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

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.360 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a great show for you

00:00:16.540 today with my fellow host here at Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. Joining me is personal

00:00:23.380 finance expert, host of The Ramsey Show, and author of the upcoming book, Baby Steps Millionaires,

00:00:30.900 Dave Ramsey. Dave, a lot to talk about. I'm sure all of our audience would like to become

00:00:34.660 millionaires, and you are just the man to speak to about how to do that. But I want to begin in

00:00:39.240 a sort of what may seem like a weird place for you, as opposed to like a political pundit like

00:00:45.040 we had Charles C.W. Cook on the show yesterday. But I'm going somewhere with this, so stand by.

00:00:50.300 Stay with me. The story dominating the news yesterday was of this January 6th hearing.

00:00:59.160 And they've put together what they're dubbing a bipartisan commission. It's not. It's the

00:01:04.200 Democrats plus two. They're not Republicans. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are Republicans in the

00:01:10.660 same way. Nicole Wallace or Jen Rubin or Bill Kristol are Republicans. At one point, it may have

00:01:15.200 been thus. It's no longer so. McCarthy pulled the Republicans because he couldn't get the ones he

00:01:20.860 wanted. And now it's become just a complete farce. But it took a very weird turn yesterday. And to me,

00:01:27.340 it speaks to a couple of things. Number one, dishonesty in media. And number two, how off these

00:01:33.280 people are on what matters to Americans, what matters to voters. And that's where you're going

00:01:41.460 to come in. All right. So let me just set it up. So the commission is looking into how January 6th

00:01:47.140 happened and why and who should be held responsible. They've been subpoenaing the records and deposition

00:01:53.640 testimony of all of Trump's top aides from Steve Bannon to we had Peter Navarro on the show last

00:02:00.880 week to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff. And they've they've either said, you know, I'm not coming at

00:02:07.460 all, you know, go pound sand like Bannon. They've tried to or they've tried to work with them a

00:02:11.660 little like Mark Meadows, but said, I'm going to respect the president's claim of executive

00:02:15.500 privilege, which is playing out in the legal lane. And Trump, by the way, is losing. He just

00:02:20.400 suffered a bad setback from the Court of Appeals. Basically, he pulled the worst three judge panel one

00:02:26.240 could possibly pull. And they all are hard left Democrats and appointed by Obama and Biden. They

00:02:31.480 were all like, this is a national emergency. You got to turn everything over. So unless he can get

00:02:35.480 relief at the Supreme Court, his claim of executive privilege is going to be permanently overruled and

00:02:39.260 all these people are going to have to fork over the documents. And I believe they will. Anyway, Mark

00:02:44.080 Meadows said, give you what I can. I've got to wait on the executive privilege stuff. Well, they're not

00:02:49.060 happy with that. They decided to release his private text messages that they've gotten so far. And yesterday

00:02:56.680 it turned into this weird thing, not about Mark Meadows, not even exactly about Trump, but about

00:03:03.960 Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade. And they the texts were from those guys to Mark

00:03:12.620 Meadows on the day of January 6th, essentially saying this isn't good. Trump should speak. This

00:03:18.980 should stop. This is not helpful to the MAGA movement. And the what Liz Cheney was positing was

00:03:26.380 they are liars because that's what they said privately to Mark Meadows when they got on their shows that

00:03:31.180 night. They said something very different.

00:03:33.960 Well, I open minded. OK, you know, I don't carry water for Fox News. I don't work there anymore.

00:03:39.240 Same as you. What's the truth, right? Like walk me through it. So I went, do we have that sound

00:03:44.560 bite, you guys? I the Washington Post one. OK, so I started to call it together. Then I found

00:03:51.440 exactly what I was looking for on The Washington Post. I was like, oh, I don't have to do it.

00:03:54.560 The mainstream media is going to tell me how they lied. Now, in the law, bear in mind while you watch

00:04:00.380 this, there's something called improper impeachment. If you take the stand, Dave, and you say the sky

00:04:05.120 is blue and I say, OK, fine. But if you take the sky, you take the stand and say the sky is

00:04:11.160 yellow and I know it's blue. I get up there and I say, I want to impeach this witness.

00:04:16.480 He previously said the sky was blue. He knows it's blue. Why is he saying it's yellow? They'd let

00:04:20.760 me come after you. But if what you had said previously was it's blue and then you took the

00:04:24.980 stand and you said it's light blue and I tried to get you, the judge would sit me down saying

00:04:31.020 that's improper impeachment. You don't have him. That's that you're making up this impeachment

00:04:35.020 moment. And I'm telling you, that's what's happening right now with Liz Cheney and the

00:04:38.660 Fox News hosts. And you just listen for yourselves. You don't need a lawyer, somebody like me who

00:04:42.960 practiced law for a decade to show you how what she's playing is not impeaching what their

00:04:47.760 texts said. So I'll let you listen. It's two minutes long and the audience judge for

00:04:52.880 themselves. And I'll ask Dave about why people don't care about this and what they actually do.

00:04:57.380 Stand by. Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of

00:05:04.740 us. He is destroying his legacy, Laura Ingram wrote. The Capitol was under siege by people who can only

00:05:12.640 be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. Now, there were likely not all Trump supporters,

00:05:18.500 and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout

00:05:23.500 the crowd. Please get him on TV, destroying everything you have accomplished. Brian Kilmeade

00:05:31.100 texted about how I feel about the whole thing. I just thought the tone, the attitude of defiance

00:05:38.100 played out in the Capitol. The lack of security stunned me. I do not know Trump supporters that

00:05:43.120 have ever demonstrated violence that I know of in a big situation. Quote, can he make a statement,

00:05:49.780 ask people to leave the Capitol? Sean Hannity urged. They knew there were hundreds of thousands of people

00:05:56.080 that came to town. We also knew that there's always bad actors that will infiltrate large crowds.

00:06:02.820 I don't care if they're radical left, radical right. I don't know who they are. They're not people

00:06:06.400 I would support. One of the president's sons texted Mr. Meadows, quote, he's got to condemn

00:06:12.900 this shit ASAP. The Capitol police tweet is not enough. Donald Trump Jr. texted. Donald Trump Jr.

00:06:22.140 texted again and again, urging action by the president, quote, we need an Oval Office address.

00:06:31.720 He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. End quote. There you go.

00:06:39.400 If you were to take his speech. Now she gets to Don Trump defending his dad. Nobody is surprised by

00:06:45.080 that. You tell me, Dave, I mean, you're you weren't expecting this. We didn't pre-rehearse this. Did you

00:06:50.300 hear something starkly different in the messaging of Laura Ingraham, for example? The president needs to

00:06:56.560 tell people at the Capitol to go home. It's hurting all of us. He's destroying his legacy.

00:07:02.160 With that, it's with her coming out and saying, if you were a Trump supporter, this is what she said

00:07:08.480 that night on the air. If you were a Trump supporter trying to display your support for

00:07:12.200 the president, today's antics at the Capitol did just the opposite. And she says the Capitol was

00:07:17.100 under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. How is that

00:07:21.440 inconsistent? How is any of this inconsistent? Just because they kept open the thought that there

00:07:26.540 could be non-Trump supporters there as well is not a dismissal of the whole event. And so you tell me

00:07:32.820 whether you've heard the inconsistency and you tell me whether these people have any sort of a finger on

00:07:37.900 the pulse of what is a real Americans are sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about going

00:07:43.340 into this holiday week. Well, I'm certainly no expert on any of that. And full disclosure, you and Sean

00:07:53.840 and Brian and Laura are friends of mine. So, you know, so I've got a little different view on it.

00:08:00.280 And the other thing I've sadly learned, and we've all learned that are in this business,

00:08:04.960 is that there's a vast difference in what is actually makes it onto the television screen

00:08:11.420 and what reality is. And the public that I deal with suspects that they read a newspaper article

00:08:19.740 and it says this, this, and this, and this about whatever subject. And we all kind of,

00:08:24.880 from a public perspective, just kind of roll our eyes and go, so I really don't believe 90% of that.

00:08:30.260 And I'm not sure what 10% is actually true. And so they discount the whole thing. And so

00:08:35.380 my guess is that, and I'm just a regular guy guessing, that the differences between what was

00:08:43.160 texted and what was said, and if this is a news story, we're short on news right here at Christmas.

00:08:49.220 Exactly right. It's crazy when you look at this. So this is what Laura texted to Mark Meadows.

00:08:55.160 This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. This is what she tweeted that very same

00:09:01.960 day. This hurts the movement, the Trump legacy, and of course the country. She was entirely

00:09:08.580 consistent. So was Sean and so was Brian. And if they weren't, I would tell the audience that too,

00:09:14.760 because we owe them the loyalty, the audience, not any one personality. What she's upset about is

00:09:21.740 Laura in particular, I guess, made, and Sean, I guess, kept space open for the thought that

00:09:26.180 there may have been infiltrators there that day. And Laura points out last night that she

00:09:30.740 then corrected even her suggestion of that. My point is, if you look at the full context of their

00:09:35.740 reporting that night and their tweeting and so on, it condemned what happened on January 6th.

00:09:41.580 Absolutely it did. And there's nothing inconsistent with, for example, Hannity saying,

00:09:45.900 can Trump make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol? How is that in any way inconsistent

00:09:52.360 with him later saying there are always bad actors that will come to town and do bad things? I mean,

00:09:57.380 it's like, that could have been MAGA people. It could have been bad MAGA people. He never ruled

00:10:01.080 out that any of these people were Trump supporters. And so to me, it's the mainstream media, whenever they

00:10:06.280 have the chance to jump on anybody who they perceive as a Republican, it could be at Fox News,

00:10:10.180 it could be on social media, it could be you, it could be me. And more often than not, sadly,

00:10:13.980 it's people who have no power and no microphone and no ability to fight back against them.

00:10:18.740 You know, occasionally you get the rare instance where you see like a Nick Sandman come back.

00:10:22.780 Now it's escalated to points where you have like a Kyle Rittenhouse whose life is on the line trying

00:10:26.640 to fight against these media narratives about him that weren't true, but they have no compunction

00:10:32.820 in doing it. And I look at the dishonesty of the MSM and I think this is why no one's watching them,

00:10:40.340 right? Their numbers are in the toilet. And this is why the Democrats numbers are going down to

00:10:45.400 President Biden's approval rating now a new low for 538. Nate Silver's polling operation 43%.

00:10:53.640 It's even lower if you look at CNBC's latest quarterly All-America economic survey,

00:10:58.380 overall approval down at 41% now. And the two things really driving it are the economy and the

00:11:07.020 pandemic. The voters are angry about what's happening in their pocketbooks and still having

00:11:14.060 to wear the masks and take the vaccines and a sense of hopelessness, Dave, that this is never

00:11:20.140 going away and our leaders don't know the path forward.

00:11:25.020 Yeah, that's, that's very true. And, you know, part of the indication that they don't need to know

00:11:30.880 the path forward is that they're concentrating on the past all the time. And so instead of dealing

00:11:36.620 with some of the stuff that's in front of us right now that needs actual leadership on, we're going

00:11:41.880 to worry about whether the guy carried off Nancy Pelosi's electorate or not. I mean, it's a horrible

00:11:46.840 thing and I'm not discounting that that all shouldn't have happened, but I'm way past ready to move

00:11:51.900 on with my life. Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you look at the polls, this barely registers. No one

00:11:56.880 cares about January 6th. It's like hard partisans want to go relive it. And Democrats think it's a

00:12:02.480 good point for them, I guess, with their core core base. But the vast majority of Americans don't

00:12:07.260 care. They really don't care. They see it as politics. They understand how politics plays out

00:12:11.100 in capital health, but they do care about inflation. Let's start there. There's a rising and widespread

00:12:16.480 concern about it. And the American people are especially negative right now on how the administration

00:12:21.380 is handling it. More than two thirds of Americans, 69 percent now saying they disapprove of how Biden

00:12:27.740 is handling inflation. Just 28 percent approve. Vast majority of Republicans, 94 percent disapprove.

00:12:35.580 Not a shock. 71 percent of independents disapprove. And even 54 percent of Democrats. No, sorry,

00:12:42.540 54 percent of Democrats approve. So that's a relatively low score for him with the blue.

