The Iced Coffee Hour - George Kamel Breaks Silence on Dave Ramsey Controversy, Early Retirement, & Getting Debt-Free
Episode Date: May 10, 2026NetSuite: Download the Demystifying AI Guide for FREE at https://netsuite.com/iced HIMS: Get personalized and affordable care for Hair Loss, ED, Weight Loss, and more at https://Hims.com/ICED Airbnb: ...Find a co-host at https://airbnb.com/host Shopify: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich Follow @GeorgeKamel and @TheRamseyShowEpisodes here! *𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗨𝗦* 𝗜𝗚: https://www.instagram.com/icedcoffeehour 𝗝𝗔𝗖𝗞: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗛𝗔𝗠: https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheIcedCoffeeHourClips 𝗫.𝗰𝗼𝗺: https://x.com/TheICHpodcast 𝗧𝗶𝗸𝗧𝗼𝗸: https://www.tiktok.com/@theicedcoffeehour 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆: https://open.spotify.com/show/5c2uoXBQkOjIiCOf60jJj7 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-iced-coffee-hour/id1515070058 For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: icedcoffeehourpartnerships@gmail.com Apply for The Index Membership: https://entertheindex.com/ For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 1:58 - Credit Cards After Being Debt-Free? 3:01 - When Is It OK to Borrow Money? 4:40 - Would You Borrow $1B at 0% Interest? 5:46 - How Many Millionaires Has Ramsey Made? 6:36 - Biggest Money Misunderstanding 7:43 - People Don't Consider Student Loans Debt 8:58 - What People Waste Money On 12:48 - Personal vs Corporate Responsibility 13:47 - Is the System Rigged? 16:54 - Sponsor - NetSuite 18:21 - $180K in Debt Spending $1K/Day at Disney 24:51 - Should You Ever File Bankruptcy? 26:15 - Debt Consolidation 27:27 - Inflation's Impact on Finances 29:01 - Income Problem vs Behavior Problem 30:55 - Sponsor - HIMS 32:19 - Are People Passionate About Their Work? 33:38 - Supporting a Family of 4 on One Income 39:03 - How Much to Retire in Your 40s? 40:25 - Why Ambitious People Can't Retire Early 45:29 - Five Pillars of a Great Life 46:32 - Savings & Investment Strategy 51:08 - How Much to Retire at 50 53:12 - Advice for 18-Year-Olds 56:23 - Be a Millionaire by 25 1:04:24 - Sponsor - Airbnb 1:05:38 - Sponsor - Shopify 1:07:09 - George's Investment Portfolio 1:15:05 - Fashion & What He "Wastes" Money On 1:19:59 - Ken Coleman Leaving Ramsey 1:23:47 - Would Ramsey Hire Caleb Hammer? 1:29:34 - Paying Off Mortgage vs Investing *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan & Jack Selby will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan & Jack Selby are 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Want to have money without having money?
It's a fancy plastic I-O-U card that will have you swimming in debt for the rest of your and your offspring's life.
The system exists to screw you over.
The system exists to keep you broke.
And then you have a choice.
As a human being with free will, you get to decide whether or not you want to be a part of the system.
Americans are carrying more debt than ever before.
$18.6 trillion.
What are most people wasting their money on?
Wants and not needs.
and there's all sorts of ways
you can get the thing you want now
without having the money
and that's the part that scares me
this is proof that the system is rigged
or it's just a personal failure.
Number one villain in this story is the person
and if I can teach people how to budget
how to get out of debt,
all of a sudden they can start affording
the things in their life that they want
without needing to turn to these companies.
There is no magic time in your life
or income level in your life
when you go, that's when I'm going to get good with money.
Get good with money now
no matter what you're making
and then work to get your income
up and then everything will scale.
What happened to Ken Coleman?
What did he say?
George Camel, Ramsey personality.
Thank you so much for coming on, the Ice Coffee Hour.
It's an honor. Is this my third time?
I think this might be the third time. Maybe we had what the first one was with Dave Ramsey.
I joined him.
Then I think we've done two since then. So this is my fourth official.
People love them.
Oh, that's sweet.
Well, thanks for having me back on. I always, I love the show. So I'm a fan.
Thanks for coming on. We have so much to cover.
there are just some crazy studies.
Have things been happening out there?
A lot of things have been happening.
A lot of debt has been happening.
We have a lot that we need to disagree on.
Okay.
But first and foremost, an ex-Ramsey employee, Anthony O'Neill, made a video claiming that he's shifted perspective since working at Ramsey.
He said that if you have paid off your debt and stayed paid off for two years, then it's fine
to start maybe getting an AMX card, paying that off at the end of every month, having a system.
in place to make sure auto pay is on and start building credit. What do you say about that?
Well, I disagree. I see his point in that he's saying, hey, once you've had the discipline of
not going back into debt, you can sort of reintroduce it. But to me, the same reasons you went into
debt, that person is still inside. And you can change. You can be disciplined. But I don't think
it makes it better than if you use your own money. So once a borrower, always a borrower.
Yeah, I mean, I had some credit card debt and I haven't been in debt for 13 years. So could I
I potentially use a credit card, I'm going to put this in huge air quotes, wisely, pay it off
every month and maybe accumulate some points. Probably. I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze,
and I think I still would spend more than if I stuck to my debit and cash. So I disagree that, you know,
that's advice that people should go out there and open credit cards if they've been debt-free for two
years. I think you're just better off never opening it again. So when do you think it's okay to borrow money?
The only time would be okay to borrow money where, like, I wouldn't yell you for it, is a mortgage. And even then, that would be a 15-year mortgage with an affordable payment, meaning it's not 50, 60% of your take-home pay, which is sadly what we're seeing out there.
What if it is an affordable, but the interest rate is 20%. I mean, at that point, if it's an afford, if it's 25% of your take-home pay, regardless of the interest rate, it's a small part of your financial world.
Even if it's 20% interest.
Yeah, I mean, if mortgages were 20% interest at the prices they are now, I think nobody would be buying homes. It would be a terrible deal. And it would be very difficult to get that payment low enough. You'd have to be such a high income earner to be able to afford a payment. Is there an interest rate that you say you would not pay? For a home? Yeah. No. Because I mean, every time I've ever bought a home, the interest rate wasn't really as much of a factor. I bought a home at 3%. I bought a home at 6%. And so it would just be more does that interest.
interest rate make it unaffordable as part of my take home pay and my after tax income. If it was 50% of my take home pay, regardless of the interest rate, I'm going, this is too much. We're not ready. We need to save up more. We need to change the home we're looking at. So we had a really viral clip when Jack asked Dave Ramsey if he would borrow a billion dollars at zero percent interest. If you could borrow one billion dollars, zero percent interest for 10 years, would you do it? What did he say? No.
And everyone flamed him because they said you could just put that billion dollars in a risk-free treasury making 4%.
Yeah.
And just pocket the difference.
Would you borrow a billion dollars at zero percent interest?
I'm happy to be flamed as well from people on Instagram and YouTube comments, but I simply wouldn't do it.
And it's not because I'm like trying to be, you know, anti-debt guy.
it's because I live by a set of values and principles,
and I have found that living debt-free is simply a better life for me.
So, of someone else down the road, they can take that loan,
and I wish them the best.
They can make all the money in the world.
At this point, money is not something that I'm chasing.
I got kids.
I got crippled dogs.
I'm not interested in playing money games at this point.
I like the most boring, slowest ways to build wealth.
So if it sounds like, dude, you can make this money.
much in a year. That's when I go, I don't know. I'm not going to sleep well at night. I already
have too much anxiety in other areas. So the idea of owing anybody, any amount of money at this stage
is simply uninteresting to me, no matter the dollar amount. And I know that is not a popular take.
But again, happy to get flamed for it. Flame away, my friends. How many millionaires has Ramsey made?
We're actually trying to track financial transformation as of this year. Because of our every
dollar budgeting app, we can actually see debt paid off, dollar saved, and aggregate numbers.
And so we're actually going to start tracking that. But so far, it's just basically self-reported,
people in the lobby whispering to me, hey, by the way, we're babysaps millionaires. But there's no good
way to just track it. My gut says, we know that 10 million people plus have been through
Financial Peace University. We know that millions and millions more have purchased the total
makeover in our other financial books. So if you've become debt-free,
and you follow our principles for, let's say, 10 or 15 years,
I think you're going to find that they become millionaires as a byproduct
from having a paid-for house by following our plan
and investing 15% of their income in the meantime.
So what do you think is the biggest misunderstanding with money that there is,
aside from debt?
The biggest misunderstanding with money aside from debt
is that you have to make a lot of it to have any level of wealth.
And if you don't have a lot of it, which, again,
A lot of it is the squishiest number because we now know that half of people making over $100,000
are paycheck to paycheck.
And so it's not about income.
We know that.
That's factual.
I just took a call on the Ramsey show this week where they made a $340,000 household income and they were broke.
They were going into the hole every month.
And so it's not about income.
It's about what you do with it.
And the faster you can get control of it, if you make $40,000, the faster you're going to get control of it when you make $100,000.
So I think it really is about realizing there is no magic time in your life or income level in your life when you go, that's when I'm going to get good with money.
Get good with money now, no matter what you're making, and then work to get your income up, and then everything will scale.
You've been polling a lot of people on the street, and I really enjoy those videos.
Thank you.
What does that tell you about the average person's finances?
The most shocking thing was, number one, people don't consider their debt to be debt.
If it's student loans, they go, well, I mean, I don't consider that debt because the government's probably going to pay for it.
Crazy, but that's what they say.
Or if it's a car payment, they go, well, it's a lease.
It's not technically debt.
So I'm not going to count that.
And so everyone that has debt, number one, may not consider a debt.
And number two, they're not concerned about it.
I was like, does that stress you out?
No, not really.
I don't really think about it.
Well, are you working on paying it off?
I mean minimum payments.
Well, do you have money in savings?
Yeah, I got some money in savings.
Enough to pay off the debt? Yeah. Why don't you pay off the debt? I'd rather see my money and savings. And so there's just this nonchalant attitude towards debt that scares me because I see the record highs in consumer debt that we're hitting every month. I mean, credit card debt's now at $1.3 trillion. And car payments. I mean, we're seeing $750 is the average new car payment. $1.67 trillion sitting out there in car payments. More delinquencies than ever. More people defaulting on their debts than ever.
