The Truth About Money and Why We Have It All Wrong | The Mel Robbins Podcast

foreign I am just on pins and needles I have somebody on the show that I have admired from afar for a very long time who am I talking about I'm talking about none other than ramit Sethi he has a simple step-by-step process that he's going to walk us through at zero cost today for how you can change the way you think about money and the four simple things that you need to pay attention to in order to make it a reality I've got sweaty Palms I'm so excited to talk to this guy so let's just

jump into it hey it's your friend Mel and today's episode of the Mel Robbins podcast is Rich with tools and strategies to help you make more money let's do this thing okay I am just on pins and needles I have been counting down the days for this particular episode because today I have somebody on the show that I have admired from afar for a very long time I don't know if there are people that you follow online that you're just like gosh I would just love to meet this person in real life one day well

today is that day for you and for me to meet one of the most inspiring experts and human beings out there when it comes to being rich and not just rich with money but rich with experiences and happiness and building a life that you just love this is a guy that is a New York Times best-selling author millions of people come to him to help them change the way they think about money to get out of debt to start businesses to retire early and most importantly to imagine design and create a rich life he has

a brand new Netflix series how to get rich it is just released it is so popular where he is coaching six people just like you and me on these exact things who am I talking about I'm talking about none other than ramit Sethi and he's here because he has a simple step-by-step process that he's going to walk us through at zero cost today for how you can change the way you think about money how you can design a completely different type of life and the four simple things that you need to pay attention to in

order to make it a reality I am I've got sweaty Palms I'm so excited to talk to this guy so let's just jump into it do we have him here oh he's here okay let's let him in okay let's get ramit ramid I'm so excited that you're here ramit thank you for being here thanks for having me it is so exciting to meet you I have been a fan of your work for so long I have stalked your website because it is amazing I can't believe we haven't met until now why is it I'm trying

to figure it out myself but regardless I'm excited that we get a chance to do it today me too me too and I'm really excited for everybody to hear what you're about to teach us because when I think about somebody who could fundamentally change the way that a person thinks about money and the way that they use money to live and experience what you call a rich life you're the one person on the planet that can do it I mean they're not just passing out Netflix shows to everybody well thank you I love I love

talking about this it's kind of weird you know usually you don't think about someone actually loving talking about money and it's actually you know okay listen I've written a book about Roth IRAs and automation oh my God I'm already asleep do we we're not talking exactly hey me too and I'm the one who wrote the book on it so what I'm much more excited to talk about now is how to actually apply that money so you can live your rich life and to me that's that beautiful tapestry of Life of I love eating out or

I love travel and to be able to go deeper on that and to use money to do it oh what could be more exciting oh my gosh and you know what else I love about you I love that you come at this after [ __ ] things up with money and I love because you know look let's face it there's a lot of experts out there that kind of talked down to the rest of us that aren't you know at the Pinnacle that they've reached yet and even though you have gone from somebody who and

I'm gonna have you tell everybody the story because it's awesome um even though you're somebody that has made millions and millions and millions of dollars and you are super smart about money that wasn't always the case and so I would love to have you take us all the way back to 2004 where you are back as a student at Stanford you cannot afford to go to Stanford unless you pay your way and you figure out how to apply to 60 scholarships and you self-fund your education but when you get your first scholarship check you do

something [ __ ] stupid with it well I didn't think it was stupid at the time I thought it was a genius uh so here I am in high school it's like late 99 2000 and um I grew up the son of Indian immigrant parents and they came from India built their life here my dad worked my mom stayed home with us and uh when it came time for college they told us you know of course you're going to college but we don't have money so you've got to find scholarships for it they just told

us Point Blank and they had raised us you know we may not have had a lot of money for us eating out was a thing we did once every six to eight weeks always with a coupon we would never buy enough drinks for the whole family we'd have two and we would share it but they taught us how to work and they taught us this idea that if you work hard enough usually the money stuff will take care of itself so culturally we grew up knowing education is important and and personally I love systems I

love building a system and doing the work once so I don't have to do it again oh that's why I don't like budgets I don't have a budget I don't think anybody should have a budget for that matter and we can talk about that uh because who wants to track the price of apples for the rest of your life it sounds like hell does anybody other than a CPA or a controller for a company actually track a budget can we just start no no and in fact some of the very people who tell America to

keep budgets don't even keep a budget themselves wow so let's just get real okay so here I am I uh applied for 65 scholarships and I built this system so I ended up doing it pretty rapidly you know by the end it was taking me like an hour in application I started to get scholarships now how many of the 65 did you land I probably got 10 to 12. that's amazing okay 15. yeah some were small some were like a thousand dollars some were extremely large which ended up paying undergrad in grad school wow and

yeah so I was very fortunate but again you know if I hadn't gotten all those scholarships I still had Plan B plan C Plan D and and I think we all should have a plan B because life doesn't always work out the way we think it's going to that's true so here I am I get this scholarship check and they made they wrote the check to me Mr ramit seti high school kid in 1999 when all I was reading was these thick magazines about tech stocks I go cool I'm going to invest this scholarship money

because I'm a genius oh 1999 wasn't that the year that everything crashed well it hadn't crashed when I invested it crashed right after it happened okay so I learned some really valuable lessons first of all I lost half my money immediately and that humbled me and I think when these things happen it gives us a chance to choose with Pat which path we want to take for me I could have been like investing is a scam and I'm never doing it again a lot of us feel that way luckily I will say I was so

fortunate that my parents especially my dad really encouraged me hey try to figure out what happened look learn and also in the grand scheme losing that money while a lot of money at the time ended up being a little bit of money in the grand scheme so here I was at Stanford now I'm studying social psychology uh human behavior persuasion and I'm reading all the books about personal finance investing compound interest asset allocation and I'm looking around and I'm going the emperor has no clothes what does that mean all the all the advice that we

get about money tell me if this sounds familiar to anybody listening uh don't spend money on lattes don't buy new jeans don't go on vacation in fact hoard your money in a little cave and then one day when you're 93 years old maybe just maybe Society will give you permission to go enjoy it what kind of horrible life is that and here I am you know young guy in college I want to go out with my friends my dream at the time was to be able to buy around the drinks from my friends not worry

about it without a coupon to me not a Koopa exactly and so just I love that you said that because as I got a little older and I graduated you know what my rich life was in my early 20s no it was literally to be able to go to a restaurant and order an appetizer without worrying about the price because when we were a kid we couldn't afford to do it and what is that 10 bucks maybe 15 bucks and it felt incredible so in fact let me ask you when you think about your early

formative 20s what was a thing for you that you were just like that feels almost irrationally amazing to be able to do [Music] um I guess to go on a vacation somewhere warm that I could pay for with my friends like I saw not not pay for them meaning like you see all these kids go to spring break and I always needed like I I worked during college but I needed my parents to spot me the money or I needed the invitation from another person's friends parents who were gonna you know take their daughter somewhere

and she got to bring a friend and so for me I think a quote rich life which we're going to unpack for everybody so they understand what you're talking about was like wow it would be pretty incredible if I could have my own money not for textbooks not for gas but to actually buy a plane ticket and go to a hotel and be on one of those spring break things that I see I love that it's each one of us has something and it usually is in a formative age for us that we vividly remember

