The Art of Manliness - #536： How to Achieve a ＂Rich Life＂ With Your Finances

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, if you've

00:00:11.120 read a lot of personal finance advice, you know that it usually concentrates on what you can't

00:00:15.260 do, what you shouldn't buy and how you shouldn't spend your money. What it doesn't often offer

00:00:19.380 is a vision of what all that scrimping and saving is for. I guess they argue that while

00:00:22.980 knowing how to save money is hugely important, it's also important to know how to spend it.

00:00:26.660 His name is Ramit Sethi. He's the author of the book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. It's

00:00:30.320 out now as a revised second edition, 10 years after the publication of the original. We

00:00:34.560 begin our discussion going over what has and hasn't changed over the past decade when it

00:00:38.180 comes to personal finance. Ramit then makes the case that living what he calls a quote

00:00:41.580 unquote rich life involves not only knowing where to cut back on spending, but where to

00:00:45.540 increase it in places he calls money dials. We then get into some practical ways to better

00:00:49.420 manage your money to ensure you spend it less in areas you don't care about and more in

00:00:53.640 those you do, including how to manage and pay off credit card debt, the bank accounts

00:00:57.460 you need and how to set them up so that your finances are automated and why you need to

00:01:00.860 start investing today. And we end our discussion on the idea that the big money decisions that

00:01:04.860 many people ignore are more important than the small ones that get a lot of attention.

00:01:08.980 After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash richlife. Ramit joins me now

00:01:14.020 via Skype. All right, Ramit Sethi, welcome back to the show.

00:01:25.800 Thanks for having me back again.

00:01:27.100 So last time we had you on, we were discussing behavioral science and psychology and how that

00:01:31.980 influences decisions we make and our finances and diet and exercise. Today, we're going to

00:01:37.400 talk about your book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, because this thing, you originally published

00:01:41.720 it 10 years ago, and you've updated it and republished it with new insights you've gained

00:01:47.760 in the past 10 years. I'm curious, what's changed since you originally published the book,

00:01:53.580 I Will Teach You To Be Rich, in the past 10 years? Is there stuff you've learned along the way since

00:01:57.880 then? Oh, yeah. There's a lot that has changed in the outside world, and there's a lot that's changed

00:02:03.200 with me. I didn't expect to write an update of the book because when it comes to good advice,

00:02:10.680 most good advice is timeless. And some of my favorite books were written 50 years or more

00:02:17.060 ago. But when I finally took a look outside, I saw there were new accounts. I use different

00:02:23.860 credit cards than I used 10 years ago. There are better perks that you can squeeze those credit

00:02:28.720 card companies for. There are robo advisors. There's crypto. There's movements like FIRE,

00:02:34.780 Financial Independence Retire Early. And then also, my life has changed. I got married.

00:02:39.120 And as you can imagine, love and money, huge topic. My business also grew. So I've come to see

00:02:46.880 money very differently than I saw when I first wrote the book. And my favorite part of it was

00:02:53.560 being able to share the stories of people who used the book. And in the last 10 years,

00:02:57.780 you can see their lives have completely changed.

00:02:59.900 And the other thing that's changed, you make a note of this in the book, interest rates have changed.

00:03:03.280 Oh my God. Okay. This is probably the biggest mistake of my life. All right. I made a lot of

00:03:10.040 mistakes. But you wouldn't believe for the last 10 years, every single day of my life, I wake up and I

00:03:16.340 have 10 or so emails from random people around the world cursing me out. This is like my morning coffee.

00:03:22.940 I wake up, I open up my email, I get cursed out by people saying, your book told me there are 5%

00:03:30.600 savings accounts. Where are they? You liar. And I'm like, oh, at first I used to write back,

00:03:37.680 hey guys, are you aware that interest rates are variable? And also, even if you have $10,000,

00:03:43.920 we're talking about a difference of about $4 a month. It turns out people really don't like to hear

00:03:48.720 that from me. So now I have just stopped responding to those. My new lesson in life is

00:03:53.820 never write interest rates in a book. Lesson learned.

00:03:58.640 But so you talked about, there's how these been changes in the larger world of personal finances

00:04:02.880 and in your own life. But overall, I read the second, the update, the fundamentals haven't really

00:04:07.840 changed all that much. That's right. If you think about investing,

00:04:12.800 compound interest still matters. Automating your money still matters.

00:04:17.380 And knowing how to master your money psychology still matters. I learned that when I first wrote

00:04:24.820 the book, I could give you the perfect automation technique. I mean, down to the list of accounts,

00:04:30.600 down to the days that money should transfer. And I did that in chapter five. But if you don't

00:04:35.980 understand your own money psychology, then none of it matters. For example, think about how many of us

00:04:41.380 grew up with our parents saying random offhand phrases like money doesn't grow on trees,

00:04:46.900 or we don't talk about money in this family. And we take those messages and 25 years later,

00:04:54.320 30 years later, they still affect us. They actually cause a lot of our purchasing decisions that we

00:04:59.020 don't even realize. So that is something that has not changed, but I wanted to shine a light on it.

00:05:05.180 But I would say that even though I added 80 new pages of material and I updated a bunch of stuff,

00:05:10.020 good advice doesn't really change that often. And if you use the book 10 years ago or you use it now,

00:05:14.980 you're going to be financially set.

00:05:16.380 Right. Well, another interesting thing that happens, you've had 10 years to interact with

00:05:20.680 readers of your content. And I'm curious, during that time, you've laid out this stuff,

00:05:26.060 the fundamentals, they're strong. But I think something you've mentioned in the book and on your

00:05:31.540 website, that you still see people make the same money mistakes over and over and over again.

00:05:36.840 Which ones are those? And what do you think is... What's the underlying factors? Is it the

00:05:40.100 psychology that's the problem?

00:05:42.120 Yeah. Everybody knows the basic stuff of money. We all know that we should be saving more.

00:05:49.280 We all know that we should somehow be investing. And these words are tossed around like 401ks and IRAs.

00:05:55.820 But the biggest mistake is that people put it off until another day. And I actually completely

00:06:02.220 understand why. If anything, in the last 10 years, I've become much more compassionate

00:06:07.240 about people's attitudes and behaviors towards money. I mean, just think about it. You wake up in

00:06:13.020 the morning, you go to work. Most people want to have a cup of coffee in the morning, go to work,

00:06:18.380 not get in trouble, come back, maybe hang out with friends or family, have a nice meal,

00:06:23.260 watch some Netflix and go to sleep. That's a good day. And I get that. I respect that.

00:06:29.100 When you think about opening up your bills and you think about learning all this word salad of

00:06:34.480 annuities and 401ks, that makes people feel bad. And as one person told me, he said, I don't know

00:06:42.380 exactly what I'm doing, but I know that I'm doing it wrong. And that's how a lot of people feel about

00:06:48.800 money. So I get why they procrastinate. That's the first mistake. Another mistake, and this is a big

00:06:54.360 one, is people telling themselves stories that are not true. So they'll tell themselves the story that

00:07:01.640 I need to wait to have some money to invest or only rich people invest. When in reality,

00:07:08.640 it's actually the opposite. The way that you become rich is in part by investing. Another,

00:07:15.440 you know, a lot of people, especially on social media these days, they love to victimize themselves.

00:07:19.420 There's no way to get ahead. Oh my God, the student loan debt crisis. And while there are certainly

00:07:25.620 some serious structural issues, I get that. I always come back to, okay, that's true. There is a crisis,

00:07:32.660 a housing crisis, student debt crisis. But when was the last time you invested in your 401k?

00:07:38.140 And if they say, there's no way I can even put aside 50 or a hundred bucks, I say, give me 10

00:07:44.280 minutes with your calendar and 10 minutes with your spending. And I will show you your priorities

00:07:49.060 and I will show you how you can make that money work. And then the third mistake is, and I hate to

00:07:54.420 be blunt about this, but it's listening to losers for money advice. Like I see people going on obscure

00:08:00.420 subreddits and listening to commenter number 86483 telling them, oh my God, there's no way to

00:08:07.880 get 8% returns. That's impossible. And why are you listening to a random anonymous commenter on Reddit?

00:08:14.440 Many, in fact, I would say over 95% of the people who complain about money have never spent one weekend

00:08:20.340 reading a good book about money. And so if your entire reality is people who don't have money telling

00:08:26.300 you why you can't have money, perhaps it's time to make a change. Yeah. And another problem that you

00:08:31.460 mentioned is that people make the perfect the enemy of the good, right? They just think everything's

00:08:36.460 got to be in place, right? They got to have all their debt paid off and then they can start investing

00:08:40.440 or they got to have a perfect investment plan before they start investing. But you're saying like,

00:08:45.760 no, you just need to get it 85% right. That's it. Yeah, that's it. I call it the 85% solution,

00:08:51.300 in fact. And it's funny because we kind of all intuitively know this with something that we

00:08:55.460 started and we got good at, you know, people listening, maybe they decided to improve their

00:09:00.200 style or maybe they decided to improve their fitness. And looking back, there were so many

00:09:06.440 things that were impossible to know when you got started. And like, I've gone on a fitness journey

00:09:11.380 myself. And when I started, if someone had taught me about macros and calorie counting and all kinds

00:09:17.220 of the, you know, overhead press, I would have been completely overwhelmed. I wasn't ready to learn

00:09:22.440 that stuff. What I needed to do was show up at the gym and control what I ate. Very simple.

00:09:29.180 Same thing with money. You need to automate your money, have some money go to savings,

00:09:33.360 some money go to investing. You need to have the right accounts. And like, that's 85% of it.

00:09:38.580 You're good. If you want to tweak it and go a little further, you can. I show you how in chapter eight.

00:09:43.300 But most people will do very well with 85% solution.

00:09:47.260 Right. So quit looking for the perfect thing. It's not going to prevent you from getting to

00:09:52.020 where you need to go. Yeah. I mean, like I, you know, I talked about this before we got on the

00:09:55.320 show. Like I read this book 10 years ago and one of the advice you gave was like target funds,

00:10:00.640 right? For investing. We can talk about this later on in a little detail. I mean, I didn't know much

00:10:04.560 about investing. I needed to start a retirement account. I didn't know what to invest in. So I just

00:10:08.480 did that. And it's been crazy to see like in the past 10 years, how well those target funds on

00:10:14.680 Vanguard have done. And I haven't done anything. I haven't like, we haven't had to rebalance.

00:10:18.960 It's just, I put the money in and that's it. So this is a crazy thing. First of all,

00:10:22.860 I'm so happy to hear that. I love, love, love talking to people who took the advice,

00:10:28.060 they automated it, and then got on with their life. That's the beautiful part. Like you did not

00:10:32.920 spend like hours and hours every single day tweaking and fiddling with it. That's not a rich life.

00:10:38.300 Most people do not want to become financial experts. They want to set things up,

00:10:41.800 move on and live their rich life outside the spreadsheet, which is exactly what you've been

00:10:47.340 doing. And that's amazing. I think that if you look at what happened with this book,

00:10:53.420 it came out in March, 2009. Now I don't believe in market timing, but that was probably the best

00:10:57.800 time it could ever come out because that was the absolute bottom of the recession. Now,

00:11:02.700 if you just followed the advice in the book, even with conservative numbers, like a hundred bucks

00:11:07.120 a month, you're basically financially set for life. And so I want everyone listening to really

00:11:14.760 get honest with yourself. Take a look in the mirror and say, have I been delaying, you know,

00:11:19.280 learning about a 401k? Have I been complaining about money, but not actually picking up a good

00:11:24.260 book and reading it? The key thing about what you said, which I love is most people in most parts of

00:11:29.280 life want more control, right? They want to have control over their living environment,

00:11:34.280 their work, their career, all that stuff with money. It's ironic that the more you try to control

00:11:40.760 every last bit, the less successful you're going to be. And in fact, we see this with portfolio

00:11:47.320 managers, people who fiddle around actively investing. They actually fail to beat the market

00:11:51.920 over 80% of the time. And what you can see is all you need to do is automatically set money aside,

00:11:59.400 pick a simple investment, and then get on with your life. And you will outperform over 80%

00:12:03.780 of professional investors. So you just mentioned something there. You mentioned this idea of a

00:12:07.920 rich life. And that's a new concept too you've been developing over the past 10 years. I don't

00:12:12.300 think you talked about that in the first book or the first edition of the book, but this idea of a

00:12:16.820 rich life. And when people hear that, they think, oh, it's private jet mansion. That's not what you're

00:12:23.220 talking about. What is a rich life for you? Okay. So this is definitely the crux of what makes this book

00:12:30.260 different from so many other books. And also my philosophy. So my philosophy is that each person's

00:12:38.020 rich life is their own. So your rich life is different than mine. And in fact, let's kind of

00:12:42.800 just get into it right here. So if I asked you, what's your rich life, what would you say?

00:12:47.400 Being able to buy books whenever I want, barbell train, maybe occasionally buy some things from my

00:12:53.460 garage gym, and spending time with my family and maybe taking a vacation to Vermont once a year. That's it.

