George Kamel - 4 Ramsey Show Callers I'll Never Forget

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

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Ever heard a grown man cry on live radio? I have. I think I cost it. You see, part of my job is co-hosting the Ramsey Show, which is a daily call-in show where we answer money questions and where the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Over the years, we've taken calls that were hilarious, heartbreaking, and downright hard to believe. And today, I'm reacting to some of the most unforgettable moments I've ever had on the phones,

and hopefully this video will be better than you deserve. I'm done. I'm done. Let me just have my fun. Well, that's enough fun for one day. Okay, let's get to the calls. I found some debt their wife's been hiding from me over and over again. Oh, uh, credit cards mainly. Uh-oh. How much?

And she is, well, we have one maxed out credit card for about $1,000. And the biggest disappointment is it's actually maxed out on McDonald's because it was connected to her app and we had gotten rid of paid this credit card off twice since June thought we had gotten rid of it she told me she had closed it out

that's a whole lot of combo meals yeah was this was there's a lot going on here was she sneakily going behind her back to McDonald's and not telling you no I wouldn't say that works really early in the morning and just stopping and getting Beth's

brittos and stop it's easier to pay on the app skip the line head to work And it just got out. How much is the breakfast preying out? So you thought it was coming out of the debit card to your bank account and it was actually on a credit card. So was this malicious? Did she know that it was not tied to the cards that you were aware of?

No. Or was an honest mistake? But I thought it was closed out. But she just says that out of habit, being it was still connected, you know, there was that line of credit there. Oh, man. All right. Enough for that guy. Okay.

I just, I'm still concerned. I'm more concerned about her health than the financial side. because every single morning, she's ingesting a McDonald's burrito. I got to do the math here on the burrito at McDonald's because she maxed it out. It's a $1,000 card. If she did this over 30 days, that's $33 a day. This is correct? Who did this?

So in a month, you dropped the $1,000. That's not how much burritos are. So did this happen over, like, if a burrito's, I don't know. $5? What could a burrito cost? Well, how much good? a banana cost $10? Here's some money.

Go see a Star War. $5, $1,000, that's still 200 days of burritos. That's like a full working year. It took her to max out a $1,000 card. I just, my heart says there's more going on here than Zachary was letting on. I don't think this was all just straight up burrito dead. But I do think it points to a bigger problem when you, number one, use credit cards. Things can get dicey.

Number two, you're not fully aligned. three, you haven't fully combined finances. You see, my wife and I have one joint checking account. And so I would know if she was dropping a thousand bucks on McDonald's burritos pretty quickly. And we would have the conversation about it. Plus, my wife and I do a budget. And so we sit down before the month begins and go, hey, what's happening this month? How much are we going to spend on eating out?

How much are we going to spend on groceries? And then we spitshake and go, all right, we're going to stick to that. So there's a lot of dysfunction happening in this marriage. And I think the McDonald's burritos, while a. funny scenario because of the low amount, you know, all things considered, and the fact that it's being spent on McDonald's has some inherent humor there. But I do think that they have some marital issues to work through. And as usual, old Ronald is exposing it. That's what happens. I do appreciate the comments. A thousand bucks on McDonald's is absolutely nuts,

a barf emoji. Don't yuck someone else's yum. I'm sure it's a delicious burrito. I'm just saying every day. You kind of watch out for the small intestine of the colon. Look out for number one and number two. I hope you're happy with yourself. All right. I'm done. I'm done. I'm moving on. Let's get to something more serious. Let's see what Henry has to say. I'm in a good spot, but I'd like to see if y'all are in my shoes, how would you, what would you do in the future you're coming up? All right. Lay it out. So me and my wife previously had a home. Then we actually just moved back in with my dad. He's not charged us anything. He just wants us to save money.

I currently have $14,000 in my bank account. We got a little surprise when we moved in, and my wife is now six months pregnant. So, yeah, I don't really know if I should just keep saving and then buy a home, or some people were telling me to buy a trailer, some people were telling me buy a home. I'm not really too sure all I'm doing is just putting money in my checking account. and I don't really know what direction to go. How much debt do you have? I don't have any.

I actually just paid all mine off. Awesome. So you're at Babysip 3. You're saving up a fully funded emergency fund. What does three to six months of expenses look like for you guys? Obviously, it's tough now because you're basing it off of zero rent living with dad. But what would it be? Well, right now the only thing we really have is my wife got a new car.

About six months ago. Way to bury the lead, Henry. Is there a payment on it? Yeah, it's about... Henry. That's debt, homie. We've got to start off this relationship with honesty. I asked if you were dead free.