you know I remember uh sitting in the back of a taxi in New York and back then you know those taxi ticker things used to tick up every quarter mile eighth of a mile and sometimes you're just going oh my God like how high is this gonna go before I get there and of course I don't think about that now but back then part of a rich life for me was to be able to not have to worry about taking a taxi especially on a Hot August day walking out of the subway going to a

meeting and dripping in sweat okay so I kind of love this this idea of where we all start from it's it's usually something modest and Ultra specific and we can smell it we can remember exactly what the people around us look like and we're saying and that really informs where we came from which is can also inform what our rich life is today and possibly even tomorrow I would love for you due to talk to the person listening and guide them through the process of locating this core memory so that they have that with them

as we move forward and you help us to find this philosophy that you've created called a rich life I love it let's do it okay so let's start we're going to start in your early 20s okay and we're going to zigzag throughout our conversation today we're gonna go back to Childhood and we're gonna go to the future we'll do it all because that's what money is about it's about understanding the seasons of life and how money interacts oh I [ __ ] love this okay so so in my you know in my 20s again that

irrational Joy came from being able to buy appetizers and for everybody here I want you to think about you may have been in college you may have been working at your first job what was the thing where you said to yourself I wish I could do that or am I ever going to be able to do that and remember it's not usually a big thing it's not I want to take a round the world trip and stay in all these fancy places it's often an appetizer it's uh being able to pay for your own vacation

it might you know a lot of people joke about getting the guac at Chipotle it might actually be that there's nothing shameful about a small Vivid aspiration that you had how do you think everyone listening is is going along with this journey so far Mel good Amy okay you think we're good okay good yeah uh my producer's like this is okay good we got like I think we're all right there I have a question to ask you to go a little deeper in this because I always I noticed that you know you've spent a lot

of time studying psychology and you of course help people change the way they think about money and I would love to ask you about the way in which your formative years as a child and what you experienced as your parents emotion or conversation around money how that impacts your mindset around it and you know I I'm asking that because I feel like it must be somehow related to this core memory of I just wish I could go and take myself vacation I wish I could buy the guacamole I wish I didn't have to worry about

the needle on the tank of gas getting to empty and not being able to fill it up and so for me personally you know it's interesting my parents my my father um was the first person in his family to go to college and he had to pay for it and my mother also went to college and had to pay for it and she ended up dropping out to have me and then my dad got into medical school and my mom worked nights for the IRS while she and my dad took care of me at night

and then she took care of me during the day and we lived in public housing while he was a medical student and when he was a resident in Dayton Ohio and then my I was in fourth grade when my parents were able to purchase their first home and my dad did not pay off his medical school loans until late into his 30s but here's the interesting thing about it even though we struggled and I can relate to the you know we never went out to eat when I was a kid um not until middle school

anyway and I never remember my parents being stressed out about money what do you remember them saying about money nothing I like I I I don't remember them talking about it and I just had this sense because there was this like ease about it that if you need something you figure out how to get it that there wasn't a lot of griping or complaint and I know they were trying to make the ends meet and they come from very blue collar modest families hard-working they were very hard working and so I just kind of got

this thing like money's there when you work for it and you don't need to worry about it and you know what I mean like I not like I was spoiled or anything that was not it at all yeah but they didn't pass on the stress to me now Chris's family had plenty of money but there was this huge dialogue you don't deserve that we don't have it you're not going to be spoiled and so his butt is so clenched when it comes to money like the guys like how much does the guacamole cost I'm like

dude have you seen our checking account you can afford it like he literally adopted this this kind of gripping mentality how does your What like how does that impact the mindset that you have your Early Childhood years so this you just gave us a fantastic uh journey into your childhood and if you don't mind please uh I'm gonna I'm gonna dive a little bit deep and kind of uh shine a light on what you just told me okay okay so a lot of this comes from my work on my podcast and of course on the

Netflix show with individuals and couples and many people believe that money is simply about numbers and of course the numbers are a very small part of how we experience money so when you say your family never really talked about money but there was a sort of ease about it I'm I'm listening I'm going okay and then it clicks when you tell me they were blue collar and they taught us that if you work hard money will come okay that's a cohesive belief I totally agree sometimes I speak to couples where one uh person in the

couple grew up let's say white collar maybe upper middle class and the other grew up working class blue collar their beliefs conflict and they can't figure out why right they think it's about oh she spends too much at Target or his truck is too expensive but really there's this belief particularly with different class structures which we never really talk about in America which is if something's hard let's just grind harder and you can grind harder there's no doubt about that law school at set medical school but there's a certain point where grinding a little harder

just doesn't work you have to you have to change the way you think about money for example did your parents talk about uh investing IRAs compound interest when you were growing up oh my God no exactly and so some of the uh folks who I speak to they said we were talking about investing at age five or on the dinner table here's what happens if you put a quarter in the bank now imagine if a couple is meeting and one of them's been talking about investing since age five and the other has never talked about

investment that's what we discover when we peel uh back the curtain and we see how beliefs affect us so if you're listening the question I would ask you is what conversations do you remember your family having when you were young about money what phrases here's some examples that might sound familiar we can't afford it um uh we don't talk about money in this family uh we're not like those people we don't need a fancy car vacation eating out any of these sound you heard these or your friends heard these no but I mean I I

mean I have heard these I'm nodding because I'm like this is exactly what people hear exactly and so here's the consequence of that okay so you hear the most common one is we can't afford it yes parents just say this like it just comes out of their mouth parents you got to stop because let me tell you what happens they end up 40 years later talking to me and they heard we can't afford it ten thousand times growing up just reflexively oh I want shoes we can't afford I want a Trapper Keeper we can't afford

it and then this person hopefully they end up in a pretty nice job you know maybe they read my book they set up some Investments maybe they've done well they have some decent amount of money they come to me to go why do I still feel guilty ordering a salad when I eat out and my partner is saying we have the money look at our checking account why well trace it all the way back to conversations you had starting at age six we can't afford it and it really shows this key principle of money which

is the way you feel about money is highly uncorrelated to how much you've got in the bank okay say that again yeah the the way you feel about money is highly uncorrelated to how much you've got in the bank most of us believe if I have five thousand dollars more or fifty thousand dollars more five hundred thousand dollars finally I'll feel safe and I'm here to deliver some unfortunate news which is that's never gonna happen now you can change the way you feel about money you can but a number in the bank is never going

to change your feelings about it because it's uncorrelated you have you've got to work if you want to live a rich life you got to do two things at the same time one you got to understand the numbers the basic numbers of Finance you've got to know your savings rate you've got to understand the rule of 72. this stuff is actually not complicated it's really fun we can talk about them I'll give you a couple of ratios it's easy stuff it's like a sixth grade I'm already zoning out on that we'll get to that in

a minute well first I want to hear the second part of this the second one is you've got to simultaneously work on improving your money psychology you've got to put a practice into place to start feeling good about money because so much of society tries to get us to feel bad I love this those two things you're going to be doing I love this because whether you're listening right now and you've got millions of dollars in the bank and you're set for life or you are nearly a million dollars in debt like my husband and

