The Quick Part is a Lie, But This Guy Will Teach You How to Get Rich | Ramit Sethi on Impact Theory

Let's talk about the job stuff because [music] I routinely show people how to negotiate 10, 25,000 dollar raises all the time. [music] And you're like, that's crazy. There's no way, etc. etc. Excuse, excuse. Here's [snorts] the different approach. The first way that most people think [music] is like, if I'm going to negotiate for a raise, which like, oh, they might just like fire me. That's problem number one. That's That's the wrong way to look at it. [music] If you go in and ask for a raise, you're not devaluing yourself. You're actually increasing your value. [music] Because what type of person would go in and ask for a raise? A top performer. So, the second thing is [music] 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 [music] 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. [music] Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is a New York Times best-selling 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 1 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. Tom, good to see you. Good to see you. How are you doing? I'm doing well. You as well. Welcome to the show, dude. Thank you. Exciting to have you. Oh, thanks. It's great to be here. Yes, man. We know a lot of the same people, so researching you was a lot of fun. So, I got to 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. Thank you. 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. All right. 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 no way 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 it's a mindset problem. Mhm. 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 um 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 uh 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 one-on-one with their money and their psychology. Yeah, that that to me is a a very interesting and powerful approach. I come at it 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. 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 you're 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. Yeah, I agree. And 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 have know how much you owe, I understand that. Why would you want to open up the emails and the bills? It's 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. You 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 the frame of reference, the mindset, the intentional programming that you think especially young people who are struggling right now um should have? Well, let's start with what they do have. So, we grow 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 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 uh you're throwing money away on rent. They don't make more land, you know, and on 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 cuz real estate is religion in America. But, if you actually di- 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 hear that, they're like, "Wait, I thought the I Will Teach You to Be Rich guy is rich, so why is he renting?" They get very confused because real estate is religion. You know, another thing that is um really common today for people is there's no way to get ahead, right? Especially for young people. Social security will be around, etc. etc. And I just don't believe in that. I think if you go onto Reddit or you go onto these places where it's a it's a lot of people who are um 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 around. 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. Dude, that [ __ ] really terrifies me. And when I think about So, I'm a child of the '80s and I was just talking to a 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 collar, blue collar. So, like I was definitely not set up to be wealthy. I didn't know anybody who was wealthy, didn't know anybody who'd 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 it was super powerful." He said, "You used to talk about it all the [ __ ] time." Interesting. And of course, I Anybody that knows my story knows for decades I chased money. It was my stated goal. I wasn't That didn't feel weird to me. I was just like, "Yeah, I want to be rich." And I was pursuing that doggedly. Yeah. And of course, only end up getting rich once I let go of like understanding that that wasn't going to make me happy. So, I set that aside. But, 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. Yeah. 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 to think that way. And you said something in one of your talks in the book, I can't remember which place, but it was like even in those moments, people can be successful. But, if you're telling yourself that you're not going to be successful, then 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 if you take somebody and you just talk I 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, "Ramit, can you help me convince my husband not to waste money?" And I go, "Okay, what what's going on?" She goes, "He's spent 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 her and her husband's household income is?" I know the story. I I would have guessed otherwise. 80,000, 100,000 somewhere in there. 600,000. And the This is a perfect example. Like, rationally and logically we should literally not be talking about this because it's a rounding error. But, 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 wearing 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 cuz 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 that?" 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. And in in your book, you talk about like starting with what you want instead of what you don't want. You also talk about like what's that money dial? What's the thing like 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 like don't usually let people go into. Okay. And it's known as the comic room. Okay. And if you go in the comic book room, you will see there it's just like stacks of like comics everywhere. Okay. And that's my my iced tea. Like if my wife were going to complain about what this Tom spends his money on outside of the business, of course, it's that. Like Now, why do you love those comic books? Well, that's that's a very involved story. But I will say that there's something unique about comic books that give you um these really big ideas very rapidly. Okay. Love it. And then let let me let me share this story that just happened a couple days ago here in LA. Um I was giving a talk and I asked somebody what what they love spending on and she said, "Clothes." She said she loves buying clothes. I said great. 