Dave Ramsey | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 36

that's how you succeed in business you should do the right thing it's how you succeed in life you do the right thing you know I'm gonna give up something today I'm gonna live like no one else so that later I can live and give like no one [Music] here we are on the Sunday special with our very special guest financial guru Dave Ramsey super excited to have him on but before we get to Dave Ramsey first let's talk about your impending death so the fact is that you're gonna plotz sometime hopefully not soon and hopefully much later but you should have life insurance because life insurance is one of those topics everybody knows a little bit about but do you understand it well enough to feel comfortable buying it whether you're an insurance expert or a newbie policy genius created a website that makes it easy for you to compare quotes get advice and get covered policy genius is the easy way to get life insurance in minutes you can compare quotes from top insurers and find the coverage you 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really appreciate it well I'm honored to be here your legend it's honor to be always well I mean right back at you my family's been listening to you for a long time I didn't know about it apparently as it turns out over the weekend I found on my in-laws listen to you and my wife apparently listens to you and I didn't know about it which says something about both our marriage and the success and I want to start by asking you now what I want to get into your financial strategies and kind of your life strategies but what is your background for people who don't know your story and how you came to your kind of realizations and program about financial independence yeah well I started out with all these letters and licenses after my name is said I was supposed to know something about money and I started with nothing and we ended up with about 4 million dollars or the real estate by the time we were 26 and back in the 80s I was making a couple hundred a year which neighborhood I grew up and we called that rich because it starting from nothing and but I was stupid I had borrowed too much money and I spent the next two and a half years of my life losing everything we owned too much debt and I got a PhD in D UMB we got a chance to star / with a brand-new baby and a toddler and a marriage hanging on by a thread and so kind of pierced through the academics and through the lens of faith and through the lens of common sense found really common sense money stuff and we started doing it ourselves and 30 years ago maybe you can explicate some of the baby steps that you use because I know so many people who have had serious debt problems and have been attempting to get out of those who have used the steps that you talk about so what are some of those those steps that you talked about you know what we figured out was that was that personal finance I kept trying to fix it with the math cuz I'm a math nerd and then I finally figured out it wasn't a math problem it was a me problem the guy in my mirror is the problem if I can get that guy to behave he can be skinny and rich but he's got issues and so I figured out he needs a clear path and basic financial planning / mixed in with a little common sense to make some gumbo we came up with an idea that hey do this first then do this then do this real clear and don't deviate from it and lots of people did it and it worked and we called it the baby steps because you can do anything if you just take a step at a time maybe stepping once a thousand dollars quickly save a little starter emergency fund to is knock off all your debt except your home using the debt snowball listing them smallest to largest attack them in that order three there's an emergency fund go back to that thousand raise it up to a fully funded grandma's rainy day fund three to six months of expenses so now you're sitting with 1520 thousand bucks and no debt except your house now you can breathe that's a foundation and then you start your investing into your retirement kids college and pay off your house early difficult millionaire pays off their home in about ten point two years and then you're set up for baby step seven which is just build wealth and be outrageously generous so I want to talk about some of some of those ideas because there's a lot there and as you say a lot of that is psychological as opposed to monetary so when I first heard about your program and I've talked a lot as I say a lot of people who have used your program there are a couple things that jumped out at me because I too am kind of a math minded guy the first one was when you talk about the debt snowball you start with small to large you list all the debts and you say okay we've got a $200 debt pay that one off first and you know build up to the to the big debt and I'm sitting there going okay well if you have a two hundred dollar debt at two percent interest and a ten thousand dollar debt 10% interest why not start with the one with the high interest rates mathematical blasphemy it really is for a nerd like me it's like fingernails down a chalkboard we're doing it wrong you know we're doing it wrong but the thing is if you go to the Y and you sweat and you drink water and you don't eat white bread and you gain weight you will quit and the same thing getting out of debt you need some quick encouragement you need to go this might work and then you pay off another one you go well this might work you pay off another one you like getting the neighbor in here this might work hey baby come over look at this we pay and you start to get this thing happening it's called hope and you actually believe it's gonna happen and so and what happens is the more people get excited the the more they believe the deeper they'll sacrifice and the faster they get out and so this debt snowball thing even though it's you know it's a paradox even though that it works it works and people don't get out of debt using the other because they get stalled out and I was just laughing we tell our audiences you know if we were doing math we wouldn't have credit card debt in the first place it's not a math problem so I want to ask also about who kind of your target audience is because you know I think that there are certain situations right I'm I came from a middle-class background by the time I was you know a teenager a late teenager I'd say we were sort of upper-middle class and I incurred debt for college I incur debt for Law School you're very anti debt for college I agree with you that many college debts are worthless but for my wife for example she's a doctor as people know and she went to medical school and she also went to pre-med for for undergrad you know are there any situations in which you think that taking out college debt is worthwhile well I just don't teach people to borrow money the shortest path between where you are and wealth is to stay in control of your largest wealth building tool which is your income now that puts some serious hurdles in place when you're going to law school or you're going you're gonna go to med school but I talk to people who go to med school and they find a way they get scholarships they they do fellowships the MD ph.d program there's all kinds of ways to do it but it's tough it's tough but so is paying off 250,000 freaking dollars and debt that's tough too so you're gonna pick you're tough you just got to pick which one I mean and that that's sort of I guess the question because it sounds like there are certain situations like the there are situations in which if you have to have a government-sponsored debt it seems to me those are the situations in which it's a bad idea to really take out debt if you've got to take out a student loan from the government in order to go major in gender studies good shot you're never gonna be able to pay that off but there are certain professions where the