Transcript of Dave Ramsey: Get Rich and Stay Rich, Financial Decisions That Help You Build Wealth | Finance | E388

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I think it's an excellent time to be in business. I am so excited for a 25-year-old entrepreneur right now. You're going to make some mistakes, you're going to stub your toe, you're still going to get a bloody nose. Oh, well, have at it. Do it anyway, man. But this is the best time in human history.

Personal finance expert, host of The Dave Ramsey Show.

His name is Dave Ramsey.

Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey.

It was going to be the real estate guy. We had $4 million worth of real estate, and we lost it all. We lost everything. We were bankrupt, and we figured out that what we've been doing obviously didn't work, so we needed a new plan. I don't borrow money, period. 100% of the time, debt equals risk.

The argument is, especially for high earners, is that you can pay off your credit cards. A lot of people are really interested in points. Why is that still a hard line for you?

There's tons of data, tons of pieces of research out there that show that a credit card versus cash is 12 to 21% more spending. If you add to it, Oh, I'm getting points, then I'll even increase my spending yet more. So you gave up a dollar to get a penny?

What do you feel is the biggest money mistake that younger people do right now?

You grew up with this thing in your hand your entire life. It's a magic wand. You could push a button and anything happens. What that gives you guys is your abundance thinkers. You think anything's possible because anything has always been possible. And that's the good part. The bad part is...

Yap, gang. More income doesn't automatically mean more wealth. In fact, some of the highest earners are also the most financially stressed. So what's really going on? Well, I got the opportunity to fly down to Nashville and ask Dave Ramsey in his home studio this very question. In this conversation today, Dave breaks down why making money and building wealth are two completely different skill sets. We unpack the behavioral traps that keep high earners stuck and the simple time-tested principles that create lasting wealth. By the way, Dave first joined us on episode three 44 last year, where we talked all about how to build and scale a business that lasts. That was an incredible conversation. If you're an entrepreneur, you need to listen to that one. And we are replaying that conversation this Friday, so make sure you check it out. And if you're new here, take one second to follow us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app so you can keep listening, learning, and profiting. Dave, welcome back to Young and Profiting podcast.

I'm honored to be with you again.

I am so excited for this conversation. I'm so happy that we're getting to meet in person. I got to spend an hour with you already. Our first interview was amazing. We're going to play it again on Friday, so everybody gets your background stories, so everybody hears about your latest book, Build a Business. But today, I really want to focus on money problems for high earners because most of my listeners earn over $125,000. They're usually between the ages of 35 and 45. And so I've got a lot of high achieving people tuning in. And a lot of these people, they know all the steps, they know your baby steps. They've listened to you for years and other financial advisors, but they still don't change. So why do you think people change even when they know the roles, they have the knowledge?

I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know why I still eat too many donuts. It's the same thing when I know it's not going to help my figure. People don't change because they don't have a real reason to change. They don't think it's worth the effort. It's worth the sacrifice. It's a pain gain thing. Is there enough gain for the pain if I've got to engage in this? And so we tend to take the easy button. We to go the easy route. I think it's just human nature. I'm the same way. I do the same thing. If I don't make myself stop and as an intellectual act of the will say, Wait a minute, I need to make better decisions on this particular subject. So I get a better result. People, you don't normally do that. It's an act of the will.

Now, I know that you're really known for hard lines, right? You take hard stances, you've got hard rules. Why do you think that you're so absolutist in this way in your thinking of having these hard lines? Is it because of the things that have happened to you personally or because of all the callers that you've heard over the years, thousands of people, and just knowing what's best for people?

Well, any hard line I take with anyone is because I believe that's what's best for them. I'm not doing it just to make a stand. I'm saying, if you were my best friend, if you were my little brother, my little sister, this is I would tell you to do. And so that's not ever changed from the day we got on the air. And there are some tactical things that we don't take hard lines on. But then there's some principles and some processes that are now proven. And so I've got eight grandkids, and if one of them is standing on the edge of the roof, I need to take a hard line because the law of gravity works every time, and it's going to cause harm to them if they don't get away from the edge of the roof, and I love them, and I don't want them to get hurt. That's a hard line, but the law of gravity is a principle. We can count on it. There's a principle that when you give all your money to City Bank or you give all your money to Ford Motor Company, you don't have any money.

That's what debt does. It steals your most powerful wealth building tool, which is your income. That's a principle, and I don't really need to think about that anymore. It was certainly influenced, then initially, when we started teaching this stuff almost 40 years ago, when we went broke. Yeah, that influences it. But these days, it's more influenced by tens of millions of people that have followed what we asked them to do, and it caused a positive result. They've succeeded because of it.

Yeah. I know that you were on the show before. You talked a lot about your financial collapse. But for those who don't know about what happened to you personally, do you mind just going into it a little bit and then telling us some of the big lessons that you learned from that period?

