Financial guru Ramit Sethi explains doing this one essential thing before anything else to get your finances in check. He says you’re not going anywhere if you don’t map out and plan your journey. He teaches how to make smart financial choices that will keep your financial house in order.
The era of technology has paved the way for fintech companies to help users transfer money conveniently and budget money properly. These days, there is no shortage of budgeting apps that range from free to premium services. Budgeting apps such as Mint, YNAB, PocketGuard, or Zeta could keep your finances in order.
Moreover, you can also find many resources about achieving long-term financial success and security. However, the author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Ramit Sethi, says that all these budget and financial apps won’t work if you don’t do one essential step.
I Will Teach You to Be Rich explores the principles to manage your finances properly and gain control of your future. It details a six-week program that encourages people in their 20s and 30s to live a more fulfilling life with financial security.
Getting your financial goals straight
The Cut’s Charlotte Cowes interviews Ramit Sethi about financial planning. Sethi claims that people can get too confused about making money-related decisions. He says he gets more than 2,000 messages from people of various socioeconomic backgrounds and ages per day.
Most of these messages are queries about finances and how to gain control of it to live a comfortable life. Sethi says that most people don’t know the definition of financial success. For example, when he asks clients what financial success is, they respond vaguely with no satisfying answers.
His clients’ definition of financial success would often relate to being able to do whatever they want, getting out of debt, or having a million dollars. However, when pressed for reasons of how they came up with these, his clients couldn’t answer.
More often than not, people think about taking control of their money after graduating from college, getting married, getting divorced, having children, or getting a new job. Sethi claims that this reckoning is due to external factors and never internal ones.
For instance, not many people wake up one day and say, “I want to regain control of my finances.” Instead, it’s always about these external events in one’s life that pushes people to think about managing their money.
When this epiphany happens, most people who complain about personal finances probably have never read a book on personal finances. According to Sethi, the secret ingredient to achieving financial success is competence. You have to learn the ins and outs of the language of money. Unfortunately, money is talked about restrictively and unappealingly.
The ONLY one question to ask to improve personal finance
Sethi says that these vague answers might be for fear of not living a comfortable life or a sense of obligation. These answers don’t motivate anyone from start to finish. But it’s how you plan a creative vision that allows you to make smart financial choices.
Let your dreams push you towards better money management. So before tackling the basics of financial planning, ask yourself this one question:
“What does the rich life look like to me?”
Sethi advises being more specific on your visions in life. The more detailed and sensory your responses are, the more precise the path to financial success.