the income coming out is gonna be good enough that there's a reason the bank is giving you a low-interest loan if you're if you're taking out a loan for pre-med they're presumably giving that loan hoping they're gonna get knowing or having actuarial tables suggesting they're gonna get paid back on the other end so you know are you supposed to forgo let's go federally insured loans too and the inherent problem and it becomes a policy problem when you get right down to the core of it with one point four trillion dollars now in student loan debt we're basically loaning eighteen year olds who have never had a job and want to get a degree in left handed puppetry up to a hundred and forty five thousand dollars I mean we the people are stupid really stupid that we're guaranteeing these loans I mean because there's no guidelines on this whatsoever and the parents many times don't care don't bother to be involved or don't know how to lead their kid you know they're like malaria team they make their own decisions that's probably not a good idea you know maybe maybe we put your arm around a little junior and say you know we really do need to get a degree in something other than you know polka German polka history let's try something else you know let's try to get something actually it's marketable and that you can put some tools in your belt to earn a living so you live in my basement when you're 32 let's have a plan here and it's funny that you come at this from a different angle from people like Peter Thiel obviously you end up in exactly the same place which is college is very often a waste of time I maybe you ought to just be going out and learning a career apprentice in yourself actually making something yourself I don't think it's a waste of time at all I mean higher education we just completed one of our MC personalities Chris Hogan we just completed the largest study on millionaire has ever done we should say ten thousand one hundred and sixty five of them and the vast majority um have a four-year degree they didn't do that they didn't use that to get it though that's what's odd 68% of them have a four-year degree and almost none of them went to prestige schools though look at them with the state schools and community colleges and that kind of a thing and but you know it turns out being being educated is a good thing it's just you know what are you studying and what are your expectations but it just breaks my heart when I get a young lady calling me from Atlanta last week on my show and she's got $165,000 in student loan debt for a master's degree in sociology and she makes $38,000 working for the state of Georgia where were her parents where we as a culture failed her to tell her that was going to work but then you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater and say well education isn't a good idea but we're just stupid about education that's the paradox so you know as far as you know taking on Deb you know I'm focusing around the debt because this is one of the areas where as you say you know like the kind of statistically minded folks look at you and they're the it sounds like blasphemy so look talking about entrepreneurial ism so when you look at the number of businesses that are started in the United States and that are successful the percentage that were started off of some sort of loan from family from friends from a bank there there there are a lot of businesses that were started off at least with somebody investing who was not the original person where we're you know our business for example we started off with an investor and we went to the investor and we had an obligation to pay off the investor and our business doesn't exist without us actually borrowing money and then using it to build our business and then paying back the investor and that's true for an enormous number of publicly traded companies you know is there a happy medium here or do you really believe that it's just a matter of scrimping and saving until you can get together enough money to start the business because sometimes you actually do need a spend of scale in order to make sure that you can get launched well if if you're an income I mean if you're in game as an IPO if you're wanting to go public you're probably dealing with the vulture capitalists at that point I mean you probably bencher capitalist you're probably about to get yourself into a situation where somebody owns your soul and that's going to be part of the process if you're doing something like you guys are doing you've got an angel investor that's that's setting you up and believes in your cause and that that gets you going in my case we started on a card table in our living room we've got eight hundred and six employees today I will do about two hundred million in revenue this year we've never borrowed a dime but it didn't take us 20 years you know 20 years later went overnight success yeah it sounds like a pretty good plan I mean 20 years to 200 million dollars in revenue ain't a bad thing so it worked out so when it comes to kind of personal character how much do you think that financial decisions are about education people to make the right decisions and how much is it about actually being able to put off what you want for what you need now that's called maturity the ability to delay pleasure and that is a character quality integrity there's a high correlation between integrity wholeness not just telling the truth and honesty but this full on integrity you are who you are all the time that's integrity and not only do you tell the truth not only do you honor your word in situations high data point correlation between that and the ability to build wealth this idea that you cheat your way to the top is mythology it truly does not work out there I mean think about it if you go to the local car place and get your car worked on he cheats you you tell everybody you know and you don't tell everybody you know and if you go in there and he says oh this was 35 cents I fixed it don't worry about it you tell everybody you know cuz you just found a unicorn you know I mean so where the guy just did the right thing and you send your family your friends and that's how you succeed in business you do the right thing it's how you succeed in life you do the right thing integrity the ability to delay pleasure the ability to say you know I'm gonna give up something today I'm gonna live like no one else so that later I can live and give like no one else that's why we say it on the show you know one of the things that I think is so fascinating about your approach is that it is an approach that is driven by personal responsibility so much of what's going on in the country in politics generally is driven by precisely the opposite attitude so you're smart you stay away from politics I'm in politics full time and it seems like politicians make Bank off of basically telling people that nothing they do is their own responsibility and that everything that is wrong in their life can be blamed on outside forces in America how much of people how much of what's bad in people's life do you think can generally be blamed on the decisions they make and how much can be blamed on on outside forces if you had to balance that out well I think you can be born into a situation where you don't you know you you're in I grew up in a neighborhood where people said stuff like the little man can't get ahead it was a victim mentality blue-collar thing it's like you know the the Union I'll take care of you the government will take care of you I sure hope we can elect a you know a president or congressman will take care of us because the little man can't get ahead on his own and and is that a reality yeah if you think it is if you think you can or you think you can't you're right Henry Ford said you know and so there's a reality to this and so the belief is the real privilege it's not the skin color and it's not that a socio-economic thing it's the belief