9 Things I Stopped Doing Once I Became a Millionaire

All right, here's the thing. You're probably going to have to change the way you treat money if you want to live a very rich life. And I want to just share some of the examples of things I have stopped doing as I have grown my wealth and more importantly, started to have more fun and live a rich life. Sometimes it's not just about what you do more of, but also what you stop doing. So here's a list of nine things I stopped doing once I became a multimillionaire. Starting with number one, always looking at prices and thinking about cost. Instead, I started looking at prices using percentages. For example, a special sushi dinner that costs $300 might seem totally outrageous, but as a percentage of income, it's a lot different. Think of it this way. That same $300 meal would be extremely unaffordable to somebody working part time making $35,000 a year, compared to someone making $175,000 a year. This is a much more advanced way of looking at money. Using percentages and looking at percentages of income has allowed me to actually increase my spending on things I love and care about. For example, travel, clothes, generosity. And it's allowed me to cut back on the things that are not that important. Number two, spending tons of time and energy making little decisions. These little decisions can start to engulf the things you think about on a daily basis. And as you spend more time shrinking your attention to think about tiny $3 decisions, I can almost guarantee you are not thinking about the $30,000 decisions. What's my savings rate? At what year will I achieve the crossover point where my investments will generate more than my income? And on and on. That is why I love to create rules for myself, so that I can stop worrying about all the little things and focus on the big picture. And I think a lot of us already naturally do this. For example, maybe you have a Go to uniform that you choose to wear for work every day. Maybe you have a set meal plan that every weekday for dinner, this is what I eat. And if you follow my money advice, particularly from chapter five of my book, you've already set up automatic savings and investing. So here are some of the rules I created so I could spend less time making insignificant decisions instead of wondering what to eat every day. I mostly eat the same meal almost every day if I go to a restaurant, because when I was a kid, we couldn't afford appetizers. Now if I see two appetizers that look great, I get them both. If a flight is over Four hours. My personal rule is I fly business class. Again. That's my personal rule. Your rule is probably going to be very different. And instead of debating how I'm going to get to a hotel after I land at an airport, I just have made it a rule now to always have a car waiting for me. Now you can see this concept can be as small as a $10 appetizer or as large as business class or more. What I want for you to do is to take this idea and adapt it to your own life. Number three, diying my finances. Now this might be surprising to a lot of people because I. I have written an entire book about how to manage your own money. But here's something you might not know. As I made more money, I stopped trying to figure out every last tiny detail myself. Now I've hired accountants and bookkeepers. I've even hired a financial advisor a couple of times. Remember, I paid a flat fee never aum. And I did this because they can help me iron out tiny wrinkles in my financial system or, or help me monitor it in an ongoing way. The point is, you can actually become a multimillionaire handling your finances on your own. But at certain levels of net worth, or if you own your own business or have a complex financial situation, it can be beneficial to occasionally hire financial experts to help you. Speaking of hiring experts, that brings me to the next thing I stopped doing once I became a multimillionaire. Number four, accepting mediocrity. Now first of all, look at me. You think my parents accepted mediocrity? When I was growing up, 99% was 1% wrong. So as I grew my wealth, I started to apply the same thing to myself. I wanted to start using my money to improve myself instead of just accepting this is as good as it gets. 20 year old skinny Ramit could have never thought about even going to the gym three or four times a week. Skinny Ramit never believed he could even gain weight. I used to tell myself I'm just a skinny Indian guy. And I wish I had not said that because it became a self fulfilling prophecy over time. In my mid-20s, I realized health was a really important part of my rich life. And I didn't want to accept that I was just this skinny guy who would wear oversized shirts and that was it. But I needed help. I didn't know how to do it on my own. I didn't even know what the word protein meant until my mid-20s. So I started using money to help me on my health journey. I hired A personal trainer who taught me how to work out properly. I paid for food. So when I open up the fridge, there's healthy food, meal by meal, ready for me. And I hired a posture coach. I really love this one because I found myself feeling a little bit of back pain and I wanted to learn how to improve my posture. I hired the coach not only helped me improve my health, but also helped me improve the way that I present myself. All these things work together to improve my overall health and fitness goals. So I don't have to accept being mediocre. I. I can learn from the best and keep pushing myself. Number five. Doing what was available to everyone else. Now, travel is one of my biggest money dials. It's an area where I love to spend money. So as I became more financially successful, I wanted to turn that dial up. Basically, I caught the travel bug. And I'll tell you, I got bored of landing in a city and then looking up on Expedia. What should I do here? Ending up at the same sites, seeing the same monuments, the same museums, when sometimes I don't even feel like going to a museum. Now, before I travel somewhere, I will spend weeks or even months reading all about that city, asking myself, what do I want to feel when we get there? What kind of amazing experiences do we want to have? And then I'll work with a travel advisor who understands that vision to bring it all together. Now, it doesn't matter if it's just me, my wife and me, or. Or we bring friends and family with us. I want to do something that is special, something that is incredibly memorable. I'll give you an example. Just a couple of months ago, I took a guy's trip. We went to Tokyo and we decided to take a food tour. And on this food tour, which was private for just us, the guide asked us ahead of time, what kind of foods do you want to try? Now, my friend knows about Japanese berries. You know, those perfect berries, Sometimes it costs like $40 for a strawberry. He wanted to try those and he wanted to understand why they are so great. So our tour guide made a special appointment at a specialist berry place where we could try different strawberries. And the person working there could explain to us what is the difference among all these different strawberries. And during a safari, I hired a photographer to give me photo lessons. Because my photos were not very good on my own. He taught me how to shoot long distance animals with a long lens. As I started to become more financially successful, I wanted to respect my time and I wanted to Create amazing memories. That's