George Kamel - 19 Minutes of Insane Car Payments

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

📈 Check out the Investment Calculator!   Americans are in auto loan debt to the tune of $1.69 trillion dollars. So today, I’m reacting to some videos on TikTok to see just how insane people’s car payments have gotten.     Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video 25 Minutes of INSANE Credit Card Debt on the Internet! • 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! • 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan.   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Go to Boost Mobile to switch today! • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • Go to FAIRWINDS Credit Union for an exclusive account bundle! • Sign up with Privacy today and receive a $5 credit just for being a George Kamel fan.   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americans are in auto loan debt to the tune of $1.69 trillion dollars. So if you're mad at Elon for being a trillionaire, you should be extra mad at this, because that's more than his network. So naturally, I'm going to TikTok to see who's responsible and find out just how insane people's car payments have gotten. But first, let's give a shout out to my passenger princess delete me for sponsoring this channel. You eat your snacks and just enjoy an app, okay? We'll be there soon.

Here we go. What is the highest monthly payment you have ever seen? I had a customer coming and buy a new navigator for me. It was $3,700. What is the highest monthly payment you've ever seen? $2,100 a month. I think it was a Bronco Raptor. What was the highest monthly payment you've ever seen for a vehicle?

I sold someone a BMW M850I, and they signed out at 1875 a month. What is the highest monthly payment that you've ever seen? Probably it was about 1,600 and something thousand on an F-450 platinum. What is the highest monthly payment that you have ever seen? $1,300 on an expedition. It's the highest monthly payment. that you've ever seen. $1,400 a month for 72 months.

What is the highest monthly payment you've ever seen? $2,600. Guys, I mean, I guess it makes you feel better about your own car payment when you hear $3,700 a month for a new navigator. I don't even understand. I mean, I guess if you do a really short-term loan, like three years, maybe, but I don't understand how a car could be that expensive and how someone is actually willing to pay for it. Imagine what you could do with $3,700 a month if it wasn't going to a car going down in value. down in value. Pay off debt. Double down on your mortgage payment, which the median monthly mortgage payment is $1,500. So this is over double the median mortgage payment? That's nuts.

You could invest it. You'd be a millionaire in 12 years if you invested that payment. Oh, I'm already angry. Yeah, it is diabolical pepper jack. Thank you. The real flex is no car payment. Let's go, retro reminiscence. Oh, oh, there's Papa Dave. Yeah, he's not happy about that one. 31 replies. And Dave's voice, this comment is gold. There we go. Anything over $500 is crazy. Anything over $0 is crazy in my book.

No, I don't feel bad about my 4-100. See, people. This is why you go to social media, to feel better about your own decisions. That's the state of America today. Yeah, we do need to teach financial literacy because this is absurd. Thank you, Cassandra.

So just remember this. The auto industry is a business, and you are a pawn in their scheme, and they don't care about your financial well-being. As much as they want you to think they do. Yeah, we want to make sure this payment works for you. They don't care. They just want to go home.

They don't want to deal with you. When you accidentally overpay your car loan and now have zero dollars. I'm like, hey, money's gone. What? How do you accidentally overpay your car loan? Go to your bank, get the payment reversed. I've done this with my credit card payment. I accidentally added an extra zero.

Yeah, I don't know. I want to know the details here. Now, depending on the lender, you can sometimes get refunded the extra payment or it could get applied to principal, which I would recommend applying all that to principal. What she really needs here is an emergency fund. So separate from your checking account, have an emergency fund, start her emergency fund of $1,000 until your debt is paid off,

then you don't need a parent bailout here, which I'm assuming is what she ended up doing. SAV. Those look like real tears, though. I got to say, I don't think she's acting. I mean, I could tell the puffiness, the redness in the eyes. She's stressed over this. I hope you're doing well today, Saf.

I hope you're doing well. Brashing out over the monthly payment for a 2026 Ford Expedition. I gotta take a deep breath before watching. That's how you know it's gonna be bad. Okay, quick story time because I fear I may be overreacting. So I just left the dealership. I went specifically to a Ford dealership. I'm sitting in my paid-off Ford Expedition, 2018, to be exact.

All right. And let me tell you what just happened. Take a wild guess about how much a brand new, 2006 Ford Expedition Platinum Max with the ultimate package would cost for a lease. Oh, for a lease? Okay, I let you guess. $1,700. $1,700.

