George Kamel - Say "No" to These 14 Things If You Want to Build Wealth

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

🎥 Watch my video Why Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps Still Work (Addressing the Criticisms).   For decades, Dave Ramsey has been telling people no when they’re about to make a dumb financial decision. Today, we’re breaking down 14 times Dave Ramsey wants you to say no—and why you should listen. Next Steps: • 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! • 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan. • 📙 Order my book, Breaking Free From Broke, in hardcover.   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • Learn more about opening a high-yield savings account with Laurel Road. • Get up to 40% off Cozy Earth with code GEORGE. 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

You have to bring out the secret weapon. What's that? The ancient word. Uh-oh. No. You can't lease that car. Bozo. You're broke.

No. You can't afford a boat. No, no, no, no. Bozo. No, no, no, no. Squire! No. You can't lease that car.

Bozo, you're broke. Not the tilt angle. No. You can't afford a boat. No. No. No. No, no, no.

Dave, you're no fun. No, no. Yes, I am. I'm a lot of fun. No. I want to make that a ringtone and sell it so badly. It's just Dave saying no, no, no. Oh, guys, listen, I know the new Bieber's been making waves,

but you're telling me this couldn't go number one. Also, who uses ringtones, you bozo? What are you thinking? Hey, Dave, what if you made a ringtone? Even Dave should have just been like, yeah, you can leave now. I can do this show on my own. That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that.

And Dave do be spitting bars. But for real, Dave has been telling callers on the Ramsey show no for decades when they're about to make a dumb financial decision. And a new article from Finance Buzz has rounded up some of his greatest hits. It's titled, Fourteen Times Dave Ramsey wants you to say no, and you should listen. Why didn't our team come up with this for our articles and blogs? I don't know. I will be asking them very shortly. They're going to get a sternly worded email.

from me after this video. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I forgot. But today, on this day, I will be reacting to the list and explaining why Dave and yours truly stand firmly behind every one of those knows, because every no is a yes to something greater. Put that on your...

Put that on your pipe. Not in it, put it on top. You scruffy got smoking a pipe. Now the list can get pretty repetitive, so I'll skip over the predictable ones to keep this video from feeling like the plot of a Hallmark movie marathon. Let's see what they had to say. had to say. First of all, nope. What in tarnation. Why? Who? That's not. Okay, the eyes are almost there.

The nose close. The mustache, the goatee. It's like all the pieces are there, but it's also very much not. Could they just not use a normal photo of him? Guys, and this, here's the crazy, here's the unhinged part of this. Let me bring this in so you can see what this says. It says, fact-checked. So you're telling me, this has all the journalistic integrity in the world, except for this bizarre O Dave that is now going to haunt me in my dreams. Not nightmares. Let's get into the list just so I can scroll past the... Oh, wait, hold on.

Look at this. In a recent podcast episode of the Ramsey Show, Ramsey and his co-host, George Camel, that's giving Batman and Robin vibes. Listed all the times they want you to say no to help improve your finances. Appreciate the shout-out finance buzz. You're back on my Goody Boy list. Number one on their list.

of things Dave says no to, eating out while you're in debt. According to Ramsey, it's not about being a killjoy, but sometimes you have to say no to life's simple pleasures. When did Buffalo Wildlings become a simple pleasure? When? Now listen, I've got nothing against restaurants. Well, I got things against a few restaurants, but nothing against them as a category.

But they do typically mark up their prices as much as 300% to cover their overhead and make a profit. And here's what that means. you wind up paying $20 for a meal that you could have made at home for $5 per serving. So totally agree with this one. You're off to a great start finance buzz after a real rough intro there with that AI image. Number two on the list, going on vacation when you can't afford it. If you can't pay for a vacation without going to debt,

Ramsey advises against agreeing to go on any vacations. Instead, he suggests holding off on any recreational trips until you can afford to pay for the entire thing in full and in cash. I like this one because think about this. You go on vacation and you have some temporary joy. The trip's fun or swiping our life away. And then you get back home and you get to relive the worst parts of that vacation, aka the parts you swiped, with 29% APR on that credit card that you have to pay off for the next year.

That's not fun. So there's a lot of other ways to get some R&R if that's what you're looking for. There's a lot of affordable things you can do in your own neighborhood, in your own city, with short drives that don't involve spending a whole bunch of money. Number three on the list, they've got keeping up with other people's lifestyles. It's tempting to try to keep up with what everyone else your life is doing. You may get jealous when you see your friends taking fancier vacations or driving nicer cars. Ramsey recommends saying no to keeping up.

I think this is good life advice. Who is out there going like, you know what? Best life advice I've ever heard? Try to keep up with everyone around you constantly, no matter what. This is the classic quote. We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. So here's what that's really saying. Find better friends.

and find the person in you that you respect. Not the guy who has to keep up with everyone around him to try to be liked. Just like yourself first. I feel like I'm like a snarky Mr. Rogers with that one. Just like yourself first. And then you don't have to be a big dingus. It's you. I like it. I'm going to skip over buying a boat when you're broke.

