How Gambling Pulls In People Who Think They're Being Smart
I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Ramit Sethi, who says he has spent more than 20 years studying money behavior, reacts to a series of gambling clips from social media. His main claim is that many people who lose savings, homes, or relationships to gambling believed they were making smart money decisions. He also argues that the same thinking appears in options trading, crypto, and prediction markets. Across the clips he looks at how an innocent first bet becomes a spiral, and he ends with a simple test for telling investing from "gambling in disguise."
Options Trading as a Red Flag
The first clip opens with a creator explaining how they use "an options trading strategy to bet the weather on prediction markets." Sethi stops it almost immediately. His view is that anyone describing themselves this way will lose money, and that it's "just a matter of time."
He supports this with his own experience. He says he has never met an ultra-wealthy person who trades options, and that in his experience it is typically done by people who are uneducated, don't have much money, or both. He grants that companies trade options but says an individual is not a company. He also points to what he sees as a contradiction: people who present themselves as sophisticated traders often can't say what their own income is or how much they spent on burgers in the last week. He doesn't finish the clip and moves on.
A Young Man's Spiral Before Age 21
The second story is a young man describing how he got into gambling. He kept seeing gambling promoted on YouTube and TikTok, along with people posting huge wins, and wondered why that couldn't be him. He downloaded DraftKings. He says his mom trusted him to open the account after he told her he didn't have a problem and only wanted it "for sport." He lost $2,500 in one day. Things got worse after he also downloaded FanDuel. He says he was losing entire paychecks of over $2,000 each while "chasing that high" and trying to win everything back quickly.
The turning point he describes came late one night, alone in bed, playing a casino game on BetMGM. He got his balance up to $11,000 and told himself that was his stopping point because he had recovered his losses. He didn't stop, and he says he doesn't know what kept driving him. He lost it all the next day and describes a "hopeless feeling." The interviewer confirms that all of this happened before he turned 21.
Sethi says he appreciates the young man sharing the story and considers it courageous, because losing money is deeply shameful, especially for young men who see content online suggesting that making money this way isn't hard. In his conversations with people who have lost money through gambling or other poor decisions, he says the hardest part for them is facing what they did. Stopping means looking in the mirror and admitting there is no one else to blame, so it can feel easier to keep going.
Easy Access and "Predatory" Companies
Sethi then turns from personal responsibility to the environment. He argues that 15 or 20 years ago, someone under 21 could not have gambled this easily. They would have had to drive somewhere to lose money. Now they can pick up a phone and lose $11,000 by clicking around.
He says people should take responsibility for their behavior, and also recognize that "these predatory companies are surrounding you." In his account, these companies disproportionately target young men through ads, paid organic posts on Reddit, and a general effort to be present everywhere. He tells viewers to stop seeing gambling companies as friends or sources of opportunity and to treat them as enemies. He mentions his own public comments on Twitter telling the co-founder of Robinhood that he has no respect for what the co-founder built. He groups Robinhood with "all these other gambling sites" that he says know they are trapping young men and keep doing it anyway.
A Spouse Discovers the Losses
The next clip comes from John Delony's show. A caller named Elise asks how to support and handle a spouse with a gambling problem. She says that a year or two earlier she started to feel that they earned decent money but never had any, and were always scraping by. She opened her own bank account and moved her direct deposit into it. A few weeks before the call, her husband told her they were about to overdraw. She wondered how her whole paycheck had disappeared in two days, looked into the account, and found he had been going to the casino. She estimates they are about $20,000 in the hole.
Delony replies that he bets the real number is triple that, and says he hopes he's wrong, because $20,000 is a problem they could solve fairly quickly with discipline. His next step is that her husband starts going to Gamblers Anonymous the next day. When she asks what happens if he doesn't, Delony says she will have a choice to make. When she mentions she has already "recommended" things, he says they are done with recommendations, because her husband is taking out loans in her name.
Sethi agrees with Delony. The issue, he says, is not recommending or pleading with a spouse. It is setting a clear expectation and being clear about the consequences if it isn't met. He notes that couples with addictions have appeared on his podcast and that it is very difficult. He also raises financial infidelity as something people rarely discuss. There aren't movies about it the way there are about other kinds of infidelity. Because many people don't understand their own finances, discovering a partner's secret gambling or spending leaves them unsure what it means, even though they know it feels bad.