00:13:00.260 Love it. Love it. Okay. Love it. Now, let me ask you this. Out of the things you talked about,

00:13:05.740 what is the thing you absolutely love spending money on? I don't mean like, I mean love.

00:13:11.420 Going to Vermont. And I'm here right now talking to you in Vermont.

00:13:15.180 Perfect. This could not be a better example. Okay. Now let me ask you this. What if you took

00:13:20.180 the amount that you spend on that and you quadrupled it? What would that look like? What would that feel

00:13:27.060 like? What would that be?

00:13:27.940 I have no clue. I'm going to have to think about that. I'm going to have to get my journal,

00:13:31.400 maybe journal about it. Quadruple. So the amount I spent on going to Vermont,

00:13:36.700 if I quadrupled that, I would probably buy a second home in Vermont and come here all the time.

00:13:44.680 Nice. And what would that feel like?

00:13:46.400 Just feel great. I love it here. I can relax. The nature's fantastic. The outdoors are fantastic.

00:13:51.960 You probably have your stuff there so you wouldn't have to transport it, right? You'd travel

00:13:57.320 lighter. You'd have something to look forward to. What about memories with your family? Maybe you'd

00:14:02.320 even bring friends. Extend that. Yeah, that's right. Okay.

00:14:05.860 I would do all those things.

00:14:07.580 Love it. Okay. So this is a concept I call money dials. And money dials are part of your rich life.

00:14:13.960 If everyone's got at least one money dial, a money dial is something that you absolutely

00:14:18.660 love spending on. Everyone intuitively knows what it is. And I call it a money dial because you can

00:14:25.520 turn that almost like a radio dial. You can turn that dial way, way up. Now, the most common money

00:14:31.780 dials that people tell me are travel, eating out, and to some extent, well, let me just stop there.

00:14:40.800 Those are the two most common ones. Mine is a little different. Mine is convenience. I love

00:14:45.280 convenience. It makes me happy. I wake up in the morning. My calendar is perfect. My food is like

00:14:51.120 all ready. Everything is convenient. I love it. Now, what I challenge people to do, I ask them,

00:14:56.860 what does it look like if you quadruple your spending? And what is amazing is most people have

00:15:02.780 never thought about it. Just like you said, I'm going to have to think about it. And when they do,

00:15:07.080 they start, they give pretty generic answers. So I had one woman in LA and she said to me,

00:15:14.500 I love buying clothes. I love it. And I encouraged her. I said, good. Tell me more. What do you love

00:15:18.940 about it? She's like, I love coming home to my apartment. There's boxes. And I said, cool. You

00:15:22.920 open them up. It's like a gift. I said, what if you could quadruple your spending? She's like,

00:15:26.760 I would have boxes everywhere. And the whole crowd was just loving it. And I said to her,

00:15:33.940 where do you shop? And she said a store called Topshop. And I said, if you quadrupled your

00:15:39.720 spending, where would you shop? She said, she looked confused. She said, I would shop at Topshop.

00:15:44.720 And this is where it became very interesting. Most people have never thought about spending more on

00:15:51.360 the things they love because most people and most topics about money are all about what you can't do.

00:15:56.880 No, you can't buy lattes. No, you can't go out. No, you can't go on vacation. You have to hoard it

00:16:00.760 all until you're 90. So I always start from a place of what do you love? And what if you could

00:16:05.520 spend more on it? And I challenged her to get specific, to dream bigger. If you quadruple

00:16:12.220 your spending, you're not just going to buy more of the same clothes. You might actually turn that

00:16:16.880 dial way up and you might shop at a different brand, or you might fly to a headquarters and

00:16:24.700 factory of a brand you love and take a behind the scenes tour and even get something custom created

00:16:29.940 for yourself. So I share this example because you love Vermont. If you quadrupled or five extra,

00:16:37.340 10 extra spending, it's not just adding a little bit more. You can actually completely change the

00:16:42.940 entire experience. And I always say, spend extravagantly on the things you love, as long

00:16:50.440 as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. It's a totally different way of looking at

00:16:54.340 money than most people who only focus on the things you can't do.

00:16:57.940 Yeah, that's a good point. Because you have most personal finance advice. This is something you've

00:17:01.460 been railing against for the past 10 years. Skip the latte. If you skip the latte, your retirement

00:17:05.680 will be set. And it's like, well, yeah, but you're missing out on that latte. You enjoy it. It's a part

00:17:13.740 of your routine. It gives you pleasure. It gives you joy. Money's there to also enjoy life as well.

00:17:20.440 It's there to be spent. And it's there to be used. I grew up in a middle-class family,

00:17:25.420 pretty large family. And one thing I learned is I love strawberries. But when we got strawberries,

00:17:31.840 I would always try to save them. Because I like them. And I wanted to extend the pleasure.

00:17:38.160 But inevitably, they would go bad or they would get eaten. And so I have a new philosophy, which is

00:17:43.500 strawberries are meant to be eaten. And money is meant to serve your rich life. So you notice that

00:17:52.000 most of the advice out there that tells you what you can't do, it never really ends up telling you

00:17:58.260 what you can do. So it's interesting. This has really bled into people's psychology, especially

00:18:03.000 in America. I ask them, what's your rich life? And so many people say, I just want to pay off my debt.

00:18:10.100 That's as far as they've dreamed. And I said, man, it's no surprise you're not living a rich life.

00:18:15.180 If your entire dream is to pay off your debt, that doesn't get anybody up in the morning.

00:18:19.380 That doesn't get you excited. But what if you said, I want to pay off my debt, and then I want

00:18:23.600 to take my family on an amazing vacation once a year. Or I want to donate more to charity. Or I want

00:18:30.520 to go out and eat at a beautiful restaurant on our anniversary every quarter. That suddenly becomes

00:18:37.380 something that gets people excited. So money can be about saying yes, not just about saying no.

00:18:42.140 Right. And I like this idea of conscious spending. This doesn't mean you're going to be

00:18:46.240 a total spendthrift, right? Where you're just going to spend all your money all the time. Like

00:18:50.720 you said, you have to decide what you really want. And you put your money towards that. And then the

00:18:56.000 stuff that you don't really care about, dial that down. Be a month if you have to, to get that thing

00:19:01.660 that really cranks up that money dial for you.

00:19:05.020 Yes. So let's talk about that. Because I don't want people to think that I'm just telling everyone,

00:19:08.460 go out and buy private jets. I have no interest in that. And let me share a little bit about what I

00:19:13.380 don't spend on. And then I'd love to hear from you also, what do you not care about spending on?