in the culture you come out of I mean I grew up in Tennessee and we're hillbilly culture my family's scotch-irish and proud hillbillies of the best of the best kind and an interesting Bunch they'll fight you for their freedoms and yet sometimes they'll adopt that victim mentality and a whole bunch of those folks I mean JD did a nice book hillbilly ology that indicated that probably that's a bunch of us are who elected Trump but it was all that he was a little bit Reaganesque in that it's up to you I'll just make it where you can win mm-hmm you know and I'll do it for you and there's a different message there in that ideology but you know the problem is if you start to believe someone else is gonna fix your life whoever it is your employer your mommy the president the Congress you're screwed yeah well this is one of the things I'm really fear because I am seeing it rise on both the left and the right there's a sort of new right-wing populist movement that suggests okay well you know all the problems they're having life you didn't get married because you couldn't afford it and it's like well maybe you should have made some different decisions and single motherhood is not a financial decision it's not that you got pregnant out of wedlock because you couldn't afford it okay the classic studies are that 97 percent of the 30 year olds that graduated from school high school before they got married and got married before they had a kid that's all they did high school and they did in the right order in other words 97% are above the poverty level almost everyone below the poverty level somehow got that out of order I got pregnant before they got out of school they got pregnant before she married they got married before they got it's good they got it out of order it's the success order all kinds of data points on that statistical evidence and it's not a political statement it's just this is the proper way to live your life turns out morals have implication characters character has implications so in a second I do want to ask you about what's happened because it feels like there's been a decline in both happiness and I've a tribute that to it in a in virtue and religion I want to see the kind of your perception that in just one second first let's talk about your healthcare program so I have some good news if you missed the deadline to sign up for healthcare insurance or more importantly if you signed up for a plan you're just not that happy with you still have a choice it's called Medicare Medicare is a Christian health care sharing program they've been around for 25 years they've more than 400,000 members now around the country and get this over the years Medicare members have shared over two billion dollars of each other's medical bills so they could help share your needs as well best of all you could save a lot of money with Medicare the typical savings for our families about five hundred bucks a month your savings could be more they could be less but think about what you could do with that extra money every month so if you think you're stuck with a high cost health plan that doesn't have much to offer think again you can join bed a share anytime so just call them today and check it out just head over to Medicare comm slash Ben I'll call eight four four sixty one Bible to find out more there's no pressure they are super easy to talk to you find out how much you could save why Medicare is really popular I've talked to the folks over there really nice folks Christian folks go to Medicare comm slash Ben that's meed I shared comm slash Ben or call eight four four sixty one Bible for more information again that's 844 61 Bible 844 sixty one Bible or Medicare comm / Ben 844 61 Bible go check them out so I want to talk about some of the the aspects of virtue that you're talking about because I fully agree with this I think that the supposed crisis that we're having in terms of happiness the rise in the opioid epidemic above some of that is due to bad diagnosis and people being given medical opioids and all of that the reson suicide the rise in single motherhood that in the end these are mostly personal problems these are people making bad decisions and they're making bad decisions because they've been taught by society by the government by the culture that if you make a bad decision it's not really your fault and at the beginning of wisdom is recognizing that it's probably your fault where do you think these kind of where did things start to fall apart or do you think things are really not that falling apart you know it's strange there's pockets that are falling apart and there's sometimes a malaise that are fog over some things but then there's entire segments of the population they're booming like never before them the best years of their life right now and maybe did even under Obama you know they the best years of their life and but I mean we share a book in our faiths and my Christian faith through Jewish faith the prep book of Proverbs a book of wisdom and all throughout the Book of Wisdom the fool is juxtaposed with the wise the wise does this the fool does this wisdom is this and wisdom is in the Hebrew you know this probably is the art of living life well is really what it means and that's what we've lost his wisdom not knowledge what we've lost wisdom as juxtaposed with the fool and and if you read through proverbs you go well I've done that I'm a fool I've done that so I'm look we're doing that someone be watched in the house of the wise our stores of choice food and oil but a foolish man devours only has if you spend everything you make you're a fool fool fool fool I've done that and then when I quit doing that actually save money I had some money in the house of the wise I mean it was just it's remarkable in it and so the art of living life well and and when you start to believe that if I plant corn I'm gonna get corn if I'm gonna reap what I sow if I'm gonna live in a cause-and-effect world where I actually can impact my own destiny there's variables around me there's isms I mean there's racism and sexism and bald ISM there are people that won't let me do stuff cause I'm bald hasn't been a bald president elected since television go look that one up it's interesting I mean you know these kinds of things are variant we got one with bad hair but we don't have any with no hair you know I mean and so Jerry Ford is not elected that there's always you know I've got a southern drawl and four years in the radio business now we've got six hundred stations but for years people in Boston thought we broadcast from a double-wide because we were in Tennessee you know with no shoots you know I mean there's all these isms right there's everybody's got an ism they got a bus through I don't care who you are but if you truly believe because of your ISM whatever it is that you can't win you're not gonna get corn if you plant corn then why would you ever plant corn that's hopelessness and that's the the path of the fool yeah the way that I've put it on my own show is that I root for reality because there's nothing else to root for but there's a lot of folks out there who are rooting against reality and you see this not only in politics we see it in culture just the general thing where people look at their life and they go X or Y isn't fair here's a person who's really rich and I'm not really rich and that's unfair and you see politicians say this without any solution they just sort of put it out there and this is their actual talking point you say okay well let's assume for a second that that is unfair that if you were God you would even all that out you're not god you're not evening all that out and even if you would even know that I wouldn't result exactly in what you want here so maybe you should stop fighting reality and deal with reality instead you know actually wealth equality is unfair because effort is not equal smarts is not equal I'm not as smart as Bill Gates he's