Dave Ramsey's Life Advice Will Leave You SPEECHLESS (MUST WATCH)

38 years ago, my wife and I got married, we were stupid. We didn't do any pre-marriage counseling. I was a hell-raising, beer-drinking hillbilly. Good salesman, though, so I sold her. And about the time I started buying and selling real estate, I left that other thing, and I grew up in real estate business. My mom and dad, they were in real estate business, so I thought I was going to flip this house, and that's back before there was cable TV to tell you how. And so I started buying houses and flipping them, and I got rich, starting from nothing. By the time I was 26 years old, I had about $4 million worth of real estate, a little over a million dollar net worth, and I was making about $250,000 cash taxable income a year. That's $20,000 a month. I don't know what neighborhood you grew up in, but the neighborhood I grew up in, we called that rich. It was fun, too, y'all. That car you always wanted, if you ever got some money, I want that car, mine was a Jaguar. I wanted to get me a Jaguar, because no money in my old neighborhood could even spell Jaguar. It was exotic, you know. So I got me a Jaguar, man. Within 90 days, baby, I was a Jaguar. I was having fun. And Sharon and I, we had never traveled really much, other than a little bit, I mean, we went to Florida on our honeymoon, that was about it, and we started getting some money, and we said, well, what do rich people do? And they found out they go to Hawaii, so we went to Hawaii. Rednecks in Hawaii, y'all, wow! That water's so blue, it was unbelievable. We loved it, too, man, it was a blast. We liked it so much, we got home and planned another trip, and two months later, we went back again. It was fun, and we got Sharon some of these sparkly things, and they weren't big enough, so we got her some more. It was fun, y'all. Sometimes I hear these people say, oh, those rich people are miserable. Mm-mm. Now, I am not here to tell you money will make you happy, because money will not make you happy. Money will make you more of what you already are. If you're unhappy and you get money, you will be unbelievably unhappy. If you're depressed and you get money, your depression will darken. If you're a jerk and you get money, you become a big jerk. If you're sweet and you're generous, and you love giving and you get money, you become what we call a philanthropist, and you change entire communities, entire people sectors. You become more of what you already are when you get money. It doesn't fix your marriage. If you have a bad marriage, it'll make it worse, and the crazy that's in your family. So we're cruising along, and everything's pretty good, and only I had done some stupid stuff. Nothing illegal. I didn't cheat anybody. I didn't lie. I didn't commit fraud. I didn't do anything like that, but I was just stupid. How many of y'all ever done something dumb with money? How many of you didn't raise your hand and have a problem with lying? I borrowed too much money, and we were doing a lot of it on 90-day notes because we were flipping these houses, and our bank, our largest bank, got sold to another bank out of state, and the guy looks down and goes, there's a kid, 26 years old, owes us a million two on 90-day notes. Let's limit this relationship, which is banker talk for ruin his life, and we weren't late on a single note, but they called all our notes because under the paper I signed, they had the rights to do that if they just squirreled, and they squirreled. I was the idiot that signed the paper that allowed that to happen, never dreaming that anybody would be that way. Our second largest lender heard we were in trouble and called another 800,000, so we got $2 million due almost immediately, and it's all tied up in real estate. We spent the next two and a half years of our life losing everything we owned. One year I made $250,000, the next year my taxable income was $6,000. Spent the whole year selling stuff, trying to pay my bills, because I was told you're supposed to pay your bills if you say you're going to. Two and a half years later, we were at the bottom. Our marriage was hanging on by a thread because the number one cause of divorce in North America today is money fights and money problems. We didn't get a divorce. Sharon said, I would have left, but I didn't have a car. We had a brand new baby and a toddler, and our marriage just barely hanging on, and my hopes and dreams crushed. We were bankrupt. I remember standing in the shower with it so hot I could just barely stand there, and I would just stand there with a shower on my face and cry because I was so scared. It took a while. Instantaneously things don't heal, do they? It takes a little time. So we didn't instantly bounce back. When you fall that hard, it's more of a splat. And so we started handling money this way. We started doing these five things that I'm going to teach you this morning. If you do these five things 100% of the time, they work because they're from God. I didn't make them up. I stole them all from the Bible and your grandmother. They're called common sense. I just sold them better than anyone has ever sold them in America's history. That's all. Number one, get on a budget. Jesus said, don't build a tower without first counting the cost, lest you get halfway up and you're unable to finish, and all who see you begin to mock you and say, this man began to build and was unable to finish. My friend John Maxwell says, a budget is people telling their money what to do instead of wondering where it went. My friend Zig Ziglar used to say, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every single time. It turns out winning at something is an intentional act. No one accidentally wins. I never interviewed the football player after the Super Bowl's over and goes, how did you do that? How did you just win