Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #104 Ramit Sethi

Starting point is 00:00:26 Hey y'all like saying that hey y'all fun saying hey y'all gotta be from texas to say hey y'all i guess you can do that anywhere down south but it's new to me and i enjoy it and i'm kind of rambling here but that's only because i'm so damn excited to present to you today's guest ramit sadie who is fucking one of the few people that i've learned in recent times it's kind of like the first time I heard Wim Hof, it just changed my life forever. And the first time I heard Ramit, he was on the Tim Ferriss show. And without question, he's changed my life already radically from the finance perspective. And one of the things in wanting to change the show to the Kyle Kingsbury podcast was the idea that I can include so much more under the umbrella of optimization, more than just health and wellness, diet, nutrition, and that kind of stuff. And so one of the first things that really gravitated towards me was this financial optimization. And obviously there is a huge tie-in between our emotional state of well-being and how well we're doing financially. It is one of the biggest reasons that people get divorced. Certainly was a huge stressor in my household.

Starting point is 00:01:07 And I think it is just something that really goes missed. It goes missed in our education. It goes missed in our upbringing. And it's something that we need to talk about more. But Ramit really dumbs this shit down. His book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, second edition is an absolute game changer. It is straight to the point and really covers all

Starting point is 00:01:27 the areas you need to know about optimizing your own personal finance and investing to optimizing credit cards and you fucking name it. We go all over the place in this interview. And I mean, you can tell I'm excited when I'm talking to you right now. I was super excited to meet Ramin. I'm a huge fan. Hopefully that guy will be my pal one day. We'll be good friends. I would absolutely love that because he's a great dude. He's got a wealth of knowledge and he stretches that knowledge into many other avenues outside of personal finance, going into all sorts of shit, like how to apply for a job better, how to interview for a job better, how to ask for a raise better, how to start your online company, all sorts of really cool products that he's got up his sleeve. And he ties the

Starting point is 00:02:09 psychology of all this stuff into how we were raised and really helps unpack a lot of the narratives that we've been telling ourselves from day one. So really pumped you guys are tuning in this one. There's a few ways you can support this show. Number one, subscribe. That helps a ton. Two, tell your friends, tell your mom, tell your dad, and give us a rating on iTunes. That will really help other people see the show. And then finally, support our sponsors. We've got amazing sponsors today. We've got MindBullet. You've been hearing me talk about these guys already. They make a premium tea capsule. Comes out of Southeast Asia. Let's see if I get it right today. MitraGina Speciosa. I think I say it different each time.

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Starting point is 00:03:26 shipping straight to your door. There's nothing nasty in this. They use 100% CO2 extraction. That means there's no solvents because they're organic. That means there's no nasty pesticides and herbicides going into your body. It's so safe. I've given it to my son for brain injury. I take it with my wife every morning and every evening. It helps him with sleep. It lowers systemic inflammation and just helps me to operate the absolute best I can. There's nothing artificial in the bottle. They use MCT oil and all natural flavors. Cinnamon is our absolute favorite. Lemon is also damn good too. And they're just a phenomenal product. You can go to wabe.com, that's W-A-A-Y-B.com and enter code word Kyle for 10% off. And as always, folks, remember, if you go to

Starting point is 00:04:06 Onnit.com, use code word Kyle at checkout for 10% off all supplements and food products. Thank you guys for tuning in. I hope you enjoy the show. And without further ado, my man, Ramit Sethi is in the house. We've been clapped in. Ramit Sethi is in the house. How are you doing? I'm doing phenomenal. And we've come all the way to see you here in New York City. Thank you. It's an honor that you guys came. I appreciate it. Hell yeah. You were actually the reason behind coming out here. And then of course we tacked on some other amazing, amazing podcasts, but your book is phenomenal. It's an absolute game changer. There's very few books that I read where I'm like, holy shit, this is going to change everything. And as you can see, we got my copy here on the table.

Starting point is 00:04:46 It's been read a couple of times. It's been listened to more than that. But, you know, I first heard you on Ferris' show, and you were incredible there. I definitely want to get into a lot of what makes you different. And, of course, as we always start, with the background. Growing up, your background, and, you know, I'm from the Bay Area. Yeah. I grew up with a lot

Starting point is 00:05:05 of Indian kids. I have a lot of Indian friends. And there were some major cultural differences that I noticed when I was growing up. And so I always, it was funny because I think I just thought of them as like, oh, that's the way they do things. But that's the way I can do things as well. I can't negotiate because I'm not Indian, but it's like, no, no, no. These are things we can take from everyone. I love that. So let's dive into where you were raised, how you were raised, all that good stuff. So my parents moved here from India. And interestingly, my dad came first to study in the seventies. He went back, met my mom. Seven days later, they were married. They both came to the US and I grew up

Starting point is 00:05:47 basically in California. And it's interesting you mentioned how you saw, you know, you grew up with Indian kids and you didn't quite, you saw what they did differently, but didn't quite see how it might apply to you. I love that as a metaphor for life. We see so many different people and we naturally say, well, that's them. They eat at those kinds of restaurants or they wear those kinds of clothes or they travel for a month per year. I can't do that. And one of the most powerful questions that I've asked myself is what if, what if I did that? What if I could do that? Now it's interesting. You might turn out to decide, like, I don't actually want to eat at those restaurants, but I think everyone should be able to try something once. And so that's a powerful question. Growing up here, being born

Starting point is 00:06:34 here in California and growing up, I really started to understand two different cultures. So my parents, we didn't have a lot of money growing up. We were, I would say, middle class. My dad worked. My mom stayed at home with us. And there was built-in frugality. In fact, that was the lens. If I put on a pair of glasses to look at the world, my money lens, like most Americans, was frugality. The first question I asked is, how much does that cost?

Starting point is 00:07:01 I tried to save money. And I think that's actually a good lens to grow up with in some ways. The good part is that you learn a happy life doesn't depend primarily on money. Money is important. It's a small but important part of a rich life. But we were happy. Our vacation when we took one was driving down to Southern California and staying with our cousins. That was our vacation. When we went to Disneyland, we would start, we would stay with a cousin, go early in the morning. Like we were there when the park opened.

Starting point is 00:07:37 We had lunches packed because you can't feed a family. Going to a rest is too expensive. And then we would stay until the park closes. Why? Because we're not coming back here. So we better get everything we can. Gotta milk it. Milk it.

Starting point is 00:07:49 That was our life, right? And I like that. In a way, it teaches you the power of really going after an experience. But I also think that I didn't learn other money lenses. And for example, I remember one time we were in a gym and there are these like fit people sitting behind a glass door. And I asked my mom or my dad, like, who are those people? And they said, like, don't worry about that.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Like they're there to take your money. And so the concept being that a personal trainer is there to take your money. Okay. That's one way to look at it. Now I have a trainer. I work out four times a week with that trainer. I'm happy to pay, happy to pay. And I have a different money lens now for fitness, which is results. So I want to pay for more results, even though I could probably get the workouts for free on YouTube. I pay for the accountability. I pay for the results.

Starting point is 00:08:43 I pay for peace of mind. So one thing we may be able to talk about today is how those money lenses change. There's frugality, which most of us know intimately. There's results. There's luxury. There's safety and security. There's so many. And if we start thinking about

Starting point is 00:08:57 what kind of rich life we want for ourselves, then we can choose how our money can help us do that. 100%. Well, we're already taking a deep dive here into some of the stuff I wanted to get into. Let's just talk, let's explain first, because I think this is a key concept. One of the feedback that we were getting, I mean, I made an Instagram post about this book and how it changed my credit score in all of 15 minutes by doing some of the tips in there. And of course, that's improved since then. So major thank yous there. But a lot of people, the only negative feedback that I was seeing is, it's not all about money. Why is it so important to be rich and all

Starting point is 00:09:37 this shit? And of course, your response, and as you detail in the book, is what a rich life means to you is different from what a rich life means to me and every other person on this planet. And figuring that out is critical. So explain what your rich life is. Okay. Love this question. And I think it's a fair criticism. Why do we want to be rich? And when you think about what rich means, I want to ask everybody listening, what comes to mind for you? And what you might discover is that some of the things that come to mind are not very positive. A lot of people still believe that rich is somebody wearing a fur coat, you know, eating on a massive table with two people sitting in 30 feet away, these big silver platters being lifted, almost like this Richie Rich caricature. And that is what rich was presented as in the eights yeah the first batman yeah let's pass the salt

Starting point is 00:10:28 please exactly let's get real rich today can mean completely different things rich can mean traveling for a month per year it can mean uh being physically fit i think one of the one of the modern signs of a rich life is someone who's physically fit. Because you have to have a lot of things going on in your life correctly to be able to be physically fit. You have to be in control of your time. You have to have the knowledge to know about fitness and potentially macros and things like that. Discipline. Yes. That's rich. Rich can be having a strong family, family relationships, all these things. Now, can rich mean wearing a beautiful sweater? Yes. A lot of people will come on and tell you,

Starting point is 00:11:13 oh, rich, you should never buy any of this consumerist stuff. Hey, guess what? Let's be honest. I love a beautiful cashmere sweater and I spend unapologetically, I spend a huge amount on clothes. That's rich to me, but that doesn't have to be for you. Soologetically, I spend a huge amount on clothes that's rich to me, but that doesn't have to be for you. So for me, I'll tell you a little bit about what rich is to me. And then I'd love to know for you, what is rich to you? Okay. So for me, rich is being able to work with people who I like and respect. I never want to have to work with anyone that I don't. And because I run my own company, I will teach you to be rich. I choose. Simple as that. Next is to be able to travel at least one month per year. My wife and I took a honeymoon last

Starting point is 00:11:54 year. We took a six-week honeymoon and it changed our lives. And we said, you know what? Let's not make this the last time. Let's do it every year. So every year on the books, one month per year, we travel. It's about seeing our family frequently. So whether we visit them or we fly them out to visit us, that's a core part of our rich life. And then I mentioned clothes. There are a couple things I like to spend on, clothes, fitness, and I do it unapologetically. I think there's always something in our lives that we should have no budget for. We can talk about the concept of money dials, but I also think there are certain things that I just don't care to spend money on. I have a seven-year-old computer, works fine. I don't have a TV. I don't care. Those are things that are just not important to me. So a rich life is knowing what rich is, doubling down on that, spending extravagantly

