How to Live Your Rich Life with Ramit Sethi
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel, all while spending less and saving more. I'm Chris Hutchins, and today I'm incredibly excited to be talking to the one and only Ramit Sethi, who's not only a friend of mine, but is also the author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, a New York Times bestseller with over a million copies sold.

In this episode, we'll talk about some of the tactical ways you can start living your own rich life. We'll talk about the 10 money rules Ramit created to ensure he's living his rich life. Talk about some of the ways he's helped couples tackle money issues.

and some of the invisible scripts that society has created to control our financial life and how to overcome them. So let's do it. Chris Hutchins works at Wealthfront. All opinions expressed by Chris and his guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Wealthfront. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions.

Ramit, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I am excited. I wanted to just kick off because your whole brand is I Will Teach You To Be Rich. And I thought it'd be helpful. There's a lot of ideas of what rich is. For me, my earliest vision is Scrooge McDuck running around in gold coins. But I know that's not what you talk to your audience about. What is being rich to you?

Well, when I ask people that question, they give me back three answers. And the first answer is, I want a million dollars. That's not very satisfying because a million dollars at 20 is different than a million at 60. A million in Kansas is different than a million in San Francisco. And so that's the first answer. The next one is, I just want to pay off my debt. And this is kind of a haunting answer because...

It's almost like you're underwater and all you want to get is just barely above it. And if you've been in debt for a long time, you can understand that one. But I don't find it particularly inspiring. I think there's got to be more to life than just getting to zero. And then the third one is the most common, which is I want to do what I want when I want. And I always say, okay, so what do you want? And then they look at me and just blink. Because most of us have never thought beyond that.

A very simple, facile answer. So in my opinion, you define rich, not me. And rich can be picking up your kids every day from school. Rich can be a thousand dollar cashmere sweater. And rich can be traveling for eight weeks per year, or it can be just buying a round of drinks for your friends. You decide what your rich life is. And what's your rich life?

Well, my rich life is being able to do work that has big impact and work with people I like and respect. It's being able to be generous with the people around me. It's being able to have a flexible schedule. So being able to travel, say, six to eight weeks per year and being able to dream bigger and then realize those dreams every single year. One of the interesting things you said is spend time with the people you like. You mentioned buying a round of drinks if you want. Yeah.

I feel like rich is always something that people talk about. Like, I've got to be rich eventually. But being able to buy a round of drinks for your friends isn't something you need a million dollars for. When I started out, I remember being maybe college or right after college. And to me, rich was being able to order appetizers. Why? Because when I was a kid growing up, we never ordered appetizers. We would hardly ever eat out. When we did, we had a coupon. And...

like appetizers. That was a never going to happen thing. Then as I get a little bit older, I remember being in New York, hot August summer. I had to go somewhere for a meeting. I got to go down into the depths of hell into the subway in August. And I'm just dripping in sweat. And I still cannot figure out how so many guys down there just wearing full suits, looking totally normal. I'm dripping. Okay. And I said to myself, you know, my rich life would be

in August, in New York, being able to jump in a taxi and not have to worry about how much it costs. And anyone who's just a little bit older knows that feeling of sitting in the back of a taxi when you don't have a lot of money, particularly in your early 20s, and watching that number just tick up. And so many people are like, oh yeah, I used to be like, oh, you can just let me off here. It's fine. For me, the dream, the rich life was

Just simply being able to get in a taxi and not have to worry. Now, for a lot of us, that number is not very expensive. We're talking about 10 bucks a week, maybe 15. It's not a lot. For some of us, it's being able to go to the grocery store and order pre-cut vegetables. Okay, another thing we would never, ever do when I was a kid. Now, time, money, value has changed a little bit.

Of course, my rich life has expanded now, right? To be able to travel and do all these things that make the taxi thing look small. But the point is actually not the price of it. And that's really important for people to know. $10 back then meant the world to me. Now the number might be bigger. That's great. It should be bigger.

But you're right that a rich life is not simply about kind of Scrooge McDuck and accumulating money in your spreadsheet. That is meaningless. Money matters, definitely. It's a small but important part of a rich life. But the question that I want to challenge everybody is what are you doing with your money to live a rich life?

How do people start to figure out when they can start living that rich life? If you have some debt or if you haven't really saved that much, but a round of drinks isn't that expensive, how do you think people should decide, now I can start doing those things that I want to do, even if they're only $10, $15, $20? First off, most people don't.

think about it in that way. Here's what most people do. They're torn by two opposing messages. The first message is cut back on lattes. Don't spend money on jeans. Don't go on vacation until you're 75 and maybe just maybe you can afford to take a trip to Italy then. That's the first message and it is drummed into us in our puritanical society from day one. Okay so most of us listen to it

And we absorb it. And we hear phrases like, money doesn't grow on trees. What do you think, I'm made of money? And oh, if those rich people had to step on somebody to get there. I call those invisible scripts.

On the other hand, we are bombarded with messages of spending and consumerism. Well, my friend, who's not even as smart as me, is going to Bali on a Wednesday. How come I can't do that? You know what? I'm going to buy this really nice blank, blank, blank car, sweater, trip, etc. Those two messages are directly connected.

in opposition. And in America, the consumerist message tends to win. Now, what I would say is I have no problem with spending extravagantly on the things you love, as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. I would rather somebody come and say, you know what, Ramit, I love nice clothes, or I love a nice car.

I say, "Tell me more. "Tell me what is your dream car?" And I would love to get into that. And then I would say, "Great, okay, we put that there. "You wanna buy a Tesla, maybe you can't afford it today, "but you know exactly how long it'll take you to get there? "Cool, yes, you're gonna get that Tesla."

Now tell me what you don't care about. Well, you know, I don't really, I'm not in the mood to travel for the next couple of years. I don't need to buy a house in the Bay Area. I don't need X, Y, Z. Okay, great. Let's put that down. And suddenly you find someone almost like a barbell. They have one side where they have their extravagant spending, really doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on the thing that's important. And then they have that other side where they consciously say, this is not important to me.

