Animal Spirits Podcast - Living a Rich Life with Ramit Sethi

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

On today's episode of Animals Spirits: Talk Your Book we are joined by Ramit Sethi to talk about his new Netflix Show, How to Get Rich. Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, we are joined today by a special guest for me to say tea of I Will Teach You to Be Rich and How to Be Rich, Fame, join the show where meet. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. You're the first personal finance blog ever started reading probably 2006 or 2007, and I read the background on you, and the idea was you were trying to teach your friends at Stanford about personal finance, and you set up like a seminar to get them to come in person to learn about it.

And you said no one showed, right? And I just think it's so great that we've seen this evolution of that's why you started your blog because no one would show up. And now people like personal finance enough to watch a show on Netflix about it. Can you believe that Netflix actually gave you a show about personal finance on their streaming platform? No, because, you know, when I started teaching personal finance in 2003, 2004 at Stanford, it was basically just one story of heartbreak and depression after another. You know, my friends, sitting there saying, oh, I got my third overdraft fee. I go, great, let's talk about it.

I have this one hour class. It's free. I'll teach you all I learned about money. Like, yeah, that sounds awesome. And then nobody ever shows up. So it wasn't some master stroke of starting a blog. It was just like, how come no one's listening? And then to fast forward 20 years and to have a Netflix show, no, I never, ever would have believed it. I think that Rameet is our generation's Dave Ramsey, who's not promising 12% annual returns. Is that a compliment or an insult? Because there are several differences between us, including one, I believe in masks, two. I don't promise 12% bullshit returns.

Is that a compliment or an insult? No, no, no. Well, fair enough. I meant that as a compliment, of course. Like, he is our generations. You are the face of personal finance for people under 40. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And hopefully, you know, we get to expand the definition of personal finance. It's not just a spreadsheet number, it's not just some boring compound interest chart, it's a rich life. So when most people think about personal finance, they think about decimal places and ratios. And when I think about money, and when I look at your money, I see a trip to Disneyland with your children. I see a beautiful cashmere coat. I see taking a month off to travel or visit your elderly parents. These are the things that get me excited. So money is a small but important part of a rich life.

but a rich life is so much bigger. I love how you talk about most of personal finance. It's boring shit. It's saving money. It's not drinking Starbucks. And you've cemented this thing. Like, don't think about the $3 questions. Think about the $30,000 questions.

And every time I spend money luxuriously, I think about you. Well, not every time. Most of the time. And I'll give you an example. And I'm pretty sure I DM'd you this. And I think you'll be very, this will put a smile on your face. Because you are about intentionally spending money on things that make you happy. So what did I do?

I am the father of two young boys. My wife works full-time. She has a three-hour commute. And so when we put the boys down, the last thing that we want to do at 8 o'clock at night, which at that point we had to start cleaning the house, right? The last thing that we wanted to do was fold our laundry. And so we would do the laundry and we would pile and pile and pile. And on Sunday night, we would have a giant pile of wrinkled clothes that we would have to take

care of. And I said, what are we doing? Remit would punch me in the nose and say, get somebody to take care of this for you. So for $80 a week, I have somebody who comes to my house, does all of my laundry, folds it and puts it away. And I know it sounds like a first class, whatever. And it is. And it is the best $80 I could ever spend. And I can't imagine not doing that going forward. Oh, man. I love that. I love that for you. I love that for your wife. I love that for your kids who get relaxed parents. And I love it for your rich life because, you know, if one or both partners are working hard, what you should do is you should put your hand out and say, what do we get? What do we get for all this work we're doing? What do we get

for the savings rate that we've got for these investments? What do we get? And if it's some boring number in a spreadsheet, then you really miss the ball. You really miss the entire game. sometimes a rich life is as simple as our laundry is done on Sunday night and we can start the week off fresh that's how it goes that's awesome I love the format of the show

