George Kamel - Trump's 50-Year Mortgage

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!   Apparently, pigeonholing you into debt for 30 years wasn’t enough, because Trump just introduced the idea of a 50-year mortgage. Let’s discuss why this is just . . . the worst.    Next Steps: • 🏡 Check out my free home-buying course • 🎥 Watch my video Don't Buy A Home Until You Watch This • 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? ⁠Get a free personalized plan.⁠   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Get up to 40% off Cozy Earth with code GEORGE. • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • 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

Well, President Trump broke the internet again with the craziest idea I've heard since Heinz came out with every sauce. 14 sauces and one? Are you guys serious? You mixed a pickle ketchup with a curry ketchup with a mayo racha? We live in a society. We have rules. We have laws. Anyways, Trump posted this graphic on Truth Social, comparing himself to FDR and teasing a modern version of the 30-year mortgage, the 50-year mortgage. You heard that right. Your mortgage. Saved you and edit, editors.

No need for slow-mo, your boy can do it himself. No, George. So what's this all about? Well, I guess it's a Hail Mary attempt to make homes more affordable and help buyers that are struggling with record prices and high interest rates. And what was the result of his post? Almost 3,200 re-truths. Which I assume is the most viral post ever on Truth Social.

So it turns out this all started at Mar-a-Lago, when Bill Pulte, the new head of the Federal Housing Finan agency showed up with a three by five poster board featuring the headline, Great American Presidents featuring a photo of FDR under the 30-year mortgage and a photo of Trump under 50-year mortgage. Ten minutes later, Trump posted it to Truth Social and the reactions from across the internet did not disappoint. Let's take a look at some of the best reactions, which one can only assume did not occur on

Truth Social because I assume President Trump is the only one on there. Three-year Letterman said, using my $2,000 stimulus check for the down payment on a 50-year mortgage, Stay mad, haters. Not Jerome Powell said, Boomers with 17 paid off properties watching you take a 50-year mortgage. Not. Oh, listen, hate all you want. I want to be them.

Whatever they're on, give me some of that. And finally, the Babylon Bee, Dave Ramsey in critical condition after learning of the 50-year mortgage. Okay, the truth is Dave looks pretty good there. I don't know if it's the hospitalization, but he's lost a few in this photo. It looks a little buff even. But get well soon, Dave.

We're pulling for you. And the amount of people who sent me this, guys, you... The audacity to think, Oh my gosh, I'm going to be the first one to send this to him. Rude. Bottom line, pretty much everyone on the internet agrees. This new development is Cocoa Loco.

And while this outrageous idea is fun to joke about, the reality is that a lot of people are going to get screwed if this winds up becoming a real thing. And that's because a 50-year mortgage has five, yes, five major red flags that we need to talk about. The first of which is that 50-year mortgages don't actually make homes cheaper. You would think that spreading a home loan across an extra 20 years would drastically reduce your monthly payment.

But when you crunch the numbers, that's not actually what happens. Let's say you took out a $400,000 loan on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 5% interest rate. Well, your monthly payment would be $3,167. If you jump up to a 30-year mortgage with a 6% interest rate, your monthly payment would go to $2,398. Now here comes the crazy part. That same $400,000 loan on a 50-year mortgage with a 7% interest rate would give you a monthly payment of $2,406. About the same as the 30 year. So riddle me this. How does that make homeownership more affordable, Donald? It's $8 more expensive to go with the 50-year.

Now, you might be wondering, how is this mathematically possible? Well, the answer to that question brings us to red flag number two with a 50-year mortgage. It's a giant interest trap. When you add extra years to a mortgage, two things happen. First, the lender will charge a higher rate since they're taking on more risk, something that all people touting 50-year mortgages as a way to save on monthly payments are simply ignoring. All the math has been, well, 6% on a 30 year, 6% on 50 year. That's not how it works in reality. They're going to charge you more for that longer mortgage.

And second, the interest has way more time to accumulate, 20 years more, which grows the total you wind up paying over the life of the loan. Let's go back to our example of a $400,000 mortgage to see how that plays out. Over the life of that 15-year mortgage at 5%, you'll pay about $170,000 total in interest. Now, let's bump it up to 30 years at 6% and the total interest you pay is over $460,000. Now, that sounds bad, but wait, there's more. With a 50-year loan at 7%, you'd pay over a million dollars in interest, over six times the interest you'd pay on a 15-year mortgage.

Let me say that again for the people in the back. You will wind up paying over $1.4 million for a $400,000 loan, all for the privilege of being trapped in debt for half a century. And that brings us to red flag number three. 50-year mortgages turn home ownership into generational debt. The typical first-time home buyer is now 40 years old. And a 40-year-old taking on a 50-year mortgage would have to live until 90 just to pay off that loan. But chances are you'll be pushing daisies well before 90 since the average first

only lives between 74 and 80, which means that neither your spouse or your kids will even inherit a paid-for house. They'll just inherit your poor financial decisions and probably your male pattern baldness. Sorry, Brad. Now, I don't know about you, but that's not the kind of legacy I want to leave.

I want people to remember me for things that really matter. A well-groomed quaff that never went away. Stayed thick till the end. Thanks, Pop-Bob. Red flag number four. You barely build equity. There are two primary reasons that home ownership is a good move financially.

First, you stabilize the biggest line item in your budget. And second, you build equity with each monthly payment, which ultimately helps you build wealth because it adds to your net worth. 50-year mortgages basically wipe out that second perk. You see, because 50-year loans rack up so much interest, that's what most of your payments will cover for the first four decades of the loan. Get this. In the first year of a 50-year mortgage at 7%,

a mere 3% of your payment actually reduces what you owe on the home, the principal. The rest all goes to the bank. And you wouldn't pay more toward principal an interest until around year 41, almost at the very end of the loan's life. That is insane. And by the way, by year 40 or 41, you would think, wow, we must be almost done with this thing. Nope, you're not even halfway done paying off that loan by year 40. That is insane. And since the average homeowner sells after about 10 years, you'd likely move before ever crossing that line. That means you would spend over a decade making payments and walk away with little to no equity

to show for it, especially after closing costs and realtor fees. In practical terms, with a 50-year loan, you're just renting from the bank instead of a landlord. Except this time, you're on the hook for replacing that roof, the H-FAC, and that smoke detector that you fixed with a hammer at 3 a.m. I get it. That thing is of the devil. Finally, our fifth red flag. The 50-year mortgage only benefits builders, banks, and investors, not the American people. Here's why. If everyone suddenly qualifies for a bigger mortgage, sellers and builders will raise prices accordingly.

Plus, banks earn interest for twice as long at a higher rate while having a majority stake, in the value of your home. Good deal for them. And then you've got Wall Street investors who will profit from decades of payments repackaged into mortgage-backed securities. So you think you're buying a home, but what you're really buying is 50 years of cash flow for someone else to fund their dreams. And this isn't just me thinking this. Across the board, politicians are speaking out on this. Even Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green said this on X. It will ultimately reward the banks, mortgage lenders, and home builders. While people pay far more in interest and die before they ever pay off their home. In debt forever, in debt.

debt for life. And I think she's right. And I got to say, when the person who blamed California wildfires on space lasers has become the voice of reason, you know this country is officially off its rocker. What is happening? We are screwed. Now, I could go on all day about why the 50-year mortgage is completely insane, but I think I've sufficiently poo-poot it at this point. At the same time, though, I want to be sensitive to the reason this is even a conversation in the first place, because the housing market is completely out of whack, and millions of young people who would have been able to afford a home just a few years ago are now on the outside looking in. So what should we do about this housing crisis? What can we do? Well, I've got some ideas

and I'll share them with you in just a second. But first, let's talk about solving another crisis, having your personal data floating around the internet. Because once it's out there, it can basically hang around forever getting bought and sold by spammers and scammers. And that's why I use Delete me, one of the sponsors of today's video. Their privacy experts, find your info and data broker sites, delete it, and keep it gone. And while you could try to do that yourself, it would take forever. Maybe not 50 years, but Delete Me has already saved me over 108 hours compared to going on a bunch of websites and deleting all of it myself. And right now, you can go to join DeleteMe.com slash George and use Code George for 20% off their annual plans, or you can just

use the link in the description below. And if you think 50-year mortgages sound crazy, that's probably because you believe having less debt is better than having more debt. Well, that means you have critical thinking skills and it means you need to bank somewhere that agrees with you. And that's exactly why I love Fairwind's Credit Union, another sponsor of today's video. They're not trying to trap you in payments and fees. They're trying to help you make real progress with tools built for fans of this channel. The Fairwin Smart bundle gives you a no-feet checking account and a high-yield savings account. So if you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and actually make financial progress, bank with someone who cares. Go to fairwins.org slash Ramsey to get started or use the link in the description below.

