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

Summary

The Iced Coffee Hour

Episode Title: Dave Ramsey’s Shocking Prediction For Housing Prices, Stock Market, & The Trump Economy
Hosts: Graham Stephan & Jack Selby
Release Date: August 3, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Iced Coffee Hour, hosts Graham Stephan and Jack Selby welcome financial guru Dave Ramsey to discuss his bold predictions regarding the housing market, stock market, and the economy under the Trump administration. The conversation delves deep into Ramsey's economic outlook, investment strategies, and his perspectives on personal finance amidst national financial challenges.

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Economic Outlook and Predictions

National Debt Concerns Dave Ramsey kicks off the discussion by expressing his alarm over the unsustainable trajectory of the U.S. federal budget:

“The US federal budget is on an unsustainable path. We're just spending like we're on crack. I mean, it's just nuts. We're gonna be broke really quickly unless we get serious about dealing with our spending issues.”
[00:19]

Trump Economy Ramsey shares his cautious optimism about the Trump administration's economic policies:

“The big beautiful bill really did some wonderful tax things. The middle class got huge tax breaks in 2017... If you can get the energy sector moving, that's a boom waiting to happen.”
[02:16]

He highlights potential catalysts for economic growth, including tax breaks and revitalizing the energy sector. However, Ramsey admits his hesitance in making precise predictions:

“Anytime I predict the economy or politics, I'm generally wrong, so I hesitate to do it.”
[02:16]

Potential Downsides Despite the upsides, Ramsey addresses possible economic slowdowns due to tariff uncertainties:

“I was a little bit caught off guard by how all the tariff discussions... froze everybody. The waiting to see what's going to happen did more damage than I thought.”
[03:49]

He emphasizes the importance of positive economic beliefs:

“If people believe things are going to be good, what do they do? They invest in new people, they bring on payroll... it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
[05:43]

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Housing Market Insights

Renting vs. Buying The conversation shifts to the strained housing market, with rising prices and interest rates making homeownership challenging:

“A home now long term, always buying a home is a good idea. Buying a home you can't afford is not a good idea.”
[06:21]

Ramsey acknowledges varying personal circumstances:

“We talk to a guy who’s a college graduate making $140k and another making $400k; they’re not worried about affordability. But for others, it’s a different story.”
[07:03]

Graham Stephan shares his perspective on the current market dynamics, advocating for renting over buying in certain high-cost areas:

“This is the first time I've ever seen the housing market where to me even it makes more sense to rent.”
[08:14]

Ramsey responds by emphasizing long-term financial health:

“If you buy a home and pay it off, it’s no longer your largest expense. The data shows that millionaires typically have paid-off homes and sizeable 401(k)s.”
[09:03]

Strategic Investments in Real Estate Dave Ramsey reveals his personal investment strategies, including a recent foray into commercial real estate:

“I just put an LOI on a piece of commercial real estate... it’s going through zoning and, if we get through due diligence, we'll start developing.”
[13:20]

He discusses expected returns and the active nature of real estate investing:

“Most of our commercial stuff when it’s built out would have an IRR up in the 20s, but a cash on cash would probably be 12, 14 most of the time.”
[16:11]

Ramsey underscores the active management required in real estate:

“I always laugh when people say real estate is passive. That’s just stupid to me. There’s nothing passive about it.”
[16:29]

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Navigating Financial Uncertainty

Advice for the Average Person When asked about altering financial plans in uncertain times, Ramsey remains steadfast:

“Do the same principles over and over. The same principles work in uptimes and downtimes.”
[05:54]

He advises balancing income growth with expense reduction:

“Cut your expenses and increase your income. That’s called margin.”
[65:37]

Retirement and Social Security Ramsey critiques the current Social Security system and its sustainability:

“Social Security was never intended to be your retirement plan. It’s a negative rate of return.”
[28:22]

He advocates for personal responsibility in retirement planning:

“If you do all the right things, you won’t rely on Social Security. It’s not equitable to take money away from those who have paid in for 50 years.”
[30:09]

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Generosity and Personal Responsibility

Promoting Outrageous Generosity Ramsey emphasizes the power of individual generosity to replace government support:

“If we could increase outrageous generosity by typical individuals to a point that it makes a macro impact, Social Security would become irrelevant.”
[33:03]

He shares personal anecdotes to illustrate impactful giving:

“I gave a $100 tip to a mom delivering sushi late at night. It made a significant difference for her and made me feel great.”
[34:14]

Balancing Generosity and Financial Health Ramsey discusses the importance of balancing generosity with financial stability:

“Do what you’re supposed to do anyway and opt out. Use the money you would have been giving to fund your personal life and come out way better off.”
[30:55]

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Addressing Societal Issues

Men’s Role in the Economy and Society Ramsey touches on the devaluation of men and its societal impacts:

“Men have been devalued and trivialized... Masculinity is toxic by its very nature. And so you're of no value.”
[73:24]

He highlights the economic and social repercussions:

“We have 7.2 million able-bodied men not engaged in the workplace. They're supported by disability checks or others, which is economically detrimental.”
[73:24]

Encouraging Empowerment and Responsibility Ramsey advocates for empowering individuals to take control of their lives:

“They have the power to stand up and decide, I’m in business. You do have the ability to decide what you want and take actions to achieve it.”
[77:22]

He underscores the importance of aligning personal goals with financial strategies:

“Figure out what your desired future is. Reverse engineer how to get there by identifying what must be true to achieve that future.”
[68:17]

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Personal Reflections and Final Thoughts

Embracing Opportunities and Technology Ramsey shares his excitement about the current era being the best time to build wealth:

“This is the best possible time to be alive in the history of the human race... Anything’s possible.”
[56:46]

He praises the ease of entry into the market with modern technology:

“You can start a digital application and go to market for free. AI will help you build a website in a few hours.”
[56:46]

Living with Purpose and Generosity Ramsey reflects on his personal journey from bankruptcy to financial prosperity:

