The Iced Coffee Hour - THEY LIE TO STEAL YOUR MONEY (Avoid The #1 Wealth Killer In 2024)

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

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It's harder than ever in America today. Inflation, the housing market. the guy in the White House. And what I've found is you can get ahead in America today if you just follow a really simple, controversial, upstream path. But most people want to make it more complicated. They think they're smarter than that. There's pride.

There's fear. There's greed. And then people calling to the show at 60 going, I'm screwed. What do I do? So that in the simplest terms would be your advice to make any viewer watching right now a millionaire. Yeah.

If you just follow these principles, you will get there and you will have the things on the other side. I say this is going to be jarring. This is not going to be what you want to hear. George, welcome back to the iced coffee hour. Really happy that you're here. Our last episode, I think is it like 600,000 views? It did so well. Everybody loved it.

Everyone wanted to follow up. Some hot takes. We had a great time. Thank you for your generosity. And I think it was a fun conversation. I think what's really interesting that people really appreciate it is that we have very different views on debt, on credit cards, on finances. You have your way, I admire my way. And we're able to have a good conversation about it. And I think people really like that.

So we're going to dive even further into that because you made it. a whole book about how bad credit cards are and how you should never use them. And I was reading through it and we have some disagreements that we probably have to hash out today. Can I just say, Graham? Let me remind you. I am on the back of the book. That you are on the back of the book. And here's what Graham had to say. George dives into financial topics that should be required learning for absolutely everyone. Whether you're just starting or on your path of financial freedom, this book has every tidbit to help optimize every dollar. Signed, Graham Steffen, Real Estate Investor, YouTube Personality. So first of all, thank you for endorsing.

it. That means a lot that you put your stamp of approval on it. You're welcome. Even though we don't agree on all things finances. Exactly. We have a very mutual, a mutual respectful relationship, and it's been so great getting to know you guys over the years. We're going to dive into it today. You said chapter three in your book was the strongest argument against debt that you think you've ever heard. Against credit cards. Against credit cards that you've ever heard. In the credit cards chapter. I'm just going to recite some of the things that you said in this chapter. So people get an idea of what you said. It's like a court of law. I'm going to use your own words against you. Now, you claim these credit card companies lure you in using heavy metal cards to impress your friends.

Congratulations, you've been approved, as though it's a good thing. They say, we are pleased to announce. We have increased your credit limit. They give you rewards. They give you sign-up bonuses. They give you discounts. They give you exclusive lounge access. You say statistically 80% of people reading this have a credit card.

So 80% of you viewers have a credit card conducted by Ramsey Solutions. Skynosis source. And you also said 49% of people can. can't pay off their monthly credit card bill. In 2023, there is an outstanding debt of credit cards of over $1 trillion, spread over 55 million households, with each household balance averaging over $14,000 in an average interest rate of 22%. Those are all facts. Those are none of my real opinions. But yes, that's all accurate. It's in the book. After reading that, this is a bystander. I think it's interesting because I never put the two and two together until you wrote that.

The way credit cards frame their language of saying congratulations, you've been approved. This is a great thing. Look at what we just did. I do think that's interesting. I mean, that's marketing at the end of the day. They want to frame it as a good thing. And it can be. It can be a good thing depending on the credit card that you get approved for.

Well, I think it's more about the emotional validation we get from like, they're giving me more credit limit. It's like, well, what does that really mean? They're giving me more access to debt. Now, if that's the game you want to play, that's fine. But for most people, when you ask them what their financial goals are, they would say, well, to get out of debt, which is such a hilarious contradiction, that for the average consumer, their singular goal is to get out of debt, and they're getting excited when they have access to more debt, and they think it's winning, because that's the scoreboard we've created in America.

Do you think, though, that could be a selection bias, that the people who are getting into personal finance, step number one, for a lot of those people who are just starting is debt. Get out of the debt. Well, we tell them to succeed in America financially, you've got to have a good, credit score. And so how do you do that? Well, people will open a credit card and they swipe the card going into debt even temporarily. At the heart of it, I just think people aren't winning as much as they think they are. And the credit card companies love when people think they're winning. So do you think this is something now where if you're good at it, you could win? Yes, but that's kind of like saying, if you're good at gambling, you should gamble. And everyone goes like, well, I think I'm good. I won that one

time and so they sort of self-select themselves and go like, I'm going to be the guy who does it it well. I think it's different. I think if you're good at card counting, so if you're good at being a winning player, then I think that's different because the game isn't set to defeat you in credit cards and stuff like that. Like, sure, a lot of people do end up losing money, but every tool that you need to get ahead is in the system, right?

Maybe. The way I think about it. Define getting ahead. That's really what it comes down to. It could be similar to starting a business, let's just say, because you see. say it's money losing propositional. Starting a business is money losing for a lot of people, but some succeed. So couldn't it be the same way? If you know what you're doing and you're successful at it, you can do really well. You can make a lot of money in both a business and

with credit cards. Yeah, I mean, some people do game the system. And so I talk about that at what cost does that come? Because it comes at a cost. Credit card companies are not nonprofit charities. They're not just giving away money. And so I talk about where the money actually comes from that turns into rewards and cashback and points and all that. And as I got into it, like, it's just not pretty. It's not my opinion of like, well, it comes from this group over here. There's multiple studies from the Federal Reserve that are now showing like, oh, it's the people who are uneducated, low income suffering the most that are funding this whole program. And it's not a moral thing to say you're a bad person if you get cash back. It's not that at all.

But it doesn't make me feel like I'm winning when I'm, that's how the system works. It's just kind of gross. And so if I can opt out of it by using debit and cash, I'm opting out of it. And that's just one reason on top of many to not use the credit card. It's interesting you turn it into a moral argument because I've never seen it that way. If you could explain where that money is coming from and who's receiving the money, that would be great. Like in exact terms. Oh, yeah. Well, the Fed found that $15 billion moves from the poor, uneducated lower income to the higher educated wealthy. And there's billions and billions of dollars that gets moved in that way. And it's all stemming from the

credit card companies. And a lot of people say, well, George, credit card companies, the money I'm getting in my cashback is from transaction fees. It's from the interchange. The interchange. That's what they're saying. But I actually looked at the data and Capital One has their earnings report right there online for anyone to go check out. And it turns out it was like 75% of the earnings from Capital One's credit card revenue came from interest, not from transaction. Capital One. What about American Express? Well, American Express is different. They have a different business model, and you know that. And so where does most of their money come from? It comes from charging the highest possible transaction fee in the industry, three and a half percent to businesses when you swipe that American Express.

So that's why a lot of small businesses go, we don't take Amex because we're not going to stomach that fee and pass that on to the consumer. And so either way, it's not pretty. AmX is a different story because of their business model. You know, these charge cards, you have to pay them off the end of the month. And so it's a different model, but for most people, the rewards cards, it's coming mostly from interest and fees, which is coming from people who can't pay it off. Yeah, your Capital One example, I do think makes sense because Capital One generally, besides the VentureX business card, which is pretty good sign-up. Which is a fantastic sign-upon. That would be hilarious if this was brought to you by Capital One. But no, Capital One usually is seen as like a beginner credit card where they really just send out mass mailers to just about any.

So it would make sense that for them, their business model would be heavily reliant to people just carrying a balance because they don't know any better. Yeah. And so I was trying to just go at it from a research standpoint versus like a here's how I feel. Because I really truly, like I don't think anyone's a bad person for using a credit card or that it's wrong to get cash back. I just think it's an interesting angle for people who are already kind of on the fence to go like, you're right.

I'm going to opt out. And truthfully, people have reached out to me going, I didn't know that this is the case and it finally made me cut up the card and now I feel more free than ever and I'm building wealth faster. Do you think credit card companies are immoral? I think a company is amoral in a sense. I think the people involved in it that are at the top and the way they're making money. I don't think it's the right way to make money. I think you can serve people in a way and run a business in such a way that it helps a lot of people. I don't think causing people to go into debt is a worthwhile business to be in.

And, you know, there's a lot of companies that make billions of dollars. You know, when we say Sally Mae is a moral company, or are they evil? As a company, they're just a company. But the things they do in order to attract business, we would say is immoral. Like paying financial aid counselors and putting them on cruises in order to pitch Sally Mae products, that's pretty gross. Putting them in call centers and making them think they're talking to a financial aid counselor when it's a Sally May representative, we would say is immoral

and gross. So there's practices in those industries the way credit card companies go after us and the experimentation they do. We would say that's pretty gross. But as far as a company goes, a company's a company and it doesn't really have a moral compass as far as that goes. Do you think there's any way for a credit card company to do it right? For a credit card company to take what you say and say, you know what, we're going to fix the problem. It's still going to be credit, but we're going to solve these issues, every issue that you say. Well, this lady called into the Ramsey show this week and it was so funny. She was like, yeah, well, I'm with this nonprofit now that's helping me with my credit card debt. And Capital One is the one who told me to reach out to them. I was like, you're going to trust

a credit card company to help you get out of the debt that they got you into? That makes no sense. It does, because they want to get paid back. If they default on her, they're not, they're getting pennies on the dollar. Which just makes sense. They're like, well, we can get her money back. We'll be doing her service. But overall, I just don't, I don't trust credit card companies with a 39 and a half foot poll. Do you know what the terms were of that? Like what she signed up for? I don't know. I kept asking her. She didn't know. I was just like, this sounds like a scam. It sounds like one of these debt relief settlement companies that you sign up for that you pay them a bunch of money and they tank your credit on purpose and then doesn't resolve the issue. So anytime you're using

debt to move around to pay off other debt, it's just you're not actually solving the root problem. And what I found is people who avoid credit card debt completely and avoid credit cards, they tend to just have more of their income at their disposal because they're not tempted. it's really hard to go into credit card debt when you don't have a credit card. That's the bottom line at the end of the day. You can't spend more than you make if you can't spend more than you make.

But before we get into that, obviously if you're watching this episode, you think financial health is incredibly important. And dare I say, I think there's something more important, physical health. I tend to agree with that. I know for myself,

I'm doing my best to get to the gym every single day throughout this last year. I feel so much better. I work a lot better. And the one thing that's actually made the biggest improvement is my diet. Funny you say that, Grant, because that's actually my news,

resolution, I want to get shredded. Like Justin Waller type shredded. I want that eight pack of abs. And today's sponsor, Hero is here to help. Hero makes my favorite foods that I want to indulge on and eat all the time, but in a very healthy, tasty way. Like for those unaware, Hero Bread has become a daily staple of mine every single morning because if it's soft, fluffy texture and rich flavors that make it constantly taste like it just came freshly baked out of the oven. And what's even crazier than their flavor gram is their nutrition facts. Just listen to this, guys. Their Hero tortilla, which I absolutely love, I made an amazing cassidy out of it, zero grams net carbs, zero grams of sugar, 80 calories, seven grams of

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What do you think is the root problem? Because you said you can solve it by just getting rid of your credit cards. but that doesn't necessarily, I'm assuming, solve still the root problem in which why people go into debt. Couldn't that be akin to saying, well, you know, get people off drugs by just eliminating drugs? If drugs didn't exist, no one

would be addicted to it. Wouldn't it just go to something else? I mean, if you look at, addiction is a strong form. Some people have spending addictions. But for the average person, they would tell you, like, I'm not addicted to credit cards. Yeah, sure, I have 16, and I try to maximize

the rewards, but I'm not addicted. And so credit cards are a different beast because we've socialized them to the point where it's so normal. And I have a quote from Dave in the book of, credit cards have become the cigarette of the financial world. It's normal, but I think it's a bad habit that is slowly killing people. But it's not one of those where it's like, it's not meth. You know what I mean? Like you can live a long time and still smoke cigarettes.

And some live a long life and they're fine and they live normal lives. But I still think you'd be better off with your health and your financial health without it. So that's the big thesis there. And I walk through eight different character archetypes in the book that I think will hit someone reading or listening, where they go, that's me. I consider myself the perfect spender. All right.

I've heard. I pay off my card every month. I've never spent a dime in interest. How many times have you said that or heard that, right? Every time. Every time. And it makes you feel like you're winning. But here's the thing.

Even if you never spent a dime in interest and you pay it off every month, that still leaves you with zero dollars. It does not mean you're moving ahead financially. it just means you're not getting behind. And I want people to move ahead. And I think playing this game is just sort of this monopoly game created by the credit card companies

to make us feel like we're winning. I'd rather you have no debt, but I think it's better to use your own money, and I think you make different decisions when you do that. So you did make the claim that I'm guessing is based in some sort of data that if you have a credit card

versus a debit card, you're prone to spending more money on a month-to-month basis with the credit card. Yes. And I cite an MIT study that was done, You used fMRI technology, and it scanned the brain when people use credit cards. And what's wild is that not only did they say, hey, when you swipe that card, it sort of releases the brakes on spending. But not only that, it hits the accelerator and causes you to spend more, which is a pretty wild thing.

They already knew that spending with that little friction, spending other people's money, it's going to sort of like release the brakes a little bit. But not only that, it causes you to actually spend more on top of that, which is compounding the problem. Now, I've seen a similar study that found when you start spending money that you spend more money as a result of spending because you're already in a habit, regardless of credit or not. I forget what the exact study is, but a philosopher, I believe, in like the 1800s who started looking at buying furniture. Oh. And he bought furniture. He bought like a new chair in his living room. And then all of a sudden, everything else looked outdated because he got the chair.

So then he wanted the couch. So he got a new couch. And then the rug looks weird because those two are new and the rugs kind of get a rug. Wardrobes are very similar when you buy a shirt. Well, now I need a new pair of pants to go with the new shirt and a new pair of shoes. And that's just a spending habit that I think is... It's just a cascading effect. It is, regardless of debit or credit.