Why Sethi Wouldn't Choose a Partner With Gambling Tendencies
Sethi states his personal position plainly: he could not be in a relationship with a gambling addict. If he saw even gambling tendencies in someone up front, he would not commit to them. He calls the choice of partner both the biggest risk and the biggest opportunity of his life.
He separates this from the harder case of discovering the problem inside an existing marriage. There, he says, setting an expectation and holding the person to it matters most, and he declines to tell anyone to end their marriage. His advice is aimed at people who are single or dating. If they see signs of gambling, or simply irresponsibility with money, they should think hard about a lifelong commitment. He describes marriage in practical terms: deciding who gets up when the kids are crying, managing when one partner has to spend four months caring for a sick parent, and setting goals together when it's hard. He argues all of this becomes extremely difficult if one partner is addicted to gambling.
"Gamblers Are Optimists": The Golf Comparison
The next clip shows a man explaining gambling from the inside. He says people who call gambling idiotic are taking a logical approach, but gamblers are optimists who focus on the possibility of a big win. He offers an example: losing $5,000 on each of five Vegas trips a year comes to $25,000. He says he knows people who spend $75,000 or $125,000 a year on golf; he doesn't golf, he gambles. He admits that if you play for the rest of your life you will lose money, and calls it "dumb," but says the entertainment and the rush, such as doubling down from $100 to another $100, is what keeps people coming back.
Sethi calls the video insightful and breaks it into several points. He agrees with the first: people don't act like rational robots. His example is clothing. Most people aren't wearing the cheapest shirt available. They buy from Old Navy or Macy's because it feels good or because a coworker wears it. "We are emotional creatures," he says.
He rejects the golf comparison. He says he doesn't really know anyone who spends $75,000 a year on golf. More importantly, he sees the comparison as a classic deflection: when people are questioned about gambling, they often answer that at least they aren't as bad as someone else. He compares it to reality TV logic, such as having $12,000 in credit card debt but not $100,000, and says this isn't an effective way to go through life. He also adds a difference the golfer didn't address: gambling can cost you your house, your 401(k), and eventually your partner, and many people won't realize it for years.
If It's Entertainment, Budget It as Entertainment
Sethi does credit the man for admitting that gambling loses money over the long run and is really about entertainment. He likes that honesty because it allows a fair comparison. If gambling is entertainment, it should be weighed against ordering DoorDash, seeing a movie, or going to a bar. He is fine with spending money on fun. What he objects to is calling gambling an investment. His recommendation is to take a set amount from your guilt-free spending, set a firm limit on gambling, and never confuse entertainment with investing.
He connects the rest of the stories to a missing system. Without one, he says, people make emotional money decisions without running the numbers, chase losses to get back to even, and convince themselves the next big thing will fix everything.
$100 a Day on Kalshi
The longest segment is a clip from a creator on "day 184 of risking $100 every single day for the rest of my life," who bets on the strangest thing they can find online. Sethi admits it's a compelling hook he would click on himself. He then asks why people won't spend $100 on improving themselves, such as college, books, or learning Spanish. His answer is that betting $100 on a "pie in the sky" payoff is easier and more exciting than something that sounds boring, like learning to conjugate verbs.
The creator says they are up for the month and the year, and goes to Kalshi, a site that lets users bet on almost anything. They choose a market on whether Powell will say "uncertainty" five times during a September press conference, and bet "no." A $100 bet would win $113. Sethi says this is like watching broke people talk about how they'll become wealthy, and that no wealthy person he knows would talk or act this way.
The 4% Interest Hook
Sethi rewinds after noticing a line on screen: the funds "earn 4% interest." He argues this is a deliberate technique by what he calls a sophisticated financial company whose job is to squeeze money out of users. As he describes it, the user is emotionally excited about a big Powell bet while the rational part of their mind notes that 4% is reasonable, similar to a high-yield savings account, so the bet seems better than leaving money in checking. He says these features let users believe they're winning while they are "merely the receptacle" the company squeezes for profit, and he directs this specifically at men aged 21 to 30.
