Habits and Hustle - Episode 88: Ramit Sethi – Personal Finance Advisor, NYT Best Selling Author, Co-Founder of GrowthLab.com

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Ramit Sethi is known as one of the biggest names in personal finance in America. He is the author of the 2009 New York Times Best Seller, I Will Teach You to Be Rich and founder of GrowthLab.com, and owner and a co-founder of PBworks, a commercial wiki website. This episode is jam-packed with incredibly actionable tips. Ramit floods this episode with such great knowledge that we even recommend pausing it during certain segments just to execute on some of the great things you can do right now to improve your personal finance. These 90 minutes will be a great value-add to your life, please listen and learn! Youtube Link to This Episode Ramit’s Website Ramit’s Instagram Ramit’s Twitter ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to The Habits and Hustle Podcast. A podcast that uncovers the rituals, unspoken habits and mindsets of extraordinary people. A podcast powered by Habit Nest. Now here's your host, Jennifer Cohen. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I've been anxiously waiting to talk to you. I've watched about a bill of your talks and I have to tell you your book, I will teach you to be rich. Here it is. You know when you kind of like do this, like the book where you kind of like, what do you call it, you earmarked? Or doggie, yeah, doggie or the, I of like, what do you call it? You earmarked? I don't hear it. Yeah, yeah, dog ear.

I'm like, OK, you know I'm going to do this. And that way I'll have a better, you know, I can like laser in on a few things. Well, like I would have to say that 96%, like 95% of this book is dog ear. So amazing. Well, I appreciate that. That's what an author always wants to hear.

I mean, I love seeing my book, you know, Torn Up and Notes in it. And it's meant to be used. So I appreciate that. No, I love it. And you're like, you're my kind of financial guy because you kind of say, kind of the antithesis of what a lot of other people say. And you're very real and honest. And there's like no BS. And yeah, I really like your book and you've revised it. This is the book that you actually wrote in 2009 and it, right? And then you revised it. So, how many times have you revised it then? This is the first revision. So, the one you have in your hand is the second edition.

Okay. And I was not too keen on revising it because I don't know, maybe I'm just a bad writer, but it takes me a long time to write. Oh. And a lot had changed. And I wanted to add a lot of new lessons that I learned and new tools. And in retrospect, I'm really glad that I did it because there are 10 years of people who had never read the book and they read it and it's much more modern and appropriate for them.

Yeah, no, I mean, like, you can people who don't know much about finance can really kind of sink their teeth in and like understand, that's probably me on that. And like I have so many questions for you. I don't, like I said, I don't even know where to begin. I guess let's start with the beginning, right? So first of all, how did you, like you obviously talk a lot about your Indian background? You know, your Indian, your background.

How did you kind of start to think of yourself as a financial guru or expert. Is something happening in your background? I remember hearing a story that you were saying when you were talking about how your dad was like trying to buy a car and he lost the car deal because of some like things that, what do you call it? Like the, the mats in the car and I would think that,

that would make you kind of a frugal person or a, or a big sped in thrift later on, like kind of one extreme or the other. I was definitely raised in a frugal family. And part of it was just by necessity, you know, my parents are immigrants, my mom stayed home with four kids, my dad went to work. And so we just didn't have a lot of money. And growing up, you know, now I hear about people who have a summer house or they go on vacation

to some country, that was not the case for us. Vacation for us was driving in our van from Northern California to Southern California to stay with family. Like that was it. And I think by necessity, we learned how to stretch a dollar. And lots of things we did, we would have cars, and we would keep them for as long as they would possibly.

Okay. We would, I found out later in life, I asked my mom one day in my 20s, I said, how did you afford to put all of us in sports? And she told this story to me that I didn't actually know at the time. She called up the local soccer league and said, I've got four kids in soccer. These fees are too much. What can you do? And they said, if you come early and chalk the fields, put

chalk on the fields, we'll wave the fees. So imagine knowing that your mom was out there chalking the fields before soccer games at like 8 a.m. on a Saturday. I mean, it's not valuable. And yet what that taught me was sometimes you just have to raise your hand and ask. And there's always a way. Money is usually not the primary problem. In my mom and dad's case, it was simply asking for what they wanted and learning how to navigate the system. And then as I grew older, I learned about different things. I learned about applying to scholarships to pay my way through college.

I learned about applying to scholarships to pay my way through college. I learned about earning more. And I started to also develop new philosophies, not just about cutting back, but also about earning more, which led eventually to I will teach you to be rich. Well, you know, a couple things. First of all, I love that story about your mom, right? Because, you know, the truth is you never get anything unless you ask. And that's like, that's kind of like my entire philosophy. I just did an entire TED talk on asking for what you want,

not just defaulting to what's in front of you, basically. So you're speaking my language. What I also, I love about what you do is you create a framework for people. And then you also incorporate the psychology behind why people do what they do. And then you have ways that they can dip in the butt sort of speak, right?

Which again, is why. I think it's very relatable. One of your, what was it that I was looking at? I can't remember what it was exactly, but one of your big money rules, you're talking about marrying somebody, like making sure that like you, who you marry, it's a part of like your money rules.

Like we talk a little bit about your money rules and kind of things that people should kind of keep in mind that are important. and kind of things that people should kind of keep in mind that are important. So I love hearing people's rules for life. And whether you're a parent and you have a certain philosophy on raising your children, whether you are really into personal style

and you have a philosophy, I don't have to agree with it, but I just love talking to people who have really thought about the things they love and have built up some sort of philosophy and set of rules for it. I just love it. And I teach money, business, careers, and psychology. So of course, I've thought about this stuff a lot. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to show people my rules. And so I created something called Remiets 10 Money Rules. You can Google it.

And what you might think those rules are is actually not really what they are. And you can tell that because when I ask people to create their own rules, their rules always sound like this. when I ask people to create their own rules, their rules always sound like this. Never spend money on anything besides a generic bread. Never, ever order dessert. Never, never, no, never, never, no. It's always restriction. That's not the I will teach you to be rich way. In fact, if you get the five or ten big wins right in life, you can buy all the appetizers and coffee you want.

You don't have to worry about these $3 questions. You can really start asking $30,000 questions. So here are some of my rules. One of them is always have one year of emergency fund cash. That's sort of a straightforward one. Again, you can agree or disagree with me on the duration, but what does that mean for me? It means that if I've got that cash,

I'm secure if something goes wrong, fine. Let's talk about the more interesting rules. Another one is for flights longer than four hours, business class. Okay, now if you're listening to this and your first reaction is must be nice. Well, remember, these are my rules, not yours. So for me, I decided once I hit a certain level that I wanted to travel comfortably. But I don't really care about the car I drive. My computer was eight years old.

A MacBook Air, I was running my entire business off it. Just not important to me. But when I fly, I want to fly comfortably. And so that was another one of my rule. Let me give you a couple more. Never question spending money on books, appetizers, health, or donating to a friend's charity fundraiser. Have you ever gotten one of your friends who's running a 5K and they sent you a thing,

hey, I'm fundraising for this or that? I've done it. I've raised money for a political cause that my wife and I were supporting. And we sent notes to our friends and others. And it was so meaningful when people contribute it. And so I mean to rule, I will always donate and I will always donate above whatever they're asking. Simple. Same thing for health, whether it's a personal trainer or whatever I want to spend more on that.

And then to your question about marrying the right person, that is one of the most, I think counterintuitive ones. People like, what is that love? Well, it's about love. It's not about money, Rameet. Yeah, of course, you're gonna marry the person you love. But let's remember that the person you marry is probably the biggest financial decision you ever make. And so when I say marry the right person,

I'm not saying marry somebody who has 10 times the money you have. That's not the consideration. It's, are they aligned with your money values? Do they think about money generally the same way? They don't have to agree on everything, but generally, do you both see eye to eye or is one of you in $80,000 of credit card debt and the other one has 80K of savings? These are questions that we wanna talk about before we get engaged or married and that's why it's one of my money rules.

It should be because the truth is, what people fight about, the number one thing people fight about is money. So if you spend money one way and I spend money another way, that's right away, you're gonna have a situation. When I read them, it's just saying to me, right? You're very similar to my husband, actually,

because a lot of your non-negotiables are way you think about it. Now, what I want to know is, though, for example, let's go with that business class for a hour, are you telling people to follow your rules Are you trying or you're telling people to make their own that's important to them? Correct. Don't follow my rules because the more That you think about your rules and the more that you refine your rules

They will fit you like a handmade glove and it's right. They will become so Personalized they will actually seem ridiculous to other people. Like one point is spend as much as I want on appetizers. Why? I know it's going to ask you why. Why? Because you never had them as a child or that's exactly it. Right. So growing up, we hardly ever ate out. It was once every six to eight weeks. We would go to a pizza place with a coupon. Of course, we would never order appetizers. It was ridiculous to even ask our parents. So now, when I go to a restaurant, to be able to say, oh, that looks good. Oh, that one looks good too. Which one should I get? You know what? Let's get them both.

