61. “I am going to die in 5 years. Should I quit my job?” (Part 2)
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Before we start today's show, I have a really exciting announcement that I've been wanting to share for a long time. On January 1st, 2025, I'm releasing a new book called Money for Couples. For the last three years, you've heard me on this podcast speaking to different couples every single Tuesday. I've spoken to over 170 couples on this show about their money psychology, the money messages they heard from their family, the peculiar dynamics that they have around money and where they get stuck.

and how they can get on the same page. Well, behind the scenes, I've been working on the definitive book to help couples get on the same page with money, and that's what I wrote for you. It's coming out January 1st, and in the book, I'm going to share how to talk about money, including the exact words to use, when to talk about it, how to teach your kids about money, even the exact agenda and account setup that my wife and I use in our finances.

I'm going to show the tactics to make instant improvements, like how to set up your accounts to automatically work together and how to assess your financial health.

And finally, you're going to get a deeper understanding of money psychology in your relationship. And you're going to discover why you and your partner see money differently and how to get on the same page. Now, it's one thing to listen to couples or watch couples every single week. I love doing that for you. But it's a whole different thing to be able to have the book and to be able to work through it with your partner. Okay?

I'm so excited to get this book in your hands. You can pre-order it using the link IWT.com slash money for couples and stay tuned for a lot more on this book this year. Again, go to IWT.com slash money for couples to pre-order my new book about getting on the same financial page as your partner.

Um, what the hell is going on on this podcast that like 80% of the people who come on here go through massive screening, fill out applications, they never actually read my book. Is anyone else puzzled by this? Look, a lot of the questions that you ask me about money are answered directly in I Will Teach You To Be Rich. How do you pay off your student loans? How do you automate your finances? Where do you start investing and how do you handle big purchases?

I wrote this book as a six-week program so you can follow along on your own or with a partner. If you want to improve your finances, I recommend you get the I Will Teach You To Be Rich book. It has over 18,000 reviews on Amazon. Get it at iwt.com slash book. I had a double lung transplant in October of 2020.

According to my calculations, I have about like a 67% chance of living five years post-transplant. So another three and a half years roughly. But I'm behaving like I was when I thought I might live to be 90. And there's like virtually no chance I'll live to be 90. At some point, we're going to be looking back and saying, why didn't we do the stuff we could do when we could do it, which is now.

There's no virtue in living a smaller life than you have to. But yet it does feel sort of satisfying in some way. I can't quite explain why. If you knew that you had only a 67% chance of living the next five years, what would you do differently? Welcome to part two of my conversation with Tom and Julie. They're both around 50 years old, and they have accumulated a $12 million net worth of

But Julie still works at her day job because she likes the income. And they hesitate on spending money on things like travel and eating out. The stakes are high for Tom and Julie because she knows the statistics of how long she will live after receiving a double lung transplant. Now we're talking about life or death here. And we're talking about millions of dollars.

Julie herself has said that she wants to create experiences for their two young daughters. So why are they finding it so hard to make changes? As you listen to today's episode, please know that there are two follow-up letters from Tom and Julie, which you can get at iwt.com slash episode 61. But first, let's get into today's episode. I'm Ramit Sethi, and this is I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

I have this concept of money dials, the thing that you love to spend money on. Have you ever articulated what your money dial is? For me, it's travel. I really like that. When I was in my master's program, that's where I would splurge and really try to have some good experiences. Now that I have kids, it's where I imagined traveling.

splurging and like with COVID, I'm not comfortable flying because of my being immunocompromised and so on. But I do feel like there's things I would like to do. Like if my kids are in distance learning and I'm working remotely going to Arizona for, for a month in the winter and just getting out of this terrible, uh,

northern, northern Midwestern climate for a while and just experiencing a different part of the country and being able to eat outside and in restaurants. What do you think your beliefs about wealth have cost you? I have reflected a lot on that over this recent time frame here, the last probably 18 months.

