9 Money Moves to Get Rich in Your 30s

Are you about to turn 30 with nothing to show for it? You got a decent job, maybe even a good salary. But if you're honest, you're winging it with your money. You don't have a plan. Maybe you are not confident about money. Maybe you're just guessing what to do. Well, the good news is you're not too late. Today I'll show you 9 smart money moves to make before you turn 30 so you stop improvising and start building real financial momentum. And make sure you stay until the end because the last move is the one that ties everything together and makes all the other steps worth it. Money is the tool to fund the kind of life you want. So you got to make a plan for it. The problem is budgets suck. I don't keep a budget. You don't need to keep one either. Budgets force you to track every single dollar. You're sitting there tracking the price of olives. Now you have to cut out drinks with your friends. You feel guilty when you buy one of those little freaking Hershey chocolate bars that brings you joy. It's a miserable way to live. It doesn't work. And that is why no one sticks with them. That's why dealing with money is such a turnoff to so many people. There's good news. You can use a conscious spending plan. No, I don't have anything to sell you right now. This is a free thing you can use. It works differently than a restrictive, backwards-looking budget because it's actually a forwards-thinking plan. Here's why this matters before you turn 30. Without a conscious spending plan, it is really easy to drift for years. Ooh, should I cut back on coffee? That'll save me. After 9 million years, I can buy a house. What the When you have a conscious spending plan, you're going to have clarity knowing exactly how much you can enjoy guilt-free while still automatically saving, investing, and paying your fixed costs. The conscious spending plan is really simple. You only have 4 key numbers that you need to know. Number 1, fixed costs. Number 2, savings. Number 3, investments. And number 4, my favorite of all, guilt-free spending. Let's dive into each of these. First up, fixed costs. This category should be no more than 50 to 60% of your take-home pay. Take-home means after taxes are taken out. And this is really important. If your fixed costs are higher than this, you're going to find it really difficult to spend money on anything else like savings, investments, even going out to eat. People who have high fixed costs, they are the ones who are stressed out about money. They are the ones who are going into debt. They are the ones who are avoiding looking at their bills. Is that you? Then this is probably the major area to focus on. Fixed costs include anything you normally need to live, like rent or mortgage payments, utilities, transportation, including gas and insurance for your car, groceries, and debt payments, including student loans or credit card debt. Now, I recommend adding 15% for things that you might forget about. For example, you probably didn't plan for car repairs or medical emergencies. 15% is that number that I have magically found, covers most unexpected expenses and doesn't leave you getting a bad surprise at the end of the month. Next up, savings. This should account for 5 to 10% of your take-home pay, maybe ideally a little bit more. Your savings goals should consist of anything that will take you about 1 to 5 years to save for— things like a nice bag, new hiking gear, or maybe things like an engagement ring or even a down payment on a house. And your savings should always include an emergency fund goal. I'm going to why this is so important. But for now, I recommend saving 6 to 12 months of living expenses, fixed expenses. If you don't have money left over to save, I would take a look at your spending to see where you can cut back to add money here. Third is investments. This is where you build real wealth. You don't build wealth by agonizing over the price of beef jerky. Nobody gives a shit. Now, I recommend this category be 10% of your take-home pay minimum. Minimum. Why do I recommend? Because the more aggressively you save now, especially in your younger years, the more you will have later. Now, let me just stop the 99.8% of you who are about to start typing this furious comment to me. For me, must be nice. There's no way I can do it. Inflation. Stop it. If you can't do 10%, then do 8%. If you can't do 8%, then do 3%. The fact of the matter is I talk to a lot of people every single year. Virtually everyone. Can invest at least $50 a month automatically, never even seeing the money, and they won't even know that it's gone. Now, a little trick you can use if you're starting off not investing 10%, but maybe doing 5% because that's more feasible. At the end of the year, make it 6%, and then the year after that, make it 7%. That one decision to increase your investment rate by 1% per year will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to you over the course of your lifetime. Forget about getting the freaking child's meal at Chili's. That's irrelevant. We are talking about a tiny change once a year. It takes 15 minutes and is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, when I talk about investments, this includes the amount you're sending to your 401(k) and your Roth IRA every month. I'll get to this in a few minutes. Now, yes, for the 3 nerds watching this video who are getting angry at me because I'm confusing pretax and post-tax, it doesn't really