Dave Ramsey’s Shocking Prediction For Housing Prices, Stock Market, & The Trump Economy

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18:07I'm curious, are you seeing a lot of opportunity in commercial real estate right now? We have a friend, Ben Mala. I don't know if you've ever, yeah, okay. Well, he does a lot of commercial real estate over in Florida. He says that he sees a lot of opportunity because the loans on commercial, they're a lot shorter and a lot of them are going to be coming due and then they're going to have to refinance at a higher rate. It's going to then open up the supply. A lot of people are going to have to sell and you could be really aggressive right now with low-balling offers on commercial real estate as opposed to residential real estate where there's going to be a little less opportunity.

18:40Dave Ramsey:Yeah, residential's the only place you compete with the in-use consumer. When you're in commercial, you're competing with other B2B. So your other player is an investor. So everybody's looking for a deal, but nobody's looking to pay an emotional white picket fence for my Yorkie in the backyard price, right? You don't have that with an apartment complex. It's just crunch the numbers. The numbers is the numbers and the per units, you know, what are these things selling for per unit? And, uh, what's that moving for? Or what's the, what's office space doing right now, given that some people are working at home and how much of it's empty and what's the future of that and so on.

19:17Dave Ramsey:So you just kind of got to play those things through, but you're not, you don't really have the same competition. That's why I tell people, you know, the beginning investor, they say, I want to buy a duplex and live in one side and rent out the other. Two problems with that. One is your tenants next door and two is when you get ready to sell it, the buyer is probably not an emotional buyer, a retail buyer. It's probably another investor which means wholesale by definition. And so you're probably not going to see the same appreciation rates on something that the investor market is your pool for resale.

19:51Graham Stephan:Yeah, I would agree with that. So I did that. I got a duplex. Oh no, you got to just step in. I was very lucky. That was the first place that I was really like, trying to house hack and get by. And so I basically got this place for no money whatsoever. I went in, I fixed it up. I then refinanced it. I pulled all my cash out. So I had$0 of my own money in this. And with the rent from the other unit and paying down the mortgage, it was a free place for me to live in the middle of Los Angeles. But I also got very lucky. I love the tenants next door. They were awesome. So for me, that worked out really well.

20:27Graham Stephan:But I do agree with you on the appreciation aspect of that. But looking back from a price standpoint, I would have made more appreciation buying a single family home. But in that case, it worked out really well from getting the rents. So they almost balanced each other out. But from appreciation, it would have been easier to sell a single family home.

20:48Dave Ramsey:Well, and you caught a wave in L.A., which that wave's not cresting right now.

20:52Graham Stephan:Yeah, correct.

20:54Dave Ramsey:I wouldn't be able to do that today. If you did that exact deal today, it might break you.

20:58Graham Stephan:Yes, I would agree with that. Speaking of debt, the national debt is on pace to hit 50 trillion over the next 10 years is what they're estimating. Do you see there being a huge issue with money printing and taking on debt within the economy?

21:14Dave Ramsey:I'm the guy that hates debt more than anybody you've ever met. You know, I mean, and I'm baffled by the national debt because, I mean, when I first started in my 30s, there was books out that the world was coming to an end, right? Bankruptcy, was it bankruptcy 1994 or something? A guy predicting that hockey stick in the debt was going to dry up the money supply and it was going to crash. He was going to squeeze the life out of the economy, choke it down, and that the interest that the U.S. is paying out of their budget line items is far exceeding most other things in the budget. And the thing was going to flip over mathematically, and we're all going to die.

21:52Dave Ramsey:Another one was coming economic earthquake. And another guy, one of my buddies that buys and sells, and I think the world of him, he and I are complete opposites, but I still love that guy, is Robert Kiyosaki. and kiyosaki did a book about the ending the coming end of the world whatever the coming economic collapse or whatever he called it i forget and so uh and it didn't happen it's kind of like me predicting the coming economic prosperity for like six quarters but it didn't happen you know so uh i i everybody and and the other thing i've noticed there's a lot of people writing books on the end of the world do this stuff and uh as i've gotten old i've noticed that old white men really have this desire for the world to come to an end.

22:32Dave Ramsey:I don't know what the problem is, but they keep bringing me these, they keep sending me these manuscripts that are half typed out, looks like something from a movie, right? And you need to tell the world about this, Dave, and it's the coming economic earthquake. The world's going to end, you know? And, you know, I hate debt and I don't like that we're doing this, but a long time ago, it was supposed to have collapsed everything and it hasn't, which I don't understand. It baffles me. So one of my good friends is a guy named Art Laffer. Art moved to Tennessee from California many years ago. And, um, he's the father of supply side economics.

23:10Dave Ramsey:He was, he started Reaganomics. He was on Ronald Reagan's cabinet and he's brilliant. He's got a PhD in economics from Cambridge. Okay. He's old money guy. Uh, he's in his eighties and he's just a wonderful guy. And, uh, he and I got a big argument riding together on a plane about this. I'm like, Art, come on, explain to me. And he tried to explain it to me why it's okay. Cause it doesn't bother him a bit. And he's Mr. Economics, right? Um, and I'm like, and I couldn't understand why he doesn't, I still don't understand why it's not there, but, but I quit worrying about it as the summary of the story.

23:45Dave Ramsey:I really don't understand why it has not done more damage already. I mean, you talk about 50 trillion. I mean, I remember when we're talking about 10 trillion. Trillion. My God. I mean, how in the world? And we're just spending like we're on crack. I mean, it's just nuts. How can you possibly sustain this? And yet for three decades, I've watched us do it, and it has seemingly had almost no effect.

24:15Graham Stephan:So could you argue, though, that the effect is a devaluation in the dollar, some inflation, and asset prices have increased?

24:24Dave Ramsey:No, because during the time we've done this, we've had inflation of 2 % some years. We've had inflation of 3%. I mean, the CPI for 70 years has averaged 4.3. That's the Consumer Price Index, the measure of inflation. I mean, we had 9.7 under Biden, and we had some supply chain screw up and weird inflation, you know, post-COVID inflation and that kind of stuff. It was kind of an anomaly. but overall, if you chart inflation with the debt, it hasn't followed it. It's not been that. I mean, the worst inflation we had was in the 70s, and there was hardly any debt then. You go back under Carter era and look at that stuff and gas prices and gas lines, and we had double-digit inflation year in and year out in the 1970s.

25:06Dave Ramsey:And it was not tracking with the debt. It didn't follow, you know. Because if you did that, you would think there was – If it was causation instead of correlation, you'd be able to track them both on a graph and see them following each other, right? And they don't, which I truly don't understand. Art tried to explain it to me, and I'm just not smart enough to get it. So if you were in charge of the government, how would you approach things differently? Well, nobody would let me be in charge because I would cut all of their lives out. All of this, God, man, the nanny stuff. I mean, I would make Elon Musk look like Mother Teresa.

25:41Dave Ramsey:You know, I mean, we would doze that thing down to, I mean, I could balance the budget, but no one would let you because of all the, because everyone's grandmother would be in the street starving and whatever to hear them tell it, which is bull crap. But this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense?

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26:23Dave Ramsey:um you know all these little pet projects we'd have no streets we'd have no army we'd have no whatever according to the the people who go bananas as soon as you start cutting one little thing i mean look at how they reacted to cutting just ridiculous stuff under elon he brings up these things that you look he puts them out there and any sane human right or left is looking at this going this is moronic and they cut it and then what do they do they protest in the streets because we cut moronic stuff. So I don't know how you would do it politically or without causing societal upheaval of some kind, but mathematically you could do it.

