16. “We’re worth $8 million but I comparison shop for strawberries”

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I was getting some frozen organic strawberries that I remembered from Whole foods are like $7.99 and they're like $15 and I was just like I can't do it because what it's crazy. Like that is $7. I can't bring myself to pay two times the price for the exact same thing.

What is your net worth?

About $8 million.

Hi, my name is Ramit Sethi and my guests this week are Chris and Amy, a young couple who work in tech and have a net worth of $8 million. They have already won the game of personal finance and yet they behave in peculiar ways with their money. You're going to hear more about that Strawberry story. You're going to hear stories about strollers and traveling and very odd ways that they behave compared to the amount of money that they have now. Before you go on, it would be easy for you to roll your eyes and send me a message about how unrelatable this is. Resist that temptation. I love today's episode and because it shows you that if you have money issues today, it's very likely you're going to have the exact same money issues later, at $1 million or 5 million or, yes, $8 million, those issues don't magically go away. Chris and Amy. I think Chris and Amy are actually giving us a gift by talking to me today. Because most wealthy people won't talk about their money issues publicly, but Chris and Amy will. They're giving you a crystal ball into your own future behavior. If you continue doing what you're doing today, saving and investing and accumulating, you can see one very real possibility of where you might end up. And remember, you will not hear this kind of discussion anywhere else except on this podcast and on my email newsletter. I'm Ramit Sethi, and this is I Will Teach youh to Be Rich.

Chris, can you think of the last time that you spent more than an hour making a financial decision?

Like this morning, like, literally this morning, what was it? We're planning a trip and we're trying to book flights, and we're optimizing to a degree that many would think was crazy. And we're thinking about which hotel do we stay at, which flight do we take, do we leave early? Do we change which island we want to go to because it's cheaper to fly to this other one? And I don't know, we probably combined spent too long, like five, six more hours in the last 24 hours.

Five or six hours together in the last day, yeah.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. Chris and Amy have a combined income of about $600,000 per year. That's in addition to their net worth of $8 million. Now, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that it is literally not worth their to sweat the small stuff like this. And they know it too. But money psychology runs deeper than basic logic.

All right, you gotta explain it to me, Chris. Tell me what's going on here.

I love the feeling of, like, getting the best optimization. And, you know, we've been fortunate to rack up millions of miles and upgrade certificates and, like, figured out how to play the system. I proposed to Amy, actually. I said, hey, if we want to make this easy, we could just buy flights in business class. And she's like, how much is it? I was like, it's like $6,000 a person.

I barfed. Absolutely not. I'm sorry. Having lived with Chris and understanding that there are so many hacks out there in a way that you can do it first class or business class without having to pay cash outright, knowing that that exists makes it really challenging to then turn around and say, I know I can get it somehow cheaper, but I'm just going to pay straight cash. That's not a calculation in my world.

And just to be clear, I don't know if Amy was ever willing to pay for business class. That definitely never happened.

That's fair.

I think it was. Didn't know there was a cheaper way to get things. And if that person never learned it, maybe would have made enough money to be able to pay for business class or a nice luxury hotel or fill in the blank.

Well, you do make enough to pay for a nice luxury hotel, right?

Yeah.

Do you? I don't want to tell you. You tell me.

Yes, we do.

Just a quick reminder for everybody listening to these $2,000 hotels being thrown around left and right. And it can seem unrelatable, extravagant, out of touch. But put it into context. Somebody who makes $600,000 a year of joint income with an $8 million net worth, a $2,000 a night hotel is the equivalent of a low end motel. It's important to remember that. Very, very important. Because our job is not to judge somebody based on our values or our income or net worth. It's to take into account their values, their net worth, their money dials and rich life. So that is why I am really pulling out all the details here, all the juicy details so we can understand what they want to spend their money on.

Let's find an example where this is not functioning correctly. Maybe it's grocery shopping. What is it where you are spending too much time to save a few dollars and we can take a totally different approach to.

Grocery shopping Is a great example. He will pull up multiple different delivery sites and he will actually compare the cost of almond milk from one site to another. And he will actually order off of two different orders from two different delivery services to get the cheapest groceries that we need from multiple sites. As opposed to just saying, here's our grocery delivery site, we will go through, we will get what we need, put it in the cart, check out, off you go.