“We went from sitting at a grocery store with envelopes of money to living comfortably and being able to give generously.”
[86:17]

He underscores the importance of partnership and shared goals in achieving financial success:

“We laid out the desired future together and were aligned on the sacrifices needed to get there.”
[83:56]

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Conclusion

Dave Ramsey imparts a blend of optimism and caution, encouraging listeners to take personal responsibility, embrace generosity, and leverage modern opportunities to navigate economic challenges. His insights on the housing market, investment strategies, and societal roles provide a comprehensive guide for individuals aiming to achieve financial stability and prosperity in uncertain times.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The US federal budget is on an unsustainable path. We're just spending like we're on crack.”
  [00:19]

• “Anytime I predict the economy or politics, I'm generally wrong, so I hesitate to do it.”
  [02:16]

• “If people believe things are going to be good, what do they do? They invest in new people, they bring on payroll... it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
  [05:43]

• “Social Security was never intended to be your retirement plan. It’s a negative rate of return.”
  [28:22]

• “If we could increase outrageous generosity by typical individuals to a point that it makes a macro impact, Social Security would become irrelevant.”
  [33:03]

• “Men have been devalued and trivialized... Masculinity is toxic by its very nature.”
  [73:24]

• “This is the best possible time to be alive in the history of the human race... Anything’s possible.”
  [56:46]

---

This comprehensive summary captures the essence of Dave Ramsey's discussions on economic predictions, housing, investment strategies, personal responsibility, and societal issues. Ramsey's blend of practical advice and philosophical insights offers listeners valuable guidance on managing finances and navigating the complexities of the modern economy.

Transcript

[Dave Ramsey]

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[Jack]

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[Dave Ramsey]

If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. They visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off terms apply. The US federal budget is on an unsustainable path. We're just spending like we're on crack. I mean, it's just nuts. We're gonna be broke really quickly unless we get serious about dealing with our spending issues. How can you possibly sustain this?

[Graham]

How would you approach things differently?

[Dave Ramsey]

I would make Elon Musk look like mother teres.

[Graham]

For young people today, where do you see the biggest opportunities for them?

[Dave Ramsey]

This moment in time is the best possible time to be alive in the history of the human race. If you want to build wealth, so many people have become desensitized to the fact that information of the entire world in their palm. You start a digital application of something, you can go to market with it for free. It's like having a magic wand. 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, and, you know, boomers bought their houses with a basket of strawberries, and now you can't buy. If you don't quit believing all that crap and instead go, God, anything's possible. Go do something.

[Jack]

Dave Ramsey, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, it's good to be back with you guys. Really appreciate the big dogs out there, the lineup that's been on the show lately. Wow, thank you.

[Jack]

It is.

[Dave Ramsey]

Congratulations.

[Jack]

Super, super fun to have you on and your insights into the economy and everything financial. They're always extremely fascinating. So thanks again.

[Dave Ramsey]

Fascinating is a word. Yeah.

[Jack]

So we, we have to know, what are your predictions for the Trump economy in terms of jobs, stocks, and growth? If you're just to lay it all out, what do you predict?

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, I'm. Anytime I predict the economy or politics, I'm generally wrong, so I hesitate to do it. So, but I would say rather than my prediction, my hope is that what he's attempting to do works. And so, you know, the big beautiful bill really did do some wonderful tax things. The middle class got huge tax breaks in 2017. And it was made permanent so that anytime that there's less taxes, there's more money and that helps the economy, people have their money in their pocket instead of sending it to the stupid government. So that's a good thing. Obviously, if you can get the energy sector moving, that's a 1/8th of the or 1/7th of the economy, depending on how you measure it. And if you get drill baby drill happening that, that that creates a boom. If you get interest rates to move slightly down and he's having a big argument now as we speak about that, then, you know, cause an economic boom and get things moving and so forth. So there's a lot of reasons to be bullish. I honestly thought some of it would have happened before now when he came into office. But this is hard process, I guess. And again, I'm not very good at predicting it. And I've been predicting that the we're going to have a boom real estate economy for, I don't know, unsuccessfully predicting that for like six consecutive quarters. So I'm about ready for it to happen. Actually, if you keep saying it, eventually you'll be right.

[Graham]

So all of this seemed like upsides. Are there any potential downsides that you see or any concerns with that adding on to a national.

[Dave Ramsey]

I was a little bit caught off guard by how all the tariff things, all the tariff discussions and arguments and grenades and whatever you want to call them is method of negotiating is pretty much a baseball field window. But the. I was a little bit shocked about how that froze everybody. They just sat on the sidelines like a deer in the headlights and watched. Let's wait to see how that happens before we do because it doesn't affect a lot of people, it doesn't affect us. We don't buy a lot of stuff overseas. It doesn't affect Ramsey at all. And so why would we be sidelined? We're going to go. We should go do what we were going to do. And we haven't been. We haven't made a decision. But I'm amazed at the number of people in business that I talk to that, you know, they're like, wow, we're kind of waiting on this tariff thing to clear out. Why it doesn't even. But did more damage. The waiting to see what's going to happen did more damage than I thought it was going to do and slowed everything down sluggish. Because anytime you. Because you know, we've talked about this before, the economy self fulfilling prophecy. If people believe things are going to be good, what do they do they invest in new people, they bring on payroll, you give people jobs, they invest in buildings to put the company in, they invest in computers to run the thing on. You know, the money goes out the door when you believe, when you're hopeful, when you're scared, you pull back and you build the war chest and you quit hiring and you quit investing and you quit building up inventory and because you don't think it's going to sell. And so you know, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy in that if you believe it's going to work, you do the things that causes it to work, causes the prosperity to occur if, if enough people do it at a macro level.

[Jack]

So given the uncertainty, what would you then recommend for the average person should they alter their, their plan of action considering the, the financial environment right now?

[Dave Ramsey]

Nope.