That, what does it cost me? An extra 10 bucks, but it feels amazing. It is so abundant. So if you didn't know me, that would be completely bizarre. Why is this guy talking about business class and appetizers? Those two are not at the same scale, but it's meaningful for me. And so for each person when you create your money rules, which I really encourage you to do, there's a couple of things that I suggest.

The first is just to sit down and ask yourself, what do I love? What do I truly love? Most people start with restriction. Trust me, you've been raised on a lifetime of restriction. You're not going to escape from it, but let's flip it and start with what I call your money dials. Start with what you love, write those things down, and then you might realize, ooh, you know, buying a new computer, maybe that's just not that. It's not in my top 10 list of money rules. Like I didn't put, make sure I fill up the air on my tires. It's going to happen. I don't need to elevate it to a top 10 list. But there are certain things that we love. And maybe it is, you know, I want to see my family for vacation once a year.

Maybe it's charity. Maybe it's just, I want to buy a beautiful jacket every year. No shame in that. It's no problem if that's what you love. And then you can start to think about who do I want to participate in these things. You'll notice that a lot of my rules involve other people because a rich life is really not, it's not sitting in your spreadsheet and typing your Monte Carlo formula. Nobody cares. It's inviting your family, your friends, your kids, whoever. So those are some of the things I would encourage people to do. So you're saying for someone who kind of like, I think that's where someone will stop in the start, right? People hear it and they're like, that sounds, that sounds great. But

then they don't know human nature. They don't know where to start, right? So you're saying how to start as they sit down and they figure out what their own money dial is, like what's their thing that they love and that will spend on that at no cost and then really kind of pull back on the things that you don't care about. Like I love health and fitness. So I'll spend a lot on those things and I hate clothes. I don't only care about clothes. I don't only care about clothes, I don't really care about that. So I'll just wear like rags basically.

I mean, wait a minute. I gotta stop you. Can we actually do this money dials exercise? Sure. I want people to hear it going through it with you. So you kind of jumped a gun on it, but let's go with it anyway. What do you love spending on? You said fitness. So I love anything with wellness, right? So I'll spend, I do, my nature is because how I was raised as well is I will always feel guilty when I spend my money, even though it's more of a security thing for me,

like I like to know I have money in the bank, but at the end of the day, where I'm going to spend my money is on fitness, wellness, you know, anything, like things that are like big, you know, I want to buy an infrared sauna, for example, and I've been going, I've been wavering back and forth and back and forth, but yet I will drive two miles extra to get asparagus that's like 10 cents cheaper. Because that's just, you know what I mean? Like it's a psychology thing,

but that's one thing I will spend money on is like health and fitness. And like I said, save on other things. So most people answer in very predictable ways. The first and most common answer to what do you love to spend money on? Can you guess what it is? Can I guess?

Trouble. Ooh, that's a good guess. That's number two. That's number two. That's number two. Yep. Food. That's right.

It's food. Yeah. It's restaurants. It's that. It's food out. It's restaurants. It's that. So, here are the most common answers to what is your money dial. In other words, what is the thing you love to spend? Eating out is number one. Travels number two.

Health and wellness is number three. So you're right there in the top three. And then after that, it drops off a steep cliff. There are approximately 10 or so categories that I've identified. Mine is convenience. So, you know, I wake up. Yeah. My place looks like a serial killer has organized it. Everything is like in right angles. You know, I could go blind. I still know where the coffee is. It's perfect. Okay, now I know. Listening to me, you're like, this guy's nuts. Good. Because my money dial is different

than yours. Right. So now my second question, after asking you, what do you love? And everybody listening, I hope you're playing along because I want to know, what do you love spending money on? My next question. If you could quadruple your spending on that. What would it look like? What would it feel like?

Oh my gosh. Are you asking me to answer that question? What would it look like? What would it feel like? Oh? My gosh, are you asking me to answer that question? What would it look like? Well, okay, I would probably get a Personal trainer to actually work out with me even though I know what I'm doing But I like I even coaches and coaches, I think to get to that optimum level, I would spend money on that. I would buy, like I said, I would kind of like,

stoop my place up with all the different recovery things. I would kind of like create an equinox within my house. Even though I have a nice gym, I don't wanna say, I don't, I would actually just level it up to the max. Okay, what a great answer. Let me just probe on a couple of those things. Okay. You would get a trainer.

Look at that smile, by the way. I know, right? When people talk about what they love, they light up. And it is so common with money, they've never actually been asked this question. Instead, the only thing we are asked about money is we're judged. Ooh, why do you spend that much on grass-fed beef? Oh, why? It's so ridiculous.

No, we're flipping the complete 180. What do you love? And what if you could actually spend more? So let's just live here for a minute. You said a personal trainer. How often would you see this trainer? I would see them probably five for a minute. You said a personal trainer, how often would you see this trainer? I would see them probably five days a week.

And the reason why, and you know what I mean, and the thing is, I want to make sure I have a caveat. It's because I'm too cheap. Why do you defend yourself? I feel best. I feel good because I know what I'm doing. I'm already motivated. But you still can get in a slump.

You still plateau. Tiger Woods still has a coach. I'm already motivated, but to kind of, you still can get in a slump, you still plethto. Tiger Woods still had a trade, you know, has a coach. Everyone has coaches to kind of, you know, amp up there for personal growth itself, you know, it's a betterment. I mean, even like having a... Why are you justifying? You just spent the last 60 seconds. Why?

You don't have to justify it. We are anybody. I know. I feel like I have to justify it. I don't know. It's your money. And again, we're doing a hypothetical here, but I'm confident if this is your money dial and if you choose to and you know, if you're successful

wherever that number is for you, you can do it. The thing about a money dial is, you don't have to justify it to me to anybody. All you have to do is know to anybody. All you have to do is know my money is good money, meaning I've earned it, and I have the right to spend it in a way that's going to bring me joy as long as I can afford it. Okay? You don't have to justify it, and if you want, you can do it two times a week, three times, ten times a week. But I love you when you started off saying, you know, I feel guilty about asparagus, and then you just applied that same thing to a personal trainer.

No need, I'm not gonna judge you. I spend crazy amounts of money on certain things I love, but I also cut back mercilessly on things I don't. And that is the point of the money dials exercise. You have told me, and I saw it in your face. You started off with this big smile and then vanished. When you started to tell me, I'll be caveats.

So unnecessary. I don't need the caveats. I want to know what you love and I want to help you get it. Similarly now, what is something you just don't care about? You mentioned clothes. Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not at clothes, but I don't love, just don't care about? You mentioned clothes? Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not a clothes person. I don't love, I don't care about jewelry, I don't care about name brands.

I don't like, to me that's like, it's like not, it's not necessary. I mean, I literally live in the same two pairs of pants and shirt, you know, I look like a hobo hat, like 95% of the time, you know? What I love hearing about That philosophy see I don't personally I love clothes. It's actually one of my money dials Believe it or not. Oh really yes, and and my wife nice shirt Thank you very much

But you know what it doesn't matter that we are actually diametrically opposed on the clothing thing That's not your money dial is your money dial and the things you care about are for you. No judgment from me. This is so different than how most people talk about money. And think about it. Most people they're judging you. Oh my God, you bought a car for that much.

You could get a cheaper one used. Oh my God, you bought that kind of organic blah, blah, blah. You could get it cheaper at the local grocery store. But guess what? They never stop to say, hey, what's important to you? What do you love? What gives you joy? And then also, what do you just not care about?

I think if people got crystal clear on that, like you just did with all of us, it's so enlightening, because now you don't have to feel guilty about spending more on the things you love, as long as you can afford it, because you're prioritizing your money there and you're going to be ruthless with cutting back on things you just don't care about. So, you don't care about what? You don't care about your computer. What else don't you care about? I have a very old car that I bought after I graduated from college.

It's 15 years old. It's a great car. Runs perfect. What else? I rent by choice. I saw that. So this is like the big thing, right? Everyone thinks that you should be putting your money into real estate, right?

I mean, you're like the polar opposite. Why explain this? Well, I ran the numbers, so that's one. A lot of people in America in particular, real estate is religion. And you hear these trite phrases, they're almost biblical, and people say things like, stop throwing money away on rent. What does that mean?

I gotta tell you something. If somebody says that, I always say, out of curiosity, when you ate out at that restaurant three nights ago, were you throwing money away? I mean, you could make the case, it was literally going down the toilet. Oh, yeah. That's different.