In the most recent example, I was like, I've been pretty happy with Amazon Fresh, right? And then I was getting some frozen organic strawberries that I remembered from Whole foods are like 799 and they're like $15. And I was just like, I can't do it. I cannot pay $15. It's crazy. Like that is $7 that like if I just got the. I don't even know. It's just like I can't bring myself to pay two times the price for the exact Same thing.

You know what I love about this example is that we're all kind of laughing, but I actually think it's the perfect training wheels example. I think it's perfect because here we are. We could sit here and talk about a $2,000 a night hotel room, but going from where you are today to that is a big, big jump. You are right, Chris. $15 for strawberries is crazy. I agree with you. And yet you should probably order them. Why do you think I'm telling you that?

If I were talking to a clone of myself, I'd probably tell them the same thing. Why? I could give you the financial reason that the cost to open up another card and pay another delivery fee is probably not. Doesn't even make it worth it. But let's assume for a second that it was worth it. It's just not worth the time. But it's hard to, at least for me, to inherently value your time as much as you're like salary divided by your hours worked justifies.

You're exactly right. That is academic language. It sounds correct, it's technically correct, but it never changed anybody's behavior. The correct answer is to say, what kind of person and couple do I want to be? I will never ever again be the type of person who's comparison shopping for xyz. It's not in my identity anymore. Part of your identity is optimizing. For $7, what if you could just change that? What would it be like to rewrite that part of your identity? Maybe you're too important to be looking at the price of strawberries.

This is a big, big point. So much of what we do in our lives is driven by our identity. What's your identity? Here's mine. I'm a good husband. I'm a good son. I'm Indian. I graduated from Stanford. I'm a CEO, an author, I like hot sauce, I'm happy to pay my taxes, and on and on. If your identity is. I would never fly business class, then just imagine what happens if you end up with lots of money. You are still going to be bound by that identity. The problem is that identity might not be serving you anymore. And that's what's happening with Chris here. Paul Graham had a great essay where he talked about keeping your identity small because once you publicly proclaim something, it becomes hard or almost impossible to change it. This is one of the reasons you hear about these anti vaxxers who refuse to take a vaccine. It's not that they're carefully reviewing CDC data and having intellectual debates about randomized control trials? No, many of them have trouble deciphering a menu from Olive Garden, much less reading CDC data. No, what's really happening is they posted on Facebook about how the government is trying to force something down their throats and now they can't change their identity from it. Even though their own friends and family members have died from COVID they're now essentially locked into an identity that they created for themselves. To admit that they were wrong would mean social death from their entire network and it would mean a cascading failure of assumptions that they took to be completely and self evidently true. That's too hard to bear. So they go on posting on Facebook putting themselves and others at risk.

I don't agree with them.

I think they're morons. But you can understand the mechanics of what's going on here. Now back to Chris and Amy. One of the ways to get at identity is to ask people what others think about them. And there is no better way to do this than the cheap test do your friends think you're cheap?

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I mean I have to assume, yes, but it's not like a common like I have to assume in more jesting ways. But I think people know that we have a nice like you know, it's like I'm not sewing my own clothes and buying them at the thrift store. And, and you know, I don't think.

You have to be sewing your own clothes to be called cheap.

I would say our friends have enough class to approach it as you are like the master hacker.

Very cleverly, like smart people do, they found a way to put a positive spin on their behavior. We're not cheap. We're master hackers. We're expert deal hunters. And now that defines whether or not they're willing to spend money on things. Like it or not, you have an identity around money. It may be what you think of when you think of yourself and money. It certainly involves what other people think of when they think of you and money. But for me, the beautiful thing is you can change your identity if you want to.

Amy, I heard you saying no way. I'm really curious now about where that instant no came from.

I guess to your point, it feels frivolous to me. It feels like am I actually getting the value for paying that and what else could I do with that? I mean we have a 10 month old at home, so I'm always thinking, well, you know, that could buy her X years of swim class or months of swim class. I could buy her a new, you know, running stroller, which it would be great. As we get into running. I don't know. Right? Like, it's like all of these things. Can you actually do that? Probably not.

I just have to say, the running stroller example, that seemed like it came out of left field.

Well, we were biking down the street, and we. And we saw someone had a running stroller at the end of their driveway with little free sign on it. And so I was like, oh, my gosh, we don't have a running stroller. I kind of like to run. And so I drove back, and I picked it up, I brought it home, and I was like, well, it's got a flat tire, and the strap that holds the buckles in place holds the child in the stroller, which is probably really important for a running stroller. Was not there. So now I'm, like, shopping for replacement straps on the Internet and, like, trying to see if someone on ebay has, like, an old version of the stroller that's totally broken, but we could get the fabric through seat and thinking about cleaning it off.

I love Chris and Amy. I love how honest they are about their spending issues. Yeah, we're multi millionaires, and he saw a broken stroller on the side of the road and stopped and had to have it. Like, what other couple would come on here and be that honest? Chris and amy make over $1 million per year if you factor in their income and the growth from their $8 million portfolio. Okay, approximately real estate, blah, blah, blah. Yet he is chasing broken strollers. Don't roll your eyes. It's easy to say, ha, ha, how stupid. But almost all of us do this on a smaller level. We develop an identity for ourselves, and when we make money, we don't adjust our mental model of what normal is. So you end up with these martyrs who complain about how little time they have. But when you suggest spending 20 bucks to get their groceries delivered or maybe hiring someone to clean their place, they go, oh, my God, no way. Why would I pay someone? I can do that myself. Yes, you could, but you probably shouldn't. As Jim Rohn said, the more successful I became, the less I was able to afford. He means that he couldn't afford to mow his lawn because his time was better spent with his family. Here's another rule that's very relevant for Chris, and that is the more money you make, it becomes more and more okay to waste some of it. What do I mean by that? I mean that in Chris's case it's probably a good idea to just set a blanket rule that he's always going to get his groceries from one place and if occasionally that place has berries that are expensive, even $15, just get them. Yeah, he's going to waste $7, but he's got to move up and focus on more important things versus being constantly in the weeds on, on literally seven or eight dollars questions. You can't simply tell someone these concepts about money and identity though. It just sounds like academic jargon. You have to get em to feel it themselves. So I'm gonna gently probe Chris on what his behavior is costing him and then what it's getting him. Listen to his responses.

I see Chris do the stroller thing, which to me that's a hard line that I'm like, you are going too far. This is bananas. It's like beyond sanity. Please stop and let's just go take it back to the lovely yard it came from and leave it there. We kind of like light heartedly engage and challenge each other a bit but at the end of the day we still have the stroller and it's still sitting on our garage and I'm pretty sure Chris is still looking for the missing parts.

Chris, is that true?

I found the missing parts for $100, but now I'm convinced that there's actually a way to do it for like $40. Okay, one of these days I'm going to see you out both running.

You know there's going to be a wheel falling off and you'll say no, no, no, it's fine.

I got another one on order on ebay.

So what I love hearing is there's.

A lightheartedness about this and that's good. What is this kind of behavior costing both of you?

Definitely time.

It's a massive time suck if I'm being completely honest. Maybe a little bit of happiness just because we're not spending our time the way we want. Right.

We talked about what it's costing you. I'm curious what your behavior is getting you. What does it get you?

More money, what else? I mean there's like a real probably messed up satisfaction of being like, I know I spent so long, but I got this thing that everyone else has to pay for and I got it for less.

Now we're starting to get there. It's relatively easy for people to admit what their behavior is costing them. Amy and Chris know that it's wasting time and it's causing them stress.

Fine. Easy.

It's much harder for people to understand what their behavior is really getting them. Why are they doing it? What's it getting you? It's harder for people to admit this because deep down, sometimes the truth is uncomfortable. Some of us behave in peculiar ways because we're lonely. We want attention. We want to feel superior to others. Or maybe we want to distract ourselves from a painful reality inside that doesn't feel good to say. So we paper over these uncomfortable truths with a lot of apologizing. I know I shouldn't do this. And we use academic jargon like I should quantify that. And it's clearly not an ROI positive use of time. The truth is often much less logical and much, much deeper.

Amy said it right. When I think like, therefore we won. We got the like, amazing thing and we didn't have to pay for it.

Yeah, and what? The person who stayed at that original hotel and paid $2,000 a night, they did not win. What did they do then?