I used to be over a decade ago starting with changing your psychology around money changes absolutely everything and that's what we're going to focus on today because that is something that we all need to do even if you've made a ton of money grinding it out putting your head down you probably haven't enjoyed it and there is a way for you to change the way that you think and relate to and the psychology of money so that you have greater Freedom so that you have possibility so that you're more present so that you can be

more confident uh and effective in your decision making and that's exactly what ramit is teaching millions of people to do and it's available to all of us regardless of where we've come from what class we're in right now what we've experienced in our lives we can all just have a zero on the balance sheet and we're going to go up from here because ramit's going to teach us how to change our psychology so where exactly do we start knowing that that you know everybody comes to this conversation dragging historical baggage that they might not even

be aware of about their relationship to just money and what it means yeah let's imagine that it's the first day and you've decided to join the soccer team okay people come with some people have Fancy Shoes some people have no shoes some people are really physically fit others haven't run at all in years and for this metaphor I'll be the coach okay and what I'm gonna say is we're all in this together and we're all going to start on the same page okay okay so I like to start from a place of we're gonna have

fun with this I'll tell you what we're not gonna do I'm not going to say uh he'll pull out this 46 part spreadsheet and let's go through all your spending nah everyone's gonna leave and I don't even want to no one it's irrelevant instead I want to do something and exercise together with you me and everybody listening okay about what I call your money dials so I'm going to ask you let's do this together and everybody listening I want you to follow along so Mel if I asked you what is something you love to spend

money on not like but truly love look at that smile what would it be oh I love buying dessert I like now that I've I've I've started you know I've gotten out of debt I make a lot of money my favorite thing and I always joke that this is my version of a Lamborghini when I go out with a group of people I order every dessert on the menu okay what does that get you tell me about that why um it feels really decadent and fun and it allows me to sample things without committing and

it's a way to um uh take care of everybody at the table because everybody kind of secretly wished that you know somebody would order one of the desserts yes and it's a way to relax kind of that grip like oh I'm only allowed one dessert so I gotta pick the one it's just like a playful way that's kind of ridiculous but every time I do it everyone's like oh my God that's so fun and so I just love doing that and I'm also a massive Gift Giver so I love spending my money on other people

and orchestrating gifts and creating experiences for people those are my two big things I love it I hear I hear so many things that I'm so thankful I get to highlight some of the things I just heard so it sounds like your what I would call a money dial the thing you love is either gifting or eating out desserts yes would that be fair yeah okay pick one which which is the one that gets you really excited um gosh I don't know um it's I kind of think it's desserts because desserts desserts it's it's usually

very obvious like it people light up when they talk well because I also feel like it is a gift because nobody does it for themselves and it's ridiculous like why would you order all the desserts knowing everyone's gonna take one bite because we can and because it's fun and very abundant yeah and it's very it's about abundance and play and like that kind of it makes you feel like a kid almost okay I love it so here we have Mel in like a Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory just like we get to get it all and

it's very abundant so for everybody listening the most common money dial or thing you love to spend money on is eating out number two most common is travel number three is health and wellness number four is convenience which happens to be my money dial and there's a variety of others you know you can search online okay so that's great for everybody listening you should identify the thing you love and go into that detail if you're doing it with a partner notice how I asked her why tell me what what does it mean to you get

curious and then the second question I have for you Mel is if you were able to quadruple your spend on your money dial what would that look like and feel like for you I'd send those desserts to everybody in the restaurant whoa tell me more um just kind of spreading that exuberance and joy and this kind of psychologically it's not financially extravagant if you can afford to do it like it's not like you went out and spent two hundred thousand dollars on a car but there's this level of surprise and exuberance that and and and

extravagance that's that that kind of there's Delight there's surprise there's the fact that it tastes good that if I spread that through a whole restaurant I think the Positive Vibes that would go out and the positive energy that would swell in that space would be freaking unbelievable amazing okay I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to take that and extend it even more oh okay because I know you're very successful so you know let's say you eat out once a month you could do that no problem it wouldn't even affect your bottom line let's turn it

up even more not quadruple let's 10 exit think expansively think beyond the confines of a restaurant um well the first thing that came to mind was the Ben and Jerry's free cone day okay that they celebrate the it was this year their 40th anniversary by having a day where they give everybody a free ice cream cone if they show up and they typically support a charity right yeah I think that's pretty cool so you would do that like a day of let's say outside of school or something or some charity you're just gonna get an

ice cream truck and rent it and do that well when you said school I was like how cool would it be if like everybody got dessert at school for free okay you know I love your answers there there is a cohesive thread that goes through them it's it's generosity it's surprise it's delight and it just happens to be around food but I'm willing to bet in your life there's a bunch of other things like that yeah okay so for everybody listening take this example we just heard and apply it to yourself let me let me

give you some examples that will help please so uh for most people like I said eating out is their number one money dial and when I ask him to quadruple it they almost always say the same uh like PG rated joke they go well I'd probably have to watch what I eat because I'd be eating out four times a week and then I go all right listen that's very linear thinking the fact that you eat out once so you're gonna quadruple it you're just gonna eat out four times that's linear like okay you could eat

out four times a week but are you gonna eat at the same place and and people pause they start thinking oh wait a minute okay so if it's like Chipotle or whatever it is that you eat at wow okay and I remember this um young man in DC I was speaking there and he said the same joke and I had the same unamused response and I go where would you eat and he thought for a second and he goes you know what I have a list of every michelin-starred restaurant in DC young guy I go

wow okay cool you like food he goes yeah I love it I go who would you take with you and he got really quiet the entire audience pin drop science and he goes I would take my family why because they could never afford to eat at places like that now that is a money dial that is a vision of what you love today and it could be modest right buying dessert for your friends that's very generous also pretty modest but when you understand hey where could I go with this could I turn my dial up

2x4x10x what would it look like it wouldn't just be more of the same I might change the quality I might change the frequency if I love clothes as a young woman in Pasadena did I asked Are You Gonna still shop at the same place h m she goes no and when we really explored and played we came up with this idea that one day she could fly to Italy with her mom and they could get something custom made together in Italy now she can't do that today she can't do it tomorrow but now she has

a vision of what excites her with money that's how we get started why is it important to start with a vision that's exciting because money is such a drag for most of us when you think of money what are the first words that come to mind debt yep yep restriction overwhelming mistakes am I too late mistake it sucks so are we surprised that Americans have terrible financial behavior well I'm not really surprised when everything around us basically tells us don't pay attention to this until it's too late I mean it's more exciting to talk about

flossing than it is to talk about money it sucks but if we start talking about oh my God I love to eat I'm Unapologetic about spending extravagantly on the things I love as long as I cut costs mercilessly on the things I don't well Suddenly It's a lot more fun to talk about it really is because I think there's so much shame that we carry about money because there's all these expectations that you have about how much you should have how much you should have by now what you should have done with it if only

had I invested back uh in the day in apple like I missed these opportunities I should have done this I should have done that and that sort of negative story that you keep reinforcing to yourself that then has you go I can't buy the guacamole I better not get a latte [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] it keeps you stuck in that story but when you allow somebody to play and dream again because money is not only psychology it's sort of a vehicle to do those things exactly yeah and you I love