[Jack]

You would say tried and true, always do. Exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

Do the same principles over and over. The same principles work in uptimes and downtimes.

[Jack]

But then what about the, the state of the housing market too? With affordability getting really low because you have rates staying up, you have home prices are staying up. Overall it's getting much more difficult to buy a home. A lot of people are saying maybe you should start considering when the American dream has always been to buy a house. What do you say to maybe a person that's debating between renting and buying.

[Dave Ramsey]

A home now long term, always buying a home is a good idea. Buying a home you can't afford is not a good idea. So if the affordability issues are affecting you as a person, then obviously you need to sideline until you can get your situation straightened out. Here's what's interesting about that discussion is it applies to some people and it doesn't apply to others. We talk to a guy who, I talked to a kid the other day who just came out a four year degree in supply chain, brand new college graduate making 140 right out the gate. He's not worried about affordability in Nashville, Tennessee. He can, he can do it. He's freaking 23 years old. I mean, come on, you know, he's.

[Jack]

Not what he graduated with. What was his major in?

[Dave Ramsey]

Supply chain. Okay. Supply chain logistics. So yeah, I mean killed it. It's a great degree field. And you know, you talk to another person who's I talked to Lay the other day who just finished up her stuff in CyberSecurity, she's making 400k, she's not worried about, you know, so she's not having this discussion. But it's people who are stuck in their careers and they're not advancing their incomes faster than the house prices or the interest rates are advancing the cost or affordability issues. And so then they start to read the news and they start to read the wealthy quality stuff and they're like, oh well, life's unfair. I can't buy right now. There's been times in my life I couldn't buy.

[Graham]

But just because they could buy, does that mean that they should? Because just from what I'm seeing, this is the first time I've ever seen the housing market where to me even it makes more sense to rent. And I'm looking at properties, and I've been looking at properties daily for years throughout la, California, Vegas, and I'm looking at the rent to sale ratio and throughout most of these areas you could rent for half the price it would cost you to buy it. And when I'm looking at the interest rates and the property taxes and the insurance, I would rather just rent.

[Dave Ramsey]

It might be the case for a year or it might be a case for two years. I don't know. I, you know, again, I started getting my real estate license in 1978. We've had that discussion before. So I've watched this a long, long time. And the thing I know is if I'm Talking to a 40 year old and they never buy a house, the 80 year old version of them is going to be really pissed because their cost of housing over that 40 years, 100% chance it's going up 100%.

[Graham]

What if they're diligently investing? Because you've seen these statistics before where if you had put your down payment in the S and P at the same time as buying a house and the S and P investment would have outpaced it by double. And that was from the 80s through today.

[Dave Ramsey]

Except that the largest line item in your personal income budget for the typical American is housing. And when you buy a home and then you pay it off, that's no longer your largest line item in your personal budget. And you can do investing. And so you flip the cash flow towards investing at that point. And the data from the largest millionaire study ever done that we did, 10,167 of them, shows that the typical 1 to 5 million, the first 1 to 5 million of net worth that they get is in the 401k and investing in Roth IRAs and Good Mutual funds in the market and getting a home and getting it paid off. So they're sitting there, million seven net worth and they've got a $800,000 401k and they got a paid for $900,000 house and they're 47 years old and they're millionaires and that's, that's their first 1.7 million. Now you don't get to 100 million doing that. That's a. Is. We're not talking about billionaires, we're talking about millionaires and sustainability. So I don't Talk to Happy 78 year olds and 83 year olds on our show that are renters. So it's not a long term play. But on the short term is there, is there times the market is dipsy doodle and it's got, you got this hydrocline, so to speak where it's flipped and the cold water's on top and the hot waters on the bottom, you know. Yeah, that could happen. Just like when I'm diving, same thing can happen. It's a weird experience but, but it's not the norm. Eventually the, the warm water is going to be on top and cold water is going to be on bottom.

[Jack]

It's interesting because your perspective is like financially maximizing. It's kind of like what people should be doing. And then your perspective is kind of like what people are doing because you have the whole idea of like, well right now it makes more sense to rent because maybe you could be mobile with your job. With rates and affordability as low as it is, it gives you the freedom.

[Dave Ramsey]

But that's not a 40 year play.

[Jack]

That's true.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean it depends if that's a 40 month play.

[Jack]

If you're reassessing all of the time and you're financially maximizing. That makes sense. Same thing goes for credit cards because you could still get the money back if you don't adjust your spending habits and stuff like that. And that's, and that's what people like. If you are financially maximizing and you're super in tune with it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Doing really good for a minute, wasn't he?

[Jack]

Where is it? But let me just, let me just, you know, specify. You actually report on what people are doing. The fact of the matter, like yes, you do have this.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's true.

[Jack]

But I also maximize.

[Dave Ramsey]

But what I'm. My point is not that. My point is you don't want to compare a five year plan with a 40 year plan. They'll lead you to different conclusions. And to say I'm going to rent for 40 years would be ludicrous based on historical data. Yeah. Are there moments in time where a four or five Year plan. That what Graham's saying. I don't doubt what you're saying a bit. I think that's probably accurate numbers, but it's not a 40 year plan. And so right now if you're in a moment where you need the flexibility and you're in and out and you know you're in, you're sitting in LA with your. As your example was, and you can rent for half of what you can buy. If that's the case. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I don't doubt. Okay, I don't doubt your numbers. So I mean, if that's the case, then yeah, for now. But don't, you know, don't make that your long term game plan.

[Graham]

I would agree with that. Really. It was up until 2021 was I was huge proponent of buying a house. 2022, I saw things starting to flip where I noticed rents just getting way too cheap for what they were. So now I'm in a very much like I wouldn't buy something right now. I would rent. But prior to 2020, I was all about buying. I thought there were great opportunities out there.