Well, I've never thought about it like this, but they also won because they are staying at an amazing hotel and they're getting the exact experience they want. And they did not spend significant time trying to find an alternative because time is value. So I guess we both win in a different regard. But I would argue we lose in that we spend more time than the win. The feeling of the win is worth.

To me, but when I think about the win, I'm like, well, if we'd gone on to that hotel and we went on a week long trip, there's $14,000. And if we really optimized it and used all the deals and points and everything, we'd have a similar experience and spend $3,000.

When do you get to have the exact experience that you want? You have $8 million of net worth.

I laugh about this, but like, there's a harsh reality here, which is we are so caught up in playing the game now that I just don't. I don't see an end in sight. I don't know how it ends.

When do you get to choose what you want? Without price being a consideration.

That one seems like a never.

One of my favorite things to do is to read forums where ultra high net worth people share their fucking delusional philosophies on money. I'm obsessed with this one mommy forum. It's called DC Urban mom. And there's a discussion thread where someone who has $30 million says they can't afford to fly private. Not even once. They said, maybe when we have $100 million. It's fucking $25,000 to fly private. I don't even care if you fly private, but you do not need $100 million to spend 25,000. The same forum has other threads where someone making $250,000 a year says they can't go on vacation. What world am I living in?

By the way?

Please don't write me saying Ramit. 250k actually isn't a lot of money if you live in one of these. I lived in all those cities. I know what you can do with $250,000. I have zero problem if you don't want to go on vacation. But I have a real problem when people use money as an excuse for not doing things that they can easily afford. Things that they claim they actually want to do. I asked Chris, when do you get to make decisions without price being a consideration? His response? Never. He has a net worth of $8 million. What is happening right now? You can see why I say people's feelings about how they are doing financially are highly uncorrelated with their actual financial status. Chris and Amy could have another $20 million, but they will feel exactly the same way unless they make it a priority to change their relationship with money.

What comes to mind when I share these specific moments? Renewing your passport. Scheduling a dentist appointment.

Replacing that light bulb that's been out.

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When I talk to new business owners, I hear a lot of the same motivations. I want to make extra money. I want more freedom. I want flexibility. But I will tell you something that I've never heard. I want to start a business so I can fill out a bunch of tax forms. That sounds like my hell. The good news is you don't need to be a tax expert to start your own business. Instead, you can use Gusto, this episode's sponsor. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one. It's remote, friendly, and it's incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. They offer automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers comp, 401k matches. You name it, they can help. Plus, it's quick and easy to switch to Gusto. Just transfer your existing data and get up and running fast with no hidden fees and no surprises. Try gusto today@gusto.com ramit and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/ramit once more. Gusto.com/ramit.

Everything you talk about in terms of value is focused around free functionality.

Do you know that you both have.

So much money, you don't have to justify purchasing anything to anyone ever, except each other.

Yeah, right, Exactly. And yourself.

That's the problem.

That's the challenge. Yes, but I hear in ourselves, I.

Hear the language used and it's words like value, which is a good word. But I wonder if there's something in your life, for each of you that you buy just because you want it.

That costs more than $5, cost more than $500.

So I surprisingly did make a purchase that was over $500. And I love fashion. I love shoes. I. There are certain things that I can just justify paying money on because they bring me real happiness. There were a pair of shoes, a pair of sneakers that I was looking at. And Chris, I told him, because we have this rule that if either of us want to go and spend what is over 200, we have to check in and just make sure, like, that's good. So I take this to Chris and I Say, hey, I really love these shoes. I'd like to buy them. And he was like, are you serious? He's like, it's for shoes. Those won't last long. And I said, okay. He said, can you get them for sale somewhere? And I said, look, boy, I've tried everything I can. They don't go on sale, and no, you're not going to find a discount code. So I think I let them sit. And we had this back and forth for the better part of almost a year. My breaking point was, so they're. They're easy on and off shoes. And my breaking point was I was super pregnant. I was having to bend over and tie my stupid shoes. And I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. They're shoes I want. They go with everything. They're super functional, they're super versatile. They're really cute. And I'm not doing this anymore, Chris. So guess what? Mama just went, bought the shoes, and I felt really happy. And I wear them all the time.

I love that example.