it feels a little bit like an HD TV show to me or one of the Bravo shows and I like that it's kind of like fast-paced but it's also very bingeable because it's not like you're starting one episode with one person or couple and finishing with them it's their whole journey so how much of us say

did you have in how you wanted that show format because I really like how you do it. Well, thank you. That actually means a lot. I really appreciate that. I did have quite a bit of a say in it. So I'm an executive producer on the show. And so when I got together with our development team, we really spent months trying to plot out how to make a money show that's exciting. And if you think about it, there hasn't been a new money show created in about 20 years. You know, Susie Orman was the last one. Her show ended around 2015. But money historically has been thought of at networks as boring.

I mean, who really wants to see somebody pulling out a spreadsheet and looking at numbers? It's not exciting. And that's not what TV's for. TV's primarily for entertainment. So I was all good with that. I told Netflix, look, I have an idea. I have a vision. We got together with some really smart development folks.

But there were things that I learned along the way as well. So I had an awesome showrunner. and she helped me understand how character arcs work, cliffhangers, especially at a place like Netflix. If you watch episode one, at the very end of episode one, you will not be able to stop. You will not, because the cliffhanger at the end of episode one and subsequent episodes quite dramatic. So I did have a say, but I also learned a lot going through the process. Is there anything that you learned about people's personal finances or the way that people take? because you've been in the content game for a long time.

And a lot of it was broadcasting to, by the way, credit to you, you've, I genuinely believe that you've helped, I don't know, is it hundreds of thousands of people like better their financial lives, which is just incredible. But there's a big difference between putting your work out and getting intimate, which you did with the podcast,

which you're doing with the TV show. Is there any, was there any like, ha, I can't believe like that's so obvious. I just, it never occurred to me. Yeah, a lot. Okay, so I've done Instagram stuff. I've had digital programs that I've been doing for 15 plus years, et cetera. There's nothing quite like walking into somebody's house

and talking about their financials. In America, that is one of the most, if not the most intimate thing that you can do with somebody you don't know is walk into their house. I'm meeting their children. I'm seeing what's in their living room. They're giving me a tour of their house. You have to understand when people welcome you into their house,

especially a finance person. They're rigid. They're expecting me to pull out a budget. Okay, here's what you're doing wrong. And that's just the way that America talks about money. It sucks. Oh, you're spending too much on asparagus. You made the wrong decision.

Look, you're not going to be able to retire. I told Netflix day one, I said, I'm not doing that show. And I don't want to go to some couple in the middle of nowhere and look at their Safeway receipt and tell them they're doing it all wrong. And they were like, good. We don't want that either. We want you. I was like, okay, cool.

So that's number one thing I learned, which is that you have to put people at ease. Number two, I learned that there's this phrase in Hollywood, you know, people forget about the cameras. It's totally true. Once the cameras start rolling and once we were talking, people would say exactly what they would say in any intimate situation. You can see that in the first five minutes of the show. Those two things were surprising. Probably the most shocking thing for me. Okay.

listen, if I went on a TV show, I would be dialed in. Like, I would be ready to go. I would have my homework done. I would have done my research. I would be dialed in, okay? That's just not true on TV. Like, okay, let me put it this way. At this point in my career, when I text people, usually they text back. I was sometimes texting folks on the show because I was on the other side of the country. I was like, hey, what's going on? How's the homework coming? Anything I can do to help, and I just wouldn't get texts back for like a week at a time. And at first I was like, wait, what the hell? And then second, I actually kind of find it refreshing. Because like I said, I don't really get treated like that anymore. And so it made me remember, hey, I'm just a moment

in their day. And I am not the most important thing. And that's real. So you really get these glimpses of what reality truly is because it's all real. And one of the realest things is, I text people and they just don't text me back. Well, you had the one couple who at first said, like, we're done. We're out of the show. Yeah. And then they brought you back. But are you ever, because Michael and I get even just emails for people, we're always kind of surprised the willingness that people put their faith and trust in you because you talk about finance and they won't talk about it with like their family, but they'll share with us like, I make this much money. I have this much saved. I want to do this. I spend this much. Are you ever surprised at some of those stuff that