[Jack]

You know, I just realized it's hilarious. In 2020, I was buying my first house and he was like, no, Jack, don't do it. But he's telling everyone, oh, it's a great time to buy. And it was a good time. And now I'm buying a house because he's like, jack, you should get this house. And he's telling everyone, no, it's not the right time to buy. That is like, Jack is the exception.

[Graham]

In 2020. Jack, you're a little skyrocketing. In 2020, his income was going up and I'm like, if you wait like a few years, what you would be able to purchase would be so much different. Yes, that, that was the reason why he was going from not zero, but like going from zero to one like very quickly.

[Jack]

So if I'm financially obliterating myself and buying a short term rental right now, what is your personal Investing strategy for 2025? How are you allocating your money? What's your, what's your goal?

[Dave Ramsey]

I just put an LOI on a piece of commercial real estate. Oh no, we just went to contract on it.

[Jack]

Oh, really?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, we're gonna, it's going through zoning and if it, if we get through due diligence on it, we'll start developing.

[Jack]

What's the goal in mind with this real estate?

[Dave Ramsey]

40 years. Yeah, it won't be for me. I'm not doing it for me, I'm doing it for my grandkids. So my son in law runs all our real estate, Rachel's husband and he and I are having a blast and he'll, he'll, he'll run it and someday it's a wonderful piece of property and it'll take, it's a large deal and it'll take, it'll take a couple, a decade plus to build it all the way out. Oh really? Yeah, several pieces of, you know, like some retail on the front, some office in the back and that kind of stuff. What's your hotel on it.

[Graham]

What's your secret to getting a good.

[Dave Ramsey]

Deal on that deal? That particular one? I don't know that I really got a great deal. I usually buy stuff at, you know, south of 70% of retail appraisal. In that one I'm, I am doing something I don't usually recommend. I'll just be authentic on that one. I'm, I got a good price on it. It'll price for more than I've got it tied up for, I think. But what I'm really betting on, it's right on the edge of the growth ring. And so I'm just betting on it's a great long term play. So it's a value purchase rather than a, a price purchase kind of thing. In that particular case, if we were buying a, you know, something that's cash, you know, cash flow apartment right now or something like that, I'm just looking at, I'm looking at rois and looking the net operating income, I'm looking at the cap rates and just saying okay, you know what, what's my cash on cash? Because I pay cash. And so you know, what am I, what am I going to get out of this now and how much, how poorly is it managed and can I get the occupancy rates up and so forth.

[Jack]

How did the numbers shake out on this? And I'm also curious. Obviously you don't need to be doing any of this, but I'm curious. Are you just like scouring loop net still? Like you're like, you're like looking at deals, trying to find something, calling the person like hey, you know, I mean.

[Dave Ramsey]

Winston, he does all that. So you have people that they came in and said hey, here's four or five things we look at. And I went, you know, I went down, drove the truck up on it and sat up on a piece of ground and go yeah, check out traffic counts here. This feels good. And I know exactly, I Mean, this, I grew up in this area, so I've watched this progress for 50, 60 years, you know, so I got a good feel for it that way. Feasibility studies in my gut, you know, and so, you know, and then, then we go and we do all the other stuff too. So we'll do all the stuff during due diligence. But no, I'm not scouring it, but I do, I, I just love messing with real estate. I grew up in the business and I, it's the, the thrill of the chase and the building stuff is fun and I just. And the numbers are great, you know, it's a great return on investment.

[Graham]

What sort of return do you look for?

[Dave Ramsey]

Most of our commercial stuff when it's built out and everything would be. It's going to have an IRR up in the 20s, but a cash on cash would probably be 12, 14 most of the time.

[Graham]

That's fantastic.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's phenomenal.

[Dave Ramsey]

But the IRRs, I mean, including your depreciation schedules, your appreciation and all that stuff, that's the irr, right. Internal rate of return. And so, you know, we look, we want that to be up in the 20s or 30s, easy. But, but there's a hassle factor involved in all that stuff that you don't have, you know, mutual. If I want to throw something in an index fund, I can make, you know, 11, 12, last two years, 23, 24, but. And not do anything hardly, just, just, you know, open the computer screen and look at it. But this stuff you actually have to work on. So. I always laugh when people say real estate's passive. That's just stupid to me. There's nothing passive about it. Yeah, very active.

[Graham]

Although before we go into that, when it comes to business, they say that you could get better, cheaper or faster, but you could only pick two.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

I'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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Graham]

Okay.

[Jack]

Well, he does a lot of commercial real estate over in Florida. He says that he sees a lot of opportunity because, you know, the, the loans on commercial is a lot, 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, with lowballing offers on commercial real estate as opposed to residential real estate where there's going to be a little less opportunity.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, residential is the only place you compete with the end use consumer. When you're in commercial, you're competing with other B2B. So it's your, your other player is an investor. So everybody's looking for a deal, you know, 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 per units, you know, what are these things sell for per unit and 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. 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. And which means wholesale by definition. And so it doesn't, you know, you're probably not going to see the same appreciation rates on something that the investor, that the investor market is your pool.

[Graham]

For resale yeah, I would agree with that. I so I did that. I got a duplex and oh no.

[Dave Ramsey]

I got to just step in.

[Graham]

I was very, 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 zero dollars 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. But I do agree with you on the appreciation aspect of that. 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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well. And you caught a wave in la which that wave's not cresting right now.

[Graham]

Yeah, correct. So I wouldn't be able to do that today.

[Dave Ramsey]

You could get your did that exact deal today. It might break you.

[Graham]

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?