And I would say they have cost me or us, our family, a lot of experiences. 20 was a big year for us. That was of course when COVID hit and everybody was impacted by that. But it's also when my lung function went way down and I had to have the lung transplant. So I feel like prior to that, I wish that

Tom and I had really taken advantage of the opportunity to take our kids on trips to go to some less developed countries together. Or if Tom didn't want to go, I should have found a friend to go on those trips with. That is what I think I have missed out on. I don't think...

anything I could have bought with the money is any material things will be anything that I will miss. I don't feel like I would have had a better life if I had had a nicer car or better shoes or I think it's experiences. Like what do I want my girls to remember? Because I feel like

And just all those losses of my parents makes me just think about what I remember from them. And it's about experiences and getting out. What I want my kids to, what I want to impart on them is a sense of adventure.

of like you and your friend can go to Vietnam and you can go to Laos right after they open the border and you will be just fine and you will figure things out and you might be uncomfortable and you might have to drink Diet Coke because they don't have coffee. And I'm really worried I'm going to like leave them.

And they'll be like cupcakes or just not cupcakes, but just like think like the upper Midwest is the world. And I feel like the upper Midwest, it's a really nice place to live, but I want them to have broader horizons. And then of course, Western Europe is so great and

speak Spanish. And so getting to live that and just becoming aware that there's different cultures and different ways of being, and there's nothing wrong with eating dinner at 10 o'clock every night and just having those broader experiences and adventures. That's what I want versus staying here.

and being very comfortable. At some point, we're going to be looking back saying, why didn't we do the stuff we could do when we could do it, which is now, right? And that's where I don't want to be in the future is looking back and thinking, why didn't we? We could have, but we didn't. You have a clear, clear view on mortality. You have statistics, you have numbers, right?

you know what most other people cannot know, which is how long they will likely be around. You have a view that most of us will never have. And wow, Tom, you really said it. You do have a magic wand because with the exception of a few places and a few methods of travel that you probably do not want to do, you can essentially create your own magic wand style of traveling right now.

So I'm a little puzzled. I love your vision. I know that we have a ticking clock and you have $12 million. So to me, all the pieces are here. What is stopping you?

I would have said, oh, it's my health insurance. But then Tom had debunked that myth by doing some research and figuring out options. Okay, so it's not that. And so it's not health insurance. I think it really goes back to that feeling of security. And my actions say that I have weighed that down.

more heavily than I have weighed the desire for experiences. I would say security and comfort and routine is what I have prioritized versus the alternative. Does going into more adventure and experiences, is that mutually exclusive from safety and security?

When I say safety and security, I mean what I get from my job. I guess I could continue working remotely and work. It sounds exciting, but then it also sounds sad to close the door on this chapter because there's a lot of good things about it.

But then I feel also, then why am I spending eight hours a day at my desk instead of with my kids, instead of with my friends and doing other things I want to do? But my big priority would be spending time with my kids. But I feel like once I leave this role, I probably won't look for another professional role. How old are your kids?

12 and nine. Why would you continue working? Because it makes me feel more secure. This is very interesting. How much do you make, Julie? A couple hundred thousand a year. Okay. So you make more in interest from your portfolio than you make from your job. Are you aware of that?

Honestly, no. But I do believe last year was a big year for capital gains. So it was... Everybody noticed how she's changing the subject. That was a nice pivot. It almost worked. Yes, I know we have... I know. I understand the math of, oh, if we withdraw 2% a year and the interest. Yeah. I get the math. Can you finish that sentence for me? If you withdraw 2%, then what? And...

And say we don't reinvest the capital gains and the dividends, that we would have a very nice lifestyle. I am just... But then why can't I? I don't know. I'm just having trouble connecting. This is where the intellectual part doesn't square up with the emotional part because just doing some simple...

math, right, and using a financial calculator, we can easily see that we could live our same lifestyle and our net worth will most likely grow a little bit, but not shrink. And that's if we both stop working today. No matter how many times I talked to Julie about that, she can't get there. And I really think like one of the big hurdles for her not quitting her job is she

She wants to still have the security of the paycheck coming in. She'll make a comment like, I got paid today. I'm like, oh, great. Julie, what does that mean? Who cares? It doesn't matter. That's important for her. I got paid today. Logically, this makes no sense. But emotionally, it makes all the sense in the world.

When Julie grew up, she saw her mom almost become homeless. Her mom then told her, safety, security, you need to put money away. And so when she receives a paycheck, it's not really about how much she's making from that paycheck, but rather what that paycheck represents. Safety, security, and knowing she will be okay. The problem is that those beliefs are now costing her a lot.

I ask this question to guests sometimes. What is the cost of your beliefs? People come on, they say, I think the stock market feels like gambling. I say, okay, what is the cost of that belief? For many people, it costs you millions of dollars in lost earnings because you just randomly believe that the stock market feels like gambling. Well, for Julie, she has a ticking clock on how long she will live and the cost of her belief is

is severe. It is eight hours a day away from her family. It is not being able to create the experiences that she herself says she wants to create. So you can have your beliefs. Nobody's changing that. But what is it costing you?

You know how many people's conscious spending plans I see every week? What's fascinating is the categories of spending, especially the ones where people spend way more than they think they do. For example, subscriptions. Let's take a look at some recent numbers on how much people spend on subscriptions. $100 a month on subscriptions. $205 a month. That's from someone spending 76% of their take home each month on fixed costs.

$211 a month, $147 a month, and $487 a month. This is literally thousands of dollars a year, and most of us have forgotten about all the subscriptions we are actually paying for.

Thankfully, this episode's sponsor, Rocket Money, can help you easily find and cancel those unwanted subscriptions. Rocket Money monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20%. Just submit a picture of your bill

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Well, I intellectualize it and I go back to this framework that says there's three narratives. I love a good framework. Tell me. I love a good framework.

There's three narratives for people who have a critical health issue. One is the chaos narrative where everything's awful. It's just doctor's appointments and tests and uncertainty. And the other is the restoration narrative. So they go from sickness to being...

like they were before the sickness. And then the other is a, a rebirth. It's like being a reinvention narrative. And so they might become an advocate or they might discover something that they love or, and I feel like then I just, then I start intellectualizing and being like, well, I went with the restoration path. I get it. I totally get it. I mean, as I,

Anyone who's into intellectual frameworks understands that they can be very powerful, but they can also be taken too far and they can be weaponized. They can be weaponized into selling stuff that people probably shouldn't buy. They can even be weaponized against ourselves to rationalize anything that we possibly want to. You think that that might be what's going on here? I do. I recognize that

That there was value in me working for a time because it's what I've really felt like I should do. But I feel like it's time to really re-examine that decision. And I feel like that framework is an excuse. You know, a lot of people are facing a very similar situation to what Julie's talking about. You might not see the similarity, but literally millions of Americans are experiencing this right now. Retirement.

People hate the idea of not having an income, even if they have enough. That's because since we started working, we got used to a steady income. And an income means value in our society. Being able to earn an income means you provide for the family or you contribute to the family.

Even if you have enough money in your portfolio, or you have a big pension, or you have $12 million, like Tom and Julie, our minds are not wired to translate a big amount of wealth into a steady paycheck.

And there's so many easy answers to this. Literally, they could pay someone $100 a month to log into their Vanguard account, sell a few shares, and transfer money into their checking account. And this problem, at least logically, would vanish. But of course, it wouldn't really because this is emotional, not intellectual. I spend a lot of time thinking about, should I work? Should I not work? Here's the pros, here's the cons. And I felt like

There are some real pros. My setup is pretty nice at work. It's a pretty good situation overall. I mean, it's still work, but... And I just think about my grandmother going into this factory. She was a seamstress and she would sew...

And then they would be like shipped all over the country to be sold, I guess. And I just remember like how hot it was in there and how noisy. And I don't know what she was paid, but I don't think it clearly was not a lot. And I just think, God, I'm so lucky just to have such a great setup. You are lucky. But Julie, there's no virtue in living in,

what your grandmother would have done. If you want to honor her and you want to do it financially, write a $2 million check to some organization. You can afford it. You make that back an interest in a few years. But for you to stay at a job when, if I'm reading correctly, that is not part of what you want to spend the next five years of your life doing, that doesn't add up for me. Yeah, I think that is a very...

Fair point that my situation is not my grandmother's and it does not honor her to live a smaller life than I can. That's right. I think that's a tragedy to live a smaller life, especially because you have a ticking clock and you have daughters. And even beyond your daughters, you made a lot of really smart decisions and disciplined work to get here.

I'm not asking you to completely change the way you look at the world. That would never work. What I'm asking you to do is to take the logical extension of all the work you already did and simply shift into the next phase of your rich life. You accumulated and you won. You had a family. Great. You're a great parent, great wife.

