Books · Money
Book summary and verdict
I Will Teach You to Be Rich
Ramit’s whole plan is to move your money before you get ideas, because apparently the person most likely to rob your future is you, standing in a store, holding something rechargeable, saying, “I’ve been meaning to get one of these.”
Should you read it?
Read it if you have a regular paycheck and want saving to happen automatically. If your income jumps around, use percentages instead of rigid dates, because a bank will overdraw you, charge a fee, and call all three events a service. If you already automate investing, you know the move.
L.Ramit Sethi wants me to automate bills, savings, and investing during the narrow window when I am not shopping like a minor king. The plan is boring, sensible, and deeply insulting, which is usually where my best financial advice lives.
The ideas
I · Infrastructure
Automate your savings. Willpower has missed three shifts and still wants a raise.
People say, "I'll save whatever's left at the end of the month," which means every subscription, impulse buy, and mysterious twelve-dollar charge eats first, and retirement gets to lick the plate. Move savings on payday. Make the present live on leftovers for once.
On payday, automatic transfers divide the money among bills, savings, investments, and whatever is left for fun. The important stuff gets paid before desire opens negotiations. Your landlord figured this out years ago. He does not manifest the rent.
L.I automate my savings. Excellent. A recurring theft you arranged yourself.
Moving the money automatically means discipline never gets a vote, which is good because discipline is unreliable and deeply impressed with itself. It arrives Monday morning carrying a water bottle and announcing a new era. By Thursday it has financed a pizza oven.
Save on payday. By dinner, that money has become nachos in your mind.
II · Spending
Keep the pleasures you remember. Cancel the charges you discover while checking for fraud.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
III · Automation
Automation gives willpower the one job it can handle: nothing.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
IV · Priorities
Being rich means picking your luxuries. Otherwise every expense puts on a neck brace and calls itself essential.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
What to actually do
Check whether your employer matches retirement contributions, then raise yours enough to collect every matched dollar.
Smaller: Apparently some of your salary is being held hostage by a dropdown menu.
L.Find the box. Get paid.
Set one automatic transfer for just after payday. Start with five dollars if that is what fits.
Smaller: Your bank can deploy a late fee at 3:01 in the morning with military precision.
L.Make the machinery work one shift for you.
Open your bank statement and find one recurring charge you do not use.
Smaller: That company is selling you a monthly serving of forgetting.
L.Cancel it. Ruin the business model.
When income is irregular, move percentages toward bills, savings, and investing every time a payment lands.
Smaller: A large deposit looks impressive until you remember six people paid late and rent remained magnificently punctual.
L.Divide it before rent introduces itself again.
Still in the app
- What happened when people tried them
- Bullshit?
- Where readers disagree
- The one thing worth remembering
The rest of this book is in the app.
Skip the Book reads the self-help books so you don't have to: what each one argues, what happened when real people tried it, which claims are exaggerated, and what to do tonight. 108 books and counting, new ones most days.
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