26:59Dave Ramsey:I mean, but none of this happens in a vacuum. Roughly a quarter of the entire budget of the government goes towards social security. What are your thoughts on overall retirement income, social security? Should we push out the retirement age? Is this something that we should be dealing with or just say, okay, we need to take care of the people that have worked their entire life and maybe not been financially prudent and then give them Social Security. Well, Social Security was never intended mathematically nor philosophically or politically to be your retirement plan. Couldn't have worked like shaken out mathematically if they just kept individual accounts for each person for the most part.

27:35Dave Ramsey:That's how it should be. Honey, if we had individual accounts and put it in 2%, I mean, it's a negative rate of return. Social Security is a negative rate of return. So if we just put it in there and didn't spend it and gave it back out, you'd have more. If you just broke even. But if you put it in an account and got 2%, God, if you put it in an account and got 7%, you'd have like bazillions of dollars more. Bush tried to talk about privatizing a portion of it. What happened? W. And he got just destroyed politically because you're trying to, my grandmother is not going to be able to eat because these evil Republicans and all this garbage came out.

28:13Dave Ramsey:So, but I mean, the math on social security, it is the worst possible investment. I, I, I, you know, when Bush was doing that, I was on the show and I would come out and here's the math guys. At that time I was like 40 something years old. I said, okay, I paid in for 25 years. If you just won't make me pay in any more, you can keep all I've given you. I won't tell. I'll opt out. Completely opt out. I'll not take it. And I will kick your butt with the remaining 20 years of my earning power. I will I will have I'll be just fine with the money I would have paid into Social Security, putting it into a CD.

28:52Dave Ramsey:I would have had 10 or 20 X what they're going to pay me now at 65 years old. Why can't you opt out? Because it's just I would have really for that. It's just another tax.

29:02Graham Stephan:It's not like the thing is, the reason why smart people would. Well, and that would only leave the dumb people. The reason why is because current workers pay for the people who are currently on Social Security. So all of our money goes to them. Because the trust fund has been robbed long ago.

29:19Dave Ramsey:There's no trust fund. It's a cash flow mechanism now. But yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, and so like pastors, preachers can opt out on the grounds of I object to the system on a religious basis, which as a Christian I could easily do because it's a horrible use of God's money. So I object to it on a religious basis, but I'm not a preacher, so I can't do it. But when preachers ask me, should I opt out? I'm like, oh yeah. Yeah.

29:44Graham Stephan:So you're saying everyone should become a preacher. Apparently. That's a great side hustle video right there.

29:50Dave Ramsey:But it's only your pastoral income you can opt out on. So if you have a side hustle, anything else you get is still subject to the system.

29:59Graham Stephan:You could shift income.

30:02Dave Ramsey:What do we got to replace? You got to have a retirement plan. Duh. You got to have a long-term disability because if you become disabled as an adult, you get SSI, which is a function of social security. And if you die, your kids are taken care of with social security. And so you need life insurance. But duh, you need all three of those things anyway if you're a responsible adult. That's part of financial planning. You need a retirement plan. You need long-term disability. And you need life insurance to take care of your family if something happens to you. That's basic financial planning. You need to be doing that anyway, pastor.

30:31Dave Ramsey:So just do what you're supposed to do anyway and opt out and use the money you would have been given those doofuses to fund your personal life and you'll come out way better off.

30:41Graham Stephan:So what is your balance then between having a social safety net and taking personal responsibility? I spoke in a church the other day and I was showing them the numbers that if we spend in America, if we took 20 % of our Halloween budget and 20 % of

31:01Dave Ramsey:our pet budget, we the people could take care of we the people. Easy. There'd be no hungry kids. you could fund every, every harvest food bank, every hungry kid in America. There'll be no hunger except for systemic problems. But I mean, mathematically there'd be the money to feed every hungry kid in America. 20 % of your Halloween budget, 20 % of your pet budget. How much are people spending on Halloween and pets? It's billions and billions and billions every year. I didn't even touch Christmas. I'm not the Grinch. Okay. So, but our consumption versus our generosity, we, the people, and people are not as generous because they think it's the government's job and it's not, it's your job.

31:47Dave Ramsey:If we would take care of each other, we can put the government out of business. We can make them irrelevant. And then suddenly all these discussions start to have a different flavor. So one of my massive goals is just to increase outrageous generosity by typical individuals to a point that it actually makes a macro impact. What would you say are the best real world applications of generosity for average people? You just look for something that is loving people well that are struggling. And how can I fund hungry children? How can I fund something to keep, you know, this huge problem with sex trafficking?

32:23Dave Ramsey:Take something like St. Jude's Hospital. So, you know, it's only like a couple billion to run one of those things. And that's nothing out of our consumption budgets. Nothing. You could build 37 of those things in one year if you just dial back a little bit of consumption and said, okay, we're all going in the charitable hospital business, all of us together. And, you know, it's not required, but it's inspired. And that's the difference in taxation and generosity. I suppose this is a very like a weird niche dilemma to bring up, but every single time that I've like given to a charitable organization, I have gotten probably two to three letters in the mail every single month for years because of that, which is obviously like not anything, you know, horrible.

33:13but we also, I mean, we also, we did St. Jude's. Yeah, we did St. Jude's. We did St. Jude's this year. But every time that so far, and you don't know where the money's going, which I guess is also up to the charity. Like they could also tell you exactly. No, it's up to you to ask.

33:25Dave Ramsey:You could just say, okay, are your books open? And their books are open, by the way. You could, if you want to know where their money is going, just ask them, they got it. You can jump on their site and look at it.

33:33Graham Stephan:I like doing things where I could see the impact or see the person. Tipping, but I'll give you a good example. This is like the most memorable for me is I was eating sushi and it was maybe 9.30 at night and I see a mom come in with her four-year-old and she's doing DoorDash. And I'm thinking, she's a hard worker at 9.30 at night picking up sushi with her kid. She can't get a babysitter, so I gave her a hundred bucks. And like that I felt great about because she's out there working and like a hundred dollars for her, I'm sure would go a long way. That made me feel good to see the impact that has on a person and to see the reaction when you do something like that.

34:11Dave Ramsey:You know, and all the studies tell us that when you can see the impact, the generosity increases. And so, you know, how do we do that at a million dollar level instead of a hundred dollar level and see the impact? And you can do it. I mean, you don't have to give to some monolith and not know, throw the money into some black thing and never know where it went out there. But and, you know, for that matter, people, it's not unusual for wealthy people to just start something and say, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go. I'm going to go put a stop to at least some sex trafficking. I'm going to go out here and I'm going to make sure that these kids get fed.

34:44Dave Ramsey:And that means we're going to set up a food bank here and I'm going to make sure it's funded. And I'm going to watch the people come in and get the food. And then you do it with a million dollars instead of a hundred. But yeah, I agree with you. The tipping is tipping activates that part of your DNA that we're talking about right now. But if we did that at a macro level, you do away with social security because I'm. Because Dave Ramsey doesn't need social security. I don't have to have it. I'm fine. whatever, 1500 bucks a month or something. I don't need it. Are you collecting social security?

35:17Dave Ramsey:I will. I'm 64. I'm getting ready to be 65. So you've delayed it to try to get the maximum amount. Yeah. At a certain age, you just have to take it. It's not. I mean, I don't. What are you going to do with it? I don't, well, I don't even know what's there. I'll just, you know, just go into the account and we'll just keep going. But, um, but that, you know, the point is, is that you said the folks that are struggling, how do we take care of them? How do we have a safety net? I don't need a safety net because I've been, I've done my job. Right. And for people that have done their job, they don't need a safety net.

