The Iced Coffee Hour - Dave Ramsey on Retiring, Getting Divorced, and Going Bankrupt

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Oracle: Free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/iced Collective: Get 1 month of Collective free today at https://collective.com/ich NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00 - INTRO 00:33 - Dave Is RETIRING?! 01:43 - The Ramsey legacy is the most important thing 04:50 - Dave's Survivability Index 13:20 - Raising kids to become "Great adults" 26:57 - Why Dave Ramsey is staying bald 33:47 - What Dave needs to fix about his own finances 41:30 - How to keep your marriage afloat through hard times 49:12 - How to change your values and find REAL validation 52:27 - Relying on necessity vs hope 58:09 - Would Dave take free debt? *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Of course it's not enough. It wasn't intended to be enough. Any skin color, any sex, any nation you come from, if you want corn, no exceptions. You have to plant corn. We've heard some news that you are considering retiring soon. So Dave Ramsey, welcome back on the iced coffee hour. I'm on here twice. I know. That means your popularity didn't completely plummet. I didn't. So here we are again, and we've heard some news that you are considering retiring soon. You did? I did. It's not true. It's not true?

Really? Who did we get this information from? Scaling back? I'm 63. I've been scaling back for a long time. Four years ago, I quit working on Fridays. Does that count? I feel like that's getting there, yeah. That's a step in the right direction. We moved my son 12 years. He's been working here. Yeah. moved him, the operating board moved him into the president's role in January. What is that now, nine, ten months ago.

And he and I get to work together for the first time. He's always worked for someone else here. So we're having a blast working together. So for this next season, I'm the CEO, and he's the president. And someday I will retire. Yeah. But retirement for me will actually be, I'll still do the show. As long as I make sense, if I quit making sense and I start hurting the brand,

then we'll have to take me off. Yeah. That'll happen to, or become completely irrelevant and just an angry boomer. But close now maybe, but anyway. But yeah, we'll do that. And I'll continue to speak as much as I can and those kinds of things. I enjoy those things. And so that'll be my retirement to do those things.

But I'll be down here most days. How much thought do you put into legacy in terms of building your business, passing it on and making sure that everyone you give it to doesn't take it for granted? Way too much. I started 15 years ago. and operating board we set annual goals around brand transfer, ownership transfer, and legacy and leadership transfer. And those are all legacy items, succession planning, if you will.

And so, yeah, we've been working very, very hard on it for 15 years. And it's harder than I thought it was going to be. In our case, there's really three elements, the ownership issue, which means I need to raise the Ramsey kids. and teach them business acumen over a series of decades, which we've done, to be wise owners. Because even if I got good leadership team, if the owners are dumb, and then they make the good leadership team do dumb things, the good leadership team will leave, and the company will go down.

Okay, the legacy will be blown up. So you have to have wise owners, and you have to have a quality leadership team, bench depth. They carry on the values. In our case, it's different than would be anybody in our space, all of us. when you are the product of the brand, you've got a brand transfer that's very difficult. And the others, there were good best practices. We found lots of people that had transferred,

you know, generational businesses, ownership-wise and leadership-wise. Found lots of good data out there, lots of good books and families that we could talk to that had done it. They're on Gen 4, Gen 5, that kind of thing. And so lots of best practices we could get. But it's very hard to find somebody's done a brand transfer like ours. Because I'm just a stinking brand.

Yep. And when I'm not there, what's the brand? And so we started working on what we now call, these days called Ramsey personalities. Instead of doing a one-to-one handoff, it turns out being the guy that follows the guy's almost impossible. It's almost 100% failure rate. Paul Harvey Jr., very seldom can take Paul Harvey's seat. Occasionally it works, but it's so rare it's not something you want to model.

But we did figure out a one-to-many had a chance. and so that's why I didn't put the whole thing on my daughter, Rachel Cruz's shoulders, and then we have now raised up a George Camel and a Jade Warshall and a John Deloney and a Ken Coleman, and we're in not only the money space, but the other spaces. And so that, and we actually have started studying, we have these dumb accounting measurements of whether it's working. It's probably more than you wanted to know, but you asked. No, no, I'm curious. When we started it was like, okay, I'm producing all the revenue off of my brand.

And so if I die today, you know, what happens to all these employees? Well, they're screwed. The whole thing's going to fold up like a bad tent. You know, that's where it started when I was 48 years old. And we said, okay, we need to measure non-day revenue. So if Rachel is going and making, doing a book, that's non-day revenue. Or if Ken Coleman goes and speaks somewhere, that speaking fee is a non-day revenue, right? Which is kind of a weird.

We've had to have dumb names for around here for stuff all the time. And so then we started calling it worse. It's called the survivability index. That sounds a bit morbid, no. It's very morbid. It's like when we get, once a year we do an estate planning meeting where we talk to all the leaders and all the owners and about what happens if Dave dies this year.

And I call it the Monty Python meeting. I'm feeling much better. It's just a flesh wound. You know, it's like, oh my God. It's a cold, guys. It's horrible. I'm sitting there and talk about me dying for an hour and a half. But you have to plan it because otherwise you just,

you ensure the failure. of the thing you've worked so hard to build. Are you treating your health differently as a result of that, of the survivability index of, hey, maybe I should go to the gym more, get more exercise, eat healthy or not? You know, it actually takes the weight off of me. The more, and, you know, we had a goal of having by the year 20, 2020, we wanted it to be at 50% of the revenue was not mine.

And the great news is that in 2023, we're at about 78%. No. I'm not here because it's not only that they're producing it, but we've built the business models out in such a way that it's not Dave dependent to continue to run. Okay. For instance, our high school curriculum is a $15, $20 million business in high schools.

They don't care if I'm alive or not. That's got like a 98% survivability, right? And so, I don't know. Teachers are like Dave died. We can't teach it anymore because I'm not even in the videos. So hardly just a little bit. And we could chop those out in 20 minutes. So, yeah,

or they could chop those out. I won't be here. But yeah, that's that's kind of stuff. It's very interesting. It makes you think about your business model stuff, and it takes the pressure off of that. And so it's just, it's weird. It's awkward.