And so to me, it's scary that people don't have the urgency that I have for them when it comes to getting rid of their debt and creating some peace.
What are most people wasting their money on?
Most people are wasting their money on wants and not needs.
Like, I don't think renting is wasting money, yet that's the thing people focus on.
And then I find out they're spending $300 in DoorDash every month.
And they're doing buy now, pay later for Coachella tickets.
And there's all sorts of ways you can get the thing you want now without having the money.
and that's the part that scares me is we're such in a yolo mindset of just well i'll never have
wealth because the boomers took it all and who knows if the world's even going to be around who knows
of social security will exist so let me just enjoy my life now index funds are boring retirement is a
pipe dream let's just put it all on black and sports bet and gamble and do prediction markets
and by now pay later our way into some level of joy and the problem is that wears off real quick
What was the study that came out with Coachella tickets?
Like over 50% of people borrowed money to go to Coachella?
It was close to half.
Is that true?
I want to say it was 40 something percent.
Yeah, borrowed money to go to Coachella.
That's crazy.
Can someone fact check that?
Over 60?
Over 60%.
According to what?
According to Billboard, over 60% of people that went to Coachella borrowed money
in order to get the ticket.
Those just were the ones that were honest.
That's the crazy part.
They're all mostly young people who are mostly broke.
Wow.
And they're going, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Let me go when I'm young.
My favorite artist is going to be there.
It's going to be this incredible experience.
So people can justify it real easily.
And when the payment is, well, zero percent interest on a payment plan.
I mean, I just went to Disney and interviewed people at Disneyland.
And half of them are going, yeah, I'm on the payment plan for annual pass.
It's $130 a month.
And me and my mom are both trying to pay off.
How much do people spend at Disneyland?
on average from talking to people the trips range from five to eight thousand dollars for a
couple of people so imagine about a thousand bucks a day per person is what you're going to spend
between lodging transportation and it can go up from there but that's generally what i saw
that tells me there there's an epidemic of people going i don't need to have the money now i can
get it now and i can justify it and eventually future me will deal with that what does this tell you
about human psychology, human nature.
I think we're fickle creatures.
And as much as I want to say, people are more disciplined than I think,
and they can handle debt and handle payments,
time and time again, it's proven that it's just too hard.
I mean, the fall of man got us here.
And so humans want the thing now.
And we made it so easy, so frictionless to get the thing now.
Because back in the day, to go to Coachella,
you kind of had to have a payment form to get that ticket.
Now, right there, it'll say,
say use a firm, use Klarna, use afterpay, and pay nothing now or pay a small amount now
and you can pay the rest over the next couple of months. And so that level of frictionless
payment plans have caused us to go into way more debt than we would have otherwise.
Yeah, but isn't that just a lack of personal responsibility? I mean, just because it's there,
does it mean you have to go and do it? Like, I wouldn't blame a firm because someone took out
a loan to go to Coachella. That's, to me, it's more of a, you know, that's on the first. Yeah,
Yeah, number one villain in this story is the person doing these dumb things.
The number two villain is the predatory companies that have normalized this and made it so easy.
So it's not like a firm, it's not like there's such good people of goodwill, but like,
we're just going to let them go on the trip.
They don't care about you.
You are a number to them.
And even if you default, they'll write it off.
They'll come after you.
They'll sell it to a collection agency.
So either way, the lenders are always going to win.
And so the question you have to ask yourself is, do I want to be a part of the system knowing that I'm going to make terrible decisions all for a temporary experience or product?
What percent responsibility falls on the person versus the company?
100 percent responsibility on the person.
I think there's a lot less we can do about polymarket and Kalshi and Fandul and Bet MGM.
There's too many lobbyists out there.
Like, I'm not going to spend my life trying to go after these companies.
I'll make YouTube videos about them trying to take them down, but that's nothing to them.
They don't care. They're making billions of dollars a year, growing exponentially,
increasing their shareholder value at the expense of a broke generation.
And so I just know, I don't have the power to go to the White House and fight the lobbyists,
but I do have the power to tell that person to stop doing that, to get out of the system,
to use their own money, to wait, save up to where they can afford it.
And if they can't afford it, it's just a not now.
and if I can teach people how to budget, how to get out of debt,
all of a sudden they can start affording the things in their life that they want
without needing to turn to these companies.
So to the hundreds of thousands of people that are watching this right now
that are not where they want to be financially,
you George Camel, money expert, would say this is proof that the system is rigged
or it's just a personal failure of the person listening right now
that's not where they want to be financially, it's on them.
Yes, both and this is like improv.
Yes, and. So I wrote the book Breaking Free from Broke, and the first two-thirds of the book is about the system, how the system exists to screw you over. The system exists to keep you broke. And then you have a choice. As a human being with free will, you get to decide whether or not you want to be a part of the system, whether you want to participate and play the game and play with snakes hoping you don't get bit, which is how most people operate their life. Right. At 18, we're told, got to get your credit score. Got to get a credit card. Well, might as well get a car payment because who can afford a new car.
these days. You want something reliable. You don't want it to be in the shop all the time.
Well, who can afford college with the current rates? Let's go to student loan debt. Maybe a parent plus loan. Maybe the government will forgive it. And all of a sudden, there's payments all around us. And we signed on the dotted line. Nobody forced us. Nobody had a gun to your head going. You're going to get in a brand new key of Sorrento. You decided you wanted the brand new car instead of the used one that you could afford in cash. So that's the growing gap. Is the people who decide I'm not going to do debt are thriving because they're not playing the game.
as interest rates go up, as the costs of all this stuff go up with inflation.
Instead, real millionaires are buying four-year-old used Toyotas and Hondas.
And instead of going to the new car lot, saying sign me up for whatever payment I can afford,
stretch the loan out to 84 months, I don't care, I want to be in that car.
So it's really all about fighting the inner child who wants the thing and is whining about the thing
versus maturity, delayed gratification, saying, I'm going to pause.
So then a directly actionable thing to the people watching, right?
now they're not where they want to be financially. The actionable thing is to pay attention to your
money probably for the first time. When I ask people, do you do a budget? They go, yeah, I mean, I do a
budget. I've looked at my bank statement. No, no, no, no, do you do a budget? Do you know what's coming in?
Do you know exactly what's going out where it's proactive instead of reactive? That one thing alone,
like when you download every dollar, you plug in your income, you list out all of your expenses.
If you just do that, you are doing probably better than 99.9% of America because you have a true picture of if you're spending more than you make or if there should be margin that's disappearing into money leaks.
Like buy now, pay later, eating out and who knows what else.
When you're talking to people, are they doing better or worse than you expected?
People's a general term, but I would say in the street, they're actually doing better than I expect.
When I talk to young people, I found most of them.
they have $2,000 to $5,000 in credit card debt.
They're driving cars, you know, 2013, 2016.
A lot of them paid off.
Some of them have five or seven grand.
They're few and far between where I meet someone who's like,
I'm 180 grand in debt.
Those are the calls on the Ramsey show.
Those are the extreme calls that we get.
But the everyday people in the street,
I think are actually doing better than you would think.
And they're driving cars that would not impress you.
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Thanks to NetSuite for supporting the show. Back to the episode. What's the worst story you've seen?
On the street, I met a guy who at Disney, they were 180 grand in debt in consumer debts, and they were at Disney.
And they told me they were dropping a thousand bucks a day to be there for a week.
And that's the clip that went viral on Instagram.
That was the picture of what you expect at Disney, right?
This person who's in crippling debt going, I just want to go on a trip.
I need a vacation from the reality of my life, which is crippling debt.
So that one stuck with me because I felt for them.
And I talked to them afterwards, and I gave them the every dollar budgeting app and kind of coached them a little bit, gave them some next steps.
Because I hate to, the point of those man on the street videos is not to make someone feel bad about their vacation.
The point is to create a little bit of conviction that I can do better and I know how to do better now.
And therefore, our ignorance was bliss until now.
I kind of pointed it out.
Have you kept in touch with them?
I haven't, but I think he's messaged me once before.
So I'm going to try to get back in touch to see where are they now.
and try to see if I can get them out of this thing.
It's interesting because that actually sounds exactly like someone who's addicted to drugs,
because their life is falling apart, and it's because of the drugs that they take,
but then they take the drugs to escape that life.
The same thing goes for this person in $180,000 of consumer debt or other people,
maybe not this person exactly, but generally speaking,
like, you're going on this trip to Disneyland, you're taking on more consumer debt
in order to escape the stress of being in consumer debt.
So it's just a vicious cycle that feeds itself.
Yeah, Dr. Arthur Brooks calls that the doom loop.
And it happens with all kinds of addiction.
And when you translate it to money, it's the retail therapy.
I buy a thing.
It wasn't enough.
The dopamine wore off.
So I need to go kind of do more of it.
Go bigger.
And with debt, you see this kind of added to my tab mentality.
Of well, I'm 180 grand in debt.
What's another 10 grand onto the pile?
And even I have family members to do this.
You know, they go to med school and they're three hundred.
50 grand in debt. So adding a car payment to that is like a drop in the bucket to them. And that's the
scary part is this is like monopoly money to us. And we don't realize the ramifications. And that's the side
we get on the Ramsey show. When life didn't work out perfectly, when they were laid off, they were
fired. A spouse wants to stay home because they had a kid. And all of a sudden, we have to tell them,
hey, you got to sell the house or, hey, that car is about to get repoed. You're about to get foreclosed on.
So those are the heartbreaking calls. Everyone takes on payments when they're doing okay in life.
and they can afford the payment, quote, unquote.
And eventually, they have a misstep.
Life happens.
They have an emergency that they weren't prepared for.
And then the whole house of cards crumbles.
So what's the worst thing you've seen on a call?
Oh, my gosh.
The worst thing I've seen on a call, the one that is burned into my memory,
is, I don't know if you've heard of the sovereignty movement.
There's a sovereign citizen thing?
Sovereign citizen.
What is that?
They believe that the government is basically operating under false pretenses.
that taxes are illegal, and therefore I'm not going to pay taxes. I'm not going to pay back my debts
because I think it's unlawful. And a woman called in and said my husband is a part of this movement.
He's sort of fallen into this cult-like mentality. And the car is about to be repoed. Their house is about to be
foreclosed on because he's not making mortgage payments. And he owes the IRS $300,000. And I told her, I was like, hey,
you might go to jail too.
