THEY LIE TO STEAL YOUR MONEY (Avoid The #1 Wealth Killer In 2024)

people say the little man can't get ahead it's harder than ever in America today inflation the housing market the guy in the White House and what I found is you can get ahead in America today if you just follow a really simple controversial Upstream path but most people want to make it more complicated they think they're smarter than that there's Pride there's fear there's greed and then people calling the show at 60 going I'm screwed what do I do so that in the simplest terms would be your advice to make any viewer watching right now A Millionaire yeah if you just follow these principles you will get there and you have the things on the other side I said this is going to be jarring this is not going to be what you want to hear George welcome back to the iced coffee hour really happy that you're here our last episode I think is it like 600,000 everybody loved it everyone wanted to follow hot takes we had a great time thank you for your generosity and uh I I think it was a fun conversation I think what's really interesting that people really appreciate it is that we have very different views on debt on credit cards on finances you have your way I have my way and we're able to have a good conversation about it it and I think people really like that so we're going to dive even further into that because you made a whole book about how bad credit cards are and how you should never use them and I was reading through it and we have some disagreements that we probably have to Hash can I just say Graham let me remind you I am on the back of the book that you on the back of the book and here's what Graham had to say George dives into Financial topics that should be required learning for absolutely everyone whether you're just starting or on your path of Financial Freedom this book has every tidbit to help optimize every dollar sign St real estate inv YouTube personality so first of all thank you for ending it that means a lot that you put your stamp of approval on it even though we don't agree on all things finances but exactly we have a very mutual uh Mutual respectful relationship and it's been so great getting to know you guys over the years we're going to dive into it today you said chapter 3 in your book was the strongest argument against debt that you think you've ever heard against credit cards against credit cards that you've ever heard in the credit cards chapter I'm just going to recite some of the things that you said in this chapter so people get an idea of what you said okay this like a court of law he's like I'm going to use your own words against you now you claim these credit card companies lure you in using heavy metal cards to impress your friends congratulations you've been approved as though it's a good thing they say we are pleased to announce we have increased your credit limit they give you rewards they give you sign up bonuses they give you discounts they give you exclusive lounge access you say statistically 80% of people reading this have a credit card so 80% of you viewers have a credit card conducted by ramsy Solutions this guy knows his sources and you also said 49% of people can't pay off their monthly credit card bill in 2023 there is an outstanding debt of credit cards of over $ trillion spread over 55 million households with each household balance averaging over $14,000 and an average interest rate of 22% those are all facts those are none of my real opinions but yes those are all that's all accurate that's in the book after reading that just as a bystander I think it's interesting because I never put the two and two together until you wrote that the way credit cards frame their language of saying congratulations you've been approved this is a great thing look at what we just did I do think that's interest I mean that's marketing at the end of the day yeah they want to frame it as a good thing and it can be it can be a good thing depending on the credit card that you get approved for well I think it's more about the emotional validation we get from like they're giving me more credit limit like what does that really mean they're giving me more access to debt now if that's the game you want to play that's fine but for most people when you ask them what their financial goals are they would say well to get out of debt which is such a hilarious contradiction that for the average consumer their singular goal is to get out of debt and they're getting excited when they have access to more debt and they think it's winning because that's the scoreboard we've created in America you think though that could be a selection bias that the people who are getting into personal finance step number one for the for a lot of those people who are just starting is debt get out of the debt well we tell them to succeed in America financially you got to have a good credit score and so how do you do that well people will open a credit card and they swipe the card going into debt even temporarily at the heart of it I just think people aren't winning as much as they think they are and the credit card companies love when people think they're winning so do you think this is something though where if you're good at it you could win yes but that's kind of like saying if you're good at gambling you should Gamble and everyone goes like well I I think I'm good I won that one time and so they sort of self- Select themselves and go like I'm going to be the guy who does it well I think it's different I think if you're good at card counting so if you're good at being a winning player then I think that's different because the game isn't set to Def to defeat you in credit cards and stuff like that like sure a lot of people do end up losing money but that every tool that you need to get ahead is in the system right see like the way the way I think about it Define getting ahead that's really what it comes down to it could be similar to starting a business let's just say because you say it's money loing proposition while starting a business is money losing for a lot of people but some succeed so couldn't it be the same way if you know what you're doing and you're successful at it you can do really well you can make a lot of money in both a business and with credit cards yeah I mean some people do game the system um and so I talk about that at at what cost does that come because it comes at a cost credit card companies are not nonprofit Charities they're not just giving away money and so I talk about where the money actually comes from that turns into rewards and cash back and points and all that and as I got into it like it's just not pretty it's not my opinion of like well it comes from this group over here there's multiple studies from the Federal Reserve that are now showing like oh it's the people who are uneducated lowincome suffering the most that are funding this whole program and it's not a moral thing to say you're a bad person if you get cash back it's not that at all but it doesn't make me feel like I'm winning when I'm that's how the system works it's just kind of gross and so if I can opt out of it by using debit and cash I'm opting out of it and that's just one reason on top of many to not use the credit card it's interesting you turn it into a moral argument because I've never seen it that way if you could explain where that money is coming from and who's receiving the money that' be great like an exact oh yeah well the FED found that $15 billion moves from the poor uneducated lower income to the higher educated wealthy and there's billions and billions of dollars that gets moved in that way and it's all stemming from the credit card companies and a lot of people say well George credit card compan the money I'm getting in my cash back is from transaction fees it's from The Interchange The Interchange that's what they're saying but I actually looked at the data and capital one has their earnings report right there online for anyone to go check out and it turns out it was like 75% of the earnings from Capital 1's credit card Revenue came from interest not from now that's Capital One what about American Express well American Express is different they have a different business model and you know that and so where does most of their money come from it comes from charging the highest possible transaction fee in the industry 3 and a half% to businesses when you swipe that American Express so that's why a lot of small businesses go we don't take AMX because we're not going to stomach that fee and pass it on to the consumer and so either way it's not pretty AMX is a different story because of their business model you know these charge cards you you have to pay them off at the end of the month and so it's a different model but for most people the rewards cards they're it's coming mostly from interest and fees which is coming from people who can't pay it off yeah your Capital One example I do think makes sense because Capital One generally besides the Venture X business card which pretty good sign up fantastic that would be hilarious if this was brought to you by Capital One but no uh Capital One usually is seen as like a beginner credit card where they really just send out Mass mailers to just about anybody so it would make sense that for them their business model would be heavily Reliant to people just carrying a balance because they don't know any better yeah and so the I I was trying to just go at it from a research standpoint versus like here's how I feel cuz I really truly like I don't think anyone's a bad person for using a credit card or that it's wrong to get cash back I just think it's an interesting angle for people who are already kind of on the fence to go like you're right I'm going to opt out and truthfully people have reached out to me going I didn't know that this is the case and it finally made me cut up the card and now I feel more free than ever and I'm Building Wealth faster do you think credit card companies are immoral I think a company is amoral in a sense I think the people involved in it that are at the top and the way they're making money um I don't think it's the right way to make money I think there there's you can serve people in a way and run a business in such a way that it helps a lot of people I don't think causing people to go into debt is a worthwhile business to be in and you know there's a lot of companies that make billions of dollars you know would we say Sally May is is a moral company or are they evil uh as a company they're just a company but the things they do in order to attract business we would say is immoral like paying financial aid counselors and putting them on cruises and order to pitch Sally May products that's pretty gross putting them in call centers and making them think they're talking to a financial aid counselor when it's a Sally May representative we would say is immoral and gross so there's practices in those Industries uh the way credit card companies go after us and the experimentation they do we would say that's pretty gross but as far as a company goes a company's a company and it doesn't really have a moral compass yeah as far as that goes do you think there's any way for a credit card company to do it right for a credit card company to take what you say and say you know what we're going to fix the problem it's still going to be credit but we're going to solve these issues every issue that you say well this lady called into the Ramsey show this week and it was so funny she was like yeah well uh I'm with this nonprofit now that's helping me with my credit card debt and Capital One is the one who told me to reach out to them I was like you're going to trust a credit card company to help you get out of the debt that they got you into that makes no it does because they want to get paid back if they default on her they're not they're getting Pennies on the dollar Mak sense they're like well we can get her money back we'll be doing her a service but overall I just don't I don't trust credit card companies with a 39 and a half foot pole you know I you know what the terms were of that like what she signed up for I don't know I kept asking her she didn't know I was just like this sounds like a scam it sounds like one of these debt relief settlement companies that you sign up for that you pay them a bunch of money and they tank your credit on purpose and then doesn't resolve the issue so anytime you're using debt to move around to pay off other debt it's just you're not actually solving the root problem and what I found is people who avoid credit card debt completely and avoid credit cards they tend to just have more of their income at their disposal because they're not tempted it's really hard to go into credit card debt when you don't have a credit card that's the bottom line at the end of the day you can't spend more than you make if you can't spend more than you make but before we get into that obviously if you're watching this episode you think Financial Health is incredibly important and dare I say I think there's something more important physical health I tend to agree with that I know for myself I've been doing my best to get to the gym every single day throughout this last year I feel so much better I work a lot better and the one thing that's actually made the biggest Improvement is my diet funny you say that Grant because that's actually my New Year's resolution I want to get shredded like Justin Waller type shredded I want that eight pack of abs and today's sponsor hero is here to help hero makes my favorite foods that I want to indulge on and eat all the time but in a very healthy tasty way like for those una aware herob bread has become a daily staple of mine every single morning because of its soft fluffy texture and rich flavors that make it constantly taste like it just came freshly baked out of the oven and what's even crazier than their flavor gam is their nutrition facts just just listen to this guys their hero tortilla Which I absolutely love I made an amazing quesadilla out of it zero grams net carbs zero grams of sugar 80 calories 7 g of protein and 15 gam of fiber on top of that gram I made a barbecue steak sandwich with a hero sliced white bread it had 0 g of net carbs 0 g of sugar 45 calories 5 g of protein and 11 G of fiber even for myself I've started started tracking calories lately and this makes a huge difference because I'm not wasting calories on bread that I would buy from the store that tastes worse than what you would get with herob bread so you may as well just eat hero bread instead so guys at the very least just give it a shot I'm very confident you're going to absolutely love it just like Graham and I and they're also offering at 10% off your entire first order at hero.com again that's hero.com slist with the link Down Below in the description to place your order today and they're also going to be baking croissants for every single month in 2024 so you'll enjoy it thank you so much and now let's get back to the podcast what do you think is the root problem cuz you said you can solve it by just getting rid of your credit cards but that doesn't necessarily I'm assuming solve still the root problem in which why people go into debt couldn't that be akin to saying well you know get people off drugs by just eliminating drugs if drugs didn't exist no one would be addicted to it then wouldn't it just go to something else um I mean if you look at addiction is a it's a strong form I some people have spending addiction but forver I'm not addicted to cards yeah I have and I to maximize rewards but I'm not addicted um and so credit cards are a different Beast because we've socialized them to the point where it's so normal um and I have a quote from Dave in the book of credit cards have become the cigarette of the financial world it's normal but I think it's a bad habit that is slowly killing people but it's not one of those where it's like it's not meth you know what I mean like you can live a long time and still smoke cigarettes and some live a long and they're fine and they live normales but I still think you'd be better off with your health and your Financial Health without it so that's the big thesis there and I walk through eight different character archetypes in the book that I think will hit someone reading or listening where they go that's me I consider myself the perfect spender all right I've heard I I pay off my card every month I've never spent a dime in interest how many times have you said that or heard that right every time every time and it makes you feel like you're winning but here's the thing even even if you never spend a diamond interest and you pay it off every month that still leaves you with zero doar it does not mean you're moving ahead financially it just means you're not getting behind and I want people to move ahead and I think playing this game is just sort of this Monopoly game created by the credit card companies to make us feel like we're winning I'd rather you have no debt