Starting point is 00:12:46 on the things you love, but also cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don't. That's my rich life. What's yours? I love it. So I've obviously put some thought into this just due to the fact that I've read your book a couple of times now. And it's funny that you mentioned the MacBook Air because originally I had my wife's MacBook Air and I was like, oh, all right, let's see if we can milk this. But it was so slow and I brought it into Apple and they're like, dude, we've updated the software too many times and now you're at like half a gig of RAM. So unapologetically, I'll buy shit for business, right? Anything that's going to help me. So we need a new MacBook Air, done. Want to get Zero to launch, which we'll get into at the end

Starting point is 00:13:24 here, done. Buy the whole thing, right? So we'll get into at the end here, done. Buy the whole thing, right? So things like that, obviously any book. If I see a book, I don't even look at my bank account, obviously. I mean, I don't need to, thankfully, but that's going to be purchased immediately on Audible and hardcover or softcover, just because I know that's going to help feed me. Past that, what are the things that I enjoy in life we love to travel we love to see the world we love going to new places this year it's funny you said it's been a month out i i don't know with if i'm with my entire family sure i think they'd be great we have a four-year-old son yeah uh we spent four weeks a little over four weeks out of the country this year so we went to tulum

Starting point is 00:14:03 mexico cabo san lucas puerto ayarta and then we did 10 days in uh costa rica doing an ayahuasca a little over four weeks out of the country this year. So we went to Tulum, Mexico, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and then we did 10 days in Costa Rica doing an ayahuasca retreat, which was fantastic. I think I'm just a homebody though, but I like spacing that out, you know, and I think being able to travel and see new places and do it with my wife, not just for work, you know, a lot of these are work-related and certainly fun. Everything's fun. So that's kind of the rule of thumb is, is it fun or is it not fun? Do I use the power of no or the power of yes? Yes.

Starting point is 00:14:34 And I think that's become important. But understanding what that rich life is, it really is about seeing the world, getting out to new places, and then food. I mean, we fucking love food. So one of the ways that I consciously spend, and we'll get into this for further from your side is we can make great food at the house and it'll cost us a lot less, but we also like eating out and having somebody else make us great food. So when we're home, that's when we'll dine in. And when we travel, that's when we'll eat out and not worry about it. I love this. Okay. So for everybody listening, notice so many subtle things that Kyle said. First of all, very obvious when someone tells you about their rich life, their eyes light up. Like both of us were just smiling because we

Starting point is 00:15:14 get to talk about the things we love. And I think that that's what money provides. That's what a rich life is. It's not about sitting around and looking at Excel and saying, oh my God, I got an extra 0.3% return. No, that's what people think rich is. It's not. A rich life is what do I use my money for? And I smile when I talk about sweaters, when I talk about bringing our parents on our honeymoon as we did for the first part of it. You talk about traveling with your wife and your son. You talk about eating out. Like, you love it. I would challenge everyone, when you think about the title of this book, look, I know it sounds weird. I will teach you to be rich.

Starting point is 00:15:52 Who is this guy? I get it. But go deeper than the surface level explanation that you've been fed by society. Society tells you that it's bad to be rich. Because if you are rich, you must be evil. You must have stepped on someone's toes or shoulders or head to get there. You must have done wrong. Whereas in reality, rich can be, I like to cook at home, but I also like to eat out at amazing restaurants and never look at the price. My rich life when I moved to New York was, I want to order appetizers because I never did that as a kid.

Starting point is 00:16:26 We never did. Then my rich life was, if I want to go to a meeting, like in New York in the summer, I'm going to get in a car, a taxi, instead of taking the subway and coming out dripping in sweat, which I did today.

Starting point is 00:16:40 I took an Uber, like great. And then my dreams of a rich life have become bigger because I've worked hard. I've been disciplined. I've been fortunate. I would challenge everyone that rich is not a bad word. It's your word that you can define however you like. And I love that we have similarities. We both buy books without even thinking about it. We also have differences in things like computers, like awesome. We should be able to talk about that, bond about that, differ about that. Because your rich life is yours.

Starting point is 00:17:09 It's not mine. 100%. I love that. Well, let's, I know we talked about growing up. You went to Stanford. At what point did you realize that you're going to become an entrepreneur? And you made this decision to not take the cush job at Google. You know, I think I was into entrepreneurship even as a high school student. I remember my parents had this funny phrase they would say to us.

Starting point is 00:17:34 They're not writers, but they would say to us when we were sitting around the dinner table and we were talking about something, we had an idea. They would say, why don't you write that up? And I don't think I understood the power of that question. Why don't you write that up? And I don't think I understood the power of that question. Why don't you write it up? I did write it up. I wrote a couple of articles that went in the back of the Sacramento Bee, and it was like the teen section called Sidetracks. And to me, it was just like, oh, write this thing and submit it. What I later realized is that my parents were saying to me, you have something

Starting point is 00:18:05 important to say. You should say it to the world. I didn't realize that. That's a very deep concept. My parents just said, why don't you write it up? But I started to realize that, yes, I do have ideas. Now, are they good? I don't know. Is anyone going to listen? I don't know. That was something I needed to work on and you need to get good. But just to feel confident that you have something that people might want to hear, I don't think anybody tells most people that. So I was very lucky to grow up with two parents like that. I had a lot of unconventional jobs. I was a soccer referee.

Starting point is 00:18:39 I worked in a pizza place making pizzas. And I had a sales job where I started to get pretty good at sales, I knew that when I went to college, I wanted to do something different. I've never been the guy to get the best grades. I always prioritize my friends first, then my own business stuff, and then classes. But with that said, I did have pretty good grades. So I think it's important. Like you need to win the game that you're playing and then you can also do something in addition to that. So I think that's important. Once I went to school, once I went to college,

Starting point is 00:19:15 I started to meet a lot of people who just encouraged me. Hey, it was the equivalent of, why don't you write that up? But why don't you start a business? Why don't you try this? What's the worst that could happen? It fails. Big deal. And so when I graduated, I'd done a bunch of internships. I worked with Seth Godin. I worked at Sun Microsystems. I worked for a venture-backed startup. And I kind of learned what I liked and what I didn't. I realized I didn't like working for a big company. I really resent having to put on a name tag, like a badge.

Starting point is 00:19:47 Like I hate it. It feels like handcuffs to me. And I know that's not a normal feeling. A lot of people sitting here listening saying this guy sounds nuts, but we all have something in life that we just do not like. And for me, it was being told, I have to put this on my body. Who are you to tell me? And that kind of gave me a sense like maybe I'm not right for the corporate world. Now, I did accept an offer at Google. I was going to work there. And I took a couple months off for summer. I'd been in school for a while. And during that time, I started a company with a friend of mine. And we were just kind of seeing what would happen, but it took off. And so I went back to Google and decided not to go there and went into a full, true startup

Starting point is 00:20:30 where we basically made no money. And I lived in a house with three other guys, and we were just scrappy. And that was my early 20s. I love it. Well, let's dive in here to some of the myths around money and specifically something that really, I mean, it's right in the beginning of your book that just blew me away was the connection between money and food, the psychology behind money. Oh my God. So like all of your listeners probably intuitively know this. When we think about fitness and food, how many myths are there

Starting point is 00:21:03 out there about fitness and food, right? You need to eat this many times a day. There's all this, everyone has an agenda and everyone's telling you about, you need this, you need keto, you need intermittent, you need all this stuff. Now, it's good to know, but ultimately, once you become very good at it, it boils down to a few simple things. And you talk about this a lot. And anyone who's fit, they kind of have these unconscious behaviors that they do. And it's so interesting. You mentioned we like to cook at home,

Starting point is 00:21:36 but when we travel, we like to eat out. That is a very conscious, deliberate boundary that you've set. Whereas most people don't have these rules. Same with money. With money, when we don't know anything about it, we just hear these words like annuities and 401ks, and it just sounds so confusing. But really, if you get good at it, which is not that hard, it boils down into a few simple things. So there's so many similarities. We don't track how much we eat. We don't track how much we spend. We listen to our overweight uncle telling us you need to get on this diet. We listen to some random Redditor telling us that you need to invest in crypto. Okay, we do all these nutty things, listen to these nutty people never stopping to say, why would I take advice from that person? And interestingly, you know, a lot of people struggle with food or their weight or their fitness. The vast majority

Starting point is 00:22:32 of those people have never spent one weekend reading a good book about fitness. Never. Similarly, if you talk to anyone, especially anyone who's 40 plus, you ask them, what's the number one thing you're worried about? Answer is always the same, money. Yet those people have never spent one weekend reading a single good book about personal finance. And so there are so many similarities right in the introduction of my book with food and money. And the truth is I wanted to write this book to show people that you can control it. It's not out of your control. It's not your genetics. Genetics is not destiny for you. And the way you were raised is not destiny for money. I have to tell you too, I was advised to take out my references to food and

Starting point is 00:23:18 fitness. Take it out because it's been- Publisher didn't want it? I don't want to say who advised me, but it was someone involved and they were very insistent because it's now considered offensive to talk about changing your body. Guess what? I refused. And I said, not only have I become good at money,

Starting point is 00:23:39 but in the last 10 years, I've gone on my own fitness journey. I used to be super skinny Indian dude. And like, you would look at me and you'd be like, this guy knows about money because I looked like a Cisco engineer who's just like, you know, like I'm really good at programming. I'm not good at programming and I don't work at Cisco. I went on my own fitness journey and I learned that I can take control of my fitness. I can change the way I eat. I can change the way I train. I can get good teachers who show me how to do this. So I believe even more that it's possible to control your money,

Starting point is 00:24:10 just as I have, just have millions of my readers have. And we all know it's possible to control your fitness and your food and therefore your body. That is why I wrote this book to show you that you are in control of your rich life, whether it's the way you look, feel, or how much money you have to create your rich life. And these things just, I mean, it just blew my mind the second I read that because I was like, God, and I could even see when I went off the deep end, in either case, it was the same thing, a lack of discipline, a lack of paying attention, right? Like when I was fighting in the UFC, I'd win a fight of the night, get 60 grand from fighting and be like, all right, fuck yeah, we're going to do it up, you know? And then three weeks later, I've got half of it and I'm like, oh shit, I should

Starting point is 00:24:54 have paid attention, right? And I think that can be the same for somebody who they lose weight, they feel great. And then now I'm going to reward myself. And that little reward turns into a week long bender. And all of a turns into a week-long bender. And all of a sudden they've gained all the weight back. But discipline and paying attention doesn't mean you'll never have the cheat meal, much like conscious spending means that it's not like you're never going to have a latte again or get to eat out. But if you're paying attention, then you get to choose that and you choose it wisely. And even on the discipline of food, like I tell people all the time, clean is is a hashtag that quest nutrition remember the quest bars they created that cheat clean i think it's

Starting point is 00:25:31 the the coolest fucking hashtag ever like you're gonna you're gonna do pizza yeah make it yourself there you go to a clean place you want a bacon cheeseburger use grass-fed beef and free-range bacon and do it at the crib like you can make an amazing burger that way or go to a place where they're using high level ingredients. Yeah, I like that. That idea of if you're going to, like whether you call it a cheat meal or if you're going to go out and just enjoy something, like be conscious about it.