What Serious Investing Looks Like
Sethi also criticizes the creator's excited presentation, joking that it needs NBA entrance music. He says serious investors don't act this way. He compares them to a chef cooking for 300 people. The chef doesn't wonder anxiously how the cornbread will turn out, because they've done it a thousand times. He says his own face doesn't change when he invests, because he doesn't do it by hand. His money moves automatically every month, as it has for almost 30 years, and he doesn't log into websites to type in numbers.
He also points to a poster in the creator's background from Uncut Gems, the film in which Adam Sandler plays what Sethi calls a hustler and scammer. He contrasts this with the people he looks up to, including his wife and authors who taught him a lot, and argues that backgrounds can reveal who a person treats as a hero.
Why One Win Doesn't Validate the Process
As the press conference continues, the odds shift while the creator watches reporters' questions and Powell's answers. The final question ends without Powell saying the word five times, and the creator wins.
Sethi expects viewers to say he was wrong. He responds that getting lucky on one day, or a few days, doesn't change whether the process is good. His analogy is the gym: one day you might magically bench 225 pounds, but what matters is going three or four times a week and applying progressive overload consistently. Someone might win for a day, five days, or even five months, but he says he is judging a process meant to last a lifetime, and he doesn't see one here.
The Math of $100 a Day
Sethi runs the numbers. He puts $100 a day at about $3,000 a month, or $36,000 a year. He assumes the creator is roughly 30 and starting from zero, and has 35 years to invest in low-cost funds. By his calculation, that grows to about $5.3 million after adjusting for inflation, or about $10.7 million without the adjustment. He stresses that the inflation adjustment is already included, to head off that objection. His point is that almost nobody would actually spend $100 a day on entertainment for the rest of their life, yet the same money invested would make them a multimillionaire.
He says he takes this seriously because he sees "an epidemic of young men corrupting their own futures." In his view, many are so nihilistic that they don't believe they can ever get ahead, so they choose fun and the approval that comes with it.
Likes, Selective Memory, and Hidden Losses
Sethi notes the clip had about 116,000 likes and 670 comments, with one comment receiving 12,000 likes. He reminds viewers that likes don't pay the bills and calls this kind of attention addictive. He points out that some young men mock women for taking selfies in restaurants, and argues that posting gambling content is no different, except that it costs potentially millions of dollars in exchange for praise from strangers.
He also highlights something he calls subtle: the creator is sharing this because they won. Sethi says gamblers are notorious for not reporting losses. People even erase losses from their own memory as a way for the brain to cover them up, while talking loudly about wins. He cites crypto posters on Twitter as a well-known example of people who post wins and delete losses. His conclusion is that viewers are being played from every direction, by the videos they watch, the people they follow, and the apps they use to place bets, and that they are "the mark" without knowing it.
The Partners of Disguised Gamblers
Sethi says he feels sorry for the girlfriends and wives of gambling addicts, particularly those whose partners disguise the addiction as intelligence. He describes a man who calls himself a crypto trader, sits in a Discord with Robinhood open and charts on the screen, and explains to his wife in jargon about liquidity and breached candles. She assumes he knows what he's doing and leaves the room. Sethi's view is that this person is a gambling addict who has made it sound sophisticated, and that partners often find out two, three, or five years later and wonder how they could have known. His blunt advice: if they have a Robinhood account, "you all need to walk."
The Litmus Test: Investing vs. Gambling
Sethi ends with the rule promised at the start. Investing is boring, repeatable, and based on long-term growth. Gambling is exciting, unpredictable, and depends on short-term wins. His test is based on feelings. If you feel a rush when you make a decision, an urge to check constantly, or a need to win money back, you are gambling, not investing. He shows it with his face: an excited expression for gambling and a blank one for investing, because his money sits in low-cost index funds and simply grows.
His alternative is to automate investments every month so they happen without manual action, use simple low-cost index funds or equivalents, and stop checking accounts daily.
