The Ramsey Show - App - Nobody Becomes a Millionaire From What the Government Gives You! (Hour 3)

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Chris Hogan, Ramsey personality and author of the book Every Day Millionaires is my co-host today. This is a millionaire theme hour. We're talking to real millionaires, not someone with an opinion, someone who really has a million dollars and asking them how they got it, where came from how's it invested and uh so you can learn maybe you want to be one too a millionaire is a million dollar net worth that's

right not a million dollar income that's exactly right and let me define that so you know what you do you take all that you own and subtract out anything that you have debt on. So I'm talking about bank accounts, 401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs, all of those things added up. Subtract out anything with debt on it. If the end number is a million dollars or more, then congratulations, you're an everyday millionaire. That's it. That's it. What you own minus what you owe, your assets minus your liabilities is your net worth. And that is really the most accurate measure of wealth.

Income is not wealth. Credit score, sure as crud, is not wealth. It just means you've been playing kissy-face with the bank. And so, you know, what is a real millionaire? Where do they come from? What does real wealth look like in America today? So if you have a net worth of a million dollars or greater, call us. We're going to talk to you and ask real people, not your broke brother-in-law,

but real millionaires how they did it and who they are. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Mike is our first one up. Mike, what is your net worth? $1.48 million. Say it again. $1.48 million. Okay, $1.48 million. Say it again. $1.48 million. Okay, $1.48 million.

And break that down for me. How is that invested, the categories? Yes, I've got that about $640K and a $401K in Roth IRA. I've got $450K in an ESOP, Employee Stock Ownership Program. About $80K in other mutual funds. $280K is my house, and about $30K in cash. All right. Good for you. Very cool.

And so how old are you? I'm 44. Oh, a young guy. Good for you. So how much of the $1.48 did you inherit? Zero. Zero. And what has been your income range in your working lifetime from the time you started working your worst year to your best year?

So I started at 41K, and I'm about 112K now. Cool. What do you do for a living? I'm an engineer. Good for you. Ah, so you did get a degree. Do you remember your GPA? Yeah, I got a master's degree.

My GPA was 3.8. 3.8? All right. And do you do any giving as a household? Yes, we consistently give about 12% to 15% of our income. That's fantastic. And tell me this. What was your biggest money stupid throughout your journey to becoming an everyday millionaire?

I don't think we made any big mistakes. I would say my biggest mistake was just being slow about paying myself first. I did some of the standard, some early minimal consumer debt and credit cards, but we got rid of those pretty quick. Okay. Once I started investing regularly and paying myself first and making it automatic, that made a big difference. Yeah, because just your 401K and your ESOP has got you over a million dollars. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, way to go, man. Congratulations. I'm proud of you. So what advice would you have for the 25-year-old version of you? Sounds like get started earlier, right? Yeah, no, get started early. My supervisor encouraged me to contribute to my retirement right away, and I took that to heart.

But I would say invest in yourself, pay yourself first, and make it automatic. That made a huge difference. That does. Automatic discipline is easy discipline. Yeah. And so you didn't use debt to create wealth did you no not at all okay all right so a couple of myths uh debunked right there right off the bat so mike thank you for the call well done congratulations it's a millionaire theme hour we are talking to

real millionaires the phone number if you want to be one of them on the air, is 888-825-5225. Engineer is one of the top five that hit your research on millionaires. It sure did. We had engineers. We had accountants. And then school teachers, teachers hit in at number three, which blows people away. But if you start to think about it, teachers love a plan. They follow a plan, and they're intentional and so what that really boiled down to show is that it has nothing to do with your

income dave it's about having a plan yeah it really is and so we want to hear from you we don't care if you invented something if you won it in the lottery maybe you inherited maybe you inherited it either way we want to hear from you because this guy this guy was not making 400k a year he's making a max of 112 yeah he's only 44 um i mean he he did not inherit any money and he did not borrow money to make money nope and so all the mythology that's out there you know this is people inherited their wealth their crooks theiroks, they're famous entertainers, they have 4.6 GPAs or whatever, they're geniuses. We don't find that to be true most of the time. Occasionally one of them is, but yeah.