So what can we do to make home ownership more affordable without trapping people in debt until they're 90? Well, I've actually seen some solid ideas thrown around. And the first one involves capital gains tax. Right now, a lot of people are staying put in their home instead of selling because they might be on the hook for a massive tax bill if their home has appreciated. Well, back in July of 2025, Marjorie Taylor Green introduced a bill that would eliminate the federal capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences.

And Graham Stephan has argued for raising the capital. gains exclusion on home sales to a million bucks for married couples instead of the current cap of 500,000. So if you raised or eliminated that exemption, more long-time owners would finally sell, which could open up inventory and cool prices for everyone. Another idea that I like from Graham, let homeowners transfer their existing low-rate mortgage when they trade up to a new property. The idea here is that could free up tons of frozen supply in the starter home market. And I think he's right on that one. Here's another simple solution that's bipartisan. limit how many single-family homes can be sold to hedge funds and institutional investors.

When trillion-dollar firms like Black Rock or Invitation homes are buying entire neighborhoods, regular families simply can't compete. You stop that, and you would fix a huge part of the affordability crisis overnight. And what's crazy is that despite all the math, logic, and common sense we've walked through today, there are still people defending this thing, including the president himself. He had this to say about it to Laura Ingram who asked him on Fox News. Your housing director has proposed something that has enraised your MAGA friends, which is this 50-year mortgage idea.

So a significant MAGA backlash, calling it a giveaway to the banks and simply prolonging the time it would take for Americans to own a home outright. Is that really a good idea? It's not even a big deal. I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years, and what it means is you pay something less, from 30, some people had a 40, and then now they have a 50. All it means is you pay less per month. you paid over a longer period of time.

It's not like a big factor. It might help a little bit. But the problem was that Biden did this. He increased the interest rates. And I have a lousy Fed person who's going to be gone in a few months. With all due respect, Mr. President, paying the same amount per month while forking over a million dollars in interest is a big factor.

That's not helping people. That is handing them a lifetime of payments. And that's exactly what the word mortgage means. It comes from the old French word mortgage, literally death pledge, translated to English. pledge ends when either the debt dies or you do and a 50-year mortgage brings that meaning right back to life if you buy at 40 your final payment comes due at 90 that is not home ownership that is financial slavery Proverbs 22 7 says it best the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender and what these kinds

of policies do they don't break the chains they just add some shine to it to make it more appealing and I get it people are desperate to make home ownership work they want the American dream they're tired of the rent going up they're tired of prices going crazy, they're tired of everyone telling them that they're falling behind and they should stop throwing away money on rent. So when you hear about a 50-year mortgage, it sounds like much-needed relief. But it's not. It's a trap that keeps you paying them most while owning the least. So a longer loan does not fix affordability. It just hides how bad the problem really is. And while politicians argue about solutions, here's what I know to be true. The people who wait

on Washington, on policy to fix their money problems, stay stuck. The people who take control for themselves who are diligent to get out of debt and stay out, who save for the future, who plan, who live with patience and laid gratification, they're the ones who build real wealth and freedom for themselves. And last time I checked, there's nothing in the Constitution that says you have to own a home by the time you're 21, 31, or even 41. And there's nothing wrong with renting if that's what you can afford right now. So take your time while being intentional with your money goals, like getting out of consumer debt and getting an emergency fund saved up first. And if it takes you five years to save up that down payment to make your mortgage affordable, that's fine.

And if you can't afford your dream single family home just yet, start smaller. Maybe it's a townhouse or a condo further out of town that actually fits your budget. It might not impress your friends, but owning a modest home you can actually afford beats being owned by a house you can never pay off. Because at the end of the day, freedom doesn't come from stretching your debt, it comes from getting rid of it. And if you want my step-by-step game plan for buying a home that fits your budget, even in this crazy market, I made a free course on home buying that lays it all out. So if you want to get

that free course, use the link in the description to check it out. You can also watch this video where I break down the biggest cost that most people don't even think about before buying a house. So click here to watch it next or use the link in the description. That's it for today. Be sure to hit like on this video if you found it helpful, subscribe to the channel for more, and share this with someone who desperately needs to see it. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.