the Super Bowl? I don't know, I just got off the bus and it just. Winning is an intentional act. If you're going to have a great marriage, you're going to work at it. If you're going to have great kids, you're going to work at it. They've had your kids turn out the nurturing of their mother, the fear of their father. We had a plan. All the boys in the youth group are scared of you. Great, awesome. Keeps away, wusses and jerks. We don't want those. As sons-in-law or daughters-in-law. You know, it's just a plan. You don't win with money accidentally. You're not going to win the lottery. You're not. It's not a random lightning strike. It's a series of, I planted some corn and corn grew. Wow. As you sow, so shall ye reap. I plant nothing, nothing grows. The same rain comes, the same sun shines, but nothing grows. If you manage money for a company called U Incorporated and you manage money for U Incorporated, the way you manage money for you now, would you fire you? Don't answer that. The second thing is get out of debt. The borrower is slave to the lender. 100% of the mentions of debt in scripture are negative. There is no good debt in scripture. When you read about 100% of the messages are, it's a curse, you're a fool, you're a slave. 100% of the messages in scripture, biblically speaking, debt is stupid. And so what happens is we go to school and we get us a little student loan. Got to have old Sally May in our life. And then we get a master card. Borrower is slave to the lender, so we should get a master. And then we go buy a car we can't afford. We know we can't afford it because we have payments on it. And then we go buy a house we can't afford. And we look up seven years into our brand new marriage, trying to live the same standard of living our parents were living. Only took them 35 years to get there. And we fast forward with debt into something we can't afford. We can't breathe and we're stressed out. All the money comes in, all the money goes out. And now all we do is think about how we're going to make it to Friday. We make $85,000 a year and we don't have the money for food. And this is normal in America today. People come in our office, they look like this all the time. They're like, dude, can you get me out? Yeah, I can get you out. It's going to hurt though. What do you mean? We're going to have to amputate the Tahoe. You're going to have to do things where you quit caring what other people think. You're going to have quit spending money you don't have to buy stuff you can't afford when money you don't have to impress people you don't even really like. You have to reset your value system Instagram breath, watching other people's highlight reel and thinking that should be your life. Comparison will kill you. So we made the decision we're not borrowing money anymore. You're weird. You're right, normal's broke. You know what you have if you don't have any payments? Money. Weird thing. Everything changes. You even make different decisions about your job. Some people stay in toxic job situations because they have to pay their bills. You suddenly are free to go, I think I'm going to open up a competitor to you people because you aren't really good people and I don't want to work here anymore. So isn't that fun? It's a whole different thing. It's a whole different mindset. So a guy called me from Average Car Payment America by the way is right now $529 over 84 months according to National Auto Dealers Association. If you take $529 that you put into a good Chevy truck and you know, that goes down in value like a rock that's where Chevy got that like a rock. And if you take $529 from age 30 to age 65 put it in a decent growth stock mutual fund in a Roth IRA, you'll have about $5.6 million in there instead of having a car. I hope you like your car. That's what it's costing you. I'm not saying don't have a nice car. I'm just saying maybe your nice car shouldn't have you. Maybe we ought to think different about this. Guy called me from over in West Texas and like, babe, you're going to kill me. I'm not going to kill you. I'm in Tennessee. You're in Texas. What'd you do? He goes, truck payment. How much is your truck payment? $769. Dude, really? It's no fun, is it? He goes, it's killing me. How bad? I said, how much is your house payment? He said, we live in a double wide, 550 bucks. Dude, if your truck payment's bigger than your house payment you might be a redneck. Unbelievable. So we got out all the plastic and we lit some candles and we told the kids to gather around and we had plastic surgery. Citibank, what's in your wallet? Money. You're weird, Dave. You don't have any credit cards? Nope. This is my wallet. Green president's faces. Four pieces of plastic. My debit card on my business, which you have to have money in there to use those, okay? My debit card on my personal account. My driver's license and my handgun carry permit. Next one is interesting. Foster high quality relationships. Do you know you become who you hang around with? Be not deceived, evil company corrupts good habits. If you hang around with people that go, the little man can't get ahead. We're just stuck. I sure hope we can elect someone who will fix my life. They're spirit animals, Eeyore. If you're hanging around with that guy, guess what? You're gonna be that guy. When they say take it easy, they mean take it easy. I mean, hound dog in the sun on the porch. You cannot motivate these people. You hang around people that are getting it done, baby. Let's get up, leave the cave, kill something, drag it home. Game on, man. We got things to do. We got people to see. You're gonna read the same books your closest friends read. You're gonna see the same movies. You're gonna watch the same Netflix series. You're gonna talk like they talk. You're gonna pray like they pray. You're gonna be generous like they're generous. But if