Today I'm looking at some of the most brutal gambling stories online. I'm talking about people losing their savings, their homes, their relationships. And here's what's going to surprise you. A lot of them thought that they were being smart with money.
I'm Ramit Sethi. I've spent over 20 years studying money behavior. You may have seen me on Netflix. And in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how people go from just one innocent bet to these losses that spiral fast. Stick around because at the end, I'm going to show you the rule that I use to instantly tell if something is investing or just gambling in disguise. Let's get started.
Here's how I'm using an options trading strategy to bet the weather on prediction markets.
Already you're going to lose money. I can stop the video right there. Once you say options trading, you're f***ing broke. It's just a matter of time. I never met someone who's ultra wealthy who does options trading. I'm going to tell you right now, it's typically people who are uneducated and/or don't have a lot of money. That's it.
There are no highly sophisticated people that you know doing options trading. Are there companies doing it? Yeah, but you're not a company. I can tell because you don't even know your own income. Talking about, "Oh, I'm so sophisticated." You don't know how much you spent on burgers in the last seven days. You're sitting over here talking about options trading. Do I even need to watch the rest of the video? No, I'm getting on the next one.
Scrolling through YouTube, TikTok, even, you see people gambling. Gambling is good. Gambling is this, gambling is that. And you see all these people getting these huge wins. And you're like, "Well, why can't that be me?" So I downloaded DraftKings.
DraftKings, holy sh**. You saw me talk about it on my Netflix show. Whoa, no good.
My mom trusted me to make an account. I explained to her that I don't have a problem and I'll be fine. I just want to use it for sport. I started depositing into DraftKings, lost $2,500 in one day. It got worse when I downloaded FanDuel. I'm losing my whole paycheck, over two grand a check. And I'm just losing the entire thing. Still chasing that high, trying to make everything back as fast as I can.
This was a late night. I'm by myself in my bed. What else am I going to do? So I go into BetMGM and I'm playing a casino game now. And I had my balance up to $11,000. I told myself, "This is the stopping point. You got everything back," but I didn't stop. I don't know what kept driving me to keep playing. I lost it all on the next day and it was just such a hopeless feeling.
So the entirety of the situation for you played out before you turned 21.
I'm not even 21 yet.
I really appreciate this young man sharing his story. This actually takes a lot of courage because it is deeply shameful to lose money, especially as a young man when everything you see online effectively tells you, "This isn't that hard."
When I talk to people who have lost money through gambling or other poor financial decisions, the hardest part for them is to truly grapple with what they've done. It's often much easier to just keep going because if you stop and you have to look in the mirror and say, "Here are all the decisions I made and there's nobody else that I can assign blame to except myself."
Now, let me point out that just 20 years ago, 15 years ago, it would not have been this easy for this guy to gamble. Gambling before he's 21, how would he have done it? He would have had to get in a car, drive somewhere, gamble a bunch of money away. Now, picks up his phone, starts clicking around, loses $11,000.
So while we should take personal responsibility for our own behavior, we also need to acknowledge that these predatory companies are surrounding you. They are disproportionately targeting young men like you. They're running ads to you. They're buying organic posts on Reddit. They're doing all kinds of things to be present everywhere you go.
You all need to stop seeing them as your friend, a source of opportunity. They are your enemy. Do not make friends with gambling companies. F*** them. Look at the comments I made on Twitter. I told the co-founder of Robinhood that I have no respect for him because of what he's built. He knows what he's doing. Robinhood, for example, and all these other gambling sites know that they are trapping young men and they still keep doing it. You all should be disgusted with them. You should be revolted by them. You should not be making friends with them.
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All right, let's look at the next story.
My question is how to support and navigate a spouse that has a gambling problem.
Oh, gosh, what a nightmare.
I know. Not a fun one.
How bad is it?
Probably about a year or two ago, I started getting that feeling of, "Okay, we make decent money, but we never have any money. We're always scraping by." I opened my own bank account and I changed my direct deposit to my own account.
When did you find out, a couple of weeks ago?
He told me we were going to overdraw. And so I was like, "How did we go through my whole paycheck in a matter of two days?" And so I then got into the bank account and did some digging and discovered that he had gone to the casino.