But if you don't talk about it, you screw it up. Yeah. make sure that they work for it. You mentioned your son now. He's in the role of being president of the company. I heard from somebody that he had to climb that ladder and one rung at a time. It was tough. And it was not easy.

So how intentional were you about doing that? Because a lot of people, they mess it up. Generational wealth usually only lasts like three generations, as they say. Well, again, we studied some principles, and some of them were that. That you can't, obviously nepotism leads to the destruction of legacy. so, meaning putting someone that's incompetent into a role because they happen to hit the DNA lottery. You know, it happened to be in your bloodline. That's just dumber and rock.

And the other thing is we want to put people in roles that they fit in. David Green told me at Hobby Lobby, he said, if the job is to climb a tree, get a squirrel. Not a dog. You know, and so, you know, my children are, the Bible says train up a child in the way he is bent, is the old king James. and the tramp of child the way he's bent the way he's made and when he's old, he'll not depart from it. And so we did not put Rachel, who's very good on camera, very good on stage, incredible on social media,

horrible on details. We did not put her in charge of accounting. The whole place would be gone. It would have burned down, okay? And so, you know, put her where she's a dancing poodle. I mean, everybody, I've got three kids. everybody's got a kid that comes out with a cigar and a bottle of champagne. Rachel's that kid.

She's a party looking for a place to happen. She's perfect for this, and she's brilliant. She's world-class at it. But to make her the CEO, the people would just leave. Not because they don't like her because everybody likes her, but because they would have no idea what we're doing because we would make it up every morning. And my son Daniels is quite the opposite.

He does not want to be on camera and on stage. but he's very entrepreneurial and, you know, loves products and digital products and projects and design, you know, organizational design and all this stuff. And so, you know, put them where their strengths are and you've got a good shot at doing that. But you can't ensure it. The only thing we can do is to test and gradually do it. So, you know, like for instance, when we went to one of the moves we made was two years ago, we went from the Dave Ramsey Show to the Ramsey Show.

And we thought it was a huge deal. And the weird thing is we did not announce it. We didn't even tell our 680 radio stations. Two radio stations called us and loved it. No, the rest of them noticed. Our listenership in the comments went, they just changed the name. Well, that's cool. Well, they're doing that succession thing they talk about.

Okay, that's cool. And then it was over. For us, it was this big emotional thing. And it was, oh, wow, are we making a chance? Are we going from Coke to original Coke? And nobody cared. But us. So you think it was better not to announce it?

Oh, it turns out it was genius not to announce it. Okay. In that case, we just did it. And then for the first eight months or so, if I wasn't on the air, the numbers were down. I had a co-host like I do now on the Ramsey show. But if I wasn't there at all, it was two of them doing it, the numbers were down. Now the numbers are up when I'm not there. You're kidding.

I'm serious. So people don't want to see you anymore. So distressing. How does that feel? You plan not to be important and your plan works. It sucks. How much does that hurt your ego? It hurts my feelings.

But it was my plan. I did it on purpose. And so you have this, on one hand, it's like it worked. We're successful. And on the other hand, it's like, they don't like me. It's great. It's a weird set of emotions to. How do you set your own feelings?

A plan to be less important. How do you set your feelings aside on something like that? And don't take it. personally and view it objectively. Well, I have to say, you know, the way you do it, I intellectually make the decision of it's what I was trying to do, so I really shouldn't gripe about it. I was really trying to make it where this place survives without me. Hello.

And that it, you know, how do you ensure that generationally it doesn't crash when Dave's gone, you know, and you put it on it before you're gone and you make it work before you're gone. And then it did. And damn, blame it, it did. And so, you know, it's the little boy, Dave, that's six years old and wants to be important that lives inside of me and still lives inside of everyone, he's got his little feelings hurt. But the man, Dave, who's thinking about legacy and generational change

and my grandkids and my great grandkids and the number of lives that'll be touched because we did this right after I'm gone, that guy's real proud. But before we get into that, I'm sure you guys have been hearing this absolutely everywhere and for good reason that AI might now be the most important new technology out there.

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well. I'm serious. Like, it's not, you know, it's really great time with the Ramses, but I'm saying, like, a lot of people we talk to, like the wealthy people, man, they're kids. They go off and they, everyone wants to become an artist, which there's nothing wrong with that, but usually it's just a decoy because they can't find their actual ambition or passion. It seems as like your kids, but how do you foster that? Well, I mean, there's a couple of things we learn, thank God. after going broke and our kids were growing up as we were growing wealth. They weren't born into wealth. It was just there by the time they were grown.

One thing is my friend Andy Andrews says, don't raise kids to be great kids, raise kids to be great adults. And so teach them critical thinking skills. If I'm making you do something in your eight years old and we're having a big argument about it all the time, I haven't really explained to you why I'm making you do it. Like you need to brush your teeth. I don't want to brush my teeth.

I brush my teeth. your toothbrush is dry. Now you lied and you didn't brush your teeth. And we got two problems, right? And this has happened at the Ramsey house. It sounds like it has. Who's not brushing your teeth? So what's the big deal about brushing your teeth?

Because, you know, I want adult children that have teeth. That's why you do it, right? I mean, how do you want them to turn out? I want them to have, you know, daughters are going on a date. My son's going on a date in high school. It's like, I kind of think that person's scummy. Why would you do that? Because you might end up with them and then your life's going to suck, you know, if you, you know, plug your life into scummy over here.

And so we teach them. I used to say, when we've got great in-laws, I mean, my daughter-in-law, my two sons-in-law are fabulous. They're world-class. And I used to say, man, I hit the son-in-law lottery. Before Allison came along, Mary Daniel, now I hit the in-law lottery, right? But I quit saying that because it wasn't that. It wasn't accidental. I taught them how to pick, and they picked well.

What qualities do you teach them to look for in a person that they pick like that? I think it's kind of common sense. Everyone would answer that probably the same, somewhat the same anyway. Integrity, work ethic, desire to serve others to not be abusive. Toxic human beings are going to exude toxicity, right? And in our case, we're a family of faith. And so are you welcome with God? Because that's going to lead you to these other character qualities as well,

is how it's happened with me in my life. happen my kids. So, you know, but it wasn't like some kind of legalistic things like, you must marry a Baptist. No, it wasn't that. It was more like, look, these are values that we have. And here's a place you're going to find them is with people that think that way. Even then, obviously, they come from different things.

And so, you know, every one of my kids has a hundred percent of them have had fights with their spouses, 100 percent of them spend time learning how to be married and oftentimes see a marriage counselor or a therapist. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just training. But we taught them to do that too. So we did it. Sharon and I did it.

So why not? And so you read books on how to do marriage if you want to be married well. And so all that stuff. So all of that's the second answer to your question, Jack, is how do you raise kids in a wealthy family? The wealth doesn't ruin them. Wealth does not ruin people. It exposes who they are. Wealth is ambivalent.

It's amoral. It doesn't. And in the case of you or me, too, it just magnified. who I am. The good parts of me, the bad parts of me get really big, the more money I have. So if someone has a problem with their temper and they get wealth and they're a rageaholic and nobody wants to be around them, they're absolutely out of control moron, you know, or if they're kind and very giving and they get wealth, they become known for their generosity worldwide for their generosity. It's like they're like a picture of generosity. But they were

already a person who was generous. or they had already developed the generosity muscle before they got wealth. They didn't suddenly become generous because they got wealth. It just exposed who they are. And it seems true with kids. So if you raise kids that are lazy that don't work hard, they don't tell the truth, that lie, that are entitled because they grew up and, you know, they were born on third base, thought they hit a triple, right?

Then you give them money. Well, they're going to be useless. But they were already useless. The wealth just showed us that. How do you test financial compatibility with a partner? And is that something you could change about a person? You can present someone the option to change, and then they decide to change, but you can't change other people on anything.

All I can do is present an idea, and then you decide if you're going to pick it up or not. You know, the way we've taught it on the air for years is the data tells us that if you can agree on four things prior to marriage, the probability of you still being married 40 years later is very high. If you can agree on your money, because when you agree on how money is going to be handled, you're agreeing on your fears, you're agreeing on your anxieties, you're agreeing on your dreams, you're agreeing on your values, because money flows to those things. So if you can agree on your money, it's very important. If you can agree on kids, how many we're going to have, how we're going to

raise them, are we going to be, are we going to manage the children or are they going to manage us, you know, that kind of stuff? In-laws, crazy's in the family, because every family's got crazy in it. And if you don't think there's crazy in your family, it means it's you. And so, you know, so anyway, You got to deal, how are we going to have boundaries, in other words? And then the fourth is be in agreement on religion. If we're going to be atheists, then let's both, you know, let's be an agreement about that. If we're going to be Christian, you know, it's very few cross-religion marriages end up making it long term.

Because, again, it's a value system thing. Sure. It's what you're, it's how you live your life, how your decision-making paradigm comes out of your value system. And so that ends up there. So the data says if you agree on this four things. So once I know that, and by the way, number one calls a divorce is money. problems in money fights. If I know that, and I'm dating, then it becomes very important if we're going to get married that we're compatible or that we at least agree prior to marriage.

Okay. Now, you could start out and be going, you know, in the case of, Rachel tells the story of Winston taking her out on their first date and he used a credit card to buy the pizza, you know, and so you don't throw Winston away because he used a credit card in the Ramsey family, right? And she want to. He bought the pizza. It's his problem, right? And so, you know, that's what's necessary. But someone explained to Winston later on, that's the Ramsey's daughter. Used a credit card.

You're a moron. You know, it made fun of him. And then it became a funny thing later. But, you know, that's not an indication that we're not compatible on one date. It just said, okay, there's a thing there that the Ramses don't use credit cards. So we've got to talk about this ahead of time. And we've got to decide how we're going to do that. So typically you don't have to be, you don't want to be the same.

Like my wife is a saver and I'm a spender. My wife is a scarcity person, and I'm an abundance person. So risk, I'm much heavier risk tolerance than she has. And you need that balance, that counterbalance. Larry Burkett used to say, if two people just like get married, one of you is unnecessary. So you don't want to be just alike. But you do need to have a value system. Like if you detest, for instance, in our case,

detest being in debt, you can't stand it. And you marry somebody who just is going to borrow all the time. You can have a problem. Hello. I mean, no kidding. And so, or you like to have a plan and know where things are going, and the other person refuses to participate in that. You can have a problem.

But there's other stuff going on there beneath the surface anyway. It's more than just the money. The money's just revealing it. I'm curious on finances and what keeps people poor. How often can you chalk it up to systemic issues, like credit and, you know, payday loans and different predatory loans taking advantage of people versus their own responsibility, financial literacy, versus just, you know, not being subjected to financial literacy as they're growing up.

Yeah. Could be the economy too or... Could be the economy. Yeah. That upbringing. I think it's everything. It's all of those things. And so where do we chalk it up to the ones, those of us like me that make it out?

I mean, I didn't grow up with any money. So what's the difference of me and my next door name? neighbor. We had the same skin color, way of the same accent. We had the same elementary school, and then why am I sitting here? And he's not in terms of net worth. Okay. What's different? So the systemic things are there, and they do take pockets of people. And there are industries that, as you said, from a biblical perspective, we would say he oppressed the poor. It's one of the most horrible things you can do to take advantage of a widow and orphan in the poor. You know, it's just anti-human.

It's evil. And so these businesses that feed on the poor are just, they have, at their very core, a detestful immorality. And so they are oppressors of the poor. Lord help them. You know, it's not going to go well for them. So you don't want to be a person that picks on the poor. You instead want to be someone that lifts them up or helps someone not be poor.

Mike Todd said, I've been rich and I've been broke, but I've never been poor. Poor's a state of mind. And so it's, oh, people like us, you know, we can't get ahead. Eeyore is my spirit animal. Oh, it's bad. Thank God it's Friday. Oh, God, it's Monday. The little man can't get ahead.

We're stuck. I sure hope the president fixes my life. It's a victim mentality or an entitled mentality that causes you to not take action and put corn in the ground. And then you're shocked. There is no corn. drop. You have to plant something if you want something to grow. There is no exceptions to that. Rich, poor, any skin color, any sex, any nation you come from. If you want corn, no exceptions. You have to plant corn. If you want something to come into your life, you have to cause that, cause and effect-wise what to happen.

