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

let's talk about the job stuff because I routinely show people how to negotiate 10 $25,000 raises all the time and you're like that's crazy there's no way at etcetera etc excuse-excuse here's the different approach the first way that most people think is like if I'm gonna negotiate for a raise which like oh they might just like fire me that's problem number one that's that's the wrong way to look at it if you go in and ask for a raise you're not devaluing yourself you're actually increasing your value because what type of person would go in and ask for a raise a top performer so the second thing is they believe that they have to kick down the door of their boss and say like give me money well if you do that of course they're gonna kick you out that's a very impolite way to do it a third way is much more effective so I'll just give you like the quick lay of the land if you want to get a raise for anybody watching this is how you [Music] [Music] everyone I hope you enjoy this episode brought to you by our very good friends at audible everybody welcome to impact theory today's guest is a New York Times bestselling author whose theories around personal finance have helped countless people achieve financial freedom as well as making him a very wealthy man he's the founder of growth lab calm and I will teach you to be rich calm and he has more than 20,000 documented success stories so far he's a Stanford grad who studied both technology and psychology and he takes a profoundly humanistic approach to finance his views are often counterintuitive but they cut through the typically trite confusing and emotionally impossible guidance that permeates the landscape of financial advice his simple six-week method to gaining financial control over your life is both powerful and straightforward to implement a voice that has withstood the test of time 10 plus years after first publishing his award-winning book I will teach you to be rich he's been pictured next to Warren Buffett in Forbes magazine had a 6 page feature in fortune and he's been covered by such prominent institutions as CNBC The Wall Street Journal CNN PBS Fox Business and the New York Times over 1 million people read his material every month and his newsletter alone reaches hundreds of thousands of people weekly so please help me in welcoming the man who fortune called the new finance guru the no BS money man for the new generation ramita say t exciting to have you thanks it's great to be here yes man we know a lot of the same people so researching it was a lot of fun so I got a got to hear some old voices and people that have been on the show before and there are a ton of people who give just a lot of credibility to you the way you think the way you approach it and where I wanted to start and this is something I don't have the answer to so I'm really curious to hear what you say all right right now the noise around being young today is that the world financially has basically come to an end everybody's buried under so much dead there's no way to get ahead they're stuck they're trapped and I've heard that so many times in the beginning I just sort of blew it off and I'm like it's it's a mindset problem it's so pervasive is it a mindset problem or it's a really something deeply problematic that's happening I think the answer is yes yes and yes I think that there are definitely systemic problems when it comes to things like inequality when I think it comes to things like student loan debt yes those are problems and there needs to be a lot of work done on those and we can simply look at history to see how crazy tax rates are compared to where they've been historically or how crazy student loan debt is compared to where it was historically but whenever I hear someone who starts complaining about the large-scale societal problems I just have one question I say do you invest in your 401 K and it's one thing to talk about systemic problems and we should talk about them and tackle them but the best thing we can do for ourselves is to focus on what we can control and that's what I believe that's why I'm here some people work on systemic problems I'm here to help people one on one with their money and their psychology yeah that that to me is a very interesting and powerful approach I come out of the same way I was giving a talk at Google and there was an african-american gentleman in the front row and basically the question was like is it harder for me and my answer was yes that seems pretty apparent but now what so you can go try to tackle that systemic problem and I'm super glad that there are people who are wired for that yeah but for me I'm always like what can I do right now today because when you're dealing with huge systemic problems you're basically you're doing something amazingly altruistic for the next generation but the odds of you being able to reap the benefits of that are pretty slim yeah yeah I agree and I think that when you can start to take control and make one step after another for example for people who are in debt it's so interesting when people write me about how to get out of debt over ninety percent of them don't know how much they owe hmm so if you don't have know how much you owe I understand that why would you want to open up the emails and the bills it's you don't know what's inside but you know it's bad but the first step to doing that to paying it off is to open it up confront reality get real and then make up and all of those things can be done in and of yourself without regards to what's going on outside your house or outside your email inbox one thing that I really like about your approach is the way that you look at it from a psychological standpoint talked a lot about programming the beliefs that people have our own money which I think are really really important and as the person who I believe it is my mission in life is to help people construct a frame of reference that sets them up to what I'll call it's an empowering mindset it sets them up to be able to actually execute on their dreams yeah what is the the frame of reference the mindset the intentional programming that you think especially young people who are struggling right now should have well let's start with what they do have so we grow up with these things I call invisible scripts and these are the scripts that are beliefs that are so powerful we don't even realize that they're there around us that's why they're invisible so a classic one in America is the American Dream is buying a house where did that come from and in fact there's all these phrases that people use like you're throwing money away on rent they don't make more land you know and on on and on if you really deconstruct that and you actually run the numbers you might discover that actually buying house is often not the best investment and this is super counter into it people get really mad because real