George Kamel - Dave Ramsey's Biggest Concern for 2026

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

We did it again. That’s right, I’ve got the king of commonsense back in the hot seat: Dave Ramsey.     Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video Millionaires in Cars Getting Coffee With Dave Ramsey. • 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan. • 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Get up to 20% off Cozy Earth with code GEORGE. • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • Save money on your phone plan with Boost Mobile. • Go to FAIRWINDS Credit Union for an exclusive account bundle!   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Finance only through the lens of math is extremely naive. You're leaving out all the implications of your life of this mathematical decision. The American Dream is not dead. Your life is not horrible. This is the best time in the history of man to be alive. There's more opportunity now, more chance to be somebody, more chance to build wealth and change your family tree. It's easier now at this moment than at any time in human history. You know, we've spent our whole lives. lives proving that someone can start from nothing and be somebody in America.

And I said, look, here's what you need to do, Kevin. You got to fire me. If I were in your shoes, I would fire me. I don't have to try to beg or change my principles or change who we are. And the consequence was more prosperity came after getting fired. Pay attention. Winning is not an accidental act. Success is a pile of garbage.

It's all the mistakes you made. You're just standing on it instead of laying under it. There's no reason to be hopeless. There's always a way to do something. There's always a way to take another step in the right direction. Well, what are you most concerned about in 2026? What keeps you up at night? Don't call it a comeback, but we've done it again.

That's right. I've got the King of Common Sense back in the hot seat, Dave Ramsey. He's a best-selling author and the number one enemy of American Express. And more importantly, he's also my mentor, my boss, and the owner of my third favorite goatee. Number two, Guy Fieti. Number one, watch till the end to find out. That's called a tease.

Let's do this. Dave, welcome back. Good to be back. Our last episode in here, I said, if I don't get 500,000 views, Dave's going to fire me. But I didn't put a timeline on it. So we just hit 500,000 views on that video.

Took us a little over a year, but we got there. And I'm still employed. And Dave never made the threat. That was an onus I put on myself. That was a self-imposed. Yes. Well, I know you've been away for a little while. The Internet has been very concerned about you.

You made the news. You were in a hospital bed, poorly photoshopped from the Babylon B. Are you doing okay now? Our friend Seth Dillon at the Babylon B. He's funny, isn't it? You're out of ICU. You look great. Let me tell you.

The interesting thing was that particular post with the Babylon B woke up the 60 to 75-year-old crowd, all my friends and relatives, every one of them. They're at that age. I thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, and they all sent it to me just in case I didn't know what to happen. Yeah. I'm glad you get that, too. Hundreds. Wow.

Well, I'm glad you're doing okay after the news of the 50-year mortgage. I think you were, you know, working on your tan in combo at the time. I don't think you were that concerned. People think that you're glued to the headlines going, oh, my gosh. I looked really bad in that picture. You know, you had lost some weight in an unhealthy way. He photoshopped me into serious ICU, yeah. Yeah.

But let's talk about that. You had mentioned it on air. I did a video on. it and people are going, oh, man, Dave's going to have a field day with this one. And you were very clear about it. So what are your feelings about the 50-year mortgage that Trump proposed? I'm assuming, and I said this on the air, that President Trump actually understands the math. If he does, this was a completely bogus political stunt, just like Biden saying he was going to forgive the student loans when he didn't have the power to do it. He knew he didn't have the power to do it.

He just doesn't make headlines. It was just trying to say, look at me, I'm doing something. And because if he understands the math, he knows that the 50-year mortgage doesn't really do anything. Because the difference in your payment on a 30-year and a 50-year, it doesn't lower it almost in half. It lowers it only 16%. And that's if the interest rates stay the same. If the interest rates stay the same. If the interest rates are both 5%, it lowers it 16% to go to almost double the number of years you're in.

And from a 15 to a 30 is not double. You know, you're not, again, you're not saving half when you go from a 15 to a 30. You only save about 24% doing that. So that's why we've always recommended 15 year. Because the math on mortgages does not work on a straight line, it works on a curve, a geometric progression, compound interest working against you. And so, yeah, the 50-year mortgages, it's come up before when interest rates were high or the real estate market was slow. But when anybody runs the math out, all right, they're like, it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't solve much.

It doesn't like make housing affordable. Well, some countries have the like 100-year mortgage, which is generational debt and you get to inherit it as a gift from your ancestors. Again, you might as well just do interest only. Because that's what essentially. And plan to never pay it off. Yeah. The amount you're actually attacking principle with. Which is absolutely stupid, by the way.

Yeah. The heart of it is home prices have gotten ridiculous and maybe this will be helpful, which we now know it's not. But it's led to this movement of the, quote, forever renter. This person who's just going, I'll never own a house. I'm just going to make peace with that and rent forever until I die. What's the point of home ownership? What do you tell that person who's maybe lost hope or even just goes, it's not for me? Well, it's kind of sad that you reach that point.

But there's always been people, when people feel like they can't get something. And they feel like they can't control their own destiny. that my actions, I cannot, through my actions, I control the controllables, I can't get there, then that equals hopelessness, which equals kind of drama queen stuff. Like in my generation, people would stay stuff like, well, the little man can't get ahead, you're stuck, man, the man, the corporations, the administration, they would make up all these words that they didn't know what they meant. And, you know, but the little man stuck.

The system. And so you're always going to have a car payment. She might as well get you a good car, son, and this kind of stuff. And it's the same line of bull, right? It's the same thing. It's saying, I can't get what I want, and this is my passive-aggressive, negative version of throwing a hissy fit. And so I'll just rent. I can't do anything.