Like, you might be able to claim innocent spouse if you're lucky if you get a good attorney and get out of this.
But this guy is going to drag you into prison with him if you're not careful.
So those are the scariest ones where someone is, I mean, I think it's a mental illness at that point of that level of sort of paranoia and, you know, deranged behavior.
What was her response?
I think she was a little bit of, you know, just shock mode of she didn't really know what to do.
And there was a lot of next steps to handle all of it.
is, you know, I didn't think the marriage was going to survive in all of this. It's hard to, you know,
you're so far removed of like, that's not the person I married, you know? And so that,
that was a really difficult call to take. That's hard to nail down in seven minutes on a radio
call to help her. And so that's the hard part is you always think about them later on and you kind
have to, like a surgeon or a doctor go, like, all right, foof, next caller, you know, you have to
kind of compartmentalize it and not let it stick with you too much. It seems to be more of like
a psychological question, but that also seems to be the same thing that leads people to believe
that it's a good idea to put debt on, to take on debt in order to get a Coachella ticket.
It's like all just like being disillusioned, basically, like being diluted, seeing reality for
something that it isn't.
What do you think is this all like a- We don't see money anymore.
One is the last time you guys saw $10,000 in cash.
Now, Graham probably has because it's sitting and is safe at home.
But most people, money is just like this digital thing.
just a number in a bank account. And therefore, when we take on debt, like a car payment,
it's $50,000 for that new car. You didn't have to actually exchange anything for that.
All you had to do is promise to make a $750 payment next month and the month after that.
But that balance sitting with that car lender of $50,000 isn't really real to you,
similar to a mortgage. And that's what I think we need is to bring friction back,
bring the reality back that even if you have $20,000 in savings and you have $50,000 in debt,
you are not okay. You are not safe. There's a real deficit there and you are, you are in the red.
You think it has to do with delayed consequence because back in the day, let's say if you,
if you didn't pay the IRS or if you wanted to take on debt, like I feel like the consequence
of doing that could not be stretched so far. Oh yeah, you'd be borrowing money from like the mob or like
from dude and then your legs get broken when you're like a day late. Yeah, that doesn't happen
anymore. Now what you do is you file bankruptcy. You pay a couple grand, get on a payment plan,
or they repo the assets or foreclose the home, and then you got to get out of jail free card.
Now, your credit shot, your financial world is ruined for about a decade, but people just go,
I'll file bankruptcy again. That's sort of the mentality now, and people see bankrupt.
I mean, we get so many calls where people say, should I file bankruptcy? And they are $12,000 in debt.
But they just somewhere learned along the way that there was a shortcut,
out of this thing that did not involve them.
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bankruptcy? I believe never. And if you know Dave Ramsey's story, he famously filed bankruptcy back in the
day. But what happened is he had his back up against the wall. He had done everything he could in the
time that he was allotted, 90 days to pay back all of the mortgages that he had. And he couldn't sell them off
in time and therefore had to file bankruptcy. So we've never told someone on air, you should file
bankruptcy. What we tell them is do everything you can to climb out of this thing. And then eventually,
if you're a Dave Ramsey situation, it's going to be a natural byproduct because you've run out of
options. But too many people make it the first option instead of a last ditch effort of,
I man, I tried everything I could and I couldn't pay it back in time. And there was no way out.
But rarely is that the case these days. Most of the time, even if it's a couple hundred thousand
in, you know, SBA loans, that's a big one we get is people took on a bunch of leverage to start a
business, the business failed, and yet they're left, you know, holding the bag. And that's a
scary situation. We go, hey, you guys have to go get normal jobs and work on paying this down
over time and get on a payment plan. But I still believe that is the best path out because the
behavior change and transformation that happens when you have to pay all that money back
and sacrifice and actually have that inner transformation, you'll never go back in. Because what we
see is people go into bankruptcy two, three, four times because they just keep doing the same behavior
that got them there. They never really learn. What do your thoughts on debt consolidation?
It's another shortcut that I'm not a fan of. People again think this is some like magic trick of just like,
I'm going to take my 20 different debts and put it into one debt and that'll be easier to manage.
And the truth is it makes it harder to pay off because now you're staring at Everest instead of
quick win, quick win, knock out one debt, knock out the next, which is the debt snowball method.
Debt consolidation makes the debt snowball method nearly impossible.
because now you're just paying back one giant life.
What if you lower the interest rate and it lowers your payments and you're able to chip away at it faster?
Do you think the psychological aspect just outweighs that?
I still think the interest savings isn't worth it, especially if you're doing our plan.
Because our plan says gazelle intensity, deep sacrifice for a short period of time.
So therefore, the actual math on how much you'd save on interest is negligible when you're going to attack it in 18 to 24 months,
which is the average we find people getting out of their consumer debt following our plan to a T.
And so I've never seen someone go, man, I became debt free and debt consolidation was my ticket.
Or even worse, these debt settlement debt relief companies that are popping up all over the place.
What are you seeing right now with inflation impacting people's finances?
Because right now gas prices are crazy.
Even in Vegas, I'm seeing like $5, $6 a gallon.
Yeah, I was just in California and I wanted to throw up thinking about $8 a gallon.
Having to fill up a car.
There was one gas station by Beverly Hill.
where someone posted on Reddit, $10 a gallon for gas.
That is insane.
$10.
I think I'd get a bicycle real quick.
It's nice weather over there so you can easily get to where you need to go or just, you know, don't leave the house other than going to work and back.
But yeah, that's true.
Inflation is real.
It's not like a boogeyman.
There's a real level of prices have gone up.
And even as inflation has cooled, the prices just don't go back down.
They just don't go up at quite the same pace.
and so it is a real problem.
I don't see it changing drastically anytime soon,
and therefore what's the solution?
It's your budget.
It's cutting back in other places
and trying to make more where you can.
That's the only real solution is to go,
all right, gas is going to cost me
$250 instead of $150.
Well, where am I going to find that $100?
I got to cut it from somewhere else.
And once you can do that math
and start to finagle your own finances,
it becomes a lot less stressful
than just sort of being in denial
going, yeah, gas is more expensive, but I'll add it to the tab. I'll put it on my credit card and hopefully I'll be able to pay off the balance at the end of the month. Now, instead, make a real plan of where that extra money is going to come from, whether it's from working extra, getting a raise, getting a promotion, cutting back on subscriptions, cutting back on eating out, because that money is real and you have to account for it. How often is not making enough money a valid reason for someone's dissatisfaction with their finances or being in debt? I would say out of all the Ramsey show calls I take,
there's probably 10% where it legitimately is an income problem. But even then, they are in a, like, the debt to income ratio is off balance. So they have $40,000 in debt, but they make $60,000 as a household. That's a really tough situation. Like as your debt starts to creep up with as much as your income, if not more, the math just becomes a lot harder to pay off. But rarely do I find, I think once you hit the normal threshold, which most of our callers, they're making the average median house.
income or higher. They're doing well. They're making 80K, 100K, 10050K. Rarely do we get the ones that are,
hey, our household income is 40K. Yes, that is a problem. You're not going to be able to have a
stay-at-home spouse with a bunch of kids, with the car you want, life you want, while making
40K as a household. That's just really tight in today's America. So the good news is we always dig in
and go, what are you doing for work? Okay, what's the latter in that field? And if there isn't one,
how do we get you out of this like hourly wage position making 15 or 20 bucks an hour?
Do you tell them to be an AI consultant?
You know, I haven't tried that yet.
I heard Grant Cardone say you can make a million dollars a year pretty easily as an AI consultant.
I haven't attempted it.
But I do tell people, okay, what is the skill set behind the thing that you're doing?
And then where can you make a lot of money with that same skill set if you just moved it over here?
And obviously, if you listen to Ken Coleman, what is the, you know, the thing you're actually passionate about?
So not just the thing that's going to be soul-sucking
because we also get a lot of calls from young guys
who go, hey, I just want to make a lot of money.
I want to go into medical device sales
because I've heard you can make a lot of money.
Well, that's a terrible reason to go into medical device sales
because you're going to get burnt out,
you're not going to last,
you're not going to be a good salesperson,
you're going to come across a little skeezy
if you're only in it for that dollar.
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I mean, right, 99.9% of jobs out there, Graham's Stefan goes, you couldn't pay me enough to do that.
Well, maybe they could pay you enough to do that.
Graham's like, I have an amount.
Yeah, they absolutely get it.
There's an amount.
I have a number.
But the truth is, there's also people who, no matter what the work is, they find joy in it.
Because they don't look at the face value of the work.
Because if you look at face value of the work for most people, I sit in meetings all day.
I'm in front of a computer all day, trying to wordsmith an email, and then you go home.
That's soul-sucking.
But if you actually like to serve people, you like to be around people, if you have coworkers, you actually want to grow, then almost any work can be fulfilling.
I mean, I've met Walmart readers that have more joy than the guy making $300,000 at Deloitte.
Oh, because they get really good health insurance.
That's where it's at.
That's right.
That's right.
But it's true.
There's a quality of life that your job affects.
And if you have a poor quality of life due to the income or due to the stress or due to the soul-sucking.
nature of that job, get out. There is work out there for you that you can enjoy and make good
money doing. So how much do you think it takes per year to have four kids with a stay-at-home wife?
Well, it's very area of the average, of course. Bay Area versus Idaho is going to be very different.
So let's just talk then, high cost of living, like metro areas. Metro area, single income,
four kids. Now, I'm going to say you don't have debt, all right, because it's going to,
now you've got to way increase the income if you're in crippling debt.
You got a bunch of cars, a huge mortgage.
Let's save a reasonable mortgage.
You followed our principles.
15-year fixed, 25% of your after-tax income, and no consumer debt.
You can then survive on a decent, you know, let's say a high-cost living area, $100,000.
Because if you do the math on that, you're talking $6,000 a month, probably coming in, maybe five if you're high taxes in California.
And you have a reasonable mortgage.
That's $2,000 a month.
You got $3,000 a month to play with to cover food, utilities, insurance.
a little bit of fun money for four kids what depends on the kid i mean how old how old are the kids
are they in private school all of that matters but i mean with kids you're talking about
maybe formula diapers and basic clothing rice and beans like what do kids actually need we're not
we don't need to take them all to disney every year we're just making sure that they're fed
they're growing properly they're healthy that's about it i kind of agree with that like i could be
totally naive here because i don't have kids but like i don't have kids but like
for a wife or a girlfriend.
Shout out to Jack.
I'm interested.
I do not remember being, like, needing expensive things when I was a kid.
Like, all of the vacations that we would go on would just be backpacking trips.
And so, like, we would just take the car out, load up our backpacks.
We'd have a tent.
And then we'd just walk somewhere and then, boom, set up the tent and sleep.
And then, of course, you have food.
And then you have, like, I was in soccer, but soccer was maybe like $100, $200 to sign up for a team.
Yeah.
And then aside from that, it's.
I mean, what insurance?
But my mom was a public school teacher, so that was also.
Which is, I mean, she's not making the big bucks as a public school teacher.
And what you find is the reality is a lot of people live in California making $100,000 household income.
They exist and they make it work.
And yet there's other people who make $350,000 who are in the red every month, paycheck to paycheck.
And so it's really hard to say, well, if they just made this much money, they would be okay.
because as we know, half of those six-figure earners are paycheck to paycheck.
So you can't just say, well, if they made $200,000, it'd be reasonable.
Because that lifestyle probably necessitates this fancy car that they can't afford,
the big house that they can't afford.
But when you go, this is the reality of how much we make, what can we actually afford,
you just make different decisions.
And you make it work.
There's sacrifices made when you have a stay-at-home spouse with four kids.
You don't do the things that other people do.
Graham is under the impression that like to raise a family of four what do you think it would cost?
Like over 18 years or what?
Per month?
Per month.
We had a discussion with the Oppenheim brothers and they were throwing out like ludicrous numbers.
And I'm like there's just, my parents weren't making that amount of how many of these people have four kids?
Well, no, two kids because it's a family of four.
So how many of four?
Okay, I have a family of four.
Do they have a family of four?
No.
Graham does not.
He's just, he's just like very apprehensive to have kids because he feels like he can't afford it.
So how much apprehensive to have kids?
I'm just saying it's, I just don't.
think it's going to be a few grand a month.
So how much do you think a family of four needs to be bringing in to support a family?
I think it really is location dependent if you own your house.
Vegas.
I'm going to say probably one 25K a year minimum for a family of four.
Is that assuming there's no consumer debt?
Correct.
Let's assume there's no consumer debt.
Don't you think it's a better way to live at that point, to just have no consumer
debt that way. Yeah, that's why I said $125K. He's saying $125K, no consumer debt.
So like, yeah, I think that's a good life. Yeah, about 10,000 months, but he said that's
minimum. But that's not to cover the kids. That's just to cover the entire household. Everything.
Yeah. Utilities, kids, food, they might be some travel. Five percent of that. Other expenses,
emergency. I think that's the minimum. I think it could be done for less, but I think that would
be the, the amount that would be comfortable. Yeah. As as someone who is a, you know, we have a four
and family. I've got an infant. I've got a toddler. I can tell you what we spend on the kids.
And it's it's diapers, it's formula. And honestly, all the toys and books, we didn't purchase.
They come from family and friends and birthdays. It was interesting that Chris Camillo was saying
that when you raise kids in a nicer neighborhood, they cost significantly more just because
if you don't keep up with what the other families are doing, the kids will feel excluded.
That's true. And that you have to have your kids at the same level. Otherwise, they're the odd ones.
Well, I'll give you an example. Our neighborhood, like all of these little kids have these little, you know, these little jeeps. These little motorized cars are driving around in. And so we got my daughter one because now she's just watching them drive around not able to participate. And so for Christmas, my family got her a little motorized Jeep that she loves to ride around in now. But there is a level of you sort of, and that's funny that we learn this at such a young age, that you have to assimilate to the people around you. Otherwise, you stick out like a sore thumb. And there's a truth to it.
that you want to be a part of this community, you sort of have to be like that community. Otherwise,
eventually they go, hey, he's not really one of us. Or they don't want to participate. Would you
say Nashville is similar to cost of living to Vegas? Oh, 100%. So you're in Nashville. We're in Las Vegas.
How much do you, as a family of four spend per month? Probably $5,000. Maybe six if we're really
living. But that's our like to cover it. Like if I had a, let's say I lost my job. We needed our
emergency fund and we cut back to like a pretty, just like bare bones budget. We still enjoy our life,
but we're kind of cutting out all the extras. I could bring it down. Yeah, I could bring it down to
four or five grand easily. Because our actual expenses we have to cover are insurance for the home,
taxes for the home, all the other insurances, auto, term life, all of that. And then food.
which we could really, you know, just shop at Aldi and meal prep and do all that kind of stuff if we had to.
And the kids have plenty of crap. They don't need any more of it. And so I feel very confident that if there was a situation like that, I could trim way down. But if you look at the average home in Williamson County, which is the county we're in, it's a million dollars now. It's the average price, which is crazy in Williamson County. And so I assume Vegas is similar. I would say it's to that. Similar. And depending on the area, you could probably find cheaper. Like if you went to the most expensive area of Vegas,
it'd probably be more like that of average home at least a million.
I would agree with that.
So how much do you think someone would need to retire in their 40s to support a family of four?
If they retired in 2026?
Yeah.
Let's say they're 40 years old.
Oh, they want to retire early?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's a pretty wild.
Well, I wouldn't recommend it, first of all.
Why?
I've never met someone who can sustain that.
Because the personality type, to be able to retire at 40 with a huge nest egg, they're just simply
too ambitious to just go full stop. It's like a marathon runner doing the marathon and saying,
I am never running again. They're just going to be jonesen for that next thing. They're just too
goal oriented to then just stop and have no ambition and sit on a beach. It gets old fast. Even if you want
to travel internationally, great, you go on the trip and eventually you just want, you know,
a McDonald's hamburger and to sleep in your own bed. And so I think there's a fallacy that retiring early,
I love the idea of retiring early or being work optional.
That's what I love.
That's, it's kind of the like screw you money where you hate everything.
You hate your boss.
Your job is toxic, whatever.
You can just go, I'm out.
I don't need this anymore.
And your assets create enough income to cover your expenses.
I think it's a great goal to have for your assets to cover your expenses and
spit off enough income to do that.
But I think the idea that you're going to do nothing is the scary part.
Because those people have so much value to add to the economy.
If they're making probably a couple of hundred,
probably a couple hundred thousand dollars and stocking most of it away to be able to retire at 40.
If you think about starting from 25 to 40, 15 years, you are just piling money away,
probably to the tune of a savings rate of 50, 60 percent to be able to do that.
So how much would you need?
It depends on your lifestyle.
Some people want to live this sort of, and you know this, there's the like lean fire all the way to fatfire
from financially independent retire early.
So we're talking, I can live off $750,000 nest egg to I need $10 million plus.
just to survive. And what I found, because I've been looking into these communities,
the goalpost always moves. Everyone is so scared to pull the trigger. And all the comments go,
dude, the math checks out. You're fine to retire. You got $6 million and your expenses are $100,000
a year. Go enjoy your life if you want to quit. But most people are so scared and it's not about
the money. I think it's about the purpose and value in identity they feel in the work that they do.
And what's going to happen on the other side when they're just sitting at home. I think a lot of
of it is that they plan for the downside.
Because I've seen a lot of those posts.
I'm on Reddit Fat Fire like every single day.
And I see those where it's like, I have 14 million liquid and, you know, I'm doing this.
The average person went to the Fat Fire subreddit.
They would go, these are the most out of touch idiots I've ever met.
They got $14 million and they're saying it's not enough, right?
That's essentially most of the posts in there.
They're all sort of like, well, I have this much, but I don't know.
I'm still a little gun shy because they just, they're scared of the future.
which is kind of what got them here.
And they wanted to have some control over their future.
And yet they are so controlled by their mind, by their own prison they've created.
What would you tell those people?
I tell them to let go and let God and go find work you enjoy doing.
And don't worry about, you know, the dollar amount at this point.
Because truly, they have earned their way to financial freedom by all stretches the imagination.
And so now it's going, dude, if you can't learn to live off of $10 million, then you'll never be able to live.
And I think truthfully what they're missing is a real purpose in life because their sole purpose was get to this number.
They get to the number and they go, well, I guess there needs to be a bigger number because I can't let go of the one thing that was keeping me alive, this weird financial goal.
So that's the part that scares me is there's no real foundation other than, well, I want to be able to work out more or, you know, enjoy travel more.
I think you just need a deeper purpose than that.
And some people avoid having starting families.
They avoid getting married.
They avoid having kids because they think that is a deterrent to their financial goal.
And what purpose do you recommend for those people?
Oh, my gosh.
I mean, I think getting married and having kids gives you an immense sense of purpose.
And it's not to say that if you're single, like you don't have purpose, but I think there's a newfound sense of purpose that causes, forces you forces you to become more selfless and be less inward focused when you've got to, you've got to raise these kids and you want to do it right.
And what if they already have kids?
Because it seems like a lot of those posts they already have kids.
Yeah, if they're married, they have kids.
I do think faith plays a big part of it.
I think without faith underpinning a lot of this, it does feel a little bit meaningless.
This sort of like capitalistic rat race, we're here for 70 years, then we're in the grave.
So what's the point of anything?
You sort of have an existential crisis if you don't have a bigger picture and a bigger thing to live for.
And so I think faith plays a bit of.
big part, family plays a big part, your health plays a big part because we see a lot of these people
are burnt out, stressed, high blood pressure, out of shape. And so if you're able to focus on your
health, your relationships, your family, your work, and your faith, you are so well-rounded that you're
going to have a great life no matter how much money you make or have. How much do you think people
should be saving who want to get to that point in their 20s, 30s, 40s? Is there a percentage that you
recommend or an amount? For like a work-optional sort of aggressive savings goal? Yeah.
Well, what I did is I saved 15% of my income into retirement accounts while aggressively paying down the mortgage with anything left over.
So that was my plan. I'm not saying everyone has to do that. But being completely debt free in my early 30s then freed me up to go from investing 15% to 50% because I still live the same way. We didn't really increase our lifestyle by much. We may have bought our time back in a few ways, you know, lawn care, a cleaner, whatever it is.
But aside from that, I'm still the same, George.
I don't have this materialistic, like, I just want more stuff.
We really focus all of our energy toward our, like, buying our house, let's furnish it nicely.
But outside of that, a vacation's a, you know, it's a pipe dream for us right now with an infant toddler and two dogs, one of which is handicapped.
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You keep bringing up a handicapped dog.
I'm just curious.
What's the handicap?
If that's, like, insensitive to ask, I'm sorry.
No, I think the dog would be fine with me telling you.
He had something called intravertible disc disease, IVDD, which is fairly common in French Bulldogs and other dogs.
You have a French Bulldogs.
I got two French Bulldogs.
So that's another thing.
They're born broken.
Okay, when you think about dogs that just don't look like they should exist, French Bulldogs are at the top of the list.
And vets hate and love these dogs.
They hate them because of how they're bred.
And they have so many issues, breathing issues, hip issues, spine issues.
and they love them because it pays for their second home. And so French bulldogs have common
issues like this. So my dog was very athletic, four years old, great shape, all of a sudden
exploded disc in his spine, lost all function in his back half. So we had to make the hard decision.
Do we see if it heals on its own or do we do an expensive surgery to remedy it? They go out and
clean the, you know. That's the hard. I thought you were going to say a different hard decision.
I'm putting them down. Yeah. Well, that's a that's a byproduct that could happen if you don't
deal with it. And so we decided to do the surgery. We had about an hour window to decide. I was live on the Ramsey show. My wife's calling me in tears at the emergency vet going, hey, they need a decision now because there's a window of time where you can actually do the surgery. And so we did the surgery and it was eight months of grueling rehab. And he's doing actually great now as far as all things are considered. He can run and walk. He can't bend his back legs. He kind of does like a just this move on the back. That's good. But he, you know,
He's thriving otherwise.
Like, he still lives a pretty normal life, which is great.
But that's taken a toll on us emotionally, you know, financially.
It's just super expensive.
Why get that breed of dog?
There's some things in life you do knowing that it's not a smart financial decision.
And I think dogs fall into that category, but especially dogs with known issues.
You buy like a mutt from the, you know, the rescue.
That dog's going to live forever with no issues.
You buy a purebred French bulldog, it parties over.
And so we just, both my wife and I love French bulldogs.
We love their temperament.
We love the way they look and their weirdness, their personality.
And so we just got one and then decided it needs a friend.
And so we got another one.
And here we are.
How much was the surgery?
The surgery was $6,000.
It's not as bad as I expect.
It's not horrible.
That was just the surgery.
The scan and anesthesia,
I think was another $5,000.
Oh.
And then the rehab costs, the medication costs, that just kept adding to it.
So it put a hole in our pocket.
Luckily, we did.
So I don't advocate for pet insurance for most people.
I think you're better off just putting money away in a savings account and using that as your
insurance plan for a pet.
But knowing that these dogs have so many issues, I got sort of a high deductible pet
insurance plan.
And so they ended up paying the max for us of a five grand back into our bank account.
How much was a pet insurance?
insurance? It's probably a couple hundred bucks a year for that. Oh. So we made, we made out
like bandits for this one, but it was still, I mean, that's what made me feel good. What I didn't
want was to have to make the decision, as Davis said on air, of like, do you cover it or do you
put the dog down? Were those the only options? Because I've seen some dogs that have the
wheels and they're able to use their front legs and they have like the wheels. We do have those for
him to help him sort of rehab on walks, but he doesn't need them to move. Why couldn't he just have
that with his lower half not working.
Well, there was a chance.
That was a possibility, but we wanted
to see if he can get back to
where he was, because he's only four years
old. So I was like, he still has a lot of life left
in him if we can get him healed up.
And so I feel like we were
on the right side of history there. Deloney wanted
me to just, he was like, dude, I would have
not done what you did. Rachel, same way. They're both
not. Even Dave would have said, I would not have done
what you did. Really? They would have ridden it out
just to see what happens, but they're not going to pay
for all this stuff. I feel like to see
what happens? I feel like a dog's always like a member of the family. I agree. And truthfully,
the reason we do the baby steps, the reason I'm so conservative with money is because I don't know
what life is going to throw at me. So when a dog has a situation like this, we have the money
sitting there. We don't need to get on their payment plan or put it on a credit card. We take it out of
the emergency fund and go, that sucked, but I'm glad we didn't have to suffer financially too. And so
it's one of the biggest reasons I advocate for a debt-free life, the savings in the bank,
building wealth of the future is because you have more flexibility and options with whatever life's going to throw at you.
So then in order to retire, let's say someone does want to retire early, how much would they need in a low cost of living, medium cost of living in a high cost of living area?
Man, I wish so was a magic number. It would be so fun to spit it and everyone goes, this guy crushed it.
Again, it depends on your lifestyle, your expenses. But if you kind of go, how about this, we can kind of go with like a low, middle, high lifestyle and how much I think is a.
The blanket number, I would like to have in a nest egg retiring in, like, in your 50s?
What are we talking?
Well, let's do 50, 50 years old.
I think it's an easy.
If you want to just blanket it, I would say $1 million, $2 million, $3 million would get you very far.
That's not to say it's going to cover every situation, every family, every level of household expenses.
But I think when you look at the stair step of that, you go, that's a pretty, it would take a long time to deplete that if you only took out what you needed.
$3 million for most people in a nest egg, they'd be set for life.
Now, if you spend $20 grand a month, may not get you that far.
But for most people, let's say the average household expenses are between $3,000 and $7,000.
For most people, that's plenty if they're not, you know, just milking this nest egg.
Susie Ormond says $5 million.
That would be comforting.
But I think to tell someone that they need $5 million by the age of 40 is insane.
50. By 50. Still, that's a very aspirational goal that only personal finance nerds. Now, if there's an 18-year-old who watches your channel or my channel, even in their 20s, it's very achievable. If you can make a good income, household income of, let's say, $80,000 to $150,000, you have a great investment rate, you have no consumer debt, you get that mortgage paid off and then invest that mortgage payment for the rest of your life, you can get there. And I plan on having more than $5 million when I retire. So it's not to
say that I couldn't live on less, but the more I have, the more impact I can have,
the more I can create generational wealth, the more I can give to my church or non-profits that I
cared about. And so I think making money has been villainized and having a ton of money
has been put on an unhealthy pedestal. So if someone's 18, what advice would you give them?
Would it be to go to college? Would it be to become a consultant? What would you recommend?
I think I would have them figure out the work they're wired to do.
first because that will then show you the path.
Because for too many people, and I just went to a high school a couple of weeks ago,
and I interviewed all these high schoolers about their plans after school.
And it was shocking to me how many people just went, well, I'm going to college because I don't know the next step.
So they're just sort of falling into this herd mentality of I go to college because I'm told that's going to be my best path.
When the truth is it's not, especially in 2026, as you know, most people want to be YouTubers.
You don't need a college degree to be a YouTuber.
it probably won't even help you at that point.
You're probably better off spending that four years creating content than sitting in a classroom.
And so depending on what you want to do, college might be the next step.
It might be trades.
It might be an entrepreneurial venture.
But I do think the faster you know, the work you're wired to do, the faster you can fail when you're young, the better off you're going to be.
Because too many people wait until they're in the 30s, 40s to figure out, man, I really hate this.
Well, I hope you have figured that at 22 instead of 42.
you will save yourself a whole lot of time and heartache.
But the 18-year-olds I talk to, the number one question I have is,
how do I get a million dollars by 25?
That's my most viral TikTok.
Was a call on the show, 18-year-old calls in and says,
I want to turn 100 grand into a million by the time in 25.
And I said, why?
And then he backed out.
He went, ah, it was just a question.
I went, no, I just want to know truthfully why.
And at the heart of it, they're all scared that they'll never get ahead.
They'll never build wealth.
They'll never own a home.
therefore they need to do something crazy risky and high leverage in order to make a lot of money now
because they're never going to have it. And that's the heart of it. If you ask someone why or and then what,
they generally don't have an answer after one or two rounds of that. Here's interesting.
Let's just say he had to do it. He had to turn 100 grand into a million at 25. How would you do it?
Go make a lot of money and sock a lot of it away. How would you make a lot of money? Let's just say,
His life depended on it.
He turns 26 and he doesn't have a million.
I think starting a business is the best path for a young person to make a lot of money quickly.
Because I don't know a lot of companies looking to hire an 18-year-old unless there's some kind of prodigy working in tech or AI who's going to pay them $200,000.
But you can make $200,000 with a lawn care business at 18.
And I've met those people.
They're crushing it.
So find a business that is not sexy that is not highly.
that is not highly promoted on TikTok and go,
all right, how do I scale this thing with the time that I have
in a smart way that doesn't involve debt?
And the people that do it debt-free
just have much more room to play with.
And the people that are highly leveraged,
well, now they just own a job with a bunch of payments on the other side.
But if you can scale this thing,
hire a couple guys under you to start doing the lawn care,
you scale into Christmas lights during the winter,
you start to get resourceful,
you can make money in these little niches over here,
and compete with the big guys.
If someone were to listen to every single thing you tell them to do,
let's say you called them every single morning for five minutes,
you're like, do this, do this, do this, do this.
They're 18, they want to be a millionaire by 25.
What's the likelihood of them doing that?
The likelihood, okay, give them seven years.
Now, this is largely dependent on their income
because we always say your income is your greatest wealth building tool.
So making $40,000, you're not going to get there from 18 to 25 to a million.
I mean, it's a $900,000 gap we're talking about.
about in seven years. That's over $100,000 a year you need to be putting away or growing for you.
So I think it's just a, it's a terrible goal. And so my number one thing with that person would be to
adjust their goal, not to help them get to the number. But let's just say like if you could put
your mind into the mind of an 18 year old, what's the likelihood that they could go to becoming a
millionaire in seven years? Likelihood, I would say 10%. If they called me every day? Every single
day five minutes with you and you just or however long you know if you said hey today i want you to
spend 14 hours going door to door trying to sell this and then once you have this money report back
to me how much money you have i'll tell you exactly how to reinvest it okay that you only made
this much we're going to try doing this do this study this read this book and if they just listen to
every single thing and they needed let's say eight hours to sleep two hours they need they need
they need to show i'm just i'm just curious to get the likelihood that they become and
they really followed it like they're exactly to a t and they're motivated every day yep
I would give it 40%.
Oh.
40%.
And the reason I say 40%,
not 50%,
is because there is an element
of just the person and randomness.
No, let's say the person listened
to every single thing you said.
Yeah, but even then.
Okay.
So randomness,
like they get into an accident, yes.
There could be like random things
that just come up
that I am not equipped to handle either.
So I would say a 40%.
I'd be confident.
Well, the key is they would need to be,
because I'm not a guy
who's going to,
a betting man. So most people would say leverage, take a bunch of risks, and hopefully it works out.
I'm going to go, I'm going to be the tortoise instead of the hair and go, well, what is a six-figure
job or business you could create and then sock away that level of income? Live off 20%, 30% of that,
keep living so frugally and sock it away. Which again, is not a good quality of life, which is why
I would not recommend it. I would go, hey, what's behind this? What happens at 25 with a million dollars?
What then?
They probably don't have an answer.
I take it to 90% if I could have more than five minutes a day with them.
You can have as much time as you want.
Why isn't this a new channel, Graham?
You should start this series.
No, because we would do social media consulting.
And I would have this person nonstop throughout the day.
Creating content.
Not creating content.
Finding people who need social media consulting, like corporations.
You can't pay this person or going to business with them.
I just have to coach them.
They can't come to me and say, like, Graham, what do I say?
they need a thumbnail.
What do you think about this thumbnail?
You can't get, well, then they would just be marketing.
Graham, no, you're destroying the premise because then they could just say, oh, yeah, I'm basically Graham.
I'll just ask the premise of this random hypothetical.
Come on, man.
I'll just ask Graham, you know, because I'm Graham's closest friend.
Then it's backed down at 40%.
Okay.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
It's hard to answer because I think it's just a useless goal.
Because I think once you have a million dollars at 25, your life is not necessarily better.
you probably have no relationships at that point because all you did was grind.
So now you're just single, no friends with some money, and you probably have bought some nice things along the way.
Let's be honest.
But you could make friends at any age.
And to be fair, a lot of the people I hung out with from 20 to 25, I never see them.
None of it really mattered.
And now I have great friends.
And now you have at least one friend.
No, I have one friend.
And a wife.
And a wife.
And two cats.
and a dog is worth a hundred non-qualified friends.
Yeah. That math hurts my head, but I'll go with it. I'll go with it. Yeah, I just think that
that person has their goals out of order. I would rather them go, what is a problem in the world
that I would love to solve? That's a much better question to ask than how much money can I make
or how do I get to a certain number? That number needs to be a byproduct of something that you
added to as far as value to someone or a group of people.
And that we talk about that at Ramsey.
One of our core values is if you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money.
That's what Dave's done.
I mean, most of our content's free.
We're not asking you for money at every turn.
You could buy a course or a book, but it's not like we gatekeep it.
See, I agree with that, but my mindset was always from 18 to 30.
You head down work.
You sacrifice everything you don't need and you just head down work.
Because the value of money when you're 20 years old is so high compared to the value of that same dollar at 50.
Agreed.
I can I tell you the math on it?
At 20 years old, every dollar you invest is a 73x return at 65.
So $1 at $20 turns into $73 at $65.
At what rate of return?
That's, I believe, 9 or 10%.
Now, when you invest that same dollar at 55, maybe a 4x return if you're lucky at 65.
So you can see from 73X, it starts to go down, down, down over time because you have less time for compound growth to work its magic.
Yeah.
So that's why I always thought.
that it didn't matter if you see friends or not.
It doesn't matter if you're not going on vacations
because you could do it when you're 32.
Like the difference of experience, I think, between 25 and, like, 35, very little.
Like, I still feel internally 25.
Yeah, I mean, you look at great skincare.
That really helps.
Macy's got me moisturizing.
Wow.
Yeah, she's got this.
All these serums.
Dude, marriage will do that.
I will say I got a huge glow up when I got married.
There was so many things I didn't know what wrong with me.
until my wife lovingly pointed them out
and said, we can fix that.
What was the biggest one?
Hair was one thing.
I think I up the hair.
Clothing was a huge one.
I was not dressing very well
when I met her
and she helped me step up that game.
My teeth,
I think I was using a sort of mouthwash
that was making my teeth
sort of have a,
almost like dark lines in between these teeth.
Oh, that's plaque.
It wasn't plaque though.
It was like, I listerine too much
and it affected my,
so all of that stuff.
Glasses, I got different glasses.
that really helped.
That's a little more modern
that fit my face better,
all of that stuff.
So marriage will do that.
Yeah.
So get ready, Jack.
One day you're going to have the glow up,
nobody expected.
You're going to be looks maxing.
I appreciate that.
Have you interviewed that guy, by the last year?
Yeah, yeah.
Jack has ascended a little bit
over the last month and a half.
Was he nice to talk to?
Yeah.
He's very friendly.
He's socially interesting, I would say.
It's a nice way to put it.
I would just curious.
I just think that,
But I don't get in that world.
Like the manosphere, the looks mad.
I have to be told by Gen Z people what's happening right now.
And it makes me feel like a boomer.
But I just think there's a level of just vanity and grossness and flexing that's happening right now in culture that I'm just not at all interested in.
I noticed that you were magging us when we came in.
I don't know what that means, but it sounds like it's a bad thing that I did.
It's not a bad thing.
It is what it is.
You were maugging Jack and I.
What does that mean?
Can you even give me the definition of magging?
Yeah, you were kind of like one-opping us.
It's like you're kind of showing...
Oh, like a little...
Like status a little bit.
Okay.
The way you were dressed.
I didn't mean to.
I think you guys just usually generally underdress.
That's all.
Yeah.
So it wasn't me flexing.
But you guys look great, honestly.
And you wore my jacket on my YouTube channel when you did my show.
Yeah.
Are you wearing socks?
I'm a no-show guy, which I know is a big faux pa in the Gen Z world.
It is.
I'm told that no-show socks have not been cool for tennis.
years. Correct. But I simply refuse to wear thick white socks in the summertime or when it's warm
out here in Tennessee. But you'll wear a jacket. Yeah, I'm indoors. So what does your current
portfolio look like? This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just wrapped up a trip.
We were in Austin for a few days. We filmed episodes with Togi, Chris Camillo, and Caleb Hammer.
And honestly, every time we're on the road, we're staying at homes on Airbnb, it's just become
the default. And here's the thing most people don't think about. When you're the one traveling,
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So instead of your home-sitting
empty. You could be generating some extra cash, whether that helps you cover the next trip,
your flights, or it just goes towards something that you've been putting off at home.
I actually listed a spare room in my house on Airbnb, and I was genuinely so surprised how
easy it was to set up, how seamless the entire process was, and it actually made me some pretty good
money. I would actually recommend this to anyone out there that wants to make a little extra
cash on the side. It's honestly phenomenal. If you're thinking about hosting but want some help
getting started, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And when Jack and I started the Ice Coffee
the hour. In the very beginning, we were winging it. We were trying to figure out everything
ourselves. And that's why if you're starting or growing your own business, you get it and how
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to Shopify.com slash ICH. Again, that is Shopify.com slash ICH. The link is also down below in the
description. Thanks again to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. What is your current portfolio look like?
The same as it always was. It's the home. Let's talk percentages. The home is probably,
let's see. The home is probably about half of my entire net worth. And then the investments between my
wife and I's retirement, checking, savings, all of that is probably another half. And then what
What do the investments look like?
My, we have, my wife now stays at home.
So she had a 401K at Ramsey and we rolled those over to IRAs, a traditional IRA for
the traditional side, Roth IRA for the Roth side.
So we have that just sitting there.
I've got my 401K at Ramsey.
I have an IRA from a rollover from a apple.
Yeah, but like what are they invested in?
In mutual funds.
I do have a brokerage account that's non-retirement that's invested in, you know, Vanguard index funds.
So that's pretty, that's the only thing that's not.
Do you do international index funds?
Do you do bonds, treasuries, anything?
I don't do bonds or treasuries.
I'm an equities, so I like to go 100% equities.
I think it's a, the asset allocation theory is kind of bunk.
And the idea that I need to have 40% in bonds is, is wild.
What do you have in cash?
Cash, probably close to 10%.
And do you buy the dip or do you just dollar cost average?
I dollar cost average across investments.
I like to do things monthly.
I might fund a Roth IRA, for example, you know, in one fell swoop.
But other than that, I have, I like to have things automated so that my human brain can't mess with it.
So, for example, I have my kids' 529 college savings plans.
I automate investments to that.
I automate the investments to my brokerage account so that the money's gone.
Like paycheck hits, the money disappears.
I'm basically living like I'm broke, which is great.
I keep only as much as I need for household expenses and checking.
How much Bitcoin do you have?
Currently close to zero, and by close to it, I mean I've zero.
I don't need, truthfully, I don't even know how to buy it.
You could buy the ETF.
That still sounds like work to me.
Like, if you gave me the choice of a S&P 500 index fund or a Bitcoin ETF,
I'm going to go index fund every time because it's the one that I understand.
I understand what's behind it.
There's 500 companies.
They're weighted.
There's market caps.
Bitcoin is based on how we all feel like that.
buy you one share of ibit you can do that are you going to donate it to me how does that work
no i would just venmo you enough to buy what's one share cost 40 bucks and what's that going to do for me
now you could say you have a little bitcoin exposure oh okay so it's the flex for me yeah case people
ask and go yeah i got a little bitcoin how much grand bought me so grand bought me 40 bucks it was a gift
from a friend would you take it who am i to say no i'm not one to block a blessing so if you
going to give me $40? Sure. But with the express intent that you have to buy one share of I
yeah, if you show me how to do it, I don't even know how to create a wallet and all that.
It's in a wallet. It's an ETF. It's traded on any brokerage. Any brokerage. It's IBIT is the
Oh, so I can go to Vanguard and purchases. Yeah. Okay, great. If I can do it in Vanguard, I can understand
that. Okay. Great. $40. Deal. So now. Cool. George owns Bitcoin. Yeah. There we go.
Holy cow. We just convinced you to buy Bitcoin here on the podcast.
Well, technically grand bought Bitcoin.
Well, I'm just holding it.
You own Bitcoin now.
Yeah, I guess so.
I don't even know what I bet is.
It just represents Bitcoin.
Yes, it's an ETF.
So it's a fractionalized ownership of Bitcoin, but as a stock.
So do I actually own Bitcoin or just move up at the same price Bitcoin does?