but I think it's better to use your own money and I think you make different decisions when you do that so you did make the claim that I'm guessing is based in some sort of data that if you have a credit card versus a debit card you're PR to spending more money on a month-to-month basis with the credit card yes and I cite an MIT study that was done it used fmri technology and it scanned the brain when people use credit cards and what's Wild is that not only did they say hey when you swipe that card it sort of releases the breakes on spending but not only that it it hits the accelerator and causes you to spend more which is a pretty wild thing they already knew that you know spending with with that little friction spending other people's money it's going to sort of like release the brakes a little bit but not only that it causes you to actually spend more on top of that which is compounding the problem now I've seen a similar study that found when you start spending money that you spend more money as a result of spending because you're already in a habit regardless of credit or not I forget what the exact study is but a philosopher I believe in like the 1800s who started looking at buying furniture oh and he bought furnit he bought like a new chair in his living room and then all of a sudden everything else looked outdated because he got the chair so then he wanted the couch so he got a new couch and then the rug looks weird because those two are new and the rug's kind of get a rug wardrobes are very similar when you buy a shirt well now I need a new pair of pants to go with the new shirt and a new pair of shoes and that's just a spending uh Habit that I think is it's just a cascading effect is regardless of debit or credit if you spend I would like to see a study if people start spending do they spend more because they've already spent something it's floodgates already opened yeah well that's how I feel about it I mean with with credit scores and credit cards it's sort of this Gateway into other types of debt and once you have a payment on one side of your life what's a payment on another side what's a car payment what's a mortgage payment and I think we need to retrain our brain to stop thinking in terms of payments and start thinking in terms of Freedom with our income because that's really you know we say it's your greatest wealth building tool and when you give that to lenders even if you're paying off a card every month you're still giving it away and that's money I think you would have you would have kept more of your money if you had spent your own and I say my sort of end thesis in the chapter is when it hurts less it costs more when it hurts less emotionally which is what happens when you swipe instead of handing over $100 bills in cash we would Revolt if we had to hand over $100 bills to pay taxes every year but because it sort of comes out of our paycheck or when we spend it sort of just gets swiped on a card we don't feel the emotion of that money leaving our bank account just a digital number changes slightly it's similar with casinos and chips I heard one of the reasons they switched to chips I mean not only is it easier to carry around but because you don't associate that with money it's a lot easier to spend chips than it is to be like here's 100 100 100 well think about that with with credit card points why do you think they move from cash back numbers to you get 150,000 points it sounds like an amazing huge number instead of going here's $500 they go here's 150,000 points credit card companies watching this could actually do some crazy stuff with that with marketing and saying you're going to get a million points but in the fine print is say the million points that's a $100 yeah when IAL I I actually talked to an X Capital One employee and she was talking about all the experiments they run and the ab tests when they said hey when we switch to points it causes people mentally to flip on a different part of their brain because they don't associate points versus money it just feels like I'm winning it feels like I'm at Chuck-E-Cheese and so the stuff that she unpacked it just made it even like more gross to how these credit card companies come after us to where I'm like even if you think you're winning you're not and someone else is losing at the expense of you winning what are some of the other secrets that that person told you about credit card companies oh my gosh well the fact that they run Capital One in particular runs 10,000 experiments on consumers every year that boggled my mind like there's only 365 days in a year how is this possible they're constantly running these AB tests to figure out what's going to get people to spend more money um that part was was pretty gross and then just all the amount of like they can devalue your points at any time what are some of the tests they run you ask didn't get into the specifics of what they did but it's a lot of switching the mentality and the verbage around it and so but I think a lot of it is when they move from cash back to points that there's a reason all the credit card companies have moved to talking about points in airline miles and so I break down how the airline miles work and how much you'd actually have to spend and it's like 50 Grand in spending gets you $250 in Rewards or $500 and so it's just when people tell me I get a free flight and I spend how I normally would I'm like you would not normally spend spend $50,000 in a year the one counter to that is that mostly you'd be able to get those free flights with a sign up bonus which have a much lower spent so let's just say your example $750 which is about uh the sign up bonus for a higher end credit card or like mid- tier to Upper mid usually that would require a spending of anywhere between $4 to $10,000 in three months so all of a sudden then the cash back seems a lot higher when it's just the signup bonus versus keeping the card for years and like year three spending 50 Grand a lot of people most people do is they go like well I wasn't planning on spending 10 grand like 10 grand in three months is a lot cuz you can't you know most people can't put their mortgage and utilities on there and so we're talking about consumer spending groceries gas so what do they do well we'll eat out again this month because we got to hit them we got to hit the number and so I think mentally and psychologically they know you're going to spend more by doing this in order to get the bonus and maybe you'll use the bonus maybe you won't we found a lot of people foro the bonuses forget it expires whatever the thing is uh they're not actually utilizing it to its full capacity to that end it's causing people to go into debt in order to get a bonus which then negates any reward that now see that I would agree with that a lot of the bonuses go unused and the same thing with gift cards there was this whole study that I read recently on gift cards of how many of them just go un sitting on there and it's and it's genius from the business perspective because essentially to them it's a free loan businesses are able to get 0% interest because you're buying a gift card and it's a honestly it's a 50-50 whether or not you're ever going to use it so it's free money for the businesses we tell ourselves well it's free money I might as well do it for the free money and I just I just think that mentality causes more people to go broke than it does causes them to ever build any wealth you know and I get it like no one's claiming they're Building Wealth with credit card uh points but at the same time they see it as like a piece of being smart financially and I just I just disagree fundamentally that I think Graham would be just as well off if he stuck to a debit card if not better off so I will say my perspective changed a little bit after chapter 3 hey that's a win the only reason why it changed a little bit is because I actually saw how bad the data was on it which was like the main thing for me was 49% or whatever number it is can't pay off their monthly credit card statement now for me that's a really really really sad because they're getting charged exorbitant interest rates it's just going to keep them under right and it brings me back to this conversation that we had with Grant Cardone actually and I was saying it's better to encourage people to get high-paying salaried positions and he was saying no spend your last few thousand doar on education to start your own business but most businesses fail in the first 5 years 50% of businesses fail so you're like setting them up to fail a said they had bought my course may they would sure you could make that argument but his whole thing is like if you're just persistent and you keep trying you keep trying I'm like sure if you play it super smart but if you look at all available data people do not win when they're trying that everyone should start a business now here's the thing if you're super smart about it yes I believe the the percent would change I'm sure 90 some percent could succeed in business if they continue pushing year after year after year after year get persistent and continue working on it the same with credit cards if you're super smart and super disciplined with your spending and you don't spend more because of it and you never allow them to charge you interest because of it then I think that you can get ahead but if you look at all available data I would never encourage every single person listening right now to start your own business because I know most I know most fail I would not encourage everyone listening to this to start day trading because I know most day Traders lose money so now if I'm looking at data around credit cards it's like well most people lose right if you're smart you'll win and I do think it's good to win right I do think it's good to get the cash back on credit cards I think it's good to get the sign up bonuses I think it's really nice to go into the lounges when I'm flying but I think it's important about being intentional about the decisions that you're making rather than being you know super I would say motivated to get a credit card because oh we're pleased to accept you into the card or by a sign up bonus and you're not actually spending the points and stuff like that I think it's important to be intentional about it but before we go into that you might have noticed that we're now filming in 4k we're really proud of that we've come a long way because if you go to our Channel and you sort by oldest you'll be able to see our first video and it was pretty bad but it got us started and we were able to grow to almost 900,000 subscribers without anything fancy and our sponsor streamyard is there to help you out creating good content does not need a cost an arm and a leg and 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to the episode I just know human nature is you know I talked to a girl today man on the street in Las Vegas and I was asking her about her credit card like hey how many do you have what do you use and she's like I have this one then I have the apple one I was like what made you get the apple one she's like well it's titanium and I saw my dad with it I'm like that's human like whether we want to admit it or not that's humanity and I talk about the book the actual history of credit cards and it's funny it started with Frank mcnamer in a diner in New York and he forgot his wallet he was so embarrassed that he asked hey we need a credit system so where if I forget my wallet I can still pay the first credit card was born the diner club and the first one was actually made of cardboard not quite the flex of the titanium cards but the fact that we're lured in by she literally said well the card's just pretty like that's an insane reason to get a credit card and but it's one of the reasons and one of the main reasons people do it there's a reason we love the YX it's shiny and thick and the thicker it is the more well off you are it's a game they've created I just like the idea of being morally consistent and if I wouldn't encourage everybody to be a day trader I don't know if I would say here to everybody that you should get a credit card when you look at the data here's thing here's the thing though with your example like business or day trading I I think it's a terrible thing to do that out of desperation for money if someone says hey I'm broke I need to make $1,000 you would never say start a business CU like you said so many people would fail or a sign up bonus but I think it's like hey I got this idea and I want to be an entrepreneur and if it fails or succeeds I just want to try it then I think it's Fant I think the the experience that you get from running a business or even day trading could be really invaluable even if you lose the experience that you get from that I think is is invaluable I agree and I do think there's some selection bias if you look at the people watching your videos of like the five best credit cards to get in 2023 I think if you look at the results of that more people are probably winning than losing huge dude imagine in these videos of like you should get this card because it's Titanium because you're actually outlining like how you can be smart with it and it's not just like oh get this card because well and no one's reading the fine print if you ask people what the interest rate is on their credit card they'd have no idea most of them unless they're they have a balance and they're having to pay that you know what I mean like they all get star out of the bonuses and not looking at here's what could happen you you may get 2% you may as well get 22% in interest another hard thing though is is there any significance to paying that interest for a few months to get a slap on the wrist and learn your lesson that you need to be more intentional about your spending or you silly to be like I think we should touch the hot stove to figure out that stoves shouldn't be T need tou that I think some people need to I think people need a reality people sometimes need a rock bottom to have that I've had it moment and we that's what we see on the Ramy show yeah I mean we everyone at some point that has followed the Ramsey plan has some level of of that didn't feel good I don't want to live like that anymore you have to get to that point so I think Americans are just too comfortable sitting on our own poopy diapers at this point but the people who are ready to make a change they've had life happen and they have that emergency and they didn't have the emergency fund to cover it and it was scary Co did that for a lot of people I mean it spooked to everyone like crap we got to get aaack together we've been just like spending spending spending no nothing in savings nothing in retirement like we don't know what life's going to throw at us so we better be prepared what was the most surprising thing from going to people on the street and talking to them oh man I mean Vegas has you know there's a lot of interesting people on on the Vegas trip that you talk to but the most shocking thing was just I was asking people like did you budget for this trip how much do you plan on spending how are you paying for this and the amount of people who just did not have answers it was just like I'm just going to swipe and I'll worry about it later like that lack of there's no planning there's no delayed gratification it's all instant gratification YOLO that's a problem for future me and the problem is future you is going to wake up going crap like you got a financial hangover from how you spent in December and so that's the problem I'm saying is no one's making a budget going all right we're going to plan $1,000 we're going to pay cash for it instead they're like well I'll get the cash back and I'll make the payments what percentage of people said that though that they just swiped the card and didn't think about it I would say six out of 10 people have that mentality and we know six out of 10 people live paycheck to paycheck so I think there's a strong correlation there yeah I think the problem with a lot of these things such as like being financially disciplined losing weight and stuff like that is that there's never a stark punishment until it finally rains then it pours like you're not going to be suffering from swiping your credit card for maybe a couple of years and then all of the sudden everything adds up like you you know gave an example of in your own personal life in your book where it just got so much and then it infected every other area of your life yeah no one opens a credit card thinking I'm probably going to carry a balance everyone thinks thinks I'm going to be the guy that pays it off early on time and I'll never carry a balance part of it is that the minimum payment isn't even that painful so if you just can pay $100 a month but carry a $5,000 balance it's not that bad it's not even a slap on the wrist it's just slightly pay off or you just never pay it off but I mean what are the re it's it's numbers on a screen to a lot of people so see the 