Ramit Sethi

I highly recommend Ramit Sethi's http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com. It's a great book for those clueless about personal finance and managing their money and he gives you lots of common sense advice based on psychology/human behavior. Ramit is one of the smartest people of our time in general and I take you will love his other content as well (I definitely do.) Once you're up to speed on that and want to get really fancy you should check out https://www.youneedabudget.com. Good luck on your journey.

There is no doubt in my mind that if I had followed the advice in this book, I'd be substantially better off then I am. I read it when it first came out, and it's an amazing read. Short enough to could get through it in a day; funny enough to make you laugh; information density is great; and lots of supplemental material on his blog free of charge. Check out http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com - he's got tons of material on there, and if you like his style, definitely buy the book.

I am a New York Times best-seller and I would be happy to answer questions about how I went from blog --> book --> products, especially about the challenges of getting people to pay online. My book: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 My blog: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com Let me know if you guys have questions about monetizing content, book sales, or the psychology of getting people online to pay. There is so much interesting stuff I've learned over the last few years.

In the past, I tried many time to start businesses and many times I failed (although I always had a job and tried only in my free time). Now, I have been running a business for the past 7 years, and it keeps growing. Is it because I just kept trying? No. I might still be trying if I followed that approach. Instead, I took many courses on starting and growing businesses. That's what made the difference. My problem, which is your problem, was that I just kept writing code for ideas I had. That's a recipe for failure. You admit that you don't know if anybody would pay for the thing you are building. Stop. That's going to end in the same way as before. You have to start from finding customers even before you decide what product you will build. You need to know who they are, how to reach them, what they need. You have to learn their pains and dreams. Only then you create a product that solves their real problems. I recommend studying the stuff of: - Jay Abraham: https://www.abraham.com - Ramit Sethi: https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com But there are also many others. The important thing is that you learn how to start a business and stop throwing spaghetti at the wall. If I were you, I would get a well-paying job to support your family. Then you can try something new with the safety of a salary. That's what I did in the past. Your time will decrease with a family, but I am helping friends with two small children to start a business, so it's possible.

I understand everyone's sentiment about Steve's blogs on earning passive income. If you look around his site he does have some interesting blog posts on things like Polyphasic Sleep. HN readers for the most part are probably not in need of his motivational/inspirational "speeches" and articles. And most understand the desirability of passive income but understand its challenges, obstacles, and reality. Someone similar who shares Mr. Pavlina's strong beliefs and desires for everyone to achieve their life's goals and live every day to its fullest is Ramit Sethi (http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/) with his own book and numerous other "programs" like Earn 1K. Ramit recognizes and addresses the reality of passive income and recommends not going after it at first. Both Ramit and Steve are excellent reminders and motivators to keep working towards your goals similar to 21times.org's daily email newsletters for startups. UPDATE: I like what someone else said in another comment here. Paraphrasing it: Don't think of it as passive income, think of it as delayed income. UPDATE: Let's clarify what we all really mean by "passive". It's not really passive as in "you don't have to do anything". What we mean is that we are no longer trading straight time for income. Our income potential is no longer limited to the number of hours we are awake trading our time for money. UPDATE: The delayed income relies upon a long tail return. Often the amount of energy consumed to setup the long…

> Is a strong, unified online presence a requirement for freelance success? No. Not in the least. I think a strong sense of marketing yourself is important, and that often ties into developing a strong online presence, but not a unified online presence. > they have a professional identity that they use across communities, a blog full of relevant professional content, and an attitude towards community participation online pretty much opposite of my own. That's only one way to do it. There are tons of successful freelancers / contractors that you haven't heard of (not because they aren't successful), but because they're working on developing their skills and getting work, not developing an online presence. When you want to take the jump towards full time freelance work, I recommend Ramit Sethi's writings on earning more money (http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/) or the earn1k program (http://www.earn1k.com). IMO, you don't need to wait until you lose your job to start developing an online presence or to start freelancing.

