George Kamel - You're Cooked If You Have a Job? (Money Expert Reacts to TikTok Advice)

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

💰 Find out your earning potential with the Investment Calculator.  TikTok is full of free money advice—proceed with caution, folks. In this episode, I react to the latest roundup of personal finance content sweeping the internet. Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video 21 Things Broke People Waste Money On. • 📈 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 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • 💸 Learn more about opening a high-yield savings account with Laurel Road. 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

I've got a confession to make. I've spent a fair amount of time on TikTok, but I'm not just wasting my life on soap-cutting videos, which are oddly satisfying. No, I am deep in the FinTalk rabbit hole, where the personal finance advice is free, and so are the red flags. So today, we're going to look at some of my favorite personal finance TikToks

that range from, huh, to that's actually decent, to who hurts you? And everything in between. Now, that's entertainment. But before we dive into the chaos, do me a solid by tapping the like button and hitting subscribe. Apparently, it's helpful. All right, let's get to it.

Are we still dabbing? I just learned how to do it. You're telling me it's already out? Futures now, old man. Let's do it. To take a private jet from Atlanta to Vegas and then back to Atlanta is $126,000. Oh, great. And y'all are asking me. Do you understand what I'm saying?

No private jet? What, you're not taking a private debt? You're not spending all this money to go make money? Four hours. How much you do that? In what world is that smart? Then y'all would be like, are you going broke again? Oh, I love this so much.

So T-Pain is clearly on what I assumed to be a Delta flight, because this is the caption. If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense. Pass me the Biscoff Coo. I love this. This is T-Pain going, hey, guys, just because I have money doesn't mean I'm going to waste it on private flights. Because the old saying, you got to spend money to make money. Not $126,000 for a flight from Atlanta to Vegas. That is insane. So let's see what some of the comments had to say.

This one's from imitation by Jarrell. Meanwhile, they're typing on their air mattress in their parents' basement. I guess he's responding to the haters? Is that what's happening here? Caleb said, people think rich means irresponsible. Amen and roll tide. Caleb. I'm not sure I use that in the right context, but we'll make it work. And finally, Delta, chimed in. Make it make sense.

Sunglasses emoji. Okay. You ruined it, Delta. We were having fun and you ruined it. You know what? This is like when the boomers pick up the Gen Z lingo, and then Gen Z is like, nah, we're done with that. You can have it now. Way to ruin the fun. But here's the truth. Here's the heart behind this. Other people will always find ways to spend your money faster than you would. So you've got to do what makes sense for you and not care what other people think. And if that means T-Pain is next to me on a Delta flight, that's a double blessing. T-Pain, I love your content. If you want to collab, your boy's got some pipes. I think we can spit bars on a track. I think that's what, okay, I think that's ruined, too.

I've ruined that one as well. All right. I think rap as a genre is now shut down because of me. You violated the law. Pay the court a fine or serve your sentence. All right, let's move on. Ask me what's the best purchase I've ever made. It's two purchases. That's the best purchases that I've ever made in my three one content right so like anything that's on camera anything that's that's that's gonna upgrade my streams anything that's good at the streams so like gear my mom got it my house my kids already good they like they got a house they're already good like that's a big step you you will oh let me tell you how important let me tell you how crazy a house is when you purchase it bro when I bought my mom house and it was and they were able to live in it

Like, actually live in it? When I bought my house, I had the AMP house, right? But when I bought my house, I went into my house, chat. Every time I go inside my house, door unlocks, I lock it, shower turns on, lights turn on, food in the refrigerator, and it's my, like, it's yours. Like, think about it, like, it's yours, chat. The A&P house that we got all together. I always tell the bros, I'm like, you know this house is going to be for, like, all of our kids, right?

Whenever they want to, this is the headquarters. Don't spend your money unnecessarily. Oh, all right. So I'm told this is Kai Sinat, who is a very famous Twitch streamer. I don't know what most of those words mean, but I like what he's saying here. And I love his, I mean, just this amazing gratitude he has for having shelter that he can call his own.

That's special. So when he was asked, what are the best purchases he's made, gear to create the content he creates? Love that. That's really investing in his business and in his future and his family. And then you've got the house purchases, and he's going, hey, this is, this is legacy. A lot of people never get to own their own home. And it's a goal for a lot of people.

And I love that he has such gratitude of what a blessing this is to walk into a house and go, this is mine. Now, when you get it paid off, that's even better. When you got no mortgage on it, I don't know his situation. Sounds like he has the money to just buy it in cash if he wanted to. But regardless, I love the sense of ownership that he has over this house and what it means to him. and that tells me he's going to be a good steward of it, he's going to take care of it, and he's going to leave the legacy he wants to leave.

