Quote
“Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't.”— Ramit Sethi, in I Will Teach You to Be Rich (2009) · I Will Teach You to Be Rich →
Why it was said
Ramit Sethi's spending rule runs through the chapter on conscious spending, where he replaces the budget, which tells you to spend less on everything, with a plan that decides in advance what deserves money.
What it actually means
Most money advice is a uniform pressure to spend less, and it fails because it asks people to give up what they love along with what they do not notice. Sethi's rule is asymmetric on purpose: name the two or three things that genuinely make your life better and fund them without guilt, then cut the rest to the bone. The sentence is a permission and a knife in the same breath.
How to use it
- 1Write the two things you would spend more on if you could and the five you would not miss; move money from the second list to the first.
- 2Automate the cuts so they do not need willpower each month.