5,000 it doesn't matter 22% APR is which is the average credit card interest now it's at an all-time high credit card debts at alltime high of a trillion dollars and we're all wondering why we're broke fighting you know we're trying to fight inflation people broke that's what I want to know it's they're not well they're consumer spending is way up so if they are broke they don't seem to care very much I see such conflicting studies some have more money than they ever had there's 6 trillion dollars right now sitting in Money Market funds and in cash and treasuries more than ever but it also seems like anecdotally you hear stories of people who are doing worse than ever but statistically it seems like people are better off today overall than they were in 2019 well I mean America is an amazing country so even a bad day for us is a great day for any other country so we're just so spoiled and there's a lot of entitlement here and people have great incomes you know people like to complain but most people have great incomes it's not an income problem it's an expense problem you know we see this people making six figures are still living paycheck to paycheck the data shows so that tells me it's not that you just make more money and your problems are solved you just have life style creep happen and uh you know you make 100,000 you're going to spend 120 and that compounds over time um causing a lot of people to feel broke regardless of their income so what do you think of the long-term consequences of this if people aren't saving up for retirement maybe it's like this younger generation that wants that instant gratification well they don't want to wait 30 years to tap into a 401k piggy bank what do you think is going to happen in the future then to these people because this seems like it's a huge population of people that are doing this yeah well I think the younger Generations in a lot of ways are way smarter than than our parents generation like the fact that they have access to all this information is amazing the problem is there's so many more traps out there and I've always said if you follow the trends you're going to follow the traps our parents didn't have options it was you put money into your retirement account and that's it nowadays it's like do I do single stocks do I get into crypto do I do real estate the options are so overwhelming that there's this you know paralysis by analysis and people either don't do anything or they do a bunch of things but don't really make progress in any of it and so that's what I'm worried about with the next Generations is that they're not focused and there's no consistency over time and you guys know like Building Wealth is consistently you're dollar cost averaging into the S&P 500 over time it's the boring move but it's the one that consistently will cause you to build wealth see I just think it's so much easier for people who pay attention to get ahead just because so many people are not and just give in to whatever they desire in the moment like I think it's easier than ever if if you put your head down and you want to stay disciplined you're going to get ahead very easily and that's the I mean the thesis of the book is like the people say the little man can't get ahead it's harder than ever in America today inflation and the housing market and the guy in the White House and what I found is you can get ahead in America today if you just follow a really simple boring unsexy controversial Upstream path of getting out of debt staying out of debt have an emergency fund invest 15% into proven things like the stock market over a long period of time pay off your G house and don't hang on to it in retirement with a second mortgage and a helck on it and you're going to be okay and that's regardless of income whether you make 40,000 or 400,000 if you follow those principles you will be okay but most people want to make it more complicated they think they're smarter than that there's there's Pride there's fear there's greed and it causes us to make really unwise decisions and then people call into the show at 60 going I'm screwed what do I do and it's just harder at 60 to undo some of those decisions so that in the simp terms would be your advice to make any viewer watching right now A Millionaire yeah and I don't here's the thing I know a lot of people out there are saying well leveraging debt is a part of Building Wealth and while some people have done that the majority of people will go broke faster and so to me getting out of debt and using your powerful wealth building tool your income is your best path to wealth so what's the difference between people who leverage debt successfully and make money versus those who do not and lose money well it's there's there's types you know like leveraging a real estate debt for example versus trying to leverage something else like margin or options calls in the stock market like that stuff is insane Jack don't do it and Jack all about losing lots of money I got so there's you know there's different types of of debt leverage out there uh but a lot of the difference is luck and timing if you're going to be honest of like people who have done it well or successfully or even looking at crypto you know it's like people didn't know what crypto was going to do or is going to so the that have become millionaires itn't because they were so brilliant I think it's a really small population of people though I think it's education that's the main differentiating factor between those who leverage debt properly and those who do it poorly yeah I mean there's a lot of Education there's strategy involved I've just found for the average person there's a 100% success rate if you get out of debt and do it my way versus a 7% success rate leveraging debt this way and so to me I'm all about what is your shest best path it may be slower but you'll get there I would agree with that and then the thing that I mostly have a problem with with the anti-d philosophy give me the beef the home loan why is it such a big deal to to have a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at two and a half% that's what I have right now now you would probably argue if I had the cash to pay it off we know you won't you have the cash you can do it today I'm making money on inflation like I this money I'm able to invest in other things put in a 30y treasury I could put in a treasury and get more money you could how much I'm losing on interest My Philosophy Jack is in the and the write off the that's my favorite the write off sending $2,500 to the IRS is somehow better than sending $10,000 to A lender that's the write off right there it takes the 2.8 down to a 2.3 effective that's what the write-off does that hurts my brain 2.3 inflation is way higher treasuries you lock in a 30-y year right now looking at a very specific window of time yes and so things are looking great for Jack on paper right now but to me we just don't know what the future holds and I would rather reduce the risk have more peace have that money back in my life obviously you don't have a huge mortgage payment you know to begin with you got a bunch of Roommates so you're doing okay but for the average American out there hanging on to the mortgage is not benefiting them in any significant way I think it would I think it would reduce the risk not to pay off the mortgage because all of a sudden yeah you're going to do some ma cuz you're saying you're saying the money's locked up money locked up let's say the house is 400 Grand you have a $300,000 mortgage I think having $300,000 about situation my house is paid off the money's stuck in the house I can't access it I'm not going to do a cash out refi not going to do any of that why am I screwed and what risk do I have in your position I don't think you would be screwed I think in a lot of people's positions where they don't have a paid off house and the choice is do I sell my stocks and you know everything I have over here my investments to pay in the house let's say they pay off the house all of a sudden they lose their job and let's just say they have children and health care expenses and things like this and they need money and all of a sudden they're negative every month in that situation yeah of course they can get another job or something like that but I would value the liquidity of having money on the sidelines much more than having it tied up in a property well we call that an emergency fund and that's part of it we tell people have a 3 to six- month emergency fund before you become a homeowner and so let's say things went downhill I would have my emergency fund there ready to protect me and the idea of me being out of work for 6 months I mean like I'd swallow my pride and go do whatever gig I needed to do until I got back on my feet and for most people there's very little Interruption of income some people don't have to touch the emergency fund at all but if they do it's there to cover them during that period of time so to me I'm like I don't need the wiggle room because I have my emergency fund part of it too is 30 years from now let's even say 20 years from now the money that you're paying off is going to be so de valued with inflation I mean we could see the way the dollar is going it's going down I if we see a small amount of deflation at some point so be it but I think longterm they're going to keep printing money you also you believe in the housing market and it's going to continue to appreciate correct so my house my house is appreciated way more than my investment accounts yes but but had you leveraged your money and let's say bought two properties you would have doubled that appreciation potentially yeah but there's risk and headache involved and you know it could have gone over 30 years I'd bet on the housing market over 10 I have no clue but over 30 50 years I think it's a solid investment personally yeah I mean real estate is great and I think if you did it with cash there's there's less risk on paper less upside and in real life you know but there's and you get more cash flow with a cash flow property you know you talked to Dave Ramsey about this and he he you know audited your portfolio he's like the only I do different is pay it all off you got the money but you like your cash position California is a good example of those mortgages they're at three a half% 3.3 give or take but I'm paying 50% taxes to California when everything's said and done with state income tax and everything like that so I I that three and a half% is really just take that down by half it's so cheap you know what else I've seen with these low interest rates that's actually becoming a curse is people have handcuffs now oh yeah they don't want to let go they won't sell it cuz like well I can't get another loan for 3 and half% so they're stuck the other thing no one's talking about is a a tax basis on these properties that have gone up in value that have doubled in value in like 5 years now all of a sudden it's not just your mortgage rate that goes up it's your tax basis if you were to sell and buy anything else all of a sudden your property taxes are also going to be going up significantly so that's one of the reasons that like if I could snap my fingers and keep my tax bases in California transfer that somewhere else I would love to do I just dump everything I have just to get out of the state but don't you think if you had everything paid off you'd be less worried about letting go of an a low interest mortgage um if you're going to just pay cash for the next property you'd have more options truthfully versus feeling stuck like I can't like go of that I mean those are the calls because it's so attractive that that's the only reason why is it's so attractive to me to have a 3% interest rate for 30 years especially in a high income tax state like that to me is so good that it's like why do I want to give up such a good thing so it's not like I feel handcuffed I only feel handcuffed because it's like this is so good that I can't give it up exact me that is a form of handcuffs you know what I mean golden handcuffs we'll call them that sure golden handcuffs it limits Mobility but it's so good that you know the good outweighs kind of being stuck and holding these properties sure with a low tax basis very first world problems the way that I see it is in my personal experience in Graham's personal experience in another viewer let's say if they're very intentional about the way that they're spending and taking on debt and stuff like that then I think it's a win I think that you're just winning at the end of the day if you look at your financial statements taking on debt and being smart with it maybe using credit cards and stuff like that and you're extremely intentional and smart about it year after year you will win more than the other person that isn't barring spending more because it's a credit card rather than cash out of your account barring that yeah um so I think that's great but I also think the only other thing that could sway me is this peace that everyone says that you get when you pay off debt and I want to know like I just talked about this with Andre Andre J was talking about like he was like could you create a mathematical formula for the Peace of Mind emotional and I was like I wish that's the only thing I've been curious about that's what needs needs it an equation where he could be like all right the peace of mind is X Z multipli by you know fun there's no way to do it I remember this conversation I had with you a few years back Graham so Graham and I when we were in uh Los Angeles together we would go on this walk almost every single day I missed those walk romtic I know it so cute dude we came up with the best ideas one hour during the weekdays we take like a two mile wow amazing so good well we lived together so that's when we did it and here's an interesting thing when you're actually walking your brain works more efficiently I believe that so there's like some studies I can prove that I don't know what they're called but yeah walking backwards inefficient not good exactly no but we we would do this walk every single day and one day Graham out of nowhere never heard him say anything like this ever before he was like you know I'm really tempted to pay off every property I have I said that you said that I don't remember I honestly don't remember you DayQuil or something like struck me that you said that and I was like what are you talking about you're like just the peace of mind and you're you were like thinking about it because I don't think that I think obviously you had a lot less money back then so you were thinking to yourself like you know like now you you're more affluent so you think okay it's okay if I take on more debt still a smaller percentage of the amount of money I have but back in the day I think it was a more significant portion and so you were considering just paying off everything and living more affluently which I I found really interesting and and I was wondering like if you could measure out that piece back then would it have convinced you in hindsight I'm glad I didn't I think I remember what was going through my mind at the time was that um Co was kind of Uncertain the markets were a bit uncertain and I had this cash and I was thinking what would be the benefit cuz I just moved into a new home and this was like my expenses tripled by going from a duplex into like an actual house and so I was kind of I I was stressed out from going from like living on $1800 a month to like I think at the time it was like 10 like it was a huge bump up and so that stressed me out for a while in hindsight I'm glad I didn't do that mhm but I want to know like cuz even he was tempted and this is is like you know Mr proad over here the anti- Ramsey but if we can somehow figure out this peace that people experience when they pay off their debt in another form other than like screaming right like the anti- scream because I think that's hard to measure if we if if I'm sure someone much smarter than me can find some equation that may convince Graham okay so in your own personal life when you paid it off well I think also like having a family and getting married and having a baby it it just changes the level of risk you know if I was a young man making what Graham makes I would probably have a similar risk tolerance but at this stage of life as I get older as I you know find what my priorities are in life and what my goals are things have just shifted like the goal post has just moved and to me less risk is going to create a more peaceful family environment like I'm not going to fight with my wife when we don't have payments you know what I mean like we just had a baby four months ago and if she wants to stay home it's not like a oh gosh we got to pay the bills and if we lose your income it's just like cool you do what you want babe like whatever your your heart leads you to do and it just changes the way you have um it changes the way you make decisions it gives you more options more margin