I think if you spend... I would like to see a study if people start spending, do they spend more because they've already spent something? It's like the floodgates have already opened. Yeah. Well, that's how I feel about it. I mean, with credit scores and credit cards, it's sort of this gateway into other types of debt. And once you have a payment on one side of your life, what's a payment? on another side? What's a car payment? What's a mortgage payment? And I think we need to retrain our

brain to stop thinking in terms of payments and start thinking in terms of freedom with our income. Because that's really, you know, we say it's your greatest wealth building tool. And when you give that to lenders, even if you're paying off a card every month, you're still giving it away. And that's money I think you would have, you would have kept more of your money if you had spent your own. And I say my sort of end thesis in the chapter is when it hurts less, it costs more. When it hurts less emotionally, which is what happens

when you swipe instead of handing over $100 bills in cash, we would revolt if we had to hand over $100 bills to pay taxes every year. But because it sort of

comes out of our paycheck or when we spend it sort of just gets swiped on a card, we don't feel the emotion of that money leaving our bank account. Just a digital number

changes slightly. It's similar with casinos and chips. I heard one of the reasons they switched to chips. I mean, not only is it easier to carry around, but because you don't associate that with money.

It's a lot easier to spend chips than it is to be like, here's 100, 100, a hundred. Well, think about that with credit card points. Why do you think they move from cash back numbers to you get 150,000 points? It sounds like an amazing, huge number. Instead of going, here's $500, they go, here's $150,000 points. Credit card companies watching this could actually do some crazy stuff with that with marketing and saying you're going to get a million points. But in the fine print to say the million points, that's $100.

Yeah. When I talk, I actually talked to an X Capital One employee. and she was talking about all the experiments they run and the AB test when they said, hey, when we switch to points, it causes people mentally to flip on a different part of their brain because they don't associate points versus money.

It just feels like I'm winning. It feels like I'm at Chucky Cheese. And so the stuff that she unpacked, it just made it even more gross to how these credit card companies come after us to where I'm like, even if you think you're winning, you're not. And someone else is losing at the expense of you winning.

What are some of the other secrets that that person told you about credit card companies. Oh my gosh. Well, the fact that they run Capital One in particular runs 10,000 experiments on consumers every year. That boggled my mind. Like, there's only 365 days in a year. How is this possible? They're constantly running these A-B tests to figure out what's going to get people to spend more money. That part was pretty gross. And then just all the amount of like they can devalue your points at any time. What are some of the tests they run? Did you ask about this? Didn't get into the specifics of what they did. But it's a lot of switch.

switching the mentality and the verbiage around it. But I think a lot of it is when they move from cashback to points. There's a reason all the credit card companies have moved to talking about points in airline miles. And so I break down how the airline miles work and how much you'd actually have to spend. And it's like 50 grand in spending gets you $250 in rewards or $500. And so it's just when people tell me I get a free flight and I spend how I normally would. I'm like, you would not normally spend $50,000 in a year. year. The one counter to that is that mostly you'd be able to get those free flights with the sign-up

bonus, which have a much lower spent. So let's just say your example, $750, which is about the sign-up bonus for a higher-end credit card, like mid-tier to upper mid. Usually that would require a spending of anywhere between $4,000 to $10,000 in three months. So all of a sudden, then the cashback seems a lot higher, which is the sign-up bonus versus keeping the car for years than like year three, spending $50,000. A lot of people would do that. Most people do that. go like, well, it wasn't planning on spending 10 grand. Like 10 grand in three months is a lot. Because you can't, you know, most people can't put their mortgage and utilities on there.

And so we're talking about consumer spending, groceries, gas. So what do they do? Well, we'll eat out again this month because we got to hit the number. And so I think mentally and psychologically, they know you're going to spend more by doing this in order to get the bonus. And maybe you'll use the bonus. Maybe you won't. We found a lot of people forego the bonuses, forget, it expires, whatever the thing is.

they're not actually utilizing it to its full capacity. To that end, it's causing people to go into debt in order to get a bonus, which then negates any reward that could have happened. That I would agree with, that a lot of the bonuses go unused, and the same thing with gift cards. There was a whole study that I read recently on gift cards

of how many of them just go unused. Money just sitting on there. And it's genius from the business perspective, because essentially to them, it's a free loan. Businesses are able to get zero percent interest because you're buying a gift card, And honestly, it's like a 50-50 whether or not you're ever going to use it.

So it's free money for the businesses. But we tell ourselves, well, it's free money. I might as well do it for the free money. And I just think that mentality causes more people to go broke than it does causes them to ever build any wealth. You know, and I get it. Like no one's claiming they're building wealth with credit card points. But at the same time, they see it as like a piece of being smart financially. And I just disagree fundamentally that I think Graham would be just as well.

well off if he stuck to a debit card, if not better off. So I will say my perspective changed a little bit after chapter three. Hey, that's a win. The only reason why it changed a little bit is because I actually saw how bad the data was on it, which was like the main thing for me was 49% or whatever number it is can't pay off their monthly credit card statement. Now, for me, that's a really, really, really sad because they're getting charged exorbitant interest rates is just going to keep them under.

right and it brings me back to this conversation that we had with grant cardone actually and i was saying it's better to encourage people to get high paying salaried positions and he was saying no spend your last few thousand dollars on education to start your own business but most businesses fail in the first five years 50% of businesses fail so you're like setting them up to fail eventually down the line and he said well if they had bought my course well no maybe they would sure you could make that argument but his whole thing is like if you're just persistent and you keep trying you keep trying and like sure if you play it super smart but if you look at all available data, people do not win when they're trying that. Not everyone should start a business.

Now, here's the thing. If you're super smart about it, yes, I believe the percent would change. I'm sure 90 some percent could succeed in business if they continue pushing after year after year, after year, get persistent and continue working on it. The same with credit cards. If you're super smart and super disciplined with your spending and you don't spend more because of it and you never allow them to charge you interest because of it, then I think that you can get ahead.

But if you look at all available data, I would never. encourage every single person listening right now to start your own business because I know most I know most fail. I would not encourage everyone listening to this to start day trading because I know most day traders lose money. It's not if I'm looking at data around credit cards. It's like, well, most people lose, right? If you're smart, you'll win. And I do think it's good to win, right? I do think it's good to get the cash back on credit cards. I think it's good to get the sign-up bonuses. I think it's really nice to go into the lounges when I'm flying. But I think it's important about being intentional about the decisions that you're making rather than being, you know,

I would say, motivated to get a credit card because, oh, we're pleased to accept you into the card or by a sign-a-bonus and you're not actually spending the points and stuff like that. I think it's important to be intentional about it. But before we go into that, you might have noticed that we're now filming in 4K. We're really proud of that. We've come a long way because if you go to our channel and you sort by oldest, you'll be able to see our first video and it was pretty bad. But it got us started and we were able to grow to almost 900,000 subscribers without anything fancy. And our sponsor, Streamyard, is there to help you out. Creating good content does not. need a cost an arm and a leg and with today's sponsor stream yard you can create high quality

content right from your browser with just the click of a button all you need is a camera and an internet connection and you'll be able to stream throughout multiple platforms at the exact same time from youtube to instagram to facebook to lincoln and more getting on every single platform is something we've been personally working on in the ice coffee hour for example you may have seen us on ticot or instagram which has been doing incredibly well for us and stream yard is there to make it extremely simple and also free with a free package with the link down below in the description again it's completely free and all you need to do is click the link down below in the description to start creating high quality content today. And Streamyard has been a fantastic tool for us. We've used

them for years now. Highly recommend them. The link is down below in the description to get started today for free. And now what that said, let's get back to the episode. I just know human nature is, you know, I talked to a girl today, man on the street in Las Vegas. And I was asking her about her credit cards. Like, hey, how many do you have? What do you use? And she's like, I have this one. then I have the Apple one. I was like, what made you get the Apple one? She's like, well, it's titanium, and I saw my dad with it.

And I'm like, that's humanity. Like, whether we want to admit it or not, that's humanity. And I talk about the book, the actual history of credit cards, and it's funny. It started with Frank McNamara in a diner in New York, and he forgot his wallet. He was so embarrassed that he asked,

hey, we need a credit system. So where if I forget my wallet, I can so pay. The first credit card was born, the diners club. And the first one was actually made of cardboard, not quite the flex of the titanium cards, but the fact that we're lured in by,

she literally said, well, the card's just pretty. Like, that's an insane reason to get a credit card. But it's one of the reasons and one of the main reasons people do it. There's a reason we love the Yamex, it's shiny and thick, and the thicker it is, the more well-off you are. It's a game they've created. I just like the idea of being morally consistent, and if I wouldn't encourage everybody to be a day trader,

I don't know if I would say, to everybody that you should get a credit card. When you look at the data. Here's the thing, though, with your example of, like, business or day trading, I think it's a terrible thing to do that at a desperation for money. If someone says, hey, I'm broke, I need to make $1,000. You would never say it start a business because, like you said, so many people would fail.

Or a sign-up bonus. But I think it's like, hey, I got this idea and I want to be an entrepreneur. And if it fails or succeeds, I just want to try it. Then I think it's fantastic. I think the experience that you get for running a business or even day trading could be really invaluable. Even if you lose, the experience that you get from that, I think is invaluable.

I agree, and I do think there's some selection bias if you look at the people watching your videos of like the five best credit cards to get in 2023. I think if you look at the results of that, more people are probably winning than losing. Gosh, I would say huge... Dude, imagine in these videos of like, you should get this card because it's titanium.

Exactly, because you're actually outlining how you can be smart with it and it's not just like, oh, get this card because... Well, and no one's reading the fine print. If you ask people what the interest rate is on their credit card, they'd have no idea most of them. unless they have a balance, they're having to pay that.

You know what I mean? Like they all get stare at the bonuses and not looking at, here's what could happen. You may get 2%. You may as well get 22% in interest. Another hard thing, though, is there any significance

to paying that interest for a few months to get a slap on the wrist and learn your lesson? That you need to be more intentional about your spending as much as a slap. Is that silly to be like, I think we should touch the hot stove to figure out that stoves shouldn't be.

Some people need to touch that hot stove, though. I think some people need to. I think some people need to. I mean, people sometimes need a rock bottom to have that I've had it moment. And that's what we see on the Ramsey show. Yeah, I mean, everyone at some point that has followed the Ramsey plan has some level of that didn't feel good. I don't want to live like that anymore.

You have to get to that point. I think Americans are just too comfortable sitting on our own poopy diapers at this point. But the people who are ready to make a change, they've had life happen. And they have that emergency, and they didn't have the emergency fund to cover it. And it was scary. COVID did that for a lot of people. I mean, it spooked to everyone. crap, we've got to get our act together.

We've been just like spending, spending, nothing in savings, nothing in retirement. Like, we don't know what life's going to throw at us, so we better be prepared. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories. that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News.

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. What was the most surprising thing from going to people on the street and talking to them?

Oh, man. I mean, Vegas has, you know, there's a lot of interesting people on the Vegas trip that you talk to. But the most shocking thing was just, I was asking people like, did you budget for this trip? How much do you plan on spending? How are you paying for this? and the amount of people who just did not have answers. It was just like, I'm just going to swipe and I'll worry about it later. Like that lack of, there's no planning. There's no delay gratification. It's all instant gratification.

Yolo, that's a problem for a future me. And the problem is future you's going to wake up going, crap. Like you got a financial hangover from how you spent in December. And so that's the problem I'm saying is no one's making a budget going, all right, we're going to plan $1,000, we're going to pay cash for it. Instead, they're like, well, I'll get the cash back and I'll make the payments. What percentage of people said that, though, that they just swipe the card and didn't think about it? I would say six out of ten people had that mentality.

And we know six out of ten people live paycheck to paycheck. So I think there's a strong correlation there. I think the problem with a lot of these things, such as like being financially disciplined, losing weight and stuff like that, is that there's never a stark punishment until it finally rains, then it pours. Like, you're not going to be suffering from swiping your credit card. for maybe a couple of years. And then all of a sudden, everything adds up. Like you gave an example of in your own personal life in your book

where it just got so much and then it infected every other area of your life. Yeah, no one opens a credit card thinking, I'm probably going to carry a balance. Everyone thinks I'm going to be the guy that pays it off early on time and I'll never carry a balance. Part of it is that the minimum payment isn't even that painful. So if you just can pay $100 a month but carry a $5,000 balance, it's not that bad.

It's not even a slap on the wrist. It's a slightly uncomfortable. Or you just never pay it off. But, I mean, what are the, it's, it's numbers on a screen to a lot of people. So let's just see the 5,000, it doesn't matter. They don't make $100 a month. 22% APR is, which is the average credit card interest now. It's at an all-time high.

Credit card debt's at an all-time high of a trillion dollars. And we're all wondering why we're broke, fighting, you know, we're trying to fight inflation. That's what I want to know. They're not, well, their consumer spending is way up. So if they are broke, they don't seem to care very much. see such conflicting studies. I know. It doesn't seem like...

Some have more money than they ever have. There's $6 trillion right now, sitting in money market funds and in cash and treasuries, more than ever. But it also seems like, anecdotally, you hear stories of people who are doing worse than ever.

But statistically, it seems like people are better off today overall than they were in 2019. Well, I mean, America's an amazing country. So even a bad day for us is a great day for any other country. So we're just so spoiled. And there's a lot of entitlement here.

And people have great incomes. People like to complain, but most people have great incomes. It's not an income problem. It's an expense problem. You know, we see this. People making six figures are still living paycheck to paycheck, the data shows. So that tells me it's not that you just make more money and your problems are solved. You just have lifestyle creep happen.

And, you know, you make $100,000. You're going to spend $120. And that compounds over time causing a lot of people to feel broke regardless of their income. So what do you think of the long-term consequences of this? If people aren't saving up for retirement, maybe it's like this younger, generation that wants that instant gratification. Well, they don't want to wait 30 years to tap into a 401k piggy bank. What do you think is going to happen in the future then to these people? Because this seems like it's a huge population of people that are doing this. Yeah, well, I think the younger

generations in a lot of ways are way smarter than our parents' generation. Like the fact that they have access to all this information is amazing. The problem is there's so many more traps out there. And I've always said, if you follow the trends, you're going to follow the traps. Our parents didn't have options. It was you put money into your retirement account, and that's it. Nowadays, it's like, do I do single stocks? Do I get into crypto? Do I do real estate? The options are so overwhelming that there's this, you know, paralysis by analysis, and people either don't do anything or they do a bunch of things, but don't really make progress in any of it. And so that's what I'm worried about with the next generations is that they're not focused, and there's no consistency

over time. And you guys know, like, building wealth is consistently, you're in a dollar cost averaging into the S&P 500 over time. It's the boring move, but it's the one that consistently it will cause you to build wealth. See, I just think it's so much easier for people who pay attention to get ahead just because so many people are not and just give in to whatever the desire in the moment. Like, I think it's easier than ever. If you put your head down and you want to stay disciplined, you're going to get ahead very easily. And that's the, I mean, the thesis of the book is like, the people say the little man can't

get ahead. It's harder than ever in America today. Inflation, the housing market, and the guy in the White House. And what I've found is you can get ahead in America today if you just follow it. really simple, boring, unsexy, controversial upstream path of getting out of debt, staying out of debt, have an emergency fund, invest 15% into proven things like the stock market over a long period of time, pay off your dang house and don't hang on to it in retirement with a second mortgage and a he lock on it, and you're going to be okay. And that's regardless of income. Whether you

make $40,000 or $400,000, if you follow those principles, you will be okay. But most people want to make it more complicated. They think they're smarter than that. There's pride, there's fear, there's greed, and it causes us to make really unwise decisions. And then people calling to the show at 60 going, I'm screwed, what do I do? And it's just harder at 60 to undo some of those decisions. So that in the simplest terms would be your advice to make any viewer watching right now a millionaire. Yeah. And I don't, here's the thing. I know a lot of people out there are saying, well, leveraging debt is a part of building wealth. And while some people have done that, the majority of people will go broke faster. And so to me, getting out of debt and using your powerful wealth-building

tool, your income, is your best path to wealth. So what's the difference between people who leverage debt successfully and make money versus those who do not and lose money? Well, there's different types, you know, like leveraging a real estate debt, for example, versus trying to leverage something else like margin or options calls in the stock market. Like that stuff is insane. Jack, Jack. Don't do it. And Jack is all about losing lots of money. Yeah, I got margin. So there's different types of debt leverage out there. But a lot of the difference is luck and timing, if you're going to be honest, of people who have done it well or successfully or even looking at crypto.

You know, it's like people didn't know what crypto is going to do or is going to do. So the ones that have become millionaires, it wasn't because they were so brilliant. I think it's a really small population of people, though. I think it's education. That's the main differentiating factor between those who leverage debt properly and those who do it poorly. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of education. education, there's strategy involved. I've just found for the average person, there's a 100% success rate if you get out of debt and do it my way versus a 7% success rate leveraging debt

this way. And so to me, I'm all about what is your surest best path. It may be slower, but you'll get there. I would agree with that. And then the thing that I mostly have a problem with with the anti-dead philosophy is the home loan. Why is it such a big deal to have a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at two and a half percent. That's what I have right now. Now, you would probably argue if I had the cash to pay it off. We know you won't. You have the cash. You could do it today. And I'm making money on inflation. Like this money, I'm able to invest in other things. You could put it in a 30-year treasury. I could put it in a treasury and get more money. You could. How much I'm losing on interest. My philosophy, right-off, Jack.

And the right-off. That's my favorite. The write-off. Sending $2,500 to the $1,500 to the IRS is somehow better than sending $10,000 to a lender. That's the write-off right-off right there. Well, it takes the 2.8, it takes the 2.8 down to a 2.3. Effective. That's what the right-off does. That hurts my brain. 2.3. Inflation is way higher. Treasury is you lock in a 30 year right now. Well, we're also looking at a very specific window of time. Yes. And so things are looking great for Jack on paper right now. But to me, we just don't know what the future holds. And I would rather reduce the risk, have more peace, have that money back in my life. Obviously, you don't have a huge mortgage payment, you know, to begin with, you've got a bunch of roommates,

so you're doing okay. But for the average American out there, hanging on to the mortgage, is not benefiting them in any significant way. I think it would. I think it would reduce the risk not to pay off the mortgage, because all of a sudden, yeah, you're going to do some math because you're saying, you're saying the money's locked up. Money's locked up. Let's say the house is 400,000 dollar mortgage. I think having 300,000 dollars liquid. Talk about my situation. My house is paid off, the money's stuck in the house, I can't access it. I'm not going to do a cash out refi, not going to do any of that. Why am I screwed? At what risk do I have? In your position, I don't think you would be screwed. I think in a lot of people's positions where they don't have

a paid off house and the choice is, do I sell my stocks and everything I have over here, my investments to pay in the house? Let's say they pay off the house. All of a sudden, they lose their job. And let's just say they have children and health care expenses and things like this. And they need money and all of a sudden they're negative every month. In that situation, of course, they can get another job or something like that, but I would value the liquidity of having money on the sidelines much more than having it tied up in a property. Well, we call that an emergency fund, and that's part of it. We tell people, have a three to six month emergency fund before you become a homeowner. And so let's say things went downhill. I would have my emergency fund. They're ready

to protect me. And the idea of me being out of work for six months, I mean, like, I'd swallow my pride and go do whatever gig I needed to do until I got back on my feet. And for most people, there's very little interruption of income. Some people don't have to touch the emergency fund at all. But if they do, it's there to cover them during that period of time. So to me, I'm like, I don't need the wiggle room

because I have my emergency fund. Part of it, too, is 30 years from now. Let's even say 20 years from now. The money that you're paying off is going to be so devalued with inflation. I mean, we could see the way the dollar is going. It's going down. If we see a small amount of deflation at some point,

so be it. think long term, they're going to keep printing money. But you also, you believe in the housing market. And it's going to continue to appreciate. Correct. So my house, my house is appreciated way more than my investment accounts. Yes, but had you leveraged your money and let's say bought two properties, you would have doubled that appreciation.

Potentially. Yeah. But there's risk and headache involved. And, you know, it could have gone south. Over 30 years, I bet on the housing market. Over 10, I have no clue. But over 30, 50 years, I think it's a solid investment, personally. Yeah, I mean, real estate's great.

And I think if you did it with cash, there's less risk on paper. Less upside. And in real life. And you get more cash flow with a cash flow property. You know, you talk to Dave Ramsey about this. And he, you know, audited your portfolio. He's like, the only thing I do different is pay it all off. You got the money.

But you like your cash position. California is a good example of those mortgages. They're at 3.5%, 3.3, give or take. But I'm paying 50% taxes to California. When everything's said and done with state income tax and everything like that. So that 3.5% is really just take that down by half. It's so cheap. You know what else I've seen with these low interest rates?

That's actually becoming a curse is people have handcuffs now. Oh, yeah. They don't want to let go. They won't sell it because, like, well, I can't get another loan for 3.5%. So they're stuck. The other thing no one's talking about is a tax basis on these properties that have gone up in value that have doubled in value in like five years. Now all of a sudden it's not just your mortgage rate that goes up. It's your tax basis.

If you were to sell and buy anything else, all of a sudden your property taxes are also going to be going up significantly. So that's one of the reasons that, like, if I could snap my fingers and keep my tax bases in California transfer that somewhere else, I would love to do it. I'd dump everything I have just to get out of the state. But don't you think if you had all, everything paid off, you'd be less worried about letting go of a low interest mortgage. If you're going to just pay cash for the next property, you'd have more options, truthfully, versus feeling stuck. Like, I can't let go of that. I mean, those are the calls we get. No, just because it's so attractive.

That's the only reason why. It's so attractive to me to have a 3% interest rate for 30 years, especially in a high-income tax state. Like, that to me is so good that it's like, why do I want to give up such a good thing? So it's not like I feel handcuffed. I only feel handcuffed because it's like, this is so good that I can't give it up. Exactly. And to me, that is a form of handcuffs. You know what I mean?

Golden handcuffs. We'll call in that. Sure. Golden handcuffs. It limits mobility, but it's so good that, you know, the good outweighs kind of being stuck in holding these properties. Sure. With a low tax base. What do you think, Jack?

What do you think, Jack? The way that I see it is in my personal experience, in Graham's personal experience, in another viewer, let's say, if they're very intentional about the way that they're spending and taking on debt and stuff like that, then I think it's a win. I think that you're just winning at the end of the day. If you look at your financial statements, taking on debt and being smart with it, maybe using credit cards and stuff like that, and you're extremely intentional and smart about it, year after year, you will win more than the other person that isn't.

Barring spending more because it's a credit card rather than cash out of your account, barring that. So I think that's great. But I also think the only other thing that could sway me is this piece that everyone says that you get when you pay off debt. And I want to know like... I just talked about this with Andre.

Andre Jake was talking about like, he was like, could you create a mathematical formula for the peace of mind, emotional? And I was like, I wish. That's the only thing I've been curious about it. Because that's what Graham needs. Graham needs an equation where he could be like, The piece of mind is X over Z multiplied by.

You know what's funny. There's no way to do it. I remember this conversation I had with you a few years back, Graham. So Graham and I, when we were in Los Angeles together, we would go on this walk almost every single day. Oh, I miss those walks. I miss those walks. I know. It's so cute.

Dude, we came up with the best ideas. One hour during the weekdays, we take like a two mile. Wow. It was amazing. So good. We moved here. We lived together. So that's when we did it.

And here's an interesting thing. When you're actually walking forward, your brain works more efficiently. I believe that. So there's a lot. So there's like some studies that can prove that. I don't know what they're called, but yeah. Walking backwards inefficient, not good for the other. Exactly.

No, but we would do this walk every single day. And one day, Graham, out of nowhere, never heard him say anything like this ever before. He was like, you know, I'm really tempted to pay off every property I have. I said that? You said that. I don't remember. I honestly don't remember. It struck me.

It struck me that you said that. And I was like, what are you talking about? You're like, just the peace of mind. And you were like thinking about it because I don't think that, I think obviously you had a lot less. money back then. So you were thinking to yourself like, you know, like now you're more affluent, so you think, okay, it's okay if I take on more debt. It's still a smaller percentage of the amount of money I have. But back in the day, I think it was a more significant portion. And so you were considering just paying off everything and living more affluently. Which I found really interesting.

And I was wondering if you could measure out that piece back then, would it have convinced you? In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't. I think I remember what was going through my mind at the time was that COVID was kind of uncertain. The markets were a bit uncertain. And I I had this cash and I was thinking what would be the benefit? Because I just moved into a new home. And this was like my expenses tripled by going from a duplex into like an actual house. And so I was kind of, I was stressed out from going from like living on $1,800 a month to like I think at the time it was like 10. Like it was a huge bump up. And so that stressed me out for a while. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't do that. But I want to know like, because even he was tempted. And this is like, you know, Mr. Pro Debt over here, anti-Ramsey. But if we can somehow figure out this piece that people experience when they pay off their debt in another form other than like screaming, right? Like the anti-dead scream.

Because I mean it's hard to measure. If we if I'm sure someone much smarter than me can find some equation that may convince Graham. Okay. So in your own personal life. Yeah. When you pay it off. Well, I think also like having a family and getting married and having a baby, it just changes the level of risk. You know, if I was a young man making what Graham makes, I would probably have a similar risk tolerance.

but at this stage of life as I get older, as I find what my priorities are in life and what my goals are, things have just shifted. Like the goalposts has just moved and to me, less risk is going to create a more peaceful family environment. Like I'm not going to fight with my wife when we don't have payments.

You know what I mean? Like we just had a baby four months ago and if she wants to stay home, it's not like, oh gosh, we got to pay the bills and if we lose your income, it's just like, cool, you do what you want, babe. Like, whatever your heart leads you to do. and it just changes the way you have,

it changes the way you make decisions. It gives you more options, more margin, more peace, more joy. And that's the whole thesis of this book is if we break free from the system, we get out of debt, we build wealth the right way, we can have what we're really after, which I think is those things. It's not just more money.

We want what the things money can't buy, which I think is the emotional piece. I'm just so curious what that would be for me. And the unfortunate part is it would cost a lot of money at this point, with all the mortgages to pay them all off. What would it take? Give me a number.

What? To pay off the mortgages? Yeah. $3.9. $3.9? And that's this house and all the mortgages in California. It would cause you to be completely debt-free. Have you done the math on what your new cash flow and income would be?

Because even if that money is in treasuries making 5.5% to pay off 5. My cash flow would go down. But that's a recent thing in history that we've seen these kinds of numbers. Or I could lock it in. I mean, I could lock in for the next 30 years. hypothetically if I wanted to and still get for something, which is still higher than the mortgages. So I feel like it would be a downgrade financially in terms of cash flow. But you're having a new cash flow to invest, wouldn't you?

Yes, but I would be paying higher taxes from the California portion because it would have less right-offs against it. It sounds like a California problem. I think it's time. That's a certain, that's a California problem. It would be a lot of money to have that feeling, and I'm not sure if I would feel any better because of it. Well, I think truthfully, in both of your situations, the key to your success and your wealth is the income. It's your savings rate.

