Wealth Triggers – Ramit Sethi
NYT bestselling author reveals…
Taboo secrets of the 1%
What separates the wealthy from everyone else?
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Money Psychology: How do they see mental roadblocks and financial opportunities that others overlook?
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Spending Habits: Why would anyone spend $40 on hand soap or fly business class? (Hint: It’s not just to show off.) Read on…
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Dream Lifestyles: How do they design a life of possibility, not scarcity? (If you waved a magic wand, where would you spend your money?)
(Of course, there’s also luck. Yes, people were born on third base. But I believe we all play with the cards we’re dealt — and we should give ourselves every advantage in life, especially if we can use a hidden “rulebook” that others have developed.)
Today, I’ll show you the hidden “wealth triggers” that separate “the 1%” from everyone else — and how you can start using them immediately.
Hi, I’m Ramit Sethi, the New York Times best-selling author and CEO of I Will Teach You to Be Rich.
“I’m repulsed by that kind of spending”
I recently sent out an email asking people what they spend extravagantly on. I got tons of responses. Here’s one of my favorites, from Jim G.:
“I’ll be honest – years ago I would have been repulsed by extravagant spending.But after reading your emails over the years, I realize that if the expensive item or experience is important to people, they should be able to spend their money on it. Of course, while being careful with the rest of your money, like you say in your book.[Now I realize] it’s cool to see what people spend their money on.”
I couldn’t resist. I asked him why he would have been “repulsed” by these examples earlier on. That’s a strong word!
“Earlier in my life I would have been repulsed because we didn’t have much money growing up, and we looked upon extravagant spending as a waste.My beliefs have changed over the years (and are still evolving), where I much more understand why people spend on things they like/love.”
You and I both have something in our lives that we LOVE to spend extravagantly on.
For example, when I’m ordering food at a restaurant, I don’t look at the price — and if three appetizers look good, I order them all.
There is true love in my eyes
What’s your area of life where you’ll spend anything?
There are some socially acceptable answers, like “anything for my kids.” Or your health. I appreciate hearing these ones.
But what I’m fascinated with are the areas we spend on that very few people talk about … the ones we have and know we spend a lot on … but we rarely talk about publicly.
Because those spending areas reveal a lot about what we value.
Like my friend. I have a friend who spends $5,000 on shoes — every year. She values luxury goods.
Another friend actually lives in the Four Seasons Hotel Residences — year-round. He values convenience, like the 24/7 concierge.
A third friend travels for 2 months every year. She values travel and adventure.
And a fourth friend, who loves making new friends and organizes four annual events at his lake house to introduce new people to each other. He values relationships.
(Before you keep reading … what do you spend money on that others would call “ridiculous”?)
For those examples above, it’s easy to look at these areas of spending and scoff. $5,000 for shoes? What a waste of money, right?
Our society has a long list of money taboos. Break one and you’ll hear about it from your family, friends, neighbors — even strangers who happen to be nearby.
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Flying first class? What a waste … we’re all going to the same place at the same time.
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Hiring a nanny? Are you too busy to parent your child?
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Staying at a luxury resort? Such a waste of money. I prefer to stay at some place more authentic, not holed up in some 5-star hotel.
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Getting an assistant? Why do you need an assistant? Are you too good to go to the grocery store like everyone else?
And yet…
If we’re totally honest, a tiny part of us wants to know how the wealthy do it.
Sure, you may not care about shoes or luxury hotels or first-class seats. You might spend the money differently.
But how do they even have the option of spending such crazy amounts on things like that?
These are the same thoughts we have scrolling through Instagram in bed. We’re worn out from another rat race day when more beach pics from our friend’s Bahamas getaway pop up. Didn’t she already go on vacation this year? How does she afford it?
You know what I say?
Let everyone scoff about “crazy” spending. I want to know how they do it.
I call this the “Disparagement to Curiosity” Principle, where everyone says “That’s ridiculous” … but if you get deeper, you start to say, “Wait a second. Why do they do that? How do they do that?”
Are they just up to their eyeballs in debt? Sure, some people are … but a lot of people pay in full — no debt. (Including me.)
If you look closely, you’ll also find genuinely wealthy people who play the game by completely different rules.
How the wealthy think
(vs. everyone else)
The difference between wealthy people and everyone else is deeper than just bank account balances. It goes all the way down to their thoughts and feelings.
I’ll give you a couple examples.
Take a Disney World vacation…
MOST PEOPLE:
“Let’s go to Disney World. There are hotels nearby. We’ll get there early since the lines are long and we want to get in as many rides as we can.”
A SELECT FEW:
“Let’s go to Disney World. We’ll stay at Disney World and get the Disney FastPass for several days so we don’t have to rush or wait. Or better yet, let’s splurge on the Disney World VIP Tour Service.”
Same destination … but two completely different vacations.
Or take food.
Everyone eats, but not everyone has the same experience…
MOST PEOPLE:
“I want something tasty that will fill me up. Mexican food is always good.”
A SELECT FEW:
“I’ve been keeping an eye on this amazing sushi restaurant for 3 years. It’s my anniversary and I saved up — and I know I’m going to remember this meal forever.”