00:12:47.760 And you tell me, because what we had for the first four or five, six months of this inflationary

00:12:54.680 business was it's transitory. It's going to come and go. You know, it's don't worry. You don't need

00:13:00.600 to plan around it because it's transitory. And then you had the Fed chair Jerome Powell coming out and

00:13:05.620 saying, it's not transitory. That stuff we said, don't believe that it's not transitory. And I think

00:13:12.480 people were like, you know, whatever it is, it's bad. It's hurting me. And any wage increase

00:13:17.640 I get right now is not going to outpace it. So what's a gal or a guy to do? And what are your

00:13:22.920 thoughts on that? Well, I do believe overall that there's a big portion of it that's transitory.

00:13:31.500 I think there's two big elements of the inflationary market right now that were controlled by the Biden

00:13:37.860 administration and were caused. Energy cost, definitely. He caused that. The price at the

00:13:43.560 pump is his fault, his policies. And the other thing is the labor shortage and the labor,

00:13:48.880 the disruption in the labor market. And the fact that we can't get people back to work to make the

00:13:56.400 goods and services to deliver them. So there's a continued shortage. And anytime there's a shortage

00:14:01.460 versus a high demand, the seventh grade economics, when the demand supply, supply demand curve crosses,

00:14:08.120 you're going to have price increases. So we've got a big shortage of goods or services because people

00:14:12.240 aren't working because they're sitting on their butts because the government's been feeding them

00:14:16.060 free money. Those are two policies that are driving inflation. They're also driving wages up, which are

00:14:22.620 a component of your, you know, if you, if the cost of the guy doing the work goes up, then the results

00:14:31.040 of the work, the price has to go up. And so it's driving that. Some of the other things were caused by

00:14:36.920 shortages that were a result of the pandemic. And that was not Biden's fault. We had an earthquake

00:14:43.180 at sea and that was the pandemic. We shut down entire segments of the economy for an extended period

00:14:51.840 of time, quarantining healthy people for the first time in the history of the human race. And

00:14:57.800 consequently, no goods or services were being produced. And when everyone came back with their

00:15:03.200 demand for those things, there was a shortage of those things. And so lumber prices went through

00:15:08.160 the roof, steel prices went through the roof, uh, and, uh, logistics were just, there's a huge

00:15:15.220 logistical breakdown. We've seen all the pictures of the ships sitting in the harbors with full of

00:15:20.640 billions of dollars of goods and can't get them offloaded, uh, because of the labor shortages. So,

00:15:25.460 but the, the, the tsunami that happened after the earthquake at sea, I didn't see that coming.

00:15:32.160 And I think a lot of other people didn't either. Uh, I thought maybe, Oh, we're past the pandemic.

00:15:36.920 We're okay now from an economics standpoint. And we weren't because we have this crash of the

00:15:42.400 tsunami. That was the result of not going to work. So everything, there's a shortage. So these

00:15:48.180 shortages all crash up on the shore. When those wash back out, there's going to have been destruction

00:15:54.040 like with a tsunami, obviously. Uh, but we will be back on dry land again. That part is transitory.

00:16:00.400 Uh, but it's being exacerbated by these policies out of Washington and it's making it worse. Hey,

00:16:07.160 there's a lot of things that could be done to smooth this out and make it more transitory.

00:16:12.440 Um, you know, if you turn open the gas lines and let gas flow again and drop the price and you stop

00:16:19.140 paying people to not work. And so they go work and create goods and services. That's going to help

00:16:25.060 the tsunami go back out to sea instead of aggravating it. Well, those unemployment checks

00:16:31.140 are no longer, they stopped in September. So why are the people still sitting on the sidelines?

00:16:36.720 Because there's an unintended consequence of, again, the regulations are an intended consequence.

00:16:42.720 We're working with small business people every day. See when, when a small business person furloughs

00:16:46.960 someone during the pandemic, lays them off, they have to pay unemployment. The small business

00:16:52.260 person pays the unemployment. When the person, when they offer the job back, if the person doesn't

00:16:57.940 come back to work, the unemployment is supposed to stop. That's not being paid by the government,

00:17:03.800 but it's being paid by the business. And they're not the, the unemployment offices all around America

00:17:09.720 are looking at these business guys and we're wearing it every day. Uh, they're looking at these

00:17:13.800 business guys and go, you offered him the job back. He didn't come back. Well, you're still

00:17:17.280 going to pay the unemployment. He has a right to sit on his butt. And so even though the checks

00:17:21.520 aren't coming out of the fed, the regulations and how they're dealing with the unemployed

00:17:25.260 and not forcing them to come off the unemployed roles and the small business is still being

00:17:29.400 drained of cash paying someone who's sitting at home.

00:17:32.740 Oh, that's fascinating. I, I did not realize that I've been baffled since they sort of shut

00:17:37.700 off that spigot, you know, at the federal level of the Biden unemployment money, uh, why we

00:17:43.500 haven't seen a bigger return to the workforce. You know, we had those low jobs numbers, um, last

00:17:49.000 month and it was like, well, but where are the people now that the money's been shut

00:17:52.520 off, they should be going back into the workforce. And you're saying they needed to change a lot

00:17:56.540 more than that to get these people on their couches off of them.

00:18:01.320 Well, they changed their policy and told the unemployment office to, uh, the feds did this

00:18:06.640 and, you know, again, Biden administration and, and told them to not enforce the law.

00:18:12.220 And, you know, in other words, don't cut these people off and they continue to drain the cash

00:18:16.440 out of the small business. So it's a double whammy. A, we don't have the labor force and B,

00:18:20.600 you know, the very businesses that are going to cause this inflationary market to be stabilized

00:18:25.540 and it go away because of the shortages. If the shortages go away, this thing, these prices are

00:18:30.380 going to drop back down. That's what it must do. So what can we do to get the shortages to go away?

00:18:34.220 You stabilize the labor market by getting them back to work. Uh, you turn down the cost of gasoline

00:18:39.200 again, by increasing the supply, quit trying to play energy games and be politically correct on all that.

00:18:44.980 I'm talking in as an economist. Okay. At that point. And then you, you'll do anything you can

00:18:50.300 to help get ships offloaded instead of stuck. You do anything you can to get logistics straightened

00:18:54.760 out and the thing will work itself out, but they're aggravating it, exacerbating it by these

00:18:59.760 policies and making it worse. They're not the cause of it, but they're the cause of it. Continue

00:19:04.420 to stay screwed up. Yeah. Because Biden's not going to touch a domestic oil production. He's already

00:19:09.920 made a vow to swear off of that. I mean, he's all about green energy now, which is,

00:19:14.600 is not going to help short term and some would say long term. Um, but I see, okay,

00:19:18.620 we got to get the shortages off the shore as Dave Ramsey says so much more to go over with Dave for

00:19:23.820 the show, uh, more on the Biden economy on jobs, jobs, jobs, supply chain. Uh, and then we're going

00:19:29.180 to get into some cultural issues, which are always fun to talk to Dave about. Don't go away.

00:19:39.860 Let's just spend a moment still sort of on the 30,000 foot level and talk about hopelessness

00:19:44.420 because I really think that's what's behind the falling poll numbers for Joe Biden. And I think

00:19:49.980 it's largely related, yes, to the increase in prices and so on, but to the never ending belief

00:19:56.740 that we're in the peak of the COVID crisis and that we have to spend every day and treat every

00:20:03.500 new variant as though it's the lowest point in the, in the crisis. And there's no getting out from

00:20:09.040 under the crisis. It will never abate. There was an Axios poll, uh, I came out, I think yesterday

00:20:14.220 said, uh, 46% of Americans expect, expect that it will be more than a year or never before they can

00:20:22.820 return to their normal lives. Dave, more than a year or never before they can get back to normal.

00:20:30.740 That means 46% of the American people believe normal life is no longer possible. I mean,

00:20:36.800 this administration said they, they would control the virus. They couldn't for sure. This is holding,

00:20:40.860 hurting his poll numbers, but it's more importantly, it's just hurting the American psyche.

00:20:46.120 Yeah. Hope is a powerful thing. We, we see it when it's there, because when you've got hope,

00:20:54.140 you can run through a brick wall. I mean, you'll go do amazing things when you believe you can.

00:20:58.680 And when it turns into hopelessness on the, uh, on the opposite side of that coin,

00:21:04.020 we see how powerful it is too, because it causes people to sit and do nothing. And, um,

00:21:09.880 it causes them to shrink back and be fear-based and anxiety-based. And it's really a sad,

00:21:15.560 sad situation. Proverbs says, uh, hope deferred makes the heart sick. And what we're talking about

00:21:23.000 here is a sickness of the heart. And the sad thing is, is that hope, uh, you know, it actually can be

00:21:28.740 brought about by strong leadership. Um, and you know, the, the idea that bad things are ahead of us

00:21:36.080 are not the problem. Uh, the problem is, is there's an, a sense of ambivalence, a sense of that

00:21:41.600 we cannot control any of the controllables in our lives, uh, and, or the, you know, the leadership

00:21:48.740 can't control any of the controllables. Uh, so, you know, as a leader, I've got a thousand folks in our

00:21:54.500 team. My job is to not say hope it consists of Pollyanna, that there's never any bad news.

00:22:02.160 My job is to say, here's good news and here's bad news. Oh, and here's what we're going to do

00:22:07.140 about both of them. Here's what we're going to do. And here's where we're going. And if we see a way

00:22:12.160 forward, so hopelessness doesn't come from bad news. Hopelessness comes from ambivalence and not

00:22:17.580 knowing a way through or seeing that anyone is going to find a way through the, uh, you know,

00:22:23.420 through, through after 9-1-1, things change forever. We have a thing called TSA in the airports

00:22:28.820 for the rest of our lives because it, so it, you know, did it, will it ever go back to normal,

00:22:33.960 but pre 9-1-1 in the airport? No, probably won't. So after a pandemic, is there going to be some

00:22:40.360 version of something like that? That's a lingering effect of a brave new world? Probably. But what

00:22:48.980 we've got to have to have hope is, okay, we got TSA and this is how we fly and this is how we're

00:22:54.760 going to do it. And, you know, but ambivalence, this ambivalence, this, we're going to control

00:23:00.060 the narrative by continually peddling that there is no hope is not leadership. Yeah. And it's

00:23:09.140 disastrous from, for the American psyche. There aren't even any identifiable off ramps,

00:23:15.560 right? So parents like yours truly who are, you know, I've had it to high heaven with putting my

00:23:20.340 kids in masks every day, nevermind my own, but I have to, I get to avoid them a lot more than my

00:23:25.160 kids do. Um, there are no off ramps. There's no metrics. There's no, okay, when the hospitalizations

00:23:29.880 get down to this as a percentage of the population, then we won't wear them. And the data come in,

00:23:34.800 the studies showing that the masks are ineffective, that gets ignored. Um, so even for people like me

00:23:41.200 who are not COVID fear porn mongers, um, who are, have been very settled in response to this

00:23:48.380 pandemic, things happen. We handle it. It's really no reason for panic. Um, it's, there's some

00:23:53.940 hopelessness because the, the authorities in power where I live and work won't listen to reason.

00:23:59.920 You know, you're in Tennessee, you have a better situation down there from, from my vantage point.

00:24:05.000 And I realized people like move. Okay. It's not that easy. Um, I gotta, my mom's in upstate New York.

00:24:10.580 I'm not leaving her. She's 80, blah, blah, blah. Um, but it does lead to a sense of frustration.

00:24:16.000 And I think even for Democrats, at least the, and even people who are more fear porn lovers,

00:24:20.880 they're like, fix it. And the rest of us are like, let's move past it. It's a very small

00:24:25.980 constituency. That's looking at the policies on this thing right now and saying, nailed it.

00:24:30.980 Yeah. Well, and, and again, if you just show me a way and, but there's a sense out there right now

00:24:38.320 that there's, that the fear porn is just being used to control, that it's no longer about COVID.