00:19:18.600 So for me, I rent on purpose. That's a very counterintuitive notion. A lot of people believe

00:19:25.480 that, oh my God, buying a house is the best investment. You're just throwing money away on

00:19:29.540 rent. That is not true. I live in Manhattan. I've rented in the same place for the last 10 years,

00:19:35.400 even though my net worth has increased a lot. So that's a choice. I'm happy in my apartment. I don't

00:19:40.520 need another place. Another thing, I don't have a TV. It's not important to me. So those are a

00:19:47.620 couple of areas where, and I have the same computer for the last seven years, MacBook Air. Simple. It

00:19:52.800 runs, it might be a little loud, but it works. And those are things where I'm like, yeah, it's good

00:19:58.180 enough. I don't need to spend more. On the other hand, I love convenience and I love to travel to

00:20:04.420 really, really nice locations and hotels. So I will spend a lot on that guilt-free. That's my

00:20:10.760 conscious spending. What about yours? So I don't care much for cars. They don't,

00:20:16.320 doesn't get me going. Like I could just, I could drive. I have, we have like an 11 year old. No,

00:20:20.640 it's how old is it? It's a 2007 Honda Element. Love it. It's got almost 200,000 miles on it. And I'm

00:20:27.340 going to ride that thing to the ground. And it's pretty dorky looking. I'm not a big, but you know, 0.80

00:20:31.040 it drives, gets you going where you need to go. So that food, I'm not a foodie. Like I have a

00:20:36.720 garbage gut. If you just give me food and it has calories and carbohydrates and protein and fat, 0.95

00:20:41.060 it's fine. So I don't spend a lot of money on food. Like movies, going out to movies doesn't

00:20:46.080 interest me. So those are, yeah, I don't spend money on that. So yeah, most of my money goes towards

00:20:51.140 books and then, you know, saving up for a Vermont trip. And then that's pretty much it.

00:20:56.420 See, I love this. I love this concept of spending extravagantly on the things you love

00:21:00.880 and cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don't. Because when you think of how most people

00:21:05.020 spend money, it's interesting, actually. First of all, notice that in America, everybody tells you

00:21:11.400 how to save, but nobody teaches you how to spend. Think about that. And so where do we pick up our

00:21:18.160 spending lessons from? We pick it up from Instagram, which tells us to just spend on stuff to keep up with

00:21:24.680 other people, even though we may not even like it. We learn to spend from our parents and the people

00:21:29.700 around us who probably have different values than we do. And what I recommend for people is really

00:21:35.880 think about your own values. Like you might have heard me say, I don't particularly care for the

00:21:40.320 apartment that I, moving apartments, or, or you say, you know, you don't care about cars. You might

00:21:45.420 recoil at that and say, I love cars. And my answer to that is awesome. Then you should spend more on a

00:21:52.580 car. But you also have to be honest with yourself about what you don't care about. And this takes a

00:21:57.720 higher level of reflection than just spending a little bit here and a little bit there and getting

00:22:02.260 to the end of the month, looking at your bills and shrugging and saying, I guess I spent that.

00:22:06.880 I like that a lot. And it could be different for every person. So maybe someone doesn't even have a

00:22:10.660 house or an apartment and they live in a van and they go camping all the time.

00:22:14.720 Yeah. That sounds like, that sounds like hell to me, by the way. But I respect it. Like we all have our

00:22:21.160 own things. One guy in my book, he's right at the front. He said that he used my book and he got it

00:22:26.360 10 years ago. He and his wife retired in their mid thirties and they travel around the country in

00:22:30.740 an RV. And I was like, I would rather be dead than travel in an RV around the country. But I love

00:22:38.060 that that's his rich life and that he and his wife together dialed it in and created their own rich

00:22:44.620 life. And they are unapologetic about it. Our rich lives can all be different. It's just about you

00:22:49.400 deciding what yours is and not letting anyone in society tell you that you should feel guilty about it.

00:22:54.400 Right. And a rich life can be not just about spending more on material things,

00:22:58.460 but the kind of lifestyle you want. So maybe you're willing to way downsize your house so you

00:23:03.620 can be a high school football coach instead of a lawyer.

00:23:06.060 It's so interesting. If you ask people right now, what do you truly want? What is your rich life?

00:23:12.480 I would challenge the listeners. As I said, one comment that I get, there's three answers that I always

00:23:17.560 get. One is I want to pay off my debt. We already talked about that. The second one is this word

00:23:22.740 freedom. It sounds logical, but it's actually really vague. I say, okay, freedom, what does

00:23:29.580 that mean to you? And then they look at me with their eyes glassed over. They've never actually

00:23:33.440 thought about what that means. So freedom, what is it? Does it mean you don't have to go into an

00:23:39.060 office? Does it mean that you don't have a commute? Does it mean that you're working three months a year

00:23:45.880 from somewhere else or you're not working at all? What does it mean? That's why I pushed you on the

00:23:50.520 Vermont question. I want people to be ultra specific. My answer when I first moved to New

00:23:56.220 York was, uh, I want to be able to buy appetizers. That's my rich life because growing up, we could

00:24:03.300 never afford it. And then my, as I kind of got a little bit more successful, I wanted to be able to

00:24:09.520 take a taxi. If I had a meeting in the middle of summer, instead of going on the sweaty subway.

00:24:14.480 Now my dreams are a lot bigger, but that's the level of specificity I want for people to have.

00:24:20.500 I don't want words like freedom. I, the third answer, by the way, they give me is I want to

00:24:25.240 have a million dollars. And of course that number is totally arbitrary. Depends if you live in Kansas,

00:24:29.960 Manhattan, et cetera. But what I want people to do is get as specific as saying, I want to buy

00:24:35.740 appetizers without ever looking at the price. Whatever that is for you, that is the level of

00:24:40.960 specificity that will help you create your rich life. Oh, I just thought of another thing I like

00:24:45.100 to spend money on. Entertaining. My wife and I love inviting people to our homes, feeding them.

00:24:49.920 Love it.

00:24:50.540 Talking. I enjoy it. Love it. And it's not that like, it's not like we're like,

00:24:54.980 it's sometimes pizza, but I want to be able to buy pizza and not have to worry about it.

00:24:58.600 I love that.

00:24:59.660 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:25:02.880 And now back to the show, right? All right. So we've been talking big picture.

00:25:07.420 Let's get down into some brass tacks things. So in the first section of your book,

00:25:12.780 I was always surprised, but I was surprised by this when I first read it initially. And then

00:25:16.160 it's still there. The first section of the book is about optimizing credit cards. It's not developing

00:25:20.640 a savings plan. It's not developing a retirement account. You start with credit cards. Why start

00:25:26.560 there? What's the point there?

