Ramit Sethi Will Teach You To Be Rich (Replay)

You're listening to Impact Theory. Impact Theory. Impact Theory. Impact, baby.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is a New York Times bestselling author whose theories around personal finance have helped countless people achieve financial freedom, as well as making him a very wealthy man. He's the founder of GrowthLab.com, and I will teach you to be rich.com, and he has more than 20,000 documented success stories so far.

He's a Stanford grad who studied both technology and psychology, and he takes a profoundly humanistic approach to finance. His views are often counterintuitive, but they cut through the typically trite, confusing, and emotionally impossible guidance that permeates the landscape of financial advice. His simple, six-week method to gaining financial control over your life is both powerful and straightforward to implement, a voice that has withstood the test of time 10 plus years after first publishing his award-winning book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He's been pictured next to Warren Buffett in Forbes magazine, had a six-page feature in Fortune, and he's been covered by such prominent institutions as CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, PBS, Fox Business, and The New York Times.

Over one million people read his material every month, and his newsletter alone reaches hundreds of thousands of people weekly. So please, help me in welcoming the man who Fortune called the new finance guru, the no-BS money man for the new generation, Ramit Sethi. Thank you. You're welcome to the show.

Thank you. It's exciting to have you. Thanks. It's great to be here.

Yes, man. We know a lot of the same people, so researching was a lot of fun, so I got to hear some old voices and people that have been on the show before, and there are a ton of people who give just a lot of credibility to you, the way you think, the way you approach it, and where I wanted to start, and this is something I don't have the answer to, so I'm really curious to hear what you say. Right now, the noise around being young today is that the world financially has basically come to an end. Everybody's buried under so much debt, there's nobody to get ahead, they're stuck, they're trapped, and I've heard that so many times, in the beginning I just sort of blew it off, and I'm like, it's a mindset problem.

It's so pervasive. Is it a mindset problem, or is it really something deeply problematic that's happening? I think the answer is yes, yes, and yes. I think that there are definitely systemic problems when it comes to things like inequality, when I think it comes to things like student loan debt, yes, those are problems, and there needs to be a lot of work done on those.

And we can simply look at history to see how crazy tax rates are compared to where they've been historically, or how crazy student loan debt is compared to where it was historically. But whenever I hear someone who starts complaining about large-scale societal problems, I just have one question. I say, do you invest in your 401k? And it's one thing to talk about systemic problems, and we should talk about them and tackle them.

But the best thing we can do for ourselves is to focus on what we can control, and that's what I believe. That's why I'm here. Some people work on systemic problems. I'm here to help people want them with their money and their psychology.

Yeah, that to me is a very interesting and powerful approach. I come out of the same way. I was giving a talk at Google, and there was an African-American gentleman in the front row, and basically the question was like, is it harder for me? And my answer was, yes, that seems pretty apparent, but now what?

So you can go try to tackle that systemic problem, and I'm super glad that there are people who are wired for that. Yeah. But for me, I'm always like, what can I do right now today? Because when you're dealing with huge systemic problems, you're basically doing something amazingly altruistic for the next generation, but the odds of you being able to reap the benefits of that are pretty slim.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that when you can start to take control and make one step after another, for example, for people who are in debt, it's so interesting, when people write me about how to get out of debt, over 90% of them don't know how much they owe. So if you don't know how much you owe, I understand that. Why would you want to open up the emails and the bills?

You don't know what's inside, but you know it's bad. But the first step to doing that, to paying it off is to open it up, confront reality, get real, and then make a plan. And all of those things can be done in and of yourself without regards to what's going on outside your house or outside your email inbox. One thing that I really like about your approach is the way that you look at it from a psychological standpoint, talk a lot about programming, the beliefs that people have around money, which I think are really, really important.

And as the person who I believe it is, my mission in life is to help people construct a frame of reference that sets them up to what I'll call, it's an empowering mindset. It sets them up to be able to actually execute on their dreams. What is the frame of reference, the mindset, the intentional programming that you think, especially the young people who are struggling right now, should have? Well, let's start with what they do have.

