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

by Ramit Sethi

If you’re booking travel or eating out, use a travel card to maximize rewards. For everything else, use a cash back card. The card I use for travel and eating out is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. For everything else, I use an Alliant cash back card. And for business, I use a Capital One cash back business card. For extra benefits, I have an Amex Platinum card.

I’m sorry, but I’ve been a customer for four years and I’d hate for this one fee to drive me away from your service. What can you do to remove the late fee?

call your credit cards and lenders once a year to ask them what advantages you’re eligible for. Often, they can waive fees, extend credit, and give you private promotions that others don’t have access to. Call them up and use this line: “Hi there. I checked my credit and noticed that I have a 750 credit score, which is pretty good. I’ve been a customer of yours for the last four years, so I’m wondering what special promotions and offers you have for me . . . I’m thinking of fee waivers and special offers that you use for customer retention.”

credit cards automatically give you amazing consumer protection? Here are a few examples

Capital One 360 Savings (capitalone.com/bank): This is the savings account I use. It lets you create virtual sub-savings accounts, in which you can specify savings goals like an emergency fund, wedding, or down payment for a house. You can also set up automatic transfers to other accounts

A Conscious Spending Plan involves four major buckets where your money will go: fixed costs, investments, savings, and guilt-free spending money.

Mint (mint.com), which will automatically sync with your credit card and banks to categorize your spending and show you trends.

software called You Need a Budget (youneedabudget.com)

If you have free time at home, you can sign up to be a virtual assistant on sites like upwork.com

by diversifying your investments, you’ll make more money as an individual investor.

Swensen suggests allocating your money in the following way:

Once you’ve got a list of index funds you want to own in your portfolio—usually three to seven funds—start

I recommend a target date fund as the 85 Percent Solution.

buy a car at the end of the year,