistics, and the hidden financial costs of divorce with co-host Rachel. | |
| Bill Perkins on Coping with Divorce and Reframing Partnership | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Bill Perkins opens up about his divorce being his greatest failure and how examining blame led him to reprioritize long-term partnership over pure freedom. | |
| Bill Perkins on Relationship Coaching and Preventing Scars | 5 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Perkins aggressively debunks the stigma around relationship coaching using athletic and historical analogies, which Codie reinforces with her own weekly coaching routine. | |
| Bill Perkins on Freedom versus Building Love Brick by Brick | 4 | 4 | 2 | 0 | Bill compares short-term freedom to addictive junk food and rejects romantic soulmate myths in favor of deliberately building a relationship brick by brick. | |
| Deconstructing Divorce Odds, Options, and Active Stability | 7 | 0 | 0 | 2 | Codie cautions against confusing correlation with causation when interpreting divorce data and emphasizes the need for active over passive relationship stability. | |
| Financial Literacy, Prenuptial Agreements, and Proactive Therapy | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Codie explains financial literacy disparities in marriages, champions prenuptial agreements as risk alignment tools, and advocates for private mediation over court litigation. | |
| Business Risks of Divorce and Codie Sanchez's Personal Story | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Codie details corporate spousal waivers in private equity before reading an intimate, emotionally raw written account of leaving her first marriage. | |
| The TEAM Method for Daily Relationship Communication | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Codie details her structured daily relationship routine called the TEAM method (Touch, Education, Appreciation, Metrics) to preempt creeping resentment. | |
| Preserving Identity, Overmedication, and Partnership Power | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Codie warns against total identity loss in domestic life, critiques the overmedication cascade among isolated women, and describes an intentional partnership as a superpower. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Sanchez: 70% of 1990s marriages reached 15-year mark
“What we actually found is that it's more like 70% of marriages in the 19 nineties actually made it to their 15th anniversary, and that this number is increasing from 65% for the seventies and eighties.”
Sanchez: Divorce rates double for female lottery winners, but not men
“When men win the lottery, it's kind of, nothing really changes. They get married at the same rate. They have kids at the same rate. When women win the lottery, the divorce rates double.”
Sanchez: Average US divorce costs $12K-$100K and takes 10 months
“The average wedding in the U S is 30 K, which is wild. The average cost of a divorce is like 12,000 to a 100,000, obviously varying on total costs. And it takes even without children about 10 months.”
Perkins: Couples Need a Relationship Coach to Build a Great Marriage
“I tell all my friends, I'm like, you should have a relationship coach. I don't care how good your relationship is, you should have a coach.”
Perkins: Relationships Fail from a Thousand Small Cuts, Not Singular Incidents
“I think that relationships die from a thousand cuts, not like this big thing. You know what I mean? Like, even relationships that they have, oh, they cheated on me or whatever, it's like probably the thousand cuts that's created the environment for the infidel…”
Sanchez: Children of Divorced Parents Have Higher Suicide and Divorce Rates
“Your kids are more likely to commit suicide or self-harm. If you get divorced, your kids have a higher likelihood of becoming divorced themselves.”
Sanchez: Never-Married Single Mothers Report Highest Happiness in Studies
“Single women who have never been married and have kids actually have the highest happiness as evidenced by studies.”
Sanchez: Assuming Relationships Are Passively Stable Leads to Divorce
“There's two types of stability, active and passive. People get in trouble when they confuse the two. Relationships, for example, require attention and care. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you'll wake up one day to divorce papers.”
Sanchez: Women control household spending, but men understand overall finances
“The data shows us that women are the, have the purchasing power in the household. Like if you are Amazon or Walmart, you actually want to get to the female. Because she's typically the one doing a lot of the household spending. But the one with the understandi…”
Sanchez: Hiring aggressive divorce litigators is a costly mistake versus mediation
“People try to go out and get the gnarliest, meanest divorce attorney that they can get. And that's actually a terrible idea. You'll spend a ton of money on your divorce attorneys. And instead you guys decided to commit to something for life. Try to exit it as …”
Sanchez: Resistance to signing a prenuptial agreement is a red flag
“It seems to me a little bit of a red flag if anybody would be concerned about getting a prenup on either side.”
Sanchez: Founders' spouses must sign away business rights before I invest
“I always make the partners
Of the founders that I invest in and the founders or investors in a fund, usually their partner needs to sign documentation to waiving their rights to the business.”
Sanchez: Left $1B AUM business with zero equity or severance
“I had built up a business with nearly a billion dollars in assets under management. And despite that, I took nothing with me. No severance, no equity, no clients, no assets.”
Sanchez: Society Will Soon Recognize a Silent Loneliness Epidemic Among Women
“Right now, we're starting to hear about, like, the alpha men, and we're starting to hear about testosterone levels lowering, and we're starting to hear about incels and men not having sex in increasing amounts, and we're starting to hear about Men having a tou…”