It's like in the investing world that we all talk about all the time. the interesting statistic is 96% one study showed of whether someone is able to build wealth in their retirement plan has to do with whether they actually put money in it. It's not the rate of return. It's not the 12b1 fees. It's not no load versus load. It's not bogal passive investing versus buying mutual funds from a broker. It's none of that. It's did you actually take action and put money into the freaking account, you know?

Did you plant the corn? You know, did you plant the corn? And then you stand back and go, well, the corn, reason the corn didn't grow is any of the right? Fertilizer. No, you put no corn to the ground. You know, and so there is definitely prejudice out there because there's ignorant people out there. There's definitely racism out there. There's ignorant people out there.

There's definitely sexism out there because there's ignorant people out there. Those are systemic things that affect your personal economy. It affects the opportunities that are in front of you. It affects all of those things. But there are yet, and yet in every one of those cases, we can find many, many examples who people that overcame those things. I mean, I'm from the South and I have a southern accent, which by definition for some people in the North, because they're stereotypically idiots, they immediately assume that because I have a southern accent that my IQ is lower than theirs. That's true. You know, but is that a barrier for my broadcast?

Yes, I had to go take voice and get some of. I got rid of about 80% of my country fried red. neck accent. I kept a little for flavor. But the, but, but I had to work on that because people in Boston are like, I don't even know what he's saying. And it can't be right because it sounds like he's broadcasting from a double wide, you know. And so, but that's a barrier. It's a systemic barrier. And so you've got to deal with, okay, that's a blocker. How much is they got to get over it and how much of I got to get over it? And how much is somebody saying, you're never going to make it because of that. And I go make it anyway. But before we get into that, running a business can be

incredibly rewarding, but obviously you still need the basics and fundamentals down if you want your business to run smoothly. This includes items like CPA, bookkeeper, separate payroll solutions, and so on. Plus, and I say this from experience, the more your business scales, the more complicated it gets, and the more you need to pay attention to this. Well, with today's sponsor Collective, you can make sure that you don't only just do that, but you also save thousands of dollars and countless hours in the meantime. Collective is the solution for contractors, freelancers, and self-employed entrepreneurs that allows them to focus on their passion, not the paperwork. Collective handles compliance, taxes, bookkeeping, accounting, and even payroll.

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And if you don't like it, that's totally fine. It's completely free at collective.com slash ICH. Thank you so much, collective, and back to the episode. Now, you're talking about a victim mindset. Do you think that's more prevalent today with social media? Or do you feel like it was more prevalent 20, 30 years ago? No, it's always been there. Social media just gave my voice. Sure. But do you feel like other people hearing victim mentalities online? They could more relate to it.

And it might sit down. It's a campfire that can get around. It's just a very large campfire. Sure. And that tribe is the victim tribe. And you know, you found your people. And, you know, it's a bunch of trolls. And, you know, I'm going to whine and gripe and blame everybody else.

And it's this and that. It's this and that. Because I refuse to go plant corn. Yes, I'm validating and saying. I hear you. I see you, that those things are real. They've happened to me. You know, here's a weird one, okay.

The number of people that are successful on network television that have no hair that are male, think about it. None. Yeah. Okay. So I'm a victim of baldism. You have some hair. But, hey, I refuse to go get a toupee or a hair implant.

So I'm probably not going to be on the cool channel with the HD beautiful people. I'm on there as a guest because I'm a dancing animal. I'm curious. But other than that, yeah. When you were losing your hair, did you ever have the desire to get a transplant, a toupee, or like try to keep it at all? Are you just embracing it? For a while, I didn't think anything about it. And then it was gone.

And I thought, well, that's on a book cover. And so if I go get a, if I go get hair, then they're going to go, I mean, you used to not have hair. And that's weird. And, you know, so I'm, you know, it's like glasses. I could, you know, I wear contacts, you know, when I'm playing golf or scuba or scuba or, doing anything sports-wise. We do a lot of water skiing. I wear contacts. I wear contacts almost a weekend.

Or when I get home, but I, you know, but 25 million books with these glasses. So it was like, Dave, what'd you do? What's different? What's different? I took the glasses off. But yeah, so I still wear the glasses. That's interesting. We did a podcast recently with Ty Lopez who said that he keeps his glasses on

even though he got LASIC and he takes the frames out so that when he's on camera, you don't see the reflection of the glasses. Oh, wow. Because his brand is so recognized with him wearing glasses. Yeah, I couldn't get LASIC, so I didn't do that. But I actually have some blanks. They're glasses, but they don't have any prescription in them.

That's crazy. In case I've got contacts in, I can reach in my backpack and throw them on and jump on stage and not think anything about it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's crazy. But, I mean, it's just, no, I never thought anything about it. I don't, it's not, I've never been, I'm not one of the blessed people that has been able to open doors using my appearance. So it's never been an issue.

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If people know they should just contribute, what do you think the reason is that they just decide, I'm not going to do this? I know I should be saving, but I'll do that tomorrow. I'm not positive, but I think it has something to do with hope. I like pizza but I know if I eat like the whole thing that I'm going to continue to be an oopalumpa I'm going to continue to be overweight right

and so why is it that you know A I don't want to pay the price to get the different result or B I don't believe that if I do it it's really going to work that's called hopelessness lack of hope

And so I don't believe if I save money, I can really be a millionaire. And even if I became a millionaire, millions is not enough. And so I'm not going to do any of it just because I don't believe it's going to end up with a better life for having saved that money. So I'll just spend the money and have a great weekend. And then Monday I'll be broke and have anxiety about my money again because I don't believe it's going to work. So half of our job on the Ramsey show has been over these decades is to inject hope, cause people with math or cause people with, a discussion or cause people with humor or a story or someone else's debt-free scream to believe they can do it. It's one of the reasons we have eight bazillion debt-free screams on YouTube because I'll guarantee you there's somebody like whoever's watching this, like you.

There's somebody like you on there because, I mean, there's eight million. I don't know how many hundreds and thousands now of those debt-free screams on there. So there's a single mom that's 52 years old that cuts hair and she's on there. And so if you're a single mom and you cut hair, she's on there. She did it. That's social proof, you know, makes her believe she can do it. That's hope. And sometimes you hear me just do it with math and you go, you know, $100 a month saved

for $25 to $65 is, you know, it'll be somewhere around a million, million and a half depending on what your rate of return is, but 10 to 12% somewhere in there is what you're going to have. $100 a month. So shut up. Go do it. And they go, I didn't know I could do that. That sounds attainable. Sounds like I could do it.

You can do it. You can do it. Or I got $100,000 in student loan debt, and I don't know how I'm going to get out. Okay, well, what do you make? $100,000, okay. What about $25,000 for four years? You could be out in four years.

Or what about $33,000 for three years? Could you do that? Could you work a little extra and be done in two years and live on almost absolutely nothing and your friends think you're crazy? Yeah, I never thought of that. It was a sixth grade math. I did long division from the sixth grade.

No insight here. It's hope. That is so, I've never thought about it being hope, but it makes sense. It makes, because the math really is so easy. It is. Sorry. Yeah, you're fine. You're good.

That is, that is a unique take. I did not expect you to say that, but I actually really like that. You would never go to the trouble to go out in the sun with a hoe and dig up the ground and put the corn in the ground and then make sure it was watered and then make sure the weeds are killed and then keep the animals off of it so that the corn would grow. you would never go to that trouble if you didn't believe corn was going to grow. That's hope. Why would you plant corn and go to all that trouble? It's easier to sit at home watch Tiger King on Netflix.

I mean, why would you go to all that trouble, right? Why would I put myself out there? Well, I would a risk embarrassment? Why would I sweat versus not sweat? Why would I be tired versus not be tired unless I believed it was going to work? I think that can be applied to just taking action in any direction in life as well. Same as like, you know, maybe being a YouTuber, a lot of people, They want to be a YouTuber, but they feel like even if they put in all the time an effort to make all these videos and put themselves out there, they're not going to be successful at it.

So why bother in the first place? Well, 100% of them that don't try won't get there. Sure. I mean, we've done detailed research, right? True. So, I mean, you may just embarrass yourself. You probably will, actually. You certainly will.

Almost certainly. I've made a good living embarrassing myself. But, but yeah, it's sometimes I look back and I go, what in the world are you doing? There's one running around YouTube right now. Somebody posted on there. of me on a Christian bad. It was like a Saturday Night Live skit. Bad Christian TV.

And I'm on there. And it was like I was 31 years ago. I was 31 years ago. And I'm just like, yeah, and you can get out of that. And here's what this says. And I'm saying it's very country fried. And I got this little comb over going because I hadn't lost my hair yet, to your point and all this stuff.

But the comments on YouTube were like, he's saying it better now. He actually looks better now. But he's saying exactly the same thing. It's like, yeah, that's true. It's still the same thing. But somebody dug that up and it's a clown show. It's an awful look at it. What's something that you think you could be doing better about your own finances?

I could spend more time more carefully and aggressively, is not the word, more intentionally investing. I'm a little bit haphazard. I just buy a mutual fund, put it on a little pilot, forget I on it. I'm looking at real estate. I'm checking. I check my LLCs. I check the, you know, the rent rolls. I check that stuff.

I, you know, I don't like vacancies, you know, I don't like tennis not paying. I'm going to know that stuff. But I haven't sat and went, okay, I could move that and I can do that and can manipulate that. I probably could do a lot better at that. I tend to set it and let it go too much. And that's not a suggestion, people. It's saying I'm seeing a weakness. It's something I can do better at.

The good news is I'm a little bit ADD a lot. And so if I screwed with it as much as my brain told me to, I would have undone half the good stuff that happened by leaving it alone. So it's worked to my advantage to set it and forget it a little bit, but I'm also missing some things that I could tighten up some stuff and do a little better. But it's not, it's okay. We're okay. I have a question on one of them, I would say one of the most common criticisms that people have of you, which is kind of like this undertone of a slight refusal to change, which would be obviously the debt thing, which I actually don't necessarily, I agree with that. I like your debt takes. But also unlike the thousand.

$1,000 emergency fund and other aspects that you've kind of held true for, I don't know, 30, probably, yeah, 30 plus years at this point. Do you think that overall that's worked in your advantage? Do you think that maybe you've cemented yourself in with these positions a little bit too hard? Are you content and satisfied with it? What do you think about changing in on these, like, core beliefs? Could that be productive? Well, there's two buckets that those things fall into. and not to be smart aleck or anything,

but if we thought that we needed to change them, we would have changed them. They're not set it and forget it. They're stuff. We see the criticism. We go, well, you just didn't understand this or didn't understand that. But so, for me, your most powerful wealth building tool is your income. And when you don't have any debt, you've eliminated the vast majority of risk,

and you freed up this cash flow to bill wealth. and if then in an asset, the same thing occurs, for instance, a piece of real estate. If it's paid for, the cash flow is going zoom, zoom. It cash flows more than if you have debt on it. Duh, you don't have a payment. So you've increased your cash flow, you've lowered your risk. You've increased your cash flow, you've lowered your risk. Stay out of that.

And so mathematically, and I've proven in my personal life, and tens of millions of people have proven it, becoming baby steps of millionaires, that, you know, going that path. So that's a principle for me that falls kind of like, it's the law of gravity. You can either like it or not like it, but it's still a law. It's still, that's just, so no, I'm not changing that one. That one's not mine. That's something I observed, you know, wealthy people doing.

I observed it in scripture. I've observed it in places where I felt like I had a body of truth that this is a, it's as dependable as a law of gravity. For instance, another one is, you know, I'm not ever going to tell you to, that budgeting doesn't work. Because 100% of businesses that are successful budget each P&L within the business. I've got 14 P&Ls inside Ramsey. We budget those. Not because I'm Dave Ramsey, but because that's how you run a freaking business.

You know, you don't accidentally become successful. It's a, you know, we plan it and then we measure against the plan. We plan it, and we measure against the plan. And Ziglar said, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. And so you plan it and you measure against the plan. Same thing as the succession we were talking about earlier, all of that. You plan it, you measure against the plan. You've got to have a survivability index.

God help us, you know. You plan it, you measure against the plan. And so, you know, someone, there's been a books or people come out and say, you don't need to do a budget. Budgets are stupid. No, they're not. It's the only possible way to win. No one accidentally wins it anything.

So that's a principle like the law of gravity. The $1,000 thing is different. That's not a principle. That's just a baby step. And we could change it if we wanted to. But if someone says, well, $1,000 is not enough. Of course it's not enough. It wasn't enough when I put it in place 20 years ago.

It wasn't intended to be enough. We're not saying a $1,000 emergency fund is adequate. It's more adequate than zero. And it makes you a little bit scared because you only have a thousand. So you get your butt and gear and get out of debt in baby step two using the debt snowball. Then I did my job. It's not supposed to be adequate. And so, you know, it needs to be inflation adjusted.

Well, inflation adjusted means that it was adequate. No, it's not adequate. Three to six months of expenses is a proper emergency fund. That's baby step three after you're out of debt. That's adequate. And that automatically adjusts because the way the formula is. It inflation adjusts or whatever. Three to six months of expenses are different today than they were when I started teaching it 25 years ago.

But the formula inflation, inflation adjusts, right? $1,000 was never meant to be adequate. It's meant to be inadequate to get you off the couch and get you go get out of that. People that follow the total money makeover baby steps for a financial piece, they're out of debt, not counting their house. I average 18, 24 months. That's your risk window for living off $1,000. It's not like I'm saying, for the rest of your life, you should only have $1,000. Of course I didn't say that.

So, of course I should be criticized if I said that. And yes, I should change that if I said that. But I didn't say that. That's not how this works. The way it works is we're trying to get to three to six months of expenses. That does inflation adjust. You know, I'm still putting all the rest of the baby steps do automatically adjust. by the way the formulas are set 15% of your income going into retirement five doesn't have a formula put money for your kids college it's very vague because we don't know what how old your kid is or how many kids you got or how wealthy you are or whatever so you got but you need to be doing something for educating your kiddos so they don't live in your basement and so all this stuff and you know uh so everything all this stuff moves 25% of your income going to go into a thing it's 25% of your income why does that happen

going to a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage for your personal residence. That automatically adjusts with interest rates. It automatically adjusts with house prices. So it doesn't need to be changed. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out.

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If you put more than that in, you're still going to have squeezed your disposable income. You still don't have the margin to invest, the margin to be generous. You don't have the margin to buy a couch, so you put the stupid thing on 90-day same as cash, and then you wonder why your butt's in debt, because you didn't keep margin in your budget. That's why. These are basic things, but they're all formula-based except the $1,000, and I never intended it to be adequate. I guess it makes sense when you look at just baby steps. It is a baby step. I like what you said about your principles, the ones that have never changed. It's not actually

based off of what you believe to be true, but it's on objective reality and you kind of just see yourself as a mouthpiece for that reality. That's best practices. I mean, when I went broke, I went and talked to old rich people. And they all told me the same thing. Live on less new make, get on a budget, stay out of debt. And I wasn't doing any of that. That's why I went broke. I was deeply in debt. Didn't have a plan? I thought I could out-earn my stupidity. How did you get that hope, though?

After that, I was hopeless. So I was at the bottom. I was bankrupt. Everything was gone, you know. And so, man, I got hungry kids and a wife that wants to leave, but she doesn't have a car. You know, but, yeah, so I'm like, I got, you know, the stuff I was told apparently didn't work because I did it perfectly. I mean, I believe the leverage thing and went all in, baby. And, you know, it hit me in the back of the head.

And it wasn't because I was dumb. I was anything but dumb. I was really good at it. How did you keep your marriage together during that time? The truth is probably too much information. Probably too much information. But anyway, we used to laugh and say we held on to each other just to get a better grip. You know, it's like we fought a lot.

It was really brutal. But the, because she was really scared. She was terrified. And my self-esteem was destroyed because I got my confidence out of myself. success and when my success was gone I didn't I wasn't there anymore I was just a shell I was an arrogant little jerk and so I had to rebuild we were not just broke we were broken and so that's why I can still hear it when people call that are in I can hear it in their voice even all these years later I can still hits me and my stomach gets up at my throat but the

we had two little babies and there really weren't any good options I mean leaving wasn't going to fix it although we fought like crazy. But so we just said, do the next thing, do the next thing. And get up and go to work, get some money, pay the light bill, get the lights turn back on. Get up, go to work, get the water turn back on, get up, go to work, and change the diaper and feed the kid and take the kid to school and put some gas in the car. And we really were just almost zombie-fied, you know, literally living day-to-day emotionally. And we did that until we started making money again.

and I got back into six figures, which in those days was substantial money. And we went about three years, and then everything kind of, we weren't rich, but I mean, we were not desperate anymore, broke. We were paying our bills, and we had money, and we could go to the grocery store and not freak out. We had a budget, and we were out of debt, and all this stuff, or almost out of debt. And once all that happened, then all of those stored up feelings that we had stuffed down just to get the day-to-day, done, rose up, and that's when we almost divorced was three years later. Because we'd stuffed it down, you know, and then it just blew up. It boiled and blew up.

And we ended up sitting with the marriage counselor for like three years after that. And that lady, to this day, is one of our best friends. She saved our lives. She saved our marriage. So I'm curious, how does your wife get over not blaming you for that situation and maybe not holding on to any resentment? And how did you get back your self-esteem? Do you think that was just because you started making more money and then that came back or do you think you looked on something differently within yourself part of it was a spiritual walk um a psychological emotional walk and that i realize i'd put my faith in the wrong things you know if you if you put your faith in stuff or in your net worth then it's always going to let you down that's a hollow thing it's a good thing to do

to go do those things but putting your faith in that and or drawing your self-esteem from that you know it's gone and what determines whether I like me what determines whether I'm a good person or not is not based on my net worth or based on my cash flow or based on any of those things those aren't those can be results of being a good person doing the right discipline things that we were talking about earlier but but their results they're not they're not causal and so just becoming a person of character I want to become a good dad I want to become a good husband I want to become opening a business a good leader I want I want to learn how to I want to I want to be a person be somebody that when I look back and I'm 80 years old and look back and go, that was a pretty

good ride, you know, not, but look back and go, man, I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I hadn't done that. There's a lot of stuff I've done that dumb, but I don't want to do things of character, that character problems that regret. So the changing that. And then with her, you know, her terror came from her, bless her heart, she thought she had married Sir Galahad and it turns out it was Goober. You know, I mean, it was like the guy that she counted. I don't let her down. And so she had to also say, oh, I'm not, I can't place my faith in him. And then over time, how did she have confidence in me?