Then they go like this, they go, well, I don't want to pay some landlords mortgage. I go, how did you feel about paying the restaurant tour's mortgage? Oh, that's different. Let's break this down. Many people say buying a house the best investment you can make. Sometimes buying your primary residence

can be a good investment. Many times it's not. And you hear these stories, oh my grandma bought a place in Texas in 1970 for $200,000 and she just told it for $500,000. 50 years later, she made a $300,000 dollar profit. I said, first of all, do you know math? Do you understand opportunity cost? Do you know what you could have gotten compounding in the S&P 500? They don't know what I'm talking about. I'm like read a book read read one book on investing buying a house can

Be a good financial decision, but for many people it's not when I lived in New York It made no financial sense to buy a place. I could have bought it easily But it didn't make any sense Furthermore when people buy and they buy at 200K, they sell at 500K, they think 300K is profit, but they forget a couple things. Number one, they forget phantom costs. Phantom costs include taxes, it includes a variety of different maintenance fees and on and on and on, which are they're like trying to swim with a 25-hour weight vest. You're just slower because of it. And the second and critical thing

they don't understand is opportunity cost. What could you have gotten? Had you taken that money and invested it in the market, which over time returned 7 to 8%. Historically, for approximately 100 years, this stuff becomes a little complicated if you haven't heard it. To the average person who's never thought about it, they just see this rent they're paying. And it's just like, I don't want to throw this away. Where's my equity? But guys, what I want to emphasize to you is when you're buying a house, it's the biggest financial purchase of your life, you really need to become educated about it. Yes, you need to read a personal finance book. Read, I will teach you to be rich or read another good book.

Yes, you need to read a personal finance book. Read, I will teach you to be rich or read another good book. I want you to understand the trade-offs and for particularly the young people listening, I don't ever want you to feel guilty about renting. I rent by choice. So do lots of people that I know that are very, very financially sophisticated.

There's something nice about your porch breaks, your fridge breaks, you call up your landlord boom. And for everyone who's about to email me and send me an angry Instagram DM telling me, actually your cost of maintenance is factored into the landlord's feet. No, it's not. Your rent is based on what the market will bear, not what your landlord's costs are. I've talked about this all over the place, including chapter 9 of my book. So the reason I get heated is I see so many people, particularly young people, feeling guilty about not buying, making horrible financial decisions without ever running the numbers. And what I want to empower people to do is to stop for a second

and say, wait a minute, who has an incentive to get me to buy? Realtors have an incentive to get me to buy. Okay, you can trust realtors about as far as you can throw them. The government has incentives to get me to buy. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take ownership. I'm going to learn how the math works and I'm going to decide for myself. If you decide to buy, great. There are lots of financial reasons, there are also lots of non-financial reasons such as children education, etc. But I do not want anyone listening to simply mirror what society tells you for the biggest purchase of your life.

Keep coming back, you got plenty of space! Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on. Like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor, called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the... All warm. All fuzzy fuzzy all self-care

Zero self-doubt you Grab a with love today vitamin water zero sugar nourish every you vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass. Oh It's so funny because that's what happens right like where did it come it come from? Where it's so ingrained in everyone to feel badly when they rent, right? And most of these people don't even do the math, right? And then they get themselves in a situation, in a black hole, where they out of guilt and shame they end up buying something.

They don't even really want. And then they're always struggling. Yeah. It's called house poor. So they buy it because everybody told them to. And by the way, your question, where did this come from? Is it a great question?

It, you know, this did not used to be the case. The American dream of owning a house has been manufactured in particular by the National Association of Realtors. They want people to buy. So if you ever go go out and read the press, search for National Association of Realtors and look at their quotes in the New York Times,

the Wall Street Journal, wherever you look. They'll say, the market's down. It's a really good time to buy. Ooh, the market's up. It's a really good time to buy. No matter what happens, they tell people, particularly young people, that it a really good time to buy. No matter what happens, they tell people, particularly young people, that it's a good time to buy. Never actually acknowledging that financially, you have often, depending on where you live, much better options. So,

I do agree, you know, being a house poor, where you put all your money into this house, and then you realize, oh, oh, I didn't actually factor in how much it costs to repair a roof or I didn't advertise the cost out of my maintenance. I don't even know what amortized means. Suddenly you're in a real rut. Or you got a 30 year alone. So I don't want people to do that. Again, I'm not telling you buying is always bad. I will buy. Okay. But when I buy, I can tell you right now it's not going to be a good financial decision. Right point blank. I can tell you right now it's not going to be a good financial decision. Right point blank. I'm telling everybody right now for when all these people come

out on Instagram, Rami, through such a hypocrite. No, no, no, when I buy it's going to be a terrible financial decision. I'm going to do it purely because I want it. Pure luxury. That's it. I'm not going to justify it as a good financial decision because I already know all the cities I would buy in, it's a terrible financial decision. But I'm going to save up enough and that's that. So that's what that would be when you do it, it's going to be part of your money dial. It's going to be because you just, it's important to you. What are, right? Yep. What are some of what can you name a couple other big financial myths that you hear all the time that just drive you crazy that you wanted to bunk? Investing is gambling. You know, this is typically people who have never invested anything and they they think that investing is looking on a computer screen with all these black and green

Letters and like ooh, it's minority report. No, that's not investing. Investing is actually really boring. I set up my asset allocation or my investing plan years ago. I basically do nothing. It automatically goes where it needs to go. I mean, I have more excitement deciding how much salsa I'm gonna eat with my chips than looking at my portfolio. And that's the way it should be. Investing should be boring.

It's not a reality show. If you want excitement, get a dog. Investing is boring and profitable. So that's one. People feel they're so worried. Oh, I'm going to lose my money. But what you don't realize is by having money in your savings account, just sitting there, you're actually losing money every single

day because of inflation. So what I want to emphasize to people is, you know, when it comes to living a rich life, money is a small but important part. And you can actually earn a tremendous amount of money if you start investing, tremendous. A lot of people don't realize, I have readers of mine who are paid hourly and we already know from looking at their earnings and noticing how much they're investing, they will be millionaires. Okay, so you don't become wealthy simply by winning the lottery or purely just getting lucky. You can make a plan, you can set it up so it takes less than one hour per month and you can invest. Okay, but have a it up so it takes less than one hour per month, and you can invest.

Okay, but how does someone start, right? When they're like, when they're listening to this, what is like a couple of ways that someone starts when they don't feel they can? They don't have the, they don't have the wear with all, they don't have the information, it can get very overwhelming, right? Absolutely. I mean, let's just take some of the terms that Wall Street has named. I mean, I couldn't think of more confusing terms if I wanted to. Hey, everybody, how's

your 401k Roth IRA, SAP IRA, asset allocation, rebalance? What the hell do these words mean? It's very confusing. I have a philosophy in my book called the 85% solution. And what it means is I would rather have you get 85% of the weight and then move on, then to aim for 100% and not do anything at all. And that is what so many of us do. Oh, I need to get all my ducks in a row. I need to, I bought these five books, but I haven't read any of them because they're so dreadfully boring. Nobody wants that.

And if you read, I challenge anybody here, pick up any personal finance book. The first chapter, do you know what it will tell you to do in the first chapter? Are you asking me? Okay, find a financial advisor to help you. No, that's in chapter three, we've already found this. Okay, you don't believe in that.

I want to talk to you about that too, right? They tell you. They tell you. Let's figure out how much you spent last year. And then everybody says, no, thanks. They closed the book and threw it in the trash. Nobody wants to know how much they spent because they don't know what the answer, but they know it's bad. Yeah. Personal finance is as much about psychology as it

is about math. And that is why in chapter one of my book, I would never tell someone track your spending. It's a great way to get him to turn off to personal finance for the rest of their lives. And they would never be a New York Times best seller also if you told that to them. They would never recommend a book. I mean, my business is built that if you succeed, then my business grows. If you don't, then you're going to return the book, or you're going to return our multi-thousand dollar programs on how to start and grow your business, on how to find your dream job, all those things that we have on our products page. We give people full refunds if they don't love the material. So it's got to work. And

that's why chapter one starts with here are the words literally read them off the page, call up your credit card and you'll get your fees refunded, you'll get a bunch of perks you had no idea even existed like if you spill coffee on your computer. They'll write you a check and We will show you how to expand your credit We start with that and by the end of the book your money is being automatically invested Okay, and it's simple. You know exactly where it's going. You can even predict the month you will become a millionaire Okay, you know how to negotiate your salary, including the exact words to use. And there's even a little script I love about talking about money with your partner.

Husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend. It encapsulates all these critical parts of a rich life in the I will teach you to be rich book. Okay. So then start with the first chapter you're saying. So it says you start with what nobody else starts with. That's how to get refinance, your credit card, all that stuff.

Give us a couple of those tips, like give me something to, that the people when they're overwhelmed, that they can do just by listening to this, when they finish listening to this. Okay, so for anyone who's in, besides by your book. Besides that, for anyone who's in debt,

you should be able to answer this question. What is your debt payoff date? Okay, 99% of people do not know the answer to this question. So whether you have student loans, credit card debt, any type of debt, it's not the end of the world, okay? Debt is very manageable. So what I want people to do listening to this is if you've got debt, any type of debt. It's not the end of the world, okay? Debt is very manageable. So what I want people to do listening to this is if you've got debt, I know it can feel overwhelming or even hopeless. I want you to go to Google and

type in debt payoff calculator, okay? Now for most people, it's the first time they actually realize how much they truly owe. Over 95% of people who are in debt do not actually know how much they owe. So this is gonna be challenging. But I want you to type in the numbers. How much do you owe? What's the interest rate? And what are you paying each month? All these things are on your statements.

