George Kamel - 21 Minutes of People With Less Retirement Savings Than You

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

📊 Check out the Retirement Calculator!   Roughly 20% of adults over 50 have no retirement savings. So today, I’m reacting to videos on TikTok to see who’s ready to retire and who’s living on ramen and a prayer to ride out their golden years.   Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video 23 Minutes of People Going Broke in Real Time. • 💵 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

Roughly 20% of adults over 50 have no retirement savings. So I'm gonna do what I do best. Shame you all into retiring with dignity. It's a spiritual gift. Today I'm reacting to videos on TikTok to see who's ready to retire, who's not, and who will be living on ramen and a prayer to write out their golden ears. But first, let's pull up a rocking chair and give a shout out to delete me for sponsoring this channel.

Text overlay. Enjoy your job, and the blink of an eye, you'll be retired. Nailed it, Karen. Keep blinking. Keep blinking. I like that one. The piano music really, it made me emotional for no reason. Why'd you have to do that to me, Karen?

Hey, friend, so it's not working for me? Is there a trick to it? Been blinking for 30 minutes now. Try 30 years, Carlita. We all want to be retired. But are we ready to be? That's the question. It's not about even an age or a time span.

It is, when can my assets and nest egg produce enough income to where I don't have to work anymore? That's really how you know. That might be at 45 for some of you. Might be at 75 for some of you. It might be never if you don't get started. So appreciate the meme. Appreciate the humor.

I love the joke. And I just ruined the joke. You're welcome. Next. I'm going to be 55 this year. And I had to face something really uncomfortable. I've worked since I was 15 and I have nothing saved for retirement. And it's hard to say out loud, but it's true.

But instead of letting that truth shame me, I'm letting it wake me up. I don't want to spend the rest of my life just trying to survive. I want to build income in a way that actually gives me freedom and flexibility and just enjoyment in life. So that's what I'm doing now. I like her energy. At first I was like she's smiling a little too much to have no retirement. But really what was behind that smile was hope. She said, you know what?

I get it. I should have started earlier. I'm 55 now, which, by the way, you said you don't have nothing to show for it? What's the skincare routine? You've spent a lot of time staying young, looking 30. Give the rest of us some tips here, okay? I'm struggling. Doing great on retirement.

Skin care routine could use some work for me. But I love this energy, and I think most people would do better to carry some of this spirit that she has. Of, hey, better late than never. I'm not going to let the next 20 years be the same as the last 20. I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to invest.

I'm going to harness the power of compound growth, even if I have it for 15 or 20 years instead of 40. That's okay. Do something about it. Wow, a lot of people in the comments commiserating that they are also broke in their 50s and even 60s. It's a good reminder that just because you quote unquote work hard or work a job for a long time, that doesn't necessarily give you a pass for retirement. Now, some people have a pension, and that is, like I clocked in for 40 years and they promised me a paycheck.

That's different. For a lot of people, the pension is long gone, and it's on you now, through a 401k or an IRA, for you to put money into the right things over a long period of time consistently. That's really the only thing you have to do, and it's easier said than done, and it's never too late. Best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today, and Kelly, just let us know. Moving on. When asking millennials about the retirement plan, the plan, death and millennials. Well, this is a good start. Let's see where this goes. Millennials, okay, they're chasing after death. Oh, wow. Oh, they're booking it. Dang!

Incredible. Okay, I like a little dark humor every now and then. So, here's the TLDR. Their retirement plan is dying. Death is not a plan. Put that on a stitch pillow, sell it at your local T.J. Max. I will purchase. It's good advice, okay?

A lot of people go, I'm just going to die with the debt or I'm going to work till I die. And retirement is a farce. It doesn't exist. It cannot be attained. And if that's your attitude, you're right. You know, the old quote, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And that's not like false positivity, mumbo-jumbo feel-good stuff.

That truly means you reap what you sow. If you plant corn one day, you might have some corn. And if you don't plant it, you're never going to have corn. So don't wake up one day and say, well, nobody could have corn. anymore. Yeah, bud, you didn't plant any back there. What are you thinking? You're a terrible farmer.

