The Tucker Carlson Show

00:00:00.000 You send me a rifle that I love.

00:00:01.900 I don't care.

00:00:03.420 You get busted for a drug-related murder spree,

00:00:05.560 and I will testify to your character.

00:00:08.640 Sorry.

00:00:09.460 I'm actually very used to buy.

00:00:11.240 I didn't know that.

00:00:12.860 Fairly cheap date.

00:00:14.220 I have a cheap date.

00:00:16.660 It's like, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer, bad guy,

00:00:20.340 but he sent me this rifle once that I love.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.

00:00:34.600 We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else,

00:00:38.740 and they're not censored, of course,

00:00:40.300 because we're not gatekeepers.

00:00:41.780 We are honest brokers here to tell you

00:00:44.100 what we think you need to know and do it honestly.

00:00:46.980 Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.

00:00:50.220 Here's the episode.

00:00:51.380 So I woke up this morning thinking about something

00:00:54.080 you said at dinner last night.

00:00:55.060 You said, I've been telling people,

00:00:57.800 I've been warning people for 30 years about debt

00:00:59.900 and why it's bad,

00:01:00.820 and there's more people in debt than ever.

00:01:04.260 And you sort of bitterly laughed,

00:01:06.440 but I thought it was a really interesting point.

00:01:09.880 This country is much deeper in debt,

00:01:12.440 I think, than we appreciate on an individual level,

00:01:14.820 not just national debt, but people.

00:01:16.960 How deep is the debt and why?

00:01:19.780 It's bad.

00:01:20.680 It's bad.

00:01:21.160 It's bad.

00:01:21.760 Yeah, we're not.

00:01:22.860 We're laughing about it because we, you know,

00:01:26.020 we're David and Goliath in a sense of the,

00:01:28.520 the credit card industry, for instance,

00:01:31.580 spends more on advertising and marketing in a year

00:01:35.360 than all professional sports put together,

00:01:38.940 than any other single product line on the planet.

00:01:42.480 And they are excellent marketers.

00:01:46.860 They're very good at what they do,

00:01:49.020 just to sell a Visa and to make it normalized

00:01:50.960 and to make MasterCard a part of our lives.

00:01:53.580 And so we're at $1.7 trillion in credit card debt right now.

00:01:56.380 We're at $1.9 trillion now in student loan debt.

00:02:00.600 Car debt is, you know, in the mid $1 trillions as well.

00:02:04.960 That's the highest.

00:02:05.540 All of those are the highest they've ever been right now.

00:02:08.840 And I've been working to get people out of debt for 30 years,

00:02:11.280 so I'm a complete abject failure.

00:02:13.700 You've been telling the truth, which counts.

00:02:16.280 It counts, but in terms of, I helped that one and that one,

00:02:19.380 but as a whole, the macro on it, yeah, we're running backwards.

00:02:22.720 They're better at selling it than I am getting them out of it.

00:02:25.560 They spend more on marketing.

00:02:26.700 I just want to say this out loud to make sure I got it.

00:02:28.620 The credit card companies spend more on marketing every year

00:02:31.500 than all professional sports.

00:02:33.180 Yep.

00:02:33.280 And then all, and any other product line, an automotive line,

00:02:37.560 you know, put together Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, whatever.

00:02:40.100 And there's a lot of television commercials with Chevy trucks running through the mud.

00:02:43.740 Oh, yeah.

00:02:44.140 Nothing like Visa.

00:02:45.120 Nothing like Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex,

00:02:48.640 because it's so stinking profitable.

00:02:51.600 They just make so much money.

00:02:53.260 Do they really?

00:02:54.400 So can you explain?

00:02:55.580 I wish I knew more about this.

00:02:57.280 Well, it's simple.

00:02:57.860 They charge 18% to 28%, and people stay in debt.

00:03:01.300 The average American right now is $37,000 in credit card debt.

00:03:04.880 So you run that out times $300 million,

00:03:06.860 and you've got some money coming into good old Chase,

00:03:10.580 and what's in your wallet?

00:03:11.820 Their money.

00:03:13.300 You know, so it's bad.

00:03:17.360 So, I mean, that's got to be one of the major profit centers in American banking.

00:03:21.680 Oh, definitely.

00:03:22.720 Definitely.

00:03:23.760 Banking exists based on debt in general.

00:03:26.080 Of course.

00:03:26.560 Obviously, obviously.

00:03:28.060 They're borrowing money from you at the rate of your savings account,

00:03:31.580 and then they're loaning it to your neighbor at the rate of a car loan

00:03:34.960 or a credit card or a home equity loan.

00:03:37.300 And obviously, there's a spread there,

00:03:39.140 and that's why we've always known bankers were wealthy folks.

00:03:42.840 They're not greedy.

00:03:43.600 They're not evil.

00:03:44.120 They're just doing their thing,

00:03:45.460 and they're better at it than we are as consumers.

00:03:47.520 We're just kind of wandering along like pigs to the slaughter.

00:03:52.360 So, okay.

00:03:53.340 Anyway, they market to kids, and I know that because when I was in college,

00:03:58.800 one of the few things I remember from college was getting free credit cards in the mail.

00:04:03.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:04.320 But they, you know, you weren't allowed to send me cigarettes or Copenhagen,

00:04:08.580 chewing tobacco, but you could send credit cards, and that was good.

00:04:11.240 No one ever said anything about it.

00:04:12.680 That seems wrong.

00:04:13.720 It is, and nowadays, it's more accidental just because of the level of aggressive.

00:04:19.200 You know, they're just chaotic and aggressive in their marketing.

00:04:21.760 It's everywhere.

00:04:22.460 I mean, they send it to dead people, to dogs.

00:04:25.040 You know, we've got great credit cards that customers have sent us that was issued to their Labrador retriever,

00:04:30.420 you know, or to their poodle.

00:04:31.980 And so, Fru-Fru can, you know, get a line of credit, you know,

00:04:34.800 just because they're just sending it everywhere.

00:04:36.940 They're sending it everywhere.

00:04:37.820 And, you know, there's a whole movement probably 15 years ago where they were all over the college campuses,

00:04:43.600 and they pretty well are off the college campuses now.

00:04:47.620 They're just across the property line, you know, to next door to the college campus doing something.

00:04:52.860 But the thing of them shoving it down to college students at the behest of the college,

00:04:59.740 a lot of that's gone just because there was so much consumer uprising against it.

00:05:04.300 But they're still out there.

00:05:05.340 I mean, they're still just going.

00:05:06.960 It's what they do.

00:05:07.500 I mean, the supposedly radical lefties out there calling for a revolution and a total overhaul of our society,

00:05:15.340 like, they never go after the credit card companies.

00:05:17.760 You know, they mention student loans or they mention, you know, the big companies or capitalism,

00:05:22.900 but they never, I've never seen any Antifa person say,

00:05:27.160 hey, don't pay your credit card bill.

00:05:28.860 Like, for some reason, the left, even AOC and people like that,

00:05:35.300 they seem like, are they bought off by the credit card companies?

00:05:37.980 I never hear them attacking the credit card companies ever.

00:05:40.840 Well, I mean, we're taught, again, with the most repetitive,

00:05:45.340 sophisticated marketing over the longest period of time in human history.

00:05:50.560 I mean, the number of impressions before your eyes and across your mind,

00:05:54.120 we've been taught, don't leave home without it.

00:05:56.220 We've been taught that, you know, what would you do?

00:05:59.040 I mean, we have people who have physical reactions when they cut up their credit cards.

00:06:04.080 I mean, they're crying, they're shaking.

00:06:07.040 Really?

00:06:07.320 I mean, what that means is that it's become, you know,

00:06:10.180 it's become something that is necessary for life.

00:06:12.880 It's an altar that we worship at, right?

00:06:15.120 And it's not.

00:06:16.520 I mean, Daniel Boone did leave home without it.

00:06:18.440 I mean, this is a fairly recent phenomenon in human history.

00:06:22.180 It's not like it's something that's gone on forever.

00:06:24.260 If you really, back to the 1970s even, the credit card was, you know,

00:06:28.460 25% of Americans carrying a credit card in 1972.

00:06:30.920 I mean, there was not, it's fairly recent that it was, that it's so pervasive

00:06:36.820 that it's just necessary for life.

00:06:39.200 And it's not.

00:06:40.600 I mean, I don't have credit cards.

00:06:42.000 I haven't, you know, in 30-something years.

00:06:44.180 I have debit cards.

00:06:45.400 Finally, they came out.

00:06:46.240 That made life a little better.

00:06:47.320 So travel and everything, and the debit card will do everything the credit card will do

00:06:50.540 except get you in debt because you actually have to have money in your freaking account

00:06:54.360 in order to spend it.

00:06:55.480 But, so I've got, you know, debit cards on my business

00:06:59.180 and debit cards on my personal account.

00:07:00.920 And I use it, like most people use a credit card, I guess.

00:07:05.680 What's wrong with having a credit card if you pay the balance every month?

00:07:10.340 Most people don't.

00:07:12.300 Most people don't.

00:07:13.400 That's the great lie.

00:07:14.380 78% of people don't.

00:07:15.780 No way.

00:07:16.200 And they all talk around, talk about how everybody talks about this theoretical discipline

00:07:20.340 that they just freaking don't have.

00:07:22.300 And so, you know, wait, 78% roll the balance over month to month.

00:07:29.540 Just like 97% of the people don't pay a 30-year mortgage like a 15 so that it pays off in 15

00:07:36.880 because they promised themselves they would.

00:07:38.780 We're going to take out a 30 just in case we need to let up, but we're going to pay it like a 15.

00:07:43.540 97% do not systematically prepay.

00:07:47.080 And that's, you know, Federal Reserve statistics.

00:07:50.020 I didn't make those numbers up.

00:07:51.200 And so, it's just this idea that we have, we trust ourselves with this discipline that's really just simply not there.

00:07:58.800 And so, why?

00:08:00.260 What's the purpose?

00:08:01.060 What are you getting?

00:08:02.540 Okay, if you're going to pay your credit card off every month and you're really going to do that,

00:08:06.480 then a debit card will work because there's money to pay the credit card off

00:08:10.680 and just use that money through your debit card.

00:08:12.260 It's the exact same freaking thing.

00:08:14.880 I mean, it's the exact same thing.

00:08:16.100 People do that because they've been taught that they can't live without this

00:08:20.440 and that if you don't get airline miles, then, you know, if you don't get 1% back on your Discover card,

00:08:26.780 which this one tickles me.

00:08:28.240 I keep people with a master's degree in financing.

00:08:30.300 I got 1% back on my Discover card.

00:08:32.140 So, you're going to run $100,000 through your Discover card to get $1,000 back.

00:08:35.560 On what planet does that build wealth?

00:08:37.560 I mean, and under what math?

00:08:43.100 I mean, did you get out of the sixth grade where you trade $100,000 for $1,000,000

00:08:47.740 and you call this a wealth-building mechanism?

00:08:49.780 That's just asinine, you know.

00:08:51.880 But people make supposedly sophisticated people make this argument at me,

00:08:56.660 and they have for 30 years, so I've got a long career.

00:08:58.600 So, is your argument that they're just too dangerous?

00:09:00.860 There's no point.

00:09:01.920 There's no point.

00:09:02.600 It's not even that it's that dangerous.

00:09:04.060 If you are paying it off every month, it's not going to bankrupt you.

00:09:06.320 The other thing is this.

00:09:07.740 And, again, we're dealing with Joe and Susie Consumer.

00:09:11.320 I'm not dealing with somebody with a master's in finance, usually.

00:09:15.340 We're dealing with folks making $80,000, and he's a cop, she's a teacher.

00:09:20.800 And so, what MIT study shows us is that when you swipe plastic,

00:09:27.120 you spend 12% to 18% more than if you lay down actual cash

00:09:32.400 because cash, when you see Benjamin looking at you,

00:09:36.920 activates the pain centers of the brain.

00:09:39.720 And when you swipe it and go one further, just take your Apple phone

00:09:43.420 and just use your wallet, and you never even see plastic.

00:09:46.560 You just moved your phone around like you just returned an email or a text,

00:09:50.080 and now you're walking out of Home Depot with another tool, right?

00:09:52.980 And that's even less friction.

00:09:56.620 And less friction is your website, my website, where they just push a button,

00:10:00.660 or Amazon, push a button, and the recognition in your brain

00:10:04.880 that you're actually spending money goes down precipitously as you go along.

00:10:08.400 Oh, that's why they have chips in a casino.

00:10:09.820 Exactly.

00:10:10.420 Exactly.

00:10:11.180 Exactly.

00:10:11.660 They would never.

00:10:12.500 And it's why they take taxes out of our check.

00:10:14.980 If you had a guy standing at the end of your office every Friday

00:10:20.260 named Matthew, the tax collector from the Bible,

00:10:22.920 and you had to hand him your tax money out of your check,

00:10:27.940 there'd be a revolution in America

00:10:29.640 because people would recognize emotionally with the pain centers of their brain

00:10:33.940 what they're actually paying in taxes.

00:10:36.260 It's the same thing here.

00:10:37.360 It's just friction in marketing, we call it.

00:10:39.500 You call it.

00:10:40.060 I call it on our websites.

00:10:41.120 And we want to lower friction.

00:10:42.820 We want to make it easy for the customer to buy where they don't feel any pain,

00:10:45.880 and they buy more.

00:10:46.920 It's a simple arrangement.

00:10:49.740 But if you have to actually lay down $100 bills,

00:10:53.680 and, you know, Rachel, my daughter teaches with us,

00:10:55.960 and she brought up the point, which I had never thought of,

00:10:58.640 that when you hand someone a piece of plastic at the store,

00:11:01.740 they hand you the groceries or the shirt back with the plastic.

00:11:07.300 When you hand them money, they just hand you the shirt.

00:11:10.540 That's more like a trade at the old trading post.

00:11:14.180 I'm trading you this for that.

00:11:16.260 With plastic, I get the plastic back visually and the item.

00:11:20.940 And, again, no recognition.

00:11:23.800 We do intellectually grasp it,

00:11:25.980 but I'm talking about emotional, psychological recognition

00:11:28.180 that actual transaction has just occurred, and so we spend more.

00:11:31.980 That's what it comes down to, and so we're spending more.

00:11:33.760 Big picture, there's a weird incentive here

00:11:36.500 because the forces of totalitarianism want to get rid of cash, of course,

00:11:43.120 because cash cannot be controlled in the way that digital currency can be controlled.

00:11:48.180 All of our cash comes through the banks.

00:11:50.540 The government gets us cash through banks,

00:11:52.940 but banks have a massive incentive to get rid of cash also

00:11:56.800 because they're profiting from credit cards.

00:11:59.100 And very labor-intensive to screw with the cash.

00:12:01.160 Well, exactly, and dirty, by the way.

00:12:04.420 Yeah.

00:12:06.100 So banks have, once again,

00:12:08.960 every incentive to eliminate the use of cash in the United States.

00:12:13.620 Well, and, again, it's –

00:12:16.360 we go how far we want to go on how evil the intent is from the bottom up

00:12:23.320 and how organized the evil is.

00:12:25.080 I don't know about –

00:12:25.700 I'm just saying, but the incentives are aligned.

00:12:27.160 The incentives are there,

00:12:27.900 but what I'm saying is that I could go either way.

00:12:30.580 I can go real deep into that personally,

00:12:32.300 or I can say, eh, they're just not real good at it.

00:12:35.140 But they are collecting our data,

00:12:38.220 and when you're operating cash, you're off the grid.

00:12:40.580 Well, exactly.

00:12:41.140 And so it's one more place –

00:12:42.540 I hadn't thought of that.

00:12:43.120 – that I can tell you exactly what is happening with Joe and Susie.

00:12:48.060 And so it's gone so far as to the collections departments

00:12:53.320 with some of the large credit card companies are so scummy.

00:12:56.000 They're very good at what they do.

00:12:58.120 But if an area code comes in

00:13:00.480 and someone's returning a call to a collector from the south,

00:13:04.920 the person's calling from the south,

00:13:06.980 they'll put someone on with a New York accent

00:13:11.980 because that's abrasive to someone with the south,

00:13:14.760 and you want to create an abrasive situation with a collector.

00:13:17.820 If they're calling into customer service,

00:13:20.440 they'll match them up with an accent that's pleasant to them.

00:13:25.340 And so on.

00:13:27.460 – Really?

00:13:27.960 – Oh, they're very good at what they –

00:13:29.980 – But indebted southerners get Yankee collectors.

00:13:32.500 – And vice versa.

00:13:33.980 Because you want to piss a Yankee off,

00:13:35.320 bring a passive-aggressive southerner in.

00:13:37.460 You know what I mean?

00:13:37.900 It's like, right?

00:13:39.560 So, you know, now, honey, you're right?

00:13:43.440 I mean, that's not going to go well.

00:13:45.680 That's not good for a New Yorker.

00:13:47.860 And so it's just a –

00:13:49.740 they're very, very good at what they do,

00:13:51.280 and they collect data,

00:13:52.140 and they use the data to sell us more.

00:13:54.360 And, I mean, Google's doing that.

00:13:56.020 We know that.

00:13:56.580 We know Apple's doing that.

00:13:57.500 That's not –

00:13:57.840 It's not rocket surgery.

00:13:59.040 We know this is going on.

00:14:00.560 But so cash gets you off the grid.

00:14:02.080 Cash represents freedom.

00:14:03.120 So it is antithesis for totalitarianism.

00:14:06.760 – Do people use cash?

00:14:08.180 I feel like people don't use cash anymore.

00:14:09.780 – Not as much.

00:14:11.560 Not as much.

00:14:12.380 It's way down.

00:14:13.520 It's way down.

00:14:14.180 And one of the last places I gave up using cash

00:14:16.960 was at the pump, pumping gas.

00:14:20.040 Because I used to always walk in and pay cash.

