Summary Notebook

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

by Ramit Sethi

9 min read

Money management doesn't have to be complicated or be reserved only for people with a high income.

Even if you don't have too much money to spare each month, you can still get started on building yourself a good portfolio that meets your demands.

How?

With a mix of information and the proper mindset.

This summary will help you build up a decent financial base without giving up on everything enjoyable in life.

Let's start by:

Eliminating The Excuses

Most people stay away from money management due to the following reasons:

  1. There are too many options to invest
  2. You need big bucks to build a considerable portfolio

Although information overload is a problem, you don't need thousands of dollars to start investing.

The magic of compounding is that your money starts growing at a crazy rate with time.

Even with a modest investment of $100 every month, you can build up a huge corpus in the next 10 years.

I started by investing only around $50–60 every month.

Now:

You don't need to spend a month researching the best place to invest your money.

You can pick a standard option like index funds or retirement funds and start investing.

The cherry on top?

With a concept called conscious spending, you can save money without giving up on what you enjoy.

Don't Pay The Minimum

Debt is not bad.

If you play smartly, you can build up a fantastic credit score which will help you get low-interest rates on your big-ticket purchases.

And the best way to build a good credit score is by having a credit card.

Credit cards are often touted as evil weapons invented by banks to rip off consumers.

Yes, if you abuse your credit cards, you can rack up massive debt within a short time.

But:

If you carefully use your credit cards, you build an excellent credit score and can also earn thousands of dollars worth of rewards.

Here's how: