Humbled, and In-Charge. Dave Ramsey Talks to Armstrong & Getty

How are you, sir? Great? How are you guys? Oh, we're terrific. We're terrific. You know, we have a lot a lot in common, whether you know it or not, because we share a lot of your beliefs about financial responsibility and how you know it's it's I don't know if you consider it moral? Do is like being reasonable with your money, being frugal, being smart? Do you consider that a moral value? Probably? Is this definitely wise? Sure?

Because I mean it used to be taught by all the classic religions that that was part of being a good person. Yeah, it's a discipline of your life, and it's an indicator or that you're uh, you know, you're emotionally spiritually mature that you handle money well, I mean,

you're not a child. Here. Here's where it comes up most often on our show is there'll be some government statistic or a conversation particularly about or around retirement or people, you know, when they're getting older and how much money they've got, and I'm supposed to feel terrible about it. Well, I might feel terrible about person A. Maybe they had bad things happen to him. I don't know. But person B may have always owned a new car and gone

on vacations. I've never gone on, and then lived in a house bigger than they should have, and then they got no money there into their life. I don't care. So it bothers me that that the news never takes that into an into account, well, because there there would be an ideological agenda obviously with those folks. So the news folks and people putting out that in that way because if you can say, well, society is sick, and uh, you know all of those people are victims of a

systemic problem, then we must to need socialism to fix it. Right. Yeah, I get I get what you're saying, but just what a bad message to have for everyone though? Uh? In real life. Just two days ago, I'm going to visit my my dad with my kids. They're going to see grandma and grandpa. And buddy of mine said, boy, where your dad lives. He must have really done well in the business he was in. And I said, no, not really. He never made very much money. We just always drove

used cars. We lived in a small house. We never went anywhere on vacation. He's just always been really really fuegel. That's frugal. That's why he's got some money. The assumption that you have to make says some Cooper says, oh, he's lucky, right exactly. But luck didn't have anything to do with this. So listen. For fans of Armstrong and getting you might not listen to you or or be familiar with you. What's the introduction crash course to Dave

Ramsey and what you teach? Well, start with him. Honored to be on the Armstrong and Getty show. You guys are legends. Thank you for having me. Honored to be with you. But you know, it is common sense. It's God's and Grandma's ways of handling money, is what we always say. And so it's live on less than you make. It's be outrageously generous. It's have a written plan, stay out of debt, because your number one wealth building tool is your income, and when you give it to everybody else,

that makes you pour uh. You know. It's those basic kinds of things like that. It used to be called common sense, and I've made a really good living for thirty years with it. Yeah. Well, I didn't know this about your bio until I was reading your bio. At twenty six. You accumulated a lot of money for a year old, then you lost it all. What's that whole story? And then what you learn from it? I was stupid? Um,

that's you know. We started with nothing, and by the time I was twenty six, I had about four million dollars worth of real estate, a little over a million dollar net worth. And this is eight four. I made two h fifty thousand dollars cash taxable income that year in Tennessee. We call that a lot of money back then. And so I was doing great, but I borrowed too much.

The bank got sold to another bank. I had built a house of cards, and guess what they called our loans because they freaked out and saw twenty six year old kid oh too, millions of dollars. And it took two and a half years then for Sharon I to lose everything we owned, and we had the wonderful opportunity to start over with a brand new baby, a toddler in our marriage hanging on by a thread. Wow, that's that's something else. And and so starting out a new

what was different about your approach? Um? Well, I wasn't just broke. I was broken. Uh it. I thought I could do anything, and I've discovered I couldn't. And so I, you know, I had to rethink all the stuff I had been taught in academia and check it against scripture and check it against common sense. Because in academia they tell you that there's good debt and so borrow as much as you can if it's a student loan or a house. And uh here I sat broke using that

exact theory. So something's wrong with this. And I kind of came up with the idea that a broke finance professor is like a shop teacher with missing fingers. You know, I don't think I'm gonna follow your best ideas because the last time I did, it left a mark. And uh so I just got weird. I just said, you know what, I talked to rich people, and they don't borrow money. They don't borrow money. They don't care credit card balances, they don't have car payments, they drive used cars. Um,

they don't borrow money. They go on vacation, they pay for it. They don't borrow money. They get ready to fix up their kitchen, they pay for it, and then the next month they get to keep their paycheck instead of giving it some stupid bank home equity loan. And so it was a real revelation, you know. And so I started applying this stuff to my life, and then I started talking about to other people, and it turned into, you know, thirty years later, a Hall of Fame radio show,