$1,700. The same exact price that my four-bedroom three-bath mortgage is, minus a couple hundred dollars. What are they thinking? I don't know, maybe it was because it was me. going in there and I was like, you know what, me as a 35 year old female can walk into a dealership and just, you know, test drive a vehicle and ask for some lease numbers. I don't know. How hard can it be? Boys do it, right? So I walk in there. First question, how much do you want your payment to be? Sir, Michael, I just want you to run some numbers ethically and tell me how much you can do it.

for it. Okay? Um, so he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. Uh, 48 month lease, $1,700. Insane. I laughed in the man's face. I said, no, no. I don't know. Maybe they didn't think I could play ball, but I worked in a dealership at 16 years old. So you're not, you're not gonna fool me once, fool me twice kind of thing. It's just an absolute no. For a four? No. Me and my 2018, that is paid off. We're just, we're not going anywhere.

$1,700. You know what? In this economy, maybe that is the going rate. It's not. It's not. That is insane. Don't normalize that, okay? Let's pull up my handy-dandy calculator here to show you the full numbers.

$1,700. She said 48 months. I'm going to take out of her word. That's $81,600 is what you ended up giving the lender. After owning nothing! That is insane. You give the car back. And it's why we call leasing fleecing around here,

because you're getting fleeced anytime you accept the terms and conditions of this contract. You're paying for a car you'll never own. There's mileage caps, so you can't even take it where you want to take it. There's wear and tear fees at the end, disposition fees. And like she said, it's the same cost as her mortgage payment every month. All to drive a nice car? Listen, that 2018 expedition is running great. And back in 2018, that was a fancy brand new car.

But somehow we're going, I wouldn't drive a 2018. That's old. I want the new one. That's basically the same thing. Maybe slightly better technology. Barely. For a Ford?

I like that. That was a nice touch. Nah, people need to stop normalizing car payments like this. Yep, agreed. Do not trade in a paid-for vehicle on a lease. Nah, bring back $200 car pay. Yeah, I don't know. It's just gotten crazy.

And I think here's what happened. Car dealerships, yes, things have gotten more expensive with the chips and the technology and what have you. But it also is because car dealerships can charge what they want. And people will just take on a slightly bigger payment. Same thing happened with student loans. Colleges were just like, yeah, it's going to be $50,000 for tuition now. And people just went, okay, I guess I'll take out more government-backed loans to make this happen. So that's my hot take, conspiracy theory, of why everything sucks.

Hope that helped. I have a $1,200 car payment, and I would do it again and again. and again and again. You're only on this planet once. While it's important, you do smart things with your money, it's also important for you to enjoy yourself. You're paying a mortgage on your car. I don't care. I'm interested in cars, and I have a twin turbo V8 in my 20s.

Oh, Twin Turbo V8. It's a give and take, it's a push and pull. Where I may overspend on my car, I underspend in other critical areas of my life. Like, I barely buy myself new clothes. Don't drink any alcohol. I definitely don't smoke any of that good stuff. So I may be $50,000 in debt, but it's my life.

That was crazy. There's so much there. I mean, there is a lot of money. meat on these bones. He really just did boy math. He went, well, uh, I mean, I don't smoke crack, so this is all I have. What? What?

You can't do that. That's not, that's not accurate boy math. You do realize this flies at the face of 150 years of economic theory. I mean, I don't have hobbies either, but I don't justify taking on a $1,200 car payment because of it. Well, I don't have a country club membership, so this is actually cheap in comparison. That's wild. Let me show you, bud, if you want to enjoy your money and you want to have some

later. Here's how to do it. Buy the cheaper version of that car that you can afford in cash. And guess what? Nobody cares about that V8 twin turbo engine except you and other doofuses who care about that too. You're the only person that cares. So just learn to not care what other people think if you want to build wealth. Let me show you what you're actually giving up. Let's see you have nothing invested. I don't know how old you are. Let's assume 25. This feels like a guy in his 20s. So nothing invested. Monthly contributions, that car payment. We're going to keep driving what we were driving. That was paid off. $1,200 bucks a month. Let's say, let's give it 25 years. He's 25 now. Let's say by the time he's 50,