Well, I'm thinking of me. She put it in her name. She did all about herself. No, y'all are y'all. Any money she owes, you owe. Was this against your will, or were you an accomplice in the crime? Well, see, I work a lot. I get work on call, so I was one of those I was on call working,

and she said she was going to go look at cars and then kind of... Snuck away. to the dealership and showed up with what? How much was this car? 32,000. And what do you guys make a year? So I make 2150. She makes 19.

Oh, my gosh. An hour. Okay. So you guys are making, I'm going to just ballpark it and say you guys are making about 80K a year? Yeah, about there. Okay. She's left John Deloney flabbergasted on this one.

Okay. Secret car. That takes the case. from one of the craziest calls we've taken going, you know, $32,000 in debt behind his back. As he tells us, well, I'm dead free. No, I'm completely dead free. My wife, she's got some debt, though. I'm like, bro, it's y'all, as my friend, Dr. John Deloney said, this is a real dark situation.

You don't just saunter off to the dealership. Well, I was working, so what was I supposed to do? You know, she's got to go to the dealership, she was looking at a car, she comes back with a car. That is insane. That would be a relationship ender for most people. That's some huge financial infidelity. That is one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make in your life beyond a house. And so again, a lot of these calls turn into a marriage issue where there's a lack of communication, a lack of trust, financial infidelity happens.

This is mine. This is hers. That's her debt. This is my income. This is her income. All of that tit for tat and scorekeeping causes situations like this. And it's why I always recommend joint accounts, joint accountability, joint vision. That's the only way to live.

if you don't want to be the next caller on The Ramsey Show. My husband does well financially, but he tends to be a bit controlling with money. He's always taken the inheritance I've received each year and invested it in the stock market. Recently I received about 50K, which will probably be the last bit of inheritance for a while. Since I'm a stay-at-home mom with no allowance, I'd like to keep this money in a separate savings account in my name only, but he's adamantly against this and wants me to give him money to invest. He said he'll give me the monthly dividends as an allowance. I don't like the word allowance used when it's not with your own child.

Right. Is this how it's been your whole marriage? Yeah. And sometimes I get in allowance and sometimes I don't. Based on your behavior? Did you clean up your toys? I don't understand. Does this feel weird to you?

Now that I say it out loud, it is. It's very weird. It's just financial abuse. It's gotten worse since we had our child. I have a six-year-old and I'm not able to put him in like, swim lessons and stuff. And he does really well financially. We have about a $5 million net worth. He makes about 400k a year. And he says that I'm selfish to keep the money in a savings account and that I'll lose money to inflation. I've asked for an allowance before and he's done it for a

couple months. But then, you know, it's just not very much. It's like $400 to $500 a month. So this call just disgusted me from the get-go when she mentioned that she gets an allowance. Then it just got worse. As I found out, they're making great money. And this woman is being treated like a child in her own marriage. And sadly, we get calls like this a lot, where one spouse is very controlling, has all the cards, isn't showing them to the other partner going, hey, you can have a little some crumbs off the table if you're a good girl. Disgusting. And she gets into the fact that she got a $50,000 inheritance that he's now wanting to take and then give to her piecemeal in some sort of monthly payment allowance situation again.

And I like some of this advice here. Use the 50K to get a lawyer. That's not bad. And some people are encouraging divorce, which I rarely do on the show. That's a decision for them to make. That's not advice that I'm going to ever give someone. I don't have the full scope of a situation and a five-minute call. But let me just say, this marriage was not looking good.

And unfortunately, when you don't combine finances and you're not one with that person when it comes to your money goals, your values. This is what it turns into. It turns into resentment and eventually financial abuse and sometimes financial infidelity because we don't know what the heck this guy is doing with his money. And there's no easy solutions here other than a lot of hard conversations. And hopefully they can keep this marriage going. We'll see.

All right. We'll get to the next call in just a second. Let me tell you, I enjoy taking calls on the show. I enjoy trying to walk people through some really difficult and sticky situations. But you know what I despise? Calls from spammers and scammers trying to get my money. So that's why I use DeleteMe, one of the sponsors of today's video. Because it seems like every other day there's a new scam to watch out for.

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or use the link in the description below. Happy saving. Next up on unforgettable calls. We actually were sold a home illegally and we are wondering if we should claim bankruptcy. So we bought the home in April of 2023, and we wanted to get some things done like fencing and encapsulate the cross space underneath. And we learned that when we went to go get the property surveyed for the fencing, that the property didn't exist. And so there were no permits. There's no CO on the house. and what do you mean the property didn't exist

they told us the property didn't exist in the county there was no house that was on that property I'm confused you bought a house sight unseen no we bought the house we saw the house the county had no idea the house was built oh so the house was illegally built on that land in the first place with no permits and then that person sold it to you how did you even go through the closing process was it just done through the

seller? No, it was done through all of the bells and whistles that you're supposed to do with inspectors and real estate agents and lenders and everything. And they still sold it to us. I mean, aren't there titles to be cleared? I mean, I'm just so confused how nobody caught this. Yeah, so the lenders were in the bylaws of our contract. They were supposed to get the CEO and obtain it five days after closing and they never did. And then we, didn't find out about all of that. This is our first home. We were first time home buyers. So we learned a lot in this process. What did you pay for it? At $259. And you got a loan on that? Yes. It's a USDA loan. Okay. How much was the loan for? It was for $259. So you put nothing down with the USDA loan?