Bob is next. Bob's in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hey, Bob, what's your net worth? Well, hello. My net worth is 1.15, and we actually just got over that during the pandemic. Okay, great. Okay, cool cool so break that down for me what are the categories and how much in each category well um we have about 540 in mutual funds 220 in real estate and 243 in cash and then we've got about,000, and it's insured for that, and collectible musical instruments, sports cards, and guns. Cool. Good for you. That's fun.

Okay. And how old are you? We're 70. Good for you. All right. And how much of the $1,000,115,000 did you inherit? Well, about 15 years ago, my parents, who are wonderful Christian parents, but not much in financial training, they gave us $1,000 and said, this is probably your inheritance. And as it turns out, it was.

Okay. All right. And what has been your range of income during your working lifetime, your best year and your worst year of income well when we first got married we had one income as for two school teachers because we only had one job we made six thousand four hundred dollars for the year and then that increased as school teachers go we were both music teachers and so the last year that we taught, I made $41,000, and she made $38,000. That was the last year before we retired. Now, our highest annual income is actually then after retirement because our mutual funds have done pretty well and because we do a little part-timing stuff and draw our retirement. All right.

And so your best year teaching was combined 79, and what's been your other best year? Well, with everything, all the retirement plans we're drawing, Social Security and teacher retirement and all of that, 160 is what we were taxed on last year. Oh, wow. Wow. Excellent. Okay. Good for you. last year. Oh, wow. Wow. Excellent.

Okay. Good for you. Well done. Well, congratulations, sir. Seriously. Music teacher. Wow. There's music instruments that are collectibles.

I bet that's an interesting room. I bet it is. Well done, Bob. Well done. Real millionaires on the Millionaire Theme Hour. theme hour. 2020 is finally over, but there's still a lot of work to do in 2021. Here at Ramsey Solutions, we are working hard and we need people like you to join us on our mission to change lives. We're hiring designers, marketers, writers, sales reps, and tons of engineers. We're paving the way with our digital products and we have massive goals to deliver

hope to millions of more people this year. And you should know, while we always work hard, we also have a lot of fun. Our 1,000 team members get together for weekly staff meetings, monthly celebrations, and epic annual events. We volunteer on company time at local charities and nonprofits because we value giving to the community. It's simply who we are. It's also why Ramsey Solutions was named Best Place to Work in 2020 by Inc. Magazine. So join our team here in Nashville, Tennessee. Apply today at DaveRamsey.com slash careers. It's a Millionaire Theme Hour here on The Ramsey Show as we talk to real millionaires, people with a net worth of a million dollars or greater to learn where they got it, who they are, and so you can emulate them.

You can copy them. You can learn best practices from them because we want you to have abundance. We want you to live and believe in proper principles that will take you to abundance. I think you will notice, as I've done the Millionaire Theme Hour now for many years, that I've never talked to a single person who said i became a millionaire because the government gave me so much money my stimulus check made me a millionaire these are words i have never heard no and you know what else hadn't heard dave credit card miles made me a millionaire. Hadn't heard that one. Never heard it. Hadn't heard that one. Bonus miles, all those things.

Very seldom here, I inherited it. Yes. Very seldom. Yeah. And statistically, it's less than 7% of you that are millionaires actually inherited your money. Most of 93% did not become millionaires. According to the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America, airtight statistical analysis and research format that we used. Because we knew some of you lefties would go bananas because you don't like us telling people that they have responsibility for their own lives. Well, and you know what it's telling people that they have responsibility for their own lives well and you know what they'll be okay the reality is is we are in control of our destiny and that's one of the stats that jumps out by the way you can get all these statistics

uh we've got the national study uh of everyday millionaires available where you can get just the stats uh you want the white paper it's the white paper you can read all that but one of the shocking ones in there was 97 of the millionaires surveyed said that they felt that they controlled their destiny versus 50 of general population and that was regardless of race yeah regardless of uh uh ethnicity, region. Right. It was a belief. Yes. Mindset. It was, you know, I know there's crap I have to climb over. I know I'm going to run into morons along the way.