Well, I've got a degree in finance and specialization in real estate. I was going to be the real estate guy. I started buying real estate and nothing down, flipped this house before Chip and Joanna were born. We've been doing this a long time. I went broke because I was so highly leveraged. I borrowed so much money, and the bank called our notes. We had $4 million worth of real estate, and we lost it all, starting from nothing. I was 28 years old at the bottom, and brand new baby, a toddler, and a marriage hanging on by a thread. And we lost everything. We were bankrupt. And in the process, I had met God on the way up, and I got to know God on the way down. And someone said, Hey, here's what the Bible says about money. Now, that was weird to me because I was a hell-raising beer-drinking hillbill. And what the Bible got to do with money. And so I'm looking at these Proverbs, and they sounded like my grandmother, like live on less than you make and have a plan. And basic common sense. I started living our lives that way.

And just because we figured out that what we've been doing, obviously, didn't work. So we needed a new plan. And then we started sharing it with some people, and that was 30 years ago.

Yeah, and that's how it all started. Like I mentioned, you're really known for these hard lines. I feel like because we've already talked before for an hour, then maybe I can push you on these hard lines a bit, tell you what other people say against them, and you tell me why you feel they're still a hard line, or if over the years, you've conceded on this hard line. Okay. Sure. Let's start with no credit cards ever. Now, the argument is, especially for high earners, is that you can pay off your credit cards right away, pay off the full balance. A lot of people are really interested in points, especially Gen Z, millennials. We're all about our points, getting free travel, free hotel, free flights. Why is that still a hard line for you?

The The reason is just the data doesn't say that it works. There's two major problems with that. 78% of the airline miles are never redeemed. Hello?

Yeah.

The data tells us, any of us that do any digital marketing, and I've got a large firm, and we do a lot of digital marketing, we know that friction decreases spending. If it's harder to navigate the website to buy, you lose people. They abandon the cart, right? And so you abandon purchases where there are friction. The less friction there is, the more increase in spending there is. And there's tons of data, tons of pieces of research out there that show that a credit card versus cash, nobody carries cash, right? But a credit card versus cash is 12 to 21 % more spending. And if you add to it, Oh, I'm getting points. Thank you, Samuel L. Jackson, I'm getting points. What's in your wallet? Then I'll even increase my spending yet more. There's even examples of that in the commercials. They're advertising, Oh, I'll pay for this for you, so I get the points. You gave up a dollar to get a penny? How's that an increased wealth? And then the second piece of this is, so you do increase spending is the biggest problem because it's less friction. And let's go all the way over to Apple Pay.

You don't even see an expenditure. It's just you wave a wand and stuff happens, right? And so that's the ultimate and psychological lack of friction. And so you're going to spend more, you're going to spend more, you're going to spend more. It's easy. Just wave a wand, wave a wand. I do, too. I mean, we were on a cruise the other day, Sharon and I, my wife, and your room key buys everything on the boat, right? Because they don't have any transactions, not even your credit card, not even your debit card, not anything, no cash. I'm just buying stuff, and I'm like, I teach this, and look at what I'm doing. It's crazy. Anyway, that's the thing one. Then the thing two is there's no credible data that says using points causes wealth. As a matter of fact, we did the largest study a millionaire has ever done at Ramsey Research, 10,167 of them. The number of them that said, I became a millionaire because of my points is zero, none. It's a game, and you're playing with a multi billion dollar company who has more algorithms tracking your behavior patterns than you can even imagine.

And believe me, they're not coming out on the short end of this.

The consumer is. Now, what about credit cards for a business, for a company? How do you feel about that?

I use debit cards here. We've got about 85 people inside Ramsey that have a Ramsey debit card, like a company card. And so they spend it and it comes out of the account. The debit card does every single thing the credit card will do. Some debit cards even have points with them now. Some of them even have airline miles and stuff. But I'm not going to chase pennies with dollars. The logic of that, I get 2% back, so you spend $100,000 and you got two grand? How does that equate to wealth? It doesn't. It's bad math.

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I interviewed Michael McAlowitz recently, if you're familiar with him, and he taught me about something called the Parkinson's law, which basically, as hirners get more money, when they have more money in their bank account, they just end up spending more because visibly they can see more money. Do you think it's the same thing with credit cards? If you know you've got a $20,000 limit, then suddenly...

It's out of sight, out of mind. It's the same. Parkinson's law applies to closet space, too. In your home, if you have an empty closet, it's going to fill up. There'll be some junk in there in about 10 months. So your garage does the same thing. So that applies to everything. There's this sense of that. The way we've seen it, in the old days, when I first started doing this on talk radio back in the day, we would have someone call in and say, Hey, I got a $300 a month raise. How'd you celebrate? I bought a $400 a month car payment. That's Parkinson's law, too. It's the same thing. If it's there, I have to spend it. Yeah, I do agree with that. I think you got to watch that. There's an interesting thing with the credit card, too, that goes with the same thing. Again, no one spends cash. I actually use cash sometimes. I'm a cash guy. I'm an old guy, so that's possible. I understand everybody's not going to do What's interesting is if I'm going to buy something, I hand you money, you keep it, and I get the item.

