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A $4 Million Net Worth at 41, and Still No Permission to Stop

I Will Teach You To Be Rich · ▶ 1:54:29 · 31 min read
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Overview

On Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich podcast, Ramit speaks with J and Ana. Both are 41, they have three children and live in Nevada, and they built nearly $4 million in net worth through decades of work and real estate investing. Neither of them feels free. J applied to the show because it feels like their "foot is stuck on the gas." Ana says she wants to relax too, but can't tell when it is safe to stop. Ramit frames the whole episode around one question he says almost nobody answers: how much is enough? He estimates that fewer than 1% of people actually know, and he calls it "kind of lame" to spend a lifetime accumulating money without ever deciding where it ends.

31 min read

The first look at the numbers

Before meeting the couple, Ramit reads through their Conscious Spending Plan (CSP), the framework he uses on every episode. The figures are $4.876 million in assets, about $1.256 million in investments, roughly $137,000 in savings, and $2.28 million in debt, for a net worth of $3,985,358. He guesses from the size of the debt that they own real estate. Several parts of the plan look off to him. Fixed costs are listed at 66%, which he calls "kind of high for having that high of income." Investments are at 3%, savings at 7%, and guilt-free spending at 24%.

Ramit also points out who applied. In heterosexual couples, he says, the woman almost always sends in the application. J says he tends to take on what he calls the "quote-unquote woman role" in the relationship: the finances, the communication, and, as Ana confirms, the wedding planning.

"Our foot is stuck on the gas"

J's application said: "We've worked and saved like crazy since we were 16, but it still feels like our foot is stuck on the gas and we don't know when we can cruise." J explains that he started working at 13 and Ana at around 16. Once they had enough money, they began investing in real estate, so on top of his day job he was also a landlord and renovated homes. "We never have a true moment to just relax." Relaxing is what he describes as his Rich Life.

Ana says she wants the same thing: to reach a point where their finances are good, the kids are taken care of, and they can sit on the couch and watch a movie. Her problem is that she doesn't know when that point arrives. She thinks there is still a lot they could do better, and she wants to keep working hard so their kids have what the two of them didn't have growing up. J believes that selling some of the rentals would mean they're done. They have talked about it many times, J says, and each of them stays convinced of their own view, so "we just talk and talk and just doesn't really get us anywhere." Asked when they last disagreed about money, J answers: "Every time."

Their jobs: Ana works in retail, and J is a national account manager for a rental equipment company. Their children are a 16-year-old daughter, a 14-year-old daughter, and an 11-year-old son. Both say they talk to the kids about money "all the time," mostly about not living paycheck to paycheck and not living off credit cards, because neither of them learned those things growing up.

The credit card statement fights

The conflict flares at the same point every month, when J's credit card payment goes through. J says he puts much more than personal spending on that card, including bills and medical and dental costs, but Ana will see a payment of $6,000, or once $10,000, and ask what was on it. J says he ends up explaining $20 and $30 purchases. That makes him feel she doesn't trust him to keep the family "in the green," even though he has handled their finances for 18 years. He says that looking year over year, they are in the green, although some months run higher.

Ramit asks Ana what she would do with a magic wand. She says she would take away J's credit card and some apps on his phone, put the money toward paying off the rentals, and stop worrying about all the mortgage payments. J says he doesn't buy it. Less than two weeks earlier, he says, Ana suggested that if they sold one of their California properties, they should buy an eight-plex in Nevada. "I'm always going to have mortgages." Ana smiles and says she is "working on" it. She adds that she hopes the conversation will get them to stop acquiring properties and let J travel, which he loves. Ramit asks whether she needs his permission to live her Rich Life, and she laughs: "Yes, please give it to me." More seriously, Ana wants their spending under control so they could live on their W-2 income if they no longer had the rentals.

Shoes, cars, and $55,000 in modifications

Ramit asks about two recurring flashpoints. The first is shoes. About seven months earlier, J bought roughly ten pairs during a Nike sale for about $300 in total, and he expects them to last two or three years. He thinks Ana just likes calling him out when he spends.