00:24:43.560 It's about control and it's about, I'm going to make you do something. And, um, there's a real

00:24:49.680 pushback out here, you know, in America against that. And so it's going, that's, what's driving

00:24:55.720 the poll numbers, uh, too. Uh, I think, uh, because it's the dissatisfaction with your governor,

00:25:01.440 dissatisfaction with your mayor, dissatisfaction with your president, whatever, because not because

00:25:05.800 they can't fix COVID. Um, I mean, I think if you have any level of intellect, you know, it's not

00:25:11.760 within Biden's power to fix COVID. Uh, but the way we're implementing and the way we're reacting to

00:25:18.040 it and the way we're overreacting and making false promises and demanding false, uh, narratives go

00:25:24.320 forward that it just, people aren't buying it anymore. They've lost credibility. And like you

00:25:29.740 said, and so now it's about how I can skirt the system. And now it's about how I can walk around

00:25:35.680 these ridiculous thing, barriers that are put up to nothing. And, um, you know, it, it's just sad.

00:25:42.240 Uh, if we can just go, okay, here's some bad news and here's a way to plow through it. I think that's

00:25:47.140 why people were willing to do pretty extreme things during the pandemic. That's right. But,

00:25:51.800 but the lingering, because they can at least go, okay, if we flatten the curve, then we'll be okay.

00:25:57.340 Nobody's mentioned flattening a curve in a long, long time, but that's what started this whole thing.

00:26:02.340 And so, you know, now, now, now, if we get vaccinated, now, if we wear masks, now, if we

00:26:07.760 do, and now if you've got a vax card and now if you're, if big companies will just do, and now,

00:26:12.560 and now, and they just keep moving the line, like a bully in the schoolyard going, come over and

00:26:16.120 then step across the line, then we'll fight. Now, now step across this line, then we'll fight.

00:26:19.280 And you just keep moving the line. And that's, that, that's the ambivalence

00:26:22.560 that creates the hopelessness because, because we no longer, you know, it cried wolf too many times.

00:26:28.320 I'm not stepping across the line anymore. I don't believe you anymore.

00:26:30.980 Hmm. That's exactly right. They, um, I love commentary magazine and their podcast. And

00:26:35.560 they were talking about how governor Hochul in New York, it, she was giving a press conference

00:26:39.160 where she was wearing a, a chart, like a necklace that in large, like gold letters, red vaxxed,

00:26:45.900 you know, okay. Straight out of central casting. And then, um, Noah Rothman was making the point,

00:26:51.220 oh no, she's going to need a charm, a charm bracelet type necklace where it's like, no boosted,

00:26:55.440 boosted again, boosted against Omicron. It could go on forever. But

00:27:00.440 you mentioned the politicians. So I do think for sure, it's one of the reasons Joe Biden,

00:27:04.960 the main reason Joe Biden's poll numbers are falling. And it's the reason Trump lost too.

00:27:09.740 It is 100%. I mean, Trump was sailing onto a reelection until COVID. And then the pain that

00:27:15.020 people felt on the loss of life, the loss of business, the loss of freedom, the loss of the

00:27:19.600 societies we knew it was taken out on him. And Biden held himself up as I know how to fix it.

00:27:24.920 I will defeat COVID. And he hasn't. And I predict he will be held to account as well.

00:27:30.140 And an interesting nugget for you. They just had the democratic governor's association winter

00:27:36.440 meeting used to be called the Christmas meeting, but now you got to call everything winter because

00:27:40.100 Christmas is no, I made that up. Um, they, uh, they were talking about how the party was defeated

00:27:45.820 badly last year, last month in Virginia and had a closer than expected victory. Three points.

00:27:50.140 Phil Murphy won the governorship in New Jersey where he was expected to sail in. And, uh, this is,

00:27:56.600 I think, political reported that this has many Democrats searching for an off ramp to the pandemic

00:28:02.000 that will allow them to sell a brighter future to voters in November. Uh, they, they spoke with

00:28:07.860 Murphy. Apparently he, in his most candid assessment of that tiny victory, slim margin to date, he said,

00:28:13.420 folks in New Jersey feel like government is not connecting with them. They're sick of masks.

00:28:17.940 This is a Democrat in blue, New Jersey. They're sick of masks. They're being told what to do

00:28:23.140 in terms of vaccines, probably not thrilled with what they sense is going on in Washington.

00:28:28.760 They may have lost a job or a business that went bust or worse yet, a loved one. Yes, that's right.

00:28:35.400 So that I find that somewhat encouraging, you know, I mean, you live in a state that I think people are

00:28:40.460 generally more reasonable when it comes to COVID in, but do you feel like this is the attitude

00:28:47.040 you've already caught in Tennessee? I mean, cause I feel like up here where I am starting to catch

00:28:51.440 fire in little pockets. Well, regardless of the party, um, you know, politicians promise that they're

00:29:01.500 going to give us something. Statesmen promise that they're going to get out of the way and show us a

00:29:07.680 way to go get something ourselves. And so that's what's happening around this. And again, red or blue

00:29:14.560 doesn't matter. It's, uh, what's happening in Tennessee is our governor has just declared out

00:29:20.420 loud that, um, okay, here, every, we all have the information. And so as adults, we get to make our

00:29:27.120 choice based on the information. And, um, you know, you get to make a decision of you're going to mask,

00:29:33.280 you're going to socially distance, you're going to do whatever with your company that you own.

00:29:37.160 Uh, you're going to vax or not vax. You're going to make the decision with the information that you

00:29:41.960 have instead of, uh, so he's showing a way through and going, okay, here, we all have the same set of

00:29:49.360 guidelines. I mean, we all have the same set of data. It's, it's very available. And then based on

00:29:54.300 that, different people are coming to different conclusions because they're adults and they're

00:29:58.320 allowed to function in this thing called freedom. And when you do that, you're, you're a statesman and

00:30:03.040 you're leading through a crisis or you're leading through towards prosperity. Um, you know, probably

00:30:11.100 one of the best to do that was Ronald Reagan. He didn't promise everybody anything. He didn't

00:30:15.320 promise a chicken in every pot. He promised you the ability to go get a pot and get a chicken and

00:30:20.160 put one in the pot. And that made me believe I am free in the free enterprise system. Those wonderful

00:30:27.280 thing, crazy experiment called America to go prosper. And so I would, I could go prosper.

00:30:32.780 Uh, I didn't wait on them to send me a check. It's exactly the opposite mentality though,

00:30:39.300 with some, um, I mean, I, I would say in this administration and, and just in general with

00:30:44.820 some on the left, which is, it's not about empowering you to do something that you want

00:30:49.520 to go get something you want. It's about government giving you what you, what they think you need.

00:30:54.000 And we're seeing that even now in the, even in the face of, you know, record debt and record,

00:30:59.800 literally record inflation, um, and a souring mood in the country when it comes to hope and

00:31:05.560 the pandemic and so on, what do they want to do? They want to spend more. They want, I mean,

00:31:10.620 this has got to be your, as a guy who hates debt more than anyone I've ever known, this has got to

00:31:16.880 be driving you nuts. The shit, no sooner do we get the infrastructure bill passed, which was

00:31:22.260 politically popular, um, of 2 trillion. We, well, between one and two. Um, now we got another one

00:31:28.700 coming down the pike, build back better, which is basically a bunch of Democrat wishlist spending.

00:31:33.960 And really the only thing standing in between that and passage is Joe Manchin and maybe Kyrsten

00:31:39.480 Sinema. So how's that going to help? Hmm. Well, I think what we need to remember is John Maynard

00:31:47.100 Keynes, Keynesian economics was a socialist. He believed in socialism and he taught FDR,

00:31:55.760 Keynesian economics. And so the FDR decided we're going to do the new deal. And that's Keynesian

00:32:02.940 economics to spend our way government spending to stimulate the economy. And, uh, then that's been

00:32:09.620 taught in our schools now for 60 to 70 years as truth. And, uh, and the problem is it's not,

00:32:17.100 that's the problem that the government seldom spins an economy like never into prosperity. It's

00:32:24.340 an illusion. Uh, and so the, the truth is the people pushing these things, uh, they, they actually

00:32:30.680 believe they're going to work. Uh, they're not trying to, uh, Scott, uh, scam somebody. They're

00:32:36.000 not con artists. They just believe a lie. They believe that the best way to stimulate the economy

00:32:41.720 is run the debt through the roof and use that money to build infrastructure. And that'll stimulate

00:32:47.580 the economy. Uh, but those of us that are more free market instead of Keynesian, uh, we don't

00:32:52.700 believe that. And, uh, we would be called capitalists. And, uh, we, we believe that lower

00:32:58.240 debt, the government, not being a tick on the butt of the economy and sucking the blood out of it

00:33:03.040 with the debt payments is a better thing than huge piles of debt. And so whether it's Trump running up

00:33:10.340 the debt to give something he promised, or whether it's Biden running up the debt to give something

00:33:15.060 he promised, but they're all wanting to be grandpa and give us candy. And instead of demanding that we

00:33:20.660 be adults in the marketplace and forge our way through this. And it is very possible to forge

00:33:26.140 your way through it. I've, you know, bazillions of piles of data to prove that, uh, that, that you

00:33:31.640 can become a millionaire in America today. Uh, but it's not based on the government stimulating the

00:33:37.660 economy. Yeah. I mean, think of how that would work in your own family budget. If you're in debt

00:33:43.080 up to the eyeballs, just spend more. The answer is spend more. Can you imagine what your, what my

00:33:48.040 husband would say to Abby, what Kevin would say? Kevin would not allow that. No, he's, he's, he's

00:33:52.040 like, you are Dave, very anti-debt. All right. But here's something fascinating just crossing the

00:33:57.140 wires, sir. Um, NBC news. Uh, this is interesting. NBC news is reporting that the Senate is now expected

00:34:05.720 to quote, shelve the BBB, the build back better bill. Um, and that just yesterday, they'd been

00:34:13.420 saying that it's going to be, they're going to get a vote on it. They're going to get it approved by

00:34:16.500 the end of the year before Christmas. Um, now they're saying, according to NBC, they're shelving

00:34:22.140 it. I asked my team, has, is anybody else going with same reporting? What we found so far is, uh,

00:34:28.260 Bernie Sanders said as follows quote, obviously voting rights. Oh, and NBC is reporting that now

00:34:34.200 they're saying we're going to focus on voting rights instead. As if those two things are that

00:34:38.420 Oh, you know, one has to go before the other. They're there. They don't. That's not a pivot

00:34:43.580 to something more important. That's you couldn't get the BBB passed. And now you're trying to

00:34:47.260 distract us with this other shiny thing. So apparently Sanders says, quote, obviously voting

00:34:51.320 rights has got to be dealt with immediately. Obviously Dave, obviously voting rights has got to be

00:34:55.120 dealt with immediately. I would like to see a build back better dealt with as quickly as possible,

00:35:00.360 but if we can't deal with it right now, it's far more important that we deal with the voting

00:35:04.740 rights issue. Um, I mean, if that's true and BBB is done, cause it's not coming back in the new year,

00:35:11.780 not unless Biden solves the pandemic, somehow completely changes all of his poll numbers.

00:35:17.220 Like it's not, that's an amazing thing for the, for the GOP and a major setback for the Dems on a bill.

00:35:24.700 They'd been telling us we had to have to transform the economy.

00:35:29.080 And the economy, you know, in spite of inflation is growing. Uh, I mean, stock markets booming.

00:35:37.600 So there's a lot of good things out here. Here's a, here's a sad truth. Uh, 80% of Americans,

00:35:44.620 I just made that number up. 88% of statistics are made up on the spot, but my guess, my guess is most

00:35:50.100 people couldn't give a rip about either one of these things. Cause they know the BBB being passed

00:35:55.140 or voting rights being passed is really not going to intrinsically affect their next 12 months of

00:36:01.620 their life. Uh, unless you got a job managing one of those lumps of cash that Washington's going to

00:36:07.100 start doling out. Other than that, the rest of us out here, it's not going to affect my life today,

00:36:12.520 but it just puts this weight on the economy. Uh, but you, you can, and so they keep working on things

00:36:19.240 that, that, uh, that are not affecting the average person's life on a day-to-day basis where you walk

00:36:26.480 up to the gas pump and it was $2. Now it's $5. Now that one's real. That affects people's life

00:36:31.800 tomorrow, today, going to grandma's house for Christmas, filling up your tank costs twice as much.