Who Knew So? And what's interesting to us about the change in the culture from a pays ugo society to everybody borrows to buy everything all the time, is that it didn't happen in two seventy five years. I mean literally, Grandma paid as she went there. There bad guys in this Is it just a societal thing? How that change happened. Uh, there's bad guys, but they're they're not. It's not a conspiracy theory. They're just uh, they don't care about their customer,

and they're called banks. And you know, the debt is the most aggressively marketed product in the culture that has the most marketing in the history of mankind. So there's more money spent selling the credit card than any other product in our world today. And we live in the most marketed to culture in the history of the world. So these guys are really good at getting you in debt and making you believe at the core of your very being that you cannot exist without debt. Well, you

can't have a car that a car payment. You can't be a student without a student loan. It's absurd, Graham, you've lost your mind. No, got a pretty good life that way, boy. And the most obvious of business analysis is they're not working that hard and spending that much to get your credit card because if they know it will be helpful, it's because they're gonna make that much money. You know. If you notice their building is bigger than your house and their furniture is nicer than yours, something's

going on here. It's a transfer of wealth, boys and girls. Boy. And if you if you've ever been in the position to pay cash for things you're washing machine or your car or whatever. When you when you when you are paying cash, you make different buying decisions. You don't buy the next step up of car if you're paying cash for at least that's been my experience. You yeah, because it's like real money. It's yeah, it counts his real money. So a Dave um any thoughts on the current state

of college education and paying for it. You've mentioned student loans a couple of times. What else? Uh, Well, one of our Ramsey personalities, Anthony O'Neil's launching a book on October seventh called Debt Free Degree. We are sure you can go to college debt free. But it's just like you, it's exactly like you just said. It has to do with college choice, choosing to go to a school that is within your budget, choosing to buy a car that's

within your budget. No one even considers what they're paying for school because it's not real money. It's monopoly money. And um, you know. And on the political front, this idea of forgiving student loans without the idea of stopping making them is ridiculous. If this is a plague on America of epic proportions, which I think it is. Then Congress needs to wake up and stop making stop guaranteeing

the line. I don't know how much time you want to spend on the politics as but but it drives us crazy that the discussion is always about whether you forgive loans or not, or how much or whatever. Nobody ever even brings up why is college so damned expensive? Now? Why? Why would knowledge is easier to spread around than it's ever been in the history of the world. Is college ten times as expensive? It doesn't even come up in the conversation. Well, it's supplying to my end of money.

I can tell you that. I mean, when you have unlimited money, when your customer has unlimited money to spend, you will find a way to raise your prices. And so you want college price to come down, stop the student loan guarantee program instantaneously. Colleges will disappear, and some of them need to because they're ridiculous, and the rest of them will adjust to a disrupted market. But this is a market that's propped up by government subsidies, and

it's driven the price through the roof. It's basic econ right. You don't need to be an economist. You need to be like a first or second year ECON student to understand what distorting market is. Um but and and you know a final note is semi philosophical. It's interesting listening to you tell your life story, Dave, that it comes from being humbled, and through being humbled you decided I'm the captain of my own ship. I'm strong enough to

plot my own course. It's it's kind of an interesting contrast. Now, the problem with my monny is the guy in my mirror. If I can get that goober to behave he can be skinny and rich, but he's got issues. Well said, indeed, you know it's it's been too long since we talked. Listen, not let too much time go by again, Dave Ramsey, Well, thank you, my brothers. I'm honored to be on the station with you, and thank you for letting me come on for a few minutes. You holler anytime, I'd be

happy to do this. We'll do that. Thanks. I've never heard that story before I did. I listened to Ramsey on and often I hear all the credit card advice and stuff, and it's all great. I agree with it, but I've never heard the story of how he had a million dollars when he was twenty six, and that's when a million dollars was really a lot of money and and lost it all. Well that you know, that'll change your view of things. Yep, good stuff extra large