Starting point is 00:25:57 And I remember I listened to an interview on a podcast where there was a former Navy SEAL who said something really interesting. He said, when other people do pushups, they get tired. When I do pushups, they make me stronger. Just a total reframe. And so when you think about a cheat meal, for a lot of people, it's this concept of cheating, of letting go. And that's okay. We can let go, but we can also be a little conscious and saying, you know what? What do I really, really love? I love a good burger. Okay. What would make that burger even better? Well, I've kept my eye on this one burger place. The burgers

Starting point is 00:26:36 are a little expensive because they have better grass fed beef. I'm going to save up. And when I hit this goal or when I accomplished this, I'm going to go there and I'm going to, I'm going to save up. And when I hit this goal or when I accomplish this, I'm going to go there and I'm going to eat it. I'm not even going to think about the price. And like half the joy is in just thinking about what you're going to do when you get to spend on your rich life. And then you get to go there and do it unapologetically. I think what we're both saying is be conscious about it. Cheating or spending on something you love doesn't have to be this idea where you just let go. You can actually do it. You can be free. You can be contributing to what your goals are,

Starting point is 00:27:13 but you can also really enjoy it. In fact, enjoy it more than most people. Hell yeah. Well, let's dive in right up front. You know, it's funny, as I started reading about credit, and of course, that was what my post was, which obviously a lot of people have ideas around that. And there are some pretty high up authors and people in the finance space who are adamant against it. And Dave Ramsey is

Starting point is 00:27:38 a great guy, and you don't talk bad about him in the book or anything like that. But I found it comical. I follow him on Instagram now. And he had a, it was a cigarette box that had credit cards on the inside. And he said, this is basically what you're doing to your financial health. What's the deal here? Because that meme was funny, but there are people who believe that credit cards are basically the devil, like Bobby Boucher's mom. That's the devil, Bobby. It's very easy to give people black and white answers. Very easy to give that advice. And a lot of people like that advice. A lot of people like to be told, this is good, this is bad. No gray area. When in reality, life is a series of gray areas. And I think I have a different philosophy.

Starting point is 00:28:27 I have a very different philosophy than Dave Ramsey. I think Dave has helped a lot of people get out of debt. I have a lot of respect for that. I believe people are smart and I believe people crave the truth. That's why I'm here talking to you. And first question I asked you up front was, how long do we get to talk?

Starting point is 00:28:41 Because the longer, the better. People say, oh, I just want something short and quick. No, people want the truth. And if that truth takes an hour, two hours, three hours, they will listen to every last minute. People are smart. They don't want to be told, this is bad, don't use it forever. They want to understand, hey, what is this credit thing and how can it actually help me make tens of thousands of dollars? Why are some very intelligent and very wealthy people using credit cards and how do they squeeze every perk out of it? And where are the ways that people go

Starting point is 00:29:17 wrong with credit? Okay. People are smart and I insist on treating them like they're smart. So that's the difference in a lot of my philosophy, which is I'm not going to give you a black and white answer that says X and Y. I'm going to show you how it works and then I'm going to make my recommendation. My recommendation for 95% of people is probably correct. But if you want to differ from me, be my guest.

Starting point is 00:29:40 So that's what I believe. And I think with credit, it's easy to go around and say, don't use a credit card because you might go into debt. Now, these credit cards are engineered to get you to spend more and they're engineered to keep you in debt once you're in there. That is true. I talk about how to reframe it. Instead of saying, ooh, they're bad, let me avoid them, let me show you how to go on offense and beat them. Okay, I don't want to play a life of defense. This whole book is about going on offense.

Starting point is 00:30:12 It's so easy to say, ooh, bad 401k. Don't do that because one thing could go wrong. Ooh, bad credit cards, bad this. Let me just retreat into a cave for the next 80 years and hide from all these potential bad things. What kind of life is that? Let's go on offense. Let's figure out how do credit cards work. Let's squeeze them for every perk we can take from them. Let's pay off our debt if we've got it and not fall into the

Starting point is 00:30:35 traps that other people who have never read a good book do. And then let's get our credit automated and move on to the next thing. That's my philosophy that differs from other people. I love it. I love it. And there are certainly, I mean, this is funny. I've been waiting to talk about this. I have a buddy who has mastered credit and he recommends a lot of same credit cards you do. He recommended because of the travel that I do and because that's my rich life to get a Chase Sapphire card. And and no chase is not a sponsor of this episode podcast but they do 3x on what 3x on travel 3x on hotels 3x on fucking uber 3x on dining out yeah i mean you if you went down my rich life and checked off boxes that would be the card yeah 3x points and you get a point and a half back if you use it towards flights, hotels, and food.

Starting point is 00:31:26 Yeah. So, I mean, there's things like that where, and of course, I wasn't aware of that. You know, I've had every shitty credit card known to man. So that's the thing. When the entire world tells you no, then you just reflexively distance yourself from it as opposed to the world saying, hey, here's the good, here's the bad. Let me show you what you can do to be on the good side.

Starting point is 00:31:52 If you just start saying no, and the personal finance world loves to say no, no lattes, no vacations, no credit cards, no jeans, no nothing. Go into a cave. It's no surprise that most people in America just tune out, do whatever they were gonna do, overspend, they end up in debt, they don't read a book. It's no surprise, because everyone's busy telling them, no, no, no, bad, bad, bad.

Starting point is 00:32:16 No, let's actually flip that and say, yes. Money's about saying, yes, you wanna improve your credit, which by the way can save you tens of thousands of dollars if and when you go buy a house, how many lattes is that worth? So get your credit score right. Use the right credit card, which you, by the way, I put in the book, tons of stories of people going on their honeymoons for free, going on trips for free, getting upgraded to hotel suites for free. How? Because they, first of all, started by saying, I'm confident in myself. I trust myself that I can learn this and be disciplined about credit. And second, I want to get every last perk I possibly can. All right. I think the next thing that we go

Starting point is 00:33:00 through here in the book is how do we optimize banking? And this is something that I understood all too well with Bank of America. Oh, you used them. Oh my God. Okay. First of all, this episode is definitely not sponsored by Bank of America based on what I'm about to say about them. Wells Fargo, you too, you're coming up next. So why did you use Bank of America? Let me guess. It was the first one that I got right out of high school. I was 18 years old. Bingo. You know, it's so funny how many people fall in love with these banks. They're like, yeah, I've been at Bank of America for 18 years.

Starting point is 00:33:32 I'm like, why are you at Bank of America? They're like, well, my mom opened up a custodial account when I was 13. I'm like, okay, I get that your mom did that. You know, you're 33 years old, man. Is it time to maybe switch to a better bank? I don't know. Like, that would be pretty hard. And I kind of like Bank of America.

Starting point is 00:33:48 They have Skittles when I go into the office. Man, what's wrong with you? You're loyal to a multi-billion dollar bank that's predatory towards its customers? What the hell is going on here? Most people just have inertia when it comes to their bank. Wells Fargo, you suck. You've been fined by the government for your predatory behavior. Bank of America, I get the most complaints of my readers for all the

Starting point is 00:34:10 scammy stuff they do. So I'm not just here to shame banks, but I do name names. I believe in naming the best, who are the best companies and who are the worst. And that is something you don't see in a lot of other books. A lot of times you have authors who want to cut a deal with some bank. I want the people listening to know what the exact banks I use are. So I want to be totally transparent about that. The reason that banks are important is that all of your financial infrastructure flows through it. So imagine that your checking account is like your email inbox. All of your money is going to go in there and then it's going to be automatically filtered out like a Gmail filter. Once you follow the automation that I talk about in chapter five,

Starting point is 00:34:56 your money's going to come in from your paycheck or your freelance work. It's going to sit in your checking account and then it's just going to automatically flow like a beautiful river. Part of it's going to go to savings. Part of it's going to go to investments. If you have debt, it's going to pay that down automatically. And then the best part is it pops out guilt-free for guilt-free spending. You want to go out to dinner? Please do. I encourage it. But in order to start, you want to get the right infrastructure. It's kind of like when you're in fitness, you want to just have your basic foundations set up straight. You want to be flexible. You want to have good ankle strength. If you're squatting, you want to do all these basic things and getting the right account where they're not going to trick you into having the

Starting point is 00:35:39 wrong accounts. They're not going to charge you all these crazy fees. And they're actually going to give you perks. Like how many people here have to go to their exact bank ATM because they don't want to pay fees? Why is your mental space concerned with a $3 question? You should be focusing on $3,000 or $30,000 questions. I use a checking account, Schwab, where I can withdraw from any ATM. Doesn't matter, and the fees get refunded to me. You should be putting yourself in a position where instead of asking $3 questions, you can ask $30,000 questions. Your bank accounts are the first way to do that. It's massive. It's a massive game changer. What'd you switch to, by the way?