And I know I'm going to get some help along the way from good people. Right. But I believe it's up to me. Yeah. And it's this realization, Dave, that everybody, we're all running this same race, right? The race of legacy. And we all have different start points. Some people do have some challenges that they have to deal with.

Others start off a little bit ahead, but we're all running it, and it's us against us. And having that mindset that that's the finish line that I'm going for, it's possible. It is possible. Ninety-seven percent of the millionaires said it was their own destiny. When we surveyed and asked the public how much do they think, the general public was 62 percent. Was it 62? I said 55. It's okay. Sixty-two percent.

But a drastic decrease. Yeah. And so, in other words, it's not the only thing. Right. But it is a big thing to actually believe that it's possible, which is why we do this show. Oh. Because you and I have overcome baldism in order to become wealthy. We sure did.

We had to overcome baldism because everybody has something they have to overcome. Hey. Some mountains are taller than others. That's right. That's not a real tall mountain. That's not. But it is a thing. But you told me there's never been a bald president.

Since television. Since television. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last one, other than Gerald Ford, but he didn't get elected president. That's right. He was, you know, he became president on Nixon's resignation. Right. And he never got reelected.

He got beat in the reelection. There's an ism. So there you go. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. But seriously, we have the ability to be able to build wealth. It's about being intentional. That's why we're doing this hour so you can hear directly from them.

Eric is in Detroit. Eric, what is your net worth? About 1.85 million, Dave. Good for you. And give me the breakdown by category, some dollars per category. Okay, about 550 in retirement and investments, $150 in cash, and about $1.2 million in real estate,

which is six rentals and a primary residence, so seven total. All paid for? All paid for. Wow. Good for you. Big real estate guy. Okay, how old are you? I just turned 52 yesterday.

Awesome. You're like a poster child. That's our average age of the millionaires and the ones we studied, by the way. So good for you. So how much of the 1.5 did you inherit? About $50,000. Okay. Were you already a millionaire when you got it?

I don't know exactly. It's hard to say because, you know, in Detroit we had that property crash and everything. So I probably wasn't, but I don't think that that actually made me one either. Okay. So you didn't take that $50,000 and parlay it into a $1.5 million? No. I didn't think so. In fact, half of it's sitting as an inherited IRA.

Oh, so you never touched it. Okay. No. And so what has been the range of your income over your working lifetime, your best year and your worst year? Oh, God. Looking for a job, making $15,000 a year, and I probably made between $150,000 and up before business deductions and stuff with the rents. Got you. So what is your career? I'm a lawyer.

Okay. Good for you. But I'm more of a real estate guy than a lawyer. I understand. I understand. Obviously, you got your degree. You went to law school. What was your GPA?

Well, in undergrad, my GPA was a 365. In environmental science and photography, I was really planning, Dave. You have to listen to, you know, I hear that, you know, the creative writing degree. And in law school, it was only about a 2.9 because I don't like to read. Okay. All right. And do you and your family, do you all do any giving? Yes. What kind of giving do you and your family, do you all do any giving? Yes.

What kind of giving do you do? Well, I'm very involved in the Ferndale Elks Foundation and the National Elks Organization. So I do a lot of work in giving there, and I do a lot of work with animal shelters. Gotcha. Good for you. That's fun. So before you were a millionaire, how many brand new cars did you buy? Let's see.