helped more people than I've helped and as a result he has more money I mean I haven't changed the world with a computer he did I'm not Steve Jobs I didn't do that now I've made a good bit of money I've helped a whole bunch of people but you know I was arguing with this lady a liberal lady and she was mad at me because I hadn't made a lot of money selling books to people helping them with money and she's like well you're taking advantage of all these people that are broke I said you know when I when I sold five books for ten dollars nobody was mad but all you people got pissed off when I sold ten million of them and I helped ten million people and so the you know your your level of return is the level of help and so that that just defeats the wealth equality argument completely because we now know that 79 percent of the millionaires in America today 8 out of 10 inherited 0 0 which means they did something in the marketplace so the American Dream is alive and well I mean one of the things that I love that your show is that you actually do defend the morality of the free market and that that's something that very few people are willing to do in this day and age it's all about the shortcomings of the free market income inequality the idea that people are being exploited and it seems like they're coming from this perspective that even basic elements of life in the Intelligent gaps that this should be somehow rectified and you see this with they'll use Bill Gates is an example how is there a Bill Gates in this country who's worth this much money and then you'll see somebody who's worth no money and you know you say well he's contributed more he's he's and they say well but that wasn't his choice he was smarter right he was smarter he grew up better what how do you answer that you know what he did you know he and he is and you know George Clooney's prettier than me so I mean so what deal with it I mean you did this is your hand play your hand and you know I was on a we had a leadership event we did our entree leadership event last and I've spent some time with Condoleezza Rice and she grew up in a in a segregated neighborhood outside of Birmingham and she's you know she was talking about coming out of that segregated neighborhood to become Secretary of State she's brilliant and brilliant lady and she said it my parents told me my whole life it doesn't matter where I'm coming from and what matters where you're going and you just decide that's what we're gonna do but that has to all this all the way back to the day with this thing called hope and this belief that if I plant corn I shouldn't be shocked if I get corn if I plant nothing I can't gripe about the farmer who planted corn and was out there toiling to kill the weeds and in the hot Sun meanwhile I'm standing over here watching the guy and then I go well it's not fair that he's got some corn I mean I wonder if some of the complaints that are cropping up particularly among young people and I speak a lot on college campuses where there are a lot of young people who make exactly these complaints that this is coming as the result of a breakdown in religious community because you know I'm a religious person you're a religious person there are a lot of rich people people who have been you know I've been a lot poorer I've been you know I've done well that's changed but I've watched the same thing happen to people in my community who I grew up with and so I know all of them and so it's hard to be a lot it's a lot harder to be jealous of the guy that you've known and grown up with and he can go to for help then some random guy on the streets we have no association with and as we fragment as a community there there's more of a feeling of well maybe that guy owes me money as opposed to well I've known my next-door neighbor my entire life we go to the same church or the same synagogue the one area of equality the matters more than any we are equal which is we are all equal before God right God sees us all exactly the same with that breakdown I'm wondering maybe that's what's caused a lot of the feeling of dispossession well and it's also you know contributes to racism also contributes to arguments between religions I mean if you sit down spend time with people actually develop a relationship with people that have different situation than you've got you're gonna learn there's good people and there's bad people and almost every one of those things I know wealthy people all over the world they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars they're some of the best people on the planet and I know some of them that'll cut your throat just to see just to see if you bleed I mean and I know some poor people that are some of the best people on the planet and I know some of them cut your throat and the money skepta with their character or their lack of it the money just revealed it so where do you think the country is going are you hopeful or pessimistic for the country you deal a lot with individuals but on a broad level where do you think the country is going right now I mean my spoiler is that I'm always pessimistic which is which is great for me cuz it means I'm always right eventually yeah just a question of where the event happens but are you optimistic or pessimistic about sort of the direction that the American people seem to be moving I'm optimistic overall overall there's lots of issues there's lots of problems and the I think the biggest problems we've got are not structural and they're not systemic the the biggest problems are belief breakdowns where people believe the wrong things and when you believe the wrong things then you make bad decisions because your worldview is screwed and that that's what breaks that's what that's the most pessimistic piece of God about it and so to the extent that we can people like you can get out here and be thought leaders and teach people that they what happens in their house at the end of the day is probably a lot more important for the quality of life they lead over the next several decades than what happens in the White House so what's your religious background where do you come from like hum about your parents because how did you get this part of the question oh I didn't grow up in church I grew up I was a hill racing beer-drinking hillbilly I was a crazy man no I met God as an adult and I actually met him on the way up when I was making that money and then we were losing everything I got to know him on the way down so I started studying Scripture because I you know I had all these letters and license after my name and about money and then house it broke something I must have got some bad information because I was acting on all the information I had and it didn't take me where it was supposed to take me instead I built a house of cards that fell in on me use OPM leverage other people's money and all that stuff right and I got to thinking about it and who was it taught me to borrow money that was my finance professor in college he was broke kind of like a shop teacher with missing fingers right that's a problem so I started you know as a young person of faith and young in my faith in my 30s 20s I really don't learn what the scriptures say about money I mean if you just read proverbs over and over you have a master's degree in finance so you have three kids and how old are your kids twenty-six 2:32 and and have they followed all of your advice if they do yeah okay and they're all actually functioning human beings they have great marriages married good people and have great babies and great careers they work very very hard they are not silver spoon by any stretch one of the things that I love about your show is that you really do give tough love advice to a lot of the folks who call it I mean it's what makes it so entertaining is that you're actually telling them the truth have you ever felt bad after you get off a call that you slap somebody a little bit too hard upside the head