The Scrooge Strategy

Hi, guys. My name is Ramit Sethi. I'm the founder of a personal finance blog called iwillteachoberich.com no, it's not a scam. I also just announced the creation of a new program called the Scrooge Strategy. And this is one premium tip to save money per week. It's very simple, and I want to tell you a little bit about it. But first, I want to tell you why I hate most frugality tips. These are the tips that you read online or you read in books. And first of all, most of the tips are just irrelevant. You read the same old tips that say, don't eat out, create a budget and see where your money's going. Or online, they often get very extreme. Knit your own clothes, grow your own food. And it's like, who's really going to do that? The other reason I don't like them is they're all about cutting down on your spending. When you read about saving money, which we all need to do, they often tell you what you need to stop spending on. Well, first of all, Americans are horrible at cutting their spending. And second, saving money is not just about cutting spending. Of course we all need to stop spending on certain things. But the way I look at it, you can save money by fundamentally cutting costs or also earning more. So I created a model called the CEO model, and that stands for cutting costs, earning more, or optimizing your existing spending. And I'll tell you in a second how I applied that. The third and final reason I really don't like most frugality tips I read is that they leave you on your own. You read a great article about how to save money on travel, and then it's like, okay, now what? What website do I go to? What's the screenshot I'm supposed to use? What do I type in that box? Who do I call? What's the phone number? Just the fact that those are not right in front of us means it's that much more difficult for us to actually take action and save money. So I think what we need are rich, highly detailed tips that have phone numbers, information, screenshots on everything we need. For example, when I wrote a tip on how to save money on your car insurance, I included all the popular companies, their phone numbers, their websites, and even a call script for what to say to them when you got them on the phone. And people saved an incredible amount of money. Most people saved a few hundred dollars from that one tip alone. So what I did in November 2008 was I saw that people were looking for ways to save money. So I created a a 30 day series called Save $1,000 in 30 Days. And this was a series of 30 tips to show you how to save money by cutting costs, earning more, and optimizing your existing spending. Well, it turned out to be hugely successful. It was featured on Lifehacker and the blogs of the Wall Street Journal and MSN Money. And people saved an incredible amount of money. They did this by just following a few of the simple tips. And they also saved money by using some of the tips that were new to them. For example, I taught people how to use fuel prices to hedge their spending, and that saved people a pretty significant amount of money. Taught people how to negotiate with their banks and credit cards, and taught people tips about how to squeeze every last bit of money out of their credit card and any other associations they belong to. So that ended up generating tons and tons of savings for people. And along the way, I decided, hey, this thing is going really well. I've got to create something that gives people more tips once this is done. So I created the Scrooge Strategy. And here you are. It's very simple. One tip per week to help you save money. And my philosophy is, rather than trying to save on 40 or 50 things and try to save $5 each and just feel very stressed about it, I would rather have us focus on three or four things that we know we're overspending on and really optimize our savings there. For a lot of us, we know what it is, it's going out, it's eating out. Those are areas where if we saved 25%, we would generate 100, 200, $300 of extra cash every month. That's cash that we could use to pay off debt or invest or save. And so with the Scrooge Strategy, what I decided was to create some really simple tips that were also rich with information. The tips that I write on the Scrooge Strategy tend to be about four to six pages long. They tend to have screenshots, exact examples of what you need to do, phone numbers, websites, my own recommendations, because I've done all these tips myself, and I did a little preview by sharing this with about 100 people who signed up for the program early. And the results have been astonishing. People have saved thousands of dollars just in four weeks. And remember, this is with one tip per week. I think part of the reason is that the tips I hope are very useful to people. They're telling you that they are. So I'M feeling fortunate about that. The other reason is you get these tips once a week and it's a little kick in the butt that, hey, it's time to start saving again. It's like having someone over your shoulder every week just remind you, keep focused on saving money. So the tips here, I think they're really useful. I spend a lot of time on them and it's just one tip per week. What I will tell you is that if you sign up, I guarantee that you will save more than you pay for the program. That's it. Very simple. You will save more than you pay to be a member of the Scrooge Strategy. If you don't, you should just email me and I will cancel your membership and refund your money. You should try it out for about a month, give it a shot. If it doesn't work out for you, just cancel. But I think it will. The people that have joined the program have saved hundreds and even thousands of dollars in just four weeks. And it's a constant reminder that you should be saving money. One tip per week. And I would love to have you join as a member of the Scrooge Strategy. Thanks a lot.