estate is religion in America but if you actually dot dive in deep you might discover wow there's a lot of parties who want me to spend a ton of money that's why for example I could buy today but I rent and what people hit they're like wait I thought though I will teach you to be rich guys bridge so why surrett they get very confused because real estate is religion you know another thing that is really common today for people is there's no way to get ahead right especially for young people Social Security will be around etc etc and I just don't believe in that I think if you go on to Reddit or you go on to these places where it's a it's a lot of people who are disaffected young people they create an echo chamber of other people who want to victimize themselves then you have a choice you want to be reading those threads or like I was the comments on your YouTube videos I was like these are the best YouTube comments I've ever seen people are positive constructive they're pointing out things they saw in the 30 second minute of the video we need to actually watch the whole thing those are the kind of people that I want people to be around so it's not impossible to make money there's actually a lot of people making money it's not impossible to get ahead pay off debt even invest and grow there's a lot of people doing it but if you're surrounded by people who constantly complain about how difficult it is and it's impossible guess what you're gonna absorb those invisible scripts do that [ __ ] really terrifies me and when I think about so I'm a child of the 80s and I was just talking to a good friend of mine who I grew up with and he was like oh I knew you'd be rich one day and I grew up teetering white collar blue collar so like I was definitely not set up to be wealthy I didn't know anybody who was wealthy didn't know anybody had been successful and he was like oh I knew you're gonna be rich and I was like why and he said because you get what you believe in and he said you believed money was like a thing that it was super powerful he said used to talk about all the [ __ ] time interest and of course I anybody that knows my story knows for decades I chase money it was my stated goal I wasn't that didn't feel weird to me I was just like yeah I want to be rich and I was pursuing that dogged Lee yeah and of course only end up getting rinche once I let go of like understanding that that wasn't gonna make me happy so I set that aside but because I had all these positive beliefs about that it was possible that it could happen to anybody I never fought to not chase it yeah and so the company that my partners and I built that ended up being the billion dollar success and just like crazy we started it in 2009 at like the height of the recession and so it's like it just never occurred to me to to think that way and you said something one of your talks in the book I can't remember which place but was like even in those moments people can be successful but if you're telling yourself that you're not going to be successful then you don't take the actions yeah walk me through like how do you get through to people who have these scripts they're shutting down they're not taking those steps like do you have sort of entry-level movements for them for sure many of us if you take somebody and you just talk I do this a lot there'll be at one of my talks or they are newsletter or following me on Instagram and I'll give you an amazing example that just happened recently I had a woman who wrote me and she said we meet can you help me convince my husband not to waste money and I go ok what what's going on she goes he spends so much money on ice tea and I was like here we go I go how much money and she goes he buys ice tea 20 times a month like almost every day I said how much is this ice tea she said it's a dollar fifty each time so in my head I'm like this is insane like why are we even talking about this man but I knew there's something here so I want to unpack it I said out of curiosity what's your household income no response for 20 minutes okay and then finally she comes back she goes I'm not comfortable sharing that I said just give me a range okay what do you think her her and her husband's household income is I know the story I I would have guessed otherwise would be thousand one hundred thousand ice six hundred thousand and the this is a perfect example like rationally and logically we should literally not be talking about this because it's a rounding error but there's something going on in her belief system that made her fixate on iced tea and so for anybody whether it's iced tea or whether it's you know lattes is a classic example everybody tells you not spend money I'm like that's the worst advice ever buy as many lattes as you want or some people they just love for example clothes right I like clothes they love it but everybody around them has told them things like that's shallow that's a waste of money you should invest in your Roth IRA and so what do they do all of us we're torn apart because we live in a paradoxical society that is both puritanical telling us we should retreat into a cave and do nothing but then we go on Instagram and everyone's in Bora Bora wearing it's ridiculous and so what do we do we just buy everything and then we feel guilty it's the worst possible response so what I do is first I say what do you love spending money on love and nobody talks about this they always say oh let me see your budget your overspending and everyone's just like a half forget this I'll never come here and to berate someone for their spending cuz I've seen it all when they talk about what they love then I say what would it feel like to be able to spend two times or four times as much on them the people have never thought like that then once we start from a place of aspiration of what do we want let's work through the mechanics of how to get there did I love that so much and in your book you talk about like starting with what you want instead of what you don't want you also talk about like what's that money dial what's the thing like for you that you really get amped up about and I was like the funny thing is I'm doing this research you have to imagine this I'm doing this research in a room that I like don't usually let people go into okay and it's known as the comic room okay and if you go in the comic book room you will see there it's just like stacks like okay and that's my my iced tea like if my wife we're gonna complain about what this Tom spent his money on outside of the business of course it's that like now why do you love those comic books well that's that's a very involved story but I will say that there's something unique about comic books that give you these really big ideas very rapidly okay love it and then let me let me share this story that just happened a couple days ago here in LA I was giving a talk and I asked somebody what what they loved spending on and