00:14:22.720 I had cash for my gas.

00:14:23.780 I had cash for our groceries.

00:14:24.660 We still pay cash for our groceries at the Ramsey's.

00:14:27.080 Sharon still carries an envelope with cash in it

00:14:29.200 and in her purse for – it says groceries on it.

00:14:31.680 And to this day, it's how we started our stuff years ago.

00:14:34.220 It's what we teach.

00:14:35.200 But I'm too lazy to walk into the stupid gas station

00:14:37.980 and pay the bill now.

00:14:39.240 But here's the thing.

00:14:41.120 Again, one more time, think about it.

00:14:43.160 When gas went 20 years ago, gas moves up to $5 for 10 minutes.

00:14:50.660 If you had to walk in the store and you're paying cash,

00:14:54.120 all of a sudden, the cost of gasoline is a much more passionate political issue.

00:15:00.760 – Of course.

00:15:01.580 – Than when we're just sticking a card in.

00:15:03.200 Ah, crap.

00:15:04.120 I can't believe it was $100.

00:15:05.480 And you walk off.

00:15:06.480 And you don't think anything about it.

00:15:07.860 But if you walk to the store from the pump and you put down –

00:15:12.040 by the time you get back to the truck, you're pissed.

00:15:14.300 – Oh, for sure.

00:15:15.100 – You know?

00:15:15.720 And so nowadays, when gas goes up, it's kind of like,

00:15:18.660 oh, look, gas went up or did it.

00:15:20.820 I'm not sure.

00:15:22.360 How much was it under Trump?

00:15:23.560 How much is it under Biden?

00:15:24.980 You know, and people – it doesn't – again, it doesn't register

00:15:28.200 because the pain centers aren't activated.

00:15:29.900 And now it becomes a political thing because it's not –

00:15:34.060 the cost of that is not waking you up.

00:15:38.000 So the cost of eggs, if you were paying cash in the grocery store

00:15:41.300 in this last routine, the eggs were the thing, remember?

00:15:44.040 – Yeah.

00:15:44.200 – Not long ago.

00:15:44.760 We were all done to die because eggs were too expensive.

00:15:47.220 The Biden inflation, right?

00:15:49.280 So – but if you were paying cash for it, there'd have been egg wars.

00:15:53.100 I mean, it's like – so it's –

00:15:55.980 – So they're lolling us to sleep.

00:15:57.700 – It's very interesting.

00:15:58.520 Yeah, we're lazy.

00:15:59.500 – So how much debt is the average American carrying on credit cards?

00:16:05.060 – 37,000.

00:16:06.920 – 37,000 – like, per?

00:16:08.920 – Mm-hmm.

00:16:09.440 Yeah.

00:16:10.100 That's the current averages.

00:16:12.160 I mean –

00:16:12.620 – Depending on who you read and who you believe.

00:16:14.080 I have – we haven't done that research at Ramsey, but we've looked it up.

00:16:17.560 – $37,000?

00:16:19.240 – Yes.

00:16:19.500 – At what interest rate?

00:16:20.860 – I don't know.

00:16:21.300 18 to 28 is the range on cars.

00:16:24.060 – Well, that's just crazy town.

00:16:25.340 – Yeah, yeah.

00:16:26.000 – If you had $37,000 in credit card debt, wouldn't you be scared?

00:16:29.500 – They are.

00:16:31.380 And so when the cost of bread goes up and supply chain screws with their grocery basket cost, it's not – it's a very real fear.

00:16:41.880 – Then why is not a single – I never – I just – I can't get past this – of all the villains in public life, well, you've been attacked, I've noticed.

00:16:51.960 – And a lot of virtuous people have been attacked.

00:16:55.740 I never hear the credit card companies attacked by anyone ever, but they seem like one of the main causes of misery for Americans.

00:17:03.000 – Yeah, we have, and we've attacked them for 30 years, but mainly attacking the stuff like we're talking about right here is present people with ideas, and they go, oh, I'm getting screwed.

00:17:13.840 I'm going to stop this.

00:17:15.140 And they make a change, and they cut up their cards.

00:17:17.280 We call it plastic surgery, right?

00:17:18.660 They chop them up.

00:17:19.380 They get out of debt, and they'll never go back once they've had that emotional experience.

00:17:23.860 – There is a big – I mean, all debt is obviously, in my opinion, bad, and one of the reasons I'm so grateful for your role in our society, reminding people of that.

00:17:32.160 But not all debt is the same.

00:17:33.620 If I'm paying 4% on a mortgage, that's very different from paying 25% on a credit card.

00:17:38.740 – Exactly, sure.

00:17:39.780 – I mean, that's just insane that people pay –

00:17:41.920 – Well, and you've got one thing that's going up in value, and the other is a steak you ate last night.

00:17:45.840 It's pretty much gone, yeah, so.

00:17:47.480 – So we were in a meeting here at TCN the other day, and I looked around the room,

00:17:50.600 and every other person had a kind of ruddy vitality, sort of pink cheeks, alertness, bright eyes, full mental acuity, and a cheerfulness you could almost smell.

00:18:05.320 And I asked, why does everyone look so good?

00:18:08.940 And part of the answer, of course, is they like what we do for a living.

00:18:12.200 It's really interesting.

00:18:13.140 We think it's important.

00:18:13.900 But another reason everyone looks so good is because they'd all had a great night sleep.

00:18:21.500 I'm not making this up.

00:18:23.380 Almost everybody here uses a new sleep technology from a company called 8Sleep.

00:18:29.860 They sent it to us, and everyone here loves it.

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00:20:13.300 I don't understand.

00:20:21.320 So the states, the state of New York and the federal government, you know, spent decades, a century putting mafia figures in prison for loan sharking.

00:20:34.220 Loan sharking.

00:20:35.600 And that was lending money at high interest rates because it was against, it was unfair.

00:20:41.380 It was considered, well, it was a crime.

00:20:43.400 I think it still is a crime.

00:20:44.300 How is it not a crime when the credit card companies do it?

00:20:47.920 I don't know.

00:20:50.940 I'm a free market guy.

00:20:52.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:20:52.840 I would rather punish them by taking their customers than by providing regulation.

00:20:57.400 I get it.

00:20:57.980 I'm not even calling for regulation, but I'm saying that it's regulated when the Genovese family does it, but not when Citibank does it.

00:21:03.340 So how does that work?

00:21:04.540 Yeah, and how does payday lending still open at 800% interest?

00:21:08.060 800?

00:21:08.880 Yeah, 800% interest.

00:21:10.360 And these are poor people they're leaning on.

00:21:12.400 So this is particularly bad.

00:21:14.120 It's funny because someone like AOC, obviously protector of black people and the urban poor, like I haven't heard her say one word.

00:21:23.240 I mean, it seems like everybody is kind of colluding against lower income people.

00:21:30.200 Yeah, and it's biblically unsound.

00:21:33.520 I mean, it's a bad idea.

00:21:34.840 What does that mean?

00:21:35.400 If you read in Scripture, you don't want to be on the list of the person who oppresses the poor, the orphan, or the widow.

00:21:43.680 That's not a good list to be on if you have any idea that there might be a God.

00:21:48.460 Because the things that happens to the people that oppress the poor, the orphan, and the widow are not good.

00:21:53.760 You're supposed to take care of the poor and take care of the widow and take care of the orphan.

00:21:57.860 And it's quite the opposite.

00:21:58.940 And we don't see that kind of sanctified capitalism as much as we should.

00:22:07.860 I don't see really any of it.

00:22:09.160 It's out there.

00:22:09.960 There's lots of good companies that do take care of their team.

00:22:13.700 They take care of their employees.

00:22:14.720 They take care of their customers.

00:22:16.120 The customer comes in and they go, this lady just is, you know, she's, her husband just passed away.

00:22:21.780 She's got little kids and she can't eat and they'll take care of her.

00:22:24.860 I mean, companies do that everywhere.

00:22:26.640 Americans are unbelievably generous.

00:22:28.480 Yes, they are.

00:22:29.200 Generous culture in the history of the world.

00:22:30.580 And that comes through small business.

00:22:32.220 It comes through even big business sometimes.

00:22:35.260 Americans are the best.

00:22:37.220 It's their institutions are rotten.

00:22:39.560 And it does seem like maybe that's the problem.

00:22:42.040 If you could just reform some of the big institutions, it would be a much happier country with fewer oppressed people.

00:22:48.380 But 800% on a payday loan.

00:22:51.780 It's a, you take out a, you write a $250 check for two weeks, advance on your paycheck coming in, and they hand you $200.

00:23:02.660 And so it's a $50 charge.

00:23:04.300 It's loan sharking rates.

00:23:06.520 And that's not that horrible, so to speak, because that's all there is.

00:23:11.120 But if you renew that all the way through one year, it's 864%.

00:23:15.680 And so, and that's the typical payday lender.

00:23:19.720 Some states have outlawed payday lenders completely.

00:23:22.620 Others are, quote, unquote, regulating them.

00:23:25.160 But those people are feeding on the poor.

00:23:27.700 Because I've got to promise you, the wealthy people are not going in there and doing a $200 to $250 transaction.

00:23:33.320 It's not, they're not, middle class people aren't even.

00:23:36.240 And so it's the same thing as the rent, they're in the same rent-to-own, title pawning, you know, same end of town.

00:23:42.280 What is, can you explain rent-to-own?

00:23:44.220 Uh, rent-to-own is you take a $1,000 washer and dryer, and you pay for it six or eight times monthly because you're renting it.

00:23:56.740 And then they let you own it at the end of it.

00:23:59.760 By the time it's almost worn out.

00:24:01.560 But the, again, the, you could have taken your monthly and gone to a garage sale and bought a good use set.

00:24:08.280 Yeah.

00:24:08.820 And had zero debt, zero payments.

00:24:11.420 But again, no one that's middle class or upper class falls for that junk.

00:24:15.520 You don't see those things in the rich end of town.

00:24:18.180 No, you don't.

00:24:18.820 You see them when you go into the other side of town, the other side of the tracks.

00:24:22.000 I mean, credit cards are, I think, so embarrassing.

00:24:24.620 It's almost like a drug habit.

00:24:25.960 You know, nobody wants to talk about credit card debt.

00:24:27.700 If the average American who has a credit card is $37,000 in debt at over 20% interest, I mean, that's like, that's the craziest thing I've heard this week.

00:24:37.360 And that includes you and me, which have zero.

00:24:39.680 And we're talking an average.

00:24:42.600 Yeah, I mean, I've had.

00:24:43.500 I mean, someone else has more in order to get to that average if you and I have zero, right?

00:24:48.820 Yeah, I'm not good at math and I'm not good at business.

00:24:52.220 I'm not good at managing money.

00:24:53.360 I've definitely had money problems, big time money problems, but I've never had credit card debt.

00:24:57.420 Because even I, low IQ with numbers guy, could understand like 20% interest is a lot more than 6% interest.

00:25:06.220 You know what I mean?

00:25:07.360 I don't want that.

00:25:08.520 But so, huh, what happens to a person who's $37,000 in debt who makes $60,000 a year in credit card debt?

00:25:23.420 Too many negative things to count, but number one cause of divorce in North America today, money fights, money stress.

00:25:30.960 Seriously?

00:25:31.380 Number one thing people fight about in their marriage, by far.

00:25:34.180 So we've got a socioeconomic impact.

00:25:37.960 If you lose hope because you feel like a rat in a wheel, and it's I owe, I owe, so off to work, I go, thank God it's Friday, oh God it's Monday.

00:25:46.060 And I just look up 40 years later and I retire broke because I put nothing in my 401k because it's all gone out in payments every month.

00:25:54.020 All the money comes in, all the money goes out.

00:25:55.780 But then you have to retire and say, gosh, I hope the government, which is well known for its ability to handle money, will take care of me.

00:26:02.100 And now we're tearing Social Security, which even according to the socialists that put it in place, called it a supplement.

00:26:10.140 Right.

00:26:11.080 Not a retirement plan.

00:26:12.760 It's not a retirement plan.

00:26:13.720 It's not designed to eat.

00:26:14.940 I mean, if you try to retire on Social Security, you're eating alpo.

00:26:17.700 I mean, it's rough.

00:26:19.460 And so you retire broke.

00:26:21.360 You have a higher likelihood of divorce.

00:26:23.560 Hypertension goes up.

00:26:26.020 Anxiety goes up.

00:26:28.120 So there's medical bills go up as a result because it's a constant stress in your life over a long period of time.

00:26:38.400 And so we've had people, of course, over the 30 years of doing what we're doing, they often say, wow, when I got out of debt, I paid off my car, when I got rid of MasterCard, when I got rid of the student loan that had been around so long, I thought it was a pet.

00:26:49.980 But when I, you know, even when I had a, this week, I had a lady, 34 years old, paid off her house and zero debt, 34 years old and 600,000 already in her 401k at 34 years old.

00:27:02.200 I said, so how does that feel?

00:27:04.320 She said, I feel like I sat down 300 pounds and I walked away from it.

00:27:09.620 She said, there's this release physically.

00:27:11.740 She said, my shoulders feel different.

00:27:13.480 And so you cannot completely go, this is only a math thing because it's integrated into our lives.

00:27:20.960 And, you know, and so, yeah, we're starting to see now the implications of it, you know, on a society as a whole, you know, medical bills, again, divorce rate.

00:27:34.360 And it's not the only sole cause of all those things, but it's certainly a contributor.

00:27:40.620 And sometimes it works in reverse.

00:27:42.100 Sometimes the medical causes the financial problem, right?

00:27:46.400 Sometimes it's the other way.

00:27:47.800 Sometimes the marriage situation causes the financial problem.

00:27:51.000 So there's not all correlation and causation directly.

00:27:54.580 But there's enough interaction with that that there's no reason to say, I'm going to live my whole life hopeless, working in a job I hate, just to pay the truck payment because somebody at a stoplight might go thumbs up if they like my truck, you know.

00:28:12.500 And I'm trying to impress other people that I don't even know with money I don't have.

00:28:17.020 And it's a sickening thing.

00:28:20.280 It really is.

00:28:20.620 It's consumerism gone amok.

00:28:22.120 But the good news is people can decide we're going to change.

00:28:27.200 And they turn the corner.

00:28:28.540 And, man, it's beautiful when they do.

00:28:31.280 There are a lot of impediments to doing that.

00:28:34.040 So one thing that you hear when you start lecturing people about credit cards, as I'll confess I have, is, well, you have to have a credit card because you have to build a credit rating.

00:28:43.540 If you don't have a credit card, you don't get a credit rating.

00:28:45.380 And for some reason, you need a credit card rating.

00:28:47.060 I'm sure you've heard this.

00:28:48.400 No, never.

00:28:49.860 Of course.

00:28:51.160 Yeah.

00:28:51.300 Fair Isaac designed the FICO score.

00:28:53.880 The FICO score, there's a mathematical algorithm by which your FICO score, your credit score, is derived.

00:28:58.640 100% of the inputs to build your credit score have to do with debt, the type of debt, your ratio of debt, whether or not you're paying your debt on time, which is what we all think of when we think of a credit score.

00:29:13.900 It's 100% interaction with debt.

00:29:18.020 Your FICO score has nothing to do with your financial well-being.

00:29:25.480 Nothing.

00:29:26.500 It has nothing to do with your net worth.

00:29:28.520 So you can inherit a million dollars tomorrow from your rich uncle that died, and your credit score doesn't change one point.

00:29:37.240 Your boss can walk in and say, I'm going to give you a million dollar a year raise on your income.

00:29:41.820 Your FICO does not change one point.

00:29:43.540 It has 100% to do with borrowing money.

00:29:48.220 And so the whole premise of the thing is almost humorous when you look at it.

00:29:52.420 So I need a FICO score.

00:29:54.800 So I'm going to go get a credit card, take out a car loan.

00:30:00.440 I'm 18 years old.

00:30:02.500 So I can build up my FICO score.

00:30:05.280 Why do I need a FICO score?

00:30:06.920 Because that's the score they use to decide to loan me money.

00:30:10.820 So I need a FICO score so that I can get into debt.

00:30:13.100 So I'm going to get into debt so that I can get a FICO score so that I can get into debt.

00:30:16.440 So that I can raise my FICO score so that I can get into debt.

00:30:19.980 So that I can raise my FICO score so that I can get into debt.

00:30:22.540 so that I can keep my FICO score up by paying my debt and getting into more debt.

00:30:27.220 Because if you quit paying all your accounts, they take them all to zero.

00:30:31.540 You pay them all off, and you close 100% of your accounts.

00:30:35.520 Within six to nine months, your FICO score will be zero.

00:30:39.560 So I've not had a FICO score in 38 years.

00:30:44.360 Mine's indeterminable, which means I'm probably not even real.

00:30:48.640 Probably not.

00:30:50.180 You're a specter, a ghost.

00:30:53.520 I mean, you would think.

00:30:55.460 And I own several hundred million dollars worth of real estate.

00:31:00.220 So here's what's asinine about this whole thing.

00:31:02.760 I can go down to the local apartment complex in our little town of Franklin, Tennessee,

00:31:06.540 that's managed by a 26-year-old who has a boss in Atlanta, Georgia, right,

00:31:10.840 who's telling them how to lease an apartment.

00:31:13.600 And they won't lease an apartment to me because I don't have a FICO score.

00:31:18.620 Now, I can write a check and buy the apartment complex.

00:31:21.340 But I can't rent an apartment there.

00:31:24.740 See, that shows you how inept this measure of wealth is or of financial well-being.

00:31:31.280 And it is a dog chasing its tail.

00:31:33.000 Why am I going into debt?

00:31:33.940 So I can get a FICO score.

00:31:34.820 Well, so you're looking at it, because I think you're a more decent person than I am, as silly and not an accurate measurement.

00:31:42.160 I'm looking at it as a very sinister system intentionally created to enslave people with debt.

