George Kamel - In Your 30s? Watch This Before It's Too Late

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

💻 Take the Coverage Checkup quiz here!   There are a lot of mistakes you could make in your 30s, but some will cost you big time financially. So today, I’m walking through the seven biggest wealth-killing mistakes you should avoid in your 30s.   Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video A Step-By-Step Guide to Building Wealth in Your 30s! • 📊 Check out the Investment Calculator! • 💵 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

There are lots of mistakes you could make in your 30s. Getting a face tattoo, unless you're Post Malone, posting heavily on LinkedIn, or somehow worse, wearing crocs in public. And negative bonus points, if you wear crocs in public, with headlight gibbets, you know who you are, and you disgust me. You know what? I still love myself. But some mistakes will cost you big time financially, so today I'm counting down the seven biggest financial mistakes you can make in your 30s,

finishing with the ultimate mistake that will ruin your financial future. But first, let's not make the mistake of forgetting to Today's channel sponsor, delete me. Consider yourself remembered. Okay, with these first few mistakes, it's usually because people just don't know any better. Like number seven on the list. Why did they use the strongest tape known to man? I don't know.

I don't think guerrilla tape was necessary for this exercise, but here we are. Am I weak or is the tape just strong? You'll never know. Oh yeah, I know every team. Missing the chance to double your retirement savings. It requires zero effort on your part. Here's what I mean. When you invest into a 401k or an IRA, some kind of retirement account, that money will generally

double every seven years. This is due to the rule of 72, one of my favorite rules involving a number followed closely by the five second rule. Here's the formula for the rule of 72. You divide 72 by your expected interest rate, and the answer is how many years it will take your money to double. So if you take an average rate of return of 10% in the U.S. stock market, 72 divided by 10 gives you 7.2 years for your money to double.

That means if you start investing your 30s, your money has the chance to double at least five times before retirement age. Let me show you what this looks like in real time using our investment calculator. So for this example, let's say you had $100,000 invested by the age of 30. That would be nice. One zero zero zero zero. No monthly contributions and we're going to give this seven years to grow at a 10% rate of return. Calculate $200,000. You see what it just did there?

It doubled without me adding a dime. Now, let's say, we go another seven years to 44. So it's going to be 14 years. $403,000. Let's give it another seven years. Now we're at 21 years. We're now 51 years old, and we have $809,000. Go another seven years to 58 years old,

28 years of growth, $1.6 million, and finally, seven more years to 65. That is 35 years of growth. From that $100,000, never touched it, Just let it ride, and we've got $3.2 million. And that's if you never contributed anything else beyond the $100 grand. Just let it ride. So, moral of the story, start investing as early as possible.

You want as much time for your money to double as you can get. According to the Investing Nerd Extraordinators at Goldman Sachs, waiting just 10 years to save for retirement reduces your assets by 38%. And that's not what you want. You want to increase your assets for retirement. To put it more bluntly, you want them big old assets in retirement. I hope that connects with the youth. You wanted to hear that from this guy, didn't you?

Now, did I have to say Dem? Did I have say Big Ole? No, but I think it added to it. You want them large assets. That's not any better. See, when I did that, ugh. It was a grocer somehow. I didn't write that, by the way.

Was not my idea to say that, I would not even, that thought would not come through my mind. You sure about that? Okay, the number six mistake is... Okay, you know what? The number six mistake is, leaving money on the table in your career. And you know and I'm not leaving on the table?

This board. I'm just gonna read them. I don't think we needed the prop, to be honest. I think it was a fun idea from the crew. Bad execution. We can all agree on that. Well, I thought it was a lovely idea. So let's talk about this,

leaving money on the table in your career. For some reason, it has become uncool to care about your job. And I don't get this. People just phoning it in, putting their career on autopilot. And why? Because all bosses are toxic and all corporations are evil, and we shouldn't have to work to live. Here's the truth.

You don't have to climb a soulless corporate ladder or make your job your entire identity. All you need is a little icky guy. I-K-I-G-A-I. This is an ancient Japanese concept, meaning a reason for being. Basically, it means finding a career that combines what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs,

and get this, what you can be paid for. If you can find a career like that, you'll not only be happier, you can also build wealth and have a great life. Now, while it's easier said than done, it is possible. And my story is proof. I started my career at Ramsey Solutions as a wee intern, an email marketing coordinator and temp back in 2013.