You won at all that stuff. Now, let's take the wins. All that work you put in, all that discipline, all that time, you've now afforded yourself the ability to do something with it. I think too, Julie, if there's things that you get out of working emotionally or you could find that other places, whether it's

volunteering someplace online or if that's of interest or finding another, and maybe it's not right, but it's not like you're saying you close this chapter and like, Oh, now I can never have like other adults like that in a work situation that I talked to. I think you could make that happen, but just like frame it up differently. However you want it to. Yes, that's true. That's great, Tom. The framing matters so profoundly. It's not quitting. It's,

It is spending more time and attention on this new chapter of my rich life. And in order to do that, in order to travel the way you want to travel, in order to create these experiences you want to create, it's incompatible with working the job that you currently work. It'd be very difficult to have a full-time role and have the flexibility to travel.

It makes me think continuing to work probably is not the right path for me, given our situation and my limited time. Yeah. I don't think anyone on this planet would give you a hard time for saying, you know what? I had a double lung transplant. I'm a multimillionaire. I have two kids and I'm ready to move on to a different chapter of my life.

Yeah. There's nobody out there who's going to say a thing to you except congratulations. In my opinion, it's a total no-brainer for Julie to leave her job. She's not expressing any joy over it. If anything, she's expressing joy over her new rich life, travel, creating experiences with her family,

The major reason that she continues to work is for the income, which is irrelevant to her. So in a later conversation, I recommended that she get out of this job as quickly as she can.

and really focus on that next chapter of her life for her and her family. And as a quick sneak preview of Tom's follow-up letter, this is what he wrote. He wrote, quote, thinking through how others likely would perceive her leaving work lifted some of the anxiety she's been feeling over this decision. They would completely understand and support her decision.

Just think about that. We're talking about life or death. We're talking about essentially an unlimited amount of money and a ticking clock and still peer pressure reigns rule. This tells you how powerful peer pressure is that even if you are facing debt and even if you will not run out of money, it is still worrisome to us to consider what other people would think of us leaving a job or making an alternative decision.

Guys, this is why I want you to start practicing the skill of designing your rich life and living it now. Because you can't wait until one day when you magically have all this money and all this time. You will not have the skills to live your rich life. That's why I'm so insistent about what I do. That's why I do this podcast and my programs and my book.

Because if you don't practice it early on consistently, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a change later on. Now for Tom and Julie, I can tell you that I feel very confident for them. But as you can see, it takes a lot of agony, a lot of soul searching to be able to make this decision. And I just want it to be a little easier for everybody. You can get those full follow-up letters from Tom and Julie at iwt.com slash episode 61. But let's keep going on today's episode.

Can I make a general suggestion for some rule? You know, I love rules, money rules, all kinds of rules, but I love rules that are positive. So I don't like restrictive rules unless we need them sometimes. A couple of rules that come to mind for me. Number one, at this stage with $12 million and a double lung transplant, it probably should not be hard. Anything you do probably should not be hard. It should be easy. What do you mean when you say that?

If you were going to go travel somewhere. Yes, I got you. Yeah. It should be easy. I'm not saying it all has to be luxury, but for example, we have to do six different visas and two different vaccine shots. And what are we going to do to get a taxi at the airport? That can be complicated, especially if you're just going with you and the girls. Maybe Tom's not coming on this trip, let's just say.

It should be easy. Would you be willing to entertain that rule? Yes. I can embrace that rule. I like that. Okay. I just love your smile on that. Have you used that rule before in your life?

You know, I have to say I took my girls way up north a couple weeks ago to a cabin and it was fine. It was exactly what I had scoped out. But my daughter and I had to like get the canoe off the rack and get the pack.

paddles out. And it was fine. We had a great time and I'm really glad we went, but we went to another resort for dinner where they had all the canoes lined up and we were out on the

doc and one of the people who worked there came up and said, can we get you in a watercraft or something? And I just felt like this is the kind of place I want to stay going forward. I don't want to be like hauling my canoe out. And my kid got bitten by a bee. It was just drama that we don't need. Okay. So this new rule would... So I embrace that. I feel like it's consistent with the direction I have thought. Beautiful. So that's one of the new rules. It should be easy.