I LOVE getting glimpses into the mindsets of wealthy, successful people. People living their own independent rich lives without compromise.
I may not want the same things they want, but I do want to understand the secret habits, hacks, and mental frameworks behind their success.
Of course, I didn’t always think this way. I used to laugh at people with money.
I lived 24 years before I discovered I was suffering from an invisible — but very real and very painful — handicap. I realize that’s a loaded word, but I’m using it on purpose.
Once I saw it, I noticed that nearly everyone else had similar problems. And they were just as blind to it.
The handicap I didn’t know I had
I was raised to save money. It was a necessity. We grew up middle class, four kids, and we simply “didn’t do” lots of the things that other people did…
- Paying for a personal trainer? “Talk about a rip-off.”
- Hiring someone to mow your lawn? “That’s what the kids are supposed to do. They don’t have anything better to do, right?”
- Dining out? On the rare times we went on vacation (road trip, to see relatives), my mom would pack sack lunches. Eating out wasn’t even considered.
So it’s no wonder that younger me was obsessed with the things I didn’t want to spend money on:
- “Oh, I’ll never spend money on business class … that’s dumb”
- “I would never eat at those kinds of restaurants … you’re just paying for ambiance there”
- “Dry cleaning? … That’s just a tax on people who buy expensive clothes”
My motto was: “LOL! Who would ever pay that much?”
Can you see the trap here?
When you start to define yourself by what you DON’T do, those walls become a box you can’t escape from.
How can you hope to shop at Nordstrom if you only buy clothes at H&M?
How can you hope to see the world if travel is an unnecessary extravagance?
It’s just like people who enjoy being the smartest person in the room … and then wonder why they never grow.
That was me, but with money.
If I could go back in time, I would find my 22-year-old self, shake him, and say, “OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES!! You’re missing the point!”
Even though we didn’t have a lot of money, I never felt poor.
I was rich in a lot of ways. I had a stable, loving family. I had good schools and good teachers. I had friends.
It didn’t bother me that I couldn’t afford most of the things the rich spent money on. I just thought the rich were different.
After a while, I even felt superior because I was surrounded by more meaningful things, like family, and wasn’t distracted by expensive nonsense like “fashion” or gadgets. It was better that I didn’t have those things.
Even more, I was better.
To be honest, I felt sorry for the rich. They were chasing money, but money can’t buy happiness.
Or so I thought.
As I grew up, I started to notice some problems with the idea that “money can’t buy happiness.”
When I was in college, I saw friends who had been obsessed with working at Company A for years … completely change their life’s goals as soon as Company B offered them $10k more. Did they make a good choice or a bad choice?
When I started writing about money, I read every piece of personal finance advice I could find … and I hated it. I didn’t want to live the personal finance lifestyle of endless cutting back, always saying “no,” obsessing over 1-ply or 2-ply savings. It felt like even if I “won” the personal finance game, I still lost. Something was missing…
When I took a trip to Napa with my buddies, we decided to hire a limo to drive us around. That way no one had to be the designated driver and we didn’t have to worry about parking or logistics. It was a crazy idea to me at the time, but the trip was 10x more enjoyable because of it. And it wasn’t that expensive in the end…
What if money could buy happiness?
Can money buy happiness?
You may have heard about a study that found money makes us happy up to $75,000, then it levels off. In reality, the 2010 study by Deaton and Kahneman found that “emotional well-being” peaks at $75,000. But if you take another measure, “life satisfaction,” you find no plateau — not at $75,000, or $500,000, or even $1 million.
As Dylan Matthews notes in an excellent Vox article, there is strong data indicating that the more you earn, the more satisfied you are with your life. “For developing and developed countries alike, being richer is correlated with higher life satisfaction.”
And if you want to know how to use money to live a happier life? Whillans et al. told the New York Times: “People who spent money to buy themselves time, such as by outsourcing disliked tasks, reported greater overall life satisfaction.”
That could be things like paying someone to clean your house or organize your garage. Or getting your groceries delivered to you. Any chore that makes you miserable … you can pay to make it disappear. All these little bits of help make a big difference in your overall life satisfaction.
Best of all, you don’t have to spend a lot to enjoy this, either. Sometimes, something as simple as having someone run an errand for you through TaskRabbit on a hectic day can make a world of a difference.
In short, don’t believe the headlines. Money is a small, but important, part of a Rich Life. And you can strategically use it to live a more satisfying life.
I know there are many people who have trouble making ends meet. That’s hard. I’ve been there.
But there are also a lot of people who are doing pretty well, making a comfortable living, and are addicted to the struggle. Instead of using their money to buy back time or help or happiness — they grind and save, grind and save, miserably.
I think it was Dan Kennedy who said, “Saying money can’t buy happiness is like saying love can’t buy soup. They’re supposed to serve different purposes.”
Money can buy happiness.
That little belief, that “money can’t buy happiness,” was a core piece of my identity. It was part of my family’s identity. It shaped how I viewed the world and decided what to do each day.
