Speaker 1: Dave Ramsey, personal money management expert, America's trusted voice on
Speaker 1: money and business, has a national radio show It's all
Speaker 1: over the place. He's got seven best selling books um
Speaker 1: sold in many millions of copies, and he's got a
Speaker 1: heck of an interesting life story as well. And we
Speaker 1: couldn't agree with this guy more on a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different things, because four hours simply usn't enough. This
Speaker 1: is armstrong and getty extra large. There he is, Dave Ramsey.
Speaker 1: How are you, sir? Great? How are you guys? Oh,
Speaker 1: we're terrific. We're terrific. You know, we have a lot
Speaker 1: a lot in common, whether you know it or not,
Speaker 1: because we share a lot of your beliefs about financial
Speaker 1: responsibility and how you know it's it's I don't know
Speaker 1: if you consider it moral? Do is like being reasonable
Speaker 1: with your money, being frugal, being smart? Do you consider
Speaker 1: that a moral value? Probably? Is this definitely wise? Sure?
Speaker 1: Because I mean it used to be taught by all
Speaker 1: the classic religions that that was part of being a
Speaker 1: good person. Yeah, it's a discipline of your life, and
Speaker 1: it's an indicator or that you're uh, you know, you're
Speaker 1: emotionally spiritually mature that you handle money well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not a child. Here. Here's where it comes up
Speaker 1: most often on our show is there'll be some government
Speaker 1: statistic or a conversation particularly about or around retirement or people,
Speaker 1: you know, when they're getting older and how much money
Speaker 1: they've got, and I'm supposed to feel terrible about it. Well,
Speaker 1: I might feel terrible about person A. Maybe they had
Speaker 1: bad things happen to him. I don't know. But person
Speaker 1: B may have always owned a new car and gone
Speaker 1: on vacations. I've never gone on, and then lived in
Speaker 1: a house bigger than they should have, and then they
Speaker 1: got no money there into their life. I don't care.
Speaker 1: So it bothers me that that the news never takes
Speaker 1: that into an into account, well, because there there would
Speaker 1: be an ideological agenda obviously with those folks. So the
Speaker 1: news folks and people putting out that in that way
Speaker 1: because if you can say, well, society is sick, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know all of those people are victims of a
Speaker 1: systemic problem, then we must to need socialism to fix it. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get I get what you're saying, but just what
Speaker 1: a bad message to have for everyone though? Uh? In
Speaker 1: real life. Just two days ago, I'm going to visit
Speaker 1: my my dad with my kids. They're going to see
Speaker 1: grandma and grandpa. And buddy of mine said, boy, where
Speaker 1: your dad lives. He must have really done well in
Speaker 1: the business he was in. And I said, no, not really.
Speaker 1: He never made very much money. We just always drove
Speaker 1: used cars. We lived in a small house. We never
Speaker 1: went anywhere on vacation. He's just always been really really fuegel.
Speaker 1: That's frugal. That's why he's got some money. The assumption
Speaker 1: that you have to make says some Cooper says, oh,
Speaker 1: he's lucky, right exactly. But luck didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with this. So listen. For fans of Armstrong and
Speaker 1: getting you might not listen to you or or be
Speaker 1: familiar with you. What's the introduction crash course to Dave
Speaker 1: Ramsey and what you teach? Well, start with him. Honored
Speaker 1: to be on the Armstrong and Getty show. You guys
Speaker 1: are legends. Thank you for having me. Honored to be
Speaker 1: with you. But you know, it is common sense. It's
Speaker 1: God's and Grandma's ways of handling money, is what we
Speaker 1: always say. And so it's live on less than you make.
Speaker 1: It's be outrageously generous. It's have a written plan, stay
Speaker 1: out of debt, because your number one wealth building tool
Speaker 1: is your income, and when you give it to everybody else,
Speaker 1: that makes you pour uh. You know. It's those basic
Speaker 1: kinds of things like that. It used to be called
Speaker 1: common sense, and I've made a really good living for
Speaker 1: thirty years with it. Yeah. Well, I didn't know this
Speaker 1: about your bio until I was reading your bio. At
Speaker 1: twenty six. You accumulated a lot of money for a
Speaker 1: year old, then you lost it all. What's that whole story?