Starting point is 00:36:19 I'm opening up with Schwab and also for the savings, which we'll get into here, Capital One 360. Nice. So let's talk about that. Savings is something that, and I actually have a question about this. So, well, first, let's get into savings. I didn't realize you could have sub-savings accounts. You could set up a small amount of money for each for emergency funds or for a house down payment or for the wedding you're going to have. All those things make sense to me. But as you talk about in the book, when you get into savings,

Starting point is 00:36:51 and this is perhaps going to link into the next thing I want to talk about, investing, and we'll get into retirement and investing. I'm all over the place here. Savings. If I have money to put into savings and I have the bare minimums reached, would it be better to put all the rest of that money into my investments that's still available when I need it to be, as opposed to the 401k I never touch? Okay. So let's talk, this is a great question about savings versus investing. And I'm covering a lot here, so I'm sorry. It's great. I think you're asking the questions that people want to know. So let's start with savings accounts. Why do we have a savings account? A good rule of thumb is if you're going to need the money in zero to roughly five

Starting point is 00:37:32 or 10 years, you should put it in savings. So here's what falls under a savings account. You definitely want to have something called an emergency fund. An emergency fund is your bare minimum expenses times six, six months. Why do I say six months? Because if you get laid off, chances are there might be a recession going on. So it's not going to be like you just hop into another job and you want to give yourself time. Time is one of the best things that money can buy. You want to give yourself time to find another good job. So now everyone listening is like, hey, Ramit, that must be nice to be able to have six months of savings, but it doesn't happen overnight. It takes a while. So just for easy math, if your bare minimum expenses, like forget about cable, because if you get laid off, you're going to cancel cable,

Starting point is 00:38:18 but your bare minimum, your rent, your this, your that. For easy math, let's just say that it's $1,000 per month. I understand it's probably more, but $1,000 a month. So you need to now save up $6,000. That's not easy. Okay. If your expenses are $1,000 a month, it's going to take you a while. That's fine. You simply say, okay, I'm going to contribute $100 a month or $500 a month. And it's going to add up after a while. Once you fill that up to six months of savings, you're good. Just let it sit there. Don't worry about if you're not earning enough. It's liquid. It's there. You are safe for a long time. So that feels great. You're going to sleep easy

Starting point is 00:38:56 knowing if something ever happens, I'm covered. Then you have savings accounts for things that are coming up in the next five to 10 years. So things like, if you're going to get married, I started saving for my wedding in my mid-20s. I hadn't met my wife, but I knew that eventually I would get married. That's so financially responsible. Yeah, I know. It's weird. Oh my fucking God. This is like the dorky side of Rumi. like okay here's the thing here's my defense of it

Starting point is 00:39:25 like yes it is very financially responsible but i also believe in being honest like look time is going to happen in the next 10 years it's actually pretty predictable what we're going to spend money on if you're in your 20s odds are you're going to get married i'm not saying everyone gets married but odds are and And in fact, we know the exact amount of an average wedding. So I just said, I'm average. Well, I'm Indian, so I'm going to have a probably bigger than average wedding. So I picked a number and I just started contributing. I also knew that I was going to buy an engagement ring. I also knew that I was going to travel and on and on and on. Here are some predictable things that are going to

Starting point is 00:40:03 happen in the next 10 years for people. Depending on your age, you might get married, you might buy a house, you might have kids, you definitely are going to go on a really nice vacation. Why not plan ahead and put some money aside? People think that's weird. Oh, Rameet, so weird, you know, planning an engagement ring before you ever met your wife. Yeah, well, how about another, you know what another thing that's weird is? not planning it and then waking up and saying, oh shit, where's the money going to come from? So yes, I am a planner, but I like to be able to plan for things that are basically predictable. And so that's what a savings account is for. And you can create multiple sub-savings accounts. Did you do multiple sub-savings accounts?

Starting point is 00:40:44 Yeah. It's emergency fund and then down payment for a house. Beautiful. And we'll get into houses as well. So I know that's a big one. So that's your savings account. Now, what if you fill up all of your savings goals? Notice I call them savings goals because what most people do with a savings account is they just say like, I should save more money. And then they put it all in this like random account. It has no name. It's just savings. And they sort of contribute whenever they feel like it. Oh, I have a little extra money. I guess I'll write a check transfer like a hundred dollars. So they look at it three, four, five years later. And they're like,

Starting point is 00:41:20 this account has like 600 bucks in it. There's nothing in here. That is the equivalent of saying, I want to go work out when I feel like it. Dude, you're never going to feel like it. So don't take that approach. Put it in your calendar or come up with your plan. You want to work out two times a week, four times a week, whatever it is, and go consistently. When we have a checking account,

Starting point is 00:41:43 we automatically transfer money every single month to our savings account. So it could be 50 bucks. It could be 500 bucks. I know people who automatically transfer $5,000 per month. The point is you should not be consciously writing a check or transferring it. It happens automatically. And when you do that, you wake up three months, six months, 12 months from now, and your savings account is big. It's massive. And suddenly you do that, you wake up three months, six months, 12 months from now, and your savings account is big. It's massive. And suddenly you're like, oh my God, this thing actually works. That's how you get to have a massive amount in your savings account. Hell yeah. Well, let's dive into retirement. And this is something that I think anybody, you mentioned this in your

Starting point is 00:42:26 book, it's mentioned in any other finance book that I've read, Money Master the Game, The Asset Allocator, all these things where it's like, if you're 35 and you're first starting your retirement plan, you wish you were 25. If you're 25, you wish you were 20 or 15. I mean, there's no question, but it's never too late, even if you're 45, to start. And as I mentioned before the show, when I was fighting in the UFC, the money came and it went. And I had no plans of the future. I lived in the moment. And it was something where I really wish that I had started earlier.

Starting point is 00:42:58 But thankfully, now I've got my big boy pants on it. We're tied in with Vanguard. They're absolutely phenomenal. Let's talk about some differences in retirement between an IRA, 401k, those kinds of things, and just take a deeper dive into retirement. Okay. So I want to talk about why invest. We talked about why have a savings account and these sub-savings accounts. This is money that you want to keep liquid, whether it's for an emergency fund in case something happens or for these things that are predictably coming up. But guys, saving is not enough. A lot of people think, oh, if I saved a little bit of money, I'm good. But every day that your money is sitting in a savings account,

Starting point is 00:43:44 it's actually losing a little bit of money. And most people don't know this. It's almost like you're on a boat. You've got a little canoe or a rowboat or whatever you've got. And you're worried about crashing into this big boat. People think investing is like gambling. That's their idea of crashing.

Starting point is 00:44:01 Oh, my money's going to be cut in half. But what you don't realize is that your little rowboat's got a hundred little pinpricks in it, and it's just slowly sinking every day. That's your savings account. So what's going on here? Every day, your savings account is losing a little bit of money thanks to inflation. Now, you don't really need to worry about it. It's fine. You're going to hit your savings goals. Don't worry about that. And your money is not meant to grow in a savings account.

Starting point is 00:44:30 You're just putting a dollar in. You're going to basically get a dollar out minus inflation. But the way that you generate real money is through investing. Just to give you a comparison, right now for people listening, interest rates on a savings account, in other words, how much give you a comparison, right now for people listening, interest rates on a savings account, in other words, how much money you get back, are roughly 2%. Over time, you've been able to achieve roughly 8% investing in the market. Now, that doesn't sound like that much more, 6% more. The difference for most people over the course of their lifetime is hundreds of

Starting point is 00:45:02 thousands of dollars. So while you do need to have money in your savings account, the way that you actually build wealth is through investing. There's a few things that people get scared of. You know, the biggest common thing is investing feels like gambling. That is the equivalent of saying, if I deadlift, I'm going to throw out my back. Like, could it happen? Yeah, I guess. You put 400 pounds on there and go there the first time and do it. Yeah, okay. But what do we do in training? We learn, we move progressively up, we are safe, and all those things. In investing, we want to understand where our money's going. You're not picking stocks. People think investing is about picking stocks. Oh, I got to look at this screen, some PE ratio bullshit. No. Investing is

Starting point is 00:45:51 simple. It's boring. It's automatic. So I spend less than 60 minutes per month on all of my money and most people should be doing the same, maybe 90 minutes when you're starting out. Investing is not about excitement. It's not about picking random stuff. It's about picking a strategy and automating it and then getting on with your life. A rich life really is spent outside the spreadsheet. You're not tracking all this stuff. The system works, and that's how you build real wealth. So I can give you numbers. I can show you how much wealth you can accumulate. The numbers are actually quite staggering. Most people, they think like, oh, being a millionaire,

Starting point is 00:46:31 like that's impossible or having this much money, impossible. No, it's not magic. It's actually just math. And you can see how if you started today, the numbers become very achievable and bigger than you would ever imagine. Yeah, there's no doubt. That was something when I sat down with the guys from Vanguard, it just blew me away. And I mean, there's a lot of questions I have here. But what surprised you when you sat down? You started learning how compounding actually works.

Starting point is 00:47:01 Learned how compound worked. And from there, really began to understand taxes as well. You know, so I would love for you to dive into some of these different options in retirement and, you know, really what I'm doing now, which they set up for me. So, I mean, I just fell, this fell in my lap. Yeah. It was a Roth 401k. Yeah. So there's a lot of options that you have. And remember when I talked about credit cards, how people are reflexively against credit cards because they've been told they're bad. But what you discover is you can actually squeeze them. There's lots of perks offered. The same is true in investing and taxes. So when people think about taxes, they've been conditioned

Starting point is 00:47:43 to think taxes are bad. In fact, there's this common phrase that people, especially on like Twitter and Reddit, taxes are theft. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Let's. And what that means, like a Roth 401k is one example. There's IRAs, Roth IRAs, there's all these different accounts. What they mean is that you can get the money you're paid in your paycheck, you can actually get tax-advantaged accounts, which means that you are either deferring your taxes until later, or you're not even paying them at all. And this can turn out to be massively valuable for people. So what I would say to people is like, I understand accounts sound confusing. You've got a 401k, now a Roth 401k, IRA, Roth IRA. You've got all these different accounts, HSA. What I did in the book was I basically said, put your money here first, then this, then this, then this. It's very simple. It's kind of like you're at a party.

Starting point is 00:48:50 You know, those cocktail guys, they pour the champagne. It starts on the first glass and once it fills up, it goes to the next glass and then the next glass. That's how you think about your money. It's not that confusing. There are a few accounts you should use, but you should know that you have huge tax advantages available to you right now. You don't have to be a billionaire. No, you can do it right now. And so that is what I would suggest for people is to really get educated about the different type of accounts. And again, think of it like a champagne glass. You pour it into the first one. Once that's filled up, just go to the next rung on my ladder of investing. Yeah, it's brilliant because it simplifies it.

