How to Achieve a “Rich Life” With Your Finances

Today's blog post is based on a podcast from The Art of Manliness.

If you’ve read a lot of personal finance advice, you know that it usually concentrates on what you can’t do — what you shouldn’t buy and how you shouldn’t spend your money. What it doesn’t often offer is a vision of what all that scrimping and saving is for. 

My guest today argues that while knowing how to save money is hugely important, it’s important to know how to spend it too. His name is Ramit Sethi and he’s the author of the book I Will Teach You to Be Rich. It’s now out as a revised second edition, ten years after of the publication of the original. We begin our discussion going over what has and hasn’t changed over the past decade when it comes to personal finance. Ramit then makes the case that living what he calls a “rich life,” involves not just knowing where to cut back on spending, but where to increase it in places he calls “money dials.” We then get into some practical ways to better manage your money to ensure you spend less in areas you don’t care about, and more in those you do, including how to manage and pay off credit card debt, the bank accounts you need and how to set them up so that your finances are automated, and why you need to start investing today. We end our discussion on the idea that the big money decisions that many people ignore are more important than the small ones that get a lot of attention.

Ramit talked about increasing your money dials on the one thing that you love most to spend your money on by four times! Of course, you'll be cutting back spending on the things that aren't as important to you.

Ramit was featured in a blog post about a year and a half ago, where he talked about many things, including money. But this podcast focuses pretty much exclusively on money.

Here are the highlights so you can see what was discussed. Many of his ideas are counter to what many of the other financial "gurus" are saying:

Show Highlights

• How have things changed since Ramit first published his book 10 years ago?
• How your money psychology impacts your finances
• The money mistakes that people make over and over again (and why!) 
• The 85% solution 
• Automating your investing 
• What does it mean to have a “rich life”?
• What are “money dials”? How do you turn them way up?
• How do you turn the dials down on the things you don’t really care about
• Why extreme frugality isn’t necessarily the solution 
• Where we learn spending habits, and why the usual places are terrible 
• Optimizing your credit cards (and why to start there)
• The best bank accounts to have
• How to deal with student loans
• Why investing is so confusing 

Also, check out the resource section for other interviews and articles on the subject,

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