um yeah oh sure sure but typically what I've learned to do in the past more than in recent years I've gotten better at it I mean because I can judge what I used to do is I would just hit everybody the same and that's not fair if somebody joined our tribe three weeks ago they've got a different set of knowledge so I can't hold them to the same level of account you know I started I started watching your stuff on YouTube Dave three weeks ago okay I'm on give you we're gonna gently bring you along but Dave I've listened to you for 10 years and I leased a car last week you know I mean you're gonna get it you know so because you know you know not to do that I'll do everything you say to do and then tell me three things you didn't do you know so it's like I we're gonna get you dude and it's tough love but you know what that is that's real love look I'm real love is always I mean I had my son's 26 he's a wonderful fabulous young man he's a vice president our company is brilliant great entrepreneur when he was eight he would not take a bath and his dad made him bathe because you stink and you can't exist in society if you don't take a bath you know you don't brush your teeth you're not gonna have any Sun and I'm gonna make you do this against your will for your own good I don't get any benefit out of it at all it's for your good best love like all the tough love it's it's just being a good dad this is one of the things that drives me up a wall I know so many people who are both adults and teenagers but it must have been inculcated them in when they were teenagers and now they carry it forward this idea that you're 25 and you've screwed up your life and if somebody says anything that crosses you it's because they don't love you enough that if they truly loved you then they would just accept you as you are and so well maybe I'm trying to not accept you as you are because you suck the way you are maybe for stop suck and then he will have earned the love I think four duis is awesome just keep drinking it's working for you yeah I mean come on you're gonna spend your life in a ditch if you live and don't kill somebody else this is ridiculous I'm gonna have to drag your butt out of the bar boy I mean this isn't gonna work for you and you just gotta love somebody enough to go I'm not gonna participate in your crazy I'm gonna stand over here on the side and show you what sane looks like come join us it's more fun over here so what are your rules for relationships you know a lot of folks who are married or thinking about getting married do you have any sort of relationship rules and advice for folks who are getting married that they should keep kind of first and foremost in their minds oh man I've been married 36 years and happy wife happy life is the first thing no I mean as far as the money piece goes we have learned that when people handle their money together they're really setting their life goals together they're sharing their fears the sharing of stresses they're sharing their dreams because their money all runs towards those things way you handle your money symptoms more of a symptom of what's going on in your life than of actual problem and so when we can get couples to start talking it's amazing they go through one of our classes and they've been married 12 years they come back you saved our marriage I'm like you went the wrong class a sex class was down the hall it was are we it was we made them start talking about their money one checking account shared accounts we're gonna know everything that's going on both of us there's no I'm gonna take care of you you're not you know you're not good with money honey so I'll do the money no we're all on this together one might be the nerd that's gonna do more of the details but we're gonna be two adults pulling the wagon together and there's tons of data that says you're not gonna build wealth unless you do that so I I know again you don't you don't get into politics too much but from a general political view I'm gonna ask you one political question which is what do you think the proper role of government is because it seems like nowadays people think it's to fix an income inequality guarantee people jobs in your ideal world your King Dave Ramsey do you get to decide you know what government does and what government does what do you think governments actual role is well God has been smart enough so far to not allow me to be involved in that and I pretty much agree with him so no I mean politically I'm sitting here so I'm obviously conservative very conservative probably just to the right of Genghis Khan but you know and our my liberal friends my liberal listeners they I make fun of them all time on the air but but they know I love them and I'll help them with their money and I'll help them with their marriage when they call in and help them retire with dignity I'll show them how to do it but I'm like people you know I'll help you wherever you are that's okay but as far as the reason I'm a conservative is prop you know I was sitting with John Stossel one night about 15 years ago back when he did 2020 back a long time ago and and he said I'm read up on you and I said oh really that didn't take long because yeah you're a you're a social conservative an economic libertarian wow I never thought about that but I probably am I probably am I'm a konami libertarian because I'm a free-market I mean I am a capitalist Pig I love capitalism capitalism is what happens if you leave people alone you know they will go and function in their own best interest some of them will do it crooked some of them will do it with morals some sanctified capitalism some of them do it wrong and you wish you hadn't let them run loose just like when your children grow up sometimes you wish you hadn't but that's the way it is and but I see so much good happen more good happen in the marketplace when you let people do their own thing I mean any time any time you have put a large number of people in a small area geographically there has to be more rules we call that civilization if you're going to be in the middle of Montana and there's you know more sheep per capita you know in this square mile than people and there is it's beautiful if there I love Montana and but you don't need it I mean you can just walk around the gun on your hip and you can just shoot it if you want to you know but if you do that right here in the middle of La you'll not only go to jail but you're in danger people what we call that most of the city actually you know but that's you know legally I mean you know the point is more people you have to have more rules and government is the same way and so I love the old systems of government I'm an old guy so you know highways and and take care of the military and a bunch of this other stuff you know they were just trying to engineer votes and they should have be out at all of those businesses so yeah if you made me King there'd be a whole bunch of folks unemployed that used to work for the federal government very quickly because I'd just do away with a bunch of it but I'm not gonna be king so you're safe it's okay all righty so I want to ask you about charities so in your program you talk a lot about how when you get wealthy you should give a lot of charity what do you think the role of charity is because there's a whole group of folks who are sort of the iron Randian Objectivists you say that the best way that economics works is to never give charity the best thing you can do is invest your money create more jobs why do you think it's important for folks to give charity well has nothing to do with the economy as do what it does for you god teaches both of our faiths to give very very clearly tons of Scripture the Talmud the Old Testament where we Christians would call it and in the New Testament as well tons so why would a loving God suggest that you give money there's nothing there the economics your synagogue does not need your money my church