Starting point is 00:49:28 And you look at anything in life, from jujitsu to basketball to whatever, if you see mastery in any given thing, they're a master of the basics. That's right. And you simplify it in the same thing. What is the Navy SEAL quote? Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Starting point is 00:49:45 Bingo. So this is why I love talking about money with people who are experienced in other crafts. Jiu-jitsu, amazing. Fitness, amazing. I'm sure you get a lot of people asking about like, I'm too advanced for this. What's like the most advanced maneuver? And when they ask, they ask the same thing for me. Flying armbar. Yeah. I'm like, what does your portfolio look like? They're like, portfolio? What's that? And I remember there's a quote from a strength coach who said something to the equivalent of, don't ask me about intermittent fasting if you don't use a foam roller. Basically, don't ask for these more advanced things. What time should I take my supplements if you're not doing the very basics? And so it's really easy for people. The psychology here is it's easy to go into the clouds. And with

Starting point is 00:50:38 money, what we do is we say, well, the government is doing this, or I don't like the macroeconomic policy, or there's definitely going to be a recession. It's all this stuff in the clouds. And the reason that we are drawn there is it's easy to talk about stuff up here because nobody holds us accountable. When somebody comes to me saying, there's definitely going to be a recession, I say, what does your 401k look like? What does your asset allocation look like? And almost always, they don't even have the basics in place. So when I started out, and even now, I focus on the fundamentals. I log in every, not that often. I make sure my asset allocation is correct. I make sure that my funds are

Starting point is 00:51:19 automatically transferring where they need to go. I check in on a couple of areas that I tend to overspend on. That's it, just two. And then I get out. Like I'm focused on the basics. I'm relentless about those and that's it. Sometimes the most advanced thing you can do is to become really, really good at the basics. I love it.

Starting point is 00:51:42 And like, as we were talking about before the show, when it's automated, it's something that never even crosses my mind. The money that's there is the money that I have to spend consciously and everything else is going to go where I need it to go systematically. What was that twist for you when you went from manual,

Starting point is 00:51:57 like you mentioned that you used to get a $50,000 check and then you kind of look at it two weeks later, half of it was gone. Now you switch to an automation mindset where your money just transfers where it needs to go. What did that feel like when you made the transition? Well, it feels good. I mean, and no different from me doing ayahuasca or trying a new strength and conditioning technique. I want to tell the fucking world that's why you're here. There's's no doubt if it's powerful and it has the ability to move the bar.

Starting point is 00:52:26 I want to tell everyone about it. And that's something, I mean, it's, it's funny because I, I become obsessive over things when I get ahold of something that I think has some, some good weight to it.

Starting point is 00:52:37 Yeah. And so right now my wife, that's all she hears about. She's like, she's like, I don't care that you switched the 401k to go above the employer match. I don't care what it maxes out at. And at 50, I can go to 25,000 a year, you know, like all this stuff. And it's like, that's amazing. It's so funny. So I used to see people,

Starting point is 00:52:55 I would do events once in a while and mostly people would come that were single. And then sometimes I would see them and I could see them from a mile away. There's one person who's super excited to see me. They're like, oh my God, Ramit. And they're like dragging their spouse with them. And I could just tell. So when they got to me, I'd be like, all right, which of you hates me? And always one of them hated me because the other one was so excited. They would be playing my YouTube videos. They had all my audio stuff going on in the background, like every night. And their spouse was like, I don't want to hear what this motherfucker has to say anymore. But what I'm seeing now is a lot of people are coming with their partner. And I'm like, okay, which of you

Starting point is 00:53:33 hates me? They're like, oh no, we both like your stuff. We listen. Nowadays, I think I've gotten married. I've gotten a little older. I've got a lot of people who are married following me. And what happens is people have these conversations with their partner and suddenly they realize like, it's not just my rich life. It's actually our rich life. And so the money that we're putting away in a 401k or an IRA, et cetera, like we get to use that. We get to travel. We get to eat out. We get to do whatever we want. And that becomes exciting to both people, not just one. With that said, I apologize to your wife for having to listen to this. Well, that's just because I geek out on shit like that. That's just it. I geek out. I mean,

Starting point is 00:54:13 even when I was doing extended fasting, I'd be sitting there just like Dr. Peter Atiyah, showing her my ketone numbers and pricking my finger every two hours. She's like rolling her eyes. Oh boy, here we go again. Yeah. So I mean, we've talked a bit about taxes here and the importance of tax deferral. And also, you know, one key concept that I like with argument for the Roth options is that taxes are likely going to go up in the future.

Starting point is 00:54:38 Even if you make less money, overall taxes will likely go up in the future. So I think that's such an important piece there. Here's an example that illustrates the power of a Roth. For example, a Roth IRA. So right now, let's just say that, I'm going to give an easy math, you make $100 and let's just say that you pay $30 of it in taxes. Okay, great. So you got 70 bucks left. Let's say that you put that $70 into a Roth IRA. Again, I'm using very simplified numbers. So you've already paid taxes on the money,

Starting point is 00:55:08 and you invest that Roth IRA money. You invest it in a simple investment. Let's say over time, it returns 7% to 8% over the long term. When you go to take that money out, and by the way, a lot of people don't know this, but you can actually withdraw your Roth IRA money whenever you want. The money you put in, you can withdraw that principal after a certain time period. It's soon. So don't feel like you're locking your money away up forever. When you go to take that money out, anything you've made on your money, and for most people,

Starting point is 00:55:41 if you're listening and you start investing aggressively, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars. That money is tax-free. That's amazing. You guys don't understand how amazing that is, but imagine you would have normally paid 30 or 40% of that in taxes. Now you don't. You already paid taxes on the principal, and so the rest of the gains you get are tax-free. If this sounds confusing or too technical,

Starting point is 00:56:06 there's more in the book, but let me just say this. It's a shitload of money. So you should take advantage of these taxes. Other people sitting out here worrying about lattes, worrying about $3 appetizers and all these crazy things. Meanwhile, they're ignoring the 30,000 or in this case, $300,000 benefits of a Roth IRA, of a 401k match, of all these things that will pay you so much more than worrying about how much you spent on an appetizer of cheesecake or whatever it is appetizers people are eating these days. Okay. Oh, this tuna tartare, $14. How about $140,000 in your Roth IRA? How about that? So I just want people to focus on the important stuff, not what's in front of them. It makes so much sense. Yeah, I've definitely gotten into it.

Starting point is 00:56:50 And there's other things that are available out there. You mentioned HSAs, health savings account. I think that we can just touch on that for a second. If you have an emergency fund for healthcare, you wouldn't necessarily need to do that in a savings account because if you use an HSA, which also comes out, I don't see that money, right? Yep. Then that can grow tax deferred and have compounding interest. Yeah. And HSA is a somewhat more advanced account for people, but you get to work up to it.

Starting point is 00:57:19 But it's cool. It's like seeing someone at the gym doing a really cool exercise. You're like, man, that looks pretty fucking cool. It's like, you can get there. Let me show you how to do a one-arm pushup, for example. Yeah, it's not in the first chapter of your book. It's not in the first chapter, but if you want to do it, it definitely can. And the concept here, an HSA or a health savings account. See, the beauty of this is most people just think of an HSA as some weird account that their HR rep told them about. It turns out that your HSA is like a triple benefit account and you get massive tax advantages.

Starting point is 00:57:54 So what I show you in the book, I show you how to squeeze opportunities out of so many things, out of your checking account, out of your credit card. And in this case, out of an account that most people think is just meant to buy toothpaste and get braces. No, turns out you can actually make hundreds of thousands of dollars from this account, and you can invest it in the same low-cost funds that you would invest through a 401k or an IRA. So again, it's a little bit more advanced, but like I said, I believe people are smart. People want to know all the options. So I show you first do this. If you did that next, do this next, do this. And at a more advanced level, if you still got money left over, you know that you've got an HSA, which you can turn into an investment account. It's one of the best options out there. All right. So we've got, we've got our credit in order. We've got our

Starting point is 00:58:44 savings in order. We're consciously spending and we've started've got our credit in order. We've got our savings in order. We're consciously spending and we've started to get our retirement in order. And maybe we've got a health savings account even. Now we can think outside of ourselves and we think about our kids. Yeah. How beneficial is a 529 if we're putting our kids through school? Well, I'll tell you the truth. One of the most common questions I get from parents is, what should I do about my kids? And I always ask them the same question. I say, tell me about your finances first. And inevitably, invariably, they're usually in their early 40s. And they'll say, well, I have 18K saved up, but I haven't really done anything with my investments, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:59:31 And the truth of the answer is they need to focus on themselves first before their kids. Their kids have time. They do not. And one of the things we learn is that time can work for you if you start early, or it can work against you if you start late. So if the vast majority of people who are in their forties and they start to think about their kids, what's really going on here is an interesting psychological maneuver. A lot of people who are in their forties and have not saved a lot have basically accepted that what they basically tell themselves is I've lost this game. I don't want to play it. Throw in the towel and let me instead try to play this game for my kids. At least they have a chance. That reminds me of a fat nurse who smokes cigarettes on her break, who's very, very health conscious over the patients she has and wants to

Starting point is 01:00:17 take care of them, but neglects herself or himself. Yeah. It's very telling, right? And ultimately, this is not about the nurse being stupid. That nurse is very smart, very skilled. This parent is probably a very good parent, and they're probably very smart and good at work. It's about the psychology. When you get to a certain point, you're in your late 30s, 40s, and you haven't learned about money, which by the way is hard. It's hard to start learning about this stuff. There's so many people out there telling you all these things you need to do. And so suddenly you just say like, I can't win this game. And people do not like to continue struggling at a game that they feel they cannot win. So what they do psychologically is they throw in the towel

Starting point is 01:01:01 and they say, I'm going to go play a different game. And in this case, it makes perfect sense because we love our kids, don't we? Of course, we want the best for them. The best thing you can do for your kids financially is to make sure that you are set financially, get through all the ladder of investing, automate your money, invest, do all that. And if you still have money left over, be my guest. Open up a 529. It's amazing for your kids. But remember, your kids need you to be safe and secure, and they can also find other ways. My parents told me, look, you want to go to school? Great. You got to find scholarships. So I did. Student loan debt is not the worst thing in the world. This is like this crazy thing that the world has told us. Student loan debt is so oppressive. Oh my God. Guys, getting a college education is one of the best investments you can

Starting point is 01:01:50 possibly make. The data shows that a college graduate has $1 million more in lifetime earnings than a non-college graduate. Now, am I saying you should go and blow all your money on a student loan for a degree that's never going to pay? No. Be smart. Be thoughtful. But I'm not going to give you a black and white answer that says student loans are evil. They're not. People who go to college and get a degree have $1 million higher lifetime earnings. So when you're focusing on your kids, remember, they have time. You do not. Get yourself financially automated first, and then you can worry about your kids. Yeah, because if you don't, you will become a burden on them financially. And most, let's face it, you're Indian, it might be different for you.

