My Rich Life
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #169. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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A tongue-in-cheek but also painfully earnest look at pop culture and anything else that deserves to be ridiculed while at the same time regarded with the utmost respect. It is written by Matt Marrone and emailed to Stu Horvath and David Shimomura, who add any typos or factual errors that might appear within.
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There is a Netflix reality show The Wife of the Year recently asked me to watch with her. It’s called How to Get Rich and its mantra is “live your rich life.”
What is your rich life? The answer, we quickly learn, is different for everyone. Is it freedom from crippling debt? The ability to travel on a whim? To buy your dream home? To open a successful restaurant? To finally sell the $60 microwave you’re paying thousands of dollars to keep in storage? To actually trust your spouse enough to help handle the finances?
We follow as best-selling author Ramit Sethi meets a series of real-life people willing to let the world take a peek into their bank accounts and relationships. He breaks down their debt, their spending habits, their quirks and attempts to help them understand their mistakes and start building up to their rich life.
I find it a nice guilty pleasure and I’m glad to have something to watch with The Wife of the Year. She laughs at it with me, but she also takes it very seriously – I haven’t asked her outright, but I’m positive she has a major crush on Sethi, which is understandable given his line of work and the way the show constantly has him slow-walking into hip places as he crisscrosses the country. He’ll take, say, calls from California on speaker phone from the back of a New York City cab after just being at that person’s home in the previous scene, because . . . well, it’s never quite explained. But it makes him seem cool.
I’m pretty sure his book is going to end up in our house if it isn’t already and I’ll be filling out a worksheet with The Wife of the Year answering questions about our rich life and what we want it to be. I keep telling her I’m already living my rich life – I’m typing this, after all, on my iPhone while on a flight to Miami with my dad for a three-game weekend series between the Marlins and Yankees. As a Disney employee, I get into Disney World for free. As a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, I get into baseball games for free (not a perk I am using for this weekend’s pleasure trip, of course). And whenever I think of other things I want, they’re typically free as well, if too often elusive — sex, peace, quiet.
But, as I said, that worksheet is inevitably coming, and I suspect my current level of satisfaction won’t be considered sufficient by my significant other. In order to get ahead of this latest potential marital argument, I decided to use this month’s column to throw things at the wall and see if they stick. Do they? Judge for yourself.
The Rookie of the Year’s Rich Life: Five Goals
- Move up the ladder here enough to get access to the Unwinnable company jet. The car Stu bought me is nice, but flying commercial as I am this very moment is part of the non-rich life I am now supposed to be working so hard to put into the past.
- Win $2,000 a week for life via scratch-offs.
- Help both my elementary school-aged children find amazing careers and move into their own apartments down the street, preferably within the next six months.
- Never do a household chore ever again.
- I can’t think of a fifth.
OK then. Now that you’ve read what I have, what do you think? I need you on my side here because I think these goals will infuriate The Wife of the Year, who will a) conclude I’m not taking this seriously and b) argue No. 4 already exists.
So, I’m stuck. As I said, I’m more or less already living my rich life, but it can’t be truly achieved/maintained unless The Wife of the Year is happy. But she might not be happy unless I have a fresh plan for said rich life, one that will look great on her crush’s worksheet. Which means I need at least one of my above goals to be attainable.
Stu, can you gas up the jet?
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Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.