It's like when you're a little child, you're trading toys. It's interesting It's an interesting visual that when you hand someone a card, even if it's a debit card, they hand the card back and you get the thing. Isn't that an interesting visual? There's no trade took place.

Yeah, that is really interesting. It It really makes you feel like you're not really giving up anything to get it.

Exactly. That's the frictionless problem we're talking about. Yeah.

Okay, so another hard line, which is on the same line, so we don't have to spend too much time on it, but there's no such thing as good debt. So even mortgages on a house. You believe there's no such thing as good debt?

Eventually. I mean, we don't yell at people for taking out a mortgage on our programs and in our processes. I don't borrow money, period. I've never borrowed any money since I went broke. I built everything with organic cash along the way 100%. It means I had to go slower than some people. I'm not as big as some people, but I'm fine with that. I'm not going to lose it either. The thing that we don't equate with debt, hardly anywhere in our society or in this discussion is 100% of the time, debt equals risk. Little debt, little risk, small interest rate debt, Small debt, little risk. Big debt, big risk. But people don't think about it. They only talk about debt as if there's one possible outcome, and it's a positive outcome. We always laugh and say, We've done detailed research, and 100% of the foreclosures occur on a home with a mortgage. If you want to destabilize your retirement, go into retirement with a mortgage. Think about it, because you're 80 years old now and you got a house payment. You're 78 years old, you got a house payment. This is not a plan. Again, referring back to that millionaire study, we found basically two things that caused people to get their first $1-$5 million dollars in networth.

It was a well-funded retirement plan, taking advantage of good mutual funds and compound interest. And that'd be seven, $800, $800, maybe after 10 or 12 years of working on it hard, and a paid-off five, six, $800, $900, $1,000 house. Those two things combined, the number of them that had paid off houses as a big component of their first million dollars was huge. There's a correlation between it and wealth building.

That makes sense. To that point, you don't believe that you should have any debt into retirement. Once you retire, you should be totally debt-free.

It's the best way, obviously, to have a stable situation. Because the number of times I talk to someone that they've got a mortgage, and then they've run through their nest egg, and now they got a mortgage, and they're trying to figure out How are they going to support that? It's devastating.

Yeah. Okay, good advice. Okay, one more hard line. Debt snowball over avalanche. The argument is that avalanche method could actually help you save more money, whereas you prefer the snowball method, which pays off the smallest balances first.

Right. The avalanche method pays off the highest interest rate to smallest interest rate, which is purported to be mathematically advantageous. Then the debt snowball pays off the smallest debt to the largest debt, which is a feedback loop, because personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. We started the discussion with, why don't people do this? Because they don't get positive feedback. If you go to the gym for three months and you don't lose weight, and your goal was to go to the gym to lose weight, you quit going to the gym because you got no feedback loop. Okay, so the positive on the debt snowball is the feedback loop. I pay off the little one, it's like, whoa, and then I pay off another one, like, whoa. And hope starts to kick in. And as you get more excited, you'll sacrifice even deeper, and the math gets better and better and better. But here's the big problem with the avalanche, and people saying it's mathematically advantageous. It's actually not. Because if you're going to do the real math on it below the surface, you have to say, what's the probability of completion? Probability of completion because of the feedback loop with a snowball is way higher than the probability of completion on the avalanche.

Most people don't finish it because they don't get positive feedback. If you add in probability of completion, then you got a high probability of completion versus a low one. You put that in the math, which is an actual proper sophisticated way of looking at the mathematics, then you would say, Oh, that snowball is actually mathematically advantageous.

Yeah. Well, you must be onto something because you've helped millions of people at this point get debt free and become financially free. I have a theme for this episode. I'm calling it Mo Money, Mo Problem. Back to the fact- I like it. That my listeners are doing really well. They're high earners. A lot of them are entrepreneurs. They're earning well over six figures, some of them a million dollars a year or more. I want to go through some financial scenarios that a lot of high earners might be facing, not just people who are in... I don't think my listeners are in so much debt and things like that. I think they're just worried about the right moves to do now that they actually have money. The first scenario I have is a 35-year-old person works in tech. They're making $300,000 a year. They've got a really high paying executive job. Their lifestyle is built around their high paycheck, but they see layoffs happening. And they're worried that one day suddenly, their high paying job will just go away. So what do you think their plan should be? How should they prepare knowing that job security today is an issue?

Well, job security is always an issue. Yeah. Well, job security is always an issue. You don't want to fall for what we call the myth of continuity. The myth of continuity is because it's been this way, it's always going to be this way. It's not. It's not always going to stick there. It doesn't always... It's going to change. It's going to be better or worse 100% of the time. I think you need to work a plan that works when times are good and when times are bad. That's the advantage of the Luddite Ramsey plan. The Ramsey plan is just so grandma basic. Live on a lesson you make, have a written budget, always be generous, always have an emergency fund, get out of debt and stay out of debt. If you're doing that and you make 300K and you got an emergency fund, you don't have any payments, You're okay. You're planning and you're investing for your future and you're generous. You're going to be okay and you have prepared properly. Oh, by the way, that works if you don't get laid off, too. You'll still end up with a bunch of money. It works out great.