What's another rule you'd like to create for this phase of your life, Julie? I think for me, it's something around not making more opportunities with friends. Tell me more. What would it be? Just initiating more instead of waiting for people to initiate. And initiate, what would you do once a month with your friends? It could, I mean, we're a little limited with

with my situation and COVID still, but I feel like it might just be getting together for...

a drink at a bar with an outdoor fire pit or heat lamps, even though it's cold outside. There's still places that we can go get dinner or drinks. And it's like seeking out opportunities like that and planning them. I have a bad habit. And I think Tom exacerbates this habit, which is totally my issue, not his, of just waiting for people to initiate it.

And then, but I feel like there will be more joy and more engagement and more memories if I figure things out and take the lead versus wait for the invite. Okay. That could be a great rule. Whether or not you initiate it or...

You hire somebody to do it for you and plan which restaurant has an outdoor fire pit. It actually doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that once a month, you're out with your friends. That matters to me. What I'm doing here is walking Julie through the idea of creating money rules. You can Google Ramit's money rules to see my 10 money rules. But let me give you a quick background on why these rules are important for you.

At any given time in any given month, you're going to face a thousand different financial decisions. What flight should I take? Should I get an extra piece of pie? A million different financial decisions. It helps to simplify these decisions down to a few key rules, especially for things that you are going to consistently encounter. If you fly a lot, you probably want to have a rule around what seat you choose, but

If you go out to dinner a lot or if whatever is important to you, where you live, you want to create a rule around that. What I'm doing with Julie is helping her align her beliefs with her spending. And suddenly when you're faced with these decisions, should I do this or should I not?

A lot of times we revert back to what's comfortable, what we've known. But the life we want to live, our rich life, requires us to make some changes. These rules help make it easier to do that. So Google remits money rules. You can read a bunch of articles that I've written and see my rules. But as for Julie, I want her to kind of try this new mindset on for size. One of the worst feelings in life is feeling stuck.

You hear it sometimes with podcast couples here. They feel stuck around their money. I felt stuck in my business. I had made a bunch of decisions years ago and I woke up feeling trapped. So after thinking about it, feeling stuck, not sure what to do, I went to a CEO council that I'm a part of and I just laid it out. And after listening to me, they were like, oh, it's so obvious. You need to change this. Move this person over here. Change this resource allocation. Boom.

I wish I had done it years earlier. If you feel stuck in your career and you also wish you had a group of peers who could help you get unstuck,

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and join thousands of top senior leaders from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta who have taken the first step towards accelerating their careers. That's sidebar.com, S-I-D-E-B-A-R.com slash R-A-M-I-T. When I was in my early 20s, I was not into clothes. I wore free t-shirts from tech companies, and I really did not want to seem like I tried too hard.

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Elevate your style using Next Level Wardrobe at nextlevelwardrobe.com slash Ramit. That's nextlevelwardrobe.com slash Ramit. When I look at your numbers, just conservatively, you'll make about $650,000 in interest this year. The year after that, you'll make $700,000 in interest. The year after that, $750,000.

And it goes up and up, $922,987, $1.2 million, eventually making millions of dollars in interest per year. What's the point of all of it? Yeah. What are you thinking, Julie? I'm thinking the point is what you leave behind with the people that you love. That's how you live on. That is your legacy. Or at least for me will be, I don't have some great business that I built or invention that I...

created. And so, so this is just making me reflect on, am I using my energy towards that, that purpose or, or not? And I think that the answer is, is fairly, is evident. And I'm also thinking like when we got a, a nice inheritance from my parents, it was,

It was definitely an amazing gift to get. And I feel like they had a great retirement. And Tom would always joke, because my parents were always traveling and overseas, he'd always joke, oh, your parents are off spending our inheritance. And he was joking. But to me, it seemed sad to get that inheritance because I felt that it was

their opportunity lost. Like, gosh, they could have enjoyed that. Yeah. As much as they were able to do, they could have done more. And it's sad to think that they felt like maybe they didn't want to do that more because of their attitudes about money, which I don't want us to be in that same situation. Yeah. There's no virtue in living a smaller life than you have to.

But yet it does feel sort of satisfying in some way. I can't quite explain why. I get it. It's like finding a great coupon. It's like finding a great deal. It's like knowing that you made the right financial decision, even though it was a hard one. I get it. But you won that game. That is how big you won. So perhaps now the game to play is,

is not the game of making lists of pros and cons. Perhaps we don't even play that game at all. Perhaps the game we play now is not a game of how will this affect our finances because there's effectively nothing that the two of you could spend that would really meaningfully affect your finances. Certainly not the way that the two of you spend money today. So perhaps we have to play an entirely different game. What might that game be, Julie?

