I've Made Money Mistakes... (My Confession)

I have a confession to make. I've hosted a Netflix show called how to Get Rich. I've sold over a million copies of my New York Times bestselling book, I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. And I've been teaching people about money for over 20 years. People call me a money expert, but I have made a lot of big mistakes with money. And today I want to share four of them with you, including the lessons I learned, starting with confession number one. I didn't follow my own personal finance rules. Just like everybody watching this, I let things get confusing and sloppy with my own money. I once had an old 401k from a job, and I left the job. Didn't roll it over for a year. It was just sitting there with the old company. I didn't add money to it. It wasn't really doing much. I definitely was not keeping track of it in my overall financial system. And I know better. I shouldn't let things things get sloppy. It's kind of like letting your garage just get cobwebs everywhere. And yet I still did it. And that happens to all of us. I felt embarrassed, and I knew that it was sloppy and it still happened. And that's just one example in a lifetime of things that have gotten just a little loose. So what's the lesson? The lesson is fight for simplicity in your finances. You're always going to be busy. You're always going to have one more opportunity coming at you or one more thing on your to do list. This is why I'm such an advocate of keeping things simple, especially as you start to make more money. And once you realize, like I did, that things have gotten sloppy, take a step back. See how you can simplify your money system so you won't get in that situation in the Future. Confession number two. I made a $100,000 business mistake. This one is horrible. A few years ago, we had to switch providers for our email software. We were sending lots of emails. We had a lot of complex funnel needs. And so I hired somebody as a contractor to come in and evaluate which software we should buy. Well, we ended up purchasing that software. I signed the order and we logged in. The big day. We finally got the login. All the money sent. Let's do it. We logged in and we realized we could not use it for the one thing we needed to do. One important thing for us, it was sending two emails in one day. And that was the deal breaker. Without that feature, we could not make it work with our funnels. So I called up the sales guys. I said, hey, guys, you know, we've been talking for six months. Can you just refund our money? This feature doesn't exist. You know what they said? Sorry. You sign the contract, good luck. I said, guys, I don't even mind. I'm happy to pay for all the time. Keep $10,000. Just send us back the 90. We've only logged in once. Sorry. So, first of all, this company, okay. But second, who can I blame? I can't blame the contractor. He was working for me. I can't really blame the company. Technically, they're right. I can only blame myself. And that was not a $10 or hundred dollar mistake. That was $100,000 directly out of my pocket for software that we never used. Ever. Not once. Now you can imagine how stupid I felt. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. And I knew that there was no one else to blame except myself. What's the key lesson I learned? Well, I needed to be a more effective manager. I hadn't done oversight of that contractor's work. What did I do? Number one, I fired him immediately. But two, I had to take a real hard look in the mirror and say, if I'm going to run a process like that for very expensive software, then I need to make sure that it's properly managed. And so I changed things. Then we built SOPs. We brought in managers with more experience. As one of my friends said, I don't mind making a mistake once, but I will never make it twice. Now, I know most people are not buying $100,000 pieces of software, but we are buying expensive things as we get older. It might be houses, cars, private school vacations, financial advisory services. And what I'm saying here applies to those as well. Do not simply do them on a whim. Do your due diligence and take this seriously. Before I get to my third confession, do me a favor. Click that subscribe button if you're not already subscribed. It really helps me grow this channel. Now moving on to confession number three. I didn't fully understand the importance of feelings when I started talking about a prenup. The prenup process that my wife and I went through taught us so much about money. I brought up the idea of a prenup because before we got married, I had grown a business. I had invested. I'd saved a whole bunch of money. It was important to me to discuss a prenup. We both got lawyers. We started discussing it, we started looking at numbers, and it became really hard. And I thought, well, I'M the money guy. This shouldn't be that hard. I've been working on this for 15 years, and what I missed was the importance of connecting over how we both feel about money. You could sit there and talk about numbers all day, but until you truly connect on what money means to you, you are going to be stuck. We finally decided to go see a therapist, and that was so helpful. We went in, she asked us a bunch of questions, helped us unlock the way that we saw money. We got deeper with our feelings. We had new tools to talk about our fears of money, our hopes with money, our pride with money. That was something I'd never really talked about in our relationship, how proud I was of what I had built with the portfolio and the business. And I have to tell you, we did get through that process. We did sign the process prenup. And now when we look back, yes, we know that it was really difficult, but we also both know that we never would have had these difficult conversations that got us deeper and more closely connected than ever. The prenup helped us do that. So what's the key lesson I learned? First of all, I should have started way earlier so that we would have had the ultimate luxury, which is time. Okay. Second, I should have remembered numbers come second. But first, we really need to connect about our vision. How do we both feel