Why Most People Stay Broke (And How to Break Free)

Personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. We all know what to do. We can Google and go, oh yeah, I should probably live on less than I make. And yet no one is doing it. And so it really is more about habits. And you can't create wealth unless you create the habits. And a lot of people are trying to shortcut that. They don't want to sacrifice. They don't have that, that muscle of delayed gratification. We want it now. And a lot of that is due to the world we live in. We have access to everything 24 7, all of the time. We don't want to wait. And if we can't wait a week, a week for a shipment of something we didn't need, how are we going to be able to wait 40 years to retire with dignity? And that's. People aren't thinking long term because they're barely thinking about what's happening this weekend. We got to pause and take a step back and go, what is a long term vision for our life? Because life is too short to live like this for another 20 years, which is what most people do.

Guys have to welcome the one and only George Campbell. Dude, what's going on, man?

You know, not much. I have an 8 month old, so that, that's taken up a lot of my time in the best way. And my wife recently retired from her career here at Ramsey Solutions to stay at home full time with our little daughter Mia. So that's been the big life change. That's the big season we're in.

Yeah. Well, look, I'm super excited to talk to you for a variety of reasons, but one of the things that I love about kind of what you've been doing recently is you've done the hard work and you did it in a short amount of time. You know, a lot of folks talk about getting out of debt, they talk about building a strong financial foundation, but yet they never seem to get around to it. And I'm curious to know why. Do you think they kind of put that off and put that off and put that off?

I think we have really good intentions and I think at the, at the heart of man is sort of this selfishness and desire to oppose the hard work and oppose the transformation and life change. And they go, yeah, I'll do that later, I'll save later. I'll get out of debt later. And to me, life is too short and too precious to waste it staying in debt and to waste it feeling broke. And so I see money now. As a tool instead of an obstacle. And I wanted to do that in as short of a time as possible. And so sacrifice is a part of that for a season and. But man, it's beautiful on the other side of that, you know, two year journey to get out of debt. The next 20 years can be very rich and fulfilling for sure.

I think it go, it goes for personal and business. You know, I was, I used to complain because when I started the business, I just exited recently, 25 years ago, I started with terrible credit, a quote unquote terrible credit score. Got myself in all kinds of debt. Swore to myself that I would figure out a way out of it. I slowly chugged my way out of it, which was a learning curve all itself. But then because of the bad credit, I couldn't get, really couldn't borrow money from loans and banks and all kinds of stuff to, you know, build a business. And at the time I was really, really bothered by that, you know, because here I was trying to grind it, trying to make something happen, trying to make, you know, create something out of thin air and ultimately ended up being one of the biggest blessings on my life. You know, I was at a Christian conference recently, speaking in Florida a couple weeks ago, and one of the things that came up was, you know, people were like, well, how much? How do I, how do I get money? How do I get money to start my business? I'm like, dude, you don't need that. You just, you just need grit and tenacity and, and the willingness to do it. You know, all the businesses that I built, we built off cash. Wow. You know, and you know, the largest one, you know, just, you know, we, one of our best years was just under nine figures. And you know, that's 25 year history of working off of cash. And it's interesting, when you work off of cash rather than debt in a business and a personal sense, you decrease risk but increase like stability. So how did you kind of find yourself in that same mentality? Because what you did at your age is not, is, is very uncommon.

Yeah, well, you know, I learned from the best. And Dave Ramsey has a very similar story. After he went bankrupt in the 80s, leveraging all this debt for his real estate portfolio, he built Ramsey Solutions at the speed of cash, built the building we're sitting in at the speed of cash. And with all of his real estate, I mean he'll tell you they cash flow pretty beautifully when they don't have debt attached to it, that people forget that. And the exponential, you know, growth you can have. As those wheels start turning and everything's cash flowing, you're able to do way more.

Yeah.

And so if you're just willing to have that delayed gratification, you'll see that blessing on the other side. And I found that in my personal life, when I got out of debt, it was countercultural. People were calling me crazy to, you know, cut up my credit cards and stick to debit and to not carry the car payment, instead pay cash for a simple, reasonable car. And upgrading my life at the speed of cash also gave me agency over my life, because debt is a shortcut. You really don't own anything. You didn't have to work to get it. All you had to do is keep up your stupid credit score and the bank will be happy to loan you more money. But when I had the agency to pay off my own mortgage and lose all of the chains that I had with all these lenders, I was like, what else can't I accomplish? I had this come at me, bro energy, which for a guy who's 5, 6 and doesn't work out, is saying something. I'm no Stephen.

Well, I'm five' five, so you got me by an inch.