does not need money they're gonna be fine I promise so that's not what it's about this is about what happens in me when I turn loose of money and I see the result it moves me from selfish selfish to selfless it grows my character and selfless people are highly attractive much more so than selfish people and so it turns out that the person who gives is also the person who holds the door for you and also the person has a level of humility they understand the center of the world really doesn't run through the top of their head and so but there's a spiritual result a character-based result in a psychological result when you go through the tactical step of mathematically giving your money away and so when you reach over and you see a lady waiting a table and a greasy diner and you leave her a $300 tip and she's pregnant a lady needs some money now you helped her but the economy was affected but what it did for you was more than any other player so oddly enough charity is selfish in that regard if you understand what it does for you what it does for your kid to see you give and and I've got a good friend who's Orthodox Jewish rabbi rabbi Daniel lapin and he cannot stand the phrase and I agree with him give back he says you're not giving back you didn't take anything right you're just giving you didn't give back indicates somehow you took advantage of the culture and you owe the culture a debt you know the culture of that that's not true but you owe yourself a debt to learn to have that element of your character but because people who give are always grateful people they're more humble and they're more selfless and they're highly attractive people they're who you want your kids to be they're who you want to be when you grow up you know that's who I want to be I meet those old men those are women they got those beautiful faces you know and then you meet the ones that don't have beautiful faces says they're angry and they're selfish and you come it's up on their countenance when you get old and because when you get old you become more what you're gonna be right you know and that's what charity does now think about this though if we could look at that on the macro level what would happen Oh baby I mean what if we could get a whole culture that started giving not because of the economic impacts not because they help this little charity or not because this this kid was fed although that's a wonderful thing but we got a whole culture of people who are highly attractive and so flips instead of selfish and mean and nasty and on Twitter unbelievable you know ya know and I think that's exactly right it's because I think that what happens is that the folks who don't give charity tend to be the folks who are very eager to take somebody else's money for somebody for something else I mean it's there's a really high crossover and not to get too political again but they're this death show that red states give a lot more charity than blue states that religious people gotta give a lot more charity than non-religious people and those people also tend to vote for small government because again those people understand that when it comes time when the pedal hits the metal and it's time to help somebody out that in the end it's up to them it's not up to somebody else and they're casting a lot a casting off on a third party is a mistake and one of things I always note on my show is that when it comes to charity yes I have a commandment to give charity but there's no commandment to receive charity there's no command we seem in our society to have reversed it there's the commandment is mostly that society owes something to make it used to be that if you took charity from somebody you felt the obligation toward that person because you knew who the person was the person had a face and I always say the movie Cinderella Man where James Braddock is walking back into the welfare office of the role of 20s and paying back the welfare office what is there a single person in the United States who gets a check from the government who would ever think about doing that today probably not but if you do it in the context of a community of which are apart you know exactly how much you owe to everybody else in your community well and all that is is gratitude if you've received it it changes your gratitude level if you've received help at some point in your life you're grateful person and if we could create a whole culture of people who were self less rather than selfish and in the process out you know we gave so much into these institutions that you may you could literally you literally financially economically could make the government irrelevant you could put them out of business be wonderful so what do you think you know as a person running a massive massive business what have been the biggest obstacles that you faced in taking your business from non-existent to a 200 million dollar business people people our people on our team are our greatest blessing and they're our greatest pain we love them and they drive us nuts sometimes people the human the human resource and loving them well compensating them well attracting the talent and people with character people that have quality that actually act like they own the place and actually work while they're at work and all that kind of crap you know I mean it's that that has been our biggest obstacle we are tuner folks last year but but you have to go through ten interviews with us they were very hard to get on with but we win best place to work every year why be the best freakin place to work we take care of our people I mean we're we're very very good too but we require a lot so you have to bring it baby we're playing for the Super Bowl dad said tell me about that experience like how does that interview process work that's a--that's a lot of vetting I mean maybe we'll start doing that around here well I mean I was so dumb when I first started I thought if you hired people they would just work you know and I was dumb I mean I thought they would actually care and I would steal and turns out you have to hire people that work and care and don't steal you can't just hire people and they want to do you have to actually vet that process there's a due diligence involved so we just found out if you spend more time with people you get to know them though they'll tell you we call them thoroughbreds or donkeys you can't win the Kentucky Derby with a donkey I've never been one win it ever yeah and and you can't win it business with a roomful of donkeys and so sometimes a donkey can dress up they put on their interview clothes they look like a thoroughbred when they come in but you have to talk to them long enough until they finally going yeah here yeah one someone's got a drug issue I don't thing we're gonna do that and that one's doing some crazy but stuff in their personal life I don't think we need that toxic stuff in here and you know that kind of stuff and so because you know everything moves the speed of trust and if you can't trust people's competence their excellence their integrity their intent then it's hard to work together you can't get work done because you're always looking over your shoulder Cena's gonna stab you and so we just fire people if they do stuff like that have you started have you seen em you've gone through so many people that sounds like have you seen any like quick indicators of the donkey like well how do you how do you spot the donkey right off we just talk to them and they'll tell you and we love Millennials for this reason the millennial generation is a fabulous generation I get asked all the time these leadership conferences out of your iron Millennials buddy are Millennials I love them they're awesome because there's really only two kinds awesome and sucks and that's the only Millennials they don't and they don't tell notice tell you I suck I live in my mother's basement I don't intend to work I got a participation trophy I'm not