I also love that you kind of offhandedly threw in a couple of functional things, such as slip on shoes and.

How long are they going to last?

Yeah, okay, fine.

But ultimately, bottom line, you just wanted them.

Yeah.

And you got them. And by the way, the X hundred dollars you spent on these shoes, will it change your life in any way whatsoever? No, it will has zero percent change in your life two years from now. If you look at your finances, you will never, ever, ever be able to find that number ever. It won't even be a decimal place correct.

Okay. A frequent thing that I hear is, don't get me so excited about something, and then we have to have the conversation again. So, like, come back when, like, there's a thing that I can get excited about that we also will do. And that doesn't mean that you're comfortable spending on. That means, like, come back to me when we have, like, the optimized version of this that I know we'll both say yes to. Well, I'm like, hey, Italy was so amazing.

We should do this for 95% of people listening. You're like, what the hell is Chris talking about? An optimized version? What are we talking about here? And I wanted to show you this because different types of people have different types of language. I remember one of my friends and I used to host a dinner series in New York. And every month or two, we would have six people out for dinner, and we would invite a lot of diverse groups of people, and I Remember one night, for whatever reason, we had a self development table. Lots of people from coaching, et cetera.

And they were using these words and.

Phrases like hold the space. And at one point I kind of mentioned, you know, most people don't know what that means.

Hold the space.

You know, live your truth. That's not common parlance. And the table went completely silent. They looked at me like I was absolutely nuts. What do you mean people don't know what hold the spaces? I go, this is not a phrase that normal people use. And they were a little bit insulted. Okay, what do you mean normal people?

Why?

Because everyone in their world had that worldview. They used the same language, the same concepts, frameworks. Chris in tech uses words and worldviews that other people in tech use. So does Amy. That's the world that they are living in. And so they're reinforcing each other with these phrases and these frameworks and worldviews. One of those worldviews is that we need to optimize. This is super, super tech. Tech people love to optimize. Sometimes I just want to say, please shut up. I don't want to hear anything about optimizing anything anymore.

Just stop.

Sometimes you can over optimize. Sometimes you don't need to optimize at all. Do you optimize when you give your mom or dad a hug?

No.

Sometimes you just do something because it's good. It's the right thing to do. So one of the things that I can do when I work with people is to kind of gently nudge them out of this worldview that they think everybody else sees. For example, with Chris Naimi, maybe we don't need to optimize all the time. Maybe we can just get a pair of shoes because we want it.

Yeah, I mean, he pitched me on Italy and he got me so excited about it. And then he came back and said Greece is supposed to be very comparable, the weather is slightly better, and by the way, it's much cheaper. And so suddenly we pivoted to Greece, which I fully support. But now I've. Now I've gone so deep down the, the Italy train that I have to like reorient myself around Greece, which I haven't done as much research around. And I just don't have the same elements to get super excited about in me yet.

So the two of you are optimizers and you get into an optimization loop where each of you optimizes and then will come back and let me know about this. But what you don't truly Internalize is that this optimization is not making you happy. What kind of couple do the two of you want to be? How would you describe in a few words what kind of couple the two of you want to be?

Honestly, I love us. I love our relationship. I love the couple we are. I think we have a good banter. I think we make each other laugh. We're both very responsible and respectful and receptive to each other's needs. So I personally feel really happy. I think the financial bit, though, is a challenge in that financially, we are. I would say we are doing well and we don't have the burden of having to stress about how we pay for things. How do we cover bills, how do we. But we are completely irrational in trying to find a deal. And for me, what I would like to see different moving forward is us still being ultra responsible with how we spend, but in a way that actually drives happiness and. And. And meaning, as opposed to everything having to be like, a win because it was a better deal for us. So if we can remove that bit.

In a few words.

I don't know how to summarize that.

No, I mean, I think. I think we're like a fun, goofy couple that loves to travel and explore the world and do fun stuff. Like, I, like, want to maximize the experience of life.

Yeah.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, me too.

You want to maximize the experience of life. What does that mean, Chris?

It's just when you're, like, in every opportunity to do something, make it the most. And that doesn't always mean go to a place and do everything there. Right? The experience of life could be letting yourself unwind and go nowhere. We might just go to the hotel for two days and do nothing. And, like, for. For that part of time, that's maximum. But the next day, we might go on a food tour. We might make sure we meet a local and go around and see things.