It's your ability to have a giant chunk of money that you can deploy into investments in real estate. And so it's not necessarily that debt was the ticket. It's you guys found ways to increase your income to such a point where you can worry about those kinds of places. Here's an example. Right now I could take, let's just say, $4 million. I could take $4 million, put it in commercial real estate here in Las Vegas, and get anywhere between 7 to 8%. I would be able to depreciate that property against the income.

and for the most part, almost all of it would be tax-free. So I can make eight, let's even say conservatively, six and a half percent. That would be more than enough to cover all the debt servicing. Every year I make that,

I'll pay the debt two years. So like from a financial standpoint, I'm looking. I don't see any good deals. Oh. Yeah, I've been looking. I'm in the camp that I think commercial real estate's

got to take a hit and I could be totally wrong, but I've noticed prices go down. So far. So in the last year, they've gone down about 10 to 15%. in Vegas. And I just don't think they've hit a point. I feel like as a cash buyer at this juncture, though, and you could find some deals. Everything I like has multiple offers, believe it or not.

Dang. And they're going over asking. Hot market. Yeah. Come to Nashville. I mean, it's also very high. Well, the issue, and I know we're getting nuanced here, but a lot of buyers coming from California and they're parking their money in Vegas. And anything in Vegas that they get, even if it's at a five and a half percent return, a five cap, they're doing it because it's better than having our money in California. And we have 1031. So let's just take what we could get. So anything that's decent, California buyers or New York buyers, they're just taking their money. They're putting it here. Or move to Tennessee, no state income tax. Solve some problems. Yeah, but capital gains taxes there. That's not going to kill you. You're not selling property. If I sell, you know, you never know.

If. But you wouldn't because you have that sweet low interest loan. Not even, well, yeah, here, but, you know, anything else you buy, you're not going to get that. Not unless you paid cash. Boom. What I find interesting is you said, we acquire money to get all of the things that money can't buy, which I've never heard it phrase that way. And I do think that kind of makes sense when you say that your wife, you know, she had the kid, you guys had the kid. And she didn't have to go back to work.

To be fair, she did. I did not. I did not do much work. In your own way, in the George way, you contributed. Sure. Right. So, you know, she doesn't have to go back to work. She's able to stay at home, stay with the kid and everything.

because you have this like debt-freeed lifestyle, which I've never heard it said in that way. And that is a very compelling way. It's like, I mean, what are we working so hard to get all of this money for? Life is short. Life ends, you know? And once you have enough, granted, you know, whatever a debt,

enough amount is, then sure, maybe you can accelerate the amount of time that it takes to get to the point where you're getting the stuff money can't buy. I mean, yeah, when you look at really successful, wealthy people, they'll tell you, like, time freedom is everything. And now money can buy conveniences like the personal chef or the personal trainer or whatever those things are that allow you to have the life you want. And I just, I've rarely seen debt allow people to have that life any more freely. And the people that I look up to and my mentors, they have more time

and money than ever. And it's largely because they live a debt-free lifestyle. And these aren't like billionaire business owners. These are people who are from all over the country visiting us And they're saying, hey, I was able to cash flow all five kids college, thanks to following your principles, living debt free, paid for house. We're baby steps, millionaires now, and, you know, this was on a teacher's salary. That inspires me, because it's not about the Grant Cardone. If you don't make 400 grand, you suck. You know what I mean? Like, some people just want to be teachers.

Like, we need teachers in America, and they may never make six figures, and I still want them to build wealth. And so a part of it is just, it's comforting to me that anyone can build wealth, regardless of their income. income. Obviously more income helps, but if you just follow these principles, you will get there and you will have the things on the other side like we talked about. And so that's why I talk about money so we can stop talking about money. Because too many of us are talking about it in a negative way. We're stressed out. What's going to happen? What could be? What could I have done with this money? And I want people to have Joe Mo instead of FOMO, the joy of missing out. I'm saying, I don't need, I can just run my race, take care of my family, take care of my business, go on the

vacation I want to take and not have to worry about any of this stuff. So how has paying off your debt had any other tangential benefits in your life? You explain the thing about your wife being able to stay home with the game. Oh yeah. Any other things like some sort of inner piece that didn't exist beforehand or other ways. I mean it's hard to say because I'm not the amount of time that I'm saving. I know it sounds weird by not playing the game of the system by not worrying about the credit score and the auto loan. Like we just paid cash to get my wife, uh, an SUV and I didn't have to haggle over financing.

I just went, here's the price, there you go. And the finance office is calling me being like, I don't understand why you're paying cash, you should be leasing. That's what I do with all my vehicles. I lease all my vehicles. I'm like, lady, you don't understand. You got the wrong guy. Do you know who I am?

I didn't have the emotional energy to even fight this lady in the finance office. I was like, lady, I'm writing a check. I'm going to be done with it. And to me, like, the time saving and the mental energy and brain calories I'm not burning over playing the game of a talk toxic money culture is so worth it. And so it just feels nice. I'm never worrying about there's no

bills coming to our house. Like the utility bills get paid and that's it. What's your overhead every month? Utilities and insurance and property taxes. I'm guessing that comes out to a thousand bucks. And then what about food, healthcare? Well, I guess health care, Ramsey would. Healthcare comes out of my paycheck. And now it's more thanks to a baby. And so that's, you know, a few hundred bucks a month max for a premium. You know, $250, maybe. Okay. What about food?

Food, I mean, we are, now that we don't have any payments, we do eat out more or we'll get more, you know, frozen meals and less cooking at home, less toiling over the rice and beans. And so we have a food budget of probably on average, $700, $800, and, you know, we'll go out to eat and have some nice date nights and some good meals at home. But we don't really like, we don't have to like, you know, worry about grocery shopping. It's like, we'll get what we need. It sounds to me with like car insurance and gas and other maintenance, 3,000, maybe 3,500 a month. Yeah, our hard expenses, you're looking at 3,000 a month to, like, cover everything we need. And so anything above that is money that I can invest into my girls' college fund, a brokerage account, giving generously, saving up for the vacation, saving up to upgrade my car. You know, my, Graham, you'll be so upset.

My Tesla window fell into my door and it will not. come back up. There's no way that happened. I rolled the window down. That happened on Macy's car. It's the motor. It's the motor. It's like the power window regulators. Yeah. It's about 600 bucks. So it may be more because it's Tesla. Sure. And they up charge, but it's 300 the cheapest, 800 the most expensive. I dealt with it. Just real quickly explain how you got this Tesla because it's so funny. What? Like how I just paid for it? I've not heard of the story. I'm curious. Didn't you buy like the most amount of mileage Tesla? Oh yes. So I was looking, this is fun. Because you wanted the luxury.

We paid off the house, and so I dangled the carrot of, I'm not going to upgrade my 09 Honda Civic with the bumper hanging off until I pay off the house. That was my goal. And so we paid off the house, and I went, all right, I'm going to buy a Honda. My dream car was a hybrid Honda Accord. My wife laughed at me. But I was like, I'm a man of utility. That's a sweet ride.

You get like an EXL, Primo. I could not find one. She was nervous because the ladies love that car. The ladies can't get in a like, it's over. Yeah. So I could see why she did not wait. Ladies love and accord. So I was looking for like a 2018.

This isn't like 2021. I'm looking for like a 2018 accord hybrid under 30 grand. I could not find one across the country. Then I stumble upon a 2013 Model S Tesla, four owners, two minor accidents, 165,000 miles. And I was like, I'm getting it Tesla. And so I ended up checking it out. I was the first one to, you know, inquire. There was 25 people that were waiting.

You're kidding. The guy was like, I need to know if you're serious because this car is going to move. I was like, I've never even driven an electric car. I don't know. So I nervously took it for a test drive. And he was, I knew the guy, so I trusted him. And I was like, I'll take it. And that car was 23-9.

And I took the gamble on a high-mileage Tesla. So now I'm sitting at 188,000 miles. And how has it been since then? It's been great. No issues? I mean, the door handle got stuck out. I got that fixed. And this window situation.

Sure. I upgraded the screen to the newer, you know, model system. But other than that, it's been a great vehicle. I mean, it truly, I mean, this is not an ad for Tesla, but I respect the heck out of them for going half a million miles on these batteries. And it's only degraded about 20%. So I still get 165 miles range. Mine had no issues except right when I got it, the AC broke and it was fixed under warranty within a week. And at the time, now this is 2019. This is your model three? This is model three. Okay. They gave me a P90D Model X. for a week as a loaner car.

I don't know if that still exists. I don't think they do that. They usually don't give you the fancy ones. There's some privilege there. They knew you. Back in the day, they'd give you the fancy ones. Yeah, so maybe it's just back in the day. Okay.

I got in with the Model 3 before they were cool. Yeah. Just as they were starting to come up there. Any issues with yours, Jack? No. No issues so far. No. The only thing is the build quality is not fantastic.

Like, obviously, everyone knows this. Compared to like a traditional electric car. Yeah, you could buy a Prius or something. And it's going to look, by the way, the new Prius is, oh my God. I love them. Gorgeous. I love them. Yeah, they're like,

oh, you think Priuses are ugly? Ha! And then they make the 2024 Prius, and it looks gorgeous. I wouldn't mind getting a Prius just because of the range. The one thing I don't like about the Model 3 is if you're driving a long distance.

I think it's time for you to get the long range. Get that Model S, 400 miles? Yeah. That's something. Yeah, I think it's 405 miles. Worth it. But it's expensive.

That's $60, I could buy two Priuses for that price. I know. Or you could sell the old GST. No. Get 10. Dang it. I was so close. Get 10 Priuses. I was like, oh, that's a great idea.

Enjoy them on Turro. You'll make a $4 million a year. Well, if I put that money down and I finance the Priuses and I get 100 Priuses, imagine that on Toro. And then I could start an Airbnb business. We took this call, Graham, the other day, and this couple, they financed three cars to use on Turro. They're underwater on all three by 15 or 20 grand. It was heartbreaking. What are you so screwed? I mean, they're screwed.

There's no way out of this. You have to come up with the money for the difference. to then pay them off, and they're clearly not making enough from Turo to then cover these payments now that they're underwater on. So you've got to just keep them and pay them off, cover the difference, or get a loan for the difference from a credit union, which is going to be hard to do at this point. So, I mean, there's sad situations where people think they get real starry-eyed. And car loans, I have the whole chapter on car loans in the book and how they are America's wealth killer today. I truly believe that. As is as expensive as they are, how high the interest rates are, and how willing we are to just go into.

to debt for a car. The car loans are something that is largely unregulated. And I did a whole deep dive in an old video of mine about the auto loan industry. And they're not regulated. And it's one of the few things that like when you get a student loan, there are certain bodies of the government that can regulate them. Like hey, don't screw people over. Yeah, pretty much. And make sure they're fair and make sure that you qualify for it. Like it's so stringent to get a mortgage. Very stringent to get student loans. But car loans were in like sure. Exactly. And leases are even worse. Yeah. Because they don't have to disclose the interest right that's baked into your payment. Oh, absolutely. The other thing is that with auto loans, I think it was something like 30% of people lie on their application, but get approved

anyway. So they'll overstate their income or underestimate their expenses to be able to get the loan. And the lenders purposely will overlook it. They're not going to check anything because they just want to get the loans. They're not exactly people of integrity. But they get paid the dealership and the person originating the loan get paid as long as you make your first like two payments. Yeah. They'll tell you, hey, don't pay this off early because you'll Screw me over on the bonus. Exactly. So as long as they just make the two payments, they could bundle them together, sell them to hungry

investors who want a high yield, and they don't care. Well, I compare dealerships to Gus Fring and Breaking Bad, Los Pollo Sermano, so it's a front for his drug operation. Like, that's what dealerships are. Yeah. The vehicles are just the vehicle. They're actually making money with lending. Absolutely.

And so it's a really wild. That's why they'll be like, oh, you're going to pay cash? No, no, no, no. We're going to charge you more. A thousand dollar incentive. was only if you're financing. That's because they're making that and more. Auto loans, I 100% agree with you.

So financing any sort of depreciating asset like that at the interest rates that you're getting on car loans. And they're just extending them out. Well, and now when we're seeing loans on the Ramsey show, everyone is underwater on their cars. They're calling in, like, I'm 20 grand underwater. And I'm like, how did we get here? They're rolling over negative equity.

They're doing all kinds of things. People thought that car loans would just, or people just thought that car values would keep going up. They saw 2020, 2021, 2021, 2020. He was like, oh my gosh, my used car is worth $10,000 more. Wow. I could make money on cars now, and I'm going to buy a Chevy Volt, and it's going to be worth more,

and they're going to buy it at the peak of the market and pay over MSRP for that. Just to find out, wait a second, it's not reality. I think same thing with watches, too. Everyone is like, oh, all these watches, certain Potex, APs, the hype watches are down like 30% from the peak. Some are down 50%. When did you buy the townhome?

2019. How much has that gone up in value, like percentage-wise? Oh, it went up. We bought it at 300. We sold at 529, three years later. The GT's not gone up that much, but it's up about 30%. But it's up about 30%. I'm glad that my personal home beat a luxury toy that you purchased.

It's come for them. It's up 30%. It's pretty good for now. No, I think it'll stay. Well, once they find out it's grams. Can I say, I was talking to Andre, and he gave me the down low, that you had attempted a foot modeling career. I did?

It didn't pan out. Oh, people were trying to buy feet picks? Yeah. For me? Yeah, he said no one would buy your feet picks.

I think you're confusing with bathwater. Oh. I'm just, I'm recanting what Andre told me. Well, I'm sure he would sell feet picks for the right price. No,

you tried to sell bathwater? I get $10,000. And you know, I think this is the funniest part. Like people sell bathwater, it's like a cup or a pint. He's selling a gallon of bathwater,

which is first of all, a shipping nightmare. Second of all, who wants, like, I would, the thing is, I think a pint of bathwater is novel, but then you think of who's the type of person that wants a gallon. You know what I mean? I don't understand who was buying bathwater. No one bought it. No one bought it.

