The 3 smartest ways to cut costs and grow your savings during a pandemic, according to a personal finance guru

Ramit Sethi.Courtesy of Ramit Sethi

• Ramit Sethi is an entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of personal finance website I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
• During the pandemic, he recommends people find new ways to cut down on their highest expenses, which are typically rent, eating out, and discretionary spending on material items.
• Sethi also strongly advises people to ramp up their savings and work towards building a one year emergency savings account — the key to this, he says, it automating your savings each month.

How can you save money during a global pandemic? Individuals and businesses alike have found themselves coming up against this issue.

To learn some of the best strategies, Business Insider spoke with personal finance advisor and entrepreneur Ramit Sethi, who is a New York Times bestselling author and creator of the platforms Earnable and I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Under what Sethi calls the "CEO strategy" — cut costs, earn more, and optimize spending — he advises people to first focus their energy on cutting costs.

"For individuals, cutting costs with your money is in many ways like flossing — we all know we should do it, but most of us never get around to it," said Sethi. "We often feel guilt because we know we should have done it a long time ago, and we feel overwhelmed because there are hundreds of things we could cut back on."