Yes. I wouldn't take you in a fight. But there is a beauty, too. I was just talking to a debt free screamer on the stage. I hosted the Ramsey show and we had this beautiful debt free scream. And you can tell the spirit of someone who has conquered debt is the spirit of someone who can conquer anything. They can conquer any problem in their life, whether that's a physical goal, a spiritual goal, a financial goal. There's nothing stopping them because they realized how much more control they had than they thought. And that's the beauty. The underpinning of the Ramsey plan is that freedom and autonomy, agency over your life.

In this awesome book, you've got Breaking Free from Broke. One of the. There's an underlying message of it. You know, I'm a believer. I know you're a believer. I actually find it's actually a good thing. People have gotten into debt and they've gotten themselves out. And here's, here's, here's my random kind of weird thinking about it. I think you have a better appreciation of having that agency. You have a deeper level of character because you do that, which makes the work that you guys do so important. You know, I was thinking through, you know, kind of how Jesus handled sin, right? So, you know, it's. We've obviously all fallen short and, and had to kind of Repent and get back there and. But, you know, I always think about the guy that was sitting Jesus next to Jesus on the cross, you know, the head, he confessed like, I'm a sinner. I've done this, I've done this, I've done this, I've done this. Is there a place for me in heaven? He's like, you know, you'll be with me in paradise. It just makes you wonder how grateful he was for that hopeful release. And I, and I, as strange as it sounds, I see there's something.

Very ministerial, I guess is the best way to say it. It's a ministry of sorts of getting out of debt and then having that liquid resource to go and invest the proper way. Right. So talk to me a little bit.

Changes everything.

Oh, absolutely. Well, talk to me a little about compounding interest and working for us and against us, because I, you know, so one of the things I obviously the, you know, it's a huge takeaway in the book and most people are on the. Under the wrong perspective, from my perspective about what debt is and what debt is not.

Well, the way I see it, broke people pay interest, wealthy people earn it. It's that simple. And most people out there, you know, they're much smarter than me and so they feel like, well, I'm going to make the spread and I'm going to leverage the debt and, and they, they miscalculate the sort of risk meter in their brain and how much emotional mental weight that's taking up. I mean, I meet these people who are, you know, like they're trying to hack the credit card and they're trying to play all these games and they write essays about all the steps they had to take to sort of hack the system and beat it. And I go, you know, what's way less brain calories is just bucking the system.

Yeah.

When I just budget and pay cash for my flight instead of hoping I have enough sky miles at the end of the year. Yeah, it's a simpler way to live and it gives me more agency to go. I'll fly when I want to on whatever airline has the best bang for my buck instead of being beholden to someone else's game. And that's what I found with credit scores. With debt, you're always stuck playing someone else's game. There's always risk involved. And if you're a believer, I mean, the Bible never speaks positively about debt, not a single time. It says the borrower slave to the lender. It doesn't say unless you can get a 2% interest rate and make the spread. It, it doesn't have that caveat, not even in the message version. And so it's a beautiful thing to realize while people can still build wealth with debt, it's a lot riskier. And that get rich quick mentality of taking those shortcuts ends up biting them the butt in the long run. And so I, I like the tortoise versus hair mentality. I like the crock pot versus the microwave mentality. I think that's how we were created to live. I mean, Proverbs 13:11 says this wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. And so that tells me if you're moving slow, you're moving in the right direction at the right pace.

Absolutely. It's interesting that, you know the principles we're discussing today, I know they've obviously made you have a, a seven figure set enough worth. I'm in a higher, I'm, I'm in a solid net worth myself. And it's all because of the ability to only basically use what's necessary. You know, Warren Buffett said a long time ago, I think that if I, if I'm, if I'm recalling correctly, it's like it's not about how much money it makes, about how much money you creep.

That's so true. Lifestyle creep is a real issue even with six figure earners.

Yeah.

They don't have anything to show for it because their lifestyle creeps up to meet their new income.

Yeah. Well, and then, and what are you doing it for? Right. I know it's a big, you know, it's, it's funny how we feel so insecure. We feel like we have to do so much to prove ourselves to so many that really don't pay any attention to us to begin with. Right. Yeah.

That insecurity plays a huge part. Like I, I've said the, the evidence of our envy is our debt. And that's usually a flex to try to prop up this lifestyle and show someone that we've made it, whether that's a parent. Oftentimes it's, I want to prove to my dad that I'm finally the man. He, you know, there's always that toxic sort of vibe or if it's the friends you're around. And I found if you're, if you're in a healthy place and you look at yourself in a healthy way and you're around healthy friends, you can just let that, just put that down and sort of become A person of character versus a person of status.

Dude, that is such a good moment. Person of character versus a person of stature.

That's. That's hard. That's a hard one. I mean, that's a daily choice you gotta make.