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 uh 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, "Topshop." And I said, "Okay, so you quadrupled your spending, where would you shop?" She said, "Topshop. I just have a lot more." And it was fascinating because when you ask people what they love spending on and what if they could spend more, what would they do? Most people have never thought about it. She had limited herself into the box of Topshop. Now, I don't know, Topshop's perfectly fine, that's fine. But I guarantee you if you quadrupled or 10x your 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, what what 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, and 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 costs mercilessly on the things they don't. Mhm. Yeah, really fast define a rich life for people cuz 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, cuz I never did [laughter] it when I was a kid, like ever. We we would go and we'd eat out once every four to six weeks if we had a coupon, and we would like share two Cokes 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 dreams got bigger and it 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 don't 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 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 3:00 p.m.? And that's where the conversation stops. So if you're watching, I want everyone to think what is your rich life and take it from the clouds to the street. I want to buy three different Lululemon tank tops a month because I don't ever want to have to wear an old one. Whatever. Go as crazy as you want. I want to take travel for a month and I want to bring my family with me. Great. Uh a rich life is different for everyone, but it's about your definition. Yeah, it's interesting and be careful what you aim for. So we just did a piece of content not too long ago and I was standing out in the backyard and um the the guy that does my Instagram was like, hey talk to people about like what you used to do when you were broke to like stay motivated. 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 uh an economic downturn means that I can't do well. I was just sort of oblivious to that in 2009 when we were starting Quest. And so, I just marched ahead assuming that it could happen or you you are thinking about it and you paint a very clear vision and so you're constantly asking yourself how 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? Like I know right now the one thing that people are thinking is [ __ ] these guys are just like off in the clouds. It's two rich guys having a rich guy conversation. It's not real. But dude, inside I'm thinking [ __ ] I used to be so poor that I couldn't pay my bills. I used to sleep on an air mattress with a [ __ ] leak in it, dude. And so, I would blow it up sit on the floor every night. Sometimes like 3:00 a.m. I'm so [ __ ] exhausted. Until and usually I would only do it halfway. So, I was [ __ ] 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 like have my air mattress in the normal part of the room. I emptied my closet. I [ __ ] slid my bed half in. So, when it deflated, you know the rack that like the door slides across, I would wake up with that [ __ ] on my back. I'm like that's where I [ __ ] 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. John Hughes convinced me accidentally that I could be rich. He just like everybody had a nice house in Chicago. And so, I was like well that's not what I have and I really want that. But I never had darkness around it. I was just like [ __ ] that's what I want. Let's do it. you say darkness, those are those beliefs that you hear people talking about sometimes, right? Like you have to step on someone to make money. If you hear that enough or or like we don't talk about money in this family, if you hear that enough, [clears throat] 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 a aspiration, it sounds like. Funny enough, you you got it from movies, but it almost seems like uh you went for it maniacally, and then once you got it, that's probably where chapter two happened. Where it's like, "Wait a minute, do I actually want some of this stuff that I got?" Like, that happened to me. I'm 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'm going to hear your story. 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. Um my parents told me, "If you want to go to college, which of course you do cuz you're Indian, what you got to pay you got to find some scholarships." And I love building systems. I think people who are kind of lazy, uh they like to do the minimum amount of work, but I like maximum results. So, I built this 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 it in the stock market." And then I lost half the money right away. I was like, "Oh, man, not that smart." So, I started learning about money, and uh and that was a really valuable lesson to me. Because no matter what, you will get the [ __ ] 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 like the project manager?" Whatever. I'm like, "Your first five hires are going to be horrible. Just acknowledge it. It's going to suck, but you got to keep going because you'll get better each time, and on your sixth you'll be great." And it could be the same for, you know, how do I find it could anything that you're looking for. How do I find the right recipe to start cooking? Well, your first 20 times you make eggs, you're going to suck. You don't just give up. You keep going until 21. So, I 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. 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. [laughter] 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. And we all hate credit cards. Let me show you how to beat 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 is kind of weird. I'll try it." They pick up the phone, even millennials who are afraid of using the phone. They picked up the phone. They did it. And they're like, "Oh, shit." You said they called the bank. They called 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. I got money back. Now I can do it." So, it's so important to be to be really incorporating your own psychology when you think about money. And part of that is, what 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 as 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? Like, I can't afford to either go in and ask for more money or to even begin applying. Like, there's so much insecurity and and just shutting down. Yeah. 