Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt, and today we're talking Breaking Broke with George Campbell.
That's right.
Yeah, Today we are talking all about getting out of debt, and it's a good time to have this discussion as well, since consumer debt, especially credit card debt, it's been on a.
Tear over the past several years.
Basically since the bottom of the pandemic, and we're lucky to be joined by someone who knows a thing or two about debt. George Cammell. Not only has he personally climbed from a negative net worth himself, but he's also a personal finance expert over at Ramsey Solutions. George co hosts The Ramsey Show as well as Smart Money Happy Hour with our friend Rachel Cruz, and he as a new book, Breaking Free from Broke, that came out earlier this month. We're excited to talk about all of.
That and more today.
George, thank you for joining us today on the podcast.
Joel Matt, it is such an honor to be here. I was telling you guys earlier, I've been fans of y'all's for a long time now, and so I feel like I'm inside of the matrix. We're gonna see how the sausage is really made.
Today.
It's much less impressive as you've seen.
I was impressed, honestly by Matt's hair. I'm already jealous. Who isn't I are the hair of the closer.
We stop recording, George and I will exchange nice on how we get that volume.
It always takes in forty five minutes to get it like that, George.
So yeah, not all about the hair dryer.
That's right, not too much time, all right, George. First question we ask every guest who comes on the show is what's their craft beer equivalent? And what we mean by that. Matt and I spend you know, someoneld say too much money on craft beer, but you know what we're saving and investing at the same time. So it's a okay, what is that thing in your life that you spend more money on than some people would think is normal or right? Oh?
Man, Well, I consider myself bougie frugal, and so I'm trying to buy expensive things but get like ten percent off and feel like I'm winning. And so the thing for me that I think people will go you're spending they spent a lot of money on that, and it's mostly my wife, and that is Bourbon. I'm in a Bourbon society with some friends, about thirty of us, and so I just have too much of it. I don't even drink it a lot. I just have a lot of bottles. There's like a fomo to it when it's
a special bottle, a hard to get bottle. And so the most I've spent on a bottle is probably about one hundred and twenty dollars or so, and it hurt my soul.
But what was that I ask?
Is actually Joe and I with our wives, we went up to Bourbon country this time.
Was it last year?
So I was almost exactly a year ago for my fortieth for a little birthday.
Yeah.
So what are some of your favorite go tos? Even though you're not maybe the biggest partaker of.
Yeah, this particular bottle was a Jack Daniel came out with a barrel single barrel barrel proof rye that will knock your socks off, very nice.
Nice.
So that in Blanton's.
Weller twelve Classics.
Angels envy rye is another favorite, and so there's a Yeah, those are probably the go tos and they can range, you know, fifty to one hundred bucks, and so that is something that I splurge on. Ever since I'm not broken anymore, I've been able to, you know, indulge more. I have no hobbies, So if that makes you guys feel any better, I really don't do it. I hang out with my dogs, which are the most expensive part of all life.
Well that that and whiskey.
And it's no wonder that you drop big money on that Tennessee bottle with y'all being there.
Outside of NASHVILLEE.
But oh yeah, okay, George, we want to get to know you as an individual because we I mean, this is literally the first time we've ever we've ever talked with you, and I'm curious about your money story. You
are of Middle Eastern descent. Your parents are immigrants, and it sounds like that they've fully immersed you into like the American culture, but simultaneously, like you've talked about how you got coupon's with your with your dad, I would love to hear about your parents' influence on how it is that you see and just what it is that you believe about money.
Absolutely, yeah, my parents are from Egypt and Syria, and they moved to the US in the eighties and had my brother, and then I was born in Boston, and so I grew up in like a weird little Arabic Baptist bubble, so Arabic Baptist church, but in an Irish Italian, you know, Catholic area of Boston, and so it was a really weird time to grow up but also hilariously fun. And my parents they adapted and they fell for some of these money traps. And they were, you know, we
were middle class. They worked really hard, we never struggled. We didn't go without food, it wasn't anything like that. But they also you know, had we had student loans. I fell for some of those traps where I thought my parents were just wealthy because they were like, well, well don't worry about college, we'll figure that out. And I went, wow, they have some secret money they've been saving.
This is wonderful. Turns out it was like co signing loans and subsidized loans through financial aid quote unquote, and so I sort of felt for these traps. And my dad had a you know, forty credit cards that they were like maximizing rewards and playing this game but I saw those moments of stress where it wasn't fun and things were getting tight, and at the same time they were very frugal. And that's a I don't know if it's a Middle Eastern trade that runs in our DNA,
but we just love a deal. We love to haggle, we love to negotiate, we love to find the coupon, and so that has been instilled in me. And I love helping people save money on things they really want.
That is the saddest thing to me about American culture is that we don't haggle like so many other cultures. I think it's so fun, Like I love traveling to other countries and going to the market or something like that, and it's expected in so many other places.
Oh yeah, but in the US in America.
Yeah, if the US you asked for a discount and they look at you like are you crazy? Like you can't ask that question.
It's not the proper Western European way, Joel exactly.
That's a game to me.
Yeah, We're always trying to push people in that direction, like no, no, no, ask for the discount, even though some people might think it's uncouth. You can and if.
You're a nice guy I found, like, you know, three out of five times, like you're gonna something will happen.
Yeah, exactly, No, I think you're spot on. Uh okay, you we're not going to go through like all of your life, childhood, middle school or anything like that. Middle school everybody knows was the worst, so we don't.
It was a cold day.
Yeah, but you let's go, let's skip to kind of when you joined the Ramsey team. You didn't start off as a Ramsey personality. You started off as a marketing intern, but you also had you had debt when you joined the crew there, and so I'm curious what that hiring process looks like. You had debt. Are they like, wait a second, you're not allowed to work here? Yeah? What does that look like? What any questions are they asking you?
And are they kind of steering you in the right direction when you get hired.
That's a great question. A lot of people assume that, like, when you start at Ramsey, you got to be debt free and investing fifteen percent into your wroth four O one K. But truthfully, we have people from all backgrounds and walks of life that apply here, and we look for a culture fit and if you're pumped about our mission and you're actively trying to pay off debt, that's what really matters. And so you can come in here with two hundred thousand dollars of debt. We're not gonna
sit here and judge. We just want you to be on the plan. And so that I came in not knowing much about Dave going. I went through Financial Peace University when I started here as part of the onboarding process, and that's when I sort of went, oh, crap, I'm more broke than I thought because it was my first salary job. You know, I was an intern and so
I didn't even have a full time job here. And a few months later the internship ended, I found a spot as an email marketing coordinator full time for two and a half years. That was my first job, and it was my first salary job, and I realized, I'm like, this entry level starter salary is barely enough to just pay my bills because of my debt and my lifestyle. And so I had to make some sacrifices and get some side hustles and start doing a lot of things
to clean this mess up. And that happened in about eighteen months, I was able to pay off that forty thousand dollars in consumer debt.
Wow. Okay, so you said side hustles, what were you doing? You driving an Uber? Like you got an Etsy shop cause of selling George Campbell Crochet's like, what what were you doing to make some money?
Well, you know, I was a musician, and so I was still doing some music gigs. I got some music licensing hits, like Ford used my music on our YouTube channel video they did and I was like, oh my gosh, they want They're gonna pay me like thirty five hundred dollars for this. And on top of that, I was driving for Uber and Lyft and they were new to
Nashville at the time, and they had these bonuses. If you did this many rides, you'd get a thousand dollars bonus, And so I was taking advantage of the Uber and Lift sign up bonuses. I was doing marketing consulting, helping people launch podcasts, build websites, launch books as the marketing guy, and so I was using all of the skills I had, and skills I didn't have to just make any extra money I could. I even did the Nielsen People Meter y'all know about this.
How do you do that?
A little beeper? Well, they just listen. It's really creepy now looking back, but you carry around this little beeper and you turn it on and it's listening to all of the media. You're consuming music, TV, all of that radio, and it's tracking all of that and it's kind of using me as an example of what other people are
listening to. And so you would get you know, as long as you turned it on, you were making a few cents here and there, and so I'd get a check for twenty bucks a month or something from Nielsen for doing this. But I was just willing to do whatever it took to make that extra buck and it would it paid off. I don't regret it one bit. I didn't miss out on life, and I was also surviving off of lean cuisines and.
Hope George was hustling. Yeah, and I love that because we talked about that too, like wrapping your car or something like that. With an advertisement, A lot of people would be like, no way, I'm doing that. But for the person who really cares, like about paying off their debt, about making progress more quickly, you're you're willing to look like an idiot sometimes in order to make that happen. Well, even with like the media thing, It's like, how intrusive
is that you wrap your car? Everyone can everyone knows you're what you're getting after it. But if you've got something discreet and it's listening to, it's like a fitbit but for your ears, for your brain. But it's fascinating though that you didn't come into the Ramsey orbit knowing necessarily who Dave was, and like over time that that that became more a part of your story and your identity.
But how is it that you went from doing marketing and you know, initially starting out as an intern, moving to marketing and then ending up being actually in front of the in front of the camera, in front of the mic.
Yeah, that transition was really interesting because I was the kind of I'm a marketing guy. I was doing social media and email marketing for my first few jobs here at Ramsey for the first i don't know, six years of my career. And then I made this transition to host an MC for our live events in our video channel, and that happened after I went on stage to host our Battle of the Band's event we do it's an
internal company event. Our team members get together, they form bands, we do cover songs, and we kind of fight for the number one spot. And I was a musician, so I was in these bands for three years and I kept losing till like second and third place, and I got sick of it. The hosting was terrible, so I raised my hand and I went, hey, I think I could bring something to the hosting gig to transition between the bands and introduce and do all the fun stuff.
And so they gave me that shot, and I put all my whole soul into it with creative videos and funny parodies and on stage gimmicks and games with the team. And they saw me on stage and went, hey, this guy could backfill for our friend Ken Coleman, who's stepping into this personality role with this career message. And so they gave me a shot, and I did a good enough job to where they said, all right, you're switching gears.
We're going to put you in this role. And so that helped me get kind of on front of the cameras instead of behind him, which was a dream of mine to be a filmmaker. So I always love video and broadcasting and all that stuff. I just never thought I'd be the guy in front of it, and so it's been a huge humbling blessing to get to do
what I do now. And following the money plan, they went, this guy's really passionate about what we teach and he has really interesting ways of creating content and connecting with new people, and we should give him a shot as a personality and see what he can bring to the table.
So that's what happened when I launched The fine Print in twenty twenty one, went on air with Ramsey and we transitioned to The Ramsey Show from Dave Ramsey Show, and we've been co hosting The Ramsey Show now for a few years.
There's something really powerful when you've kind of gone through the process yourself, right, digging yourself out of doing all the side hustles, and then you want other people to know, wait, this is possible. Like I've lived it. I went through years of getting to this point where and now you're a millionaire. You host a YouTube show, oh like talking to other millionaires in your call the YouTube channel. Yeah, I mean there's a lot going on on that front.
I'm curious. So like The Ramsey Show, in particular, the radio show. You've got your finger on the pulse of kind of what's happening with individuals, what's happening in the economy. I'm sure just based on the calls you guys get on a daily basis, you have a decent understanding of kind of what's happening in America and what's happening with people's finances. How does the show feel right now, specifically in January, post holiday spending hangover that so many people
find themselves in. Is inflation still a topic? Like? What are people wrestling with right now? Are what are the calls you're getting that maybe feel the most compelling or feel the most indicative of what's going on in our society right now.
That's a great question. And I've talked with our other personalities. We'll get off air and we'll just go talk to each other and be like, man, do things just feel heavier lately? Like the problems are just getting worse and people are feeling more and more hopeless. And it's funny to me, you know, we'll get comments on Instagram and
be like, these guys are so out of touch. I'm like, we're literally talking to callers like as closely and as intimately as we can every single day, and so I feel like I'm more in touch than some dude with a faceless Instagram profile. But what I'm seeing is people are underwater on their cars more than ever because cars got really expensive and people were just willing to pay.
And then the car market kind of cooled off a little bit, and so now the car that they owe thirty five on is only worth twenty you bought two years ago after they reduced price exactly. So that's one huge problem. The other one is people got freaked out about the housing market and so they jumped you into home they couldn't afford. Now they're calling us saying, hey, we bit off more than we can chew. What do
we do? Do we sell the house? We are strapped with payments all over the place, and this mortgage is killing us. And that's housing and cars. The other one is credit card debt. We are seeing more and more people with huge credit card balances. We're not talking five, ten, fifteen, We're talking fifty thousand, one hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt with twenty two percent APR, and it just takes your breath away to hear some of these stories.
And not all of them are like we're spending frivolously on our lifestyle. Some of them just, hey, life happened. We didn't have an emergency fund, and we started just putting you know, we're in the red by a grand or two every month, and we just started putting it on the cart every single month, month after month. So those are the big ones we're seeing.
I'm curious.
I mean with those being obviously with cars and homes, those are massive. Those are big ticket items, right, and oftentimes you're not gonna if someone comes to you, you're not typically going to say, all right, just go ahead and list the house completely, uproot the kids, you're gonna leave your community.
Yeah, how is it that you are? How do you start.
Talking to folks to get them to wrap their head, their mind, their arms around the debt that they have. I've got to think that initially you're focusing on the credit card debt.
Is that right?
Well, we always you know, I think the debt snowball method is the most powerful motivating, encouraging process, which is small to largest balance. So the only time we'll tell people to kind of go outside of that is if they have IRS det and we tell people, well, hey, that goes to the very top because the IRS can really screw up your life if you don't get a hold of it. So if you've got that tax, debt, tax burdens, back taxes, put that to the front of
the line. Then focus on small so largest balance, and so that's usually the best case for everyone. Of course everyone's situation is a little bit different, but I would say nine times out of ten, that's where we're going to steer people. And what I do is, I think my strategy personally is if if they're really wanting to dig into the math, I lean into emotion. And if they're very emotional, I lean into the math. And I think that helps you get away from the feelings of
it and go, Okay, how much do you guys make? Oh, we make one hundred and seventy five grand a year? Okay, great, how much what's your debt payments? Have you guys done a budget? Okay? You should have this much margin? What is keeping you guys from having that much margin? So getting into the details helps. But when someone wants to argue about math, I go, hey, how would it feel if you just woke up tomorrow with no payments in the world, what kind of decisions would you make differently?
That just helps them break out of what you know, vortex they're stuck in mentally, And I found that it's a pretty decent strategy to help callers just see things in a different way.
Have have rising interest rates changed the way you talk about debt at all? Because that clearly changes the math for someone on the math front, right, Like you go from a cardit card with fifteen percent APR to twenty two percent, or your he lock was three and a half percent and now it's seven and a half percent, and so that can massively impact your financial trajectory. Or is it? Do you think the message is the same no matter what's happening kind of in the macro environment.
I think the ultimate message is the same is get out of debt is a thief. It's dealing from your paycheck and income. But you're right, with higher interest rates come more pain. It's harder to get out when the interest is building on that balance, and it's hard to pay down that principle fast enough. And we're seeing that with cars. I mean, car interest rates are at all time highs, and I had a caller call in he had like a twenty six percent interest rate on his car.
Wow.
So, and we're seeing payday loans make a comeback because people are getting really desperate, and so the interest rates when you actually do the math on these things, can be four hundred percent, and they're stuck in these cycles trying to get rid of this. So I think the interest rates are making things harder for people, But it's great for us because it's not that hard to convince them that this debt is bad and that they should
get rid of it. The one area it is difficult, I'll be honest with you, is when people call in and they want to argue about, hey, my savings account makes five percent and my mortgage is three and a half percent. Why the heck would I pay off my mortgage when I can make five percent of my savings account.
Those ones they want to argue about the math and the spread of what they could be making, and it's it's truly exhausting, and I try to again steer them toward the emotional freedom of not having a payment and what if you could invest that payment, and the math of hey, unless you have the full balance. Sitting in a savings account making guaranteed five percent, you're not making as much as you think you are. If you look at your amortization schedule, see how much money you're forking
over an interest every month on that mortgage. And so I'm trying to help people see this with math and emotion. But we know that personal finance is eighty percent behavior only twenty percent head knowledge. So you can argue with this all day long. But you're calling in because you've got a problem to solve, and we're trying to help you solve it in the way we know best.
Yeah, at the end of the day, if you are in a boatload of debt, something that you did got you there, it takes a different formula to get you out of that.
I guess I want to ask, too real quickly, like timeline, how do you help people think through that? Because sometimes it can People want the silver bullet, they want the quick solution, They want to get out of debt in six months when it took six years to get into it. How do you help people think through the amount of time and effort that it's going to take and kind of sustained vigilance maybe to get out of that debt hole. Yeah.
Good. Most people, when they get that desperate, they're looking for shortcuts, and so they're asking, hey, should we take out the heelock, Hey should we take out the four one k loan or make that four to one k withdrawal in order to pay off this debt? And I tell them, hey, you're not solving any problems here. You're
just moving debt around. And it might feel good for half a second, but doing these consolidations and settlements and debt relief and whatever these shortcuts are, they're not going to actually lead you to long term freedom, and so it always requires a level of sacrifice that's uncomfortable. But I also remind them people on average, following the Ramsey Plan with we call Gazelle intensity in eighteen to twenty four months that pay off all consumer debt except the mortgage.
So this isn't forever. But when you're drowning in payments, twenty four months feels like a lifetime, and you want to get out next month with one of these shortcuts, but it's never worth it. We try to walk them through, here's what's going to happen. You're going to be calling back three months from now, because now you just have debt in a different spot that you're still trying to pay off. You have to change your behavior in order to finally get freedom.