35:45Dave Ramsey:So, um, but, uh, but also it's not fair to take the money away from me because I have paid in for 50 freaking years. And so, um, that wouldn't be equitable. That wouldn't be correct, but socially we could do it with a non-governmental process and people are cared for and loved. And think about the most of the universities were started as Christian institutions. Most of the hospitals in America were started not by the medical industry, but by the healing arts. And these were people doing this as an act of love, as an act of generosity with wealth that they had built. And it was the private sector taking care of the private sector.

36:27Dave Ramsey:There's a lot going on that's very good in that area. But man, you could make the government irrelevant mathematically, and it would be an awesome day. So we spoke about the underserved, the people that are struggling, that need help. What do you do with just the lazy people that don't want to work? They want to sit back, relax, spend time on their phone.

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38:19Dave Ramsey:What we got to stop and think about is what's good for that person. okay what's good for that person is to discover the incredible dignity that having an empowered just having an empowered life where i go leave the cave kill something and drag it home the thrill of the hunt the thrill of the the metaphorical kill the um they they have a listless the chemicals in their body are not doing what they're supposed to be doing because they're not active, they're not engaged. So what they're doing is not good for them. It feels good to eat too much chocolate cake when you're eating it, but it doesn't end up well for you.

39:04Dave Ramsey:And so what's really good for that person? How can we love that person well is the way I look at that. And so if that was my son or my daughter, what would I do as if I'm a loving father, not a harsh father, not a mean father, but someone who really wants what's best for them. What's best for them is, is they engage something that they get the dignity of hard work of getting a mental or a physical callous, um, that they actually get the, the feeling that we have all had by accomplishing some things, you know, and you don't get that sitting on your couch, um, playing call of duty, you know, um, and so, uh, the highest depression rate ever, highest rate ever, the, the, uh, deaths of despair, we call them in the statistical analysis is the highest ever in the group we're talking about because it's, it's really a horrible life.

40:01Dave Ramsey:And so whatever we've got to do to get them to engage and build a work ethic muscle for their own good is the best thing we can do for them. And sometimes that is what, you know, where you let someone suffer the natural consequences of their stupidity or their bad actions. I've done some stupid things in my life and the natural consequences took me out, you know, knock me to my knees. Um, and it ended up being, you know, okay, next time you learned to duck, next time you learned to not do that thing, don't touch that hot stove. It hurts. Don't sit on your couch and have no money and be hungry.

40:39Dave Ramsey:Oh, being hungry would be a good thing. That would cause you to get off your couch, you know? And so a little desperation is really good for the soul. It's a great motivator. Now, again, I'm not trying to be harmful. It's an act of love And people say, well, that's tough love. No, it's just real love. Real love is not leaving them alone in their mess. That doesn't help. They're not being helped. If you really love your kid, you know, you make them brush their teeth. So they have some. One thing that I found fascinating is that Bill Gates always argues that he should be paying more in tax. What do you think Bill Gates means by that?

41:16Why do you think he's saying that? Bill Gates is paying more in tax. than anybody. But he says the tax rate, the percentage should be high. Didn't he say that on Oprah? He went on Oprah or some sort of talk show, and he was like, I should be paying more in tax.

41:31Dave Ramsey:I have no idea what Bill Gates means, but I do know that 48 % last year of Americans paid zero federal income tax.

41:39Graham Stephan:48 %? Zero. Yep. The top 10 % pay something like, I think it's like 90-something percent of tax. Yeah. It's a very high amount.

41:50Dave Ramsey:So Gates actually does not know. If he said that, he doesn't understand statistics because the truth is the evil 10%, the top 10 % are paying the vast majority of the federal income taxes. It's already there. I mean, and Trump even took it further because he drastically increased and now it's indexed for inflation, the standard deduction. And so you've got, now you're going to have about, this year, probably about 92 % of the people that file an easy return that don't file an atomized return. So they're taking no charitable deductions. They're taking no interest deductions. They're taking no deductions because they take the standard deduction, but you can make, I think it's like, uh, I forget what it's gone to.

42:33Dave Ramsey:It's not like 30 or$35 ,000 in standard deductions and, and have zero tax. And so again, they're not doing anything wrong by paying zero taxes. It's just, they're not, they don't have any due under the current system. So to say that rich people need to pay their fair share is the most mathematically asinine statement that you could possibly make.

42:54Graham Stephan:What a lot of people do is they look at capital gains and they say, well, Elon Musk's wealth went from 100 billion to 200 billion and he pays only that amount of tax. But they take into account the value of his company without him actually realizing those gains. But then anytime his company is worth less, they never say he should get a tax refund. They never mention that. You can't write off those losses.

43:16Dave Ramsey:All right. Because they're not realized. Exactly. They're realized, but they're not recognized in terms of tax code. But yeah, so, and again, that's people just trying to make a case for why they haven't succeeded. If you quit analyzing Elon Musk's personal finances and analyze your own, probably be a good use of your calories. Would you say there are any valid reasons for financial failure in America in 2025? Yeah. Yeah. Um, tragedy comes to someone. Um, I've got two friends right now dying of cancer and, um, they're not gonna make it. And if they had absolutely zero money and left behind a wife and kids or a husband and kids, um, yeah, you could have failure.

44:06Dave Ramsey:The twist on the answer would be, is there any reason for permanent financial failure? No, there's not. Unless someone is just completely debilitated or has an extreme disability where they're unable to function. But if you're able to function in the marketplace, you can have a tragedy and it's a temporary thing. And during that time, they can't do anything. It's, it's very sad and very real, but, um, but you know, is, is that a permanent? No, that's a snapshot and life's a film strip. And so how many times do we hear of the, I mean, I talked to a lady the other day who went to jail for robbing a bank and she was in jail for 10 years and she lost her kids to, you know, to her fam, you know, family services took them away.

45:00Dave Ramsey:She lost everything, her reputation, her confidence. her looks, everything. She comes out of jail. Now, can she start from below ground zero, subterranean, and still at 32 years old or 34 years old, still go make a life? Absolutely she can. But her biggest problem is, like a buddy of mine who grew up in a really low-income area, he said, you know, getting out of the hood is not as hard as getting the hood out of your head. So her biggest problem is overcoming her mindset. and believing and having hope again and seeing a system that she could use from you guys or me that she could use to actually go and, okay, I can go get this job and then I can do that and then I can take this class and I can do this and I have a career path and then I can start saving and investing.

45:50And mathematically, can someone starting from nothing and no reputation that's a convicted

45:56Dave Ramsey:felon become prosperous over 30 years in America? Absolutely. But they got to believe they can and they got to see the system and have access and that. But if you don't, you know, if you can't get out of your own head, then no, you ain't got a chance. How do you help people get out of their own head and believe in the system? You got to show them a system that they believe. It's called hope. Bible says hope deferred. In other words, hopelessness makes the heart sick. It's a sickness of heart. But when desire comes, it is the tree of life. And you guys have heard it and seen it on our show and on yours, someone calls here and they say, well, this is my situation.

46:36Dave Ramsey:This, this, this, this, this, and I think I'm bankrupt. And I'm like, no, you're not bankrupt. If you sold that and you did that and you move that over there and you quit trying to hold on to that, you're not only not bankrupt, you're going to actually come out of this with a positive net worth. And then you go from there and here's, and they go, you can hear the light bulbs going off on their head. Right. And because it changes their perspective because they were in the middle the forest and couldn't see the trees. So it wasn't math. It wasn't the systemic problems with the economy that were keeping them down.