It really is. Yeah. Well, I think it's easy to. In a world. And this is. I know this is a culture concept that Ramsey Solutions on the whole team, yourself and everybody tries to attack on a daily basis, which is adjusting the culture to stop wanting to go into debt just to get stuff that you can't really afford now, like hindsight being 20 20. I'm actually so thankful that God held me in a season where I had to pay cash for everything. I mean, I've been able to build my businesses based on cash. And as a result, when I've had business struggles, and if you're in business, you're going to have business struggles from time to time. I didn't have catastrophic failure, you know, during COVID We had cash reserves during the downturn in 2008. The company that I had started at that, you know, 1998 was around during that season, and we actually sequentialed in size, ironically, because all of my competitors went out of business because of all the debt that they owed on boats and RVs and houses and all this kind of.

They were over leveraged.

Yeah.

And you were the last man standing.

Yeah, yeah. And I think there's a. I think there's a truth to that. And if you handle your affairs in a fiscally responsible way, you're gonna have a lot of really good stuff. One of the things I was really happy you tackled in the book was investment traps, because I think there's a lot of different types of things that come at us in a grand scheme of way that honestly are like, I mean, how do you evaluate what you should and shouldn't do? You know, you finally save up a $10,000 and you're, you know, at the teller to get ready to pay off your mortgage and you have like. Like you don't know what to do. So let's, let's break down some of those traps.

Yeah, there's. There's so many, you know, social media hacks out there. And at the, at the root of them, I wrote about this at the end. There's these three stooges of wealth building and their fear, greed and pride. And the interesting part was I had studied all these investment traps and I went, there's a thread here. And I went, oh, there's one of these emotions driving These, and they're all toxic. They're all out of a very negative place of fear. And we see that with, you know, people buying gold. Gold is being pushed now when the economy's, you know, everything's on the fritz. Everyone needs to go buy gold or even crypto, the fomo, that's a version of fear, the fear of missing out. What if I miss out on this meme coin that ends up skyrocketing and I miss out on making a million? Right.

Yeah.

And then you have greed. Those are the day traders, the sports bettors. Maybe pride going, you know what? I'm going to be the guy who knows what he's doing. I know how to beat the house here. The house doesn't always win. And that's when people lose their butts, is when they make decisions based on fear, greed, or pride. And so cryptocurrency is one of the traps I discuss. And again, I'm not even anti crypto, but it's crazy how defensive the crypto bros are out there calling me an idiot, saying I don't understand it, just because I don't advise the everyday person to go in on it. I believe they should be investing in their 401k before, you know, the newest Sheba coin that's out there, or even Bitcoin. And so crypto is a big one. I address sports betting is another one. We're seeing sports betting addictions and gambling addictions start to pop up now as it becomes you combine the power of the smartphone on your brain with the power of gambling and then socialize that with all of your friends in sports, something that you love. That is a scary place to be. And we're starting to get more calls with people that have sports betting addictions losing big money because they thought they were going to beat the bookies. That's another one. Day trading has popped up a lot as well. You know, the penny stocks, the guys who are going to intraday trade and try to make a spread, or, you know, forex currency trading. And then gold and precious metals have come back in a big way. And then the big one I rail on in that chapter is permanent life insurance. And this one has come back in a big way. And here's the, here's how you know it's about permanent life insurance. They never mention the word insurance and it sounds too good to be true.

Yeah.

That's how you know the person behind the screen is trying to sell you life insurance as an investment scheme.

Yeah.

So this is whole life. This is Index, universal life. This is variable life. There's all forms of it. But they always pitch it as this tax free wealth strategist. You know, trust me, bro, just give me the money and I'll turn it into this. And you can, it's tax free inheritance. And they pitch all of these benefits without telling you that your money's getting eaten up with all the premiums and fees and commissions they take. And so we recommend term life for life insurance and investing for your investments. Do not mix the two. It never, like if your auto insurance was like, hey, what if you could give me more and I'll invest for you? You'd be like, that's stupid. Why would I do that? Well, that's what you're doing with life insurance. Don't mix the two. And so those are some of the big traps I'm seeing out there. And again, they, they all come back to fear, greed and pride. And I think building wealth is so much simpler than people think. Mutual funds, index funds, real estate, building a business, those are the tried and true ways.

Yeah. And one of the things I love about real estate, specifically a lot like the market and the mutual funds and whatnot, is it's a buy and hold approach. You know, there's, I own real estate. I have a huge, I have a good size portfolio in real estate, commercial and residential. Now all, all pay cash, don't own.

Amazing.

Right? So that's been a huge blessing. But when you look at the whole grand scheme of things, one of the things that I like is it's an asset, it's a fixed asset there, it has a, an assignable and in many times an escalating value. Maybe it's a declining value for a year or two, maybe we hit a bumpy economy. But if you're in a position where you're not financially strapped, where you have to have the cash to service some other kind of debt. Right. You can buy and hold and actually pick up the escalation. The commercial property, one of the commercial properties I own, I was able to pick up almost two and a half million dollars.