00:36:37.200 That's a real thing for somebody out here in the real world. Well, you look at the numbers and they're

00:36:43.560 big, you know, new cars was just a couple of examples. New cars are up by 11.1% that you'd feel.

00:36:49.100 It's not like you're talking about a thing that costs a dollar to begin with up 11% on a $20,000

00:36:53.560 automobiles a lot. Beef up 20.9%. Oh, that's a big number. TVs, 7.9%. Decorations. We're all in

00:37:03.180 the midst of those this time of year, 4.2%. Whiskey Dave. Now this is wrong. Up 1.6%. What's up with

00:37:09.300 that? Um, toys up one to 1.2% and, um, 10 to 30% increase in Christmas trees year over year. The cost

00:37:18.340 of Christmas trees. My goodness. So people feel it, they know it, and they are left asking

00:37:23.920 themselves the following questions. How do I pay those bills and still become a millionaire?

00:37:29.860 Dave Ramsey has answers and he's laying them out in a new book and we're going to talk about it

00:37:34.680 next. So don't go away. And don't forget, you can follow me and you can actually listen to Dave's

00:37:39.880 show all in the same place now, which is serious XM triumph channel. One 11. We are live every weekday

00:37:46.820 at noon East. I listened to Dave earlier in the morning and the full video show and clips are

00:37:51.500 available of our show. When you subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:37:56.380 If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download an Apple Spotify, Pandora stitcher,

00:38:01.780 or wherever you get your podcasts. I have to tell you, I mentioned that I read the reviews or on the

00:38:06.700 Apple show spot. So if you subscribe and download a, it helps me. And B I get your feedback.

00:38:12.540 There was the nicest note this morning. It was like, it was such a nice pick, pick me up. I really

00:38:17.260 appreciated it. It was very thoughtful from somebody who clearly listened to a lot of the shows

00:38:21.060 and duh was brilliant. Anyway, go back and look at our archives while you're there. We've got more

00:38:26.420 than 220 shows, including the very first time Dave was on, which was with us, uh, episode 82.

00:38:36.700 Dave, a couple of things, um, breaking now. Uh, now apparently Elizabeth Warren is tweeting out

00:38:44.520 something about how she wants, she's going to introduce a bill to add four seats to the U S

00:38:48.220 Supreme court. Look over here. Something shiny. It has nothing to do with the BBB falling apart.

00:38:54.860 Shiny Supreme court. That'll distract the conservative. It's never happening. That's not

00:38:59.260 going to happen. Like they're so transparent, right? Um, in other good news though, for Elizabeth

00:39:04.460 Warren, one of her main talking points about greedy, greedy, greedy, greedy corporate America

00:39:09.060 being to blame for the inflation, right? She's like, it's definitely not me. And it's definitely

00:39:12.420 not Joe Biden's policies. It's greedy, greedy, greedy corporate America. Um, because apparently

00:39:17.180 they weren't greedy, greedy, greedy last year or the year before the year before that. Like,

00:39:20.340 okay, I don't know. Like, did they just get greedy just under Biden just in the past three

00:39:23.500 months? Um, her talking point made its way into Jen Psaki's mouth, uh, this week as Psaki

00:39:29.100 tried to dismiss our inflationary woes, uh, in particular in the meat industry as follows.

00:39:34.320 Listen, American families, uh, digest inflation is by price increases. And if you look at industry

00:39:41.600 to industry, it's a little different. So for example, the president, the secretary of agriculture

00:39:46.420 have both spoken to what we've seen as the greed of meat conglomerates. That is an area when we're

00:39:51.880 people go to the grocery store and they're trying to buy a pound of meat, two pounds of meat,

00:39:55.360 10 pounds of meat. Um, it is, the prices are higher. That is in his view, uh, and the view

00:40:00.940 of our secretary of agriculture, because of, you could call it corporate greed short. You could

00:40:05.360 call it, uh, jacking up prices, uh, uh, during a pandemic. Uh, there are other areas where we've

00:40:11.800 seen increases, uh, because of supply chain issues. And we're seeing those increases around

00:40:16.460 the world as it relates to gas prices, uh, oil supply and things along those lines. So I would

00:40:21.840 say there's some areas, uh, where we have seen, uh, corporations, uh, benefit profit from the

00:40:27.060 pandemic. Wow. So just as a recap, you know, we passed infrastructure spending, which is over a

00:40:34.160 trillion prior to that, they spent 1.9 trillion on the American rescue plan. And in there, there

00:40:39.760 were a bunch of goodies for American meat providers. They actually gave them $600 million

00:40:43.580 worth of subsidies because they were flailing in, in response to the pandemic. So it was like,

00:40:48.220 they're, they're flailing or they're greedy corporate overlords. Like I, why'd you give

00:40:52.860 them, if they're greedy corporate overlords, why'd you give them $600 million? You explain

00:40:56.540 to me what's going on here with respect to our greedy corporate overlords in the meat

00:41:01.420 industry and elsewhere, Dave Ramsey. Well, I mean, it's, that's obviously a false

00:41:07.540 narrative. Um, that that's ridiculous that there's always been greed. There will always

00:41:12.760 be greed, but here's the thing. If one producer of beef rose there, raised their prices to the

00:41:21.120 level they are now. And the rest of them saw an opportunity to sell more beef by not raising

00:41:27.620 their prices and undercutting their competition, the power of the marketplace would cause the

00:41:32.940 prices to correct themselves. And so greed doesn't, doesn't work as an explanation for

00:41:39.600 price increases. You'd have to get the entire industry to collude, which is, uh, virtually

00:41:45.280 impossible. Number one, but number two, in that industry, getting a bunch of ranchers to collude

00:41:50.500 on something and agree on anything, not a chance. So it's just ridiculous. Uh, the marketplace would

00:41:57.160 have corrected the greed is what I'm saying. And so it's not marketplace driven and it's not greed

00:42:01.900 driven. Uh, what is it's cost of goods drove the price up. And the reason cost of goods drove the

00:42:08.640 price up is you have to put that, that, that those cattle on a truck and the cost of that truck has

00:42:15.400 gone through the roof because the driver is, there's a shortage of drivers because then

00:42:20.300 yeah, the diesel you put in the tank is doubled. And this is all reflected in your beef prices,

00:42:26.040 uh, because we need electric cars to replace everything according to the energy. And so we're

00:42:31.480 going to cut off all the gasoline and the diesel and create a shortage of that and drive the prices

00:42:37.520 up. And guess what? That shows up in every item you purchase. This is what, I mean, this is sort

00:42:44.520 of their MO is like, you don't believe your lying eyes. You know, it's not what you, what you think.

00:42:48.300 Um, you know, whether it's CRT in schools or the COVID madness or the economy, they can't continue to

00:42:54.300 deny the inflation. It's transitory. It's transitory. Now they'd been, it's not transitory.

00:42:57.340 Well, it's not our fault. It's, it's corporate greed. Well, why'd you subsidize them for 600 million?

00:43:01.520 Oh, well, I don't want to look over here. And, uh, by the way, Elizabeth Warren,

00:43:04.580 four seats on the Supreme court. Did we mention that? We're going to get you four seats on the

00:43:07.160 Supreme court. We're going to get judge Judy. We're going to get, uh, judge Joe Brown. We're

00:43:15.240 going to get, okay, I could go on. Um, let's talk about how, who wants to be a millionaire.

00:43:22.960 That one was taken that title, I guess. Um, but people really are hurting, right? They're hurting,

00:43:27.660 especially this year. You feel like, cause right now, ideally you've bought your Christmas presents

00:43:32.760 and you're a loving, kind, generous person. So you spent fair amount of money and now you're

00:43:38.680 having like a little regret. Cause you may have spent more than you wanted to. Maybe you didn't

00:43:43.200 do the Dave Ramsey budget as he's told you a million times you should do. And you're like,

00:43:47.620 Oh God, it's not returnable. It's new year, new me. That me could be a millionaire. How?

00:43:53.760 Well, the only thing you can control is the controllables and you've got to control the

00:44:00.800 controllables. The good news is most of those are in your mirror and baby steps millionaires.

00:44:05.940 We put the largest study ever done of millionaires in North America that we did with airtight research

00:44:13.200 a couple of years ago. We put it in the appendix of the book so that people can read it.

00:44:17.000 An interesting item of that is, as we studied over 10,000 millionaires, we asked them,

00:44:22.300 can someone become a millionaire? Do you believe you can become a millionaire? 97% of them said they

00:44:29.720 believe that most people can become a millionaire. When we surveyed the general public, 69% believed

00:44:37.900 that they could become a millionaire. Now, what that belief leads you to do is to control the

00:44:42.580 controllables. I can control the person in my mirror. I can not overspend.

00:44:45.720 I can work extra. I can save. I can't control what happens in the White House,

00:44:51.120 but I can control what happens in my house. And if I'll concentrate on my house instead of waiting

00:44:57.120 on the White House or the island of misfit toys known as Congress to fix my life, then I can move

00:45:03.360 the needle and go forward. I can control the budget. I can control purchases. I can control whether we go

00:45:09.240 on a vacation or not. And oddly enough, when you start deciding you can control it,

00:45:15.180 you do control it, then you'll get out of debt and you'll put yourself in a position to begin

00:45:20.080 investing over a long period of time. And the typical millionaire becomes a millionaire in about

00:45:25.180 17 years from the time they start the process. And we've been teaching this for 30 years. And so

00:45:30.040 I've got tens of thousands of people all over America following the Ramsey process that have

00:45:35.740 become baby steps millionaires, following our baby steps. And what did they do? They said,

00:45:40.440 this is a proven thing. If I do this and I do this and I do this and I do this, and none of it was

00:45:45.560 looking for someone else to fix their life. In every case, they said, I can't, there's bad things

00:45:50.900 out there. They're real. The cost of meat is up. The cost of toys are up. The cost of decorations are up.

00:45:56.060 Those are real things. I can't fix those. But what I can fix is my reaction to those and how we adjust

00:46:03.720 our household based on that and how we weather the storm of inflation, whether it's transitory,

00:46:10.040 whether it's permanent.

00:46:11.540 You get used to the concept, the little concept known as I can't afford that, which is one of my

00:46:18.580 favorite lines ever from an old episode of Cheers, where Woody, the bartender, is dating the super rich

00:46:23.180 Kelly. He's trying to explain to her he can't get her the big old wedding ring and the engagement ring.

00:46:27.700 And she doesn't understand that. And she's like, oh, wait, it's it's like that time. Daddy couldn't

00:46:31.840 buy shell oil. All right. Stand by, Dave. Much more with you and your plan right after this. Don't go

00:46:38.900 away. All right, Dave. So can we just start with what the what does it mean to be a millionaire? Is it

00:46:50.060 like I have now earned enough collectively in my paychecks over the years that it equals the number

00:46:54.640 one million or is it something else? No, it is not that at all. It is not an income issue. It's

00:47:01.180 net worth. There's only one definition. It's an accounting function. It's a it's an accounting

00:47:05.760 definition and it's your net worth. Your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities, what you own

00:47:12.020 minus what you owe. And when that equals one million dollars or greater, you're a millionaire.

00:47:17.360 It's not a it's not a moral construct about whether the rich or evil. It's not a it's not a statement

00:47:25.620 that a million dollars is enough. It's not a statement. The million dollars is too much.