It's about maximizing that time. It's about given what's safe, how do we have the most experiences in the funnest way possible so that... Figure out how to do it in the best way we can.

Make it as easy as we can. Figure out how to do it given the limitations we may have, but still figure out a way to do it. That could be the game. How do we accomplish what we want to? How do we get to Phoenix the easiest way possible that we both agree on? How do we do something we didn't think we could do? Yeah. That could be the game. Julie, I love that word you used. I never heard you use it before today. Blonde.

How do we have the most fun? What a beautiful word. How do we use money to have fun? How do the two of you use it to have fun? And how do you use it with your kids? Fun. Fun can be staying at an Airbnb that's like a farm, okay? And it can be staying at a five-star hotel in New York or Tokyo. Fun. You decide.

But I love that idea of playing the game of how do we maximize fun for the rest of our lives. And I do think like it is a little cliche, but travel is the thing. And I know Julie's preferences. And I think I need to work on being more accommodating to what we can do versus what maybe we want to do. And what is the difference between what you can do and want to do?

I mean, I would love to like, hey, we're going to Tokyo. We're staying in five-star hotels. We're going to Manhattan. We're going to San Francisco. We're going places like that and doing stuff actively with other people. And we can't do that stuff now yet. Because of COVID and because of being immunocompromised? Yeah. Okay. Right. Is that you can't do things indoors or you can't do them at all?

You know, it's all just trying to mitigate the risk, right? So without an immune system, like the chances of getting COVID go up if you're indoors, no matter if you have a mask on or not. So it's just kind of risk and reward. So we've kind of, and Julie's doctors have advised her that, okay, if you can stay outside, that's better. And like, you shouldn't be eating in restaurants indoors. And so- So could we find, is there a solution we could find that would allow you to experience

one of these cities, but do it outdoors? Yeah, I think maybe. All right, so let's plan a trip together. Let's do it right now. I am going to throw out there Phoenix and Santa Fe in February, March of 2023. That works. What are we going to do there? The bigger question is how are we getting there?

Are you saying we're going to be driving in a car for 48 hours straight? I would say drive. I don't know why we would have to do 40 hours straight. I think we could plan a route and stop at places that are interesting. And we'd have to be a little creative with the indoor dining in the middle of winter. But I feel confident we can manage through that.

Yeah, I do. And I think as extravagant as it is, I mean, even when we were looking around at potential transplant centers for Julie and trying to think about the travel, I was just like, well, if we wanted to, we could rent a private plane to go to this city. Completely. So would it be easier? I'm going back to one of the rules we talked about. Would it be easier if we chartered a jet and flew there?

Just us. That's what you saved all this money for. What's it for? Life and death is where you use the money. This dream of going to New York or San Francisco, it's very achievable. If you had to hire a private tour guide to bring a private doctor along with you for $10,000 a day, it would still be worth it. You make that money in interest, but to be able to create the life that you want in this remaining time,

It's almost priceless. And at your net worth level, we don't even need to factor money in. That would be one of my rules. We are not factoring money into our decisions anymore. Can you imagine? No. I can't. It's just so ingrained in how I think about decisions as not the only factor, but a contributing factor as I weigh in.

options and alternatives, it's really hard for me to think about what would it be? How would we make decisions and not consider money? Notice how Julie has immediately gone back to weighing options and factors and logic. Instead of that word she described just a few minutes ago, fun. Fun does not involve a spreadsheet and pivot tables. Sometimes fun is just saying, what if? What if we do that? And then doing it.

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fly even though we can, even though we just had this conversation. I think when Julie sees the price of a chartered flight, whatever it is, say it's 15 grand, 20 grand, I don't know, 25 grand, it will not happen. You should all see Julie's face right now. She's looking down absolutely mortified as the prices are going up. I don't know what it costs from where you live, but I would guess 30K one way. How would you feel about that, Julie?

I think there's benefits to driving. That's a nice way of putting it. Now, I appreciate that that is how you feel. Now I'm going to ask you another question. What will you do? Probably look at the map and see where we could stop if we drove and think about it. And in the end, what will you do?