It's just not a thing for me. And I'm going to cut my costs mercilessly here. That is a rich life, as opposed to the common thing, which is, I know I shouldn't do it, but I'm going to do it anyway. And then just feel guilty about it. And if you're spending extravagantly on the things you care about, how do you know that it's okay to spend extravagantly without derailing everything? No one wants to work till they're 100. How do you make sure you're at least setting aside enough to be able to do that?

Well, my rule of thumb is that you need to get educated about this. Okay. So when people turn 40, there are consistent data that show you go ask them, what are you worried about most? They always say the same thing, money. Those very same people have never read a single book about personal finance. Okay. And they're like, oh, it's so hard. It's impossible to save. Oh, yes, it is very hard. And there are a lot of external factors making it increasingly unaffordable. And by the way, out of curiosity, when was the last time you picked up a single book on personal finance and read it for one weekend? Oh, no.

I don't read books. I don't do that. Yes, if you want to master your money or even live a comfortable and or rich life, yeah, you need to be able to speak the basic language of personal finance. This is not something that I want people to delegate. This is something that I want people to control because it's simple and it directly affects you. So that would be things like knowing

Hey, what's a ballpark rate that I should be saving every year? What's a ballpark percentage of income that I should be investing per year? By the way, the answer to that basic numbers would be 10 and 10%. I want you to be saving 10% at least. I want you to be investing at least 10%. I'm speaking conservatively here.

At the beginning level of personal finance, I want you to be able to answer some basic questions. How much do I owe? How much do I make? What percent am I saving and investing? What are the things I want to spend more on and less on? By the way, most people don't know the answer to that question. And finally, what are my invisible scripts about money? These are the...

basic questions that you should be able to answer. And you can read my book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, or many other good books on personal finance. But as I always say, life is not a Disney movie. Nobody's coming to rescue you. And so we have to take as much control of this as we can. Yeah. The invisible scripts thing is one that I just want to touch on for a second because I think one of the things that I've learned in my career talking to people about money as well is that

If you have things that you believe and then you do a little research, you might find that they're completely wrong. And in my last startup, my co-founder always joked with people. He said, look, I can buy a house. I don't want to buy a house. I don't think it's a good deal for me. And people were blown away. Are there common invisible scripts that you'd challenge people to go question that you think people get wrong all the time? The number one invisible script is buying a house is a great investment. So like your co-founder, I can buy...

and I choose to rent. And this completely blows people's minds because they look at me, they go, wait, this is the I will teach you to be rich guy. He must have some money, right? But he's renting. He isn't renting for losers. That's what I've been taught because, and here come the invisible scripts, you're throwing money away on rent. You don't want to pay your landlord's mortgage. You got to build equity. Real estate's the best investment, and on and on and on. And my favorite response to that is,

That whole concept about you're paying your landlord's mortgage, it's always said very derisively. I say, you know, last time you went out to eat, did you feel guilty about paying the restaurant owner's mortgage as well? And they look at me like, that's crazy. And I say, you know, last time you went out to eat, did you feel you were wasting money as you were throwing it away on a meal which literally went down the toilet? Well, that's different. I said, really, why is it different?

Buying a house in America is religion. Real estate is religion. And a lot of people don't understand this because we grew up with what could best be termed propaganda that has been advanced by religion.

one of the, what I would consider, most unethical organizations in America, the National Association of Realtors. Then we also have the government who actually has encouraged home ownership, which can be a good goal, but when it becomes a sole metric, can be driven to drive people who cannot comfortably afford a home to buy one. And then all of us, almost all of us, have parents who tell us, you gotta buy a house. Why? Because they bought a house and it became a source of wealth to them at that time. What I want people to do is to really proactively

probe. And for the biggest purchase of your life, you actually should be quite versed in this stuff. And let me give you a simple example of why buying a house may not be the best investment. You take somebody who's renting for $1,000 a month, easy math. And you see somebody next door who has a mortgage for $1,000 a month.

And you think, wow, I might as well get the mortgage because I can build equity, etc., etc. But what you don't factor in is this thing I call phantom costs. And that is things like repairing your water heater, roof, maintenance, increased purchases like furniture, and of course, taxes, etc. Those turn out to be quite substantial, in many cases, over 50% higher. So now suddenly you're talking about $1,000 versus $1,500 a month times 30 years.

Let's not forget that you could take that $500 and invest it in the market in a simple low-cost index fund and often outperform real estate. And finally, let's not forget, I know what people are going to say right now, Ramit, you're stupid. You're not factoring in that rents go up. That is true. Rents do go up sometimes, but rents also go down. They're down right now. They're down right now. And in fact, I lived in Manhattan and when I left last year,

The prices were as low as I had paid 11 years prior. Think about that. An entire 11 years erased, okay? The building that I was negotiating with, this is something they called me up. They go, hey, Ramit, we'd love to talk to you about your renewal. Now, I already knew the market. I keep my eye on the market like a hawk. I said, okay, what are you offering? And they go, well, you know, we looked around at the data and we can offer you renewal with no price increase, okay?

And I knew this guy was a good sales guy. So it was like game recognized game because we started having a blast negotiating with each other. I said, listen, that's not going to work. You and I both know the market's down. You better come back to me with a better offer. He said, okay, I'll call you back next week. He comes back to me. He says, I can give you one month free. First of all, in New York, in Manhattan, that's not bad. That shows that there's a weak rental market. I said, look, on your website itself,

You're giving three months free. So you're going to have to do better than that because I can go to the website right now and get that price. He says, okay, you've been here 11 years. You tell us what you'd like to pay and we'll see if we can make it work. Now that is something that people have almost never heard in a Manhattan real estate market. Based on what he was saying and the way he was talking, my estimate is I could have gotten

five to six months free in Manhattan. Now that is a staggering decrease in rent, staggering, okay? And so I want to emphasize to people that rent goes up, it also goes down. Rent is the maximum you will pay. A mortgage is the minimum you will pay. Think about that. Let me say it again. Rent is the maximum you will pay.