So we grew up with these things I call invisible scripts, and these are the scripts that are, beliefs that are so powerful, we don't even realize that they're around us. That's why they're invisible. So a classic one in America is the American dream is buying a house. Where did that come from?

And in fact, there's all these phrases that people use like, you're throwing money away on rent. They don't make more land, you know, and on, and on. If you really deconstruct that and you actually run the numbers, you might discover that actually buying a house is often not the best investment. And this is super counterintuitive.

People get really mad because real estate is religion in America. But if you actually dive in deep, you might discover, wow, there's a lot of parties who want me to spend a ton of money. That's why, for example, I could buy today, but I rent. And when people hit it, they're like, wait, I thought I will teach you to be rich guys, rich, so why is he ready?

They get very confused because real estate is religion. You know, another thing that is really common today for people is there's no way to get ahead, right? Especially for young people. Social security won't be around, et cetera, et cetera.

And I just don't believe in that. I think if you go on to Reddit or you go on to these places where it's a, it's a lot of people who are disaffected, young people, they create an echo chamber of other people who want to victimize themselves, then you have a choice. Do you want to be reading those threads or like I was reading the comments on your YouTube videos? I was like, these are the best YouTube comments I've ever seen.

People are positive, constructive. They're pointing out things they saw in the 32nd minute of the video, meaning they actually watched the whole thing. Those are the kind of people that I want people to be. So it's not impossible to make money.

There's actually a lot of people making money. It's not impossible to get ahead, pay off debt, even invest and grow. There's a lot of people doing it. But if you're surrounded by people who constantly complain about how difficult it is and it's impossible, guess what?

You're going to absorb those invisible scripts. That really terrifies me. And when I think about, so I'm a child of the 80s and I was just talking to a good friend of mine who I grew up with. And he was like, oh, I knew you'd be rich one day.

And I grew up teetering white color blue color. So I was definitely not set up to be wealthy. I didn't know anybody was wealthy. I didn't know anybody who had been successful.

And he was like, oh, I knew you're going to be rich. And I was like, why? And he said, because you get what you believe in. And he said, you believed money was like a thing that was super powerful.

He said, you used to talk about all the fucking time. And of course, anybody that knows my story knows for decades. I chased money. It was my stated goal.

That didn't feel weird to me. That wasn't going to make me happy. So I set that aside. Well, because I had all these positive beliefs about that, it was possible that it could happen to anybody.

I never thought to not chase it. And so the company that my partners and I built that ended up being the billion dollar success and just like crazy, we started it in 2009 at like the height of the recession. And so it's like, it just never occurred to me to think that way. And you said something when you're talking to the book, I can't remember which place, but was like, even in those moments, people can be successful.

But if you're telling yourself that you're not going to be successful and you don't take the actions, walk me through like, how do you get through to people who have these scripts, they're shutting down. They're not taking those steps. Like, do you have sort of entry-level movements for them? For sure.

Many of us, if you take somebody and you just talk, I do this a lot. They'll be at one of my talks or they are on my newsletter or following me on Instagram. And I'll give you an amazing example that just happened recently. I had a woman who wrote me and she said, Remit, can you help me convince my husband not to waste money?

And I go, okay, what's going on? She goes, he spends so much money on iced tea. And I was like, here we go. I go, how much money?

And she goes, he buys iced tea 20 times a month, like almost every day. I said, how much is this iced tea? She said, it's $1.50 each time. So in my head, I'm like, this is insane.

Like, why are we even talking about this? But I knew there's something here. So I want to unpack it. I said, out of curiosity, what's your household income?

No response for 20 minutes. Okay. And then finally, she comes back. She goes, I'm not comfortable sharing that.

I said, just give me a range. Okay. What do you think? Her and her husband's household income is?

I know the story. I would have guessed otherwise. 80,000 and 100,000. Like a nice 600,000.