Cars are the bigger issue, and J calls them "my vice." At a previous job he bought a truck costing over $100,000, and before that a sports car. He says he mostly sold them for close to what he paid but lost money on the modifications. The truck, a Raptor, got paint protection film costing about $8,000 plus suspension upgrades. His current car is a Toyota Supra. He paid $55,000 for it and estimates he has put another $50,000 to $55,000 into modifications: "I could have bought a second one." Ana says they waste a lot of money on modifications that go away when he sells, so she has told him he is not allowed to sell the Supra. Ramit says he isn't a car person and finds the whole aftermarket world baffling. J's reply: "We can't all drive a Honda Accord for 20 years, man."

The parent–child dynamic

Ramit asks what role each of them plays in these arguments. J says Ana is "the authority… or the mom," asking why he spent money, and his job is to justify himself. Ana agrees, adding that she has trouble understanding why anyone would spend that much on an already nice car.

Ramit names the pattern as a parent–child dynamic: "Why'd you do that? Did you need that?" answered by "But, Mommy, I like to spend money on candy." He says it's more complicated than that, though, because Ana told him she doesn't enjoy playing that role. His other point is that although some of J's spending is extravagant, the couple can almost certainly afford it. So in Ramit's view, something deeper is going on. He tells Ana he doesn't know yet whether J should spend this way. The way to decide is to look at the numbers: do they have enough, are they going into debt? Simply disliking the spending isn't enough of an answer. Ana says she understands.

Reworking the Conscious Spending Plan

Both say that filling out the CSP together was eye-opening and confusing, because they didn't know which bucket some numbers belonged in. Ana was surprised by "how everything adds up so fast." Asked how the net worth figure makes them feel, Ana says she likes everything except the debt and feels "a little anxious" but "overall content." J says he feels proud: the numbers represent about 30 years of 18-hour days and nights renovating until 3 a.m. He adds that all the debt is real estate debt and that they have equity in every property, so they could sell and pay it off if they had to.

Ramit calls it incredibly impressive at 41, saying it would be impressive at 70. He asks whether they ever celebrate. J says they take roughly one vacation a year, though they skipped the most recent one, and those trips are when he turns off his work phone and does nothing related to real estate. But they have never sat down and said "look where we're at." This was the first time they had ever put their numbers on paper. Ramit says it's common to live day to day, paying bills and fixing dishwashers, without ever stepping back to ask what it all adds up to and what it means.

The income figures had errors. Their combined gross monthly income is $21,279, about $255,000 a year, yet the net was listed as $367,000, higher than the gross. The reason was that Ana had added rental income into net because they didn't know where else to put it. In a voiceover, Ramit explains that the CSP is deliberately simple and struggles with multiple income streams taxed at different rates, so the team ballparked it. Ana's gross was changed from $4,518 to $10,500 a month and her net from $18,375 to about $8,000. She had also counted their mortgage twice under fixed costs, and removing the duplicate brought fixed costs down sharply. Ramit says the original 66% "did not sit right" for a high-income couple, and this explained it. He acknowledges that viewers often want the CSP expanded with more line items and calls many of those comments fair, but says he would "take simplicity over complexity and even comprehensiveness," since "weird freak optimizers" tend to build spreadsheets no one can understand.

After the adjustments, fixed costs came to 49% of about $243,000 in net annual income. Investments were listed at 5%, which J disputed: he puts 7% into his 401(k), $1,000 a month into Robinhood, and $7,500 a year into a Roth IRA. Adding the Roth (about $585 a month) brought investments to 8%, and Ramit notes the real figure is higher once the 401(k) is included. Savings were 10%, about $2,100 a month, leaving roughly $6,000 a month.

Next Ramit notices that J had set the miscellaneous category to zero. J says he assumed it meant subscriptions, and they don't have many. Ramit points out that the $6,000 a month on the card, including a recent $2,000 tooth replacement, is exactly what miscellaneous is for. J admits he may have done it "to get a rise out of you," and Ana says she warned him Ramit wouldn't like it. Ramit says that about 3% of the time, people change his numbers for a good reason and he respects that. What he objects to is zeroing out a line because it looks big. With miscellaneous restored, fixed costs rose to 57%. That's still within his 50–60% range, though he thinks their income could support a lower number. Their savings cover 11 months of fixed costs. J says that reassures him because Ana's biggest fear is something happening to him or his job. Ramit says he has been recommending 12 months in turbulent economic times and calls their savings solid.