about money? If you begin with a spreadsheet, you've definitely taken a wrong turn. If you even start talking about numbers in the beginning, you've definitely taken a wrong turn because money is way more than numbers. It's highly emotional, and that is okay. You're emotional, I'm emotional. We grew up with different feelings around money. What I should have talked about more was meaning fears, hopes, and dreams. And the money part would have come later. So take this as a lesson. Don't wait to have these talks. Whether it's a prenup, whether it's how you want to raise children around money, whether it's what you want to do for retirement. The earlier you start talking about money with your partner in a fun way as a team, the better. Next, I'll share something surprising I learned about getting things for free. But before I get to that, I get a lot of comments on my videos, and I love hearing from you. I have noticed that some people who try to roast me fail miserably, and I would like to help you. Just take a look at this message on my recent video about renting versus buying. Look at the first sentence. The advice on this video is really bad. Now I'm no communications expert, but I will say perhaps starting off by insulting someone is not a great way to have people listen to you. What if instead you could edit your grammar to make it more effective? Let's take a look. See, I've been using this tool Grammarly, which is a writing partner that works where you work, Google Docs, Slack, even YouTube comments, so you can actually craft quality writing across different platforms. So I've taken the liberty of asking Grammarly to rewrite your poorly written comment for you. Let's take a look. Much better, maybe a little long, which of course you can edit down. Or using Grammarly Premium, you can ask it to change the tone. In your case, I would recommend you ask it to change all of your tone. For example, I can make this comment more constructive, more casual, or more simple. Grammarly Premium also helps my team write and edit faster. For example, here it is in action with one of our recent podcast newsletters. It actually gives suggestions on how to make our writing more impactful to the reader. It identifies gaps in our writing, and it can even help you add images without having to switch to another app. So if you want to write better and faster, whether you're trying to roast me in my YouTube comments, which never works, or you're trying to write cover letters for your job search, social posts, emails, whatever, I recommend you check out Grammarly Premium. Sign up and upgrade to Grammarly premium@Grammarly.com ramit or click the link in the description below. Alright, now I want to share something surprising. I learned about free stuff. And that's confession number four. I have changed the way I think about money. In my early 20s, I loved free stuff. Free food, free tickets, buy two, get the third free. And I think about my childhood. Going to Costco on Sundays, getting free samples. Of course I loved it. Now, in my early 20s, I thought that getting things for free meant I was winning. Winning at what? I'm not sure. But that's how I thought. Now that I'm older, something big has changed. I have more money and less time. And now I don't want free things. I actually don't even like getting free things, which seems crazy because who doesn't want free stuff? Me. I don't want free stuff because free comes with obligation. If someone wants to give me a free hotel stay, they probably want me to post nice things about about it. I'd rather pay out of my own pocket. Or if someone gives me a free meal, they're probably going to serve a preset menu. I don't want a preset menu anymore. I used to love Restaurant Week, where you could try these nicer restaurants for a cheaper price. I don't want that anymore. I want to order what I want, even if it costs a little bit more. And that's the big thing that's changed. If I like something now, I want to pay for it. Isn't this the irony that when I was younger and I didn't have money, I. I would have loved to get something for free. And now that I have money, you get offers to get things for free and I actually don't want it. I don't want it. And this is what changes. As you build wealth for a lot of people, you're not as drawn to free. Instead, you're more drawn to having something done exactly your way. I'll give you an example. The Amex platinum card costs several hundred dollars a year. And yeah, there's some free perks here and there, but most of their perks are taking things you're already spending a lot on and making them better for you. For example, if you're planning to stay at the Rosewood Kona Village, which is already a very expensive hotel in Hawaii, if you use their FHR program, you will get an early check in, late checkout and room upgrade. That's what happens at certain levels. They don't just give you something for free because that's not as valuable. What they do is they improve your experience with additional benefits. So what's the key lesson I learned here? I learned that money changes people, and that's good. Money should change you. Making more money has allowed me to be more spontaneous, more adventurous, more generous. And the lesson is, as you make more. Get comfortable changing your money lens. Get comfortable with changing your money lens. Don't keep looking at money through the same lens you did when you were 20. Like when I was just happy to get free fries at McDonald's. Okay. That would have been my dream. Allow yourself to change the way you look at money, and you can actually open yourself up to a lot of new possibilities. In other words, there's more to life than free. Now, I hope this video has shown you that even someone who's built their career around money can make money mistakes. I've made them. I'm making some right now, but I can still acknowledge them and move on. You don't have to be perfect with your money. You just have to be willing to learn from your mistakes and keep moving forward. So I'm curious in the comments. Let me know one money mistake you've made and what you've learned from it. And now check out this video popping up on screen to watch more.