00:31:48.040 That's what it looks like to me.

00:31:49.840 It is.

00:31:50.740 No, you're right.

00:31:51.880 It's just the ridiculous logic that we, the people, have fallen for that allowed them to do that.

00:32:01.440 Well, so here's a potentially non-ridiculous concern that I have heard as I've been lecturing.

00:32:06.740 Some people may or may not be my children on this question because I hate credit cards.

00:32:11.980 But they say, well, if I don't have a good credit rating, I won't be able to take a home loan out to buy a house.

00:32:21.040 And I'm not really sure how you get to a place where you can buy a house in cash at 30.

00:32:26.820 Well, it has been done, and we've got lots of stories where it has been done.

00:32:32.160 But aside from that, again, just bad information.

00:32:37.780 The truth is you can get a home mortgage with a zero credit score.

00:32:42.320 George Campbell, one of our Ramsey personalities, he and his wife bought a very, very nice home not long ago and got a small mortgage on it.

00:32:49.620 They paid it off in about nine months.

00:32:51.100 Good for them.

00:32:51.580 But he went and got a mortgage with a zero credit score.

00:32:56.360 It's called manual underwriting.

00:32:59.040 So when I got my real estate license in 1978, if you sold a house in those days, there was no FICO score.

00:33:06.700 If you sold a house in those days, you went to the mortgage company or the savings and loan that was still open in those days.

00:33:14.000 And you took the client over there, and the client filled out several pieces of paper, a VOD.

00:33:18.460 They gave permission for the bank to verify the deposits, verification of the deposit.

00:33:23.720 Do you have money in your bank for a down payment?

00:33:25.580 You had to prove it.

00:33:26.380 A VOE, verification of employment.

00:33:28.580 They sent it to your employer.

00:33:29.640 Employer sent it back, said, you have a job.

00:33:32.020 You make this much money.

00:33:33.340 So you have your down payment.

00:33:34.320 You make this much money.

00:33:35.620 A verification of payments.

00:33:37.480 So you send that to the landlord.

00:33:38.800 And the landlord where they were renting would say, yes, Joe pays his rent.

00:33:41.600 So now Joe can get.

00:33:43.340 And so it was called underwriting a mortgage.

00:33:45.520 They actually looked at the human beings and said, are these human beings, is it good for them to have a mortgage?

00:33:52.060 And are they going to be able to pay it?

00:33:54.940 And they did math and research on the people.

00:33:57.400 And it took about 45 days to get a mortgage in those days.

00:34:00.560 You know, it took a while because this was all snail mail, you know, back and forth.

00:34:04.360 But that's called underwriting a mortgage.

00:34:07.000 Nowadays, you can do manual underwriting much faster than that.

00:34:10.480 But all they're doing is checking the person, all these different elements of the personhood, and see if the person is going to be able to pay their stinking mortgage.

00:34:18.620 It's that simple.

00:34:19.400 So that's how George and many, many, many, many other Ramsey followers over the years, tens of thousands of them, have gotten a mortgage with a zero credit score.

00:34:27.280 So you just go to the bank and say, I'd like to take a loan.

00:34:29.540 Well, you have to go to a mortgage lender that actually knows how to do a manual underwriting because a lot of them don't.

00:34:36.180 But, and again, they're, too many of them are lazy.

00:34:40.120 Are the rates different?

00:34:41.220 Nope.

00:34:41.740 Nope.

00:34:42.140 Exactly the same.

00:34:43.760 Exactly the same.

00:34:44.440 Oh.

00:34:45.040 And exactly the same down payment requirement.

00:34:47.020 Exactly the same everything.

00:34:48.560 It's just more work for the mortgage company.

00:34:51.140 Because basically the FICO score is a monkey can make this loan.

00:34:55.100 They can look at the number and identify, big number, loan done.

00:34:59.060 Just like that.

00:34:59.600 Check.

00:35:00.020 It's over.

00:35:02.000 That's the whole thing.

00:35:02.900 And that's how you get a housing crisis in 2008, is they were approving these loans based exclusively on FICO, not actually looking at the human beings.

00:35:10.900 And in some cases, they were fraudulently putting up FICO and fraudulently putting values on it and so forth.

00:35:15.780 But we get a housing loan.

00:35:16.300 Wait, so you can game your credit score, the FICO score?

00:35:19.240 No, I'm saying those people were putting down false credit scores in that case.

00:35:22.680 Or they're walking in, I've got a high credit score, but nobody mentions I just lost my job.

00:35:27.900 Nobody mentions I bought five houses four weeks ago that are not yet showing up in all of this data, right?

00:35:35.540 And because they're just handing this money out like it's candy if you've got the number.

00:35:40.900 It's all about the number.

00:35:41.880 Ooh-hoo.

00:35:42.320 Have you got the number?

00:35:43.320 Ooh-hoo.

00:35:43.740 No, you don't.

00:35:44.660 It's that a monkey can run this business.

00:35:47.380 That's good monkey sounds.

00:35:47.940 Yeah, these are good, yeah.

00:35:51.380 So.

00:35:53.480 Very good.

00:35:54.340 And you spent time around monkeys, obviously.

00:35:55.700 Yeah, you and I were having way too much fun last night, I'm just saying.

00:35:59.680 So here's the other, so that's fascinating.

00:36:02.120 I didn't know that, thank you.

00:36:04.160 The second concern would be that if you're not carrying debt on your house, you're penalized by the tax code because you can write off the interest on your loan.

00:36:13.700 Yeah.

00:36:14.100 And so when I went to pay off my mortgage, which was the very first thing I did when I made any money at all, I was criticized strongly by a friend of mine who's knowledgeable on financial matters.

00:36:26.180 She's gotten way richer than I'll ever be.

00:36:28.540 And he said, that's idiotic.

00:36:29.920 Why would you do that?

00:36:30.620 You've got a low rate and the government is paying you to have that mortgage.

00:36:36.100 Not true.

00:36:38.080 Not true.

00:36:39.940 It's true for such a small percentage of the population.

00:36:43.660 So here's the thing.

00:36:44.420 The only person who can write off the interest on their home mortgage is someone who itemizes their deductions, particularly under Trump.

00:36:52.060 And they're still in place.

00:36:53.360 Biden has not undone them.

00:36:54.440 The standard deduction on a 1040 is so stinking high now that 92% of Americans do not itemize.

00:37:04.040 Your charitable deductions are of zero value if you don't itemize.

00:37:09.780 Your interest deductions are of zero value on your tax return if you do not itemize.

00:37:14.620 And so only 8% of Americans does this apply to, okay, which could be you.

00:37:19.840 You could, you know, you've got complicated businesses.

00:37:22.640 You probably are itemizing.

00:37:23.820 You're probably not doing a standard 1040 easy because you've got deductions in excess of the standard deductions, which would make you want to do the itemization.

00:37:32.280 Me too, by the way.

00:37:33.740 And so now let's go to that case for the 8%.

00:37:37.360 We got rid of 92%, but let's go ahead and go with the 8.

00:37:40.740 So let's say that you pay, I'll make up a number, $10,000 in interest in a year.

00:37:49.000 You give $10,000 to the bank in interest.

00:37:51.540 If you are in a 30% tax bracket, you take a $10,000 tax deduction.

00:38:00.820 That means you don't pay taxes on $10,000 of your income.

00:38:06.180 Follow me?

00:38:07.180 Yes.

00:38:07.540 So if you didn't have that deduction, you'd have to pay taxes on $10,000 more.

00:38:12.340 Taxes on $10,000 would be $3,200 if you're in a 32% tax bracket, right?

00:38:19.980 So what your friend is suggesting is that it's a good idea to send the bank $10,000 to keep from sending the government $3,200.

00:38:28.960 Ah.

00:38:29.400 Once again.

00:38:32.340 Does make sense.

00:38:33.280 Cultural mythology.

00:38:36.420 So there is no downside in your view to paying off your mortgage.

00:38:39.720 No, none whatsoever.

00:38:40.920 And here's the thing.

00:38:42.240 It feels different.

00:38:43.500 Well, that's why I did it anyway.

00:38:45.140 You walk through your backyard with no shoes on, the grass is different, man.

00:38:48.880 I mean, we have a Fauci pandemic.

00:38:51.740 They're not taking my house.

00:38:53.120 Yeah, that's how I feel.

00:38:54.220 It's a whole different thing.

00:38:56.820 It's a liberty issue.

00:38:58.120 It's a freedom issue.

00:38:59.360 It's a math issue.

00:39:01.540 It's a spiritual issue.

00:39:03.080 The borrower is slave to the lender.

00:39:05.020 It's tough to serve two masters, Jesus said.

00:39:07.000 I don't have two masters.

00:39:09.100 I don't know anybody.

00:39:10.560 It's a completely different setting.

00:39:12.940 The number of times my wife and I have a discussion about a house payment is precisely zero because we haven't had one in 30 plus years.

00:39:20.400 You know, I mean, this is nuts.

00:39:22.260 I agree with that 100%.

00:39:23.940 It's just so countercultural.

00:39:25.820 It is.

00:39:26.280 I remember reading.

00:39:27.220 But the culture's broke.

00:39:27.960 Let's keep this in mind.

00:39:28.960 Well, and also the people who are profiting from this are absolutely in charge.

00:39:34.060 I've always thought of you as the least controversial, most mainstream, wholesome person ever.

00:39:39.340 And I remember reading a piece on the Daily Beast just attacking you.

00:39:43.120 And I was like, why attack Dave Ramsey?

00:39:44.920 He's not even explicitly political or not.

00:39:48.240 You know what I mean?

00:39:48.960 Oh, I get it.

00:39:50.000 I get it.

00:39:50.620 I don't get it quite as hot as you get it, but I get it.

00:39:52.940 But it's interesting.

00:39:53.820 And that's clearly at the behest of people who are profiting from this system of financial enslavement.

00:40:01.400 They're mad.

00:40:01.980 Yeah, and sometimes it's just if you put a message out there that makes someone feel like what they're doing is dumb, it's convicting.

00:40:11.780 And that makes that person rise up and come after us.

00:40:14.600 It's not even like Visa wrote them a check or something to come after Dave.

00:40:17.860 It's just like Dave said that your whole life that you're living and believe is stupid.

00:40:22.520 And instead of actually looking at that, they get pissed off.

00:40:25.500 How big is, what percentage of our economy is money lending?

00:40:30.700 I, I'm not sure.

00:40:33.340 But huge.

00:40:33.720 I'm not sure.

00:40:34.120 It's easily one-fifth.

00:40:36.580 Yeah.

00:40:36.920 Energy, healthcare.

00:40:39.380 Real estate.

00:40:40.640 Real estate, money lending.

00:40:42.980 I mean, that's, it's got to be there.

00:40:45.580 That's the big one's right.

00:40:47.020 Yeah.

00:40:47.280 Tech now, tech.

00:40:48.420 Yeah.

00:40:49.320 But I mean, there's about six buckets that probably make up the vast majority of our economy.

00:40:53.520 So every year when Apple releases the overpriced new iPhone, the big carriers play the same old game.

00:40:59.540 Sign up now, next two years, some big cellular contract, get a free iPhone.

00:41:05.260 Well, what do you give up in return?

00:41:07.420 A lot.

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00:42:18.180 So what happened – okay, so just back to the example of the person who makes 80 grand a year and has got $37,000 in credit card debt at over 20% interest.

00:42:44.740 How does that person get out of that?

00:42:46.320 Like, what happens to that person?

00:42:47.680 You said it puts enormous stress on the marriage, on the body, every part of your life.

00:42:53.260 But how do you – can you get out of that much debt if you're –

00:42:55.880 Oh, we have people pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

00:42:58.800 Every week they come on the show doing what we call a debt-free scream.

00:43:01.880 Wonderful, wonderful stories.

00:43:02.940 There's like 2,000 of them posted on our YouTube channel of people doing debt-free screams over and over and over and over again.

00:43:08.380 And what they did – we ask them, what did you do?

00:43:09.880 What did you do?

00:43:10.180 How did you do it?

00:43:10.560 When we told you to get on – and first thing they do is they get on a budget, you know, they lay out a plan.

00:43:16.100 Because if you were taking over a company and the company was in trouble, you'd come in and look at their financials and you'd go, okay, what's going on here?

00:43:25.920 Why is this thing failing?

00:43:27.460 Why is it – why did I buy it at a nickel on the dollar?

00:43:30.260 What's going on here?

00:43:31.340 And so you'd immediately start doing a simple analysis.

00:43:34.680 And really, here's the interesting thing.

00:43:35.740 You don't have to be a math genius.

00:43:37.060 As a matter of fact, sometimes the people that aren't math geniuses do a lot better at this stuff because they just sit down and they look and go.

00:43:42.680 I had one old country boy.

00:43:43.760 He came into one of our small group discussions in Financial Peace University one night.

00:43:48.500 And he said, well, he discovered why we ain't got no retirement.

00:43:51.660 We've been eating it.

00:43:53.820 You know, he had $1,240 a month average on restaurants.

00:43:59.840 And he couldn't figure out why he couldn't fund his kid college fund and couldn't figure out why he had no retirement and couldn't figure out why he couldn't get out of debt.

00:44:07.200 Because they're living in a stinking restaurant and they have no money.

00:44:10.780 And they're spending money they don't have.

00:44:12.500 And, oh, got an $800 car payment on a truck.

00:44:17.120 And I'm like, God, man.

00:44:18.500 How much is your house payment?

00:44:20.100 $700.

00:44:20.900 Dude, if your truck payment's bigger than your house payment, you might be a redneck.

00:44:24.280 I mean, seriously.

00:44:25.780 So we get, you know, we've had a lot of fun discussions with people.

00:44:29.180 But basically what we tell them is, you know, on a written plan, the two of you together, husband and wife, have to be committed to this.

00:44:36.180 And then you go on scorched earth.

00:44:38.120 No eating out.

00:44:39.300 No going out.

00:44:40.520 No vacations.

00:44:42.380 Take six extra jobs.

00:44:44.220 Sell so much stuff the kids think they're next.

00:44:45.880 And let's start, let's get this thing moving in the right.

00:44:48.460 Sell so much the kids think they're next.

00:44:50.340 I said, don't put, I said, put the cat on Craigslist and the dog on eBay.

00:44:54.860 One morning on national television, PETA started picketing me the next day.

00:45:00.000 So because they don't have a sense of humor, I was in a joke.

00:45:02.800 But the, I love my dog.

00:45:04.540 I'm not putting it on eBay.

00:45:05.820 But the, anyway, we, so yeah, you just change the numbers.

00:45:10.880 Because usually they have enough money coming in to turn the corner.

00:45:14.940 Usually.

00:45:15.860 Maybe they got to sell the truck to get rid of the $800 payment and get you a $4,000 truck.

00:45:21.100 And maybe you're running Uber or delivering pizzas or mowing grass or the number of people

00:45:27.940 that have college, four-year college degrees that have elected to become maids or open

00:45:33.560 a commercial cleaning service and clean toilets because the money is really good for a short

00:45:40.100 period of time to get their mess cleaned up so that they never have a payment again the

00:45:44.760 rest of their lives.

00:45:46.020 People will fight to be free if they believe they can.

00:45:48.200 One, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when desire comes, it is the tree of life.

00:45:53.700 You know, so when you believe, people will change, they'll chase the gates of hell.

00:45:57.420 Where's that quote from?

00:45:58.640 Proverbs.

00:45:59.660 Can you say that again?

00:46:00.840 Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

00:46:05.260 Hopelessness.

00:46:06.380 But when desire comes, it is the tree of life.

00:46:09.800 When you believe, then you'll change the, you'll charge the gates of hell with a water pistol.

00:46:14.200 You don't care suddenly what your broke friends are laughing at you for driving a hoop

00:46:18.060 empty because I'm getting out of debt because I'm going to change my family tree because

00:46:21.800 my kids are not going to have to live the way I live because I'm going to pay a price

00:46:26.140 to win.

00:46:26.560 When you get that thing going, that, oh, I've had it going, you get the tunnel vision and

00:46:32.860 you and your wife, you and your husband are both doing that.

00:46:36.000 You work and the thing is, you don't have to drive a junk car the rest of your life.

00:46:40.040 You don't have to work an extra job the rest of your life.

00:46:41.660 It's 18 to 24 months and most of these people are out, everything but their house.

00:46:45.760 And so it's a period of time and you're not going to die from hard work.

00:46:48.580 Right before you die from hard work, you pass out.

00:46:50.420 It's okay.

00:46:50.960 You're not going to die from hard work.

00:46:52.920 It's a short period of time.

00:46:54.260 It's a sprint.

00:46:55.240 I don't want people to live their whole lives like that, but instead they're living their

00:46:58.480 whole lives just kind of in this malaise stuck.

00:47:02.680 And so our whole thing is to shake them and say, you can do this and show them and give

00:47:06.820 them hope and make them believe they can do it.

00:47:08.880 And the neat thing is, is we've proven it millions of times now.

00:47:13.220 So you don't think if I'm deep in credit card debt, it's not a good idea to get a couple

00:47:17.660 more credit cards and use those to pay off the first one?

00:47:20.300 Yeah.

00:47:20.820 The way we get out of a hole is we dig out the bottom.

00:47:23.000 I know you've seen that though a lot.

00:47:24.860 Oh yeah.

00:47:25.320 Yeah.

00:47:25.720 Yeah.

00:47:26.360 Yeah.

00:47:26.720 The debt consolidation programs.

00:47:29.540 So what about, okay.

00:47:30.560 So what about that?

00:47:31.560 So people who are deep in credit card debt.

00:47:33.460 You're moving your debt to a lower interest rate, but interest rate wasn't your problem.

00:47:37.840 Overspending was your problem and not living on a plan because no one plans to be stupid.