And this is a perfect example. Like, rationally and logically, we should literally not be talking about this because it's a rounding error. There's something going on in her belief system that made her fixate on iced tea. And so for anybody, whether it's iced tea or whether it's, you know, lattes is a classic example.

Everybody tells you not to spend money. I'm like, that's the worst advice ever. Buy as many lattes as you want. Or some people, they just love, for example, clothes.

Right? I like clothes. They love it. But everybody around them has told them things like, that's shallow.

That's a waste of money. You should invest in your Roth IRA. And so what do they do? All of us.

We're torn apart because we live in a paradoxical society that is both puritanical telling us we should retreat into a cave and do nothing. But then we go on Instagram and everyone's in Bora Bora where it's ridiculous. And so what do we do? We just buy everything and then we feel guilty.

It's the worst possible response. So what I do is, first I say, what do you love spending money on? Love. And nobody talks about this.

They always say, oh, let me see your budget. You're overspending. And everyone's just like, ah, forget this. Right?

I'll never come on here and berate someone for their spending. Because I've seen it all. When they talk about what they love, then I say, what would it feel like to be able to spend two times or four times as much on them? People have never thought like that.

Then once we start from a place of aspiration of what do we want, let's work through the mechanics of how to get there. Dude, I love that so much. In your book, you talk about starting with what you want instead of what you don't want. You also talk about what's the thing for you that you really get amped up about.

And I was like, the funny thing is, I'm doing this research, you have to imagine this. I'm doing this research in a room that I don't usually let people go into. And it's known as the comic room. And if you go in the comic room, you will see, it's just like stacked up in the comic room.

And that's my iced tea. Like if my wife were going to complain about what does Tom spend his money on outside of the business, of course. It's that. Now why you love those comic books?

Well, that's a very involved story. But I will say that there's something unique about comic books that give you these really big ideas very rapidly. Okay. And then let me, let me share the story that just happened a couple of days ago here in LA.

I was giving a talk and I asked somebody what they love spending on and she said, clothes. She said she loves buying clothes. I said, and she was so excited. I love just, whenever you ask people their eyes light up and I asked her, what would it look like if you quadrupled your spending?

And she said, I would have clothes everywhere. Like all day long, I'd be ordering online, I'd be sending half of them back. And I said, where do you shop? And she said, top shop.

And I said, okay, so you quadrupled your spending. Where would you shop? She said, top shop. I just have a lot more.

And it was fascinating because when you ask people what they love spending on what, if they could spend more, what would they do? Those people have never thought about it. She had limited herself into the box of top shop. Now, I don't know, top shops perfectly fine, that's fine.

But I guarantee you, if you quadrupled her 10x, you're spending on the thing you love, your money dial, you might shop at a different brand. You might even fly to the factory that makes them and get a behind the scenes tour, as I did when we went on our honeymoon. So why I'm sharing this is that so many of us operate in a linear way. Oh, if I have this thing I like, I like coffee, I might get two coffees a day.

But what if you actually truly love it? You might go to the coffee factory and bring your family with you. So there's this whole idea of what you can do with a rich life. It doesn't just mean more stuff.

It could be experiences. It could be security, like buying a house in a place that keeps you safe or staying in a hotel where you're around things that are comfortable for you. There's so many different ways to look at a rich life. And most people, I want to challenge them to really think what it would feel like to spend more on the thing they love.

Of course, if they cut cost mercilessly on the things they don't. Yeah. Really fast to find a rich life for people, because I think that's going to be a key component to this whole discussion. Well, it's different for everyone.

My rich life early on was to be able to go to a restaurant and order appetizers. Because I never did it when I was a kid. Like ever. We would go and eat at once every four to six weeks if we had a coupon and we would like share two coaks with the whole family and we would never order appetizers.

So I was like, I'm going to do it. And then the next dream for me was to be able to hop in a taxi if I lived in New York during the summer without having to take the train and sweat before a meeting. Now, my dream's got bigger. And there's a variety of things that are my rich life, but everybody's is different.