Yeah, you own the stock.
You own the company that owns Bitcoin.
You're not directly buying the Bitcoin itself.
What company owns Bitcoin?
I thought it was not on by anybody.
This is Black Rock.
Well, now I'm supporting Black Rocks.
That's scary.
Fund.
It feels like I'm in with them off.
Well, there's FBTC too, but that's $70.
So I picked Ibit.
You're not willing to spring the 70 for me?
Do you want to split it, Jack?
It'd be a nice coffee hour expense.
Would you rather have, I mean, I...
This video is going to produce more than $70 for you guys.
I feel like I'm worth that.
We had expenses flying out here.
You know how much our flights were going back to Vegas?
Let me guess, let me guess, let me guess.
Just one way?
One way, two people.
One way for two people.
Okay, from Nashville to Vegas.
One way, what airline?
Southwest.
I'm going to go...
Total.
Total.
With $780.
$1,200.
You got ripped, man.
You got ripped.
Gas prices and flights are...
Jet fuel cost?
Yep.
I think they knew it was your account on Southwest and they...
He's got the money.
Probably.
So that's why we have to settle for Ibit.
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
We got to save money where we can.
Now, I'm fine with that.
I'm not anti-crypto.
I just don't understand it enough and I'm not interested enough to be a part of it and
track it knowing that it's 24-7, it's not, there's nothing underlying in it other than maybe
utility in the future. That's it. I mean, so I like to know, hey, Apple just released the iPhone 17
and a new MacBook and their revenue went up and therefore the share price went up and therefore
I benefited from that. That, I can understand. And I love Warren Buffett's take that he wouldn't
buy all the Bitcoin in the world for $25. He said that. I don't know if it's still true,
but I respect the man for having some principles going, it doesn't produce anything.
He's like, what would I do with it?
Would you buy all the Bitcoin in the world for $25?
I would.
Yeah, 100%.
Okay, there we go.
If you said, no, it's really going to push back up.
You got me with your hypotheticals.
If someone offered all the Bitcoin in the world, which I assume is like trillions of dollars at this point, I would take it to $25.5 bucks.
But let's say Bitcoin crashes.
It's worthless.
And they say you could buy all of it for $25.
Yeah, I would do that.
Okay.
I mean, that's DoorDash money.
Good.
Wouldn't anybody other than Warren Buffett?
Because he already has billions.
But you wouldn't take a billion dollar loan at negative 10%.
It's a totally different process.
That's debt.
That's borrowing money.
This is money I actually have to purchase something.
So that's the difference maker.
Happily, I will buy things with my own money.
But borrowing money to get anything, not interested.
One thing I just realized right now, which I think is very funny, is this shirt I purchased
with my Saks Fifth Avenue credit that I get from the MX Platinum.
Look at you.
Thank you.
And these pants I purchased with my.
my Lulu Lemon credit that I get with the MX Platinum.
And I didn't even do that on purpose.
You know who loves that right now?
Sacks Fifth Avenue and Lulu Lemon, which is why they paid MX good money to give you that credit.
Also, these pants were like $130 and my credit was $75.
So I paid an additional, you know, $70.
Cost you.
I'm just being honest.
And this was also more than $50.
Well, plus we got the annual fee.
Which is the Sax Fifth.
You know, what's the annual fee on that card?
$700 or something?
So now we're already over $1,000 that we've paid for the pleasure of getting some
credits that you then had to use because you wouldn't have shopped at Sacks Fifth Avenue you could
have got that on Amazon for a fraction of the price this yeah well how much did you pay for that jacket
I didn't pay for it how much did you pay for that shirt this is an old Everlane shirt probably 20
bucks those pants probably another 50 bucks the stocks two dollars shoes 60 dollars glasses
I'm wearing some money right at Warby parkers 100 oh I am high index so they charge you more for
the pleasure because otherwise I'd have lenses this thick so maybe
Maybe $180.
Graham?
Free.
Free.
Free.
$2.
Wow.
Free.
Ding, ding.
So Jack is the high roller here.
Well, I also, well, yeah, if you account for the credits.
I mean, this was a Christmas present.
These were free.
I do like the pickleball socks.
That really brings the outfit together.
Thank you.
And I actually was hoping that they weren't going to show on camera, but, you know.
I think you wear those socks to show.
You want to show them off.
No.
No.
I did a purge of my socks lately, and these were some of them ones that I kept and just happened to pack them.
Wow. Well, I'm glad we're all pretty frugal with our clothing.
What do you waste your money on?
If you, like, what other people would say I waste money on?
Sure.
Oh, man, that's a tough one.
If you looked at my bank statement, you would say we waste money on our dogs, 100%.
They would say to waste the money to spend money on their specialized food.
We send them to, like, our friend's house for, like, a daycare a couple times a week.
We spend money at the vet, you know, rehab visits, acupuncture, all of that stuff.
People would say that is a waste of money.
And I go, there's about five, six creatures that I really care about on this earth.
And my family and dogs are in there.
If you came into financial hardship, would you sell your dogs?
When I sell my dogs, if I came into financial hardship, if it was like life or death or like to avoid bankruptcy,
see, I still don't think I would.
I would find a way to make money.
But people should sell their horse.
Well, financial hardship, well, here's the good news.
I physically, there is zero reasons I would ever be able to go into debt.
You know what I mean?
Like financial hardship, I'm not going to need to borrow money ever.
And so that's, again, a crazy hypothetical.
But if my dog was worth $20,000, $25,000, and I was $135,000 in consumer,
debt. Would I, knowing that horses are to be bought and sold on the open market? Absolutely.
Now, would it maybe a rehoming fee temporarily while we got our feet, you know, back on track?
I might do that. Now that the horse thing has ran its course, how do you feel about it?
That's pun intended. Yeah, the horse ran. I think I'm on the right side of history if you
understood the context of that call. I think on what I said, I wish I could take back a thousand
times. Explain what happened. Katie called into the show, 136 grand in debt, rural area in Kentucky,
working for the USDA, making 36 grand a year. And I was doing the math going, she's never going
to get out of this because she's like, well, I can't move. It's a rural area. I have no plans on going
anywhere. I'm stuck here because of my horse. And I finally find out the horse is worth 25 grand.
It's a prize-winning horse. And so finally, at the end of the call after she hit us with
excuse after excuse of why she couldn't take any of our advice. I said, Katie, I'm going to give
you a hard challenge. Could you sell the horse? And she went, I had, I died of 11 years.
And I didn't know. And I said, Katie, the horse doesn't even know your name. And then we went to
break. So the part that I wish I could take back was the cruelty in which I threw out the horse
doesn't even know your name. I thought a lot of people agreed with you. There was a small subset.
The large majority were in shock at what I said and how I said it. I thought it was hilarious.
But I think over time, people are more on my side, which I appreciate. The thing is,
and I've heard from Katie, she's doing better now. He would say to sell the horse immediately.
Well, when you look at the horse as an asset, which, by the way, if you are racing your horse for
profit, you can't tell me it's just a family member. Okay, I don't race my dog for profit and then try to
claim that, you know, it's a family member. So that's the difference maker is horses do go for a
million dollars if it's a prize winning horse for the derby or whatever. My dog barely can walk.
And so, you know, it's not really something anybody would want. But French bulldogs, you know,
if you go out in the open market and try to buy one from a breeder, you're paying three grand, four grand,
five grand. We have a member of this community. It's called the Index. And he breeds horses.
and I've seen the prices that he gets for some of these horses.
He sold one recently.
I think it was like 400 grand.
And they go to auction.
But they have a soul.
How could he do that to that poor horse?
That's a show horse.
All horses can be show horses if you put them on a show.
Is Katie doing okay now?
Did she end up selling the horse?
She's doing better.
There was a lot of backstory that she kind of filled me in on,
but she is chipping away at the debt still.
This was years ago, and she's still in the debt.
To my credit, could have sold the horse
and been out of debt by now probably.
Did the horse go up or down in value?
I don't know.
I don't know how I need to ask her about that.
She's been tracking the value of said horse.
You know, you got to get a horse appraisal, I imagine,
which that's a job.
Somebody's out there praising horses.
Maybe that's what the 18-year-old should be doing.
Don't tell me there's not some opportunity out there.
There's no jobs out there.
Go appraise a horse.
Dude, an AI horse consultant.
Grant Cardone, get them on the line.
I think you need to go spend more time around horses.
I think you need to get a connection.
I am going to the Renaissance Fair here in Nashville coming up.
So I'm going to have to meet some horses.
I do have an irrational fear that I'm going to get bucked by a horse to my untimely death.
There's no way that has nothing to do with you telling this lady to sell her horse.
I just think if it happens, we're all going to go, kind of had it coming.
It was bound to happen.
So on the topic of controversy, because that horse issue is a controversy, people online are making crazy speculations of what's going on with Ken Coleman.
Oh, I love it.
He's left Ramsey.
Yeah.
So now we're all curious.
We're sitting in his studio for his old show front row seat.
What happened to Ken Coleman?
The only true story, which at this point, who's going to believe me when they already
have a narrative in their mind that something crazy happened?
I've known Ken longer than most people in this building.
I've known him since 2010.
We were friends before he even worked at Ramsey.
And we were really good friends when he was here.
And he truly did not see this opportunity coming.
if you follow Ken's content, you know that he preaches the proximity principle. That's do the work you
want to do. He get around the people doing it. And his whole thing was get better, move up, lead well.
And because Ken is such a sharp guy, that he had a lot of friends. And those friends were entrepreneurs and business owners. And they moved over here. And now they're at this company. And so he tapped Ken on the shoulder for this opportunity to become kind of an executive, you know, C-suite SVP of communications for this tech software company. This
caught Ken off guard. He wasn't expecting it. And the more time went on, you know, a month or two of
discussions, conversations, praying about it, talking to his wife, he realized that it was an opportunity
that was a once-in-a-lifetime generational wealth-building thing for his family that he just couldn't
pass up. And Ken loves a challenge, if you know, Ken. And his, you know, he had a great, what,
12-year run here, going from host to personality, multiple shows, carrying Ramsey's
and live events and books and products that have done really well.
So there was no animosity.
He had a great two-hour meeting with Dave at his house.
And, you know, there was tears.
There was hugs.
He's still going to be a family friend to Dave's.
And I know that's the least exciting story I could tell.