In a later voiceover, Ramit concedes the CSP work was "a little chaotic" and says he may not have clarified everything. What stands out to him is that the couple weren't surprised when fixed costs dropped by that much. He reads that as a sign they aren't closely connected to their numbers, and he wonders whether they are comfortable with chaos in general, since it would fit with working constantly and never relaxing even for an afternoon.

How they actually think about debt

About $5,000 a month remains for guilt-free spending. J likes that, but says Ana wants it in savings or put toward the mortgages. Their primary residence is at 6.5%. The other mortgages are at 2.75% and 3.25%. A Big Bear Airbnb that J co-owns with a friend, which they are trying to sell, is at 7.25%. Ramit asks Ana whether she would pay off the 2.75% loan early. She says she would focus on the primary, and that the 2.75% rate is too low to be worth paying down.

Ramit finds that revealing. Many people hate debt so much that the math doesn't matter to them. He compares it to having roaches on you: they want it gone even when he shows them that paying early could cost something like $385,000 in opportunity cost. Ana, he says, understands interest rates. So he asks what she actually wants to do with the $5,000. She says she would put it in a separate account to cover the rentals in case something happens to J or they lose tenants, because one property is a house the kids want to keep in the family.

The house they can't agree on selling

That house, in California, is the center of the disagreement. J calls it messy. It's a large, valuable home, and its mortgage roughly matches the mortgage on their current Nevada house, so a three-month vacancy means paying two mortgages. "Can I sustain it? Yes, but for how long?" He also worries it would create resentment among the kids someday, because only one family could live in it. If they sold it, he says, they could pay off the primary residence, invest the rest, or even buy the eight-plex Ana wants.

J says Ana has agreed to sell it twice and then changed her mind. Before they were invited on the show they had decided to sell, and about two weeks ago she reversed course again. Her reason is their 11-year-old son, who has memories there, like coming down the stairs and watching videos together on her phone, and who says he loves the house. Ramit says the decision clearly isn't purely financial for her, and that each question the couple pulls on unravels into another one. He calls it "analysis paralysis." J says they have been stuck like this "as long as I can remember," and neither of them feels good about it.

Ramit points out the irony that making all this money hasn't made them feel better. J says that higher salaries and more properties turned out to bring more pressure, because "you're doing it for the team." He loves that his son has memories there, but an 11-year-old doesn't understand the mortgage, upkeep, and maintenance that come with a house that size. He adds that they are very thankful, but keeping everything afloat is a lot of work. Ana says the emotions around the kids make it impossible for her to decide on the math alone.

Two immigrant childhoods, two different reactions

Ana came to the US from Iraq at age seven. Her parents didn't speak English, and her father took whatever work he could find, including landscaping and car washes. She hadn't attended school back home, and here she noticed other kids' clothes and wondered why she didn't have them. Her father is now 70 and still works. He says it keeps him young, even though she wishes he would stop. Her mother raised seven children in a small house, and Ana never saw her parents discuss money. What they passed on, she says, was the basics: work hard. She graduated from San Diego State (SDSU) with no student debt by working one job after another and saving, and she credits her mother, who handled the family's money. Asked whether her mother is relaxed now, Ana says no, she still stresses, though she tells Ana to stop working so much.

Ramit notices that Ana rushed through her childhood as she described it. He says friends of his with immigrant parents often find it very hard to feel at ease. He tells her he isn't sure he believes she wants to relax. Maybe stress is simply what she knows, and if she never saw relaxing modeled, it's hard to know how to do it. Ana describes her relationship with money as "not enough." She doesn't like spending, she likes saving for the future and the kids, and she calls herself "a worrier" who is always asking "what if this happens?" Asked who she would be without the worry, she says she doesn't know, because it's who she has been all her life. Ramit says that's exactly what worriers tell him, and that the worry usually comes from what they watched their parents do.