Yeah, the behavior change is needed for the vast majority of folks, I do think, and we hear from folks that reach out to us where they truly were in the dark, and it's like they have seen the light. The blindfold has been removed from their eyes, and they've seen the error of their ways, and with that in mind, they are able to make some of those more mathematical changes coupled with that desire to change how it is
that they've been living their life. But like I think about folks that do have these massive sums of debt. But then on the other hand, you have folks who are just kind of playing with debt just like it's something that they've come to accept. Right, Like you write, this is a quote. The normalization of debt over time, it robs us of margin, freedom, options and joy and
the way we approach debt. Like, we do think there are some advantageous use uses of debt, but talk about like the cascading consequences as we've become desensitized to debt in our lives.
Yeah. I talk about this in the book that it's not all your fault, but it's your responsibility. And I have a lot of empathy that it's just not like people spending frivolously. We were led down this path by society and misguided guidance counselors and well meaning parents because we were told get good grades, go to the school of your dreams, to get this degree that's going to
give you some magic salary. And what that turned into was borrow as much Sally May monopoly money as you can get your credit score built up by opening a bunch of credit cards and trying to spend respond possibly at seventeen eighteen years old, so that you can live your financial life, so that you can get a good deal on your car payment, so that you can get a house that's too much house for a twenty five
year old to be jumping into. And then all of a sudden you look around and your income is swallowed up by all these payments. And I say in the book, you know, you were promised the American dream and you were delivered this American nightmare. And it's not all daisies and rainbows on the other side, it's stressful and you don't make as much as you thought you did, and man, after taxes and all those debt payments, there's really not much to live off of, which is how you turn
to more debt and more debt. So that's what I call the toxic money culture. And I've learned because I was the same way. So I have empathy because I was there, I believed all of those myths, and now being outside of it, and you know, I rose above this debt system by just realizing I don't need to play the game and these companies are not my friend, and I don't need to leverage any of it, and I can live a more peaceful life without any payments. And so that's what my wife and I did in
our early thirties. We paid off our house and went what options could we have in our early thirties without any payments in the world. And so that has really freed us up as we've entered adulthood, and you know, now we have a little girl who's five months old. It's really just taking off the money stress that many people are experiencing.
Well congrats on that, by the way, and so fun to get into that area of your era of your life. But it's so much more fun and so much less stressful when you don't have like ridiculous debts hanging over your life and when you're financially prepared to take that on. And that's always a tough question, like to wrestle with people. Are we ready to start a family? Are we financially ready?
And you're never fully ready financially emotionally, Like you're read all the books, you're never really not sure until you're in it. Yeah, you can read what to expecting, you're expecting three times through and you're still not quite ready, but still you want to be prepared. All right, George, we got more to get to with you, and include what we're gonna talk about spending. Especially from a guy who loves to get a good deal, I want to
pick your brain on that front. We'll get to the more of George Campbell right after this.
Right, we are back from the break again talking with George Cammell. And you know we spent the last section George talking about debt and I think you've mentioned this in your book. You want to take money from being a stressor in your life to a blesser and a part of that being able to enjoy your money is spending it. And in particular, I like your smart Spender framework, and I think following those.
Steps it'll help a lot of folks just dial back.
Needless consumption that is harming their finances as keeping them from their ultimate money goals. But talk to us about that framework if you don't mind.
Absolutely. So I started this when we did a Financial Peace University lesson called why Spending, and I was trying to come up with a simple framework to help people use as a filter when they're making any purchase, whether it's ten dollars or ten thousand dollars. And so I came up with these five questions and they spell out the word smart if you walk through them. So self awareness is the st art. You got to ask yourself will this add value to my life? Is this truly
going to add some utility to my everyday life? And if that's a yes, you can move on. If it's a no, we got a pause. So if it's yes, we move on to the m from motive. Am I buying this for the right reason? So many of us are buying things because of outside pressures or boundary issues or it's emotional. It's retail therapy signaling, right. You guys have seen that with callers as well. A lot of our purchases are emotional.
Yeah. No, that's one hundred percent true. There's that is a huge reason why people spend I'm actually reading a book by a professor from the University of Michigan right now. It's called Tightwads and spin Thterst. We're gonna have them on the show soon. I'm really excited.
Oh I love that.
Yeah, And it's and so many of those decisions often get made not in the realm of the budget and often divorced from kind of those ultimate money goals, And it's about the signaling or the emotional response in the moment.
That's so much smarter than I could say it. I love that. So that motive is the second step. If you can say yes, I'm buying for the right reason, then you move on to the a affordability which you touched on. There is this in my budget. That's a very simple but revolutionary question because if we answered this correctly, America would be zero dollars in debt if everything was in the budget, everything we could afford in cash. So if you can say yes, we've saved up, we're going
to be able to cash flow this purchase. Then you move on to the R for research. And I know you guys will love this one. Is this the best option? Retailer and price? Most of the time it's kind of impulsive. We just kind of clicked on that ad or we saw that in the store and just grabbed it. And what I like to do is just pause and do a quick search online and see, hey, are there other
retailers that have this? Is there generic brand that could work? Oh, Amazon makes a knock off, it will work just as fine. So asking yourself those questions will help you just pause and be intentional about your research. And then finally, if you say yes, I've done the research, you move on to the T for timing. Is now the time to buy it? This one comes down to opportunity cost. It
might be in the budget. You might have the money, but you might want You might want to wait a year or six months or two weeks to make that purchase because you have other financial priorities. So those are the five questions to ask. If you say yes to all five, you're making that purchase with intentionality and no regret, and if it's a no to any of them, you've got to pause and adjust your motive, your lifestyle, your patience, and your budget until you can say, heck yes to all five.
Yeah. No, I think that's super helpful because most of the time we're not running through any framework or we don't have any delay between the desire and then the click to purchase. And obviously not just Amazon, but Amazon in particular makes it so stinking easy to pull that off.
Well. Now, with ads, they're so targeted, it's like they know exactly what you're wanting and things yourselves. Yes, and these marketers are so smart, and so you've got to be aware that companies are constantly coming after your wallet.
And I know our friend Clark Howard would agree. You've got to be on the defense here and think psychologically about what is happening to you and how you're feeling that day and is this really the time to make this purchase or did you just click on that ad because it was a slick ad.