matter. Just set it up. Move on. And the fourth category, my favorite category of all, guilt-free spending. Guys, this is actually the most fun part of all. The point of money is not just to save it and hoard it and count it on a spreadsheet like a freaking nerd. The point is to use it to live your rich life. And if that means you're going out with friends, maybe picking up the tab once in a while, if that means you're buying a beautiful shirt, if that means you are traveling or going to a baseball game, amazing. I want you to be able to do that. After paying all of your fixed costs and saving and investing, what you're left with is the fun money, or what I call guilt-free spending. Now, depending on how you've structured your other categories, a good guideline here is to use 20 to 35% of your take-home pay for guilt-free spending money. That's a lot. When I tell people that, they go, whoa, that's 25% of my take-home pay I can spend guilt-free. Yes, as long as you hit those other numbers, you could do whatever you want guilt-free. Money here covers things like restaurants, bars, taxis, movies, vacations, clothes, accessories, whatever you want. And yes, 20 to 35% is a lot of money to spend on these things. But this is an area where very few of us actually pay attention to. What often happens is we just end up spending money on random shit like delivery, not actually aligning where our money is going with what is truly important to us. Here, let me just ask you right now. Let's just do an exercise. Is your rich life eating lukewarm Chipotle delivery? No, you're ending up spending $80 a week on freaking Chipotle with those little corn particles in there. It's not even good. You and I know it. Or even worse, you have the worst palate on earth freaking going to Arby's. Mm, so good, Ramit. You don't appreciate good food. I fucking appreciate food. That's why I never set foot in an Arby's since I was 6 years old. So if your fixed cost number is where it should be based on my guidelines, then I would inspect your guilt-free spending number to see where you can cut back. Then you can redirect that money to investing and saving. Guys, it's like a puzzle. It's like playing Tetris. If it doesn't fit this way, rotate it. Are you tired of playing defense with your money? Of always worrying that you've spent too much even for something as small as buying a tea? What if we could go on offense with our money? What if we could become so confident that we could feel good about spending on the things we love? That is what my money my coaching program is all about. Every single month in the program, I'll show you how to automate your finances, pay off your debt faster, invest your money, and actually spend on the things you love guilt-free. You do not need another budgeting app. What you need is a proven system and coaching and a supportive community that gets you results. You'll find that in my money coaching program. Go to iwt.com/moneycoaching or click the link in the description below to join the program today. Some depraved viewer on this video right now is preparing to send me a 5-page email telling me all the reasons that they spend 17% of their take-home pay on pickles. You think I care? If you can make it fit, God bless. It's up to you. It's your rich life. Now let's do an example. Let's imagine you bring home $3,000 just for easy math. Your conscious spending plan might look something like $1,800 a month for fixed costs, $150 a month into savings, $150 a month into investments, $900 a month for guilt-free spending. Now, instead of agonizing for the next 45 years, oh, can I afford to eat out? The answer is yes. Guilt-free. You already made a plan. Enjoy it. But without a conscious spending plan, you're going to drift for years. You're going to be playing financial whack-a-mole. Oh, and then you're going to be this puritanical, typical American Oh, I'm so bad. I shouldn't have gotten that latte. I'm so bad. Punish me. Stop this bullshit. Okay? Stop wasting energy obsessing over small purchases while ignoring the big wins. Make a freaking plan. You'll have clarity knowing exactly what to do. So download my free conscious spending plan. It's totally free. I'll link it for you below. And now you have a plan. Okay? You have a basic understanding of your money. You're using the conscious spending plan. The next technique is going to guarantee you always hit your goals. You never get off course. You know, I don't log into my bank account every day, every week, every month. In fact, I don't even have a freaking banking app on my phone. Why would I? I'm not kidding when I say that automating your money will be the single most profitable system you ever build. If you do this and you can do it right now, you can spend less than 1 hour per month on your finances and all of your money will flow exactly where it needs to go. You'll never forget a bill. You'll never try to save or forget to invest. It just happens while you sleep. Here, look at this face. Get in tight on this face. That is the face of somebody who knows how to automate their fucking money. You think I'm stressing out? Oh, is my savings happening this month? Hold on. I'm forgetting to breathe right now because I'm getting so mad. Okay, let me try to have some empathy for people who can't remember to breathe. Ramit, remember to breathe. Wow. Is that what life is like for you? That's got to be difficult. Now, if you do this right, you're going to have enough to spend