I'll never be a house. So I'm just going to be a renter. And then I'm going to do a TikTok on it to show that I'm smart and I'm sophisticated. You're not smarter sophisticated. You just gave up hope. That's all. it is. You just gave up, and you gave up based on where you sit today and where the market sits today, which is not the reality of where you will be 10 years from now or where the market

will be 10 years from now. Things change. And so today, maybe you can't afford to buy a home based on your income and the location that you chose and the current housing prices. That might be true today. But to extrapolate that through 50 or 60 or 70 years of your life, That's dumb. Obviously, that's not right. To say where I am today is where I'm always going to be. It's not true. You know, I mean, at any given point in my life, there's something I couldn't afford.

And that doesn't mean I can never afford it. I can never have a nice car. I was a broke college student. Of course, I couldn't afford a nice car. You know, we got our first little whole house, you know, but that doesn't mean never. House prices are just ridiculous. House price has always been ridiculous. The first house Sharon and I bought was $80,000.

It was almost identical to the home I grew up in that my parents bought 25 years before. It was within six miles of the house they bought 25 years before for 12,000. So if you look back, you were always going to go, oh, my gosh, the prices are insane compared to... 100%. I mean, my parents were looking at us going, you paid 80. Have you lost your mind? You're going to go broke. You're going to hell everyone.

The whole family tree is destroyed. And that house is 80,000 in 1982 or whatever. And so now what is that house today? It's 600. Wow. And the mapping. Or 500 or 500 or whatever it is. Yeah.

400, something like that. But it's obviously it's gone up, but it went up from 25 years before I bought it. You know. And so that's just, again, you cannot take a particular moment in time. Life is a film strip. it's not a snapshot. And so the next frame, something changes. The next frame, something changes.

The next frame, something changes. And you could be the roadrunner. You know, the anvil could fall on your head in the next frame. Or you could be, you know, that you could be Rudy and you finally get in the game, you know, in the next frame. And so you don't know what the next frame is. But the only thing for sure is change. That's the only thing you can count on. So to extrapolate a negative situation as your only possible destiny, that's just defeated.

Well, it's assuming the envelope. is going to fall on me, so why move? Yeah. That's essentially where they've landed. It's fatalism. It's a defeatist attitude. Little man can't get ahead. That's it.

I'm a little guy, and I made it. I got ahead. So I think I'm living proof. George, we're not talking about physical. Oh, okay. I didn't understand that. Well, let's get into your outlook for 2026. What are you most hopeful for as you've been seeing things play out?

I'm always early to the party on something being positive. So I'm really hopeful that the energy sector really gets moving and gets the economy moving. And I thought it would already be there. And it's there, but it's not where I thought it would be by this time. A year ago, if you asked me, I would have said by now we've been drill, baby drill, and we're, it's okay. But I'd like to see that get heated up, no pun intended. And I'd like to see the real estate market get heated up again. All the way to...

More people selling, more people buying? Yeah, just more activity, just more things going on. And, you know, because that moves the market around, and that lets people... Because, see, part of what happens is that there's no inventory because people feel stuck, so they don't want to move up out of their great interest rate, or they don't want to move up into a house that they think is overpriced. But if the market starts moving again and people start moving, then you're freeing up those entry-level inventory pieces that are now kind of frozen. And so the market, some churn in the market is good for people to be able to enter the market. And so I'd like to see the real estate market get moving, and I hope it does.

So we need more supply there, which is going to mean people selling or builders building. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I saw a thing the other day. I mean, I was talking to a real estate expert guy, and he was just saying, you know, anything we can do to get inventory up, supply up, it holds prices. holds the price down, even if the market's honking. And part of what we've had is we've had these major national corporations, both real estate reits and Chinese companies and everything else, coming in and they're buying entire streets of houses and taking them off the market permanently, turning them into rentals. So they're sucking the supply out. So that is actually a

policy thing that the Trump administration could do. You could stop this massive corporate sucking sound on the inventory or Chinese sound or whatever, whoever group it is, that it's both. And just get more supply on the street. And that's a policy decision. That's not a economics thing. But it has an economic impact because if you could just say, all right, all the, I don't know, let's just call it a million houses that are off the market now because of that. They're not going to continue to pull that away from the marketplace.

Because that's part of what's driven the problem is. lack of inventory. Yeah. Well, I've heard a solution to this, and maybe you know more about it, is this sort of portable mortgage idea, which has been in existence, but it doesn't really work out. If someone could just take their current rate, move it to a new house, more people would sell in a perfect world. But that's not how it works in the lending world. You can't just move the mortgage with it. Yeah, it's a theory, but the mechanics of that theory are so complicated, given the system that's set up today that I... You wouldn't bank on it, quite literally. I would literally not bank money.

Well, what are you most concerned about in 2026? What keeps you up at night? People being hopeless for the wrong reasons. On either side. Yeah. There's no reason to be hopeless. There's always a way to do something. There's always a way to take another step in the right direction.

The American dream, the American system, is not devastatingly flawed to the point that the average person can't go. and be somebody. And there's more negativity and more hopelessness. And in the name of sophistication, they try to dress it up. You know, we've spent our whole lives proving that someone can start from nothing and be somebody in America, more than any other system in the history of man. But this negative Debbie Downer all over TikTok and Debbie Downer all over Instagram, and they spend their amazing amount of brain calories trying to prove that life sucks, and it's impossible.