> - I Will Teach You To Be Rich The author also has a great podcast [0] that discusses money issues with couples. Even if you are not a couple, the insights they have are very useful and interesting, as it acts as a sort of therapy for the guests and the listener. After all, money issues are often psychological in nature. [0] https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/podcast/

If it ever comes up that you talk to them about it there are many sources of good information. But just to name one, https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/ is pretty good, I think. (Not associated.) There is a book that I gave my kids.

I recommend looking into Ramit Sethi's advice on negotiation: https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/guides/ultimate-guide-to-asking-… (Don't be put off by the same name. Ramit is great.)

Another amazing information: https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/win-lottery-what-to-do/ Please be conservative and take time to educate yourself about investing / markets. It will take about a year. YOU CANNOT TRANSFER RESPONSIBILITY for this. You need to know how this works.

Are you familiar with Ramit Sethi, from https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/ ? He has shifted a bit from a blog about financial advice but has years of entries in the blog (and a book from a few years ago).

Just $2 a day! I don't spend as much, and yes, coffee can be so much cheaper, but it's also not a lot of money. Interestingly, the following guy has a recurring theme on how trying to save on lattes is inefficient and distracting (similar to the idea of premature optimization in code): http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/save-on-coffee/

To be fair, it's an actual company that's really called I will teach you to be rich. http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/ Although it sounds high pressure to work overtime, it actually sounds like a pretty interesting job. Apart from the PHP.

Ramit Sethi[1] focuses almost exclusively on increasing income. He thinks the "latte factor" is bullshit, since you can just bring in more money. Personally, I think that increasing income and reducing expenses are two sides of the same coin. You're either changing the numerator or the denominator in the time-to-FI equation. The really powerful stuff happens when you do both at the same time. [1]: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com

Ramit has a lot of good tips on his free mailing list. Just ignore the upsell stuff. http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/

There are jobs that let you use multiple skills. I do a wide range of tasks because of my skillset, though I was hired to do only one of those things. It was just a natural progression of the job and taking on new responsibilities. One framework I think is helpful is this: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/ask-ramit-how-do-you-choose-… Talking with people about what a job actually entails, versus what the job posting says it does, seems really obvious when you say it, but sometimes obvious things need to be said. During my last job search I actually talked with people on my options, and found it extremely insightful between what I thought the job was and what it actually is.

Ramit Sethi has a great post from last year on why passive income is largely a myth for most people: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-i-traveled-for-3-weeks-a…

I also suggest to check out Ramit Sethi's material on freelancing at http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/home these are some products that can be worth their money (depending on who you are).

HN user Ramit has a really great blog post that answers this exact question: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/turn-failure-to-domination-s…

Luckily, I was writing in personal finance for a few years before I joined Mint so I knew most of them. Some of them included Ramit at http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com, Cap from http://stopbuyingcrap.com and Jim at http://bargaineering.com to name a few. We just went and interviewed the guys above or asked thme for guest posts. You have to think how to serve their interests (traffic / exposure / relationships with a potentially cool company). Yea, the Mint blog.

Seconded on both index funds and http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/. If you have a job but haven't thought about retirement accounts, you owe it to yourself to read this today to take advantage of what is basically free money before April 15: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-worlds-easiest-guide-to-…

Basically I like to hack on money http://www.getrichslowly.com http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com http://www.budgetpulse.com but I will be starting to hack in internal designs also, because want to buy an apartment ;)

your brother writes i will teach you to be rich? (http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com)

I definitely agree that a frugal attitude is essential for success. But I'm reminded of a great article on "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" called Cheap vs. Frugal. http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/cheap-versus-frugal Being cheap means spending as little money as possible often ignoring quality and efficiency. Now frugal, might not necessarily be the cheapest but it is the best value. From the article above: "Cheap people think short term. Frugal people think long term."

