I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B. S. Just a 6-Week Program That Works
by Ramit Sethi
published March 23, 2009 (paperback) by Workman
If your 401K is in the toilet, and your home value has plunged, and you can’t re-fi because the boss just cut your hours…you’re in a huge club! Read Ramit Sethi’s unapologetic book I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He’s actually written for his age group – people in their twenties and low thirties – yeah, I’ve got a few years on him – but I found some of his spunky advice quite applicable.
Ramit is chatty and irreverent, and downright rude sometimes. You can find these particular comments followed by his note “Sorry, mom.”
Despite his penchant for gorgeous twins in Vegas, I am giving him a humongous gold star! Out of the dozens of financial books I have read – and I’ve interviewed their authors, Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Jean Chatzky and others – he is the only one I recall who speaks to freelancers. For a page and a half, fine, but he explains how to make a budget when you have no freaking clue how much you will make in the coming month. Basically, you hide three-months income in a savings account – preferably ING – cha-ching, a smart friend talked me into doing that a couple of years ago. You have to know how much you need to survive each month to accomplish that. After you’ve got a cushion, you sock money away in a Solo 401K and and SEP-IRA. Ramit says Jesse Mecham has created a planning tool perfect for people with irregular incomes – it’s called www.youneedabudget.com.
However you make your money, Ramit Sethi insists on a conscious spending plan. No, it’s not a budget, because no one likes the word budget. Ever do the envelope plan? You put a certain amount of money into envelopes designated for groceries, eating out, movies, clothes, and when the money is gone from that envelope, sorry, that’s it! Although, you can choose to mix the money between envelopes. I did that about a decade ago when I was married. I could never get the system to work. Years later I found out that I had been missing a critical piece of information – my then-husband was gambling away huge chunks of our income. The envelope game works for just about everyone else.
When I began reading the book, I was – no – I’ll put it more accurately. I chose the book because I was feeling down about my current financial picture. Armed with new information, I feel like I can breathe again. It’s really not that bad at all. Whew!