00:47:43.940 No one plans to be broke to where they can't breathe, where their chest is tight, where there's

00:47:50.020 a tear in their eye on Friday because they know for a work all week, this check's already

00:47:54.360 gone.

00:47:55.240 No one planned.

00:47:56.460 That's not a plan that you fall backward into that.

00:47:59.360 You don't walk into that with knowledge, but when you start running a plan, it turn,

00:48:03.720 it changes everything.

00:48:05.420 It turns a corner.

00:48:06.880 And so people can do this stuff.

00:48:09.060 I'm, you know, again, we've seen it so many millions and millions of times now.

00:48:14.540 But there are all these services that advertise to people who are in hopeless credit card debt.

00:48:18.840 We will consolidate your debt.

00:48:21.680 Well, what happens when they do that?

00:48:22.720 You move your, I'm sorry, I got off track.

00:48:24.060 You move your debt over here and you don't change your habits of spending more than you

00:48:30.140 make.

00:48:30.800 And so the debt grows back.

00:48:32.120 And so the people that, the people that do lending, there's two types of debt consolidation.

00:48:38.120 There's these services you see on cable TV, right?

00:48:40.960 And that's not lending.

00:48:42.160 All they do there is tell people not to pay their credit cards for six months and they'll

00:48:46.020 take over all these defaulted accounts and negotiate them for pennies on the dollar and

00:48:49.920 try to walk you out that way.

00:48:51.060 And meanwhile, destroying your credit worse than if you'd have filed a bankruptcy.

00:48:54.460 So that's a complete freaking con.

00:48:57.320 But the...

00:48:57.880 Is it really?

00:48:58.680 Oh, it's, it's nasty.

00:49:00.080 It's a nasty business.

00:49:01.280 And the one that...

00:49:02.960 Why?

00:49:03.100 What's bad about it?

00:49:04.180 Well, because they're current on their credit cards.

00:49:07.020 They could have paid their debts off.

00:49:09.360 And instead, their method of becoming debt free is quit paying payments, destroy your

00:49:15.840 reputation, your credit.

00:49:17.860 Okay.

00:49:18.240 Don't...

00:49:18.660 As if you file bankruptcy, right?

00:49:20.200 And then after your credits are, credit cards are six months behind, credit card companies

00:49:24.880 will take 25, 30 cents on the dollar for that.

00:49:28.580 And so these companies will go in and go, okay, we'll pay you payments at 25 or 30 cents

00:49:32.220 on the dollar.

00:49:32.780 And they set up a new payment on the reduced amount and knock it out.

00:49:36.840 And well, one third of the time, right?

00:49:38.980 And so, and it's, I mean, to me, if someone has the ability to pay their payment, they

00:49:46.740 should pay their payment.

00:49:48.100 It's a moral thing to me, an ethical thing.

00:49:50.080 I don't like that they got into debt.

00:49:51.580 I don't like that they got duped by an industry that's out to slit their throat.

00:49:54.320 I don't like any of that.

00:49:55.100 But you signed up for this.

00:49:56.020 You're like a grownup, like student loans.

00:49:57.920 So you can, you need to pay it.

00:49:59.480 And we can show you how to pay the whole stinking thing.

00:50:02.080 If you can pay the current payments, I can get you out of debt.

00:50:04.380 I don't have to destroy your reputation and put you in the deadbeat category, so to speak,

00:50:10.520 in order to do that.

00:50:11.560 The other kind of consolidation loan is an actual loan where a bank will loan, say, a

00:50:17.360 second mortgage or a home equity loan.

00:50:19.340 And, you know, we'll take all the credit cards, $37,000 worth of them, make it a second mortgage

00:50:25.480 on the home.

00:50:26.660 And now I have a lower interest rate on the total of $37,000, pay off all the credit cards

00:50:31.400 with that loan.

00:50:33.080 And now we're going to pay that second mortgage down.

00:50:35.480 And it's a lower interest rate.

00:50:36.780 So hypothetically, you would think you would get out of debt faster that way.

00:50:41.400 But you don't change your habits.

00:50:43.480 You just moved the debt, kept the habits.

00:50:46.280 So we keep going out to eat.

00:50:47.460 We keep going out to fish.

00:50:47.920 No, I get it.

00:50:48.680 I get it.

00:50:49.120 But just back two clicks to something you said, and I admire your integrity on the

00:50:53.760 question of repaying loans that you signed up for.

00:50:56.020 I get that.

00:50:56.760 On the other hand.

00:50:57.480 If you can.

00:50:58.400 If you can.

00:50:58.960 But on the other hand, another way to look at it would be if someone's addicted to drugs

00:51:04.020 and it's a voluntary thing, I'm buying fentanyl every week or every day.

00:51:08.040 On the other hand, the person who's selling me fentanyl is also a criminal, you know.

00:51:11.120 And so I've often thought if I, you know, if ever were to retire, maybe I would start a political

00:51:16.040 movement, a new party in the country where the whole purpose is to bring the banks to

00:51:20.320 their knees and shut them down or just you encourage everyone who's deep in debt to stop

00:51:25.380 payment.

00:51:25.900 Like, how about 100 million people stop paying their car loans, their mortgages and their

00:51:29.680 credit cards?

00:51:30.480 And then in the same way that Donald Trump once said, if you take a big enough loan from

00:51:35.580 the bank, it's their problem.

00:51:37.280 It's their problem.

00:51:37.900 You're kind of in charge of the bank at that point.

00:51:39.380 But I would think it'd be kind of cool to do a crush the bank's political party where

00:51:45.080 you just all of a sudden everyone stops payment at once.

00:51:47.580 And then, you know, then you sit down with Jamie Dimon and renegotiate.

00:51:50.740 What about that?

00:51:51.640 I kind of like that.

00:51:53.720 Well, there's other implications to that.

00:51:58.740 I'm sure, look, I know nothing, but I'm acting out of hostility in my head.

00:52:02.540 I appreciate it.

00:52:03.100 But I mean, it's, I, again, I would rather punish them incrementally and just let the

00:52:09.640 demand for their horrible product dry up over time and let that be reflected a little bit

00:52:17.680 at a time in their stock price instead of one morning in their stock price.

00:52:20.660 One morning in the stock price, all the banks are broke.

00:52:22.980 It feels a lot like 2008.

00:52:25.720 And that's a pretty chaotic.

00:52:26.700 There are a lot of downstream effects.

00:52:28.640 Pretty chaotic situation for the world.

00:52:31.300 No, I think it's a...

00:52:32.200 If all the banks go belly up day one.

00:52:34.940 I don't mind the idea that they become less profitable over the next 20 years.

00:52:38.840 No, I get it.

00:52:39.500 This is why you're a responsible person and I'm not.

00:52:42.640 But it is...

00:52:43.680 That's why I'm not in politics.

00:52:44.540 It's this revenge.

00:52:45.680 No, I think you're taking the long view, which is you don't want to wreck your country

00:52:48.760 just because there are some bad actors who live within its borders.

00:52:51.840 I completely agree and thank you for being sensible.

00:52:54.600 I'm not sensible.

00:52:55.480 I'm just mad.

00:52:56.980 But just one more question on this dark little thought experiment.

00:53:01.860 That would bring the banks to their knees like day one, right?

00:53:04.660 Oh, yeah.

00:53:05.380 Yeah.

00:53:06.120 Well, that'd be kind of fun, wouldn't it?

00:53:07.600 Yeah.

00:53:08.060 It'd be fun if you did it for 20 minutes just to get their attention and reset the American mindset.

00:53:17.600 Now, that might be cool.

00:53:18.760 I think I'm going to do this.

00:53:19.660 If you did it one month, for two months, we don't pay payments.

00:53:23.640 Now, that would not destroy the world economy.

00:53:26.160 But never we're going to pay them again and you get 50% of the public to do that.

00:53:30.600 Yeah, you could screw up the whole world economy with that one.

00:53:33.220 But no, I don't want to do that one.

00:53:35.860 But for two months?

00:53:37.700 Yeah.

00:53:38.980 Again, though, it's a little bit like student loan forgiveness.

00:53:45.160 You know, student loans, there's no question that our federal government and the banking industry has duped now the third generation into going deeply in debt.

00:53:58.440 No question about it.

00:54:00.280 And their parents stood by and signed the note.

00:54:02.920 I agree.

00:54:03.380 And these, quote, young adults who are old enough to do whatever else they can do.

00:54:11.000 They can sign a contract legally in any state in America to do anything else.

00:54:15.540 We call them adults.

00:54:17.080 Whether they emotionally are or not, we can argue.

00:54:19.480 But they signed up for this.

00:54:22.180 I had a student loan.

00:54:23.200 I signed up for it.

00:54:24.140 It was not.

00:54:24.840 It's a little small one.

00:54:25.780 It was an old, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

00:54:27.620 But how much was your student loan?

00:54:31.380 $3,500, actually.

00:54:34.120 $3,522 when I paid it off, yeah.

00:54:37.320 Wow.

00:54:37.880 Was it worth it?

00:54:39.140 No, no, no.

00:54:41.460 The only reason I did it is I could not figure out any other way because no one ever, and even in those days, and that was so long ago.

00:54:47.780 I mean, this was 40 years ago, 45 years ago.

00:54:51.300 So it was a different mindset then, even, that these things are dangerous.

00:54:58.440 And now it's like, well, you're not allowed to be a student without a student loan.

00:55:01.600 Now it's completely come the other way to where you're some kind of, like paying off your mortgage or some kind of moron if you don't take out a student loan.

00:55:09.120 Of course you have to take out a student.

00:55:10.420 It's assumed, and again, we've shifted the cultural belief system to where parents don't tell a kid, hey, maybe you should go to the local college that we can pay cash for instead of going across the state line and the family goes $125,000 in debt.

00:55:30.060 So you get a degree in sociology, so you can make $38,000 as a caseworker with the state.

00:55:34.860 This is not good ROI.

00:55:37.180 Maybe the parents need to step up and go.

00:55:39.120 Yes, but I don't understand in the whole debate over student loans why the beneficiaries of these loans, which are not the students, are never discussed.

00:55:47.420 They have no skin in the game whatsoever.

00:55:48.800 This whole system exists to benefit colleges and universities.

00:55:52.860 There's no question.

00:55:53.380 And they exist not to benefit students, but to sustain these massive payrolls of administrators, DEI people, a lot of dumb people, and then the professors, most of whom are totally evil.

00:56:04.000 And no one ever suggests they should pay some of the cost of this.

00:56:08.480 I don't disagree with that at all.

00:56:09.620 So how does that work?

00:56:10.520 Here's the thing.

00:56:11.020 I resent as a taxpayer that a politician says I should pay for the forgiveness of students.

00:56:17.900 How about Middlebury College?

00:56:19.540 I'd be fine if they did it.

00:56:21.000 I'd be fine if the endowments that are billions and billions and billions of dollars.

00:56:26.380 But they already pay high taxes on those endowments.

00:56:28.120 Oh, you're killing me.

00:56:29.320 Oh, wait.

00:56:30.000 They don't pay any taxes, right?

00:56:31.140 So Duke University, which is totally filthy, and it's actually colleges like that are one of the reasons our country's falling apart.

00:56:38.120 Where do you think all these ideas come from?

00:56:39.960 Anti-human, anti-civilizational, anti-American.

00:56:42.440 They're all coming from those campuses.

00:56:44.440 And they're not paying any taxes at all.

00:56:47.280 We're subsidizing them.

00:56:48.600 And then when their scam gets exposed, we have to clean it up?

00:56:52.700 Yeah.

00:56:53.520 Like, how does that work?

00:56:54.880 So when a politician says I'm going to forgive student loans, you know, I have sympathy and empathy both for the student loan borrower that's in up over their head because they got duped.

00:57:09.040 And they're an adult, and they signed up for it.

00:57:11.800 And so the same thing's true of our bank discussion.

00:57:13.460 I get it.

00:57:13.840 You signed up for that car payment.

00:57:15.860 You know, I walked in there one time in my 20s and impulsed a car.

00:57:20.780 You know, that's just.

00:57:22.880 Is that a verb now?

00:57:23.960 That's what you call going deeply in debt for a car you can't afford just because I wanted it right then.

00:57:30.000 The smell of toxic plastic coming off a new car.

00:57:33.640 Rich Corinthian leather.

00:57:35.080 Yes, yes.

00:57:36.060 What kind of car was that?

00:57:37.340 Oh, man.

00:57:38.000 I've done so many dumb things.

00:57:39.380 The biggest one I did that was stupid was I bought a Jaguar.

00:57:42.460 A Jaguar?

00:57:43.220 In my 20s, yeah.

00:57:44.620 Because I was making money.

00:57:45.720 I was in the real estate business, and I thought I was hot stuff, and I needed to prove it by what I drove.

00:57:50.820 That's a vehicle my mother had when growing up, and you had to take it in, and they had to, I think, lift the engine out to change the oil.

00:57:59.000 I mean, the whole thing was, and it broke every week.

00:58:01.240 It was, yeah, it was a life lesson.

00:58:05.940 Was it a cool car, though?

00:58:07.100 It was a great car.

00:58:08.120 It was a beautiful car.

00:58:09.140 Yeah.

00:58:09.400 But, and I really thought I was hot stuff, and it was, but see, what was broken there?

00:58:15.720 Was it the car industry?

00:58:16.960 Was it the bank?

00:58:17.800 No.

00:58:18.340 Dave.

00:58:19.700 Dave was an arrogant little twerp who wanted to show somebody that he was somebody because of what he drove.

00:58:25.300 How shallow is that?

00:58:26.960 You know, but that's Dave.

00:58:28.680 And Dave signed up for that, and that car took my freaking head off.

00:58:33.600 Really?

00:58:34.180 What happened?

00:58:35.040 Well, it was part of the bankruptcy when we lost everything in our 20s.

00:58:37.860 That car was still sitting there in the middle of that mess.

00:58:40.260 Were you married?

00:58:41.320 Oh, yeah, barely.

00:58:43.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:58:43.880 We got married.

00:58:44.640 The second child, Rachel, was born the year we filed bankruptcy.

00:58:47.940 And so with a brand new baby and a toddler and a marriage hanging on by a thread, we got the opportunity to start over because doofus here signed up for so much debt, and it took me down.

00:58:59.640 The car was the minor part of it, but yeah.

00:59:01.700 How much debt did you have?

00:59:03.440 We had $4 million worth of real estate by the time I was 26, starting from nothing, and $3 million worth of debt on it.

00:59:10.920 So we were 70% leveraged, 80% leveraged.

00:59:14.700 That's not an unusual ratio, though.

00:59:17.580 No, it's not.

00:59:18.360 It was a lot of it was short-term notes.

00:59:20.000 We were doing Flip This House before Chip and Joanna were born, and so there was no cable TV to show you how.

00:59:25.920 We were just buying and selling real estate.

00:59:27.400 And, you know, I had $1.2 million in 90-day notes.

00:59:31.500 And if I got rid of a house, if a house came up to the end of the 90 days and hadn't sold, we just paid the interest on it.

00:59:36.560 The banker renewed it because I was always making money on them.

00:59:38.980 I was good at it.

00:59:39.700 But then the bank got sold to another bank, and they called our notes because they looked down and said, 26-year-old owes us a million, too, on short-term notes, on house flipping, whatever that is.

00:59:52.420 And so then, yeah.

00:59:54.720 And the second largest lender heard we were in trouble, so they called another 800.

00:59:58.500 So we had less than six months to come up with $2 million, and it was all in real estate.

01:00:01.940 It had no cash.

01:00:02.960 It was all in real estate.

01:00:04.640 And that started the crash that took two and a half years completely to unfold.

01:00:12.060 What did you say to your wife?

01:00:15.640 I mean, I had dinner with her last night.

01:00:17.040 You seemed to have a really happy marriage.

01:00:18.460 That was my observation.

01:00:20.040 So obviously it worked.

01:00:20.920 This was 30 years ago.

01:00:21.880 This was 1988.

01:00:22.940 So, yeah, we did not have happy marriage then, though.

01:00:24.940 She would have left, but she didn't have a car.

01:00:30.480 I'm looking at her right now.

01:00:32.800 She's nodding.

01:00:34.360 Yeah.

01:00:34.940 We were – but, I mean, we were just scared little kids with little babies, and, you know, we were just trying to – the water got cut off at the house.

01:00:42.460 The lights got cut off at the house.

01:00:43.900 You know, and we were just struggling.

01:00:47.280 So when these people –

01:00:47.980 Oh, so this was not a clean or pretty bankruptcy.

01:00:50.120 No, this was not a politically correct bankruptcy.

01:00:54.440 This was a freaking disaster.

01:00:57.500 Because, again, I'm old school.

01:00:58.880 I grew up hillbilly, and you pay your bills.

01:01:01.160 Yeah.

01:01:01.340 And so we were paying everything as best we could, and we did everything.

01:01:04.700 We sold everything in sight.

01:01:05.760 We sold a bunch of real estate.

01:01:06.740 We almost turned the corner, but we didn't make it.

01:01:09.260 And we got sued so many times.

01:01:11.880 It was unbelievable.

01:01:13.020 And they were all correct suits.

01:01:14.500 I mean, they were lawsuits because I didn't pay the bill.

01:01:16.760 It was defaulted.

01:01:17.660 So we finally hit bottom.

01:01:19.940 And –

01:01:20.060 What?

01:01:20.940 And you had two little kids?

01:01:22.360 Yeah.

01:01:22.720 And we were so scared, man.

01:01:24.660 So people call me on the air.

01:01:25.960 I can still hear that instantly in their voice.

01:01:30.080 I can hear – I start looking at the numbers.

01:01:32.020 I go, you're really scared, aren't you?

01:01:33.620 And they start crying.

01:01:34.500 They're terrified.

01:01:36.160 You know, and so –

01:01:38.160 Yeah, it's the worst thing that ever happened to me

01:01:43.640 and the best thing that ever happened to me.