she said clothes she said she loves buying clothes I said grand she was so excited I love just whenever you ask people their eyes light up and I asked her what would it look like if you quadrupled your spending and she said I would have clothes everywhere like all day long I'd be ordering online I'd be sending half of them back and I said where do you shop and she said Topshop and I said okay so you quadrupled your spending where would you shop she said Topshop I just have a lot more and it was fascinating because when you ask people what they love spending on and what if they could spend more what would they do most people have never thought about it she had limited herself into the box of Topshop now I don't know top shops perfectly fine that's fine but I guarantee you if you quadrupled or 10x your spending on the thing you love your money dial you might shop at a different brand you might even fly to the factory that makes them and get it behind the scenes tour as I did when we went on our honeymoon so what why I'm sharing this is that so many of us operate in linear way oh if I have this thing I like I like coffee I might get two coffees a day but what if you actually truly love it you might go to the coffee factory and bring your family with you so there's this whole idea of what you can do with a rich life and it doesn't just mean more stuff it could be experiences it could be security like buying a house in a place that keeps you safe we're staying in a hotel where you're around things that are comfortable for you there's so many different ways to look at a rich life and most people I want to challenge them to really think what it would feel like to spend more on the thing they love of course if they cut costs mercilessly on the things they don't mmm yeah really fast to find a rich life for people cuz I think that's gonna be a key component yeah this whole discussion well it's different for everyone my rich life early on was to be able to go to a restaurant and order appetizers because I never did it when I was a kid it like ever we would go and we'd eat up once every four to six weeks if we had a coupon and we would like share two cokes with the whole family and we would never order appetizers so I was like I'm gonna do it and then the next dream for me was to be able to hop in a taxi if I lived in New York during the summer without having to take the train and sweat before a meeting now my dreams got bigger and there's a variety of things that are my rich life but everybody's is different so some people I have people in my book they're like I use your book my wife and I retired at 35 and 36 we drive around in an RV I don't want to drive around in an RV but he and his wife do and I love that so a rich life is what you define and when I ask people what's a rich life to you they usually say two things freedom it's a very nice word but it's kind of generic and they say a number usually a million bucks and I say like freedom what is what is that to you and they're like I want to do whatever I want when I want and I'm like get specific you want to order appetizers do you want to do yoga at 3 p.m. and that's where the conversation stops so if you're watching I want everyone to think what is your rich life and take it from the clouds to the street I want to buy three different Lululemon tank tops a month because I don't ever want to have to wear an old one whatever go as crazy as you want I want to travel for a month and I want to bring my family with me great a rich life is different for everyone but is about your definition yeah it's interesting and be careful what you aim for so we just did a piece of content not too long ago and I was standing out in the backyard and the the guy that does my Instagram was like hey talk to people about like what you used to do when you were broke to like stay motivated and I was like what we used to drive around these really rich neighborhoods Beverly Hills Bel Air all of that and I said ironically I'm recording this telling you this from one of the houses that we used to drive hi and be careful what you aim for because you really might get it and it's like that whole Topshop example that you were talking about where the person put themselves in that box they had this they had a lack of thought about anything beyond it till that lack of thought that can work for you or against you and what I mean by that is I didn't even think about Oh an economic downturn means that I can't do well I was just sort of oblivious to that in 2009 we were starting quest and so I just marched ahead assuming that it could happen or you you are thinking about it and you paint a very clear vision and so you're constantly asking yourself how I'm not gonna get there where I'm at now yeah so how do I cross this chasm how do people cross that chasm like I know right now the one thing that people are thinking is [ __ ] these guys are just like off in the clouds it's two rich guys having a rich guy conversation it's not real but dude inside I'm thinking [ __ ] I used to be so poor that I couldn't pay my bills yeah I used to sleep on an air mattress with a [ __ ] leak in it dude and so I would blow it up sit on the floor every night sometimes like 3m I'm so [ __ ] exhausted until and usually I would only do it halfway so [ __ ] tired I put clothes under my air mattress by the way also sleeping halfway in the closet because I'd a roommate law and so I couldn't even like have my air mattress in the normal part of the room I emptied my closet I [ __ ] slid my bed half in so when it deflated you know the rack yeah like the door slides across I would wake up with that [ __ ] on my back I'm like that's where I [ __ ] started this was not like somebody handed me money but in that place I had this um belief that I can make it come true yeah that I could make it come true where did that come from honestly 80s movies John Hughes like well oh really accidentally that I could be rich he just like everybody had a nice house in Chicago and so I was like well that's not what I have and I really want that yeah but I never had darkness around it I was just like [ __ ] that's what I want let's do and when you say darkness those are those beliefs that you hear people talking about sometimes right like you have to step on someone to make money if you hear that enough or or like we don't talk about money in this family if you hear that enough you start to associate making money with being bad and when winning is actually losing most people just choose not to play the game at all so you had a aspiration it sounds like funny enough you got it from movies but it almost seems like you went for it maniacally and then once you got it that's probably where chapter 2 happened where it's like wait a minute do I actually want some of this stuff that I got like that happened to me I'm curious is that what chapter 2 was for you a little bit different about I think people watching