Making Money Talk Accessible

I’ve been sucked into the world of Ramit Sethi. For all intensive purposes, Ramit Sethi is a public personality and self-taught financial coach, with a best selling book called “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”, a Podcast spin off with the same name, and a Netflix show titled “How to Get Rich”. Wiki informed me that he is also a Stanford graduate of Arts in Science, IT and Psychology. All I can really vouch for is that his content is highly engaging and surprisingly practical.

Feeling aversion already?

Ekk, finance and financial advice, pretty dry and stressful, right? The idea of budgeting, financial discipline and education about investing can be intimidating and emotional for many of us. I used to think the same, but I can say that Ramit’s work really made me shift my thinking on how to approach finance and money, simply by laying it all out (no shame or judgement) and emphasising the importance to base our money decisions on our unique priorities and a concept of our “rich lives”. There is so much we can learn, if we face our shame or negative perceptions of money which we’ve evolved to learn throughout our childhoods and lives.

What’s the go?

Ramit’s philosophy is to make money-talk more open and accessible. He does this by shedding light on our personal money dials (how we spend and why), money beliefs (positive or negative views on money) and internal philosophies (who should be the bread-winner or beliefs about saving) that are often deeply ingrained in us from our parents and environment. Like so many things we adopt from our parent’s our view on money can be blindly influenced by our own parents views on the topic, and whether they had or lacked resources. A common trait in many of Ramit’s guests who are more “financially mature”, is that their parent’s spoke openly about money and often educated their children about the importance of thinking long term. Education is power.

Children are never too young to understand spending.

I grew up comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, my immigrant parents worked hard and struggled to ensure that my two siblings and I had everything we needed to study hard. Putting themselves through tertiary education in a foreign country, they were able to grow their salaries to buy a house, and pay for all the tuition that we needed. Even though we went on family trips to the coast once a year, I often heard, that we don't have enough for that class or that book, and often heard my parents bickering about finances. As a child, it made me feel like money was always stretched and never abundant. It’s affected my ability to make good financial decisions, as I often lack the foresight and long term thinking that ones needs to grow wealth, and that’s been self awareness that’s really helped in changing my approach to spending and saving money.

It’s only recently, as an adult, that my parents have started to talk about investing and financial strategies to grow wealth. I think it’s also coincided with their own financial journey and freedom. A key tenet of Ramit’s philosophies, is that it’s never too late to start, and it’s never too early. Instead of thinking that investing and saving starts once you meet a certain salary threshold, the idea is to practice those behaviours at every stage of your livelihood, so that when you have larger income, you are familiar and able to grow wealth exponentially.

Financial freedom means different things for different people.

Part of being financially free, means each of us being able to spend extravagantly on areas of our lives that are important to us. For some of us it may mean traveling a few times a year, or for others it might be renovating the house. What we want to avoid is blindly spending exorbitantly without a care despite not having the funds, or squirrelling away money into savings, never touching a dollar. This is surely, how you see your life pass without enjoying your “rich life”. By knowing what brings you joy, and what you desire to spend money on, you can be decisive and intentional about other areas that you traditionally spend on.

Money and relationships.

I find it particularly interesting how Ramit dissects the relationship of couples on his podcast. Discussing financial disagreements is a surprisingly good pathway to understand underlying relational tensions. It often brings to light the difference in deeply ingrained individual beliefs from childhood. From gender role expectations to scarcity mindsets, it's fascinating and so relatable how each couple has adapted to navigate each others different beliefs.

I’ve learnt so much about my own biases and beliefs about money through the content, and I encourage everyone to check it out to make money-talk more open and less taboo. It’s something that affects all our lives, and Ramit allows us to see that it doesn’t have to be painful or shameful.