people are willing to share with you that you're like, oh man, they really trust. me because they probably wouldn't share this with their co-workers or anyone else that they interact with on a daily basis. After doing my podcast and the show, now I'm not surprised. Before I was absolutely blown away. Because, you know, when I started the podcast, for example, where I bring couples on and they share every bit of financial information, including their income, debt, et cetera, and I have couples who have $800,000 in debt.

I had a couple where they were married 21 years. she was about to divorce him because he's too cheap and their net worth was about $13 million. And I mean, these are real stories, okay? All over the spectrum. I have people involved in MLMs. I have all kinds of stuff. What I've learned is, yes,

it's actually really hard to get people to share their financials because people, they keep it very intimate. But it's a testament to how lonely people feel about money that if they know you're there to help them, to judge them, but to help them, they'll reveal everything. And that's, that's, I'm compassionate about that because I've had parts of my life where I was really embarrassed. I felt like everyone learned this one thing. I just was absent the day they taught everyone else in America, for example,

how to lift. I'm like, where'd everyone learn how to deadlift? Like, was I sick that day? What the hell? Like 300 million people in America know how to do this and I'm like, uh-huh. But so you have compassion when you understand not all of us know what compound interest is or the difference between a Roth IRA and Vanguard. To a lot of people, those two things are basically the same thing. And so that's what I've learned along the way. Rameed, I think some of the things that some of the people when you discuss their situation, it doesn't make logical sense.

But money is not logical. Money is emotional. And I think that, I don't know what the age is, from zero to 13, 15, whatever it is, you are shaped, you are fully formed and fully baked, and it is very, very, very hard to undo something that somebody saw or experienced early on in their life. I'll give you an example that happened to me. So my parents got divorced and my mother had to get a job and she had never worked

and she was probably making $40,000 a year. And we went to a diner and I was young. I was probably seven or eight years old and I wanted to get something that was too expensive. It was probably like an entree at a diner, right? So instead of $7, it was $12. And I couldn't because of money. And that did something to me. I don't know what it did, but I remember that, like, vividly.

So if you're just listening and being my psychologist, I think I would say that it put me like the other way where I was maybe the opposite of frugal because I didn't want to experience that. And I was just happy to spend, spend, spend, spend. So moments like that, and we all have different moments, shape you forever and can never, ever be undone. Yeah. Well, I think that childhood has an effect on us when it comes to money. Like you say, you remember that vividly. I'm sure you can remember what the diner look like, what it smelled

like. I often ask people on the podcast and on the show, I'll say, what do you remember about money growing up? And the answer is just so fascinating. So probably 80% of the time I get comments like this. They'll say, my parents would always say, we can't afford that. That's a classic one. By the way, parents stop saying that because you say that. You say it 1,000, 10,000 times by the time they become adolescents, they really believe it. And then even though they may have a very nice job later on, making good incomes, saving up, 20% savings rate, they're going to go to a diner and they're going to look at something that costs $15 and think to themselves, I can't afford it. And then they end up on my podcast. So please stop saying that, okay?

You know, mine with my kids, my kids, they ask like, how much does this cost? How much is a car cost, how much was the house cost? And I think a lot of people don't like talking about that. And I've been telling them, like, it costs this much. And they're like, whoa, that's a lot. So like, I'm trying to let them know. Yes, you got it. So that's another number two thing I hear is, oh, my parents never talked about it at all. Okay. And you also have lots of class distinctions. So socioeconomic. We talk about class. We talk about gender. We talk about power on the podcast. Things that are very present, but invisible. And we all shy away from it because all, all these personal finance nerds love sells and spreadsheets and sell C4. C4 is so logical.