[Dave 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 the hockey stick in the debt was going to dry up the money supply and it was going to crash. It was going to squeeze the life out of the economy, choke it down. And that the interest rates that the interest that the US is paying out of their budget line items is far exceeding most other things in the budget. And it was going to. The thing was going to flip over mathematically and it's going to. We're all going to die. 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 the guy is Robert Kiyosaki. And Kiyosaki did a book about the ending, the coming into the world, whatever the coming economic collapse or whatever he called it. I forget. And so, and it didn't happen. It's kind of like me predicting the coming economic prosperity for the last six quarters, but didn't happen, you know, so 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 that do this stuff. And I, as I've gotten old, I've noticed that old white men really have this desire for the world to come to an end. I don't know what the problem is, but they, they keep bringing me these, they keep sending me these, these, these manuscripts that are half typed out. Looks like something from a movie, right? And you need to, 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 he's the father of supply side economics. He was, he started Reaganomics. He, and he was on Ronald Reagan's cabin. It. And he's brilliant. He's got a PhD in economics from Cambridge. Okay. He's old money guy. He's in his 80s and he's just a wonderful guy. And 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 because it doesn't bother him a bit. And he's Mr. Economics, right? 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. 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, you know, and you know, we're just spending like, we're like we're on crack. I mean, it's, 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.

[Graham]

So could you argue though that the effect is a devaluation in the dollar, some inflation and asset prices have increased.

[Dave 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 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 and it was not tracking with the debt. It was not. It was not. It didn't, it didn't, you know, and 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, 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.

[Graham]

So if you were in charge of the government, how would you approach things differently?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, nobody would let me be in because I would cut all of their lives out. All of this God, man, the gut, the nanny stuff. I mean, I would make Elon Musk look like Mother Teresa. 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.

[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Dave Ramsey]

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. I mean, but, but none of this happens in a vacuum.

[Jack]

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?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, Social Security was never intended mathematically, nor philosophically or nor politically to be your retirement plan couldn't have worked like.

[Jack]

Shaken out mathematically if they just kept individual accounts for each person for the most part.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, honey, if we had individual accounts and put it in 2%, I mean, it has a negative rate of return. Social Security is a negative rate of return. So if we put it, 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.

[Jack]

What happened?

[Dave Ramsey]

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. So. But I mean the math on Social Security, it is the worst possible investment. I, I, you know, when Bush was doing that, I was on the show and I would come out. 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 anymore, you can keep all I've given you. I won't. I'll opt out. Completely opt out. I'll not take and I will kick your butt. With the remaining 20 years of my earning power. I'll be just fine with the money I would have paid into Social Security, putting it into a CD, I would have had 10 or 20x what they're gonna pay me now at 65 years old.

[Graham]

Why can't you opt out?

[Jack]

Because it's just really for that tax. Another tax. It's not like.

[Graham]

But the thing is the reason why.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because the smart people would. And that would only leave the dumb people.

[Graham]

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 future generations go to work has.

[Dave Ramsey]

Been robbed long ago. 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, yeah.

[Graham]

So you're saying everyone should become a preacher?

[Dave Ramsey]

Apparently.

[Jack]

That's a great side hustle video. Right? But it's only life hacks.

[Dave Ramsey]

The sad thing is only your pastor income you can opt out on. So if you have a size, there's.

[Jack]

Probably a way you can.

[Dave Ramsey]

Anything else you get is still subject to the system.

[Graham]

You could shift income.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do we got to replace? You got to have a retirement plan, duh. You got to have 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. 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.

[Graham]

So what is your balance then between having a social safety net and taking personal responsibility?

[Dave Ramsey]

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 our pet budget, we the people could take care of we the people easy. There'd be no hungry kids. You could find every, every harvest food bank, every hungry kid in America. There would 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.

[Graham]

How much are people spending on Halloween and pets?

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, it's billions and billions and billions every year. I didn't even touch Christmas. I'm not the Grinch, okay? 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. If we would take care of each other, we could 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.

[Jack]

What would you say are the best real world applications of generosity for average people?

[Dave Ramsey]

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? Take something like St. Jude's Hospital. You know it. 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 it's not required, but it's inspired. And that's the difference in taxation and generosity.

[Jack]

I suppose this is a very like 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. But we also, I mean we also, we did St. Jude's like yeah, we did say 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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Like they could also ask, you could just say, okay, are your books open? And their, 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.

[Graham]

I like doing things where I could see the impact or see the person tipping, tipping. But I'll give you a good example. This is, 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 4 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 100 bucks and like that I felt great about because she's out there working and like $100 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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, 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 $100 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 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, and you do it With a million dollars instead of 100. 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 Dave Ramsey doesn't need Social Security. I don't have to have it. I'm fine. 1500 bucks a month or something, right? I don't need it.

[Jack]

Are you collecting Social Security?

[Dave Ramsey]

I will. I'm 64. I'm getting ready to be 65.

[Jack]

So you've delayed it to try to get the maximum amount?

[Graham]

Yeah, at a certain age you just have take.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's not, I mean, I don't.

[Jack]

What are you going to do with it?

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't, I don't even know it's there. I'll just, it'll just go into the account and we'll just keep going. But, but that's, you know, the point is, is that it? 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. So. But, but also it's not fair to take the money away from me because I have paid in for 50 freaking years. And so 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. There's a lot going on that's very good in that area. But man, we. You could make the government irrelevant mathematically and it would be an awesome day.

[Jack]

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.

[Dave Ramsey]

What we got to stop and think about is what's good for that person.

[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Dave 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. 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 metaphorical kill. 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. 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 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 they engage something. That they get the dignity of hard work, of getting a mental or a physical callous, that they actually get the feeling that we have all had by accomplishing some things. And you don't get that sitting on your couch playing Call of Duty, you know. And so the highest depression rate ever, Highest rate ever. The deaths of despair, we call them in the statistical analysis is the highest ever in the group we're talking about because it's really a horrible life. 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, knocked me to my knees. And it ended up being, you know, okay, next time you learn to duck. Next time you learn 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. 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.

[Jack]

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? Why do you think he's saying that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Bill Gates is paying more in tax than anybody?

[Jack]

But he says, like the tax rate.

[Graham]

The percentage should be.

[Jack]

Didn't he say that on Oprah? He went on Oprah or some sort of talk show and he was like, I need. I should be paying more in tax.