Yeah. You almost need like a mental chastity belt for your while to keep it protected. What are your thoughts on lifestyle Creed George, Because you're a dude, who who's made a lot of progress over the last decade. You are, you've reached a millionaire status, you've reached full debt payoff. That you paid off your mortgage in twenty six months. I want to say, which most people would say ridiculous, George, don't know how you did it, but like, are you
still as frugal as you were before? Have you loosened the purse strings of the merse strings? I guess maybe a little bit?
I like that strings.
Yeah, the man person. Clearly you spend a little bit more on bourbon these days. But once you kind of pay off debt and you've been investing for a number of years, how do you think about spending now? And are you willing to spend more than you used to be then you used to be willing to spend.
That's a great question. Absolutely. We have increased our lifestyle, you know, modestly over the years as we've made more, as we've gotten rid of debt. But for most people, lifestyle creep is the biggest problem. As I call into the show, people are making one hundred ninety thousand dollars household income and they're calling us and they're broke and it's all due to lifestyle creep. The more money they made,
the more money they spent. They got nicer cars, they upgraded to the nicer house, and they're falling for all of these debt traps. And so I do believe lifestyle creep is one of the biggest issues that people aren't really paying attention to in their budget and they're wondering, I'm making more and more money, but it's all about inflation and the housing mark. We're blaming everything else, but we're not looking at the guy or gown the mirror
going like, oh, I increase my spending excuses. So it's rare that people go, I'm just going to increase my giving, and no one has gone broke by being generous. You know, it's all spending, and no one's gone broke by saving money. But I do think the Ramsey plan. What I've found is people who follow it to a tea who are really intense, have a hard time making the shift back to we're going to spend more now. And so that's
an area I try to encourage people with. They're calling us saying, hey, we make one hundred and fifty grand and we buy the thirty thousand dollars car in cash, we have no debt. I'm like, buy the freaking car. Yes, yeah, But those are the people that have a harder time, and so I feel for them because it still hurts me emotionally. We just bought my wife a car and it was the biggest purchase we've made outside of a home, and it hurt my soul. But I also knew you
got to like enjoy life too. You know, we're saving, we're giving, but you also have to not have a flat tire when it comes to spending. And Dave has been very encouraging in that way because he's he's a big fan of enjoying the money while you're on earth. And so there's a good balance between saving, spending giving, and we're on track for retirement. We're not worried about that. We're giving in all the ways we want to, and
so the rest we get to enjoy. And so that means, you know what, We're gonna get the house cleaner once a month, We're gonna pay for the doggy daycare, you know, twice a week. All of those things are now luxuries that we are able to afford because of the sacrifices we've made.
I love it.
This is a conversation. I feel like that we've been
having more and more. We recently talked with somebody who used to be a part of the Fire movement, and a big part of our conversation with Gwen was just trying to figure out how to allow yourself to spend more money, because yes, there can be a mental block, but then even once you get past that, how is it that you, as you're talking to callers, how do you encourage them to explore and to maybe even determine what it is that they're going to spend money on.
And even then once they've identified something, do you have any sort of rule of thumb? Is there some sort of line that you're wanting them to not cross? Because I feel like it can be a slippery slope once you start freeing yourself up to spend a little bit more.
I'd love to hear your thoughts there. Yeah.
I think an easy framework is to realize that there's only three things you can do with money, give, save, and spend. You know, you can teach this to your seven year old and they'll grasp it. So I think a great way to look at any extra money that's floating around is First, you know, we're big on generosity, and so I think giving some off the top is a great way to just already have a loose hand
with it. And again, the the joy you get from giving surpasses any that you would get from spending and saving, and so I think that's a beautiful way to start. Then we can save if you want to just put away twenty percent of that money. You know, if you've got a house paid off, you can go hog wild with investing in max out retirement accounts and put someone in a taxable brokerage or the five twenty nine plan for the kids. But beyond that, you know, we tell
people you don't want a flat tire. If you're just really good at saving, but you're a miser when it comes to spending, you're not going to have a quality life. Your family's gonna suffer, your marriage is gonna suffer. So you have to be able to enjoy things. So what I tell people to do, that's a hard one. It's a hard habit to create, but you force yourself in the budget to put a line item for that spending. And for some people that's a vacation. They haven't taken
a vacation in ten years. It feels like a frivolous luxury. And we go go spend five thousand dollars and go to an all inclusive and just have a great time and force yourself to spend that money. And it's all about ratios, you know. Dave talks about this. If you make a million dollars, well, spending ten grand is like a biscuit to someone who makes forty grand, you know
what I mean. Yeah, So it's all about ratios. And so it's okay if Dave Ramsey goes out and buys one hundred thousand dollars car, it's a very small portion of his world, his net worth, his income. And so as you make more money, it's okay to look at those ratios and go, we can up it in this area. And the greatest one I've heard Dave talk about is the burn test. Can you put that pile of money on the dinner table and burn it and still be okay and not have an emotional breakdown? And if the
answer is yes, then it's probably an okay decision. But if the answer is, oh my gosh, I would I would, it would take my breath away to see ten thousand dollars just disappear. Then don't do it, because most of these things are toys and luxuries. Like he talks about vacation properties and cars. These are toys, and so you can't put too much of your net worth into these And.
The timing, the order of when you make those decisions matter so much. Buying the new car at twenty three and financing it is a completely different thing than buying the brand new car at thirty three when you have no debt and you have significant savings on hand. Right, You mentioned relationships too, and the money decisions we make drastically impacts our friendships. They impact our relationship with our spouse and our kids, and I think, yeah, being too
cheap can certainly have a negative impact over time. Talk to us about that a little bit. You met your wife on the job, so it sounds like y'all were probably on the same page a little bit with money already. How important was that to you, given the amount of progress you'd already made. Kind of having someone with a similar vision for their finances. And I'm sure you get callers too who aren't on the same page as our spouse. How do you encourage them to maybe kind of land in a similar place.