01:01:46.040 I met God on the way up.

01:01:47.340 I got to know him on the way down.

01:01:49.120 Yeah, well, that's –

01:01:50.340 Yeah, so we started to decide we're going to handle money

01:01:55.240 grandma's way and biblical – what the Bible says.

01:01:58.860 And it's all just common sense and live on less than you make,

01:02:01.400 live on a plan, get out of debt.

01:02:03.860 And we started doing it, and people said,

01:02:05.520 what are you doing?

01:02:06.140 This is – y'all look different.

01:02:08.420 And so we started teaching a few people here and there,

01:02:10.760 and all of a sudden, you know, here we are 43 years later

01:02:14.420 and sitting on this thing that has happened.

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01:04:07.060 So how did you, how did you do it?

01:04:23.820 I mean, can you just give me the Cliff Notes version of,

01:04:25.700 because that sounds like a true disaster.

01:04:27.900 What it?

01:04:28.640 Get out of that.

01:04:29.780 I mean, you just.

01:04:30.260 We filed bankruptcy.

01:04:31.100 We lost everything.

01:04:31.840 I mean, and we just.

01:04:33.900 First thing we did was just start.

01:04:37.120 I mean, I started doing real estate deals,

01:04:38.920 but I didn't have any money,

01:04:39.660 and I would just pitch them to one of my buddies and make a spread.

01:04:43.000 And so I'd tie up a property at,

01:04:45.900 I don't know, let's make up a number,

01:04:47.160 $100,000 that was worth $200,000.

01:04:49.800 And then I would sell him,

01:04:50.960 sell one of my buddies that used to be my competitor,

01:04:53.680 sell him that deal for $15,000.

01:04:55.280 And I'd make a spread on it.

01:04:56.800 And so he could go buy a hundred and pay $115,000,

01:04:59.920 including me, for a $200,000 property,

01:05:02.120 because I was buying foreclosures.

01:05:03.740 And then I was one.

01:05:05.160 So we know how to do real estate deals.

01:05:07.780 And so I had a real estate license my whole life, just about.

01:05:11.920 So we just started doing that.

01:05:13.240 I got back up in 1989 to six figures again.

01:05:19.860 And.

01:05:20.240 Well, that was fast.

01:05:21.260 Just dug back.

01:05:22.100 It was income came up,

01:05:23.180 but it, you know, we're still.

01:05:27.300 There was no arrogance left.

01:05:29.160 I bet that's right.

01:05:29.920 Very little confidence.

01:05:31.840 And, and we just had a yellow pad.

01:05:33.660 And every night we would look at the yellow pad and go,

01:05:35.660 okay, food's first.

01:05:37.620 Feed the babies first.

01:05:39.060 Water and lights is second.

01:05:40.540 And house payments third.

01:05:42.520 And gas in the car is fourth.

01:05:44.220 And we really do need to get her a better car.

01:05:46.220 We need to get her a better car.

01:05:47.140 We got to start saving for that.

01:05:48.140 Oh, the heat, the light, the air conditioner went out today.

01:05:50.600 Oh, good.

01:05:51.520 And so we just started pecking down that list,

01:05:53.540 pecking down that list, pecking down that list,

01:05:55.260 every dadgum month.

01:05:56.360 And then the list got nicer and nicer and nicer.

01:06:00.560 And now on the list, there was a cruise.

01:06:03.480 And then on the list, there was a better car.

01:06:05.500 And then on the list, there was,

01:06:07.220 we weren't worried about food anymore.

01:06:08.820 And we just kept pushing our way through it.

01:06:10.700 And then started teaching people, wrote a little book.

01:06:13.180 How long did it take to go from the world is falling apart bankruptcy

01:06:17.320 to thinking, okay, now I've got it under control?

01:06:24.420 Under control is a weird thing for me,

01:06:27.940 but away from terror, two years.

01:06:32.580 Wow.

01:06:33.020 Where we weren't terrified.

01:06:35.280 And, you know, we weren't worried about food or lights or water

01:06:37.640 and that kind of stuff.

01:06:38.240 That's what I mean by terror.

01:06:39.780 And then, but then to start to say, you know,

01:06:42.700 to heal from that experience,

01:06:45.420 probably never have completely.

01:06:47.700 I don't trust a guy that doesn't walk with a limp.

01:06:50.080 And so-

01:06:50.480 I agree with that.

01:06:50.960 Most of us have had something,

01:06:52.460 and that something formed who we are.

01:06:54.060 Amen.

01:06:54.800 And so-

01:06:56.520 Dan, did you talk every step through with your wife?

01:07:01.280 After it crashed.

01:07:02.260 Yeah, that's what I mean.

01:07:03.400 Prior to the crash, she, I mean, we've owned real estate.

01:07:05.480 She didn't even know-

01:07:06.040 Of course.

01:07:06.800 Well, I wasn't hiding it from her, but she-

01:07:08.160 I get it.

01:07:08.560 No, no, no.

01:07:08.860 I think most, I mean, she had little kids too.

01:07:11.000 She had two little kids.

01:07:11.700 She's managing babies and I'm managing real estate.

01:07:13.860 And of course, if I had asked her,

01:07:15.220 she would have said, whatever you want to do, honey.

01:07:17.260 That would have been exactly-

01:07:17.520 She's doing her job.

01:07:18.460 You're doing yours.

01:07:19.220 You know, you do whatever you want to do.

01:07:20.900 And then later on, she goes, I had a bad feeling about that.

01:07:23.200 And, you know, well, I bet you did.

01:07:24.140 Yeah.

01:07:26.260 But yeah.

01:07:27.140 But that was now today.

01:07:28.900 And that from that point forward, one of the things that we teach couples and that

01:07:34.160 we've used, and I'm convinced it's one of the reasons where we are on the success metric

01:07:38.680 is Proverbs 31 says, who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies.

01:07:44.660 One of the greatest, greatest sections of the whole Bible.

01:07:47.080 Her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain.

01:07:53.740 It's a wealth building principle to listen to your wife.

01:07:59.060 That's the last proverb.

01:08:01.440 I think that's the end of the book.

01:08:02.720 It is.

01:08:03.240 Exactly.

01:08:03.740 31 of them.

01:08:04.360 You can do one a day like a vitamin.

01:08:06.500 And the, but yeah, she, and so, you know, she's got a home ec degree.

01:08:11.460 She's been a full-time mom for 39 years and now a full-time grandmom and Mimi.

01:08:17.920 And so, but she has wisdom and as she says, common sense.

01:08:26.560 And by the way, common sense is so rare in America, it's like having a superpower.

01:08:30.080 I agree.

01:08:30.400 So we don't make large charitable contributions.

01:08:35.240 We don't make big real estate decisions, big estate planning decisions, big huge decisions

01:08:42.300 at the office, at the company without Sharon.

01:08:45.740 Uh, and she looks at over 99% of the time she says, yeah, that makes sense.

01:08:50.900 Let's do it.

01:08:51.860 Um, and sometimes she goes, you know, I've got a bad feeling about that.

01:08:54.920 And we always joke because she's from the hills of East Tennessee and say feeling is

01:08:57.880 a seven syllable word, a bad feeling, but yeah, but if she has a bad feeling, if I go

01:09:03.340 against it, it's a minimum $10,000 penalty from God.

01:09:06.260 So something bad's going to happen.

01:09:08.460 I don't go against that.

01:09:09.420 So that's a change that you made after bankruptcy and that you counsel couples to make as well,

01:09:14.640 which is make decisions.

01:09:16.660 Don't come home and say, honey, look what I did when you bought a bass boat.

01:09:20.740 Yeah.

01:09:20.960 That's just.

01:09:21.480 That's really smart.

01:09:22.360 No, I agree with you.

01:09:24.620 And that's worked.

01:09:25.820 It's huge.

01:09:26.500 Oh, guess what?

01:09:27.400 It also works in your marriage.

01:09:28.420 It's called communication.

01:09:29.820 And when you agree on your spending, you've agreed on your dreams, your fears, because

01:09:35.120 all your money flows towards your dreams and your fears.

01:09:37.280 You've agreed on your plan.

01:09:39.140 You have to agree on whose parents we're going to eat Thanksgiving dinner with to agree on

01:09:43.440 your spending because you're going to have to buy gas to go over there and you're going

01:09:46.880 to figure out if you're going to get a hotel or you're going to stay in their basement

01:09:48.640 that week.

01:09:49.140 I mean, Thanksgiving planning.

01:09:50.760 Here we go.

01:09:51.200 Get ready.

01:09:51.840 So, you know, when you agree on your money with your spouse, it's massive for your marriage.

01:09:57.680 It'll heal a broken marriage because you start communicating about everything that's real

01:10:02.640 immediately.

01:10:05.700 Do you sense that that is a problem for people?

01:10:08.760 Oh, definitely.

01:10:09.900 Definitely.

01:10:10.300 So, how does it, in the marriages that you see, people you talk to about their marriages

01:10:15.800 and their money, how does it normally go?

01:10:17.620 What are the unhealthy patterns that people get in?

01:10:22.180 Well, first, I'll tell you, I didn't know this when I started.

01:10:25.160 I thought I was telling them how to do it, what a mutual fund was so they could put it

01:10:28.420 in their 401k.

01:10:29.280 Exactly.

01:10:29.680 And here's how you get out of debt.

01:10:31.120 And here's how you do a budget.

01:10:32.080 I thought I was teaching them about money.

01:10:33.480 And they would come to Financial Peace University, our class, and then the class was over.

01:10:37.140 They would go, hey, you saved our marriage.

01:10:39.120 And I'm like, the sex class was down the hall, man.

01:10:41.860 I'm like, I don't have anything to do with that.

01:10:45.800 No, you made us work together because I'm just so practical utilitarian that I forced them

01:10:51.600 to do a budget together, and it forced them to deal with all their crap in their marriage.

01:10:56.800 And so, yeah, what are some of the breakdowns?

01:10:58.760 It's a lot of different things.

01:11:01.420 But sometimes the worst cases that we see, the most heartbreaking ones, are where one spouse

01:11:07.240 is knighted the money person.

01:11:14.260 So you're to pay the bills, and then things get out of control, and they go into debt

01:11:19.880 trying to keep the lifestyle the way it is and don't bother to tell the other spouse.

01:11:24.660 And so this other spouse, when they finally do get in the loop, there's $100,000 in credit

01:11:29.660 card debt laying there to support a life that we could not afford.

01:11:33.780 And so you've got deception now and shame and condemnation and all these other things

01:11:39.820 mixed in that are really nasty.

01:11:41.720 And then sometimes I get the neighborhood I grew up in, a blue-collar neighborhood, it's

01:11:48.720 not unusual in those neighborhoods for the wife to handle the money, and the guy just

01:11:53.420 goes to work and brings home the bacon.

01:11:55.020 Yes.

01:11:55.820 And too often, relationally in those situations, what ends up happening is the guy who's working

01:12:03.440 and bringing home the money in that scenario, it's a classic 1950s almost scenario, right?

01:12:08.420 Every electrician I've ever met has his wife do the billing.

01:12:11.100 There you go.

01:12:11.440 Of course.

01:12:12.380 Same thing.

01:12:13.300 What happens too often in that is he ends up having to ask his wife for money, like she's

01:12:22.460 his mommy.

01:12:24.080 And this maternal thing ends up happening that's really weird in their marriage, where

01:12:29.800 he becomes increasingly adolescent and doesn't ever grow up and make grown-up decisions with

01:12:36.140 good decision-making paradigms.

01:12:37.720 Instead, he just says, well, my wife, my mommy, mommy said I couldn't go out tonight because

01:12:42.600 we don't have any money.

01:12:44.280 And I seem like as much as I work, we'd have some money.

01:12:46.900 And then you get that routine.

01:12:48.060 And he's, he just-

01:12:48.980 Boy, I've seen that so many times.

01:12:49.980 I've seen that digressing emotions.

01:12:51.220 Yeah, me too.

01:12:52.240 And so I'm always yelling at those guys because they're my guys.

01:12:55.200 I mean, that's who I grew up with.

01:12:57.040 And I'm just yelling, hey, man, be a man.

01:12:59.240 You're not a little boy.

01:13:00.340 Your wife does not want to be married to her baby.

01:13:02.600 She wants to be married to a man and quit being his mommy, quit being his mommy and taking

01:13:07.200 care of his little self.

01:13:08.880 My God, you two sit down like two dadgum, two dadgum adults and look at this thing and

01:13:15.120 go, we're stupid and we need to stop being stupid.

01:13:17.900 You know, look at this.

01:13:18.560 We bought you a truck you can't afford.

01:13:19.900 We've got $600 bass boat payment because you couldn't catch a fish with the other one.

01:13:24.140 You're killing me here.

01:13:25.620 And this is, this is America.

01:13:27.760 This is who we, and it's me too.

01:13:29.340 I was the same guy.

01:13:30.280 So I got a PhD in DUMB, I did it worse than all these people put together.

01:13:34.560 Think about it.

01:13:35.200 So I, I know what stupid looks like because I looked at him in the mirror for a long time.

01:13:39.620 So, um, but yeah, you got to get on the same page and you both have to be grownups.

01:13:45.040 And, you know, the opposite of that, the, the, I guess the inverse of that is the, the

01:13:50.600 sweet little wife who the husband is domineering and takes care of everything.

01:13:54.360 And she has no idea what's going on, which was really in a sense where Sharon was when

01:13:58.580 we went broke.

01:13:59.180 She was just doing her thing over there and assumed I had a brain, which was a bad assumption.

01:14:05.960 So, um, you know, it's, and then here's horrible situation with that one that could go on for

01:14:11.560 40 years and never really have a problem.

01:14:13.920 And he dies and she is a, uh, an infant in terms of her ability to even write a check.

01:14:22.340 She has no idea where their investments are.

01:14:26.300 She has no idea how to pay a light bill.

01:14:28.900 In some cases I've met him.

01:14:30.200 She's not even pumped her own gas into her car.

01:14:33.260 He's always done that.

01:14:34.360 And, and she's left in this infantile state emotionally.

01:14:39.040 And then her grown kids are having to come along and we're having to train 52 year old

01:14:43.580 mom, how to be like a grownup woman now, because she's been a kept woman.

01:14:47.480 You know that saying, you know, and in that sense, and that's not good for her.

01:14:52.000 That's not good for her.

01:14:52.740 She needs to grow up and it's, and he's not doing her a favor by taking care of the little

01:14:57.580 woman, you know, or whatever bull crap is going on in their emotions there.

01:15:01.120 So these two thoroughbred horses in the marriage that both step up, lock into the same harness

01:15:08.560 at the same speed, both with their different giftings, but both with the level of responsibility.

01:15:14.280 These are the people that build quality families, quality legacies, and build wealth almost every

01:15:20.740 time.

01:15:21.320 It's incredible to watch.

01:15:24.300 So you're saying that the relationship with your spouse is, is a key part of your investment

01:15:29.300 strategy, basically.

01:15:30.320 All our data says that when we did the largest study of millionaires ever done, uh, 10,167

01:15:36.740 of them, we found 84% of them say that they, the, that one of the keys to their building wealth

01:15:43.320 was a spouse that worked with them and they did it together in unity.

01:15:48.620 Dragging a princess for 40 years and still becoming a millionaire is very mathematically difficult.

01:15:57.140 Dragging a little boy with a bass boat that's in a, stuck in a 37 year old body into wealth

01:16:03.300 is very difficult.

01:16:04.560 And again, I'm not against bass boats.

01:16:06.620 I got three boats.

01:16:07.440 Okay.

01:16:08.000 So we're not, boats are not the thing.

01:16:09.620 I'm just picked on that metaphor for some reason today.

01:16:11.820 But, um, but, uh, you know, that yes, yes.

01:16:16.940 To answer your question, couples that can work together.

01:16:19.160 And sometimes when we find that you ask how we get that $37,000 couple, $37,000 debt out

01:16:25.900 of debt.

01:16:26.240 But maybe what we're doing is teaching them to work together for the first time in their

01:16:30.400 12 year marriage or their 18 year marriage.

01:16:32.860 And, and sometimes we're forcing them to work on these relational things, which we didn't

01:16:37.120 even understand, you know, when we first start doing this, but it's such a key part of it

01:16:42.040 that working together and, well, I'm going to be independent.

01:16:45.100 We need separate everything.

01:16:46.480 Well, then why the flip did you get married?

01:16:48.580 That's just the worst marriage ever.

01:16:50.020 It's a joint venture.

01:16:51.120 It's not even a real marriage.

01:16:52.240 I agree with that.

01:16:53.620 And like, how common is that for married couples to have separate accounts?

01:16:58.360 Very.

01:16:59.220 Really?

01:16:59.920 Very.

01:17:00.340 And we get hate mail by suggesting that that's dumb.

01:17:03.860 Yeah.

01:17:04.560 Hate mail.

01:17:05.600 Lots of it.

01:17:06.640 Lots of negatives in the comments sections.

01:17:09.040 Yeah.

01:17:10.480 Big time.

01:17:11.800 So you did this enormous study of, of people who've been successful.

01:17:15.940 Um, what are the key qualities apart from a functional communicative marriage?

01:17:21.040 You know, we focused more on what the, uh, the tactical money things that they did were.

01:17:26.960 Okay.

01:17:27.380 So we're, what kind of wealth do you have and what are your components of your net worth

01:17:31.380 and that kind of thing?

01:17:32.520 Not necessarily what their character qualities were.

01:17:34.860 What we did find, um, is that they're almost always the tortoise.

01:17:39.020 They're never the hare.

01:17:40.420 They're slow and steady.

01:17:42.100 Um, they oftentimes pick a mutual, a series of mutual funds for their 401k, uh, almost never

01:17:49.200 changed them and the mutual funds sometimes, most of the time are less than the best.