I go, stop it. We have something very obvious in front of us. Why don't we shine a light on it? And so when we finally start interrogating these beliefs, what happens is you start to realize, wow, so many of the things I believe about money, if I ask you, why, why, where'd that come from? Trace back to when you were seven years old and mom or dad lost their job and this is what happened to your family. And it's fine. That happened to you. You can't remove that from your past, but you can acknowledge it. As an adult, you can add some context around it. And now you can choose, what do I want the next chapter of my life to be? Am I in debt because I have the same behaviors as my parents or my family? Okay, that happened. That's a part of me. But I can change it. Here's how. one of the things people always say is one side of the personal finance debate will say we need to have personal finance in every school in the country we need to teach this and then you have these academic practitioners will say no we've done the studies if you teach people personal finance it doesn't work my whole thing is they're probably just teaching it the wrong way or teaching the wrong stuff like what do you think is an is a way that we could actually enact change to get people at a younger age because it is true you you get out of college you learn all this stuff and then you come out you don't know how to balance your checkbook or how to spend your money correctly no one teaches you you this besides maybe the stuff that you witnessed growing up. So what is the right way to teach people about this? First of all, when was the last time you balanced your checkbook?

Exactly. This is what people who talk about educating high school kids talk. They literally use archaic terms. I'm like, what are you going to pull out an abacus right now? And they are stuck 40 years. And now I know you're not, Ben, because you're completely up to date. There are still plenty of old people at the grocery store where use checks. It just pisses me off every time though, because they're not the ones who should be teaching a 13-year-old about personal finance. So no, I actually don't. A lot of people in personal finance

are surprised by this, but no, I actually am not an advocate of adding a personal finance class to high schools. Why? I'll tell you a few reasons. Number one, who's going to teach it? You want some overburdened high school teacher to teach personal finance? Okay, what are they going to take away?

How are they going to get trained? Who's going to create the curriculum, which brings me to point number two? Do you think I want Wells Fargo and Bank of America, these shitty banks putting their curriculum inside the schools, public schools across the country? No. Third, we can't even agree on basic fundamental truths in this country. How are we going to have a discussion about personal finance? And this is so funny when I post on Twitter because I talk about politics and people go, Ramit, stop being political. I follow you for money. Why do you have to bring up politics?

I go, are you stupid? Do you not understand how political money is? Money is. by definition political. It's the reason that housing is so unaffordable. It's the reason that health care is so unaffordable. You're telling me money is not political, read a book. Okay, so then there are several other reasons, including one, kids don't really care about learning personal finance until it's relevant to them. I have given speeches and talked in front of big crowds, thousands of people. I have a Netflix show. Man, the scariest audience I ever presented in front of was a bunch of, like, 12 or 14-year-olds. Like, I had these jokes.

I was like, these jokes kill. I know it. These jokes are amazing. These kids truly do not give a damn. They just looked at me. I was like, what do you guys love spending money on? They gave me the craziest answers I've ever heard. And I was like, these kids are too scary for me, man.

And if I can't do it, and I'm really good at what I do, how do we expect some local public school teacher to be teaching personal finance? No, I think personal finance should be changed. in many ways, structurally and educationally, but no, I'm not calling for education in high schools to be changed for personal finance, particularly because the research is quite mixed on its effectiveness.

Rameh, the topic of the year has been, of all things, in personal finance, I think cash, right? Like, what to do with your cash? Wait, are you serious? Kind of. What are you going to say, like, the question where they go, oh, what should I do with my cash

that I don't need for seven months? No, no, no, no. I'm not going to ask you for advice. I was just going to say, when you sit down with people, how do you balance talking about what they want to talk about today, whatever the topic of the day is, versus what really matters beyond just the next 12 months? Okay, love it. This is a great question.

