Ramit SethiRamit Sethi: The No-BS Guide to Living a Rich Life

They're millionaires but struggle to pay the bills

1 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief conversational segment, the speakers explore the concept of a "rich poor" person—someone who appears affluent, owning homes and maintaining a comfortable lifestyle, yet faces chronic cash flow problems due to high living expenses and insufficient savings. They discuss how such individuals often scramble to cover monthly bills and discover shortfalls at year‑end, especially as costs like food and private‑school tuition rise. A concrete example is presented: a family with five children attending private school, whose tuition and other expenses leave them with little to no financial cushion, illustrating how even seemingly wealthy households can struggle to pay the bills.

What is a rich poor person?
Somebody that lives a wealthy life, very comfortable lifestyle, owns homes, and at the same time has such a high cost of living. So there's no savings, there's no cushion. There's a struggle to pay the bills month to month.
So every month he's trying to figure out how to pay the bills because he does the money?
It's more like at the end of the year when we're getting down to the bottom of things, like, How is it that we're short?
You're short at the end of the year.
Well, there's not much left when there should be spending every single penny.
That's going to be an even more difficult pill to swallow next year with everything going up. The food is consistently going up. The tuition bill goes up a little bit every year. And we have, you know, 5 kids to pay tuition for next year.
You have 5 kids in private school?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.