I love the vision, and I can tell it excites both of you. I also think that we all can agree that the way you are treating your money is not honoring that vision. Is that fair to say?

If you assume that we want to continue this vision forever, obviously, you know, for as long as we live. And you irrationally assume that we may, like, we could spend all of our money and run out, like, then you could assume, like. I think that's what, like, always goes through my head.

You cannot run out of money.

I don't think that's true.

Yeah, it's true. Compounding interest here, you are so far down the Frugality, border, not borderline cheap world, that it is impossible for you.

To run out of money.

Not to mention that your money continues to compound. And just in a few years, you'll have close to $40 million and more and more and more. At that point, it actually becomes almost financially impossible to spend it all. So, yes, if you were a very irresponsible new athlete with this kind of money, of course, you could go bankrupt. But the two of you, do you think either of you will ever let that happen?

No, I don't think we'd let it happen. But I think. I think we pride ourselves on not having played the keep it up with the Joneses game. And so maybe there's some hidden fear that, like, oh, well, you know, you buy one pair of $500 shoes, now you have 50 pairs, and now it's.

Not a hidden fear. It's out in the open. All of us can see it and hear it. It's not hidden at all. You took a stroller. You took a stroller off somebody's driveway.

And now you're gonna go put it back.

It's not hidden.

So let's kind of reorient the way that we think about money. You have played for so long, defense, you've played not to lose, that it's becoming very difficult for you both now to play to win. And so what I would love to see is you mentally turning the page on your relationship from chapter one to chapter two of your lives. Chapter one was about safety and emergency funds and accumulation and worrying about risk and all these calculators that you do all the time. But then you won, and you won really early in life. And you worked hard. It's not like it was just given to you. You both worked hard. And so you get the privilege, but also the burden of the opportunity of turning the page to chapter two and.

Saying, oh, my gosh, we won.

Now what do we do with the.

Rest of our lives?

And this is really hard because it means you have to relook at everything. You know, I asked my trainer a long time ago, I was kind of stuck on doing pull ups, and I said, how do I do more pull ups? Like, what's the alternative? Any thought for a second? You know what he said? He said, if you want to do more pull ups, do more pull ups. And so sometimes the way to change the way you feel is to start by changing your behavior. So if you were to change your behavior with these groceries, Chris, what would that look like?

It would just be committing in advance I am just going to go to this place and buy everything and not look anywhere else. I agree.

You have to get out of these $3 questions and in your case, get into the $300,000 questions.

For Chris and Amy, because of their considerable net worth and their annual income, a $2,000 a night hotel is a $3 question. That's not something they should really be thinking about. Instead, they should be asking $300,000 questions or even questions that aren't even about money itself. They should be saying, what kind of trip do we want to take? What kind of experience do we want to create for our family? What kind of memories? And so when you listen to this, I know it can be tempting hearing some of these big numbers. $2,000 a night must be nice. I wish I could spend that kind of money. Other people are starving. But I'm intentionally showing you this episode because I want you to know that at every different level of personal finance, we all have $3 questions that we obsess over. It might be buying pre cut vegetables for you that literally cost $3, or you might have such a a high net worth that buying a car is a $3 question to you. The principle stands regardless of the exact numbers. Now let's get back to how Chris and Amy should be approaching their travel.

There's this myth that if you rent, it means you haven't made it. I don't really believe that I rent and I want you to know that you are not a failure if you choose to rent. In fact, I want more freedom right now than buying a 30 year mortgage. But if I'm spending thousands of dollars a month, I want to get some of the perks that homeowners get. And that is where BILT comes in. BILT is a loyalty program for renters. You pay your rent through BILT and you can earn points for it. Think about it. You're earning points for your biggest expense every single month. And you can redeem those built points towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides, or even future rent payments. BILT has evolved into a complete rewards ecosystem where you get rewarded for the first time as a renter. And it's easy. Almost any payment method is compatible. So you can start earning right now. I wish I had had this when I first started living in New York. Plus, BILT recently announced that homeowners will be able to get rewarded the same way on their mortgage in 2026. So stay tuned. Join the loyalty program for renters@joinbuilt.comit that's J O I N B I L T.com Ramit and make sure you use our URL so they know that we sent you. Have you ever met somebody who tries to fix everything with duct tape? We know these people. They try to fix the bumper on their car. They use it to hold their wallet together. They patch a hole in their winter jacket and I actually don't mind. It's very creative for a while, but it is a temporary solution. It's like a band aid that doesn't really fix the underlying problem. And we see the same thing happening with your business. You can try to patch together a bunch of apps, but it's only going to be a temporary fix. To take your business to the next level, you need to address the problem at the source, often using an all in one platform like NetSuite. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It simplifies your business into a single platform. Your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM. All of it. Plus it uses an AI built system to automate your routines, deliver actionable insights and help you cut costs with confidence. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead of the package. If I'd had a system like this back when I was building iwt, it would have been amazing. Right now get their free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com ramit that guide is free to you at netsuite.com ramitaT netsuite.com ramit I foresee a future where.