Wow.

In, in increased asset value just because of the market conditions. And some minor. And I did, when I say minor, about about 20% of the number I just qualified for is what I had to reinvest and just kind of re, you know, fixing things and making it look pretty and all kind of stuff.

Oh yeah.

You know, so when I, when I start looking at that, what I'm having a hard time understanding is why people choose to invest in Modalities that do have a tendency to lose. Is it because they're not doing the research? They're just following the hype from the market? They're watching too much YouTube, by the way, guys, for, you know, George show is fantastic. It's hilarious and very informative. So make sure you check it out.

So kind. It's not all trash on YouTube.

I'm on here, Georgia shows.

Awesome.

It really is. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm out here just sort of flying in the face of it all, just making people angry. So most of my engagement is just people disagreeing, but that's fine as long as we're. They're watching and having the conversation. I'm like doing the Lord's work out here.

That's right.

But I. Yeah, that's. So that's true. When it comes to, you know, assets versus liabilities, most people, the liabilities are shinier and. And sexier in a way. Right. We want the nice car with a giant payment, even though that's going to go down in value while we pay interest on it.

Yeah.

That's most people. We're just buying stuff.

Yeah.

And when it comes to assets, there's only a few types that really hold, and that's real estate and the stock market as a whole. Mm. So you just stick to those things. Your money will grow exponentially over time. And like you mentioned, you look at the home prices, you know, the values of real estate, whether it's commercial, residential from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, while it has dips, it also goes up over time.

Yeah.

We've never seen it where it stayed down and stayed there. Of course it was, you know, the 2008 crash. But, man, if you bought in 2008 during the crash like Dave did, that really jumped back up. And the sizable, you know, part of his net worth and his portfolio is because of having that position where he was in a position to buy up all of this real estate during a time when everyone had been over leveraged.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I did actually brought back a memory of one of my first mentors that taught me, you know, get out of debt principles before I had a chance to kind of catch up with Dave and Sharon a long time ago. But it was interesting because he told me that one of the best financial principles I would ever know is to understand that a bull is always chasing the bear and the bear is always trying to bite the bull. So what he meant by that is in a bull market, there's a bear market around the corner. And when there's a bear market, there's a bull market around the corner. And he basically said the wealth principle that he shared with me at that point is you have to be in a position to buy anytime there's a bear market. And you sell honestly in a bull market. If you're going to sell a different assets class, different asset classes. After the appreciation factor, do you find that being true as well?

Yeah, I mean, if you just look at the, the return of the s and P500, this is the benchmark that we use for the US stock market. You will see that most of the time we're in the green. Now that might be a little, it might be a lot. And there are those. It's kind of like this bull, bull, bull, bear, bull, bull, bull, bull, bear, bear, bull, bull, bull. And so even when the times when there was a crash, if you look at the rarely has there ever been a long period of time where it stayed down. Yeah, usually it hits record highs in the first two years. After that, you know, bear market. And so that's a very encouraging thing to go. I'm okay riding this roller coaster because I know it has a happy ending if I just stay on the ride. But most people out there, they watch too much news, they get freaked out by the economy and they go, I got to pull out all my investments. I'm going to put it in the settlement accounting cash because I'm spooked by what could happen. And then they're going, why didn't my account grow? I went, I missed out on this growth. What happened? I went, well, you pulled all your money out at about the worst time.

Yeah.

Because right around the corner it was going to climb back up. And I've seen this in my own family and it's sad to see where I go, here's why your account didn't grow. You pulled it out or you put it all into bonds because you had very little risk tolerance. And to me, as long as you're diversified with your mutual funds and index funds, you're not in single stocks or any kind of risky super volatile investments. Over time that's gonna go up. And if you keep watching it day after day, you're going to freak out. And so it's sort of the set it and forget it, only pull from it when you need it mentality versus this. I gotta have this glaring in my face.

Yeah.

You see on the news, you see the green arrow, red arrow, green arrow, red arrow. And depending on the day, you know, you might be freaking out or doing jumping jacks. Yeah, that's no way to live.

No, it's, it's a very bipolar lifestyle for 100.

Exactly.

You know, going back to some of the questionable investments and this kind of tips into some of the insurance things we talked about. A lot of folks are.

Looking at hardcore what's called infinite banking. So I'd love to, I, I, obviously I'm pretty familiar with, with Ramsey Solutions stance on infinite banking, but for the sake of our audience, would you mind giving us a little rundown of what infinite banking is? And while, while Ramsey Solutions yourself, everybody take the stance you do?