So for that, I say a thousand percent yes to this advice. And if you want to stream sometime, hit me up. I can only play one video game, and that's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but pretty good at it. Keep dreaming, son. Let's move on. I have a question about passive income. Gary. When you say passive income, what do you mean?

I mean not having to work all day long. I want to be on a beach in Mexico instead of being a... an office in Sweden in the cold November. Are you being serious right now? Yes, yes, I'm serious. The quickest way to not be on a beach in Mexico is to think that passive income exists. I think the reason so many scum buckets are making so much money is because you're buying stupid forces over and over thinking there's some magic formula for passive income.

Passive income looks like this. You take money that you can afford to go to zero and you put them into two places that have historically created passive income. Public markets that you don't care if it goes up and down and you just wait to the end or real estate, and you hope that your real estate area doesn't get crushed. Everything else almost doesn't exist. God bless Gary V for just telling the people the truth, telling it like it is. And I think Gary is spot on with this one. When you talk about passive income, it is absolutely a myth. All right, you can't earn money if you don't work. And this idea that you're going to

have some four-hour work week on a beach somewhere, well, it's a myth unless you do what Gary's saying. Put your money into the stock market to where your stock market investments make more money than you do. That's technically as passive as it gets. And real estate, while being less passive, can generate a serious amount of income if you build a pretty big portfolio and it's paid for it, which means it's cash flowing. There's no debt against it. So all the profits are yours. So I love this mentality and I love Gary calling it like it is. If there's passive income to be had, it's because some guy told you there is in his course and I would run, run far, far.

away. Thank you, Gary. You're an American hero. All right, we're going to move on to another category, which is all about wealth building. So let's see what these gurus have to say. Who understands what inflation is? Right now, we're cheating around 4%. What percent? Which means that when you're earning nothing in your bank account, you're actually losing 4%. So you're nervous, you're Dave Ramsey. You're out of debt and you have $100,000 in the bank. Next year it will feel like $96,000. And the year after that is going to feel like $92,000. So the bank is the dumbest place on the planet where we store cash. And if you have more than an emergency reserve, then you are a beautiful child of God,

a precious, priceless soul doing really dumb things. Well, he said it. Don't appreciate his use of Dave Ramseyite. And I don't know why he thinks that we preach that you should keep all of your money in a checking account. I would agree with him on this, that that is insane. I don't know where he's going with it. I assume it's to pitch his big real estate course to give him your money instead of the bank.

That's where this guy usually goes with this. But there is some nuance here, right? If you're saving up for a big purchase you're going to make within the next few years, like a car or a house, it is best to keep that money liquid in a high yield savings account, which is about at the rate of inflation right now. So your money's at least growing with inflation. And like you mentioned, emergency reserves. You should have a three to six month emergency fund in liquid cash.

Again, in a high yield savings account that's at least, growing a little bit with time. So this is a rare moment. I'm going to agree with this guy and say you don't want to keep your money in a local brick and mortar bank where your savings is basically collecting dust. Instead, put it into a high-heeled savings account

with an online bank, and I recommend and personally use one called Laurel Road, one of the sponsors of today's video. They're an online bank, so they don't have all this overhead, and they pass on those savings to you in the form of top-tier API. Plus, there's no minimum balance required to open an account,

and your deposits are FDIC insured. And best of all, Laurel Road never dings you with any junk fees and maintenance fees, which means all of your money stays your money. You can open an account today by going to Laurel Road.com slash George or click the link in the description below. All right, let's see what the next guy or gal has to say. Something my mentor told me that stuck with me, even though it was years ago, is that he who works all day has no time to make money. If you are relying on like an hourly pay to like make your way, you are cooked. And I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to.

and like roast you obviously like i want you to succeed that's when i'm telling you this if you ever want to be a millionaire even half a million dollars think about your i want you to look at your hourly wage right now say five hundred thousand dollars and do the math 500 000 divided by 15 you would have to work 33 000 hours you would have to work 1,388 full Days, bro. So if you work a job that doesn't take too much of your time, you should be using literally all of your time to try to make more money. If you really want to make it, it's going to take every single second of your time.

Some say they want it. Others really want it. If you want to know if someone really wants it, just look at what they're doing with their time. I'm so confused by all of this. And why is he whispering in a hotel bed? I don't know. Why does this have 60,000 likes?