So, you know, for me, it's like driving in the fog. When you're driving in the fog and you can only see 50 feet away, if someone's like, what's going to happen at that curve four miles down the road? You're like, what are you talking about? Dude, I'm just trying to get the next 50 feet and not get it. in an accident. And that is how so many of us are with our money. We literally live month to month. Even though some people have money sitting in a checking account or a savings account, we are not taught how to think at the annual level, certainly not at the 5, 10, or 25 year level.

And this is one of the reasons there's such a disconnect between the personal finance industry and everyday people. The personal finance industry is like, look at this compound interest chart. The compounding in the last five years is where all the... gains come from. And people are like, what hell are you talking about, man? I'm just trying to pay my bills this month. And then the advisor will go, well, what are you talking about? You have all this money. It's in your net worth. And already you've lost the everyday person because you're speaking at different levels of analysis. So one of the things I like to do is to formally say, look, it's driving in the fog. I want to give you permission to put that car in park. Let's pull over

and let's zoom out for a second. Let's talk about your rich life. What does it look like. What does it look like a year from now? Where do you want to go a year from now? And depending on who they are, how adept they are, I might vary the thing. I might go, let's do a 10-year bucket list exercise. That's what my wife and I did. It might be five years, one year. It could even be this weekend. What would your perfect weekend look like? And in that case, you know what happens, Michael? One hundred percent of the time, they never say, uh, my rich life weekend is doing laundry for three hours. I go, great. Let's pay that away. Fifty bucks. Done. And And they go, oh my God.

Like, it's almost like they say, I never realized that I could do that. Why? Because so many of us live under this idea that money is meant only to be restricted and saved. We've got to cut 5% on asparagus, 5% on laundry, 5% on eating out, 5% on coffee. I go, that sucks. Who wants to live like that? So instead, I want them to spend extravagantly on the things they love. Could be laundry, could be travel, whatever.

and once we start having this type of conversation, now they're dreaming. They've elevated themselves beyond the end of the month. And now we can talk about some structure. We can talk about the difference between saving and investing. We can talk about time and money. But I can't get into that right away because it's just a foreign concept for most people. When I think, oh, sorry, when I first had the conversation with my wife when we were getting married and we had like the money talk, right? And I'm this finance dork who is all on the spreadsheets, like you said. I was totally in it. And we're talking about, like, how we're going to save retirement.

And I'm trying to, I, like, made a PowerPoint presentation with, like, stock market charts. I love this, dude. Wait, can you share that? You know, I did that, too. Like, I had an agenda in my Google calendar. Okay, we all did this. Oh, yeah. And I showed her, and she's like, well, you know, and she's like, I want to just understand how we're investing.

And, like, just completely her eyes glazed over. And she's like, what will be talking about here? Yeah. And it took me, like, a few years of marriage. to realize like, oh, she doesn't really care that much about that. She just wants to get to the point where, like, I'm not micromanaging the finances, and I'm not, like, she can just get her nails done and get a Starbucks, and she really likes to, like, throw parties and give presents to other people. She's, like, very selfless. I probably spend more money on, like, material

possessions than my wife does. That is a very nice sweater you're wearing. I see that. I have, like, more clothes than she does. And so it took to realize, like, her whole thing was, like, I just want to be comfortable, not if I spend this amount of money, I don't want to have to worry about it or stress about it. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's like the level she needed to get to, but it took like a few years of us, like, budding heads to realize, like, oh, this is where she is, where I am the micromanaging, you know, strategy spreadsheet guy. And we were just on a completely different wavelength. So, like, knowing your audience is so important with that kind of conversation. It is. It is. And I think spreadsheet dorks, I'm included in that.

you know, we're so excited because we're like, we crack the code. Do you understand that tweaking this cell, it actually goes all the way down the model? And, you know, like normal people just truly do not give a shit about that. But I believe every single person does care about money just in their own way. Sometimes when I ask people, what is your rich life? They'll say, I want to shop at Whole Foods without having to worry about the price. I go, great. I love that.