what you said about the guacamole example is that because we feel shame because we feel like it's too late we are our field of vision Narrows almost like if you've ever felt like you're about to faint everything shrinks and we shrink our own desires so I'll often ask people what is your rich life and you know what they always say to me they always go I want to do what I want when I want I go oh okay there we go and then I go wow that's so interesting I never heard that one except for

that eight million times I heard it I go so what do you want and they are stumped because we never actually thought about what our rich life is and so then I you know I'm gentle I want them to come to it but I also want to have a little fun with them yeah and so they'll say something like well I guess like you know it would be cool if I had a beach house one day but it doesn't have to be a big beach house it could be small it could be a shack it

could be dilapidated I don't even need anything I go what the hell we're talking about your rich life and you already shrunk your desires in five seconds ah I don't allow that I go dream bigger and then let's figure out if your finances supported what investments you need to make and hey maybe you're not going to get a nine bedroom place in the Hamptons but maybe you could get a beautiful place rent it for a week or buy it in 10 years etc etc so we minimize ourselves unnecessarily and then that cuts off our access

to authentic inspiration yeah nobody's inspired by a tiny Vision nobody's inspired by the idea like oh I could say five percent on coffee who cares that's not exciting that's so true I want to ask you a question on behalf of anyone that's listening that is up to their eyeballs in debt and is having trouble dreaming and is trying to make ends meet or maybe they're not even it's not even the debt it's that with two kids in college and bills to pay and a mortgage they're just in those crunch years of just grinding it out

what is the concept of a rich life and can you walk us through regardless of where we are financially how we start to Define it for ourselves because we've covered the money dials but I want to just get a flat definition from you of what a rich life is and what are the steps you walk somebody through regardless of where they are yeah to creating one a rich life is when you look at your life and you go wow this feels amazing now you can have a rich life and still be in debt that's okay

you can have a rich life and not be exactly where you want to be ultimately but a rich life can be traveling two months a year it can be buying a beautiful cashmere coat a rich life can be picking up your kids from school every afternoon the key is that your rich life is yours it's not mine it's not your friends not your parents it's yours and in fact the more you carefully Define your rich life and really turn those dials up and down the more bewildering your rich life will be to other people I'll

give you an example from my own life my rich life is really weird to other people and that's exactly what it should be I love spending extravagantly on travel I'm a hotel guy I love I have a list of hotels in all parts of the world I know the exact room I want to stay in like I love it I'm obsessed I'm that's my thing I also love clothes I love them I spend a lot on it and so those things are things I spend extravagantly on on the other hand uh my car is not

that important to me and to give you a point of comparison I've spent more in one year on travel than I spent in 20 years on all of my car expenses added together wow so that's crazy that's bewild it makes no sense to somebody listening and that's exactly how it should be if you love camping maybe you turn that dial up you find a way to have a smaller cost for your rent or mortgage and instead you you're going camping I don't know X weeks per year you've got some behind you've got some place you

go that nobody else knows about some equipment that's amazing you you take friends with you amazing not my thing I've got a reader of mine who told me he retired in his 30s with his wife they travel around the world the country in an RV I go that sounds like hell yeah to me no way but today I love that it's their rich life yes so are there particular questions other than the money dial that you would want us to ask ourselves or answer in order to start to really Define it because I agree with

you most people when you ask them for real what do you want it's like uh uh it's hard it's a really big question yeah so we what we can do is we can zoom in and out okay to help people create some context around it okay so you know I have this journal which you can do Solo or with your partner and I'm going to give you a few exercises that are really helpful let's start big picture and then we'll Zoom really tight down to day to day okay so this is a fun exercise I

did this one with my wife we sat down and we said let's create a 10-year bucket list so in our in the next 10 years what do we want to do that would make this an amazing and Rich ten years okay so we took two separate pieces of paper we spent a few minutes we wrote it down and then we came back and compared it and this is a really cool opportunity to recalibrate the way you talk about money because it's dreamy it's fun you don't have to commit to anything so you want to get

curious you know one of us is like oh I want to learn Spanish and the other one goes oh cool you want to do that online or like would you want to go to Mexico City and do an immersion the other one you know for one of my things was I want to write a book at a hotel makes perfect sense I well I don't necessarily love writing but if I'm going to write a book I'm going to write it in an amazing luxury hotel that I love which okay cool oh uh so there was

one in Kyoto that I love and in fact recently went there on a writing project I achieved yeah and you know the funniest part um my wife was going to Japan anyway with some friends she goes hey why don't you go and work on your writing project you know I know you love that hotel and you've got the time one and I was like oh yeah it didn't even occur to me so sometimes you need somebody to remind you about yourself now if you're single or you're newly divorced or you've just graduated from college do

you recommend that you grab a friend or a sibling or somebody or is this something better you can do it solo you can do it solo okay yeah you could totally do it solo so you come up with a list of of things and it's it's things that are exciting um that you would look back on and be like wow that was a really cool 10 years I remember that's memorable okay then so the two of you have if you're in a partnership you've asked each other if you're solo you're looking at them and you're

picking one that really jumps out at you don't overthink it it's the one that you go I want to do that above all others in the next 10 years yep I gotta go to Australia for a month in the next 10 years I'm not saying that's mine but I'm just saying like what are some of the things you've seen from the millions of people that you've helped um we want to take a family trip to Italy super common everybody wants to go to Italy like it's like and I I just I love hearing it because

um I then get to help them dimensionalize it like Italy alone is just a word I want to know what seat on the airplane are you flying what season are you going what are you wearing where are you eating I want to know every detail to the point where we can almost smell it because then it becomes Vivid and aspirational okay okay so um that's what we're doing in this first process it's actually really fun oh my God we get to go on a pizza tour whatever then you pick that one and Solo or together

you go all right let's actually make it happen when do I want to do this in our case we wanted we decided we want to have an amazing 10-year wedding anniversary we were inspired by some friends of ours who did it and we're like what people actually do that and then we're like well who cares if people do it we want to do it and so we said that's it we happen to know the exact date we want to do it and the location if you want to go to Italy or wherever you got to

pick a specific month and year it's got to now start getting specific and then you got two more steps and then you're good to go let me just clarify something yeah what we're meat is teaching you to do is to dream again and to attach very positive and aligned emotion with what a rich life would feel like and I think so many of you are going to have trouble even getting past this part and giving yourself permission to do it because of the amount of mistakes that you made and you know I'll just say ramit

when Chris's restaurant business was really struggling and we had liens on the house and could couldn't pay for groceries uh at times and I had lost my job dreaming seemed impossible but it was actually a Lifeline because it made me feel like this was gonna be temporary that we would figure out a way through this and so I just want to underscore that per that if you're like got crushing student debt right now if you've gone through a divorce and you're in financial ruin this is actually exactly what you need to do because if you

continue to stare at the debt you're going to feel disempowered which means your actions will be disempowered if we can give you a beacon out on the distance to raise your gaze and get you feeling inspired again something to work toward that we know based on the research that's your big why when it comes to a goal and so I love what you're doing here because it's the exact opposite of what a financial advisor would tell you which is you'd sit down you'd go through the numbers you'd feel like an imbecile you'd basically get somebody