I think that one's pretty obvious, and I don't think I'm going to convince the boat bros on this one anyways. Number five, getting an expensive cell phone when you can't afford it. If you're in debt, you don't have the cash saved up. Ramsey recommends not buying an expensive cell phone. That's good journalism there.

While it's tempting to consider upgrading the latest and greatest tech as soon as it hits the market, Old Phone will likely continue doing job just fine. They had a better sentence there, but I liked making it more Yoda speak. Why buy a new phone when Old Phone do a trick?

So here's the deal. And I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but Android's are always a stupid investment. And I say this only to some, I summon them to the comment section, which guess what makes me all-powerful. I summon you to the comments to tell me about how great your Android device is and how Apple iPhone users are inseparable. The ego. The ego.

I simply don't care. And here's the thing. If you're over 50 and you have an Android, I love you. I think you're a wonderful person and I wish you the best. But if you are a millennial, a Gen Zier, and you're proudly. you know, adorning your Android device, just buy a used iPhone. Whatever that prices you paid for that Android, whatever iPhone you can get with that amount of money, do it. Your life's going to be better. We don't want the green bubble. No more green

bubbles. And here's what really grinds my gears is nowadays they say, hey, it's a free phone, basically, or we'll just add it into your contract and part of your monthly payment will be to eventually pay off this phone in 24 months, which is essentially, essentially, just taking on debt because they still own that phone as long as you're with them. And you're stuck with that contract overpaying for your cell phone plan. Not okay. There are way cheaper options out there. So just buy a used phone in cash if that's what you can afford and then switch cell phone plans to someone that doesn't lock you in with a payment attached. That's all I got to say about that. Number six, we have leasing a car. Leasing a car might seem like a good idea

to some, but Ramsey recommends avoiding this type of financial contract. Camel even calls out this practice in a post on the Ramsey Solutions blog, noting that leasing a car benefits the dealer more than it benefits the customer. As such, both men, thank you for that, recommend paying for your next vehicle and cash instead of taking on a short-term lease contract, which will have you paying into a loan that will never help you actually own your car. Thank you so much for the shout-out to my article, for calling me a man. Gosh, I want to shout out Sarah and Lauren for being the best people. at FinanceBus. All right, what do I have to say about car leases? A car lease is the most

expensive way to operate a vehicle. Think about it. You are basically very expensively renting a car and prepaying the depreciation all the while being tied in with all the restrictions and fees that the dealer puts on you. Think about it. The payments account for expected depreciation plus taxes and fees and then you pay back end charges. And what happens if you want to get out of it? How do you get out of a lease? It's really difficult. You need to have the full balance for early payoff or you got to find someone else to take over the lease and good luck finding someone else to do the stupid thing that you just did. So don't do it. Don't lease a car. All right, next up, taking a vacation when you have debt. Okay, hold on finance buzz. That's a turkey in reverse.

Yeah, they just said number two is going on vacation when you can't afford it. If you can't pay a vacation when I'm going on a debt. Okay, is this one any different when you have consumer debt weighing down your finances? All right, guys. I was just, Just praising your journalistic integrity. And here we are with the redundancy. You fact-checked this, but you didn't bother to check for redundancy? That's a point off your score. Yeah, so I think we cover this one, taking a vacation when you can't afford it

or when it causes you to go into debt. Both a bad idea. Next up on the list, parents moving in. This one's going to get tricky. When it comes to living situations, Ramsey frequently advises his followers to say no to long-term houseguests no matter who they are. For example, saying no to what he calls silver squatters, which is still the best.

It sounds like a toilet for old people. Like it helps you get the pipes moving. You know what I mean? Like a squatty potty. But for old people, which I don't know, comes with a reader's digest. I don't know what would make that different. He says you shouldn't feel obligated

to allow your aging parents to move into your home simply because they haven't made responsible financial decisions. Instead, he suggests working together with your parents to come up with a plan for them to cover their own living costs. This one obviously depends on the situation. This is not like, well, my mother-in-law, I needed to take care of her because she was in poor health. Is Dave saying that that's stupid? No, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about people who just simply didn't save her retirement are now broke,

want to keep up their lifestyle in retirement, even though they're not working anymore. And now they go, well, I'll just mooch off of my kids because I, I, I changed their diapers at one point, so I feel like they owe me for the rest of my life while I make stupid decisions for the rest of mine. Bad idea. Don't like it. I've never seen it go well.

I see a lot of resentment here. Again, the caveat being, there are circumstances in which you have to have mom or dad move in or other family members to help take care of them. Not against that, but I don't want this to be because of their poor financial planning. Capish, caposh. Number 10, enabling family members' poor financial choices.