01:17:55.720 They're like in the top 70% of mutual funds, maybe, but not the best ones, but they still,

01:18:01.000 so picking the exact perfect fund turns out not to be the secret sauce.

01:18:05.580 The secret sauce is doing the investment every single month for 30 years or actually 17 years

01:18:11.120 was the average to hit the first million, but the, um, so just doing that and then, and

01:18:17.140 the steadiness with their, the frugality, they, the number of them, when I talk to them on

01:18:22.440 the air and when they have a one to a $5 million net worth, we do a millionaire theme hour and

01:18:26.600 they call in and tell us about their lives in that case.

01:18:28.760 Listen, the, the number of them that drive a Toyota is like staggering.

01:18:32.540 We need Toyota like as a sponsor on the Ramsey show.

01:18:35.540 Cause it's, it's, why Toyota?

01:18:37.160 Yeah.

01:18:37.320 I don't know.

01:18:38.060 Cause the vehicle's highlander, a Tundra, you know, a two-year-old Tundra, a four-year-old

01:18:42.360 Highlander, a minivan.

01:18:44.020 And it's like, that's the, the car of choice.

01:18:46.320 I don't, uh, get a few Hyundais every now and then, but, um.

01:18:49.460 But Toyota is the vehicle of choice for self-made millionaires.

01:18:51.980 And F-150s.

01:18:53.100 Yeah.

01:18:53.460 It's, uh.

01:18:54.080 What about Silverados?

01:18:55.680 I don't hear as much on that.

01:18:57.160 I just don't.

01:18:57.640 But, um, nothing, I'm not against Silverados.

01:18:59.800 I'm kind of a Chevy guy, but that's just what I'm seeing.

01:19:02.160 So, yeah, that we're seeing some of that kind of thing, but most of them, it's a fairly

01:19:07.700 simple thing that it's kind of boring actually.

01:19:09.940 Like, but the numbers were staggeringly, uh, complete statistically.

01:19:15.640 So it's like in the 80 percentile on most of these numbers.

01:19:19.240 Uh, and it kind of blew our minds that it was that extreme that, that, um, like 80% of

01:19:25.600 them work together with their spouse.

01:19:26.840 80% of them, um, steadily invest for a period of time.

01:19:31.440 80% of them had a bought a new car in 10 years.

01:19:35.080 Uh, 80, a brand new car because the loss in value, 80% of them in the, in the 80% to 84,

01:19:42.100 82, 89, 89% of millionaires, eight, nine out of 10 in America are not millionaires because

01:19:49.500 of an inheritance.

01:19:50.400 Now that's one you hear from the leftist group is the, the wealthy quality garbage that you

01:19:56.300 hear out there that were stuck in America.

01:19:58.600 There's no opportunity in America, but 79% inherited precisely zero 5% inherited enough

01:20:05.580 or inherited a large amount after they were already millionaires.

01:20:09.080 Like they had a million to net worth and they got 200,000 from mom after that, she died, or

01:20:13.780 they got 5,000 bucks from grandmother.

01:20:15.840 And it was not mathematically anything that impacted them becoming a millionaire.

01:20:20.080 And so eight 80 or 79, five and five is 89.

01:20:24.040 So we've got nine out of 10 are not millionaires because of inherited money.

01:20:30.800 So that's just complete hogwash.

01:20:33.460 And this study Tucker is, we knew we'd get criticism on it from the lefties and the Antifa

01:20:39.060 garbage and all that stuff.

01:20:40.620 And some of the press even, you know, they're, well, I don't know.

01:20:43.400 I've always heard, well, I don't give a crap what you've always heard.

01:20:45.980 Here's data.

01:20:46.840 Okay.

01:20:47.660 So our, uh, research methodology on this was freaking airtight.

01:20:52.500 As a matter of fact, we had an outside firm look over our shoulders.

01:20:54.640 So we didn't do confirmation buys.

01:20:56.020 And because we knew if anybody really dug into the white paper on the thing, if we had just

01:21:01.800 screwed around and gathered up a bunch of people that did what I said to do, this is not all

01:21:05.400 Dave tribe, the 70% not did not know who I am.

01:21:09.640 And so these are people that went out and they just, you know, they're 42, 46 years old,

01:21:15.800 51 years old.

01:21:16.780 And that's the template.

01:21:18.080 And they've got a paid for house at six or $700,000 and they've got a six or 800 grand

01:21:24.500 in their 401k and Roth IRAs.

01:21:26.420 And that's pretty well their first 1.7 or 1.8.

01:21:29.940 Now you don't get to 50 million or a hundred million doing that.

01:21:32.860 You're not a billionaire and a billionaire is a thousand million.

01:21:35.840 That's a different formula and much fewer of those out there.

01:21:40.360 But I'm talking about, can Joe and Susie retire with dignity, leave an inheritance, change

01:21:44.940 their family tree, uh, not have to count on the government for support, uh, not have to

01:21:50.880 pray that they can vote a savior into the white house because they can't fix their own

01:21:54.360 life.

01:21:54.860 Can they exist and live the American dream, get up, leave the cave, kill something, drag

01:21:59.460 it home and make it you dadgum right.

01:22:01.240 They can.

01:22:01.600 We proved it with data and it's exciting.

01:22:05.860 Keep their finances commingled.

01:22:08.180 Absolutely.

01:22:09.020 A hundred percent.

01:22:09.820 Why don't people do that?

01:22:10.900 You said earlier that you see a lot of people who don't, who have separate accounts.

01:22:14.020 Um, modeling from the last generation for one thing, their mom and dad didn't because

01:22:20.660 they don't trust each other, obviously.

01:22:22.260 And it, you know, if they've been divorced and remarried, then the scars of the other

01:22:26.920 one, they, you know, you're superimposing upon your new spouse, the idiocy of your last

01:22:32.220 one.

01:22:32.860 As one guy said, my starter wife, you know, messed this thing up.

01:22:36.720 Your starter wife.

01:22:37.920 Okay.

01:22:38.080 That was your first one.

01:22:38.860 Okay.

01:22:39.020 And, uh, but I mean, that, that, that thing is, um, and, you know, it probably has something

01:22:46.120 to do with this idea of misogynism or, uh, this idea that, uh, of, um, equal rights, uh,

01:22:53.120 that women need to be able, Hey man, I'm, we have equal rights.

01:22:57.120 Sharon gets the same vote I get.

01:22:58.380 Yep.

01:22:58.980 Uh, and 100% of the income since, um, our first child was born in nine and she's 39, uh, has

01:23:06.760 come into the house because of me.

01:23:08.300 Sharon doesn't earn an income.

01:23:09.840 Hasn't not because we're jerks.

01:23:11.540 It's just what we choose to do in our life, but, but I don't have an income.

01:23:15.220 We have an income here, the pronouns.

01:23:17.620 And so Sharon has as much right and much vote as much say.

01:23:21.960 And, um, as, um, so there's no misogyny here.

01:23:26.360 It's quite the opposite.

01:23:28.160 Um, it's an equal vote.

01:23:30.300 And, you know, if we can't come to an agreement, we don't do it, which sometimes pisses one of

01:23:35.740 us off, but we need to be in agreement.

01:23:37.760 We need to be in unity, uh, because there is safety in that unity.

01:23:42.520 There's wisdom in that.

01:23:44.220 And, and, you know, if you want to be independent and not have anyone ever tell you anything that

01:23:51.180 you should do wrong, then please don't get married.

01:23:54.100 It doesn't go well because I mean, it's immediately, there's going to be friction the first day on

01:24:00.460 that basis, or you complete me or some kind of bull crap like that.

01:24:04.220 It's not, you better get in that marriage to serve the other person and that together we're

01:24:08.440 going to serve the next generation.

01:24:09.760 And beyond that, the next generation and we are going to serve the community.

01:24:13.740 And let's get in this idea where there's some meaning to life rather than this, what can

01:24:18.640 I get out of it?

01:24:20.500 You better get in that marriage to serve the other person.

01:24:23.900 I love that.

01:24:25.220 It works.

01:24:27.160 Um, are married people more likely to be in better financial shape?

01:24:30.620 Yes.

01:24:31.800 Yes.

01:24:32.260 There's all kinds of research and data, um, called the marriage advantage.

01:24:37.580 And it started with that the husbands, uh, in the sixties or seventies, the first time

01:24:44.040 we started seeing this, this type of research pop up, it's not true today because it's not

01:24:48.720 exactly how the, uh, socioeconomic fabric is today.

01:24:51.940 But if you take 1965 or 1970, husband goes off to work with a little briefcase, wife stays

01:24:57.960 at home with two kids, we're boarding, you can cleaver, right?

01:24:59.940 But whatever, um, then that guy had an advantage in the marketplace and ended up with a better

01:25:08.900 career path, higher income and higher likelihood of building wealth than his single person peer

01:25:15.020 did.

01:25:16.200 Um, and it really was because of support from home is what it amounted to in those days.

01:25:20.640 It was, he didn't have to worry about cooking.

01:25:22.560 He didn't have to worry about kids.

01:25:24.500 I mean, he didn't have to, and she, the fact that he felt the responsibility back to them

01:25:28.980 drove him to further things rather than, you know, what's my responsibility?

01:25:33.460 I need more beer on Friday night.

01:25:34.820 I don't have anything to come back home to, to, uh, to, to, that I need to be better for.

01:25:41.180 Uh, and so being better for the family drove the man in those days today, we're still seeing

01:25:45.880 the marriage advantage, but of course we don't live in a society that has that very often.

01:25:50.140 Uh, the vast majority of couples, uh, today, uh, both at work or have worked at some time.

01:25:57.320 The vast majority of couples today are on a, on a more equal playing field in the, uh, in

01:26:02.280 terms of in the career space.

01:26:04.260 We see a lot of times nowadays where the lady's out performing the man income wise in the marketplace,

01:26:09.340 not unusual at all.

01:26:10.380 Um, and perfectly cool with that, but still we end up with that couple having a marriage

01:26:18.180 advantage.

01:26:18.920 And I think it's got to do, my friend Simon Sinek wrote a book called The Infinite Game.

01:26:23.460 And the thesis of the book is that when you play a game with a set of rules and there's

01:26:28.560 an end to the game, you, you move the pieces around, you make the decisions in the game to

01:26:35.440 get to that end.

01:26:37.420 When you are playing a game that there's not an end to, that is going to go beyond your

01:26:42.840 life, then you're playing long ball.

01:26:45.500 You're making decisions that are long-term based rather than short-term example of that

01:26:50.600 in the marketplace would be, uh, the publicly traded company who lays off a bunch of people

01:26:56.380 just to make quarterly stock numbers, a short-term thinking.

01:27:00.920 You can artificially run the profitability of a company up by laying off half your payroll,

01:27:06.340 you know, having a big layoff.

01:27:07.680 And you didn't need to lay them off, but you needed the, you needed to make your numbers

01:27:10.600 for the stock market, right?

01:27:12.340 And so, but a company that's not doing something like that long ball is they'll take a deep

01:27:18.940 breath and, and kind of go through a hard period of time and keep their high quality talent

01:27:24.200 because you're going to need your high talent in the long ball game.

01:27:28.740 Um, you know, you're going to need them five years from now, 10 years from now, but if

01:27:31.800 you're only thinking about one quarter at a time, you make different decisions than

01:27:35.720 if you're thinking about 10 years, 20 years, 30 years out, privately held companies make

01:27:40.060 different decisions for that reason, uh, in the handling and the strategy of their businesses.

01:27:45.520 Same thing's true in our personal lives.

01:27:47.280 So what ends up happening is, is the guy, the couples that are married have, are playing

01:27:52.600 long ball.

01:27:53.100 They're playing infinite game.

01:27:54.540 They're saying, I want to change my family tree.

01:27:56.320 They're looking at baby being born.

01:27:57.760 By the way, that's an impotence, probably number one thing that is, that we've run into

01:28:02.520 that causes people to stop the stupidity, get off this like crazy cycle and say, we're

01:28:07.660 going to get out of debt.

01:28:08.380 We're going to get on a budget.

01:28:09.280 We're not going in a restaurant.

01:28:10.480 We're going to do whatever it takes to get free.

01:28:11.940 We're going to change everything.

01:28:12.960 We're suddenly going to grow up and quit spending money.

01:28:15.440 We don't have is when they have their first child.

01:28:17.900 Oh, absolutely.

01:28:18.660 That first child comes in the world.

01:28:19.960 It's like, dad gum, this is an adult thing.

01:28:22.040 Now I'm not a baby anymore.

01:28:23.580 And I quit.

01:28:23.980 I got to quit acting like one.

01:28:25.020 And your emotional calling to nobility goes way up.

01:28:29.660 What are the main things?

01:28:31.080 You've made a couple of references to restaurant spending.

01:28:34.260 Is that one of the big?

01:28:36.220 It is.

01:28:37.320 Okay.

01:28:37.560 And I'm not against restaurants.

01:28:38.660 I love good food.

01:28:40.080 Oh, me too.

01:28:40.440 One of my favorite sports is fine dining.

01:28:42.780 You know, so.

01:28:43.780 Definitely.

01:28:43.980 But, you know, 80% of what you spend in a restaurant is entertainment.

01:28:49.020 You can make the same meal at home for 20 cents on the dollar.

01:28:51.380 Yeah.

01:28:51.880 And so it's not necessary for nutrition.

01:28:56.460 It is entertainment.

01:28:57.700 And you don't go buy Broadway play tickets for 400 bucks a piece when you're broke.

01:29:03.960 You know, you stay home and play cards.

01:29:07.640 So you don't do entertainment when you're broke.

01:29:10.200 It's expensive and entertainment.

01:29:11.800 And that's what eating out is.

01:29:13.280 And Americans have moved, again, partly because both of them in the workplace, they both get

01:29:17.380 home.

01:29:17.640 They're tired.

01:29:17.980 They don't feel like cooking.

01:29:19.880 You know, they don't feel like getting out the dadgum frying pan and doing something.

01:29:22.600 But you can start eating from home.

01:29:24.460 By the way, it's healthier in general to eat from home.

01:29:27.520 And when you start looking at it, it will open your eyes what you're spending on out

01:29:33.620 to eat.

01:29:33.940 What you're spending on your car payment, out to eat, and on vacations when you're broke

01:29:39.760 is those three things are what we find in a budget that we can change immediately.

01:29:45.320 And it helps the math to make that turn real fast.

01:29:48.960 So it's car payments, eating out, and vacations.

01:29:51.840 And vacations.

01:29:53.300 So you addressed eating out.

01:29:55.900 Let's get to vacations.

01:29:57.520 How much do people spend on vacations?

01:30:02.900 I don't have numbers memorized.

01:30:05.400 But I mean, it's your impression that that's a big spend.

01:30:07.800 Oh, we know it is.

01:30:08.760 I mean, it's, again, the $80,000 family.

01:30:13.180 What a trip to Disney costs for four days.

01:30:16.260 You know, what a trip to the beach for five days costs and rent an Airbnb.

01:30:21.700 And, you know, you grew up different than I did.

01:30:26.240 But I was never on an airplane until I was 15 years old.

01:30:30.620 Air travel was not normal in my generation.

01:30:33.620 No.

01:30:33.760 It's very normal for middle class and lower middle class people.

01:30:37.400 Air travel for almost every American is normal now.

01:30:41.520 It's very normal for people to jump on an airplane.

01:30:45.420 And it costs a lot of money to buy an airline ticket.

01:30:48.660 We're going to fly to New York.

01:30:49.920 We're going to fly to Disney.

01:30:51.480 We're going to fly to the beach.

01:30:52.540 We're going to fly to Cancun or Cozumel or Cabo.

01:30:56.540 And which is great.

01:30:57.700 I don't, I'm not against doing those nice things.

01:31:00.100 I do them, but you live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no

01:31:06.360 one else.

01:31:07.020 And so you look up and you go, we're dropping, we make 80 grand.

01:31:09.880 We're dropping seven, eight, nine, 10 grand a year on a vacation and then stuck with credit

01:31:16.260 card debt.

01:31:16.980 And then we can't figure out, whoa, oh, Christmas.

01:31:19.740 I surprised us.

01:31:20.880 It's in December this year.

01:31:22.020 Caught me off guard.

01:31:23.400 And so dadgum, what are we going to do now?

01:31:25.720 Well, we got to put that on a credit card because we just used up what little money we had in

01:31:29.620 savings to go on this beach vacation during fall break.

01:31:33.260 And, and it just, and there's a sense of waking up then in January after the holidays with a

01:31:41.140 financial hangover and the average American is paying on Christmas until May.

01:31:46.660 And so, but because they're not, they didn't have any, there's no Christmas club savings account.

01:31:52.600 At any local bank anymore.

01:31:54.320 Hardly.

01:31:54.840 I mean, but 1% of Americans don't have a Christmas club account.

01:31:59.080 Some people do save for Christmas.

01:32:00.680 Thank God.

01:32:01.380 But what's a Christmas club account.

01:32:03.140 It was a, it was a thing again, fifties and sixties.

01:32:05.860 It was a big deal and it's just kind of deteriorated with some of the good banking practices.

01:32:09.900 But the idea was in January, you would open an account, a savings account that had Christmas

01:32:14.540 written on the outside of it.

01:32:15.640 It's called the Christmas club.

01:32:16.540 And you put enough in there one 12th.

01:32:18.660 So when December got here, you had the money to pay cash for your Christmas.

01:32:21.160 And you'd take your little money down there, put your cash in at each payday and like lay

01:32:26.360 away.

01:32:26.780 Remember lay away.

01:32:27.520 Yeah.

01:32:27.920 Yeah.

01:32:28.140 It's the same kind of concepts, except the old ideas that have now died in a new digital

01:32:33.440 world.

01:32:33.960 And it's not, it's okay that they've died, but the idea behind them, I'm going to save

01:32:38.420 up and pay for it.