And I might have stayed that way if I just had an attitude of collecting a paycheck. But I decided a long time ago that if I was going to work, I might as well work really hard. So through my 20s, through my 30s, the harder I worked, the more opportunities I was given. And that eventually led me here, doing a job that gives me a great paycheck and a ton of icky guy energy. I love what I do and I hope you can find it too. And since we're on the subject of icky things, may as well bring this up. Death, namely yours.

You see, in your 30s, you feel about as impervious to death as Marvin Harry and Home Alone. You may think you've got a good 50, 60 years ahead of you, but that's not always how it works out, which is why the number five wealth-killing mistake you could make in your 30s is not protecting your family. Think about it. If you die unexpectedly, your entire income stream

disappears just like that, which forces your family to burn through any savings or investments they have to stay afoot. or worse, sell the house. Now they're grieving and dealing with a financial crisis at the same time. So if you don't do anything else after this video is over, other than like and subscribe, please, please, I'm begging you get life insurance. But what kind of life insurance should I get, George? Great question, other George.

Term life insurance. Not whole life insurance, not any kind of permanent life insurance, not variable universal life insurance, not index universal life insurance. Just level term life insurance. How much do I need, George? An astute question, my friend. 10 to 12 times your current income. For how long? A 15 to 20 year policy should do the trick, maybe 25 if you're really young.

And here's the idea. You want this to last until you are self-insured, meaning you have enough assets to replace your income of something where to happen to you. You've been investing in retirement for a couple of decades. You have paid off the house. There's no mortgage. Your expenses are lower. So that is why you want 10 to 12 times your income,

which you can then invest and hopefully see 10 to 12% on average in the stock market and 15 to 20 year policy. And it's not very expensive. The younger and healthier you are, the cheaper it will be. That could be just $20 to $40 a month for a half million to a million dollar policy. So don't put this off. This is how you say, I love you, to your family. Although they'd probably like to actually hear you say, I love you.

So do that too. But life insurance isn't the only type of insurance you should have. And you can find out exactly what insurances you actually need by taking our five-minute coverage checkup quiz. I will link that in the description. It will be five minutes of your time well spent. Now, you could be forgiven for making any of the mistakes thus far. Most of the time, it's just because you're not thinking about them.

But the next ones are worse, because you see them coming and you still do it anyway. Speaking of things we don't think about, when's the last time you thought about your online data? You know how it is. You accept cookies willy-nilly. You give your email to anyone who asks. You use the password short king for life a little too often. Totally random example. And where does that data go?

Right into the hands of data brokers who sell it to spammers and scammers. Unless you have Delete Me, which I'm very glad I do. DeleteMe wipes your info from hundreds of data broker sites, keeps it gone, reducing the risk of spam and scam while saving your precious time. And as a sponsor of today's episode, they are kind enough to give you 20% off their annual plans. Just go to join deleteme.com slash George to check it out. But there's one piece of personal info you definitely don't want falling into the hands of scammers,

your debit card information. And sadly, we make it really easy for these scammers when we expose that information right there on the internet for every chachki and trinket we buy. And that's why I love privacy, a sponsor of today's video. Privacy creates virtual card numbers that you can use to shop online instead of exposing your actual debit card number.

You can have a custom virtual card for every merchant you shop with. So even if there's a data breach, your bank account is protected. Sign up today and get a $5 credit just for being a fan of this channel by going to privacy.com slash George. All right, back to our list of mistakes.

We are at number four, not starting your marriage with more margin. These days, people are getting married later than ever, and most of them enter holy matrimony by spending an unholy amount of money. The average wedding now costs a whopping $34,200. Look, I'm not one to judge here. If you've got the money or someone else's money and it's paid for in cash, have a good time.

But at the same time, $34,000? That's like a down payment on your first house. And if you finance the whole wedding, congratulations. You're spending the next five years making payments on centerpieces your mother-in-law thought were tacky. And they were. You were right, Brenda. I support you.

Wicker is out. I regret nothing. The end. So let me ask you. something, would you rather have one huge party the last a couple of hours that most of the people in attendance have already forgot about? Or give yourselves a 30 grand head start in your marriage? This is all about opportunity cost. Just make sure that you're still going to feel good in 10 years with the decisions you make, including the person you marry, which might just be the biggest

financial decision you ever decide on. But as bonkers as the cost of a wedding is, it won't derail your wealth nearly as much as this next mistake. So mistake number three, staying stuck in the car payment cycle. In my humble but aggressively unyielding opinion, car payments are the number one wealth killer in America. For one very notable reason, it has become as normal as Vin Diesel mentioning family. You finance a car, drive it for a couple years, get a raise, which means it's time for a nicer car.