If you don't know where to find them, send an email to the debt companies, make them do the work for you. And suddenly you're gonna realize, oh my God, if I keep going the way I'm going, it might take me two years or 15 years. Now, you can tweak that. What if you pay an extra 50 bucks? For some people who have a large student loan, that can shave off five years from your payoff. And suddenly you realize, oh my gosh, I can take control of my debt. It's not just this large thing looming over me. It's actually within my control.

So that's number one if you've got debt. Number two is your credit cards. A lot of people are missing out on amazing perks from their credit cards. So whether it's cash back, there's great 2% cash back cards. There's travel cards if that's what you prioritize So I can name some specific names. I'm happy to tell you what I use But those are credit cards that I personally love and then finally your bank accounts. I Want people to wait wait, which ones do you use? I want to know what you I want to do what you do

Okay, so I use I like a cash back card. I use a fidelity 2% cash back Okay, so I use, I like a cashback card. I use a fidelity 2% cashback. For travel, I use a Chase Sapphire Reserve. That one has an annual fee, so you can do a credit card calculator to see if it's worth paying the annual fee or not. And then my pure luxury on credit cards, it's just a luxury of mine, is the MX Platinum. It doesn't actually make financial sense for me to pay because the perks for me are not

that great, but it has one thing I love, which is access to Centurion lounges. So for that, I'm like, okay, cool. Convenience. You're like the introversion of my husband. I'm telling, and everything you say, the rent, but I mean, have you met, you guys should meet, I don't know why why you ever not last night. That was a great guy. Yeah, I'm telling you, he was beside me when I was listening to a bunch of your stuff

yesterday last night. And he's like, who is this guy? He sounds great. He's so similar. I think we're going to be friends. Yes, I really think so, actually. Wow. All right, so I didn't interrupt you.

So, okay, go on. So, those are the credit cards. The lounges. Yes. The key here, again, I want to emphasize is at this stage, we are just getting the right infrastructure in place, right? We're going to get to investments, but people come to me to like, hey, Rumi, like, what do I, do I pick this stock? What about Tesla?

I'm like, hold on. What do you think? Exactly. And they're like, this is what they say, it's so funny. They go, I'm using Wells Fargo. First of all, Wells Fargo sucks. It's the worst bank account you can use. And the second worst bank account is Bank of America.

And then I go, why are you using that? And they always say the same thing. Well, my mom opened it up for me when I was 13 years old. I feel kind of bad. So I'm like, you feel loyalty to a shitty predatory multi-billion dollar bank. Trust me, they don't care about you and your $305 balance. Trust me when I say that. So if you're listening, I want you to know, I love naming names.

In the book, I name all the best accounts. Those are the ones I use. I also name all the worst accounts. And I love doing this for a couple of reasons. Number one, when I was a teenager, I was watching Oprah at 4 p.m. one day. And Oprah did this thing where she does my favorite things. And I was watching her and I was,

you love that. I love that. Somebody with that kind of influence, naming specific products. Even when they're on camera, they turn their water bottle around and all that. Yes. I hate that. If I too.

Oprah, I want to know what Oprah uses. Where does Oprah shop? What kind of candles does she buy? I want to know it all. So Oprah did it and I was like, oh my God. And her audience loved it because they trust her. So when I started writing, I have no boss. I don't have my manager approving, we have a deal with Wells Fargo.

No, fuck Wells Fargo. We suck, and they've been fined by the government for their predatory work towards opening up fake accounts and a variety of things. So I decided, you know what, I'm going to bend over backwards to tell people the truth about money. These banks are horrible. You should never use them. And I have to tell you, I'm very proud of one thing. When I started telling people to get off of these banks, I found out from a friend who works at Bank of America that I'm on their internal negative influence or list. That is my greatest achievement in life. Because- It wasn't even me who cares.

If you don't use them anyway, then you don't deal with them. Well, they won't sponsor you. Yeah, they're definitely not going to sponsor you. They endorse you. They keep an eye on who's influencing about Bank of America, and I just have to be on the negative one. But I find it, I love it because I want people to know that when you come and read my stuff, you get specifics. And I'm so glad you pushed me just a minute ago.

Hey, tell me the credit card you use. Tell me the bank accounts. I'll tell you the investment accounts. I'll tell you what to avoid because nobody's talking about this stuff. And when I was starting out, I wish someone had just told me, do this, don't do this stuff and when I was starting out I wish someone had just told me do this, don't do this, and say these words when you call up your accounts and they will wave your fees. That's what I wanted to do. Well that's what I wanted, that's what I had tried to do because I want to get in the weeds. I'm very curious in general and so I don't need these platitudes of things to say. I really would

like to know the details, like what investments to actually do, what to stay away from. Like, I want the like nitty gritty. All right, let me get ready. I have my pen here to write down the notes even. Okay, let's get to it. So here's the specifics that I want people to follow. First of all, there's something called the CEO strategy. How do you save and earn more money? Well, there's three steps. C cut costs. All of us know about this. I'm not going to belabor the point. E earn more. We can talk about this in a minute. This is actually starting to negotiate your salary. We can, we'll also talk about taking your ideas and turning into a business. I want to talk about, oh,

because with O, you can make five phone calls and oftentimes save a thousand dollars or more in one hour. So here are a few of the places you can call right now and then I'll tell you exactly what to say. You can call your cable company. Write it down, your cable company, your cell phone company. You can call your credit card. You can call your student loan or any person you owe money to, any company. And finally, you can even call your landlord. your student loan or any person you owe money to, any company. And finally, you can even call your landlord.

What do you say? This is what you say. Looking at how much, looking at how long I've been a customer or a tenant, I've been here for three years. COVID is making it difficult for me to continue with my payments as usual. What options do you have for me? Now, a couple of things I want to caveat.

Number one, only say this if COVID is actually making it difficult a lot of my Readers who actually lost their jobs early on during COVID called their cable company gave them a $600 switch to a lower plan a lot of them waived fees for six to 12 months I had a friend of mine who used it negotiated 50% off his rent until the rest of the year. Now, that is unusual, but you can negotiate. Depending on your landlord and the company or person, they are often, certainly in the big cities, happy to negotiate now more than ever before. And rent, for most people, is their biggest expense.

So these are calls you can make. And what you do when you call your credit card or you call your cable company or cell phone company say, look, I'd hate to have to switch to your competitor, but they're offering me a better deal right now. And they're like, oh, hold on, hold on, oh, let me, let me give you a $600 credit for the rest of the year. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. These are calls that the money is nice. but what's more important is it shows you you can take control of your finances. You can call these companies and you have leverage because they want you as a customer. You're not just there to play their games. That's great. I love that. That's that's actually great advice and also also, you have to be a little bit bold,

but who cares? You've got to practice, right? Like anything else. So that's great to save money. Give us another one in investments. Like what investments, Tesla? God. I've ever, is this a two-go Tesla?

In the same ones over and over again. Best thing is not about picking individual stocks. Let's start there. People think that investing is sitting around and Best thing is not about picking individual stocks. Let's start there. People think that investing is sitting around and looking at PE ratios and picking individual stocks. Let's just get this right out of the way. Investing is about long term low cost investing. So when you hear words like diversification,

people nod, oh yeah, diversification. They don't really understand because it's actually somewhat complicated concept. So let me kind of cut to the chase. I'll give you the short version of investing. And then of course, this is going to be the biggest area that you will make money from over your lifetime. So I expect you'll probably want to learn more in chapter three and seven of my book or whatever book. When it comes to you memorize what every chapter where you speak about everything, every chapter, I wrote this books like multiple times.

I know. Well, no, but you're like in chapters three page 72, you know, funny. You know, I broke it down into two chapters. It's interesting. And it's a, there's a psychology reason to it. Investing is very complicated and the first time you start, it can feel complicated. So what happens is people have these questions, Tesla or whatever. It would be like somebody coming to me after never working out and I, let's say I'm a personal trainer and they go, you know what, I think I want to do this type of squat,

but you know, what do you think? This squat or that squat? And the trainer's looking at the person like, well, wait a minute, like, how's your balance? How's your flexibility? How's your strength? Have you ever trained before at all? And they're obsessed about this obscure part of fitness.

