My friend has a problem: He’s deeply in debt. Even though he makes good money—last year, he earned $491,800—he owes a staggering $3,622,200. The problem is, my friend—let’s call him Sam—keeps spending more than he makes. And he’s been doing it for years. No matter how much he takes in, he always finds a way to spend 30 to 40% more than that. Last year, despite bringing in close to $500k, he spent $682,600. He covered the $190,700 shortfall with credit card debt and long-term bank loans, but some of his lenders are starting to wonder if they’ll ever get paid back. Even worse, Sam’s accountant projects he’s going to keep adding to his debt each year. Before we know it, he’s going to have more than $5M of debt. And the more debt he accumulates, the faster it compounds and the more it costs to service it. Last year, he paid $88,100 in interest alone. So a few months ago, most of Sam’s family said “enough is enough” and staged an intervention. They brought in their friend Don and gave him a mandate to control all of Sam’s spending. Now, Don is a somewhat non-traditional choice for this role. Instead of spending his life climbing the ladder toward a job like this, Don spent his career in commercial real estate and entertainment. He’s sharp and he’s a great negotiator, though (he’s also hilarious—get a few Diet Cokes in him and ask him what he thinks about Rosie O’Donnell). He’s been through a few corporate bankruptcies himself, too, so no one understands the risks of too much debt better than him. Don officially started the job a few weeks ago, but he quickly realized that solving Sam’s financial situation was a problem too big for him alone (did I mention that Don is also busy right now trying to buy a huge island?). Don hence called his even wealthier friend E and asked if he would drop everything he’s doing, fly to Sam’s house, and help him get things sorted out. (Side note: If you think Don is a little crazy, you should really meet E. The guy runs about five companies, has a dozen kids, and stays up all night posting on social media and playing video games. People speculate he doesn’t sleep, which might explain why he’s prone to talking about stuff like spaceships and Mars all the time.) E is brilliant at disrupting old ways of doing things, and he knew that hiring more accountants and auditors to figure out Sam’s financial situation wouldn’t do much good (after all, the accountants hadn’t been able to stop Sam from racking up all this debt in the first place). Instead, E brought in a bunch of young, super smart, caffeine-addicted computer programmers. These guys moved into Sam’s house and started working 24/7 to figure out where all of Sam’s money was disappearing to. Part of the problem for Don and E, however, is that Sam’s family doesn’t want them touching most of Sam’s expenditures. Last year, Sam spent $413,000 on retirement benefits for Sam’s older relatives and on healthcare for many of his older or poorer family members. He also spent $85,500 on security (one of Sam’s nextdoor neighbors runs a drug lab in his basement, and his family members keep trying to break into Sam’s house). It really only leaves $96,000 of “discretionary spending” for Don and E to look at cutting. But E and his team weren’t going to be deterred. Looking through all of Sam’s financial records, they saw he was spending $3,000 to $4,000 per year on international aid, without much accountability. A lot of this aid was going toward unpopular political causes; much of it was also getting directed to contractors and consultants who lived in Sam’s high-price city, not toward people in need overseas. Don and E therefore decided to pause that aid spending, at least until the groups in charge of disbursing it could get a handle on their expenses. And that’s when all hell broke loose. Out of nowhere, many of Sam’s family members—people who had never been receptive to hiring Don in the first place—started protesting. They lobbed absurd accusations about E leading a coup against Sam, and they said Don and E were sacrificing Sam’s “standing in the international community” (whatever that means). They talked about how you can’t eliminate a $190,700 shortfall just by cutting $4,000 at a time. But here’s what they still don’t understand: All these numbers add up. Sam’s $3.6M of debt is the result of all of those annual shortfalls, compounded across the years. And each of those annual shortfalls is the sum of all of those small bills Sam was paying each year. $190,700 might be a lot more than $4,000, but—just like eating an elephant one bite at a time—you can only reduce the big numbers if you’re willing to start by chipping away at some of the small numbers. So I’m glad that Don is in charge of doing something about Sam’s spending problem, and I’m grateful that E is taking time to help him. Because I’m one of Sam’s family members here, and, if you’re reading this, you probably are too. We’ve been giving Sam a lot of money for a long time, and it feels like all we have to show for it each year is fewer results for our families and more debt that Sam is just going to pass along to our kids. Enough is enough. I hope Don and E keep going, and I’ll be cheering them for each dollar they save along the way.