J also came to the US at seven, from Mexico. He says that as a child he felt money was treated as something evil: relatives who had money were criticized as stingy. His mother cleaned houses, and his father went from landscaping to pool construction. Until he was 13, J wore hand-me-downs from the families his mother cleaned for, and the family lived in a two-bedroom apartment. When his father started earning more, the first thing he bought was cars, one for himself and one for J's mother, and J remembers that as a point of family pride. He thinks his car habit comes from there. No one talked about saving, and J was the one who introduced his parents to a 401(k). He says he loves money, or more precisely what it can bring: freedom and experiences.

In a voiceover, Ramit notes that the two are the same age, immigrated at the same age, and share a birthday, yet reacted to similar upbringings in opposite ways. He says that among couples he talks to, the fearful, protective partner is often the woman and the one who spends and invests more is often the man, though not always. He adds that you can't predict whether a given upbringing will produce a spender or a saver, and that this applies to their children too.

What the Rich Life is, and why "never" is the answer

J's Rich Life is waking up without an alarm, having breakfast with Ana, and spending a day with nothing scheduled: no practices, no broken toilets or air conditioners. Ramit says that sounds like retirement, and J agrees. Ana says her Rich Life is her kids: set them up first, then vacations, someday grandkids, and relaxing.

Ramit tells her that in theory she could relax today. If they sold every property and invested the money, they would never need to work again. J says this is the argument Ana always dismisses as ludicrous. Ana says she doesn't believe it because everything costs more now, her youngest still has seven years until adulthood, and after that she wants to help with college, homes, and weddings. Ramit replies that by that logic she will work forever. Then he runs the numbers: a 20% down payment on a $1 million house for each of three kids ($600,000), a $50,000 wedding each ($150,000), and $150,000 of college each ($450,000), roughly a million dollars set aside. Would she be ready to relax then? "I want to say yes, but I know myself." Ramit tells her the answer, for most people he talks to, is "never."

When Ramit asks Ana to describe her future self, she mostly lists what that person wouldn't do: not worry, not check price tags, not check every account. She says the future Ana would wear the same plain clothes and drive the same car. Ramit points out the "shield" going up and tells her there are no wrong answers. Even if her Rich Life were Cincinnati, he would say out loud that it sounds amazing. Eventually Ana names Japan, Thailand, and Greece, eating authentic food, and shopping at markets so she can teach the kids recipes at home. Just the two of them, she would watch a movie on the couch. She can't do that now, even midday, because "there's a thousand things I could be doing": kids, sports, errands, managing rentals, fixing the house. She likes being busy, she says, and also doesn't.

Busy as identity

J says he is the same way. They moved from California to Nevada partly to save on taxes and partly to slow down, so the kids could walk to school and rely on them less. A few weeks before the episode, they realized: "It doesn't matter where we live, it's us." When one of them finally sits down in the middle of the day, the other asks why they're resting. He says both of them do it and he hates catching himself. The night before recording, they were outside until 10:30 p.m. hanging string lights in the backyard to finish the project before the trip. He liked the result. The work itself, he says, is "just the norm for me."

Ramit offers an example from his own career. He used to write and send his newsletter himself, testing every link and watching the metrics, and he loved it and was good at it. Now someone on his team does it, and he couldn't say what software they use. Only after delegating did he realize the part he actually loves is the readers' responses, not the mechanics. J says that fits: some projects stopped being fun long ago, but hiring a contractor makes them unaffordable in the moment, so he weighs it that way. He also recalls Ana insisting he fix an air conditioner himself instead of paying about a $99 service fee. Ramit calls it an identity trap. J says it's more about picking which disagreements to have. Ramit's answer is that sending those emails made him feel smart and in control while he was "playing small." If he hadn't let go, he says, he wouldn't have learned YouTube, done podcasts, written another book, or made a Netflix show. J names his equivalent: "the physical work."

Ramit says it's work a couple worth $4 million shouldn't be doing. He argues that parents who are up until 11 p.m. hanging lights, when they could pay someone about $1,500, are teaching their kids to fear money rather than to manage it. At this level of wealth, he says, success depends less on hard work and more on knowing when to delegate. Ana says it opened her eyes, but that their son helped with the lights and it was quality time. Ramit sets the lights aside and points to everything else: the AC, the dishwasher, screening tenants.

Are the properties part of their Rich Life?