47:04Dave Ramsey:It wasn't, uh, wealth inequality that was keeping them down. It wasn't all that bull crap. It was, they couldn't see their way because they were so deep in the forest and all we just take a chainsaw to the sucker, you know, and go, okay, guys, here's what you do. You do this, this, this, because we're on the outside. We're not emotionally in their head space. I don't have their depression. I don't have their blues. I don't have their dysfunctional daddy in my head, you know, or whatever the crap is going on. Right. But if I go, okay, if you do this and they go, yeah, that would work. And you start to hear them and you, they're the ones that are going to do it.

47:33Dave Ramsey:You can hear the ones aren't going to do it too. Right. And they go, wow. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that. And you mean, yeah, I'd have to get rid of that. And I hate that. I wouldn't want to sell that, but I would to get free, you know, to be free and to be able to start again. And, and, and that energy, you'd feel the energy come right back up, but that's headspace. That's not math problems. And it's not systemic problems with the economy. and it's not house prices versus affordability indexes or any of that crap. It's belief. How do you feel when you could tell someone's not going to follow your advice?

48:04Dave Ramsey:Like they just took up the time on the air that we could have used for somebody who was going to. And so I end up going, you don't hold and you're gone. I will argue with you about three times and about the third time you come back at me and like, I'm wasting my time. You called me up to get me to endorse your stupidity and that's the wrong idea i'm here to help you get a path see a plan see a way of going and if you can't see that then i'll move on to somebody else it's like you know like lady had you know how long ago i had a escalade and she owed like 85 5 000 bucks on a stupid escalade you know and um and she's like i can't do this and this this this and i'm like lady you're broke you need to sell the escalade well that's a non-starter i'm not doing that.

48:52Dave Ramsey:And that was the fourth time I'd gone at that thing. And I just went, move on. I can't help her. She didn't really want to be helped. She wants a magic wand and we don't have fairy dust here. We have calculators. On the topic of shifting mentality, you said you were 63? Four. 64. Okay. My dad's 63 and I was out to dinner with him recently. And he said, it's only a symptom of the past five or so years. He's been wrestling a little bit more with mortality. It's making him reflect on his life thinking what he would have done differently And I think that it's really altering his perspective. He's never mentioned this to me before But he said it's only like a product of around this age.

49:30Yeah, i'm curious if this is something that that you started thinking about recently And if so, what does it look like when you're wrestling with mortality?

49:39Dave Ramsey:For us, it's not been like regret I'm, not looking back going. Oh, I screwed that up because I did screw up a lot of stuff in my life But i'm not I don't want to go back and do it again. It was all it's been a good ride. I'm fine Um, but the going forward is you start counting your days, you go. And so my wife and I have adopted a saying, um, someone calls us up and wants to do something. We, we go, why wouldn't I, we don't say no to a lot. We just go do it. You know, whatever, you know, why wouldn't I, we're going on a cruise. All right, let's go. We're flying to Croatia. All right. I'm in, let's go.

50:10Dave Ramsey:And so, um, whatever, or, you know, uh, you know, she was, she, we've been learning to play golf together for the last five years. And so we're finally getting tolerable at the stupid sport. What's your best round? 78. 78? You're hiring coaches, huh? Oh, all the time. Yeah. Lots of coaches. Yeah. To get rid of - You destroy me. Destroy me. Play golf with this body. You have to have coaching. That's fantastic. That's not average. You said my best ever. Well, that's still phenomenal. My best ever is 100. Okay. All right. Well, anyway, so we're learning to play. So anyway, she's playing with these clubs and two or three of her friends are playing of these clubs and they're like, you know, I, you know, whatever.

50:51Dave Ramsey:And I said, well, let's get you, get the guy over here and have a professional fit you in a set of clubs and get you some real, much better golf clubs. You can get rid of these Walmart things. And she's like, why wouldn't I? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense?

51:22There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.

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52:01Dave Ramsey:It's an irrelevant amount of money in our world today. I'm not bragging, but I mean, what else am I going to spend it on with this many years left? To your point, to your question. And so, you know, I'm 65, so 85, 95. I mean, you know. And what part of that is debilitating health? I'm not able to do stuff. So, hey, we're going to Scotland and play golf for 13 days. Y 'all want to go? Why wouldn't I? At what point in your life do you think it's healthy to adopt that why wouldn't I framework? When you can afford it.

52:35Dave Ramsey:The problem is when you're 26 and you're broke and you go, why wouldn't I? And you're financing out your ears. And then, yeah, that's why you wouldn't. I can tell you why you wouldn't. but in this case, we have the money. It's an irrelevant amount of money compared to the overall situation as a percentage of net worth or percentage of income. And whatever the thing is, if it's a luxury item or a generosity item, we're looking over, we could give that to that situation.

53:00Graham Stephan:And why wouldn't I? What percentage do you look at where you just say to yourself, it doesn't matter? Is it 1%, 5%, 0.1?

53:09Dave Ramsey:We ask ourselves the question, if we take that much money and burn it in the middle of the floor, will our life change? And so if it changes our life, then that's a high percentage of your net worth or too high a percentage of your net worth. You know, I'm not talking about gives you indigestion. I'm not talking about makes you sad. That would, if you burn money in the middle of the floor, either one of those would occur. Right. But, but the point is that what happens is when you strain and struggle and fight and scratch and claw through this thing of building a business and building wealth. sometimes you never learn to let go and be generous to others and to yourself to enjoy some of it but it's not it's not 80 i'm not putting 80 of my money on something i'm leaving an inheritance to my children's children i want that's a biblical thing for me i want to do that and so you know i want to change my family tree and i have um assuming i don't do something extremely stupid in the next 20 years, which is, but going on a cruise is not going to do that.

54:08Dave Ramsey:Or, you know, catching a plane to Scotland is not going to do that. Or giving a million dollars to something is not going to do that. I mean, these buildings are worth 650 million. So I'm probably okay, you know, you know, so that kind of thing. So I'm not bragging. I'm just saying, you asked, it's a ratio thing for me. Does it, does it, have I got too much tied up in stupid, you know, in consumption or in generosity to the point that I'm harming the nest egg, that I'm harming the mothership. and that's what I'm always asking myself because I think as a Christian, I want to be responsible before God for managing his money, and he says take care of your own household first, or you're worse than an unbeliever.

54:45Dave Ramsey:So I'd take care of my wife. She put up with this stuff for 43 years. I mean, she deserves some golf clubs. I mean, you know, so, you know, that kind of thing. So that's there, and then I want to leave it in. A godly man leaves an inheritance for his children and children. I want to do that. God loves a cheerful giver. So I want to be outrageously generous. So those are the three guiding scriptures that keep me in line and managing his money in a way that I get to have an incredible life and I get to be a blessing to others, too. For young people today, where do you see the biggest opportunities for them?

55:19Dave Ramsey:I think I truly believe this and I think I've got good basis for the belief that today in the United States of America at this moment with all the political poop. And this moment in time in our economy as it is structured at this moment and the way things move at this moment is the best possible time to be alive in the history of the human race. If you want to build wealth, if you want to become somebody, if you want to go do something. I've got so many Gen Z's on this team. and the thing I have learned about the Gen Z's and Millennials is that they've grown up with this thing in their hand that answers any question that they want answered instantaneously.