00:47:29.980 It's just a statement that the number in the corner of the balance sheet assets minus liabilities,

00:47:35.940 what you own minus what you owe equals one million dollars. And very few millionaires ever made a million

00:47:42.900 dollars. Almost none of them. Oh, in other words, they got it by investing. Yeah. I mean,

00:47:48.880 the one third of the millionaires that we studied had never had a household income greater than one

00:47:54.960 hundred thousand dollars. Wow. One third of them. And so sixty seven percent, most of them fall in the

00:48:00.740 hundred to three hundred thousand dollar range. And so now obviously someone that makes a million

00:48:07.380 dollars, they're much more rare if you make a million dollars a year. But, you know, you're not a

00:48:12.600 billionaire based on your income. You're not a billionaire based on your income. It is a statement

00:48:18.620 of net worth. It's a factual thing. It's not really up for argument. You can argue about what it means

00:48:24.240 and you can argue about how you get there. But that is what a millionaire is. You know what? Can we take

00:48:30.220 a call now? Because I actually see Maggie in Pennsylvania has an interesting thought related to

00:48:35.120 you, Dave. Hi, Maggie. What's on your mind? Oh, hey, I love listening to Dave Ramsey and I agree with him

00:48:41.560 completely. Well, I'm a Trump supporter. We don't sit around and kind of that news is kind of

00:48:48.220 subsidiary. We're worker bees. And I work really hard. I'm a real estate agent. And about five years

00:48:55.020 ago, I had two hundred thousand dollars in the bank and I had credit cards. I got rid of my credit

00:48:59.760 cards, like Dave said to do. And then I did inherit two hundred thousand dollars when my mom passed away

00:49:06.120 at 98. But I am just shy of a millionaire. And my biggest coach is my son, Andrew, who's in wealth

00:49:13.980 management. And Dave, you'll appreciate this. He calls, he calls my son, he'll say, keep talking

00:49:21.260 it, mom. Keep talking it. Keep talking it. So every month I put something away. And I know a lot of real

00:49:28.120 estate agents, they've worked 20, 40 years. They have nothing. They spend every time. They drive

00:49:33.180 fancy Mercedes. I drive a Subaru Outback. I just sold my other for like a hundred thousand miles. I mean,

00:49:41.360 it's how you live and it's how and a lot of it is a lot of it's guided by faith as well.

00:49:48.620 How old are you?

00:49:49.260 Um, uh, well, I'm old. I'm seven. Dave, you're seven. How much do you weigh, Maggie?

00:49:56.840 No, I'm serious. But you became a millionaire. How many years ago?

00:50:03.160 Um, just this year, just this year. Okay. I'm so proud of you. Awesome.

00:50:08.180 My mom was 98 and she had a million dollars in the bank and she lived on her investment.

00:50:13.140 She had a motor home. She didn't live. She wanted to give us all something and she did pass away at 98,

00:50:18.180 but it's not like, it's not like I think I could retire. I'm afraid I'd spend too much. And like

00:50:24.680 my son says, I have hobbies. So I might as well just keep working in Pittsburgh as long as I can

00:50:29.940 stand what's happening. Well, you know what else? If you stop working, it's like pretty,

00:50:34.380 pretty quickly. The mind goes to mush. I mean, it's like, you really have to stay focused on

00:50:37.860 something if you want to stay sharp and interesting to other people. Congrats, Megan. It's awesome news.

00:50:42.680 So, I mean, that's the thing, Dave is like, you've, you've done this for a lot of people. You've helped a lot

00:50:46.320 of people do this at first, first get out of debt and get a bell rung. Um, and second actually hit

00:50:53.460 the million dollar mark. So what's the first, like people who right now are saddled in the red,

00:50:57.460 which is most Americans feeling like that's never going to happen to me. I don't, I'm not going to

00:51:01.100 get an inheritance. I'm never going to be able to get out of this mountain of red facing me,

00:51:04.660 especially after the Christmas season. The very first thing they need to do, let's say,

00:51:08.540 if not tomorrow, then January one.

00:51:10.580 Well, I mean, you need to get a written game plan and say, okay, what creates wealth? Uh,

00:51:18.480 all of the data that we have indicates that your most powerful wealth building tool is your income.

00:51:23.800 And when you give your income away to someone else, to Sally may, to master card, to general motors

00:51:32.720 and the form of payments, you don't have your income anymore. And in other words, you're spending

00:51:37.180 everything you make on debt payments. And so it's why Dave Ramsey became famous for getting people

00:51:42.100 out of debt. I didn't, I didn't start out to just get people out of debt. I want them to get out of

00:51:45.440 debt so that they had their income. And with that income, without it all going to some stupid company

00:51:50.880 out there, you've got the money to be generous. You've got the money to invest. And that creates

00:51:57.900 the millionaire. So what we found is, is that the typical millionaire that we studied ended up with

00:52:03.300 about a million and a half dollar net worth. And about 500,000 of that was their paid off home.

00:52:08.880 They had zero debt of any kind. And about a million of it was in their 401k in the Roth IRAs.

00:52:16.280 And so about a third, two thirds, roughly. Now, if you get up over $5 million net worth,

00:52:20.580 we started seeing those ratios change, but the first one to 5 million, it pretty well laid out

00:52:24.980 about that way. It was simply get your house paid off and fill up your 401k. And over a period of 10 to 15

00:52:30.740 years, you're going to have a net worth of a million dollars. So don't get discouraged if

00:52:34.800 you don't have your debt paid off in six months, it's going to take a while. But the point is to

00:52:39.240 just chip, chip, chip away, but at the same time, tighten your belt around the house.

00:52:45.680 Yeah. And it's just, it's, it's a temporary thing. It's live like no one else so that later you can

00:52:49.880 live and give like no one else. I'm not asking people live in a cave, collect Lent and never come

00:52:53.640 out for 30 years, but I am saying, Hey, for two years, let's turn up the heat here. Let's get rid of

00:53:00.180 the debt. Let's get, if you didn't have any payments, what would it be like? Wow. You know,

00:53:05.300 that'd be the numbers change in that person, typical person's budget dramatically, you know?

00:53:10.320 And so like one guy was looking at the other day, he goes, I got $1,200 in payments. If I just got

00:53:14.480 rid of those, that $1,200 would afford me a great life and enough money to invest and become rich.

00:53:21.620 Don't you find that we only fool ourselves into believing we need the accumulation of these material

00:53:26.940 things. And it's like, if you ever, if life ever gives you a reality check and bounces you back a

00:53:31.540 little financially or what have you, it's a gift. Cause you quickly realize I don't need any of that

00:53:36.000 nonsense. I'm actually perfectly happy living at a lower standard of quote living, uh, than I,

00:53:41.860 than I had before. Well, I mean, I'll call her there. She's driving a Subaru instead of a Mercedes

00:53:47.100 and she's perfectly happy. And, uh, it's almost a badge of honor for her and that's fine. And

00:53:52.400 there's nothing wrong with having a nice car. The problem is when spiritually or mathematically,

00:53:57.100 the nice car has you. And so you're right. I think the most powerful financial principle

00:54:02.280 that can lead someone to wealth is contentment. This idea that I'm okay, I'm okay. And so I don't

00:54:10.620 mind getting a car. I do mind the car getting me. So can I tell you yesterday, um, I went to a

00:54:17.900 memorial service for a friend of mine. Um, he was a, just a gentleman of a man. His name was Stu

00:54:24.320 Snyder and he died at 72 surrounded by family and friends. Um, he died of cancer and at his memorial

00:54:32.980 service, people were, you know, in, in a great way, making fun of him and some of his habits during

00:54:39.200 life. He was a lawyer and, uh, sort of a local lawyer who helped people got, who got into trouble

00:54:43.780 and say never, he never met, he never met a stranger. You know, he loved everyone. And one

00:54:47.980 of the things they were mocking lovingly was his car. He never switched out his car. He just had

00:54:52.440 the oldest, most beat up cars, you know, 20 years old. And then the, his brother had to like sit on the

00:54:56.780 bumper to get it started. And they literally said at one point he had a windshield wiper, but he was

00:55:00.840 operating it through the sunroof of his car with a string. So he would just pull the string to make

00:55:05.040 the windshield wiper go on the front of the car. You would have been proud. But the thing is,

00:55:11.280 you look back at Stu Snyder and I'm sure he could have had bigger jobs at bigger law firms in bigger

00:55:15.460 cities with bigger paychecks. And what did he want? He wanted to spend his life with his family.

00:55:20.440 And it was so crowded at this memorial service day, but this wasn't a 22 year old, this is a 72 year

00:55:25.320 old man. Um, you couldn't even get in there was a standing room only. They were, they were falling out

00:55:30.760 on the street, just trying to get an earful at the microphone, uh, at the speaker to just to hear

00:55:35.860 something about this man that they, whose lives he had touched so many of, right? Like all of us,

00:55:40.740 he had made an impact on us because he created a life in which he had time to do that, to form

00:55:44.920 connections, to be his normal, warm, gregarious self, to prioritize friends and family over the

00:55:49.780 almighty dollar. And riches did come in many other ways. And he had a beautiful home. It's not to say he

00:55:54.600 was living like a pauper, but he was not the guy who had the fancy air conditioning and heating in the

00:55:59.420 best car and the blah, blah, blah. He wasn't, he made different choices and he was happy as they

00:56:04.100 come. Yeah. And there's nothing to say. You can't have nice things. You can have nice things and be

00:56:09.600 happy. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is when that, that, that we're going to be happy

00:56:14.200 when we get the nice things, uh, now, cause that's, that's a bully in the schoolyard. Again,

00:56:19.060 that's going to, it's going to move on you. I'll be happy when, if you start that phrase coming out of

00:56:23.900 your mouth, you're about to have trouble with happy. Uh, and so, yeah, but again,

00:56:29.060 I'm not anti nice car. I really don't want to drive a car with a string on the,

00:56:33.700 through the sunroof. I don't want that. And I don't want that. I don't want that to be your

00:56:38.860 goal in life to live that. If you want to do that, I'm fine with it. That's a wonderful

00:56:42.700 testimony. But, uh, you know, I always tell people, they got to say, I'm driving my Dave Ramsey car.

00:56:47.700 And that means a junk car, right? While they're getting out of debt. And I'm no, your Dave Ramsey

00:56:51.720 car is the nice one you get, when you become wealthy, because you did what I told you to do.

00:56:56.080 That's your Dave Ramsey. That's right. Don't, don't mess with my brand.

00:56:59.060 Uh, let's get into somebody else. Evan from Colorado is calling with an interesting question.

00:57:02.700 Hi, Evan. What's your question for Dave?

00:57:05.420 Hey, so I am a long time Dave Ramsey follower. I, uh, I'm on baby steps four, five, and six.

00:57:12.380 And I own my own business along with my wife owns her own business as well. Um, I have seen

00:57:19.500 a extreme increase in all the products that I buy as far as price goes.

00:57:24.680 And I'm stuck in this weird situation where I don't want to raise the prices for my customers,

00:57:31.300 especially my long-term customers, my builders I work for. But at the same time, it's cutting my

00:57:37.600 profits from 20% where I would like to be down to 5% or sometimes even less.

00:57:43.920 Hmm. You don't, you don't have a choice. Your cost of goods sold has gone up. And so your price is going

00:57:49.240 to go up. Um, and it's not your fault. You're not greedy and you're not greedy corporate America

00:57:54.300 taking advantage of people. Your costs have gone up. And so your price is going to go up. Uh, and

00:58:00.220 guess what? You're everybody out there right now. Everybody has to, I mean, the cost of paper to print

00:58:06.120 a book has gone up. And so you get ready to buy a book this year. They're $25 last year. They're

00:58:10.520 going to be $30 this year. And, uh, because the cost of what I pay to print that book is gone up

00:58:15.900 dramatically. And so it, you don't have a choice. You're not doing anything morally wrong. I appreciate

00:58:21.260 your sentiment that you don't want to raise the prices to your customer, but, uh, you won't be

00:58:25.700 there in business anymore to serve your customer. If you don't. What about Dave, if they decide to go

00:58:32.200 to somebody else, like if he has a competitor who doesn't raise his competitor has the same problem.

00:58:37.240 His competitor has got that same cost of goods sold. If his competitor wants to work for nothing,

00:58:41.400 it'll be short lived. If you work at zero margins, eventually you go out of business.

00:58:45.960 And, uh, that that's not a, if it doesn't make a profit, it's not a business as a hobby.

00:58:49.820 And so, you know, you don't have a choice. It's, you know, the, the marketplace is driving these

00:58:54.600 things and it's not your greed. You didn't do anything like you just suddenly woke up one morning

00:58:59.360 and went, I'm going to raise my prices, but you're going, man, I got to stay open. And in order to do

00:59:04.100 that, I I've got to absorb the customer's going to absorb these additional costs. Um, and it may

00:59:09.660 change the demand on the product. It may change the number of customers you have, but I don't think

00:59:14.640 you're going to have a competitor undercut you because they're getting their stuff from the same

00:59:17.380 place. Yeah. It's all the same industry. Evan, thank you. How about Jordan in Florida? Who's got

00:59:22.380 a question about, uh, well, I, maybe it's a question. Maybe it's a comment about selling,

00:59:26.720 selling your house. Jordan, what's the story?