Well, you can get likes and views for it now. Back in the day, it was just you and your buddies complaining to each other. Now you can actually get some engagement out of it. Yeah, and there was beer involved then. But it's like, holy, you can't even get that now. So now you just get the negative. Yeah, so we need more hopeful people going, I control more than I think in my life. The American Dream is not dead.

Your life is not horrible. You have the, this is the best time in the history of man to be alive. There's more opportunity now, more chance to be somebody, more chance to build wealth and change your family tree. It's easier now at this moment than at any time in human history. It's easier than when I started. And I became a millionaire twice. I'm so dumb, I had to do it two times. Just to prove it to yourself.

You could do it again. And prove it to everybody, I guess. I always think if you have the ability to complain from a smartphone with shelter and AC, heat, you're doing okay. Yeah. I mean, and complain about rich people, which is kind of, that's funny. Well, that even that is, the spectrum of that has changed. Because now when you talk about rich or wealthy, you're not talking about average

millionaires. They're thinking of billionaires in their head and going, well, this doesn't work. Because, you know, I can never be a billionaire. So what's the point? When did the goalpost move so drastically? Well, a billion is a thousand million. And so, yeah, that is not for, Everyone can't get there.

Especially not through their 401K. Everyone's not that pretty, that smart, that positioned, that lucky, that whatever. It takes a different skill set and a different thing to get there. I mean, the millionaires that we've studied, we know what they did. They saved in their 401K. They got their house paid off. And, you know, they live below their means. And they have two cars, one house.

No jet. Okay. Now that's, you know, but when you talk to billionaires, You know, we talked to Jimmy John. He's got two jets, you know, and he's worth $3 billion. One for him, one for his wife. But he grew a massive business. You know, you can't save your way in your 401k into a billion. That's not possible. So it's a different formula to get there. And it's mostly entrepreneurs who did. Almost all the billionaires in the Forbes 400 that are first generation that didn't inherit it, which is like 70% of them are first gen. But they're almost all business somehow. They either grew. They grew a business and sold it. They grew a business, took it public, or they grew a business and own a massive amount of cash flow.

So entrepreneurship is still a prosperous path in your mind. You can still do it. I mean, you know, I mean, opportunities not over. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff you can do. There's more problems to solve. Absolutely. And you can do it better than someone else. There always is.

And you've got access to information, and you can move so quickly now versus, you know, we would have to actually mail a letter and put a stamp on it. You know? How long since any of you done that? Send a fax. Gully. A fax. Yeah. Bum,

but um, but dump, but dump, but dump, and then it's waxy paper and it would smear and the contract wasn't binding.

And now I can send you an email and you can scratch your fingernail on something and I have a binding contract. You know? What a time to be alive. Something to be thankful for that we don't have to fax anymore,

hopefully. Well, we've seen lots of ups and downs in the economy over the last few years, and people are still, you know, even though the economy has been doing well as far as the stock market goes, we've had some great years. People are still worried and we're, you know, a year into a new presidential administration. What's going well and what isn't as far as you've seen it? The actual fundamentals, the actual pieces of the economy are going stronger than people think they are. That's going well. What's not going well is no one's telling people that. The difference in a Ronald Reagan and a Donald Trump was Ronald Reagan told you every day how wonderful things were and made you believe it.

And then you went out and acted as if things were wonderful. And guess what? Self-fulfilling prophecy, things became wonderful. Donald Trump is doing all of these things. But the only thing he's doing is just pissing everybody off in the process. He just, you know. He likes the controversy. He's just making fun of ABC reporters or something, you know, instead of, instead of,

of going, hey, guys, America's greatest country, you know, make America great again. Look at me. I did it. Instead of going, you're the hero. And you guys out there can really do this stuff. I've created an environment where you can go be somebody. Now, go be somebody. And I'm showing you how to do that.

That was Reagan's masterpiece. And, you know, to Bill Clinton's credit, didn't agree with a lot of his politics. But he had one of the best economies in his presidency. And he actually bounced the freaking budget. That's impressive. Little known fact. Nobody talks about. It was very impressive.

But he made you believe that you could go in. He didn't try to make Washington the hero of the story. And my problem with politicians, as always, they try to make themselves the bad ones. Politicians try to make themselves the hero of the story. Statesmen make you the hero of the story, and they're there to serve, their public servants. And President Trump has not done a good job with that. And I'm a supporter. I endorsed him for president,

I do all that kind of stuff, but I'm not a worshipper. And so, you know, I'd like to see the bully pulpit, so to speak, make people believe again, not just in you, but in America. And this is what's going on. You can do this because that's what I do. And I believe, and I truly believe that. I think it's true.

I don't think it's a false narrative. And so I think that's what's not going right. Well, for 30 years now, you've made our, audience, our viewers, the hero in the story. You know, anytime they come up on the stage and they say, Dave, you help me become dead free. You quickly say, no, I didn't. You did it. You did the work. We're just here to, you know, coach you, guide you along the way. And I think that makes a huge difference. What I did do is I made you believe you could do it. Not that I was going to do it for you. Yeah. But I made you believe you could do it. And that's one of the secret sauces of all

of Ramsey, of you and Rachel and Jade and Deloney and Coleman, all of us. I mean, our job is to make you believe you can do it. And here's some tools and here's some fresh ideas and here's a dose of hope to stir into it. And by the way, we can laugh while we're doing it. And let's do, you know, let's do all that. And then if you believe you can do it, then you'll take the steps and go do it. But belief and hope are a big deal. Well, you have referenced the IRS as the KGB. Jokingly, I might add, big fans. And then Trump proposed to abolish the IRS. So are you on board with that? And could it actually work? Well, like a lot of things, some of this is for shock value. But what would work is if you change the tax system, you could abolish the IRS.