So what we want to do is we'll get to the squats and we'll get to the Tesla if you want to do that. Fine, no problem. If you want to invest in Tesla, we could talk about that. But we're we want to start at getting the basic 85% correct. And then if you're advanced enough, we can talk about that last 15%. More from our guests, but first a few words from our sponsor. So I just finished reading the book, Believe in People, which was not only just a great read with so much insightful information, but it gives you a different perspective. The solution to our country's biggest problems are

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Canva, design for everyone. I think it's amazing advice, actually, because even when you said this, it gives me anxiety and agita, because I don't even know what you're even talking about. Okay, great. People say that all tests are tested. Okay, so how do I even do it? You've got to give us the basics before you can have the crawl before you walk. And honestly, most of the time,

the most advanced thing you can do is to execute the basics flawlessly over and over again. And you mentioned the fitness world, it would be much better for people starting out to actually train three times a week or four times a week, five times a week consistently, then to do these advanced Olympic lifts their first month out there. That's not the appropriate way to do it.

So I insist on my readers following a system, follow the program. Most people discover you actually want to stop at 85%. And it's the rare personal finance nerds I get who are very, very advanced. They really want to peel into all these different asset allocation options. I give them a separate program, which is much more advanced, it's much more expensive, but honestly, most people don't need that. They need to simply show up every day, watch what they eat, do some training, same thing with money.

So let's get into some specifics here. And by the way, just before you do, there is a lot of similarities between finance and fitness, a ton, but anyway, go ahead. Go ahead. So chapter three, the reason I started it off there was that all I wanted people to do was open up an investment account.

That's it. And what we do is we help them open an account and they put 50 bucks in there or 100 bucks and then they pat themselves on the back to clear victory and go home. Great job. That's you did it. Okay. Once they go through chapter 45 and six, now they're actually really, really confident and comfortable. And now we go back to that account, which they already have the login and password for, they got a hundred bucks in there. Now it's time to have some fun.

Now we pick our first investment. And this is how you teach effectively. You don't need to give students everything on day one. We have a long relationship ahead of us. I hope to, you know, I always say, I wanna create students for life. So in chapter three, I'll give you some of the key things you want to do. You want to open up a low-cost investment account. For a lot of people, if you work at a company, you have a 401k. Now, a lot of people

listening are like, I don't even know if I have one and I don't know if I contribute money to that. I don't understand. Fine, that's totally fine.'t know if I contribute money to that. I don't understand. Fine. That's totally fine. No judgment. Here's what you want to do. Send an email to your HR person or whoever sends out all those emails about benefits and just say, hey, I'm trying to get my 401k in order.

First of all, do we have a 401k? And that's number one. And number two, can you tell me what my contribution settings are? What that means is, am I actually putting any money in there? Okay, so that's one thing you can do right now. Pause this thing, send an email to your HR person. Next up, you can open up another account called a Roth IRA. Okay, a Roth IRA, I'm going to just give you the basics here.

It's basically an account, kind of like a savings account, but it's an investment account. And it gives you some really good tax advantages. Basically, you can save a tremendous amount of money. I'll give you an example. Let's say I contribute $3,000 and over the course of my life, that $3,000 turns into $50,000. Guess what? I only pay tax on the $3,000. I don't pay tax on the $47,000 that I make.

That's really good. That's making you more money than all those stupid lattes you're worried about. So you should be doing this instead of worrying about your extra large chai latte, okay? All right, so you can open up those two accounts. I like Vanguard. I personally use them. I don't have any those two accounts. I like Vanguard. I personally use them.

I don't have any deal with them. I just love them. And I think they are low cost, long term focused. They're the best company out there for investments. Some other people are going to ask about fidelity. They're going to ask about those are fine. Some people are going to ask about Robo Advisors. Personally, I'm not a particular fan of

Robo advisors compared to Robinhood. Oh my god, hold on. Robinhood. Hold on, I just had a complete brain freeze. Please, please do not take what I just said as advice. I got to rewind because I was already getting my rant geared up about Robinhood. Okay, let's start over everybody listen carefully. getting my rant geared up about Robin Hood. Okay, let's start over. Everybody listen carefully. Vanguard is great. Fidelity is great. Schwab is good also. If you're thinking about a RoboAdvisor like Wealthfront or Betterment, those are fine. They have additional fees. I do not personally see the value of those, but if you really want to, okay, fine. If you email me and ask if you should join Robin Hood, I'm going to tell you, what does my book say? Stop joining these stupid accounts that try to get you to day trade. It makes no sense. Okay, no individual

investor should be using Robinhood. It literally makes no sense for people and it incentivizes the wrong behavior. So why do you love Vanguard so much? Because why do you favor it? Not, and you say you're not getting paid by them. You just genuinely really like them. So why do you love Vanguard so much? Why do you favor it? Not and you say you're not getting paid by them. You just genuinely really like them. So why? I love them because they were built from day one to be founded on the philosophy of low cost investing. Why does that matter? Let me tell you why. A lot of people may have heard about your parents paying some financial advisor or some broker. How do you pay them?

Typically, what Wall Street does is it charges about 1%. Now, if you think, oh, 1%, that's not that big of a deal. 1% they kind of handle everything. No big deal. Let me explain the math to you. If over the course of your lifetime, you make $100,000 from your investment account. Guess how much you owe in fees for that 1% fee? Guess the dollar amount that you owe

from $100,000 in gains, can you guess? 10,000, 15,000. That's a good guess. Most people would say 1,000, because it's 1%, 1,000 1000 but it's 1% every year. The answer is approximately 28,000 dollars in fees. And if you have a 2% fee which some people do, approximately 56,000 dollars in fees, that's over half of your returns.

The mouth is counterintuitive and it compounds. So I had a young woman who wrote me on Instagram the other day. I did a story about this. I absolutely loved it. She wrote me, she was in her early 30s. She made 80K a year and she goes, hey, Rameet, I'm paying 1%. I don't really see the problem with it

because 1% right now it's like 400 bucks a year or whatever. I said, okay, over the course of your lifetime, you're in your early 30s, how much do you think you will pay in fees? So she goes, I have no idea. I don't know how to do that. I go, okay, well, let's just break it down. What do you think your average salary is going to be over the course of your life? And do you know where her answer was to that question? What? She said 80k, I'm already capped out. I'm like you're like 32 years old. You're not capped out Have some confidence in yourself. So she was wow very reluctant to even Model out that her salary would go up and trust me if you're at 80 in your early 30s

You're very accomplished your salary will definitely go up Absolutely, so just for easy math. I think I assume something like her average salary will be 100 or 110 okay, that's like very conservative candidly I know a lot of people who made 80k and 30 they make a lot more money by the time they get to 40 etc So I triple that if you want to know the truth But whatever but she's not she's not ready to I should have been careful of that if you want to know the truth, but whatever. But she's not ready to handle that, but the truth is she knows she's good, but she felt and she even wrote this to me.

She's like, I feel uncomfortable writing it down. Okay. So I said, let's be conservative. We picked some number. And I said, okay, you know, your average salary is going to be what? 100, 110. Guess how much it's, if one percent of that, guess how much it's going to cost you over the course of your life? She goes, look, I have no idea how to do the math if one percent of that, guess how much it's going to cost you over the course of your life.

She goes, look, I have no idea how to do the math. I said, just literally guess. She guessed $30,000 over the course of her life. I said, how does that feel to you? She goes, it's okay. You know, it's a lot, but it's like $1,000 a year, it's fine. I did the math for her. You want to guess how much she would pay in fees?

Probably like more than a half a million, I would imagine, right? $15,000. In fees. Okay. That pays for all the lattes, all the jackets, all the trips to Spain, business class, you can ever buy in your life.

So for everyone listening, wow. These are the kind of things you learn in chapter six of the book. You learn that your focus, you're so focused on these $3 questions, lattes and appetizers, that you're not asking the $30,000 questions,

the ones that actually generate serious wealth, and that kind of wealth that you can use to get a trainer five times a week, that you can use if you want to take your family on a trip. These are the kind of things that get me pumped up because it helps you live your rich life and you fight back against Wall Street, who takes advantage of mom and pop,

who have no way of ever understanding the complex math behind this stuff because it's intentionally opaque. And so you take control back. To me, that's a rich life. Wow, no, that's a great advice. So I didn't realize even that 1% is not just 1%, it's 1% every year and it's compounded.

If it's in the fine print though, I mean, nobody knows this and they get away with this. No one ever challenges these things. They don't have the time, right? You have to remember that most people when they start off, they are simply overwhelmed and they, I don't want to pay attention to this. It's too scary. Okay.

So they just want to offload it. That's number one. Number two, Wall Street has intentionally developed methods and techniques to obscure these fees. That's why they call them things like expense ratios. What's an expense ratio? You think your school teacher, mom is going to understand what that is? No. And then finally, if you call them on it, like I did, I'm gonna tell you about a call I had with one of them. They quickly shift, they've been advised, how to avoid answering questions.