56:10Dave Ramsey:They've got information of the entire world in their palm. They can push a button and stuff shows up on your front porch in a few hours. It's the weirdest thing. It's like having a magic wand. And what that has done for those of you that have this native, that you've had this your entire adult lives or semi-adult lives. You've had this at your access. You can stop. You can get an app to do anything is you have a built-in, if you let it function, a built-in abundance mentality. Because this thing says anything's possible. Because anything's possible. That's an abundance mentality. And if you will tap into that, instead of believing these horrible philosophies that are floating around about, oh, the economy is systemically flawed and you're screwed.

56:59Dave Ramsey:And, you know, boomers bought their houses with a basket of strawberries. And now you can't buy it. If you don't quit believing all that crap and instead go, God, anything's possible. Go do something. It was a lot harder to be Bill Gates or Michael Dell in their garage than it would be today. I mean, you start a digital application or something, you can go to market with it for free. It doesn't cost anything. You don't even have to know how to write code now. AI will do it. I mean, an idiot like me can write code now. I've never written a lot of code in my life, but I can open up ChatGTBT and have a website in a few hours that's really nice.

57:41Dave Ramsey:and if I don't know how to run a store, I'll put Shopify on there until I learn how to run a store and it costs me nothing. And all of a sudden, my ideas are in the marketplace and the marketplace can talk back to me and say, your idea sucks. So adjust it, iterate it. And you can iterate it quickly and easily because it's not an analog product. It's a digital product. It's the best time ever to make money. I mean, you can go make money. Just like, I've never seen anything like this. you know we actually had to have brick and mortar analog i had vhs tapes for god's sakes i was selling you know i carry books around the trunk of my car there was no internet and god man if you could just touch a button and it goes automatically to a warehouse that i don't own and they fulfill it for me and i make us and my book goes out there and and oh by the way i wrote that book in about a fourth the time.

58:37Dave Ramsey:And if you actually want to go crazy, AI will probably do your audio version and it'll sound just like you. The last book I did, we almost used AI to do the audio book because it sounded, it was, it was about 94 % perfect. Wow. And we decided the edit to clean up the other 6 % was too much. It was easier for me to sit down and do the 16 hours to record it. But dude, that's probably the last one I'll ever record. The next audio book that Dave Ramsey does will probably sound a lot like Dave Ramsey.

59:04Graham Stephan:Kevin O 'Leary said that he went to Dubai and they did a whole AI imaging of him. He said a few phrases. They got a few hours of him. But now they could edit in real time any advertisement of him without him ever being involved in it. They just type in the script. Which is a little scary.

59:24Dave Ramsey:But the point is it's a huge opportunity. Yeah. You don't even need AI to do it. You don't necessarily need digital to do it. But you've got ease to market. You know, if you, old econ class was, what are the barriers? It's how difficult it is to get to market. How trapped is that market? How hard is it to pass the test to become one of those? You know, ease of entry. It's easy to become a real estate agent. It's hard to become a securities salesperson because you've got to pass a series six, series seven, 63, which is a lot like CPA exam, real estate test I took in 27 minutes. So, I mean, it's ease of entry.

59:57Dave Ramsey:but in general can i what's it take to suddenly just take my idea out there so to sit and do nothing at the best opportunity in the history of mankind is such a it's so sad and such a freaking waste i'm so excited for your all's generation and what's going to happen what's going to happen to ramsey when i'm gone and the stuff that these that the people in this building are working on right now is mind-blowing. And it's just, man, the scale can go hockey stick up and to the right. I'm just, it's a good time to be alive. So for those that aren't capitalizing on the amount of opportunity around them, what is the primary obstacle that's preventing them from doing that?

1:00:39Headspace.

1:00:40Dave Ramsey:Belief. It's just belief that if they plant the seeds, the corn will grow. Exactly. And if you don't plant seeds 100 % of the time, corn will not grow. That's the problem. And so sometimes when you plant seeds, there's not a lot of rain and it sounds too hot and you don't get a good crop. Sometimes when you plant seeds, God brings the rain and the sun and it's perfect. And you get a bumper crop. You don't control the sun and the rain, but you do control whether or not you plant. And a hundred percent of the time you're planting, you're going to get some kind of a yield on that. And you may learn something that next year you plant differently.

1:01:16Dave Ramsey:You iterate and you change the product line. I mean, the number of things we do today at Ramsey tactically to deliver goods and services to the customer that we did 10 years ago is really close to zero. Of course, you've got to iterate and change how you're doing it and what you're doing and the way it looks and the way it feels and the way the book business is versus when I did my first book. When I did the first book and I was on the Today Show, people actually watched the Today Show back then. It was crazy. and, and, and there were these things called bookstores and they had books in them and people went there and, and I would have a thousand people in a line to do a book signing.

1:01:57Dave Ramsey:I can't even imagine that happening today. No chance that would happen today. And so, um, I don't think there's anybody that famous hardly that, that are big, maybe, maybe Taylor Swift. Okay. But, but I mean, who's going to say to, to go to Barnes and freaking Noble and stand in line, everybody got their coffee to get a book signed by somebody you think something good about. Okay. Doesn't happen much. If I did a book signing today, there'd be 14 people there. I mean, it just wouldn't come. I disagree. I bet you would get a thousand people. I don't. I really don't. I mean, I are because a, well, it just does.

1:02:33Dave Ramsey:It's not the way people are consuming the product anymore. It's shifted. And so to continue to do it the same way and not iterate and follow where people are is a thing. So a friend of mine does a reality show. I was talking to him yesterday and it was very successful, um, 10 years ago. And they took it off and they quit and they retired. And now they're trying to come back with version 2.0. Okay. And, but when they did it before it was on cable and I was talking to him yesterday, he said, you know how many people have cable? I said, no. He said, nobody. He goes, it's a problem. He said, we suddenly woke up and realized we put out a reality show on cable.

1:03:14Dave Ramsey:and expected somebody to watch it. It's hilarious. Nobody's watching it. He goes, we've got to reboot this thing, and we've got to get Hulu. We've got to get YouTube TV. He said, I'm doing a distribution deal for the fall. I've got to reset all these episodes we've done and send them out again and try to restart this thing again. Otherwise, we're going to have to close up the tent on it. But, yeah, he's like, the marketplace moved, and we acted like it didn't, and so we're sitting here with nothing. It's not working. So, yeah, you've got to follow around what's happening. So if you take a person that's struggling with their finances and their current situation right now, I feel like back in the day, the advice would have been, okay, we'll start cutting back a little bit on your expenses, start saving a little bit more money.

1:03:52Whereas now, if you're reiterating your strategy, it seems as though the best solution would be to try to take on some more work or be more creative in making more money. So what would you say to a person that's struggling right now in 2025? Should they lean more into cutting their finances or should they lean more into trying to expand on their income?

1:04:11Dave Ramsey:Oh, the answer is the same as it was 30 years ago. Both. Yeah. In the old days, we would just say, go deliver pizzas, which now is DoorDash or whatever, right? But we said, go to Papa John's. They'll hire you if you can breathe and you bathed and maybe bathed. And you can deliver pizza, right? And when you go to the front door and people ask how you're doing, say better than I deserve because that way they might know that you're listening to this show. That's why you're working an extra job. They'll give you extra tip. And so use the code. And so get your income up. Yeah. And cut your expenses.

1:04:46Dave Ramsey:And the same thing's true today. Get your income up, cut your expenses. The difference is that if you are a teacher, there's no reason you should do DoorDash. You should do online tutoring at 50 bucks an hour. And you can set it up in about 45 minutes. And there's no, if you want to get your income up. I mean, it's just, uh, if you've got a PhD in something, you know, uh, on the online classes, you can make seriously good money as your side hustle, you know? And so you've got, again, the, the, the world that we live in today just gives you so much ease of entry into things. You don't have to get in your Chevy Chevette and deliver a Papa John's is a lot of stuff you can do to get your income up temporarily, uh, with an unreasonable number of hours.