politely telling you you're [ __ ] and you shouldn't buy coffee out and you shouldn't enjoy yourself until you get your debt under control and you pay this off and that can come but let's first get the conversation fun and exciting again because when you're in that kind of mood you're going to be more motivated to do the tedious [ __ ] that any financial advisor can tell you correct correct 100 and thank you for slowing us down and really providing the context behind why we are doing it this way I don't want us to

shrink our world to a spreadsheet that's not going to help you that's not going to help anybody instead what I want to do is expand our vision even if it feels impossible to dream and to say look just in this moment on this piece of paper let's dream for a second and it's having a conversation with yourself or your partner and saying we may not be able to even see how we can get there today but we've got time and if we put the intention behind it and we Marshal our resources I think we can

do this yeah that's beautiful absolutely beautiful so you've got one powerful vision of what you want to accomplish in the next 10 years I say powerful because it's not like eating at a restaurant that's not powerful enough I had a guy once tell me his rich life is coffee and I just sat there and then I said that's boring I just told him Point Blank and he was shocked oh somebody's telling me my rich life is I was like yeah that's boring you can't just say coffee like this guy had a lot of money I

go okay if you love coffee then tell me you want to go to Guatemala and take a behind the scenes tour of a farm tell me you want to go to the National Barista competition and bring somebody tell me something Beyond I want to order an extra Dunkin Donuts coffee shipped to my house no that's not acceptable so sometimes I have to challenge people to think bigger you got something big it could be skydiving it could be a trip whatever all right you know the date okay specifically in the next 10 years you got to

pick a date the month and the year yep you got to be specific then this is the hardest part but it should take no more than five minutes okay approximate the cost so if you're going to Italy people they start to freak out because they everybody yeah it's it's like we revert back to seventh grade math and we're like oh gotta do the quadratic equation and get it perfect I go listen you don't need any decimal points okay in fact you could approximate on the back of a napkin how much is a flight gonna cost

approximately you know add 15 because you forgot about tax and all that stuff what's a hotel gonna cost I don't know Google Hotel Italy Rome whatever okay let's double the price because maybe we want to stay at a nice hotel all right fine that's the level that we're talking about here okay and if you have two different like my wife and I had two completely different numbers mine was way bigger and my rule is if you got two numbers go with the bigger one got it okay okay go with the bigger one and so now

you've got a beautiful Vision you've got a month and year you've got the approximate amount it's gonna cost the last step is to make it a reality how do you do that let's say that it's 10 years away it's going to cost uh ten thousand dollars I'm just making it up that means you need to be saving a thousand dollars a year or roughly you know 100 bucks a month okay roughly okay we could do that suddenly you start to understand a little concept of like time and money and you set up an automatic savings

from your checking account to your savings account for one hundred dollars a month and you call it dream trip 2030. boom every month that you are talking about money in what I call a rich life review it's like a video game you see we're getting three percent closer and that is a joy I love this and I know that you is that what you call a conscious spending plan because a little different but it would incorporate that yes okay so can I just ask one more question about this and I know I'm beating a dead

horse but having been somebody that was in a scary place financially just over a decade ago I want you to explain what will happen to somebody with crushing student debt or who's having trouble just making the ends meet right now and they don't have a lot of savings how will doing this exercise change their psychology about money starting today yes thank you for asking this because if you are in large amounts of debt whether student loan credit card even mortgage for for some people some of this can sound really Airy fairy and I'm I'm the

last guy to get accused of us all sitting around the campfire saying Kumbaya I'm like look I'll talk about psychology but we're also going to talk about the numbers and so what I want to emphasize to people is that we often have this belief that we're overwhelmed with money okay it's easy to feel that way but when I ask people show me your spending what percentage of your income is going to housing or Investments I would say 99 of people do not know okay so how can I don't know I I literally don't know yeah

totally it's very common and so how can we feel in control of something if we don't understand the basic mechanics of it even when we drive a car we got to know how to turn the ignition on or reverse so we go through life In This Very uh arbitrary transactional way of like okay this bill came in I'm gonna pay it this bill came in that feels really bad it's transactional it's reactive and what I'm encouraging you to do is to go from defense to offense with your money that means once you set the intention

of an Italy trip if you're in crushing debt you may go hey ramit I actually cannot afford to put a hundred dollars a month away I go okay well why don't we write that down 100 a month towards Italy but you can't do that today that's totally fine next we're gonna go through your four key numbers in the conscious spending plan let's make sure you understand your numbers and you will be quite surprised that a lot of people discover they have more money than they actually realized once they go on offense with their personal finances

oh wow okay so what are the four tight things that we all need to go through everybody needs these four numbers this is what I use instead of a budget I don't keep a budget you think I'm going to sit around tracking the price of asparagus for the rest of my life hell no okay I don't want to live that kind of life either okay yeah all right so four numbers that you should know these are all part of my conscious spending plan the first is your fixed costs okay so that would include your rent

or mortgage yep your utilities car payment gas Insurance anything that's fixed even groceries every month that goes there and what about the minimum debt payment or is that part of another yeah that's that counts there exactly okay and that number you should try to get it between 50 to 60 percent of your take home pay okay let me let me run through these all and then I'll tell you what they mean fifty to sixty percent of your take-home pay for fixed costs next up your savings how much money are you saving every month this should

be roughly five to ten percent of your take home and savings would be an emergency fund or money you don't need for at least one to five years things like a down payment for a house Etc next up would be Investments roughly five to ten percent of take home although I like to see it higher because investing early in life pays well it pays dividends later okay and then a little name for Mel Robbins did not invest early in life I'm just gonna like let that one go and focus on my dream list okay just

wanted to acknowledge that when you said that because yeah I'm like [ __ ] I didn't do that okay well I wish I started deadlifting when I was 13 years old but I didn't even know what that was you know so we all start from the place we start at that's true okay the last category is my favorite one of all it's guilt free spending and this is 20 to 35 percent of take-home pay what no yeah that's right desserts Mel go get them beautiful cashmere coat that's for me go get them if you want

to go you want to get roller skates you want to go to your gym 20 to 35 percent of take home now let me tell you why I love this and why I'm getting excited four numbers okay so many of us shrink our lives and we agonize over some stupid five dollar purchase really think coffee is going to change your life it's irrelevant it does not matter how much coffee you buy so please stop thinking about that the same people who act and I go oh I'm so overwhelmed I don't know anything I go what's

your savings rate they go what's that how much are you investing well I try but I don't really know okay how are you supposed to feel not overwhelmed if you don't know any key numbers so know the four numbers and you will suddenly feel totally in control some of you aren't going to be able to hit these numbers that's okay at least we can work with it we got the puzzle pieces on the table now we can start assembling your rich life wow okay I I think I can do this yeah so you just like

carve out some time on the weekend and get your arms around these four things yeah which should take 15 minutes do not no everything's gonna take me a while really it takes 15 minutes yeah here's what here's what how do you do it you know because the the biggest um challenge is uh people don't have the right logins so their logins are spread although they got their Fidelity account or some old 401k or whatever so I I would recommend breaking it up into two days okay the first day is just get all your stuff assembled

