Ramit Sethi says most people claim relationships, health, and travel matter most, but their spending doesn't match. He pushes you to look at where your money actually goes and redirect it toward what you say you care about: surprising family, better groceries, a gym membership.
If you ask people what's important to you, they'll often give you the same answers. They'll say, relationships, health, maybe travel. I go, okay, let's take a look at your spending. Show me where you spend on those things. It gets really quiet really fast. Now, it's one thing to spend time on relationships, and we should. But we can also spend money to enrich those things. It might be surprising your niece at a showing of Michael Jackson, or surprising your family by going home and visiting them. There are lots of ways you can use money to enrich those experiences. Same for health. It could be what you buy at the grocery store. It could be training or a gym membership. It could be whatever it is that's meaningful for you. But if we claim something's important to us, it sure better show up in our time and our spending.