This is the wrong field for you, literally. We yearn for the urn. That's pretty good. Put down the stitch pillows. I will buy that. I yearn for the urn. My generation has been promised apocalypse, world ending plague, Armageddon, nuclear war,

and dang it, none of it has happened yet. True story. Next up. I was like, oh, 37 years until I retire. I could do this. I don't have a savings account. There's hardly anything in my 401k. I'm not retiring. That was a really good acting job. Can we just watch the end of that again? Friently done. There's hardly anything in my 401k. I'm not retiring. Oh, the camera twitch. That was really good. Okay. Well, she did say she has 37 years until retirement. So whether you have a savings account now or you get one

tomorrow, you've got a whole lot of time on your hands. And by the way, that is the key to wealth building is time. It is the number one ingredient. And I want to show our friend here just how much she could have if she starts today with a 37-year trail ahead of her. So I'm going to use our handy-dandy retirement calculator. So let's say that our friend here is 28 years old. And she's saying, hey, there's 37 years to go until I'm 65.

So current age 28, we're going to 65. That is 37 years. Current retirement savings, she said, I got nothing in the 401K, nothing in savings. So nothing there. But monthly contributions. Let's just use an example. I'm going to just, I don't know how much she's making. Let's assume she's making an average salary, which is about, let's say, $65,000.

That would be a solid salary. And we're going to do 15% of that. Once she's debt-free, she's got the emergency fund. That's 9750. So divide that by 12 months, and we have our monthly contribution of $812. So I'm going to go $800. Now, if you're going, must be nice to have $800. It is nice, and you can create that kind of margin.

If you get out of debt, you likely had debt payments to the tune of $800, and you get on a budget, you can find $800 out of $5,000 if you do it right. So I'm going to go with a 10% rate of return. On average, hit calculate. and wouldn't you know it, $3.7 million. Wow. Wow. So what did it take? It took automating an $800 contribution into your 401k or IRA every single month

without fail for 37 years. So pretend that money didn't exist and learn to live on what's left in your bank account and you will end up with $3.7 million. Notice we did not invest $3.7 million. We put in $355,000. that's pretty wild to see that level of growth. $3 million of it was just straight growth.

Over $3 million. That shocks me. And that's the power of compound growth. Your pile of money makes some money. The new pile makes some more money. The new pile makes some more money. And over time, it kind of does this. It's slow at first, and then all of a sudden you see this hockey stick

as the pile of money gets bigger and bigger. So, no matter what it is, let's say you've even at half of that at $400. From $28 to $65. you still have $1.8 million. And get this, if you do that in a Roth account, like a Roth IRA, a Roth 401k, you're using after-tax dollars to invest, that is $1.86 million tax-free. The government already got their cut on the front end. Now it's growing tax-free.

You can withdraw tax-free. So that's like net income. So that will go a whole long way in retirement. If you do nothing else, you never get a raise. So if you want to use this calculator for yourself, you want to see how you stack up. I will drop a link to this. calculator in the description of this video, go click it and let me know how much you will have

in retirement. Having a plan for retirement is great. But what about shorter-term goals and your emergency fund? Where are you storing that? Well, it deserves to be in a bank that will help it grow and not just sit there on a shelf collecting dust like Granny's precious moments collection. And that's where Fairwin's Credit Union comes in, a sponsor of today's video. Unlike most other banks who offer savings rates of less than a half a percent, Fairwin's high-yield savings accounts give you over 3%. And with their smart bundle, you'll get the high-yield savings account, a no-monthly fee checking account, and a Ramsey-themed debit card, all with one goal in mind to help you win with money. So get started today, go to fairwins.org

slash Ramsey or click the link in the description. Now, if you're worried about rising costs in retirement, there is one cost you'll never need to worry about going up, and that is your phone bill if you have Boost Mobile, a sponsor of today's video. You'll pay just 25 bucks a month forever on their unlimited plan. No inflation, no price hikes, no hidden fees. I don't know how they do it. but they do it. $25 a month forever. Even better, switching is easy and takes just a few minutes because most phones have an e-sim,

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on Boost Mobile Unlimited Plan. Back to the Vids. When your parents give you work ethic instead of generational wealth. Love this already. This is the worst. Thanks, Mom and Dad. You gave me character and virtues.