So some people, I have people in my book. They're like, I use your book. My wife and I retired at 35 and 36. We drive around in an RV.

I want to drive around in an RV. But he and his wife do. And I love that. So a rich life is what you define.

And when I ask people what's a rich life to you, they usually say two things. Freedom, which is a very nice word, but it's kind of generic and they say a number, usually a million bucks. And I say like, freedom, what is that to you? And they're like, I want to do whatever I want when I want.

And I'm like, get specific. You want to order appetizers? Do you want to do yoga at 3 PM? And that's where the conversation stops.

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So we just did a piece of content not too long ago and I was sending out in the backyard and the guy that does my Instagram was like, hey, talk to people about what you used to do when you were broke to like stay motivated. And I was like, well, we used to drive around these really rich neighborhoods, Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, all of that. And I said, ironically, I'm recording this telling you this from one of the houses that we used to drive by. And be careful what you aim for because you really might get it.

And it's like that whole top-shop example that you were talking about where the person put themselves in that box, they had this, they had a lack of thought about anything beyond it. And it's that lack of thought that can work for you or against you. And what I mean by that is I didn't even think about, oh, an economic downturn means that I can't do well. I was just sort of oblivious to that in 2009.

We were starting quests. And so I just marched ahead assuming that it could happen. Or you are thinking about it and you paint a very clear vision. And so you're constantly asking yourself, I'm not going to get there where I'm at now.

So how do I cross this chasm? How do people cross that chasm? I know right now the one thing that people are thinking is, fuck, these guys are just like off in the clouds. It's too rich, guys.

Having a rich guy conversation. It's not real. But dude, inside, I'm thinking, motherfucker, I used to be so poor that I couldn't pay my bills. I used to sleep on an air mattress with a fucking leak in it, dude.

And so I would blow it up, sit on the floor every night, sometimes like 3M, I'm so fucking exhausted. Until. And usually I would only do it halfway. So I was fucking tired.

I put clothes under my air mattress. By the way, also sleeping halfway in a closet because I had a roommate. And so I couldn't even have my air mattress in the normal part of the room. I emptied my closet.

I fucking slid my bed half in. So when I deflated, the rack, the door slides across, I would wake up and that shit on my back. I'm like, that's where I fucking started. This was not like somebody handed me money.

But in that place, I had this obsessive belief that I could make it come true, that I could make it come true. Where did that come from? Honestly? 80s movies.

John Hughes. Oh, really? Accidentally that I could be rich. He just like everybody had a nice house in Chicago.

Well, that's not what I have. And I really want that. But I never had darkness around it. I was just like, fuck.

That's what I want. Let's do it. And when you say darkness, those are those beliefs that you hear people talking about sometimes. You have to step on someone to make money.

If you hear that enough or we don't talk about money in this family, if you hear that enough, you start to associate making money with being bad. And when winning is actually losing, most people just choose not to play the game at all. So you had an aspiration. It sounds funny enough.

You got it from movies. But it almost seems like you went for it maniacally. And then once you got it, that's probably what chapter two happened. Where it's like, wait a minute.

Do I actually want some of the stuff that I got? Like, that happened to me. I'm curious. Is that what chapter two was for you?

A little bit different. But I think people watching know my story well. Enough. Let's, I want to hear your story.

So mine was, I had some similarities with you growing up, middle class. We didn't have inheritance, summer houses, none of that stuff. And my mom stayed home with kids. My dad went to work.

My parents told me if you want to go to college, which of course you do, because you're Indian, you've got to pay, you've got to find some scholarships. And I love building systems. I think people who are kind of lazy, they like to do the minimum amount of work, but I like maximum results. So I've built a system of applying to scholarships and I started getting them.

And for some reason, they wrote some of those checks to me. So I, 1999, 2000, took that money. I was like, I'm smart. I'm going to invest in the stock market.

And then I lost half the money right away. I was like, oh man, that's smart. So I started learning about money. And that was a really valuable lesson to me, because no matter what, you will get the shit kicked out of you at some point in life.