love it right it's like cleaning the garage and then the second day 15 minutes and done do not overthink it okay we're going for approximate numbers okay that's it I love you I love you love you love you you have that what is it the 85 rule get 85 percent of this right you're good yeah get on with your life you don't need to sit there and optimize everything it's a waste of time and I also love this because like it can feel so insurmountable when you've made major Financial mistakes in your life yeah that

this gives you a place to start that you can then start to get better from and and I just actually had a huge wake-up moment I realized that one of the great things about growing up with parents who were very s like just I didn't ever see any concern about money and I didn't see them talking about it actually that's not true I would see my mother sitting at her desk with one of those little calculators with the tapes as she was balancing her checkbook hey that's a that's a really important thing that you saw

you saw a woman taking control of money yes and obviously and being capable and competent that is a very valuable lesson to learn as a child that that obviously has come through for you that's amazing oh yeah and she then went on to open her own retail store and I I come all the women like my grandmother is a farmer and ran the money and she had a calculator with the tape but my other grandmother my grandparents had a bakery and she had the thing with the tape but what's interesting is that I think the

oh it's chill aspect has gotten two hands off for me the fact that I can't answer those numbers like that at this stage in my life for me it used to be because of fear and shame and how bad the numbers were I used to be one of those people that the bills would arrive and I would just not open them yeah common and because it was confronting to see the debt and confronting to see how much I had spent because I was you know basically shopping to escape my life with money that I did

not afford or that I didn't have and then you'd open up the bills and be like [ __ ] yeah I I don't have that money and so I it used to be that but I think now that I've paid off all the debt and I have savings and I've you know maniacally saving I don't look at it at all still okay let's let's talk about a couple things that are so interesting about what you just said I love the honesty all of us have something in our lives that we are we feel like we

should be doing better and we kind of pushed the envelopes away and I deeply understand this because for me it was Fitness and I grew up half joking calling myself a skinny Indian guy and I really wish I had not said that because it became part of my identity and you know if if any of us say something like I'm bad with money I will gently encourage you to not say that maybe reframe it and say gosh I haven't learned the skills of money yet but I'm changing that now I want to stop right there

hold on I apologize for interrupting you but this is so important if you just heard ramit say I'm bad with money I want you to pay attention loud and clear because he's absolutely right or if you say something like I I don't understand it's overwhelming I'm not good with math I'm not good with math what are other things that your students say ramit that really crystallize a terrible psychology around money my family's never been good with money we're all bad I'm never gonna get out of this debt we always fight about money and I'm just

an overspender or my husband took care of the finances oh classic oh that drives me insane hold on I'm getting mad but I got I'm getting mad at multiple things right now so let me take him each and turn okay first off um what you said about not opening envelopes and then now as you've become much more financially successful it's almost swung the other way is totally common in my experience once people start earning around 150 000 they stop really paying attention to the numbers because they basically make enough to not have to really pay

attention and actually I'm a little okay with that I don't want people agonizing over the price of groceries if they're making 150k but what I do want and what I do for myself is I spend one hour per month on my finances that's it just one hour I review the CSP my wife and I talk about money hold on the CSP was that conscious spending plan of the four things fixed cost uh what's your automatically savings your Investments and then the the category I love the most guilt-free [ __ ] spending people there you go

well I love it you added the f word that's so good I gotta add that that's beautiful it is exciting okay so all those things when you have money carved out for guilt-free spending it is literally defined so that if you want to eat and get an extra cheesecake or you want to go to the movies like you don't have to feel guilty because you know my debt is being paid off my rent or mortgage is being covered I'm even saving money I'm not trying to save money just like I don't try to brush my

teeth it is happening automatically it's even better than brushing so that is if you're listening I hope that's a sense of relief that you don't have to feel bad about having debt you do not have to track a gajillion numbers that you don't even care about you do and I would highly encourage you to focus on four key numbers that will totally transform your life I love this I love how easy you're making this thank you for that it's absolutely my pleasure I I don't want to spend time doing that either I don't want anyone

else to waste it so may I just I want to clarify one thing so these four pillars of the conscious spending plan and again I come from the lived experience of crushing debt yeah where you feel that unless you can get to zero balance you don't deserve guilt-free spending yeah that somehow you're cheating on your goal to get out of debt which is whatever financial advisor pounds into your head yeah and you feel like that latte robs you of the opportunity to be out of debt you feel like spending to go on a trip with

your friends robs you of the ability to be out of debt and what you're saying is no no no no no you can start right now by figuring out these four things and allocating incoming to those things correct we have a very unhealthy relationship with money in this country on one hand we have a puritanical uh strain that tells us do not buy anything and you're a bad person for having debt and you should live in a monastery until that debt is paid off and then maybe you can go buy a pack of gum okay

on the other hand we're like uh okay hold on let me look at Instagram oh my friends in Bora Bora on Tuesday oh I think I'm gonna go uh take a trip even though I don't even know how much I have in the bank what a two paradoxical beliefs and usually it's the consumers one that wins but we still feel guilty yeah we love to feel guilty in this country I don't really know what I don't want to feel guilty with money I don't also I'm not naturally like I don't feel guilty I'm just like

let me just fix this so um when it comes to having debt here's my belief number one you need to know how much you owe 90 of people I talk to who are in debt do not even know how much debt they owe that's number one you got to know your numbers number two you've got to know the exact month and year your debt will be paid off 95 of people in debt do not know their debt payoff plan easy way to do it literally go on Google type debt payoff calculator plug your numbers in

and you will see and don't worry if it seems depressing oh it's going to take 28 years what I want you to do is just plug the number in and sit with it for a day and later you will learn things like wow if I add an extra fifty dollars a month it can shave off three years from my debt but that comes later and you know what else I also love that you're saying is I love that you're saying it's okay to have it like most rich people actually finance a lot of things you're

the expert I don't know why the hell I'm talking about money go ahead well first of all whether it's okay or not a lot of people have debt yes so let's just accept us for who we are that's that's the fact of life now I do want you to get smarter with debt so there when I look at people I always look at the snapshot of their finances and I talk about all these numbers on the podcast by the way we have folks who come on eight hundred thousand dollars of debt they're not even sure

really are you serious well that was me uh over a decade ago yeah when the liens hit the house okay no College savings no 401K credit cards maxed out home equity line maxed out plowed it all into my husband's restaurant business did not go according to plan I lost my job leans hit the house he hadn't been paid in six months friends and family had invested holy [ __ ] hell that was my life okay so this so you really know oh what it's like yeah this is not a joke this is it's like um

you think about it every day of your life when you're in it yes and in fact there's research I believe that says that the number is 75 or 78 000 in the United States is what you need to make in order to be relieved of the day-to-day Financial stress that you have that when you reach that number there's a level of Freedom involved I don't know if that's true or not I I know the research what is it it's not uh people have wildly misinterpreted it let me put it this way and I want to

correct it because people listening who are making 75 000 they're like wait a second why do I still feel so stressed what's wrong with me right and it's not there's not something wrong with you nobody is broken with money nobody there are ways for you to get uh informed about money so you know the basic language of money which anybody can do you do not have to be a math genius I'm not and second to work on improving your money psychology you know I spoke to a couple on my podcast and uh they were in