let's see where it's at with a 10% average rate of return. That is a whopping $1.6 million. Now, if he continues this trend and just keeps on, take it on a different car payment every single year for his whole adult life, let's put it at 60. From 25 to 60, that becomes 35 years to grow. $4.5 million. Meanwhile, all those cars he was driving are now in a junkyard somewhere. So let's be wise about this, guys. This is insane. He could have been a millionaire before he was 50, just in this investment alone,

without ever investing a dime outside of this car payment. So if you want to crunch the numbers for yourself, I'm going to drop a link to this investment calculator in the description. I'd triple dog dare you to put your car payment in there and see what it's really costing you. Now, these crazy high car payments are scary, but what's also scary is your personal info out there on the internet for unsavory people to get their hands on.

Your name, address, email address, phone number. It's being packaged and sold by data brokers, and then spammers and scammers take advantage of it. But Delete Me, one of today's sponsors can help. Delete Me scours the internet and finds and removes your info from hundreds of data broker sites and continues to monitor it so you don't have to. They've literally saved me over 150 hours in counting, according to my latest report. And as a millennial father of two little kids, having more time and peace of mind is priceless. So go check it out and get 20% off their annual plans at join deleteme.com slash George, or click the link, in the description.

Now, while today's car payments may be out of control, the good news is your phone bill doesn't have to be. With Boost Mobile, another sponsor, you'll pay just 25 bucks a month on their unlimited plan. Think about it. A single car payment of 800 bucks would cover three years of Boost Mobile. And the price never goes up. It's 25 bucks a month forever, no depreciation. And there's also no contracts, no hidden fees.

So when they say talk is cheap at Boost Mobile, they mean it. They can back it up. You can bring your phone, keep your number, and start saving today at BoostMobil.com Ramsey or click the link in the description. $25 forever requires customers to remain active on Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. All right, back to the insanity. Monthly payment on 2026 G80 M3. I don't even know what this is. I don't know what that says about me. That's just letters and numbers at this point. Let's break down my monthly payments on my 2026 G80 M3 competition.

I didn't want to wait to custom order one, so instead I called literally every single BMW dealership in the U.S. specifically looking for the carbon buckets, the Brooklyn Gray, and X drive. The buckets were honestly pretty hard to find, especially in the floor blue color, but when I found this one, I knew I needed it. I have the carbon buckets, the carbon interior package, extended leather, and of course, X drive. So with that being said, the MSRP on this car was just about 100K flat. I traded in my 22 Chevy Silverado RST, and I got $12,000 in equity, so that went right into the down payment for the M3. I financed it through BMW at a 6.7 APR for 72 months. Now, with that being said, I also do not plan on keeping it financed through BMW.

I'm going to refinance it through a credit union with a lower APR. My total monthly payment is $1,500, and if I didn't put anything down, it would probably be roughly around $2,200. That's my monthly payment on my G80M3. I don't know why it's like, it's not like a haul. Like, hey, like, why are you so proud of this $1,500 payment? A $100,000 car. Like, that is insane. I don't know how old you are, but you can't be over 30.

Like, just insane to me that young people are out here dropping $100,000. With a $12,000 down payment, from equity on the trade-in that you still owed on? Oh boy, let's do some math here. $1,500 a month, $72 months, $6.7% APR, $108,000. So, after her down payment, she's paying about $20,000 in interest alone. That's basically another car.

Most people aren't even driving $20,000 cars, and she just handed that to the lender for fun. And by the time this is over, the depreciation on that thing is going to tank her. It's going to be worth $60,000 in no time. She's going to be underwater, if she isn't already. Deep breaths.

I hope she's an influencer making Buku bucks because this is not good. This is stressful. Please tell me that the comments are not celebrating this. Okay, good. Everyone's saying it's wild. Stop hating. If she could afford it, let her live.

Sure. If she could afford it, just buy it in cash then. Why pay it extra 20 grand? That's crazy. Must be nice to have rich parents. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't know. We don't know if there's a trust fund involved here.

