????不久前的一個下午，在曼哈頓市中心一家東南亞餐廳里，我見到了備受推崇的私人理財大師拉米特?塞希。采訪進行得并不順利。29歲的塞希是一位莫測高深的印度裔美國人。他不茍言笑。眉毛濃密且向鼻梁傾斜，給人一種嚴峻之感。在品嘗蔬菜咖喱的間隙，我問起他童年的事情，他說自己已經記得不多了。當我問及他的愛好和愿望時，他根本就不予理睬。直到吃完飯，我伸手去拿借記卡準備結賬時，他的眼睛才突然閃亮起來。

????“給我看看！”他指著我的錢包咆哮道。當塞希瞅見從皮夾中露出的美國銀行（Bank of America）標識時，他揮動了一下雙手，表現出一副極其震驚的樣子。“天啊！”他說。

????我心里直犯怵。這張借記卡提供的回報極其微薄。它掛靠在一個要求存儲最低余額的支票賬戶上面，這筆錢不僅不能動，而且利息也低得可憐。這家銀行最近正威脅說要收取每月5美元的費用。就在我猛拽回錢包那一剎那，塞希得意地大笑起來。

????我早該料到這一幕。拉米特?塞希是私人理財領域的“淘氣鬼”。2004年，當時還在斯坦福大學（Stanford）讀本科的塞希開辦了他的個人網站“我可以讓你富”（iwillteachyoutoberich.com）。自那以后，他就擁有了一群忠實的信徒。這家網站的訂閱用戶接近20萬人。他寫了一本也叫做《我可以讓你富》(I Will Teach You To Be Rich）的著作。這本書在上市當天就飆升至亞馬遜網站（Amazon）暢銷書排行榜的首位。塞希還開辦了學費逾1,000美元的網上課程，這一課程為他每年帶來100多萬美元的收入。

????塞西的理財建議也稱不上超凡脫俗：他希望年輕人削減債務，盡早為退休投資，并提高自身的掙錢能力。他的與眾不同之處在于其咨詢方式。跟自助行業的大多數咨詢師不同的是，塞西從不提供模棱兩可的主張，而青睞于具體的指導。他的理財秘訣建立在仔細測試的基礎之上，并結合了他對神秘莫測的人類行為的觀察思考。他的技術風格跟蒂姆?費里斯有類似之處，后者著有紅極一時的生產力指導類書籍：《每周工作4小時》（The 4-Hour Workweek）。跟費里斯一樣，塞西擅于提供一些非常簡單、讀者可應用在日常生活的理財妙計（熱衷提高自身生產力的人群稱之為“黑客秘笈”）。

????塞西和費里斯是很好的朋友。“極少數人非常善于分析和嘗試，結果無意之中打造出了自己的個人品牌,”費里斯說。“拉米特就是其中之一。”

????然而，在我用那張受盡嘲笑的借記卡支付了餐費之后，我突然發現自己實在搞不懂塞西為何如此受歡迎。說他是大師吧，他又不算很有魅力：他態度冷漠，不具備親和力，看起來更像是一位工頭，而不是一位聲名顯赫的導師。

????但這或許正是他的讀者（主要是二十來歲，三十出頭的千禧一代）崇拜他的原因。這代人受夠了老一輩的所謂理財專家，他們年紀差不多是自己的兩倍，總拿年輕一代當小孩子一樣哄著。26歲的程序員馬克斯?康托說，他特別欽佩這位博主待人冷漠這一點。這位來自克利夫蘭的小伙子曾經給塞西發過一個電子郵件，想請教一個問題。結果，他后來竟然發現，他提的這個問題出現在了“我可以讓你富”網站的推送內容上，成了塞西冷嘲熱諷的對象。“他挺操蛋的，對吧？”康托笑著說。

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????譯者：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.