Yeah. How should you suggest that somebody who makes 300 grand a year budget? What should their steps should be in terms of creating a sustainable budget?

The only budgets that work is the married couple works together and they both have a vote and they both agree to it and stick to it, and you develop the plan before the month begins. We call it a zero-based budget. That's where you take your income before the month begins, and you give every dollar an assignment, every dollar a name, down to zero. Now, we're not talking about your checking account balance, we're talking about your budget. So if you've got $25,000 coming in a month, the $300,000 plus or minus taxes, right? But if you got that $20,000 coming in, then we're going to put $20,000 at the top of the page, and we're going to give Every dollar, an assignment. Every dollar, a name. That's why we named our budgeting app Every Dollar. And then we're in agreement, and then we stick to that. And all you're doing there is being intentional. John Maxwell used to say, a budget is people telling their money what to do instead wondering where it went. And so we run about a $300 million company here. Every profit center has a budget. Before the month begins, before the quarter begins, before the year begins, we lay out rolling 12, rolling 18, what we're projecting revenues to be and where they're going to go and what the resulting profits are.

And then we manage to that budget. We manage to that. And that's what you do in a household. And so we always say, if you work for a company called You Incorporated, and you manage money for YouIncorporated the way you manage money for you now, would you fire you? I would fire somebody here if they have budget PnL responsibility and they don't do a budget and they don't stick to it. They just willy-nilly go do whatever they want to do and Impulsa Porsche. You just can't operate that way and be successful. It's an intent. Winning is an intentional act, and budget is where we become intentional with our money.

Yeah. Now, I know a lot of earners, high earners, as they start to break $500,000 a year, a million a year, they might lose sight of needing a budget. They might feel like, Well, I make so much money. I don't need a budget anymore. Do you feel like there's any problems with that thinking?

Yeah, because it's just chaotic and wasteful is what ends up happening. You're not going to go broke because of it. You're making a million dollars a year and you're spending like a crazy person. That's fine. You're probably going to be okay until you quit making a million. But the problem is you just didn't get the best squeeze for the juice, right? I mean, you didn't get I don't want to make that money and look up 10 years later and have nothing to show for it. That would be like having a hangover. It would be awful. I want you to win. I want you to get the most out of this as possible. All a budget is, again, is a spending plan. It's not that to be restrictive. It's just you're telling your money what to do, and then you stick to what you want to do. It's your deal. You decide. And the same thing is true in a company. And so if we were running, instead of a $300 million company, if we were running a $3 billion company, we wouldn't say, Oh, we don't need to do budgets now.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's take this scenario. Somebody has been making a lot of money in their 30s. They haven't been saving that much. They haven't thought about retirement. They hit 40, and they realize they only have a couple of hundred grand for retirement saved, even though they've been making a whole bunch of money in their 30s. What should they do next?

Well, obviously, you got to play some catch up. And there's some urgency, but not panic. I love urgency because it gets people moving. It gets me to change. I like urgency in my own life. I think it's a good thing. So let's just, again, the framework we always use, and you're aware of this, is the baby steps. And so we're going to make sure you're out of debt, have an emergency fund. Once you've done all that, then let's start socking some money away. Let's start putting 15% of your income away. If you're 40 years old, you make an average income, and you start putting 15% of your income away, plus or minus match in a good Roth IRA and good mutual funds that give you market rates of return, you're going to be a multimillionaire easily in 25 years, mathematically. But you've got to do it. You can't just talk about it. It's not theory. The number one problem with retirement planning and retirement investing is not what people put money in. It's that they don't put money in. You got to put money in there. There needs to be some money in there. It's a pretty simple math thing.

That's what you've got to gear up here is just get some urgency and start. We got to start socking some money away. We got to get this 401k jacked up, and we got to learn a little bit about this and have some motivation and quit spending like we're in Congress. Yeah.

Okay, last one is about taxes. Somebody owns a business, they're making, let's say, $5 million a year, and they become obsessed with saving on taxes. They're like me, they move to Austin to try to save on taxes, and so much of their decision-making energy around their business is saving on taxes. What's your thoughts about that?

You have to, in business, make first good business and economic decisions. While you're doing that, if you can do that in such a way that it saves on taxes, fine. But if you do something to save on taxes, and when people get obsessed with this, this is what we do. I've done it, too, in the past, not in a long, long time, but I used to do it. If you get obsessed with, I hate taxes so bad that I'm going to do this to save on taxes, but it's stupid. It's bad business. It's a bad financial decision. I won here, but I lost 10 over here. That's a bad idea. An example of that is the simple buying something that is not needed because you can write it off. Well, if you spend $100,000 on an item that is that is expensive in that calendar year, depending on the category of the item, but let's call it expensive, and you're in a 25% tax bracket, you save $25,000 in taxes. You don't save $100,000.

Yeah.