know my story well enough let's I want to hear your story I had some similarities with you growing up middle class we didn't have inheritance summerhouses none of that stuff and my mom stayed home with kids my dad went to work my parents told me if you want to go to college which of course you do because you're Indian what you got to pay you got to find some scholarships and I love building systems I think people who are kind of lazy they like to do the minimum amount of work but I like maximum results so I've built this system of applying to scholarships and I started getting them and for some reason they wrote some of those cheques to me so I 1999-2000 took that money I was like I'm smart I'm gonna invest it in the stock market and then I lost half the money right away I was like man that's smart so I started learning about money and and that was a really valuable lesson to me because no matter what you will get the [ __ ] kicked out of you at some point in life and it you can take two routes you can be like oh that sucks I'm never gonna do that again or you can be like oh that does suck what did I learn from that how can I improve and I see this a lot with entrepreneurs I know who are starting to hire they're like oh how do I hire like object manager whatever I'm like your first five hires are gonna be horrible just acknowledge it it's gonna suck but you got to keep going because you'll get better each time and on your sixth you'll be great and it could be the same for you know how do I find it could anything that you're looking for how do I find the right recipe to start cooking well your first time twenty times you make eggs you're gonna suck you don't just give up you keep going until 21 so I I started doing this with money and I started learning about money and psychology and I think that most of what you see with money is just this mathematical logical stuff and it sounds good and everyone's like oh you're a compound interest but then they go back to their day-to-day life which is like I want that sweater I know I should be doing this how come I'm not doing that I feel bad close the book forget it and I want to take a really different approach a perfect example is if you look at any money book anybody watching go look at any money book look at chapter one you know what they tell you to do in Chapter one of any book fine let's find out how much you spent last month and people are like no thanks see you later they don't know how much they spent but they know it was bad right and so if you actually understand human psychology you know that my goal is not to make you feel bad my goal is actually to show you how money can be positive how you can live a rich life whatever you want so in Chapter one of my book I said look we all use credit cards we all suck at using credit cards and we all hate credit cards let me show you how to beat them read these words off the page this battle-tested script and you'll get your fees refunded and you'll get all these perks you don't even know about people did they're like I don't know this Indian guys kind of weird I'll try it they pick up the phone even Millennials who are afraid of using the phone they picked up the phone they did it and they're like oh [ __ ] he's talking they call the bank called the [ __ ] yes and like that they get a $35 fee refunded or they get some perk they never even knew existed and suddenly psychologically they go oh my god I can take control of my money it's not all these huge concepts of retirement and inheritance and all this stuff no I called I got money back now I can do it so it's so important to be to be really incorporating your own psychology when you think about money and part of that is what do I want where did I get these beliefs from whether it's a movie or a family friend and then what can I do today to start moving along and developing my rich life yeah that to me is super interesting the maybe even more interesting part that you detail pretty extensively in your book are the excuses people give us to why that doesn't apply to them and I'm trying to really think about the person watching right now who I want to help them so badly I can't see straight but I know what I'm fighting against is their mindset and they're saying things like I love your content around getting your ideal job yeah like get my ideal job like I can't afford to either go in and ask for more money or to even begin applying yeah there's so much insecurity and just shutting down what is your advice around getting that ideal job first of all stop being a special snowflake all these people who write me they're like whole roommate great to see these literally thousands of testimonials of people but I'm left-handed and I I'm an albino and I live south of the Equator will it work for me no it won't work for you if your first reason is all the ten reasons it won't if you believe that it won't work for you then congratulations you are correct a better approach what I see from the best people who use my material is they say you know what it worked for those other people I can make it work for me simple as that so let's talk about the job stuff because I talk about jobs it's a little unusual I think that it's become very popular online to say like screw jobs and like be an entrepreneur and I think entrepreneurship is great but I also think most people have a job and you can create amazing value by working with a team and I have employees and they do an incredible job so and I've had jobs so I think that when it comes to a job there is a totally counterintuitive way to approach it I mean we show people how to negotiate ten twenty five thousand dollar raises all the time and you're like that's crazy there's no way at cetera etc excuse-excuse here's the different approach the first way that most people think is like if I'm gonna negotiate for a raise which like well they might just like fire me that's problem number one that's that's the wrong way to look at it if you go in and ask for a raise you're not devaluing yourself you're actually increasing your value because what type of person would go in and ask for a raise a top performer so the second thing is they believe that they have to kick down the door of their boss and say like gimme money well if you do that of course they're gonna kick you out that's a very impolite way to do it a third way is much more effective so I'll just give you like the quick lay of the land if you want to get a raise for anybody watching this is how you do it you send an email to your boss you say you know what I would love to meet with you and I would love to discuss what it takes to be an absolute top performer in this world to make your life easier could we set up sometime in the next week or two of course 100% of bosses are gonna say yes I'd love to see you so you go in there and you say hey boss really appreciate you taking the time I've enjoyed my role I just want to tell you