An alternative view on this, which may seem cynical but which I find empowering: In their best form, these types of questions are a litmus test for whether you have a certain type of background. When they fail it's because they test for skills not required by the job. It's fashionable to complain about this, but it seems to me to be more practical and useful to just get better at answering these sorts of questions. Leveling up from "terrible" to "adequate" at this will take less time than you think, and due to the craigslist penis effect[1] will put you way ahead of the game. Easy resource to get started: https://www.interviewcake.com/ This book is pretty well regarded: http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/… Btw, anyone with better starting places for this, please jump in. [1] http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-craigslist-penis-effect/ EDIT: formatting

Wow, this is so cool to read! It reminds of exactly how I felt two years ago, before I quit my job chopping up bloody cows at a meatworks and "became" a programmer. If I can do it, so can you! Like you, I thought my lack of connections or programming friends was the biggest hurdle. I came up with the following plan to get started: 1. Build five small apps that I can put on my resume, and are built for some specific end-user (or group). 2. Regularly contribute to an open source project I believe in 3. Attend programming meetups to be around "programming people" (I attended Python and Functional Programming meetups) I did not spend time on stackoverflow or blogging about code because they weren't the biggest thing I could do to get business. They were part of my plan originally but someone pointed this out and I took them off. To build my resume I would build demos for small job adverts on Elance. I wouldn't apply for the job, only slowly complete it and put it on my resume so I appeared valuable. Later, I earned $1,350 over 5 months, before a small startup in Australia found my resume, liked the look of it, and asked me to join their team (earning more money that I've earned in my whole life!). I didn't make any friends at the meetups but I'm 100% SURE you could. The groups were sponsored by local software companies, who provided office space and pizza in return for advertising their job openings. Other attendees would let everyone know about openings at their own…

There's some fundamental dysfunction that needs to be addressed in online dating: - Why the heck do folks use a service built by people who might not have been successful in love? Would I use an operating system programmed by doctors? - How do dating sites overcome the personality shortcomings of having a hard enough time connecting in real life, let alone the computer. In the end the relationship is in real life. - People are nickels trying to get dimes instead of improving themselves. (Analogy can be read here: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/why-wont-anyone-be-honest-wi… - How do you set the bar of the mindset you want to attract? Should dating sites be encouraging and attracting people, "Love me to validate myself and my worth of receiving love", or "I'm happy, work at being the best I can and would be even happier with someone"? - People who come on a site, find love, and leave might not be profitable customers. It's like the startup stuff out there, does much of it keep you in a startup phase instead of moving into more? - In some cases, the socially challenged geeks that build it who may have underdeveloped personalities themselves trying to help others connect. geeks compensate for in person skills by being behind a keyboard. ie., what does Facebook have that isn't transactional and is transformative, say, like a successful dating match might be? As a society, too many folks don't work on connecting to ourselves, and through that to…

Excellent points. On a related note, I just read a good article on using small barriers to entry as filters for your time: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/i-use-small-barriers-to-avoi… Most of the folks that ask me for help aren't 'kooks' perse, but they usually want someone to make their dreams come true with little or no effort on their part. Asking these people to do a small task as a precondition of your help is a great way to filter out those not really serious about the goal. Here's how it typically goes: "Hey Matt! I hear you do iPad apps! I have a great idea for one! I'm super passionate about this and really want to get it going!" Me: "Great! Before we go any further, it's best to sketch the app out on paper first. Do that and then let's take a serious look at it!" I've had many many conversations like this. Even requiring a simple sketch filters out about 98% of these people. Another common variation is from folks who want to learn programming. Instead of asking for a sketch, I'll send them a link to an excellent beginners tutorial to work through. I very rarely hear back from anyone after that. However, those very few that do come back are typically great to work with. I haven't always used these filters. I used to really try and help everyone that asked for it. Unfortunately that nearly always ended up with me putting in time and effort to help someone who I would later discover wasn't really all that serious about the goal. Small…

Buying is as much a emotional decision as it is a financial one. You have to take into account not only the how much you can afford and how much you want/would like your money to grow but what kind of lifestyle you desire. If the lifestyle that owning one's home affords is more important than the increased returns then perhaps you should buy. On the other hand if you are happy to rent for a decade or two you will likely end up richer. I am currently of two minds, I love the idea of being able to do what I like to my own home. But at the same time real estate isn't necessarily the best investment, though where I am (Melbourne, Australia) we've had massive growth in housing prices (somewhere in the order of 20%+pa off the top of my head) though it is slowing down now. One of my favourite bloggers Ramit Sethi has some strong opinions on the issue http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/buying-a-house/