money on the things you love, like eating out, traveling, health and wellness. So here's how I recommend you set up your automatic money flow. First off, open up a checking account or assess the one you already have. If your checking account is with Wells Fargo or Bank of America, you have the worst fucking accounts on the planet. Stop it. Close them up. And don't give me this. Oh, I've had it since I was a child. I love it. Get a new friend and get a dog and get a spouse and get a friend. Wells Fargo does not like you. In fact, they fucking hate you, especially if you're a person of color. Moving along. Think of your checking account like an email inbox. All of your money comes into your checking account and then it automatically is moved to the right place. Next, you'll need an online high-yield savings account. Now, I actually recommend you keep your checking and savings account at two separate banks. Why? Because it makes it more difficult for you to casually dip into your savings just to transfer money so you can go out with friends for a bunch of drinks. Don't do it. When looking for a savings account, I don't recommend using a standard big bank savings account like Chase or Bank of America, Wells Fargo. Obviously, online savings accounts let you earn a little bit more interest, lower hassle. They're just great accounts. There's a lot of them. It doesn't really matter which one you choose. By the way, quick warning: a lot of people become obsessed with chasing rates. They want to find the savings account that gives them the best rate on Earth. Let me give you an example why this is so dumb. If you have $5,000 in an account earning 3.5% versus 4.5%, you know the difference? $50 for the whole year. We're talking like $5 a month. Why are we talking about this? It's not worth your time. Pick a good savings account. Move on. Now that you have your checking and savings accounts, I'm going to show you how to make this automatic so your system can run itself with just a few hours of work per year. Here's what you do. List all of your accounts in one place. Now you're going to link them together so you can set up automatic transfers from one account to another. When you log into any of your accounts, you'll find an option called Link Accounts or Transfer or Set Up Payments. Click that and you can connect your accounts together. Now they talk to each other. All right, let's take your conscious spending plan and let's automate it. I don't want to sit here and look at all these numbers all the time. I don't even like numbers. I like you. I don't like numbers. So let me show you how to automate this. Imagine you just got $100. What would you do with $100 if I gave it to you right now? Here's how it could break down if you follow the conscious spending plan. $60 would automatically cover your fixed costs. $10 would go straight into savings, another $10 straight into investments, and you would have $20 left over for guilt-free spending. Now, that's just an example with $100. But when you think about your money like that, every dollar has a job. And once you automate it, this system moves on its own without lifting a finger. It's not about $100. It's about your paycheck. Every single time you get paid. Now, remember, if you don't set this up to happen automatically, what are you actually doing with the money? You're doing what most people are doing. You're randomly looking at stuff at Target or on Instagram and you're like, I think I'll buy that. There's no strategy. There's no plan. So you're ending up spending money on stuff you may not even care about. And then you're feeling bad. And then people do this for their entire lives. What a tragedy. You can actually buy the stuff you want. In fact, a lot of you can spend more than you want if you have a plan. So take some time this weekend, set up your automatic money flow, and then move on with your life. I guarantee you're going to thank yourself 3 months from now. Before we get to move number 3, I want to talk about something else that you're going to thank yourself for, and that's making sure your personal information is not out there for anyone to find. Try Googling yourself. You're going to see your name, email, phone number, home address, family members show up. It is ridiculous. And that is data brokers selling your information. When your information is out there, that means more spam calls, more phishing emails, and you are at higher risk for identity theft. That is why I personally use DeleteMe, this video's sponsor. Now, DeleteMe is a subscription service that continuously goes out and helps remove your personal data from the hundreds of data broker websites that profit off of your information. Nobody really has time to do it themselves. It's like playing whack-a-mole. You get rid of one, another one pops up. Delete.me handles all of this automatically. I love this service so much that I bought it for my parents too, because I know that parents are even more vulnerable. Delete.me was recently named by Wirecutter as the number one data removal service. So if you want to remove your personal information from the web, I highly recommend going to joindelete.me.com/Ramit and use code Ramit at checkout. You'll get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. You can also click the link in the description below. Let's move on to the next move you should make before 30. This is simple. If you're carrying credit card debt, this is your number one financial