more peace more joy and that's the whole thesis of this book is if we break free from the system we get out of debt we build wealth the right way we can have what we're really after which I think is those things it's not just more money we want what the things money can't buy which I think is the emotional piece I'm just so curious what that would be for me and the unfortunate part is it would cost a lot of money at this point with all the mortgages to pay them all off what would it take uh give me a number what to pay off the mortgages million bucks two million bucks 3.9 and that's all the mortgages in California everything it would cause you to be completely debt free have you done the math on what your new cash flow yeah it doesn't make sense because you know even if that money is in treasuries making five and a half percent to pay off five and i' like my cash flow would go down like in history that we've seen these kinds of numbers or I could lock it in I mean I could lock in for the next 30 30 years hypothetically if I wanted to and still get four something which is still higher than the mortgages so I feel like it would be a downgrade financially in terms of cash flow and then I'm paying a high cash flow to invest wouldn't you uh yes but i' would be paying higher taxes from the California portion because it would have less write off California problem I think it's time that's a certain that's a California problem it would be a lot of money to have that feeling and I'm not sure if I would feel any better because of it well I think truthfully in both of your situations the key to your success and your wealth is the income it's your savings rate it's your ability to have a giant chunk of money that you can deploy into investments in real estate and so it's not necessarily that debt was the ticket it's you guys found ways to increase your income to such a point where you can worry about like here's an example right now I could take let's just say4 million bucks I could take $4 million put it in commercial real estate here in Las Vegas and get anywhere between 7 to 8% I would be able to depreciate that property against the income and for the most part almost all of it would be tax-free so I can make eight let's let's even say conservatively six and a half percent that would be more than enough to cover all the debt servicing every year I make that I'll pay the debt two years so like from a financial standpoint I'm looking I don't see any good deals oh yeah yeah I've I've been looking I I'm in the camp that I think commercial real estate's got to take a hit and I could be totally wrong but I've noticed prices go down so far so in the last year they've gone down about 10 to 15% in Vegas and I just don't think theyit I feel like as cash buyer at this juncture though you could find some deals um everything I like has multiple offers Believe It or Not dang and they're going over asking Hot Market yeah come to Nashville I mean it's it's also very hot well the issue and I know we're getting nuanced here but a lot of buyers coming from California and they're parking their money in Vegas and anything in Vegas that they get even if it's at a 5 and a half% return a five cap they're doing it because hey it's better than having our money in California and we have to 1031 it so let's just take what we could get so anything anything that's decent California buyers or New York buyers they're just taking their money they're putting it here or move to Tennessee no state income tax solve some problems yeah but capital gains taxes there that's not going to kill you you're not selling property sell if I sell you know you never know if but you wouldn't because you have that sweet low interest loan not any yeah here but you know anything else you buy you're not going to get that not unless you pay cash boom what I find interesting is you said we acquire money to all of the things that money can't buy which I I've never heard it phrased that way and I do think that kind of makes sense when you say that your wife you know she had the kid you guys had the kid and she didn't have to go back did I did you contributed in your own way in the George way you contributed sure right so change diapers right exactly so you know she doesn't have to go back to work she's able to stay at home stay with the kid and everything because you have this like debt freak lifestyle which I've never heard it said in that way and that is a very compelling way it's like I mean what are we working so hard to get all of this money for life is short life ends you know and once you have enough granted you know whatever that enough amount is then sure maybe you can accelerate the amount of time that it takes to get to the point where you're getting the stuff money can't buy I mean yeah when you when you look at really successful wealthy people they'll tell you like time freedom is everything and now money can buy conveniences like the personal chef or the personal trainer or whatever the those things are um that allow you to have the life you want and I just I've rarely seen debt allow people to to have that life any more freely um and the people that I look up to and my mentors they have more time and money than ever and it's largely because they live a debt-free lifestyle and these aren't like billionaire business owners these are people who are from all over the country visiting us and they're saying hey I was able to cash flow all five kids college thanks to following your principles living debt free paid for house we're baby steps millionaires now and you know this was on a teacher salary that inspires me cuz it it's not about the Grant Cardone if you don't make 400 Grand you suck you know what I mean like some people just want to be teachers like we need teachers in America and they may never make six figures and I still want them to build wealth and so a part of it is just it's comforting to me that anyone can build wealth regardless of their income obviously more income helps but if you just follow these principles you will get there and you will have the things on the other side like we talked about and so that's why I talk about money so we can stop talking about money cuz too many of us are talking about it in a negative way we're stressed out what's going to happen what could be what could I have done with this money and I want people to have Joo instead of fomo the joy of missing out of saying I don't need I can just run my race take care of my family take care of my business go on the vacation I want to take and not have to worry about any of this stuff so how has paying off your debt had any other tangential benefits in your life you explained the thing about your wife being able to stay home with the kids oh yeah any other things like some sort of inner peace that didn't exist beforehand or other ways I mean it's it's hard to say because I'm not the the amount of time that I'm saving I know it sounds weird by not playing the game of the system by not worrying about the credit score and the auto loan like we just paid cash to get my wife an SUV and I didn't have to haggle over financing I just want here's the price there you go and the finance office is calling me being like I don't understand why you're paying cash you should be leasing that's what I do with all my vehicles I at least on my vehicles I'm like lady you don't understand you got the I I didn't have the emotional energy to even fight this lady in the finance office I was like lady I'm writing a check I'm going to be done with it and to me like the time saving and the mental energy and brain calories I'm not burning over playing the game of a toxic money culture is so worth it and so it just feels nice I'm never worrying about there's no bills coming to our house like the utility bills get paid and that's it what's your overhead every month utilities and insurance and property taxes I'm guessing that comes out to 1,000 bucks and then what about food Healthcare oh I guess Healthcare Ramsey would Healthcare comes out of my paycheck and now it's more thanks to a baby uh and so that's you know a few hundred bucks a month Max for a premium you know 250 bucks maybe okay um what about food food I mean we are now that we don't have any payments we do eat out more or we'll get more you know frozen meals and and less cooking at home less toiling over the rice and beans and so we have a food budget of probably on average 700 bucks 800 bucks and you know we'll go out to eat have some nice date nights and some good meals at home but we don't really like we don't have to like you know worry about grocery shopping it's like we'll get what we need and we it sounds to me with like car insurance and gas and other maintenance 3,000 maybe 3500 a month yeah our hard expenses you're looking at three three grand a month to like cover everything we need and so anything above that is money that I can invest into my girls college fund a brokerage account giving generously saving up for the vacation saving up to upgrade my car you know my my my gram you'll be so upset my Tesla window fell into my door and will not come back up there's no way that happened I rolled the window down on car it's the motor it's the motor it's like the power window regulators out yeah it's about 600 bucks now it maybe more because it's Tesla sure and they up charge but 300 the cheapest 800 the most expensive I dealt with that just real quickly explain how you got this Tesla because it's so funny what like how I just paid for it I've not heard the story Jack I'm curious didn't you buy like the most amount of mileage Tesla that oh yes so I was looking this is funny soed the we paid off the house and so I dangled the carrot of I'm not going to upgrade my 09 Honda Civic with the bumper hanging off until I pay off the house that was my goal and so we paid off the house and I went all right I'm going to going to buy a Honda my dream car was a hybrid Honda Accord my wife laughed at me but I was like I'm a man of utility that's a sweet ride you get like an EXL Primo I could not find one she was nervous cuz the ladies love that car the ladies driving yeah so I could see why she did not want you ladies love an accord so I was looking for like a 2018 this is in like 2021 I'm looking for like a 2018 Accord Hybrid under 30 grand I could not find one across the country then I stumbled upon a 2013 Model S Tesla four owners two minor accidents 165,000 mil and I was like I'm getting a Tesla and so I ended up checking it out I was the first one to you know inquire there was 25 people that were waiting you're kidding the guy was like I need to know if you're serious because this car is going to move I was like I've never even driven an electric car I don't know so I nervously took it for a test drive and he was I knew the guy so I trusted him and I was like I'll take it and that car was 239 and I took the gamble on a on a high mileage Tesla so now I'm sitting at 188,000 Miles how has it been since then it's been great it still has um I mean the door handle got stuck out I got that fixed and this window situation I upgraded the screen to the newer you know model yeah system but other than that it's been a great vehicle I mean it truly I mean this is not an ad for Tesla but I I respect the heck out of them for going half a million miles on these batteries and it's only degraded about 20% so I still get 65 miles range mine mine had no issues except right when I got it the AC broke and it was fixed under warranty within a week and at the time now this is 2019 this is your model 3 this is model 3 they gave me a p90d model X for a week as a loner car I don't know if that still exists I don't think they do that I think you don't give you the there's some privilege there they need back the day they'd give you the fancy ones yeah so maybe this is back in the day this I got in with the model 3 before they were cool yeah just as they were starting come any issues with your with yours Jack no no issues so far no the only thing is the build quality is not fantastic like obviously everyone knows this compared to like a a traditional yeah you could buy a Prius or something and it's look by the way the new Prius is oh my God I love them gorgeous love yeah they just were they're like oh you think Priuses are ugly ha then they make the 2024 Prius and it looks gorgeous I would mind getting a Prius just because of the range the one thing I don't like about the model 3 is if you're driving a long distance get the long range get that model S 400 miles yeah that's something yeah I think it's 405 miles worth it but it's expensive that's 60 Grand I could buy two Priuses for that price or you can sell S no okay get 10 PR I was so close get 10 Prius like oh that's a great idea them on turo you'll make a $4 million a year Well if I put that money down and I finance the Priuses and I get a hundred Priuses imagine that on Toro and then I could start an air we took thisam the other day and this couple they financed three cars to use on turo they're underwater on all three by 15 or 20 grand it was heartbreaking screed I mean there're they're screwed there's no way out of this you have to come up with the money for the difference um to then pay them off and they're clearly not making enough from turo to then cover this cover these payments now that they're underwater on so they only you got to just keep them and pay them off cover the difference or get a loan for the difference from a credit union which is going to be hard to do at this point point so it's real I mean there's sad situations where people think they get real star eyed and car loans I have the whole chapter on car loans in the book and how they are America's wealth killer today I truly believe that is as expensive as they are how high the interest rates are and how willing we are to just go into debt for a car the car loans are something that is largely unregulated and I did a whole Deep dive in an old video of mine about the autol loan industry and they're not regulated and it's one of the few things that like when you get a student loan there are certain bodies of the government that can reg screw people over yeah pretty much and make sure they're fair and make sure that you qualify for it like it's so stringent to get a mortgage very stringent to get student loans but car loans were exactly and leases are even worse yeah because they don't have to disclose the interest rate that's baked into your payment oh absolutely the other thing is that with auto loans I think it was something like 30% of people lie on their application but get approved anyway so they'll overstate their income or underestimate their expenses to be able to get the and the lenders purposely will Overlook it they're not going to check anything they justers they're not exactly people of Integrity but they get paid the dealership and the person originating the loan get paid as long as you make your first like two payments yeah they'll tell you like hey don't pay this off early because you'll screw me over on the bonus exactly so as long as they just make the two payments they could bundle them together sell them to Hungry Investors who want a high yield and they don't care well I I compare dealerships to uh Gus Fring and Breaking Bad Los poos Hermanos a front for his drug operation like that's what dealerships are yeah the vehicles are just the vehicle they're actually making money with lending absolutely and so it's a really wild that's why they they'll be like oh you're going to pay cash no no no no no we're going to charge you more a thousand that $1,000 incentive was only if you're financing and it's because they're making that and more auto loans I 100% agree with you so financing any sort of depreciating asset like that at the interest rates that you're getting on Carlos and they're just extending them out well and now we're seeing on the Ramsey show everyone is under water on their cars they're calling in like I'm 20 grand underwater and I'm like how did we get here they rolling over negative equity they're doing all kind of things people thought that car loans would just or people just thought the car values would keep going up they saw 2020 2021 2022 it's like oh my gosh my used car is worth $10,000 more wow I could make money on cars now and I can I'm going to buy a Chevy Vault and it's going to be worth more and they're going to buy it at the peak of the market and pay over MSRP for that just to find out wait in a second it's not reality I think same thing with watches too everyone is like oh W these all these watches certain pects APS the hype watches are down like 30% from the peak some are down 50% when did you buy the town home 2019 how much how much has that gone up in value like percentage wise oh it went up we bought it at 300 we sold at 529 three years later the GT's not gone up that much but it's up about 30% but it's up about 30% I'm glad that my personal home beat a luxury toy that you purchased that's comfor it's up 30% it's pretty good for now no I think