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, Ramit, great to see these literally thousands of testimonials of people, but uh I'm left-handed and I I'm an albino and I live south of the equator. Will it work for me?" I'm like, "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. So, let's 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. So, 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 I routinely show people how to negotiate 10, 25,000 dollar raises all the time. And you're like, that's crazy. There's no way, etc. etc. Excuse, excuse. Here's the different approach. The The first way that most people think is like, if I'm going to negotiate for a raise, which like, oh, they might just like fire me. That's problem number one. That's 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? I would love to meet with you and I would love to discuss what it takes to be an absolute top performer in this role, 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 this? So [ __ ] good. Like this is the greatest advice of all time. Okay. Be Because we're creating value, right? And I'm not coming in saying like, 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 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 Look at that. Look at the 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?" Cuz you don't deserve $10,000 unless you go above and beyond. So, you know, "Hey boss, uh I know that I'm currently working on the 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?" Da da da. So, you you have a little discussion and you say, "Okay, am I reading this right? These three things would help me really outperform at 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 2 weeks. And at the end of 6 months, I'd like to come back and show you what I 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?" [ __ ] yeah. [laughter] Yeah. All right. Okay, right? 1,000%. So, this is So, this is the first conversation. Now, I 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 6 months from now. And by the way, this is true for negotiating a raise. 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 knows." So, I send another email now and I say, "You know what? Uh as you know, I've been updating you every week for the last 4 and 1/2 months. I have some fantastic results. You know, we hit this, we hit that. I'd love to come in and present the whole thing to you. Can we set up some time?" 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 [snorts] my salary on uh salary.com, payscale. And I discover, you know, my range should actually be 56 to 62. Okay, good. I'm writing that down. Second, I have a couple of my co-workers and I go to them and I say, "Hey, you know, we've worked together on this project. I would really appreciate it if you would send a an email to the boss and just say, 'You know what? Ramit's been 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. You're like, "This is the greatest employee on Earth." I walk in and I say, "You know what? I'm so proud we accomplished this, we accomplished that. We discussed this 6 months ago. I wanted to be a top performer. Here you go." You theatrically pull out your results out of your briefcase. The It It matters to be theatrical, right? And then, how's the boss feeling right now? Amazing. 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 uh 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 is 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 go [ __ ] deliver. And if your attitude is, "Why am I not being paid more?" and you're pissed about it, first of all, that 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 bulk at paying at that point. If you actually did it. And they're not willing to compensate, you bounce. And here's what I always tell people, you've just put yourself in the most powerful position ever because you can deliver results. Once you're good enough to actually deliver results, you can go wherever the [ __ ] you want. Man, I'm so glad. That's 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 [ __ ] 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?" I want to know. "Or 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 like show up and do your job. You need to be [ __ ] good." That's the truth that people need to hear. For sure. Yeah. No question, man. I want to go back to something you said and it revolves around the idea of uh 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 And one thing that you advise people to do, which I think is really smart and 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. See who responds. 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. 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 let's just take uh somebody watching this video right now. Hoho, Ramit, 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 is going, "Save $100 a month? I can't even save 50 cents." And it's this it's this regression not only to the mean but this just downward spiral of competing to see how bad you've got it. And what 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 so let's just complain. And I just I've no tolerance for it. I've 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 deadlift. 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 hit 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. And if you're complaining about money and you have not 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, Remit, 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?" And she goes, "Once? 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 aimed at what you want. I know the clarity is a big thing for you. Make sure you know what you want, what you're building towards. I think that's really important. Um I also think rules, which you talk about, are important. What kind of rules should people have, specifically around money? Okay, I 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% uh consistently, right? If I'm doing that, then whether I'm spending $3 or $5 on a coffee or cheesecake or whatever is irrelevant, cuz I'm hitting my goals. Uh I want anytime I'm flying over a certain amount of time, business class. Okay, now I did I wasn't able to do that for a long time, but now I am, so I do it. Um 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 move on, define right person. Well, that's that's for everyone. So, I wanted to meet and marry someone who um 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 um like my parents had an arranged marriage. Okay, so my dad flew back to India after studying here. He met my mom 7 days later they were married. Wow. Yeah. And they met they had the chance to meet but basically the way it worked especially back then was you meet you get 