Could have used a trust fund while we're at it. Why is it always one or the other? Where's all the trust fund kids with character and virtue? Sorry to disappoint. But this is true. We all are jealous of generational wealth. And there is this great wealth transfer from the boomers down to the kids

as the boomers begin to pass away, you know, God rest their souls. But a lot of people are going, not for me. I'm not getting much. My parents are broke. And that is a problem. So if you are the parent, just change your family tree. Don't let that be you and your family. I want to leave a legacy. I want to leave an inheritance to my children's children, cover my grandkids, college funds, and just spoil them for all eternity while I'm still here. And maybe from above, too, if they get a bunch of money. They'll be thanking me. And our study of 10,000 millionaires revealed that eight out of 10 did not receive a dime of inheritance. And for nine out of 10, the inheritance was not the root cause of their wealth.

And that's true for me. I'm the son of a middle class immigrant family. I'm a self-made millionaire. Not because I started a business or struck it rich. I'm just a W-2 employee who for the past 13 years has tried to do my best to get out of debt, stay out of debt, have the emergency fund, invest for the future, build a life. for my family and it can be done. Now, a million bucks between your house

and retirement accounts and cars, it may not allow you to go retire in a beach right now, but one day I will be work optional to the point where I can go, you know what, I got $5 million in a retirement account, we're gonna be just fine. So, TLDR, create your own generational wealth. Go fund yourself.

Crying an eldest child. Well, sorry kids, I got the spiritual wealth. Hey, I'll take a turn of life. in trust fund. Do I have to draw the evangelism around here? A leukemia doctor's thoughts on aggressive retirement savings? Well color me intrigued. I know we're supposed to plan for retirement, have these big financial goals and save up, but if you knew the amount of people that I meet that are diagnosed with some devastating cancer right before or right after they retire, I think it would change your calculus a little bit. I'm not saying be financially irresponsible

and don't plan ahead. But there is a balance. there where you don't give up your happiness, the opportunities you have now for something that's not guaranteed in the future. I mean, that's hard to argue with. It is true. You see people who retire at 67 and they pass away by 68 or 69. They never got to truly live out their retirement years. So we don't know how many days we have on this earth.

And so here's what I do. I am saving for the future while living in the now, while being present, while budgeting for the vacation. I'm not waiting until 65 to enjoy my life. Now, will I have more resources as I get older to do more fun things? Yes. Will I have less energy, willpower, and health to do those fun things? That's also true.

I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. So there's a balance there. And my goal is not to work until I'm 70. My goal is to be able to work if I want to, but not have to. So here's the order you've got to do this in. Crush your debt first because it's stealing from your future. build up an emergency fund so that you never go into debt again, then you have some financial peace.

Then you can invest for the future. Invest 15% of your income for retirement. And anything beyond that, maybe you're safe for the vacation, save for the car upgrade, put your kid in private school if you want to, pay off the house early, give more, all of that you can do before 65.

So don't believe in this lie that you've got to wait till 65 to enjoy your life. If you want to build a bridge fund, instead of waiting till 60 to access retirement, you have a brokerage account, you can do that too. So you can retire at 55 and have five great years in between accessing your retirement accounts. And that's where that bridge fund can really help out. So a lot of options here, but she is right in that it's a sad reality when a health crisis or an accident can cause you to not enjoy the retirement dreams that you had. Thank you, doctor, for reminding us of her own mortality.

when retired people are busier than ever, in quotes. What am I up to this week? Oh, it's a busy one. Doctor's appointment on Monday. Mowing the lawn on Wednesday. I don't know how I'm going to fit it all in. I've got lunch with Margaret. So that's basically the whole day gone.

Can I call you back? It's a madhouse here. I've just had to change the remote batteries. Then, of course, we've got the holiday coming out. Tuesdays are right off. I've got to go to Big Tesco and Walk the Dog. It's all go this week. Pinday and a haircut.

I don't know how I'm. I worked full time. And we're going away next week. I've had to push back my garden center trip to Thursday. Got no time this week. I'm updating my password. I think I'm going to have to retire from retirement. Updating the password, that is a full day.