00:59:28.800 Yes. Hi, uh, Dave. So my story is I'm 30 years old. I just sold a house, which I'm so happy I did

00:59:36.900 in the market, you know, where it was, um, bought the house two years ago. Uh, and I ended up making

00:59:42.880 a profit of $114,000 profit way to go. Um, thank you. And then, uh, I, I have since then completely

00:59:51.560 paid off my student loans as well as all my credit card debt. Before I did that, I actually refi, you know,

00:59:58.180 I did the thing I I've been, you know, since I was 18, been racking up credit card debt, just living

01:00:02.940 that stupid, you know, kind of adolescent life. Uh, and then, uh, I was able to kind of consolidate

01:00:09.560 it all. And then I had, you know, the one lump sum type thing that I'm just not going to do it

01:00:13.840 anymore after paying off my high interest for a while. So I'm completely out of credit card and

01:00:20.160 student loan debt, which I cannot tell you when I hit pay on both of those things, just, it felt like

01:00:26.360 my soul, like a bad part of my soul left my potty. Um, so it was gratifying, but my other, so I did

01:00:33.400 buy a new house. Um, and unfortunately, you know, the way that it is, the house is probably, I probably

01:00:39.400 overpaid for it. Um, and my mortgage payment has gone up pretty substantially, but I have $30,000 less

01:00:47.460 in those amount of payments that I'm doing. So what is your advice? I mean, now I have just a car

01:00:53.920 and my home. And those are the only two things that I'm making payments on now. Is there anything

01:00:58.760 else? You've made some good moves, man. Excellent job. Well, of course, you know, we're going to tell

01:01:03.660 you going to get the car paid off as fast as possible. That's finishing what we call baby

01:01:07.780 step two to become debt-free, not counting the house. Baby step three is make sure you have an

01:01:11.640 emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And then let's start putting 15% of your household

01:01:16.400 income away towards retirement, uh, in good growth stock, mutual funds and Roth IRAs, Roth 401ks with a

01:01:23.180 match those kinds of things. And if you'll follow those steps right up without that car payment and

01:01:27.940 that emergency fund in place, that 15% going into retirement is not going to feel like anything.

01:01:32.820 It's going to feel like you've still got a lot of room left in your budget because you do. Even if

01:01:37.000 you got a little pinch on the house, uh, payment going up because you went up a little in house,

01:01:41.420 you're still going to be fine. And at your age, you're going to retire with an awful lot of money.

01:01:45.800 If you put 15% of your income into mutual funds and you run that in a retirement calculator,

01:01:51.200 you're going to find that number to be millions of dollars.

01:01:54.160 Yeah. And I really appreciate that. I actually have a, uh, car payment or a, um, my company's

01:02:00.280 giving me a car allowance of more than double what my car payment is.

01:02:04.600 They're going to give that to you, honey, whether you have a car payment or not. So get rid of the

01:02:08.220 car payment.

01:02:08.640 Right.

01:02:09.520 Right. That, that, I know that is a really good, that's a good point there. And I have been actually

01:02:14.560 saving since I started when I was 20, when I was 23 years old, I've been putting about 10% of my pay

01:02:21.380 in a retirement account. So it's not, not easy in there. Uh, I have about a hundred thousand dollars

01:02:27.140 in there right now. Way to go.

01:02:29.520 At 30.

01:02:31.740 All right, Jordan, keep stocking that, that cash away. Cause I want to get another call in. I'm,

01:02:35.740 uh, Linda from New York. That could be my mom. Linda, what's on your mind?

01:02:39.920 Hi. Hi, Megan. Hi, Dave. Uh, thank you for taking my call. I've followed Dave's principles

01:02:46.340 for years. My husband and I have, we're now in our sixties and I feel like I've been a little

01:02:51.780 duped about the retirement idea in the sense that we, you know, we have about a million and a half

01:02:58.640 and it's going to be eaten away by inflation. That's my concern. And taxes because we utilize

01:03:07.320 401ks to bring the income down, but now we're going to pay taxes on everything we use and

01:03:14.580 we're limited in how much we can use of it by how much you can take out a year and these

01:03:19.240 kinds of things. So I feel like it's a little bit of a American dream. That's not really true

01:03:25.660 and it's gotten worse by inflation. So I'm just wondering your thoughts on, so you've got

01:03:31.280 all this stuff in retirement accounts now, but the taxes are going to be brutal.

01:03:37.140 He's got it. I, uh, I, I share your emotions. I share your emotions, but the facts are that you

01:03:44.400 are not duped. The facts are honey, you got a million and a half dollars. That's a fact. And the

01:03:51.960 fact is, is that inflation is going to be here and it's not going to be here at this level. I don't

01:03:57.080 predict. I don't, I mean, I'm in my sixties, I'm 61 and I don't think I'm going to face double

01:04:02.120 digit inflation like the Carter administration, because I, as we talked about earlier in last

01:04:06.640 segment, uh, I think most of this is going to go away over time. I don't know how, what period of

01:04:10.820 time, but you're going to be just fine, hon. And, uh, you know, I, I think what's happening is,

01:04:15.800 is you're hearing about inflation and everybody's going, ah, and you're hearing about taxes and the

01:04:20.440 Biden administration raising taxes on rich, evil, rich people like you. Ah, and you're worried about

01:04:25.160 that, but still, even if both of those things occur at some level, they're not going to be up

01:04:30.080 there far enough to harm you. You built yourself a great nest egg. You are a hero way to go.

01:04:36.580 Did you inherit any money? No, we've never inherited a dime. I think we inherited five

01:04:42.100 grand at one point. That's it. Rock on sister. You are, you're a baby steps millionaire. You're an

01:04:48.120 everyday millionaire. We see them everywhere just like you. And it doesn't feel rich because it's,

01:04:54.000 you know, it's not a feeling it's a math thing. Hmm. I wish you could have spent more time with

01:04:59.980 another Linda in New York, who is definitely not a million dollars. That's my mom in upstate New

01:05:04.560 York. She's got me, so she'll be okay, but she was not much of a saver. Linda, thank you for calling

01:05:09.820 in and good luck with it. Hopefully, uh, transitory, uh, will in fact be the case. Uh, we're going to have

01:05:15.440 much more with Dave Ramsey in a moment. We want to hear from you too. You can still call in and ask

01:05:19.740 questions about saving money, holiday spending, or anything you want to talk about. 833-44-MEGYN.

01:05:24.720 That's 833-446-3496. And believe it or not, after the break, I'm going to be asking Dave about Ben

01:05:29.980 Affleck and Elon Musk. I'll explain moments away. So Dave, um, in addition to being a financial guru,

01:05:40.060 you are a Christian man, God loving man. And I wanted to ask you some, some cultural questions,

01:05:46.740 which I'd love to get your take on. The first one I was just ticked off about. And I'm like,

01:05:50.980 I want to talk about it with Dave. I want to talk about it with America. I want to talk about it

01:05:54.080 with anybody who will talk about it with me. And that is the subject of Ben Affleck. Okay.

01:05:58.600 This is a right. This is coming at you from left field. Um, Ben Affleck is one of the luckiest

01:06:04.040 men in America, men in America, because he was married to Jennifer Garner and she's America's

01:06:08.440 sweetheart. She's the nicest person. Now I happen to know that Jennifer Garner has been through a lot

01:06:12.820 over the past couple of years in a way that she's never disclosed to anybody, but she is a stoic,

01:06:17.960 strong, powerful, reserved, private person. And her marriage to Ben Affleck fell apart.

01:06:25.360 According to the reports, largely due to his alcoholism. She took him to rehab. They have

01:06:29.520 a couple of daughters together. Um, she stood by him. The marriage fell apart. Now he's of course with

01:06:34.340 JLo. He's back with his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, who I believe was clearly using him just to

01:06:38.580 change the press because her boyfriend A-Rod cheated on her and she didn't want that headline.

01:06:42.820 They're still together. JLo and Ben Affleck. I'm going someplace with this, Dave. Stand by.

01:06:48.540 And what does Ben Affleck do, right? He should be on his knees every night, thanking God that he

01:06:54.400 had the chance to marry Jennifer Garner and have children with Jennifer Garner and that she helped

01:06:57.940 him eventually get his life straight. But no, that's not what happened. He went on our friend

01:07:03.040 Howard Stern show right here at SiriusXM and he started talking about Jennifer Garner in ways that upset

01:07:10.020 me, Dave, in ways that upset me. Here's a clip.

01:07:12.940 We probably had each other stoked. I'd probably still be drinking. You know, like it was just part

01:07:17.400 of why I started drinking alcoholic because I was trapped. The truth was we took our time.

01:07:23.860 We made the decision. We didn't want to show we grew apart. We had a marriage that didn't work.

01:07:29.420 This happens. I was trapped. You know, I was like, I can't leave because of my kids,

01:07:34.340 but I'm not happy. What do I do? And what I did was like, you know, drink a bottle of scotch

01:07:38.500 and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out to be the solution.

01:07:42.500 Okay. Here's why I don't like it. To put it charitably is not a classy thing to do,

01:07:48.360 to have your first marriage fall apart due to your alcoholism. And then when that person tried

01:07:52.500 to help you through it and never bad mouth you in the press, come out and say, when I was married to

01:07:56.400 her, I felt trapped. And if I were still married to her, I'd still be drinking. And I only wanted

01:08:03.220 to stay in the marriage for as long as I did because of those kids. But looking over at her,

01:08:07.280 all I felt was trapped. It is the height of unclassy to be charitable again and put it in

01:08:13.440 the nicest terms. And I thought you as a good husband, a good father, do you have any thoughts

01:08:19.080 on this, Dave? And please let them be what I want them to be. I don't have a thought in the world

01:08:25.180 about those people. I don't know anything about people like that. Bless their hearts. What a mess.

01:08:31.820 I'm, you know, regular people out here in the real world. We don't know how that kind of stuff

01:08:36.720 works. Oh, Mike. Well, let me tell you, it works like this. Everything's a PR effort until you've

01:08:40.940 talked to Howard Stern, you let your guard down, you stay up on such stupid stuff that ticks off

01:08:45.520 America. Because let me tell you, looking at the reaction online, the women of America are mad.

01:08:51.120 They mad. They're mad at Ben Affleck because that's not an okay thing to do. Hashtag team Jennifer

01:08:56.840 Garner. Not Jennifer Lopez, team Jennifer Garner. All right, let me try another one with you.

01:09:01.600 Uh, cause I, I gotta get to this too. There was, you know, Ben Shapiro. Well, he's got a little

01:09:06.940 sister, which I actually didn't know. And she's out there, um, on online on Twitter. Um, and her,

01:09:13.040 she goes by classically Abby. He's got his own Abby. And she sent out a tweet that went, she got

01:09:19.040 ratioed for it, meaning Twitter didn't like it. Twitter's a far left place. And it showed a picture

01:09:23.920 of Madonna, who is 63 on the left and Nancy Reagan, who is 64 on the right. Nancy's at, I don't know,

01:09:33.360 maybe the Reagan ranch. She's got her horizontal striped shirt on. She's got her red sweater. You

01:09:36.880 can't see any skin. She's wearing a hat. Madonna never looks like I just described. She's, she's

01:09:43.340 wearing next to nothing. She's got fishnet stockings or something like it. High heels. She's in a bed.

01:09:47.960 She's showing a nipple much, much of the other breast. And, um, they're basically the same age

01:09:53.360 as her point she's making. And she wrote something to the effect of trashy living versus classic

01:09:58.020 living. Which version of yourself do you want to be? Well, the liberals on Twitter did not like this.

01:10:04.660 They did not like her sort of throwing any judgment at Madonna for trying to remain sexy. But I have to

01:10:10.000 say, I get her point because I think there's a difference. You can still look sexy at any age,

01:10:15.860 64. Jane Fonda is in her eighties. You know, we've had our dust ups, but she still looks beautiful.