[Dave Ramsey]

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

[Jack]

48%?

[Dave Ramsey]

Zero. Yep.

[Graham]

Top 10% pay something like. I think it's like 90 something percent of tax. Yeah, it's a very high amount.

[Dave 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. 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 itemized 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, I forget what it's gone to. It's got like 30 or $35,000 in standard deductions 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.

[Graham]

What a lot of people do is they look at capital gains and they say, well, Elon Musk's wealth went from 100 billion dol. The 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.

[Dave Ramsey]

They never mention that you can't write off those losses.

[Graham]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because they're not realized.

[Graham]

Exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

They're realized, but they're not recognized in terms of tax code. But, yeah. So, and, 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.

[Jack]

Would you say there are any valid reasons for financial failure in America in 2025?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Yeah. Tragedy comes to someone. I've got two friends right now dying of cancer, and they're not going to make it. And if they had absolutely zero money and left behind a wife and kids or a husband and kids, yeah, you could have failure. The twist on the answer would be, is there any reason for permanent financial failure? No, there's nothing 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 very sad and very real. But is that a permanent? No, that's a snapshot. And life's a filmstrip. 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. 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 the, 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 could do that, and then I could take this class and I could do this and I have a career path and then I can start saving and investing. And you know, mathematically, can someone starting from nothing and no reputation, that's a convicted 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.

[Graham]

How do you help people get out of their own head and believe in the system?

[Dave Ramsey]

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. This, this, this, this, this. And I think I'm bankrupt. And 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 of 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. It wasn't 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, the sucker, you know, and go, okay, guys, here's what you do. You do this, this. Because we're on the outside. We're not emotionally in their headspace. I don't have their depression. I don't have their blues. I don't have their dysfunctional daddy in their. 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. You can hear the ones aren't going to do it too, right? But they go, wow, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. And you mean, yeah, I'd have to get rid of that. But. 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 feel the energy coming 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.

[Graham]

How do you feel when you could tell someone's not going to follow your advice?

[Dave 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're on 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, Escalade, and she owed like, 85,000 bucks on this stupid Escalade, you know, And. 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. 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.

[Jack]

On the topic of shifting mentality, you said you were 63.

[Dave Ramsey]

4.

[Jack]

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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Jack]

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?

[Dave 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. It's been a good ride. I'm fine. But the going forward is you start counting your days, you go. And so my wife and I have adopted a saying. 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. And so whatever. Or, you know, you know, she was. We've been learning to play golf together for the last five years, and so we're finally getting tolerable at the stupid sport.

[Jack]

And what's your best?

[Dave Ramsey]

Around 78.

[Graham]

78.

[Jack]

You're hiring coaches, huh?

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of coaches. Yeah. To get rid of you.

[Jack]

Destroy me. Destroy.

[Dave Ramsey]

Play golf with this body, you have to have coaching. Yeah.

[Jack]

That's fantastic.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's not average. You said my best ever.

[Jack]

Well, that's still phenomenal. My best ever is a hundred.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Well, anyway, that. So we're learning to play. So anyway, she's playing with these clubs, and two or three of her friends are playing with these clubs, and they're like. Like, you know, I, you know, whatever. 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? Ordinary what people say they saw at Ford's theater that night. John Wilker Spoof was a megastar. The American political climate has always been rife with division. But even juxtaposed against today's polarized environment, it has never been nearly as divided as it was during the Civil War. I'm Alec Baldwin. This is a story that shows how the lines are so often blurred between hero and villain, immortality and infamy, justice and vengeance, and how in that respect, nothing has changed. Today, revenge is not a very noble motive, but it's a very human one, right to want to spread the pain I'm feeling to other people. The goal of this series is to offer more investigative context, a perspective that makes a murder that occurred more than 150 years ago remarkably relevant in today's America. Listen to the ides of April wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

This is the story of the 1. He is responsible for keeping a leading health care facility clean and safe. And he trusts Grainger's high quality H vac cleaning and safety products combined with their world class supply chain to consistently deliver, ensuring he's covered inside and out so he can focus on keeping his facility clean to help protect the health of everyone inside. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, it doesn't matter what it costs. 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, is debilitating health? I'm not able to do stuff. So, hey, we're going to Scotland, play golf for 13 days. Y' all want to go, why wouldn't I?

[Jack]

At what point in your life do you think it's healthy to adopt that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why wouldn't I framework when you can afford it? The, the problem is when you're 26 and you're broke and you go, why wouldn't I? It's like, yeah, 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. 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. And why wouldn't I?

[Graham]

What percentage do you look at where you just say to yourself, it doesn't matter. Is it 1%, 5%?

[Dave Ramsey]

We ask ourselves that question. If we take that much money and burn it in the middle of the floor, will our life changed? 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 was 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. That's a biblical thing for me. I want to do that. And so I want to change my family tree. And I have, assuming I don't do something extremely stupid in the next 20 years. But going on a cruise is not going to do that, or catching a plane to Scotland is not going to do that, or giving a million dollars to something's not going to do that. These buildings are worth 650 million. So I'm probably okay. So that kind of thing. So I'm not bragging, I'm just saying you asked. It's a RAC 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 I, 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 unbelievers. Take care of my wife. She put up with this stuff for 43 years. I mean, she deserves some Golf clubs, hello. I mean, you know, so, you know, that kind of thing. So that, that's there. And then I want to leave. A godly man leaves an inheritance to his children. 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, 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.

[Graham]

For young people today, where do you see the biggest opportunities for them?

[Dave 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 hoop up, 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 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 Zs 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. 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, you know, 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 and you know, boomers bought their houses with a basket of strawberries and now you can't buy. 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 think you start a digital application or something, you can go to market with it for free, 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 line of code in my life, but I can open up ChatGPT and have a website in a few hours. That's really nice. 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 cost 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 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 my book goes out there. And oh, by the way, I wrote that book in about a fourth the time. 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 audiobook because it sounded it was about 94% perfect. Wow. And we decided the edit to clean up the other 6% was too much. Much. It was easier for me to sit down, 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. Kevin.

