A short-form YouTube Q&A by Ramit Sethi (from his paid money-coaching community) answering member questions. Chunk 1 includes practical guidance for (1) teaching 9–11 year-olds about money via grocery shopping, chore-earnings, vacation planning and matched savings; (2) handling spending regret by shifting from "hot" to "cool" emotions, accepting a small amount of waste, and learning from recurring-service cancellations; and (3) merging differing vacation preferences with a partner by creating a shared vision, asking about travel habits and childhood influences.
Chapters
Welcome to a very special episode of the I Will Teach youh to Be Rich podcast. Today I'm gonna talk about my favorite services that I use when I travel, how to handle FOMO when you're investing, and also how to handle traveling with other people, among many other Q&As. Just a little context on where these questions come from. I've been running a money coaching program for a lot of my readers, and we have a monthly call every month. I come on there. I do live Q and A. And we also have a SL community where people ask each other questions. We have a ton of channels. Investing, spending, relationships, all kinds of stuff. So I picked some of the best questions that people have been sharing with each other in there. And just so you know, if you'd like to join the money coaching program, you can get in@iwt.com money coaching. That is the only place to ask me Q and A about money. So with that said, let's jump into today's questions. Jane wants to know how she should talk to her kids about money in the money coaching community. She asked. I'd love to get some real advice about talking to my kids about money. They are 9 and 11, and it seems that their interest is mainly to benefit themselves. For example, video games, clothes, et cetera. I would love to get them more actively involved in our money decisions. I'm hesitant to bring up exact figures with them because I don't want them sharing those numbers around school or our community. Okay, Jane, at roughly 9, 11 years old, there's a few things that would be amazing to get your children involved with. And I firmly believe kids should be talked to about money and they should be involved in the money process as part of being a member of a family. All right, now, of course, as they get older, they get access to more money. They get the ability to be more responsible and plan for bigger things. But let's start at around the age of 10 so they can be helping grocery shop. Here's how much we have for groceries this week. Here's what we need to get. Can you help me plan it? Okay. They can be planning a dinner out. Here's how much we have for the family. Where do you think we should go? Oh, check the menu online. Will we be able to make pay for everything? What about tax? What about tip? How much do we tip? These are things that they can be doing at that age with a little bit of help. As they get a little bit older, think about the things they like you mentioned, like video games, clothes, shoes, Et cetera. So let's say they want shoes. Help them make a plan for how they are going to earn money to get those shoes. And of course, the younger they are, you can make it a little easier for them. You can help get them supplies for something like a lemonade stand. You can match whatever money they make doing chores or going around to neighbors. You can match it one to one. The point is not for them to have to earn every single cent right now. It's just the idea that you can actually earn money by working hard. And finally, as it comes to planning vacations, even at a young age, 9, 10, 11, they can do this. Now. You don't have to tell them your entire income or your entire vacation budget. But when you can say is, okay, we're going to be gone Thursday through Sunday, I would like for you to help us plan what we're going to do Saturday morning. The amount we have for our family is $200. Look around at Virginia, where we're going, and look up some places. What do you think you want us to do? Of course, this builds on the skills of them helping you grocery shop, helping order dinner for the family because they have to account for all the phantom costs, taxes, tips, taxis, etc. And you're gonna watch them as they become savvier and savvier with money. Great question, Jane. Keep me updated. Love to know how it goes. Aisha asks, what do you do when you feel like you made a wrong choice and you have regrets in spending your money? I spent money on something I thought would help me in my life, but it hasn't. Now I regret spending that money. It was a recurring service and now I've stopped it, which is good. But I still feel bad about spending what I did. In this question, you can hear a lot of hot emotions, regret. I still feel bad. And this is a big clue for me when I'm listening to people talk about their money decisions, these hot emotions. Because my philosophy is hot to cool, right? Money is always going to be emotional. I will never tell someone, stop feeling that way about money. But what I want you to do is to replace some of the emotions you feel, some of the negative ones, with positive ones about your rich life. And also to go from hot to cool. Cool means saying something like, wow, I really enjoyed spending money on that thing. I think we should do it again. Or, you know what? I bought this thing. It wasn't for me. I learned my lesson. I'm not going to do it again. You can see the difference between cool Emotions, emotions that you are in control of versus I regret that I made a horrible mistake. Those are hot emotions, and those tend to overwhelm us. So with spending, I want to give you one principle. The more money you spend, the more money you're going to waste. It's totally normal. I want to emphasize this because you never hear anybody in the money world talking about this. Most people in the money world are obsessed with waste. Oh, my God. We got to find the waste. Oh, my God. Oh. Government waste, Personal waste, waste, waste, waste. If you've ever run a business, if you've ever run a restaurant, if you've ever done anything of any meaning whatsoever, you know that there's a certain percentage that is pure waste, and that's life. If you try to go through life eliminating waste 100%, you're probably not doing anything very interesting. So the more money you spend, the more you're going to waste. Now, is that the best thing? No, I don't want you to be wasting 40% of your income. Of course not. But in my case, for example, sometimes I might order something from Amazon and maybe one out of 80 purchases doesn't work, or it's not for me. Okay. Most of the time I try to return it, but once in a while I can't. I just don't get around to it. I have other stuff going on, et cetera. Donate it. And did I lose 10 bucks or 40 bucks? Sure. In the grand scheme of things, I have to allow for a little bit of waste because I'm running a complex system. And if you are working at a job, if you're running a household, if you're managing your own money, you are managing a complex system, and you've got to allow for a little bit of waste. Okay? So, Aisha, two things I've given you. One, bring the emotions from hot to cool. Say, hey, I spent money on this. Here's what I thought it was going to do. It didn't do it for me. I learned my lesson. I'm not going to make that mistake as I continue on my rich life. Second, understand that there's always going to be a little bit of waste. You shouldn't look to waste money, but you can accept that once in a while you're going to make a mistake with your money, and that's okay. Eric asks, how do you merge two different dream vacations when traveling with a spouse? Ooh, I love this question. The best way to do this is to create a shared vision of your rich life. So let's Say one of you likes to wake up at 7am when you're traveling, get going. And the other wants to have a leisurely morning and lounge around, have a nice long breakfast. So it would be easy to point at your partner and be like, oh my God, so annoying. We're never going to have the chance to be in France again. We need to get up. You're always so lazy on the. Don't do that. Alright, before you go on vacation, create your vision of the trip. Right? What's gonna make this magical for both of us? And you can start off by asking that, hey, what's gonna make this a magical trip for us? And you can ask each other even more questions. Hey, tell me about how you like to travel. I noticed that when we've traveled in the past, you like to wake up early and get going. Tell me more about that. Where'd that come from? And if you're really genuinely curious, you might discover that they grew up only taking three vacations in their entire family history. And they always went with their big family and they spent the entire day out because they knew they wanted to see everything because they knew they would never come back. So that's actually really interesting. That's a big clue. And maybe you ask your partner, how did you feel at the end of the day? How do you want to feel at the end of our days? When we now travel, oftentimes we simply carry the lessons we learned from childhood into our current situation. Even though our financial reality might be totally different. Maybe they didn't have enough money to take a longer trip. Maybe you do. You can also ask, what if you knew that we could go back to visit? How would that change things?