1:05:32And, uh, you know,

1:05:35Dave Ramsey:an unhealthy work-life balance temporarily because you have an unhealthy freaking mess you created and you've got to dig out of it and so yeah and you got to sell the car that's 50 of your dadgum income and so and you got to not go on vacation and you don't need to see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working there until you get this stuff straightened out so yeah you got to do both you got to get your income up and you're out go down and that's called margin and the more extreme you do that, the more margin you'll have and the less time you'll spend in hell, the faster you'll get out.

1:06:07Dave Ramsey:So I recommend ripping the Band-Aid off. I mean, like make your broke friends think you've joined a cult. I mean, go bananas for a short period of time. That intensity gets you out so much faster than trying to wander out. Let's say you seize control of a person's life that's not doing great financially. They're a little confused, a little lost. Maybe let's just say they're 25 years old. This is not supposed to be me. I'm 26 for the record. This is someone else and they're not pleased with where they're at. What exactly would you do? Would you be like, okay, get a job, work 80 hours, find a girlfriend you want to make your wife, you know, find a local church.

1:06:45What would be like the actual directional things that you would, you would tell them to do?

1:06:51Dave Ramsey:My friend, Henry Cloud, um, is writing a book right this second on a concept he's taught for years called figure out what your desired future is and then reverse engineer out of your desired future this is where i want to be and this is where i am then if where i am is not where i want to be what must be true that's not true now for me to get there and um so that will lead you then to the tactical things that you're pointing to once you solve that. What must be true for me to be the 10-year-from-now version of me to be, have this net worth, have a career that looks like this, a spiritual walk that looks like this, a physical condition that looks like this, a relationship with good friends, high-quality relationships, and possibly even one of those being your life mate, your partner, your wife.

1:07:47Dave Ramsey:what does the perfect version of 10 years from now look like and then reverse engineer what must be true to get there. And so if I want a robust spiritual walk, yeah, that'd be involved. And if you're Jewish, you'd head off to the synagogue. If you're Christian, you'd head off to a good church. Or if you're not anything, head off to a good church and figure it out. And be forewarned, there are people in those churches that aren't perfect, but that's why they're there too. too. So, um, but, but either, either way you can learn things there. Oh, and watch who you hang around with. Cause you're going to become who you hang around with, you know?

1:08:20Dave Ramsey:And so if all your friends are sitting in doom scrolling all day long and don't have any ambition and all they do is smoke pot and doom scroll, uh, you can pretty well be assured that 10 years from now, you're going to look just like who you hang around with. Um, be not deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits, you will become who you hang around with. All the data shows that. Tons of research that shows that not only your physical condition, the words you use, the books you read, the movies you like, you become who your crew is.

1:08:53Graham Stephan:And so pick them carefully. What are the biggest problems you see today with men when it comes to work, life, money, and family? A fun little story here, but when Jack and I started the Ice Coffee Hour, we had to figure out everything ourselves from the best audio equipment to use, the best cameras, how to book guests. It was a challenge. Every day was a unique experience that we had to figure out ourselves. That's why if you're starting your own business, you know just how relevant today's sponsor is. And that would be Shopify. Shopify is basically your all-in-one business partner. They power millions of businesses worldwide from major brands like Mattel and Gymshark to entrepreneurs just getting started.

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1:10:09Graham Stephan:Turn your big business ideas into... So sign up for the$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash ICH, all lowercase. Guys, it is just$1 per month. If you have a business idea, you want to turn it into a real thing, Shopify is the best way of doing it and it only costs$1 per month with the link down below in the description or shopify.com slash ICH, all lowercase. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring. this episode. There's something that comes up often on the podcast is the emphasis on diversification. And a lot of people right now are diversifying into gold and silver. And with everything going on in the economy, it makes sense why.

1:10:42Graham Stephan:Like the dollar is already down 9 % this year, while gold is up 25%. That is a major shift in purchasing power. And it might not feel like it right now, but it certainly adds up over time. Plus, with potential rate cuts on the horizon, hard assets like gold and silver have historically done really well in that environment. So if you're holding too much in cash, you could be missing on some upside. Today's sponsor, Noble Gold Investments, helps people explore different options. You could roll over part of your 401k or IRA into physical gold or silver or make a direct purchase. Either way, it's a strategic method to hedge outside of the stock market.

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1:11:57Dave Ramsey:men have been uh devalued and trivialized and been the villain or the clown of everything for good 20 years you don't see a tv commercial where the dad is the hero he's an idiot or a sitcom where the dad is a hero he's an idiot the 12 year old is the smart one and they smart off through the whole script. And they're the brilliant one, you know. And the, but the dad's a doofus. And the mother rolls her eyes at the doofus that she picked as a life partner. And if you do that to any segment of the economy long enough, eventually they begin to believe it. And so we have 7.2 million men that are able-bodied, able-minded that are not engaged in the workplace right now.

1:12:51Dave Ramsey:They're doing nothing. They're sitting because the entire culture has said, you're a doofus, you're a buffoon, you're valueless manhood. Masculinity is toxic by its very nature. And so you're of no value. And the problem is it's destroying not only economics, but social fabric as well, because we do know the data on kids, particularly daughters. the cues they take from their dad are devastatingly impactful, good or bad. And so an engaged dad who builds confidence and gives their daughter hugs growing up until she leaves home and even after she leaves home builds a confident daughter, a daughter that is not sexually promiscuous, a daughter that finishes college, a daughter that will not be victimized in the marketplace.

1:13:46Dave Ramsey:That comes from their dads. The data shows that. And so when the dad is not engaged, it's horrible for the social fabric. And it messes with sons too, but it's a different thing. The father wound on the sons is different. And it's very real. But economically speaking, what we're doing is we've got 7.2 million of these guys doing nothing. Zero. They're being supported by a disability check, and they're not disabled, but they signed up and claimed disability. They're being supported by their girlfriend, their mother. They're being supported by something else. They are not generating an income in the marketplace.

1:14:30Dave Ramsey:And so their personal dignity has just eroded. And to get those people back reengaged, if we open up a whole bunch of factories in America because manufacturing comes back to America with this Trump stuff, I don't know who's going to be in there working. I don't think those guys want to go back in there. I think they have gotten pretty comfortable sitting on their couch and lost hope. And so we've got to say, okay, being male is not evil. Being male is not necessarily holier either, but it's not evil. And it is different than being female. And it is a thing. And, and ladies can produce wonderful, creative things and wonderful incomes in the economy.

1:15:12Dave Ramsey:And so can gentlemen. And so, you know, let's go be gentlemen and ladies and let's go do the best things we can for our society, for our culture, our community and each other and get reengaged and, and quit telling everybody that the worst possible thing you could be is a, you know, a white guy. You know, it's like the worst, like the worst human on the planet in America. It's the only one in America that no one takes up for.

1:15:44Graham Stephan:So what do you think those people need to hear to make a change today? If you were to speak in terms of owning themselves and making a change in the work for us and in their lives. It is a, you know, it's a destiny thing.

1:15:59Dave Ramsey:It's you do have the power. You do have the power to do things. You do have the ability to just stand up and decide I'm in business. You can just decide I'm going to do these things. And, and all of a sudden you are, I mean, and it's an empowerment idea or message is called hope. Um, and you know, I think where we lost connection was that if I do all the right things, I'm not going to get the result. If I plant the corn, I'm not going to get corn. I'm going to get poison. Poison is going to grow. Nightshade is going to grow out of the ground if I plant corn. Somehow we got this disconnect. And we've got to go back to believing the cause and effect of hard work, cause and effect of generosity, the cause and effect of kindness and compassion, the cause and effect of having good quality relationships, that there's a tie in, that these things are not compartmentalized, that they are all, there's a holistic view to all this.