So I've seen wild controversies online.
There were these theories.
Give me the craziest ones.
I'm curious.
Viewership was declining.
And so Dave Ramsey internally is bleeding so much money.
Oh, that's hilarious.
demoted him and that
well ken has the most successful
digital product in the ramsie store
so that's just already like a debunk
his find the work you're wired to do the get
clear career assessment is top selling
product okay well apparently ramsie
solutions was bleeding money couldn't afford
to keep the show going he was demoted
that's hilarious and because
he was demoted uh he
ended up taking another opportunity to be able
to leave on his own terms instead of getting fired
wow so we let him go with dignity is what happened
because he was such a money law
for the company. No, that would have been a cooler story, though. That would have been a lot more
exciting than what actually happened. I'm curious, why can he not just pop in once a week to film
something? Well, I mean, when you're no longer employed, we're an all-in or all-out company.
We're 40 hours a week. You are representing this company and this brand. And so it gets too
messy when you're now working for another company full-time and then just popping in. I'd be mad
because I'm like, well, I don't get to pop it. I got to be here doing this show with you guys.
I'm working out here.
But Ken will remain a dear, dear friend.
We were texting the other day.
I asked him if he's making new friends at work.
And if there are any...
So he's already there?
Yeah.
He had a weekend gap, if that, a day gap before jumping on to the new...
Just the way the timing worked out.
So he wrapped up some great events that we did Ramsey Show Lives,
wrapped up a speaking gig, and it was Sionara, but he's still going to always be a pal of mine.
Who's going to take his place?
He's not moving, so he's still here.
Who's going to take his place?
Nobody.
We're not backfilling his role.
He was a once,
like this role was created for him
because of his passion.
So it's not like a field
we're just trying to fill to fill,
if that makes sense.
But if the right person came along
and they had a similar thing,
who knows?
You know, we're always hiring.
Would you guys hire Caleb Hammer?
I would say if hell froze over,
we would consider it.
I think Caleb and Dave are
so at odds
with their principles,
their values,
their faith,
the way they carry themselves, their mission, their goals, that it would not make sense. To work here,
you have to have a similar like mind, similar values, and Caleb just doesn't have those. It's not a
knock against Caleb, but, you know, we don't have that type of content around here, and we have a
different mission. When you say that type of content, what is the main thing you're thinking of?
I would say the cussing, it's not family friendly. We have a set of values that are faith-based
that I think would be jarring for Caleb to then like adhere to or grapple with in this building.
And our mission is not to like scale at all costs, which I think Caleb is just he's a young
entrepreneurial guy. He wants to scale and there's not much stopping him. And this place has been
around for 30 something years. We have a thousand people. We represent something kind of bigger than us.
And we're not willing to, you know, kind of water that down to get more clicks and views,
which Caleb would obviously get.
The guy crushes it, but to us it's not worth it.
And it's why we don't do that style of content.
What do you think Caleb is doing right?
What he's doing right?
I mean, creating crazy engaging content while sneaking in the teaching.
So he's leaning into the edg attainment where he's teaching about taxes while yelling at the person.
And you just learned about how tax brackets work in the meantime.
That I think he does really well.
But I can't watch the content because I have children at home.
And so I'd have to have headphones on at all times to engage.
age in any of it. At what age would you let your kids watch Caleb Hammer? Oh gosh, I wouldn't.
Left to my own devices, I wouldn't. Now, if they go off and they're doing their own thing and they
choose, you know, at some point you can't control what they're going to watch on the internet.
I would hope I raised them enough to go, hey, you don't want that kind of filth in your brain,
you know? And I was on Caleb's show. I left needing to take a shower after that. It was just,
whoof. You know, I'm too much of a prude, I guess, to be in that world. So,
So, you know, my kids watch Blippy and I already don't like that.
What do you think we can improve on?
I think you guys, what you've done well is sort of like let anybody in, which is really nice.
It's an open forum, essentially.
And you guys stay very curious.
I think what you could do is have a sort of a stance.
Like have a foundational principles that you got, that's clear to the audience of here's what we believe.
And therefore, that's the basis for the discussion.
I'm so fluid with a lot of these things, though, that I don't have, like, very firm beliefs on a lot of things, and I'm open to hearing other people out.
You're telling me I could convince you to cut up all of your credit cards and pay off all of your debt in one discussion.
You could convince me. I'm not saying you will convince me, but you theoretically could convince me.
Hmm. If I hear another viewpoint that I'm like, wait a second, that actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe I'm incorrect.
Graham is oddly fluid sometimes, but also, I would say you're also very hard-headed and very stubborn with some stances that you're a lot of sense that you're a lot of sense.
A sucker for logic, and it's all about the logic.
Yeah.
So that's why I think I don't know what I don't know.
And I think the part of the, I guess the blind side, if there was one, would be the reality and emotional and psychological side of the principles that we teach.
That's the hard part to just like rattle out there of like, well, you feel better if you didn't have a mortgage.
Like, yeah, but I could make $100,000 if I kept it.
I'm like, well, yeah, but you'd feel better, like psychologically, emotionally.
I feel better with $100,000, though.
That's the question marks.
You're not willing to try it to see what it's like.
Because I can't reverse that.
Like, once I pay off the 2.875% mortgage...
You're a smart guy.
You'll figure it out.
You'll arbitrage it.
You'll box spread it.
I can't get that again.
Your options call it.
I can't get that again.
See, that's a short-sighted mentality.
It's going to limit you in life.
Think big.
I think thinking big is not paying off the mortgage.
Jack, agree, disagree?
I think if in a perfect...
world, yes, it makes more sense to not pay it off. I agree. Because I think one is subject to,
like you're adding a layer of complexity, which is someone's emotions and feelings. If you remove that
and it's just down to- By perfect world, you mean if you could control every single variable in your
life without fail, then it works. Yeah, I would say in a vacuum, it makes more sense to take on the
debt. Would you say we exist outside of a vacuum? Yeah. And it also depends on how far you want to expand
outside of that vacuum. So like, you know, if you're going to go 10 layers deep, you know,
and you add complexities in your life and then you add emotions and you add this and you add that
and you add maybe someone who has a more flippant nature and they were raised a certain way
than, you know, they have addictive personality. Then, yeah, like it doesn't make sense. But I don't
think that it's necessarily black or white. I think that like it depends on how many of your
variables you can control. For example, for me, I do not even check my portfolio daily. Like, I don't do
that. I don't stay super close to my money. I don't idolize money. I just try to do whatever I think is the
most rational thing. And so for me, I'll keep my sub three percent interest rate debt because it just
makes sense. And I'm aggressively investing into the markets. I don't check my accounts daily.
I don't I don't have like some crazy theme that I try to adhere to in my portfolio. And it's worked out
very well for me. I agree with the math. The math agrees with me. But I'm also like weird because
I'm a little sociopathic in that sense.
Like I just, I don't care as much, I think.
Yeah.
Well, we can agree on that, that he's sociopathic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That's a great way to wrap.
Yeah.
Ending on Jack is a sociopath.
That's your tag.
One last question for you, though.
Yeah.
Thumbs up, thumbs down.
Selling a covered call.
I don't even know enough about that to give you yes or no, but I'm going to say no because
I don't know how to do it.
Do you think it's possible that Jack would be able to make three percent?
a week selling covered calls?
Not consistently.
How do you know that?
Because if he could, everybody would be doing it.
And it's so easy to do the math.
Well, if I just sports bet, I make 5% per day.
If that compounds, I have a million dollars by the end of the year.
The problem is the house always wins, and there's still risk involved, and you're not
going to bat a thousand in the financial world.
And so therefore, I think it's a simpler.
I'd rather just leave the money in an index fund, and eventually you'll have enough.
And even paying off the mortgage, to your point,
let's just say you're going to have plenty of money
even if you pay off the mortgage,
you're going to have more money than you could ever spend in a lifetime.
What's the point of having a little extra money right now?
You have plenty.
Well, if I had all of the money in the world,
then I would pay off the mortgage.
Yeah.
But do you have enough to pay it off right now?
Yep.
So why won't you?
Because I don't have all of the money in the world.
What happens if you pay off the mortgage right now?
Are you broke?
No, I'm not broke.
The way that I see it is that there are certain like tiers of wealth.
And once you check those boxes,
once you elevate to that level, let's just say a net worth of $5 million. Once you hit $5 million,
then you have a new tier of FU money. It's not quite FU money, but it's the amount of money
that you need in order to raise a family of four comfortably in most locations in the world, right?
And so like I kind of want to race to this new tier. And then once I get there, I'll be selfish
or selfish enough to pay off my mortgage because that reduces the emotional toll of having a
mortgage. I'll be selfish enough to spend a little bit more on clothes, to do other things that I
wouldn't normally do. But right now, I feel like I need to be a little bit more selfless and do
the thing that might be a little bit more uncomfortable to be financially advantageous to then get
to that point of being able to take care of my family better. Okay, we'll play back the clip.
He said, once he gets there, you'll do it. Pay off my mortgage? Five million dollar net worth?
I would not pay it off a five million. You just told me you would. Well, I would start enjoying other
things. Yeah. You just told me if you
had, if you got to this point, then you
would do it. No, I said all of the money in the world.
No, you said five. And then the way that I
did say five. Did I say five? Did I say five? I said five.
Playback the clap. That was after I said all of the money. I said there are different
tiers. Yes, he did. This is sociopathic behavior.
Wow.
Thanks, guys. Is that how we end this episode?
That's how you want to wrap? We can tell
them about our credit idea, Jack. No, I don't want
to hear about that. I'm not going to invest.
I'm not your short tank. Do you want to say it's going to,
it's easy 3% a week if you invest?
You couldn't tempt me.
Everything you guys are saying is just making me want to run the other way.
What have we offered equity?
In ice coffee hour?
No.
Oh.
Oh.
Yikes.
No.
I'll take equity and ice coffee hour.
Well, if you want to check out our credit startup, guys, we're going to leave it more mysterious.
It's incredible.
Check out my debit startup.
It's in the description.
You're going to click it to see what it is.
I don't co-sign any of this, by the way.
George is not co-sign.
George.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, man.
Thank you guys so much.
Appreciate it, guys.
Thanks.
By the way, if you enjoy this episode, we just posted our next one early for members.
So if you click the join button, you could literally begin watching our next episode right now.
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