Yes. This, this ties back to that permanent life insurance scheme I was talking about. And again, there's a reason why they don't say, hey, do you want to buy life insurance? And instead they say, what do you think about infinite banking? You're like, that sounds amazing. It sounds so cool. Sign me up. All this is, is borrowing money from yourself with interest inside of a life insurance plan. And so again, you're paying giant premiums, we're talking like 10x what it costs for term life insurance in order to play this game where you borrow your own money with interest tax free, quote unquote. And so it's a very confusing way to sort of make wealth. And so the idea is you're going to borrow this money, leverage that. And this is sort of this untouchable, you know, nest egg you've built inside of this life insurance scheme, which by the way, takes decades to even build a serious cash value because of how little it grows, the terrible performance, how much of it is getting eaten up by fees. And so generally this is again pitched by these, these life insurance agents posing as, quote, wealth strategists that are trying to get you to give them massive, we're talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month that they require in order to set up these accounts and keep them up. And if you don't keep them up, they start taking away from the cash value to pay the premiums. And so eventually it sort of self implodes because you run out of money because they're getting their money from somewhere, you don't just stop paying. And so that's a really scary place. And for those that have these accounts set up, we always tell them, hey, get term life in place. Once you have term life insurance set up, cancel the whole life. And yes, there's going to be the surrender fees and you'll take barely the cash value that you accumulated. And we call that a stupid tax. But don't stay in it as part of a sunk cost fallacy.

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You are. I can't argue with that. You have me so far.

I appreciate it, thanks man. Um, but I'm, I'm John Doe in this case for sure. And you know, I'm, I've got sky miles, I got, I got, you know, I fly all the place. Delta is good to me. They always, you know, give me, you know, move me up a class and all this kind of stuff and you know, I pay my credit card off every month until. So talk to me about some of the lies that the credit card traps because again, I've, this is one of the things I've been like super anal and tum about with my kids and because they're like, well, I have to get a beacon square. I've got to do this. I'm like, no, you don't. I promise you, if you can put down 50% down on a house because you've saved your money, you've done your due diligence, you can get a mortgage, maybe not be the best thing to do, but you could do it right. So talk to us about some of the, some of the tactics and the, the lies we hear about credit cards.

Yeah, it's definitely an interconnected web as you started talking about credit score. And it's sort of this gateway drug that were sold as kids. And it's because of well meaning parents who didn't have a lot of financial literacy, who also fell for the traps. And the credit companies love that. We've all just sort of ingrained this into our minds that you need to have a credit score as an adult. So what do you do? You got to open a credit card and just make little thing, just make little purchases. And what does that do? It trains your brain to not have to use your own money and not have to use your own money instantly. And so you, we train our brains to use other people's money that we pay back later and hope for the best. And that leads to a life of more payments. It leads to having a car payment, leads to getting the student loans, it leads to taking on way too much mortgage and all of a sudden we can't pay off the balance. Everyone opens a credit card thinking, I'm never going to carry a balance. It'll be fine.

Oh, I need it for emergencies.

My miles. Right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And here we are. At the time I wrote the book, we were a trillion dollars in debt. Now we're already at $1.2 trillion in credit card debt. And in comparison, we have about 1.57 in car loan debt in America and about 1.6 in student loan debt. And so we are Rivaling the amount of car loans and student loans just in credit card debt. Yep. These are balances people can't pay off. And we found that half of the people say they can't pay off the balance in full. And those are just the people who are honest with us. So who knows the other 50% how honest they really are? And so on top of all that, you know, carrying a balance that's now at 22% APR, there's also this idea of the credit card marketing really playing games with our brain. I interviewed an ex Capital One manager who told me that these companies run 10,000 experiments on consumers every year to try to get them to spend more, to try to get them to. To get into debt, to stay in debt. And it's through all the confusing point systems and redemption. And it used to be cash back, which was simple. I could understand 2% cash back on purchases. Whoopee. Then it became, well, you get points. What is 10,000 points? I don't know. A $25Amazon gift card, who knows? They get to decide. They get to devalue it at any time. And then it became miles now. And so we see the sky miles is a big thing. Well, how much is 10,000 sky miles? Well, that gets you about a $250 flight. Okay. And we just play these games and look up and see hotel points and sky miles and cash back and think, I'm going to be the one to beat the system. I'm going to use the rotating cash back, which by the way, is usually for, you know, luxury spending, like eating out, restaurants, entertainment, not for necessities of life. Which just means we're going to encourage bad consumer spending and then give them back 5%.

Yeah, well, correct. I'm wrong with that.

That's not enough to make this game worth it.

Yeah, correct. If I'm wrong, but there's a national stat, if I believe it's like 86 or 90, 90, close to 90% of people who have basically started using credit cards who swore they'd never go out into debt or they'd pay it off before the end of the month or whatever, they end up largely in debt, paying all kinds of massive fees. Is that still holding true? Is it still in the high 80s and 90s?