Speaker 1: And then what you learn from it? I was stupid? Um,
Speaker 1: that's you know. We started with nothing, and by the
Speaker 1: time I was twenty six, I had about four million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of real estate, a little over a million
Speaker 1: dollar net worth. And this is eight four. I made
Speaker 1: two h fifty thousand dollars cash taxable income that year
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. We call that a lot of money back then.
Speaker 1: And so I was doing great, but I borrowed too much.
Speaker 1: The bank got sold to another bank. I had built
Speaker 1: a house of cards, and guess what they called our
Speaker 1: loans because they freaked out and saw twenty six year
Speaker 1: old kid oh too, millions of dollars. And it took
Speaker 1: two and a half years then for Sharon I to
Speaker 1: lose everything we owned, and we had the wonderful opportunity
Speaker 1: to start over with a brand new baby, a toddler
Speaker 1: in our marriage hanging on by a thread. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: that's something else. And and so starting out a new
Speaker 1: what was different about your approach? Um? Well, I wasn't
Speaker 1: just broke. I was broken. Uh it. I thought I
Speaker 1: could do anything, and I've discovered I couldn't. And so I,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to rethink all the stuff I
Speaker 1: had been taught in academia and check it against scripture
Speaker 1: and check it against common sense. Because in academia they
Speaker 1: tell you that there's good debt and so borrow as
Speaker 1: much as you can if it's a student loan or
Speaker 1: a house. And uh here I sat broke using that
Speaker 1: exact theory. So something's wrong with this. And I kind
Speaker 1: of came up with the idea that a broke finance
Speaker 1: professor is like a shop teacher with missing fingers. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm gonna follow your best ideas because
Speaker 1: the last time I did, it left a mark. And
Speaker 1: uh so I just got weird. I just said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I talked to rich people, and they don't
Speaker 1: borrow money. They don't borrow money. They don't care credit
Speaker 1: card balances, they don't have car payments, they drive used cars. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't borrow money. They go on vacation, they pay
Speaker 1: for it. They don't borrow money. They get ready to
Speaker 1: fix up their kitchen, they pay for it, and then
Speaker 1: the next month they get to keep their paycheck instead
Speaker 1: of giving it some stupid bank home equity loan. And
Speaker 1: so it was a real revelation, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I started applying this stuff to my life, and then
Speaker 1: I started talking about to other people, and it turned into,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years later, a Hall of Fame radio show,
Speaker 1: Who Knew So? And what's interesting to us about the
Speaker 1: change in the culture from a pays ugo society to
Speaker 1: everybody borrows to buy everything all the time, is that
Speaker 1: it didn't happen in two seventy five years. I mean literally,
Speaker 1: Grandma paid as she went there. There bad guys in
Speaker 1: this Is it just a societal thing? How that change happened. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's bad guys, but they're they're not. It's not a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory. They're just uh, they don't care about their customer,
Speaker 1: and they're called banks. And you know, the debt is
Speaker 1: the most aggressively marketed product in the culture that has
Speaker 1: the most marketing in the history of mankind. So there's
Speaker 1: more money spent selling the credit card than any other
Speaker 1: product in our world today. And we live in the
Speaker 1: most marketed to culture in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: So these guys are really good at getting you in
Speaker 1: debt and making you believe at the core of your
Speaker 1: very being that you cannot exist without debt. Well, you
Speaker 1: can't have a car that a car payment. You can't
Speaker 1: be a student without a student loan. It's absurd, Graham,
Speaker 1: you've lost your mind. No, got a pretty good life
Speaker 1: that way, boy. And the most obvious of business analysis
Speaker 1: is they're not working that hard and spending that much
Speaker 1: to get your credit card because if they know it
Speaker 1: will be helpful, it's because they're gonna make that much money.