1:16:57Dave Ramsey:so you start to understand okay building a net worth of a million or two million dollars is not compartmentalized the tie-in is that we found 83 percent of them have an onboard spouse that works as their teammate this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome.

1:17:31Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

1:17:37Graham Stephan:Hey Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new Fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it, Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crock store today.

1:18:06Dave Ramsey:that's not a disconnect that is causal that that's not simply correlation and um versus if you interview the general public you know 40 say their spouse and then we're on the same page but they're not obviously not winning in these areas um and that you know so when you start to believe in the cause and effect then you go okay it's really important that you and i get on the same page, darling, and that we are pulling this wagon together instead of apart. And what questions do you ask or what questions should someone ask their spouse to make sure you're on the same page? Let's start talking about that desired future and be in agreement on that.

1:18:44Dave Ramsey:If we got our desired future laid out in HD, high definition, we can see the sweat beads on it. We can see the hair color on it. We know exactly what winning looks like. It'll change. But for today, we're in agreement that that's where we want to go. then we can start reverse engineering together. What sacrifices have we got to make? What must be true? That's not true today. What price do we have to pay to get there? When we started this business, um, I had just gone broke a couple of years before we had nothing. Uh, I made$130 ,000 flipping real estate the year I started this and it was three years after I'd gone bankrupt and I really wasn't flipping it.

1:19:24Dave Ramsey:I was just tying it up and selling the position, selling the context. Um, and I did the numbers and I said, Sharon, we sat down and looked at it and she said, this stuff that you're teaching at church, this financial peace stuff, this is really helping people. And you, we need to talk about that. Okay. So we're praying about it. I'm like, okay. I think God is telling us to go just do that and not do real estate anymore. But if we do best, I can figure selling a few books and a few speeches and I'll, you know, having a little class, I might, might make$62 ,000. Here's the numbers. Here's how I get there.

1:19:57Dave Ramsey:which is half of what I made the year before. I got little babies and a wife who's just gone through a bankruptcy. And we're looking at this, and I said, do you think we ought to do that? And she said, I think we're supposed to do that. I said, you really think we're supposed to take a pay cut in half? This is the weirdest, stupid conversation. She says, it's not a pay cut in half. It's a step. It's what we must do to get to where. And she said, can you imagine how many people are in debt? If we helped a few million of them, how much that$62 ,000 would change. And we talked about it. We said, okay, but you know what this means?

1:20:26Dave Ramsey:It means I got 16 hour days for the next two years. You're going to be a single mom who's just gone through bankruptcy. I'll be here, but I ain't going to be here. I mean, I'm going to be on the road talking books. I'm going to be talking to radio stations to get them to put me on. I'm going to be in a ballroom speaking somewhere. I'm going to be at the back table selling books. I'm going to be at the office until 11 o 'clock at night counseling somebody who's broke. I mean, that's what this means. And she's like, yeah, but let's give it two years and see what it does. And for two years, I worked 16 hour days.

1:20:59Dave Ramsey:But so what do you do? Why am I bringing that out? Not to brag, but obviously it worked out. Okay, no kidding. Life's good, right? But we laid out the desired future where we want to be 10 years from now. But here's the price that must be paid to get there. And only then together could we do that. If she had been at home going, you know, we need to work life balance. You know, I'm here with these little kids all day long by myself. And what are we doing? Financial peace, my butt. But, you know, if that had been the routine, which she never said a single word like that at all to her credit. I mean, she was a freaking warrior.

1:21:34Dave Ramsey:And she sent me out the door with lashes on my back. Get out there. You know, and so quite the opposite. So, but if you, if we weren't joined at the hip on this, if we weren't aligned on the price that must be paid to get to the desired future, we couldn't have done it. We couldn't have done it. And so people say, well, what about Sharon Ramsey? Sharon Ramsey is the hero of the story. The whole story, because I, unlike most of the people that I know, I have not had to deal with a high maintenance spouse who's always driving the train off the tracks the whole time I'm over here trying to work. Instead, it was quite the opposite.

1:22:12Dave Ramsey:It's like we're pulling together, we're pulling together. And anyone that says or does anything about this place, you don't want her in your life.

1:22:21Graham Stephan:Now, what would you do if she were not as supportive? And what would you do in the case?

1:22:24Dave Ramsey:We'd have to talk about it until we got aligned to where we both are in agreement. We both have to believe that the price we're paying. And if we don't, we can't do it. And so we have a saying in our house today is, uh, when in doubt we don't. So like, if we have a, we had a, a generosity thing, a substantial one come across our plate the other day that we were looking at, we met with the people and I'm like, yeah, this looks great. I think. And she's like, I don't know. I just, I don't know. Something wrong in here. I just can't, I can't tell what it is, but I don't feel right about it. I call the guy up and I go, we're not, we're not in right now.

1:23:01Dave Ramsey:We're not going to be able to help right now. Well, did we do something wrong? No, you didn't do anything wrong at all. It's just Sharon and I have to be aligned because it's too much money for us to not. I mean, it's a hundred bucks. We'll do, you know, she gripes at me about over tipping all the time, but that's tough deal with that. But I'm not talking, but I'm talking about on major decisions. We need to be aligned or when in doubt, don't, I mean, we don't, I don't come home and buy, I don't buy a car and come home and go, look what I did. And I can afford to buy whatever car I want. I mean, it's not, but we just, we talk about stuff like that before we do that.

1:23:30Dave Ramsey:We certainly don't buy a property. The property I was talking about early in this conversation, she was in the truck when I'm sitting on the thing. We drove up on the piece of land. I'm sitting there looking at the traffic, looking at the thing. I'm like, okay, what do you think? She goes, oh, this is good. We're doing this. But if I had bought that thing and she was not aligned, all I would hear about it forever or vice versa, right? If she was trying to get me to do it and I didn't want to do it and it wouldn't work. It doesn't work when you're not pulling together.

1:23:58Graham Stephan:When did you go from feeling rich to actually being rich? I don't even know what that means. Well, let's say like going through this bankruptcy at that young age, obviously that's going to be, it's going to create some scars that are going to take a while to heal.

1:24:15Dave Ramsey:Defining scars, yeah. When would you say you finally felt rich after that? Because you could get rich and be rich, but you may not feel rich after such a traumatic event of filing for bankruptcy at that young age. So when did you actually feel wealthy?

1:24:37Dave Ramsey:Well, we did end up making$62 ,000 that year. Exactly,$62 ,000. Yeah, we actually hit it. The projections were devastatingly accurate. and the um the following year i made 104 and the following year i made 250 um and then i did a book deal that was sweet and um took off somewhere along in those years in those early years right there i remember sharing we went to the grocery store and uh we had envelopes with our grocery money in it and i said you know what let's do something different. And we go to the grocery store. I want you to go in the grocery store and we've got the money. I want you to buy everything you want.

1:25:21Dave Ramsey:And she filled up a whole buggy with stuff without, I said, don't look at the price. If you see something you want in the grocery store, let's just get it. And obviously it was not a huge amount of money, but it was, it felt like we were okay for the first time. You know, it felt like we can, we can buy anything in this grocery store and we're okay. We're okay. It felt okay. That sounds silly, but it's a, it actually happened. And she tells that story occasionally still to some of our friends. She's like, I remember that time we went to the store and, and it wasn't like we went to something in New York and she bought a purse, a coach purse, which she has done too, but there's nothing like that.