00:25:28.760 It's very intentional because everything in that book is done for a reason. The book,

00:25:34.920 I wanted to create a psychology book disguised as a personal finance book, because ultimately

00:25:41.620 deep down, when it comes to money, one of the most influential things is your own personal

00:25:48.300 psychology. I can show you all the math, but the truth is people already know the math.

00:25:52.320 They know they should be saving and investing more. When you pick up any other money book,

00:25:56.820 do you know what the first chapter always tells you to do?

00:25:59.760 Cut back on spending.

00:26:00.740 Cut back on spending. And they even start a little bit before that, which is,

00:26:04.120 let's figure out how much you spent last year. And people look at it and they go,

00:26:10.140 well, I don't know what I spent, but I know it was bad. I think I'm going to put this book back on

00:26:14.400 the shelf. Nobody wants to start from a place of feeling bad. And also nobody wants to start with

00:26:22.500 these questions that are too big. Like, what is your rich life? That's really hard in chapter one.

00:26:29.020 Or let's create a retirement plan. Well, I'd rather not. I'd rather just go out and hang

00:26:32.760 with my friends today. But when it comes to our money, we all have credit cards. We all hate our

00:26:39.820 credit cards. And we can all get amazing perks that none of us even know when it comes to our

00:26:46.340 credit cards. So I started off there. And what I did was I, you know, a lot of people have paid

00:26:52.100 these late fees or credit card fees or annual fees. And I said, let me show you guys something.

00:26:56.580 First of all, here are the phone numbers. This is the level of specificity that I get to.

00:27:01.660 Here's the phone numbers. Here's the words to read off the page when you call your credit card

00:27:06.860 company. And suddenly people are like, I don't believe this thing's going to work. This weird

00:27:10.560 Indian guy, I don't know. Boom. They get their $37 fee waived. Or they discover that they have perks 1.00

00:27:16.760 that are going to pay them back for $1,000 computer repair, which happened to me. And suddenly they're

00:27:22.720 like, oh my God, this actually works. And for the first time, instead of being passengers in their

00:27:28.540 financial life, they're like, I can actually take control of this. So when they take control of a

00:27:33.000 $37 fee or some perks on their credit card that I show them, suddenly by the time I take them to

00:27:38.020 chapter nine and I show you how to negotiate a $25,000 raise at work, they're a believer. They know

00:27:44.300 that this stuff works. But if I put that in chapter one, there's no way. People are not ready for that.

00:27:49.400 So that's why I designed the book the way I did. So yeah, you're getting those small wins first to

00:27:54.420 build up that sense of agency and autonomy, which will allow you to tackle bigger things because you

00:27:59.460 know you have the capacity to do that stuff. It's just like training. It's just like any sort of

00:28:05.300 skill building. But you need an instructor who's very intentional about it. Otherwise, I just give you a

00:28:11.420 bunch of information and charts and you look at it and you feel bad and you move on. And I would

00:28:16.600 bet for a lot of people listening, that's happened. We've read a blog post that made us feel guilty

00:28:22.200 about not saving more. The difference and the reason that there are so many I Will Teach You

00:28:27.340 to Be Rich success stories is that the book is created with psychology first. And if you get that

00:28:33.620 right, then you know people are going to have a very successful journey.

00:28:37.440 Well, another thing about the psychology of starting with credit cards,

00:28:40.160 paying off your credit card debt, that's a big win.

00:28:42.700 It's a big win.

00:28:43.400 A big one. Because imagine all the interest people are paying by just paying the minimum

00:28:47.040 payment on their credit card. Once you pay that off, you free up a lot more cash that can start

00:28:53.140 going towards things you actually want to spend your money on.

00:28:55.740 Yeah. It's funny. One of the common objections is I don't have the kind of money to be able to invest

00:29:01.740 every month. And it could be some people say I don't have $100 a month. Some people say I don't

00:29:06.580 have $1,000 a month. Whatever the number may be for you. The truth is that if you had a third party

00:29:13.120 come in and take a look at your spending, not making you feel bad, but just saying, hey, here's

00:29:19.080 three scenarios. If you like eating out, great. Keep eating out. In fact, spend more on eating out.

00:29:25.780 Great. But here's a couple areas that you seem to just be spending a little bit. And is this really

00:29:30.280 important to you? And just that consciousness of saying, man, I didn't realize that it all adds

00:29:36.000 up to this much. I could take that cash and redirect it to something else, whether that be credit card

00:29:41.140 debt, saving, investing, or even just spending it on something you actually love. That is very

00:29:47.880 empowering to people. And so that's why I always start from a place of yes, and what do you love?

00:29:53.320 And then we figure out what you don't actually like.

00:29:56.180 And another interesting thing about your approach to credit cards, a lot of personal finance

00:29:59.580 people out there will say, okay, pay off your credit cards as soon as possible. And you'd say,

00:30:03.300 yeah, I'd agree with that. Get rid of those interest rates, whatever. But then the personal

00:30:07.200 finance people would say, and then cut up your credit cards. Don't ever use your credit card

00:30:10.460 again. You take a more moderated approach to that.

00:30:13.060 Yeah. I mean, look, we all live in the real world. So one of the reasons that most personal

00:30:18.260 finance advice doesn't work, and we know that just by looking at the ballooning amount of

00:30:22.760 Americans' debt, their poor financial literacy scores, is that the advice takes a very impractical

00:30:28.780 approach. They tell people, don't use credit cards at all. That's pretty unrealistic for

00:30:33.800 most people. And what I say is like, let me actually show you all the amazing perks and

00:30:39.080 benefits that your credit cards give you. So I show people the exact credit cards that

00:30:45.140 I use and the exact system. When do I use a cashback card? When do I use a travel rewards

00:30:49.980 card? And how do I upgrade them for free flights and free hotel, luxury hotel stays? And I show

00:30:55.880 some stories of readers as well who paid for their entire honeymoon in the Maldives and

00:31:01.760 Bora Bora. Like these are tools that you can use and you can squeeze these companies to get

00:31:08.020 massive perks, but you got to understand how they work. And so I show you how to beat them

00:31:12.820 instead of just abandoning them.

00:31:15.160 Right. And to reiterate the point here, people are using these credit cards, but they're paying

00:31:19.600 them off at the end of the month before they get charged any interest.

00:31:21.900 Yeah. You should not be carrying debt. And if you are, I show you how to build a plan,

00:31:26.100 but you shouldn't, I pay off my credit cards a hundred percent every time. And in exchange,

00:31:29.960 I get massive, massive perks throughout the year.

00:31:33.360 Right. And also it can help you manage your finances. You can see where you're,

00:31:36.300 a lot of these credit card companies, they'll like break down, like how you're spending your money

00:31:39.860 on gas or health insurance or whatever. It's all, you get a nice financial report.

00:31:45.220 Yeah. It's all done for you and it's just convenient. So I've actually,

00:31:47.640 since the book came out the first time I used to use cash a lot more and I actually use cash far

00:31:52.980 less and the tracking and benefits of the credit cards are amazing as well as the perks. Now there's

00:31:59.220 even better perks than there were 10 years ago. However, and I just want to say this just to be

00:32:03.860 really upfront, you need to be, you need to understand how credit works and you need to

00:32:07.840 understand that paying the minimum or late fees, those things can really, really disproportionately

00:32:13.020 hurt you. So I teach you how to use it and how to use it effectively, but I don't believe in just

00:32:17.960 saying, don't use it at all. Right. Well, the next section of your book is about bank accounts,

00:32:23.860 which is like incredibly basic because I think a lot of people, well, not a lot, you'd be surprised

00:32:28.400 the number of unbanked Americans there are. But if you came like in a middle group, in a middle

00:32:32.800 class family, you probably got a bank account when you were like 10, right? That little savers club

00:32:37.360 you joined, but you go into more detail that people aren't optimizing their accounts that will

00:32:42.660 help make their money life easier. What are people messing up there?

00:32:46.640 Well, number one, they still like, people are so funny. They have loyalty to a bank account that

00:32:51.260 they opened when they were eight years old. And I'm like, why do you, is it okay if I name names on

00:32:56.020 this recording?

00:32:57.300 Go ahead.

00:32:57.740 Oh, thank God.

00:32:58.860 Go ahead. Yeah.

00:33:00.100 All right. I'm going to, I might get bleeped out guys, but I'm just going to tell you the best

00:33:03.620 accounts. Okay. No need to, uh, to hold you in suspense. First of all, I hate Wells Fargo and

00:33:09.860 bank of America. And I tell you exactly why, you know, they've done predatory borderline. I mean,

00:33:15.280 they've done some really bad stuff to my readers and to general Americans. And so I ask people who

00:33:20.880 have these accounts, why do you have them? And they're like, well, I opened it up with my mom

00:33:24.180 when I was eight. I'm like, in what other part of life would you be loyal to a multi-billion dollar

00:33:29.500 company? That's trying to screw you. And I'm personally offended at what these companies do 0.85

00:33:34.960 and also what some of the investing companies do. That's why I wrote this book. So people could

00:33:39.380 actually be empowered against these companies that are very sophisticated. What people are

00:33:44.360 resistant because they're like, Oh, it's going to be a hassle. I got my bills. It's true. I get it.

00:33:49.160 It's going to take, you know, a few hours to fix, but it's kind of like choosing the right email

00:33:54.360 software to use, right? You can sit there and use your own software or you can use Gmail and it's

00:34:00.760 probably going to be great. Right? So I believe, you know, I tell people I use Schwab for investor

00:34:06.480 checking and I can take money out from any ATM and it gets refunded and they do all these amazing

00:34:12.020 things. I say the same for investing accounts. I name names about good and bad. And I'll tell you

00:34:17.580 why I do that. Number one, I want people to know the specifics of money. When I was starting to

00:34:23.620 research money, I was frustrated because everyone would give these broad generalities, find a bank

00:34:28.740 you trust. They should be open 24 seven. I'm like, just tell me what to use. And so if you listen to

00:34:34.720 me and you trust me, then you know that I love researching this stuff. And most people are like,

00:34:40.260 all right, this guy knows what he's talking about. I'm just going to go with his recommendations.

00:34:43.420 So, so that's number one. And number two, I want people to be more specific with every part of

00:34:48.320 their money, with when they tell me what their rich life is, with how much money they're putting in

00:34:53.000 with the accounts they use. You read this book and there are no questions left. You know,

00:34:56.920 exact the accounts, exact amounts, exact days. That's why I got specific about checking accounts,

00:35:03.440 savings accounts, and investing accounts. And another thing you point out, yeah, like people,

00:35:08.480 they open up a checking account, they open up a savings account, but they don't have a purpose

00:35:11.560 for them. They just kind of like haphazardly like funnel money into each one. But yeah, you develop a

00:35:17.140 system like, okay, your checking account is your workhorse account. That's kind of money comes in and then

00:35:21.940 it's going to immediately go out to these different funnels automatically. Yeah.

00:35:26.120 Might go to your savings. Your savings account is for a specific reason. It could be an emergency fund

00:35:30.580 or it could be you're saving up for a down payment on a home or your wedding. Like you have to give

00:35:34.980 every dollar a job. Yeah. So I love systems. So let me talk a little bit about my own system and

00:35:40.920 I show you how to do this and then you can adapt it for your own needs. So for me, my checking account

00:35:46.280 is like my email inbox. My paycheck goes there, everything goes there,

00:35:50.060 and then it's automatically filtered out to different accounts. It's filtered out to multiple

00:35:56.000 sub savings accounts. So I have multiple things that I save up for. And for a lot of people,

00:36:01.380 you might be saving up for a wedding, a down payment. I actually encourage you to pick something

00:36:05.900 you and maybe your partner want to do this year. Maybe you want to take a trip. Okay. Let's actually

00:36:11.220 think about what would make this trip extra special. You know, maybe we want to go to this really hard to

00:36:16.140 get into restaurant or take this behind the scenes food tour. My wife and I love doing food tours. 0.73

00:36:21.240 And so you start to save. And if you save over 12 months, the amount you have to save on a monthly

00:36:26.400 basis is often quite manageable. So I typically have about four to six sub savings accounts at any given

00:36:33.360 time. I also have money going from my email inbox slash checking account to my investing account.

00:36:40.380 And that money goes in there and is automatically investing. So I spend less than 60 minutes a month

00:36:46.920 on my money and it all just flows. It's like a beautiful ballet. I know I sound like a psycho,

00:36:52.960 but I told you my convenience is my money dial. And so I love systems that make my life more convenient.

00:36:59.220 That's how it works. And so I would encourage everyone here to think about the four or five or six

00:37:03.960 sub savings accounts you have. And suddenly your money goes from just this random pool

00:37:08.880 into areas that you know, you love, and you can track. That is very empowering.

00:37:15.460 No. Yeah. Like I said before the show, I was talking about when I read the book initially,

00:37:18.760 you know, 10 years ago, 2009, uh, like I set up my system, you know, sort of like how you recommend

00:37:25.440 it. And it's kind of, it's basically stayed the same. I've made tweaks along the way as I've,

00:37:30.020 as I've learned more and as my situation has changed, but the general framework is still there

00:37:34.740 and it works. I don't have to really think much about it.

