So again, just to reiterate, I’m not encouraging anyone to go out and waste money. I am saying that at a certain point it is okay if you incidentally waste a little bit of money because you have a bigger purpose than eliminating all waste of your personal finances.

Ramit Sethi - How to Spend (and Actually Enjoy It) - Mad Fientist Ramit Sethi - How to Spend (and Actually Enjoy It) - Mad Fientist

Car service and maintenance: If you don’t have a motor plan, you need to put money away for services, maintenance matters such as tires, and car-related things that might pop up. You don’t want to dip into emergency savings for predictable expenses. I feel like I, I feel like I’m spending it because the beans, I get high quality beans shipped in from around Scotland. And, and that was the last piece of kit. Maybe there’s something I could do where I could actually like go and learn the espresso stuff and the barista stuff that I don’t do. I just do a pour over, a V60. Ramit Sethi: So, believe it or not, FIRE people, some people actually are never gonna buy a book and compare the difference between a Roth IRA and a Traditional IRA. It doesn’t seem like you’re the target audience of his messaging, which is perfectly fine (I’m not particularly fond of everything he says either), but rather people who have more money than they know what to do with. If you enjoy working and earning (you don’t see it as a rat race anymore), and are naturally frugal, then this is a reasonable problem. Obviously it won’t resonate with people that dislike work and are prone to spending carelessly. I needed someone to come on the show to provide some tough love and Ramit was the only person for the job.

Ramit Sethi: Yeah, it definitely does. And it’s a funny wrinkle in human psychology that even if we are acting in a way that is not serving us, our mind will create a narrative where we end up being virtuous. So I’ve heard you on other podcasts where you’re like, you know, people who say they want to change and like, get better at spending, they don’t really mean it, but I, I actually do mean it. DeleteMe | If you want to get your personal information removed from the web, go to https://joindeleteme.com/ramitfor 20% off. So some of the things that I do on the podcast and in my work is simply showing people a different way to think about money, such as that dad who thought money was bad and he should never talk to his daughter about it. Because like I mentioned before, we flew premium economy to the States and then we flew business class home. And now one of my money rules is to fly premium economy on all flights over five hours because that was well worth the double the price of economy. But then business wasn’t really worth it to me for three times the price of premium economy.

I Will Teach You to Be Rich: The Journal - Google Books

Emergency fund: Ideally, you’ll have at least 3-6 months’ worth of fixed-cost expenses saved in an emergency fund. But if you’re really ambitious, go for one year. A solid emergency fund can ease potential hardship.The key message to me is to embrace spending more money than you might otherwise because its value brings you happiness. This is next level optimization to me. It’s about letting go of nominal thinking and fully embracing the value. The key is staring with what you enjoy and then thinking larger. To some this might be a FatFIRE indulgence, but I think it could apply to anyone. Two examples from my life that come to mind: I’m with you, already spending at the 4% level and my biggest luxury is buying my time. I don’t need any couching on how to spend more. Money isn’t everything, but if you like to live a life of experiences, it’s hard to be broke. So, how do you strike a balance between your top-heavy budget and some fun money? Maybe one day it will, and maybe, you know, I’ll do another experiment once we travel with our new son, which that may change everything. But that’s one of my money rules now because yes, I know I’m not gonna go crazy and just start living this lavish lifestyle that then bankrupts me. And those one-off experiments are really important for pushing my boundaries and finding what it is that it is worth spending on. That’s why I started the podcast and the journal. I want people to see that you can be inspired to spend money even if you haven’t really done it meaningfully in a long time.