you run around with people that don't, you won't. I'm not talking about be snubby to other people. I'm nice to anybody, whether what religion you are, even if you're from New York. I mean, I'm gonna be nice to you, okay? I love you, you're sweet. We're gonna be friends. I got all these friends that are way different than me. They don't vote right, but I still love them. And I'm nice to anybody, but I'm talking about who my closest crew is. The six guys carrying my casket. Who are these men? Because those men are a forming me. And I gotta be real careful, because eagles don't flock. You gotta intentionally gather them together. Turkeys flock. Be intentional about who you're hanging out with, because your income over a 10-year period of time will be within 10% of the average of your 10 closest friends' income. Some of you are like, I need some new friends. Well, you might. You don't have to be mean to the old ones, but if you're gonna quit drinking, you probably shouldn't run around with a bunch of drunks. If you wanna get in shape, maybe you ought to run around with people that eat, stuff that keep you in shape. I'm not hanging with that crew, but you know what I'm talking about, right? We know the formula. We don't let our kids run around with juvenile delinquents, because we know that little Johnny's a weed head. If your kid runs around with little Johnny, your kid will be a weed head. You know this. The next one is save money. The Bible says, in the house of the wise are stores of choice, food, and oil. And the rest of that says, but a foolish man devours all he has. If you spend all you make, you're a fool. When you save money, grandma said, save for a... You know why grandma said that? Because it's gonna rain. Life is coming, and when you got a pile of money, it helps. You got $30,000 in the bank and no debt, and they lay you off, you're gonna be okay. You got $30,000 in debt and no money, they lay you off, you're like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. What are we gonna do? Wise people save money. Now here's what's interesting. If you do this stuff, it works. So if you get on a plan, no one plans on purpose to lose. No one goes, let's have a plan where we spend everything and retire broke. No one says that, right? So when you actually do a plan, you will get out of debt, because you figure out when you don't have any payments, it's easier to save and easier to give, right? And so you live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else. So when you get on a plan, you will start getting out of debt. And when you get out of debt, because you're hanging out with people that are thinking different, right? We're gonna foster high-quality relationships, then you'll be saving money. And so all these things work together, and the natural byproduct is the last one. You will automatically do it. God says, be outrageously generous. He loves a cheerful giver. You can't give when you're broke. I never noticed poor people feeding hungry kids. Well, you're poor-shaming. No, you don't have any money. I'm not mad at you if you're poor. I've been poor. I've been broke. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I'm not mad at you if you're there. But, you know, change. Time to do some different stuff, man. Quit listening to those same people that got you there. Have a different way of looking at things. Look at the Bible. What's the Bible tell me about handling money? And change. It puts you in a position to be outrageously generous. Being generous is not an act. Being generous is a character quality. It's who you become. Generous people smile more. They can even have a conversation where they listen some. Ever been around people who are just takers? Generous people are the givers. They open the door for you. They can't help but notice needs because they no longer have their eyes on themselves because they got self under control. Take care of your own household first, then put you in position to be outrageously generous. So try this one out because they told me to be done in 40 minutes. That's when the Holy Spirit leaves. So Thanksgiving's coming. Here's what I want you to do. Leave early when you go to grandma's house for the feast. Put the kids in the car. We're gonna leave 30 minutes early. And I want you to drive and park right in front of the Waffle House on the way to grandma's house. I want you to leave the kids in the car. Leave your spouse in the car. Leave the car running. It might be cold, I don't know. Just come sit there. Kids, put screens down and watch. I want you to go in there. I want you to sit at the counter. I want you to have a cup of coffee. And she'll come up and she'll pour your cup of coffee. When she does, I want you to look into her eyes. They'll tell a story. The Bible says the eyes are the windows to the soul. And she pours that coffee. Happy Thanksgiving. Pull out three of these $100 bills. I want you to leave them under the saucer. Slip out. Go sit down with the kids. Hey kids, watch God show off. Let me tell you what she'll do. She'll pick them up. You know who's working in Waffle House? Somebody needs a job. You know who's working in Waffle House on Thanksgiving day? Somebody needs a job. This right here is life changing, baby. She'll pick this up and she'll go. Just bless her heart. It's been so long since anything good has happened. She thinks it's a trick. I want you to take $300 and I want you to take your spouse on an unbelievably nice dinner. And I want you to enjoy some money. But I dare you to have more fun with 300 bucks than that. That's as fun as it gets right there, ladies and gentlemen. You have the opportunity to just impact stuff when you're not broke anymore. Because you decided you were going to follow the spiritual transformation of not being conformed to this world, but being transformed by the renewing of your mind.