So you trade in your now old car to get a new car and take a bigger loan with a bigger payment, drive it a couple years, and on and on the cycle goes, add nauseam. And nauseam perfectly describes how I feel about the average car payment in America today, which is now $770 a month for a new car, and still $531 a month for a used car. But this is not just a $700 mistake. This is a multimillion dollar mistake.

And to prove it, to the calculator. Let's just say you bought the car you can afford in cash and upgrade that car over time with cash that you save up. Or you paid the car loan off and don't take on another loan. Now you've freed up that average $770 a month. Now let's say you invest that instead of giving it to a lender every month. Let's just see what happens here. So I'm going to start with $0 in our investments.

I'm going to contribute that $7.70 a month. And I'm going to start a 30 years old and go to 40. Let's just see what 10 years does here. At a 10% rate of return, I've got $157,000. Not bad. Now let's go from 30 to 50. I'm doing this for 20 years. Never taking on a car payment.

$584,000. Now let's say I go from 30 to 60. I never had a car payment again. What would 30 years of growth look like? $770 a month? $1.7 million. Hope you like the car, Brad. And guess what?

277,000? That's what I actually invested. That was my contributions. The rest was compound growth. Like $1.5 million in compound growth. Magic money. All because you decided, I don't want a car payment. I'm just going to drive reasonable cars,

drive them for a long time, upgrading cash, and invest what I would have made into a payment. But even with cars, we're talking about something that costs tens of thousands of dollars and a loan that you can wipe out, hopefully, in a few years. There's a way bigger mistake you could make in your 30s,

and it's for something that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and becomes a burden for decades. And that brings us to mistake number two, buying too much house. And the only thing worse than that, decorating said house with a porch goose, unless it's a silly goose on the loose. They'll put a photo up. It's really cute, actually. I may do it, I may not do it.

I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do. Here's the problem. When you're buying a house, the bank will often pre-approve you for way more than you can actually comfortably afford, which is exactly how every episode of House Hunters happens. So, uh, I'm a part-time butterfly breeder. My wife restores haunted dolls, and our budget is $750,000.

What? Hunted dolls? What are you restoring them from? What happened to them? You don't want to know. Now, the dangerous word here is pre-approved. You think, well, if the bank approved me, I must be able to afford it. And that's the kind of thinking

that's caused almost a fourth of homeowners to become cost-burdened, meaning they spent over 30, of their paycheck on housing. And that's why I always recommend keeping your mortgage payment, including property taxes, insurance, HOA fees, to no more than 25% of your after-tax monthly income. And yes, that might mean you need to save more for a down payment to get that mortgage lower. It might mean you gotta wait longer to buy, or choose a different neighborhood, or a type of house. There's gonna be some compromises here. You might have to endure your apartment neighbor's

daughter practicing hot cross buns on the recorder. Keep practicing Molly Joe. You got this. But if you do it that way, it's a whole lot better than spending the next 30 years wondering why your dream home feels more like a financial prison. But houses you can't afford, big weddings, car payments, there's a thread here. All of these mistakes feel like good, maybe even smart ideas in the moment, but they steal from your future. And that's the ultimate mistake people make in their 30s. So in first place, the number one mistake, trading future peace for present comfort. That's how I end up taking really sad calls on the Ramsey Show with people in their late 60s, still drowning in debt, nothing in savings and no hope of retiring soon.

And look, nobody plans to end up in that situation. But it usually starts with someone in their 30s thinking, oh, I've still got so much time. Then they wake up in their 50s, 60s wondering where all that time went and where all their money went. So I'm not saying, don't enjoy your life in your 30s. You should enjoy it. Enjoy it in a reasonable way while still preparing for the future.

As long as you're debt-free with an emergency fund in place, take the vacations, buy some fun stuff. That's all fine. Just do it with money you actually. have. Be on a budget, live on lesson you make, and have the margin to invest on top of that. You can enjoy life and still be intentional about building a future that your 30-year-old self would be proud of. So if I've convicted you today, good. Check out this next video where I'll walk you through my step-by-step guide to building wealth in your 30s. Just click right here

to watch it or use the link in the description. That's it for today. Thank you guys for watching.