I bought one and leased one. Okay, so two. I never leased again after that. So what is the dumbest financial thing you've ever done? Well, I mean, you've always bought stupid stuff at times in your life, and then you can't go and put it back. But I think the biggest financially was that I bought my first house that I lived in in 98, and I didn't have enough money to remember that, oh, you're going to need a roof

or have money for a furnace or anything like that. I didn't have the reserves. And I even paid PMI. So that was all a good learning experience. Luckily, you know, I didn't lose it. It didn't go south. I got out of it eventually. And then when I went to the next house, I put 20% down.

I got a 15-year mortgage like you talk about. And I think I paid it off in about 10 and a half years. Cool. Wow. Cool. How many properties do you own? Six rental houses and one primary residence, all like within a mile or two of where I live. Okay, good, good. And so you've enjoyed that whole process, obviously, and paying cash for them or getting them paid off very quickly, one of the two? Yeah, no no i pretty much cash flowed them one after another um you look back and you go wow i could have bought more and but then you also then could have lost them uh so uh you know i'm very happy with what i have and i you know you can always say oh i could have done better but what are the

significant downside no you're right and so where did you get this premise? Where did you learn about money the right way? My parents were both pretty depression era mentality, even though they weren't of that era. And my dad was an engineer and self-employed. So I learned a lot of the self-employed of the, you see the contractor in the Mercedes the one day and then in a broken truck three years later because it crashed. And my father was like, that's how you don't do it. And so I looked at that from the real estate perspective. And my first house in Detroit, like my own house, lost 65% of its value during the crash. And the house down the street all of a sudden was selling for $35,000.

And I was like, well, it's never going to be worth nothing. And so I decided I'd buy it. And I saw, I knew someone looked at it for $131,000. And I was going to buy a car. I was going to buy a new Camaro. So I called the house the Camaro. Ah, very well done. Very well done.

Different way of thinking. Good job, brother. Well done. Proud of you. This is a Millionaire Theme Hour here on The Ramsey Show. Listen, this is important. Are debt collectors calling you at work? Are they reporting errors on your credit report?

Folks, that's not just wrong. It's illegal. If you think you're being harassed, take a quick survey at CollectionBully.com to determine whether you're a victim of illegal debt collection harassment. If you are, Collection Bully will help connect you to a consumer law attorney in your state to make the harassment stop. Learn more and get the help you need at CollectionBully.com. it's a millionaire theme hour here on the ramsey show chris hogan author of the number one best selling book everyday millionaires is my co-host as we talk to real millionaires. How did they get there? Who are they? Lee is with us in South Carolina.

Lee, what is your net worth? About 1.5. Good for you. Now break that down for me in terms of category and dollars. Category and dollars, almost all of it is in literal dollars uh i don't count uh other assets my other assets bring it up to about 0.5 up to about 5 million or up to about another half a million another half 0.5 so you have a million and a So you have a million and a half in cash? No, about one in cash, and the rest of it is in other assets.

Okay. So that's it. Okay. I never had cash in my life, and my greedy hands hung on to it when I got it from being 100% broke in debt, basically almost to bankruptcy, when I was 42. And we all have our sob story. I had three kids in private school or in university. I was struggling, lost a job, and I was just broke. And somehow it all worked out. It's a miracle. but I was just broke and somehow

it all worked out it's a miracle and being cash poor and insecure about stock markets and oh it's all going to be bad it's going to this this this and this so I would have more if I wouldn't have been so frightened of the stock market and same way with my wife

who was always over cautious however we got a job thank god got a job saved every money helped our kids to school taught them to work they worked their way through school came out of school with uh no debt they drove junkers the way we drove junkers and they've all done the kids have all done exceedingly well. I'm not bragging, I'm not complaining, it's a fact. All three of them are millionaires, plus, plus. Wow.

And the grandkids are well on their way. Wow. How old are you? And all this, I'm 78. 78. And so I take it from this story, you inherited none of this. Minimal amount. I mean minimal from my wife's parents when they died.

It was basically nothing. And, no, we worked. What did you do for a living? Well, you know what? I was a corporate pilot up until I was 42 and in and out of jobs. Those companies hadn't done that job. And lately, we're going to, our plane's being repossessed. And back in the, sometimes the 70s and early 80s, it was almost impossible to find a corporate job.

But finally, at 42, I finally got hired by an airline. And being 100% broke at 18 years, I was obligated to retire at age 60. They since raised me at age 65. So I scrambled like mad. We paid our house, helped the kids with their debts, did this, did that. Three kids got married. They were on their own. And we saved money and were exceedingly frugal. And finally, in the last five years with the airline, I finally had some decent income,

and we squandered that away and saved. And then when I hit age 60 in 2002, I've been retired since. And nobody, and during this this time we always paid tithe and then when my kids my last kid left the house which was so 30 some years ago we began paying 20 percent without fail on every penny that we had coming in wow plus giving some undersized so i'm now again not back bragging blowing and complaining i was thankful until now at this age wife and i still have good health yeah with enthusiasm try to play tennis every day or do other things i love it and been to more countries than there are states

lee i love you man well done that's a beautiful story it is all the way from 42 and just said enough already and uh takes a shift in the career and saves everything sitting on a million dollars cash yeah at 78 and not just him but he's raised his kids three millionaire kids them are millionaires there was a story in that. Yeah, it was. Very cool. Well done. Talk about being intentional. Williams in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Hey, William, what's your net worth?

My net worth is $1.3 million, sir. Good for you. Give me a little breakdown on that by category. It's probably going to be the most boring story you hear today. There's about a million dollars of uh just mutual funds and ira and 401k and then our house is paid for at 300 000 but about 1.3 million that's that's what we hear a lot actually very well done how old are you okay okay i am 45 okay and what was your best oh how much of this did you inherit? Essentially none of it.

We'll just say none of it, yeah. I got a little bit, like a lot of people got a little bit, but that certainly was not remotely tipping any scales whatsoever. Gotcha. And your worst year of income to your best year of income, what was the range? My worst, my first job on a dairy farm was $18,000 a year, and then my best year of sales was probably plus 100 plus in that carnival park. Gotcha.

Okay, so you were in sales. Yep, I was in sales and dairy farm management, quite frankly. Ah, okay. Yeah. And so did you go to college? I went for two years. I did not graduate from college. Gotcha.

And do you remember your high school GPA? 3.401 because you had to have a 3.4 to get into National Honor Society. Gotcha. So 3.401. All right. And do you and your family, do you do any giving? That's probably the best part of having the blessings that we've got. Yeah, we do giving, and it's all anonymous, and it's all local,

and it's the best part of having been given the gift of good influences to put us in this position. Yeah. Talk about the influences. Who were they? How did that work? I was raised by a single mom, and we were incredibly poor. When we hit rock bottom, I did not have a bed.

We did not have a TV, a couch, or a refrigerator. And so the one best thing that my mom did was she sent me to work on some dairy dairy farms when i was a teenager and i learned that work ethic that is incredibly hard work that is work and you work and you work and you get up at four o'clock the next morning and you work they don't have snow days and they don't have vacation that's right that is correct sir yes that is correct so that's that's where that was the influence without a doubt that's what that's what changed the cycle in my, for me, undoubtedly, was were those influencers and those people that were in my path that I got to learn from. So let's reverse that then.

What advice do you have? Let's reverse that and make you the influencer. What advice do you have to the 25-year-old version of you that's out there? What should they be doing to get to be you when they're 45 um they should have a very simple plan and live on less than you make and also realize that what society tells you is wealth is a lie and that the people that society likes to paint the picture as wealthy or rich generally are not. And the guy in the store who's maybe not wearing the coolest clothes or driving the nicest car

has $5 million of wealth. We just don't know it. And that's what I would tell myself or reinforce myself at 25 and anybody else like do not be unassuming that's exactly right and and i like that dave don't get caught up in the world's definition of wealth because they're stupid no i mean really no i was gonna say wrong everybody's talking about it right everybody's complaining about it right nobody's doing anything about it and then you find the guy or the gal that did something about it and that's who they are they're driving a nice car but it's not flashy nope and their clothes are clean and pressed but they're not flashy

and that's how it works you know a friend of mine grew up on a dairy farm she said she was grown before she found out that labor day was not the day you worked the hardest. That's what her dad told her. Wow. Millionaire theme hour here on The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Our scripture of the day, Psalm 34, 4. I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Our friend Rush Limbaugh, who passed away today, rest in peace Rush, said, I don't think looking at things through the prism of fear is going to accomplish anything. Agreed. Agreed.

It's a millionaire theme hour here on the Ramsey Show. If you have a $1 million net worth or greater, Chris Hogan, Ramsey personality, and I want to talk to you and get the real story. Folks, it's that time of year again. Yep, tax season. And look, we got lots of irons in the fire. I know it makes taxes complicated. I use a pro for my taxes because I don't want to mess with it. If your taxes are not complicated and you want to go file online by getting some good tax software, text the keyword. Well, the key here, keyword here is good, by the way, and you want good software.

And that's why my team is introducing Ramsey Smart Tax. It is our brand-new tax filing software, and it's a great option if you've got simple taxes. And all you do is text the word TAX to 33789, and we'll tell you more about Ramsey Smart Tax. Very inexpensive, very easy for those of you that have a simple return. And we're not going to send you, like, credit card offers and home equity loan offers and mortgage offers and all that stuff. We're simply going to help you get your taxes done. Text the word TAX to 33-789.

That's 33-789. Text TAX. All right, Adam is in Richmond, Virginia. Hi, Adam, what is your net worth? It's a million with a few thousand over top of that. Cool, and break that down for me by category. So retirement is $460,000. The house is $275,000 to $400,000.

We've got $60,000 and $529,000, $70,000 in cash, and then I'll put $25,000 in guns, toys, and tools. Okay. Cool. So how old are you? I'm 47, and my wife is here. She's a little younger than that. Okay.

Cool. I love it. How much of this $1 million did you guys inherit? So my dad actually did pass a few years ago, and he left me some things that were probably valued around $25K or so. Okay. So safe to say, unless you parlayed that $25K into a bunch of money, you're not a millionaire because of an inheritance.

Not because of an inheritance, but because of the parents, for sure. Yeah, well, the influence and the teaching and the lifestyle. Yes. Yeah. So give me your range of income through your working lifetime, best year and worst year. Yeah, total household, we started out 24, 25 years ago, 30K, and then last year was our best year at 164. Okay cool what do you do for a living?

I tell people I'm an engineer which is what my degree is but then I moved over to sales started doing that in training. Gotcha and what's your wife do? She's a social worker. Gotcha and did you guys both get degrees? We did, yeah. Both got a bachelor's. All right. And what was your GPA, Adam? So in community college, because I did the knock it out in two years and then go to the four-year college. Yep. I ran a 3.3, and then I tell people I graduated from the four-year college, Virginia Tech, with a 3.0, but it was actually a 2.945.

I just rounded up. Okay. You are an engineer for sure. What was your wife's GPA? She was a 3.5. Okay. Much smarter than me. Yeah, there you go, smart man. Do you all do any giving as a family?

We do. We do through church, and we do through other. Got you. And tell me this. What was one of the biggest money mistakes you guys made in your journey you know i i think we look back at it we bought one new vehicle and we've been married a little while and we had this thing going called a truck fund so we were saving for about a year and a half and we saved about 7,500 bucks and then finally just couldn't wait any longer so we went out and

bought a uh $22,000 truck which i still have today but that was probably the the biggest thing that was the uh the one new car that we financed gotcha cool so talk about you said what your parents didn't give you was money but they did give you um habits character something i mean what do you attribute uh what did you get from them that you attribute to your ability to become a millionaire at 47 years old yeah definitely both uh work ethic my dad was a construction for years and construction for years as an electrician until he says he retired to maintenance uh my mother and he was actually my stepfather but he's my dad and um my mother for years was raising my sister and myself and, you know,

working two, three jobs, minimum wage. She used to go on welfare, but you just see the work ethic there. And then a lot of the things, you know, that my dad taught me about, you know, financial, how to handle money, when I started listening to you, I just started checking the box and saying, oh, yeah, he told me those things. He wasn't lying. He knew what he was talking about. That's really neat.

And to your knowledge, Adam, are you the first millionaire in your family? No, actually, he made it. He did? Okay. My parents made it. Okay. That's fantastic. Wow.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, I mean, we always have parents ask, okay, it's one thing to build wealth, but then how do you keep that from ruining your children? And quite to the contrary, in your case, it didn't ruin you. It made you in the sense of he taught you the habits and the character qualities that allowed you to be able to pull this off. And that's what I wanted to get at, because I hear that all the time.

That can also be passed as an inheritance. That's right. That's true, Tim. And they did it much later in life, too. I mean, I paid my way through college. My wife, you know, got a lot of scholarships, and her parents helped her. But when I went to college, that's why I went to the community college route, because we didn't have the money.

So, again, they achieved that mark well after we were married. Yeah. Very cool. Congratulations. Well done, sir. Very, very proud of you. Very proud of you. Chris Hogan's book, Everyday Millionaires.

The white paper is available at DaveRamsey.com for $10. The book is there for probably around $20, and you can pick it up on Amazon as well. But the white paper, for those of you that are nerds and want to dig through the details of the study that was done, we did it in conjunction with a research firm out of New York to have someone looking over our shoulder to hold to the legitimacy of the findings. That's right. We wanted the findings to be airtight. We didn't want them to be skewed. A lot of things we turned up when we studied 10,000-plus millionaires turned up what we thought was there.

Some of it more than we thought. Like, I mean, Tom Stanley, I just did a quote for his daughter, Sarah, sent me an email this week. They're doing an article on him, wrote The Millionaire Next Door. Some folks at Georgia University or Georgia State University or University of Georgia, one of the two, are doing a series on Tom, which they should. He's an iconic, wonderful man. But he did the book in 1992, The Millionaire Next Door. The numbers we had always had from that and from other studies that were done was that 70 to 75 percent of America's millionaires were first generation rich, did not become millionaires because of an inheritance. What we found was 79 percent received zero inheritance. That's right.

But we also found two other things, that 5 percent, the inheritance they received was so small that it was irrelevant. They got $1,000 or $5,000 or something, which is not zero, but it did not cause them. And that was 5%. Another 5% did receive substantial monies, but it was after they already were millionaires. Right. None of that now. Ninety three percent is what we're now at of the people that we studied did not become millionaires because of an inheritance. Correct. That's bizarre. That's massively high. That's higher than we thought. That's much higher than I anticipated. And today, zero. Right. No one was caused that to become a millionaire because of inheritance.

And none of these were over $2 million net worth. Nope. But there were 1.4, 1.15, 1.5, 1.5, 1.3, and 1. Yep. And 44, 70, 52, 78, 45, and 47 years old. And the 401k was either number one or number two. And a paid off house. And a part of their net worth.

And a paid off house in the other part. All were givers. All were givers. All were givers. And none of them had but one guy under a three and barely under a three GPA, but none of them had 4.0. Nope. So we got social worker, teachers, sales, people. It's possible for you.

You got to believe and then you need to work. This is why we do this. We want you to believe you can win because we know you can. The data says it. That puts this hour in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.

This is James Child, producer of The Ramsey Show. Did you know The Ramsey Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.