Mortgage is the minimum you will pay when you factor in things like taxes, maintenance, etc. And finally, some people, Americans really hate the idea of paying someone else's mortgage. They just viscerally hate it. Americans hate the concept. It's an invisible script that we have that someone else is making money off us. Ironically, then, we go and pay 1.25% on these loaded up fees and financial advisors charging AUM

never understanding that they're making tons of money off of us just invisibly. So a better way to look at it would be to say, your landlord may be making a profit off for you, or they may not. They may not even know what number they need to charge in order to make a profit. But landlords cannot simply pass the costs on to you. They can only charge what the market will bear. So that's one big invisible script. There are several others. There are many, many others. I should get married.

That's a common one. There are a lot of people who have decided not to get married. Or I should have children. That's more and more common these days. And I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's simply an invisible script in our country. My parents were terrible with money, so I'm terrible with money. That's an invisible script. And there are a million others. What I want to encourage people to do is to dive deeper into your behavior, your

and trace it back to the messages you received growing up because those have a profound impact on your attitudes and behaviors towards money. When you talked about what you did with your landlord, it reminded me a lot about the part in your book where you tell readers how to negotiate like an Indian. Yeah, well, I was raised to negotiate. I mean, my parents grew up in a culture where they negotiated. They moved here in the 70s as immigrants. And I think what I learned from them was...

Why not just ask? And that was the first part, which in America we don't like to ask because negotiation is seen as cheap and it's very antagonistic. That's the way we think about it. I personally love it. I love, like I had a blast talking to that sales guy over the course of three or four weeks because he knew what I was doing. I knew what he was doing. We both knew it was a dance and he was not obligated to give me anything.

Nothing at all. He was not obligated just because I asked, but I was not obligated to stay. And so we were both involved in this elaborate, intricate dance where he's bringing his skills and he's got his number and I've got my number and my skills and we're bringing them to bear and see what we can come up with. Now, I do think that sometimes people take negotiation seriously.

And they go a little bit too far. And this is the second thing I learned from my parents, which is there's a time and a place. Okay. So if you go to some place like a car dealership where it's totally expected that you negotiate, then you better negotiate. You're going to negotiate hard and have fun doing it. Right. I write about how my dad would take us to buy a car. And to this day, I've never bought a car with someone who goes in there and buys it and leaves on the same day. Like that's totally foreign to me.

The way my dad did it, we would go, we'd come home, we'd go back the next day, eat breakfast at the dealer, then we'd negotiate a get-go home. It was like a four, five-day family affair. But you wouldn't do that at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

And you could try, but you wouldn't do it at McDonald's. That's just not the place for it. I think what I learned is that negotiation is something that we should use strategically, not be afraid of. And when there are opportunities to negotiate, particularly on the big things in life, a house,

a car, shopping around your interest rates, those can be worth tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars. So it pays to have that skill in your back pocket. You don't have to flex it all the time. In fact, I would say the more financially successful I've become, you know, I tend to negotiate less. But when I do it, it's for a big ticket item.

Yeah, the interest rates one is one along with bank fees that I don't think everyone knows you can totally negotiate. If you miss a payment, you might not be successful, but you can ask to have that fixed so it doesn't end up on your credit report. Late fees are negotiable. Are there other things that you've learned that people don't think to negotiate but would add a lot of value to their lives?

In chapter one of my book, I give people the word for word scripts to negotiate these credit cards, bank fees, all those things. That's a big one because it's so small. It's a $37 fee. But when people do that, they go, oh my God, I actually have power against these multi-billion dollar banks and credit card companies. So that kind of opens everyone's eyes to realize, oh my God, I can actually do this. And $37 is not the point. The point is I took some control back. I didn't just eat it.

Yes, there are other things you can negotiate. So things like payment terms. As a business owner, you can negotiate payment terms with your vendors. In terms of traveling, of course. If you're staying seven days, you can negotiate very, very favorable terms. If you're staying at the same hotel chain, but in different cities, you can contact their ticketing office and you can often negotiate a special rate that's not available. But I would say that, you know,

Travel, cars, real estate, those are the big ones. Get those right, as I always talk about the big wins. And then, you know, are you going to negotiate at a farmer's market? I mean, you could. I don't anymore. Okay, so negotiating, I agree. Don't go too far. I think the two big levers, if you talk to any financial savvy person, is you can spend less or you can make more.

How do you think about the balance between focusing on trying to make more money or focusing on trying to cut costs?

Both are important, but I have decidedly come on the side of earning more, right? There's a limit to how much you can cut, but there's no limit to how much you can earn. And so while most Americans do have a spending problem, and if you give me 10 minutes with your spending, I can point out some big opportunities for you. The fact of the matter is that there's a limit to that, okay? Yeah, you can cut, but suddenly you're at the...

coupon cutter table on the 30th of every month and you're sitting there trying to optimize for 38 cents, it's a waste of time. And this is why I disagree with the common advice, cut back on lattes. If you actually run the numbers, $3 a day is not really going to add up to much. And there's a substantial cost, which is you're going to be unhappy. If you love your morning coffee and you like getting it on the way to work,

Why are you going to try to guilt yourself all to save $3, which most people, first of all, they're not going to do. And second of all, it's not like they're taking that $3 and consistently dollar cost averaging it in the market. They're just going to spend it somewhere else. So I would rather you say, you know what? I like that. I'm going to spend on that. I'm going to happily spend on this nice coffee.

But I'm going to figure out a way to earn more. So in my website and in our programs, we show people how to find a business idea, how to start it, how to grow it. So we have all kinds of business owners. We have over close to 50,000 customers. And some of them started dog walking businesses. Some of them started interior design firms. And

They did this on the side, and then some of them went full-time. We have some serious entrepreneurs who have started travel businesses and personal styling businesses. So there are lots of things that you can do to earn more, but I think first, go ahead and get your financial system automated so you're spending less than one hour per month. That's when you know, okay, I got all that taken care of. I've lowered my financial anxiety. Now what's next?