They'll say things like, well, our primary job here is to keep your money safe. And to Joe Blow, who doesn't know anything about money, he's like, yeah, safe. I need safety. I'm scared of losing money. They pray on people's insecurities. And this is what drives me insane. The average person should not have to become a financial expert to do the right things. They shouldn't. You should not have to understand every last detail that I spent 20 years learning so that you can

make the right decisions. And if you ask any average person, hey, do you want to pay $315,000 in fees over your life? They would look at you like you're crazy. And yeah, they're doing it secretly and they don't even realize it. They don't even realize it because you said, like you said, they're overwhelmed. They don't understand. They don't want to put, they don't understand it, like how I feel. So I'll just say yes and ask we asked that

because it's too, I think it's too complicated when it really isn't. So then why is that the same? And that's with financial advisors basically, right? Like this is why. Let me add some nuance to financial. Most people don't need a financial advisor. Let's start there.

It's not like hiring somebody to mow your lawn or clean your apartment or house. It's different. It's fundamentally different because money is a critical part of your rich life. So you should not delegate it to somebody else who oftentimes will not have your best interest at heart. And I want to point out there's something called a new sherry. Wall Street fiduciary means they are legally obligated to take care of you and you're put your your interest first Sounds obvious, right? My doctor should be putting my interest first But Walshary has furiously fought against a rule called the fiduciary standard Their claim is that if you make us become fiduciaries

Then we're not going to be able to help people because we won't be able to make as much money off of them. That's literally what they said in open statements. That's why I will never back down from fighting against Wall Street and I will show people how to take control of their own money. Now, there are some people who have some reasons to hire a financial advisor. If you have a substantial portfolio, well over a million dollars in investible assets, if you have a complex situation, maybe stepchildren, inheritance, et cetera, if you simply want someone to give you a second set of eyes, like a coach for a limited time, fine. There's nothing wrong with great financial advisors. You should look for a fee-only advisor. That means they charge you an hourly fee.

It could be a hundred bucks. Hell, it could be 500 bucks. Happily pay 500 bucks an hour over paying $315,000 in fees. So I've absolutely had no problem for financial advisors who are fee-only charging premium prices and giving you great answers. I've even hired a financial advisor to give me a second set of eyes. Very much, as you said, every trainer has his or her own trainer. But it was fee-only,

and it was a very specific project. And so for most people, you don't need a financial advisor. What you need to do is spend a weekend reading a good book and taking control of your own money. So you know what? so are there such things? Cause I think a financial advisory is being like someone you're paying that percentage to ongoing. But what you just said was financial coaches or someone you can hire for a finite period of time, maybe to look at everything you have and then do it

what can they help you? Like you can like spread out all your stuff and then pay them like a lump sum. So there are people, can you do that for, can they help you? Like, you can like spread out all your stuff and then pay them like a lump sum. So there are, can you do that for people? Like, can I hire you? You can't hire me, but what you, what you, what you can do is, you can probably make a lot of money like that.

That's a great, high business for you. I'd rather just post my jokes on Instagram and that's a good life for me. I think what you can do is you can find a fee only advisor. There's a good, there's a couple good organizations you can look up, napfah.org, et cetera, fee only. You can interview them asking them some specific questions. I think those are in chapter six like, hey, have you worked with clients like me? What can I expect? What is the typical timeline for this project? Are you a fiduciary?

These are the kind of questions you want to ask an advisor, and you'll have a free, consultative call, and you should speak to five of them, because you're going to discover two of them don't even respond to your emails, one of them you just don't like, and then a couple of them may be in the running. So definitely take the time.

The way that I would engage with an advisor, in fact, the way that I have engaged is I went in with a specific set of questions. For a lot of people, it will be, hey, like after after doing this or doing that, like, I don't understand how this maps, like, how should I follow this investment strategy for my specific situation? Can you advise me? And they'll say, yeah, I can work with you on that. It's gonna take me several hours to go through your finances, you're gonna have to fill out this form, et cetera.

And they'll probably either give you an hourly fee, which is fine. You know, you should say, like give me a ballpark range of how long you expect this to take. Are we talking five hours or 50 hours? Or they can give you a project fee. A lot of people, particularly older people who are getting close to retirement, they have questions like when should I withdraw social security? Those are easy questions to have answered because every advisor has worked with people like that. They can just give you a form. It's relatively straightforward. So that is the way that you engage with an advisor. You don't typically need to

like text them every month. That's not really the way to where it's not like a personal trainer who you're going to every single month. Typically, once you get your system set up and you have your key questions answered, move on with life. And you can check in every six to 12 months on your own, but you don't need to be touching and fiddling with it every single day. Okay, so this quickly, I can wrap up this part,

I've got a couple of more questions and I'll let you go soon. But so what are some of the, where is your money? So where did you invest? Where do you invest? Open companies. I'm so glad you asked.

So my favorite type of investment is called a target date fund. Okay, target date fund. Here's what it does. Imagine that you have a pie, like a pie chart. And as you are younger, you want your pie chart to be more aggressive. That's your portfolio. Okay, your pie is your portfolio. And as you get older, you want your investments to shift to being a little bit more conservative. Why? Because grandma

and grandpa do not want to have the same asset allocation or investment plan as some 20 something. A 20 something has time. They're looking for growth. Somebody who's 75 is not growth seeking as much as risk averse. They want safety, right? They want to know that they're going to have that money for the rest of their lives and be secure. Different goals over time. Well, it turns out that most people are actually quite predictable. And this is really, really important. It's very similar to fitness. Everybody walks in to a gym and believes that they're unique, special snowflake. Not really. Okay, let's talk about your training, let's talk about your food consumption. Basically, most people respond

mostly to the same thing. And that's a good thing. Once I accepted that I'm like most people 98% of the time, then I could optimize for that and then leave my freedom for that last 2% to be really unique and special. So that is an underpinning psychological principle here. A target date fund, here's how it works. You can go to Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab, they all have them, and you type in your age, and basically when you expect to retire. So let's just say you're 30 years old. Let's assume you're going to be here at 65. You as this to general you. Now, and the root of it, thank you. Why is it the root of it? You've just gone for a minute.

And you simply type in what year you're going to be, let's say 65. They have a computer. It's going to pick a fund for you. One fund. That's it. And all your investments go into that one fund. And within that fund, it includes different companies, stocks, bonds, etc. But you don't have to pick any of them. All you have to pick is this one fund. It's automatically diversified.

And the best part is over time, it will automatically change to become more conservative. So for 98% of people having a single target date fund is a phenomenal way to grow serious wealth over time. This is so valuable. I'm so glad that I had you on this podcast. I'm really learning so much. You should do a masterclass. I kid you not. You got so much information.

I mean, I, I, I, I, I, no, seriously, you got so much here. So I wanted to add that's great. And I didn't even get into this yet about your talking, but this, you were saying this a little bit earlier, but I didn't want to interrupt you about your job, about getting jobs and how you can make more money at your job. Can you talk a little bit?

Can you give some advice on how somebody can get their ideal job or make more money in the job they're in? Yeah. Like with some strategies behind how they can kind of approach this? Well, I love talking about this because when I was in college, I have a weird thing that I love, which is I love job interviews. I just love them. And I found a few friends of mine who also love interview.

Let me tell you how much we love them. We would get together over lunch and we would compare notes on interviews that we'd gone to. Questions we got, the answers we had, and we were just like sharing these amazing strategies that we developed for job interviews. That was so fun. I know it's weird. just like sharing these amazing strategies that we developed for job interviews. That was so fun. I know it's weird. That was one of the most fun things I can remember doing. It's so good.

That's why I do what I do. Like, it's gonna be very odd to be like, yeah, set around lunch and strategize. You're right, it is weird. It's all weird. I actually find it in Deerin actually. It's all right. I actually find it endearing actually. It's very endearing. Thank you. So you know what I realized, even at my college, most people did not know about these interview

strategy, even where I went to college. And certainly in the real world, nobody knows this stuff. So this is how I you know got job offers at Google and into it and a multi-billion dollar hedge fund. And did you work at any of them? No, I actually accepted the offer at Google and then I turned it down to go start my own company. What were you going to do at Google? I was going to be an APMM associate product marketing manager. I would, I probably would have eaten well. They had a lot of free food there. It would have been fine, but I, I knew that I wanted to do something on my own, and I also knew if I ever wanted to go back, I could go back there. Yeah. It was, it was a, it was a tough decision at the time. I asked a lot of my mentors and friends what I should do. And I got to tell you one of the answers that kind of drove me nuts was people said half of them said go start your own thing like you're young, even if it

fails who cares you have no expenses just go do it. How well do you at the time? I was it right out of college. I was trying to write it one. And so but another group said you should go to Google because you'll have an amazing resume. You know, you went to Stanford, then Google and this and that. And I really resented that because I said to myself, you know what, I have a pretty good resume already. I've worked hard.