it'll stay well once they find out it's Grahams can I say I was talking to Andre and he gave me the down low that you had a you had attempted a foot modeling career I did it didn't pan out oh people trying to buy feet picks yeah from me yeah he said no one would buy your feet picks I think you're confusing it with bath water oh I'm just I'm recanting you would sell feet picks for the right price okay first of all bath water 10,000 and you know it's the I think this is the funniest part like people sell bath water it's like a cup or a pint selling a gallon of bath water which is first of all a shipping nightmare second of all who wants like I would the thing is I think a pint of bath water is novel but then you think of who's the type of person that wants a gallon you know what I mean I don't understand who's buying bath water no one bought it no one bought no in general who's buying anyone's bath water only fans there's a lot of people in this world Lord come quickly she you're gonna love this amaranth we did a podcast with her she said she made like tens of thousands of dollars oh I remember that selling her farts just tell us what you think about this I mean I don't feel good about it I feel like it's I mean here's the thing to me that's similar to selling an nft it has as much value truthfully I think it probably has except it doesn't stink as much of an as whoever bought that like they have serious issues you think so serious mental health issues what if it's $50 though any amount of money what if it's like a couple bucks you wouldn't just if someone gag that's fine but I still think if like hey watch this but I think anyone that does they're not doing okay you know what I mean whoever is buying no I would actually completely agree with that I don't like having hard takes on the podcast but I would agree with that I think it's funny though it's yeah if you did as a I just think whoever bought that was not trying to be funny I truly think they're not okay I think it would be hilarious if you have a shelf of like you know Awards stuff like that you have just a glass jar like what's that jar that it's amar's fart how did we get here George how did we get not as a podcast as a society that's a good question I still sell the bath water by the way 10 grand one gallon bath water George you seem to be disgusted by a lot of what goes on in society today what do you think what do you think are these biggest issues I think we are too Bor I think we need real problems the fact that this is what we're all about is like we are we either have too much disposable income or not enough problems and so um I I don't think we have our priority strike I think we're all honestly we're a little bit fatalist there sort of like what is life what is meaning I think we're going to have a big sort of search for meaning as a society like another Renaissance we're too evolved as a species you think we're too soft well I think we're just we have everything we could ever want for and more and now we're reverting to like we all want to go camping to go see what it's like to not have electricity for a night you know what I mean like we are circling all the way back to caveman era because we have everything we could ever want and so I I think we we are very entitled as a culture as an American people consumerist culture and uh you know the fact that people are spending money on on farts and only fans is proof of that I do think that it is a necessity for connection of existence to face adversity in some way shape or form to have some adversity and I think that's getting getting harder and harder to come by for a lot of people so a lot of they'll tell you they have problems as they you know tweet at it from their $1,500 smartphone but are they problems are they real problems to them it is I mean everyone you know first world problem is still a problem to that person but you know people call into the show and they're living with their parents which is fine I'm not angry at that but at some point like you need to just get out and and pay some freaking bills and have some work ethic and I think we've gotten real comfortable as a so a society with all these fallbacks and we can just go into debt and live whatever life we want at no cost to us essentially but how would you solve that issue because people are not going to voluntarily make their life more challenging no but I mean um uh Michael Easter has an incredible book called The Comfort crisis that I think everyone should read where he kind of talks about this very issue and we're just we've gotten so comfortable we've all seen the movie Wall-E we're sort of stepping into that water where we're all just like glaring at screens all day walking through life we hate our jobs and we're just finding ways to spend our money so that we can feel something and to me that's that's sad that we've gotten here but it's where we are and so that's where I think the Ramsey plan sort of like kicks you into reality to like force you to have some discipline and sacrifice in your life I think is a great thing because it causes personal growth and it causes you to have control in other areas of your life like your physical health the amount of times we've seen people who get out of debt but then they their marriages get better they're physically healthier is amazing to me cuz I think transformation begets transformation but how do you get someone interested in doing that in the first place if they're already comfortable they got to want it you know like what made you start working out look better but you really had to want it yeah CU you didn't look bad to begin with but you had to get to a point where like this is a priority for me and it's a problem enough that I want to solve I'm willing to do what it takes I'm willing to go to the gym three times a week same thing applies to finances I'm willing to do that budget every single month and actually stick to the plan because I want to see the results but if you look at data most people are comfortable being being quote unquote mediocre right like not going to the gym they're comfortable with their payments cuz they can afford the payments therefore but it's been a change over time and I don't think Human Nature has changed so it must be something in the external environment that's changed correct well there's fear you know the economy and the headlines and Co definitely spooked a lot of people but again I think it has to get to this point where you're like this life ain't it I deserve better I work too hard to feel this broke that's the point you have to get to to actually start following the plan now it doesn't have to get to that point Point I've just found most people have to get to some sort of Rock Bottom like this sucks there's a better life I deserve better for myself I'm going to go after it you think it would be a detriment to the economy if everyone got out of debt if no one had debt what would happen a fun hypothetical I truly think everything would get better I know there's fear because we have a debt-based economy and some things would crash I'm totally comfortable with all of the debt companies crumbling to nothing if no one took out debt right if everyone became debt free then Capital One and American Express and Sally May they all go to crap Wells Fargo whatever all the lending arms now people will still have Banks uh but they're not going to make as much money so they'll just be less profitable they can't sponsor Taylor Swift tours anymore we'll be okay but I do think people would spend out of their values more we might spend less as a society but we'd spend on things that we actually care about and the economy would still be great we'd be supporting more local businesses we'd just be giving less money to lenders and giving it more to people that really deserve it that's my hot take I don't know if that's true I'm not an economist but that's my gut is that we'd all be happier and spending on things we really care about instead of flexing because think about it every type of debt has gone out of control because like look at tuition the colleges were like we can just raise tuition and people will just keep taking out more debt cars we can just raise the price of cars and people will take out more car loans and so this applies in every area of debt and it's part of the reason we're at record levels of every single type of debt debt in America $17 trillion in Consumer Debt alone yeah um and I think it's because we have access to it yeah my worry would be the economy would slow down to such a huge extent that asset values would have to fall stock prices would have to fall and people might have to find an alternative means of investing long term because of that but companies would still Prosper if we're spending money we're still buying we're you know I have more money now to spend on that Apple product so Apple's going to do great I'm going to spend money on this Tesla so you're still supporting the company you're cutting out the middleman of the lenders and so the companies themselves that I'm invested in most of them aren't attached to debt well I guess in a way you would have1 trillion dollar less of spending throughout our economy because that's what the credit card debt is just credit Consumer Debt a trillion dollars on top of that I don't know how many trillions for Mortgage Debt how how much money we're I talk about I think we're at 12 M trillion in mortgages alone and then auto loan debt so think 1.5 seven or eight trillion across the board without debt I think everything would fall because how many people would be able to buy a house outright there would have to be payment plans in place sure mortgages are the one you know we don't yell at people are having a mortgage but I think Consumer Debt is what's killing us I don't think the everyday person is dying because of the mortgage it's I have all this debt plus this mortgage that I really couldn't afford but I felt like I had to get in the housing market earlier rather than later because of pressures or whatever and so I think it's just compounding the problem but um you know owning a house is a great to wealth um I just think if you do it right it'll be more of a blessing than a burden do you think that now is a good time to buy a house yes if you're financially ready now you know I still think I believe in the economy and the US housing market will continue to go up over time I don't think houses are going to be significantly cheaper in any point in the future and history has proven that I don't think there's going to be another 2008 fingers crossed because we've solved a lot of the problems that caused that um but I think when you have a you have no debt a fully funded emergency fund and a down payment you are financially ready to buy a house so I wouldn't try to time the market and wait for the interest rates to move a certain way I would go ahead and do that we say you know date the rate marry the house yeah you know what's interesting 84% of people say that now is a bad time to buy a house 84% is that because of prices and interest rates yes okay interest rates were the number one reason that overtook home prices so it's because of interest rates that that number is so high you know the last time it was also similarly High when's that 2010 wow isn't that interesting interesting so after the housing crisis a lot of people also felt now is a bad time to buy so it's very interesting because I was having a discussion with somebody best times to buy looking back ex so I was having a discussion with somebody the other day and we're talking about how so many people say now is a bad time to buy but if you typically do the opposite of what the mass seems to think is the better option usually that is kind of works like to me it's hard to wrap my mind around it when I see home price is so high mortgage is so high the cost of renting so cheap relative to that but you know when you look at what most people are doing if you just do the opposite in most cases you're better off that's fascinating so it'll be very interesting to see what happens over these next 10 years if interest rates come down I guess there's a chance yeah everyone rushes into theet and you can tell me this if interest rates go down we're probably going to see a spike in home prices yes and no the variable to that is how many sellers sell so right now we're seeing high home prices because there's not a lot of inventory because rates but if interest rates go down to about 5% they're saying that's the magic number where all of a sudden if I have a three and a half% mortgage I it doesn't hurt as much to give that up for 5% but it does to 6% and so they're saying 5% is the magic number that would prompt more sellers to sell who were thinking about selling who had those handcuffs so there's a chance interest rates come down buyers come in the market but there's a lot of sell sellers who say finally I could you know afford to buy something else and not have to worry about it I don't care about getting giving up my 4% mortgage for 5% it's not that big of a deal so maybe the market gets flooded with inventory there's also the theory that as that flood comes in more sellers will say the Market's going down I'm thinking about selling in five years but let me sell it now really quick before values go down even further and my neighbors are selling and let me be let yeah let me beat him to it and I'll I'll price myself a little lower than they are there's a chance there's also a chance people say I'm going to hold on to my house and you know buyers have more purchasing power and values go up it's it's a total coin TOS I wish like there there should be a way to to figure out what's going to happen in this and like run the numbers but I think the key is like we're not going to see a crash regardless of what your thumbnail said but I know what you say in the video it's not going to happen like the crash is happening I'm like no it's not don't lie to me so the shocking thing is that like payments monthly payments are up like 70% since 2020 now that is low in terms of monthly payments but like when you think 70% more those interest rates I it definitely compounds that payment and it hurts people and it makes it less affordable but at what price at what point does that impact prices I mean 70% increase in monthly payments from those who bought three years ago to today yeah how much could do home prices have to come down to balance things out if at all only time will tell but I do feel for people who want to be homeowners and it's just feeling like more and more you know just they're just so sad and hopeless at this point because they need a huge down payment and they're still straddled with debt and so the only thing you can do is try to get out of debt get the emergency fund and build that down payment as high as you can get it to where you can then afford the payment and what would you say to someone who says I just want to rent I have no problem with renting I think renting is very wise which is another hot take I know some people agree and you'd probably be with me on this one but renting is buying yourself patience and I've seen people who did it the other way they said well I told renting is a waste of money I'm going to go buy a house then they call the ramsy show and they're like hey we're screwed this mortgage payment is 65% of our take-home pay and life happened and we don't know what to do and now we're we're looking to sell because we're in this bind and so I'd rather you do it with patience and buy it when you're ready even if the price is higher the interest rates whatever because when you do when you do it and the mortgage payment is that much your take-home pay you can't live the rest of your life and so you have no peace even though you're a homeowner it's the American dream your life sucks and so that's I we've just see too much of the other side if when things don't work out perfectly what are the most disturbing calls you get on the ramsy show oh my gosh I mean obviously there's like the really sad ones um you know addiction problems uh loved one passing way too soon people co-signing and getting into really murky situations especially when it comes to like Parent Plus Loans are real problem where parents are now like hey my kids stopped paying and now the loans on me I'm trying to retire and I don't have the money to pay this thing uh we're seeing so many people underwater on car loans it's almost every single call we ask them and they're underwater on the car loan by not by like a thousand but by 10,000 so those are really sad as well um and there's also the people who have like lower incomes and we're telling them hey like you're making $16 an hour like that's not going to cut it you need to be go making 20 25 get some education do whatever you have to do um because they bar can pay the bills so there's a lot of people hurting out there and obviously we Ramsay show is largely people with money problems you know we get a few that are doing really well they're