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Okay, the way that I set it up is I have a financial automation system. This is in my book or you can find it on YouTube. And imagine your checking account is like an email inbox. So all your money comes into your checking account, your paycheck, etc.,

From there, it is automatically filtered out to different places that it needs to go. You're going to have some taken to your Roth IRA perhaps. You're going to have some taken to your savings account. Within that savings account, you're going to automatically have sub-savings accounts. So you're going to have a wedding savings account or travel to Morocco in December account, etc., etc.,

Then you're gonna have your credit card being paid off and of course your guilt free spending. You wanna go out, you wanna buy a round of drinks, you wanna buy a beautiful sweater, great.

What I do for one hour per month now is I review that. It's all automatic. So by default, it's running. I don't have to do anything. But I just take a look at making sure everything has been properly paid. That's it. Then now I've set up time with my wife. So my wife and I, when I got married, it added some new complexity and opportunities. And so every month, my wife and I sit down

And we discuss our finances. So we've built a model. And it, by the way, this was the thing. When we got married, I was like, let's build the coolest model on earth. It's going to be crazy. Everything's going to flow. And my wife and I were like, she saw money very differently than me. I'd been dealing with money for 20 years. I was like, let's optimize growth. So it took us a long time to get on the same page and be able to build a model that we both own and share and contribute to.

And now when we look at it every month for one hour,

We sit down. We look at our expenses. Most of the expenses are static. Like we basically spend the same amount on groceries every month. So within parameters, we don't really care. There are a couple areas that are discretionary to us because we tend to overspend. They're variable, like travel, eating out, things like that. So we have a couple of watch areas. Like a dentist watches a couple teeth. We watch a couple of areas. But the most...

most important thing, the most important thing in that model is we sat down and we did a bucket list exercise. I said, in the next 10 years, what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? And we sat and we had a beautiful time. We sat down and we talked about what are the big things that we want to do. I'll give you an example. My wife said she wanted to learn another language and

I said that I wanted to write another book at a hotel. I love nice hotels and I love the idea of being in this luxurious place where my bed is made for me and I can go and write in this huge kind of beautiful courtyard. Okay, so we kept going and going and we found some things that we want to do together. We found some things we wanted to do separately. So I said, let's pick a couple of them, things that really excite us together and let's put a dollar value to them.

So we picked 10 year wedding anniversary. So we were inspired because some of our friends that we know had a 10 year wedding anniversary in France and they invited a bunch of friends and family and we were blown away. We're like, wow, that is, that's, you know, first of all, we don't know anybody who's done that. And second,

What a cool idea to celebrate a 10-year anniversary. That's a big deal, and it's an opportunity to party. When we got married almost 10 years ago, nine years ago tomorrow, the group of friends that we had then has evolved, and some of them are closer, some of them are more distant.

And I'm constantly thinking, gosh, if we got married now, we would have a different experience. And I've never really thought about just having that different experience as a way to celebrate. But I guess I've got 366 days to figure it out. Well, early congratulations. And so we were inspired. And so we said, you know what?

Let's do that. So this is the crux of a rich life. We took something that we wanted to do, an intention, and a big intention, a 10-year wedding anniversary in India. We know the exact hotel. We know all the friends and family that we want to invite. And we know that we want to show them around India if they've never been. We have this whole vision in our mind.

And we got excited as we started talking. We started building on each other. Yeah, okay, and we should do this. And what about that? Oh, great. And I said, okay, now let's connect it to our finances. Okay, because it's one thing to be a dream. Let's make it a plan. So my wife said, okay. I said, how much do you think this is going to cost? Let's write it down separately on separate pieces of paper. So it was really funny because she wrote down a number and I wrote down a number.

And my number was roughly five to 10 times bigger. Okay. I like to spend extravagantly on things that are important. And she was quite nervous because she said like, we're not spending that much. And I said, okay, I'll tell you what.

This is the way I think about it. First of all, this is many years away, so we have lots of time to save and invest for it. Second, for big, big things in life, really big things, I want to accumulate enough that cost is never my primary decision. Okay, so to give you an example, one day, if and when we buy a house,

I don't want to shop by price as the first thing. Same for a car. Same for if we get childcare help. I don't want price to be the first factor or in some cases a factor at all. And if you're looking and listening and saying, oh, it must be nice. Don't want to have to look at a price of a house. Just think about

an example that is important to you. Maybe it's diapers, or maybe it's the type of protein shake that you pay for. There are things in each of our lives that we do not get the cheapest. We don't even look at the price. And so whether it's diapers or whether it's a house, obviously those are different scales, but those are important things. And so I said to her, look,

We've got two different numbers. Why don't we just take the bigger number? And we don't have to achieve that exact number, but if we get even 85% of it, we have done exceptionally well. And she was like, okay, let's try it. Back to our model. Every month during that one hour, we're looking at our goal. We have about

six or so big goals for the next 10 years. We're looking at how much we have targeted for that and how much we have saved and or invested towards that. So suddenly it all boils down to our rich life.

The one hour that you spend is not meant to look at the price of how much you spent on lettuce at the grocery store. Nobody gives a shit. Oh, I got an extra bag of lettuce and it went rotten. Oh, it's so bad. That's a $3 question. Most of us spend our lives obsessing about $3 questions. We should really be asking $30,000 questions. What are the five to 10 rich life things that we, if you're in a couple, want to achieve together in the next 10 years? How much is it going to cost? Ballpark it.

And dream big. Don't be cheap. Dream big. And then do we have a plan on how much we need to save and invest every single month to achieve that? At the end of 10 years, if we just do those six or seven things, we have lived an amazing life.