Yeah, I believe that was the most recent stat I've seen, and I probably quoted one of those in the book. And what we found is that whether or not they have a balance, they're still going to pay. And I outline all the fees these credit card companies start Charging you and the late fees and the annual fees. Well, now you want to spend enough to make up for the annual fee. So you've already built in a psychological financial game where you have to spend enough to get 700 back to cover the fee that they charge you.

Yeah.

And so all of this adds to a mess of a maze and you feel like, if I get to the cheese, I'm winning. Until you zoom out and realize, no, you're a rat in someone else's maze that got the cheese. You are playing someone else's game. And so in the book, I outline all of the objections I've heard over my 11 years here at Ramsey over why people will not ditch the credit cards.

Yeah.

And I did my best to change people's minds, and it's working. One of my friends who is one of the Most, he's got 20 credit cards and I convinced him to start cutting these up after he read this chapter and he went, that was the most convincing chapter I've ever seen. Well written, with data. Not just anger and opinions, but just true data. And I hit all the mental objections and all the character archetypes that the rewards redeemer, the perfect spender, the world traveler, the fraud protector, the emergency shelter. I found. Everyone's got their own reasons. A lot of times there's three or more reasons why they keep the credit cards. One is the rewards. One is the what if an emergency happens. Another one is, well, what if I have fraud and they just think the credit card is going to make my life easier. And I'll tell you, as I've been taking calls in the Ramsey show and doing this for a while now, credit cards are not a blessing to anyone's life. You can do all the same things with a debit card, including rent a car, rent a hotel. I've even got a mortgage without a credit score. And so I didn't need any cards anymore. And so there's all kinds of ways around it. And people are like, well, that's more difficult. I'm like, you want to talk difficult? Good luck redeeming some of these freaking sky miles and points and trying to hack your way into getting a first class flight. And so they've just done a masterful job at marketing. And it's the reason why Capital One is sponsoring the Taylor Swift tour and we can't afford tickets to the Taylor Swift tour. There's a reason they have the big buildings downtown and we can't find Taylor.

Swift tour by Capital One.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so if you Think you're winning. The credit card companies love that for you. They go, absolutely, you're winning. Keep spending. You're doing great.

Well, and it comes down to human behavior, right? So that it's funny as you know, I was just thinking too that, you know, when, when Covid happened, you know, you and others in the Ramsey team were saying, hey, this is going to be a pendulum. Yeah, you're going to get some free money. Some of you guys are watching the show and listening to us, are going to take that money and get yourselves out of debt and start working on that debt snowball and really start getting your way out of it. And he goes, and the, and you guys told everybody, but I want you to be cautious that you don't get too comfortable, too complacent because when things, when the economy returns and it, and it, we knew it would, it was a matter of time. And as we start swinging back towards a, A, a healthy economy and really kind of start walking through, through things, a lot of you guys are be tempted to go back into debt because all of a sudden this job that you thought you might lose, not only did you keep because you, you added value to yourself, you were able to, you know, earn a higher wage and all this kind of stuff. Human behavior is predictable. And that's one of the things I love about the Ramsey solution teams I love about the book is you're trying to activate and change and transition actual human behavior with logic and not emotion. And I find that most of us spend money with emotion and not with our minds.

Absolutely. Dave's been saying for 30 years now, personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. We all know what to do. We can Google and go, oh yeah, I should probably live on less than I make and yet no one is doing it. And so it really is more about habits. And you can't create wealth unless you create the habits. And a lot of people are trying to shortcut that. They don't want to sacrifice. They don't have that, that muscle of delayed gratification. We want it now. And a lot of that is due to the world we live in. Things feel out of control, we're too busy. We have access to everything 247 all of the time. We don't want to wait. And we want it, you know, Amazon prime now in two hours it better be at my door. I can't wait to a week for this thing. And if we can't wait a week, a week for a shipment of something we didn't need. How are we going to be able to wait 40 years to retire with dignity and invest consistently? And that's. People aren't thinking long term because they're barely thinking about what's happening this weekend. We're too scattered and we got to pause and take a step back and go, what is a long term vision for our life? Because life is too short to live like this for another 20 years, which is what most people do.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about generations a little bit. You know, each generation seems to have its own behavior pattern. You know, X and Gen Z and all this kind of stuff. Right. What types of trends? I know because I know you guys do an enormous amount of studying. I know a normal enormous amount of analytics to make sure the data that you're providing to the market is the absolute best data and tools and techniques, Smart dollar and all these different resources. What are you seeing in the marketplace and how are you guys affecting change?