01:32:39.360 Well, that's genius.

01:32:41.360 Yes.

01:32:45.120 Car payments.

01:32:47.180 That's a huge expense for people.

01:32:49.320 Largest item we buy that goes down in value.

01:32:53.460 And they go down in value like a rock.

01:32:55.560 That's where Chevy gets that.

01:32:57.560 They, they lose 70% of their value in the first four years.

01:33:03.540 So you're going to lose $21,000 in four years on a $30,000 car purchase.

01:33:11.000 You need to be making some money to lose $21,000.

01:33:14.780 Oh, wait a minute.

01:33:15.320 We're going to pay payments for the opportunity to lose $21,000 in value and pay extra interest

01:33:22.340 in payments on that too.

01:33:24.340 Oh, and there's insurance on that too.

01:33:26.980 So, um, what we have figured out is that, um, I, and I, it's horrible for me because I'm

01:33:34.460 a, I'm a car guy.

01:33:36.080 I love cars.

01:33:37.700 And, uh, man, driving junk cars for me when we were broke was the hardest.

01:33:42.540 We already established that the Jaguar when I was thought I was rich and I, what happened

01:33:45.840 to the Jaguar, by the way?

01:33:46.800 Uh, it got sold, uh, two days before they repoed it.

01:33:49.300 I got it sold.

01:33:50.320 So it didn't get repoed just barely, but yeah.

01:33:53.740 Um, and I, well, obviously we had to write a check to get rid of it cause we were upside

01:33:58.600 down in it.

01:33:59.620 But, um, the, uh, uh, so if you'll drive like no one else later, you can drive like no one

01:34:07.820 else.

01:34:07.980 If you build some wealth, then you can afford to lose money on cars.

01:34:12.200 But a hundred percent of us that have anything with a motor in it or wheels, it goes down in

01:34:18.300 value.

01:34:19.580 Like I said, I talked, I said earlier, I've got boats.

01:34:21.880 They go down in value.

01:34:23.020 I've got cars.

01:34:23.800 They go down in value and that's in and of itself, not evil.

01:34:27.400 But when it is a large percentage of your income or your net worth, that's going down

01:34:33.300 in value, then of course you're going to be broke your whole life.

01:34:37.080 So if you're, if your entire investment strategy is $30,000 cars, instead of putting $30,000

01:34:42.460 in a 401k, you're going the wrong way.

01:34:45.280 Or instead of saving up the money and getting the house, you're going the wrong way.

01:34:48.960 House is going up in value.

01:34:50.820 401k is going up in value.

01:34:52.060 Makes you a millionaire.

01:34:52.800 Like we said earlier.

01:34:54.100 But no one buys cars to become a millionaire.

01:34:57.300 Quite the opposite.

01:34:58.160 So our rule of thumb is don't buy vehicles, everything you own that has motors put it together and

01:35:06.480 it should be less than half your annual income.

01:35:10.280 And if it is, then you've got plenty of room.

01:35:14.260 It's not going to destroy your net worth.

01:35:15.900 But I talk to people making $80,000 that are driving $70,000 worth of cars.

01:35:19.820 Oh, yeah.

01:35:20.680 And then they go, one more day.

01:35:23.320 We're so stressed out.

01:35:24.480 And I'm like, man, you know, you're not going to do what I say, probably.

01:35:28.500 But if you do what I say, I'm going to set you free.

01:35:30.940 Let me help you with this.

01:35:31.640 Here's your really good idea.

01:35:33.160 Sell two cars.

01:35:34.960 And the silence on the other end of the phone is deafening.

01:35:38.360 Well, if you sell your cars, how do you drive?

01:35:40.220 Well, you get two $2,000 cars with the payments from one month of not having $80,000 cars, right?

01:35:47.540 You got, make $80,000, you got $70,000 worth of cars.

01:35:50.440 Oh, my God.

01:35:50.980 There's no chance.

01:35:51.760 So just drive beaters.

01:35:53.040 For a short period of time.

01:35:54.500 Yeah.

01:35:55.000 Drive like no one else.

01:35:55.980 So later, you can drive like no one else.

01:35:57.600 So after the Jaguar, we had no car.

01:36:02.460 And a friend of mine helped me, I think.

01:36:07.740 He helped me a lot of ways, probably.

01:36:09.220 He loaned me his 1978 Cadillac that had 478,000 miles on it.

01:36:17.960 And it had, the predominant color was Bondo.

01:36:22.060 Oh, yeah.

01:36:22.880 And the vinyl roof across the top was broken.

01:36:25.760 So when you drove, it filled up with air.

01:36:27.380 So it looked like a parachute.

01:36:28.880 A Bondo buggy with a parachute on top.

01:36:30.820 So I went from Jaguar to Bondo buggy.

01:36:33.560 I went from arrogant to humiliated, not just humble, but humiliated.

01:36:37.860 I mean, cops would follow me in that car, right?

01:36:40.460 You know, what are you doing in this in a town?

01:36:43.360 And so you stop at the stoplight and the top would settle, you know.

01:36:47.920 It's like going down.

01:36:50.320 But you know what?

01:36:51.720 I drove that car what felt like 10 years, one three-month period.

01:36:54.760 And I saved up enough to buy a $2,000 car in three months because I wanted out of that

01:37:00.740 thing.

01:37:01.160 I gave it, gave that blessing back to my friend, right?

01:37:03.960 And said, thank you.

01:37:04.960 Thank you very much.

01:37:06.060 And got a $2,000 car.

01:37:08.440 And then I saved up and got a $5,000 car.

01:37:10.700 What kind of car was it?

01:37:11.400 The 2000, do you remember?

01:37:13.360 It was some kind of like Chevy Impala.

01:37:15.900 Yeah.

01:37:16.160 It was ugly, but it was reliable and a lot nicer than the Bondo buggy.

01:37:20.700 It was, I mean, the difference in a $2,000 car and a $400 car is dramatic.

01:37:24.080 Yes, it is.

01:37:24.880 And the difference in a $2,000 and a $6,000 car is dramatic.

01:37:27.860 The difference in a $6,000 and a $16,000 car is hardly discernible.

01:37:32.820 That's a good point.

01:37:34.540 And a $20,000 car and a $40,000 car, 90% of the people can't pick it without looking it

01:37:39.120 up on the internet.

01:37:39.940 How rich do you have to be to buy new cars?

01:37:41.560 Because we tell folks to have a million dollar net worth if you're going to buy brand new

01:37:45.600 because you take such a hit in the first 12 months.

01:37:48.400 I don't buy new cars.

01:37:50.240 I do, but I've got the money.

01:37:52.020 So I'm not ashamed of that.

01:37:54.080 But I don't, I wouldn't tell people to do that again until you've got at least a $1 million

01:37:58.740 net worth.

01:37:59.840 Don't buy a new car unless you have a million dollar net worth.

01:38:02.680 Buy a one-year-old and let somebody else take the butt whipping on the depreciation.

01:38:07.200 And again, the millionaires we're talking to, they're driving three-year-old, four-year-old

01:38:10.460 Toyota still, I kind of tell them, hey, you need to upgrade.

01:38:13.700 Because I oftentimes find one driving a 93 Camry and, you know, still, and they're a million

01:38:19.480 six.

01:38:20.000 And I'm like, dude, buy your wife a car.

01:38:21.500 Come on.

01:38:22.340 That's, that's awful.

01:38:23.900 You're not proving anything at that point.

01:38:25.540 What about leasing cars?

01:38:27.740 Leasing is a method of financing on a car.

01:38:31.700 And so a lease payment is basically a car payment.

01:38:36.740 And which is wiser.

01:38:38.260 Or it's so confusing, the leasing.

01:38:40.760 Lease is the most expensive way to operate a vehicle.

01:38:43.020 Oh, it is.

01:38:43.540 Okay.

01:38:43.880 Borrowing money at the bank is the, is, is better actually.

01:38:47.400 Paying cash, obviously, is the only thing you should do ever.

01:38:50.220 You should, I'll ride a bicycle before I get a car payment.

01:38:52.560 Again, knowing what I know now with the data that I've got and the life I've lived, there's

01:38:57.100 no way.

01:38:57.680 And I'm a car guy, man.

01:38:59.780 I like a muffler.

01:39:00.720 I'm a redneck.

01:39:01.380 I like a muffler running, you know, or I can hear it.

01:39:03.560 I love something fast, but I'm still, I'll ride a bicycle before I have a car payment.

01:39:07.520 So a car fleece, we call them, is basically the math on it is you've got the MSRP, the

01:39:14.300 manufacturer sticker price, right?

01:39:17.240 And that's what the lease is based on.

01:39:19.140 And you've got a monthly payment that where you're renting the car, you're leasing the

01:39:23.680 car.

01:39:23.860 At the end of a closed-in lease, which 98% of the leases in America are closed-in leases,

01:39:29.220 there's a buyout number.

01:39:30.820 You can buy the car if you don't turn it in for that number.

01:39:34.780 So you pay payments and the buyout number.

01:39:37.280 And the buyout number might be $9,000 and you paid $30,000 for the car, whatever, something

01:39:42.740 like that.

01:39:43.540 And you, you know, you got a five-year lease.

01:39:45.640 So you're paying payments for five years and then you get a buyout number.

01:39:48.240 So it's much like the payoff on a car if you paid it off early.

01:39:54.700 And so you can buy that car for $9,800 in our example here.

01:39:58.240 And if you run it in a financial calculator, you put it in your back and you say, okay,

01:40:02.580 my current value of the car is the one number.

01:40:07.520 The series of payments is the other number.

01:40:09.340 And the end number is $9,800.

01:40:10.880 We can ascertain that the average car lease in America is a 14.2% interest rate.

01:40:19.380 And it's not technically an interest rate and it's not disclosed by truth and lending

01:40:23.820 laws because it's not borrowing money.

01:40:25.960 So you don't get the little sheet when you, that says your APR is, that's mandatory by

01:40:29.940 the federal government.

01:40:30.780 If you buy something that has an interest rate on it, they have to give you that sheet,

01:40:34.160 truth and lending.

01:40:35.500 But you're not borrowing money.

01:40:37.560 So you never know.

01:40:38.540 The cost of capital is what it's called in lease, but it's a math formula that works

01:40:42.700 exactly like interest.

01:40:44.060 So you're borrowing money at 14% interest when you lease a car on average.

01:40:47.640 As compared to eight.

01:40:50.240 Oh, wow.

01:40:51.500 In today's world, it's almost double.

01:40:53.040 Yeah.

01:40:53.960 Yeah.

01:40:54.180 It's a high, it's a subprime rate, but it's a lower payment, less down.

01:40:58.500 And the car companies make more money on it.

01:41:00.660 So they push it like crazy.

01:41:01.700 The number one car, the number one most profitable square footage on the car dealer's lot is the

01:41:08.520 finance office.

01:41:09.760 They make a lot more money on the sale of that contract, leasing contract back to Ford

01:41:15.300 Motor.

01:41:15.720 They give them a right, they write them a check back to Toyota credit, back to Chrysler credit,

01:41:19.540 whatever.

01:41:19.860 They give them a check back to that dealer and they make more money on the spread on that

01:41:24.180 contract than they do on the actual spread of the, on the inventory item of the car.

01:41:28.280 So cars are an excuse to sell financing.

01:41:32.340 This is so sick.

01:41:36.080 Wow.

01:41:37.060 You can see why a normal person, maybe with less knowledge than you could see this all

01:41:43.000 as like a vast conspiracy to enslave us all with debt.

01:41:45.740 No, it is.

01:41:46.680 I mean, it's everybody just doing the best they can at their business and they figured

01:41:49.720 out, but I mean, Victoria's Secret figured out that they weren't in the underwear business.

01:41:53.500 In order to keep your job at the underwear store, you have to have, you have to issue

01:41:58.660 so many Victoria's Secret credit cards a month if you're the little girl selling underwear

01:42:03.200 at the underwear store.

01:42:04.360 Seriously?

01:42:04.760 Yeah.

01:42:05.460 They fire them because they're not, they're not in the underwear business.

01:42:08.840 They're in the credit card business.

01:42:10.560 Sears, boom, when it was open, made more money.

01:42:12.540 You can get thong on credit cards?

01:42:13.940 That would be, you better, or your little wait, your little waitress, your little attendant

01:42:18.680 there is not going to get to keep her job.

01:42:20.280 Well, the Sears in the old days made more money on credit than they did on anything else.

01:42:25.300 Of course, they're broke.

01:42:26.260 They had Discover card later and they sold it off for a profit and then they still went

01:42:29.860 broke, but.

01:42:30.880 Should have stayed in the credit card business.

01:42:32.500 Yeah, they should have.

01:42:36.280 Okay.

01:42:37.300 Can we zoom out a little bit from the personal to the national?

01:42:43.080 To the macro.

01:42:43.580 Yeah, to the macro.

01:42:45.000 So, our national debt.

01:42:48.880 Is it as big a problem as the personal debt that we carry?

01:42:53.100 It's a different problem.

01:42:54.600 Yeah.

01:42:55.580 It's harder to, for me anyway, it's harder to grasp exactly what to do with it.

01:43:05.120 Um, it's harder to figure out where, where there's an end game.

01:43:11.580 I have pledged, for some reason in my space, Tucker, there's always a guy, um, it's typically

01:43:18.580 a guy, not a lady, because ladies don't, for some reason, don't make this mistake.

01:43:22.240 But in the financial world, people that are in the financial world, when they get old and

01:43:25.240 they write books, they almost always take a negative that the end of the world is coming.

01:43:30.120 So, I've read 10 or 15 books that the end of the world is coming due to the national debt.

01:43:36.040 Peter Grace, the Grace Commission, studying the national debt under Ronald Reagan, wrote

01:43:42.240 a book called Bankruptcy 1984, that in 1984, the government was going to go so far in debt

01:43:48.240 that the government, that they were going to bankrupt themselves.

01:43:50.060 It was going to hockey stick.

01:43:50.860 And he makes a legitimate case with math that the world is going to come to an end, as we

01:43:54.800 know it economically, in 1984.

01:43:57.200 Did it happen?

01:44:00.120 Yeah, and there's a whole bunch of others that are noted, smart people, but it's just

01:44:05.300 something about the genre that I'm in, that people go negative when they get old, and they

01:44:09.840 always write the end of the world book.

01:44:10.960 And I promised I'm not going to, I promised I'm not going to do it.

01:44:13.800 So, no matter how old I get, I'm not going to fall for that.

01:44:16.040 Instead, I'm going to write the optimism book.

01:44:18.240 But the, um, so the answer to your question is, I do not understand why it is not having more

01:44:27.800 of a negative impact than it is.

01:44:30.500 In my mind, because, you know, I hate debt, obviously.

01:44:33.060 I've made a whole, we've had a whole discussion around this subject today.

01:44:36.060 But the, uh, I don't understand how we've gotten so far.

01:44:40.400 We're, such a large percentage of our budget now is just to maintain the interest.

01:44:45.000 Um, the trillions upon trillions, and there seems to be no end to the appetite for both

01:44:51.260 parties to just choke us to death on overspending.

01:44:55.220 Uh, the deficit is, I mean, people don't even understand what deficit means in the real world

01:45:00.020 out here.

01:45:00.760 It means that's how much you've overspent that year only.

01:45:05.140 It's not how much in debt you are.

01:45:07.020 It's how much more debt you took on that year because you're still as stupid as you were the

01:45:12.140 year before, you know, it's like, God, it's out of control.

01:45:16.000 So the, the ability for somebody to be a statesman on one side of the aisle or the other to actually

01:45:23.660 look at the American people and say, no, we're not going to do this.

01:45:28.320 We're going to bring this spending in.

01:45:30.780 It's beyond me.

01:45:31.880 Uh, so that I, that's, that's a political capital.

01:45:35.480 I don't see anybody even talking about, uh, intelligently.

01:45:39.840 Um, it's, it's a dirty little secret and, and there are, but there are people smarter

01:45:45.060 than me that think it's okay.

01:45:46.280 Uh, my, I've got a good friend in Nashville that's a world-class economist named Art Laffer.

01:45:50.920 And, uh, he helped, uh, President Trump with his, uh, tax code that he wrote, which was

01:45:55.360 a great tax code.

01:45:56.940 Um, and, uh, he was famous under Reagan for the Laffer curve, for the Laffer curve that

01:46:02.480 as you decrease tax rates, revenues rise, revenues rise because you stimulate the economy.

01:46:08.960 And it's a, it's no longer a theory.

01:46:11.120 It's a proven fact.

01:46:12.880 Um, super lefties don't like it because they, it's associated with Reagan.

01:46:16.560 But if you just look at the actual data, it actually happens under the same theory.

01:46:21.440 Clinton almost balanced the budget.

01:46:23.260 He lowered tax rates and was the closest we've come to not having a deficit in, in modern times

01:46:29.040 is Bill Clinton.

01:46:30.460 Um, because revenues went way up under Clinton.

01:46:33.120 The economy was booming and, um, and people paying taxes like crazy as a result with a

01:46:38.880 lower tax rate.

01:46:40.120 So Art says, he and I argued about this at dinner not long ago, because I'm like, Art,

01:46:45.420 I don't understand.

01:46:46.060 You're going to have to help me because I'm a hillbilly and you're like a Cambridge PhD.

01:46:49.100 Okay.

01:46:49.340 So you're gonna have to teach me.

01:46:50.860 Why is this not a problem?

01:46:52.120 He goes, it's not a problem.

01:46:53.380 It's not, I know, but that's not the answer.

01:46:55.120 It's like, I'm saying why?

01:46:57.160 And you say, cause I said, so it's not.

01:46:58.900 Totology.

01:46:59.260 So yeah, you're going to have to really talk down to me a little bit and teach me.

01:47:02.960 And, and he tried to explain it and I'm still, bless his heart.