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 you want to feel love towards your towards your partner. But if you talk to anyone who's married let's say 10 years. Maybe they have kids maybe not. Like look at their text messages they're not like oh love you babe how you oh my god you look so sexy today. They're like did you pick up the milk? It's 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 our the way that we evaluate our potential partners. Can I trust this person? Right? If they can't reach me 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 wanted. One thing that I loved is talking about the values around the money instead of just what are you spending the 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 I violated my own rule with this, with my wife, because she 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, 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 of what it means to us. And I have to say 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 were raised. My wife want she wants money to make her feel safe. I don't The word safe to me is like saying like I want money to make me feel applesauce. Like it it's just it's not I don't even connect the two. Like I feel safe I feel safe at a baseline, and I know that if everything went away I could make money again. And I have my investments and all this stuff. I have my emergency fund. But what I needed to do in married life was to realize like my way's not the only way of looking at money. And in fact, 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 cuz I was like, "Oh, I know money and I know all this psychology stuff." No, I had to start from ground zero. The things we do agree on are We made a list of our core values when we were planning our wedding, and at the top was we want to make our friends and family feel warm and welcome. And our families come from like middle class backgrounds, and we wanted them to feel like never feel put off. So, you know, for us the simplest things were the most meaningful. We found beautiful photos that we'd all taken together, and we left it in their room with a handwritten note. And like that's what they remember. We brought our parents on our honeymoon for part of it and we just said like show up at the airport and we will take care of the rest. And to create those memories of like being in Italy and doing a cooking class together like that is like mind That's the kind of stuff that to me when I think about a rich life, that's what I think about. So finding a partner who was aligned on that was just like, oh my god, like it just feels like it just fits. Yeah, that that kind of thing is really really important. Yeah. And initiating those conversations, I know that you have some pretty cool tactics around. I know you guys schedule time to discuss Yeah, every week touch base. Yeah, walk us through that. That's unique and I think super powerful. Um I think for anyone who's at work, if you are like really good at your job or you're or maybe you're managing people, you know what it takes to drive a number. Uh you need to put time on the calendar, you need to have one-on-ones, you need to like manage a metric. And so we kind of intuitively do that and then we go home and we're like, all right, like I'm just going to sit back and like turn on Netflix and we'll eat dinner. And I have to say my wife was the one who suggested that we do these touch bases. And we get together, we have a calendar like a a 1-hour block and we put stuff on the agenda. And it sounds like it People are watching this they're like, this guy's a serial killer. Like but remember, your rich life is whatever you create. If you don't need to do it once a week, do it once every 2 weeks. But I think the what what we've discovered is creating the space for us to have these conversations about what's going well, what can we improve, you know, what do we want to do for the next 3 months. Um you know, those kind of conversations is awesome. And on a very tactical level, we started off with a few core questions. Each time we're tweaking the questions to see what's what's really good. So one question is um what did you appreciate that I did last week? Start there. Start from a place of appreciation. What's something I can do better? And it's like it's kind of opening ourselves up. Uh so there those are like little things and it might be um like I don't like the sound of you biting your nails at home or like can you please load the dishwasher differently? It could be as simple and practical as that. It can also be like I really like when we go somewhere and you compliment me in front of other people. And like if the people watching thinking about it, think about what it means to you to have a space every week, every 2 weeks, every month where you and your partner get to have these conversations. Um I would say it doesn't matter if it feels weird. There's so many things that people in this people here feel are weird. Oh, it's weird to have a conversation like this. Well, I think it's weird to go 40 years and fight about iced tea instead of having the conversation. Yeah, aggressively agree with that. You need to know that when someone is is saying like you spend too much on that, it's not about that. It's one level up. It's about your values and how you were raised. And if you don't confront that, you will forever be playing whack-a-mole about a $3 expense when the real questions are like how do I think about money? So, what rules do you have for new couples getting together, mix money, don't mix money, savings account, auto saving, like the is it start with a conversation? Is it actual write down our rules and our values? Like imagine two people, they've been dating for 6 months, they decide to move in together. Now what? Yeah. Well, first of all, if you ask people what are your money values, they have no idea. So, I don't start with that question because everyone's values are like, "Yeah, I just like to spend on things I like." It's like that's not a value. Okay, let's get more specific. For accounts, uh I believe um a joint account and then separate individual accounts. And the individual accounts are like your money, do whatever you want with it, no questions asked. Um to get prorated contributions Yeah, ba- based on based on your income, you can contribute proportionally. But I'll say this, once we got married, like my fantasy was to build this just like amazing model that was like his money, her money, our money, just like all this flow and automation. And like Cass was not having it. She was like not interested. I was like, "The model, it's like so cool." And I like