You simply write an email and delegate it to your luxury travel advisor who simply makes it happen and you will not be involved in the mechanics at all. At your net worth and certainly at your net worth in about X number of years, you should not be looking@united.com so let's do a couple of things that are very tactical for you right now. First of all, I usually do something called the $100 rich life challenge. But the two of you are too successful to do a $100 challenge. So we're actually going to up the stakes. Okay, the way that it works is I give them a challenge to spend $100 on something that they love. And it's not for their kids and it's not for their dog. It's got to be for you. Now I want to ask you, since I tell the average person to do the hundred dollar challenge, what should the number be for the two of you individually?

Has to be over $200 because that's our threshold where it's like, spend it without even talking about it.

I was thinking 500 to 1000. Chris is probably wanting to throw up right now as I say that.

No, where were you bragging? Hold on. Let's rewrite that habit that both of you have, which is to anticipate that the other person is going to be averse to it. You've done this multiple times, both of you. Let's rewrite that out of existence today. Okay. Just like Chris did. Make your pitch for your number and create some magic here.

Well, I think we should target $1,000. I'm trying to position it in a way that doesn't play defensive, and I find myself catching. Catching myself going that direction. I think $1,000 is unique in that it opens up a variety of other. A variety of new purchasing opportunities that we typically wouldn't necessarily assess on a whim, and it allows us to be very creative and adventurous around how your. How you can use that money. Like, what kind of experience could you get for $1,000? Is it material? Is it a class? Is it, like a full experience? Is it, like, the photographs that come with it? What could you get for $1,000?

Okay. Thank you, Amy.

Yeah. So in my mind, I was thinking of raising. I see your thousand, and I raise you to 5,000.

Unexpected, but I like it. Okay.

It's a challenge now because there are so many things that you can buy for more than a hundred dollars. You know, I'm sure there are so many things you can buy for more than $5,000, but I have no idea what they would be.

You should know, Chris, at this level, you should know. You should not know the price of organic strawberries at two different grocery stores. I'm going to tell you that right now. Okay, Amy, he said $5,000. Are you comfortable with that?

I. I am comfortable with that. My response when I heard him say 5k was actually pleasantly surprised.

Why?

I just. I wasn't expecting it.

I'm still stuck on, like, what am I going to spend this money on?

So.

That's a great question, Kris. How would you find out the answer to that?

We would talk about it.

No, it's you spending 5,000 yourself, and she's going to spend 5,000 herself.

Oh, I thought we were spending this together.

Have to listen.

Boy.

Oh, man.

Chris is like, I take it back.

I'm not on board anymore. I'm back in Amy.

I was like, wow, okay.

I thought we got to spend it together. Oh, man, my palms are sweaty. You know, I'm like, I don't want to spend $5,000. I don't need anything.

No, you don't. Of course you don't need anything. This isn't about the thing you're going to buy. What is it really about?

Letting go of, like, retraining and rewiring our brains to be comfortable building the.

Skills and the habits of knowing how to buy something, not optimizing for it. So you both tell me a number that works for both of you. It's your number, it's not mine.

What's the timeframe for buying this thing?

48 hours.

Wow. Okay.

