I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program That Works.

by Ramit Sethi

Conscious spending means you decide exactly where you’re going to spend your money—for going out, for saving, for investing, for rent—and you free yourself from feeling guilty about your spending.

Sometimes money falls in your lap, like a birthday gift, a tax return, or an unexpected freelance contract. Believe it or not, I don’t encourage you to save all of this money. Instead, whenever I receive money I didn’t expect, I use 50 percent of it for fun—usually buying something I’ve been eyeing for a long time. Always!

If you get a raise, be realistic: You earned it, and you should enjoy the results of your hard work. Treat yourself to something nice that you’ve been wanting for a long time, and make it something you’ll remember. After that, however, I strongly encourage you to save and invest as much of it as possible, because once you start getting accustomed to a certain lifestyle, you can never go back. After buying a Mercedes, can you ever drive a Toyota Corolla again?