How much have you all figured up via him that you're in the hole?
Probably around 20 grand.
I bet it's triple that. And I cannot tell you how hopeful I am that I'm wrong because you all can solve that problem pretty quick with some discipline. And then the next thing is he's got to start going to Gamblers Anonymous tomorrow.
And what if he doesn't?
Then you have a choice to make.
Because I already recommended that I thought he needed to get more money.
We're done with recommendations.
Yeah.
Because he's taking out loans in your name, Elise.
I agree with John's advice, which is it's not about recommendations or beseeching your husband, "Please." It's about setting an expectation. And if he meets it, then you can continue. But if not, being clear what the consequences of those are.
I've had couples on my podcast who had addictions and it is really difficult. Financial infidelity also is something that many people are not accustomed to talking about. There are not movies about financial infidelity like other types of infidelity. Because many of us do not even understand our own money, if we find out that our partner is gambling money or secretly spending money, we don't even know what the implications are. But we do know it does not feel good.
I could not be in a relationship with a gambling addict. If I knew about it upfront that they had gambling, even tendencies, to me, I'm like, this is the biggest risk of my life, is the partner that I choose. It's also the biggest opportunity of my life, the partner that I choose. If I saw somebody that gave me signs like that, you think I'm going to be in a lifelong relationship with them? In what universe?
Now, I think it's much harder if you are together with them, particularly if you're married, and then you discover that they are a gambling addict. That is really, really hard. And that is where it is so important to set an expectation and then hold them to it. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you to break up your marriage. That's not my place.
But I will say this, if you are single or you are dating and you see clues in your partner that they have gambling tendencies or simply that they are not responsible with money, think hard about whether you want to be in a lifelong relationship with this person.
Marriage is not just romance. It's not just butterflies and, "Oh, let's go out to dinner tonight." Marriage is kids are crying. Who's going to wake up? Marriage is one of our parents is sick, and we need to go and take care of them for four months. How's the other one going to manage? Marriage is creating goals together even when it's hard. And it is incredibly difficult to do one of those things if one of you is addicted to gambling.
You probably think gambling is idiotic. Why would you do something that's a losing proposition? That's a very logical approach. But gamblers are optimists. So they're like, "Yeah, but you could get this big win." Let's say you lose $5,000 five times a year on your Vegas trips. That's $25,000 a year. I know people that spend $75,000, $125,000 a year on golf. I don't golf. I gamble.
The difference is if you gamble, you can lose your house. You can lose your 401(k). Many of you will not realize this for years and years until you lose your partner. And even still, you will struggle to control this addiction.
It's dumb. Don't get me wrong. If you played for the rest of your life, you're going to lose money. But if that entertainment, that rush of, "Oh, man, a double down. I was betting a hundred. Now I got to put another hundred out there." That excitement, I think, is what keeps people coming back.
This is quite an insightful video. But did you notice there were several different things he brought up? He first pointed out that most people, when they think of gambling, they approach it like people are rational robots. "Well, actually, you're technically going to lose money over time." Yeah, but that's not how people operate.
Just look at what you're wearing right now. You're not wearing the cheapest shirt you could possibly buy. Well, some of you are. I've seen some of you Silicon Valley freaks, but most of you are wearing something maybe from Old Navy. Maybe you got it from Macy's. Why? Because it feels good. Or you saw somebody else who works in your office wearing the same thing. We are emotional creatures.
The other thing he said, which I find a little ridiculous, is, "Yeah, if you spend twenty-five thousand dollars a year on gambling, well, other people spend seventy-five thousand dollars a year on golfing." What's with the comparison? First of all, I don't really know anybody who spent seventy-five K a year on golfing. And anyway, is that really the comparison we need to be making?
Notice that when people start to get questioned on gambling, the first thing they will often do is say, "Well, at least I'm not that bad." It's like watching reality TV. "Oh, well, I'm in twelve thousand dollars of credit card debt, but at least I'm not in a hundred K." That's not an effective way to go through life.
