拉米特•塞希：新新人类的理财导师（节选）

    不久前的一个下午，在曼哈顿市中心一家东南亚餐厅里，我见到了备受推崇的私人理财大师拉米特•塞希。采访进行得并不顺利。29岁的塞希是一位莫测高深的印度裔美国人。他不苟言笑。眉毛浓密且向鼻梁倾斜，给人一种严峻之感。在品尝蔬菜咖喱的间隙，我问起他童年的事情，他说自己已经记得不多了。当我问及他的爱好和愿望时，他根本就不予理睬。直到吃完饭，我伸手去拿借记卡准备结账时，他的眼睛才突然闪亮起来。

    “给我看看！”他指着我的钱包咆哮道。当塞希瞅见从皮夹中露出的美国银行（Bank of America）标识时，他挥动了一下双手，表现出一副极其震惊的样子。“天啊！”他说。

    我心里直犯怵。这张借记卡提供的回报极其微薄。它挂靠在一个要求存储最低余额的支票账户上面，这笔钱不仅不能动，而且利息也低得可怜。这家银行最近正威胁说要收取每月5美元的费用。就在我猛拽回钱包那一刹那，塞希得意地大笑起来。

    我早该料到这一幕。拉米特•塞希是私人理财领域的“淘气鬼”。2004年，当时还在斯坦福大学（Stanford）读本科的塞希开办了他的个人网站“我可以让你富”（iwillteachyoutoberich.com）。自那以后，他就拥有了一群忠实的信徒。这家网站的订阅用户接近20万人。他写了一本也叫做《我可以让你富》(I Will Teach You To Be Rich）的著作。这本书在上市当天就飙升至亚马逊网站（Amazon）畅销书排行榜的首位。塞希还开办了学费逾1,000美元的网上课程，这一课程为他每年带来100多万美元的收入。

    塞西的理财建议也称不上超凡脱俗：他希望年轻人削减债务，尽早为退休投资，并提高自身的挣钱能力。他的与众不同之处在于其咨询方式。跟自助行业的大多数咨询师不同的是，塞西从不提供模棱两可的主张，而青睐于具体的指导。他的理财秘诀建立在仔细测试的基础之上，并结合了他对神秘莫测的人类行为的观察思考。他的技术风格跟蒂姆•费里斯有类似之处，后者著有红极一时的生产力指导类书籍：《每周工作4小时》（The 4-Hour Workweek）。跟费里斯一样，塞西擅于提供一些非常简单、读者可应用在日常生活的理财妙计（热衷提高自身生产力的人群称之为“黑客秘笈”）。

    塞西和费里斯是很好的朋友。“极少数人非常善于分析和尝试，结果无意之中打造出了自己的个人品牌,”费里斯说。“拉米特就是其中之一。”

    然而，在我用那张受尽嘲笑的借记卡支付了餐费之后，我突然发现自己实在搞不懂塞西为何如此受欢迎。说他是大师吧，他又不算很有魅力：他态度冷漠，不具备亲和力，看起来更像是一位工头，而不是一位声名显赫的导师。

    但这或许正是他的读者（主要是二十来岁，三十出头的千禧一代）崇拜他的原因。这代人受够了老一辈的所谓理财专家，他们年纪差不多是自己的两倍，总拿年轻一代当小孩子一样哄着。26岁的程序员马克斯•康托说，他特别钦佩这位博主待人冷漠这一点。这位来自克利夫兰的小伙子曾经给塞西发过一个电子邮件，想请教一个问题。结果，他后来竟然发现，他提的这个问题出现在了“我可以让你富”网站的推送内容上，成了塞西冷嘲热讽的对象。“他挺操蛋的，对吧？”康托笑着说。

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    译者：任文科

    On a recent afternoon I met with Ramit Sethi, a popular personal finance guru, at a Southeast Asian restaurant in downtown Manhattan. The interview wasn't going well. Sethi, who is 29 years old and Indian American, is inscrutable. He doesn't smile often. His eyebrows, thick and slanted down toward the bridge of his nose, give him a stern look. Over vegetable curry I asked him about his childhood, and he told me that he didn't remember much. He shrugged off my questions about his hobbies and his aspirations. It wasn't until the end of our lunch, when I reached for my debit card, that his eyes lit up.

    "Show me!" he barked, pointing at my wallet. When he spotted the Bank of America (BAC) logo peeking out of the billfold, he threw up his hands, appalled. "Oh, my God," he said.

    I cringed. The debit card offers meager rewards. It is linked to a checking account that requires a minimum balance, locking up my money for a paltry interest rate. The bank was threatening at the time to slap me with a $5 monthly fee. As I yanked my wallet back, Sethi laughed with delight.

    I should have seen it coming. Ramit Sethi is the enfant terrible of the personal finance world. Since starting his website, iwillteachyoutoberich.com, in 2004 as a Stanford undergrad, he has built a cult following. Nearly 200,000 people subscribe to his newsfeed. His book, also called I Will Teach You to Be Rich, rocketed to No. 1 on Amazon the day it came out. He sells online courses that cost upward of $1,000 and pulls in more than $1 million a year.

    Sethi's advice isn't terribly unusual: He wants young people to slash their debt, invest for retirement, and increase their earning power. It's his approach that makes him different. Unlike most people in the self-help business, Sethi eschews fuzzy affirmations in favor of specific directives. His tips are based on careful testing and paired with musings on the mysteries of human behavior. His technocratic style is similar to that of Tim Ferriss, author of the smash hit productivity guide The 4-Hour Workweek. Like Ferriss, Sethi specializes in coming up with simple tweaks -- or hacks, as productivity junkies call them -- that his readers can apply to their lives.

    Sethi and Ferriss are good friends. "There are a handful of people who are very analytical and good at testing and have, almost as a side effect, built these personal brands," says Ferriss. "Ramit is one."

    And yet, after I paid for my lunch with my scorned debit card, I found myself puzzled by Sethi's popularity. For a guru, he isn't very charismatic: He is distant, not warm, and comes across as more taskmaster than mentor.

    But that may be why his readers, chiefly Millennials in their twenties and early thirties, adore him. They say they are tired of being pandered to by experts twice their age. Max Cantor, a 26-year-old programmer from Cleveland, says he admires the blogger's willingness to alienate people. Cantor once e-mailed Sethi a question, only to see his query appear in an I Will Teach You to Be Rich newsletter as the subject of mockery. "He's kind of a dick, right?" Cantor says with a laugh.