Ramit Sethi explains how wealth changes your relationship with free stuff. When he was broke, he hoarded hotel shampoos. Now he ignores them, preferring a handcrafted canvas bag from a 125-year-old Kyoto company. As you get richer, free loses its appeal and quality with meaning wins.
When I fly business class, they give me a toiletry kit. And when I was in my early 20s, I would have done anything to be able to open up these toiletry kits and get Bvlgari, you know, lotions and all kinds of these fancy things. Nowadays, I don't even open them. I just let them sit there and then I leave and leave them on the chair. Why? Because in my 20s, whenever I went to a hotel, I was taking all the shampoos, All the conditioners, all the soap, and I was taking them home. It's free! Now I don't do that anymore. I'll tell you why. Because the things that I use in my own shower, in my own toiletry bag, are better than anything I could get for free. And more importantly, I know what I like. Free doesn't have any appeal to me because I have the money to be able to buy any lotion I want. And so it might be free, but the way I see it is it's probably not as good as what I have. And it's one more thing for me to have to carry, one more thing for me to have to think about and even discard. I'd rather just not do it. So part of becoming wealthy is realizing that free, which used to hold so much value, actually holds very little value. It's actually repellent to me. So when I'm going around trying to get something that I want, if something's offered to me for free, someone offers to do something for free, I'm actually turned off by it. As an example, There— I love bags. When I was in Kyoto, I've been following this bag company for about 6 or 7 years. I've been looking at their Instagram, following them online. They're a 125-year-old family company that makes canvas bags, and I trekked 30 minutes in Kyoto to get this beautiful bag that I carry sometimes. You could give me 20 free canvas bags and I would not want them. This bag held meaning for me. There was something special about the construction of it, special about going all the way to Japan and getting it. That to me is worth more than the amount of money I spent on it. It's the meaning behind it.