that I don't want to just do a fine job I want to be a top performer here and I would love to know exactly what it takes for me to be a top performer okay so let me just pause right here if I'm the employee and you're the boss how do you feel right now with me walking in and asking this so [ __ ] good like this is the greatest advice of all time okay because we're creating value right and I'm not coming in saying like give me money I'm like please advise me you're the boss I want to learn from you so the boss is gonna say they're gonna give you some generic answer because they weren't prepared for this oh you need to show up and bla bla bla bla but whatever you say I really appreciate that I'd love to get really specific in fact I did a little bit of research before I came in here are three things I think would be look at that look at that face because bosses don't hear this most of their employees just show up do what's expected and then they're like how come I'm not getting a $10,000 raise like Rumi said cuz you don't deserve $10,000 unless you go above and beyond so you know hey boss I know that I'm currently working on this sales project and we're slated to have a 3% improvement I really think we can do six would that be part of top performing role here yes what about this that it so you you have a little discussion and you say okay am I reading this right these three things would help me really outperform at this role yes okay I'll tell you what I'd like to get to work on this I'm gonna commit to sending you an update every week or every two weeks and at the end of six months I'd like to come back and show you what I accomplished if I do it I'd like to discuss a salary adjustment at that time but let's not even worry about that right now let's have any focus on this what do you say yeah okay right so so this is so this is the first conversation now I go back to my desk I send a written record every Friday I'm sending an update here's where we are blah blah blah now the time comes six months from now and by the way this is true for negotiating a raise it's true for dating and relationships it's true for Entrepreneurship all the work is done before you ever set foot in the room ironically everyone fixates on going in the room what are the fancy words it's like yeah I'll show you the words but all the work is done before that's what every successful person knows so I send another email now and I say you know what as you know I've been updating you every week for the last four and a half months I have some fantastic results you know we hit this we hit that I'd love to come in and present the whole thing to you can we set up some time yes so now I go in by the way I've done my homework and I've done it in a couple of ways that nobody else does number one I've researched my compensation so let's say I'm being paid 50k but I researched my salary on salary comp a scale and I discover you know my range should actually be 56 to 62 okay good I'm writing that down second I have a couple of my co-workers and I go to them I say hey you know we've worked together on this project I would really appreciate it if you would send a an email to the boss and just say you know what we meats been doing an incredible job he really helped drive this process through and get us that 6.2 percent conversion increase so now I walk in you've got those emails you're like this is the greatest employee on earth I walk in I say you know what I'm so proud we accomplished this we accomplished that we discussed this six months ago I wanted to be a top performer here you go you theatrically pull out your results out of your briefcase the it matters to be theatric right and then how's the boss feeling right now amazing amazing everybody's happy you winning you're doing your boss's job for them they're happy and then you say you know there's one last thing I know we discussed having a discussion about a compensation adjustment I'd like to talk about that right now now you get to have the conversation you've got all your data you've already made the boss a ton of money and all the words you can use are right there in the book and on my courses that's how you negotiate your salary so when people say like oh there's no way I can negotiate yeah there's no way if you just walk in and say give me money but if you actually become a top performer then it makes perfect sense that you would get top performer compensation my crop man dude that's one of those things I really hope people listen to that and this is the conversation that I'm trying to have with my audience all the time is like you actually have to be that top performer you actually have to walk in know what good is know what excellent is and then actually go [ __ ] deliver and if your attitude is why am I not being paid more and you're pissed about it first of all that attitude comes across nobody wants to be around that attitude second if you lay it out and get them to agree and then you execute against it you know something about them if they balk at paying at that point yes you actually did it yes and they're not willing to come say you bounce and here's what I always tell people you just put yourself in the most powerful position ever because you can deliver results once you're good enough to actually deliver results you go wherever man I'm so glad that's that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because it is so rare to hear people actually telling the truth and I think people actually desperately crave the truth they desperately crave it about top performers about being successful fitness like there's so much [ __ ] out there and I'll give you an example from my own just recently I did an Instagram story on what I eat and I've gotten into fitness and I showed the exact macros and calories and this and that and people were just like what and like because no one shows exact numbers and when I see someone who's successful I don't just want to know some generic platitudes like oh trihard blah I'm like show me what you eat what time show me where you spend your money show me why you spend it on that why do you fly business class why I want to know or why do you not have a TV tell me people desperately crave the truth and so the fact that you're telling people no it's not enough to just like show up and do your job you need to be [ __ ] good that's the truth that people need to hear for sure no question man I want to go back to something you said and it revolves around the idea of and you've talked about this in finance that you want to surround yourself with people that are thinking the way that you think and and one thing that you advise people to do which i think is really smart and I'm going to immediately store stealing is hey if you can't find the people in your life that you want going to my comment section I've literally been attracting these people tell them what you're looking for yeah season responds I think it's