That 30K seems like a lot. It is a lot. You're chartering a private jet for yourself. It is a lot of money. Let's just be honest about that. My question is, what will you do? I would be inclined to drive. Why not do both? We could. What would that look like? I would see that as flying to Phoenix and then...

maybe doing a road trip to New Mexico. And I think there's a lot of interesting places to stop. There's Flagstaff, there's the Grand Canyon. And how would you get back? I had envisioned flying round trip. Okay. So you could fly around trip and you could drive between cities. Fantastic. That sounds good. It is such a beautiful vision.

And what would your daughters say about you? What would they say about me? About you. What would they say about mom after they've gone on all these adventures and years from now looking back? What would they say? I would hope that they would look back and just have lots of laughs because I know you like to travel. You know things don't always go as planned. It all goes into the pot of being part of a family

a memory. And so I feel like that is one thing. And then I want them to, to feel independent because I, I've done hard things with my mom and come out fine. I don't think there's any challenges that we haven't faced before in the last couple of years that we can overcome. Wow. Problem solved.

Love it. And first of all, let's take the win. Round of applause. That was awesome. One thing I love is Tom using that rule. Hey, what if we made this easy? Everything would be done because from now on, it's easy. And I have a vision of wanting to be with my friends, with my family, be safe, and it would be done. I would spare no expense on my health at all. I totally get the safety concerns for double lung transplant patients.

And so I would happily spend thousands and thousands and I would never think twice about it. You can see these rules come in so handy. They're like a grab bag. They really help you recenter. We want more experiences. We want to get out of the house. Fantastic. And we want to be safe. If any of this stuff violates one of these rules, like you're not going to be safe, then don't do it. But if there are ways to

Tom and Julie were one of the most interesting conversations that I have had on this podcast. First,

They are multi-millionaires through simple, low-cost, long-term investing. Great proof that the IWT approach works. Next, Julie struggles spending money. She struggles on her own, and she also struggles with the dynamic of Tom's frugality.

Finally, the wrinkle of Julie recently having undergone a double lung transplant and knowing that her odds of living for another 10 or 15 years are low. Therefore, everything aligns to help her change, to help her start spending money in a way that creates her rich life. But guess what? It's really hard to change. And that's why she came to me.

What I learned from their conversation was that they have a dynamic of over-intellectualizing things. It feels good. If you worry about money and you've been taught you need to save and money is for safety and you might run out, it is hard to shake that. But guess what a lot of people who feel that way do?

They go to the spreadsheet and that's exactly what we saw Julie doing. She feels a sense of control by having a spreadsheet. She feels a sense of control by earning her income from her job, even though the income is a rounding error. It is irrelevant. With $12 million, she makes more in interest than she would from working. But the logic doesn't really matter.

It's very hard for logic to change people's minds. So instead, I spent time talking about what kind of legacy she wanted to leave, what kind of experiences she wanted to create with her daughter and her husband, and actually walking through an example of planning a trip out. I wanted to make sure that she knew she should and can prioritize her safety and her health. Unlimited spending on health. That should be a rule for them.

But I also wanted to know that it was time to gently nudge her and Tom to get going, living a rich life. It's not just going to happen. What I also wanted to emphasize was some specific numbers. A $35,000 private jet does not change their money situation at all. That would be essentially like going and buying three or four entrees at a nice place for somebody else. That is how much money they have.

What I really hope she understands, whether or not she takes a private jet, whether or not they go and travel internationally, that's really up to them. What I want for them to realize is that they do have the opportunity to create their rich life and they can't wait any longer. I received follow-up letters from both Julie and Tom after our call. You can read the full letters at iwt.com slash episode 61. But let me give you a quick excerpt of what Tom said.

I realized that given our financial situation, we actually do have a magic wand, but we simply haven't been using it. What are we waiting for? We need to break out that wand and use it now while we still can. Our money rules will be our guide for how we can use this magic wand going forward.

As a result of this call, Julie has made the decision to quit her job, which I fully support. Our plan for the next year includes going on an extended trip to Arizona where we can really put our money rules to the test. It was a joy to talk to Tom and Julie, and I wish them both the best. You can read their full follow-up letters as well as some of the bonus material from this episode at iwt.com slash episode 61.

Thanks for listening to I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I'm Ramit Sethi. Please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you haven't read I Will Teach You To Be Rich, my book, pick up a copy. You can get it at any bookstore or any library, and it will show you the specific tactics for how to build the I Will Teach You To Be Rich system into your personal finances.