This 'Rich-Poor' Couple Earns Over $1M a Year and Has $11M in Assets. So Why Do They Live Month to Month?

Margo and Kevin bring in more than $1 million (around £750,000) a year, raise five children in Brooklyn, and hold roughly $11 million (close to £8.25 million) in assets. By Margo's own description, they rank among the wealthiest households in the country. Yet when she described the family's money to personal finance author Ramit Sethi, she reached for a phrase that captures the whole problem: 'rich poor people'.

The couple, aged 42 and 52, appeared on episode 280 of Sethi's Money for Couples podcast, published on 29 September 2026, because they spend nearly every dollar that comes in and have little put by.

On paper, they are worth about $9.25 million (roughly £6.9 million). In cash, they are down to about one month of savings. The reason, it turns out, has less to do with how much they earn than with who was watching the money, and how the decisions got made.

The Decision That Started It

Margot's father had quietly covered part of the tuition bill, about $70,000 (roughly £52,500), of a total that runs between $150,000 and $200,000 (£112,500 to £150,000) a year for five children in private school. The couple decided to take it on themselves.

'We just felt like we wanted to be independent and not have to ask,' Margot said. That choice is what pushed her to apply to the show. With her father stepping back and costs climbing, she could not see where the money would come from.

Kevin listed the family's figures: assets of about $11 million, half a million dollars in individual stocks, and $50,000 (about £37,500) in savings, against $2.3 million (around £1.7 million) in mortgage debt on two homes. He values his wholesale import business at $2 million (about £1.5 million), grounded in a buyout offer he turned down.

The income is just as large. The couple net about $50,000 a month, which Sethi reverse-engineered to a gross near $96,500 (about £72,000) a month, or $1.05 million to $1.15 million (£790,000 to £860,000) a year. Margot admitted she had never tracked the figure, because Kevin's distributions swing with the business.

Where It All Goes

As a general benchmark, Sethi wants fixed costs below 60 per cent of take-home pay. When the tuition and camp bills were finally added to a plan that had left them off, the couple's fixed costs climbed past 100 per cent. On top of that sit health costs the business income masks, some of them not covered by insurance.

'You are spending far more than you make every single month,' Sethi told them. 'Now it makes sense.'

A single disaster sharpened the pressure. Kevin described black mould under the basement floor that forced remediation and left the children needing treatment from a doctor outside their insurance, about $11,000 per child. The bills reached roughly $400,000, and because the family lacked the right cover, almost none came back. The couple's savings cushion was wiped out.

Managed on a Vibe, Not a Number

The deeper issue was how the money was run. Kevin said he had handled the finances alone and approved or refused purchases on instinct rather than figures. 'It's just a vibe,' he said of how he decides what the family can afford.

The couple had been told to complete the budgeting plan together. Kevin said he did it himself, and by his own account the numbers came back wrong by tens of thousands a month. Margo said she had long been left out of the money talk and handed only the stress.

Both also grew up watching the same pattern. Kevin said his parents sold their homes, spent the proceeds, and the money lasted about 20 years. Margo called it being 'born into the knot,' a community where tuition, camps, and summer homes are simply what everyone does, whether or not the maths works.

What They Agreed to Change

Sethi's blunt verdict was that their wealth is locked in property while their cash is dangerously thin. He raised an option the couple had never seriously weighed: selling or renting a home and investing the money, which he estimated that roughly $8 million invested could generate around $240,000 (about £180,000) a year, assuming a 3 per cent yield.

Margo resisted selling, calling her house a safety net, but the couple began naming cuts: dropping a car, trimming groceries, giving the children fixed allowances, and asking their eldest to help pay his own college costs.

In a follow-up recorded afterwards, they said the lesson had landed. They reported downgrading two cars, setting firm grocery and clothing budgets, ordering Sethi's book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, and bringing the children into the family's finances.

'It's not about cutting lattes,' Margo said, 'but our fixed costs are so high.'