This falls right in line. It's often tempting to help your family out financially, but in many situations, helping only enables their poor financial choices. Without true consequences, many of them may continue to make poor financial decisions, which could have them reaching back out at a later time for another bailout. Yes, I see this time and time again on the Ramsey show when we take calls and they say, hey, my aunt called me and wants $10,000, and I'm going, why is she calling you? Why is she calling her niece?

Have you ever given her money in the past? and they go, well, yeah, I guess one time I did give her $3,000 and she never paid me back, or she did pay me back, but this time she wants 10, this is what happens. You become Bank of Nees, and the aunt goes, well, I'm going to go to where I know I can get some easy money, and it's not a place that I really have to pay back. And this causes resentment, it turns a relationship into a awkward business transaction, and for that reason, it's a hard note. You should definitely not enable poor financial.

choices from your family and friends. You can't help them and try to give them the right tools and a plan to get out of their situation, but just giving them money or worse, letting them borrow money makes the whole thing terrible. Now let's shift gears for a second and talk about good financial choices, because that list includes saving for retirement, paying off debt, and investing in gear from Cozy Earth, one of the sponsors of today's video. Pretty much everything in Cozy Earth's inventory is made of premium viscos from bamboo, which means it's unbelievably soft and cozy. Their hoodies, joggers, and socks have become my go-to-athleisure. Turns out, you don't have to be athletic to wear athletic. And once you try out their bed sheets, which are designed to keep you cool and

comfy year-round, you won't ever want to use anything else. And right now, Cozy Earth is offering my audience 40% off. So go to cozyEarth.com slash George and use the promo code George at checkout. You can also click the link in the description. And before we get back to things that Dave and I would say no to, let's talk about something I would say an absolute yes to, and that is signing up for Delete Me. another sponsor of today's video. Look, the days of online scams amounting to obviously fake texts from your CFO asking for an eBay gift card

and broken English are long gone. Thanks to AI, fishing attacks and other scams have gotten way more sophisticated, and if your personal data is floating around the internet unchecked, you've got a target on your back. And that's why Delete Me comes through hundreds of data broker sites to clean up your digital footprint and keep your data away from spammers and scammers.

And right now, you can get 20% off their annual plans by going to join deleteme.com slash George or click the link in the description. It's time to take control of your data privacy, folks. All right, back to the finance buzz list. No to donuts. Finally, Ramsey wants you to say no in several personal situations. For example, he suggests saying no to donuts on a regular basis.

Feels like a stretch, but okay. Learning how to say no in this small way can help you build discipline over time, making it easier to say no to the bigger stuff. I don't think, I don't want to paint Dave, is anti-dunut. He's a lot of things. I don't think anti-donut is one of them. I think they're thinking of Gordon Ramsey, because that guy's definitely anti-donut. In fact, he thinks a lot of people are donuts. So he doesn't like those people. That's what I know. If he doesn't like you, he's going to call you a

donut. That's safe for homeschoolers. Where's the mashup, guys? Where's the Gore-Dave-Ramsie mash-up? America needs healing. Come together for the good of the nation. Yep. The best I've done it again. I'll throw his tea into the harbor. It's called a Boston accent. Ever heard of it? Get your freaking tea out of here, dude. Sick of this Brit stuff. The heck is this a potato? What am I going to do with a potato? Next on their list that I'm going to cover, saying no to lifestyle creep. Lifestyle creep happens when you slowly start saying yes to nicer things. This might include getting a nicer car, moving to a bigger apartment, or even buying high-end groceries. Ramsey suggests avoiding the slippery slope, which can have a major impact on her finances. Instead, he says she should focus on intentionally saying yes to the upgrades that really matter to you. That's fair. Lifestyle creep,

your income goes up, your spending creeps right up to meet it, and you don't even notice the shift. It just happens. You start making $10,000 more. At the end of the year, ideally, you have $10,000 more saved minus taxes, but instead you go, where'd that raise go? It just disappeared because you spent it. The more you make, the more you spend. The way to avoid this is to keep living, how you've been living with minor increases over time that are very intentional and done with cash. All right, I think that's enough from finance buzz for one day. Look, people have been calling Dave a fuddy-duddy for years, and in some households, his name has basically become a cuss word.

But here's what you have to understand. 53% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and most of them have nothing saved. And those are generally the folks that are calling us for help. So yeah, we say no to a lot of things. And you might think it's all a little extreme, but you can't deny that it's affected. Delayed gratification is the key to winning with money long term. Short, instant gratification is what's keeping us broke. So if you're still on the fence about all this,

I made a whole video breaking down how and why the Ramsey plan still works and how you can use it to change your life. So click here to check it out next or click the link in the description. That's it for today. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Thanks for watching. See you next time. You donuts!