brilliant you said something at the beginning of this interview about you're talking about reddit and you said there are certain people that want to victimize themselves and that immediately rings true to me oh yeah what do you mean in what way do people victimize themselves and then how do you surround yourself with a group of people that don't well let's let's just take somebody watching this video right now Oh ramiz must be nice to talk about getting a $10,000 raise I can't even make enough money to save a hundred dollars and then the next person is going save a hundred dollars a month I can't even save 50 cents and it's this it's this regression not only to the mean but dis just downward spiral of competing to see how bad you've got it and what what I've seen now is that there are larger echo chambers whether it be Twitter YouTube comments not yours but most reddit for sure and this idea that you simply cannot get ahead so let's just complain and I just I have no tolerance for it I have no taunts we all start at different places in life right I was born and bred to be a Spelling Bee champ I knew I was gonna be a champ ever since I was born and I was great but I did not know my dad didn't sit around teaching me how to deadlift Indian dads are not teaching their kids out of debt I had to learn that on my own so we all start from a different place in life some people are they have two parents and they're born in America you hit the lottery already some people did not some people went to a college some people did not look we all start from different places in different parts of our life but what we can focus on today is what can I do to change that and to control what I can control and if you're complaining about money and you have not say automated saving $20 a month then why are we even talking right you can take control at the basic I had a woman who once wrote me she said you know Rumi I constantly tell myself I want to go for a run three times a week and I never do I said why don't you just go once she goes once what would that do she would rather dream about running three times a week then actually go once and the many disaffected young people who victimized themselves would rather dream about being a millionaire then actually saved $50 a month and I would challenge people when you get that ball rolling of saving even twenty or fifty bucks a month it really changes your view of controlling your own life because after two or three or four months you start to say like oh my god that's adding up oh my god now I actually added some investments into there even a small oh my god that's actually growing wow I can do this that's the whole power of using psychology against yourself I love that against yourself but in a super powerful way aimed at what you want I know the clarity is a big thing for you make sure you know what you want what you're building towards and that's really important I also think rules which you talk about are important and what kind of rules should people have specifically around money okay I I love meeting smart people who have thought about any part of life like parenting because I'm like hey I might not agree with your rules but you clearly thought about it and this is true for people whether it's business Fitness money so recently I wrote down my ten rules for money you don't have to agree with all of them some of them might not apply but just to see that this is the way I think about it so I have some basic rules of thumb that help me make decisions and one rule is I want to save twenty to thirty percent consistently right if I'm doing that then whether I'm spending three dollars or five dollars on a coffee or cheesecake or whatever is irrelevant because I'm hitting my goals I want any time I'm flying over a certain amount of time business class okay now I did I wasn't able to do that for a long time but now I am so I do it another one is marry the right person probably the most important financial rule and yet we don't think about it so like how do we integrate relationships and then one of my favorites we move on to find right person well that's that's for everyone so I wanted to meet and marry someone who had a really good work ethic who of course I loved and would be a partner like a team and I think that marriage is like my parents had an arranged marriage okay so my dad flew back to India after studying here he met my mom seven days later they were married Wow yeah and and they met they had the chance to meet but basically the way it worked especially back then was you meet you get you get married and then you fall in love so what this has done for me is really you know I grew up in America but I have a lot of Indian culture around me it made me realize that so much of what we assume is true in America is actually not it's a cultural assumption so in America the assumption is you meet you fall in love and then you get married but guess what there's other cultures where it goes the opposite way marry and then fall in love so that taught me that marriage is not just about the romance that matters of course you want to be attracted you want to feel you want to feel love towards your toward your partner but if you talk to anyone who's married let's say ten years maybe they have kids maybe not like look at their text messages they're not like oh love you babe oh my god you look so sexy today they're like did you pick up the milk it's it's a partnership and so what we don't talk about in America is that marriage is not just romance it's also a team and you're finding the ultimate team mate for life someone who you can trust someone who challenges you and so we need to build that into our the way that we evaluate our potential partners can I trust this person right if they can't reach me on the phone oh they're gonna do what needs to be done to keep things running and are they gonna push me to be my best self that's a kind of partner I wanted one thing that I loved is talking about the values around the money instead of just what are you spending the money on or how to use it beyond me but what are your values and actually having that real core conversation it's a really tough one and I have to admit that I violated my own rule with this with my wife because she she opened up her books to me like the financial stuff and then I forgot hey if she opens herself up financially I should do the same and I didn't and so I think a year went by and she finally came to me she's like this isn't fair like I've told you everything and I don't know anything about your finances so we had that conversation and then we have spent so much time talking about what money means to us so I'll give you a couple of examples of of what it means to us and I have to say like we think about money differently for sure any partnership will we have different earning we have different histories with money different ways that we were raised my wife want she wants