like I have $3 million what do I do with it and we're all like oh boohoo you know send me a venmo but the majority of people like life has happened and they're in a predicament they haven't prepared financially for it and we're just trying to help them take the right Next Step yeah and it's a difficult thing to do in you know six minutes of a of a call but our goal is to give them a little bit of hope that's all you can really do in six minutes is give them hope and just a next step and a partial plan and maybe we give them a you know a product tool to help them along is there anything that doesn't get aired um in recent memory I don't think we've ever like had to cut a call sometimes if someone cusses we'll have to hit the dump button is what it's called where they cut the last 10 seconds so that's happened on occasion but as far as something getting cut completely I don't think that's happened in a few years usually whatever is screened and makes it to air it's then live on radio it's live on you know it goes to podcast pretty soon it's on YouTube an hour later so everything's pretty much out there do people ever fake the calls like are there situations like oh this this is not real there's ones where people think we either like planned a fake call which we never do like sometimes we'll schedule a call if someone emails us and we have it's a great call we'll go and schedule it with them but we don't like plan fake situations for people to call in to create great content but do they sneak through occasionally we'll get the troll here and there and uh the phone screeners are amazing at sniffing that out so to them for doing that but sometimes they'll make it to air and Dave's like that was a troll you know so we've seen that a few times some of them aren't as malicious as others some of them are malicious where they're trying to rile up Dave or whatever um what do they say are they just like I'm trying to think of some all this debt and I just should I buy the Ferrari and yeah some of them are just they want to they want to argue with Dave about you know one of his principles that's usually what it is it's usually wanted to argue with Dave and like it's some 18-year-old that thinks he knows better than Dave and he's like well Dave I don't understand why wouldn't I take this spread on the interest rate you know those kinds of things we had a clip we had a clip that went Mega viral you may as well ask it now okay all right if you could borrow a billion dollars at 0% interest for 10 years would you do it billion dollars 0% interest for 10 years would I do it no why I would be crushed under the weight of trying to manage that well and not lose it all it would be it would be frightening and I know you're thinking well just put it in a you know high yield savings account and t- bills and you'll make your money back so no and this wild hypothetical scenario where I could borrow a billion dollars at 0% I just I wouldn't do it and that's part of it is my values of like I just don't borrow money and it's a principle that like I live by so it it would go against my own moral compass like I I wouldn't be able to sleep at night and to me that's not worth the spread I could make now what if it's something smaller more manageable 0 million interest free 10 years I me what's those 10,000 that wouldn't interest me I don't think any amount I don't think it's an amount to me I think I truly have such a and it's not a uh it's not like well you're you work for Dave Ramsey so of course you're going to say that it truly I've no it does it's not attractive to me at all to take on any amount of debt what if you could borrow a billion dollars at negative 1% interest for 10 years that hurts my brain so you're saying they're paying me how it goes I think in like Venezuela or something they have like is it Venezuela there's a few countries with negative interest rates I don't think Venezuela is not one of them because um their inflation is so high are they paying you to take on you pay back less than you borrow so let's just say you borrowed a million doar you would pay back9 990,000 at the end of the term so would you borrow a billion dollars attive 1% I don't think a discounted loan is of any interest to me no a billion dollar at 1% I I think what what it is is it just you have abundance already so would saying they'll give you 10 I can understand the take of like you have abundance and acquiring more money just for the sake of money is of no interest to you I understand that and I think that's the only argument that I could TR don't know like what more money would do for me cuz I don't have I mean you guys are are doing very up your car there's an just upgraded my wife's car and it's the nicest car I've ever I've like holy crap and I still am like okay like what now you know what I mean like we can upgrade an house and that's a dream of ours to upgrade and pay cash for our next house and have a bigger house for fun but truly I'm like I don't know what I would buy what experience I would take that would add that much value to my life like what item what experience I don't I'm not going to retire what am I going to you know not going to sit and watch Netflix for the next 30 Years there's no businesses I want to start I like what I do I like the team I do that with I'm paid very well for it so I'm like I don't know charties you could give that's true so if I could borrow a billion at 0% invest that money give all of the proceeds to charity I would become a wonderful philanthropist let's have that record would you do it negative 1% interest and you donate it all to charity do we get have to really think through that I would let someone else do it and I'd be happy for them because there still is like I said still is weight it still is something and you that I ow at the end of the day regardless of what's happening with that billion I owe someone a billion dollars like that is such an unfathomable you owe someone 900 and something million right now I have it but if I invested let's say I don't know I know T bills are probably the safest bet right now or a high yield savings account at 5% it still would wait like I would be thinking about that billion dollar every day you know what I mean like there's not a day that goes by that you're still not thinking holy crap a billion dollars is sitting out there you know what I mean that's too much weight for me I truly could not handle it I'll let someone else you could pay it off early I'd pay it off instantly and point is I don't think he's going to do it what I appreciate about I don't know I truly now it's so hypothetical that it's hilarious so it's like it's it's not it's not meant to be a trap like I'm worried a lot of people thought that when I was asking Dave this question that it was like supposed to be a trap I just wanted to ask him because I thought it would be imagine he said yes like I do it absolutely you stupid I would love to get another Ferrari yeah and I'm not Dave like I never went bankrupt and because I was overleveraged and the bank called the notes like I never you know my story is much more of the average person going a little bit into Consumer Debt 40 Grand paying it off and living a better life on the other side what I want to understand is Graham still and we talked to Dr John delone about this has this scarcity mentality when it comes to a lot of different areas of his life specifically financially and you have this abundance mentality in the exact same way that gr has a scarcity mentality it bleeds into every other part of your life and what I find really interesting and I don't mean this in any sort of like nag or dig or anything Graham has a lot more money a whole lot yet he still feels this scarcity and I really respect and I just want to like decode how you have this level of peace and abundance in your life with such less money got paid off mortgage it's the paid off mortgage but it can't just be that it has to be something else cuz what what is it that led you to paying off that mortgage I well I think if you really look at the emotional underpinning of it it just comes down to contentment like I know it's it's it's that simple and it's that hard right to be like I'm just content like I'm a very anxious person naturally and so to remove any level of you know pieces of anxiety out of my life one of those being debt has been really helpful to give me a little bit of just peace and so I think at the end of the day I'm content with where I'm at and yes I have still have goals and there's things that I'd love to do but I don't have an there's no end game there's nothing like well once I get 5 million I'm retiring and that's it now I hope to have 5 million one day in a retirement account and we're able to retire and still have a great income and go on Amazing trips and all that but I have no endgame what I've been trying to do as I get older is just live in the present instead of always going like well what's the next thing because for too long I for the last 10 years I've been doing that with my career with my financial goals with whatever it is and so I'm truly and it's something I'm still working on this is not like I've not mastered it I'm not like some kind of Zen Yoda character I just truly suck at living in the present I'm always thinking about what's happening tomorrow what's on the schedule what are we going to do what about that thing instead of just now that I have a baby I think it changed the way I view my time the way I view money and like you stare into this baby's eyes and like time just like disappears like it doesn't matter anymore when you're staring into that baby's eyes so I think having a family changes the mentality around that I'm curious as you progress and you know you have a family or you have kids or whatever I wonder if that's going to change that for you and if you have a different set of goals and a different lens I find it interesting but it feels like it's exhausting because I'm like there's no end like I don't know if I could go start a business and make $100 million how would my life change would it make it worse maybe and I think that's something a lot of people don't think about cuz with more money and more responsibility you know it changes things if you got everything you wanted would you be happier say that's the question at the end of the day and what do we want I don't think we really know as humans and I I do think we've talked about this before my faith is a big underpinning of this that I think I'd be remiss to not mention because I think it changes your long-term view of Life of like what's happening ahead when I die what has this all been about you start thinking about those big questions um what I want what do I want people to say about me in my funeral are they going to be like man his YouTube videos were hilarious I doubt it I think they're going to say he was a great friend he was an amazing husband he was a loving father that's what they say and we joked about this on your gravestone your Network's not going to be like written on there and Graham's like mine will I was like that's actually a pretty baller move and I respect the hustle there but it's like what what is this all for like let's say you go in the dirt what happens then who' you leave your money to what impact did you have did it make any did it make any impact at all and so to me now I'm like what is the ripple effect I want to have well number one I want generational wealth for my family I want my daughter to inherit whatever Legacy we've built up and nest egg and for her to manage that wisely and for her to live a life we can't imagine uh because of the work that we did and the sacrifice we made I want to be able to give to Charities and pay for an adoption and buy single parents cars and just do things that like make my like we just gave 10 grand to Waffle House employees in 3 hours and to me that was the most fun I've had with money in a long time way more than buying my wife a new car way more than paying off the house to see someone's life change instantly because of something I was able to do that was in my control I'm like that's amazing to me and so like the stuff Mr Beast is doing of course like that's the stuff we're going to be talking about generations to come versus look at the Networth that he amassed you know what I mean I like that I like giving to people that are working at at Waffle House and and I know that sounds silly but I'm a big proponent of like like I like to tip big that's kind of my way of giving back I generally tip higher percentages a lot higher than the average person and I that's kind of like I take a lot of Pride I think in that and I love that because you have margin yeah like if you were broke and you had payments up to your eyeballs living a lifestyle that you were trying to maintain you wouldn't be able to give in that way and so that's one of the reasons that I want people to live debt-free cuz you can't help but have more margin to do those things when you don't have payments to make what I find interesting is you said that your anxiety comes from you don't know what's going to happen in the future and that's the same thing Dr John deloney said and that's the same thing I see in Graham whenever he's explaining his financial anxiety is like you don't know what could happen to the market it could half and then once it halfs you don't know what could happen from there and you don't know what could happen from there it's never like like stuff that is apocalyptic scenario do you ever have a real fear that like the world could end cuz at that point what are you going to do no I don't I have a fear that our gr stock market goes to zero no no let's just say the worst case 1929 happen something crazy like that let's just say it's 50% well then you take 50% off everything let's just say then how could I live off that 50% okay I'll find a way to live off the 50% now that's if you're like at retirement age because if you just hang on I also assume that my income goes to zero I just like I'm somewhat like incapacitated YouTube is shut down or that I just choose voluntar where I don't want to be forced to do something so I take it in half how could I live off the half I live off the half and then I kind of think well I want a bit of a buffer on top of that uh just to give myself some flexibility in case things get even worse so that's how I kind of think of things I want to keep the lifestyle without um having to worry about if things drop by what lifestyle because you're a pretty Frugal guy if things like really got tight you would be fine I'd find a way but I don't want to downgrade it because it's like every year I've increased My Lifestyle a little bit like let's just say it's 5% a year okay um but I do that purposely so that I can sustain that sustain why can't I say it's a hard one I want to be able to challenging sustain that sort of Lifestyle creep but I think purply do it a little bit every year people making a tenth of what you make spend more than you do in a month yeah but just because I want to be able to sustain that like you know lifestyle creep and never have to worry about it so yeah you could spend way more you spend 100% but you also you know how to make money like that's I think a skill that will carry you through any you know thick or thin I like um not being forced yeah to do that like anytime I feel forced to do something I just don't like doing it for whatever reason yeah I like doing things that if I was like gram you have to make these videos every week you like screw you AB just having the freedom to say you know if if I want to stop at any point I can and that makes me very happy yeah and again that kind of freedom I think you have more options when you have no I could it I not I just feel like at the end of the day I'm going to have L stress about if things go downhill having no debt yeah like a while ago I got an offer to buy a part of my main Channel and it was very enticing cuz cuz the the valuation they were giving me on the main channel was insane this is like Shark Tank yeah it was uh 2021 though and I knew that like this is the cheapest money is ever going to be it was a startup company that had a ton of venture capital they were valuing it way higher than ever thought it was but they said that I'd have to create three videos a week for the next 5 years oh and that for me was killed it this reminds me of like gen in Aladdin you know where he's like he's forced he's got the handcuffs when he's working for jaar yeah it was just it was a minority stake so it wouldn't change anything but it was just like the output had to stay the same yeah I know I just don't want to be locked in and making three videos a week for five years it's bad it's I don't we all want options and freedom and so we have different paths to get there um but I just think mine has proven over time to be a path anyone can take and I think people can be I mean you guys are successful you've done it your way and I think a lot of your you know your tribe and