But as long as you have an income tax system that the volumes would fill this entire studio with all the regulations, you're going to have the IRS. I mean, you're not going to just let people go, well, may or may not do what those things say. I'll just turn in my thing and good luck. But if you did away with the, the only way you can do away with the IRS is do away with the income tax, in other words. And so if you went to something like a national sales tax, Europe has, or the fare tax that was put out many years ago, national sales tax idea, you know, you could, it either, you calculated on the item, that's it.

Yeah. There's only one way to do it. You don't need volumes of regulations to figure out how to do it. And most states have a sales tax. And today, all of our software, those of us that sell on our website at Ramsey, automatically collects tax from the state of Washington if you're in the state of Washington, and then we send the state of Washington there a portion. It automatically does it.

Our algorithms, our software that we've got builds that in. And so you could do that with a national VAT tax, a value-added tax or whatever, and do away with the income tax. And then you could do away with the IRS, and nobody would be mad. That's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of employees. Yeah, it's wild. How many people work there and what it costs the taxpayers to run it? The numbers of buildings that we have for them to be in, also they pick on us. I mean, it's, yeah, it's gross. Well, and I mean, Tennessee, there's no state income tax. A lot of people love it when they move here.

Right. Because they're saving a whole bunch of money. It's a huge reason. And we do have, you know, a fairly high sales tax that helps. Yeah, lower than some, higher than some. Yeah. All right, I'm here for it. Let's go back to the 50-year mortgage for a second. The entire Internet said, I can't wait to hear what, Dave says about this. And that's because you've been remarkably consistent for the last 30 years saying, hey, I want you to be completely debt-free. If you can pay for a house and cash, do it. But I'm not going to yell at you if you do a 15-year mortgage. We get a lot of flack for our principles never changing, despite the economy changing. Why not make tweaks to the baby steps? The people want to know, why is Dave so staunch that this is the way it has to be? Well, if the reason that we're supposed to make a tweak to one of our suggestions is to convenience you and encourage you to do something that's harmful to you, well, that would be kind of dumb.

You know, and so, oh, well, because the economy is bad, let's go with adjustable rate, 30-year mortgages. Or let's go with a 50-year mortgage. Let's go with a interest-only mortgage. Things are struggling, and the poor little people can't get little houses, and they're little upset. And so let's change everything. And so let's give a drunk a drink. Let's go because you're in New York City or you're in California. Yeah, so math doesn't math there.

You're the outlier. You know, you're the exception. You get to do something that is self-destructive. I'm going to let you kill yourself. Yeah. I'm going to let you shoot yourself in the foot. Why would I do that? No, I'm not going to change that.

We change, we would change something in the baby steps, not because it is inconvinful. to you, but only if it's bad for you. But if you follow these steps and you grind it out, 100% of the time it works. If you go all in. If you follow it and grind it out and do what we teach, which is all in, a hundred percent of the time it works that you work it. And so I'm not changing that because it's there for you. It's not there for me.

I've already there. I've got financial peace. Life's good at Dave Insurance, okay? So we're good. It's not for me. But I'm not going to make you feel good about doing something that's harmful to you because I love you and I want you to win. You know, why would I do that? That's, you know, if you're looking at your own child and you go, yeah, well, you know, I know it's kind of tough.

So why don't you do drugs? You know, that's a good idea. You know, it's like it wasn't like it was when I was a kid. I was a kid or a different society. But today, today you really ought to do, you ought to really do crack. That's gentle parenting. You know, that's just like, that's just dumber than crap. Why would I do that?

I'm not going to tell somebody to do something. And so, yes, we would adjust the baby steps, but not because of your whining or not because of your little drama queen or because it's hard. It's always been hard. You know, that's why we've always looked and said, being a millionaire is a big deal. There's not as many of them because it's hard. Normal's broke because normal people do stupid stuff. When I was doing stupid stuff, I was normal.

That's what I, same thing. And so, yeah, it's hard. Winning is always hard. It's always harder than losing. It's always harder than being mediocre and average. Crap in America today, you can just wake up and breathe and have a really good life. Just kind of coast through the whole stupid thing. But if you really want to win, now you're going to have some pain.

Dave, hold on. Dave, one second. Do not. Dave, don't move. Hold still. Perfect. Thank you. All right, we'll get back to the conversation in just a minute.

But first, let me explain why I'm really excited about pants these days. That's right, Dave. Pants. Two words, Cozy Earth, who happen to be sponsors of today's video. Their everywhere pants make you look put together without feeling put together, if that makes sense. Structured, flexible, perfect for the office, your home office, or the Oval Office. And when the day's done, treat yourself to Cozy Earth's bamboo joggers, which are somehow even more soft and breathable. Best of all, you can try and risk-free with a 30-day return window.

And right now, you can get up to 20% off by using the promo code, George, at cozyearth.com slash George or by clicking the link in the description below. And before we get back to the conversation, I've got an important PSA for you. Right now, your personal info is floating around the internet. And plenty of online thieves are out there just waiting to capture your data

and sell it to the highest bidder. And that's where Delete Me comes in. They track down your data and delete it from these sketchy data broker websites so you don't have to worry about constant calls, text, and emails from spammers and scammers. Delete Me will even send you a custom report so you know exactly what they did

and how much time they saved you. And right now, you can get 20% off their annual plans at join deleteme.com slash George or to use the link in the description below. Dave, thank you for your patience. Well, I've noticed on air over the years, you've tended to lose your patience with people who know the plan and want to argue

that it doesn't work, yet they haven't done it. So what are the people that you have little patience for on the air? Like, what's going to cause you to hang up on someone the fastest when they call into the show? Well, I mean, keep in mind, the Ramsey show is there, and it always has been, to help people. So when you call in, we're trying to help two people, the person calling and all those 100 million people listening

or whatever's listening that day, right? All that stuff. So trying to help both of them. And so if you as a caller cease to be helpful to all of them, we're going to move on. We're going to put you on hold, which we don't actually hang up on them. It's important to note.