Well, it's track record. I mean, it's like if somebody was an alcoholic and I've got a good friend's alcoholic. He's got his 20-year coin the other day, not untouched alcohol in 20 years. And his wife really trusts him now. But 20 days after he went to AA, she didn't trust him yet. But he's got a good, you know, he's not been an alcoholic for a long, long time. Well, he would say he's still an alcoholic, but you know what I'm saying. He's not drinking for a long, long time.

And so the further we get from this and the more wealth we get, the more she realizes I'm not the guy, the same person that made those bad decisions. I'm not this crazy risk-taking fool that believes that, you know, that the rules don't apply to me in terms of the principle of debt-free, that kind of stuff. So the fact that we've lived these principles, and we still do at the Ramsey. And one of those principles is I don't do things We said in the old days we don't buy anything over $300 without talking about it Today we would say we don't do things of size without talking about them

We don't give large charitable gifts Without us agreeing that that's a good thing to give that to a good person to help A good situation that we want to put money into I don't just say hey honey look what I did I don't go buy a boat I don't go buy a car to this day I still do I call her and I think This is what I'm looking at. I'm thinking about this.

I just found this. I think I'm going to get it. Is it okay with you? Yeah. So I'm curious. Do you guys have any financial disagreements today? Or is mostly anything? Almost everything's good at this point.

Like if you say, I want to buy this boat. Would she ever say, no. I don't like that boat. It's too big. Too much money. I don't know if a disagreement is like, no, you should not do that. Yes, I want to do that type of disagreement.

But what we do is she says, I think I want to go to, she just did a trip with a bunch of girls. went to a dude ranch, a bunch of her friends. She said, I don't think I want to do that. I said, okay, how are you doing that? Okay, I'm doing this and this and this. And I said, I think you ought to do it, but you probably ought to do it this way.

The travel arrangements and the other stuff. And she went, and thought of that. Yeah, okay. So if that's a disagreement, then, you know, we take each other's input. And so, you know, but even on little stuff, we do that. And so that's just communication and a relationship is what amounts to. but I did all kinds of stuff that Sharon didn't even know I did. Not because I was hiding it from her.

I just didn't need her permission before. I mean, we've owned real estate. To this day, we'll go out to eat somewhere. And I'll go, hey, you know, 40 years ago, we owned that house right there. For about two days, I flipped it. And she's like, you're kidding. No, she goes, a friend of mine lived in that house. And I went like 10 years after I flipped it, right?

But she's like, but she's, I bought houses the woman had never seen it. You know, that's weird if you think about it. But nowadays, we would never do that. We get ready to buy a commercial property or something. We'll get in the car and we'll go drive on Sunday afternoon. I'll go, Winston and I are looking and doing this deal over here, and here's the numbers on it. Yeah, okay.

But most of the time, that's what it sounds like. But very, very few things. But, again, we've got 30 years of doing it right and doing it with lots of communication and lots of agreement. We're building our third house together. And that one will test you. Yeah, sure. Because you argue about stuff all the time.

I mean, we were picking out cabinet hardware for God's sakes last night. And I'm like, I don't like that. She goes, my kitchen. I went, good point. Get it if you want it. So she gets the kitchen, what do you get? I'm guessing the garage, the basement. Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff I get.

Believe me, I get plenty. But it's, you know, and I'm like, I didn't hate it. I just didn't like it, you know. And it's like, I'm not a decorator. Screw it, whatever. I'm curious, how do you change where you draw your self-esteem from, where you place your values from all of these, like external things, like status, wealth, respect from other people and stuff like that,

where you were beforehand through that transition of like, I guess, more internally facing values, like, do you respect yourself, are you a good man, are you a good husband, are you a good father to your kids? How do you like make that your primary thing? I imagine it takes a lot of time. It is not an instantaneous process. It's a decision. It's a series of decisions, I guess. I feel like it's a biological thing to command respect from other people to want to elevate your status Oh, I think we all do that

I mean I want to be liked I don't like all the day Ramsey hate That's out there I don't love that It hurts my feelings I'm human being You know it doesn't But the difference is

Do I draw my self-worth From the comments on YouTube Oh God help us That's a good point That would be bad Right It would be very bad, yeah. That would be horrible.

It'll change by the day. Yeah. I can't decide if I like me or not. Oh, God. But I mean, that's a funny way of saying the whole thing in a way is, am I taking a poll? And that's what affirmation is from anybody. The thing I had to figure out was if I'm going to listen to someone and let them have influence over my emotions and over my decisions, it needs to. it needs to be people really close to me that love me,

not people in the distant world of the internet, throwing grenades. They don't get a vote. And so they think they've got a vote, which is humorous to me, but they don't have a vote. I don't even read the stuff. I mean, George Camel, he follows all this stuff.

He comes in and tell me stuff they're saying. I'm like, really? That's fun. Let's do a little bit on that. But I don't sit, because I don't take a poll. I'm not, I didn't say what I said or do what I did to make that person. But they're happy. I did it to help somebody else.

else. And if it didn't work, it didn't work. Anyway, so how do you change that? It's a decision where you place it. In my case, I cheated, Jack, because everything I believed in was taken from me when I went through bankruptcy. My status, my confidence, my belief in the financial principles that I had learned getting a finance degree, which are all leverage-based. My wife's admiration was gone. I don't know. There was no. So you had to find something. I didn't have a choice in my case, so I cheated.