audience they'll do it your way and they'll be okay like the fact they're even watching this channel tells me they're going to be okay um but we just we talk to very different people like the people we're talking to they're going through things you know they're not watching YouTube videos for fun they're watching them because they need help and so it's a very different mindset and so I try to entertain and be informative but at the end of the day like there's people who need help and therefore like I can argue about credit card interest all day but there's a single mom who's about to call in and be like I just lost my husband I got three kids do I do daycare what do I do and so I'm like holy crap like there's real problems in the world and this is a luxury and privilege that we get to even have these kinds of conversations that's very true I think in my role it just you have a very different perspective seeing what people are really going through and it it makes me more reverse to risk and to debt cuz I've seen what it does to people you know like Andre like he's he's like I've seen my family struggle with gambling addiction I'll never gamble he's just it's not interesting to him and the same uh happens with debt to me I'm like I've seen too many people hurt by debt why would I want to play this game only to get bit by a snake later on yeah what's the most surprising thing that you've learned from Dave Ramsey I think his his tenacity and grit and perseverance is a inspiring like the fact that this guy is still at it 30 years later with more energy and um more passion than ever before I'm like I want to be that invested in whatever I'm doing and so he keeps us on our toes but what I've learned from him there is that work is about more than work like it's not a j o it's not something where I'm just like I'm doing it for the paycheck and one day you know I'll call it quits like this dude is going to keep going until he can't keep going and he'll probably outlive me just out of sure spite sheer spite um but his passion around it has just really inspired me to go like obviously that thing for me is personal finance and I didn't realize that until later on in my life um but also the way he's leaving a legacy like the way he's thinking so future I mean he's been thinking about personalities for a long time you guys talked about this his succession plan you joked about Dave Dave Ramsey's retirement plan everyone's like no Dave don't go I'm like he's not going anywhere but it was a good title I'll give you that uh so it's just made me think more big picture more long term and less about like what am I doing what's my thing and more what's everyone around me how are they being affected by my life and so that's a really interesting way to to frame things up what's something you think you can improve about your personal finances oh man um I think my investing my investing game now that you know I'm at the place we're at like getting into brokerage accounts and like Mega back door and all of that stuff is interesting to me and I'm not I'm not I haven't dipped my toes in that water yet um but but now that I'm there I think investing is one area and I think spending like we're doing fine but I think there's still ways that we've gotten lazy a little bit in kind of how we've been spending and getting that budget just tightened back up uh now that we have a baby girl it's just like there's new expenses in our world and so we we need to readjust for some of that and also like being more open I think my generosity muscle needs some flexing because we were so like we have these goals we got to pay off this house we're going to get upgrade the car and now that have more freedom it's like what are the Strategic ways we're going to give and spontaneously planned um all kinds of ways and so that's something I need to get better at and seeing Dave and the way they've done that with the family Foundation uh is really cool have you ever given and been unimpressed by somebody's reaction oh man you know that's it's such a hard thing when you give because you're hoping like selfishly you're like I hope this is a moment and sometimes it's not um we we paid off uh $10 million of debt so Dave bought the book of debt from this company for out 250 Grand and it was 10 million worth oh so we got to make a debt collection and so uh he bought $10 million worth of debt for 250 Grand and then we got to make the calls all the Ramsey team members made calls to let the people know hey your debt has been paid off and I remember we called I called this guy and I was like hey uh this is George from Ramsey Solutions just want to let you know that car that you had in collections this you know Nissan Mac has been paid off completely and he said I didn't ask you to do that I was like oh my gosh this backfired this backfired what do I say he was upset why it's in collection I don't know well the truth is these people haven't paid on this debt in a long time they don't maybe don't care about it anymore they've moved on but I was just so taken aback like if that was me I'd be like are you serious yeah oh my gosh like thank you so much and so that was just like you don't know what you're going to get on the other side of generosity so that was a a little lesson I learned there of like you know set your expectations it could go south what I've been doing is getting people's dinners so sometimes we'll go out I'll just see like a couple or you know you got my dinner I won't get Jack's dinner Jack do but right I'll see random people or there's there's one this guy kind of sat alone an older guy and I was like you know I'm just getting his dinner but I'll just tell the people secretly I'll pay for it he doesn't know it's me no one knows it's me uh he just knows someone has paid for your someone's paid for your bill usually after we've left uh and their bill is paid for but I remember one time we went to a restaurant and we're sitting down and we saw this lady come in and she had a young child with her and it was maybe like 9900 p.m. and I'm thinking is she waiting for something is it pick up and then I realized she's doing the delivery service and I thought like it's got to be maybe like a single mom because obviously if like someone's at home the kid wouldn't be out with her and the kid looks like young like a young kid like four or 5 years old is kind of sitting and like the mom's obviously doing this and and so I give her $100 and I say hey I just want to give you this and I don't want to say I was unimpressed by your reaction was like oh thanks but that you were hoping for a little bit more I was hoping for a little more but anyway you know you got to do it because you like doing it but uh the reaction would would have been nice yeah now that that's a tough part I mean you always hoping and we got some of that when I gave uh the 10 grand at Waffle House at three different locations uh we paid for everyone's tab the shocking part is you could go into any Waffle House in America and cover the tab of the entire a restaurant for $100 like that that was mindboggling you know made 150 bucks for a packed restaurant like that is such a cool thing to do just walk in and be like hey everyone here 200 bucks whatever anyone's tab is I'm covering it and here's a $50 tip to the waitress that's just a cool fun thing to do and it's not a waffle I mean you can go to any place but for some reason you know talking to the people at Waffle House like this lady had been shot in the chest by her kid's dad who's clearly not in their life anymore single mom of three kids she'll be working on Christmas Day and so when I gave her 500 bucks I mean she was already in tears and then I said hey you know what what are you getting the kids for Christmas she's like I don't know I'm working on Christmas Day and I was like I want these kids to have an amazing Christmas here's an extra $2,000 wow and the floodgates open the co-workers are all hugging her and it wasn't like a flex on my part it wasn't even my money you know it was it was Ramsay's money and we just wanted to find a fun way to be generous and I thought let's go to Waffle House but like that to me that changed that affected me more than her potentially you know what I mean like I'll never forget that of just the power of you know 2,000 bucks that's still a lot of money um but it changes her world you know what I mean and so whatever we think is a lot of money to someone else or we don't think is a lot of money to someone else is life changing whether it's in another country or whatever I like that over Charities because you get to see the impact firsthand and I feel like sometimes you you give to a charity and it's more just like you know you get these things in the mail every now thanks for your you get to see yeah you get to I like to see the impact it makes on people firstand also you do not know how efficient Charities are what they're spending oh I don't know how efficent they are that they spend a lot of money on Market you know's really cool and one other thing I gave to a few different charities earlier this year and ever since then for the past like six months oh you getting bombarded every single time I open the the mailbox they text me my emails it's like y I gave you a good chunk of change it's like every single are the animal ones oh they that is never ending and they send you photos thank you for your puppy in the mail what are you trying to do to me you know whatever whatever it is I did that at Petco and I signed up for one of those things and have you guys heard of Charity water mm uh it's run by a guy named Scott Harrison and he has revolutionized charity because here's what he did he said hey I'm going to change the game 100% of your donation goes to fund water projects in Africa and so you're wondering well how does they cover overhead and bills and all that they cover that with private donors so a group of private donors comes together to cover salary overhead all of that and 100% of donations wow go straight to the project and they even have found a way to track your donation to the exact water project and they will follow up awesome that's fantastic you can go in online and see the exact location of your water project the status of it and the people affected by it sharing their stories and to me that is like what every charity in America needs to get to so I love that model of private donors cover salary and overhead and consumer donations Go 100% yeah because that's the kind of transparency that will cause more people to give cuz there's there's a clear distrust and there's like sites like charity navigator that help with this which is cool but I think that's a really cool model I have a question now don't feel like you need to answer this question I don't know if it like will cause any tension or anything I just won't answer if I don't want to Yeah by all means we can cut it out um but Dave is not my dad dang it man everyone everyone wanted Wonder no Dave was Under Fire recently for 8% withdrawal rate what do you think about that do you think 8% withdrawal rate is fine you think that that could be a good Benchmark for people when they're trying to retire um I think there's certain situations where that would be totally fine if you follow the Ramsey plan and you have a giant nest egg and that's your plan um then that's sustainable if you look at real numbers hypothetically like this is all it's like your billion dollar question would you would you get a billion dollars and do this the realistic numbers are if you had $2 million in retirement and you withdrawing 8% um you would be okay with a paid for house money in the bank you know and you would adjust and Dave said on the show with Rachel Rachel was like well hey what if the return that year was 10% instead of 12 he go well you could take it down take it down to 6% but the key here is being flexible with your spending in retirement so in retirement if you're going I need 12 Grand to to sustain this or else it's all going to fall apart you've already failed you need to have a lot of margin for error in retirement um and that's why we tell people like invest 15% as soon as you're out of debt once you have the house paid off invest way more max out retirement accounts so the amount of people who are actually having to live this out is probably slim to none the argument of 4% or 6% or 8% um and there's there's a lot of studies that show because all of this is based on uh the Monte Carlos simulation the Trinity study Trinity study Monte Carlos situ sitation and so a lot of them showed you could have negative money in retirement you could have way more than you ever imagined in retir it's the failure rate of Dave Ramsey's % over 48% or 60% failure rate it was yeah it was it a point yeah it was over a 30-year time frame but there was a high failure rate and it's like do you want to give that to a 50/50 coin flip of failing that assuming you keep your expenses at 8% adjusted for inflation every year beginning the first year the other thing is that if you have a few bad years initially it's almost 100% SE of risk return is what you're talking yeah sure and I I think realistically people adjust lifestyle depending on market conditions and so that's why I think what Dave was saying was there's a lot of Hope Stealers out there who are like if you don't have $2 million you're screwed because you have to do 4% if you don't do that you're screwed what Dave's saying is you're going to be okay if you have no debt and a million2 million $3 million in retirement you're going to have a fine life and you can withdraw more than 4% did did Dave talk to you at all about this after the call because it seemed like he said if George said something like that we're going to take the video down oh yeah well the producer talked to him he was like Hey the caller took that out of context maliciously here's what George actually said and they was like oh okay cool and moved on with this day but no there was no we didn't it crazy on Twitter because we know this the financial Community blew up over this the day before posting our Dave Ramsey video this blew up on Twitter and I was I was texting Jack I'm like dude you see this stuff going down on on Twitter million tens of millions of views everyone was posting memes of like Dave Ramsey with like Lambos and this luxury lifestyle like withdrawing 8% that's hilar hilarious well the financial Community for a long time has loved to use Dave as a punching bag for clicks and views we all we all know that um and at the same at the in in the same clip Dave has helped millions of people and these people are in their mom's basement with their you know they just became financial advisers and they have an opinion and they've helped almost nobody and so I get why they're railing against it and their job is to you know be financial advisers and do whatever the financial Community does but um I I think it's such a funny hypothetical situation or argument and so nerdy that I'm like I again it's a wonderful argument to have the fact is people aren't saving for retirement so whether we're going to argue about four or six or 8% is a silly thing when I'm like people aren't even investing is there anything you disagree with Dave about I'm trying to think like obviously we agree on on our anti- debt stance we agree on the investing stance and he's he's cool in index funds as well he invests in index funds in a brokerage account when he gets like a bonus check U but we have the same investing strategy philosophy we're probably invested in the same funds in 401K I'm probably more like on the millennial side I'm probably just into things that he may not be into um one being Teslas he's a he's a Tesla hater unfortunately but that's not really a financial he still would probably say it was a bad financial decision that Rachel and I drive Teslas um but as far as spending goes I don't think he would we have much to disagree on I mean and it's not even like I'm towing the company line of like I have to agree with daveon everything I fully agree with the baby steps um and we talk we've you know went back and forth about baby step one a, emergency fund and dead Avalanche vers snowball and what is in a a full emergency fund and what's the best way to invest but truly like I've lived out his principles and they worked and so like I only have good things to say um not only because of my experience but millions of others that have come before me and after me do you have any advice for Dave Ramsey uh don't let the trolls get to you Dave do they well I think uh like he he'll get riled up you know on air and I have more patience with the like 20-year-old who wants to argue about the nerdy stuff and I think at this point he's just like I got people to help man why are you clogging up my phone lines wanting to argue about this thing you know what I mean I don't think Dave needs any of my advice I think he's doing great he's he's living his values out beautifully he just went to Egypt for like two weeks with his