Oh, this is such a great question because the biggest wealth hack is marrying the right person. I totally agree, And it is really hard to build wealth if you marry the wrong person who doesn't have the same values and same goals. And so obviously meeting my wife at Ramsey Solutions, she still works here. She's a boss babe executive assistant for one of our board members and Dave's right hand guys. And so she when I met her, she was obviously better looking than me, smarter than me,
and better at money management. And so when I met her, she was already dead free. So she was saving you exactly. But I think my charm won her over. She likes fil middle Eastern guys under five to eight, so that's.
A big plus great personality.
So that was a huge win. I mean, when we started dating and we got married, it was like, all right, we're going to pre decide that we're gonna put as much down on a modest house as possible and paying off as fast as possible. Because we asked ourselves those questions, what kind of options could we have in our early thirties, How could it change the decisions we make when it comes to life and work and enjoyment and generosity if we didn't have any payments already in our thirties, and
so we predecided. So that meant we were going to be aggressive, and we saved up a big down payment on we got a town home outside of the Franklin area that was cheaper. Even though the bank would be willing to loan us a bajillion dollars, we were like, no, we're going to do something that's weird and rare and get a modest town home. And so we did that.
Yeah, don't you love that pre approval letter for two thousand more than you're actually wanting to spend. That blows my message with people so hard.
Yes, And so we did another weird thing, and we didn't have a credit score because we didn't have debt, and so we got a mortgage with no credit score through a process called manual underwriting. And it wasn't that difficult, it didn't ruin our life. We got a great rate on the mortgage, and so I've been railing against that myth for a long time. But all of that allowed us to pay off the house in twenty six months with we were really aggressive. This is not the Ramsey plan.
We tell people you can move from intense to intentional when you move from baby step, you know, two and three, which is getting out of debt, getting the emergency fund into four five six, which is investing and paying off the house early. And so we were just aggressive because it was a fun goal for us and we're weird like that. But marrying her and having the same vision and goals was such a blessing to just exponentially grow
a wealth so much faster. And so if you're not on the same page, I feel for you, and you've got to have the hard conversation. You've got to tell your spouse really really how you feel. And if they like you and they love you, they're going to listen and they're going to try to understand and they're going to go, Okay, I get it. You're stressed out about this debt. What can we do to get rid of it.
That's when you guys go, all right, we're going to read the Total Money Makeover or Breaking Free from Broke or go through Financial Peace University to create that shared language, to create those shared vision and goals for what we're going to do and how we're going to do it.
That's how we see couples win. And it also improves their marriages, which makes sense because you're communicating and there's expectations and you're working toward the same goal, maybe for the first time in your life, and so it's a beautiful thing when you can get a spouse on board.
Yeah, I'm all about that, George.
And there are some differences between how it is that we view certain things in the Ramsey way, but I will say when Kate and I, the way we first got on the same page was through Dave Ramsey. I literally was like, hey, babe, yes, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, and this is over fifteen years ago, but we I bought tickets to one of the live events because for us, we didn't have a framework, we didn't have a way to talk about it, and
so we need to to learn the same language. And that was the first step towards financial freedom for us.
Now they have the Dave Amsey face tattoo on their on their shoulder to prove it.
Yeah, the tat has faded over the years, but thanks for sharing that, George. Just the story with you and Whitney. But we're gonna talk more. We've talked about spending money, and you're touching on rolling your net worth and just the ability to save up large amounts of money. We're going to talk more about investing. Right after the break.
We're back from the break. We're still talking about Breaking Free from Broke. That's George's new book, George Campbell and George. We covered a lot of ground already. Let's talk about investing. Though. I feel like you you're thirty four, I believe already a millionaire. Pretty amazing. Not many people get there at that early of an age. I feel like the apps like robin Hood, social media, what we see there, they they want to make it seem like getting to that
point can be quick and easy. That maybe it's almost like the difference between getting rich versus building wealth. What was the process like for you getting that point? It sounds like it was just a lot of hard work, having a massively high savings rate, allocating more to debt payoff and then more to investing. Was it just was it this really sexy process or was it kind of plain vanilla in nature? You getting to that millionaire status?
Well, you know, if you look at the comment section, most people make fun of how simple my financial plan was to build wealth. But I find it encouraging because if it's that simple, then anyone can do it. You don't have to be a prodigy, you don't have to download the right app, thank goodness, regardless of what these apps market to you. So I have a whole chapter in the book on marketing on investing traps, and one
of those is micro investing apps. A lot of these distractions that cause people to think they're building wealth but doing it at such a slow rate while trying to do seventeen other things. It causes them to never make progress in any area, whether it's debt payoff or wealth building. And that's what I love about the Ramsey plan is it's one thing at a time. Let's focus on debt payoff.
Let's focus on the emergency fund. Now we can invest fifteen percent, which is way more than most people are investing. And so I think it's a beautiful plan to just stay focused. And that's exactly what we did. And my investing plan was real simple. We invested fifteen percent of our household income into our WROTH four O. One case here at Ramsey, and we split those across four mutual funds that were diversified, and so that allowed us to
slowly build wealth in our investment accounts. And then of course with the house payoff, you're building equity with this forced savings plan, and the house is going to appreciate, and so we have the beauty of living in Franklin, Tennessee, which is one of the hottest areas. Definitely in Tennessee, but in the South in general. Nashville area has been blowing up when it comes to real estate. So with the house appreciation and then paying off the home, we
got another home that's paid off. And so when you add up all of our assets between our retirement accounts and the house, it's over a million. And you go, oh, my gosh, you kind of accidentally got there with intentionality. And so people will make fun of me because they go, well, George, your house doesn't count. I'm like, well, according to just basic accounting, it does. But also, I don't need a million dollars in liquid cash. What the heck am I
going to do with that? That's not really a flex that I care about at this point in my life. Because we have margin with every paycheck. We have margin. We have a bunch of money in savings. We have money in our retirement accounts that's growing for us with compound growth over time that will tap into later on. We can build a bridge account so that when we're in our fifties, if we want to retire early, we'll
have that money to cover us. And so I've never understood the argument that you need a million dollars in liquid cash to be considered a real millionaire according to the YouTube comments, which is funny to me, but that's it. Truly. Our retirement is I've got a wroth Ira, a wroth for on and K. My wife has a wroth for O, on and K. We have a paid four house and two paid four cars, and then a bunch of money in our emergency fund in a highyield savings account.