I have no idea. People are just commenting time. is money. I rely on sports betting. Money's not everything, dude. Bro, talk about 33,000 hours like I don't have over 10,000 hours on Dota, too. I'm so confused, but I think I'm not meant for the internet anymore. It's getting very scary in here. But listen, he's hating on the nine to five job. It's become the new sexy thing in the finance community for some reason. It's going, bro, if you've got a nine to five, you're cooked, bro. Bro, you're cooked. Bro, you don't even know how to cook. Don't tell me that I'm cooked. What's the last thing you cooked? Reheated your door dash? Get out of town.

bro. So yes, at $15 an hour, it would take $33,000 to technically make $500,000. But he's forgetting about something really important. Compound growth. So when you actually invest your money, it grows at a much faster rate than just the rate you can make it. So if I invest $500,000 over 20 years, my account balance is not $500,000. It's going to be in the millions. Let me prove it to you using our investment calculator. Ready for this?

Your boy is sourced. That was good falsetto. Play that back. You'll see the vibrato on that. Sourced. That is the voice of an angel. All right, here we go. Investment calculator.

We're going to go, I'll say age 25 to age 65. You currently have nothing in invent. You've never invested a dollar. And let's say you contribute 15% of the income of that person making 15 bucks an hour. That's about $390 per month. So let's contribute that monthly and see where we end up with a, let's say 10% rate of return. that's the average from the S&P 500 over the last several decades. Calculate $2.5 million.

What happened to this guy saying I need to work my whole life to maybe get a half a million? That's 5x that because I invested the money instead of just spending it on random crap or keeping it in a checking account. So I hope that helps you see that the only guy that's cooked is old broccoli rob over here. Ignore these guys. I don't want to take advice from anyone laying in a bed. I don't like it.

You get up and grind, bro. Where's the hustle? I want to see you stand and flexing the whole time. Give me some Hermosie. You know, he's always out a whiteboard or something. You're not doing anything. Just in bed all tucked in. He's too comfy.

Don't give me advice when you're comfy. I want to be uncomfortable. That's the grind, bro. They're man-meter's broken. Let's see if this next one is less anger-inducing. We can help. How long-term investors react to red days in the market? Oh, yes.

My guy, what a flex. Unphased. That's got to hurt his neck. He must do Pilates or something to have that kind of neck strength. The only people who get hurt on a roller coaster are the ones who get off before it's over. And this guy, the ups and he's calm. Cool as a cucumber. All right, he's Larry from Veggie Tales at this point.

That's how cool he is. There's actual stats behind this. When we surveyed 10,000 millionaires, we found that the typical millionaire gained that status through discipline-saving over time and a commitment to lifelong learning. They just invested consistently, no matter what the market did. So you've got to realize investing is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't freak out with every up and down,

but maybe don't look backwards the whole time because you're going to get a crick in your neck. All right, we're going to do one more, and this one's a surprise from producer Alex. He tells me it's very timely and potentially humanity is saved, question mark. Let's find out. I can't afford rent, gas, or food.

We're in a global trade war. What are we going to do? Bro, didn't you hear? We're good now. Our problems are solved. Are you even listening to me? I can't afford to feed my kids. So unless a couple of has-been celebrities went into space, I don't want to hear it. Bro.

Katie Perry went into space. Don't give me hope. Are you messing with me? No. They did it. They went into space for 10 minutes. Did they come back thinking that they're better than everyone? Yeah.

Katie Parr said that you don't know the love inside of you until you've been in space. Was it crowdfunded or funded by an evil billionaire? Not the evil billionaires. That's worse than Elon. Did they take away attention from actual female astronauts and undermine the intense process of actually becoming one? They all called themselves astronauts and the tripping enormous victory for feminism. We're going to be okay. They saved us. Gosh, that is so on brand, so perfect. That is definitely timely.

And I do thank all of the faux astronauts who saved humanity and a lot of allowed us to find true love, which we'll never find because we'll never be able to afford to go to space. Because we're just normal people. It's so good. I just want to see some of the comments here. Bonsai Buddy said, don't forget they called it a mission. The most offensive part. It's a space mission for Katie to find love. Katie Perry united the entire planet against her. Now that is true. I didn't even know we didn't like Katie Perry until she went to space and I realized, oh, we all feel that this is the most universal human experience, even more than love. We all decided.

Nope to Katie. Oh, she's got to be having some regrets. She's got to be coming down from Cloud 9, literally. All right, I have hit my daily doom-scrolling limit, so I'm going to tap out for today. But lucky for you, the good times don't stop here. Keep watching to see me react to broke people doing very broke people things with their money.

With this next video coming up, you can also click the link in the description to go check it out. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.