Asked directly, J says the properties were part of his Rich Life early on but aren't anymore. The breaking point was recent: one tenant stopped paying rent, which he describes as hard to resolve in tenant-friendly California, while another tenant moved out. That meant three to four months of vacancy plus cleanup costs, and J doesn't want to deal with that in retirement when rentals would be their only income. He is fine keeping their triplex, which pays for itself and would supplement their income. Ana admits she enjoys the fast pace of managing properties and the wealth it builds, and she wants to keep the California house for the kids. Ramit says both of their descriptions of the Rich Life barely involve the properties, and that people who own multiple properties usually don't relax.

Ramit describes a poll of his social media followers asking whether they would rather inherit a house in an uncertain location, possibly shared with siblings, or a portfolio of cash and stocks. He says more than 90% picked stocks, yet most parents think in terms of passing down a house. Ana says J has said the same thing: sell, put it in an index fund, and let the kids decide as adults. J calls the 4,200-square-foot house a pile of "phantom costs" the kids never signed up for. Ramit adds property taxes, unequal ability to pay among three siblings, and the risk of siblings becoming estranged, calling it potentially a curse rather than a gift. J recalls asking the kids outright, and two of the three said they would take the money. Ramit says the house has become "the tail wagging the dog."

Ana says she agrees but wants to wait until the kids are adults, 18 or 19. Ramit says he doesn't mind whether the decision comes at 20, 25, or 30. What he objects to is that no decisions are being made at all. He ties it to an immigrant script of "head down, keep going," which he says explains a lot of immigrant success but eventually stops making sense. He then broadens it into a critique of American busyness culture: people are confused when he says he isn't busy. He remembers calling his father at work and his father never once cutting the call short. He says he doesn't want to be impressed by couples who dream of relaxing someday. He has talked to too many who planned to travel at 60, and then one of them died.

What compounding does to "enough"

Ana guesses they will have $8–10 million by 60. Ramit says it will likely be much more. Counting only investments, not the properties, he projects about $2.86 million at 50, $4.3 million at 55, and $6.3 million at 60, and then compounding keeps doubling it. J says this is why he applied: he has shown Ana the math, including a FIRE number they have already passed, and it changed nothing. "No, cuz it's just a number," Ana says.

Ramit then calculates, for simplicity, what happens if they sold everything and invested the proceeds: $7.2 million at 50, which at a conservative 3% withdrawal rate yields about $216,000 a year; $10.2 million at 55; $14.5 million at 60; and eventually, he says, more than $100 million. Ramit asks whether the difference between $4 million and $10 million changes their lifestyle at all, and they agree it doesn't. So in Ramit's view the work isn't about the money anymore. It's an emotional skill their immigrant parents never modeled, and he thinks learning it would be worth more to them than another $5 million passed on to the kids. He also warns that heirs who only watched their parents work may either blow the money or become fearful hoarders themselves.

Ana says the obstacle is fear: "I think I'm just afraid of messing up." J says she agrees to decisions and then reverses them within days. Ramit calls the reversals a form of scarcity: retreating to the familiar because you might be wrong. They see a therapist but don't discuss money there, because teenage crises take over the sessions. Ramit suggests money may be a symptom of other issues and a good topic for therapy.

Saver, spender, and $1,000 that went unspent

Ana does say she accepts that they are wealthy, especially given where she came from, but she won't call herself a spender. She believes every couple needs a saver to balance the spender, even at $25 million. Ramit asks whether they could spend $2.5 million a year. J laughs and says he is wearing a Costco shirt and $40 pants. Ramit describes his own shift: he still insists on hitting a savings number, but no longer thinks of himself as a saver. One of his rules is that at restaurants he orders whatever he wants regardless of price, even three appetizers. Ana doesn't think she could ever do that, though vacations with a couple they're friends with are where she can loosen up.

Ramit tells Ana he likes who she is and doesn't think she needs to become someone else, only to "unlock" parts of herself. He says that talking about the kids' weddings and houses is a way of avoiding her own wants. He'd rather hear her say something like getting her hair or nails done monthly or picking up the check with friends. Money "languishing locked up in a bank," he says, isn't being respected. J agrees and says he sometimes overspends because he believes a dollar buys less every year. Ramit asks whether that might feed Ana's sense of scarcity. J says she has been this way since she was 16 or 17, long before his spending grew.