They can still hear you. We have just muted them. I've just ended the discussion with you. I'm just now going to tell you. It's like a four-year-old that melting down in the cereal aisle. And I want it. I want it right now. I want my fruit loops.

And you can't tell me I can't have fruit loops. It's like, I'm not going to negotiate with that. So the thread is you actually don't want help. Yeah. That's when it's. Yeah. And so some questions are not real questions. They're actually passive aggressive statements.

It's like, Dave, you don't really believe that you can get 11 or 12% in an index fund, do you? Yes, if you pull up an index fund. It's not Santa. It says 11.8% for the last 75 years. Hello, on an S&P. Yes, I believe that math. Yes, I do.

And just because your brain doesn't work good, doesn't mean that I don't believe that. But that's not a question. See, that's a statement. You don't really believe that, do you? Yeah. I do. And so they're really saying, you're an idiot, and I'm right, and I'm calling up to, you know, debate with you, but I really don't have the courage to do that. So I'm going to ask a question.

It's not really a question. It's a statement. So, you know, that kind of stuff. So passive aggressive, I don't have much use for. But the person calling up for help, I will help them from now on. So the one person we, you know, number one, when you cease to be helpful to yourself or to someone else, the discussion is not adding value to people's lives. We need to move on. Number two, I'm not going to argue with you.

I didn't call you and ask you your opinion. You called me and asked me my opinion. This is not a debate club. This is not, you know, I don't mind having a discussion with you and explaining to you why something is. But, you know, and so like the fourth time you tell me you're not going to do something that I just said to do, I can't help you. You know, like I remember one, Rachel was on with me in the early days, and she was just aghast that I just popped one. And she's like, this lady called out. I mean, she, you know, they owed like $75,000 on the stinking escalate or something.

And she's like, and they made $45,000. And I said, well, I mean, you're going to have sell escalate. And she goes, well, I didn't call about that. I don't really care what you called about. You have to. You just revealed this new information. You guys cannot win with this escalate. The math doesn't work.

And she's like, well, that's a non-starter. We're not even going to have that discussion. I said, you know, and George is calling from, you know, wherever, right? And Rachel's like, you just cut her. Yeah, I'm not going to, I can't help her if she keeps the escalate. Yeah. When your intuition on how this call is going to go, who we can help while trying to, you know, make a show happen. Well, they're arguing with you when you're telling them exactly.

what they need to do. You go in and you, okay, you sit down with your personal trainer, you got a keg, they got a six-pack, right? And they go, well, you know, you need to eat this and this and this, and you don't need to eat this and this and this and you go, oh, yeah, but pizza's, and my, I think pizza's, pizza's a non-starter. I mean, and donuts, seven donuts every morning is a non-starter. The personal trainer is like, what are you paying me for? You're an idiot.

You know, why am I even in this room with this moron? And that's what they're thinking. And, like, you know, you're going to argue with it. them about their nutrition plan. Or they're like, okay, pick up this weight. No, I don't usually pick up weights. You know, it's like, I think that's something to someone. I'm not a weight guy. I'm not really a weight guy. And they're like, what the heck am I doing here? You know, it's that people do that on our show. They do it all the time. And so we, you know, we keep them on for a minute for the entertainment value, but really they're not adding value. So I'm not going to argue

with you when you cease to be helpful to everybody else. Those are the two main things. The third one that gets pretty quick is you tell me for about way too long, how much you love the show, and you've listened for 14 years, and your parents have listened, and your grandparents have listened. Dave, I want to ask you about leasing a car. I'm like, you're just too dumb for words. You know, one of these things, something in this conversation is not true. You know, if you've been listening all that time and you call up with something that's exactly perpetrated, Now, if you're brand new and you don't know who we are and you ask a question this like that, yeah, that's exactly what we want. We're going to give you an opportunity to teach you why that's a really stupid but idea, mathematically bad.

It's the most expensive way to operate a vehicle. I don't care what your CPA said. You need to fire them if they told you to do this. I don't care what your mama said. I don't care what this is why. And we could talk through and teach you why not to lease a car. But if you call up and set the whole thing up with you, you know, I've been through Financial Beach University three times. I've read every one of your books.

I'm a huge fan. And Dave, I'm getting ready to lease a brand new navigator. I'm like, what the? They just want permission for their bad decision. No, no, they don't either. They don't even want that. It's like, I don't know. It's like they just wanted to be on the air.

To hear themselves talk. And I mean, why would you walk into the bear's den and, you know, throw raw meat in front of him and then jump towards him? I mean, I don't understand. It's not, it doesn't make sense. You're the bear in this case. Well, I mean, we are. Ramsey is, not just me. I'm a cub.

best. Y'all don't. Y'all don't. That's generous. Yeah, I'm a grizzly cub, but yeah. But I'm saying that, you know, when you all call it, I watch Rachel and you take a guy down the other day. I mean, same thing.