priority, not investing. It's paying off that high-interest debt. As an example, any debt over approximately 6% interest, we'll call that high-interest debt. That's like trying to run a marathon with a 100-pound backpack. It just drags you down every step you take. Let me show you an example. If you have a $5,000 credit card balance at 25% and you pay a flat $200 a month to your debt, do you know how long it's going to take you to pay it off? 3 years, and on top of that, you will have spent over $2,000 on interest alone. No, we're gonna fix this right now. There are 2 proven ways to pay off your debt. First is the debt snowball method. This is where you pay off the smallest balances first. This helps you get some quick wins. You feel good about yourself, gives you motivation to keep going. Another strategy is the debt avalanche method. This is where you focus on paying off the debt with the highest interest rate first This mathematically is the better approach. It saves you the most money in the long run. But I'll be real with you. If you're a numbers person, the avalanche method is probably the mathematical choice you want to go with. You're going to pay less interest overall. Great job. But some people are not really motivated by math. They just hate debt. So if you need small wins to keep yourself motivated, go with the snowball method. Truthfully, it doesn't really matter which one you choose. The most important thing is picking one and committing to the strategy. People make a mistake when they try to pay off their debt. They rely on willpower. Oh, I'm going to try to pay extra this month. Don't do that. It's like depending on motivation to go to the gym. It lasts 3 days and then you're right back on the couch. So we don't want to depend on willpower. We want to automate our debt payments so that it happens automatically. Here's how you do it. First, set up minimum payments on all of your debt. So you don't ever get hit with late fees. Next, automatically send any extra cash to your highest priority debt, whether using the avalanche or the snowball method. And then most important, make sure to time your automatic payments right after payday so that you never see that money sitting in your account. It's just gone. Now, I cannot tell you the relief you are going to feel once you set up a debt payoff plan and your debt shrinks every single month. You will be shocked. Even if you have $10,000, $50,000, $150,000 of debt, once you make a plan, this is how you're going to feel. Ah. Making a plan is so important, and almost nobody has a true debt payoff plan. Now listen, if you don't deal with your high-interest debt like credit card debt right now, you will drag it into your 30s, 40s, 50s, and it will become normal for you. To just live with debt. I don't live with a huge gash on my arm that's leaking blood all day. You should not live with credit card debt. Not only is that setting up bad habits and normalizing being in crippling debt, it actually delays everything else you want to do in your rich life. You can search for Ramit Sethi debt payoff calculator. Use it to make your plan, then attack aggressively. Now, I know this seems counterintuitive to talk about using a credit card right after we just talked about eliminating your credit card debt. I'm gonna do it anyway. Because yes, if you use a credit card recklessly, it can wreck your finances. High-interest debt can kill your wealth growth. And that's why we addressed it first. But the reality is using a credit card responsibly is an incredible tool in your financial arsenal. Using a credit card helps you build credit, means you're going to qualify for apartments or houses. You'll have an easier time getting a mortgage. You will enjoy lower interest rates when you go to buy a car. This can save you tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, there are other benefits like purchase protection, easy tracking, all kinds of stuff that many people don't even know about. So here's how to do it right. Get one solid credit card, probably without an annual fee. Put your normal expenses on it— groceries, gas, subscriptions— and then set up autopay. So that the card gets paid in full every single month. Now, keep in mind, this maps directly to your conscious spending plan. Some of that credit card payment will come out of your fixed costs. Some of it will come out of guilt-free spending. It's all integrated together. Now, if you do those 3 things, you'll be using this credit card as a tool, not a trap. And the earlier you start building credit, the stronger your history will be when you actually need it. Landlords, banks, car dealerships, even employers may look at it. So start now. By the way, one cautionary tale. There's this weird thing people do. They will stay using credit cards while they are in credit card debt. And I'll ask them, why the hell do you keep racking up debt? And they go, well, I need my credit score to be good. What the fuck? We do not continue racking up credit card debt just to keep our credit score high. Also, who told you that you need to carry credit card debt in order to have a good credit score. No, you need to pay off your credit card debt, as I talked about just a second ago, and you need to make sure that you are paying your balance in full once your credit card debt is paid off. Guys, don't waste time optimizing your points for the rest of your life. You can get some points if you want. It's fine. Do not ever sign up for store cards like Macy's, Kohl's. Those are the worst cards on the planet. That one move can quietly set you up for decades of financial wins. Particularly down the line. Now, I don't care who you are, what you do for a living, or even how much you earn every month. You want to set up an emergency fund in case something goes wrong. And especially when you're young, this seems like really dumb advice from some old dude. Oh, make sure you floss because one day we're going to lose our teeth. Eh, whatever, old guy. Let me tell you that as you get older, things happen in life. People get laid off, people get fired. People have a sick parent where you need to get on an airplane right now and you don't care what it costs. This is not a question of if, it's a question of when. There's so many emergencies that happen to people without them expecting it. Car breaks down, medical bill. Without an emergency fund, it's instant panic. And that's when you have to make bad decisions. You have to go into credit card debt. I talk to people a lot. One mistake derailed their entire financial life, and I don't want that to happen to you. So for your emergency fund, I recommend you target 6 to 12 months of bare minimum living expenses. In the conscious spending plan, this is basically your fixed cost, so it's really easy to calculate. I'll give you an example. Let's say for easy math that you typically spend $2,000 per month on your necessities every month— rent, groceries, transportation, etc. So multiply that by 6 that means you're aiming for an emergency fund of $12,000 all the way up to multiply it by 12, $24,000, which will give you a solid cushion of 6 to 12 months. And if we are being realistic here, I personally recommend going for the higher end of that. It's going to take time. It actually will take you years to hit that number. That's okay. The point is to simply make the plan and make sure that you are automatically putting money in a savings account every single month. Don't worry if it takes a long time. Just focus on getting the plan executed. Now, if you haven't saved a thing, that's fine. We can start today. If you've already saved $1,000 or $2,000, that's great. Just don't get discouraged about how far you have to go. Realize a year, 2 years, 3 years is going to happen anyway. We might as well have the money automatically going to a savings account every single month. Like I mentioned earlier, It's better for you if your savings account is at a different bank than your checking account. That way you're not pulling out of your savings account. In fact, as a general rule, my savings account is one direction only. I rarely pull out of it. Once in a while I may if I need something or if I've achieved a certain savings goal. But my emergency fund is one direction only. I'm never pulling out of it unless something really bad happened. Once you have an emergency fund built up, you have major financial confidence because if something throws you a curveball like a flat tire, job loss, surprise bill, you know you can handle it. Now, a lot of people dismiss an emergency fund as boring. Yeah, it's boring until you freaking need it. This is the moat that you are building around your castle. I never want to expose myself to existential risk. I don't want you to do the same either. Okay. Remember when I mentioned a Roth IRA in the beginning of this video? Let me break this down. A lot of people are familiar with a 401(k). That is an account that many jobs offer you through work where your contributions to that retirement account come straight out of your paycheck before taxes. That reduces your taxable income right now. It's called pre-tax money, and that money gets invested and it just grows and grows and grows. You pay taxes later. A Roth IRA is different. It's an account you open on your own, not through your employer, and it lets your money grow tax-free. You know, there's so many people on my social media comments who are always railing against the rich, and I'm like, dude, I'm in line with you. The rich should pay more in taxes. But one thing they often neglect to do is take advantage of the tax benefits that they have right now. It's really easy to focus on millionaires and billionaires. But have you opened up a Roth IRA and maxed it out yourself? Let's start there, and then we can rail against these fucking right-wing billionaires. Now, with a Roth IRA, you contribute after-tax dollars, which means you're paying taxes on a smaller amount of money upfront. And then when you withdraw that money after it grows, you don't pay any taxes on it. Do you understand how how fucking awesome that is, because we're not just talking about $5,000 once. We're doing $5,000 a year, and that turns into hundreds of thousands of dollars. It will eventually, depending on how early you're watching this, turn into over $1 million. You're not paying taxes on that. That is amazing. All the focus you have on saving money on flour at the grocery store, irrelevant compared to how much you will save using a Roth IRA. If you don't set this up now, you're leaving decades of tax-free growth on the table. And relying on a 401(k) alone is not enough. Remember, that money gets taxed later and you are limited to whatever investments your employer often offers. This is amazing because assuming your career goes well, you are likely to be in a higher tax bracket when you retire. Again, nobody can project what happens to taxes, but in all likelihood, they are probably