And it was false.
The truth was like a slap in the face. It felt like I discovered a handicap I didn’t know I’d lived with my entire life … except this one was voluntary.
It felt like blinders had been removed and now a bigger, brighter world stretched out before me.
All this from one belief about money — invisible, but toxic.
Once I discovered that one toxic money belief, it didn’t take me long to spot others…
Which toxic money beliefs
are holding you back?
The sad fact is that the vast majority of people will never achieve their full financial potential. They can’t because they’re blocked by one or more of the following toxic money beliefs. We learn them from our mom and dad, our friends, the media.
Sometimes these beliefs are true, but most of the time they aren’t. Most people don’t know the difference and accept the beliefs without a second thought.
I’ve found that most people believe at least three toxic money beliefs.
Fair warning: Once you see these, you’ll have a difficult time un-seeing them. You’ll start to notice just how deep many of these ideas seep into the media we consume, the conversations we have, and the culture we live in.
If you don’t want the red pill, stop reading.
I’ve added 9 of the toxic money beliefs to my “most damaging” list. These are the most common and damaging beliefs.
I’ll share 5 of them with you below…
Toxic Money Belief #1:
“Money causes stress.”
For a lot of people growing up, money was a cause of stress. They’d wake up to hear their parents arguing about the bills in the next room. Maybe you fight with your partner about money now.
“I can’t believe you bought those shoes for $300!”
“Well, you bought that Xbox for yourself!”
When MONEY means STRESS to you, you’ll find it difficult to talk about, manage, spend, and share. Even if you begin to earn more, you’ll just find more money becomes more stressful until you remove this belief
Toxic Money Belief #2:
“The rich are corrupt. Money is evil.”
American culture is bipolar when it comes to wealth. On the one hand, we love a good rags-to-riches story and celebrate financial winners like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and Jeff Bezos. They’re heroes and role models.
And then we call the rich heartless and selfish and hate on them. The persona is so common we even have a name for it: Scrooge.
No wonder we’re conflicted!
If you believe money is evil and the rich are corrupt, you’ll feel better about not having a lot of money. You’re not poor, after all — you’re a saint … right?
Toxic Money Belief #3:
“Money can’t buy happiness.”
Here’s the one that tripped me up. If “the best things in life are free,” then why bother trying to earn more money?
Toxic Money Belief #4:
“I don’t deserve
to make more money.”
Low self-esteem can fuel many toxic money beliefs. One of the most dangerous is the idea that you don’t deserve money.
Nobody would say this out loud, of course, but you can see it in their actions:
- They have a final interview to land their dream job and secure a big raise … but instead of preparing the night before, they get drunk. Then botch the interview the next day.
- They stay in a low-paying job that they’re much too talented for … for years.
- Or my favorite: They win the lottery and blow all of it within a year. (Please don’t do this.)
Toxic Money Belief #5:
“I can’t win the game so
why play at all?”
This toxic money belief is even more damaging. If the whole money game is rigged against you, why bother playing at all?
Some people learn this belief from their parents. Others adopt it themselves after failing a couple times and giving up. What they don’t realize is that the most successful people in the world actually fail MORE than anyone else.
(When I realized this, I created a “Failures” tab in Gmail so I could track how often I failed. If I’m not failing multiple times a month, I know I’m not pushing myself hard enough.)
The WORST part of all!
Here’s the most twisted part of these toxic money beliefs.
Because they’re invisible, we keep chasing random tactics instead of solving our core money issues.
We know we want to be more successful. We want to earn more money — and enjoy the Rich Life that comes with it — but how do we do it?
We search for a new productivity app that will finally make it easy to get things done … even though we know it won’t.
We tell ourselves we’ll “buckle down and work harder” … even though we know we never do.
We look for magic bullets (a keto diet, our morning routine, a bulletproof resume) … even though they never seem to live up to the hype.
We ALL do this!
But if we step back and take a broader look at what’s going on, the reality is surprising.
For most of us…
- We make more money today than we did 5 or 10 years ago — but we’re still fighting the same stress and fears about money. Why can’t we get ahead?
We see people earn more than us who, frankly, are less smart and less talented than we are. Sure, some are lucky and some have family money and some are just in debt up to their eyeballs — but not everyone. What are we missing?
- We follow the best advice we can find — “get a good job, hustle, save more” — but we always feel like we’re just treading water … if not slowly sinking.
Something doesn’t add up!
Introducing…
Unlock your financial potential and live your Rich Life
Wealth Triggers is an online course that gives you the tools you need to finally achieve your Rich Life. Crack the mental blocks that have been holding you back financially and replace them with proven, powerful frameworks that the wealthy use every day.
- This is specific — we include exact concepts, examples, and phrases you can use right now.
- This is rapid — a 21-day course with new material that you can apply instantly. Take it at your own pace and revisit it whenever you want.
- And this is practical — if you’ve already tried the treadmill of random hacks and “trying harder” and you want to go beyond symptoms to focus on what truly works, Wealth Triggers gives you the precise, actionable steps to build these inner mindsets into your everyday life.
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