We don't know if mommy and daddy helped. It's not the flex you. think it is, thank you. Bought before frontal lobe fully developed. Ooh, shots fired. Their words not mine. It's high drama right there saying it. Girl, this is a terrible car plan. This is not a flex at all. Thank you. She's pitching it as a flex. That's what bothers me. There's no self-awareness here of like, I made this mistake. This is a lot. Next, there is simply too much text on this video. It's like a video within a video within a video. Y'all will not believe how much they pay every month for their cars. Okay. I want to know what y'all's car payments are

every month because I refuse to believe that I am the only person with a high car payment and I refuse to believe that my husband is the only man with a high truck payment. Y'all, I was just curious to see if she ever said how much they pay for their cars every month. For her Tahoe, she pays $1,400 a month, a month. Her husband has a truck that he didn't even buy brand new. It was a couple years old when he bought it. And every month he pays $1,600. $3,000 a month.

3 grand every month is what they pay for their vehicles. $3,000. That's three times our mortgage for our home. I have never been more proud to admit that my husband and I don't have a car payment. Is my husband driving the very first car that he got in high school almost 14 years ago? Absolutely.

Is it falling apart and really ratty? Of course. but we do not have a car payment. We needed something more reliable for my son when we were pregnant. I saved up for a very long time. I took a note from Dave Ramsey, and I paid cash for my 2019 Chevy Traverse. Again, we have no car payment.

That's all I needed to hear. Thank you, Aden. Big fan already. Wow. I mean, it just takes your breath away to think about three grand in payments. I mean, think about this. All it takes is one job loss, a health crisis, and all of a sudden that car is getting repoed.

And even then, if it does get repo, they're coming after you for the difference of what they sold it at auction for and what you owed. So either way, you're screwed. Voluntary repo, involuntary repo. And then even then, if you pay the payments perfectly, you're still paying an insane amount of interest. And my guess is maybe they don't have great credit. Maybe they got hosed at the dealership and they've got 18% APR. I don't know. All I know is don't tell people that it's like some privilege to drive a paid-for cash car.

They're driving what they could afford and they're driving it to the wheels fall off. and hopefully they're saving up on the side and eventually they'll upgrade when it makes sense. But just financing your way into oblivion is about the worst thing you could do. Thank you for taking a note from Dave, Aden. You're better off for it. Selling my luxury car was not on my 2026 priorities list, but my priorities changed. And no, I'm not going through a financial crisis. I just realized that the car that I loved didn't align with the life I'm trying to build. Paying 900 a month for car payment, another 200 for insurance plus Mercedes maintenance costs meant a lot of money was tied up in something that was depreciating.

I had to remind myself that living below my means doesn't mean living less. It means living intentionally and building the future that I want. Beautifully said. That's the kind of self-awareness we've been missing in this episode. Okay, she was paying over $1,100 a month between the car payment and the super expensive insurance. And I love that she came to the point where she swallowed her pride, put her ego down and said, You know what? This does not align with the person I want to be, with the goals that I have for my life. And therefore, I'm going to make the hard decision to eat the stupid tax and get rid of this car.

Even if I'm doing it at a loss. And I love what you said. Living below your means doesn't mean living less. If you really want to live, you're going to have to learn to live below your means. It doesn't mean taking on as many payments as you can to try to fake your way into living this life. The best way to do it is to not owe anyone, anything, have all the margin in the world, have all the options in the world, and drive what you can afford. until you can afford to drive more. There's nothing wrong with having a nice car,

but too many people, the cars have them. Listen, the more you have, the more that owns you, and there's too many of these payments that are crushing people in these videos, whether they realize it now or not. Even if they can stomach the payments for now, they're going to get to a point where they go, gosh, that was stupid. Why did I do that?

So, the sooner you realize it, the better. And hopefully this video is the conviction you needed. All right, producer Alex, as always, has a palette cleansing video for us, or one that will drive me even further into insanity. We'll find out. What? Swagen, that's auto.

Why are they always Russian? Is this AI? The sad part is I can't tell. That's got to be. The more I watch, the more I'm convinced it may not be AI. I don't know. Will the comments section let me know? Fell apart before hitting the curtain.

That's what I'm saying. Must have hit the break-all button. One millisecond out of warranty. Held together by hopes and prayers. Well, thank you for that. I'm going to be having nightmares now. Well, if you thought card debt was a national crisis, brace yourself for the shock and awe of this next video, where I react to people's insane amounts of credit card debt. And I'll be honest, I'm not sure what I found more distracting. The bun on this one girl's head or the fact that she was over 90 grand in debt. I'll let you make the call. So click here to watch it next or use the link in the description.

That's it for today. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Thank you.