And it, you can take two routes. You can be like, oh, that sucks. I'm never going to do that again. Or you can be like, oh, that does suck.

What did I learn from that? How can I improve? And I see this a lot with entrepreneurs I know who are starting to hire. They're like, oh, how do I hire the project manager?

Your first five hires are going to be horrible. Just acknowledge it. It's going to suck. But you've got to keep going, because you'll get better each time and on your 60 degree.

And it could be the same for, you know, how do I find anything that you're looking for? How do I find the right recipe to start cooking? Well, your first time. Twenty times you make eggs, you're going to suck.

You don't just give up. You keep going until 21. So I started doing this with money, and I started learning about money and psychology. And I think that most of what you see with money is just this mathematical, logical stuff.

And it sounds good. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, compound interest. But then they go back to their day-to-day life, which is like, I want that sweater. I know I should be doing this.

How come I'm not doing that? I feel bad. Close the book. Forget it.

And I want to take a really different approach. Like, perfect example is if you look at any money book, anybody watching, go look at any money book. Look at chapter one. You know what they tell you to do in chapter one of any book?

Let's find out how much you spent last month. And people are like, no thanks. See you later. They don't know how much they spent, but they know it was bad.

And so if you actually understand human psychology, you know that my goal is not to make you feel bad. My goal is actually to show you how money can be positive, how you can live a rich life, whatever you want. So in chapter one of my book, I said, look, we all use credit cards. We all suck at using credit cards.

We all hate credit cards. Let me show you how to be them. Read these words off the page, this battle tested script, and you'll get your fees refunded and you'll get all these perks you don't even know about. People did, they're like, I don't know.

This Indian guy's kind of weird. I'll try it. They pick up the phone. Even millennials were afraid of using the phone.

They picked up the phone. They did it and they're like, oh shit. They call the bank. They call the bank.

Yes. And like that, they get a $35 fee refunded or they get some perk they never even knew existed. And suddenly, psychologically they go, oh my God, I can take control of my money. It's not all these huge concepts of retirement inheritance and all this stuff.

No. I called. Now I can do it. So it's so important to be really incorporating your own psychology when you think about money.

And part of that is, where do I want, where did I get these beliefs from, whether it's a movie or a family friend, and then what can I do today to start moving along and developing my rich life? Yeah. That to me is super interesting. The maybe even more interesting part that you detail pretty extensively in your book are the excuses people give us to why that doesn't apply to them.

And I'm trying to really think about the person watching right now who, I want to help them so badly, I can't see straight, but I know what I'm fighting against is their mindset. And they're saying things like, I love your content around getting your ideal job, like get my ideal job. Or to either go in and ask for more money or to even begin applying. There's so much insecurity and just shutting down what is your advice around getting that ideal job?

First of all, stop being a special snowflake. All these people who write me, they're like, oh, really great to see these literally thousands of testimonials of people. But I'm left-handed and I'm albino and I live south of the equator. Will it work for me?

No, it won't work for you if your first reason is all the 10 reasons it won't. If you believe that it won't work for you, then congratulations, you are correct. A better approach, what I see from the best people who use my material is they say, you know what? It worked for those other people.

I can make it work for me. Simple as that. I talk about the job stuff because I talk about jobs, it's a little unusual. I think that it's become very popular online to say like, screw jobs and like be an entrepreneur and I think entrepreneurship is great but I also think most people have a job and you can create amazing value by working with a team and I have employees and they do an incredible job.

And I've had jobs. So I think that when it comes to a job, there is a totally counterintuitive way to approach it. I routinely show people how to negotiate 10, $25,000 raises all the time. And you're like, that's crazy.

There's no way, et cetera, et cetera, excuse, excuse. Here's the different approach. The first way that most people think is like, if I'm going to negotiate for a raise, which is like, oh, they might just like fire me. That's problem number one.