But you bought $100,000 worth of stuff you didn't need. So you gave up $100,000 to save $25,000 because of your obsession with taxes. I mean, your accountant said something stupid, like you need a write-off. But you don't need a write-off that bad to trade a dollar for a quarter. Yeah. That's dumb. And that's a very simplistic way of that motivation of tax savings getting out of hand. I've seen a lot of small business people do that. Oh, I bought this because of my accountant said, I need to write off. No, not if you don't need it. All expenses coming off the bottom line or coming out of the PnL of a business should be looked at through the lens of, I need a return on that investment. Oh, and I can write it off. Not zero return on investment, but I get to write it off. That's a dollar for a quarter. Don't make that trade.

Yeah. I find myself thinking about taxes and making these decisions all the time.

I hate them. I get really angry at that time of year. It's really hard for me. I hate it. But I still have never been able to wait. This idea, it always makes me angry, too, when people say, Oh, the rich pay no taxes. I'm pretty rich, and I pay a lot of taxes. I don't know who those people are. I haven't been able to get out of it. We're very diligent and very careful. We try to learn any The techniques we can, but it has to first be economically, give me a rate of return on the investment from a business expense perspective, then it's a good tax move. Not it's a good tax move, and it sucks over here.

Yeah, makes sense. I feel like that was super helpful for everybody who's a high earner or has a business. Now, I also have listeners who are wanting to be high earners. They're Gen Z, they might be taking their first job, they're in college. What do you feel is the biggest money mistake that younger people do right now?

Well, the Gen Z and millennials, we've got a thousand folks on our team, and probably 700 of them fall in that category. And so I have become a huge fan of those two generations. And part of it is from a business perspective and from a career and earning perspective. So here's what you've got at your advantage. If you're a Gen Z or a millennial. You grew up with this thing in your hand, your entire your life that's a magic wand. You could push a button and anything happens. Stuff shows up on your porch. You can access the world's knowledge. You can do anything with it, find out what the weather is, dodge a tornado, whatever it is. It's all right there in your hand. And so because of that, that's not native to my generation. That's native to your generation. And what that gives you guys is your abundance thinkers. You think anything's possible because anything has always been possible. I just wave this wand and stuff happens. It's amazing. You really, gosh. That's the good part. The bad part is sometimes what goes with that, and to answer your question long form, is impatience.

I want it right now because I've always gotten it right now. You don't get good barbecue out of the microwave. Good barbecue has to be cooked a long time, like all weekend. I mean, you're in Austin, Texas. Good barbecue, right? They There's no such thing as microwave barbecue that's good. That's not a sentence anywhere. And so look at your career like barbecue. You got to cook it. It's going to take a while. It's not going to be instant. It's going to be sometimes frustratingly slow, and especially if you're used to not things being slow. Just guard against that. And that's normal immaturity, whether you're 55 or 25, the ability to delay pleasure for a greater good. But it's amplified in this case, and it's not immaturity, but it's amplified by this fact that your reality has been, things are quick. Yeah. And quote, unquote, easy button. Building a good career, building a brand, a depth of knowledge. You've been at this seven years. Yeah. You're kicking it, girl. I'm so proud of you. You've done such a great job. Everybody knows who you are. You're blowing up. But seven years, not seven minutes. You show up all the time, and you're sharp, and you're on it day after day, time after time.

Every time we turn it on, we get the same girl, right? Same lady. That's why you're winning. It's this persistence over time.

Now, you mentioned that you have eight grandkids. Are you worried about AI and technology? Do you worry about their careers and their ability to get That experience, given that AI might be taking a lot of these entry-level jobs.

No, I think AI is fabulous. Ai is... I wasn't worried about the internet when it came on, too. I started before the internet, right? So I wasn't worried about that. I wasn't worried about when cable TV came on. It didn't bother me. Every one of these things represent opportunity. There's going to be more AI millionaires in Gen Z and more AI millionaires out of millennials than any group of millionaires we've ever seen because they're going to take it as a tool and learn how to use it. It works for you. You don't work for it, period. If you just look at it as a tool, it's like, am I worried that Henry Ford started making cars and so we don't have to ride in a horse and buggy? No, it means I can get to someplace faster. I can deliver my goods and services faster. It's called a business It's a great opportunity, man. Let's get with it. This is efficient delivery mechanisms, right? And efficient work mechanisms. Now, if you're doing something that AI does now, you may need to do something different and make it work for you instead of it replacing your job.

But hey, welcome to the world. I mean, if you used to make whips for horses and bridals for horses, you had to get a new job because Henry Ford put you out of business. And so, yeah, that's cool. But yeah, AI is wonderful. The thing I do worry about with my grandkids is the access to evil. That the phone and that the AI, it gives a gateway into children's lives of evil that shouldn't be there. Tell me more about that. Well, we end up with stuff like sex trafficking, and we end up with people being groomed, and we end up with 12-year-olds bullying each other, and the misuse of these wonderful technologies, the evil misuse, and some of it's just so horrendous. We have to teach our kids to not get addicted to screens and to not think that everything on there is what it says it is, because most of it isn't. Most of it's a lie, including your Instagram reel, because your life's not really that pretty. None of it is. I see me in the morning, my hair doesn't look this good. That whole thing. We got to teach the kids What's real and what's artificial intelligence?