01:10:21.600 Um, you can look sexy at any age, but there is a difference between looking sexy and looking

01:10:28.160 trashy. And I think the trashiness is what Abby was picking up on in the photo. Take that one,

01:10:34.720 Dave Ramsey. Let's see what, let's see what you got. You're asking me about looking sexy. Now that's

01:10:40.760 funny. Will you tell me, what would you like to see? Would you like to see the fish? I am an old

01:10:49.380 grandpa, Southern gentleman. And I have a four-year-old and a five-year-old and a six-year-old

01:10:56.920 granddaughter. And I sure hope they turn out more like the lady on the right in the picture.

01:11:03.000 To me, it's kind of sad because I didn't know Madonna was this needy. I would think at this

01:11:07.320 point in one's life, when you have that much money and that much success, that much access to

01:11:11.180 whatever you want, you just, you wouldn't need the affirmations of people who still need to see

01:11:15.540 almost, you know, at your AARP card in your, uh, in your stockings and your, I don't know. I worry

01:11:21.320 about me when I'm not in the spotlight anymore. Cause I think I might be more needy than I thought.

01:11:25.820 You showing your boobs on Twitter. I like attention. I like attention. I'm not that kind of attention,

01:11:30.160 but I like attention. And I guess we all like affirmation and attention. And,

01:11:33.800 you know, she was a sex goddess back in MTV days and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

01:11:39.120 And I guess she just wants people to love her still the way they used to love her.

01:11:42.520 I know, but we do, we can love her without that. That's the thing. So like, I get it. I took some

01:11:47.260 saucy photos when I was 40 for a GQ. You know, I'm, I'm kind of okay with my brand maturing and aging.

01:11:55.720 Look, there are a lot of pressures on women in particular, women entertainers. And especially

01:12:00.300 if you've made your name by being a sex pot, where do you go? Right. You got, but that too,

01:12:05.280 like our COVID policies needs an off ramp. It's not that you have to stop being sexy. You know,

01:12:09.840 I actually had my team pull some pictures of women who I think look incredibly sexy past 60,

01:12:14.520 Sophia Loren, Christy Brinkley, Michelle Pfeiffer, who, I mean, God, please give me some of what she's

01:12:20.700 drinking because they, they look amazing. Yes. They admit Christy who came on my NBC show admitted she,

01:12:25.320 she does some stuff and fillers and so on. My point is they can look sexy without looking trashy.

01:12:30.000 And that's a fine line that you gotta, you know, we don't always nail it, but I think, uh, Twitter

01:12:34.780 should have sort of sat back and reflected rather than trying to kill classically Abby. Um, all right.

01:12:40.380 Don't ask Twitter to step back and reflect. That's an unrealistic request.

01:12:44.140 You, you raise a good point. Okay. But I got one for, I got a different one for you that I've been

01:12:47.560 thinking about this week. And, um, as a man of faith, what do you talk about? What do you think about

01:12:54.980 when you see an event like we saw over the past few days in Kentucky and Tennessee and with these

01:13:01.460 tornadoes and this devastation, and now 74 plus dead, we're waiting on confirmations for many,

01:13:06.880 many others, babies, toddlers, you know, who had no chance. Those are the moments where your faith

01:13:14.100 gets rocked, right? Where you say, why, why, how could a loving God allow it? Right. You hear questions

01:13:19.000 like that. And how do you, at this point in your life, resolve those? Well, I'm, I don't think you

01:13:25.100 have to be a person of faith for your heart to be broken by that. All of us that have a heart, uh,

01:13:29.860 our hearts broken looking at those pictures, they just take the breath away. And especially when

01:13:34.420 there's a child involved, it's just unbelievable. And so, um, you know, I guess I've worked, uh, this

01:13:41.260 side of the camera so long now that what I always end up seeing around these things is I always end up

01:13:48.140 seeing God show up in his people. Uh, and those are the people that come to do the rescues. And

01:13:53.380 those are the people that drive from another state with a pickup full of groceries and hand them out.

01:13:57.960 And those are the people who take someone who lost their home into their home until they can do

01:14:02.720 something else. And, uh, there's always heroes and there's always the hand of God, uh, showing up

01:14:07.960 through that, that way, uh, in response to what is a natural disaster. Um, uh, you know, we're pretty

01:14:16.080 sure God allows all of us to die and we're all going to die. Uh, it's just a matter of how and

01:14:20.680 when, and, uh, it's a matter of how people around us are going to react. And so about all I can do

01:14:27.160 is just catch somebody when they're hurting and try to be there for them. Yeah. The death of a child

01:14:34.200 of an infant to a natural disaster is hard to square. You know, like if you think this is where

01:14:41.220 I get caught up as somebody who's, I'm, I'm probably not as faithful as you are, but I am

01:14:45.640 a woman of faith. I'm Catholic. I believe in God. I haven't figured out free will and God and all of

01:14:51.620 it. I know we have free will. I know not everything's predetermined, but, but you think

01:14:57.060 of a loving God, if he sent the helpers, why didn't he, why didn't he do something to stop

01:15:00.660 the tornado in the first place? Why didn't he do something to get the babies out of harm's way?

01:15:04.680 Why, you know, why wasn't there an intervention or a steering of his humans earlier and in a way

01:15:11.780 that could have prevented the tragedy in the first place? Now there's that, that on every tragedy,

01:15:17.920 uh, since the, since humankind was born and, uh, we've been asking that same question. Why would

01:15:23.760 he allow cancer? Why would he take my wife? Why would he take my husband? Um, and, and yet, um,

01:15:29.120 and, and these are the great mysteries, uh, that we all, uh, that's part of what faith is,

01:15:34.260 is in spite of not understanding everything, I still believe. And so, um, I guess I'm going to

01:15:39.800 have some great conversations with Jesus when I get there. Gosh, I don't know. It's like,

01:15:45.580 I ask myself all those questions and part of faith is choosing to believe anyway. Um,

01:15:50.740 but it's like, what, what do I do in response? First, first thing I see, you know, or the first

01:15:56.520 thing I do in response to a story like that, I pray, right? I pray to God, pray to God to help them

01:16:01.780 pray to God to not let it happen in other places, you know, pray to God for healing,

01:16:05.980 whatever, to get them the resources they need, then try to help. So it's, it's one of those

01:16:10.460 things where it's sort of, if faith is baked into you at a young age, I think it's tough to disabuse

01:16:14.480 yourself of it. And why would you want to, then events come in your life or others' lives that

01:16:19.480 force you to challenge it or test it or reassess it. Um, I've been lucky enough not to been, not to

01:16:25.040 have been disabused from it, you know, nor do I have any wish to, but I, you hear some,

01:16:29.140 you hear talk of it come up in response to events like this. And I hear atheists raise it all the

01:16:33.940 time, uh, after we have a tragedy, tragedy like this, you know, I think people are searching,

01:16:38.580 searching, searching, especially around the holidays, Dave, you know, depression goes up,

01:16:42.500 loneliness goes up, people feel more isolated from one another.

01:16:47.120 Mm-hmm. It's very true. And I've lived portion of my adult life without faith and a larger portion

01:16:53.140 with faith and, um, uh, having a better life this way. So going to continue it.

01:16:58.500 Mm-hmm. But it doesn't, it doesn't feed, it doesn't grow unless you feed it. You know,

01:17:04.000 you have to nurture it. I've been getting back to a mass on Sundays and it's been helping. I have

01:17:08.180 to say, it's been really helping. Our priest is great with the kids and the kids that are actually

01:17:11.880 enjoying church, which is a switch from when I was a kid where it was like, Oh my God,

01:17:15.940 how much longer? The most exciting thing was putting the five bucks in the offering basket.

01:17:20.860 You know, it was like, Oh, finally I get to do something. I understand something. Um,

01:17:25.500 okay. Let's talk about, you were a kid that wouldn't sit still in church.

01:17:29.620 Oh my God.

01:17:31.940 If I could get dragged, like if I, if they gave me something to do back to our need for attention,

01:17:35.480 our mutual need that we share with Madonna, um, they won't let us dress like that in church.

01:17:39.100 But yeah, if I could, if they give me something to do, I would have like, I would have been an

01:17:42.580 altar girl. We weren't really doing that back in the seventies. Um, but no, I just had to sit there

01:17:47.120 and listen to somebody else perform. I was bored. Um, let's talk about money because I want to ask you a

01:17:51.940 question about taxes. Okay. Everybody's worried about taxes. We're going into tax season when we

01:17:56.540 come back for, from the holiday. And, um, that was actually one of the big knocks on build back

01:18:02.040 better was that it was going to wind up taxing a bunch of people. And just to underscore, we

01:18:05.360 haven't yet confirmed this independently. It just looks like from the NBC report and the Elizabeth

01:18:09.180 Warren tweet, it's done further updates to follow. Um, but there's a question about whether people are

01:18:15.040 going to be taxed by the Biden administration to pay for all this spending. And that can really,

01:18:18.640 I mean, that's like paying off the credit card bill that you never thought knew you were

01:18:21.080 spending. Right. And they say it's not going to affect anybody under 400,000, but the reality is

01:18:26.180 it is, it is going to blow back on people who, who make under four. Um, and it's even going to blow

01:18:31.220 back on people like Elon Musk who make billions. There's a funny Twitter exchange between Elon and

01:18:36.420 our friend, Elizabeth Warren, who's been kind of the second star of the show after you, she tweeted out,

01:18:41.380 let's change the rigged tax code. So the person of the year, cause he, Elon Musk was voted

01:18:46.140 person a year by time, we'll actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off of every

01:18:51.060 else. Then Elon Musk responded with a series of tweets, quote, and if you opened your eyes for

01:18:56.740 two seconds, you would realize I pay more taxes than any American in history. I will pay more

01:19:01.520 taxes than any American in history this year. Follows up. Don't spend it all at once. He's

01:19:06.520 saying to her, Oh wait, you did already. Then he follows up again. Musk, uh, retweeting an article

01:19:11.620 from Fox news about Senator Warren posing as a native American with the following message.

01:19:16.800 This is Elon stop projecting. It's a stop projecting, um, to the world. And then he says,

01:19:24.480 you remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for

01:19:29.400 no reason. And then the final, please don't yell at me, Senator Karen. So Elon's mad cause he does pay

01:19:36.520 a lot in taxes. Um, so your thought on whether the rich does bear less than its fair share and on

01:19:42.760 whether these big, big policies will trick or trickle down to the non Elon Musk's of the world.

01:19:50.180 Well, I think we have to define fair share. Um, if you want to have this discussion and that's the

01:19:59.140 problem with some of the narratives that are out there on this idea of wealth redistribution through

01:20:03.280 taxation, um, fair share from a guy that grew up in my neighborhood would be everybody got the same.

01:20:11.260 And so that would be like a flat tax. And in America today, we have 48% of Americans that pay

01:20:17.360 zero federal income tax. I'm not sure how that's fair. Unless you say, well, people shouldn't have to

01:20:27.260 pay any taxes and that's fair if, unless they make a certain amount, which is obviously what the

01:20:31.920 current tax code says. And, and so, and beyond that people that make 30 or $40,000 a year and have

01:20:38.260 four kids actually get money from the government with the unearned income tax credit that they didn't

01:20:44.280 pay in. And so not only are they not paying taxes, they're receiving tax money back that was not

01:20:51.420 withheld from their check in the first place. And so, uh, you know, and that's fair. Um, so, you know,

01:20:59.740 what's unfair to me, what's immoral is that these policies, uh, and discussions of these policies

01:21:06.080 take someone like our last caller, Linda, who has saved her whole life, inherited zero has a million

01:21:12.680 and a half. And what were her two primary, uh, fears that, that the, that she'd been sold a bill

01:21:19.420 of goods, that inflation was going to steal her money and taxes increased taxes. We're going to steal

01:21:26.560 her money. Well, she's a millionaire. She should have her taxes increased says the fair share crowd.

