How To Think About Money Like Ramit Sethi
“Getting started is more important than becoming an expert.”
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Ramit Sethi is an American personal finance advisor and entrepreneur. He graduated from Stanford and released more than 20 online courses. In 2019, a decade after he published his finance book that was read by millions, he released an updated version of I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
I was skeptical about reading a book with a clickbait headline. The book’s been sitting on my want-to-read shelf for months, and it wasn’t until some November winter blues weekend morning that I flipped through the pages.
Best decision ever.
Okay, maybe not ever — proposing to my boyfriend or starting a podcast was an even better choice — but reading Ramit’s book came close.
I ended reading the book within the same weekend. In the week that followed, I restructured my portfolio and automated more investments. I’m confident this book is among the best investments I made this year.
Use Automation to Master the Basics
Everything Ramit describes is built around convenience. He’s different from Warren Buffet and doesn’t recommend reading 500 pages of balance sheets before buying stocks. Investing isn’t the same as picking stocks. In fact, he advises against buying single stocks as over long-term periods, stock-picking never beats the market.
He uses a system to distribute his income into different buckets. In that way, he doesn’t have to make the same choices again and again. Every month, the same percentage goes into the same buckets.
Not your paycheck will make you rich, but the way you invest it will. If you earn 9000$ a month but spend 100% of it, you’ll never accumulate wealth.
“I think of my checking account like an email inbox: All my money goes in my checking account, and then I regularly apportion it out to appropriate accounts, like savings and investing, using automatic transfers.“
