The rude awakening I had while reading his recent newsletter about the people whose net monthly income is $45k a month is that many of their living expenses were in line with mine! Their mortgage was at least 5x more than mine ($6750 vs 1331) and I don't have child care, but otherwise, my fixed costs were WAY too similar to these people making millions a year. Ramit chided them on having a "guilt-free spending" line item that was "abysmal" in that it was TOO LOW for their income, but still....
This couple is worried about their future because they are in tech and are afraid that AI will replace their jobs, so they are putting 25k in investments A MONTH! Ramit says:
"Right here, this tells me that they are playing life on defense. They are so far ahead of almost anyone else and yet they still feel worried. Because they tell me that they're immigrants from India, a culture which I understand, I can tell you that they're probably going to go the rest of their life worrying about money, thinking they're behind, agonizing over tiny expenses and never actually zooming out and recognizing that they have already won the game. They could get laid off and they would be fine and that in and of itself is unlikely to happen."
Very interesting. Where "worry" sits on people's roadmaps relative to their financial situation is really interesting. I don't like worrying about money, yet I do. But I feel I have a right to. I truly try to live like the admonition in the Bible to "not worry about the morrow; the morrow has worries of its own" and "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" but it's not that easy to put into practice.
The topic of "worry" vs one's financial standing would be an interesting topic to explore in another thread.