00:37:37.320 I love it. I love that. I love that your rich life is not sitting in Excel and logging into

00:37:42.600 accounts. It shouldn't be, you know, I talk a lot about how a rich life is lived outside the

00:37:47.280 spreadsheet and you may, this may be true for a lot of people, particularly people who are in the

00:37:51.760 FIRE community, financial independence, retire early. This is a whole new culture that has emerged

00:37:58.040 and it's pretty amazing. FIRE basically encourages people to save well over the recommended 10 or

00:38:03.820 20%. They kind of laughed and said, how about 70%? And so it's, it's an incredible community

00:38:10.020 that has basically taken these assumptions and just shattered them. But what you also find is that

00:38:16.160 in the FIRE community, there's a lot of people who, um, they use words like, I feel anxious about

00:38:24.500 money. I feel nervous. I want to escape from my job. These are not the words of someone who is

00:38:32.440 financially healthy, right? I want people to use money for positive words. I want to travel with

00:38:40.760 my family or I want to experience X, Y, Z, or I want to eat out or I want to buy a beautiful leather

00:38:45.960 jacket, whatever it is you want. Um, with FIRE, you will sometimes find deep FIRE adherents who really

00:38:53.260 live in the spreadsheet and they, every day they wake up and run another Monte Carlo simulation.

00:38:58.280 And that is not what I encourage people to do. At a certain point, your system works.

00:39:03.080 It's all it needs is time and discipline. And guess what? You earned the right to live outside

00:39:08.180 the spreadsheet. It sounds like when you were talking, describing that sounds like an eating

00:39:11.300 disorder, right? Like people who like just track their calories, like obsessively and to the point

00:39:18.260 where it gets in the way of life. Like a psychologist say, you need, you need, you need help.

00:39:23.340 You need therapy. Yeah. Yeah. I want, I want, that's a very interesting analogy. I want money

00:39:28.720 to be a healthy, positive part of people's life. When in reality, if you ask people, what's the first

00:39:36.740 word that comes to mind when you think about money, they will always tell me the same five or six

00:39:39.780 answers. Anxiety, nervous, is it too late? Embarrassed, shame, guilt. These are the most common

00:39:45.220 answers. And what I want people to do is go from what I call hot to cool. Hot are those words that

00:39:52.000 are emotionally hot, you know, shame, embarrassed, guilty. Cool are things like decided. I decided to

00:39:59.760 go to Thailand this year, right? I decided that I want to hire a personal trainer. I decided that I

00:40:05.740 don't really feel like buying a TV because it's not important to me. Those are cool words, decided,

00:40:12.020 words that you consciously choose as opposed to guilt, shame, and embarrassment.

00:40:17.540 Yeah. Going back to this analogy of food, like, so I, I count macros, but like, I don't,

00:40:22.520 I try not to let it like ruin my life. I mean, here's an example. Like I'm on vacation right now.

00:40:26.900 Yeah.

00:40:27.240 There's a lot of great restaurants around town. And so I'm not counting macros so much. I'm making

00:40:33.020 sure I get enough protein, enough fiber. And then I kind of just leave. It's just sort of free reign

00:40:38.500 because I want to be able to enjoy pizza and Ben and Jerry's ice cream with not having to worry,

00:40:42.460 oh, what is this going over my car mac? Like, I don't care. Like I would just ruin it. So I use

00:40:48.400 sort of a basic structure, but I don't obsess about it. And you can apply the same thing to your money

00:40:54.500 as well.

00:40:55.220 Totally. Totally. So you have reached a level of expertise and sophistication where you track,

00:41:02.420 but you also know how to let loose sensibly. Right. And, and it's like, uh, like we went on,

00:41:09.140 we track as well. My wife and I, we track our macros and we went on a very long honeymoon,

00:41:14.540 six weeks. And, um, you know, we got, I was a bit overambitious. I was like, let's just try to

00:41:20.080 work out three times a week. That'll be good. And then, you know, you're in the middle of Kenya 0.86

00:41:23.980 for parts of it and there's no gym. And so we're like, you know what? Fine. We did work on getting

00:41:29.100 our protein in, but at a certain point we're sitting with some of the best food in the world

00:41:34.020 in front of us. And we're like, you know what? We're going to enjoy this because we have the

00:41:38.180 confidence to know that when we get back, we're going to hit the gym. We're going to count and

00:41:42.560 we're going to be back, back in shape, just like it'll take. And it took us about three weeks.

00:41:46.780 So I think that getting to that level where you can actually be happy, you can actually feel in

00:41:53.380 control, but you can also know that it's okay to let loose once in a while and nothing crazy is

00:41:58.220 going to happen because you have the confidence in yourself to get back, get to work and just go

00:42:03.360 back to your old routine. That is a real joyous feeling, whether it's macros or money.

00:42:09.160 Right. Well, let's talk about another specific thing that's troubling a lot of younger people,

00:42:14.260 maybe not even young people anymore. You might be people in their 30s and their 40s still dealing

00:42:17.520 with this and that's student loans. What's your take on that? I'm sure that you have a lot of readers

00:42:22.480 asking about that. Like, should they pay off their student loans before they start investing?

00:42:26.040 Should they invest and then pay off their student loans at the same time? What's your take?

00:42:30.280 My short answer on this one is that if you have student loans, you should create a plan.

00:42:35.720 And the way to know if you have effectively created a plan is you should be able to answer

00:42:39.860 this one single question. What is your debt payoff date? And what that means is you should be able to

00:42:47.260 say to me, well, Ramit, my debt payoff date is February, 2022 or whatever the month and year is

00:42:54.040 by knowing your exact payoff date. That is the culmination of you knowing, first of all,

00:42:59.020 how much you owe. Most people don't. Second of all, putting a plan into place with automatic

00:43:03.740 repayments. Most people don't do that. And the third is knowing exactly when your debt will be paid

00:43:10.100 off using a debt payoff calculator. And almost nobody does that. So if you can tell me the answer to that

00:43:15.560 question, you're doing great. And it doesn't matter. It might take you three years. Some people,

00:43:20.000 it might take them 10 plus years. I will encourage people to invest at the same time. Why? Because

00:43:28.200 one, it's, and this is mostly psychological, although there's mathematical too. Psychologically,

00:43:33.900 it's important for you to build the muscle of investing, even 50 or a hundred dollars a month.

00:43:40.160 Now, yes, the mathematical side says you need to count your interest rates and you might be able

00:43:45.960 to get a better return by paying off a high interest loan. You can read all of that stuff in

00:43:50.260 that chapter in the book. My point is most people don't realize that you can do both.

00:43:57.660 And so when people often say, should I do X or Y? A lot of times my answer is yes and yes.