Artificial sweetener is different than sweetener. We have to teach some good spiritual and philosophical foundations for those kids to not become victims of this. I do worry about that with the little ones in particular because there's some real nasty stuff out there.

Yeah. Well, hopefully it all works out and kids get educated on how to tell what's AI versus what. I'm sure that will be part of school moving forward because it's going to be such a big part of our lives.

I think you guys will catch on faster. It's my generation. I had a thing pop up on AI on me the other day, and then it's a fraudulent thing of me saying something I don't say.

A view, actually, a video of you?

Yeah, it's a video of me. It's not even really good. It looks like a kung fu movie. It doesn't match, right? The words don't match, but it went everywhere. My 65-year-old friends are emailing my wife going, What did Dave say that on Facebook for? Dave didn't say that. They're more susceptible and naive I think for your generation, your generation is naturally cynical for good reason about... You're like, Is that real? Immediately, first thing goes into your mind, which is awesome. I think you're protected that way.

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It's as simple as that. They have over 200 eligible subscription types, and it's usually done in 3-7 business days. If getting your money tight is part of your growth plan this year and you don't want to manually have to do it, this is your move, young in profitors. Get started with the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions are eligible. Savings, not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected account required. See experian. Com for details. Would you give us the lay of the land of Ramsey Solutions?

What are the different revenue generators? Where are you guys making the most money right now with all your products and offers?

Consumer-facing, the fastest growing thing is the EveryDollar app. It's exploding. We've spent an amazing amount of money, time, effort, intellectual calories on it, iterating it and building it and we do every day. We're going to every day making it better. It's going nuts. The broadcast properties is what we call them, but they're not really broadcast. We still have a talk radio show that is also on YouTube and also on podcast, The Mothership, so to speak, The Ramsey Show. Those things through all the different platforms we're able to monetize with ad revenues, it's pretty substantial. That revenue We still have a lot of talk radio revenue. There's still people listening to talk radio. I don't know where they are, but they're out there. That revenue is still very real, and we still got one of the largest talk radio networks. That stream is still there. I don't know how long it's going to be there. I don't think in 10 years, it'll look the same. But the Spotify's and YouTube's of the world have had a huge impact. We're on everything, and we're monetizing it with ads and with product delivery mentions integrated into show notes and integrated into the show bodies and so forth.

We have a high school curriculum that has been taught now in 48% of the high school, 7 million students have been through it. Oh, wow. It's continuing to grow. There's a real move in that world to adopt. The adoption process to adopt curriculum in high schools has been a mandated by the states and 38 states to teach personal finance. Oh, wow. And we're the premier curriculum in that, the best by far. And so that's continuing to grow. Thank goodness, because that's a great thing. If you can get this stuff in high school. Obviously, we've got the publishing arm. We're still putting out number one best selling books every year and have for decades. It's not a huge percentage of our revenue, but it's still a great brand mix and a great tip of the spear, so to speak, as we go forward. We've got a thing called Smart Dollar that is our corporate HR benefit to teach our lessons. It's like the old Financial Peace University, But taught in corporate America. And so like U-Hall has done it, Costco is doing it, companies like that, and a lot of small and medium-sized companies are buying that.

And that's a massive thing. It's real quiet, but it's because it's B2B, so the consumer doesn't really see it that much. But it's really massive and really moving. And then our Entree Leadership brand has exploded. It's gone crazy. We coach about 10,000 small businesses, one on one on how to run a business. It came out of the old book I did about 15 years ago called Entree Leadership. That was how we ran our business, and we started teaching other people how to do it. I love entrepreneurs, and I love small business people because I've been one my whole life.

Yeah, Yeah. Now, I learned, I was listening to some of your interviews that you've done recently, and I heard you say that the radio show lost money for 10 years or something like that. It was not making money for many years. So how do you think of certain aspects of your business that actually don't make money? And can you talk about some of the biggest lead generators that might not really make money but are still important to your business?

Well, that's exactly what was a lead generator. And so we didn't look at it as... We did look at it as a PnL that was losing money because I wanted to fight through and actually get some ads sold to cover the cost of running this thinking thing. But it took forever. But the reason We kept doing it and didn't close it. If we had another business unit that was doing that, we might close it. But it was generating all the leads. We were generating best-selling books because of the show. We were generating arenas full of people because of the show. We were generating all these other things because of the show, because talk radio in those days was in a zenith. It was like a podcast today, like one of the top podcasts. We were one of the top talk radio shows. That's why we kept it going. Now, we've had other areas where we lost money, but it wasn't generating any, it wasn't causing any. And so we just closed those. That's a failed experiment. Welcome to business.