doing squat I'll just tell you and good we're not hiring you but the other ones the ones that care and they join a cause they'll storm the gates of Hell with a water pistol man they're missional they will fight they drive they believe they're loyal it's the best generation I've ever hired as an old leader I can tell you it's a fabulous generation what's your management style it hasn't like in your office how do you there's some people who are you know delegate errs are some people who are micro managers what's your management's down what do you recommend in terms of men well I wouldn't really have hired you if I didn't need you to do something I didn't want to do so its delegation but I'm gonna require you do this stuff with excellence and and with a spirit on it that the customer loves the fact that they came into contact with the Ramsey organization and so it's a high level of expectation a lot of more like a coach you know I used to say coach is somebody that loves you dearly but you're a little bit afraid they'll go crazy at any moment kill you you know that's probably me yeah that's in from Pattin where he because it yells the soldier and he leaves and his adjutant says to him and they don't know when you're joking generally so it's not important for them no it's only important for me to know well I'm I mean I'm not unkind I don't yell and scream or anything like that it's not but but I mean it's you're gonna do the stuff because that's what we're all here for and this this place is bigger than any one of us and so you're going to get your work done and and if you don't then you know we'll set you free in Jesus name there's stuff you can do I mean this does seem to be the commonality between all the good managers that I've ever seen is that they do it's all about hiring the right person and leaving them alone that if you have to intervene with the person too much then you're a bad manager and you're a bad hire if you have to if you have to be in their face all the time and that's why when I look at presidents you know I'm not gonna name any names when you look at presidents and they're constantly shifting staff or they're micromanaging or going over people's heads that's the mark of a bad business to me is somebody who has to have only closely held people who can't delegate out to control freak that and so but you can't if you delegate without being able to trust someone's competence and their integrity you have that takes time if you delegate without doing that then you're just irresponsible and so and we have made the mistake in business and in government if we just hire someone who's talented and they got a good resume then we'll just turn them loose no no no no no walk with you a little bit here make sure you know how to do this stuff the way we're doing it make sure you really know how to do it that you're not just got a good resume so forth so I'm gonna trust your integrity in your competency and the bigger the job and the more money that's involved more customers that are involved the more that's on the line the longer that's gonna take so as an advocate of the free market some of the big questions that have come up recently one one that's obviously starting to take from center stage is the is the question of technology and the idea of a permanent underclass the idea that there's going to be some sort of IQ dichotomy where people who are smart are going to be able to work and get jobs and everybody else is going to be replaced by technology do you see that as a problem in the future or you know you think the technology will be more of an aid than a hindrance technologies are both simultaneously in all of our lives blessing and a curse and we've got kids who screen time it's blowing their brains up there's all kinds of problems with their brains with too much screen time you know we all you know check our inbox and have to keep it clean like we're OCD or something guilty and so on you know we and yet I can do more my personal efficiency is way through the roof compared to even 10 years ago and and so um it really doesn't require that much brain matter to take advantage of technology most people turn on their televisions and sign into Netflix most of them are listening this podcast and they're figuring out a way to do that at all social strata and so you know case in point the dollars that are flowing into those things we can see that that's happening so that there's enough brain matter grey matter to take advantage of technology but it's always a blessing it's always a curse and you know I always think about that you know the story of the guys that used to bring ice blocks and tongs on a wagon and set them in a box called an ice box that was basically a cooler and you're in your kitchen it was not it didn't have any refrigeration and then freon was invented well the ice Tong guys went out of business right well one of them had an ice house in Dallas Jerry gram and Jimmy Jimmy Graham they called him Uncle Jimmy and he decided to store bacon and milk and stuff in his ice house and you could come by and pick it up anytime between the hours of 7:00 and 11:00 and he started a little market chain and so and the ice business today by the way is a 5 billion dollar a year business and nobody's got tongs so what what does that mean it means we adapt those that are gonna win there's market disruptions welcome to life and they come at you and they present either the death of your business or the life of your business be ready they're coming so you've had a ton of callers obviously over the years is there any one that really sticks out to you as particularly memorable or it's just at this point kind of faded into the I've had several of these but I guess the first time it happened it sticks in you know sticks in your memory she called me from San Antonio and it was Monday and San Antonio's big military town and her husband special forces guy had been killed in Afghanistan the day before and she's calling me crying what'd I do well we work with military folk a lot so I knew all their programs and they do a great job of coming around there they're the spouses when they lose somebody so I knew that they were going to be there but we were able to plug her in with a good church locally and one of our coaches locally and one of our investment advisors locally and we were able to put all those people around her to help her and walk with her because I obviously in two minutes on the radio how do you I just couldn't I just cried with her I just torn me up I'm thinking about right now but I can't imagine getting that call those guys standing on your front porch you know those get you and but you know radios a blast there's humans there man one guy called and said my wife says she won't have sex with me if I don't make at least $600 a month what do you think about that Dave Ramsey I think I'd get to work I want to ask you about as I sort of referenced vaguely earlier there's been this debate that's broken out now on people among people on the right and one side of the debate people like me on the other side people like Tucker Carlson we had Tucker on the show you know probably a couple of months ago at this point and Tucker was going on about how America had left the the non college educated man behind how these people were basically stuck there was no way to get them forward and he actually said in a monologue on Fox News that the market the free market is just a tool that we shouldn't see it as a system we should just see it as a tool and just like any other tool we should be able to play with it into what we want with it and all the rest and when he was sitting in that chair one of the things that I said to him is it seems to me that you've lost the sense of American adventure Leahy because he said you know that if why should it be that if you grew up in a small town and your grandparents are buried here and your parents live here that you should have to pick up and