00:44:04.440 And so I would encourage people to build the muscle of investing because as soon as you pay that debt off,

00:44:09.560 you're going to see how powerful investments are. Just like you did from using my book 10 years ago,

00:44:13.740 you see how much that money has grown. It's massive. And when people see that, they're like,

00:44:19.300 oh my God, I can continue growing my money.

00:44:21.840 Yeah. And so it was talking about investing. So that's another thing. There's so much confusion

00:44:25.760 about there about investments because people think it's about picking stocks.

00:44:29.200 Yeah, it's not.

00:44:29.860 That's what they think investing. And it's not because if you think about it that way,

00:44:32.480 you're going to get overwhelmed immediately. Instead, you advocate, just go for like good enough.

00:44:37.840 And for most people, like a target index fund from Vanguard is good enough. And you can go on the

00:44:45.440 forums and they'll say, well, you're missing out on some interest or some growth there.

00:44:52.000 But it's like, at the end of the day, is it going to make a huge, huge difference? Probably not.

00:44:58.100 Yeah. Investing is one of those areas that is, there are so many bad parties involved in investing,

00:45:06.840 people who want to make money off of you, that you literally do not know who to trust.

00:45:11.580 So you have people telling you that, like there's a billboard right outside in New York City here

00:45:16.640 saying, be better than average. And in most of life, that makes sense. You do want to be better than

00:45:23.820 average at your fitness and be better than average at your relationship. But in investing,

00:45:29.460 average is perfect. And most people believe that if they are in control, if they take more time and

00:45:36.020 read all these PE ratios, they'll be better. No, you will fail. You will not be good. Trust me.

00:45:41.720 I know this. And so does all the data that I cite in the book. So the simplest thing you can do

00:45:45.940 is pick a target date fund. And I talk about how to identify them. They're really low cost.

00:45:51.200 And all you need to do is automate your money from your checking account, straight there every

00:45:57.140 month. You never see it. It just goes away into the investment account. You can track it every

00:46:01.560 month or I recommend six months. And that's it. The best use of your time now is to number one,

00:46:07.940 focus on earning more and funneling more in there because it'll grow. And number two,

00:46:12.380 just get on with your rich life. You want to go out to eat at a restaurant? Go ahead.

00:46:15.800 You already solved one of the biggest financial opportunities you have in your life. And that

00:46:20.380 is automatically investing. Right. And that's the thing. The big

00:46:23.560 message from your book is if you take care of these basics, getting your credit card debts

00:46:27.300 pay off, managing your credit cards, getting these accounts set up that are automated and

00:46:31.800 just investing, even if it's like a hundred bucks a month, like you got 85% there, you have

00:46:38.000 some wiggle room. It's like going back to the macros. Like if you get basically your fiber

00:46:42.060 and your protein and some basics, you've got wiggle room and it's not going to destroy you

00:46:47.380 if you enjoy yourself or even if you slip up a bit.

00:46:50.880 Yeah, that's exactly it. I call them the big wins. And you know, what most people are preoccupied

00:46:56.360 in life with is minutiae. You know, oh my God, should I buy this sweater? And oh, I don't

00:47:01.860 know. Should I spring for the extra large Coke? It's like you're asking $3 questions. You

00:47:08.280 really should be asking $30,000 questions and $30,000 or $300,000 questions are ones like,

00:47:15.660 have I automatically invested every single month? Right. Have I picked a great job and negotiated

00:47:22.920 my salary? Is my credit good? Have I chosen a philosophy on what percentage I want to save

00:47:29.740 and invest every month? That choice. In fact, it would be much more valuable for every single

00:47:34.460 person listening to increase their savings rate by 1% per year, just 1% than to worry about

00:47:41.720 ever buying a latte again. That 1% would be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you over

00:47:49.240 your lifetime. And you only have to decide it once per year, as opposed to making a decision

00:47:54.600 365 times a year for a $3 expense.

00:47:58.840 Now, that idea of people getting focused on minutiae, a lot of people, they don't understand

00:48:02.980 with personal finances, they either miss the big question or the big issue. So they latch

00:48:08.500 on to those little small things that don't really make much of a difference.

00:48:12.480 Yeah. And like I said, I have a lot of compassion because most people are surrounded by other people

00:48:17.880 who are minutiae focused. So the people listening, let me ask you, have you ever had maybe your

00:48:25.420 friends or your parents or family say, wow, that must be nice. Or I sure wish I could afford

00:48:31.680 that. Or, oh, why would you waste money on that? These are all words that people use to judge and

00:48:39.100 influence you. But you always have to ask yourself, why would I take advice from this person?

00:48:45.480 And if you are taking advice from someone who's not in a financial position that you

00:48:50.700 want to be in, then you really need to question that advice. And I get this all the time from my

00:48:56.720 readers. They're like, oh my, there's, I have people who are in their twenties, thirties, forties,

00:49:00.660 and fifties, primarily 35 plus. And so sometimes it's their parents or it's their in-laws or wife

00:49:07.360 or husband, and they're getting judged for a question. But I just ask them one question.

00:49:12.740 Is this person in a financial position you want to be in? And they're like, no, oh, I get it. I

00:49:18.280 shouldn't listen to them. Exactly. Find people who you admire, who live the kind of rich life that you

00:49:24.060 aspire to. And then think about what you can do that aligns with your own values. Don't listen

00:49:30.320 to randos who tell you, you shouldn't splurge for an extra large. This has been a great conversation.

00:49:35.280 There's so much more we can talk about. And as you said in the book, there's a lot of specifics.

00:49:38.920 Where can people go to learn more about the book and the rest of your work?

00:49:41.100 Okay. So thank you. And this has been awesome. The name of the book is I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

00:49:45.720 You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at any bookstore. You can follow me at

00:49:50.740 IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. I've got a newsletter with several hundred thousand subscribers.

00:49:56.180 And you can follow me on Instagram at Ramit and on Twitter at Ramit as well.

00:50:02.680 Awesome. Ramit Sethi, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:50:04.580 Thanks. This was awesome.

00:50:06.280 My guest today was Ramit Sethi. He's the author of the book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. It's

00:50:09.720 available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about his

00:50:13.320 work at his website, IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. Also check out our show notes at

00:50:16.860 AOM.IS slash RichLife where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:50:28.380 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

00:50:31.780 ArtofManliness.com where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles we've

00:50:35.800 written over the years about personal finance, how to be a better husband, better father,

00:50:38.960 physical fitness. Also, if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the Art of Manliness podcast,

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00:51:07.140 As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you not only

00:51:10.720 listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - August 21, 2019

#536： How to Achieve a ＂Rich Life＂ With Your Finances

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