That's a beautiful vision. You pick something up. You go, that would be good for the family. pick it up, take it home. When I lived in New York in my early 20s, my rich life was being able to order appetizers because as a kid I couldn't afford to do that. And then if I was here in August going to a business meeting, be able to hop in a taxi, not get up sweating off the subway to go to some meeting. Those are small, but really meaningful to me at the time. Here's the thing, though. What I've, I love people crafting a very visceral, vivid vision, but I also want to encourage people that as your financial status changes, you've got to adapt those dreams. And they should get bigger. It's a tragedy to live a smaller life than you have to. I hear from people on the podcast, they're making six figures, sometimes seven figures. I have folks with eight figure net worths. I go, what's your rich life? And one guy just said, coffee.

I was like, what? He goes, I love coffee. And then he just, he talked about going to the grocery store and buying coffee. This guy had a lot of money. I was like, I just point blank, listen to him, I'm like, that's boring. What are you going to buy two Dunkin' Donuts coffees? Ooh, wow. That's not exciting.

That's not vivid enough to get you motivated and certainly not enough to get a partner motivated. And so I'm constantly challenging people to think about their rich life in multiple dimensions. If you love generosity, if you are. are selfless. Put a structure to that. My wife and I sat down during COVID, we go, we want to tip much more generously because folks were delivering food. We go, let's set an amount and we have to give that every single month. Damn, the amount was pretty big for us. And so we go, wow, that means basically every time somebody comes by, we got to tip him at least 20 bucks. Now that's for us. Adapt it for your needs. If it's travel, turn that dial and ask yourself,

if we love traveling together, what would it look like if we could quadruple our spend on traveling? Again, you don't have to, but I want you to dream. Most people, they go like this, they go, well, I probably like travel four times longer. I go, okay, that's cool. Quantity is good. Would you sit on the same seat on the airplane? Hmm, would you eat at the same type of restaurants? Hmm, who would you take with you? Now, that's interesting. Because at the beginning level of personal finance, it's always about the what. What do I buy? What kind of car? What kind of sweater? But at the highest level of personal finance, it's always about the who. Who do I bring with me? Who do I surprise with my generosity? Who do I involve in our rich life? And that's what I want people to think about.

Ramead, I love that you take people outside of the spreadsheet because that's where most personal finance starts. And that maybe is where it should end, not begin. So I love that you do that and you focus on the big picture stuff. One of the biggest problems people have is marrying the wrong spouse or being with the wrong partner. And I know you've seen that a million times. Is there anything that can be done ahead of time to learn that the person that you love, you just might not be compatible with and your life might not work because you just see money so differently? I think so. I think so. I think that there are some things that can be done. Of course, you never truly know until time goes on in a relationship. But the first thing that I've learned

from talking to millions of people is it's okay for money to be a priority in your rich life. It does not mean money has to be everything, okay? But money determines where you live, what you eat, what kind of classes your children might go to. In many ways, it determines some of you the values that you're going to live for the rest of your life. It's okay to say, this is important to me. I want to be on the same page with my partner. We don't even have to agree about everything, but the big things. The big things would be things like, we believe it's important to save. We believe we should invest every single month. We believe we should spend on the things we value and not spend too much on the things we don't. Those are core values. You can find

out some of this stuff while you're dating. By the way, it's really hilarious. Sometimes people in personal finance, there's always this perennial question, when should you talk about money? Have you seen some of the folks, they're like, you should talk about it on date one. Like, you should really discuss your, I'm like, have you guys ever been on a date? Good luck. Who that hell talks about that on date one? Get real. Get real, please. Okay, so I go, listen, just ignore that advice. But there are certain things you can do to find out how your potential partner thinks about money. You can simply say, what do you remember growing up with your family? Like, what was that like? Was it two parents, one? Where'd you grow up? Do you guys go on vacation? Like, you're genuinely curious. You're