Yeah. I know that you have a podcast network You've got the Ramsey Network. I'm not sure if you know this about me. I have a podcast network as well. I have the Yatt Media Network. It has 45 shows. I represent people like Jenna Kutcher and Russell Brunson and Trent Sheldon. And I've had Amy Portefield and Laurie Harder and All these really big business self-improvement podcasters in my network, I grow and monetize them. Ramsey Network is an amazing network, and you've got awesome personalities. I've interviewed a lot of people that have shows under your network. How do you think about talent? How did you start deciding that you wanted to have a network? In my mind, having a network is the pinnacle of creator entrepreneurship. You're not just a creator entrepreneur now, you monetize other creators. It's the top of the mountain, so to speak. Why did you decide to start a network and how did you first start picking your talent?

Really good way of saying that. I hadn't actually looked at it that way. That's really smart. The reason we did it was because we started studying 18 years ago. Yeah, I'm 65. So 18 years ago, we started studying succession planning on family businesses. And so we figured out, okay, you got to train the next generation, Gen 2 of owners. You've got to have a stable, full of excellent leaders to be able to, when I'm not here to run the business and so forth. The thing we couldn't figure out and we couldn't find any best practices on was how to have this place survive when I die if I'm the only talent and if I'm the only on-air persona. Because Paul Harvey Jr. Usually doesn't make it. Good guy, but he didn't make it. He wasn't his dad. Sometimes that happens with a pastor when they pass away, if their son or daughter tries to take the church, it doesn't work, or sometimes it happens It was a small business. We started studying and we figured out, Rachel, my daughter, got a huge social footprint, does extremely well, was really blowing up at that time starting.

We said, Well, I hate to put the whole place on her shoulders. It's not very well diversified. It's also emotionally crushing to carry the whole weight of everything your dad built. Then if you stumble, it's double hard. I wouldn't do that to my own daughter. We started coming up with this idea of one to many rather than one to one handoff. It was a succession plan to brand handoff. We started studying, okay, what percentage of a revenue comes from me running my mouth? In those days, it was 98%, right? We said, well, what happens if I die? That means this whole place folds up. Bad idea for all the people that work here. Bad idea for have worked 25 years to build something, and it just dies when you do. So we said, All right, let's start building that. Today, we've actually transitioned finally to where it's about 96% of the revenue would survive if I'm not here.

Oh, wow.

And so hopefully people would be sad, but revenue-wise, they're okay.

Yeah. Do you suggest that every business have some show or Is there a way to get an audience in the way that you guys do at Ramsey?

No. You need to think about how you can interact with the public, but not like For instance, in Entree Leadership, we've got a bazillion heating and air companies.

Yeah, what are they going to talk about?

The guy running the heating and air company doesn't need a show. That's true. Probably. He might, but he might not, or she might not. Every dentist doesn't need a show. But But do they need some interface with technology and with these platforms? Yeah, some Instagram and whatever the platform is appropriate to where their audience is, to where their customer base is, they need to be there. But when Twitter got hot a thousand years ago, when it was a big deal, when it first started, there was a whole period of time people ran around saying, everyone needs a Twitter account, and everybody doesn't need a Twitter account. They don't. For sure today, they don't. But everybody doesn't need an Instagram account. Everybody doesn't need a podcast. But you need to think about, is there a place for this? And do I have something to say that somebody actually wants to hear? Can I provide a service? Can I give information that's helpful? But Instagram reels will do that. You don't have to go all the way into the podcast world to do it.

Yeah. And sometimes it could be real life having billboards or something like that. Exactly. It can work exactly the same.

You go back to old school analog stuff.

Yeah. Okay, so you mentioned that you were really excited about this app. Is it called the Every Day app?

Every Dollar.

Every Dollar.

Every Dollar has a name.

And is it a subscription model? Yes. Talk to us about why that excites you so much and why you focus so much on that in your business.

Well, in this case, from a revenue perspective, it's wonderful because the subscription model is obviously a recurring revenue. I don't have to go leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home every morning. It's already coming in. It's what we used to call in the old days, mailbox money, right? It's a beautiful thing about having some best-selling books. I still get royalty checks literally in the mailbox. From books I did 20 years ago because they're still out there selling at some level. That's mailbox money in that sense. So subscription is recurring revenue. That's a wonderful thing. The thing, though, in the digital setting, like an app or something like that, that's subscription, is It forces me as the owner and my team to be of service every stinking day. Otherwise, you get the churn dragon. And and they leave, and they'll stay because they didn't get helped. If I can be of service to you every day and be a little bit better tomorrow than I was today, and a whole lot better this time next year than I was today, then You're going to stick with it. It challenges me to love my customer better and to add value to their life better because the net business result is they stick around.

One of the sayings we have around here is, if you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. If you keep your app iterating, you keep your digital offering growing and getting better and changing with the market, because 100% of the time tomorrow is different than today, always getting better, always getting better, always serving more, always being more helpful than you were, people will stay with you. Then you have this wonderful thing called recurring revenue. If you don't meet that challenge, your subscription model will fold up like a Walmart tent. You'll crash because you'll become so stinking irrelevant in 20 seconds. The other good news is that you can fix it quickly. You can change it quick. Easy. I print a book. It's analog. I I can't fix it. There's a mistype in the thing. I can't fix it. I find it four years later. I can't fix it. I can't recall all the books because of one misspelled word. No. But I can jump on this stinking app or a website or whatever, a digital product, and we can iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate and get better. And test and test and test and test and work and help you and let you yell at us and let you smile at us.