I've excelled at what I've done. When do I get to stop chasing a resume or a credential? When? And that, funny enough, that advice actually made me realize, I'm not going to create the rest of my life chasing a credential. I've got my credentials. I'm very confident in what I've done academically. Now I'm going to take some big risks. And you know, the first year I worked on my own, I made $11,000. I lived in a room with three other, there are three other guys in the house. I was renting a room in $800 a month. And I went to Google actually three times a week to get free food because my friend

will work there. I was like, hey, let me bring my backpacks so I can get more of those snacks. So I'm like, thank you, Google. Google was great. They were super accommodating. You know, they told me we understand. And so I've only great things to say about that hiring process. Well, it has you back last year, right? You did a talk there. I did a talk in Google New York. I hate you. Yeah, no, they're great. And I think for people listening, you know, some of the key takeaways for me in that decision process

was number one, you gotta be good enough to get the offer. So good enough, that's 85% of the game right there. Do you have the skills? Do you know how to interview? Ideally, do you have personal relationships that can introduce you? Second is deciding, what do I want in my career? Do I wanna go somewhere for the name brand?

Am I motivated by money? I certainly would have made a lot of money working there early on. But I always knew, you know what? If I'm good at what I do and I enjoy it, there's gonna be more money down the road than I know what to do with. So I decided early on, I'm never gonna chase a dollar or $10,000 because I know that there will be so much more and I'm so glad.

It's hard to do that when you're 21 and you're not being paid a lot. But truthfully, what was I going to spend the money on? I mean, I had very modest tastes. I wasn't into nice clothes back then. I wore t-shirts. I'm like, thank God I could make that decision then. Now, it would be a little harder. It really would. And so glad I took that risk when I did. Wow, so tell me some of this, you haven't told us some of the strategies.

Okay, so waiting. Yeah, so some of us, so okay, when it comes to your job, first of all, what did I do from there? I started sharing these interview techniques with my friends. And I wanted to just verify that it wasn't just me and my three friends in college, but that I could actually teach people. So, suddenly my friends started getting jobs at Wall Street firms, tech firms, Google, et cetera. And I was like, yeah, this is this good stuff.

It's not just me. It actually is replicable. And so I ended up turning it into a whole course. I'm going to give you some of the specific tactics that we created. But the one we do is called Dream Job. And this is where people take it and they routinely get $10,000 or $15,000 raises.

They can switch industries using it and they can even get promotions along with those raises. So I routinely meet people on the street and they're like, oh my God, use Dream Job, 15 thousand dollar raise. Think about that and think about doing that three times in a row. You literally transform your socioeconomic status. It's very powerful. How do you do it?

There's a few things you can do. One is the best place to think about optimizing your career is at the current job you are in. So a lot of people, they don't even ask for a race and they are surprised their boss doesn't just throw money at them. That's not how it works. You need to ask and you need to make the case.

So how do you do that? I'm going to give you some specific phrases you can use right now. The common way people think about asking for a raise is, well, they just don't do it. The second thing is if they do do it, they go in their boss's office during comp review and they go, can I have a raise? Boss is like, no. And then they just walk out. That sucks.

Here's a much better way to do it. Six months ahead of your review, you set up an appointment with your boss. And you said, I'd like to discuss my role here. I have some questions for you. Really appreciate the time. Get it on the calendar. Get a formal meeting. Do not do this thing while you're eating peanuts and a bagel.

This is a formal meeting. So you go in there and you've presented, you've done 85% of the work before. You say, you know what? My goal here is to be a top performer. I'd really like to do extraordinary work. So in order for that to happen, I just wanna make sure I understand the role

and the goals that I'm working towards. Boss is sitting there like, like as if angels are playing from heaven with their feet. Oh, thank God, one of my employees actually took the initiative to come here and tell me how they want to help me. Great. So you go, okay, as I understand it, I pulled my job description and I pulled our quarterly and annual goals. Here are the three key things I'm working on and the associated metrics with each of them, improve conversion rate from 0.3 to 0.8. Blah, blah, blah. Are these right?

Would you agree or is there anything I should be thinking of differently here? Now, what you're doing there is you're pausing. You're allowing your boss to weigh in, to align. And maybe she says, well, you know, that's actually an outdated goal. We've actually moved on to this one, but you're co-creating this together. And you say fantastic. Well, here's my plan for what I'm going to do in the next

six months. I'm already working on X. I'm going to send you a weekly status report. I'm already working on Y, but I would like to add another initiative. Maybe separately, we can talk about how that might work. And then for Z, I'm going to continue working with Joe over there in Ops. How does that sound as a plan to you? Boss is like, oh my God, this is so great. I'm so excited for you. I'll give you the resources you need, et cetera. You have to remember your boss in that case is very happy because you're taking the initiative

and you're making a plan. Right now to your boss, you're a problem because they have to manage you and check in on you, but you're coming in with a totally different approach. I want to be the best. I've done the work to come up with a plan. Am I right or am I wrong? Please tell me and I can adjust things as you go. It's totally different approach to being a great employee.

So you say sounds great. I'm going to check in with you every week or every other week and then let's set up another time to talk just to check in as a milestone. Fine. Go back to your office, document the whole thing, and now the hard work begins. You need to hit those numbers. You need to exceed those. You're not going to get a raise unless you're meeting your goals at a minimum, probably exceeding them. This is where a lot of people get resentful. How come my boss isn't paying me? I'm like, are you good at your job?

They're like, uh, like, no. If you, if your answer is, uh, you're not good at your job. If you're great at your job, and I say, are you good at your job? You're like, yeah, I'm a top performer. I've beat all my goals from the last quarter, and I'm on track to beat him again this quarter. That's a top performer. So as you can see, these are not just magical words. Any person off the street can come in and say

and hypnotize your boss. No, you actually need to do the work. Meanwhile, you're sending updates every Friday or every other Friday. Here we are. Here's a status check. Oh, I'm blocked on this. Here's my plan.

If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it to get unblocked. Blah, blah, blah. By the time you walk in for your review, six months from now, this is a completely different game. You're not walking in saying, please boss, please, please give me some money down from heaven. No, you're walking in saying, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you six months ago. Here's what we discussed. Boom, pull the piece of paper out. You can Google briefcase technique

to actually see how you theatrically do this. You could literally pull it out of your briefcase. It's quite powerful. Here's what we agreed on. We talked about this first metric. Boom, hit it. Talked about the second one. Boom, hit it.

Third, didn't quite get it, but give me two more weeks and I'm gonna nail that. Boss was like, wow, great job. Pat on the back. See you later. You're like, whoa, whoa, just one second. Based on my research in the marketplace, here's what somebody at my role and level of performance would be paid. I'd like to discuss compensation.

Boom, your boss and you are now having a conversation not about how much she likes you or how much, FaceTime you put in, no, it's about the plan that you have created, co-created with your boss and your compensation numbers that you've pulled beforehand. Suddenly, that is how you do the hard work to get a 10, 15, 20,000 dollar raise in one shot. And please don't think that this is fiction. We have more documented success stories of people doing this than anybody else out there. We have videos, we have examples,

we have actual briefcase technique documents that they pulled out in interviews and negotiations. This is the way that it's done for top performers. And that's some of the stuff you learn in the Dream Job program. That's great. I mean, so basically start six months before you ask. Yep. Don't just wander in there and be like, hey, can I have a raise? I mean, you have

to kind of like put effort into it, right? It's not about just like, people think they can phone it in and be like, yeah, now I deserve $20,000 more. You have to be a hard worker. The work ethic has to be there. Everything important must be intentional. Your investments, your fitness, your career, your relationships. But the good news is if you simplify your life and focus on the five to 10 key things that are critical to you. For some it may be fitness, for some it may not. For some it may be travel, for some it may not, for some it may be travel, for some it may be children. Whatever those key things are, if you can truly go deep and be intentional, develop your philosophies, develop your scripts, get help from a coach or a book or whoever supports

system you have, suddenly you have an amazing rich life and it seems to create a flywheel where people I know who have used the personal finance stuff we teach tend to start getting into things like fitness because they realize, oh my god, I took this overwhelming concept, money, all this stuff, I never thought I could do it. Now I became the kind of person who was on top of my money, what else can I do? And that is very rewarding as a teacher to see students taking one part of what I teach and then applying it to other parts of life. It's pretty much why I do what I do.

Well, absolutely. Is that how you started to get more into fitness because you were kind of nailing it on the financial and you're like, you know what, I can take the same traits that I've kind of done in the financial world and I can just transfer them into the fitness space. Yeah, but it was hard for me. It was really hard because I grew up

without a cultural context for fitness. For example, we never went to a gym as a family. We did not use the words protein carbs, none of that. Those were not words in our household. I'm not kidding. Yeah, I know. family, we did not use the words protein, carbs, none of that. Those were not words in our household. I'm not kidding. Yeah, I know. Like, imagine if you grew up, imagine if you grew up never, ever, ever talking about

investments. It's going to be pretty hard for you to suddenly change your identity. That was the case for me. In fact, I used to joke a lot that I was just a skinny Indian guy. And like, it's kind of like a ha ha joke, but not really funny in retrospect because I created an identity for myself. Like what I was really saying was, I'm just a skinny Indian guy and I can never change it. And the analog would be people saying, oh, I'm not one of those rich people. I'll never have a Tesla. Must be nice, et cetera. I hate, I now truly hate hearing people reduce

themselves and minimize themselves, because I did it for so long. And what eventually happened was, I made a bet with one of my friends that I could gain weight, but I had no idea how. So I had a friend of mine at work who used to work, he used to work out, I said, hey man, can you take me to the gym and show me what to do? I was nervous and I felt like a complete dork walking in, not knowing any of these machines,

it's quite intimidating. And, you know, if I ever worked out, which was basically never, I would go in the treadmill because it felt safe. Yeah. Oh, um, he took me and he's showing me all these different exercises. And then I go, what should I eat? And he goes, um, do you like chicken? I go, yeah, he goes, do you like milkshakes?