a lot of financial trouble and they you know they think about it every day and they were so stressed out and I asked him have you read my book not judging it turns out like almost nobody who comes on my podcast reads my book which I find hilarious and so I said okay and they go well you know I don't really I haven't really read a lot I said okay you're a new parent she was a mom I think her baby was about like six months old I said um when you first had your baby

did you know how to hold her she goes no did you know how to feed her no did you just wing it did you just tried your best you know no I got help the nurses my mom I read a bunch of books and on and on and on and that is so normal there are things in life we don't know that's okay but we do have to say hey this is important to me my rich life is important I deserve to dream bigger than a box of pickles and therefore I'm going to prioritize learning

and also improving my psychology um I'm going to read your book I've never read a financial book in my life okay I love it you know there's an audio version too I'm just admitting it I have never heard your honesty it's right a financial book in my entire life I have read plenty of blogs and listened to podcasts I've never read a book and the truth is I am intimidated by investing and the irony of this is that this is the one area of my life where I have goals and I want to get more

into investing and also investing in uh startups as an angel investor and I don't know the first [ __ ] thing about it and there is this I don't know like self-doubt or whatever that's I realize in talking to you is keeping me from starting and yet one of the things that if I make that 10-year list that you're talking about of Dreams it is to have advised invested in and nurtured a number of startup companies particularly by you know underrepresented Founders in spaces and categories that I deeply care about and it's almost like what

I just realized is doing that would help me fulfill in a why in an amazing way that ripple effect of sending desserts to people there you go that that is the money dial the desserts are beautiful but they are such a small example you are so much bigger than a table full of desserts that is it yeah that like that I I it connected the dots between those two and so you know you've given us so much to do and so much to think about and I want to recap kind of what we've covered so

far for everybody so that you can also me tell us what else or where to start or we're going to list we're going to link to absolutely everything all your resources where people can listen your podcast where people can find your website of course your new Netflix series where you are following a number of people that need their mindset about money changed in a show where you've got like six weeks to turn people's Financial life around and so you know this is something where you can get coached by ramit not only through his programs but

through this new zero cost Netflix show so make sure to tune into that but I want us to just make sure that we have everybody leaving in action because you've just poured so much into us number one take two days everybody one for your logins for your financial thing the other to get the numbers straight and don't overthink it you got to get your conscious spending plan together which ramit taught us has four aspects of fixed costs savings Investments and your guilt-free [ __ ] spending people um the other one is you're going to do

this 10 year dream plan where you get to just get your 10-year bucket list on and this is so important because this is how you start to reclaim your life and take control of the psychology around money you get to dream you deserve to dream you deserve to have a big beautiful rich life and without this bucket list you haven't identified that you've also given us this exercise of money dials and thinking about what is the thing that if you dial it up and it's the thing that you smile big about and you know could

be eating out could be experiences health and wellness convenience things things that make your life easier make you feel more supported you also guided us through a short kind of reflection of those moments in life that really impacted your core beliefs right now about money and so you've given us a starting point you've given us the research and the why you've given us a road map for what to do get to get started what else for me when it comes to having this be day one of you having a different psychology and relationship to money

and somebody truly taking control of their life is there something else that that we haven't talked about um I would love for people to have an answer to this question I spend extravagantly on blank and I cut costs mercilessly on blank and that really is the Capstone of a lot of what we've talked about you spend extravagantly on tipping or on clothes or on what whatever it isn't to be able to write that down and be Unapologetic about it oh you're really standing in who you are and that's okay not everybody has to agree with

it and it also means you have to be honest about what you are willing to cut costs mercilessly on you know maybe I'm actually overspending on my house maybe I didn't know about the 28 Rule and maybe I didn't know about 28 36 and all these different things that you can learn over time but you have to be willing to also say if I want to live my rich life then what am I willing to say this is not part of my rich life what are some of the things that you typically see with the

people that you work with that are costs that they immerseus but what I can't even pronounce that word they mercilessly cut yes uh well I'll tell you what they overspend on tell me because it's fair it's always the same okay the number one area that people overspend on is housing costs and so in their fixed costs that is the first if there's a reason it's first there are housing costs a good guideline is that your housing cost should roughly be 28 of your gross income now I will tell you that that's really hard number especially

because housing has gotten so expensive yeah if you especially if you live in New York La Etc so if people come and they go well hey mine's like 31 I go okay you know we can approximate it's like adding a little more salt to your dish fine but sometimes they look at it and it's 42 percent now I'm going to tell you what that means because again most of us do not have the full picture of our finances we simply pay the bill that comes in and they're wondering why do we keep fighting about Target

why doesn't my husband or my wife uh want to go out to dinner once a year I'm so annoyed I go well I could tell you right right now it has nothing to do with Target nothing to do with dinner out it's that your housing cost is 42 percent of gross and because you're spending all your money up there there's nothing left trickling down the waterfall you can't save you can't invest you can't go out and when they realize that then suddenly they have they have the knowledge and they can go okay do we actually

love this house do we need to live here fine then what are we going to cut back on or do we actually need to live here could we downsize could we move do we have options could we rent out uh Adu in the back if we've got it Etc et cetera that's number one number two overspending is cars you know you get somebody I get this all the time and I always get mad at them and then everyone gets mad at me because in America we love trucks so I have nothing against well that's not

true I have a lot of things against trucks uh including safety and a variety of other things but what I really have a problem with is somebody making 75 000 who buys an 80 000 truck because their buddy Chet at the dealer told them oh you can afford the monthly payment and then they forget to factor in what I call TCO total cost of ownership that 80 000 truck actually cost you 120 Grand once you factor in insurance tax gas and on and on and on they can't afford it so I asked one guy he

comes on the show you know they're struggling with money he goes you know they tell it comes out way late they're like oh we tried everything we buy generic we buy generic macaroni and cheese I go I don't care about macaroni tell me about your car they go wait have this big nice truck I go oh okay that's so interesting uh by the way why do you have a truck and he looks at me like I'm crazy he goes to pull the trailer I go what you can't afford any of this so um anyway those

are the two areas people overspend on it's it's house and car and if you can just avoid that if you can just get your numbers in line and fit your fixed costs the rest of your life will be so much easier wow wow you have a truck Mill my husband drives a pickup truck yeah what kind uh uh I think it's a Chevy well I don't I don't really mind because I know you can afford it but let's assume you and your husband made like one tenth of what you made now and you had that