money to make her feel safe I know the word safe to me is like saying like I want money to make me feel applesauce like it's just it's not I don't even connect the two like I feel safe I feel safe at a baseline and I know that if everything went away I could make money again and I have my investments and all this died of my emergency fund but what I needed to do in married life was to realize like my way is not the only way of looking at money and in fact talking to my wife I've learned that there are totally different ways that are equally valid but I had to kind of open my mind up to that because I was like oh I know money and I know all this psychology stuff no I had to start from Ground Zero the things we do agree on are we made a list of our core values when we were planning our wedding and at the top was we want to make our friends and family feel warm and welcome and our families come from like middle class backgrounds and we wanted them to feel like never feel put off so you know for us the simplest things were the most meaningful we found beautiful photos that we'd all taken together and we left it in their room with a handwritten note and like that's what they remember we brought our parents on our honeymoon for part of it and we just said like show up at the airport and we will take care of the rest and to create those memories of like being in Italy and doing a cooking class together like that is like mine that's the kind of stuff that to me when I think about a rich life that's what I think about so finding a partner who was aligned on that was just like oh my god like it just feels like it just fits yeah that that kind of thing is really really important yeah and initiating those conversations I know that you have some pretty cool tech background I know you guys schedule time to discuss yeah every week touch base yeah walk us through that that's unique and I think super powerful um I think for anyone who's at work if you are like really good at your job or you're maybe you're managing people you know what it takes to drive a number you need to put time on the calendar you need to have one-on-ones you need to like manage a metric and so we kind of intuitively do that and then we go home and we're like all right like I'm just gonna sit back and like turn on Netflix and we'll eat dinner and I have to say my wife was the one who suggested that we do these touch bases and we get together we have a calendar like a one-hour block and we put stuff on the agenda and it sounds like it people are watching this too like this guy's a serial killer like but remember your rich life is whatever you create if you don't need to do it once a week do it once every two weeks but I think the what we've discovered is creating the space for us to have these conversations about what's going well what can we improve you know what do we want to do for the next three months you know those kind of conversations is awesome and on a very tactical level we started off with a few core questions each time we're tweaking the questions to see what's what's really good so one question is what did you appreciate that I did last week start there start from a place of appreciation what's something I can do better and it's like it's kind of opening ourselves up so there those are like little things and it might be like I don't like the sound of you biting your nails at home or like can you please load the dishwasher differently it could be as simple and practical as that it can also be like I really like when we go somewhere and you compliment me in front of other people and like if the people watching thinking about it think about what it means to you to have a space every week every two weeks every month where you and your partner get to have these conversations I would say it doesn't matter if it feels weird there's so many things that people in this people here feel are weird oh it's weird to have a conversation like this well I think it's weird to go 40 years and fight about iced tea instead of having the conversation yeah aggressively agree with that you need to know that when someone is is saying like you spend too much on that it's not about that it's one level up it's about your values and how you were raised and if you don't confront that you will forever be playing whack-a-mole about a three dollar expense when the real questions are like how do I think about money so what rules do you have for new couples getting together mixed money don't mix money savings account autosave II and like the is it start with the conversation is it actual write down our rules and our values like imagine two people they've been dating for six months they decide to move in together now what yeah well first of all if you ask people what are your money values they have no idea so I don't start with that question because everyone's values are like yeah I just like to spend on things I like it's like that's not a value okay let's get more specific for accounts I believe a joint account and then separate individual accounts and the individual accounts are like your money do whatever you want with it no questions asked to get row rated contributions yeah based on based on your income you can contribute proportionally but I'll say this once we got married like my fantasy was to build this just like amazing model that was like his money her money our money just like all this flow and automation and like Cass was not having it she was like not interested in I was like the model it's like so cool and I like again I did this prototypical email thing I was like let's talk about like cell c4 look at how the flow I need was amazing it is amazing now it's amazing but I had to I had to start and say like how do we think about money where should we prioritize we're like what's important to us and so that was the conversation that I needed to like slow down and at work I have this concept we use this concept go slow to go fast a lot of companies do this I needed to slow way down we eventually got to the model but the model and the math was the last step once you get to the math just like in negotiation once you get to the dollar figure that's like the last part but the 85% of what does money mean to you how did your mom and dad talk about money you might discover you know many couples one partner earned all the money the other did not and so guess what if you are the child of that relationship you might have that belief and you might be resentful that you have to earn money or you don't so that's a conversation to be had and the way you can do that is you can say you know if we close our eyes and wave a magic wand and we didn't have any dad and it was our rich life three years from now what does that look like that's a great place to start from a place of imagination and now they have a context for why they're even talking about it so again rich life is all about starting from what you're rich life is and