again, I did this prototypically male thing. I was like, "Let's talk about like cell C4. Look at how it flows." Sounds amazing. It It is amazing. Now it's amazing, but I had to I had to start and say like "How do we think about money? Where should we prioritize? Where like what's important to us?" And so that was the conversation that I needed to like slow down. And at work I have this concept we use this concept go slow to go fast. A lot of companies do this. I needed to slow way down. We eventually got to the model, but the model and the math was the last step. Once you get to the math, just like in negotiation, once you get to the dollar figure, that's like the last part. But the 85% of what does money mean to you? How did your mom and dad talk about money? You might discover, you know, many couples one partner earned all the money, the other did not. And so guess what? If you are the child of that relationship, you might have that belief and you might be resentful that you have to earn money or you don't. So that's a conversation to be had. And the way you can do that is you can say you know, if we close our eyes and wave a magic wand and we didn't have any debt and it was our rich life 3 years from now, what does that look like? That's a great place to start from a place of imagination. And now they have a context for why they're even talking about it. So again, rich life is all about starting from what your rich life is. And hey, maybe they can't go there this year. Maybe it's going to take them 2 years to save, but at least they wake up and they have a dream. That's important. Yeah, I think that's wildly important. So talk to me about saving and debt. How should people think about saving first, debt first? Like, what does that look like? So, there's there's a mathematical answer, and then in my belief, there's the psychological answer. And I like psychology because psychology trumps math any day of the week. So, [snorts] if you have debt, let's just say you've got a student loan or or maybe a credit card, uh your interest rates, maybe it's 4, 5, 6, or even 15%. Technically, if it's if it's anything higher than like 8%, you should be paying that off as aggressively as possible. So, if you've got credit card debt, you really want to prioritize that. But, the psychological side is I think it's really important to build the habit of where you want to go. So, for example, you might Let's just take the fitness example. If you don't have an hour to train every day, maybe you have 15 minutes. I think it's still worth doing it for 15 minutes cuz as your time opens up, you it's much easier to go from 15 to 30 than zero to 15. So, if you have debt and you have you want to save, I think that's great. You can do both. What I might do is I might look at my interest rate on my debt, and let's say that you've got 300 bucks a month that you can use. I would probably put most of it towards the debt, depending on the interest rate, but I would definitely save 20, 50, $100 automatically. And I want to emphasize one thing for people. When a lot of people think about money, it's like, "Oh my god, there's all these accounts and 401k and annuity and all this stuff." I spend less than 1 hour per month on my money. That's how it should be. Money should be boring. It should not be dramatic. You should not be looking at all these TV shows and seeing all It's no, it's boring. It's calm, right? I say from hot to cool. Hot is like stuff on TV and oh my god, I feel stressed and embarrassed. What I want to do is take it from hot to cool. Cool is do I want to go on vacation this year? Or is it worth it for me to buy this handbag or this jacket? Okay, it is or it's not, but I can make a cool decision. That's what I want people to do. So, your money's automatically saved. It's also automatically paying off debt. It's automated to the point where you actually know the exact month and year your debt will be paid off, and that is such a relief. Yeah, that the whole FIRE lifestyle and tracking that stuff I find really interesting. And I've heard you talk about how FIRE can get a little um obsessive version of an eating disorder where it's like you're a little too hardcore about it. Um If you if you live in the spreadsheet, like okay, this is for this is a rarity. Most people don't spend any money any time on their money, which they should. But then you have this very tiny percentage of people who are borderline obsessed with it. And if you find yourself like waking up in the morning and logging into Excel and running another Monte Carlo simulation, you got a real problem. So, really once you set things up, a rich life is lived outside the spreadsheet. Like this is a rich life. The fact that we get to meet and we get to talk and we get to help so many people. This is a rich life. A rich life can be going on vacation. A rich life can be eating at a restaurant or cooking at home. That is a rich life, and I can tell you after you get your basics in order, a rich life is not on your computer screen or in a spreadsheet. A rich life is lived outside the spreadsheet. All right. Where can people find you to get some help? You can find me at iwillteachyoutoberich.com. Get on my newsletter. We send a ton of awesome stuff. Instagram and Twitter, I'm @ramit. And you can find me all over the web. And my book, of course, I will teach you to be rich at any bookstore. Amazing, man. What is driving you? What's the impact that you want to have on the world? I want to help people really honestly create their rich life and to be unapologetic about it. And it can be as crazy, absurd, extravagant, fill in the blank. as you want, but I want every single person. My dream is that the people watching this, they read my book, and my email address is all over the book. My dream is that they they come and they say, "You know what? I used your book. I applied it. This is my rich life." And they just tell me. That is my dream. I love that, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. [applause] Guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get amazing stuff like this all the time. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Brother, that was amazing. Oh, man, that was awesome. Thank you so much for that. Someone said, um she only gets work because she's pretty. [music] My first thought was like, "What are they talking about?" Because that never would occur to me, and I I started to realize I need to really share more of my testimony because I don't think people understand that what they may see or perceive is something that I literally battled for 25 years, the first 25 years of my life.