No, we did. We did put down $12,000. Okay. So basically, we have a lawyer on it now. We tried to get help without a lawyer and tried to talk to the builder and gave him all the documents and tried to actually get him to agree to buy back the house. He obviously did not agree to that. In the process of all of this, the house is actually, it was creating more mold. The floors are sinking, the walls are leaning. We're starting to see things. Did you get an inspection? We did. Yes. And they caught none of this. They caught none of it. This is a scam. Yeah, is terrible. Yeah, was the inspector friends with the builder?

We're not sure, but it seems like it. So this wasn't a resell somebody else living in it. This was a builder built this essentially as a spec house on that property. As a brand new home. He said it was a brand new build. Oh, well, do you have a good... Oh, of course. Do you have a good lawyer?

We're not sure. At this point, nothing has happened and we're... No, no, no. Hold on a second. Okay. He's... Now your lawyer's dragging this out? Oh, man.

Well, the lawyer's not dragging it out, but there's not really a lot of motion happening. And we're just, we just keep hanging. Okay. Mary. Mary. Mary. It is time for you to get real, seriously mad and get going with it. Fire the lawyer now.

Wow, that was five minutes of pain and suffering right there. I still don't know. I wish people would reach, could you just reach back out? Listen, we went through it together, Mary, can you just send us an email and say, hey, here's what we're at. Lawyers working on it. The builder's getting sued. He paid us the money back. I don't know.

But this was one of those nightmare scenarios where there really is no good answers. You're just airing the dumpster fire situation on, you know, national radio slash YouTube and hoping for the best. And I guess the lesson learned here is, Do your due diligence and never assume that anybody knows what they're doing. So you've got to stay on top of people, check on the title insurance, check with the closing company, stay in top of the inspection report, the CEO, I mean, the certificate of occupancy, that never showed up. That was nowhere to be found. There were so many red flags here along the way. And I think Mary just got starry-eyed with being a first-time home buyer that she sort of just went with it all hoping people knew what they were doing.

And this is what can happen in a rare situation. Okay, that's enough calls for one day, but let me tell you, there's more crazy where that came from, and we'll cover that in some future episodes. But here's some themes I've seen from these clips today. There was a lack of communication, there was a lack of trust, and that caused resentment, financial abuse, and financial infidelity. And as you can see, a lot of these were couples. There was two people involved, and one person was not on the same page as the other person. One person was trying to do the right thing.

One person was doing something behind someone's back, and it always is a lot of it. ends up in chaos and pain and resentment. And I don't want you there. And I know a lot of you watch the show and you're going, uh, at least that's not me. I feel better about myself. Sure, that's one reason to watch the show. But listen, this stuff, even though the worst case scenarios, could happen to any of us. You don't know what's going to come at you. You don't know what life's going to throw at you. And that's why I have such a conservative view when it comes to money. Because I know life's going to throw us some curveballs. Murphy is going to show up at your door and knock down that door. So you've got to get out of debt. Don't owe people money. You got to have an emergency fund.

You got to be on the same page as your spouse building wealth together instead of separately and hoping that both of you end up in a good place. It's not going to happen. So having that alignment early on, and if you haven't had it in your whole marriage, it's time to get some marriage counseling, some marriage therapy to get on the same page. Maybe that looks like going through Financial Peace University together. Maybe that looks like doing an every dollar budget for the first time together to actually look in the financial mirror and say, where are we at? Where are we trying to go? Are we going to be a team to get there? Or are we going to have separate accounts and just lie to each other and hope this all works out? So I hope that's not you. I hope you guys are crushing it

financially and avoiding a lot of the pitfalls that we see on the show. And I'm going to drop a link in the description to The Ramsey Show Highlights YouTube channel where you can find more clips like these either to encourage you or to make you go, yikes, I never want to do that. And if you think these calls were crazy, wait till you see what happened when I asked people how much debt they have in the streets of Nashville. Keep watching this next video to check it out by clicking it here or use the link in the description. And don't forget to hit those like and subscribe buttons and share this video with your friend who is most likely to max out their credit card at McDonald's. You know exactly who it is, and if you don't, it's you, bro. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.