That's the wrong way to look at it. If you go in and ask for a raise, you're not devaluing yourself, you're actually increasing your value because what type of person would go in and ask for a raise, a top performer? So the second thing is they believe that they have to kick down the door of their boss and say like, give me money. Well, if you do that, of course, they're going to kick you out.

That's a very impolite way to do it. A third way is much more effective. So I'll just give you like the quick lay of the land. If you want to get a raise for anybody watching, this is how you do it.

You send an email to your boss. You say, you know what? If you want to get a raise for anybody with you, and I would love to discuss what it takes to be an absolute top performer in this world, to make your life easier. Could we set up some time in the next week or two?

Of course, 100% of bosses are going to say, yes, I'd love to see you. So you go in there and you say, hey, boss, really appreciate you taking the time. I've enjoyed my role. I just want to tell you that I don't want to just do a fine job.

I want to be a top performer here. And I would love to know exactly what it takes for me to be a top performer. Okay, so let me just pause right here. If I'm the employee and you're the boss, how do you feel right now with me walking in and asking us?

So fucking good. Like this is the greatest advice of all time. Because we're creating value, right? And I'm not coming in and saying, give me money.

I'm like, please advise me. You're the boss. I want to learn from you. So the boss is going to say, they're going to give you some generic answer because they weren't prepared for this.

Oh, you need to show up and blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. You say, I really appreciate that. I'd love to get really specific. In fact, I did a little bit of research before I came in.

Here are three things I think would make me look at face because bosses don't hear this. Most of their employees just show up, do what's expected. And then they're like, how come I'm not getting a $10,000 raise like Ramit said, because you don't deserve $10,000 unless you go above and beyond. So hey, boss, I know that I'm currently working on a sales project and we're slated to have a 3% improvement.

I really think we can do six. Would that be part of top performing role here? Yes. What about this?

So you have a little discussion and you say, okay, am I reading this right? These three things would help me really outperform this role. Yes. Okay.

I'll tell you what, I'd like to get to work on this. I'm going to commit to sending you an update every week or every two weeks. And at the end of six months, I'd like to come back and show you what I've accomplished. If I do it, I'd like to discuss a salary adjustment at that time, but let's not even worry about that right now.

Let's have me focus on this. What do you say? Okay. Right.

So this is the first conversation. Now I'll go back to my desk. I send a written record. Every Friday I'm sending an update.

Here's where we are. Blah, blah, blah. Now the time comes six months from now. And by the way, this is true for negotiating arrays.

It's true for dating and relationships. It's true for entrepreneurship. All the work is done before you ever set foot in the room. Ironically, everyone fixates on going in the room.

What are the fancy words? It's like, yeah, I'll show you the words. But all the work is done before. That's what every successful person is.

So I send another email now and I say, you know what, as you know, I've been updating you every week for the last four and a half months. I have some fantastic results. Yes. So now I go in.

By the way, I've done my homework. And I've done it in a couple of ways that nobody else does. Number one, I've researched my compensation. So let's say I'm being paid 50k.

But I researched my salary on salary.com pay scale. And I discovered, you know, my range should actually 56 to 62. Okay. Good.

I'm writing that down. Second, I have a couple of my coworkers and I go to them and say, hey, you know, we've worked together on this project. I would really appreciate it if you would send an email to the boss and just say, you know what, we're doing an incredible job. He really helped drive this process through and get us that 6.2% conversion increase.

So now I walk in. You've got those emails. Like, this is the greatest employee on Earth. I walk in.

I say, you know what? I'm so proud of the accomplishments. We accomplished that. We discussed this six months ago.

I wanted to be a top performer. Here you go. You theatrically pull out your results out of your briefcase. It matters to be theatric.

Right. And then how's the boss feeling right now? Amazing. Everybody's happy.

You're winning. You're doing your boss's job for them. They're happy. And then you say, you know, there's one last thing.

I know we discussed having a discussion about a compensation adjustment. I'd like to talk about that right now. Now you get to have the conversation. You've got all your data.

You've already made the boss a ton of money. And all the words you can use are right there in the book and on my courses. That's how you negotiate your salary. So when people say like, oh, there's no way I can negotiate.

Yeah, there's no way if you just walk in and say give me money. But if you actually become a top performer, then it makes perfect sense that you would get top performer compensation. Mic drop, man. Dude, that's one of those things.

I really hope people listen to that. And this is the conversation that I'm trying to have with my audience all the time. It's like, you actually have to be that top performer. You actually have to walk in, know what good is, know what excellent is, and then actually don't fucking deliver.

And if your attitude is why am I not being paid more and you're pissed about it? First of all, the attitude comes across. Nobody wants to be around that attitude. Second, if you lay it out and get them to agree and then you execute against it, you know something about them if they balk at paying at that point.

If you actually did it, and they're not willing to come, so you bounce. And here's what I always tell people. You just put yourself in the most powerful position ever because you can deliver results. Once you're good enough to actually deliver results, you go wherever the fuck you want.

Man, I'm so glad. That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because it is so rare to hear people actually telling the truth. And I think people actually desperately crave the truth. They desperately crave it about top performers, about being successful, fitness.

Like, there's so much bullshit out there. And I'll give you an example from my own. Just recently, I did an Instagram story on what I eat. And I've gotten into fitness and I showed the exact macros and calories and this and that.

And people were just like, what? And like, because no one shows exact numbers. And when I see someone who's successful, I don't just want to know some generic platitudes. Like, oh, try hard.

I'm like, show me what you eat. What time? Show me where you spend your money. Show me why you spend it on that.

Why do you fly business class? Why? Why do you not have a TV? Tell me.

People desperately crave the truth. And so the fact that you're telling people, no, it's not enough to just show up into your job. You need to be fucking good. That's the truth that people need to hear.

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Book your seat at WestJet dot com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. I want to go back to something you said, it revolves around the idea of, and you've talked about this in finance, that you want to surround yourself with people that are thinking the way that you think. And one thing that you advise people to do, which I'm going to immediately start stealing, is, hey, if you can't find the people in your life that you want, go into my comment section.

I've literally been attracting these people. Tell them what you're looking for. I see a response. I think it's brilliant.

You said something at the beginning of this interview about, you're talking about Reddit. And you said there are certain people that want to victimize themselves. Yeah. And that immediately rings true to me.

Oh, yeah. What do you mean? In what way do people victimize themselves? And then how do you surround yourself with a group of people that don't?

Well, let's just take somebody watching this video right now. Oh, Rami, it must be nice to talk about getting a $10,000 raise. I can't even make enough money to save $100. And then the next person's going, save $100 a month.

I can't even save $0.50. And it's this regression, not only to the mean, but just downward spiral of competing to see how bad you've got it. And what I've seen now is that there are larger echo chambers, whether it be Twitter, YouTube comments, not yours, but most Reddit for sure. And this idea that you simply cannot get ahead.

It's just complain. And I just, I have no tolerance for it. I have no tolerance. We all start at different places in life, right?

I was born and bred to be a spelling bee champ. I knew I was going to be a champ ever since I was born, and I was great. But I did not know, my dad didn't sit around teaching me how to deadlift. Indian dads are not teaching their kids how to dead.

I had to learn that on my own. So we all start from a different place in life. Some people are, they have two parents and they're born in America. You get the lottery already.

Some people did not. Some people went to a college. Some people did not. Look, we all start from different places in different parts of our life.

But what we can focus on today is what can I do to change that and to control what I can control. I say automated saving $20 a month, then why are we even talking, right? You can take control at the basic level. I had a woman who once wrote me.

She said, you know what I mean? I constantly tell myself I want to go for a run three times a week, and I never do. I said, why don't you just go once? She goes, what would that do?

She would rather dream about running three times a week than actually go once. And the many disaffected young people who victimize themselves would rather dream about being a millionaire than actually save $50 a month. And I would challenge people, when you get that ball rolling of saving even 20 or 50 bucks a month, it really changes your view of controlling your own life. Because after two or three or four months, you start to say like, oh my god, that's adding up.