1:26:01Dave Ramsey:That stuff is, that stuff's here. Then it's like, yeah, whatever. And it's just stuff. But, But yeah, going to the grocery store when we had been worried about feeding our family and the lights and water had been cut off at the house when we went broke. I mean, and just like a handful of years later, here we are and we can go into that same grocery store where we were counting coupons and doing every little thing. And we could just buy a basket of groceries, anything we wanted. It felt like we were okay. and and then you go through other stages emotionally at different net worths and different incomes where you start to go i mean i remember buying a car when it became irrelevant that was a weird moment you know it's like whatever i wanted to buy you buy it and it's not it's not a relevant number you know and to me i'm a redneck kid buying a car buying a good big old truck or something is like, that's a thing, you know?

1:26:59And so, um, but it's like that grocery buggy.

1:27:02Dave Ramsey:It was irrelevant, but it was relevant.

1:27:04Graham Stephan:Are there different tiers to wealth that you've noticed where doors have opened up at seven figures, eight figures, nine figures, and what are they? Definitely. Um,

1:27:15Dave Ramsey:I, I don't know that it's a certain tier, but, um, when you reach the point, I always call it the, uh, the pinnacle point where you pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal to get to the top up the hill and finally you're there and you're in Tennessee, that means you can go down the hill. And what that is mathematically for me, and I've taught people this, and I've had a lot of positive affirmation that this is accurate. When you get enough money that your money makes more than you make, that's an interesting point. When your investments generate more dollars than you generate, meaning that if you didn't work, you'd be more than fine, right?

1:27:57Dave Ramsey:When you're, you know, when you get a, let's say you get$2 million and you've got it in mutual funds and you say, okay, I could pull, I could pull 150 off of that a year and not touch it. It's still grow and I'd be just fine. And you, you know, you've been living on a hundred and you've been making a hundred and you get to that point. Well, that's an emotional point in the person's life. And I think that's different for different people that come at it from different angles, different backgrounds, different things. I mean, you come from another country where you were in poverty and you come here and the great American dream is in front of you and you grow.

1:28:36Dave Ramsey:It probably doesn't take as much to have those emotional moments as it might some kid who started middle class and goes to a good school and comes out with a four-year degree. And it probably takes that person a little more to have that same exact feeling than it does someone else. But either way, you get to the point where the money, these are different, to me, they're different flashpoints where the money becomes, the things the money is doing becomes less and less relevant because there's enough of it, whatever the investment is. And it's a spiritual thing almost, an emotional thing almost, but it's certainly a mathematical thing.

1:29:13Is there any tier to money that you have not yet accessed? We hear about like the FU money is what people say. Like Rogan has that. Rogan says he has that. Is there any sort of tier that you have yet to eclipse and you're looking to, or is it all the same?

1:29:29Dave Ramsey:You know, I, Joe certainly has done that. Congratulations, Joe. The, and I, I don't think that's an amount. of money, I think that's an attitude. Um, you want to get to the point that you're, I think what he's saying is you're not dependent on someone else. I don't have to have your approval or affirmation, whoever you are, anyone I've got enough that I can function without, if that network wants to throw me off, if that thing wants to cancel me, well, screw you, you know, you're, and you're fine. And we're certainly at that point here too. Um, but I don't really approach it like, who can I flip off?

1:30:10Dave Ramsey:It's more like I'm approaching it like, who can I serve? Because I get a lot more personal satisfaction out of service than I do flipping off, although I'm willing to do both. Okay. Well, I think we got to wrap up here, but I have one last question. So we recently had a conversation with Charlie Kirk and everyone loved this part of the podcast. I got to ask you, is it ever acceptable for a girl to pay on the first date?

1:30:37or should a guy always pay on the first date you know i again i don't care it doesn't matter to me

1:30:46Dave Ramsey:it doesn't bother me either way uh i grew uh the ramsey women that grew up in my house my daughters are massively competent and confident and they would not be freaked out one way or the other It wouldn't bother them one way or the other, which is really what I would want for them. But what I did find out is I've got two absolutely incredible sons-in-law. Both of them are just studs. And I used to say I hit the son-in-law lottery, and I quit saying that. I didn't hit the son-in-law lottery. We taught those girls how to pick. And we ran off some losers and explained to them why they were leaving.

1:31:31Dave Ramsey:and no, you can't, you're, you're done. You're done. You just move on. And you would encourage that. Oh no, I did it. I said, you're done. And up until what age? Oh, well, they were in high school, but I mean, I'm teaching these girls. What do you want in a husband? Don't date somebody. How do they obey you though?

1:31:46Graham Stephan:I feel like in high school, they'd be rebellious.

1:31:48Dave Ramsey:They live in my house and eat my food. Wouldn't that make them better at like sneaking off? It could, it could. But basically we not only ran them off, we told them why. Okay. You know, we told them why. This guy, this guy, this is the trajectory this guy's on. How did you know that? Well, when you're talking to him, you can see, I mean, he's, he's smoking a lot of pot. He's not going to make it, you know, it's not going to work out. And so, um, never seen a successful pothead. I've known a bunch of them, but I've never seen one. And so except that smoking pot. And so, you know, no, you're not going out with Bobby.

1:32:19Dave Ramsey:Bobby's a pothead. So, um, um, three weeks later, Bobby ran his car in the ditch and would have hurt my daughter. I would have been sitting there, you know, and that true story that happened. And so everybody's pissed. Bobby's mother's pissed. My wife was a little pissed. My daughter was certainly pissed, but Bobby ain't coming. We're done. Anyway, we went through all that thing to say. Where are you now, Bobby? Where is Bobby now? He's a crypto millionaire. I changed his name. That's not, I changed his name. That's not his name. Yeah, he made all his money in cannabis, but, um, but, uh, anyway, what character qualities do you want in Prince Charming?

1:32:55Dave Ramsey:Because that's going to be your husband and you're going to spend a long, time with them. Who do you want in a man? What are you looking for? And, um, I think our daughters would tell you that they would want a, a relationship where they had a vote, where they could bring their competency to the table. And it, you know, we've got a partnership here. It's not the man telling the woman what to do. Cause that ain't gonna fly with my kids. I can tell you that it doesn't fly with her mother either. So, um, we're going to have a partnership. You're going to trust my competency and I'm going to trust yours.

1:33:30Dave Ramsey:And then we're going to join together and we're going to serve each other. Now, what, how does that, what does that say about who pays for the first date money on the first date? Probably says the guy is, because he's probably wanting to serve this, this princess. This is his queen. He wants to serve her. He wants to love her. Well, he wants to do something for her, but it's not an obligation. It's a, it comes out of his character probably, but if he doesn't, it probably doesn't disqualify him. I wouldn't run a guy off because he didn't pay for the first date. I wouldn't have done that, but I would run one off for character qualities.

1:34:05Dave Ramsey:They're, you know, lack of integrity and, you know, you have a known reputation and yeah, we're not, we're not trying to run, use our daughters to fix the world. That's not what we're doing now. Well, Dave, it is always an honor to have you on the show. It's always such a great time. I love the maximal personal responsibility theme. It's one of my favorite things. I love it. I absolutely love it. So thanks for that. Thanks, guys. Good to be with y 'all. It's valuable. Thank you for watching. Thank you to the team helping produce this. Thanks, guys. So next time.

1:34:33Graham Stephan:Thank you.

1:34:43Graham Stephan:Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS.