The Megyn Kelly Show - Dave Ramsey on Inflation Reality, the Millionaire Mentality, and the Power of Hope | Ep. 222

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dave Ramsey, bestselling author, radio host, and personal finance expert, to talk about the state of the Build Back Better bill, rising gas prices, the supply chain crisis, the state of inflation in America, the power of hope, attempts to blame corporate greed for inflation, how you can become a millionaire, finding contentment with your finances, Ben Affleck, Madonna, Elon Musk, how to budget your life, "adulting," the role of faith, and more. Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a great show for you today with my fellow host here at Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. Joining me is personal finance expert, host of The Ramsey Show, and author of the upcoming book, Baby Steps Millionaires, Dave Ramsey. Dave, a lot to talk about. I'm sure all of our audience would like to become millionaires, and you are just the man to speak to about how to do that. But I want to begin in a sort of what may seem like a weird place for you, as opposed to like a political pundit. Like we had Charles CW cook on the show yesterday, but I'm,

I'm going somewhere with this. So stand, stand by, stay with me. The story dominating the news yesterday was of this January 6th hearing. And, you know, they've put together what they're dubbing a bipartisan commission.

It's not, it's, it's the Democrats plus two. They're not Republicans. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are Republicans in the same way. Nicole Wallace or Jen Rubin or Bill Kristol are Republicans. At one point, it may have been thus. It's no longer so. McCarthy pulled the Republicans because he couldn't get the ones he wanted. And now it's become just a complete farce. But it took a very weird turn yesterday. And to me, it speaks to a couple of things. Number one, dishonesty in media.

And number two, how off these people are on what matters to Americans, what matters to voters. And that's where you're going to come in. All right. So let me just set it up. So the commission is looking into how January 6th happened and why and who should be held responsible. They've been subpoenaing the records and deposition testimony of all of Trump's top aides from Steve Bannon to we had Peter Navarro on the show last week to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff. And they've they've either said, you know, I'm not coming at all. You know, go pound sand like Bannon. They've tried to or they've tried to work with him a little like Mark Meadows, but said, I'm going to respect the president's claim of executive privilege, which is playing out in the legal lane. And

Trump, by the way, is losing. He just suffered a bad setback from the Court of Appeals. Basically, he pulled the worst three judge panel one could possibly pull. And they all are hard left Democrats and appointed by Obama and Biden. They were all like, this is a national emergency. You got to turn everything over. So unless he can get relief at the Supreme Court, his claim of executive privilege is going to be permanently overruled and all these people are going to have to fork over the documents. And I believe they will. Anyway, Mark Meadows said, give you what I can, got to wait on the executive privilege stuff. Well, they're not happy with that. They decided

to release his private text messages that they've gotten so far. And yesterday, it turned into this weird thing, not about Mark Meadows, not even exactly about Trump, but about Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Brian Kilmeade. And the texts were from those guys to Mark Meadows on the day of January 6th, essentially saying, this isn't good. Trump should speak. This should stop. This is not helpful to the MAGA movement. And what Liz Cheney was positing was they are liars because that's what they said privately to Mark Meadows when they got on their shows that night. They said something very different. Well, I open minded. OK, you know, I don't carry water for Fox News.

I don't work there anymore. Same as you. What's the truth? Right. Like, walk me through it. So I went, do we have that soundbite you guys? I, the Washington Post one. Okay. So I started to call it together. Then I found exactly what I was looking for on the Washington Post. So I was like, oh, I don't have to do it. The

mainstream media is going to tell me how they lied. Now in the law, bear in mind while you watch this, there's something called improper impeachment. If you take the stand, Dave, and you say the sky is blue and I say, okay, fine. But if you take the sky, you take the stand and say the sky is yellow. And I know it's blue. I get up there and I say, I want to impeach this witness. He previously said the sky was blue. He knows it's blue. Why is he saying it's yellow? They'd let me come after you. But if what you had said previously was it's blue, and then you took the stand and you said, it's light blue, and I tried to get you, the judge would sit me down saying that's improper impeachment. You don't have him. You're making up this impeachment moment. And I'm telling you, that's what's happening right

now with Liz Cheney and the Fox News hosts. And you just listen for yourselves. You don't need a lawyer, somebody like me who practiced law for a decade, to show you how what she's playing is not impeaching what their texts said. So I'll let you listen. It's two minutes long and the audience judge for themselves. And I'll ask Dave about why people don't care about this and what they actually do. Stand by. Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us.

He is destroying his legacy, Laura Ingram wrote. The Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. Now, there were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. Please get him on TV.

Destroying everything you have accomplished, Brian Kilmeade texted. About how I feel about the whole thing. I just thought the tone, the attitude of defiance played out in the Capitol. The lack of security stunned me. I do not know Trump supporters that have ever demonstrated violence that I know of in a big situation. Quote, can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol? Sean Hannity urged. They knew there were hundreds of thousands of people that came to town. We also knew that there's always bad actors that will infiltrate large crowds. I don't care if

they're radical left, radical right. I don't know who they are. They're not people I would support. One of the president's sons texted Mr. Meadows, quote, he's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough, Donald Trump Jr. texted. Donald Trump Jr. texted again and again, urging action by the president, quote, we need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.

End quote. There you go. If you were to take his speech. Now she gets to Donald Trump defending his dad. Nobody is surprised by that. You tell me, Dave. I mean, you weren't expecting this. We didn't pre-rehearse this. Did you hear something starkly different in the messaging of Laura Ingraham, for example? The president needs to tell people at the Capitol to go home. It's hurting all of us.

He's destroying his legacy. With her coming out and saying, if you were a Trump supporter, this is what she said that night on the air. If you were a Trump supporter trying to display your support for the president, today's antics at the Capitol did just the opposite. And she says the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. How is that? How is any of this inconsistent? Just because they kept open the thought that there could be non-Trump supporters there as well is not a dismissal of the whole event. And so you tell me whether you've heard the inconsistency and you tell me whether these people have any sort of a finger on the pulse of what is a real Americans are sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about going into this holiday week.

Well, I'm certainly no expert on any of that. And full disclosure, you and Sean and Brian and Laura are friends of mine. So, you know, so I've got learned, and we've all learned that are in this business, is that there's a vast difference in what is actually makes it onto the television screen and what reality is. And the public that I deal with suspects that they read a newspaper article and it says this, this this, and this about whatever subject. And we all kind of, from a public perspective, just kind of roll our eyes and go, so I really don't believe 90% of that. And I'm not sure what 10% is actually true. And so they discount the whole thing. And so my guess is that, and I'm just a regular guy guessing, that the differences between what was texted and what was said, and if this is a news story, we're short on news right here at Christmas. Exactly right. It's crazy when you look at this.

So this is what Laura texted to Mark Meadows. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. This is what she tweeted that very same day. This hurts the movement, the Trump legacy, and of course, the country. She was entirely consistent. So was Sean and so was Brian. And if they weren't, I would tell the audience that too, because we owe them the loyalty, the audience, not any one personality. What she's upset about is Laura in particular, I guess, and Sean, I guess, kept space open for the thought that there may have been infiltrators there that day. And Laura points out last night that she then corrected even her suggestion of that. My point is, if you look at the full context of their of their reporting that night and their tweeting and so on, it condemned what happened on January 6th. Absolutely, it did. And there's nothing inconsistent with, for example, Hannity saying, can Trump make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol? How is that in any way inconsistent with him later saying there are always bad actors that will come to town and do

bad things? I mean, it's like that could have been MAGA people, could have been bad MAGA people. He never ruled out that any of these people were Trump supporters. And so to me, it's the mainstream media, whenever they have a chance to jump on anybody who they perceive as a Republican, it could be at Fox News, it could be on social media, it could be you, it could be me. And more often than not, sadly, it's people who have no power and no microphone and no ability to fight back against them. Occasionally, you get the rare instance where you see like a Nick Sandman come back. Now it's escalated to points where you have like a Kyle Rittenhouse whose life is on the line trying to fight against these media narratives about him

that weren't true, but they have no compunction in doing it. And I look at the dishonesty of the MSM and I think this is why no one's watching them, right? Their numbers are in the toilet. And this is why the Democrats' numbers are going down too. President Biden's approval rating now a new low for 538, Nate Silver's polling operation, 43%. It's even lower if you look at CNBC's latest quarterly All-America Economic Survey,

overall approval down at 41% now. And the two things really driving it are the economy and the pandemic. The voters are angry about what's happening in their pocketbooks and still having to wear the masks and take the vaccines and a sense of hopelessness, Dave, that this is never going away and our leaders don't know the path forward. Yeah, that's very true. And part of the indication that they don't need to know the path forward is that they're concentrating on the past all the time. And so instead of dealing with some of the stuff that's in front of us right now that needs actual leadership on, we're going to worry about whether the guy carried off Nancy Pelosi's electorate or not. I mean, it's a horrible thing.

And I'm not discounting that that all shouldn't have happened. But I'm way past ready to move on with my life. Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you look at the polls, this barely registers. No one cares about January 6th. It's like hard partisans want to go relive it. And Democrats think it's a good point for them, I guess, with their core, core base. But the vast majority of Americans don't care. They really don't care. They see it as politics.

They understand how politics plays out in Capitol Hill, but they do care about inflation. Let's start there. There's a rising and widespread concern about it. And the American people are especially negative right now on how the administration is handling it. More than two thirds of Americans, 69 percent, now saying they disapprove of how administration is handling it. More than two thirds of Americans, 69 percent now saying they disapprove of how Biden is handling inflation. Just 28 percent approve. Vast majority of Republicans, 94 percent disapprove. Not a shock. 71 percent of independents disapprove. And even 54 percent of Democrats. Now, sorry, 54% of Democrats approve. So that's a relatively low score for him with the blue. And you tell me, because what we had for the first four or five, six months of

this inflationary business was it's transitory. It's going to come and go. Don't worry. You don't need to plan around it because it's transitory. And then you had the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, coming out and saying, it's not transitory. That stuff we said, don't believe that. It's not transitory. And I think people were like, you know, whatever it is, it's bad. It's hurting me. And any wage increase I get right now is not going to outpace it. So what's a gal or a guy to do?

And what are your thoughts on that? Well, I do believe overall that there's a big portion of it that's transitory. I think there's two big elements of the inflationary market right now that were controlled by the Biden administration and were caused. Energy costs, definitely. He caused that. The price of the pump is his fault, his policies. And the other thing is the labor shortage and the labor, the disruption in the labor market. And the fact that we can't get people back to work to make the goods and services to deliver them. So there's a continued shortage. And anytime there's a shortage versus a high demand, the seventh grade economics, when the supply-demand curve crosses, you're going to have price increases. So we've got a big shortage of goods or services because people aren't working because they're sitting on their butts because the government's been feeding them free money.

Those are two policies that are driving inflation. They're also driving wages up, which are a component of your, you know, if the cost of the guy doing the work goes up, then the results of the work, the price has to go up. And so it's driving that. Some of the other things were caused by shortages that were a result of the pandemic. And that was not Biden's fault. We had an earthquake at sea, and that was the pandemic. We shut down entire segments of the economy for an extended period of time, quarantining healthy people for the first time in the history of the human race. And consequently, no goods or services were being produced. And when everyone came back with their demand for those things, there was a shortage of

those things. And so lumber prices went through the roof. Steel prices went through the roof. And logistics were just, there's a huge logistical breakdown. We've seen all the pictures of the ships sitting in the harbors with full of billions of dollars of goods and can't get them offloaded because of the labor shortages. So, but the tsunami that happened after the earthquake at sea, I didn't see that coming. And I think a lot of other people didn't either. I thought maybe, oh, we're past the pandemic. We're okay now from an economics standpoint. And we weren't because we have this crash of the tsunami that was the result of not going to work.

So everything, there's a shortage. So these shortages all crash up on the shore. When those wash back out, there's going to have been destruction, like with the tsunami, obviously. But we will be back on dry land again. That part is transitory. But it's being exacerbated by these policies out of Washington, and it's making it worse. There's a lot of things that could be done to smooth this out and make it more transitory.

If you turn open the gas lines and let gas flow again and drop the price, and you stop paying people to not work, and so they go work and create goods and services. That's going to help the tsunami go back out to sea instead of aggravating it. Well, those unemployment checks are no longer. They stopped in September. So why are the people still sitting on the sidelines? Because there's an unintended consequence of, again, the regulations or an intended consequence. We're working with small business people every day. See, when a small business person furloughs someone during the pandemic, lays them off, they have to pay unemployment. The small business person pays the unemployment. When they offer the job back, if the person doesn't come back to work,

the unemployment is supposed to stop. That's not being paid by the government, but it's being paid by the business. And they're not, the unemployment offices all around America are looking at these business guys and we're hearing it every day. They're looking at these business guys and go, you offered him the job back. He didn't come back. Well, you're still going to pay the unemployment. He has a right to sit on his butt. And so even though the checks aren't coming out of the Fed, the regulations and how they're dealing with the unemployed and not forcing them to come off the unemployed rolls and the small businesses still being drained of cash, paying someone who's sitting at home. Oh, that's fascinating. I did not realize that.

I've been baffled since they sort of shut off that spigot, you know, at the federal level of the Biden unemployment money. Why we haven't seen a bigger return to the workforce. You know, we had those low jobs numbers last month and it was like, well, but where are the people now that the money's been shut off? They should be going back into the workforce. And you're saying they needed to change a lot more than that to get these people on their couches off of them. Well, they changed their policy and told the unemployment office to, the feds did this, and, you know, again, Biden administration, and told them to not enforce the law. And, you know, in other words, don't cut these people off, and they continue to drain the cash out of the small business. So it's a double whammy. A, we don't have the labor force, and B,

you know, the very businesses that are going to cause this inflationary market to be stabilized and it go away because of the shortages. If the shortages go away, these prices are going to drop back down. That's what it must do. So what can we do to get the shortages to go away? You stabilize the labor market by getting them back to work. You turn down the cost of gasoline again by increasing the supply, quit trying to play energy games and be politically correct on all that. I'm talking as an economist, OK, at that point. And then you do anything you can to help get ships offloaded instead of stuck. You do anything you can to get logistics straightened out and the thing will work itself out. But they're aggravating it, exacerbating it by these policies and making it worse. They're not the cause of it, but they're the cause of it continue to stay screwed up. Yeah, because Biden's not going to touch domestic oil production. He's already made

a vow to swear off of that. I mean, he's all about green energy now, which is not going to help short term and some would say long term. But I see, OK, we've got to get the shortages off the shore, as Dave Ramsey says. So much more to go over with Dave for the show. More on the Biden economy, on jobs, jobs, jobs, supply chain. And then we're going to get into some cultural issues, which are always fun to talk to Dave about. Don't go away. Let's just spend a moment still sort of on the 30,000 foot level and talk about hopelessness, because I really think that's what's behind the falling poll numbers for Joe Biden. And I think it's largely related, yes, to the increase in prices and so on, but to the never ending belief that we're in the peak of the covid crisis and that we have to spend every day and treat every new variant as though it's the lowest point in the in the crisis and there's no getting out from under the crisis it will never abate

there was an axios poll now i came out i think yesterday said uh 46 percent of americans expect expect that it will be more than a year or never before they can return to their normal lives, Dave. More than a year or never before they can get back to normal. That means 46% of the American people believe normal life is no longer possible. I mean, this administration said they would control the virus. They couldn't. For sure, this is hurting his poll numbers, but more importantly, it's just hurting the American psyche. Yeah. Hope is a powerful thing. We see it when it's there, because when you've got hope, you can run through a brick wall.

I mean, you'll go do amazing things when you believe you can. And when it turns into hopelessness on the opposite side of that coin, we see how powerful it is too, because it causes people to sit and do nothing. And it causes them to shrink back and be fear-based and anxiety-based. And it's really a sad, sad situation. Proverbs says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. And what we're talking about here is a sickness of the heart. And the sad thing is that hope, you know, it actually can be brought about by strong leadership. And, you know, the idea that bad things are ahead of us are not the problem. The problem is, is there's a sense of ambivalence, a sense of that we cannot control any of the controllables in our lives

and or the leadership can't control any of the controllables. So as a leader, I've got a thousand folks in our team. My job is to not say, hope it consists of Pollyanna, that there's never any bad news. My job is to say, here's good news and here's bad news. Oh, and here's what we're going to do about both of them. Here's what we're going to do. And here's where we're going. And if we see a way forward, so hopelessness doesn't come from bad news. Hopelessness comes from ambivalence and not knowing a way through or seeing that anyone is going to find a way through. After 9-, through after 9-1-1 things change forever. We have a thing called TSA in the airports for the rest of our lives because it, so it, you know,

did it, will it ever go back to normal, but pre 9-1-1 in the airport? No, probably won't. So after a pandemic, is there going to be some version of something like that that's a lingering effect of a brave new world? Probably. But what we've got to have to have hope is, okay, we got TSA, and this is how we fly, and this is how we're going to do it. But ambivalence, this ambivalence, we're going to control the narrative by continually peddling that there is no hope is not leadership. And it's disastrous for the American psyche. There aren't even any identifiable off-ramps, right? So parents like yours truly who are, you know, I've had it to high heaven with putting

my kids in masks every day, never mind my own, but I get to avoid them a lot more than my kids do. There are no off ramps. There's no metrics. There's no, okay, when the hospitalizations get down to this as a percentage of the population, then we won't wear them. And the data come in, the studies showing that the masks are ineffective, that gets ignored. So even for people like me, who are not COVID fear porn mongers, who have been very settled in response to this pandemic. Things happen. We handle it. It's really no reason for panic.

There's some hopelessness because the authorities in power where I live and work won't listen to reason. You know, you're in Tennessee. You have a better situation down there from my vantage point. And I realize people like move. OK, it's not that easy. My mom's in up us are like, let's move past it. It's a very small constituency that's looking at the policies on this thing right now and saying, nailed it. Yeah. Well, and again, if you just show me a way, but there's a sense out there right now that the fear point is just being used to control, that it's no longer about COVID. It's about control. And it's about, I'm going to make you do something. And there's a real pushback out here in America against that.

And so that's what's driving poll numbers too, I think. Because it's the dissatisfaction with your governor, dissatisfaction with your mayor, dissatisfaction with your president, whatever. Not because they can't fix COVID. I mean, I think if you have any level of intellect, you know, it's not within Biden's power to fix COVID. But the way we're implementing and the way we're reacting to it and the way we're overreacting and making false promises and demanding false narratives go forward, people aren't buying it anymore.

They've lost credibility, like you said. And so now it's about how I can skirt the system. And now it's about how I can walk around these ridiculous barriers that are put up to nothing. And it's just sad. If we can just go, okay, here's some bad news and here's a way to plow through it. I think that's why people were willing to do pretty extreme things during the pandemic. That's right. But but the lingering because I could at least go, OK, if we flatten the curve, then we'll be OK. Nobody's mentioned flattening a curve in a long, long time, but that's what started this whole thing.

And so, you know, now, now, now, if we get vaccinated, now, if we wear masks, now, if we do, and now, if you've got a vax card and now, if you're, if big companies will just do it and now, and now, and they just keep moving the line, like a bully in the schoolyard going, come over and then step across the line. Then we'll fight now, now step across this line, then we'll fight. And you just keep moving the line. And that's, that's the ambivalence that creates the hopelessness. Because we no longer, you know, I've cried wolf too many times. I'm not stepping across the line anymore. I don't believe you anymore. That's exactly right. I love Commentary Magazine and their podcast,

and they were talking about how Governor Hochul in New York, she was giving a press conference where she was wearing a necklace that in large gold gold letters read vaxxed you know okay straight out of central casting and then um noah rothman was making the point oh no she's gonna need a charm a charm bracelet type necklace where it's like no boost it boost it again boost it against omicron go on forever but you mentioned the politician so i do think for sure it's one of the reasons joe biden the main reason joe biden's poll numbers are falling. And it's the reason Trump up as I know how to fix it. I will defeat COVID. And he hasn't. And I predict he will be held to account as well. And an interesting nugget for you. They just had the Democratic Governors Association winter meeting used to be called the

Christmas meeting. But now you got to call everything winter because Christmas is no, I made that up. They they were talking about how the party was defeated badly last last month in Virginia and had a closer than expected victory. Three points. Phil Murphy won the governorship in New Jersey where he was expected to sail in. And this is, I think, Politico reported that this has many Democrats searching for an off ramp to the pandemic that will allow them to sell a brighter future to voters in November. They spoke with Murphy. Apparently, he, in his most candid assessment of that tiny victory, slim margin, to date, he said, folks in New Jersey feel like government is not connecting

with them. They're sick of masks. This is a Democrat in blue New Jersey. They're sick of masks. They're being told what to do in terms of vaccines, probably not thrilled with what they sense is going on in Washington. They may have lost a job or a business that went bust or worse yet, a loved one. Yes, that's right. So that I find that somewhat encouraging. You know, I mean, you live in a state that I think people are generally more reasonable when it comes to covid in. But do you feel like this is the attitude you've already caught in Tennessee? I mean, because I feel like up here where I am starting to catch fire in little pockets. Well, regardless of the party, you know,

politicians promise that they're going to give us something. Statesmen promised that they're going to get out of the way and show us a way to go get something ourselves. And so that's what's happening around this. And again, red or blue doesn't matter. It's what's happening in Tennessee is our governor has just declared out loud that, okay, we all have the information. And so as adults, we get to make our choice based on the information. And you get to make a decision of you're going to mask, you're going to socially distance, you're going to do whatever with your company that you own, you're going to vax or not vax, you're going to make the decision with the information that you have instead of, so he's showing a way through and going, okay, we all have the same set of guidelines. I mean, we all have the same set

of data. It's very available. And then based on that, different people are coming to different conclusions because they're adults and they're allowed to function in this thing called freedom. And when you do that, you're a statesman and you're leading through a crisis or you're leading through towards prosperity. Probably one of the best to do that was Ronald Reagan. He didn't promise everybody anything. He didn't promise a chicken in every pot. He promised you the ability to go get a pot and get a chicken and put one in the pot. And that made me believe I am free in the free enterprise system, those wonderful thing, crazy experiment called America to go prosper. And so I could go prosper. I didn't

wait on them to send me a check. It's exactly the opposite mentality though, with some, I mean, I would say in this administration and just in general with some on the left, I mean, I, I would say in this administration and, and just in general with some on the left, which is, it's not about empowering you to do something that you want to go get something you want. It's about government giving you what you, what they think you need. And we're seeing that even now in the, even in the face of, you know, record debt and record, literally record inflation, um, and a souring mood in the country when it comes to hope and the pandemic

and so on. What do they want to do? They want to spend more. I mean, this has got to be your as a guy who hates debt more than anyone I've ever known. This has got to be driving you nuts that no sooner do we get the infrastructure bill passed, which was politically popular, two trillion trillion we well between one and two um now we got another one coming down the pike build back better which is basically a bunch of democrat wish list spending and really the only thing standing in between that and passage is joe mansion and maybe kirsten cinema so how's that going to help? Well, I think what we need to remember is John Maynard Keynes, Keynesian economics, was a socialist. He believed in socialism.

And he taught FDR, Keynesian economics. And so the FDR decided we're going to do the New Deal, and that's Keynesian economics, to spend our way, government spending, to stimulate the economy. And then that's been taught in our schools now for 60 to 70 years as truth. And the problem is it's not. That's the problem, that the government seldom spends an economy like never into prosperity. It's an illusion. And so the truth is the people pushing these things, they actually believe they're going to work. They're not trying to

scam somebody. They're not con artists. They just believe a lie. They believe that the best way to stimulate the economy is run the debt through the roof and use that money to build infrastructure and that'll stimulate the economy. But those of us that are more free market instead of Keynesian, we don't believe that. And we would be called capitalists. And we believe that lower debt, the government not being a tick on the butt of the economy and sucking the blood out of it with the debt payments is a better thing than huge piles of debt. And so whether it's Trump running up the debt to give something he promised or whether it's Biden running up the debt to give something he promised, but they're all wanting to

be grandpa and give us candy instead of demanding that we be adults in the marketplace and forge our way through this. And it is very possible to forge your way through it. I have, you know, bazillions of piles of data to prove that, that you can become a millionaire in America today, but it's not based on the government stimulating the economy. Yeah. I mean, think of how that would work in your own family budget. If you're in debt up to the eyeballs, just more the answer is spend more can you imagine what your what my husband would say abby what kevin would say kevin would not allow that no he's he's like you are dave very anti-debt all right but here's something fascinating just crossing the wires sir um nbc news

this is interesting nbc news is reporting that the senate is now expected to quote shelve the bbb the build back better bill um and that just yesterday they'd been saying that it's going to be they're going to get a vote on it they're going to get it approved by the end of the year before christmas um now they're saying according to nbc they're shelving it. I asked my team, is anybody else going with the same reporting? What we found so far is Bernie Sanders said as follows, quote, obviously voting rights. Oh, and NBC is reporting that now they're saying we're going to focus on voting rights instead. As if those two things, oh, you know, one has to go before the other. They don't.

That's not a pivot to something more important. That's you couldn't get the BBB passed. And now you're That's not a pivot to something more important. That's you couldn't get the BBB passed. And now you're trying to distract us with this other shiny thing. So apparently, Sanders says, quote, obviously, voting rights has got to be dealt with immediately. Obviously, Dave, obviously, voting rights has got to be dealt with immediately. I would like to see a Build Back Better dealt with as quickly as possible. But if we can't deal with it right now, it's far more important that we deal with the voting rights issue. I mean, if that's true and BBB is done because it's not coming back in the new year, not unless Biden solves the pandemic, somehow completely changes all of his poll numbers like it's not. thing for the GOP and a major setback for the Dems on a bill they'd been telling us we had to have to transform the economy. And the economy, in spite of inflation, is growing. I mean,

stock market's booming. So there's a lot of good things out here. Here's the sad truth. 80% of Americans, I just made that number up, 88% of statistics are made up on the spot. But my guess is most people couldn't give a rip about either one of these things because they know the BBB being passed or voting rights being passed is really not going to intrinsically affect their next 12 months of their life. Unless you got a job managing one of those lumps of cash that Washington's going to start doling out. Other than that, the rest of us out here, it's not going to affect my life today, but it just puts this weight on the economy.