Oh my god, now I actually added some investments into there. Even a small amount. Oh my god, that's actually growing. Wow, I can do this.

That's the whole power of using psychology against yourself. I love that against yourself. But in a super powerful way, aim to what you want. I know that clarity is a big thing for you.

Make sure you know what you want, what you want, what you want, what you're building towards, and that's really important. I also think rules which you talk about are important. What kind of rules should people have specifically around money? Okay, I love meeting smart people who have thought about any part of life like parenting.

Because I'm like, hey, I might not agree with your rules, but you're clearly thought about it. And this is true for people, whether it's business, fitness, money. So recently I wrote down my 10 rules for money. You don't have to agree with all of them.

Some of them might not apply. But just to see that this is the way I think about it. So I have some basic rules of thumb that help me make decisions. And one rule is I want to save 20 to 30% consistently.

If I'm doing that, then whether I'm spending $3 or $5 on a coffee or cheesecake or whatever is irrelevant. Because I'm hitting my goals. Any time I'm flying over a certain amount of time, business class. Okay, now I wasn't able to do that for a long time, but now I am so I do it.

Another one is marry the right person. Probably the most important financial rule. And yet we don't think about it. So like, how do we integrate relationships?

And then one of my favorites. Before you move on to find the right person. Well, that's for everyone. So I wanted to meet and marry someone who had a really good work ethic.

Who of course I loved. And would be a partner. Like a team. And I think that marriage is like my parents had an arranged marriage.

Okay, so my dad flew back to India after studying here. He met my mom seven days later. They were married. Wow.

Yeah. And they met. They had a chance to meet. But basically the way it worked, especially back then, was you meet, you get married.

And then you fall in love. So what this has done for me is really, you know, I grew up in America. But I have a lot of Indian culture around me. It made me realize that so much of what we assume is true in America is actually not.

It's a cultural assumption. So in America, the assumption is you meet, you fall in love, and then you get married. But guess what? There's other cultures where it goes the opposite way.

Marry and then fall in love. So that taught me that marriage is not just about the romance. That matters. Of course, you want to be attracted.

You want to feel love towards your partner. But if you talk to anyone who's married, let's say ten years. Maybe they have kids. Maybe not.

Look at their text messages. They're not like, oh, love you, baby. Oh my god, you look so sexy. They're like, did you pick up the milk?

It's a partnership. And so what we don't talk about in America is that marriage is not just romance. It's also a team. And you're finding the ultimate teammate for life.

Someone who you can trust, someone who challenges you. And so we need to build that into the way that we evaluate our potential partners. Can I trust this person? If they can't reach you on the phone, are they going to do what needs to be done to keep things running?

And are they going to push me to be my best self? That's the kind of partner I want to. One thing that I loved is talking about the values around the money instead of just what are you spending money on or how do you spend money? But what are your values and actually having that real core conversation?

It's a really tough one. And I have to admit that I violated my own rule with this with my wife because she opened up her books to me like the financial stuff. And then I forgot, hey, if she opens herself up financially, I should do the same. And I didn't.

And so I think a year went by and she finally came to me and she's like, this isn't fair. Like, I've told you everything and I don't know anything about your finances. So we had that conversation. And then we have spent so much time talking about what money means to us.

So I'll give you a couple of examples of what it means to us. Like, we think about money differently. For sure. Any partnership will.

We have different earning. We have different histories with money. Different ways that we raise. My wife, she wants money to make her feel safe.

The word safe to me is like saying, I want money to make me feel applesauce. I don't even connect the two. Like, I feel safe at a baseline. And I know that if everything went away, I could make money again.

And I have my investments in all this time, my emergency fund. But what I needed to do in married life was to realize my way is not the only way of looking at money. Talking to my wife, I've learned that there are totally different ways that are equally valid. But I had to kind of open my mind up to that.