Well, you know, I've done some YouTube videos talking about the different generations and even looking at their, their debt levels, what trends they're falling for. And you know, there's, there's obviously people doing well on both sides. There's some gen zers that call into the show and I'm like, you don't need me. You need to be teaching me. You're 18 years old with $30,000 saved and you're working in the trades with no debt. You're crushing it. Then we also meet the boomer who's, you know, 64 years old, has no nest egg, and they're saying, hey, I'd like to retire. What do I do? And I'm going get a time machine and go back in time and invest. And so it's, it's hard to pinpoint this generation's crushing it. This one's not. Everyone has a different set of problems. I think the boomers are realizing that they didn't do a good enough job setting themselves up for retirement. And they're still now going backwards by taking out helocs and taking out parent plus loans for their kids that they're still paying off. And then we see, you know, Generation X largely, you know, in some of the studies, they're sort of strapped the most because they're in the sandwich generation. They're trying to take care of their parents who are now way up there in aging, while also trying to raise the kids and put them in private school and give them a better life than they had. And so they're sort of stuck in this sandwich where money's coming out both ways. They're trying to take care of the parents who didn't prepare and trying to take care of the kids so they don't screw their lives up. Then you have the millennials like me who are trying to enter the housing market in a very difficult time going well, easy for my parents to say. They've got this home that they paid 150,000 for that's now worth 700. And this homes that I want are now 5, 600. And I'm broke, strapped with student loan payments. Please, government, do something about this. Forgive the debt. And they still have the car payment that they can't get rid of. Car prices are out of control. And then of course you have Gen Z, who's kind of in a lot of ways smarter because they're looking at all the other generations going, I don't want to end up like that. Oof. I don't want to do that. But what that means is they're also trying to take a lot of shortcuts because they're real smart, they're smarter than us. They're better with technology, they're better with social media, and they have an entrepreneurial spirit where they go, I don't want to work for the man. Pension doesn't exist anymore. I got to build something for myself. And so I think we're going to see a lot of cool businesses being formed, a lot of innovation from Gen Z, but they're also the most likely to need to keep up the social facade.

For sure.

Being younger, being on social media, there's a lot of that comparisons of where are my friends at, how what does my life look like? While they also struggle with anxiety for all the normal reasons. And so they're falling for things like buy now, pay later. They're anti credit card because they're going, I saw my, my brother and sister and mom and dad go into credit card debt. That's bad. 22% APR, bad. Buy now, pay later. Okay, now we're talking. No, you know, no late fees, no interest. I can get behind this to free up some money in my budget. And so they have their own lane that they're running in and they're falling for different traps and crypto and some of the newer trends. But I think everyone's got their problems and everyone's got their pros and cons. And at the same time, I believe everyone can build wealth if they're able to just all zoom out and go, I'm going to put some blinders on and go, what does the next 10 years look like? Even if I'm 55, what does 65 look like if I can get my mortgage paid off and retire with dignity? And for the 18 year old, what does it look like at 28? If I can stay debt free, upgrade my car in cash, I might be able to pay cash for a home if I do it the right way. These are the kind of stories we actually see on the Ramsey Show. These are not fairy tales. But it starts with that paradigm shift going. I'm done playing the culture's games.

Yeah, love that. And it's also true. You know, it's funny. I'm going to tie in two things together in the last few minutes together. I want to go, I want to a little. I want to go to the college concept a little bit. And only because I didn't graduate college. I barely got my ged and I went on to build a sizable business and then, you know, recently exited. Now I'm building the next business because I like building businesses.

Hey, it worked out for you. That's incredible. It did.

But my, I guess my point is, is I'm, I'm seeing a trend that people are not as sold on going into major debt in college. And I think the ratio, last I saw was also in the high 80s where someone goes to college, they don't end up in the field that they went to college for, but they end up with a debt that goes with it. And now we've got, you know, different presidential powers saying we're going to forgive this or try to forgive that. At the end of the day, somebody's paying for that. That stuff's not, it's not free. Money didn't just evaporate into thin air. So I want to talk about a little bit about that. But I also want, if there's a way to wrap it in, I want to know also know why you chose to write this particular book in this particular season. Now, what was on your heart and your mind that you were seeing the problem you were trying to solve, if you will.