01:21:32.780 Well, Linda doesn't think that's fair. Yeah. And you can understand why. Um, we'll see that one again,

01:21:41.480 for now appears to have been staved off. Uh, I want to get some callers back in. I'm going to kick it

01:21:46.100 off with Dale in Iowa. Dale, what's on your mind? Hey, this is more. So when you were talking about

01:21:51.540 the Ben Affleck thing, and this goes back to Dave, 12 years ago, my wife and I joined arm and arm did

01:21:58.140 the start. We read the total money makeover, went to a class through our church. And lo and behold,

01:22:04.840 11 years ago, we did our debt-free scream. But the thing was we were partners. Our marriage got better.

01:22:12.620 Our financial future got better. Most importantly, we gave a legacy to our adult children.

01:22:18.740 They use the system. We still use the envelope system. We still, you know, use coupons and stuff

01:22:25.480 like that, but it's the partner, the partner you choose in life. That's amazing. Way to tie it all

01:22:32.560 together for me, Dale. Sorry. Go ahead, Dave. I said he wasn't living under the curse of being a

01:22:38.080 Hollywood icon. Well, it's true. I mean, that is, I think more of a curse than a blessing and which a

01:22:44.320 lot of these stars find out. And then they turn to drugs and alcohol to try to fill the empty

01:22:48.300 voids that they tried to fill with a Hollywood film career that was never going to do the filling.

01:22:52.760 Yeah. Way to go, man. I'm proud of you. Good dad. Good husband. Well done, American. You took care

01:22:58.660 of your family. You built wealth. You are why I come on the radio every day.

01:23:05.380 Dave, can you explain for people who aren't familiar with it? We talked about the last time,

01:23:08.760 the envelope method. Oh, it's grandma's old method. We use it sparingly today. Most of what we do is

01:23:15.540 digital. But the old method of you take a series of envelopes and you write on the outside a subject

01:23:21.560 line in the budget. For instance, the food envelope, you put the amount that you're going to spend on

01:23:26.240 food this week or this month in the food envelope in cash. And when you go to the grocery store,

01:23:31.840 when you run out of cash, you stop spending. And so you have to budget and not go over your budget.

01:23:37.960 The envelope, the real cash keeps you from going over your budget. There's a few items we still do that

01:23:44.020 way. Clothing purchases, if you're in person and not online, is a great way to keep you from

01:23:50.080 overspending and also enjoying purchasing the piece of clothing because you know it's in the budget and

01:23:57.300 you know you're not being irresponsible. You know you're not going to have a financial hangover from

01:24:01.360 this purchase when you get home. So you can enjoy the spending and you can purchase. Because I mean,

01:24:06.280 when we were broke, Megan, I remember going to the grocery store and when I was buying basic stuff for

01:24:11.020 the for our family with my wife, I wasn't sure if we're going to have the money to pay the light bill

01:24:16.100 when we got home because we bought groceries. But when you've got it categorized out and you know

01:24:20.380 you're not going over the budget, then you know the light bill is going to be paid and the groceries

01:24:24.540 are going to be purchased. And wow, there's a lot of peace there. Yeah. You know, I can say the same

01:24:29.760 having having been through a period where I had no money and now having money, sometimes the one luxury

01:24:35.500 you afford yourself when you are watching your budget and you and you budget in something small that

01:24:40.560 you can get and you get it. It can be so much more meaningful to you, right? Than when you have

01:24:45.340 a bunch of money and you can have many of such things. Like that is something about not having

01:24:50.080 money that you probably may not appreciate, but just like the value of hard work, the value of a

01:24:55.080 job well done manifested in an item you didn't know that you could afford or get or bring into your

01:24:59.700 world. And then it's there, right? Because of you, because of your planning, because of your work.

01:25:04.540 It's a good feeling. Yeah. The young folks call that adulting, you know,

01:25:07.680 adulting. Right. It's now become a verb to be an adult, but, but, but adults devise a plan and

01:25:14.540 follow it. Children do what feels good. And I've been a child in an adult body before. Sometimes I

01:25:20.920 still am. But most of the time I try to be an adult and I'm just going to devise a plan and follow it

01:25:25.700 that takes me and gives me the life that I want for me and mine. He's an adult and adult body that he

01:25:31.980 will not call sexy. We have more with Dave. We're going to do all calls next. So call on in. Now's

01:25:40.640 your chance. 833-44-MEGYN. 833-446-3496. Don't go away. Dave, Anita from Texas has got a question for you

01:25:55.940 about her house. Hi, Anita. Hi, how are y'all doing today? Good. How are you doing? What's your question

01:26:01.480 for Dave? Um, um, well, my husband and I are both self-employed. Um, he's in commercial real

01:26:07.960 estate and we just had the floor pulled out from underneath us last year. Um, cause when

01:26:14.400 you're on commission and you don't get paid, it was a rough year, but we're real lucky in

01:26:19.380 that we, um, have a house that we built about 14 years ago and we've outgrown it. We're empty

01:26:24.940 nesters now. And my question is this, um, when we sell our house, because it's appreciated

01:26:31.560 so much in this crazy market, we can pull a whole bunch of cash once we sell. I mean,

01:26:39.560 we're talking probably over half a million dollars. So we're really lucky in that that investment's

01:26:44.400 been really good. So this is my question. Oh, I know that's a good thing, but you know,

01:26:49.520 we're house poor. Um, so my question is really guidance for in this crazy market, are we better

01:26:57.860 off to sell our house and pull out our equity and maybe sit on the sidelines and wait for

01:27:02.600 the prices to go down? I mean, we're looking at probably having to put a new roof on, replace

01:27:07.360 the windows just because of the age of the house. And my husband thinks that we ought to

01:27:12.120 stay in there just because, you know, we can't afford necessarily, we're not going to be able

01:27:16.780 to buy a really good price house right now because of the market where we are in Texas

01:27:21.420 is so hot. So, you know, financially, what's the best move for us to make?

01:27:27.820 I mean, I suspect the increase in prices that we've seen is going to slow, but I don't think

01:27:35.500 we're going to see housing go down in value. We've really only seen that one time in about

01:27:41.080 70 years and that was 2008. Uh, and it snapped back pretty quick. So I don't think you're going

01:27:47.440 to see a correction downward. I think what you will see over the next three to five years is the

01:27:52.500 market's going to calm down and go back to more of a normal rhythm than this crazy white hot thing

01:27:56.980 we're dealing with right now. So, you know, if you're going to sell this house, this is a great

01:28:01.160 time to sell. The downside is you've already recognized is great time to sell a house, bad time

01:28:05.980 to buy a house. Uh, but sitting on the sidelines, not going to be a plan either because they are

01:28:10.200 going to go up in value from here, maybe just not quite at the same hockey stick up into the

01:28:15.780 right that we've been seeing. So I sold my personal residence this year to take advantage of this. I

01:28:20.620 had a big old house Sharon and I had outgrown and we'd enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, but it was

01:28:24.940 time to take it out and we sold it right at the top of the market and got, and we're real happy about

01:28:29.520 that. But the problem is then we had to turn around by in this market. And so same exact thing you're

01:28:34.680 facing. Um, it's a matter of what your personal goals are. Where do you want to live five years from

01:28:39.640 today? If it's in a house different than this one, great time to get this thing fixed up and get it

01:28:44.660 sold. Interesting. It's almost like you've got to buy your next house while you still have your first

01:28:50.200 house as if everyone can do that. And then, and when the market's low and hold onto it and then sell

01:28:55.440 your hire, you know, whatever, no one can do that. Okay. Let's go down to Sean in Florida. Sean,

01:29:00.640 what is your question for Dave Ramsey? Hi Megan. First of all, just want to say, love you,

01:29:05.480 Sherrod. Thanks for, uh, having Dave on a little background, 61 years old, a hundred percent debt

01:29:13.000 free. My wife and I, I'm still working and, uh, I have three kids. The youngest is 22. Question is

01:29:21.120 how do they develop credit, which they're going to need a good credit score eventually without

01:29:26.900 borrowing money because none of them have borrowed yet other than a student loan. But, uh, you know,

01:29:32.920 I worry because I did it all the wrong way. Yeah. Well, the only thing you need a credit score

01:29:38.640 for is to borrow money. And so if you're teaching them to do what you've done, become debt free and

01:29:44.020 stay debt free, their need for a credit score is zero. You actually can get a mortgage without a

01:29:49.560 credit score. It's called a manual underwriting process. And so my credit score has been zero for

01:29:55.200 close to 30 years and I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much. And, uh, zero when I was broke and

01:30:01.060 it's been zero, uh, all the way through. And I just decided I wasn't going to worship at the altar

01:30:05.860 of the great FICO and, uh, the FICO FICO is not really your provider. All it is, is an indication

01:30:11.340 that you borrowed money and paid it back so that you can borrow money and pay it back so that you

01:30:15.540 can borrow money and pay it back so that you have a number that says that you borrowed money and paid

01:30:19.720 it back. It doesn't say you're winning with money. It says you've been playing kissy face with the bank

01:30:23.840 a bunch. Oh my gosh. That's so interesting. My credit score is zero. Uh, okay. Food for thought.

01:30:30.700 Let's go to Jennifer in Maine. Jennifer, what's on your mind? Hi. Um, thank you for taking my call.

01:30:38.200 I'm a big fan of both of you. Um, I'm calling about my daughter. She's 28, um, has no debt,

01:30:46.080 has a lot of money in the bank because she's worked hard and, and, uh, has been a good saver,

01:30:53.380 but it's all sitting in her checking account, doing nothing for her. And we're talking like

01:30:57.960 over $150,000 and I don't know what to tell her, where to direct her. She's pretty, uh, um,

01:31:05.220 she's not investment savvy at all. So I'm wondering what steps we could take to sort of help her get the

01:31:12.840 money earning for her. That's a good question. Now that's a really good question. Well, your

01:31:18.420 daughter is a wonderful daughter. I mean, a lot of moms wish their daughter was doing that instead

01:31:23.160 of the other stuff. So what a great, great position to be in. Her saving is being driven by fear

01:31:29.520 and her refusal to invest is being driven by fear. So she's a fear-based person and that's okay.

01:31:36.280 As long as we know that we're okay and we can just deal with it. So how do we deal with fear?

01:31:39.660 Well, there's two kinds of fear. There's fear that's real. Like don't jump in front of a car.

01:31:43.780 You'll get killed. That's good fear. It keeps you from touching a hot stove. Then there's fear that

01:31:48.260 the old saying is false evidence appearing real fear. If I buy a home because I've never bought a

01:31:53.440 home before, it scares me to buy a home fear to invest in mutual funds and fund my Roth IRA with

01:31:59.780 some mutual funds, because I don't even know what that is. And everybody says the stock market's risky

01:32:03.280 and it's scary. And I don't know what it is. Well, the way that fear is overcome is knowledge.

01:32:07.760 And so what I would begin to talk to her about is not what she should do by wagging my finger at

01:32:12.880 her. Instead, I would talk about, Hey, I started investing in this and look at this mutual fund.

01:32:17.520 It's, it's 70 years old and look at what it's done. And it's made this much money. And it really

01:32:22.440 only had five or six down years in 70 years. And you know, if you put money in something like that,

01:32:28.420 wow, what could have happened? And that's what I'm doing with mine. Cause I figured out that if I put

01:32:32.140 money and keep it in my checking account, that I don't build any wealth. And this money's making me rich

01:32:36.960 over here. And, and a friend of mine did this and my investment advisor does this and just start

01:32:41.340 teaching her or hooking her up with some of our classes where we can teach her about investing

01:32:46.560 because once she has knowledge, that fear will go away. Yeah. And that's right. And she, I'm sure she

01:32:52.080 also has fear of doing nothing with it. So we can tap into that, Jennifer. Jennifer, thank you for the

01:32:56.640 call. Thanks to all of our callers today, Dave. You've been a pleasure as always. Everybody's got to go

01:33:01.020 check out baby steps. Millionaires make a great holiday present. You can pre-order. Uh, and thank you for

01:33:05.600 listening tomorrow. We've got, uh, we're going to talk about the Kim Potter trial. We've got Andrew

01:33:08.840 Branca back, uh, on the show. Go ahead and check it out on YouTube in the meantime. Thanks for listening

01:33:15.120 to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 15, 2021

Dave Ramsey on Inflation Reality, the Millionaire Mentality, and the Power of Hope ｜ Ep. 222

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