I go, uh, do you like spaghetti? Like, yeah, do you like this? I go, yeah, he goes, do you like milkshakes? I go, ah, do you like spaghetti? Like, ah, do you like this? I go, yeah, okay, he goes, all right, you need to eat all of that. And what I didn't realize was, I told myself these stories. I used to say, oh, I eat so much, but when I learned how to actually measure food, how much a real serving size is,

I learned about calories and macros, it totally blew my mind because I realized I had been telling myself these stories, the whole, my whole 25 years, they were all alive. I actually didn't eat that much. When I got busy, I would skip a meal. And suddenly when I actually tracked it, I was like, oh my God, I can gain weight

just like anybody else or I can lose weight just like anybody else. And so over the course of working with trainers for many years, including now, I was able to transform. And the, it started out of pure vanity. Just, hey, can I actually get some muscle? And then I turned into actually loving the craft. Very much like careers and interviewing. It was like, hey, can I get this job offer? Now it's like, actually, can I truly communicate who I am to this interviewer? And I would say fitness has been transformative

and it's probably the most, the thing that I'm most proud of because honestly I shouldn't like I should be working at Cisco you know wearing like an extra large t-shirt and like doing some tech thing but I had to fight to learn this fitness thing I didn't know what I was doing and I had to fight to figure it out and get a lot of help and so I'm very proud and very thankful to all my teachers along the way who taught me how it really works. It's also such a huge confidence builder, right? When you see yourself and you see yourself accomplishing something that you didn't think

you could do and then you're doing it and you keep on like hitting these barriers that you thought, these ceilings, and just going one after the other. It's a huge comp, and then how you then just come up to the world is so differently. It's not just a physical confidence, and mental confidence is how you are in the space or in the world. I'm so glad you said that. And I think that that's one of those things you have to go through in order to understand.

Exactly. And I think, you know, probably each of us has something in our life that you really have to go through in order to understand what it's like for you. So for example, parents, they'll often say, no book can really prepare you. You know, you truly have to have children to truly understand it.

And I believe that. I think a lot of people in fitness say the same. I certainly know what it's like for money and for starting a business. One of my friends once told me, after I'd been running my business about 10 years or so, she started her own business. and she said to me, you know what, I don't know how you've done this

all alone for the last 10 years. She's like, I have a co-founder and half the time, I feel like quitting. And that was actually one of the nicest things she could say to a fellow entrepreneur because you can't really talk about the challenges of growing a business. You can't truly talk about it with someone unless they have done it.

So I think we all have something in our lives that we know other people can start and hopefully they stick with it and become successful. But it's hard to just read a book. You truly have to experience it. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that 100%. Where do you live? Do you live in San Francisco? Or do you live in New York? No, I live in Los Angeles. Are you? You do? Then why are we doing it like this? You know that I do this, you know, on treadmill, right? Oh, what's that? Oh, yeah, it's so funny.

on treadmills right? Speaking of it. Oh, what's that? Oh, yeah, that's so funny. Did you not realize that? I am so glad you pointed that out to me because it's such a, it just looks like a beautiful piece of art. But now, I could have got my steps in.

No, no, no, this is exact. I mean, I don't, you know, we're just starting to come back doing it live, right? This Zoom has been like a COVID thing. But I'm so cautious. I'm like very cautious about COVID. That's okay. You are very cautious of, okay, well,

I mean, I have a lot of the precautions. I have a whole row bod here that's could take your temperature and my temperature. And then I would even put a piece of plexiglass between the two dry meals. But the whole idea was that, the whole idea behind it is that you are killing to being efficient.

I'm all about efficiency and being productive. I love it. I do walks with friends. I just started like, I wanna be outside, especially living here. And go for a walk, hang with a friend, stay safe, and get some quality time in is like one of my favorite things to do. It's just like everybody loves it and it's so tactile.

You get movement, you get a lot of work. Exactly. A different way of communicating versus sitting over like a coffee table or dinner table. Absolutely. Right here, we were talking for like a hour and a half. We could have been like walking at a very slow pace, moving our bodies. You put that out for me.

Like, I know you can't walk as fast as I can. We'd go at like a 1.5, fine. I don't know. I didn't know what I, I didn't know what an overly clear, I didn't want to scare you more than I have. Like I pointed to the treadmill, but like we would be, I want you to be able to concentrate and like remember all these amazing practical advice

and all this advice you've given us, or me, and all of us, but also be able to get your steps in, earn probably like 150, 200 calories just by doing this podcast and feeling good. I need to. As opposed to like, I need to get a general is what I need to do. I feel a little guilty about buying a treadmill,

living in LA, because it's like, why not just go outside? But something so nice about just having a treadmill, you can just hop on. Absolutely, exactly true. I'm a big treadmill person. These are wood ways too, which is the best treadmill

that you can ever possibly get, by the way. Okay. But it's convenience. Like I'm about convenience, like you are. You're about convenience. Sometimes you can't just like walk out of your house and just stroll around. Yeah.

It's easier sometimes just to go downstairs or go to the right or to the left and just get your 20 minutes in. It's a great piece of machine. Anyway, so now I'm kind of bummed. I feel like this would have been. There's always another opportunity. This is not our only chance to talk.

But I really did have a great time. I thought your questions were awesome and I like I like the ability to really get into something It's so different than a typical two-minute three-minute interview And I think a lot of us are starved for more details. So thanks. Yes. Yes. Oh My gosh. Thank you so much for even saying that. We meet that was like, that means a lot. Um, and you know, I would love if you did come back because I can't tell you I wasn't just saying that to like,

low smoke up your butt, but I literally have a whole other five pages of questions because like you said, I want to get in the weeds and details because I think truthfully like how I am is I listen to a lot of podcasts or I hear a lot of things on TV and it's like And it's like very vapid. There's like no there's no real information there. It's just like oh, okay Now what yeah, I want to understand the nitty gritty of how to go from a to b to c to d and like I want to know from you What you do every single day, how you do it because you're the expert in this area, right? So.

Thank you very much. Well, I appreciate that and I hope for everyone listening that it was helpful, I personally loved going through your money dials. That was so fun. That's one of my most fun things is really to, you ask people about their money dials or their money history or how or how they talk about money with their partner. It's so fascinating.

I never get tired of hearing it and the stories are endlessly interesting. I can only imagine where do people's flat case are besides the fact that your book and it is really good, I will teach you to be rich by, how do you pronounce your last name? Remete set to you? Say ten. Like say the say tea. Say the little tea.

Say tea. It really is a very good practical book and you can actually apply these things to your life, which is why I loved it. And I'm still reading it. And it's actually not even a book as much as it is a guide. Like you can always refer back to it over and over again. It's not like it's a one and done, which I love. And where do people find you? Like on Instagram, Twitter, you can

find me on Instagram at Rameet, on Twitter at Rameet and IWT.com for people who want to know how to earn more. They want to know exact phrases to say at your job or even to start and grow a business, go to itwt.com and get on that newsletter. I think you're going to love it. Do you promise to come back on the treadmills? That is a tricky question. I'm not going to promise that because I don't know where we're going with COVID, but I'm going to say... I don't mean tomorrow. I mean like in a while. Okay, someday yes, and I'm gonna seriously consider

getting one of those treadmills too, which was an awesome realization, like an hour and a half into this chat. You did, what do you think of the Game of Thrones on the agenda? I'm sure you guys. It looks very random. Yeah.

Because I'm gonna actually thought I was on the Game of Thrones, what do you call it? The movie set, the TV set because I looked like it was part of it. But nope, that's just a treadmill. Two of them. That's all. Well, thank you so much. I could talk to you about how to, I can hook you up to one of these suckers later.

We'll talk in a bit. But thank you very much. It's a pleasure having you. Thanks, it was a pleasure. Habits and hustle, time to get it rolling. Stay up on the grind. Don't stop. Keep it going.

Habits and hustle from nothing in the summer. All out, a host of budget of fuck going. Visionaries, tune in. You can get to know. We inspire you. This is your moment. Excuses, we in Habitat. The Habits and hustle podcasts,

power by happiness. This episode is brought to you by the YAP Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire YAP Media, and host of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life.

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