Yeah. I feel like I'm ready to go do this exercise. I know I've fortunately had the chance to be with my wife for 16 years now. So we've had lots of conversations about money. And in many ways, it's interesting to meet someone when you have no money and grow together because you learn a lot along the way. Are there things... I know this is something that you've

been spending a lot of time thinking about recently. Are there things you've learned about how couples and people in relationships manage money that made your life better in that regard? Well, so many surprises when it comes to couples. Oh my gosh. So I've had the fortune of being able to talk to couples and they share everything with me. They share their numbers. I know down to the decimal point how much they make, how much they spend, etc.,

And that, first of all, is very intimate. You know, in my book, I cite a study where people would more likely be willing to talk about their sex lives than their amount of credit card debt. So this is highly intimate stuff.

What I learn when speaking to couples about money is that most of them have never thought about what a rich life means. So in their head, they delegate off to someday. That's number one. Number two, they minimize their problems. So I'll get on a call with a couple and I'll say, how important is this to you? How serious is this issue to you? Now remember, they have gotten on a call with me and they're sharing all their finances. They're

And when I ask them that question, they almost universally go, it's not that bad. I mean, you know, he does overspend a little bit on this, but it's actually fine. I mean, we could make it work. And, you know, he just buys a little bit too much. And I go, okay, let's say that he does that now. And you talk about it and he doesn't listen to you. Let's fast forward to when you have two kids. What's going to happen then? And then suddenly the partner will go, oh,

Yeah, that's going to get worse. I say, now what happens if that persists for another 25 years? And suddenly they can see that a four out of 10 easily becomes a nine out of 10, which is divorce level.

So what I want to emphasize to couples is that overspending on a video game or not being too cheap, that's a very common thing that I hear. Oh, we have money, but we don't want to spend it. That is a four out of 10 today, but it quickly turns into a nine out of 10 tomorrow. So when people say I got divorced because of the dishes,

Yeah, it was the dishes 25 years ago and it mutated and calcified into something way more serious. So take...

control, nip it in the bud, manage that as opposed to waiting and just saying, oh, it'll fix itself on its own. It never will. And do you find that if you tell couples, hey, this could evolve and get worse, are they more receptive to talking about it than they were when you first mentioned it? They instantly get it. They instantly get it. Everyone gets it because we all know couples who fight

Everybody, whether you're single or in a relationship, everybody knows a couple. You're like, oh, you go home after hanging out there. You're like, they should not be together. And you can see that a single little issue can be amplified and magnified to consume a relationship. And soon it becomes the ghost in the relationship. And I don't want that. I'll give you a couple of examples here. I spoke to a couple where they told me that their friends call them cheap.

First of all, if your friends call you cheap, you're cheap. Okay, that's a good rule of thumb. And I said, are you cheap? They said, no, no, no, no, no. We just prefer to spend consciously on the things that we like. I said, okay, you guys have read chapter four of my book. Okay, well, I'm going to probe on this.

So I said, what do you like to spend on? They said, well, we like to save, but we'll spend on health food and stuff like that. Great. I said, so why do your friends call you cheap? Well, they say that we've lived here for five years and we have no furniture. I was like, okay. And they say that when we go out to eat, we want to order the steak, but we order the chicken. I was like, okay. I'm like checking a box on my notepad.

And then my friend invited me to her bachelorette party, but the invitation came out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting it. And it was $600. So that wasn't fair to expect me to pay $600. Like all of these things have good rationale and they have good logic behind them for why they didn't want to spend it. But ultimately, then I asked him one single question. What's your household income? $600,000.

So at $600,000, they're agonizing over $600 for a bachelorette party and chicken versus steak. No, that's cheap. And it took me pointing it out to them for them to almost be visibly shaken and to say, oh my God. And when you fast forward that, they said, when we have X dollars and when we've worked Y years, we're going to start spending. So you're telling me

At age of 68, you're going to suddenly turn into these National Geographic explorers and you're going to learn the skills of spending? Very unlikely.

I feel like you might have been telling a story about my wife and I who also have a problem where I think I grew up never thinking I'd find a job I loved. And so I thought, man, one day I'll need enough money that I don't have to work. Not because I can't work, because I want to love what I do. And now I finally feel like I found something that I love doing.

But the switch didn't flip. So I feel like we need to have one of these sessions sometime because I really feel like I'm the person who's maybe not even ordering the chicken, maybe just ordering two appetizers instead of the steak. I appreciate you saying that because in America...

Almost 90 plus percent of financial education is geared towards people who don't have enough money. Okay? It's like, save and you should cut coupons and all these kind of nickel and dime type of pieces of advice that people give. And we've all seen this stuff. Read any mass market publication and it'll say stuff like,

Put your vegetables in a Ziploc bag because they'll last an extra two days. Okay. And fine. There are when you're starting out or when you're on a low income, you do need different types of advice in terms of saving money. Fair enough. But there's a very neglected group of people in this country, which is people who have started to save, earn and invest money.

and now they have no idea what to do with it. And you're right. I love the way you describe that. That switch does not flip magically. And if you have been operating under scarcity and saving for the last 40 or 50 years of your life, it becomes virtually impossible to change it. If you're listening to this, think about your parents or any relatives you know who have enough. Maybe they're in their 60s or 70s. They have enough. And yet, what do they talk about?

I got to save more. I got to save more. I spoke to a couple who was older and I said, looking back on your life, if you could go back to your 20-year-old self and give them some advice, what would you do? And they said, save more. And I happened to know their financial situation. I said, but you have more than enough now. What would you have done with the extra money? And they just looked at me. They'd never thought about it. They were operating off an automatic script that we need to save more.