You guys should know that this back and forth went on for about 15 to 20 minutes. This discussion about, is it 500, is it a thousand? Blah, blah, blah, on and on and on. Again, exemplifying the point that Chris and Amy are focused on $3 questions, not 30,000 or 300,000. Also a lot of meta talking about the process. Some couples love to talk about talking, talk about the process. And sometimes one of the best things you can do is simply stop talking and shift to becoming more decisive. Sometimes decisions are just not that important. Make it. If something goes wrong, it's reversible. No big deal for big things. You know, should we have children? That kind of thing. Yeah, you should be very, very deliberate. But sometimes for a little decision, just make it and move on.

I'm still waiting for the number decisive.

2,500.

I was going to go back to 1,000.

Here's a suggestion. When the two of you differ on a number, whether for traveling, diapers, car, what if you decided to go with the higher one?

What if that was just a basic.

Rule, totally opposite of every other couple? But in your case, it would be a simple rule that would help change the dynamics of your conversations.

But is the number a target or a ceiling or a minimum? Is it like, I don't know. Yeah.

The point is not to find the technicality. The point is to change your behavior.

I mean, here's the thing. We're going through this for a reason. We know we want to change. And so to Ramit's point, we're going to have to feel discomfort in order for that to become more comfortable over time. And fortunately for us, we have an incredible trip coming up so you could think about what kind of experience do you want? Do you want to commit to a specific experience, a rental of some sort, something during the trip that is going to give you an experience that you otherwise wouldn't have? I think there's ample opportunities here in the here and now that we wouldn't have if we didn't have this trip coming up. If it wasn't in the midst of summer. We didn't have a newer house that we recently moved into. Like, there's a lot of options.

I hear you. I'm just struggling. I like.

You don't need to know how to do it yet. You just need to pick a number.

Then let's. We'll go with Amy. 2500. All right, great.

Amy, do you agree?

Yes.

You can afford almost anything. Have you internalized that?

There's always another level to something that I don't feel like would fit into our, like, you know, life plan, like private jet.

Okay, we're not going to jump there. Fine. But what's the level up or more meaningful from what you currently live?

We don't have a. We don't have a chef every night of the week. Come to the house and cook for us. Instead, we're cooking meals. Great.

Okay, great example. And the chef, by the way, could go anywhere from delivering once a week to.

This is my thing, by the way. I'm going to spend $2,500 on someone to cook for us.

Love it.

Love it.

Look, it can go from everywhere. From once a week delivery to live in chef. There are so many layers in that one example. Just remember that a year from now, this number will be completely irrelevant to you. So write me back in a couple of days and show me, in fact, what you spent on. I'd love to see it. I think we've added at least one word to your repertoire today. What word was that?

I said yeah.

Decisive. Knowing that you have the money, you will have more money, and that your job is not to optimize for cost, but rather to optimize for magic. And magic can sometimes be expensive. Sometimes it's an extra $2. Maybe. Sometimes it's cheaper. Who cares? But that's where we start. For me, the greatest tragedy is seeing somebody live a life smaller than they have to. And I really want you to be living a bigger life, really being intentional about it. That, to me, is truly a rich life.

That's amazing. I think that resonates very deeply, and I feel very inspired right now.

A couple of nights later, I received a message from Chris. This is all it said. Salads.

Eat your grand.

Green salad with chickpea croutons and green goddess dressing with avocado and lime dressing. Soups. Roasted curry cauliflower mains salmon with chimichurri pork tenderloin. I said what is this? And he wrote Meals for next week from the chef. That's cooking for the week.

Well done.

To Chris and Amy, thanks for being so candid.

Foreign.

Thanks for listening to I Will Teach youh To Be Rich. I'm Ramit Sethi. Please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you haven't read I Will Teach youh To Be Rich my book. Pick up a copy, you can get it at any bookstore or any library, and it will show you the specific tactics for how to build the I Will Teach youh to Be Rich system into your personal finances. Here's what you'll find next week on the I Will Teach youh To Be Rich podcast.

I thought I was in my right to think he could do more since he is more older, more money, more experienced.

But instead I was like, who does she think she is? Like, I'm not gonna pay for her. I have a drop of her soup.

She should pay for it.

I did expect him to pick up Bill and we sat there for like half an hour.

There have been many instances where we've wanted to break up when we have broken up for days or whatever because of the incompatibilities and tensions. But our attraction and willingness to try to fight for each other and be with each other has always brought us.