hey maybe they can't go there this year maybe it's going to take them two years to save but at least they wake up and they have a dream that's important yeah I think that's wildly important so talk to me about saving in debt how should people think about saving first debt first yeah what does that look like so there's there's a mathematical answer and then in my belief there's this psychological answer and I like psychology because psychology Trump's math any day of the week so if you have debt let's just say you've got a student loan or maybe a credit card your interest rates maybe it's four or five six or even 15% technically if it's if it's anything higher than like 8% you should be paying that off as aggressively as possible so if you've got credit card debt you really want to prioritize that but the psychological side is I think it's really important to build the habit of where you want to go so for example you might let's just take the fitness example if you don't have an hour to train every day maybe you have 15 minutes I think it's still worth doing it for 15 minutes because as your time opens up you it's much easier to go from 15 to 30 then 0 to 15 so if you have debt and you have you want to save I think that's great you can do both what I might do is I might look at my interest rate on my debt and let's say that you've got 300 bucks a month that you can use I would probably put most of it towards the debt depending on the interest rate but I would definitely save 20 50 $100 automatic and I want to emphasize one thing for people when a lot of people think about money it's like oh my god there's all these accounts and 401k and annuity and all this stuff I spend less than one hour per month on my money that's how it should be money should be boring it should not be dramatic you should not be looking at all these TV shows and seeing it's no it's boring it's calm right I say from hot to cool hot is like stuff on TV it oh my god I feel stress and embarrassed what I want to do is take it from hot to cool cool is do I want to go on vacation this year or is it worth it for me to buy this handbag or this jacket okay it is or it's not but I can make a cool decision that's what I want people to do so your money's automatically saved it's also automatically paying off debt it's automated to the point where you actually know the exact month and year your debt will be paid off and that is such a relief yeah that the whole fire lifestyle and tracking that stuff I find really interesting and I've heard you talk about how fire can get a little obsessive yeah the financial version of an eating disorder where it's like you're a little too hardcore about it if you if you live in the spreadsheet like okay this is for this is a rarity most people don't spend any money at any time on their money which they should but then you have this very tiny percentage of people who are borderline obsessed with it and if you find yourself like waking up in the morning and logging into Excel and running another Monte Carlo simulation you got a real problem so really once you set things up a rich life is lived outside the spreadsheet like this is a rich life the fact that we get to meet and we get to talk and we get to help so many people this is a rich life a rich life can be going on vacation a rich life can be eating at a restaurant or cooking at home that is a rich life and I can tell you after you get your basics in order a rich life is not on your computer screen or in a spreadsheet a rich life is lived outside the spreadsheet all right where can people find you to get some help you can find me at I will teach you to be rich calm get on my newsletter we send a ton of awesome stuff Instagram and Twitter I'm a true meek and you can find me all over the web and my book of course I will teach you to be rich at any bookstore amazing man yeah what is driving you what's the impact that you want to have in the world I want to help people really honestly create their rich life and to be unapologetic about it and it can be as crazy absurd extravagant philanthropic as you want but I want every single person my dream is that the people watching this they read my book and my email address is all over the book my dream is that they they come and they say you know what I used your book I applied it this is my rich life and they just tell me that is my dream I love them thank you so much coming on the show guys if you haven't already be sure to subscribe to get amazing stuff like this all the time and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey everyone I wanted to take a second to give a shout out to our longtime friends at audible I know you've heard me talk about them a thousand times before but that's because I literally live inaudible it is how I do virtually all of my listening and that's because with audible you can get pretty much any audio book in any genre and listen to it anywhere you are so whether you're at home at the gym on your commute whatever audible is hands-down the most convenient way for me to learn and I think that is true for a lot of people so start listening with an audible membership today and to get started you're gonna get a 30-day free trial you'll receive your first audio book for free and to free audible originals just go to audible.com slash impact theory or text impact theory to 500 500 when you start I recommend checking out David Goggins book can't hurt me it is one of my recent favorites in fact it's one of my all-time favorites I absolutely love that audiobook and what he did as a part of the read of that is really extraordinary it's very different I highly encourage you to check it out so if you want to get more reading done this year I urge you guys to do it with audible it's just a phenomenal way to do the reps get amazing information so go to audible.com forward slash impact theory today and start your free trial right now that's audible.com slash IM p AC tthe o ry or you can text impact theory to 500 500 give it a try alright guys joy and be legendary reading online someone said she only gets work because she's pretty my first thought was like what are they talking about because that never would occur to me and I started to realize I need to really share me more of my testimony because I don't think people understand that what they may see or perceive is something that I literally battled for 25 years the first 25 years of my life

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 275,163

Rating: 4.8769565 out of 5

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Ramit Sethi, Ramit Sethi & Tom Bilyeu, Finances, how to get rich, teach, money, ramit sethi tom bilyeu, ramit sethi impact theory, ramit, sethi, i will teach you to be rich, growthlab.com, ramit get a raise, how to get a raise, how to earn more money, personal finance

Id: sNK-9_Zp7wU

Length: 52min 33sec (3153 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019