[Graham]

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.

[Dave Ramsey]

But the point is it's huge opportunity. Yeah, you don't even need AI to do it. You don't need to sit down. You 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, how ease of Entry. It's easy to become a real estate agent. It's hard to become a securities salesperson because you got to Pass A Series 6, Series 7 63, which is a lot like CPA exam. Real estate test I took in 27 minutes. So I mean, it's ease of entry. 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. Is so sad and such a freaking waste. I'm so excited. Needed 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 into the right. I'm just. It's a good time to be alive.

[Jack]

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?

[Dave Ramsey]

Headspace Belief.

[Jack]

It's just belief that if they, they plant the seeds, the corn will grow.

[Dave Ramsey]

Exactly. And if you don't plant seeds 100% of the time, corn won't 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 100% 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, 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 way the book business is versus when I did my first book, when I did my first book and I was on the Today show, people actually watched the Today show back then. It was crazy. And there were these things called bookstores and they had books in them and people went there and I would have a thousand people in a line to do a book signing. I can't even imagine that happening today. No chance that would happen today. And so I don't think there's anybody that famous. Hardly that. Maybe. Maybe Taylor Swift. Okay, but. But I mean, who's going 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.

[Graham]

I disagree. I bet you would get a thousand people, Sean.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't. I really don't. I. I mean, I. Our. Because, hey. Well, it just does. 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 the thing. So friend of mine does. Does a reality show. I was talking to him yesterday, and it was very successful 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 show. 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 and expected somebody to watch it. It's hilarious. Nobody's watching it. He goes, we've got to reboot this thing. And we're. We got to get Hulu, we got to get YouTube TV, you know. He said, I've got to read. 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 see I've closed up the tent on it. But. 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 gotta. You gotta follow around what's happening.

[Jack]

So if you take a person that's struggling with their finances in their current situation right now, I feel like back in the day, the advice would've been, okay, we'll start cutting back a little bit on your expenses, start saving a little bit more money. Whereas now, if you're reiterating your strategy, seems as though the best solution would be to try to take on some more work or be more creative and 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?

[Dave 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. But we said go, you know, go to Papa John's. They'll hire you if you can breathe and you bathed and maybe bathed and, you know, and they'll. And you can deliver pizza. Right. And. 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 extra job. They'll give you extra tip. And so use the code. And so get your income up. Yeah. And cut your expenses. 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. 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 if you've got a PhD in something, you know, on the online classes, you can make seriously good money as your side hustle, you know, and so you've got, again, 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. There's a lot of stuff you can do to get your income up temporarily with an unreasonable number of hours and, you know, 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 your out go down. And that's called margin. And the more extreme you do that, the more margin you'll have and the lot. The less time you'll spend in hell, the faster you'll get out. 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.

[Jack]

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.

[Graham]

Not sure.

[Jack]

This is someone else 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. What would be like the actual directional things that you would, you would tell them to do?

[Dave Ramsey]

My friend Henry Cloud 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 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 ten 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, what does the perfect version of 10 years from now look like? And then reverse engineer what must be true to get there there. And so if I want a robust spiritual walk, yeah, that'd be involved. And you know, 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, right? And be forewarned, there are people in those churches that aren't perfect, but that's why they're there too. So, but, but either way, you can learn things there. Oh, and watch who you hang around with because you're going to become who you hang around with, you know, and so if all your friends are sitting in doom scrolling all day long and don't have, have any ambition and all they do is smoke pot and doom scroll, you can pretty well be assured that 10 years from now you're gonna look just like who you hang around with. Be not deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. You will become who you hang around with. All the data shows that. Tons of research. It shows that not only your physical condition, the words you use, the books you read, the movies, you like it, you know, you become who your crew is. And so pick them carefully.

[Graham]

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 Iced 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.

[Jack]

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. And here's a fun fact. If you shopped online in the us, there's a really good chance it was through Shopify because they power about 10% of all American e commerce.

[Graham]

Plus, what's great about Shopify is that you get access to a complete design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful online store that perfectly matches your brand. And there's no coding needed. Not to mention their AI tools even help you write product descriptions or enhance your product photos.

[Jack]

Shopify also makes marketing extremely easy with simple email and social campaigns to reach customers wherever they're scrolling. Plus they handle literally everything from inventory to shipping to returns. Basically all of the complicated stuff you do not want to deal with.

[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

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 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.

[Jack]

Plus, with potential rate cuts on the horizon, hard assets like gold and silver have historically done really well in that environment environment. So if you're holding too much in cash, you could be missing on some upside.

[Graham]

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.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

So if you've been thinking about protecting your wealth with some real assets, now could be a great time to learn some more before any potential rate change.

[Graham]

Hit head to noblegoldinvestments.comiced to get started today or schedule a free consultation. Again, that is noblegoldinvestments.com ICED or you could also click the link down below in the description. Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the podcast. What are the biggest problems you see today with men when it comes to work, life, money and family?

[Dave Ramsey]

Men have been 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 the 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, 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, than are not engaged in the workplace right now. 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. 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 us. 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. And so their personal dignity has just eroded. And to get those people back re engaged, 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 ladies can produce wonderful creative things and wonderful incomes in the economy. 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 re engaged and quit telling everybody that the worst possible thing you could be is a, you know, a white guy. You know, that'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.

[Graham]

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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Their lives, it is a, you know, it's a destiny thing. 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 all of a sudden you are. I mean, and it's an empowerment idea or message is called hope. 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. 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% of them have an onboard spouse that works as their teammate.

[Unknown]

This is the story of the one. He's responsible for keeping a leading health care facility clean and safe.

[Dave Ramsey]

Safe.