Oh, yeah. Rachel is brutal on that guy. Same thing, though. He wants to buy his toys. Same thing. Tell him you can't afford the toy. But, you know, but, and so what we'll do is if you're brand new is, and we all are in in agreement at Ramsey about this, is we start with gentle.

And go, okay, here's what's going on. We try to meet you where you are. Figure out how you're analyzing this. Let's discuss this issue through that lens. Is it a math lens, an academic lens, a spiritual lens, a relational lens? How is it we're looking at this? And let's meet them there and talk through the angle on that and discuss how we're getting there. And based on the way you're looking at it, here's what's wrong with your logic.

And here's where you should be going. And here's what we're going to do. And about the third time that they want to come back and argue, not at, Asking questions is different. Real questions is different than arguing. And you can tell. But you can, everybody, a listener can tell. Everybody's going, this guy's arguing.

They can sniff it out. This is arguing with Jade. This is dangerous. Don't argue with Jade. That's a good move. You can argue with me, and I'll go toe to toe. Because some of these people, they want to come at you with math when it's really an emotional peace decision. Which comes into this next question, Dave.

You were on iced coffee hour with Graham and Jack. And one recommendation you've been consistent on is if it's investment property, I only pay cash. I'm not going to, you know, leverage and go into the real estate business. You've tried that before, famously, and that's part of your Origen story. And here's the quote that you said, debt is a more effective way to grow fast if that's your goal. But what people leave out of the discussion is that you've increased your risk exponentially. I run a 100% debt-free portfolio, and so I have virtually zero pressure to make a property inordinately perform in a stressful situation. It's a lot of big words. I was impressed.

Okay. That was it. I just wanted to run that by you, see how that hits you. But do you still feel that way after they asked you, would you take out a billion-dollar loan, zero percent interest, and all these sort of funny hypotheticals? Well, where does this come from? We're friends with Jack and Graham, but we all know that they just borrow up to their freaking eyeballs. They just, they've never, they didn't. They're like young kiosakis.

I mean, they just borrow. They lean more that way. They just borrow. Leverage, leverage, leverage. And so they always like coming in and asking me these questions because they're just to, A, see if there's one little crack in the armor, like I might be just a little bit inconsistent. And they're somewhat entertained. And they think they're entertaining their audience. It gets a lot of views when they get to throw a gotcha at.

Yeah. But it's not a gotcha. It's a, you know, because there's no gotcha because they didn't get you. They didn't get you. I didn't, I wasn't got. You know, so it was, you know, we love them. They're sweet kids. But they just, they're just wrong.

Take that, Graham. No, you know what I found is that you've actually been getting in there. You've been living in their head rent-free. Oh, wow. Because Graham recently, he's selling off a lot of his property, and he said these words, I'm trying to solve for peace. And I went, the man who's a human spreadsheet said, there is more to this than math. Wow.

The hassle factor he's dealing. They've been hanging around inside this building a lot, and the more you hang out of here. I'm worried about them. I'm scared they're going to become debt-free one day. Peace will rub off on you. We're going to see Graham and Jack on the debt-free stage. Once you see somebody that has peace and you can, feel the spirit of God and you feel peace off of someone, then you want it.

Yeah. And again, it's more than math. And it's why we tell people, yeah, still pay off your mortgage, even if it's a low interest rate. That's the biggest arguments we've had on the show lately. Why would I do that? More than math is a correct terminology. But it's like to look at finance only through the lens of math is extremely naive. You're leaving out all the implications in your life of this mathematical decision. The relational, the spiritual, how does it affect your career? How does it affect your decision making? And I don't think people realize, I know they don't, a lot of people don't realize that when you're in debt here, it affects a decision over there that you didn't even think about.

Like you'll keep a toxic job because you got payments. When you could have probably accelerated your career if you had solved for peace and you went, you know, I don't really have to work here. It's a changed thing. I mean, we did a deal many years ago when Fox Business first started, Cavuto and Kevin called and the guy that was the first president of Fox Business and offered us a Fox Business show. And I told him, I said, our audience is young. our audience wants basic stuff. If you want super sophisticated finance or you want a bunch of political right-wing stuff, we're not your guy.

Or if you want me to do a show that caters to 65-year-olds, we're not your show. They said, no, we want that young audience. So they gave us a primetime show, three-year contract, and we shot the show here in Nashville. They said, well, you've got to come to New York. And I'm like, no, I live in Nashville and I'm not living in New York. And they're like, okay, I'm like, you call me. Remember, I didn't call you. Yeah, okay.

And so we put cameras in down here. We had a studio there. We were all connected by fiber. We shot the show every day. It aired at 7 o'clock at night in prime time. Did really well the first six months. Blew up all the ratings. Everything was great.

It was basically me taking calls like the radio show or like the podcast today. The other shows on there, some of them were doing good. Some of them weren't. But they had a really, what I thought was a good morning news show. And they fired everybody and brought in Don Imus. and Don was 75 or 80 years old or something, and they brought him in. And so his audience is 75 or 80 years old at the time. He's passed away since.

But he was an iconic talk radio guy back in the day. So that demographic went down, went up. The age went way up. And so I've got these young people at night. He's got the old people in the mornings, and everything else is all scrambled. Well, pretty soon they're just all. in pretty much Fox. It's 55-year-old white guys are their audience. Everything's a bulk-in bathtub and a snuggy commercial, right? And so, you know, it's basically catering to oxygen tank demographic,

right? And so... Seapaps and reverse mortgages. Yeah. And so they start calling me and going, hey, you've got to change what you're doing because our whole audience has shifted and, you know, they left you. I'm like, no, they didn't leave me. You left me. And so all of this to say, after two years, I'm talking to Kevin every third day, and he's like, you got to start doing politics. I'm like, no, I'm not doing politics. Not what I do. And you got to start doing this.

