Ramit Sethi discusses the difficulty of being the only person in a social circle who thinks about money, warning against judging friends for their spending and noting that judgment shuts people down. He recommends finding people’s expertise and using empathetic questions to open conversations about finances; he references research and his book (chapter nine, “A Rich Life”) for further guidance.
It's very tough when you are the only one who thinks about money and your friends don't. A lot of times, and I've written about this in my book, people think, oh, I better not tell Ramit, because he'll judge me. He's the money guy. The problem is that a lot of people who do follow personal finance blogs, they are judgmental. We are judgmental often, and that's really not the way to go. As I say, if you judge your friends for buying $200 jeans, chances are they actually don't have that money. They haven't consciously spent it. But at the same time, I could look at your finances in three minutes and show you areas where you should not be spending that much. So it's really easy to judge people for their financial spending, but that's really not the way to get people to open up. As I show you in some of the research that I quote in the book, people are immensely protective and defensive about their spending. And if you judge them for it, they that's exactly the wrong way to get them to open up. All right? And if you say, hey, let me ask you a question, and you actually find their expertise, that can be a way to get in, I talk about that in chapter nine, which is A Rich Life. How do you deal with relationships and money?