[Unknown]

And he trusts Grainger's high quality H vac cleaning and safety products combined with their world class supply chain to consistently deliver. Ensuring he's covered inside and out so he can focus on keeping his facility clean to help protect the health of everyone inside. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. This is the story of the one. He's responsible for keeping a leading health care facility clean and safe.

[Dave Ramsey]

Safe.

[Unknown]

And he trusts Granger's high quality H vac cleaning and safety products combined with their world class supply chain to consistently deliver ensuring he's covered inside and out so he can focus on keeping his facility clean to help protect the health of everyone inside. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's not a disconnect. That is call. So that's not simply correlation versus if you interview the general public, 40% say their spouse and then we're on the same page. But they're not obviously not winning in these areas. 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.

[Graham]

And what questions do you ask or what questions should someone ask their spouse to make sure you're on the same page?

[Dave Ramsey]

Let's start talking about that desired future and be in agreement on that. 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, I had just gone broke a couple years before. We had nothing. 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. I was just tying it up and selling the position, selling the contracts. And I did the numbers and I said, sharon, we sat down and looked at it and she said, this stuff, whether you're teaching at church, this financial peace stuff, this is really helping people and we need to talk about, okay, so we're praying about it, 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, you know, having a little class, I might, might make $62,000. Here's the numbers, here's how I get there, 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 she. 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, 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? 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 hawking 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 till 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 work 16 hour days. 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 ten 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, going, you know, we need work, life, balance, you know, I'm here with these little kids all day long by myself, you know, and what are we doing? Financial peace my butt. You know, if that, 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. 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 it done, done it. I couldn't have done it. And so people say, well, what about Sharon Ramsey? Sharon Ramsey's the hero of the story, the whole story. Because 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. 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.

[Graham]

Now, what would you do if she were not as supportive and what would you do in the case?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you'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 when in doubt, we don't. So like if we have a. We had 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 called the guy up and I go, we're not. We're not in right now. We're not going to be able to help right now. 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 mean 100 bucks, you know?

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

She gripes at me about over tipping all the time, but that tough deal with that. But I'm not. But I'm talking about major decisions. We need to be aligned or when in doubt, don't. I mean, we don't. I don't come home and 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. 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. 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.

[Graham]

When did you go from feeling rich to actually being rich?

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't even know what that means.

[Jack]

Well, let's. Let's say like. 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.

[Dave Ramsey]

Define it. Scars. Yeah.

[Jack]

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?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, we did end up making 62,000 that year.

[Jack]

Exactly 62.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, we actually hit it. The projections were devastatingly accurate. And the. The following year I made 104, and the following year I made 250. And then I did a book deal that was sweet. And took off somewhere along in those Years, in those early years right there, I remember Sharon, we went to the grocery store store and we had envelopes with our grocery money in it. And I said, you know what, let's do something different as 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. 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 that, there's nothing like that. That, that stuff is, that stuff's. By 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, 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 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, I could 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 or buying a good big old truck or something is like, like that's a thing, you know, and so. But it's like that grocery buggy, it was irrelevant, but it was relevant.

[Graham]

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?

[Dave Ramsey]

Definitely, I don't know that it's a certain tier, but when you reach the point, I always call it the, the pinnacle point where you pedal and Pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal to get to the top of 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. Right? Meaning that if you didn't work, you'd be more than fine. Right. When you're, 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 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. 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, but either way, you get to the point where the money, these are different to me. They're different flashpoints where the money becomes. Let the, the things the money is doing becomes less and less relevant because there's enough of it, whatever the investment is. And it's, it's a spiritual thing almost, an emotional thing, almost, but it's certainly a mathematical thing thing.

[Jack]

Is 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?

[Dave 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. 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, and you're fine. And we're certainly at that point here too. Too. But I don't really approach it like, who can I flip off? 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.

[Jack]

Okay, well, I think we gotta wrap up here, but I have one last question. All right, so we recently had a conversation with Charlie Kirk, and everyone loved this part of the podcast. I gotta ask you, is it ever acceptable for a girl to pay on the first date date, or should a guy always pay on the first date?

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, I. Again, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't bother me either way. I grew. 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. They 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. 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. No, you can't. You're. You're done. You're done. You just move on.

[Jack]

And you would encourage that?

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, no, I did it. I said, you're done.

[Jack]

Up until what age?

[Dave Ramsey]

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.

[Graham]

How do they obey you, though? I feel like in high school they.

[Dave Ramsey]

Don'T have a choice to live in my house and eat my food.

[Graham]

Wouldn't that make them better at like, sneaking off?

[Dave Ramsey]

And it could, but basically we not only ran them off, we told them why. Okay? You know, we told them why. This guy, look, this is the trajectory this guy's on.

[Graham]

How did you know that?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, when you're talking to him, you can see, I mean, 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 never seen a successful pothead. I've known a bunch of them, but I've never seen one. And so. Except at smoking pot. And so, you know, no, you're not going out with Bobby. Bobby's a pothead. So three weeks later, Bobby ran his car in the ditch and would have hurt my daughter. 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.

[Graham]

Crypto millionaire?

[Dave Ramsey]

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. But anyway, what character qualities do you want in Prince Charming? 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 I think our daughters would tell you that they would want 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. Because that ain't gonna fly with my kids, I can tell you that. Don't fly with her mother either. So we're gonna have a partnership. You're gonna trust my competency and I'm gonna trust yours. And then we're going to join together and we're gonna 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 Gaia, because he's probably wanting to serve 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 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, their lack of integrity and, you know, you have a known reputation and. Yeah, we don't. We're not. We're not trying to. Trying to run. Use our daughters to fix the world. That's not what we're doing now.

[Jack]

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. That's one of my favorite things. I love it. I absolutely love it. So thanks for that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Thanks guys.

[Jack]

Sounds valuable. Thank you for watching. Thank you to the team helping produce this. Thanks time.

[Graham]

Thank you.

[Unknown]

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