That is exhausting for someone in their 60s or 70s. To have to remember the old one, to change the old one, to then think of a new one, to then remember the new one. Today's over. That is difficult, but it is true. You do find ways to fill your time, and also things move a little slower. Right? When you're my age, you're like, you can pack a lot in. And in my 60s and 70s, I will get out of a lot of plans by telling you that I need to change my password. And so today's not a good day. You shouldn't have made your password password.

That is my goal to be a senile old man who's too busy for you. What if they're using it as an excuse to not hang out with you? That's the real dig that you got to think about. But I do think the British accent helps. When you say it in a British accent, who am I to disagree or call you out? It's so lovely. Benedict Cumberbatch. But if we're going to be real for a second, there is some sad truth to this as well. These people clearly didn't have much dreams for their retirement. They just were like, well, I guess it's occasional grocery store run and a doctor's visit, and this is my life. That doesn't have to be you. I know a lot of people who are retired, and they retired well.

They have dreams, passions, hobbies, nonprofits, they're donating their time to, consulting work that they want to. offer and offer all of their experience to. So there's a lot of things you can do on top of the, you know, vacations and sitting on a beach or getting on the boat, whatever it may be. And it's also a lot more fun when you have a spouse. And I hope they're still alive if you do one in retirement. And remember this, there's only three things you can do with money. You can spend it, you can save it, you can give it. And once you're in a retirement with excess with an awesome nest egg, you no longer need to shovel money away. So now you've got two things left to do. spend it, enjoy it with people you love, with awesome experiences, spoil the grandkids,

and the other side is giving. And that might be your time, your resources, and your money at that age because you have all of it, which is fantastic. So find a nonprofit, a charity, a local church that you can really get plugged into and give in all kinds of ways, and that will give you so much purpose in retirement more than just the occasional doctor's office visit. Here we go. Parents just retired two months ago.

and now they do this every day. Oh, okay. This is parent goals right here. If this was my parents, I would be showing them off to the internet as well. Elation music. Oh, this is true. Yeah, their parents just really are that cool.

This is retirement goals right here. Find you a mate like that. Find you someone who goes, hey, when we retire, what if we DJ in our kitchen every day? Solo dance party, if you will. I got nothing but respect for these people. Retired, I think they just started another career, 100%.

In the kitchen because they're cooking! Oh, I know they love each other. I see my future. Need this duo in Vegas. May this love find me. Yes. Coachella 2025, I would go to Coachella if it was just retired people DJing.

The playlist would hit. And finally, we've gotten to the producer Alex video, which he has chosen at random, that may or may not have anything to do with retirement. Let's find out. when dad's babysitting. Oh, whoa. Gosh, that actually looked like to hurt.

Dude, this is like Cirque de Soleil. This is impressive. Oh my gosh. Why is this stressful? No. Oh. That is intense. How do they not all have scoliosis from that?

Like, I'm in pain watching them do that. So clearly they're in good shape, and they do this a lot. And also, how was this legal? How was nobody at this little jungle gym? trampoline park situation going, hey guys, none of that funny business. All right, someone's going to get hurt here. Probably because they signed a waiver saying, you probably will die and you can't sue us if you do.

Funer arrangements. Well, most of these videos are satirical in nature. Some of them are just straight up sad, and some of them gave me a whole lot of hope. And I hope you lean on the hope side, where you actually build wealth for the future. You get started now, regardless of your age, whether you're 25, 35, 35, 45, or even 55, There is still hope for you yet, but you got to start. You got to start putting money away for the future. And if you don't have that money, it could be because you aren't making enough.

You're in a bunch of debt. You don't have an emergency fund. So get those prerequisites knocked out. Work on getting your income up because your income is your greatest wealth-building tool. Knock out the debt because that is stealing from your future by demanding that you pay for the past. And if you do those things and you follow the advice on this channel, I guarantee you one day we'll all high-five in our 50s. Not too hard. Not too hard because of the arthritis, but just hard enough to go, we did it.

We're going to retire with dignity. Now, seeing the financial future of these TikTokers made you nervous, check out this next video of people ruining their finances in real time. My personal favorite, the dude who lost his entire paycheck in two seconds on a gambling app. Watch it next by clicking here or use the link in the description. That's it for today. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.