Starting point is 01:02:35 I have Chinese friends also in the Bay, different for them. But there's a lot of Caucasian people that would fucking want to hang themselves if their parents moved in with them, right? That's just a different culture. It's a different culture. And I think like, ultimately what, what I want people to know is like, you have not lost the game. You said it, it's not too late. You can still do it. Yes. It's going to be a little harder, but it's the same, whether it be, you know, Oh my God, I'm out of shape and I'm 45. Yeah. It's

Starting point is 01:03:04 a little harder, but you could still do it. And so I want people to know that this stuff, once you start, it's not that complicated. It's just a series of following the steps and you should not give up on this game of money. You can actually win this game, even if you're starting a little later than other people. All right. One more question on this, then we're going to move into entrepreneurship and some of the businesses and products that you've created, which I'm a massive fan if you can't tell. I don't know if the listener can tell, but I'm a massive fan. Thank you. So a lot has been discussed around which asset allocation model performs the best. And in the book and in many, Money Master the Game, all these different books, there's a

Starting point is 01:03:45 lot of different pie charts on exactly what you need to do and then when to rebalance the portfolio, either annually or quarterly or monthly. My question isn't on that because you covered in the book and I want people to read. We don't need to read this book out loud to people. That's called Audible. But the question is target date fund, which I have set up for myself. And I have that with my 401k. And then I also have a different target date fund set for my own personal investing. And that automatically comes out each month. I'm very happy that that's there. But I've also noticed it's a more aggressive plan. That's about 90% stocks, 10% 10 bonds to begin with that'll shift over time

Starting point is 01:04:26 you cover this in the book again most of these models that have performed well through thick and thin and lost little when the world fucking came crashing down have not had 90 10 splits yet at the same time target date funds can be beneficial if you don't want to pay attention to auto balancing or rebalancing your portfolio by yourself. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about what is asset allocation? What is a target date fund? These are words that we're tossing around. We should explain them. When I say you should invest your money, there are lots of different options. If you wanted to, you could pick one stock and put invest your money, there are lots of different options. If you wanted to, you could pick one stock and put all your money in there.

Starting point is 01:05:09 That would be really fucking stupid, but you could do it if you wanted to. Don't do that for everyone listening. But you have a lot of options. You could invest in one corporate bond or one municipal bond. That would be equally stupid, but you could do that. Everyone's heard this word diversification, but it's hard to really understand what that means. So if you think of your investments as a pie chart, there's really two or three different classes that we can fit in. It's almost like different types of pie you can put in the entire pan. There's equities,

Starting point is 01:05:43 which typically means stocks. There's fixed income, which typically means stocks. There's fixed income, which typically means bonds. And then there's just cash just sitting there. So stocks, bonds, and cash. Now, what we know over time is that stocks tend to return more, bonds are safer, and cash is ultra safe, but it doesn't really return anything for you. So if you're constructing your portfolio or what we call asset allocation, an asset allocation is just what does your pie look like? How much stocks, how much bonds, how much cash? Now this turns out to be extremely technical and complicated, but fortunately there are a lot of great companies that have simplified this. Like you should not be sitting in there reading all the research on technical analysis and

Starting point is 01:06:28 all this stuff because it's just over most people's heads. It's very mathematical. I use Vanguard. There's a million different great companies out there that will automatically construct your portfolio for you. And nowadays, they do it for really cheap, borderline free, which is incredible. You used to have to pay 1% or more to some financial advisor. You don't need to do that anymore. So what I did was I went to Vanguard. You can go to any company. And I told them the age

Starting point is 01:07:00 that I would retire. Now, if you don't know what age you're going to retire, you can just assume 65. Okay. So if you're 35, it's going to be 30 years from now. It doesn't really matter. Pick a number that sort of ends up when you're 65. They will construct a portfolio for you. Now, typically what this looks like, I cover this in chapter seven of the book is it'll be like 90% stocks and roughly eight to 10% bonds, maybe a little bit of cash. Why? Because stocks return more over time. But as you age, as you turn 45, 55, 65, that is going to change. It's going to go from 90% stocks. They're going to add more bonds and reduce the stocks. So it might go from 90-10 to eventually 60-40, et cetera. Why? Because how many of us know somebody who in 2008, their parents lost a ton of money? You want, as you get older, your goals change. When you're in your 20s and

Starting point is 01:08:01 30s, you want growth. You want to accumulate. When you're in your 60s and 30s, you want growth. You want to accumulate. When you're in your 60s and 70s, you want safety. So your returns go down, but your safety goes up. This is what asset allocation is about. Now, I just gave you the kind of basics on it. The simplest way to do this is to pick a target date fund. And you simply tell them how old you are. They'll give you a portfolio. And the best part is they automatically change it over time. You don't need to get in there and do it. That's called rebalancing. It's very important and almost nobody does it. So stop, just stop pretending you're going to do it. Let the company do it for you. I invest in target date funds. A lot of my readers do. I recommend them and I show you how to think about them. This is what investing is. It's simple.

Starting point is 01:08:46 It's boring. It's low cost and it just works. All you focus on is setting it up once and then putting as much money as you possibly can in that every single month, every single year. That is how you will end up with more money than you had ever imagined. I love it.

Starting point is 01:09:04 And it's, again, a part of that automatic system where I know exactly how much I can contribute. And that's just where it goes. I don't even think about it. Yeah. By the way, you asked about what happens when you lose money. So I want to be really honest about this because the market doesn't always go up. And we should talk about what happens if the market goes down. When I say the market returns 8% on average over time, that might be up 15% one year, but it might be down 6% one year. And what happens is people get really scared.

Starting point is 01:09:39 They get skittish. Oh my God. Oh my God. I lost my money. I better pull it out. There's a lot of great studies showing that the best investors are the ones who just don't pay attention to it. They set it up once and then they don't check it more than once every three or six or 12 months. You do not want to be checking this every day. It's normal that the market goes up and down on a daily basis. Again, for people

Starting point is 01:10:02 listening who are into workouts, you're not always going to have a great workout every single time. But over time, if you show up every day, whether it's jujitsu, training, any kind, over time, you focus on showing up, doing the right things, you're going to get better. Same with investing. You focus on putting money in consistently, automatically, and over time, the market historically has returned 8%. Will it go down some years? Yes, of course. I have an article I wrote where I lost over $100,000 in one month in one of my investing accounts. Guess what I did? I just kept investing automatically. If it's low, that's great. It's funny that so many of us, if the price of toothpaste goes down, we're happy. Oh my God, toothpaste is on sale, 30% off, amazing. But if the price of the market goes down, we flip out. In reality, if you're a young investor, you should love it. If it goes down, your automatic system gets to buy more shares for

Starting point is 01:11:04 the same price. And if it goes up, your investments are going up, you're still buying, but consistently you're buying every single month. That's called dollar cost averaging. And so for everybody, I kind of want to demystify this and show you that investing is boring. It's generally automatic, but that's the way you accumulate tons of wealth. Yeah. And it makes so much sense to me too, like getting into index funds and just looking that you can play an entire market and be safe there. Because I think you mentioned this too, like I had an E-Trade account when I was 20 and I lost a thousand bucks probably in the first fucking week. Yeah, same thing. And like, those

Starting point is 01:11:39 are the mistakes you have to make because you think like, oh, I'm a genius. Like I'm looking at these charts I'm going to buy. I did the exact same thing. And it's humbling because you realize like, oh, this is a lot more complicated than I thought. But at the same time, then you discover what real investing is. It's simple. It's boring. Now the world will try to get you to do all this sexy stuff. In fact, there's an ad campaign called Be Better Than Average. And I really hate this campaign because in life, we don't want to be average. I don't want to have an average relationship. I don't want to look average. Nobody wants to be average, especially in this culture. But with money, average is amazing. An average return of 8% is phenomenal. And there's this thing called alpha. People try to beat the

Starting point is 01:12:27 market, they get what's called alpha. It turns out that it is extremely hard to beat the market, especially over the long term. Now, there are a few people who have managed to do it. It's unclear whether it's pure statistics or also skill. Out of a billion people, statistically, there are bound to be a few that do beat it. But in general, the average investor has no chance of getting alpha. The average person who's... You're sitting in your house in Toledo. You're sitting there with popcorn in your mouth, reading Reddit. You think you're going to beat this multi-billion dollar investor in New York with an entire team that works 24 hours a day? You have no chance. Like if I went in to fight you,

Starting point is 01:13:06 there's no chance. Oh, I watched a cool YouTube video. I know how to do a kick. Zero chance. My ass is getting destroyed. Part of being successful is being humble enough to know when you do not have a chance to win. And by the way, average in this case is actually really good. 8%. You're doubling your money frequently. The rule of 72, look it up. So do not get carried away with people telling you be better than average. In life, yes, we want to be better than average. In money, average is perfectly amazing. Yeah. Crunch the numbers with the guys and go forward with 7%, 8%. And there's no frowny faces in the room. I'm like, all right, that fucking works.

Starting point is 01:13:50 Okay, what are my chances if I get in the ring with you? And I've watched a couple YouTube videos. Those are just the old school ones. Those are probably in a Speedo. Definitely. Because none of the UFC ones are online. How fast would I be taken down? Like, are we talking seconds?