Yeah. When this all stems from people realizing that the world is broke, I think we can all agree everyone feels broke. A lot of people are broke and everyone wants to break free from that in their own way. And they have all different solutions. I think mine is the best solution because I think it works for everyone, regardless of where you came from, regardless of who you are. But the younger generations do have an aversion to, to college because they've sort of seen Their family fall into the trap of going, wait, he went $150,000 into debt for a degree that didn't have a job at the end? That doesn't make any sense. You know, they're catching onto this stuff. They, they're smart. And so they're going, what if I could just learn a trade? Or what if I could go and start a business that could produce that same amount of income without having to waste four years at an institution getting a degree that didn't have marketplace value? And so I'm not anti education. I think that college can be a great thing for a lot of people. But you got to think, is this the only way and is it the best way, as my friend Ken Coleman says, to have the career I want? And we've trained kids to only look at great schools and famous schools and what the degree is and that we haven't really trained them to think about what they're wired to do and what career that might lead to. And that's why I love the work my friend Ken Coleman is doing. Be sure to check that out. We need to be better at that piece of it for kids to then let them decide, hey, you don't need to go to college. Don't go to college because it's your mom and dad's alma mater and you want to make them proud. Joining the same fraternity or sorority, terrible reason to go. Don't go because the freaking football team or the water slide or the Michelin star cafeteria. These are also terrible reasons. Colleges do this because they know it's going to increase enrollment, increase profit, increase endowment, increase the, you know, the whole program for alumni association and all this stuff. We've got to start going to college for the right reason. We've lost sight. And I think the younger generations are realizing that and they're going, I, I've Learned more from YouTube than I have from a college course. In a lot of ways. We have access to so much information that they're going, I'm just gonna go try some things. And I think that's a beautiful thing. And that's why we're gonna start to see way more entrepreneurs pop up and we're going to see education shift. And I think it's. It's due time.

Yeah.

And that's. That steps into why I wrote this book. In this time, in this season. I was tired of seeing people, number one, feel hopeless when it came to building wealth in America. Because my story, coming from an immigrant family, very middle class, outside of Boston, Massachusetts, going from $40,000 in debt to net worth millionaire under 10 years as a W2 employee. I went, oh my gosh, this. I'm like very average. I'm like the average dude. I'm not a prodigy. I didn't do anything fancy. I just invested in my 401k. I knocked out the debt, got an emergency fund, you know, met my wife here, got aligned with my spouse on money goals and we just built wealth together. And there's no real. See it's, it's kind of boring. And you kind of go, wait, that's it, there's gotta be more. No, we got, we worked on our careers, we got promotions. She now stays at home with our daughter. And that was a decision we got to make because of the way we set ourselves up.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people, they see money as an obstacle. And I wanted to see, I wanted them to see it as a tool. And if they could break free from broke and buck this toxic money system that is surrounding us with heavy duty marketing, with tons of debt traps, man, if we could rise above that and build wealth and become people of character, that's what it's all about. And that's why the intro of my book at the very front title page, I have the fruits of the spirit verse on there.

Genesis.

I think that's, that's really who we want to become. We want to become people who have self control, who are generous with our time and our resources, who have confidence and peace about the future, who have serenity. And I think money, if we can, if we can talk about money, we can stop talking about money.

Yeah.

And so if we can just talk about it and have you deal with it, then it just becomes a tool to use instead of a thing to complain about. And that's the beauty. That's kind of where I end the book is talking about hope versus cynicism. And who do you want to become? What life do you want to lead? And stop letting money become an obstacle. I'm tired of it. I think we were made for more than that. And regardless of your generation and where you came from, you can all grow in this area. We have control. We have more control than we think, man.

As I was thinking, the concept of let's just talk about it, we can stop talking about it. That is a such a pivotal principle. And life, truth in marriage, finance, all of it. How much of stuff is unresolved conflict? I know it's a principal mantra, you know, to get rid of conflict resolved as quickly as possible. Well, I don't talk about it. Yeah, 100%. And I know we're, we're basically out of time, but I want to encourage the audience right now to go and get a copy of the book. I actually would like to encourage them to get a few copies of the book. And here's why. We all know someone who's under financial stress and duress. We all know someone you know, and a lot of our audience is very successful in entrepreneurship category and probably have done pretty well in some wealth and some wealth building. I'm sure there's room for improvement. We all got room for improvement. But at the same time, we all know people who are coming to us. You know, people that, you know, have managed to build some, some solid net worth and be debt free and have some cash on hand where, where people are trying to borrow money and like, you know, it kind of makes you feel. Anyway, long story short is I would encourage everybody to grab the book. I just wanted you to get a couple. For people that, you know that are also in a financial duressful season, I actually feel like that's the greatest service of love that you guys can do. And for everyone watching, I also want you to go check out George's show on YouTube. I'm telling you, it's not your normal YouTube show. It is fun, it is energetic, and it is full of valuable information, dude. So, George, thank you so much for being on the show, brother. I really appreciate you. Love you, man. And if we can support you in any way, just let us know.

Thank you. Well, thank you for helping me spread the word. And you are a pro what you do. And congrats on all the success. It's well deserved.

Thank you, my brother. Chat soon.

Have a good one.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. I think hard times are coming, which is great. It's motivating. And it's not a time to get fearful or scared. It's a time to prepare.