But there is a point at which you have saved too much. Let me say that again for people because you've probably never heard that. There is a point where you have saved too much. What do you do then? Do you think you're going to just magically say, oh my gosh, the math equation revealed itself on my Excel spreadsheet cell C3. That's it. I'm quitting my job. We're traveling the world. Of course not. And I think, Chris, you know this better than anyone because...

you realize that the cage you created around yourself, the way you articulated it to yourself was, I need more money, but really that cage was one created of your own mind. And you could have stepped out of that cage at any time. And if you don't step out today, that cage will only get more and more fortified. It will become harder and harder to step out. So I'm not encouraging anyone to just quit their jobs and go travel the world forever.

24-7, that would be unlikely.

But what I am saying is there has to be a whole new money lens. You have to turn the page in the chapter of your life and say, I won. I won chapter one. Now I'm on to chapter two. And chapter two is really about spending on the things I love, not looking for the best value. It's actually saying, you know what? I don't need an ROI on this. I'm just going to do it because I want to.

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Yeah. You talked about taking time off to travel. You talked about planning this epic 10-year anniversary trip. Travel is something that I think both of us have found ways to spend money on. And while sometimes I play the points and miles game because I don't want to spend money, I've at least been able to take amazing vacations. And I know you have a ton of tips, tricks, hacks, and that's the theme of this show. So can you talk a little bit about travel and the things you've done and

evolved the way you travel to make it better yes but first are you actually going to spend any money on traveling because every time i talk to you you're like burning points which is awesome you've taught me a lot about points are you ever going to actually spend cash on traveling

I have taken one trip where we spent money, like real money. But I don't know. I have all these miles. I got to use them. But... Do you recall... I'm going to share this with everybody. So one time we were meeting in New York. We're exchanging tips about travel and stuff. And you go...

hey, do you know where I'm staying right now? I go, no. Which hotel? There's a lot of good hotels in the city. You were staying at an airport hotel near JFK because it was free points and you had optimized some triple challenge thing or whatever. And you were going to go there after we finished meeting to fly out. Now, first of all, I thought that was brilliant because I never thought about staying in an airport hotel for whatever point thing you told me. And then I said, Chris, dude,

I think you make pretty good money. Is it time for you to spend money on a hotel near where you are? What do you think? Yeah, I think the answer is I'm learning. Do you want me to just plan your next trip? I'll do it. But all it requires is an unlimited budget. Oh, man. Will you do it? Unlimited. I won't bankrupt you. You will have the time of your life.

I don't know if I could comfortably make a decision, although I guarantee you my wife would say yes. Oh, really? So I think we could do it. Oh my God. This is crazy. Okay. Hold on. I need to understand this because I didn't expect you to say yes. So your wife wants you to spend more on traveling?

I think yes. And why is that? It's not just about spending for the sake of spending. Why does she want that? We both love travel. We've taken months off to backpack. We've stayed in amazing places and we've saved enough that we can and we sometimes let life get in the way. Meaning? Meaning, so here's a great example. It's in the middle of June. We've identified that in July, we don't have any obligations.

We're still able to work remote and we could take one to four weeks and be anywhere. We can't stop working for four weeks. And my parents are in town and not going anywhere and they could watch our daughter and we could take a trip, whether it's a weekend or a week. And we're a little paralyzed of all of the options to even figure out what to do, where to go and how to have a good time. But we both want to do it.

And somehow our crazy desire to get a deal is getting in the way. Okay, wait, wait, wait, hold on. We got to go deeper on this for just a second. This has now turned into my podcast, but I love this. And I think this is very revealing.

So first of all, the fact that your parents can watch your daughter is amazing. You have flexible ability to travel. Amazing. Budget is not primarily the issue. You could spend it if you wanted to. That's great. Is it being paralyzed by all the options or is it the need to find a deal? It's definitely the latter. The deal. I finally evolved to paying someone to do groceries and I felt really good about that move.

But I'm on Amazon. And Amazon now has... You can order from Whole Foods. You can order from Amazon Fresh. And I'm the person that pulls the cart up on one, mirrors the cart on the other, and then does the thing that's the worst, which is tries to just do both. And now I got to meet the $35 minimum on each. This is crazy. Okay. So again, let's just set some context around this. If...

groceries are a substantial part of your budget every week, then it makes sense that you might say, hey, I'm going to try to save, I might go to Costco, et cetera, et cetera. If you're in the financial situation that you are, where you're earning more than you need for Whole Foods, et cetera,

then you understand intellectually that it's a complete waste of your time to be doing this. And your time would be better spent spending time with your family or honestly just browsing on Reddit, anything except for this. So what is it about that that makes you want to keep comparing $3 price on baking soda? I think the satisfaction of checking out and being like,

I managed to, from the same company, I managed to find the arbitrage opportunity. The unsweetened applesauce is $2.50 from Whole Foods and $4.79 at Amazon Fresh. Outrageous. And it doesn't matter except that I feel so good that I kind of like stuck it to Amazon. You got them. Okay. So this is what I'm talking about when I say turning the page in your book of life.

So it's true. I totally get it. There are certain things that I do that are irrational. And I'm not saying you should just stop feeling that way because you're never going to stop. You're always going to want the deal. And that's fine. But at a certain point, what I would suggest is to redirect and find joy in something else. Okay, because you've already won.

the game of personal finance in chapter one. You really have. So yes, $2, $4. Okay, you want to find a deal every quarter, focus it on one thing, feel good, great. But what I would encourage you as you turn that page into chapter two of personal finance would be, where else can you find joy? So I want to give you an example with your wife. You have the opportunity to travel somewhere. Let's put deals aside.

Putting your wife first in this case, what would be truly joyful to her? What is something that she loves when traveling? Examples would be a pool in your room, right? In your own private backyard, a beach set up, hiking. What would be the thing that would be like mind blowing? I'll give you some examples from my own life because my wife and I went through this exact thing. Same thing too. We sat down.

and we planned out our honeymoon. And we were inspired by other people who were a little older than us. They said, oh, we were planning to go on like an eight day safari, which was very exotic to us. We'd never been. And they go, that sounds awesome. When we got married a long time ago, we took six months off. We're like, what? And then the next couple was like, yeah, we took a year off. We traveled the world. We're like, who are these people? I thought they were just normal.