not out there trying to, you know, parse all this data, then there are these natural moments, I think, when you are in a relationship early on where it's natural to talk about money. The first trip you take together, maybe if you go out to a really nice restaurant, you're like, hey, I'm so excited that you invited me. I can't wait to go. I just want to clarify, you know, just put it out on the table. Like, how are you thinking about the bill for this dinner? Because it's important to me, I contribute, but I just wanted to see what you think. natural totally cool not putting anyone on the spot but just shining a light then of course a few other moments moving in together uh getting engaged getting married having children if you buy your first bitcoin

yeah buying your first bitcoin you're like why'd you do that why the fuck did you do that um and you find out your partner has like six monitors in a dark room and they have all these game stop you know meme stop and you're on a subreddit and i'm just like i feel so sorry you know i feel sorry for in those situations not even the people who lose all their money. I feel sorry for their spouses. There are spouses who open this dark, damp door every day and they see their partner sitting there dripping and sweat for like nine months.

And they're like, what are you doing on this subreddit? And their partner goes, oh, you wouldn't understand. Like, this is where the real wealth is created. And I'm just like, just leave that person. Just get out. Is that healthy? I think so. I don't know.

Okay. So what was like the biggest surprise for you of doing a TV? show like behind the scenes Hollywood stuff that you're like I didn't know how this world worked oh man complete surprise to me okay well first of all let me just say I'm like an internet dude so I knew nothing about Hollywood I moved to L.A and I had this email this email came in while I was living in New York is like from Netflix and they asked if I had representation I was like what's representation so I went on Google and I searched entertainment lawyer literally that's how I found my lawyer and so he taught me a lot about the ropes so

Two things have really surprised me. One of them is people love TV. Like they love it. I did not truly internalize this, but when I learned how casting is done and how many people apply to be on TV shows, it blew me away. And in my mind, I'm like, why are you doing this? Like for me, I have a, I love my life. I play on the internet. I tell jokes. I make fun of cheap people on Twitter and then I go take a nap. I'm like, this is an A plus life. It's great. I don't need to be on, you know, doing all this stuff. No. So when we were traveling, I would ask the crew who had shot a lot of reality TV. I'm like, why do all these people, like, why do people want to be on TV? And they looked at me like I was crazy because they're in the TV world. They go, do you understand

what TV means to America? I go, not really. And they're like, it's in every room. It's the biggest thing there is. And so that I viscerally understood by the end of filming. The second thing is I learned that they call people like me talent, like the host of a show, they call me talent. My wife hates when I say that word. I'm like, it's not my word. It's just, it's Hollywood. What am I going to do? But I've learned they don't tell talent anything. So like I'm a CEO. Okay, I've been running my business 20 years. I have people who work for me. I'm like, give me the logistics. Break it down. What's working? What's not. That's how I get good. And when I was on set, the feedback I was getting was like, great, great, keep it up. I'm like, I know it's not great. Tell me, give me constructive

feedback. And it was, it was really hard to get honest feedback. And it made me understand why some Hollywood superstar, actor, actress who's been doing it for 25 years, why some of them are true divas. Yeah, because no one ever told them the truth for 25 years. You have to fight to get the truth. And I found that to be extremely true in Hollywood. Well, as a Netflix shareholder and technically your boss, I just want to say thank you for making a great show. But, no, in all seriousness, we're like, we are huge fans and, and it might sound weird to say, but we're just, we're so happy for your success. It is so well deserved. You've helped hundreds of thousands of people and just keep gone, brother. It's just so great to see. Thank you guys. And I just

want to say, I have such a mutual respect for what you guys do. I think that you make money fun, and that, in my opinion, is the highest compliment that I can pay because money is fun. It's entertaining. It's aspirational. And the way that you guys have your banter, the way that you keep up with current events, but also keep it real with basic foundational concepts, that is how money should be taught. And I appreciate you guys having me on the show today. Thanks for me. Amazing. Thank you. Go-girl.