Starting point is 01:14:08 How fast? Yeah, I think under a minute. It'd be quick. But Kyle, I want to be better than average. And I watched a YouTube video. There's no chance. Well, that's the thing. You've talked about consistency, right?

Starting point is 01:14:21 If you consistently put your money into the market, you don't worry if it goes up and down. That's the same thing if you wanted to get good at jujitsu or mixed martial arts. Yes. And you may never become Randy Couture or Chuck Liddell, but if you consistently showed up, you might have that 8% return where you get better and better over time. Yes.

Starting point is 01:14:38 And sure, the market takes a crash when you tear your knee or you get a little injury, but as long as you keep showing up, you keep that small return coming back. That's amazing. There's so many similarities between jiu-jitsu and any kind of physical training and money. And we kind of intuitively know it. We don't expect, I would not expect to fight you and be able to pull it off. And yet we do the same thing with money. I'm going to pick these very sophisticated strategies without even doing the basics. And so I would say to people listening, like trust yourself. You intuitively know that that physical move is too advanced.

Starting point is 01:15:17 You look at it, you just know it. I know what I can do and what I can't. And then with money, which is also a technical subject, start with the basics. And when you calculate a 7% or 8% return and you see how fast that money grows, oh boy, you start to say, you know what? I'm good. This is good. Let me just set this up, automate it, and move on. Yeah. And as we generate more wealth, which we'll get into here in a minute, then that can go elsewhere. I don't need to worry about it. Much of our society is still stuck in this old model of work. And this reminds me of one of my good friends

Starting point is 01:15:52 and mentors, Paul Cech, who's been on the show, I think half a dozen times. He wrote the book, How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy. But he talks about this prostitute archetype. And the prostitute archetype can be used correctly or incorrectly. Incorrectly, the prostitute will work as a prostitute doing something it doesn't like for the remainder of its life, just collecting its money, spending it, and never working towards something else. Correctly used, the prostitute will work the job it doesn't like with a goal in mind on what they're going to do when enough money is there, the business they'll start, the education they'll get, fill in the blank. And then they're able to transition from that thing they don't like into something they

Starting point is 01:16:34 do like. One thing I want to do for people, and this really just comes back to me, like not ever wanting to have a job I didn't like and being really scared of that, seeing my parents in jobs they didn't like necessarily, is just to know how do we shift? How can we use that prostitute archetype correctly? And what are the ways that we build this? And you know where I'm going to this. I'm going to Zero to Launch, which is one of your products that I find absolutely incredible. But how do we teach people that you can do this thing you may not like to get to a place that you do like? Okay, let's start by talking about something you just offhandedly mentioned,

Starting point is 01:17:16 but I find it so fascinating. You said your parents set a model for you of not liking what they did. And can you talk about that? How did you know that they didn't like it? Yeah. Well, my father specifically, we grew up in the Bay Area, pinching pennies, living in apartments and condos, and then finally got a house outside the Bay, came back, got a house in the Bay, in Cupertino. And right then the dot-com started to boom. And my dad had a business he created called Silicon Valley Shelving. It's still around. It was all static control shelving for all the tech companies that needed to put microprocessors

Starting point is 01:17:52 and things without having their chips go bad. And so everything blew up in the Silicon Valley. So did his company. And he went to making six figures a year and that grew. And in that, he got so caught up in work, work, work, sell, sell, sell, and also 100% commissions based. So we're rich for a few months and we're poor, those kind of things. And it just was a high stress situation.

Starting point is 01:18:21 And I could see that he didn't really enjoy it. He liked the action of being in sales and getting the big deal. But at the same time, it was depleting him. And he never had time, which is that ultimate thing we're looking for, right? He never had time to go on vacation. He never had time to train anymore. This is a guy who lifted weights with me all the time when I was young. And that stopped. Thankfully, later, he started to get into jujitsu and changed his shit. Now he's in great shape. When you said that he was depleted, can you remember any specific examples where you could just tell things were not going well at work for him?

Starting point is 01:18:58 Yeah. Probably when he would sleep on a cot at work and spend 12 hours a day there working, just grinding. Okay. Well, thanks for sharing that. I mean, we all have these experiences that shape the way we think about money, time, and work. And I hear a lot of it from friends or readers, and sometimes it's really subtle. You ask them, how's it going? And their answer is, same old, same old. Or how's work going? It's a job. And to me, I think that's a real big red flag because they're at work for eight hours or more per day. And if their answer is, eh, it's a job, eh, same old, same old,

Starting point is 01:19:49 what a horrifying commentary on where they are spending the majority of their daylight hours. What I would rather hear is, oh my God, it's amazing. Or, wow, I love what I'm learning at work. Or, I just got promoted and I'm doing XYZ. Sometimes our most subtle conversational tics really betray us. And in my mind, if someone

Starting point is 01:20:16 says same old, same old, that's a huge red flag. So the fact that your dad was sleeping on a cot is beyond red flag. And if you asked him, what kind of rich life do you want for yourself? I would be willing to bet he would not say sleeping on a cot. Most of us would not say, I want my life to be same old, same old. No. If we, what we would say, I want to travel. I want to do this. I want to eat out without having to look at the prices and on and on. So I think that a lot of times people don't realize how grave of a situation they're actually in. And you can tell just by the way you introduce yourself. You can tell by how you feel on Sunday evening when you're

Starting point is 01:20:55 looking at your calendar to go to work tomorrow. You can tell when you come home from work and what do you feel? Do you feel excited to go out and see your friends or train or go hang out? Or are you like, ah, these subtle cues, our body and our mind will tell us if we were on a good situation or not. So I would say, first of all, like fascinating to hear how people notice other people. Your body will tell you what you need to know. I had times at work, myself, my own company, where things were not going well at my company. And we had hyper growth for a long time,

Starting point is 01:21:36 and then we stopped. And it became really tough for us. And I remember not being able to sleep. I sleep great normally, but I couldn't get to sleep. And then I would wake up gasping for breath. And like, I thought, okay, you know, maybe I have a nasal congestion. Then it went on for a long time. And I remember I went to see a doctor, ear, nose, and throat doctor. And they looked inside and they were like, everything's physiologically fine. Are you under any stress?

Starting point is 01:22:05 And I just laughed. I was like, you could say that. Like I was under massive stress. When we made a plan, the day after we made a plan, I slept again. And that was an example that really shocked me because I've always been remit,

Starting point is 01:22:21 like cool under pressure. Nothing really phases me. I learned it from my dad. But that example taught me that I'm just as susceptible as anyone else. And it might take a higher level of stress, but my body told me something is not right. And it woke me up gasping for breath for a period of weeks.

Starting point is 01:22:40 So I think when it comes to work, you know, a lot of us have absorbed these very, I call them invisible scripts, these invisible scripts that guide our lives. Some of these invisible scripts, like I grew up with a positive invisible script, education is a good thing. I think that's a great invisible script.

Starting point is 01:22:58 But a lot of us also hear these scripts like, finish the food on your plate. And so we take that really far and end up chronically overeating. Or you should always say yes to family. That can be good, but it can also be destructive. So I would challenge everyone right now to, you can Google invisible scripts. You'll see some articles I've written about it. You definitely have at least 10 invisible scripts right now that are so deep, they're invisible to you that are guiding you.

Starting point is 01:23:28 And you can decide whether you like them or not. One of those scripts is that work is just a job. We need to accept the pain so that later we can do whatever we want. I'll be happy when. I'll be happy when. And like, what do they say? When what? What do they usually say? When I retire. When'll be happy when. I'll be happy when. And like, what do they say? When what? What do they usually say? When I retire, when I get the raise, when I get to go on vacation, when this

Starting point is 01:23:50 happens, when that happens. 100%. And then, and that's a fine philosophy to have, I guess, but let's get intellectually honest. Take a look at the last 12 months. Literally pull out your calendar right now. Did the when happen? Did you get promoted? If so, were you happy then? Did you make an extra $10,000? If so, what happened then? You'd be surprised how many people, they think money is going to solve it all. And I can show people right now, I can show you how to get a $10,000, $25,000 raise. Yes, it will be nice. You'll go out, you'll spend get a $10,000, $25,000 raise. Yes, it will be nice. You'll go out, you'll spend a little more, you'll save a little more. Great. It's not going to fundamentally change the way you look at life. That's why so many people, especially young

Starting point is 01:24:34 technical men, find it easy to fixate on things like their spreadsheet. They get in there. There's a lot of folks in the FIRE community. I have a lot of good things to say about the FIRE community, but there's also a side that can be dark, which is they sit in there. There's a lot of folks in the FIRE community. I have a lot of good things to say about the FIRE community, but there's also a side that can be dark, which is they sit in there and they run models all day on these spreadsheets and it feels really good because they're in control. Ah, I can make an extra $3,000 and then I'll be happy. And yes, you should earn money.

Starting point is 01:25:02 You should create your rich life and all that. But the truth is that's not going to change the way you look at the world. At a certain point, you've won the game. You need to turn the page and live outside the spreadsheet. And that's where we get to talk about work. So I can talk about work. I can take you any direction you want. Where should we go? Yeah, I'm just, I have, I have an idea in my head. And the idea is that there's a large population of people right now that are doing jobs that they don't fucking like. And they're just a job.

Starting point is 01:25:28 They're not a career. Or if it is a career, maybe they're undervalued, underappreciated. And I know you have a number of programs on how to get a raise, how to talk to your employer, all these things. And they're fantastic. But thinking outside the box, there's a lot of everyone's an expert. And this is something you get into. Everyone is an expert. And if you can create a model around that expertise to share with the

Starting point is 01:25:49 world, you can have your own business. Yes. Okay. So I agree with you. I think there are a lot of people who kind of unconsciously, unhappily work at a job. And we talked about some of those verbal tics that will reveal to yourself and both verbal and your body. How do you feel on Sunday night? How do you respond when someone says, what do you do? And on and on. You should really get honest with yourself. Take a hard look. I also think some people are happy at their jobs. I know a lot of people. I hope the people who work with me are happy at their jobs. I think they're amazing. But I will say that you can now have access to the largest customer base in the world and you can share things with them.

Starting point is 01:26:29 So like, look what you're doing right here. 20 years ago, somebody like you would have retired and gone off into the sunset or maybe got a second job and that was it. You get the chance. You flew to New York to see me, which is amazing. I mean, that's like unbelievably a huge honor. We get to sit here, record on a weekday. It's like 10 a.m. on a weekday.