No, in general, who's buying anyone's bathwater? Only fans. There's a lot of people in this world. Lord, Lord, come quickly. You're going to love this. Amaranth, we did a podcast with her. She said she made like tens of thousands of dollars. Oh, I remember that.

Selling her farts. Just tell us what you think about this. I mean, I don't feel good about it. I feel like it's, I mean, here's the thing. To me, that's similar to selling an NFT. It has as much value, truthfully. I think it probably has it. It doesn't stink as much of an entity does.

I think whoever bought that, like they have serious issues. You think so. Serious mental health issues. What if it's $50, though? Any amount of money. What if it was like a couple bucks? You wouldn't just. If someone did it as a gag, that's fine.

But I still think, if I like, hey, watch this. but I think anyone that does, they're not doing okay. You know what I mean? Whoever is buying. No, I would actually completely agree with that. I don't like having hard takes on the podcast, but I would agree with that. I think it's funny though. Yeah, if you did it as a gag.

I just think whoever bought that was not trying to be funny. I truly think they're not okay. I think it would be hilarious if you have a shelf of like, you know, awards and stuff like that. You have just a glass jar. You're like, what's that jar? It's Amaranth's fart. How did we get here? George, how did we get?

Not as a podcast. as a society. That's a bad water. I still sell the bathwater, by the way. 10 grand, one gallon bath water. George, you seem to be disgusted by a lot of what goes on in society today. What do you think are these biggest issues? I think we are too bored.

I think we need real problems. The fact that this is what we're all about is like we either have too much disposable income or not enough problems. And so I don't think we have our priority strike. I think we're all honestly, we're a little bit fatalism. They're sort of like, what is life, what is meaning? I think we're going to have a big sort of search for meaning as a society. Like another Renaissance era?

We're too evolved as a species. You think we're too soft? Well, I think we're just, we have everything we could ever want for and more. And now we're reverting to like, we all want to go camping to go see what it's like to not have electricity for a night. You know what I mean? Like we are circling all the way back to cavemen era because we have everything we could ever want. And so I think we're very entitled as a culture.

as an American people, consumerist culture, and the fact that people are spending money on farts and only fans is proof of that. I do think that it is a necessity of existence to face adversity in some way, shape, or form to have some adversity. And I think that's getting harder and harder to come by for a lot of people.

So a lot of people create their own. As they tweet at it from their $1,500 smartphone. But are they problems? Are they real problems? To them it is. I mean, everyone, you know, first world problem is still a problem. problem to that person. But, you know, people call into the show and they're living with their parents, which is fine. I'm not angry at that. But at some point, like, you need to just get out

and pay some freaking bills and have some work ethic. And I think we've gotten real comfortable as a society with all these fallbacks and we can just go into dead and live whatever life we want at no cost to us, essentially. But how would you solve that issue? Because people are not going to voluntarily make their life more challenging. No. But I mean, Michael Easter has an incredible book called the comfort crisis that I think everyone should read, where he kind of talks about this very issue. And we've gotten so comfortable. When we've all seen the movie Wally, we're sort of stepping into that water, where we're all

just glaring at screens all day, walking through life, we hate our jobs, and we're just finding ways to spend our money so that we can feel something. And to me, that's sad that we've gotten here, but it's where we are. And so that's where I think the Ramsey plan sort of like kicks you into reality, to like force you to have some discipline and sacrifice in your life, I think is a great thing, because it causes personal growth and it causes you to have control in other areas of your life, like your physical health. The amount of times we've seen people who get out of debt, but then their marriages get better, they're physically healthier, is amazing to me,

because I think transformation begets transformation. But how do you get someone interested in doing that in the first place? If they're already comfortable, they got to want it. You know, like what made you start working out? Look better. But you really had to want it. Yeah. Because you didn't look bad to begin with. But you didn't look bad to begin with. you had to get to a point where like this is a priority for me and it's a problem enough that I want to solve I'm willing to do what it takes I'm willing to go to the gym three times a week same thing applies to finances I'm willing to do that budget every single month and actually stick to the plan because I want to see the results but if you look at data most people are

comfortable being quote unquote mediocre oh yeah like not going to the gym they're comfortable with their payments because they can afford the payments therefore but it's been a change over time and I don't think human nature has changed so it must be something in the external environment that's changed, correct? Well, there's fear, you know, the economy and the headlines and COVID definitely spooked a lot of people. But again, I think it has to get to this point where you're like, this life ain't it. I deserve better. I work too hard to feel this broke. That's the point you have to get to to actually start following the plan. Now, it doesn't have to get to that point. I've just found most people have to get to some sort of rock bottom like, this sucks. There's a better life. I deserve

better for myself. I'm going to go after it. You think it would be a detriment to the economy? if everyone got out of debt. If no one had debt, what would happen? This is a fun hypothetical. I truly think everything would get better. I know there's fear because we have debt-based economy and some things would crash. I'm totally comfortable with all of the debt companies

crumbling to nothing if no one took out debt. If everyone became debt free, then Capital One and American Express and Sally Mae, they all go to crap, Wells Fargo, whatever. All the lending arms. Now, people will still have banks, but they're not going to make as much money. so it would just be less profitable.

They can't sponsor Taylor Swift Tours anymore. We'll be okay. But I do think people would spend out of their values more. We might spend less as a society, but we'd spend on things that we actually care about, and the economy would still be great. We'd be supporting more local businesses, we'd just be giving less money to lenders

and giving it more to people that really deserve it. That's my hot take. I don't know if that's true. I'm not an economist, but that's my gut, is that we'd all be happier and spending on things we really care about instead of flexing. Because think about it,

every type of debt has gone out of control because look at tuition. The colleges are like, we can just raise tuition and people will just keep taking out more debt. Cars.

We can just raise the price of cars and people will take out more car loans. And so this applies in every area of debt and it's part of the reason we're at record levels of every single type of debt in America,

$17 trillion in consumer debt alone. And I think it's because we have access to it. My worry would be that economy would slow down to such a huge extent. that asset values would have to fall, stock prices would have to fall,

and people might have to find an alternative means investing long term because of that. But companies would still prosper. If we're spending money, we're still buying... I have more money now to spend on that Apple product, so Apple's going to do great. I'm going to spend money on this Tesla. So you're still supporting the companies.

You're cutting out the middleman of the lenders. And so the companies themselves I'm invested in, most of them aren't attached to debt. Well, I guess in a way you would have one trillion dollars less of spending throughout our economy because that's what the credit card debt is. Just consumer debt a trillion dollars. On top of that, I don't know how many trillions for mortgage debt. How much money for...

I talk about... I think we're at 12 trillion in mortgages alone. And then auto loan debt. That's 1.5, 7 or 8 trillion. Across the board without debt, I think everything would fall. Because how many people would be able to buy a house outright? Yeah. There would have to be payment plans in place.

Sure, mortgages are the one, you know, we don't yell at people who are having a mortgage, but I think consumer debt is what's killing us. I don't think the everyday person is dying because of the mortgage. It's, I have all this debt plus this mortgage that I really couldn't afford, but I felt like I had to get in the housing market earlier rather than later because of pressures or whatever. And so I think it's just compounding the problem. But, you know, owning a house is a great path to wealth. I just think if you do it right, it'll be more of a blessing than a burden.

Do you think that now is a good time to buy a house? yes, if you're financially ready. Now, you know, I still think I believe in the economy and the U.S. housing market will continue to go up over time. I don't think houses are going to be significantly cheaper in any point in the future, and history has proven that. I don't think there's going to be another 2008, fingers crossed, because we've solved a lot of the problems that caused that.

But I think when you have a, you have no debt, a fully funded emergency fund, and a down payment, you are financially ready to buy a house. So I wouldn't try to time the market and wait for the interest rates to move a certain way. I would go ahead and do that. We say, you know, date the rate, marry the house. You know what's interesting. 84% of people say that now is a bad time to buy a house.

84%. Is that because of prices and interest rates? Yes. Okay. Interest rates were the number one reason that overtook home prices. So it's because of interest rates that that number is so high. You know the last time it was also similarly high? When's that?

2010. Wow. Is that interesting? interesting. Interesting. So after the housing crisis. A lot of people also felt now is a bad time to buy. So it's very interesting because I was having a discussion with somebody. Exactly. Looking back. So I was having a discussion with somebody the other day and we're talking about how so many people say now is a bad time to buy. But if you typically do the opposite of what the mask seems to think is the better option, usually that kind of works. Like to me,

it's hard to wrap my mind around it when I see home price is so high, mortgage is so high, the cost of renting so cheap relative to that. But, you know, when you look at what most people are doing, if you just do the opposite, in most cases, you're better off. That's fascinating. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens over these next 10 years. If interest rates come down, I guess there's a chance. Everyone rushes into the market. And you can tell me this. If interest rates go down, we're probably going to see a spike in home prices. Yes and no. The variable to that is how many sellers sell. So right now we're seeing high home prices because there's not a lot of bend for it. But nobody wants to sell. Because they're a little

interest rates go down to about 5%. They're saying that's the magic number where all of a sudden, if I have a 3.5% mortgage, it doesn't hurt as much to give that up for 5%, but it does to 6%. And so they're saying 5% is the magic number that would prompt more sellers to sell who are thinking about selling, who have those handcuffs. So there's a chance. Interest rates come down. Buyers come in the market, but there's a lot of sellers who say, oh, finally, I could afford to buy something else and not have to worry about it. I don't care about giving up my 4% mortgage for 5%. It's not that big of a deal. So maybe the market gets flooded with inventory. There's also the theory that as that flood comes in, more sellers will say, ah, the market's going down. I'm

thinking about selling in five years, but let me sell it now really quick before values go down even further. And my neighbors are selling and let me get spooked. Yeah, let me beat him to it. And I'll price myself a little lower than they are. There's a chance. There's also a chance people say, I'm going to hold on to my house and, you know, and buyers have more purchasing power, and values go up. It's a total coin toss. I wish, like, there should be a way to figure out what's going to happen in this

and, like, run the numbers. But I think the key is, like, we're not going to see a crash, regardless of what your thumbnail said, but I know what you say in the video. It's not going to happen. You're going to watch the video. I'm like, no, it's not. Don't lie to me for him.

So I still have faith. The shocking thing is that, like, payments, monthly payments are up, like, 70% since 2020. Now, that is a low in terms of monthly payments. Sure. But when you think 70% more. Those interest rates, I mean, it definitely compounds that payment and it hurts people and it makes it less affordable. But at what price, at what point does that impact prices?

I mean, a 70% increase in monthly payments from those who bought three years ago to today. Yeah. How much do home prices have to come down to balance things out, if at all? Only time will tell. But I do feel for people who want to be homeowners and it's just feeling like more and more, you know, just they're just so sad and hopeless at this point. because they need a huge down payment, and they're still straddled with debt. And so the only thing you can do is try to get out of debt, get the emergency fund, and build that down payment as high as you can get it to where you can then afford the payment.

And what would you say to someone who says, I just want to rent? I have no problem with renting. I think renting is very wise, which is another hot take. I know some people agree, and you'd probably be with me on this one, but renting is buying yourself patience. And I've seen people who did it the other way. They said, well, I told renting is a waste of money. I'm going to go buy a house.

Then they call the Ramsey show and they're like, hey, we're screwed. This mortgage payment is 65% of our take-home pay and life happened and we don't know what to do. And now we're looking to sell because we're in this bind. And so I'd rather you do it with patience and buy it when you're ready, even if the price is higher, the interest rates, whatever. Because when you do it and the mortgage payment is that much your take-home pay, you can't live the rest of your life. And so you have no peace, even though you're a homeowner and it's the American dream, your life sucks. And so that's, we just see too much of the other side and when things don't work out perfectly. What are the most disturbing calls you get on the Ramsey show?

Oh my gosh. I mean, obviously there's like the really sad ones. You know, addiction problems, loved one passing way too soon. People co-signing and getting into really murky situations, especially when it comes to like parent plus loans are a real problem where parents are now like, hey, my kids stop paying and now the loans on me. I'm trying to retire, and I don't have the money to pay this thing. We're seeing so many people underwater on car loans. It's almost every single call we ask them, and they're underwater on the car loan. Not by like 1,000, but by like 10,000.

So those are really sad as well. And there's also the people who have lower incomes. And we're telling them, hey, like, you're making $16 an hour. Like, that's not going to cut it. You need to be go making 20, 25, get some education, do whatever you have to do because they barely can pay the bills. So there's a lot of people hurting out there. And obviously, Ramsey shows largely people with money problems. You know, we get a few that are doing really well. They're like, I have $3 million. What do I do with it? And we're all like, oh, boo-hoo. You know, send me a Venmo.

But the majority of people, like, life has happened and they're in a predicament. They haven't prepared financially for it. And we're just trying to help them take the right next step. Yeah. That's a difficult thing to do in, you know, six minutes of a call. But our goal is to give them a little bit of hope. That's all you can really do in six minutes is give them hope and just a next step and a partial plan and maybe we give them a, you know, a product tool to help them along. Is there anything that doesn't get aired? In recent memory, I don't think we've ever like had to cut a call. Sometimes if someone cusses, we'll have to hit the dump button is what it's called where they cut the last 10 seconds. So that's happened on occasion. But as far as something

getting cut completely, I don't think that's happened in a few years. Usually whatever is screened and makes it to air, it's then like. live on radio. It's live on, you know, it goes to podcast pretty soon. It's on YouTube an hour later. So everything's pretty much out there. Do people ever fake the calls? Like, are there situations you're like, oh, this, this is not real? There's ones where people think we either like planned a fake call, which we never do. Like, sometimes we'll schedule a call. If someone emails us and we have, it's a great call, we'll go and schedule it with them, but we don't like plan fake situations for people to call in to create great content. But do they sneak through?

occasionally we'll get the troll here and there and the phone screeners are amazing at sniffing that out so props to them for doing that but sometimes they'll make it to air and Dave's like that was a troll you know so we've seen that a few times some of them aren't as malicious as others some of them are malicious where they're trying to rile up Dave or whatever what do they say are they just like I'm in trying to think of some of all this debt and I just should I buy the Ferrari

and yeah some of them are just they want to argue with Dave about you know one of his principles that's usually what it is It's usually wanting to argue with Dave and like it's some 18 year old that thinks he knows better than Dave. And he's like, well, Dave, I don't understand. Why wouldn't I take the spread on the interest rate? You know, those kinds of things. We had a clip that went mega viral. I may as well ask it now.

Okay. If you could borrow a billion dollars at zero percent interest for 10 years, would you do it? Billion dollars, zero percent interest for 10 years would I do it? No. Why? I would be crushed under the world. weight of trying to manage that well and not lose it all. It would be frightening. And I know you're thinking, well, I'll just put it in, you know, high-ield savings account and T-bills, and you'll make

your money back. So, no, in this wild hypothetical scenario where I could borrow a billion dollars at zero percent, I just, I wouldn't do it. And part of it is my values of like, I just don't borrow money. And it's a principle that, like, I live by it. So it would go against my own moral compass. Like, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. And to me, that's not worth the spread I could make. Now, what if it's something smaller, more manageable? Ten million dollars. Interest free, ten years. I mean, what's those ten thousand? That wouldn't interest me. I don't think any amount, I don't think it's an amount to me. I think I truly have such a, and it's not a, it's not like, well, you work for Dave Ramsey, so of course you're going to say that. It truly, I've know,

it does, it's not attractive to me at all to take on any amount of debt. What if you could borrow a billion dollars at negative 1% interest for 10 years. That hurts my brain. So you're saying they're paying me to borrow a billion dollars. I think in like Venezuela or something. Yeah. Is it Venezuela? There's a few countries with negative interest rates.

I don't think Venezuela is not one of them because their inflation is so high. Are they paying you to take on debt? You pay back less than you borrow. So let's just say you borrowed a million dollars. You would pay back $990,000 at the end of the term. So would you borrow? A billion dollars at negative 1% interest. I don't think a discounted loan is of any interest to me.

No. At a billion dollars at 1%. I think what it is is it just, you have abundance already. So what would I do? But that's just saying they'll give you $10 million. But I can understand the take of like you have abundance and acquiring more money just for the sake of money is of no interest to you. I understand that.

And I think that's the only argument that I could actually come to odds with it. I really don't know what more money would do for me. Because I don't have, I mean, you guys are doing very well for yourself. You could upgrade your car. There's still an I yoga of stress. And it's the nicest car I've ever, I've like, holy crap. And I still am like, okay, like what now? You know what I mean?

Like we can upgrade in house and that's a dream of ours to upgrade and pay cash for our next house and have a bigger house for fun. But truly I'm like, I don't know what I would buy, what experience I would take that would add that much. much value to my life. Like what item, what experience? I don't know. I'm not going to retire. What am I going to, you know, I'm not going to sit and watch Netflix for the next 30 years. There's no businesses I want to start. I like what I do. I like the team I do that with. I'm paid very well for it. So I'm like, I just don't, I don't know. Charities, you could give. That's true. So if I could borrow a billion at zero percent, invest that money, give all of the proceeds to charity, I would become a wonderful philanthropist. I still don't know.

I said that a record. Would you do it? Negative one. percent interest and you donate it all to charity. Do we get a yes? I have to really think through that. I would let someone else do it and I'd be happy for them. I understand because there still is, like I said, that's still an iota of stress. It still is weight.

It still has something and you don't need that. I owe so at the end of the day, regardless of what's happening with that billion, I owe someone a billion dollars. Like that is such an unbathomable. You owe someone 900 and something million. Right now I have it. But if I invest it, let's say, I don't know. You know, T-bills are probably the safest bet right now or a high-yield savings account at 5%.

It still would wait. Like, I would be thinking about that billion dollars every day. You know what I mean? Like, there's not a day that goes by that you're still not thinking, holy crap, a billion dollars is sitting out there. You know what I mean? That's too much weight for me. I truly could not handle it.

I'll let someone else. You could pay it off early. I'd pay it off instantly. The point is, I don't think he's going to do it. What I appreciate about you. I don't know. I truly, it's funny. Now, it's so hypothetical that it's hilarious.

So it's like, it's not meant to be a trap. Like, I'm worried a lot of people thought that when I was asking Dave this question that it was like supposed to be a trap. I just wanted to ask him because I thought it would be funny. Imagine he said yes. He'd be like, I'll do it. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'd love to get another Ferrari. Yeah, and I'm not Dave. Like, I never went bankrupt and because I was over leveraged and the bank called the notes. Like, I never, you know, my story is much more of the average person. Going a little bit into consumer debt, 40 grand, paying it off and living a better life on the other side. What I want to understand is. is Graham still, and we talk to Dr. John Deloney about this, has this scarcity mentality when it comes to a lot of different areas of his life,

specifically financially, and you have this abundance mentality in the exact same way that Graham has a scarcity mentality. It bleeds into every other part of your life. And what I find really interesting, and I don't mean this in any sort of like a nag or a dig or anything, Graham has a lot more money. A whole lot of.

Yet he still feels this scarcity. And I really respect, and I just want to decode how you have, have this level of peace and abundance in your life with such less money. That paid off mortgage. It's to pay it off mortgage. But it can't just be that. It has to be something else.

Because what is it that led you to paying off that mortgage? Well, I think if you really look at the emotional underpinning of it, it just comes down to contentment. Like, I know it's that simple and it's that hard, right? To be like, well, I'm just content. Like, I'm a very anxious person naturally. And so to remove any level of, you know, pieces of anxiety out of my life, one of those, being debt has been really helpful to give me a little bit of just peace. And so I think at the end of

the day, I'm content with where I'm at. And yes, I still have goals and there's things that I'd love to do. But I don't have an, there's no end game. There's nothing like, well, once I get $5 million, I'm retiring and that's it. Now, I hope to have $5 million one day in a retirement account, and we're able to retire and still have a great income and go on amazing trips and all of that. But I have no endgame. What I've been trying to do as I get older is just live in the present instead of always going like, well, what's the next thing? Because for too long, for the last 10 years, I've been doing that with my career, with my financial goals, with whatever it is. And so I'm truly, and it's something I'm still working on. This is not like I've not mastered it. I'm not like some kind of Zen Yoda character.

I just truly suck at living in the present. I'm always thinking about what's happening tomorrow, what's on the schedule? What are we going to do? What about that thing? Instead of just, now that I have a baby, I think it changed the way I view my time, the way I view money. And like, you stare into this baby's eyes and, like, time just like disappears. Like, it doesn't matter anymore when you're staring into that baby's eyes. So I think having a family changes the mentality around that. I'm curious as you progress and, you know, you have a family or you have kids or whatever. I wonder if that's going to change that for you and if you have a different set of goals in a different lens.

I find that interesting that you related. It just feels like it's exhausting because I'm like, there's no end. Like, I don't know. If I could go start a business to make $100 million, how would my life change? Would it make it worse? Maybe. And I think that's something a lot of people don't think about. Because with more money and more responsibility, you know, it changes things. If you got everything you wanted, would you be happier? Who's to say? That's the question at the end of the day. And what do we want? I don't think we really know as humans. And I do think we've talked about this before. My faith is a big underpinning of this that I think I'd be remiss to not mention because

I think it changes your long-term view of life. Of like, what's happening ahead when I die? What has this all been about? You start thinking about those big questions. What I want people to say about me in my funeral? Are they going to be like, man? His YouTube videos were hilarious. I doubt it.

I think they're going to say he was a great friend. He was an amazing husband. He was a loving father. That's what they say. And we joked about this on your gravestone, your net word's not going to be like written on there. And Graham's like mine will. I was like, that's actually a pretty baller move

and I respect the hustle there. But it's like, what is this all for? Like let's say you go in the dirt. What happens then? Who would you leave your money to? What impact did you have? Did it make any impact at all? And so to me, now I'm like, what is the ripple effect I want to have?

Well, number one, I want generational wealth for my family. I want my daughter to inherit whatever legacy we've built up and nest egg, and for her to manage that wisely, and for her to live a life, we can't imagine because of the work that we did and the sacrifice we made. I want to be able to give to charities and pay for an adoption and buy single parents, cars, and just do things that, like, make my, like, we just gave 10 grand to Waffle House employees in three hours. And to me, that was the most fun I've had with money in a long time. Way more than buying my wife a new car,

way more than paying off the house, to see someone's life change instantly because of something I was able to do that was in my control. I'm like, that's amazing to me. And so like the stuff Mr. Beast is doing, of course, like that's the stuff we're going to be talking about generations to come versus look at the net worth that he amassed. You know what I mean?

I like that. I like giving to people that are working at Waffle House. And I know that sounds silly, but I'm a big proponent of like, like I like to tip big. That's kind of my way of giving back. I generally tip higher percentages, a lot higher than the average person.

And that's kind of like, I take a lot of pride. I think in that and I love that you're giving to. But you're able to do that because you have margin. Yeah. Like if you were broke and you had payments up to your eyeballs living a lifestyle that you were trying to maintain, you wouldn't be able to give in that way.

And so that's one of the reasons that I want people to live debt free because you can't help but have more margin to do those things when you don't have payments to make. What I find interesting is you said that your anxiety comes from, you don't know what's going to happen in the future. And that's the same thing Dr. John Deloney said. And that's the same thing I see in Graham whenever he's explaining his financial anxiety is like, you don't know what can happen to the market. It could half. And then once it halves, you don't know what could happen from there.

And you don't know what can happen from there. It's never like stuff that is current. It's like apocalyptic scenarios. It is. Do you ever have a real fear that like the world could end? Because at that point, what are you going to do? No, I don't. I have a fear that our growth.

market goes to zero. No, no. Let's just say the worst case, a 1929 happens, something crazy like that. Let's just say it's 50%. Well, then you take 50% off everything, let's just say. Then how could I live off that 50%? Okay, I'll find a way to live off the 50%. Now, that's if you're at retirement age. Because if you just hang on, I also assume that my income goes to zero. I just assume like I'm somewhat like incapacitated. YouTube is shut down. Or that I just choose voluntarily where I don't want to be forced to do something. So I take it in half. How could I live off the half? I live off the half. And then I kind of think, well, I want a bit of a buffer on top of that just to give myself some flexibility in case things get even worse. So that's how I kind of think of things. I want to keep

the lifestyle without having to worry about if things drop by half. But what lifestyle? Because you're a pretty frugal guy. If things like really got tight, you would be fine. I'd find a way, but I don't want to downgrade. Because it's like every year I've increased my lifestyle a little bit. Like, let's just say it's 5% a year. Okay. But I do that purposely so that I can't sustain that. Sustain. Why can I say... It's a hard one. I want to be able to sustain that sort of lifestyle creep. But I think people... So I purposely do it a little bit every year. People making a tenth of what you make spend more than you do in a month. Yeah, but just because I want to be able to sustain that like, you know, lifestyle creep. I never have to worry about it. So yeah, you could spend way more.

You can spend 100%. But you also, you know how to make money. Like, that's, I think, a skill that will carry you through any, you know, thick or thin. I like not being forced to do that. Like, anytime I feel forced to do something, I just don't like doing it for whatever reason. Yeah, I like doing things that... If I was like, Graham, you have to make these videos every week. You'd be like, screw you. Oh, absolutely not doing it.

Just having the freedom to say, you know, if I want to stop at any point I can. And that makes me very happy. Yeah. And again, that kind of freedom, I think you have more options when you have no doubt. And obviously you have your cast position that you've talked about. Well, I could bet on. I could not. I just feel like at the end of the day, I'm going to have less stress about it if things go downhill, having no debt.

Yeah, like a while ago, I got an offer to buy a part of my main channel. It was very enticing because the valuation they were giving me on the main channel was insane. This is like Shark Tank. Yeah, it was 2021, though, and I knew that like this is the cheapest money is ever going to be. It was a startup company that had a ton of venture capital. They were valuing it way higher than I ever. thought it was, but they said that I'd have to create three videos a week for the next five years. Oh.

And that for me was killed. This reminds me like the genie and Aladdin, you know, where he's like, he's forced. He's got the handcuffs when he's working for defar. But it was just, it was a minority stake, so it wouldn't change anything. But it was just like the output had to stay the same. Yeah. I know. I still want to be locked in to making three videos a week for five years.

It sounds bad. I don't like being forced to do that. That's the thing we all want options and freedom. Yeah. And so we have different paths to get there. but I just think mine has proven over time to be a path anyone can take and I think people can be, I mean, you guys are successful

you've done it your way and I think a lot of your tribe and audience they'll do it your way and they'll be okay like the fact they're even watching this channel tells me they're gonna be okay but we just we talk to very different people like the people are talking to they're going through things you know they're not watching YouTube videos for fun

they're watching them because they need help And so it's a very different mindset. And so I try to entertain and be informative. But at the end of the day, like, there's people who need help. And therefore, like, I can argue about credit card interest all day. But there's a single mom who's about to call in and be like, I just lost my husband. I got three kids. Do I do daycare?

What do I do? And so I'm like, holy crap. Like, there's real problems in the world. And this is a luxury and privilege that we get to even have these kinds of conversations. That's very true. So I think in my role, it just you have a very different perspective, seeing what people people are really going through, and it makes me more averse to risk and to debt, because I've seen what it does to people, you know? Like Andre, like, he's, he's like, I've seen my family

struggle with gambling addiction. I'll never gamble. He's just, it's not interesting to him. And the same happens with debt to me. I'm like, I've seen too many people hurt by debt. Why would I want to play this game only to get bit by a snake later on? Yeah. What's the most surprising thing that you've learned from Dave Ramsey? I think his, his tenacity and grit and perseverance is awe-inspiring. Like the fact that this guy is still at it 30 years later with more energy and more passion than ever before, I'm like, I want to be that invested in whatever I'm doing. And so he keeps us on our toes. But what I've learned from him there is that work is about more than work. Like it's not a J.O.B.

It's not something where I'm just like, I'm doing it for the paycheck and one day, you know, I'll call it quits. Like this dude is going to keep going until he can't keep going. and he'll probably outlive me just that I'm sure spite, sheer spite. But his passion around it has just really inspired me to go, like, obviously that thing for me is personal finance, and I didn't realize that until later on in my life. But also the way he's leaving a legacy, like the way he's thinking so future, I mean, he's been thinking about personalities for a long time.

You guys talked about this. His succession plan, you joked about Dave, Dave Ramsey's retirement plan. Everyone's like, no, Dave, don't go. I'm like, he's not going anywhere. but it was a good title. I'll give you that. So it just made me think more big picture and more long term and less about like, what am I doing? What's my thing? And more what's everyone around me? How are they being affected by my life? And so that's a really interesting way to frame things up.

What's something you think you can improve about your personal finances? Oh, man. I think my investing game now that, you know, I'm at the place we're at, like getting into brokerage accounts and like mega backdoor and all of that. stuff is interesting to me, and I'm not, I'm not, I haven't dipped my toes in that water yet. But now that I'm there, I think investing is one area. And I think spending, like, we're doing fine, but I think there's still ways that we've gotten lazy a little bit in kind of how we've been spending and getting that budget just tightened back up. Now that we have a baby girl, it's just like, there's new expenses in our world. And so we, we need to readjust for some of that.

And also, like, being more open. I think my generosity muscle needs some flexing. because we were so like, we have these goals. We got to pay off this house. We're going to upgrade the car. And now that we have more freedom, it's like what are the strategic ways we're going to give and spontaneously planned, all kinds of ways. And so that's something I need to get better at.

And seeing Dave in the way they've done that with the family foundation is really cool. Have you ever given and been unimpressed by somebody's reaction? Oh, man. You know, it's such a hard thing when you give because you're hoping. Like selfishly, you're like, I hope this is a moment. And sometimes it's not. We paid off $10 million of debt. So Dave bought the book of debt from this company for $250,000.

And it was $10 million worth. Oh, it was like a debt collection. Yes, a debt collection. So he bought $10 million worth of debt for $250 grand, and then we got to make the calls. All the Ramsey team members made calls to let the people know, hey, your debt has been paid off. And I remember I called this guy, and I was like,

hey, this is George from Ramsey's Solutions, just want to let you know that car that you had in collections, this Nissan Maxima, has been paid off completely. And he said, I didn't ask you to do that. I was like, oh my gosh, this backfired, this backfired. What do I say? He was upset. Why?

It's in collections. I don't know. Well, the truth is these people haven't paid on this debt in a long time. They maybe don't care about it anymore. They've moved on. But I was just so taken aback. Like, if that was me, I'd be like, are you serious? Yeah.

Oh my gosh, like, thank you so much. And so that was just like, you don't know what you're going to get on the other side of generosity. So that was a little lesson I learned there. Like, you know, set your expectations. It could go south. What I've been doing is getting people's dinners. So sometimes we'll go out and I'll just see like a couple or. You know, you haven't got my dinner.

I won't get Jack's dinner. But you're doing all right. I'll see random people or there's this guy kind of sat alone, an older guy. And I was like, you know, I'm just getting his dinner. But I'll just tell the people secretly. I'll pay for it. He doesn't know it's me. No one knows it's me.

He just knows. Someone's paid for your bill. Usually after we've left. That's cool. And their bill is paid for it. But I remember one time we went to a restaurant and we're sitting down and we saw this lady come in and she had a young child with her and it was maybe like 9 p.m. And I'm thinking, she waiting for something?

Is it pick up? And then I realized she's doing the delivery service. And I thought like it's got to be maybe like a single mom because obviously if like someone's at home the kid wouldn't be out with her and the kid looks like young like a young kid like four or five years old is kind of sitting and like the mom's obviously doing this and so I give her a hundred dollars and I say hey I just want to give you this and I don't want to say I was unimpressed by your reaction it's like oh thanks but that you were hoping for a little more I was hoping for a little more but anyway you know you got to do it because you like doing it but uh the reaction would

would have been nice yeah now that that's a tough part I mean you're always hoping and we got some of that when I gave the 10 grand at Waffle House at three different locations, we paid for everyone's tab. The shocking part is you could go into any Waffle House in America and cover the tab of the entire restaurant for $100. That was mind-boggling.

You know, I made $150 for a packed restaurant. Like that is such a cool thing to do. Just walk in and be like, hey, everyone here, $200 bucks, whatever anyone's tab is. I'm covering it and here's a $50 tip to the waitress. That's just a cool, fun thing to do. And it's not a waffle. I mean, you can go to any place.

but for some reason, you know, talking to the people at Waffle House, like this lady had been shot in the chest by her kid's dad, who's clearly not in their life anymore. Single mom of three kids, she'll be working on Christmas Day. And so when I gave her 500 bucks, I mean, she was already in tears. And then I said, hey, you know what, what are you getting the kids for Christmas? She's like, I don't know, I'm working on Christmas Day. And I was like, I want these kids to have an amazing Christmas.

Here's an extra $2,000. Whoa. And the floodgates open. The coworkers are all hugging. her and it wasn't like a flex on my part it wasn't even my money you know it was it was ramsie's money and we just wanted to find a fun way to be generous and i thought let's go to waffle house but like that to me that changed that affected me more than her potentially you know what i mean like i'll never forget that of just a power of you know two thousand bucks that's still a lot of money

um but it changes her world you know what i mean and so whatever we think is a lot of money to someone else or we don't think is a lot of money to someone else is life changing whether it's in another country or whatever. I like that over charities because you get to see the impact firsthand. And I feel like sometimes you give to a charity and it's more just like, you know, you get these things in the mail every now. Thanks for your donation. You don't get to see the, yeah, you get to see the impact that make some people firsthand. Also, you do not know how efficient charities are what they're spending. Oh, yeah. I don't know how efficient they are. They spend a lot of money on market. Well, you know what's really cool. And one other thing, I gave to a few different charities earlier this year. And ever since then,

for the past like six months. Oh, you're getting bombarded? Every single time I open the mailbox, they text to me, my emails. It's like, yo, I gave you a good chunk of change. It's like every single time are the animal ones. Oh, they know how to get you. That is never ending and they send you photos. Thank you for your donation.

What are you trying to do to me? You know, whatever it is. I did that at Petco and I signed up for one of those things. Oh, yeah. Have you guys heard of Charity Water? It's run by a guy named Scott Harrison, and he has revelations. and he has revolutionized charity because here's what he did.

He said, hey, I'm going to change the game. 100% of your donation goes to fund water projects in Africa. And so you're wondering, well, how does they cover overhead and bills and all that? They cover that with private donors. So a group of private donors comes together to cover salary, overhead, all of that,

and 100% of donations goes straight to the project. And they even have found a way to track your donation to the exact water project and they will follow up. That's fantastic. You can go in online

and see the exact location of your water project, the status of it, and the people affected by it, sharing their stories. And to me, that is like what every charity in America

needs to get to. So I love that model of private donors cover salary and overhead and consumer donations go 100%. Yeah. Because that's the kind of

transparency that will cause more people to give. I love that model. There's a clear distrust. And there's like sites like charity navigator that help with this, which is cool.

But I think that's a really cool model. I have a question. Now, don't feel like you need to answer this question. I don't know if it will cause any tension or anything. I just won't answer if I don't want to. Yeah, by all means, we can cut it out. Dave is not my dad.

Dang it, man. Everyone wanted it. People wonder. No, Dave was under fire recently for 8% withdrawal rate. What do you think about that? Do you think 8% withdrawal rate is fine? Do you think that that could be a good benchmark for people when they're trying to retire? I think there's certain situations where that would be totally fine.

If you follow the Ramsey plan and you have a giant nest egg and that's your plan, then that's sustainable. If you look at real numbers, hypothetically, like this is all, it's like your billion dollar question. Would you get a billion dollars and do this? The realistic numbers are if you had $2 million in retirement and you were withdrawing 8%, you would be okay with a paid-for house, money in the bank, you know, and you would adjust. And Dave said on the show with Rachel, Rachel was like, well, hey, what if the retirement turn that year was 10% instead of 12. You go, well, you could take it down, take it down to 6%.

But the key here is being flexible with your spending in retirement. So in retirement, if you're going, I need 12 grand to sustain this or else it's all going to fall apart. You've already failed. You need to have a lot of margin for error in retirement. And that's why we tell people, like, invest 15%, as soon as you're out of debt, once you have the house paid off, invest way more, max out retirement accounts. So the amount of people who are actually having to live this out is probably slim to none. The argument of 4% or 6% or 8%. And there's a lot of studies that show, because all of this is based on the Monte Carlo simulation. Yeah, the Trinity study. Trinity study, Monti Carlos situation. And so a lot of them showed you could have negative money in retirement. You could have

way more than you ever imagined retirement. But it's the failure rate. It's the failure rate. It's 48% or 60% failure rate. It was, yeah, it was at a point, yeah, it was over a 30 year time frame, but there was a high failure rate. And it's like, do you want to give that to a 50-50 coin flip of failing that? Assuming you keep your expenses at 8% adjusted for inflation every year beginning the first year. The other thing is that if you have a few bad years initially, it's almost a hundred percent failure wage. Sequence of risk return is what you're talking about. Yeah, sure. And I think realistically, people adjust lifestyle depending on market conditions. And so that's why I think what Dave was saying

was there's a lot of hope stealers out there who are like, if you don't have two million dollars, you're screwed because you have to do 4%. If you don't do that, you're screwed. And What Dave's saying is, you're going to be okay. If you have no debt and a million, two million, three million dollars in retirement, you're going to have a fine life and you can withdraw more than 4%. Did Dave talk to you at all about this after the call? Because it seemed like he said, if George said something like that, we're going to take the video down.

Oh, yeah. Well, the producer talked to him. He was like, hey, the caller took that out of context maliciously. Here's what George actually said. And Dave was like, oh, okay, cool. And moved on this day. But no, we went crazy on Twitter. because we know this.

The financial community blew up over this. The day before posting our Dave Ramsey video, this blew up on Twitter. And I was texting Jack. I'm like, dude, you see this stuff going down on Twitter? Tens of millions of views. Everyone is posting memes of like Dave Ramsey with like Lambeaus and his luxury lifestyle.

Oh my gosh. Withdrawling 8%. That's hilarious. It was hilarious. Well, the financial community for a long time has loved to use Dave as a punching bag for clicks and views. We all know that. And at the same,

in the same clip Dave has helped millions of people and these people are in their mom's basement with their they just became financial advisors

and they have an opinion and they've helped almost nobody and so I get while they're railing against it and their job is to you know be financial advisors and do whatever

the financial community does but I think it's such a funny hypothetical situation or argument and so nerdy that I'm like again it's a wonderful argument to have the fact is

people aren't saving for retirement So whether we're going to argue about four or six or eight percent is a silly thing when I'm like, people aren't even investing. Is there anything you disagree with Dave about? I'm trying to think like obviously we agree on our anti-debt stance. We agree on the investing stance. And he's cool with index funds as well. He invests in index funds in a brokerage account when he gets like a bonus check.

But we have the same investing strategy, philosophy. We're probably invested in the same funds in our 401K. I'm probably more like on the millennial side. I'm probably just into things that he may not be into, one being Tesla's. He's a Tesla hater, unfortunately. But that's not really a financial. He still would probably say it was a bad financial decision

that Rachel and I drive Tesla's. But as far as spending goes, I don't think we have much to disagree on. I mean, and it's not even like I'm towing the company line of like I have to agree with Dave on everything. I fully agree with the baby steps. And we talked, we've, you know, went back and forth about baby step one,

a $1,000 emergency fund, and dead avalanche for a snowball, and what is a full emergency fund, and what's the best way to invest? But truly, like, I've lived out as principals, and they worked. And so, like, I only have good things to say, not only because of my experience, but millions of others that have come before me and after me. Do you have any advice for Dave Ramsey? Don't let the trolls get to you, Dave. Do you know?

Well, I think, like, he'll get riled up, you know, on air. and I have more patience with the like 20 year old who wants to argue about the nerdy stuff. And I think at this point he's just like, I got people to help, man. Why are you clogging up my phone lines wanting to argue about this thing? You know what I mean? I don't think Dave needs any of my advice. I think he's doing great. He's living his values out beautifully.

He just went to Egypt for like two weeks with his wife. I saw. An amazing trip. He spent that 8%. He spent a good, healthy chunk of money. So that's the cool thing about Dave is he's so. so balanced when it comes to spending, saving, and giving. Like, he, we would call that a flat tire.

He's great at spending money. He's great at resting. Like, when he's not at work, the dude is at the lakehouse. He's enjoying himself in Cabo. He's living a great life. He's saving plenty of money. He's investing wisely for the future. And he's also giving outrageously, I mean, in ways that boggle my mind.

And so I don't have any advice for Dave other than maybe, I'm trying to think on, like, on the millennial side of things I'd be like, come on, Dave. like loosen up on this thing. I'm trying to think generationally because we get a bad rap, millennials, Gen Z. But even Dave is quick to say, like, there's people,

there's Gen Zers that suck. There's Gen Zers that are awesome. And we see a lot of both. But I think he can give them the Reddit community a bad rap, for one, you know, Twitter community. Sure. Because he only gets the trolls.

And so in his mind, only trolls exist on those platforms. But sometimes, you know, I appreciate the honesty of the people on there, you know, saying their truth. But he's quick to block them. as well. If you could draw a pie of your net worth and where your money is allocated, what would it

look like? Okay, I'm going to be really boring and you're not, you're going to disagree with it, but this is my true life. Because of the housing market and our paid-for house and how we over-indexed on that, that's probably, that's three-quarters of our net worth is our paid-for-house. The other, mostly that quarter is going to be our 401ks. We both have Roth 401ks. I probably have double what my wife does because of I've worked longer at Ramsey, I've made more money. And so because of that, the allocation of my 15% was just higher. So that's pretty much it. Other than that, we have our, our cars are a very small piece of our net worth, our savings account and checking account are a very small part of our net worth. Majority, probably 95% is house in 401 case. And I have a

small IRA with about six grand from a rollover from when I worked at Apple. That's it. It's that more. I have no crypto, no single stocks, no real estate property other than my primary home. I want a one word answer to this, okay? Okay. Do you think Graham and Macy should have joint accounts? Oh, gosh. Does it just have to be a yes or no? One word answer.

Yes. Graham, one word answer. I think they're, now this is caveat once they're married. Okay. Once they're married, not a second sooner. Right. And not a second later. I mean, they can go on the honeymoon.

On the altar. But as soon as they're back from the honeymoon, let's combine their counts. I think we have a joint, two severance. The his and hers. The his and hers. Why? With one joint. Why?

What is the benefit to Macy and what's the benefit to you? I think mostly the benefits to me, I mean, when you look at it objectively. Is that fair? But I think it is. I think it's perfectly fair. What does she think about it? But a lot of it is in like, you know, certain accounts and investment brokerages that it just makes sense. It shouldn't necessarily

be a joint account. It's not like the harm in saying, here's our joint checking. This is what we spend all of our money. And you have a line item of, hey, Macy, you can spend 500 bucks on whatever you want. Graham gets 500 bucks. Because she's able to do that anyway in her personal account. So what's the difference if it's all joint?

Well, that's the joint account. Shared expenses go from that. So we still have a joint account. So she could still do that from the joint account. But she has her money that she could spend however she wants. I'll never question that. But it's not our money. The joint account. Let's say you guys have a kid, she decides to stay home. What happens?

Well, I already pay all the expenses, so it's, you know, everything for her, she could spend it if she wants to. Everything? Yeah. She could spend 10 grand a month? Yeah, if she makes her money, she just says she wants to stay. If she makes her money. I said if she stayed home with a kid. She has no traditional income now.

What's your take on this, Jack? What do you think they should do? What do I think they should do? I've only seen it. Realistically, like, I think you want to, you go first. No, I'm just, I've only seen it where separate accounts has caused more marital strife than it caused any blessing. I have rarely seen it. And when it does cause any blessing, it's because they've brushed under the rug.

And they're like, well, we just don't talk about it. It's, he does his thing. I do my thing. We have the shared account. And I'm like, you're living like roommates. Like you're like, if you're venmoing each, if you're, if you're married and you're sending each other venmos, you're doing it wrong. That's not a marriage. Like marriage is we are becoming one in every way, shape, and form.

We're sharing a bed. We're sharing DNA. we're making babies, but we can't share a bank account. That's insane. So two things. If I were in Graham's position, this is if, a big if, I'd probably want separate accounts. That's just me saying what, but I think that this is a really tough line to kind of tow. But I also think that like if it's me, actually me, I also at the same time I understand, like,

having joint because if you just split it 50-50 with Graham's amount of money I'd still be fine you know what I mean I know I'll never need the amount of money I don't even think I would necessarily love to have one I don't think it would improve my life yeah to have the amount of money that Graham currently has let alone half you know don't ever give him a raise he said he's fine and that's you know I try to negotiate with Jack and he just he wants more drives a hard bargain he says one thing but he doesn't know I want to make less so I have to grind harder I don't I don't have half of the amount of money you have. Sure.

Right. So I think that there's a difference there, but that's besides the point. I think I would be okay splitting it because I know I'd be fine with half, but it would be extremely hard to part with that money. That's obviously worst case scenario. I don't even think that should be in question relative to the sadness of splitting with a partner that you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with. But I don't know.

I think like for me in my current state, I'd probably be fine joint. But then again, like I'm not Graham. I don't have the amount of money Graham has. So I think it's also, it's different. You know what I mean? That's fair. And also like the money isn't necessarily something that you're like like you're putting a value on the relationship. It's just like, hey, I worked extremely hard for this. And this is something that I just prefer to keep to myself. Like there are secrets, sure, that people will go into marriage with. It's inevitable. You can say, oh, you should talk about everything. You don't. Right. There are certain things that you'll just hold to yourself till the day you die. And that's totally fun. And people are different. And if someone has a different value and if it works for a certain couple and it works, you could look, you could look at statistics and all available data and say, oh, it generally doesn't work. But I think that they're also. going to be exceptions to the statistics. Oh, sure. Yeah, it's not saying that Graham and Macy won't have a long, healthy, happy marriage. I just think there's less of a chance, less risk of, you know, financial infidelity, as we call it, where there's a lack of transparency and I didn't know,

and there's resentment building up because, again, if she stays home or has a much lower income and it's now unfair because Graham makes this, that it just causes more awkwardness in the relationship. I understand. I think that's where the transparency comes in, and I I think that's like the key to it all is being completely honest with each other. So in my current life, I probably would have joint accounts. But I actually, this is one of the few things where I understand the way that Graham's brain works. That's fair. Very few things.

I'm like, why do you think the way that you do? Well, people love. When you guys were on my YouTube channel, people love the relationship talk. And they also thought Jack was a very eligible bachelor. Yeah, they did. In the YouTube comments. Jack, find someone from George's channel. Seriously, dude.

That was a good hair day. That was a good hair today. And you know what? I did a blow dryer. You did a blow dryer? Did you use my strategy? You didn't. You didn't.

I told you the blow dryer. I used it that day. I used it that day. I think it's time. I told you I was going to give you a little quaff to see what it looks like up there. No. Unwilling? I'm unwilling.

And you know it's hilarious? I used a blow dryer on the podcast we did with Dr. John Deloney. Worst hair I've ever had. Oh. You got to learn how to use a blood guy. Yeah, something between the two. You know, we're going to get this thing dialed in where every day it's super consistent. Yeah.

That's what I would buy a cordialer. if you could maybe craft that's my new course it's not going to be of money it's about how to care for your hair right how much would you pay for your course yeah more than you'd pay for a gallon of gram's bathwater hopefully do you accept credit because then i'd probably pay a little bit more i'll i'll take crypto if you donated crypto for the course i would take it 20 bucks that way i i never bought crypto i was donated crypto from jack there we go i like the hairstyle you had that was similar to mine remember that you got a haircut that was like very similar he just wants me slowly over time to change into to morph into grain

It wants me to actually change my name to Graham's. Well, between your hair and then Graham's workout routine where he just exploded, I was like, I don't know what's going on with you guys. I've progressed a little bit, unfortunately. Oh, no. Food poisoning. I just not been to the gym as much. Wow. It's been like a week and a half.

Are you doing okay now? Yeah, fine now. You're just shriveling away before our eyes. I've done five pounds, believe it right? Dang. Yeah. But, yeah, so the downside of those five pounds, half of that is muscle. Yeah, yeah.

So I've lost two and a half pounds of muscle, two and a half of us. People are not working out. I stay the same consistently. You got to eat more. 10 years in. What can I say? All right. I think that's good.

Is there any other thing we should discuss? I mean, I don't know if we have any other arguments. I mean, there's a lot more to unpack from this, but that's for another time, another day. But if people do want to check it out, they can do that at Ramsey Solutions.com slash store. Check out breaking free from broke.

Wherever books are sold, I'm really proud of it. The audiobook is like a whole produced thing. So if they're listening before January 16th, I don't know that they will be. You might post it sooner. And let me... They'll get all the pre-order bonuses for free. Like, audiobook, e-book, all that.

Let me also say this. I belly laughed several times. You did. Yes. I tried to make it really funny. It sounds exactly like you. Like, if we're talking. Yes.

Like, I will read it and hear your voice as I'm reading it. That means the world. And it's hilarious. And a lot of the times people will make books and it just sounds nothing like them. Yeah. Ghostwriter sounds exactly like you. There's no way a ghost writer could have written this because it is my jokes. Whether good or bad, you can tell they are my.

And so I did try really hard to make a money book that was conversational, funny, well-researched that could help anybody while being true to myself and true to Ramsey. So I'm really proud of it. The team's done an amazing job. I mean, God bless. I feel bad for people who are doing this on their own. Like authors that are doing this on their own, it's so much work. And so even though I wrote the book, it took a billion people to make this happen.

And I'm really excited about it. It's selling really well. People are excited to read it. and the audiobook is going to be fire. So if you like to listen, this is the one for you. I like to read books while listening to the audio book. Do you guys do that?

No. Less than three books? I read the book while the audio is piped into my ears because that's the level of like ADD that I have. So it helps me focus. There are studies that show that you actually retain more knowledge

when you're reading when you're doing that. Thank you for that. I knew you had a study. Were you having a good hair day that day? You know, I think I was. I was nervous about photo shoot day. You're always scared about it. what does my, how did I sleep?

What does my face look like? The team did not do me any favors, and they didn't give me like a tan in post. Yeah, the only thing I was going to say, I would up the saturation. It seems like you are too white, like too pale. Well, to be fair, against that bright orange, I think anything would be pissed.

It's a little corner right there in your forehead. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little too pale. It looks like you're getting a solid extra inch on the hair, though. They could have Photoshop that a little higher. I'm going to talk to our design guys. They did white from my shoes a little bit, which helped. They whiten my shoes.

Print it on like five copies where the hair goes behind the text. It's like full Jimmy Neutron. Yeah, yeah. That would be a lot of the back folds. No, truthfully, you know it's not Photoshop because I would have made them make me taller in post. You can tell I'm small on the cover, which is sad.

I think you look, you know. But, you know, I think we did, they did it. They polished a shirt on this one. I think they did a great job with the cover. It's gorgeous, yeah. And I hope it, I just wanted to stand out. Like, in all the noise in the financial world, that's the whole point of this is to stand out in the

out and swim upstream. So I hope this book pisses a lot of people off into breaking free from broke. It pissed me off. I'm angry. I tell I say this is going to be jarring. This is not going to be what you want to hear. It's sort of like you're, it's the vegan documentary. They're like, here's how they actually make the meat. You're like, oh gosh, that's what I wanted for debt. And I think it did that. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on. We'll link to your information down below in the description. Thank you for making it to Vegas. We'll see you in Nashville. It's an honor. And make sure to just slam that subscribe. Who's not subscribed at this point? Guys, we're racing Caleb Hammer to a million subscribers. If you could please just go

a million before Caleb. He's 20k ahead of us. Is he actually? He's like 15, maybe 20K ahead of us. We need subscribers. I think we need a new hashtag. Wow. Guys, so we got to be Caleb to a million. If you're not subscribed, I think it's like 50% of people watching or higher with the shorts are not subscribed. Please we can be Caleb. I think three of us equals at least one Caleb. Cool. Cool. Oh and they say there. Yeah, thumbnail. Oh. Come on in. Oh, my goodness. We have a bit of a surprise for you.

Now, this was completely unplanned. This man is going to give you the best stick you've ever had. Guess how much this box is worth? Oh, my gosh. Based on the branding alone and the weight, I'm going to go $175. You're actually spot on. Are you serious? $25.

What is in this? Open the box. I'm so nervous. This is pretty much the ultimate Las Vegas flex. Oh my gosh. Look at what's in here. Oh, come on. That looks so good.

This was freshly made in the kitchen 10 minutes ago. How is this possible? You're getting the freshest possible sandwich that you could ever eat. And it's right here. With, by the way, the best quality meat. This is not sponsored. Okay, so what kind of meat is? Correct me if I'm saying this wrong.

It's Japanese Miyazaki A5 Wagyu. A5 Wagyu. And it's made in a sandwich. This is $200 in this tiny box. Yes. To what do we owe this pleasure? Okay, so basically these guys reached out to us on Instagram and they're like, hey, we'd love to bring you a sandwich and film a little video for it.

We tried the sandwich. It was so good. It was so good. And that was yesterday. And we're like, hey, we're actually shooting with George. Come back. Come back tomorrow. And we could show it on our podcast.

So, yeah, it's a little bonus clip for you guys. I don't deserve this. Expensive sandwich. I'm not worth this. We figured it's like a frugal guy. You would appreciate this a lot. Uh, eat it. Okay.

I want to watch you eat it. If you guys are in Vegas and you guys want to try this out, it's all going to be linked down below. Definitely try it out. All right. Can we do it at the same time? Not sponsored. No, not at all. They just brought us food.

This is just a cool concept and we really like it. Cheers. So that's it. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Touch meat.

All right. Yeah, now that you say it that way, it feels different. I'm gonna, I'm gluten free. Can I just take a bite of the steak? Is that okay with you guys? Does the steak have gluten in it? It's fine. It's fine.

Oh my God. Is that incredible? That's probably the best stick you've ever had. That cow was a better life than I lived. It's so good. It's so tender. I've never had steak that melts in your mouth. Say hi to all the vegetarians. I'm sorry, but you're wrong.

Like, if you think the Lord didn't intend for us to eat this, you're just wrong. Oh my gosh. I'm going to hang out with you guys more often. I told you. Do you want a piece of this meat stick, Sarah?