Speaker 1: You know. If you notice their building is bigger than
Speaker 1: your house and their furniture is nicer than yours, something's
Speaker 1: going on here. It's a transfer of wealth, boys and girls. Boy.
Speaker 1: And if you if you've ever been in the position
Speaker 1: to pay cash for things you're washing machine or your
Speaker 1: car or whatever. When you when you when you are
Speaker 1: paying cash, you make different buying decisions. You don't buy
Speaker 1: the next step up of car if you're paying cash
Speaker 1: for at least that's been my experience. You yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's like real money. It's yeah, it counts his real money.
Speaker 1: So a Dave um any thoughts on the current state
Speaker 1: of college education and paying for it. You've mentioned student
Speaker 1: loans a couple of times. What else? Uh, Well, one
Speaker 1: of our Ramsey personalities, Anthony O'Neil's launching a book on
Speaker 1: October seventh called Debt Free Degree. We are sure you
Speaker 1: can go to college debt free. But it's just like you,
Speaker 1: it's exactly like you just said. It has to do
Speaker 1: with college choice, choosing to go to a school that
Speaker 1: is within your budget, choosing to buy a car that's
Speaker 1: within your budget. No one even considers what they're paying
Speaker 1: for school because it's not real money. It's monopoly money.
Speaker 1: And um, you know. And on the political front, this
Speaker 1: idea of forgiving student loans without the idea of stopping
Speaker 1: making them is ridiculous. If this is a plague on
Speaker 1: America of epic proportions, which I think it is. Then
Speaker 1: Congress needs to wake up and stop making stop guaranteeing
Speaker 1: the line. I don't know how much time you want
Speaker 1: to spend on the politics as but but it drives
Speaker 1: us crazy that the discussion is always about whether you
Speaker 1: forgive loans or not, or how much or whatever. Nobody
Speaker 1: ever even brings up why is college so damned expensive? Now? Why?
Speaker 1: Why would knowledge is easier to spread around than it's
Speaker 1: ever been in the history of the world. Is college
Speaker 1: ten times as expensive? It doesn't even come up in
Speaker 1: the conversation. Well, it's supplying to my end of money.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that. I mean, when you have
Speaker 1: unlimited money, when your customer has unlimited money to spend,
Speaker 1: you will find a way to raise your prices. And
Speaker 1: so you want college price to come down, stop the
Speaker 1: student loan guarantee program instantaneously. Colleges will disappear, and some
Speaker 1: of them need to because they're ridiculous, and the rest
Speaker 1: of them will adjust to a disrupted market. But this
Speaker 1: is a market that's propped up by government subsidies, and
Speaker 1: it's driven the price through the roof. It's basic econ right.
Speaker 1: You don't need to be an economist. You need to
Speaker 1: be like a first or second year ECON student to
Speaker 1: understand what distorting market is. Um but and and you
Speaker 1: know a final note is semi philosophical. It's interesting listening
Speaker 1: to you tell your life story, Dave, that it comes
Speaker 1: from being humbled, and through being humbled you decided I'm
Speaker 1: the captain of my own ship. I'm strong enough to
Speaker 1: plot my own course. It's it's kind of an interesting contrast. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem with my monny is the guy in my mirror.
Speaker 1: If I can get that goober to behave he can
Speaker 1: be skinny and rich, but he's got issues. Well said, indeed,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's been too long since we talked. Listen,
Speaker 1: not let too much time go by again, Dave Ramsey, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, my brothers. I'm honored to be on the
Speaker 1: station with you, and thank you for letting me come
Speaker 1: on for a few minutes. You holler anytime, I'd be
Speaker 1: happy to do this. We'll do that. Thanks. I've never
Speaker 1: heard that story before I did. I listened to Ramsey
Speaker 1: on and often I hear all the credit card advice
Speaker 1: and stuff, and it's all great. I agree with it,
Speaker 1: but I've never heard the story of how he had
Speaker 1: a million dollars when he was twenty six, and that's
Speaker 1: when a million dollars was really a lot of money
Speaker 1: and and lost it all. Well that you know, that'll
Speaker 1: change your view of things. Yep, good stuff extra large