going up, not down. So let's say you're contributing 5% of your salary to your 401(k). And then you invest another 5% of your take-home pay to a Roth IRA. Amazing. Now, here's an important note. Your Roth IRA is just another account that holds money. You need to go into your Roth IRA and instruct it to actually invest the money. If you don't, you will be like some of my readers who discovered 14 years later they've been sending money to a Roth IRA and it's just sitting there in cash. That is horrifying. Realistically, I get it. Ramit, investing can actually be confusing to a lot of people. Like a lot of people say, invest, invest. Okay. In what? What are you talking about? Well, I will suggest to you that one of the easiest investments to make is something called a target date fund. By the way, this is the same investment option that I suggest to my family. Target date funds are great for people who want their money to grow with the least possible effort. They're basically a set it and forget it type of investment. And when you're younger, the investment is aggressive because you're young, you have a lot of time. As you get closer to retirement, that investment automatically becomes a little bit more conservative, right? We don't want to be freaking 75 years old and then the market goes down 15% and now we are screwed. You don't have to do anything, by the way. Your target date fund automatically adjusts for you. All you have to do is focus on putting as much money as possible into the investment. I love the target date funds at Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab. They're all great. I personally use Vanguard. A lot of people think that target date funds have really high fees. That is an outdated concept. Target date fund fees are really low now. And the way you choose your target date fund is you simply look for the year that you plan to retire. For example, if you plan to retire at age 67 and you'll be 67 in 2070, then you look for the 2070 target date fund at Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab., you just start automatically buying shares of it. This can all be done completely automatically. Now, you might be wondering, why bother with investing when you're so far away from retirement? Well, the answer is compounding. Like, if you start investing $100 a month starting at age 22, you'll actually have way more money than someone who invests $200 a month starting at age 42. You both would have contributed about the same total amount over time.. But because you started early, you would have about $200,000 more. So remember, the biggest mistake people make when it comes to investing is they wait. Do not do that. Even $50 a month starting early makes a massive difference. There's a limit to how much you can cut back, but your earning potential, that's actually unlimited. And I find that too many people waste their time cutting coupons, arguing over who's going to split this $12 appetizer. I only had one piece of lettuce. Therefore, I should pay 1/8 of 12. Stop it. The real progress is often made in focusing on increasing your earnings. And if you don't prioritize earning more, it's going to be really easy to nickel and dime yourself, stuck at the same salary while many of your peers move ahead. And the people I find in my comments who get resentful when I talk about earning more, they've actually never built the skill of earning more money. They're mad because somebody didn't come down from heaven and just give them a raise. Well, that's not how it works. If you want to increase your earnings, it is building a skill like learning to play piano or learning to speak Spanish. So think about it. That $5,000 raise you didn't ask for and didn't prepare for, you lost out on over $1 million by the time you retire. That's money you can never get back. So what does earning more money actually mean? Well, it means mastering the skills of negotiating your salary, positioning yourself for promotions, and learning how to properly ask for raises. It means building relationships at work so your boss dreads the day you quit. You know what a lot of people think asking for a raise is? Going into their boss's office and saying, "Um, can I please have some extra money? Um, I've been here a long time." Get the fuck out of here. That's what the boss is thinking. I was once thrown out of a boss's office because I essentially did that. And I told myself, I am never going to do that again. Just being somewhere for a year, 2, 5 years doesn't mean anything. Pointless. There is a specific method to asking for a raise and doing it effectively. And when you do this right, you give yourself amazing upside on your income. By the way, there's other ways to increase your income. You can earn a side income. Something that earns you $500, $1,000 a month or more. Remember, the earlier you start, the more decades you have to benefit from those higher earnings. If you lock in that higher salary in your 20s, every future raise and promotion will be built on that bigger number. So you don't need to overcomplicate this. So start simple. Being aware of the power dynamic in your industry, whether it's a good time to ask for a raise or not a good time to ask for a raise, I'm going to show you how to ask for a raise. Raise. If you haven't asked for a raise in the last 2 years, maybe it's time to start. You can use my briefcase technique. Here's how it works. 