He noted that gambling is not just about making money. In fact, he admits you're going to lose money over the long term. It's about entertainment, doubling down. I like when people admit this because if you were honest that you are gambling because it's entertainment, then you would carefully compare going gambling to getting DoorDash, watching a movie, going out to a bar. Cool. We all want to have fun. We should use our money for that.
But we should not lie to ourselves and say, "This is actually an investment." That's not what gambling is for. If it's for entertainment, then create a number out of your guilt-free spending and set a limit for how much you're going to gamble because you cannot confuse entertainment and gambling.
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Bet on the weirdest thing you can find on the internet, but show the results. Day 184 of risking $100 every single day for the rest of my life.
This is a pretty compelling idea, risking $100 a day for the rest of my life. That's a hook I would click. How come you all don't spend $100 improving yourselves? Like $100 going to college, $100 buying books, $100 learning how to speak Spanish. No, it's always gambling. What the f*** kind of world is this?
What is that? This is cool. I want to watch the rest of this video, but it's easier to put $100 for something that could pay off pie in the sky than to be like, "You're telling me I need to learn how to conjugate a verb. That sounds boring." All right. What's this bro doing?
This month, we're up. This year, we're up. And today we are going to the site that lets me bet on anything, Kalshi. Let's see what the weird thing is I can find. What will Powell say during a September press conference? Uncertainty five times. We're going to go no.
This is literally like watching a bunch of broke people talk about how they're going to become wealthy. This is not how wealthy people talk. I can tell you right now, nobody who is wealthy would talk like this or do this.
We're going to go no, that this man is not going to say uncertainty five times. Who needs to say something more than five times outside of my toddler? Submit. $100 wins us 113.
Hold on. What the ****? I got to go back. Did I just see what I thought I saw on screen? Dollars earn 4% interest. You guys are so ****. You have no idea because you're going on Kalshi and you're gambling money based on what Powell is going to say. You have no idea what you're even doing.
And then on top of that, you have this sophisticated financial company whose only job is to squeeze the little money you have out of you until you're left like an old paper towel that's been used seven times and you're drying on a clothesline left fraying in the wind. And the way they do that is these little techniques they use: earn 4% interest.
So emotionally you're going, "Yeah, I'm going to make it big. I'm going to crush it with this Powell bet margin." But rationally your mind is going, "Well, 4% is actually quite reasonable. That's the equivalent of a high-yield savings account. This is actually a good bet because otherwise it would be sitting in my checking account."
You have no idea what you are up against. I'm talking to you young men, 21 to 30. They are with your lives doing things like these features and you think you're winning, but you are merely the receptacle that they are squeezing so they can make more money.
I've never watched something like this in character. They need NBA music when he comes out. Did you see? Look at this.
That's not how serious investors act. I'm going to tell you right now, you ever see a chef when they're cooking food for like 300 people in their restaurant? They're like, "How's the cornbread going to turn out?" No, that's amateur hour. They're just like, "Okay, I've done this a thousand times. I'm going to do it again."
Do you know how I look when I invest? Look at my face. Nothing changed. I'm barely breathing because I don't even do it myself. I certainly don't log into some scam website and type a bunch of numbers and like that. Money just goes automatically every single month, the same way it's been going for almost 30 years. You want to be wealthy? Learn what wealthy people actually do, and they do not do this.
All right. We're five minutes through. He hasn't said it yet. I just got the update that we're—
What is this poster? What am I seeing here? This poster of that Uncut Gems. Is that the video I'm seeing here? Does anybody notice what the is going on? What happens in Uncut Gems? Adam Sandler, hustler and scammer extraordinaire. Is there any message that we are possibly taking?
Just look, who are the heroes in your background? My hero, my beautiful wife, my hero. Well, that's me because I wrote all those books, but we can love ourselves too. Self-love is important. Very sophisticated authors who have taught me a lot. Who's the hero in this video? A scammer jeweler who gets in the head. Sometimes our backgrounds actually reveal so much.
77% chance to win. Economy remain uncertain. These individual forecasts are subject to uncertainty. Is the dispersion in the outlook a sign of uncertainty of policy? Stop trying to make him say it. We're down to 25%. We're at 96. Please wrap this up. This one is certain and this one isn't happening.