wife an amazing trip he spent that 8% he he spent he spent a good healthy chunk of money so that's the cool thing about Dave is he's so balanced when it comes to spending saving and giving like he we would call that a flat tire he's great at spending money he's great at resting like when he's not at work the dude is at The Lakehouse he's enjoying himself in Cabo he's living a great life he's saving plenty of money he's investing wisely for the future and he's also giving outrageously I mean to in ways that Boggle my mind and so I don't have any advice for Dave other than um maybe I'm trying to think like on the millennial side of things I'd be like come on Dave like loosen up on this thing I'm trying to think generationally CU you know we get a bad rap Millennials gen Z but even Dave is quick to say like there's people there's gen zers that suck there's gen zers that are awesome and we see a lot of both um but I think he can give them the redddit community a bad rap for one you know Twitter commun cuz he only gets the trolls and so in his mind only Trolls Exist on those platforms but sometimes um you know I appreciate the honesty of the people on there you know saying their truth but he's uh he's quick to block them as well if you could draw a pie of your net worth and where your money is allocated what would it look like okay I'm going to be really boring and you're not you're going to disagree with it but this is my true life um because of the housing market and our paid for house and how how we over indexed on that that's probably that's 3/4 of of our net worth is our paid for house the other mostly that quarter is going to be our 401 case our Roth we both have Roth 401ks um I probably have double what my wife does because of I've worked longer at ramsy I've made more money and so because of that the allocation of my 15% was just higher so that's pretty much it other than that we have our our cars are very small piece of our net worth our savings account and checking account are a very small part of our net worth majority probably 90 5% is house in 401ks and I have a small Ira with about six grand from a rollover from when I worked at Apple that's it it's that Bor I have no crypto no single stocks no real estate property other than my primary home I want to onew answer to this okay okay do you think Graham and Macy should have joint accounts gosh does it just have to be a yes or no one word answer yes Graham one word answer they're now this is caveat once they're married okay once they're married not a second sooner right and not a second later I mean they can go on the honeymoon on the alar but as soon as they're back from the honeymoon let's combine the I think we have a joint two separates the his and hers his and hers with one joint why what is the benefit to Macy and what's the benefit to you I think mostly the benefits to me I mean when you look at it objectively but honestly but I think it is I think it's perfectly fair but a lot of it but a lot of it is in like you know certain accounts and and investment brokerages that it just makes sense it shouldn't necessarily be a joint account it's not be the harm in saying here's our joint checking this is where we spend all of our money and you have a line item of hey Macy you can spend 500 bucks on whatever you want graham gets 500 bucks because she's able to do that anyway in her personal account so what's the difference if it's all joint well that's the the joint account shared expenses go from that so we still have a joint account so she can still do that from the joint account but she has her money that she could spend however she wants I will never question that but it's not our money the the joint account is let's say you guys have a kid she decides to stay home what happens well I already pay all the expenses so it's you know everything for her she could spend it if she wants to everything yeah she could spend 10 grand a month how yeah she if she if she makes her money she decides she wants to if she makes her money I said if she stayed home with a kid she has no traditional income now mhm and what's your take on this Jack do you think they should do what do I think they realistically like I think you want you go first no I'm just I've only seen it where separate accounts has caused more marital Strife than it caused any blessing I've rarely seen it and when it does cause any blessing it's because they brushed under the rug and they're like well we just don't talk about it it's he does his thing I do my thing we have the shared account and I'm like you're living like roommates like you're like if you're venmoing if you're if you're married and you're sending each other venos you're doing it wrong that's not a marriage like marriage is we are becoming one in every way shape and form we're sharing a bed we're sharing DNA we're making babies but we can't share a bank account that's insane so two things um if I were in Graham's position this is if a big if I'd probably want separate accounts that's just me saying what but but I think that this is a really tough line to kind of tow um but I also think that like if it's me actually me I also at the same time I I understand like having joint because if you just split it 50/50 with Graham's amount of money I'd still be fine you know what I mean I ne I know I'll never need the amount of money I don't even think I like would necessarily love to have one I don't think it would improve my life to have the amount of money that Graham currently has let alone half you know don't ever give him a raise he said he's fine and you know I tried to neate with Jack and he just he wants more D aain he says one thing but he does other want to make less have to I don't have half of the amount of money you have sure right so I think that there is a difference there but that's besides the point um I think i' would be okay splitting it because I know I'd be fine with hat but it would be extremely hard to part with that money that's obviously worst case scenario I don't even think that should be in question uh relative to the sadness of splitting with a partner that you're going supposed to spend the rest of your life with but um I don't know I think like for me and my State I'd probably be fine joint but then again like I'm not Graham I don't have the amount of money Graham has so I think it's also it's different you know what I mean that's fair and also like the money isn't necessarily something that you're like like you're putting a value on the relationship it's just like hey I worked extremely hard for this and this is something that I just prefer to keep to myself like there are secrets sure that people will go into marriage with it's inevitable you can say oh you should talk about everything you don't right there are certain things that you'll just hold to yourself till the day you die and um that's totally fun and people are different and if someone has different value and if it works for a certain couple and it works you could look you could look at statistics and all available data and say oh it generally doesn't work but I think that there are also going to be exceptions to the statistics oh sure yeah it's not saying that Graham and Macy won't have a long healthy happy marriage I just think there's there's less of a chance less risk of you know Financial infidelity as we call it where there's a lack of transparency and I didn't know and there's resentment building up um because again if she stays home or has a much lower income and it's now unfair because Graham makes this that it just causes more awkwardness in the relationship I understand I think that's where the transparency comes in and I think that's like the key to it all is being completely honest with each other so in my current life I probably would have joint accounts but I actually this is one of the few things where I understand the way that Graham's brain works that's fair very few things I'm like why do you think the way that you do and this when you guys were on my YouTube Channel people love the relationship talk and uh they also thought Jack was a very eligible bachelor YouTube comment find someone from having day seriously that was a good good ha you know what I did a blow dryer you did a blow dryer I did he use my strategy do a blow dryer you didn't I told you the blow I used it that day I used it that day and I think it's time I told you I was going to I was going to give you a little qua to see what it looks like up there no unwilling I'm unwilling and you know what's hilarious I used a blow dryer on the podcast we did with Dr John deloney worst hair I've ever had you got to learn how to use something yeah something Str you know we're going to get this thing dialed in where every day it's super consistent yeah I would buy a course if you could maybe craft that's my new course it's not going to be about money it's about how to care for your hair right how much would you pay for your course yeah more than you'd pay for a gallon of Grahams bath water hopefully do you accept credit because then I'd probably pay a little bit more crypto take crypto if you donated crypto for the course I would take it 20 bucks that way I I never bought crypto I was donated crypto from Jack there we go I like that a hairstyle you had that was similar to mine remember that you got a haircut that was like very s he just wants me slowly over time to change into to morph into Grand he wants me to actually changeed my name to Graham step well between your hair and then Graham's workout routine where he just exploded I was like I don't know what's going on with you guys like did you work with I've regressed a little bit unfortunately oh no food poisoning I just not been to the gym as much wow yeah it's been like a week are you doing okay now yeah I'm fine now you're just shriveling away before our eyes I've done five pounds Believe It or Not dang yeah but yeah yeah so the the downside of those 5 lbs uh half of that is muscle yeah yeah that's so I've lost 2 and half PBS of muscle two and A2 pounds of f not working out I stay the same consistently got eat more 10 years in yeah what can I say all right cool I think that's good is there any other we should discuss anything we're Miss I mean I don't know if we have any other arguments I mean there's a lot more to unpack from this but that's for another time another day but if uh if people do want to check it out they can do that at ramsy solutions.com store check out Breaking Free from broke wherever Brook are sold I'm really proud of it the audiobook is like a whole produced thing so if they're listening before January 16th I don't know that they will we might post this sooner and let me they'll get all the pre-order bonuses for free like audiobook ebook all that let me also say this I belly laughed several times you did yes I Tri to make it really funny it sounds exactly like you a lot of the yes like I will I will read it and hear your voice as I'm reading that means the world and it's hilarious and a lot of the times people will make books and it just sounds nothing like them could be a ghost riter sounds exactly like you there's no way a ghost writer could have written this because it is it is my jokes whether good or bad you can tell they are mine and so I did try really hard to make a money book that was conversational funny well researched that could help anybody and uh while being true to myself and true to Ramsey so I'm really proud of it the team's done an amazing job I mean God bless I feel bad for people who are doing this on their own like authors that are doing this on their own is it's so much work and so even though I wrote the book uh took a billion people to make this happen and uh I'm really excited about it it's it's selling really well people are excited to read it and uh the audio book is going to be fire so if you like to listen this is this is the one for you I like to read books while listening to the audiobook do you guys do that listen to three books I read the book while the audio is piped into my ears because that's how the level of like add that I have so helps me Focus there are studies that show that you actually retain more knowledge when you're reading when you're doing that thank you for that I knew you had a study were you having a good hair day that day um you know I think I was I was nervous about photo shoot day you're always scared about like what is my how did I sleep what does my face look like the team did not do me any favors and they didn't give me like a tan and post yeah the only thing I was uh going to say I would up the saturation it seems like you are too white like too pale well to be fair against that bright orange I think anything would be better little corner right there on your forehead yeah yeah it's a little too like you're getting a solid extra inch on the hair though they could have photoshopped that a little higher the hair I'm going to talk to our design guys they did whiten my shoes a little bit help they whiten my shoes print it on like five copies where the hair goes behind the T full Jimmy Neutron yeah yeah that would be the back folds no truthfully you know it's not Photoshop because I would have made them make me taller in post you can tell I'm small on the cover which is sad I think you look you know but you know I think we did they did it they polished a tur on this one I think they did a great job with the cover it's gorgeous and uh I hope just wanted to stand out like in all the noise in the financial world that's the whole point of this is to stand out in the crowd and swim upstream so I hope I hope this book pisses a lot of people off into Breaking Free from certainly it pissed me off done I tell I say this is going to be jarring this is not going to be what you want to hear it's it's sort of like you're you're it's the vegan documentary they're like here's how they actually make the meat you're like oh gosh that's what I wanted for debt okay and I think it did that perfect well thank you so much for coming on we'll link to your information Down Below in the description thank you for making it to Vegas we'll see you in Nashville it's an honor and make sure to just slam that subscribe who's not subscribed to this guys we're racing Caleb Hammer to a million subscribers if you could please million before Caleb he's like 20K ahead of us is he actually he's like 15 maybe 20K we need subscribers I think we need a new hashtag so we got to beat Caleb 2 million if you're not subscribed I think it's like 50% of people watching or higher with the shorts are com we can be Caleb I think three of us equals at least one Caleb cool cool oh and they say yeah thumbnail oh what's come on in oh my goodness we have a bit of a surprise for you now this was completely unpl this man this man is going to give you the best Ste you've ever had guess how much this box is worth oh my gosh uh based on The Branding alone yeah and the weight I'm going to go $175 you're actually spot on are you serious $25 off what is in this open the box open the box so nervous this is pretty much the ultimate Las Vegas Flex look at that oh my gosh look at what's in here oh come on that looks so good this was freshly made in the kitchen 10 minutes ago how is this getting the freshest possible sandwich that you could ever eat and it's right here with by the way the best quality meat this is not sponsored what kind of correct me if I'm saying this wrong it's Japanese Miyazaki aab A5 wagu A5 wag it's made in Sandwich this is $200 in this tiny box to what do we owe this pleasure okay so basically these guys reached out to us on Instagram and they're like hey we'd love to bring you a sandwich and film a little video for it we tried the sandwich it was insane how so good and that was yesterday and we're like Hey we're actually shooting with George come back tomorrow and we could show it on our podcast so yeah it's a little bonus clip for you guys I don't deserve this expensive sandwich not we figured it's like a guy you would appreciate this a lot uh eat it okay I want to watch you eat it if you guys are in Vegas and you guys want to try this out it's all going to be linked down below definitely try it out all right can we do the same time not sponsored all they just brought this is just a cool concept and we really like it Che that's it cheers cheers touch meat all right there we go yeah now that you say it that way it feels different I'm going I'm gluten-free can I just take a bite of the uh the steak is that okay with you guys does the steak have gluten in it it's fine that's fine oh my gosh is that incredible that's probably the best steak you've ever had that cow was a better life than I lived it's so good it is so tender I've never had steak that melts in your mouth say hi to all the vegetarians I'm sorry but you're wrong like if you think the Lord didn't intend for us to eat this you're just wrong oh my go I got to hang out with you guys more often I told you do you want a piece of this meat stick Sarah oh my gosh sure I'll try it