why doing these experiences that are off the normal path ended up being some of the most unforgettable things I've ever done with friends and family. Number six, doing everything myself. I got to the point where I actually didn't want to do everything myself and I started delegating to people who were better at specific things. For example, in my business, I used to write all the emails, load all the emails, choose the segmentation, and hit send. I would do it all, but it's been years since I even logged into our software and I have to tell you, I don't even know where the send button is. Why? Because we have email specialists at our team who are way better at that than I am. It's their job and they do an amazing job at it. Now, this idea of delegating also ties into my convenience money dial because I am buying back my time. For example, you can buy back your time by getting somebody to return packages for you, arrange your flights, fill out paperwork before you see a doctor, post YouTube videos like this one, or write and send emails to your email list. By the way, for business owners, pay special attention because this is really important. You know, I've been running my business for 20 years and you have to start by doing everything yourself. Uploading videos, editing photos, ed every social media post, doing your website, you do it all. But at a certain point, you realize you're probably the best at a couple of things. And the rest you need to find a way to get them off your plate. Now, if you have a website like I do, you probably don't want to sit there fiddling around with HTML tags or realigning images 27 times. Instead, you can use a service that does it for you, like hostinger's AI Website Builder. Let me show you how it works. Let's say I have a new business idea that I want to test. Let's Ramitz zero to Habanero. Instead of spending three months obsessing over the perfect tagline or the perfect font colors, what if I just got a website up in about 10 minutes? That way I could see if people even respond to it. So here's how I do it. I sign up@hostinger.com Ramit Sati. I recommend getting the business plan because it gives you access to a lot more AI tools. You can use the coupon code Ramit sethi to get 10% off. Then I select the AI website builder and I give it a name for my business. I give it a brief description of what it's about and boom. It spins up this website in less than 60 seconds. I mean, look at this. It looks pretty good. The shrimp looks good, the photos look good. We got Thai chilies on here. The copy's actually pretty good to start. Of course, if I want to change any of it, I just click on the headlines and edit it myself. If I want new photos, I can use the AI image generator. Let's see a picture of someone sweating or eating something spicy. There you go. You can even make a logo in seconds. Check this out. So in less than five minutes, I have a website. Do not spend months agonizing over something that probably isn't going to make a difference. Get it out there fast, See if people respond, then you can iterate and improve. And if I have another business idea next month, boom. I can have Hostinger make me another website in seconds using the same process. If you want to give Hostinger's AI website builder a try, IWT subscribers get 10% off with code Ramit Sethi when they go to hostinger.com Ramit Sethi or just click the link in the description below. All right, on to number seven. Waiting until I desperately needed something to buy it. Now I remember. I used to get a haircut every six weeks. And by the time my appointment came around, I really needed that haircut. But when I was shooting my Netflix show How to Get Rich, I was getting a haircut once a week so that I would always be film ready. I wanted to look fresh and I actually started to really enjoy it. So I decided, I'm going to make this a recurring thing. I don't need a TV show to always want to look good. And so I decided from now on, that is my rule. Haircut once a week. Now think about how you can adapt this to your own life. What is the area of your life where you wait until you desperately need a replacement before you get it? And what if you actually just decided, I don't want to wait. I want to always feel good, look good, always be ready. For example, if your shoulders get really tight from working at your computer all day, does it make sense to wait a month or two months until you really can't even move? You're going like this. Hello? Why it hurts so much. Instead of waiting until you're in intense pain, what if you proactively decided to to schedule a massage for every other week? You don't have to wait. Other examples could be having someone mow your lawn or clean your house on a more consistent basis and not Waiting until it is really, really needed. This is an idea anyone can take advantage of. It's something that changed my life. Number eight, wasting money on things that just don't excite me. As I made more money, my thoughts around spending money changed, and I realized that what I buy is important to me. My money is a very valuable resource, and I want to know more about the story of how something is made. So, for example, I stopped buying random knickknacks while traveling. I stopped filling up rooms with stuff. Instead, I would rather buy one amazing thing per year, like a handmade rug that I custom designed with the artist. I also like this concept when hiring people. For example, if somebody shows up late, they cause me a lot of stress. I don't choose to work with them. To me, this concept is something I call my money is good money. If I'm paying money for an experience or a product, I want the quality to be high. I want it to match my vision. And if it doesn't, that's okay. But my money is good money, and I'll take my money elsewhere. So before I move on to the next thing that I stopped doing once I became a multimillionaire, I would love it if you could do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. It just takes half a second, and that way I can send you more videos on money psychology. All right, that brings me to the last thing I stopped doing. Number nine, working with yes, people. Now, this is a really important, I think, subtle point. When I was young, I remember going into Supercuts. I'd go in, whoever random person was there would say, what do you want? And I would tell them, two on the side and this in the back. And they would do it. And it was done. And it was fine for 15 bucks. No big deal. But I've learned that I don't want to have to tell others what to do. In fact, I want to work with people who tell me. So when I walk into a hair stylist or when I worked with the team at Netflix, I didn't tell them my vision. They told me. And they had an amazing vision. And that is what really top people do. You walk in, you don't tell them what to do. They've been thinking about this their whole lives. This is their profession. This is what they are the best at. You say, what do you think I should do? And best of all, at this level, I trust my team to tell me how we should be executing on a strategy. Remember, the more you design your rich life, the more it will fit you like a handmade glove and the less it will actually make sense to other people. That's when you know you are really crafting your rich life. So let me know in the comments. One thing that you have stopped doing as you have made more money and now check out this video popping up on screen right now to watch more.