Chevy what do you think about that uh I I I would be it costs 125 000 that's a lot of money well this is another thing well I guess and but I also live in Vermont and I would not be able to get up my driveway that's a quarter mile long during mud season if we didn't have a pickup truck we literally have to shuttle people up and down this driveway I drive a nine-year-old car that just [ __ ] the bed and now I I drove it in to get repaired and was told it

needs to be towed out somewhere to be sold so I am currently without a car so this is very timely but I'm not a big car person well good I like that you know that see now what I want to hear is that and it could be car I don't need a fancy house I don't need fancy clothes fine I but I also want to know what you are into and once people start to define those two things that really helps create the the dimensions of their rich life also never buy anything expensive based on

a monthly payment that's a trick people do this with their house their car and they forget all about the Phantom costs that are not included in their monthly payment so if you've been guilty of that do you then like have to have an honest conversation with yourself that's like when I and again I want you to leave us with this rich life concept because while ramit is a financial advisor he's the host of a hit television show he's a New York Times best-selling author and he's helped millions of people change their thinking and mindset and

psychology and relationship with money and launch businesses and get out of debt and create and build the life the rich life of their dreams um I really want to make sure people leave with a paradigm shift yeah what do most people without realizing have if they don't have a rich life already like if you talk if you think about the people that came on the Netflix show or any of the millions of students that come to your website every month what is the current mindset that most people have and then I want you to leave

us with a definition of what is possible if you apply these tools and you listen to ramit the mindset that most of us have is what I would equate to being at work and getting one email after another and simply being an order taker okay this person emailed me oh I gotta get back to that person and that is life and that is most people's lives forever when it comes to money I got this bill we got to get diapers uh oh the car broke down how are we going to respond to it yeah it's

just one arbitrary problem after another and I don't wish for those problems to go away cars break down sometimes we go into debt that's life instead I want to give you a whole new way of looking at them which is to say agonizing over you know some tiny thing at the grocery store is actually never going to go away and it's never going to change your life and you could spend the rest of your life worrying about it and in my Paradigm that's a tragedy what a tragedy to live a smaller life than you have

to what a tragedy to defer the rich life until some mythical day which you don't even know when it's going to happen and if I ask you you apply an arbitrary number no we're not going to do that because you've listened to the two of us talking today instead we're going to Define it right now what is our rich life what are my money dials what do I want to spend extravagantly on and therefore cut costs mercilessly on and am I comfortable saying to myself and perhaps other people I'm gonna live my rich life today

and an even richer life tomorrow that's the vision I want to leave everybody with I freaking love that oh my God you're amazing this is this is the uh thank you this is like I love doing I love seeing people's lives change when they see money in a different way fantastic because when you see it in a different way you act differently yeah and that's why this matters ramit's not saying think about a rich life and also it'll be a million dollars in your bank account no no no no it's you got to be competent

you got to know your numbers absolutely I hold people to that um but when most people think about money they see stress and overwhelm and debt and when I look at numbers I see a trip to Disneyland with your kids I see an amazing food tour in India I see the ability to never have to look at the price when you're at a restaurant and that is what you can get when you understand how to use money I love this one final question for those people that have a mindset I'm terrible with money I'm bad

with money I'm never going to get out of debt if you could drop in New programming please tell them what they should start saying to themselves all day long about money instead the new phrase that I want you to use is I haven't always been great with money now I'm learning so simple such a simple reframe just nobody's expecting you to become a multi-millionaire overnight we don't even need that but day by day you put a little bit of time and attention into reframing your identity I haven't always been good but I'm starting to learn

about money now that can be listening to this episode listening to my podcast watching the Netflix show it can be putting some time during your commute to listen to the audiobook and certainly having some conversations with a partner might maybe saying you know what I realize that when we talk about money we're always stressed out and I don't want that for us I actually want us to feel good about money and I realize I've got some work to do absolutely but I'd love to do it together with you would you be willing to do that

together that's how you reframe it solo and with a partner I love that I love that and I want to add one more because I'm thinking about my husband and one of the reasons why I love your reframe I haven't always been great with money but now I'm learning to be great with it I love that because as you know those sort of mindset reframes only work if your brain accepts it as true and by Leading with the fact that you acknowledge the fact that you haven't always been great it's not a make wrong it's

a stating effect it now opens the door for your brain to go oh yeah yeah but now you're learning to be greater okay I got that and so I could say for those of you that are on the Spectrum have always been stressed but you have it I've I've I haven't always been you know free with my money but I'm now starting to enjoy it I used to be stressed about my money but now I'm learning how to enjoy it so good I love that you add that that positive emotion Because deep down most of

us don't need the fancy Villa but we do want to feel good day to day with our money yes we want to know that if our kids ask us for something for school we can get it we want to know that if a friend comes into town and they say hey would you like to meet for lunch yeah we can go we don't even have to think about the numbers because we've already built in a margin of safety we've built in some ability to to take these spontaneous things that happen in life that's a rich

life to not have to always be tight and restrictive but to be fluid and accepting and I love the way you put that enjoy money that is so good well and here's the other thing that I love if I had to put this all full circle is that one of the things that we talk about all the time on this podcast and you talk about it too is the fact that we're all obsessed with getting to some place like I gotta I gotta get that beach house I gotta get out of debt because we presume

that we're going to feel a certain way yeah when we achieve it and what you're offering is a very clear simple step-by-step roadmap that helps you change how you feel about money and how you think about money so so that as you're creating this rich life and as you're taking responsibility you feel more freedom you feel happy it starts today it starts today yeah exactly and the dust I never believe in living a life of you know I'll start doing all these things when I retire it's about the journey and I want you to also

get to where you want to go but it's even sweeter when the journey has been intentional amazing and that is what we really want to create a rich life today and a richer life tomorrow amazing thank you so much congratulations on all your success and all the people whose lives you've made richer and more enjoyable I really appreciate you taking the time today to hang with us it's great to finally meet you in person and I hope this is the beginning day one ramit of our Rich new friendship I hope exactly the same thing thank

you for having me this was a blast awesome all right we'll talk see you soon thanks hey it's Mel and if you've ever thought gosh I just wish I could get Mal to coach me well now you can once a year I offer a live coaching program called launch and it is open for registration right now if you're interested I invite you no I urge you to check it out last year it sold out it has a 7 000 person wait list but being a fan of the podcast I know you're not just the listening

type you're the doing type you're going to love this it's 42 lectures that's the curriculum it's all new it is a private Premium app driven Community I am the professor it lasts for six months there are 11 live coaching calls you are going to love this the information is in the link above and I would love love love to coach you I'd love to empower you to launch a new chapter in your personal or professional life if you've ever wanted me to coach you this is your chance do not wait 54321 let's go wow I

am so excited to get my logins and go through my numbers I feel like I have a whole new relationship with money and I'm gonna start really enjoying it and feeling more confident I cannot wait to hear your feedback on this episode and I also want to remind you that there is another zero cost resource for you to help you take control if you go to melrobbins.com take control I have a three-part free training with a workbook and now that you're inspired to create a rich life I know that melrobbins.com take control is going to

help with that too in case nobody else tells you today I wanted to tell you that I love you I believe in you and I believe in your ability to forget the balance sheet for just a minute and create that bucket list you're learning so much about the science of dreams and goals and mindset and remit stepped in today and gave you and I this huge gift he's taken everything that we've learned in other areas of our lives and he's applied it in a financial roadmap and I love that getting out of debt and enjoying

your financial life begins with dreaming and with aligning it with what really makes you come alive and there is no doubt in my mind when you and I both tap into that the sky is the freaking limit baby alrighty I love you I'll talk to you in a few days oh one more thing it's the legal language this podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes it is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician professional coach psychotherapist or other qualified professionals [Music] foreign [Music]