George Kamel - The Best Life and Money Advice I've Heard All Year

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

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I get to talk to some pretty impressive people in my line of work. And lucky for you, it's all on the record. And by that, I mean, we video it. So today, I'm going to share the most impactful moments and best advice from a few of my favorite guests. It's a treasure trove of knowledge, so prepare your heart for these uncut gems. But before we jump in, click those like, subscribe,

and share buttons so I can keep growing this channel and landing top tiered guests. Still waiting to hear back from Dwayne Johnson's camp. Come on, Dwayne, you can promote your new live-action Moana movie. I don't care. You need me. Got dark real quick, so reach out. That was weird.

All right, first up, Harvard professor and happiness expert, Arthur Brooks. We knew this one was going to be fire, but we didn't know it would be our most viewed video of all time. So here's my favorite moment from the conversation where he talks about the five things you can do with money. It turns out there's five things that you can do with your money. You can buy stuff. You can buy experiences. You can buy time. You can give it away or you can save it.

Those are the only things you can do with your money, right? Four of them will bring you happiness. and one won't. Your brain is telling you to do the one thing that won't bring happiness, which is to go buy stuff. I'll tell you, that list of five things has really stuck with me. It's really an eye-opener to realize that just buying stuff is not going to bring you true happiness.

So you can save it, you can invest it, you can give it, you can buy experiences. But just buying more crap that's going to sit around, it's not going to do it for you. And I got to tell you, Arthur Brooks, one of my favorite people to hang out with. He's like Stanley Tucci and Steve Jobs rolled into one, just wonderful, brilliant human.

So thank you, Arthur. Always a pleasure to have you hang out with us. Next up, my favorite living boomer, who I think has a bright future ahead of him, personal finance expert and fellow dog lover, Dave Ramsey. In this installment of millionaires and cars getting coffee, Dave shared how to maximize your wealth. After maxing out your basic retirement accounts,

your 401K, what are some other options for people who have done that? What do you do with the rest of your income? Well, we take always a percentage, as you said, and allocate all of our increase in income to additional generosity and additional investing and a little bit to additional lifestyle. It doesn't take much to cover lifestyle. You know, with us, we buy mutual funds, good growth stock mutual funds, and we buy real estate. I've got a lot and low turnover mutual funds, so there's no tax implications because the tax stocks don't sell every year. So it's basically capital gains growth. And that's because

you love real estate. But I've been in real estate business my whole life. Some people that are not a fan. My parents owned a company when I was a kid. And so I got my license when I turned 18. So I got my degree in real estate for God's sake. So I love it. What I love about that is that he keeps it simple. He invests in what he knows and what he's passionate about. And that is mutual funds and real estate. You don't have to get fancy. Increase your generosity, increase your saving and increase some of your spending. It's not rocket science. Thank you for that, Dave. Yeah, well, thank you. Next up, we've got YouTuber Caleb Hammer of Financial Audit. We disagree on a whole lot, truthfully. But there's one piece of financial advice we definitely agreed on.

What are the big traps you've been seeing people fall into on financial audit? Is there a thread? Dude, and it's probably the same thing you see on your shows of mine. It is in America, it is the car. It says people get themselves into a car payment they cannot afford, into a car insurance they cannot afford, into gas payments they cannot afford, then all of a sudden something goes wrong with that car that they cannot afford. And they do all this without emergency fund. Then they're, yeah, they're underwater, so they might be able to finesse it. You know, one thing that you guys recommend, and I also recommend sometimes is sometimes borrowing the difference and borrowing for like a cheaper car. But sometimes you're so far underwater that you can't even do that.

The math is doesn't work. We're a credit so shot, no lender is going to give you the difference. Yeah. So there you go. I believe in a completely debt-free lifestyle. But even Caleb says car loans, not so smart. Agree to agree. All right, this next clip is one of my favorite interviews of 2024.

Somehow I managed to get Jaspreet Singh from Minority Mindset and Humphrey Yang in the same room at the same time. What are the odds? Don't actually calculate it in the comments. I don't want to know. Never tell me the odds. It was like the Avengers, except instead of muscles, we have mutual funds, which some would say are just as good. No one in the history of time has ever said that. And we played a little game of agree to disagree, and it left Justbreet completely speechless. Agree or disagree, no lying. Everyone should be making a monthly budget. Agree or disagree. These are my budget bros right here. Let's go, man. Let's go. Budget bros.

Okay, this word has gotten a bad rap. A lot of financial creators out there have kind of dog the budget to be like countercultural. Budgets are stupid. Buy what you want. Use my spending method. I think a budget is just an intentional spending. Yeah, exactly. It's just on spending willy-nilly.

It's going, do I have the money? Is this a priority? Can I cover all my bills and things that matter to me before I go spend? Yeah, I like knowing where every dollar is going to go and then having a little roll for each dollar. knowing that if I have some leftover, I can spend it on whatever I want. I love that. That's why we call our budgeting app every dollar. Wow. See? Boom.

Big brain thoughts. How about you? I can, Donald Day, I can add more to what you guys said. Wow. We've left disparate speechless. So there you go. Regardless of all the things that we might disagree on, there's so much common ground out there. Because we all agree, you need a budget. You need to pay attention to your money. And that means being intentional with a spending plan. Next up, we've got my Smart Money Happy Hour co-host, Rachel Cruz. And Rachel gave me a sneak peek of her children's book, that spoiler is not just for kids.

Take a look. It's in a book, Reading Rainbow. Not long ago, in a forest of trees, a little squirrel said to her mom and dad, please, may I have a new ball, a teddy beer too? I just want some more toys, just anything new. So all the animals bought more and more, they gathered as much as their burrows could store. So then they end up buying everything, but it ends up filling up their homes. They can't see their table, they catch their floor.

Oh my gosh. It's in all of this mess, their things become lost. Their toys start to break and it makes them feel cross. Why does this happen? Why are we sad? Shouldn't new toys always make us feel glad? I'll tell you a secret. It's a good place to start.

It's God's love and kindness that fills up your heart. And then it walks through, understanding that like something happens inside of you and you don't need something new and what really fulfills you. What is the thing that really fulfills you? Is that not precious? That's so sweet little animals. It's so, like, nostalgic in a way. It's so pretty.

So I wanted a message, George, that was, like, great to speak over kids. Like, I want kids to get this drilled into their hearts and who they are. But as a parent, and you'll probably learn this with me very soon when you read. Do you read to her? Do you all read yet? Not yet. She can't even make eye contact, let alone understand any words. I know.

When you start to read her books, you will have your favorites. And usually it's the ones that you're like, oh, gosh, that's a message I needed to hear. Whether you have a kid or not, this is a good reminder. All right, we tend to try to fill our life with more stuff and retail therapy and emotional spending when really we need the opposite. We need less stuff and we need to be grateful and content. Thank you for the reminder, Rachel. You're like my personal Mrs. Mr. Rogers.

And that's Mrs. Mr. Rogers to you. Please don't call me that. Okay, this next one is from Millionaires and Cars getting coffee where I had a frugal offer with the dirtiest man on TV and the nicest man in real life, Mike Rowe. But first, you know what else is dirty? The way there's no good big cell phone providers charge you out the wazzo for your service when you can get the same great coverage from Tello, one of our sponsors. They've got plans anywhere from $5 a month to $25 a month for the Unlimited Everything

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Okay, back to the Dirtiest Man on TV, Mike Rowe. I'm self-relaimed frugal, millionaire. I bet you not as frugal as me. Are we going to do a frugal off right now? I'll frugal. When's the last time you used a coupon? All right, you might be more frugal. So what are things that you're still like,

I'm still frugal on this area? I refuse to spend X money on it. Okay, okay. So I've never bought a new car in my life. Wow. I only bought the house, I'm living in now, because I did have a financial advisor who said, look, you're just being an idiot. You're not being wise with this money.

Right. I'm a renter. I don't want to own anything. I never have. Do you see it as a burden to own things? It's just more to maintain and store and keep up with? I do. I think it was actually, Anthony Robbins said, the more things you own, the more things own you.

And I believe that's true. There you go. Mike Roe has never bought a new car. Why are you buying a new car? What are you doing buying a new car? Mike Roe's not buying new cars, all right? This man is frugal in a lot of ways, even if I did beat him with my coupon usage.

Aren't you proud of me? All right, to bring us home, here's our friend Dave Ramsey again, sharing the logic behind his countercultural definition of being broke. You and I, we use the word broke a lot, and it's not describing, you know, people in poverty. What is your definition of broke? Negative net worth.

The bottom line is, your income doesn't determine wealth. Because if you make $200,000 a year and you owe $300,000 on your cars and your student loans and your other stuff and you can barely pay your bills, you're broke. You just make a lot of money in your broke person. Some great reminders from Dave there.

If you live fake rich, you're going to be a real broke. And so I love his definition, and I just like hearing Dave say the word broke. There's something just hits the soul. Thank you, Dave, for that great conversation. And big thanks to all of my friends who joined me on the channel this year. Let me know in the comments

who you want to say, on the channel in 2025. And now that we've seen how Dave defines broke, keep watching this next video to see how he defines wealthy, plus what we can do about America's debt crisis. I'll also drop a link in the description below. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.