No, I'm not doing that. And I said, look, here's what you need to do, Kevin. You got to fire me. Oh. And you ask to be fired. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm not going to do what you say. And the way you've taken this station, this network, I'm not fitting in.

And I'm not going to change. and so if I were in your shoes, I would fire me. And he goes, this is the weirdest conversation I've ever had with talent. And I said, well, dude, I'm not looking for a job. You're not desperate. I didn't need the money. And I said, by the way, you're going to pay me the whole contract anyway. You're going to pay me the money anyway.

Pay it through. And because that's what you said you were going to do. And I'm keeping all the equipment because that's what it said, too. And he goes, yeah, that's what our deal said. And I said, yeah, so fire me and I'll just pay me. And then all this problem of you worrying about my show not working goes away. And you can put another show on that caters to old white people and you'll have a great show and that'll be great. And he goes, this is the weirdest conversation.

But I solved for peace 20 years before I had this whole conversation and I didn't need ego to be on. I didn't need money to be on. And when it didn't work, it didn't work anymore. And guess what? There are still people that think I'm on Fox business. 20 years after I've been off. Wow. You know, they still see you on Fox Business.

No, you don't. I'm not on Fox Business. I don't hate Fox Business. I go on as a guest, but Coleman goes on all the time. Oh, yeah. It's fine, but my show was an abject failure. It was horrible. I'm really bad at TV, by the way.

But, yeah. But I'm like, I had solved for peace and didn't need a job, so it affected my career choice. A, I'm not living in New York. B, because I'm not going to live in New York. B, I don't have to try to beg or change my principles or change who we are. And the consequence was more prosperity came after getting fired. Wow. You know, because I didn't change.

Well, I didn't change. And that consistency is what caused success. Exactly. And you can only have that if you're not. But if I had payments coming out my ears and I needed that money. You're desperate for that. then I would be talking Republican politics, I guess, right now on Fox Business, right? You'd be doing a song and dance.

I'd be one of their other little thingies that does that every day, you know. I'm glad you're not. Well, what do you say to the idea that your advice is designed for people who are trying to clean up a mess? And that anyone who's, quote, good with money should follow a more sophisticated plan. Well, if there was a more sophisticated plan that had a track record working like ours, that would be an argument. But otherwise, what it is is a snobby aristocratic statement of somebody that doesn't want to pay a price to win. So, no, it's not, you know, let me tell you what's sophisticated is. Sophisticated is something that works, regardless of how complicated or how simple it is.

And some of the most profound, sophisticated things are very easy and simple to understand. The law of gravity is pretty profound. Try arguing with it. You know, it really doesn't go well for you. So now it's not, you know, that's just bull crap. So, you know, like, okay, you got a degree in finance, so you're smarter than the law of gravity. No, you're not. You're still going to get your freaking head taken off.

I have more letters and licenses after my name and degrees and crap when I went broke than anybody on the planet. And the only thing I didn't have was a Ph.D. And I got, now I got a Ph.D. and DUNB. So, but the, this idea that somehow there's, you know, this is for simpletons. Well, maybe, but, you know, what we found is. 80, 90% of millionaires in America today did what we're teaching even if they weren't following us. That's common sense. Yeah, it's like they live on less than they make.

They have a plan. They stay out of debt, you know. And they didn't, there's no, like there's one little club over here of people that the law of gravity doesn't apply to. Bull, of course it does. Yeah, complexity doesn't equal superior. No, as a matter of fact, it generally equals less. Well, you look at, you know, like an indexed universal life policy. Well, those are complex and their terrible product.

Oh, horrible. So that goes to show you. You can just be in a 401K and become a millionaire and snooze. Most likely will. Put it on snooze. Be the average investor and get there. That's good. Another thing you've been consistent on is hating the big banks out there.

You've railed against, you know, Bank of America and Capital One. And some people, you know, had a head tilt when we announced, hey, it's the Ramsey show in the Fairwin's Credit Union Studio. And they went, I thought Dave hates credit. So can you help dispel some myths around here? Well, I don't have my money under a mattress. I have a bank. Y'all didn't think I didn't have a bank. I mean.

I thought it was like a Scrooge McDuck situation. There's a big pile of coins somewhere in a pool you have at the house. In my basement, I look like a drug dealer. I have shrink-wrapped hundreds. I mean, what? No, I mean, someone accused you of that. I think it was on Fox. They're like, well, Dave, you have, you know, suitcases of cash.

Cavuto always teased me about that. But no, I don't. You do have a pretty thick, you know, money clip that you carry with you. Yeah, I carry cash, but it's not, my net worth is certainly not tied up in my money clip. And so, you know, this idea that I don't utilize a bank, I don't borrow money from anyone, including banks, but I have several banks that we do business with. They provide, you know, things like checking and debit cards and a place to have a high-yield savings account and, you know, banking services, online services. And I probably have, I don't know, 10 different banks that we do business with at Ramsey and personally in different settings and even a few in another country. And so, you know, that's but whoopty-dupty.

I mean, that doesn't. So, and I've always endorsed credit unions the entire time I've been on the air for, 30 years. And so now I have a Fair Wins Credit Union, which is a very consumer-friendly, wonderful bunch of people. And the product lines are aligned exactly with what we teach. And so I don't know what somebody's looking for there. It's like, you know, I guess they just really weren't paying attention and they just went like, oh, anything. They saw the word credit and thought, Dave loves debt now. It's like, or they saw the word bank and now Dave loves banks. And so I've never hated all banks or all credit unions.

