798 Spend With Joy with Ramit Sethi

SPEND ON THE THINGS YOU LOVE. We all have an area of life we love spending money on. For me, it’s relationships. For you, it could be travel, food, wellness or something else. This is called your “money dial.” Once you figure out your money dial, you can spend intentionally on that rather than spending lots of money on everything. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Ramit Sethi where he shared about his concept of “money dials” and how to spend money on the things that bring you joy. Ramit says that we should cut back spending on things we don’t care about but spend without apology on the area that makes us the happiest. We can also stop judging other people for having different money dials than us. Learn how to identify your money dial and how it can take your life to the next level in Episode 798. In This Episode You Will Learn: About the different “money dials” people have (1:40) The most common “money dial” (2:03) Ramit’s personal “money dial” (2:56) What you should cut back spending on (4:18) Follow me on: Instagram @LewisHowes Twitter @LewisHowes Facebook @LewisHowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  We got my man Ramit Sethi on, who's a New York Times bestselling author of the book on personal finance called I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and the founder of GrowthLab.com. He's also got the site IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com, which his information helped me get out of debt many years ago when I read his book. He's been a good friend of mine for about 10 years and just had some incredible times with him.

• 0:39Ramit Sethi?

  And what you just said is extremely revealing. Your money dial, I would be willing to bet, is relationships.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:45Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so I have a friend, Nick Gray. Nick Gray loves hosting people at his house. Every day, he's trying a different party. He's testing stuff. He invites people over. He does all kinds of crazy stuff. He loves relationships. That's his money dial. And a money dial, the reason I say it's a dial, is you start off, maybe you have a couple of people out to dinner, and as you start to get more money and more success, you turn that dial until you're totally dialed in. You have the perfect appetizer. You have the perfect icebreakers. You have maybe friends who have jets. You're really turning that dial. There's other money dials. The most common one is frugality. Most people actually focus on cost above all else. And you can tell, because when they buy something, what's the first thing they say?

• 1:28Lewis Howes?

  They look at the price.

• 1:29Ramit Sethi?

  They look at the price, and they tell everyone else, "I got this for 60% off."

• 1:32Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 1:33Ramit Sethi?

  Okay, so that's frugality.

• 1:34Lewis Howes?

  They brag about how discounted they got it.

• 1:37Ramit Sethi?

  It becomes part of their identity. Whereas for you, dude, I see your photos. I see your conference. Your identity is about relationships. Now, there's a few others. There's wellness, which is more and more common. And you'll see people, they have the perfect diet. They have a chef. And I'm talking when they really dial it in. This is the point of it.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  They have a full-time trainer.

• 1:56Ramit Sethi?

  Yeah. This is the point of an advanced personal finance, which is, you don't have to have a trainer when you start off, right? But you went and you searched for five hours, you found the perfect program. But as you have more money, you start to say, "I want better results. I want faster results. And I have money. I'm going to throw it at the problem." Mine, my money dial, is...

• 2:16Ramit Sethi?

  Convenience.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 2:18Ramit Sethi?

  So I love convenience. And I wake up.

• 2:21Lewis Howes?

  Everything's delivered to you.

• 2:22Ramit Sethi?

  Everything's delivered. I have a chef. When I leave to travel, I have this thing called a travel protocol that gets activated with my assistant. And my plants get watered. My email gets handled differently. I mean, it's like, I've been thinking about this for the last 15 years. I'm a psycho. But that's my money dial. And I love it. Like, so.

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  She'll pay a premium for that money dial.

• 2:42Ramit Sethi?

  Exactly. But I could not care less about certain other money dials. Other common ones that a lot of people watching probably have or listening is travel. So at a basic level, people say, I like to travel. But imagine you've truly, truly become more advanced. And you've become more successful and you want to throw a lot of money at the problem because you value it. Suddenly, maybe you're going three months a year. Maybe you are leading excursions. I mean, there's, you can just expand your mind as to what you could possibly do beyond the typical eight days of vacation a year. So I share this with everyone because I like to challenge people to do something. Take a look at your spending from the last two to three months. And ask yourself, what is my money dial? And your money dial is the thing that you love to spend money on.

• 3:27Ramit Sethi?

  It's the thing that gives you joy and it's the thing you could spend endless amounts of time optimizing.

• 3:32Lewis Howes?

  And feel good about it.

• 3:33Ramit Sethi?

  And feel good about it. And so the reason, once you know your money dial, then it enables you to do two really cool things. One is you can cut back on stuff you don't care about. Okay, so if you just don't care about wellness, or if you just don't care about travel, that's okay. You can cut the spend to that. But I think the cooler thing is it allows you to take that money and now spend extravagantly on the thing you love, which is your money dial. So if you're Lewis, suddenly you don't mind throwing a lavish dinner for your friends with a performer and all kinds of crazy stuff because that's your money dial.

• 4:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Ramit Sethi?

  No need to apologize for it. So for everyone, especially the advanced folks who have money, you gotta think now, you're at a different level. You're not just trying to cut your debt. You're not just trying to cut back. You actually can spend on the things you love. And that, to me, is really exciting.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  So figure out your money dial and spend more intentionally on those things as opposed to spending lots on everything.

• 4:26Ramit Sethi?

  Exactly.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I hope you guys enjoyed this 5 Minute Friday with Ramit Sethi. And make sure to get his book, The 10 Year Anniversary Expanded and New Chapters: Teaching You How to Be Rich. Make sure to check it out on Amazon, or you can go to his website, iWiltTeachYouToBeRich.com.