That's beautiful.
And that's all my cards on the table.
Do not live your life according to YouTube comments, they'll lead you.
That's just good life advice.
Sorry, Instagram or tiktokic.
Yeah, it's exhaust I know I shouldn't look, but it's like a car wreck. I'm just so intrigued to see what the heck is going on and then I go, Okay, I need a shower after reading these comments. That's right, It's that simple.
Okay.
So, like we're kind of talking about retirement, can we talk a little bit about the safe withdrawal rate? Because you put out a video based on a bunch of pretty robust evidence out there that you know, like the four ish percent is a safe withdrawal rate for retirees. I mean a lot of that's based on the Trinity study. Talk about that and just the approach and how it is that folks should feel comfortable about drawing down on their retirement.
Well, you know, when it comes to withdraw rate, it's such a personalized decision because everyone's situation is different. Everyone has a different nest egg, everyone has different expenses, and so it's a it's a hard thing to just put out there and say, well, for everyone in America, they
should do this. But I do think you know, Dave Ramsey was on air famously talking about, hey, if the market does twelve percent and you withdraw eight percent, there's still a four percent spread for cost of inflation, rays and all of that, and you could survive off of that just fine. And you got a lot of flak for that, and I understand, but you got to remember that people following the Ramsey plan after fifteen years, if they follow our plan, they don't have a house payment anymore.
They've been investing for decades potentially, and so they don't need to have one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year in retirement. And so it's a beautiful thing when you go, oh, I could withdraw it eight percent, but I could withdraw less. And so my goal and the other question is do you need this account to stay at the principal balance forever? The answer is no, there's nothing wrong with drawing down
that balance. And most people with the life expectancy, if you retire a sixty two, most people won't live past seventy five or eighty, you know, based on data, that is true, and so you really need this account for about fifteen years, not thirty to forty years.
So hope we're a good shape and we're living passes.
That's how I hope to live to I'm gonna trust me, I'm planning to go from you know, sixty to ninety five. If the cards play around at.
George Mathusla Camill, what they're gonna come with yes.
At seven eighty four years old, still doing this podcast. But I think it's a it's a fun conversation, but it's also so hypothetical and nerdy, and I wish we could be arguing about this. But the truth is, most people aren't saving anything. Four and ten people have nothing in savings and most people dream of having a million dollars and they've lost hope. And so it's one of those things where if we can just focus on investing, you won't have to worry about withdrawal rates. Most people.
I've never heard someone calling to the show being like, hey, we are withdraw rate was too high in retirement and now we're broke. Most people are saying, we don't have anything for retirement.
What do we do exactly?
Yeah, And it's so it's a very different conversation.
It can be a psychological hurdle, I think too, for people to see that balance go down, and I think more we need to help make retirees more comfortable seeing that balance go down a little bit, because that's why you saved it up in the first place. That's why you spent so many decades on the front end making sure that you were going to be able to have retirement and you know it's okay, I guess to leave money to your heirs. That's also not something Matt and
I prioritize. We love our kids, we want to give them every advantage in the here and now, but we also don't We want to try to avoid entitlements, and part of that is not leaving behind hundreds of thousands or millions to our offspring.
Yeah, and you're probably gonna leave at the worst case, you're gonna leave paid for real estate. Yeah, which is gonna be worth a whole lot of money. When you guys you know hit you know, hit the old Rainbow trail there, and so even that think it's a beautiful thing.
Even that, though I don't. We'll see if it goes to them. I haven't made up my mind on a bunch of things. So much depends on how things progress. And I want to make sure they have every advantage, like I said, like in the here and now as they're ten, eight and four, but as they as they get older and grow up go to school. Want to help them along. But I also want to make sure that they have to drive to.
And they're not just reliant well daddy's got exactly a portfolio that I'm going to get. Yeah, that We've seen that before where I'm trying to convince someone and they go, well, I'm getting a trust fund, so none of this matters. And I go, Okay, then I don't know why.
What's this conversation right? Good for you?
Yeah, we all want that for our kids. We want to give them a better life than we had, but we also don't want to create this entitlement. And I went on air because people wanted to talk about on Fox, like Guy Fiedi says he's not leaving his kids anything, and Marie Osmond says, he's not leaving our kids Jack Squad. I'm like, I don't know that that needs to be
the goal, you know what I mean? Yeah, but I think it's a good thing to grapple with, to go, how do we leave this in a way that doesn't destroy them?
Yeah, exactly, all right, last question, talk to me about optimism versus pessimism. I am naturally an optimist, like one hundred percent all the way, and I know that everybody kind of comes out of the womb a little differently on that front. But at the end of the book, you talk about how cynicism, negativity, and fear can stem me your process. So how important do you think your outlook is on your ability to make progress? And how malleable is our outlook like? Is it set in stone?
Is it nature from the very get go? Or do we have enough ability to kind of change that? And how do we go about doing stuff?
Well? I was the opposite growing up, but I still struggle with it. I'm a recovering pessimist. I am sort of the optimist cynic and so I have to fight this every day, and it's a daily decision because it's so easy to be cynical. And I thought it was
like a flex like. I thought it was a personality trait to be cynical when I was younger, and I let cynicism for too long, I steal my joy and it kept me stuck in this victim mentality, because when you're cynical, it's everyone else's fault and you're just sort of this critic that's above it all, and you're just resigned to your fate as a cog in the machine.