Starting point is 01:26:52 And then this gets to be heard by lots of people. Now, it didn't always start off like that. When I started writing about money, I made my mistakes with money. I learned about money. I started trying to teach people for free about money. This was in college. People didn't really want to hear it,

Starting point is 01:27:08 but I felt like I had something to hear. As my parents said, why don't you write it up? Well, I wrote it up and nobody came. So finally I started a blog. And that was when I learned how to write in a way that was engaging. I learned a little bit about how to get people to come to my site.

Starting point is 01:27:24 And over time, I just treated it like an experimental lab. I never thought it would be a business. Never. I did it for free for years. The first thing I ever sold was a $5 ebook. Okay. And like $5 is like a joke now. Some of my programs cost $2,000, $10,000, $20,000. But I was just learning. And I was like, what will happen if I do this? These days now, we help people start their own businesses. And we have a program, Zero to Launch. And we have a whole bunch of programs at iwt.com slash products. I love taking somebody who, most people don't even have an idea when they come to us, but they're like, I want freedom. I want flexibility.

Starting point is 01:28:09 Maybe they have a job. Maybe they want to keep their job, but they're like, I want the ability or the option to leave and do what I want. So sometimes we have people who end up teaching health or fitness. We have people who teach dog walking, parenting, Excel spreadsheets. We have a caricature artist who went through one of our programs. She used to make $8 an hour. Now she has a multi-six-figure business because there are ways to learn how to take what you're good at and turn them into a profitable business. So that's what Zero to Launch is. And that's what

Starting point is 01:28:45 we help people do. I love it. Yeah. And obviously I'm bringing that up because I'm a part of the program and I think it's- I heard you joined. Absolutely incredible. Yeah. I told Jill. That's amazing. Okay. So what got you to join? Like what made you decide this is something I want to do and I'm going to go with this program. So Aubrey, I'm obviously learning from the guy, the head honcho at Onnit and one of my best friends. He has a number of products from a mental, emotional side of things. What's the name of it, Ryan? No, not fit for service. I'll get to that. But before that, go for your win. So he's got a program, go for your win. And it's a good program. It takes people through several weeks course. And then he has the upsell, which is if you want to be involved with us in a mastermind. And I'm one of the coaches in that. I participate in it quite a bit. We have meetups and all these things. And, you know, I just got to thinking around that, that there's for sure something I can offer on a deeper level because a lot of people that are within that program, they love talking to me, but there's 150 people in there and there's only four coaches. So how do we narrow that down to

Starting point is 01:29:48 give something to somebody that's on a closer level? And, you know, I've learned from other guys like Ben Greenfield, who's massive in the fitness space. He has an inner circle of 12 people who has his cell phone, you know, and they have everything from fitness advice to health and wellness to life advice and all that. So, I mean, I think there's a lot there, but then also, you know, scale, right? You got to give something to everyone and to be able to start low and have, you know, breadcrumbs for people to get and then just scale it up to the, you know, people who are willing to pay a high price to have private coaching. Amazing. So many things I take away from what you just said. I hope everyone catches them. Number one, the fact that you are both a teacher and a student is amazing and very undervalued. Every successful person that you see on TV or you see anywhere, they have a coach or

Starting point is 01:30:39 they're learning from a teacher, whether it's books, whether it's people that are alive now or not, whether it's trainers, everybody's's people that are alive now or not, whether it's trainers, everybody's got them. And I think that's amazing that you model that for people. You're already successful and people look up to you. Oh my God, that's so cool. I wish I had that platform. And yet you're still investing in yourself. Amazing. The other thing is the concept of scale. So it's one thing if you want to work one-on-one with clients, and that's totally achievable. But what we teach in ZTL, and what I think is very amazing, is to be able to take what you know, figure out how to package it in a way that people love, and it moves them

Starting point is 01:31:18 through results, through emotional results as well as tangible results, and to scale that. So right now, as we're sitting here, people are joining our programs automatically. How? We show how to do opt-in forms and then funnels and all these things. And all that stuff matters for sure. But ultimately, what really matters is you knowing what you have to offer to the world. And then we show you some ways of packaging it, automating it and scaling it. And that lets you take what you've got, what you're really good at and like share it with the world. That is to me, one of the most amazing things you can do.

Starting point is 01:31:56 Yeah. And on that note, I think another piece that I forgot to mention that I think no one really thinks about if they don't have it, but it's passive income. Yeah. And right now, I mean, the podcast is doing great. I get to travel for work. We're eating out at nice restaurants. We got the fucking best steak I've ever had at Eataly the other night and it's all a business expense. So like it's really good and we're having a good time with it, but it's 100% dependent upon me doing more of that, right? It's not something that I've created where like if I wrote some

Starting point is 01:32:26 type of AI and then the AI would create new podcasts for me and I could sit on my ass while the AI worked and created generated wealth. So I think of things like that. And there's no doubt, one of the exercises you have us do early on is to write 20 things down that you're an expert at. And I was like, well, I had four in mind, but as I got to thinking and five minutes later, I've got 20 things down. Bingo. There are so many people that have those skills, but they never force themselves to look at it. Exactly. People think that when they think about an expert, they think I need to be Olympic world

Starting point is 01:33:01 class. But it turns out you need to be better than the people you are teaching. You have to remember, like when I started, when I first hired a personal trainer, I didn't even know the difference between a good trainer and a bad trainer. I literally walked in to a crunch, crunch fitness and said, I want a trainer. And they literally picked the guy who was walking past and said, he's your trainer. That's it. And I worked with the guy for five years. I liked him. He's great. But the beginners, they don't know, nor do I really need to know. Did I need an Olympic trainer at the time? No, it would have been premature. It was irrelevant. I needed someone who could help me at my level. And once I got a little bit more knowledgeable and advanced, then I was more

Starting point is 01:33:45 discerning and I went down a specific route. People get overwhelmed by thinking they need to have a graduate degree. If you're teaching neurology, you need to have a graduate degree. If you're teaching somebody how to organize their apartment, you may not need to. And I think so many times we have these exercises in Zero to Launch about how to find out what you're good at. You take things for granted that could actually be a profitable business. Like my friend who's the caricaturist, there's people who have beautiful ways of organizing their apartment. If your friends say, oh my God, you always dress really well, guess what?

Starting point is 01:34:20 You could be a stylist and charge a tremendous amount. Oh, your dog is so well-behaved. Boom. There are so many things you unconsciously do that people would love to pay for. And by the way, the passive income part is amazing. I'm glad you said that because we created these programs, some of them years ago, five years ago, and they continue to generate money. So I literally wake up in the morning and there's a sales report and I see how many people bought it overnight. And these are people I don't know. They found me through our variety of marketing channels,

Starting point is 01:34:55 which we teach. And then they believe in us and trust us enough. Nobody trips and spends $2,000 on zero to launch. Not happening. People are smart. We have tons of data and information and they pay. And then by the way, if they don't like it, they get a full refund. So we go above and beyond. And I think you, everyone should as well to treat your customers with respect. You'll be surprised that a lot of people want to pay. People are scared of charging. I was too. But if you have something that the world wants to hear, they will pay. And you take a super deep dive into all that. You know, obviously there's very funny things, you know, the scripts that we have internally

Starting point is 01:35:35 around charging money for things and all that. And I think it's top to bottom, one of the coolest things that I've ever watched. And there's a ton of videos there. Please go to IWT.com. Look at the products. Just look at the watched. And there's a ton of videos there. Please go to IWT.com. Look at the products. Just look at the website. It's fucking gorgeous. There's a lot of great information there. And take the quiz. That was another thing that I thought was absolutely brilliant. I took the money quiz. I'm the hustler. Sweet. It was awesome. Yeah. It tells you a lot about yourself when you can think of it. Most people remember that when it comes to money,

Starting point is 01:36:04 it's just a series of negative things after negative things. I shouldn't spend this. I shouldn't do that. Oh my God, it's too late. What I hope everyone's hearing from our conversation today is that we can shift money into positive. We can save for the things we love. We can invest and make more money than we ever thought. And then we can work on things that we love, whether it's a nine to five job or you want to start something on the side. Amazing. I think it's interesting that so many experts talk about saving, but nobody talks about spending. And where I like to start with people is, what do you love to do? Where do you love to spend money? You set a stake. Awesome. And then I just kind of dial that

Starting point is 01:36:46 in with people. And I talk about this concept of money dials. What if you could spend double, triple, quadruple on that? And suddenly people get excited about money. Now we're starting from a place of yes. And that's where we want to go. Hell yeah, brother. It's been so great having you on the show. We'll definitely do it again. Awesome. Where can people find you online? You can find me at iwt.com. That's short for IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. I'm on Instagram at Ramit. And thanks for that post. I appreciate it. And I'm also on Twitter at Ramit as well. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Thank you guys so much for tuning in the show. Please hit Ramit and myself up online. We're,

Starting point is 01:37:26 I think, most active on the gram. He is at Ramit, R-A-M-I-T. I am at Kingsboo, K-I-N-G-S-B-U. If you have any questions, we will do our best to get back to them. I think Ramit's really good, probably one of the best at getting back to questions online, especially considering his massive following. I think I do a pretty good job of that myself, even though I like to unplug a bit more than he does. Point being, hit us up, let us know what you thought. If you have any questions and fucking get the book, we've linked to it in the show notes. It is the best 15 bucks you will ever spend in your life. And it's quite phenomenal. It's been an absolute game changer for me. A fun little fact for everyone. I've raised my credit score 100 points since reading his book

Starting point is 01:38:07 and employing his tactics. That's not a joke. I made a post on Instagram where I talked about raising my, my credit score 50 points. It's now up a hundred points. Thanks to Ramit's work. I have a better credit cards, better banking, and I'm very confident in my investment strategy for retirement. All these things came out of Ramit's, uh, teachings and lessons. I'm also doing the Zero to Launch program, which he has for launching an online business, and I couldn't be happier with it. So please let us know what you think. Buy his book, tune in, check out his website. There's a dope quiz you can do there on IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. Thank you guys for tuning in and take care.

Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #104 Ramit Sethi

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