Oh my gosh, the last question. Oh, if he doesn't say it, we win. If he doesn't say it, we win. That's it. Thanks very much. No more questions. Let's go.
So many of you watching this going, "Ramit Sethi, you were wrong. All those comments and you were wrong. He won." Let me correct you because getting lucky one day or two days does not change the process.
This is like you going to the gym one day and one day you just magically bench 225. You're like, "I'm awesome." Now, what matters is that you go three or four times a week, that you consistently use progressive overload. Those kinds of things, showing up every day and working on your process, that matters more than getting lucky once or twice. You may win one day, two days, five days, even five months, but we are talking about process for a lifetime, and that is not what I see here.
It's quite amazing. He's gambling $100 a day. Can we do a little bit of math? That's $3,000 a month. This guy appears to be, let's just say 30 years old, and let's say that he's starting at zero. He's putting in $36,000 a year into low-cost investments. He's got 35 years for it to grow, and we're already going to factor inflation in. Holy, $5.3 million.
Do you see how absurd this is? I don't mind entertainment, but almost none of you would actually spend $100 a day on entertainment. You wouldn't, not for the rest of your life. If you were to invest that, you would have millions. Yes, this already factors inflation in, so don't tell me it's going to be worth less in time. They already factored that in. $5 million. By the way, you want to know how much he'll have in his bank account if we don't even factor inflation in? $10.7 million.
It's almost a joke, but it's not a joke. I take it seriously because there's an epidemic of young men corrupting their own futures. They're so nihilistic. They don't believe that they can ever get ahead that they have simply decided to have fun, and they get a lot of approval from other people. Look at this video. If I look at it, he's got 116,000 likes. Guys, likes don't pay the bills. He's got 670 comments, 12,000 likes on one of these comments. This is addictive.
A lot of young men make fun of women for going in a restaurant and taking selfies and being outside and getting their angles right. How is this any different? And in fact, you're not just taking pictures of yourself. You're posting stuff that's costing you literally millions of dollars, all so that you can get the addictive adulation of people you have never met nor would you ever want to meet.
There's something very subtle about this video that you should know. He's telling us this because he won, but gamblers are notorious for not telling you when they lose. People literally erase these things from their mind. They're not even aware of their own losses because it's a way for their brain to cover it up, yet they talk publicly and proudly about when they win. Have you seen these crypto guys on Twitter? It's well known that they post when they win, but they delete things when they lose. This is classic.
Y'all are being played every which way from the videos you watch, the people you consume, even the apps that you are using to make these transactions. Everyone is getting a piece of you, and you are the mark, but you don't know it.
You know who I feel sorry for? Beyond gambling addicts. Their girlfriends and wives. Because a lot of times you have these gambling addicts who disguise their addiction as, "I'm so smart. I'm a crypto trader." They're in a Discord. They have Robinhood open. There's all kinds of graphics going across their screen.
Their wife goes, "Hey, babe, what are you doing?" "Well, the liquidity issue didn't work because the candle was over here and it was breached over here." "Okay, as long as you know what you're doing," and they just kind of dutifully walk out of the room. I'm like, your husband is a gambling addict. But he disguised it as making it sound like he's so smart. He's not.
Their female partners will find out two years, three years, five years later. Be like, "What? How could I have known?" How could you have known? If they have a Robinhood account, you all need to walk.
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People often blur the line between investing and gambling. So let me just make it really simple. Investing is boring, repeatable, and it's based on long-term growth. Gambling is exciting, unpredictable, and relies on short-term wins. If you feel a rush when you make a decision, if you feel an urge to check it constantly or a need to win it back, you are not investing. You're gambling.
Here, let me show you on my face. This is a real simple litmus test. Here's me gambling. Now here's me investing. Or even this. My money is in low-cost index funds and they just grow. It's boring.
So here's what I recommend instead of gambling. Automate your investments every single month. You don't even need to do it manually. It happens automatically. Use simple low-cost index funds or equivalents and stop checking your accounts every day.
If you want to learn how to build real wealth without taking these kinds of risks, watch this video next. I break down the exact system I use to grow money consistently over time.
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