6 months before your next review, you schedule a meeting with your manager, and in that meeting you say something like, look, I really want to be a top performer at my job. Can you help me understand what that would look like? You agree on 3 specific measurable goals and push them. Don't walk out of that room with some vague generalities like be better. No, I want to know exactly what to do. Then, over the next 6 months, you track those results. Every couple of weeks, you send a quick update to your boss— what you talked about, what you did, what worked, what results you got, what you're doing next. Now, 6 months down the road, it's review time. You're not walking in saying, "Oh, tell me what's gonna happen." No, you walk in running that meeting. You walk in with your current salary. You have market research on what your role is paying at other companies. You have your accomplishments and notes from the last 6 months clearly laid out. And specific ways to add more value moving forward. And then you say, over the last 6 months, I hit the goals we set together. Based on that and my research on my role, I'd like to discuss a compensation adjustment. That's it. No begging, no awkwardness, just proof that you are a top performer and a simple, respectful ask. I've had students use this exact strategy to get $10,000 raises, $25,000 raises. Even $80,000 raises. In fact, I'll even link the exact briefcase technique documents that they used in the description for you. Hold on. I actually got an email this morning. I want to read it to you. Here it is. Her name is Ashley, and she wrote to me. I'm going to read it off screen. Even my team doesn't know that I got this this morning. I found the Find Your Dream Job course immensely helpful and grounding in a massive career pivot. The best part by far was the negotiation section, which gave me really practical tools and scripts to prepare for negotiations. I used them to negotiate a $10,000 bump in the job offer, as well as negotiate a raise this past year in the same role. Please stop thinking that only those people get raises. This could be you. Even one raise can change your financial trajectory. Forever. Now, for a lot of these socially awkward freaks who watch my channel, they feel awkward talking about money. Weird. They don't feel awkward talking about sports. They don't feel awkward talking about what to do this weekend or pickleball. But money, one of the most prevalent topics in our entire lives until we die. Oh, that's so weird, Ramit. Can't talk about that. Now, I will say at first it feels easy to avoid talking about money. Lights are still on, still have my phone, still works. What's the problem? But over time, especially if you're in a relationship, it creates a wedge between you two. It's kind of like silently resenting your roommate for not paying their fair share when you go out to eat. Or it's like marrying someone and only later on discovering they have $35,000 in credit card debt. Here's what I want for you before you turn 30. I want you to have at least one real money conversation. Not small talk, but a real substantive conversation. And this could be with a friend about, are you both investing? Or how do you handle rent or student loans? It could be with a partner about how you really want to pay off debt, and here's the plan you've created, and what do they think? Or it could be with your parents about how they handled money when you were growing up. The first time you talk about money substantively should not be when you are signing mortgage papers or paying a huge amount for a wedding. That's way too late. If you need some help on how to do this, you can get my free monthly money meeting guide. I'll link it for you below. This one talk can change how you handle money forever. Now for the fun part. Before 30, I want you to sit down and actually imagine what your rich life looks like. Version 1.0. Doesn't have to be perfect. I just want you to get a snapshot for the next 1 to 3 years. Maybe your rich life includes taking a 2-week trip to Italy. Maybe it's upgrading to an apartment where you have your own washer and dryer. Or maybe it's simply being able to buy the newest laptop with the most amount of storage space. Doesn't matter to me how big or how small your rich life is. What matters is that it is real for you. In my early 20s, one of my rich life items was to be able to go in a taxi, not have to take the subway in the sweltering August heat. Think about it. We're talking about $10, $20, but it was incredibly meaningful to me. And this is powerful for you because when you have a crystal clear vision of your rich life, saving for it doesn't feel like punishment. You're not actually depriving yourself. Instead, it feels exciting. Suddenly, every dollar you save has a purpose. It's getting you closer to this beautiful, vivid vision. So grab a notebook tonight and write down 3 things that money would allow you to do in the next 3 years. And don't censor yourself. Don't worry if it sounds silly or small. That's your rich life 1.0. Once you have it on paper, you've got your why. And with a why, a really powerful why, every financial decision you make gets easier. If you're not sure where to start, you can take my rich life quiz. It's linked in the description below. If you make these 9 money moves before 30, you will not be playing catch-up in your 30s. You will be on an an incredible, incredible path. Take advantage of the time on your side and learn how to invest at any income level by watching this video next.