Dave Rant: These Industries Are Keeping You Poor

Brought to you by the EveryDollar App. Start budgeting for free today. If you find yourself with a low income and no money, the way out of the situation is not borrowing money to buy things. That will nail your feet to the floor and you will not be able to move. It's a trap. And that's why payday lenders, pawn shops, rent to own, and tote the note lots are in the poor end of town. They're not in the rich end of town. Because they oppress, they take advantage of people with low incomes who feel trapped and desperate. I have been broke. I've never been poor. Poor is a state of mind. Poor is I'm trapped and there's no way out. So I'm forced to rent my washer and dryer at the rent all place. I'm forced to buy a car and pay three times too much for it at an interest rate that can't even be calculated on the tote the note lot. Or I'm going to borrow money at 80, 800% interest. That's actually what it is. It's not an exaggeration. At a payday lender. Because it feels like I'm trapped and I'm reaching for, I'm grabbing for anything that I can get a hold of to get out of this trap. And when you do that, someone will hand you a concrete block and you will sink. They will not hand you a life preserver. And so that includes going to a car dealer when you make $25,000 a year and you're 24 years old to get your thousand dollar car worked on in the repair shop. That's a hundred percent of the time, not going to go well. They are not set up to serve that clientele. They're not set up for it. They don't even know how their brains don't even work that way. And so you can be angry about it if you want. That's not a bad thing, but the way out is not to borrow your way off of the bottom rung of the income ladder. The way out is to cut your lifestyle to nothing and work like a maniac and get your income up, get your income up, get your income up, get your income up. You do not, when you're in a situation like that, and I have been there, you do not have any time or margin for any kind of relaxation or luxury in a country that is full of relaxation and luxury. Every Instagram feed is some bullcrap thing that you don't need to be messing with. You don't need to look at any kind of social media when you're in that situation. All you need to do is work. My grandmother used to say, there's a great place to go when you're broke to work. And it's the only way off the bottom, but it will get you off the bottom. It'll get you out. You're not stuck. You live in the greatest country in the world has ever known. And if you simply get up and go work six jobs today, you can make $20 an hour at Target and FedEx throwing boxes today. Today, you can make serious, you do not have to have a master's degree in finance to make a really good living today. And once you get your income where you can go buy a $3,000 car for cash, now things start to loosen up a little bit. And then you can go buy a $6,000 car for cash. And because the good news is a $3,000 car in one year does not go down in value. It's pretty well done. So you can take your 3,000, 4,000, add to that, get a 7,000. This is how Sharon and I got out after we went bankrupt and lost everything and had two little babies. We did a borrowed car to a thousand dollar, $1,500 car to a $3,500 car. Those are the real numbers. I remember distinctly when I bought the first $10,000 car after bankruptcy, it was a several years later. It wasn't 20 minutes later. And I wasn't trying to rebuild my credit because credit had not served me well. I was done with credit. And so I went to all the way to the bottom, lost everything, started in the hole because I still load the IRS. My net worth was not zero. It was negative. I owed the IRS money because you can't bankrupt those buttholes. And so I still got the IRS. I've still got this and that. I've still got these things and I've still got two babies to feed and I've still got to keep the lights on. And I was so scared. I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what to do. And so if you're in that situation, I've been there and I'm not going to sit here and tell you what you want to hear. And if that pisses you off, that's awesome because that's my job is to piss you off. So you don't stay where you are. If I can upset you and make you move off your little butt, then I did my job because that's what people did with me. They didn't look at me and go, Oh Dave, you need a government program. I said, you need to go make some lemons out of all, eliminate all those freaking lemons. You got, you got cases of lemons boy. You need to go do something with it. These are my friends, my family, zero mercy. Actually, it was really great mercy because it was the truth. That's the kind of thing you can do for the way out is the truth, not say, Oh, well, you, you know, you just need the poor need a line of credit. It's the last thing you need when you're broke. It's going to keep you freaking broke. So the last thing you need is a car payment because you've got a car problem. And I just, my job here is to love you so well. I remember how that feels and I am not going to tolerate the narrative of lies that are going to be thrown at you. I'm a consumer advocate. We're here. George and I are here to help you. Not anything else. You're not our entertainment value. We were entertained long before we got to these microphones. Doesn't take much. So this is what you've walked into. If you walked into the Ramsey show, don't expect anything else. Create your free, every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.