When I was growing up, my mother kept notebooks where she meticulously recorded every dollar our family spent. She never talked about them with me, she just left the notebooks on the kitchen table where I could see them. I would flip through the lines of expenses, horrified at the dollars and cents I’d incurred by just existing, terrified that I would bankrupt our family.
My parents were young and making it work on a second lieutenant's salary, so they didn’t earn much money to begin with—as the child of Korean War survivors, my mom learned to hold tight to what little she had. With her savvy budgeting, she kept me fed and clothed and even entertained. We spent countless afternoons at the library and in the children’s department of the city’s free art museum. Decades later, my family’s financial situation has improved drastically, but the years of scarcity have shaped us both. She still records her expenses in the notebooks and hides the majority of her money from herself so she won’t spend it. From her, I learned that money is a source of fear and shame.
There have been practical lessons that have served me well: Always have your own money, pay off your debts as quickly as possible, and save as much as you can. But mostly, I was unable to consider dollars spent and lost without becoming sick with guilt. I didn’t have a firm set of rules, but what I did have was a hazy set of shoulds and shouldn’ts with associated moral weights. I should always pack my lunch. I shouldn’t say yes to spontaneous dinner plans. I should abstain from buying new things, any new things, ever. I shouldn’t crack and impulsively buy a book or a plant or a cup of coffee while I’m out on a sunny weekend afternoon.
Another should: I thought I should probably read a personal finance book, but unfortunately, my primary association with personal finance was a memory of Dr. Phil on an Oprah episode sometime in the ’90s yelling at a housewife for buying MAC makeup. I don’t wear MAC makeup, but I knew there was probably a similar vice lurking somewhere in my spending, and I didn’t want to confront it. Personal finance was less a set of practices and more a sheen cast onto other people who were smarter and more practical than I am. It was an impossible measure of virtue that I would never reach. So my approach stayed simple: save most of my money, and when a big expense came around, get a tummy ache.
A few months ago, my dad suggested I check out Ramit Sethi, a personal finance author and podcaster he and my stepmom have found helpful. I rolled my eyes and didn’t, because of all the reasons I avoid personal finance experts. But deep down, I also knew that I was actually avoiding this guy because I was scared to look closely at my money in any way.
So one day on my morning walk, I hit play on an episode of his podcast, Money for Couples. On the show, he sits down with couples and goes through their spending habits and talks about their goals. I was surprised to find it was way more Couples Therapy than Dr. Phil. Sethi wasn’t judgmental about his guests’ spending; instead, the conversation focused on where each of their beliefs about money came from, and how it was affecting their current money habits.
I haven’t consumed a lot of personal finance content, but I assumed it would be rife with the type of right-leaning, prosperity gospel, personal responsibility rhetoric I generally find gross and unpersuasive. Sethi’s approach surprised me. He frequently brings cultural backgrounds into conversations with his guests about money. He talks about how his own upbringing as the son of two Indian immigrants informs the feeling of scarcity he brought to money for a long time, and invites listeners to consider how their own backgrounds might inform how they approach their finances.
In the months since I listened to that first episode, I’ve also watched Sethi’s Netflix show, How to Get Rich, and read both of his books. I downloaded his Conscious Spending Plan and used it to figure out how much we could actually afford to spend on a house. I’ve sung his praises to my sister and to my best friend and now the whole Defector audience because his approach has been so helpful in quieting the fear and guilt I have around money.
I think the most surprising part is the cornerstone of Sethi's philosophy, which is his idea of a “rich life.” Sethi encourages people to consider what being “rich” means to them, in specific detail, because it turns out a rich life looks different for everyone.
It might be taking a luxury vacation once a year, or tipping 25 percent at every restaurant, or always buying the nice toilet paper. For me, it’s the freedom to eat dinner out at a restaurant a few times a week, cooking with fresh herbs at home, buying ethically made clothing, and spending a few days in New York twice a year.
A rich life looks different for everybody, because everybody has different values and desires. The idea is that once you’ve defined a few aspects of your rich life, you can orient your financial life toward it. Save ruthlessly on the things that don’t matter to you so you can spend intentionally on the life you want.
I have felt embarrassed and grossed out recommending a personal finance expert to my friends because I know how it sounds. I think of investing advice and amortization charts as the purview of white finance bros who talk about how hard they grind but fail to mention being hired at their dad’s hedge fund. Sethi is still kind of an asshole in a smartest-kid-in-your-economics-class kind of way, but he also has a warmth and compassion that makes it easier to sit in the anxiety the conversations trigger. I still feel anxious about splurging on something a little voice in my head tells me I don’t deserve, but I am getting better at realizing “deserve” has nothing to do with it. What I actually deserve, what all of us do, is the ability to see money not as a measure of my worth, but as a tool for building the life I want to live.