And so they keep working on things that are not affecting the average person's life on a day-to-day basis, where you walk up to the gas pump and it was $2, now it's $5. Now that one's real. That affects people's life tomorrow, today, going to grandma's house for Christmas, filling up your tank costs twice as much. That's a real thing for somebody out here in the real world. Well, you look at the numbers and they're big. New cars cars it's just a couple examples new cars are up by 11.1 percent that you'd feel it's not like you're talking about a thing that costs a dollar to begin with up 11 on a 20 000 automobiles a lot beef up 20.9 oh that's a big number tvs 7.9 decorations we're all in the midst of those this time of year, 4.2%.

Whiskey days, now this is wrong, up 1.6%. What's up with that? Toys up 1.2%. And 10% to 30% increase in Christmas trees year over year, the cost of Christmas trees, my goodness. So people feel it, they know it, and they are left asking themselves the following questions. How do I pay those bills and still become a millionaire? Dave Ramsey has answers and he's laying them out in a new book and we're going to talk about it next. So don't go away. all in the same place now, which is Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. We are live every weekday at noon east. I listened to Dave earlier in the morning. And the full video show and clips are available of our show when you subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have to tell you, I mentioned that I read the reviews or on the Apple show spot. So if you subscribe and download, A, it helps me. And B, I get your feedback. There was the nicest note this morning. It was like, it was such a nice pick me up. I really appreciated it. It was very thoughtful from somebody who clearly listened to a lot of the shows and duh, it was brilliant. Anyway, go back and look at our archives while you're there. We've got more than 220 shows, including the very first time Dave was on, which was with us, episode 82. Dave, a couple of things breaking now. Now, apparently,

Elizabeth Warren is tweeting out something about how she wants she's going to introduce a bill to add four seats to the U.S. Supreme Court. Look over here, something shiny. It has nothing to do with the BBB falling apart. Shiny Supreme Court. That'll distract the conservative. It's never happening. That's not going to happen. Like, they're so transparent, right? In other good news, though, for Elizabeth Warren, one of her main talking points about greedy, greedy, greedy, greedy corporate America being to blame for the inflation. Right. She's like, it's definitely not me. And it's definitely not Joe Biden's policies. It's greedy, greedy, greedy corporate America, because apparently they weren't greedy, greedy, greedy last year or the year before or the year before that. Like, OK, I don't know. Like, did they just get greedy just under Biden just in the past three months? Her talking point made its way into Jen Psaki's mouth this week as Psaki tried to dismiss our inflationary woes, in particular in the meat industry, as follows. Listen. American families digest inflation is by price increases. And if you look at industry to industry, it's a little different. So, for example, the president, the secretary of agriculture have both spoken to what we've seen as the greed of

meat conglomerates. That is an area when people go to the grocery store and they're trying to buy a pound of meat, two pounds of meat, 10 pounds of meat. It is the prices are higher. That is, in his view and the view of our secretary of Agriculture because of, you could call it corporate greed short. You could call it jacking up prices during a pandemic. There are other areas where we've seen increases because of supply chain issues. And we're seeing those increases around the world as it relates to gas prices, oil supply, and things along those lines. So I would say there's some areas where we have seen corporations benefit profit from the pandemic. Wow. So just as a recap, you know, we passed infrastructure spending, which is over a trillion. Prior to that, they spent one point nine trillion on the

American Rescue Plan. And in there, there were a bunch of goodies for American meat providers. They actually gave them six hundred million million worth of subsidies because they were flailing in response to the pandemic. So it's like they're flailing or they're greedy corporate overlords. If they're greedy corporate overlords, why do you give them $600 million? You explain to me what's going on here with respect to our greedy corporate overlords in the meat industry and elsewhere, Dave Ramsey. Well, I mean, that's obviously a false narrative. That's ridiculous. There's always been greed. There will always be greed. But here's the thing. If one producer of beef raised their prices to the level they are now, and the rest of them saw an opportunity to sell more beef by not raising their prices and undercutting their competition, the power of the marketplace would

cause the prices to correct themselves. And so greed doesn't work as an explanation for price increases. You'd have to get the entire industry to collude, which is virtually impossible, number one. But number two, in that industry, getting a bunch of ranchers to collude on something and agree on anything, not a chance. So it's just ridiculous. The marketplace would have corrected the greed is what I'm saying. And so it's not marketplace driven. It's not greed driven. It's cost of goods drove the price up. And the reason cost of goods drove the price up is you have to put those cattle on a truck. And the cost of that truck has gone through the roof because there's a shortage of drivers.

Because the diesel you put in the tank is doubled. And this is all reflected in your beef prices because we need electric cars to replace everything according to the energy. And so we're going to cut off all the gasoline and the diesel and create a shortage of that and drive the prices up. And guess what? That shows up in every item you purchase. This is what, I mean, this is sort of their MO is like, you don't believe your lying eyes. You know, it's not what you what you think, you know, whether it's CRT in schools or the COVID madness or the economy, they can't continue to deny the inflation. It's transitory. It's transitory. Now they admit it's not transitory. Well, it's not our fault. It's corporate greed. Well, why did you subsidize them for six hundred million? Oh, well, I don't look over here.

And by the way, Elizabeth Warren, four seats on the Supreme Court. Did we mention that? We're going to get you four seats in the Supreme Court. We're going to get Judge Judy. We're going to get Judge Joe Brown. We're going to get. OK, I could go on. Let's talk about how who wants to be a millionaire.

That one was taken that title, I guess. But people really are hurting, right? hurting especially this year you feel like because right now ideally you've bought your christmas presents and you're a loving kind generous person so you spent a fair amount of money and now you're having like a little regret because you may have spent more than you wanted to maybe you didn't't do the Dave Ramsey budget, as he's told you a million times you should do. And you're like, oh, God, it's not returnable. It's a new year, new me. That me could be a millionaire?

How? Well, the only thing you can control is the controllables. And you've got to control the controllables. The good news is most of those are in your mirror. In Baby Steps Millionaires, we put the largest study ever done of millionaires in North America that we did with Airtight Research a couple of years ago. We put it in the appendix of the book so that people can read it. An interesting item of that is, as we studied over 10,000 millionaires, we asked them, can someone become a millionaire? Do you believe you can become a millionaire? 97% of them said they believe that most people can become a millionaire.

When we surveyed the general public, 69% believed that they could become a millionaire. Now, what that belief leads you to do is to control the controllables. I can control the person in my mirror. I cannot overspend. I can work extra. I can save. I can't control what happens in the White House, but I can control what happens in my house. And if I'll concentrate on my house instead of waiting on the White House or the island of misfit toys known as Congress to fix my life, then I can move the needle and go forward.

I can control the budget. I can control the budget. I can control purchases. I can control whether we go on a vacation or not. And oddly enough, when you start deciding you can control it, you do control it, then you'll get out of debt and you'll put yourself in a position to begin investing over a long period of time. And the typical millionaire becomes a millionaire in about 17 years from the time they start the process. And we've been teaching this for 30 years. And so I've got tens of thousands of people all over America following the Ramsey process that have become baby steps, millionaires following our baby steps. And what, what do they do? They said, this is a proven thing. If I do this and I do this and I do this and I do this,

and none of it was looking for someone else to fix their life. In every case, they said, this is a proven thing. If I do this and I do this and I do this and I do this, and none of it was looking for someone else to fix their life. In every case, they said, I can't. There's bad things out there. They're real. The cost of meat is up. The cost of toys are up. The cost of decorations are up.

Those are real things. I can't fix those. But what I can fix is my reaction to those and how we adjust our household based on that and how we weather the storm of inflation, whether it's transitory, whether it's permanent. You get used to the concept, the little concept known as I can't afford that, which is one of my favorite lines ever from an old episode of Cheers where Woody, the bartender, is dating the super rich Kelly. He's trying to explain to her he can't get her the big old wedding ring and the engagement ring. And she doesn't understand that.

And she's like, oh, wait, it's like that time daddy couldn't buy shell oil. All right. Stand by, Dave. Much more with you and your plan right after this. Don't go away. All right, Dave. So can we just start with what does it mean to be a millionaire? Is it like, I have now earned enough collectively in my paychecks over the years that it equals the number 1 million? Or is it something else? No, it is not that at all. It is not an income

issue. It's net worth. There's only one definition. It's an accounting function. It's an accounting definition. And it's your net worth. Your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities. What you own minus what you owe. And when that equals $1 million or greater, you're a millionaire. It's not a moral construct about whether the rich are evil. It's not a statement that a million dollars is enough. It's not a statement that a million dollars is enough. It's not a statement that a million dollars is too much. It's just a statement that the number in the corner of the balance sheet, assets minus liabilities, what you own minus what you owe equals $1 million. And very few millionaires ever made a million dollars, almost none of them.

Oh, in other words, they got it by investing. Yeah. I mean, the one third of the millionaires that we studied never had a household income greater than $100,000. Wow. One third of them. And so 67%, most of them fall in the $100,000 to $300,000 range. And so now, obviously, someone that makes a million dollars, they're much more rare if you make a million dollars a year. But you're not a millionaire based on your income. You're not a billionaire based on your income. It is a statement of net worth. It's a factual thing. It's not really up for argument. Now, you can argue about what it means and you can argue about how you get there. But that is what a millionaire is. You know what? Can we take a call now? Because

I actually see Maggie in Pennsylvania has an interesting thought related to you, Dave. Hi, Maggie. What's on your mind? Oh, hey, I love listening to Dave Ramsey. And I agree with him completely. Well, I'm a Trump supporter. We don't sit around and kind of let that news kind of subsiderate. We're worker bees. And I work really hard. I'm a real estate agent. And about five years ago, I had $200,000 in the bank and I had credit cards. I got rid of my credit cards, like Dave said to do. And then I did inherit $200,000 when my mom passed away at 98. But I am just shy of a millionaire. And my biggest coach is my son, Andrew, who's in wealth management. And Dave, you'll appreciate this. He calls, he calls my son will say, keep talking to mom, keep talking to keep talking to. So So every month I put something away. And I know a lot of real estate agents, they've worked 20, 40 years. They have nothing.

They spend every dime. They drive a fancy Mercedes. I drive a Subaru Outback. I just sold my other one for like 100,000 miles. I mean, it's how you live. And a lot of it is um a lot of it's guided by faith as well um how old are you um uh well i'm old i'm 70 dave you're 70 and how how much do you weigh maggie no i'm serious you're you're but you became a millionaire how many years ago

um just this year just this year okay my mom i'm so proud of you my mom was 98 and she had a million dollars in the bank and she lived on her investments she had a motor home she didn't live she wanted to give us all something and she did pass away at 98 but it's not like it's not like i think i could retire i I'm afraid I'd spend too much. And like my son says, I have no hobbies. So I might as well just keep working in Pittsburgh as long as I can stand what's happening to our whole family. Well, you know what else? If you stop working, it's like pretty quickly the mind goes to mush. I mean, it's like you really have to stay focused on something if you want to stay sharp and interesting to other people. Congrats, Megan. It's awesome news. So, I mean, that's the thing, Dave, is like, you've done this for a lot of people. You've helped a lot of people do this. First, get out of debt and get a bell rung. And second, actually hit the million dollar mark. So what's the first, like, people who right now are saddled in the red, which is most Americans, feeling like, that's never going to happen to me. I'm not going to get an inheritance. I'm never going to be able

to get out of this mountain red facing me, especially after the Christmas season. The very first thing they need to do, let's say, if not tomorrow, then January 1. Well, I mean, you need to get a written game plan and say, okay, what creates wealth? All of the data that we have indicates that your most powerful wealth building tool is your income. And when you give your income away to someone else, to Sally Mae, to MasterCard, to General Motors, in the form of payments, you don't have your income anymore. And in other words, you're spending everything you make on debt payments. And so it's why Dave Ramsey became famous for getting people out of debt. I didn't start out to just get people out of debt. I wanted them to get out of debt so that they had their income.

And with that income, without at all going to some stupid company out there, you've got the money to be generous. You've got the money to invest. And that creates the millionaire. So what we found is that the typical millionaire that we studied ended up with about a million and a half dollar net worth. And about $ 500,000 of that was their paid off home. They had zero debt of any kind. And about a million of it was in their 401k and their Roth IRAs. And so about a third, two thirds roughly. Now, if you get up over $5 million net worth, we start seeing those ratios

change. But the first one to 5 million, it pretty well laid out about that way. It was simply get your house paid off and fill up your 401k. And over a period of 10 to 15 years, you're going to have a net worth of a million dollars. So don't get discouraged if you don't have your debt paid off in six months. It's going to take a while. But the point is to just chip, chip, chip away. But at the same time, tighten your belt around the house. Yeah. And it's just, it's a temporary thing. It's live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else. I'm not asking people to live in a cave, collect Lent and never come out for 30 years. But I am saying, hey, for two years, let's turn up the heat here. Let's get rid of the debt. If you didn't have any payments, what would it be like?

Wow. The numbers change in the typical person's budget dramatically. And so one guy I was looking at the other day, he goes, I got $1,200 in payments. If I just got rid of those, that $1,200 would afford me a great life and enough money to invest and become rich. Don't you find that we only fool ourselves into believing we need the accumulation of these material things? And it's like, if you ever, if life ever gives you a reality check, but it bounces you back a little financially or what have you, it's a gift because you quickly realize I don't need any of that nonsense. I'm actually perfectly happy living at a lower

standard of quote living, uh, than I, than I had before. Well, I mean, I'll call her there. She's driving a Subaru instead of a Mercedes, and she's perfectly happy. And it's almost a badge of honor for her. And that's fine. And there's nothing wrong with having a nice car. The problem is when spiritually or mathematically, the nice car has you. And so you're right. I think the most powerful financial principle that can lead someone to wealth is contentment. This idea that I'm okay. I'm okay. And so I don't mind getting a car.

I do mind the car getting me. So can I tell you, yesterday I went to a memorial service for a friend of mine. He was just a gentleman of a man. His name was Stu Snyder. And he died at 72, surrounded by family and friends um died of cancer and at his memorial service people were you know in in a great way making fun of him and some of his habits during life he was a lawyer and uh sort of a local lawyer who helped people got who got into trouble and got into trouble. And he never met a stranger. He loved everyone. And one of the things they were mocking lovingly was his car. He never switched out his car. He just had the oldest, most beat up cars, 20 years old. And

his brother had to sit on the bumper to get it started. And they literally said at one point, he had a windshield wiper, but he was operating it through the sunroof of his car with a string. So he would just pull the string to make the windshield wiper go in front of the car. You would have been proud. But the thing is, you look back at Stu Snyder, and I'm sure he could have had bigger jobs at bigger law firms in bigger cities with bigger paychecks. And what did he want? He wanted to spend his life with his family. And it was so crowded at this memorial service, David. This wasn't a 22 year old there's 72 year old man um you couldn't even get in there was a standing room only they were they were

falling out on the street just trying to get an earful at the microphone uh at the speaker to just to hear something about this man that they whose lives he had touched so many of right like all of us he had made an impact on us because he created a life in which he had time to do that to form connections to be his normal warm gregar self, to prioritize friends and family over the almighty dollar. And riches did come in many other ways. And he had a beautiful home. It's not to say he was living like a pauper, but he was not the guy who had the fancy air conditioning and heating and the best car and the blah, blah, blah. He wasn't.

He made different choices and he was happy as they come. Yeah. And there's nothing to say you can't have nice things. You can have nice things and be happy. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that we're going to be happy when we get the nice things. Now, because that's a bully in the schoolyard. Again, that's going to move on you. I'll be happy when, if you start that phrase coming out of your mouth, you're about to have trouble with happy. And so, yeah, but again, I'm not anti nice car. I really don't want to drive a car with a string on the sunroof. I don't want that. And I don't want that. I don't want that to be your goal in life to live that. If you want to do that, I'm fine with it. That's a wonderful testimony. But, you know,

I always tell people, they say, I'm driving my Dave Ramsey car. And that means a junk car, right? While they're getting out of debt. And I'm, no, your Dave Ramsey car is the nice one you get when you become wealthy because you did what I told you to do. That's your Dave Ramsey car. That's right. Don't mess with my brand. Let's get into somebody else. Evan from Colorado is calling with an interesting question. Hi, Evan. What's your question for Dave? Hey, so I am a longtime Dave Ramsey follower. I'm on Baby Steps 4, 5, and 6. And I own my own business along with my wife owns her own business as well.

I have seen an extreme increase in all the products that I buy as far as price goes. And I'm stuck in this weird situation where I don't want to raise the prices for my customers, especially my long-term customers, my builders I work for. But at the same time, it's cutting my profits from 20% where I would like to be down to 5% or sometimes even less. You don't have a choice. Your cost of goods sold has gone up. And so your price is going to go up. And it's not your fault. You're not greedy.

And you're not greedy corporate America taking advantage of people. Your costs have gone up. And so your price is going to go up. And guess what? You're everybody out there right now. Everybody has to. I mean, the cost of paper to print a book has gone up. And so you get ready to everybody out there right now. Everybody has to. I mean, the cost of paper to print a book has gone up. And so you get ready to buy a book this year. They're $25 last year.

They're going to be $30 this year. And because of the cost of what I pay to print that book is gone up dramatically. And so you don't have a choice. You're not doing anything morally wrong. I appreciate your sentiment that you don't want to raise the prices to your customer, but you won't be there in business anymore to serve your customer if you don't. What about Dave, if they decide to go to somebody else, like if he has a competitor who doesn't raise his price? His competitor has the same problem. His competitor has got that same cost of goods sold. If his competitor wants to work for nothing, it'll be short-lived. If you work at zero margins, eventually you go out of business. And if it doesn't make a profit, it's not a business,

it's a hobby. And so you don't have a choice. The marketplace is driving these things. And it's not your greed. You didn't do anything like you just suddenly woke up one morning and went, I'm going to raise my prices. But you go, man, I got to stay open. And in order to do that, I've got to absorb, the customer's going to absorb these additional costs. And it may change the demand on the product. It may change the number of customers you have, but I don't think you're going to have a competitor undercut you because they're getting their stuff from the same place. Yeah. It's all the same industry. Evan, thank you. How about Jordan in Florida? Who's got a question about, well, maybe it's a question, maybe it's a comment about selling your house. Jordan, what's the story?

Yes. Hi, Dave. So my story is I'm 30 years old. I just sold a house, which I'm so happy I did in the market, you know, where it was. Bought the house two years ago, and I ended up making a profit of $114,000 profit way to go thank you and then I have since then completely paid off my student loans as well as all my credit card debt before I did that I actually refi you know I did the thing I've been you know since I was 18 but racking up credit card debt just living that stupid you know kind of I was 18, been racking up credit card debt, just living that stupid, you know, kind of adolescent life. And then I was able to kind of consolidate it all. And then I had, you know, the one lump sum type thing that I'm just not going to do it anymore after paying off my high interest for a while. So I'm completely out of credit card and student loan debt, which I cannot tell you when I hit pay on both of those things this felt like my soul like a bad part of my soul left my body so it was gratifying but my other quick so I did buy a new house and unfortunately you

know the way that it is the house is probably I probably overpaid for it and my mortgage payment has gone up pretty substantially, but I have $30,000 less in those amount of payments that I'm doing. So what is your advice? I mean, now I have just a car and my home, and those are the only two things that I'm making payments on now. Is there anything else? You've made some good moves, man. Excellent job. Well, of course, you know, we're going to tell you going to get the car paid off as fast as possible. That's finishing what we call baby step two to become debt free, not counting the house. Baby step three is make sure you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And then let's start putting 15% of your household income

away towards retirement in good growth stock mutual funds and Roth IRAs, Roth 401ks with a match, those kinds of things. And if you'll follow those steps right up without that car payment and that emergency fund in place, that 15% going into retirement is not going to feel like anything. It's going to feel like you've still got a lot of room left in your budget because you do. Even if you got a little pinch on the house payment going up because you went up a little in-house, you're still going to be fine. And at your age, you're going to retire with an awful lot of money if you put 15% of your income into mutual funds

and you run that in a retirement calculator, you're going to find that number to be millions of dollars. Yeah, and I really appreciate that. I actually have a car payment or my company is giving me a car allowance of more than double what my car payment is. They're going to give that to you, honey, whether you have a car payment or not. So get rid of the car payment. Right.

Right. I know that is a really good, that's a good point there. And I have been actually saving since I started when I was 20, when I was 23 years old, I've been putting about 10% of my pay in a retirement account. So it's not, not easy. How much is in there? I have about a hundred thousand dollars in there retirement account. How much is in there? I have about $100,000 in there right now.

Way to go. That's 30. All right, Jordan, keep stocking that cash away because I want to get another call in. Linda from New York. That could be my mom. Linda, what's on your mind? Hi. Hi, Megan. Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking

my call. I've followed Dave's principles for years, my husband and I have. We're now in our 60s, and I feel like I've been a little duped about the retirement idea in the sense that we have about a million and a half, and it's going to be eaten away by inflation. That's my concern. And taxes, because we utilize 401ks to bring the income down, but now we're going to pay taxes on everything we use. And we're limited in how much we can use of it by how much you can take out a year and these kinds of things. So I feel like it's a little bit of an American dream that's not really true, and it's gotten worse by inflation.

So I'm just wondering your thoughts on, so you've got all this stuff in retirement accounts now, but the taxes are going to be brutal. Yeah, he's got it. And inflation. I share your emotions. I share your emotions, but the facts are that you are not duped. The facts are, honey, you got a million and a half dollars. That's a fact. And the fact is that inflation is going to be here and it's not going to be here at this level. I don't predict. I mean, I'm in my 60s. I'm 61. And I don't think I'm going to face double digit inflation like the

Carter administration, because as we talked about earlier in last segment, I think most of this is going to go away over time. I don't know what period of time, but you're going to be just fine. And, you know, I think what's happening is, is you're hearing about inflation and everybody's going, wow. And you're hearing about taxes and the Biden administration raising taxes on rich, evil, rich people like you. And you're worried about that. But still, even if both of those things occur at some level, they're not going to be up there far enough to harm you. You built yourself a great nest egg.

You are a hero. Way to go. Did you inherit any money? No, we've never inherited a dime. I think we inherited five grand at one point. That's it. Rock on, sister. You're a baby steps millionaire. You're an everyday millionaire. We see them everywhere just like you. And it doesn't feel rich because it's not a feeling. It's a math thing.

I wish you could have spent more time with another Linda in New York who is definitely not a million dollars. That's my mom in upstate New York. She's got me, so she'll be okay. But she was not much of a saver, Linda. Thank you for calling in and good luck with it. Hopefully transitory will in fact be the case. We're going to have much more with Dave Ramsey in a moment. We want to hear from you too. You can still call in and ask questions about saving money, holiday spending, or anything you want to talk about. 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. And believe it or not, after the break, I'm going to be asking Dave about Ben Affleck and Elon Musk. I'll explain moments away.

So Dave, in addition to being a financial guru, you are a Christian man, God-loving man. And I wanted to ask you some, some cultural questions, which I'd love to get your take on. The first one I was just ticked off about. And I'm like, I want to talk about it with Dave. I want to talk about it with America. I want to talk about it with anybody who will talk about it with me. And that is the subject of Ben Affleck. Okay. This is a right. This is coming at you from left field. Ben Affleck is one of the luckiest men in america because he was married to jennifer garner and she's america's sweetheart she's the nicest person

now i happen to know that jennifer garner has been through a lot over the past couple of years in a way that she's never disclosed to anybody but she is a stoic strong powerful reserved private person and her marriage to ben affleck fell apart, according to reports, largely due to his alcoholism. She took him to rehab. They have a couple of daughters together. She stood by him. The marriage fell apart. Now he's, of course, with J-Lo. He's back with his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, who I believe is clearly using him just to change the press because her boyfriend A-Rod cheated on her and she didn't want that headline. They're still together, J-Lo and Ben Affleck. I'm going someplace with this, Dave. Stand by. And what does Ben Affleck

do, right? He should be on his knees every night thanking God that he had the chance to marry Jennifer Garner and have children with Jennifer Garner and that she helped him eventually get his life straight. But no, that's not what happened. He went on our friend Howard Stern show right here at Sirius XM, and he started talking about Jennifer Garner in ways that upset me, Dave, in ways that upset me. Here's a clip. We probably had each other's thoughts. I'd probably still be drinking. You know, like it was just part of why I started drinking alcoholically because I was trapped. The truth was we took our time. We made the decision. We didn't want to show we grew apart. We had a marriage that didn't work. This happens. I was trapped. You know, I was like, I can't leave because of my kids, but I'm not happy. What do I do? And what I did was like, you know, drink a bottle of scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out to be the solution. Okay. Here's why I don't like it. To put it charitably, it is not a classy thing

to do, to have your first marriage fall apart due to your alcoholism. And then when that person tried to help you through it and never badmouth you in the press, come out and say, when I was married to her, I felt trapped. And if I were still married to her, I'd still be drinking. And I only wanted to stay in the marriage for as long as I did because of those kids. But looking over at her, all I felt was trapped. It is the height of unclassy to be charitable again and put it in the nicest terms. And I thought you as a good husband, a good father, do you have any thoughts on this, Dave? And please let them be what I want them to be. I don't have a thought in the world about those people. I don't

know anything about people like that. Bless their hearts. What a mess. Regular people out here in the real world, we don't know how that kind of stuff works. Oh, Mike. Well, let me tell you, it works like this. Everything's a PR effort until you've talked to Howard Stern, you let your guard down, you stay up on such stupid stuff that ticks off America. Because let me tell you, looking at the reaction online, the women of America are mad. They mad. They're mad at Ben Affleck because that's not an okay thing to do. Hashtag team Jennifer Garner. Not Jennifer Lopez, team Jennifer Garner. All right, let me try another one with you because I got to get to this too. There was, you know, Ben Shapiro. Well, he's got a little sister, which I actually didn't know. And she's out there on online on Twitter. And she goes by classically Abby. He's got his own Abby. And she sent out a tweet that when she got ratioed for it, meaning Twitter didn't like it. Twitter is a far left place. And it showed a picture of Madonna, who is 63 on the left, and Nancy Reagan, who is 64 on the right. Nancy's at, I don't know,

maybe the Reagan Ranch. She's got her horizontal striped shirt on. She's got her red sweater. You can't see any skin. She's wearing a hat. Madonna never looks like I just described. She's wearing next to nothing. She's got fishnet stockings or something like it, high heels. She's in a bed. She's showing a nipple, much of the other breast. And they're basically the same age as her point she's making. And she wrote something to the effect of trashy living versus classic living. Which version of yourself do you want to be? Well, the liberals on Twitter did not like this. They did not like her sort of throwing any judgment at Madonna for trying to remain sexy. But I have to say, I get her point,

because I think there's a difference. You can still look sexy at any age. 64, Jane Fonda's in her 80s. We've had our dustups, but she still looks beautiful. You can look sexy at any age age but there is a difference between looking sexy and looking trashy and i think the trashiness is what abby was picking up on in the photo take that one dave ramsey let's see let's see what you got you're asking me about looking sexy now that's funny will you tell me what would you like to see would you like to see the fish i am an old Now that's funny. Will you tell me what would you like to see? Would you like to see the fish? I am an old grandpa, southern gentleman, and I have a four-year-old and a five-year-old and a six-year-old granddaughter.

And I sure hope they turn out more like the lady on the right in the picture. To me, it's kind of sad because I didn't know Madonna was this needy. I would think at this point in one's life when you have that much money and that much success, that much access to whatever you want, you wouldn't need the affirmations of people who still need to see you at your AARP card

in your stockings. I worry about me when I'm not the spotlight anymore because I think I might be more needy than I thought. You showing your boobs on Twitter? I like attention. I like attention. Not that kind of attention, but I like attention. And I guess we all like affirmation and attention. And, you know, she was a sex goddess back in MTV days and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And I guess she just wants people to love her still the way they used to love her. I know, but we do. We can love her without that. That's the thing. So like, I get it. I took some saucy photos when I was 40 for GQ. You know, I'm kind of okay with my brand maturing and aging. Look, there are a lot of pressures on women in particular, women entertainers. And especially if you've made your name by being a sex pot, where do you go?

Right? You got, but that too, like our COVID policies needs an off ramp. It's not that you have to stop being sexy. You know, I actually had my team pull some pictures of women who I think look incredibly sexy. Past 60s, Sophia Loren, Christy Brinkley, Michelle Pfeiffer, who I mean, God, please give me some of what she's drinking because they look amazing. Yes, they admit Christy came on my NBC show, admitted she she does some stuff some fillers and so on. My point is they can look sexy without looking trashy. And that's a fine line that you gotta,

you know, we don't always nail it, but I think Twitter should have sort of sat back and reflected rather than trying to kill classically Abby. All right. Don't ask Twitter to step back and reflect. That's an unrealistic request. You raise a good point. Okay, but I got one for you.

I got a different one for you that I've been thinking about this weekend. As a man of faith, what do you talk about? What do you think about when you see an event like we saw over the past few days in Kentucky and Tennessee and with these tornadoes and this devastation and now 74 plus dead, we're waiting on confirmations for many, many others, babies, toddlers, you know, who had no chance. Those are the moments where your faith gets rocked, right? Where you say, why, why, how could a loving God allow it? Right? You hear questions like that. And how do you, at this point in your life, resolve those? Well, I don't think you have to be a person of faith for your heart to be broken by that.

All of us that have a heart, our hearts broken looking at those pictures, they just take the breath away. And especially when there's a child involved, it's just unbelievable. And so, you know, I guess I've worked this side of the camera so long now that what I always end up seeing around these things is I always end up seeing God show up in his people. And those are the people that come to do the rescues. And those are the people that drive from another state with a pickup full of groceries and hand them out. And those are the people who take someone who lost their home into their home until they can do something else and uh there's always heroes and there's always the hand of god showing up through that that way uh in response to what is

a natural disaster um you know we're pretty sure god allows all of us to die we're all going to die it's just a matter of how and when and it's a matter of how people around us are going to react. And so about all I can do is just catch somebody when they're hurting and try to be there for them. Yeah. The death of a child, of an infant to a natural disaster is hard to square. If you think, this is where I get caught up as somebody who's I'm I'm probably not as faithful as you are but I am a woman of faith I'm catholic I believe in God I haven't figured out free will and God and all of it I know we have free will I know not everything's predetermined but but you think of a loving God if he sent the helpers why didn't he why didn't he do something to stop the tornado

in the first place why didn't he do something to get the babies out of harm's way? Why, you know, why wasn't there an intervention or a steering of his humans earlier and in a way that could have prevented the tragedy in the first place? Now there's that on every tragedy since humankind was born. And we've been asking that same question. Why would he allow cancer? Why would he take my wife? Why would he take my husband? And yet, and these are the great mysteries that we all, that's part of what faith is, is in spite of not understanding everything, I still believe. And so I guess I'm going to have some great conversations with Jesus when I get there. Gosh, I don't know. It's like I ask myself all

those questions and part of faith is choosing to believe anyway. But it's like, what do I do in response? First thing I see, or the first thing I do in response to a story like that, I pray. Pray to God, pray to God to help them, pray to God to not let it happen in other places, pray to God for healing, whatever, to get them the resources they need, then try to help them pray to god to not let it happen in other places you know pray to god for healing whatever to get them the resources they need then try to help so it's it's one of those things where it's sort of if faith is baked into you at a young age i think it's tough to disabuse yourself of it and why would you want to then events come in your life or others lives that force you to challenge it or test it or reassess it um i've been lucky enough not to been not to have been disabused from it,

nor do I have any wish to, but you hear talk of it come up in response to events like this. And I hear atheists raise it all the time after we have a tragedy like this. I think people are searching, searching, searching, especially around the holidays, Dave. Depression goes up, loneliness goes up, people feel more isolated from one another. It's very true. And I've lived a portion of my adult life without faith and a larger portion with faith and having a better life this way. So I'm going to continue it. But it doesn't feed, it doesn't grow unless you feed it. You know, you have to nurture it. I've been getting back to mass on Sundays and it's been helping. I have to say, it's been really helping. Our priest is great with the kids and the kids that are actually enjoying church,

which is a switch from when I was a kid where it was like, oh my God, how much longer? The most exciting thing was putting the five bucks in the offering basket. You know, it was like, oh, finally I get to do something. I understand um okay let's talk about you were a kid that wouldn't sit still in church if i could drag look if i if they gave me something to do back to our need for attention our mutual need that we share with madonna um they won't let us dress like that in church but yeah if i could if they give me something to do i would have like i would have been an altar girl we weren't really doing that back in the 70s um but no i just said to sit there and listen somebody else perform i was bored um let's talk about money because i want to ask you a question about taxes okay

everybody's worried about taxes we're going into tax season when we come back for from the holiday and um that was actually one of the big knocks on build back better was that it was going to wind up taxing a bunch of people just to underscore we haven't yet confirmed this independently confirmed this independently. It just looks like from the NBC report and the Elizabeth Warren tweet. It's done. Further updates to follow. that you never thought knew you were spending, right? And they say it's not going to affect anybody under 400,000, but the reality is it is. It is going to blow back on people who make under four. And it's even going to blow back on people like Elon Musk, who make billions. There's a funny Twitter exchange between Elon

and our friend Elizabeth Warren, who's been kind of the second star of the show after you. She tweeted out, let's change the rigged tax code so the person of the year, because Elon Musk was voted person of the year by time, will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off of everyone else. Then Elon Musk responded with a series of tweets, quote, and if you opened your eyes for two seconds, you would realize I pay more taxes than any American in history.

I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year. Follows up, don't spend it all at once. He's saying to her. Oh, wait, you did already. Then he follows up again. Musk retweeting an article from Fox News about Senator Warren posing as a Native American with the following message. This is Elon.

Stop projecting. Stop projecting to the world. And then he says, you remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason. And then the final, please don't yell at me, Senator Karen. So Elon's mad because he does pay a lot in taxes. So your thought on whether the rich does bear less than its fair share and on whether these big, big policies will trickle down to

the non-Elon Musks of the world? Well, I think we have to define fair share if you want to have this discussion. And that's the problem with some of the narratives that are out there on this idea of wealth redistribution through taxation. Fair share from a guy that grew up in my neighborhood would be everybody got the same. And so that would be like a flat tax. And in America today, we have 48% of Americans that pay zero federal income tax. I'm not sure how that's fair unless you say, well, people shouldn't have to pay any taxes, and that's fair unless they make a certain amount, which is obviously what the current tax code says. And beyond that, people that make $30,000 or $40,000 a year and have four kids actually

get money from the government with the unearned income tax credit that they didn't pay in. And so not only are they not paying taxes, they're receiving tax money back that was not withheld from their check in the first place. And so, you know, and that's fair. So, you know, what's unfair to me, what's immoral is that these policies and discussions of these policies take someone like our last caller, Linda, who has saved her whole life, inherited zero, has a million and a half, and her two primary fears that she'd been sold a bill of goods, that inflation was going to steal her money, and taxes, increased taxes were going to steal her money. Well, she's a millionaire.

She should have her taxes increased, says the fair share crowd. Well, Linda doesn't think that's fair. Yeah, and you can understand why. We'll see. That one, again, for now, appears to have been staved off. I want to get some callers back in. We're going to kick it off with Dale in Iowa. Dale, what's on your mind?

Hey, so when you were talking about the Ben Affleck thing, and this goes back to Dave, 12 years ago, my wife and I joined arm in arm, did the start, we read the Total Money Makeover, went to a class through our church. And lo and behold, 11 years ago, we did our debt-free scream. But the big thing was we were partners. Our marriage got better. Our financial future got better. Most importantly, we gave a legacy to our adult children. They use the system. We still use the envelope system. We still use coupons and stuff like that, but it's the partner, the partner you choose in life.

That's amazing. Way to tie it all together for me, Dale. Sorry, go ahead, Dave. I said he wasn't living under the curse of being a Hollywood icon. Well, it's true. I mean, that is, I think, more of a curse than a blessing, which a lot of these stars find out. And then they turn to drugs and alcohol to try to fill the empty voids that they tried to fill with a Hollywood film career that was never going to do the filling. Yeah. Way to go, man. I'm proud of you.

Good dad. Good husband. Well done, American. You took care of your family. You built wealth. You are why I come on the radio every day. Dave, can you explain, for people who aren't familiar with it? We talked about the last time the envelope method.

Oh, it's grandma's old method. We use it sparingly today. Most of what we do is digital. But the old method of you take a series of envelopes and you write on the outside a subject line in the budget. For instance, the food envelope. You put the amount that you're going to spend on food this week. For instance, the food envelope, you put the amount that you're going to spend on food this week or this month in the food envelope in cash. And when you go to the grocery store, when you run out of cash, you stop spending.

And so you have to budget and not go over your budget. The envelope, the real cash keeps you from going over your budget. There's a few items we still do that way. Clothing purchases, if you're in person and not online, is a great way to keep you from overspending. And also enjoying purchasing the piece of clothing because you know it's in the budget and you know you're not being irresponsible. You know you're not going to have a financial hangover from this purchase when you get home. So you can enjoy the spending. And you can purchase, because I mean, when we were broke, Megan, I remember going to the grocery store and when I was buying basic stuff for our family with my wife, I wasn't sure if we were going to have the money to pay the light bill when we got home because we bought groceries.

But when you've got it categorized out and you know you're not going over the budget, then you know the light bill is going to be paid and the groceries are going to be purchased. And wow, there's a lot of peace there. Yeah. I can say the same, having been through a period where I had no money and now having money, sometimes the one luxury you afford yourself when you are watching your budget and you budget in something small that you can get and you get it, it can be so much more meaningful to you than when you have a bunch of money and you can have many of such things. Like that is something about not having money that you probably may not appreciate, but just like the value of hard work, the value of a job well done manifested in an item you

didn't know that you could afford or get or bring into your world. And then it's there, right? Because of you, because of your planning, because of your work. It's a good feeling. Yeah, the young folks call that adulting. Adulting. Right? It's now become a verb to be an adult.

But adults devise a plan and follow it. Children do what feels good. And I've been a child in an adult body before. Sometimes I still am. But most of the time I try to be an adult and I'm just going to devise a plan and follow it that takes me and gives me the life that I want for me and mine. He's an adult, an adult body that he will not call sexy. We have more with Dave.

We're going to do all calls next. So call on in. Now's your chance. 833-44-MEGYN. 833-446-3496. Don't go away. Dave, Anita from Texas has got a question for you about her house. Hi, Anita. Hey, how are y'all doing today? Good. How you doing? What's your question for Dave?

Well, my husband and I are both self-employed. He's in commercial real estate. And we just had the floor pulled out from underneath us last year. Because when you're on commission and you don't get paid, it was a rough year. But we're real lucky in that we have a house that we built about 14 years ago. And we've outgrown it. We're empty nesters now. And my question is this.

When we sell our house, because it's appreciated so much in this crazy market, we can pull a whole bunch of cash once we sell. I mean, we're talking probably over half a million dollars. So we're really lucky in that that investment's been really good. So this is my question. Oh, I know. That's a good thing, but, you know, we're house poor. So my question is really guidance for in this crazy market, are we better off to sell our house and pull out our equity and maybe sit on the sidelines and wait for the prices to go down?

I mean, we're looking at probably having to put a new roof on, replace the windows just because of the age of the house. And my husband thinks that you've got to stay in there just because we can't afford necessarily, we're not going to be able to buy a really good price house right now because the market where we are in Texas is so hot. So, you know, financially, what's the best move for us to make? I suspect the increase in prices that we've seen is going to slow, but I don't think we're going to see housing go down in value. We've really only seen that one time in about 70 years, and that was 2008. And it snapped back pretty quick. So I don't think

you're going to see a correction downward. I think what you will see over the next three to five years is the market's going to calm down and go back to more of a normal rhythm than this crazy white hot thing we're dealing with right now. So if you're going to sell this house, it's a great time to sell. The downside, as you've already recognized, is great time to sell a house, bad time to buy a house. But sitting on the sidelines is not going to be a plan either because they are going to go up in value from here, maybe just not quite at the same hockey stick up into the right that we've been seeing. So I sold my personal residence this year to take advantage of this. I had a big old house Sharon and I had outgrown and we'd enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, but it was time to take it out. And we sold it right at the top of the market and got,

and we're real happy about that. But the problem is then we had to run by in this market. And so same exact thing you're facing. It's a matter of what your personal goals are. Where do you want to live five years from today? If it's in a house different than this one, great time to get this thing fixed up and get it sold. Interesting. It's almost like you've got to buy your next house while you still have your first house as if everyone can do that. And then when the market's low and hold onto it and then sell your high, whatever, no one can do that. Okay. Let's go down to Sean in Florida. Sean, what is your question for Dave Ramsey? Hi, Megan. First of all, I just want to say love you, Sherrod. Thanks for having Dave on.

Thank you. A little background. 61 years old, 100% debt-free, my wife and I. I'm still working. And I have three kids. The youngest is 22. Question is, how do they develop credit, which they're going to need a good credit score eventually without borrowing money? Because none of them have borrowed yet other than a student loan.

But, you know, I worry because I did it all the wrong way. Well, the only thing you need a credit score for is to borrow money. And so if you're teaching them to do what you've done, become debt-free and stay debt-free, their need for a credit score is zero. You actually can get a mortgage without a credit score. It's called a manual underwriting process. And so my credit score has been zero for close to 30 years and I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much. And zero when I was broke and it's been zero all the way through.

And I just decided I wasn't going to worship at the altar of the great FICO. And the FICO is not really your provider. All it is, is an indication that you borrowed money and paid it back so that you can borrow money and pay it back so that you can borrow money and pay it back so that you have a number that says that you borrowed money and paid it back. It doesn't say you're winning with money. It says you've been playing kissy face with the bank a bunch. Oh, my gosh, that's so interesting. My credit score is zero. Okay, food for thought.

Let's go to Jennifer in Maine. Jennifer, what's on your mind? Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm a big fan of both of you. I'm calling about my daughter. She's 28, has no debt, has a lot of money in the bank because she's worked hard and has been a good saver. But it's all sitting in her checking account doing nothing for her. And we're talking like over $150,000. And I don't know what to tell her, where to direct her. She's not investment savvy at all. So I'm wondering what steps we could take to sort of help her get the money earning for her. That's a good question.

That's a really good question. Well, your daughter is a wonderful daughter. I mean, a lot of moms wish their daughter was doing that instead of the other stuff. So what a great, great position to be in. Her saving is being driven by fear and her refusal to invest is being driven by fear. So she's a fear-based person and that's okay. As long as we know that we're okay and we can just deal with it. So how do we deal with fear? Well, there's two kinds of fear. There's fear that's real, like don't jump in front of a car, you'll get killed. That's good fear. It keeps you from touching a hot stove. Then there's fear that the old saying is false evidence appearing real. Fear if I buy a home because I've never bought a

home before, it scares me to buy a home. Fear to invest in mutual funds and fund my Roth IRA with some mutual funds because I don't even know what that is. And everybody says the stock market's risky and it's scary and I don't know what it is. Well, the way that fear is overcome is knowledge. And so what I would begin to talk to her about is not what she should do by wagging my finger at her. Instead, I would talk about, hey, I started investing in this and look at this mutual fund. It's 70 years old and look at what it's done. And it's made this much money. And it really only had five or six down years and 70 years. And if you put money in something like that, wow, what could have happened? And that's what I'm

doing with mine because I figured out that if I put money and keep it in my checking account, that I don't build any wealth and this money's making me rich over here. And a friend of mine did this and my investment advisor does this and just start teaching her or hooking her up with some of our classes where we can teach her about investing because once she has knowledge, that fear will go away. Yeah. And that's right. And she, I'm sure she also has fear of doing nothing with it. So we can tap into that, Jennifer. Jennifer, thank you for the call. Thanks to all of our callers today. Dave, you've been a pleasure as always. Everybody's got to go check out Baby Steps Millionaires, make a great holiday present.

You can pre-order. And thank you for listening. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about the Kim Potter trial. We've got Andrew Branca back on the show. Go ahead and check it out on YouTube in the meantime. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. you