And as we walked out of there, my wife and I kind of looked, first we were like, those people are crazy. But then we said, hey, what if we did that? What if we, I mean, we both work remotely, could we do it? And we shifted into that what if mode. And so we started to dream and really dream big, similar to our 10 year plan. And we said, okay, what do we want on this trip? So I had a list of places I wanted to go and they were not geographically related whatsoever. They're all over the place.

But both of us independently said we want to bring our parents for part of it. Our parents are alive. They're mobile. They enjoy time with us and with each other. And so we said, you know what? First stop, Italy. It's safe. Everybody loves cheese. And we told our parents to show up at the airport. That's all you have to do. And they came and we planned this trip. You know, my mother-in-law, she had never been to the Vatican. Actually, they had never really left the country.

So we had cars pick him up and we took him to the Vatican behind the scenes tour. Very meaningful. Not about how much we spent, but about going...

for example, we went to a farmer's market with a chef, picked vegetables, and then went and cooked like four or five courses together with him. Like all of us are hands dirty and making pasta together. We will always remember that meal. Incredibly meaningful to us. What I would suggest in this chapter two of your personal finance life would be to say,

find the joy in creating the most meaningful experience for you and your wife. Meaningful. That can be adventure. It can be sitting by a beach for seven days. You know very nice hotels. So you find, I think, joy in certain hotels. It could be, I want to stay at this hotel or this city. It could be bringing friends with you if that's what you want. Price comes second when it comes to the most meaningful things in life. And in some cases, price isn't even...

a factor at all. If you can get to that point where you have this opportunity, you have time, you have money, and you forcibly turn that page, that can be one way to get into the next stage of personal finance for you.

All right. I got homework. Great. I do want to come back because I know you have some travel things that you do. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That I think people want to hear. So when I travel domestically for work, I like to try to stay on my fitness plan and nutrition plan. And if it's like one day, it's no big deal. But if I'm staying somewhere for three or four days...

what I'll do is I'll have food sent ahead of time. And this is like a very inexpensive way to do it. I have Whole Foods. My assistant will coordinate. She knows exactly what I eat. And so she will have somebody deliver it from Instacart, Whole Foods, et cetera. It will show up at the hotel and she'll make sure that there's a fridge in the room. And it's all like the

exact foods that I would eat at home. And so even if I'm going to go out to dinner with a coworker or somebody in a city, I know that in the morning I'm going to eat right. Probably at lunch I'm going to eat right. And it just keeps me on plan, keeps me feeling really good. And it's all kind of effortlessly handled. So that's one. Again, think about it. You would have had to essentially be a king to do this 40 years ago. Now you can have it almost automatically done

by logging onto Instacart and having it delivered to the hotel and they will keep it refrigerated for you until you arrive. So that's awesome. I love that. I also really, really love when we travel. I learned this from a friend of mine. My friend was big in the museum world. And one time he told me, he goes, if I go to a new museum, I'm spending 90 minutes there max. And the first 30 minutes are at the cafe. And I was like,

What? Because when we grew up, we never went to museums. And on the rare occasion we did, we would spend all day there. Like all day. Because we were never going back. And it was expensive. Same as Disneyland. We'd get there when it opens and my parents would drag us out of there crying and tired by the end of the day because we're never going back there. Okay? So the fact that my friend said,

I'm only spending 90 minutes and 30 minutes in the cafe kind of blew my mind. And what he really meant was, I'm going to be abundant enough to know that I can always go back. I don't have to see everything the first time. So when my wife and I travel, we now have a rule for ourself. We don't want to go anywhere for less than four days. Four days is the amount for us that it's leisurely enough that we can get to know a place, not be in a rush. We're totally comfortable saying, we don't want to see that.

And that was a huge abundant moment for me where I realized I don't have to see every monument and museum. I can choose the things I do. And then we go super deep on the things we do. So for example, in Kyoto...

My wife and I love design. So we arranged... First, we made some... I love stationery, too. So first, we made notepads by hand with this old stationery master. And then we arranged to visit this couple who invited us into their house and they're architects. And so they shared how...

the Japanese live differently than Americans. And they gave us quite a bit of... We talked a lot about design in Japan versus America. And that was crazy to be able to find a couple who would allow us into their house. That's kind of rare there. And they happen to be architects, so they could comment on design. I had all these questions that I wanted to ask. To me, that was super, super meaningful. And so for anyone traveling, I would just encourage you, kind of think...

thinking about what do you love? What really gets you off? And it could be weird. Like I love notepads and stationery. Where did you find these people? So this is the question. This is the, so these days, the easiest place to start is Airbnb experiences. That's very easy. And you can find amazing stuff. We always do a food tour whenever we go to a city. It's a great way to get to know a place. And you talked about that in an earlier podcast. And we also, for some of the more obscure stuff, like the architect people,

That you have to often make special arrangements. So we had a specialty tour guide who we said, this is the kind of stuff we want. Can you help us arrange it? And that took time and money to arrange. But honestly, we would rather spend on that than just seeing a random monument that has no meaning to us.

Any other travel or non-travel financial kind of, I'll say hacks because that's the show that you've learned over the years? Yeah, I have one called Ramit's Book Buying Rule. And that is, if you ever see a book that you're interested in, just buy it. Don't debate, don't agonize, don't equivocate, just get it. Because one line of one book...

can transform your life. And I don't just say that because I'm an author, I live it myself. I buy any book that looks remotely interesting. And worst case, I'm out 10 or 15 bucks. Best case, changes my life. - I think that is actually one, or at least part of one of your money rules.

I thought it was fascinating to read through how you've kind of framed, these are the things that are important to me. I know if you just search Ramit's money rules, you can find them. But can you talk a little bit about why you did that and how it's changed things? I created 10 Money Rules because I wanted to boil down all the ways I look at money in life into 10 simple, easy rules that help me manage the millions of decisions I'll have to make about money. So I'll give you a couple of examples.