But if you got a choice, I guess you'd have to just choose and say, you know what? This feels shallow. I feel like a reality star instead of a human. And so this feels like a shallow way to look at life. And I'm going to just choose not to do that anymore. And sometimes we see people in the public eye do that, to their credit. They decide, okay, they got into it from a very shallow, appearance-based perspective or whatever else. And then later on we find out, you know,

they really, there's a lot of character in there and they just, they made some transitions later on. But it's a series of choices. It might be growing up a little bit. It might be part of it. We're talking about changing for the better for your own personal finances and you said it's hope. And I feel like it's a combination of both hope and necessity. Like your finances need to get so bad to the point of like, I have to change, but I also believe that if I do change, I can't make a difference, you know? Yeah, but also, You know, that would not be, necessity wouldn't drive Graham to do an investment that he's never done. True.

He would change. But the reason he would change is hope only. It wouldn't be necessity. He would just be going, that looked pretty good. I've never been over in that space, but everything I'm seeing about it is good. I've got that pretty good. And I get best practices there, and there's some track record there. And, you know, you line up your basic principles of investing, but you could go to a place you've never been to, this uncomfortable change based only on the hope.

It doesn't require necessity. You don't have to go broke to learn to stay out of debt. You don't have to go broke to learn to be on a budget. You don't have to go through drug rehab to figure out drugs are bad. You know, you don't have to hit bottom to do it. But it's a thorough teacher, but I don't recommend it. We just got the sign. We only have five minutes left.

I have two questions. The first question is I was talking with someone. They're well off financially, and I asked them if they could go back in time, would they have changed anything? And they said maybe, just maybe, take it a little bit easier during like the most active years where their body was at peak physical performance to like go out, experience the world, travel and enjoy those things while they were young. What do you think about that? There's nothing wrong with that idea. But again, I feel like we intentionally made all of those decisions at the time because it's always a tradeoff. And you just want to do your tradeoffs intentionally.

Okay, so if we're going to go on a trip and not work, A, we're going to be out the money for the trip, B, we're going to be out the money that we didn't work. And so I'm, I had an opportunity the other day to do a speaking gig at a substantial fee, but I had already promised my wife we're going to be in another country at that time. And we've already booked the trip and I would lose that. But I could have netted out, but I've already decided what I'm going to do. And so it's a tradeoff. I made an intentional decision tradeoff.

We've always done that intentionally, so I don't have regrets on that. No regrets. I don't wish I had done it another way. I mean, I wish I hadn't been as stupid as I've been sometimes, but I guess everybody's done that. You learned. But, yeah. But no, in general, in general, that's not a bad idea, but I feel like I've been intentional enough. That feels like someone that's, they just kind of did stuff on autopilot rather than thinking about, what's the tradeoff?

What's the trade off? What's the trade off? And so, like, we traveled, and, I mean, I work my butt off going and doing live events and this kind of stuff. But we said, all right, the tradeoffs not fair. We don't book live events on kids' birthdays. So I'm home. I did not miss a kid's birthday. I coached Daniels ice hockey team when he was a little guy.

And I didn't miss those games. I booked events around those. And if somebody came up and said, well, you can come to, no, I already made this other commitment to my son. I'm going to do that. So I've made intentional tradeoffs. I gave up business for personal. And when I didn't, I gave up personal for business, but on a wise way, a wise enough way that the kids didn't lose their mind. because they didn't have a dad.

How do you find the balance between that? How do you know how much time to spend with your family versus how much time spending with the business? Number one, that's something sharing I talk about a lot. So in the old days when I was go, go, go, go, go, go. Sometimes she and my assistant, Patty, who's been with me 23 years, they would come in and go, you're tired. You're burning it.

We need to dial us back. Both of them. They would gang up on me. And I would go, you know what, you're kind of right. I hadn't thought about it. I was just getting it. I was just go out there getting it. I was hustling, grinding them.

Some people in my life that I love, that I trust to help me dial it back and keep it in balance. And it's never in balance in the moment, ever. It's always in balance over time. In other words, I'm 100% at work right now. So I'm not in balance. Yeah. You know, but over the scope of this week, you know,

Sharon and I had dinner last night out, just the two of us. So in the scope of this week, I've been a husband. In the scope of this week, I'm keeping my grandson tonight. I'll be Papa Dave, you know. In the scope of this week, I get a balance. A scoop of this year, I get a balance. If you're training for a marathon, you're not in balance in that six or eight, ten week period of time. You're running in the morning and you're running hours, not just minutes, you know, that kind of a thing.

And I've done like 15 half marathons. So you're not in balance in the moment. But you get people in your life and you look for balance over time, over a block of time. and then you don't get caught up in the, well, I don't want to work much because I'm such a good dad, bull, okay? Or I work all the time because it's so important that a good dad provides that I never see my children. You know, that's dumb too, okay? So we've got to vacillate between these things.

You talk to your son every single Tuesday, Daniel. We do. And I want to know, are there certain things that you share with him about life, about fulfillment, about business practices? Because you're trying to train him to take over the entire company. eventually one day. At least that's from what I've imagined. Yeah. Are there certain things that you share with him that you haven't shared publicly,

certain values, certain beliefs that you think will take him far, or is it all just on the field? No secrets. No secrets. There's no secrets. It's just life. And, you know, we have breakfast or Tuesday morning, and we get those things in. We also get those things in when we're arguing about something. We also get those things in when we're in an operating board member, and there's six of us working on a project together.

Those things just show up in the rhythm of life. we might sit and talk about football at breakfast. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Final question. To end it off. Really short one.

If you could borrow $1 billion, zero percent interest for 10 years, would you do it? No. No? Easy question? No question. Even though you could put it in treasuries.

No. After the 10 years. You could lock in 10-year treasury right now, 10% or 5%. No. It's not worth it. No. I don't borrow money.

There we go. Love it. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this. You just got to remind everyone to subscribe and hit the like button. Hey, subscribe hit the like button. It's the iced coffee hour right here. Thank you guys for watching.

Awesome. Thank you for coming on. Enjoy becoming friends with you too. Thanks for hanging out with us. Have us back anytime. Thank you, everyone in the production room. Thanks, guys. Cool.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, we could easily go another two hours doing this.