I've hated certain ones. And it's simply because they just are mean and nasty to the consumer. They're hard to work with. The White Bank of America treats the customer why anyone would stay there is beyond me. Just convenience, I guess, of not having a switch. A fifth third to piss on you just to say they did. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's awful.

No. Why would you do business with that? I'm not doing business with that. Yeah, there are good guys out there. And Fairwinds is one of them. Yeah. And, you know, just because you have, just because of church, Hill Mortgage does mortgages doesn't mean I'm inconsistent because I don't take out a mortgage.

I've endorsed Churchill mortgage for 30 years. That's good. I hope that clears the air, haters. Well, they don't, haters aren't, haters are going to hate. They're definitely watching this. They love to hate watch is what I call it. Oh, really? Yeah.

Why? I don't know. I truly don't. Why wouldn't you find programming that you enjoy it? You know, I was talking to somebody the other day that was a guy that, two guys that were in a conversation. One of them was a billionaire and one was worth several hundred million. And I asked both of them, I said, you guys. you guys run around with guys like you.

And they said, yeah. I said, how many of your friends post in the comment section on anything? And they said, what's that? They didn't even know it existed. They're like, people leave comments on things on the Internet? Successful people do not take their time to bother other people. That's interesting. That's the lesson learned.

I've always thought that. I mentioned that on the number of times I've left to comment on something is zero. You've commented on, I think, two of my Instagram posts. Well, that's Instagram posts. I'm helping George out there trying to say a tieing, but, you know, I'll say something positive about one of my friends posting his grandkid or what. But you're not, you know, spreading hate in the sense. But I'm not sitting in there going, trying to have an argument in the DMs, I'm going to drop in, whatever that is. I'm not doing it. Have you thought about it though? Because I think people would be tickled to find you in the comment section. Be like, did Dave really? Is he jumping in on this? No.

I, I, I, the closest I ever did was when Twitter was new. It was like a running comment section. The whole thing was like a comment. Everybody's just, and Twitter was fun. You could argue with people. That was fun. But it was not me going to Sean Ryan's site or Tucker Carlson's site and going. I hate this.

You know, I hate you and I used to like you and now you're awful. And they don't even read that stuff. Why are you bothering? Yeah. Go do something with your own life. Hello? Sorry, Dave. One second.

Hello? Mom, are you there? Another butt dial. But you know what? No big deal. She's got Boost Mobile. She's got unlimited talk, text, and data for just 25 bucks a month forever. That's their unlimited plan and there's 99% nationwide coverage, which means there's a slim chance the butt dial would drop the call. And that means you can scroll, stream, and group chat to your heart's content without playing the how much data do I have left game. And the best part is there's no contracts, no price increases, ever.

So stop overpaying and head to Boost Mobile dot com slash Ramsey or click the link in the description below. All right, back to Dave. Well, I want to end our time together with a fun new segment that's kind of one-liners to fill in the blank game. So I'm going to read a sentence, you fill in the blank with whatever comes to mind first. One thing that would surprise people about Dave Ramsey's last bank statement is my personal checking account. If I looked at it like, man, this guy, he loves tacos. You know, what would be the thing that stands out to me? Okay, that's fair.

Man, he does a lot of hunting, a lot of hunting gear on this statement. Yeah, he buys a lot of guns or something like that. I don't know. Yeah, that'd be on there. Yeah. All right, people will win with money in 2026 if they... Pay attention. Just pay attention.

Winning is not an accidental act. Intentionality. The biggest lie about success is... That it's caused by a singular event. You're a death by a thousand cuts kind of guy. Everybody is that's ever won. Success is a pile of garbage. It's all the mistakes you made.

You're just standing on it instead of laying under it. It's, you know, Michael Jordan talks about all the shots he missed. Babe Ruth talked about all the time he struck out. You know, success is always that. And there's not a singular, I keep waiting on someone to come along. I keep telling these people in our space, I'm some young podcasters and all. They're like, quit looking for one thing to make this easy.

Just do it every day. Do the right thing every day. Turn a stinking microphone on. Get in front of it. Do your job. Do your job every day. And you'll wake up in 20 years and you're an overnight success. But nobody's going to come along and go, ding.

Now you're Elvis. It doesn't happen that way. I'll still dream about it. Someone is definitely secretly broke if they... Large car payments. Hmm. And it's hard to tell. when you turn your head at the stoplight

to know if they have a payment. You can tell. They do. They do. The future belongs to people who? Have hope. Optimism. The glasses have full.

If he had to start from zero again, the first thing Dave Ramsey would do is... Create an income. I have no fear that you would be able to do that, by the way. I've always been able to make money. I just wasn't able to keep it. I feel like the first thing. The first one's more important. You've got to make money to keep it, so we can figure the second part out.

I made a lot of money and went broke in my 20s. You know the stories. So, yeah. But yeah, since I was 12, I could make money. So I go create an income. But now I know what to do with it and very quickly could... You could rebuild fast. Real quickly. All right. Last one. Money is... Options. Gives you options. I couldn't have ended it any better. Dave Ramsey, thank you so much for joining us today. That was fun, George. Thanks. Huge thanks to Dave for joining me in studio today. If you enjoyed this conversation, you're going to love his appearance on Millionaires and Cars Getting Coffee, which you can watch next by clicking right here or using the link in the description. Thanks for watching. We'll see you guys next time.

Brian Cranston!