How To Master Your Money and Live a Rich Life | Ramit Sethi

Ramit Sethi (0:00)

With mastery, when you truly understand the craftsmanship of whatever art you're in, whether it's fitness, food, fashion, whatever, you start to see trends and temporal issues as merely blips. Masters do not respond to everyday changes in the wind.

Michael Gervais (0:31)

Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist, and I am stoked to sit down with Ramit Sethi. Ramit is an American entrepreneur, best-selling author, and host of the new Netflix series, How to Get Rich. And he's here to talk about, yup, you guessed it, money. We all know that money is a topic commonly off limits for its ability to invoke anxiety or shame and divisive opinions about basic management, and Ramit wants to change that. His book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, is a New York Times bestseller and his new Netflix series, How to Get Rich, turns traditional money advice on its head.

And he offers practical wisdom that can empower anyone to live what he calls a rich life, no matter their station or their bank account.

And rich doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does.

This conversation is really interesting. Ramit and I dive into the psychology of money and our complex relationship with it. We talk about money dials, his framework for thinking about money and finances, how visions can inspire us, and why he advocates so strongly for spending on luxuries you love while cutting costs on the things that you don't. Yeah, you heard that right. And if you're enjoying this podcast, and haven't already, just a quick reminder to hit the subscribe or follow button, and to drop us a review wherever you're listening. It is the easiest and zero cost way to support the show. So with that, let's find out how to spend only one hour a month on managing your finances with Ramit Sethi.

Ramit, how are you?

Ramit Sethi (2:17)

I'm doing great.

Michael Gervais (2:18)

Oh, I'm so stoked to have you on. I think that right now, the idea of finances and money is so important and so central in people's lives.

And you've been at this industry for a long time, so I'm excited to sit down with you.

Ramit Sethi (2:32)

Yeah, thank you. And it's hopefully a new way of looking at money because most of us, when we think about money, we kind of cross our arms and we start shrinking and we go, Oh God, is this guy going to come on here and tell me to keep a budget and cut back on cucumbers?

And I never wanted to live my life like that. I don't want anyone to live their life shrinking from money. So, you know, let's have a little fun.

Michael Gervais (2:56)

Yeah, okay, I love it. So if that is the case, we're not going to talk about that. What are we going to talk about? Like what are the things that you love to talk about most often?

It's just a general framing here.

Ramit Sethi (3:07)

I love to talk about how to use money to live a rich life. It gets me excited, even if your rich life is different than mine. So I'll often ask people, what is your rich life? And they always have the same answer. Just about 85 to 90% of people give me the same answer. I want to do what I want, when I want.

I'm like, did everybody read the same book? Because everyone has the same, and it's not a good answer, by the way. It's really generic. So I go, oh, okay, that's interesting. What do you want to do?

And they kind of stare at me because most of us have never deeply thought about what our rich life is. If anything, we have these generic words like freedom and travel. And when I work with somebody and I really get to the bottom of it, what is their rich life, they'll tell me something like this. I want to take a three week trip to Italy. I want to be sitting on a rooftop drinking Italian wine, watching the sunset, overlooking the Colosseum. And at the very end, I'm always asking, who are you bringing with you? And they say, I want to bring my mom, I want to bring my grandma, I want to bring my son, daughter, because at the highest level of personal finance, it's always about the who.

So that is what I love to talk about is how to craft that, how to design that, and then how to use your money to actually get that.

Michael Gervais (4:25)

I love it. It's an awesome play on rich.