01:47:06.160 He's, he's just so smart.

01:47:07.160 I can't, I couldn't get there.

01:47:08.480 I do not understand why it's not a problem, but he really believes it's not.

01:47:11.380 And I got, I really like him and he's really smarter than I am.

01:47:14.120 And so I'm there, maybe it's not, I don't know.

01:47:17.100 And I'm not going to write the end of the world book anyway.

01:47:18.880 So I, I do know that it represents, uh, from a person like me, a person of faith perspective,

01:47:25.980 this lack of, uh, personal discipline, this inability to deny self in order to have a greater

01:47:36.320 gain to say no to something today.

01:47:38.780 So I can say yes to my grandchildren's generation, that lack of nobility, this, this just avarice

01:47:48.200 and greed, this just every dollar, just it, and everybody just milking the American public

01:47:54.920 with these, with their spending that to me, that's just, um, it's just sick.

01:48:01.220 Repulsive.

01:48:01.620 It's repulsive.

01:48:02.620 It is.

01:48:03.180 And so, um, to me, it's a spiritual disease.

01:48:06.620 It's, uh, it's, it's, it's a, it's an indicator of where we, the people are, uh, cause we could

01:48:13.060 stop it.

01:48:14.040 We, the people could stop it.

01:48:15.460 We just vote some different people in.

01:48:17.080 If somebody stood up and said no, but no one wants your congressman or your senator

01:48:22.400 to say no to something you care about.

01:48:25.520 I mean, I mean, my grant, you're going to cut my grandmother.

01:48:28.260 You're going to kill my grandmother.

01:48:29.940 You know, no, we're not.

01:48:31.860 But the word no in an entitled culture is an evil word.

01:48:37.000 Why are other people responsible for your grandmother?

01:48:39.780 Yeah.

01:48:40.040 She's your grandmother.

01:48:41.240 Yeah.

01:48:41.400 But she's on the program and you cut the program, she's going to die, which is not, she's not,

01:48:46.320 it's all hyperbole.

01:48:48.700 But, um, you know, if, um, but I mean, what Vivek's saying, you know, you know, turn the

01:48:55.100 bowl over and dump out the alphabet soup up there, start closing a bunch of these 464

01:48:59.320 agencies that we have.

01:49:00.700 You know what payroll is?

01:49:01.640 Number one thing on any business P&L, any government P&L, number one item, largest item when you

01:49:08.420 go down the list of expenses is always payroll and you got alphabet soup up there.

01:49:13.320 So that means we've been open 200 and something years and we've averaged two agencies a year.

01:49:17.380 And in the first hundred years we had no agencies.

01:49:19.460 So that means we've averaged four agencies a year being formed and they've never closed

01:49:22.880 one yet.

01:49:23.460 So alphabet this, alphabet that up there.

01:49:26.380 And those people can spend some stinking money, man.

01:49:28.740 They make the rest of us look like geniuses.

01:49:31.020 I know.

01:49:31.900 And yet they blame us for everything.

01:49:33.480 Oh yeah.

01:49:34.560 Um, so what, okay.

01:49:36.380 So we are a couple of weeks out from the presidential election.

01:49:41.040 How do you expect, and please go in order, uh, Kamala Harris first, Donald Trump second.

01:49:46.600 How do you expect the economy to change if one is elected or the other is elected?

01:49:53.420 Kamala Harris is elected.

01:49:54.220 What changes?

01:49:56.460 Well, um, as a friend of mine says, it's hard to say without knowing, but the, that's never

01:50:03.700 stopped me, Dave Ramsey.

01:50:05.040 Uh, the, uh, um, again, uh, this is worth what you folks out there listening are paying

01:50:18.160 for it, which is nothing.

01:50:19.060 So, um, uh, and I'm an expert on my opinion, but the, uh, economics, I am sure, and I'm a

01:50:28.640 student of economics.

01:50:29.360 I've got a degree in finance.

01:50:31.240 And so I've spent my time on that.

01:50:33.380 I've spent my whole life on the subject, micro primarily, but macro is implied.

01:50:38.040 Um, but economics for sure.

01:50:40.080 We see it in the stock market.

01:50:41.400 Uh, we see it in the stuff after the pandemic with supply chain.

01:50:46.680 Uh, we see it, uh, with oil energy movement, that kind of thing, uh, is, is as much psychology

01:50:55.500 as it is mathematics because it's about expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies.

01:51:00.360 So in other words, if I believe as a small business guy and 54% of the gross domestic product

01:51:07.220 is small business produced.

01:51:08.920 Okay.

01:51:09.580 So people have 500 or fewer employees are making the decisions on over half of the economy.

01:51:13.820 And so this heating and air guy, um, or a guy that's got a financial planning services business

01:51:19.780 or a, a lady that owns a chiropractor office.

01:51:22.640 Okay.

01:51:23.680 Are they going to invest some of their profits in growing their business?

01:51:29.820 I'll open a, rent a little larger space and hire another person to work on their team.

01:51:35.860 They have to believe in order to do that.

01:51:39.060 So it is self-fulfilling prophecy.

01:51:40.680 If they think things are bad, then they take actions that make them bad because they don't

01:51:46.280 invest.

01:51:47.000 They don't hire the next person.

01:51:48.340 And instead they pile that cash in the bank account because they're looking over their

01:51:51.420 shoulder, like, like death is coming over the corner, right around the corner.

01:51:55.460 And so when people don't believe under any president that things are going to be good,

01:52:00.880 they take actions to make it worse.

01:52:02.860 When they do believe, then they create actions that make the person look like they caused something

01:52:09.060 in the white house.

01:52:09.600 And really the small business guy is the one that caused something to happen.

01:52:13.300 Um, when I was interviewing president Trump the other day, I said, you know, when you politicians

01:52:17.420 and so you've been a businessman, president Trump and a politician.

01:52:20.040 And when you people say I created jobs as a politician, it pisses those of us that actually

01:52:24.500 create jobs off because you don't create any jobs.

01:52:27.300 All you do is create an environment where we'll go create jobs.

01:52:31.140 I'll hire people at Ramsey.

01:52:33.080 If you give me more of my tax money back, art laugher, right.

01:52:36.360 And I'll hire more people at Ramsey and grow what we do.

01:52:39.700 If I think I'm safe, if I'm in a predictable environment.

01:52:44.060 That's right.

01:52:44.440 And that's what scares me about, um, uh, vice president Harris is I, I don't think there

01:52:51.580 is a solid program.

01:52:54.620 Even if I didn't agree with the program, I can't tell what it is.

01:52:58.780 And so as a businessman, you want clarity.

01:53:00.820 Her ambiguity is more scary than my disagreement with her policy.

01:53:05.360 No, I think that's true for most business.

01:53:07.720 Oh, I'll guarantee you it is.

01:53:09.460 It's if, if, but if you're a, if you're a solid Democrat and you believe in the democratic

01:53:15.340 party, okay.

01:53:16.380 And that's your thing, uh, which you're probably not listening to this podcast, but if you,

01:53:20.200 if you are, um, you know, at least, at least then you would believe that the, um, let me try

01:53:27.640 to find one in the past, uh, that was, uh, proactive, um, uh, Kennedy.

01:53:33.160 Okay.

01:53:34.080 Of course, Kennedy's economic policies are more Republican than, than our Democrat today's

01:53:38.580 world.

01:53:38.820 But find a Democrat that you disagree, that you agree with.

01:53:44.540 And even if their policies are something I wouldn't go along with, I wouldn't do that

01:53:48.760 if I was in, but at least I know what it is.

01:53:50.660 I know what the rules of the game are and I can tell then I'll be more likely to invest.

01:53:56.060 But when you take away, um, my sure footing, even if it, even if it's treacherous footing,

01:54:02.780 the ambiguity causes the economy to slow down.

01:54:05.980 And that's what we're sitting in right now.

01:54:07.660 The lack of leadership out of the white house today, as sad as it is, and as many things,

01:54:14.100 you know, we can joke about it and we shouldn't, but it's easy to do.

01:54:17.560 We can, um, we can do, but the, just the, the sheer silence and the frozen, like a deer

01:54:23.620 in the headlights for the last minimum 14 months, 15 months has frozen the freaking economy.

01:54:30.580 It's just sitting and looking at us.

01:54:33.740 And, uh, so that's what scares me more than anything else.

01:54:37.220 Even if you disagree with Trump, at least by God, you know what he's going to do for

01:54:41.600 sure.

01:54:42.080 Drill, baby, drill, lower taxes, blow up the thing.

01:54:45.800 He's going to, I'm not in agreement with president Trump on personally, I didn't discuss this with

01:54:50.440 him, but I think the tariffs thing he's overdoing.

01:54:52.500 I think the tariffs are going to cause some inflation.

01:54:55.100 I agree with some of the economists that have come out against it.

01:54:56.840 Conservative economists come out saying, don't do that, but he's going to tear up up because

01:55:00.240 he's all about the behavior thing.

01:55:01.620 I think it's a bad idea, but at least, you know, you know, if I'm buying goods out of

01:55:06.640 Vietnam right now and my business, my cost of goods sold as a businessman, if I'm buying

01:55:11.340 golds out of Thailand right now, I'm doing some production there.

01:55:14.220 I'm not.

01:55:14.720 But if you are, are you buying stuff out of India right now?

01:55:18.320 You better get ready.

01:55:19.540 If Donald Trump's in office for your cost of goods sold to go up.

01:55:22.320 And we know that, but that's a predictable environment.

01:55:25.720 Even if it's a heart, even if it's going to harm my personal little business over here,

01:55:29.360 at least I know it.

01:55:30.460 And still now I at least know what the rules of the game are and I can act.

01:55:33.840 And you can still stimulate the economy on ideas you don't agree with because they're

01:55:39.120 predictable.

01:55:39.620 The lack of ambiguity.

01:55:41.100 Ambiguity is what kills the economy.

01:55:43.500 I understand that.

01:55:44.140 It's called lack of leadership.

01:55:45.920 Now, that's what the White House can actually do.

01:55:49.140 The White House cannot create the economy.

01:55:52.600 They can create an environment where the economy grows, but they cannot create an economy.

01:55:57.540 They do not have that power.

01:55:58.660 So don't vote for somebody because Donald Trump's going to make you rich.

01:56:02.240 He's not Kamala Harris is going to make you rich.

01:56:04.860 They're not.

01:56:05.680 The laughable thing when Obama was elected, these people, now where's my free car?

01:56:09.820 You know, because these people went completely nuts thinking Obama was going to actually

01:56:13.680 hand out candy from the White House.

01:56:15.620 And that entitlement stuff is whacked.

01:56:19.460 But from a business perspective, a business man's, business woman's perspective, you know,

01:56:25.140 the advantage Trump has over Vice President or President Trump has over Vice President Harris

01:56:30.140 is that he has a very clear exacting thing that you can choose to agree with or disagree

01:56:37.500 with.

01:56:37.780 But it's an environment you can function in because it's predictable.

01:56:43.480 That'll cause prosperity.

01:56:45.940 Here's my last question.

01:56:47.460 I was having dinner with someone the other night and your name came up.

01:56:51.820 Actually, I didn't bring it up.

01:56:52.780 This person just brought you up and said, the thing about Dave Ramsey is no one I have ever

01:56:57.240 seen treats his employees better than he does.

01:57:01.960 And you have a lot of that.

01:57:02.680 That's nice.

01:57:03.160 I thought it was really nice.

01:57:04.300 It was a memorable compliment.

01:57:05.580 It wasn't just Dave Ramsey's a good guy.

01:57:07.420 It was Dave Ramsey goes way out of his way to treat his employees well.

01:57:11.480 And this was unsolicited.

01:57:12.740 He just said that.

01:57:14.080 I didn't forget it.

01:57:16.080 So I think that's true.

01:57:17.560 I've asked other people and I think I've verified that is true.

01:57:20.360 I've reported this out.

01:57:22.800 But it raised the question and bless you for doing that.

01:57:25.820 But what are an employer's obligations to his employees, do you think?

01:57:29.980 Like, well, I mean, there's legal obligations that are obvious.

01:57:37.780 I meant moral obligations.

01:57:38.700 Yeah.

01:57:39.220 And there's ethical, moral, and then there's spiritual.

01:57:42.780 And so our HR manual comes from Jesus's word that just says, treat other people like you'd

01:57:52.960 want to be treated.

01:57:55.180 And so I've got a guy on my team right now that just had a horrible accident and he's in

01:58:05.360 the hospital at this moment of this taping.

01:58:10.260 And so, okay, if my little brother worked for Tucker and he had a horrible bike accident

01:58:17.920 and couldn't come to work, probably for a month.

01:58:20.900 I mean, he's had surgeries and, you know, he's all tore up.

01:58:25.340 How would you treat, how would I want my little brother to be treated if he worked for you?

01:58:29.760 How would I want my daughter to be treated?

01:58:32.020 And so that's the way we look at it.

01:58:35.880 And so it's real simple then.

01:58:38.940 If we have the money, and lately we have had, in the early days we didn't, but if we have

01:58:46.800 the money and we can take care of somebody that needs to be taken care of, we simply do

01:58:51.600 it because it's what I'd want somebody to do for my kid or for me if I was in trouble.

01:58:56.240 Um, and it's caused us to do some pretty wacky things at times.

01:59:01.720 Uh, like what?

01:59:02.720 Um, well, I mean, like we had one team member that had cancer and they didn't work for two

01:59:09.240 years and they got paid the entire two years and now they're back on our team.

01:59:15.320 And this person recovered.

01:59:16.600 Yeah.

01:59:17.080 She made it and she's wonderful.

01:59:18.980 She's a fabulous person, by the way.

01:59:20.400 Um, and, um, everybody loves her and, um, there was no way we weren't going to take care

01:59:26.540 of her, um, while she's going through that.

01:59:28.980 And if she had passed away, we would have helped with the final arrangements, um, because she's

01:59:35.540 been with us 15 years and she's like a sister.

01:59:38.600 So we have to take care of her.

01:59:39.760 It's what we do.

01:59:40.320 Um, the, um, and the greatest now running a business for 30 years, um, the most fabulous,

01:59:52.640 uh, experience I've had is to get to walk along shoulder to shoulder with these warrior poets

01:59:58.240 and fight through the things we've had to fight through to win and to become successful.

02:00:02.740 And meanwhile, got each other's back.

02:00:05.960 Doesn't always work.

02:00:06.960 Sometimes people lie and cheat and say things about you they shouldn't say.

02:00:10.680 And, uh, sometimes they make up stories and put them in the press and that's happened

02:00:14.820 to me.

02:00:15.400 It breaks my heart, but, um, it makes me mad.

02:00:18.700 Um, but we're always going to be caught.

02:00:22.100 I don't, I'm not going to be on my deathbed and look back and go, I wish I had taken care

02:00:25.860 of so-and-so when I had the means to do it.

02:00:29.400 My life doesn't change too.

02:00:31.700 So, I mean, how selfish would it be not to do that?

02:00:33.820 And, and what the byproduct that ends up happening, and it really wasn't the motivation for it,

02:00:39.140 but from a leadership perspective, the byproduct that ends up happening is, um, this fierce

02:00:45.120 loyalty and, um, this fierce, um, desire to come to work and actually work while you're

02:00:51.560 at work.

02:00:52.820 And, um, and they take care of each other.

02:00:56.540 So if somebody's in the hospital, the number of people that, you know, on our team will

02:01:00.580 cut their grass or make sure they've got food, the family's got food, you know, the team

02:01:03.960 shows up.

02:01:04.700 When a new person comes on board, they've never seen anything like it.

02:01:07.680 Uh, five or six people from that team will show up and help them move the stuff out of

02:01:10.760 their U-Haul.

02:01:11.820 And who does that?

02:01:13.100 We do because that's the way we treat each other.

02:01:16.080 And, uh, it's other service and there's just tremendous, uh, spiritual, psychological,

02:01:21.420 and end up being financial reward because we don't have anywhere near the turnover.

02:01:25.980 Who wants to leave Ramsey?

02:01:27.300 Nobody.

02:01:28.260 We don't, I mean, if somebody leaves because they have a family situation, like they got,

02:01:31.660 one got married the other day, moved, decided they want to live with their husband in Oklahoma.

02:01:35.320 It's kind of a problem.

02:01:36.680 So, you know, it's a problem.

02:01:38.280 We lost that one, you know?

02:01:39.360 So we have some turnover like that, but we don't have normal turnover like anywhere near

02:01:43.160 anybody else.

02:01:44.480 And, uh, and we're in the types of world with broadcasting.

02:01:47.700 I mean, it's high turnover world.

02:01:49.420 Oh yeah.

02:01:49.880 Um, it's a, um, it's a gypsy world almost.

02:01:53.400 Yes.

02:01:53.760 And I mean, my producer, Blake Thompson has been with me almost 30 years and, um, one

02:02:00.320 of my best friends.

02:02:02.000 And so that's, I mean, I get choked up about it.

02:02:04.320 Yeah.

02:02:04.840 Uh, but, uh, he'd do anything for Dave Ramsey and Sharon Ramsey.

02:02:08.960 I got to tell you, man, if something happened to me, uh, I got to, I don't have any worry

02:02:13.160 about somebody taking care of one of my kids, my wife, um, those people will be there.

02:02:17.600 You built an amazing world.

02:02:21.000 God's good.

02:02:23.280 Dave Ramsey.

02:02:23.960 Thank you.

02:02:24.420 Thank you, brother.

02:02:27.160 Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson show.

02:02:29.100 If you enjoyed it, you can go to Tucker Carlson.com to see everything that we have made the complete

02:02:34.320 library.

02:02:35.040 Tucker Carlson.com.

02:02:36.700 com.

Dave Ramsey： Trump v. Kamala’s Economic Plans, & the Diabolic Tricks Banks Use to Scam You

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