Ramit proposes that they get clear on their monthly surplus and split it: some toward a mortgage if Ana wants, some toward fun, and some just for her. With $1,000 a month for herself, Ana says she would visit her sisters in San Diego and have a nice dinner. J then reveals that last year they each opened a separate personal account with money in it. Ana's has "well over a thousand dollars," and she has spent none of it. Ramit suggests a rule that the money must be spent within a month, which he calls a skill to build. He wants her to do it for her daughters too, who "need to see their mom actually enjoying the money that she worked for."

That's when Ana cries. "I wish I could just go out and just enjoy the money with my kids… It's just hard." She says she never saw her mother spend money and would have liked to. Ramit describes putting his own parents on a travel plan that required them to spend a set amount each month. They resisted and said they planned to leave the money to him, and he told them he wanted them to spend every last cent. He calls ages 40 to 60 the "prime spending years," while people are still healthy and mobile. In a voiceover he tells viewers who dismiss millionaire couples as unrelatable that the episode is "a crystal ball into your future": investing automatically will make you wealthy, but it won't fix your money psychology.

The spa-day text

Asked what she would do if she lived more in the future than the past, Ana says she would do more with her daughters and take them for a spa day. Ramit asks her to text them right then. She writes, "Do you guys want to do a spa day with Mommy?" Her daughter replies with something Ana first reads as "What's wrong, bro?" The actual text was "Yeah, sure. We would love to. What's wrong, though?" Ana explains the reaction simply: "Cuz… I don't do it." Ramit says nothing is wrong, and she replies that she and "Poppy" work really hard and she wants to treat them. The daughter answers, "Oh, okay. Yeah, sounds good. Tell Remit I said hi, and I love him." Ramit says he is proud of her, and that while some viewers will say they've never seen someone struggle so much over a spa day, it's the first step toward a new identity.

The commitments

Ramit suggests three things: decide about the house within six weeks, starting individual therapy alongside couples therapy and discussing the decision there weekly, and watch a movie together once a month. J asks how they'll hold themselves accountable, since they've agreed before. Ramit's answer is to agree on it here and bring it to therapy. Ana thinks six weeks might be pushing it. Ramit coaches J to encourage her instead of pressuring her, and J tells her he believes a month and a half is enough time for someone as intelligent as she is. Ana agrees. Ramit tells her the scary part is probably what she needs to do, and compares deciding to learning to ride a bike.

J commits to a movie or an afternoon on the couch. They choose Friday, one of the next four, on the calendar. J also commits to being more mindful of his own spending and offers Ana $1,000 a month just for herself. Ana says she can't commit to spending that and offers $200 "if that." Ramit accepts, calling it a great start. J takes the same $200 for himself, and Ramit asks them to tell each other what they bought, without judgment.

Asked what surprised them, J says he knew Ana struggled to spend but didn't realize how severely, and that he was struck by how much upbringing shapes money habits. Ana says it was how many of her traits come from her mother. She came in "super nervous" and now understands why she is the way she is. J says it helped to have "a non-biased third party" say what he has been telling her for years.

Ramit's final warning: become decisive together

In his closing, Ramit says his real hope for them has little to do with money. He wants them to become decisive, and to do it together. Going through life indecisive, he says, is "like going through life with brakes on." He wants Ana to build the confidence to say what she thinks they should do and to have support in doing it. He wants J to be that support and to stop saying things like "this is what I've been telling you." He predicts it will be very hard, because people who have spent their lives treating exhaustion as an aspiration find it "often nearly impossible to change," and Ana struggled even to commit to $200. Still, he says there's hope, and that a brighter tomorrow would look like showing their kids how to use money well and actually watching TV together on the couch.

In follow-up videos, Ana says her biggest surprise was learning that her need to save came from her mother and her need to keep working came from her father. She says they plan to work less, take more vacations with the kids, and go to the movies with J at least once a week. J says hearing that they had done "all the right things" in their 20s and 30s gave him permission to "put the car on cruise control." He plans to slow down and spend a bit less, and hopes Ana spends a bit more. He reports that they have already put one property on the market and hope to list a second by next year.

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