Save 10%, invest 20% of gross annual income. That's sort of a standard, no big deal. That's not a surprise. But how about this one? Never question spending on books, appetizers, health, or donating to a friend's charity fundraiser.

And this one is deeply personal to me. Appetizers, as you know, I used to never be able to afford it. So it's funny. Why am I talking about appetizers? That's why. But donating to a friend's charity fundraiser. I know this because I've done charity fundraisers and it was really meaningful when my friends donated to support me. So that's one. Then we get into kind of bigger rules. One of them is be able to pay in full.

for large expenses like a wedding, dream honeymoon, or even a house. That's a big one. That's not practical for most people. And if you're listening to this saying, wait, so you're going to pay all in cash for a house? Well, I don't know if I'm going to pay or not, but I will be able to.

And that's my rule. It's not your rule. It's not anybody else's rule. It's the rule that fits me like a handmade glove. So these rules are not for you, Chris, or for any listener. These are my rules. And that's what I want everybody to do is create their own rules. A couple of others, business class on flights over four hours. This is just simple. It just helps me decide, okay, it's going to be three hours and 30 minutes. It could be business or economy. But if it's four hours and 30 minutes, business.

That's like my rule, which is business class if you can find the points available and like middle seat in the back of the plane in basic economy if you can't. You know, there's an old phrase that goes, the more successful I became, the less I could afford to do some of the things I used to do. And what that person meant by that, Jim Rohn, was I used to mow my own lawn. But now when he became much more financially successful, he's

he realized he would rather spend that time with his kids. And so I think for you, Chris, one thing is like, yeah, you became a lot more successful. You might not be able to afford back row middle seat. Now, could you? Yes, you could, of course. But it takes almost that nudging and pushing to say,

that's not the kind of life I want to live now. And I think that's what these rules are about. A couple more that I want to share, buy the best and keep it as long as possible. So for example, I have a car that I've had for 16 years now. I still drive it. I drove it here. It's great. It's a great, nice car. It's a Honda Accord. I mean, Indians love Honda Accords.

Not that important to me, right? So when I say spend extravagantly on the things you love, cut cost mercilessly on the things you don't, this car works fine. It runs like brand new. Cool. On the other hand, taking my parents, both sides, to Italy for this amazing honeymoon, totally worth it. And marry the right person. So one of the biggest financial decisions and life decisions you will ever make is who you marry.

thinking about are you aligned with them, values. You don't necessarily need to know everything about money in the same way. You don't have to have the same amount of money, but are you both generally oriented towards your money values? I think that is really important.

Chris, these money values and these money rules, the thing about them is they're not restrictive. You notice that when people try to create their rules, they're like, never spend money on X, Y, Z. But with these rules, what I wanted to show you is they're really freeing. They're permissive. They actually let me think bigger. Business class on flights, donate to my friends' charity fundraisers, nothing.

no limit for spending on health. These are awesome rules. They fit me like a glove. And so if you're listening, I would really challenge you

Create your own 10 money rules or even five and send them over to me. Tag me on Instagram or Twitter. I'd love to see the kind of rules that your listeners come up with. And you write back. I read everyone. I try to write back as much as I can. But you're not someone who just ignores everything that comes in. No, no. I write back to hundreds and hundreds of people every day through email, my email list, my Instagram, Twitter. I love it. I absolutely love hearing from everybody because I...

your rich life is so different than mine. And so every day I'm getting exposure. You know, I have readers, they retire at 36, they live in a trailer and drive around the country. That's not my rich life. But I love hearing when people really hone in. I want to foster all these pets.

Awesome. I don't want a single pet. But I love hearing people really dialed into what they love to do with their money. I love that we didn't talk about investing, which is something that I think a lot of people think is the only money thing that matters because...

As much as I believe that it's something that matters and if you want to grow your wealth in the long term, it's necessary. It's also not something you need to occupy your entire headspace with. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I mean, I invest, I invest aggressively and I detail all of how I invest in my book, but I spend less than 10 minutes a month

thinking about it. Investing should not be exciting. Investing should not be a TNT drama. Investing should be absolutely boring and mundane, like watching concrete dry. And a rich life is lived outside of the spreadsheet. It's not about logging into all your bank accounts and investing accounts. No, that's all automated. A rich life is lived outside the spreadsheet. That is

taking your wife on a beautiful vacation. That is surprising your family with a thoughtful gift or just emptying the dishwasher. It doesn't even have to cost money. A rich life is not about tracking every last dollar and cent. Although you should have the system set up to do that, it's really about using your money wisely

to create that vision of what a rich life is and then living that now, not just waiting for tomorrow. Couldn't agree more. I literally spent the last 18 months trying to focus on automation of finances to get it to a point that you don't even have to think about it. It's

So thank you for all the tips, all the tricks, everything you shared. I really appreciate it. Where, you mentioned a few times, but where's the best place to find you? You can find me at iwt.com. And I have a newsletter there with several hundred thousand people. I write about money, psychology, business, careers, and many more things. Instagram and Twitter, I'm at Ramit. You can find me there. Cool. Thank you for being here. Thanks a lot.

Wow, that was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for listening. If you're not already subscribed to the show, please click subscribe so you can get notified about the amazing episodes we have coming up. You can find show notes for this episode, links to all the past episodes, and you can sign up for our newsletter at allthehacks.com.

Also, if you have questions about your own financial life or hacks you're trying to figure out, please reach out and I'd love to help or even answer them on an upcoming show. You can email chris at allthehacks.com or at Hutchins on Twitter. Finally, if you want to help out the show, please consider sharing an episode online or with your friends or family. Thank you so much. Talk to you next week. Oh, still here? Remember that conversation about Ramit trying to plan my next trip?

Well, even though I'm actually terrified with what he might spend, I was totally serious. So if he's serious too, I'm going to make it happen and I'll let you know where we end up going and how the trip goes.