And man, we have all this wonderful interaction with our customer.

Trust is so important, especially with a subscription model. A lot of the people tuning in here are creator entrepreneurs, and their whole business is basically trust in people buying their courses or their mastermind subscriptions. What are your thoughts about building trust with your audience? What are the key things that we need to do?

Well, I think of it as just a relationship. How do you build trust in a relationship? What does it mean to be trustworthy as a dad or a husband or a mom? What does it mean to be worthy of trust? Well, one thing comes to mind immediately is obviously telling the truth. Being authentic is another thing. That's a form of truth. Another thing is incredible consistency. Earlier, you were challenging me on some of the things that are said about me, negative all over the place, about he's a hard line on this. He never changes. He never changes. For that reason, I'm very trustworthy. You may or may not agree with Ramsey, but you 100% know we're going to say it again. Exactly the way we said it before, because we really do believe it, and we really do believe it's best. It's a trust the source because you can count on it. It's solid. We know what's going to happen. It's repeatable. If you think about someone you hire that's on your team and you can trust them, well, they've proven their competence, they've proven their integrity, and it's all repeatable.

Yeah. Okay. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. Okay. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young in profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow.

Quit trying to figure out how to make money before you figure out how to help someone. Figure out how to help them first, then figure out how to make money on it.

What would you say your secret to profiting in life is? This can go beyond finance.

Open hand, generosity. Again, if you can put other people's best interest ahead of your own, God will take care of you. It works out, and it has for 40 years. I've prospered beyond my wildest imagination when I quit trying to take care of Dave first. Instead, I said, I'm going to love that person well. I'm going to love that person well. Somebody's not going to like it. Somebody's not going to understand it, but I don't care. I'm going to do what I think I would do for my little sister, my little brother, my mother, my dad. I'm going to treat them like I would treat family, and I'm going to do the right thing. And then I'm going to try to figure out how to be wise about it where I can actually stay open. And that's worked out really well.

Yeah.

Any other last words for the entrepreneurs tuning in right now?

Yeah, I think it's an excellent time to be in business. Probably the best time in human history right now. I think if I am so excited for a 25-year-old entrepreneur right now. You're going to make some mistakes. You're going to stab your toe. You're still going to get a bloody nose. Oh, well, have at it. Do it anyway, man. But this is the best time in human history. You can get a product, design, idea to market so fast right now. You can serve people so quickly and so easily right now. If you ever were going to be an entrepreneur, any time since the sun came up the first time, this is the time right now.

Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

Oh, ramsey solutions. Com. Yeah, it's all there.

Amazing. Well, for all those links in the show notes, David, it's always such a pleasure to talk to you. I had so much fun today. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, Pam, I have to say It was super inspiring to sit down with Dave Ramsey face to face. Now, Dave is somebody who's in my world. So he owns a media company. He's got over a thousand employees, and he's got a huge office and studios in Nashville. And this was one of the most inspiring moments for me as a podcaster, just flying out to Nashville, interviewing Dave Ramsey in the flesh, going to see his amazing studios and offices and everything that he's built. His company makes $300 million a year, and it's just so inspiring. And so I want to go over some of the top things that I learned with him on that day. And here are the three things that I want you to remember from this conversation. Number one is adding friction to your spending. Dave broke down how easy swipes spending fuels lifestyle creep, especially for high earners, and why chasing points can distract you from the real goal. Make spending harder on purpose. That means removing saved cards, stopping the mindless swipes, and forcing every purchase to be more intentional. Second, treat debt like risk, not like a math game. Dave's message was simple.

Debt always increases your exposure. Biger payments mean less breathing room, less peace, and fewer options when life hits. Entrepreneurs need optionality, and optionality comes from fewer obligations. Third, build a plan that you will finish. Dave explained why the method that gets completed beats the optimal method that gets abandoned. That means a clear budget, quick wins, and automatic habits like consistently investing and staying focused on progress over perfection. So my challenge to you is to make a move today. Add friction, cut a payment, assign every dollar a job. Small disciplines' choices compound into freedom. All right, YAP, gang, if you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, share it with a friend who needs a money reset. Now, YAP, fam, if you prefer to watch your podcast on videos, I'm doing a lot more in-person content this year. So this episode with Dave is uploaded to our YouTube channel. I highly recommend if you want to level up your finances to rewatch this and actually watch the video because I think there's something special about watching a real-life conversation. So if you like to watch your videos, check out YouTube. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

Just search for my name, it's Hala Taha, or Instagram at Yapwithhala. I love interacting with you all, so make sure you DM me. Let me know what you think about the show. Let me know any feedback that you have. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, AKA the Podcast Princess, signing off.