And I drank that poison for too long, and nothing changed for me financially until I realized that pity's not going to lead to progress, and so that was a hard thing for me to make a paradigm shift to. And when I found out in the Millionaire study, they asked a really interesting question. We did a national study of millionaires, the largest one ever done, and they asked this question and the answer was this. Ninety seven percent of the millionaires we studied said they believed that they
controlled their financial destiny. It's such a simple belief, but do you believe that you can personally effect where you end up financially? And if you don't believe that, then why would you even bother to get out of debt and invest for your future. You're just going to resign to your situation and wait for someone else to fix it. And so that when you have this positivity and this optimism that you can actually have agency on autonomy over
your financial life. It creates this thing called hope. And that's sort of the secret thing we do here at Ramsey. That's our secret sauce is that day for thirty years is really good at just giving people hope. And when you have hope, you're willing to do the hard thing for a season. You're willing to sacrifice and get the second job and sell the car because you can see light at the end of the tunnel and you know you're working towards something because you have a deep why.
And so that's really my hope. At the end of the book. I put it there because it's not really finance related, but it certainly affects your finances. And I want to talk about money so we can stop talking about money, because, like you guys mentioned earlier, money is an obstacle for most people. And when we can turn that into a tool to really live a life for out of that doesn't exhaust us. That's what we're really after, not just a pile in our.
Nests about what you can do with that money. Yeah, that sacrifice leads to the ability to change your life, and like I'll say on the show, that the ability to change your family tree. And George, we really appreciate you coming on the show and talking with us. Where can folks learn more about you? Where can folks learn more about the book?
Absolutely so if you want to copy of Breaking Free from Broke, it's available at Ramseysolutions dot Com, Amazon, wherever you get your books, you'll find it there. If you search breaking Free from Broke, and if you want to connect with me, I'd love to hear what you thought about this podcast. I know you're fans of How to Money, so hopefully you'll be fans of mine and you can follow me at George Cammell with a K on Instagram and X which I hate calling it that, but that's what it is.
It is.
We have to just get used to it, guys at this point. So I love, love to connect with your fans, and we have so much more in common than we do that we disagree on. And so it's an honor to be on the show and help people break free from broke and find financial freedom.
One hundred percent George, thanks so much, man. It was a pleasure and we'll talk and soon.
Awesome, thanks guys.
Nice man, what a great conversation. And I'm curious if listeners were thinking, all right, Mangel, they're gonna wrap up this conversation and immediately cut up all their credit cards. No, because I still I'm still working on get some more points there on my Southwest card.
Heya, I'm gonna be taking a lot of free trips this year thanks to my credit cards, you know. But like George said, we have a lot more exactly, and I think that's what Dave is known for.
But man, I just really appreciate how George is approaching personal finance, how he's approaching money, and the way that we think about it. But uh, yeah, I guess what was your big takeaway from our conversation today?
I think my big takeaway and you and I talked about this regularly, simplicity is so important underrated, right, And like he's talking about how your focus is spread across seventeen different action items, you're gonna make little to no progress on all of them. And I think that's so true. And he talked about his simple path paying on the mortgage and investing fifteen percent in those retirement accounts, and hey, guess what if you do that with regularity, pretty soon
you're a millionaire. Like, not in a day or a week or a year typically, but in the eight to ten to twelve to fifteen year timeframe. You can get to that point if you have that sort of focus. But yeah, it doesn't have to be some sort of complicated methodology or attacking this multi pronged system. It's paying off debt, increasing how much you're dedicating towards investments, watching those investments straightforward. Man. Yeah, I mean we talked about a lot of different things on this show.
Because we're nerds, Yeah, because we are diving into the weeds, and because we're nerds, we want to optimize at every turn. But it is important to point out that that's a particular kind of person, and it takes you as an individual knowing what type of person am I What kind of strategy do I need to focus on that is going to allow me to arrive at my goal?
Yes, as fast as quickly as possible. At the core, at the heart, at the root of the situation, it's simplicity all the way down. If you want to make progress, and we can talk about all these things on the edges, they're going to help you make additional progress. They're going to help you take that cheaper vacation, or that going to help you increase the rate that you're earning on
your savings or whatever it is. But man, that focus on simplicity is so important in something we have to constantly come back to.
Yeah, no, man, I think that is so true. So I think my big takeaway is going to be I guess going back to Earlier on in the conversation, we were talking about advice that George gives when he's talking with somebody and they've got a bunch of debt on hand, and I liked what he said about leaning the other
direction from the individual's natural tendency. And so, for instance, if somebody is maybe a little more emotional when it comes to their spending, well maybe it's worth leaning a little bit more towards the math near to your side of things. But if you have somebody and they're over analyzing their numbers, they're over there, maybe they're doing a
little bit too much number crunching. What they need to do is to realize, hey, like, let's connect with the emotional side of what this being clear this debt, what
that's going to allow you to do. I think there's some balance that that approach can provide that I think could lead to a lot of folks seeing like outsized progress then the approach that they think is going to get them out of that hole, because bottom line, the tendency is what got them into that hole, and so a lot of times it's going to take a different strategy to get you out of it. Yeah, I think if there's there's some good wisdom there.
If you're bogged down in emotion and that's how you mainly relate to money, you should lean in the numbers a little more. Maybe it used to need to get a little more analytical with it. Yeah, Or maybe you're like the engineer type and you're in the spreadsheet all the time, and maybe you're not seeing the way that the way you treat money impacts your family, your household on the emotional level, and you need to step back and think through that because that's an important part of
money too. So I like that. Yeah, maybe taking a little bit of that and sprinkling it in at least thinking through the opposite of your natural tendency makes a whole lot of sense. Totally. That's right, man.
Here's a little peek behind the curtain. Is our conversation with George was here in the morning. So you and I decided for the sake of the show, we're not going to drink a craft beer. I mean, George was drinking heavily like a fish. He's drinking bourbon out of his tubbler over there. No, it's early in the morning, and so you and I are both enjoying nice cups of coffee here I got my I will say this is a splurge. This is the tim Windlebow like the finest coffee straight out of Norway.
Well, of course, the best coffee comes from Norway, my people's.
But truly, this was not a cheap bag of beans that purchased last week. So yeah, no be a review this week. But hey, we'll be back next time always.
All right, that's gonna do it for this episode. If you want links to some of the resources we mentioned, including George's new book, you can find those up on our website at Howtomoney dot com.
That's right, buddy, So that's gonna be it until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.