move if there are no jobs in that town I said well because that is the biblical injunction and has been the nature of adventure-seeking people in all of human history that was the guarantee of America but it seems like this is a mindset that setting in for a lot of folks I was born here I should stay here there's no reason for me to leave you know do you see do you see that as a trend as well well Turker not started on fox business when it first started together he friend long time oh she's sitting here socket in this ultimate person that's just hogwash he needs to get out of Manhattan more you know when you walk around the real people out here some of these little towns are dying and evil Walmart took over the town or evil whatever took over the town and ran the little guy out of business again that's a marketplace disruption this great old book one at one in John Grisham's books painted house it's fictional but the story is about cotton family cotton pickin family white trash lowering lower-income white trash in Arkansas and the cousin had enough picked up got in the truck got a bus ticket went to Detroit because they were hiring people to build cars and he came back a year later with a Yankee wife right and driving a new car and he'd made more money than the rest of the family put together putting cars together for a Henry Ford and so what'd he do there was no economic things available so he picked up he went to Detroit I mean when the hurricane hit New Orleans you know what happened we got Cajun restaurants all over the United States the people left and never went back they left because their homes were destroyed their businesses were destroyed but then they got comfortable we got great Cajun restaurants two of them are friends of mine in Nashville that we're from New Orleans and the whole reason they're there was Katrina that's the reason they're there so when economic calamity or lack of opportunity is there you pick your butt up and you move there's always been a diaspora an economic diaspora there has always been that there's always movement you know to the state of Florida you know because of the you know the snowbirds all there's always a thing and and taxation and policy drives that there's people leaving the state of California as if the place is on fire right now going to Texas I mean the whole the whole thing the whole political makeup of Texas is shifting because of California's movement moving there to get away from the taxation and the same thing coming out of Connecticut and out and out of New York I mean you got to make a lot of money extra to offset the taxation so all of those things play into and there's always been a sense of you need to move I don't want to move I like my town I'm comfortable there but if it means feeding my family if it means leaving my debt you know my destiny that God's given me I'm gone let's go when when it comes to the question of sort of how to raise your kids in this culture what sort of tips do you have for young parents particularly who are being hit with a lot of cultural influences that suggest precisely the opposite of exactly the lessons you teach how do you shield your kids cuz you brought up three great kids of towns like how do you go about protecting them from this and and inculcating in them exactly the sort of values you're talking about well I the first thing is my friend Andy Andrews says don't try to raise great kids raise kids that are going to be great adults and that's a different thing because great kids are like little Stepford children and they don't ever embarrass you in the restaurant and they're always perfect in all this BS and they're never that way they'll poop in their diaper right in the middle the worst possible time and scream in the middle of church you know that's kids that's because they're kids that's what they do but what we are going to teach them to do is to have critical thinking skills and I'm going to be a whole lot more concerned with your character than I am your GPA I'm gonna be a whole lot more concern with the way you treat your brother or your sister and the way you talk to your mother in my house then I am whether you did a piano recital and so sometimes we we raise the activity level all the activities we plug our kids into as a substitute for teaching them character and you know we just taught them you can't lie it will hurt you because I will hurt you so that you don't get hurt later and you know well you paddled your children you dadgum right most of my best friends were paddled as kids and you beat your children you know I'm not a child abuser I love my children more than anything I take a bullet for him but they turned out and part of that was you know the nurturing of their mother the fear of their father don't even talk about that sort of stuff these days is obviously very much I get hate mail for days I will after this that's okay all right I made a living off of it it's okay well I mean this is this is the fun stuff that we get to talk about all the time and you talked about in your show too is sort of the distinctions between male and female roles in the household how do you see that well I'm probably middle-of-the-road my daughter called me a feminist the other day I couldn't believe it but I'm you know I talk take feminism toxic masculinity has been in the news this week obviously we don't want to do any of that but as a husband as a dad my job is to love my family to serve them and take care of them and that may mean the way I serve my eight-year-old is I may make him brush his teeth and maybe I mean the way I serve my 16 year old is you don't get to drive tonight cuz you're not been acting right it may be and they don't feel served when you're doing that but I'm serving them I'm their dad I love them more than anything on the planet and that that's the way I view it is not my goal is to serve but no I mean my wife has been a full-time mom but if she wanted to have a career I don't care my mama's are working mom and that that's fine I mean your wife's a working lady and a lot of three of our operating board members in our company are very very sharp ladies and so and no issue with that at all it's you know what do you want to do with your life how do you want to do it and how can we support each other to win I don't make decisions unilaterally at our house and neither does my wife by the way so big decisions we talk about it and we come together on it and that includes talking about something going on with the kids or a large charity donation or gonna buy this building to put our company in or you know in the old days when we were hired when we hire people we always interview them with their spouses and with our spouses because spouses see stuff and so that you know we just work together it's a team so you know a lot of the basic values that you talk about it seems like a lot of folks in the country ideologically do not hold those values and it seems like they are located in particular states around the coasts do you think that this is a gap that's bridgeable because this is really a concern for you know for me is is that as I said that it's almost two separate Americas it's a group of Americans who take very seriously traditional values and who still think that it's worthwhile to go to church and inculcate those values and their kids and then there's a group of folks who seem to think that those values our old fashioned outmoded that we live in an experimental age in which you basically ought to let your kids run roughshod over you or do whatever they want in which it's a mistake to try and teach your kids anything and in fact it's an act of parental tyranny to try and teach your kids anything do you think that that gap is bridgeable or do you think it's going to continue to sort of bifurcate all weight probably comes and goes we kind of went through that in the hippie movement in the 70s we've gone through it we went through a little bit with the Gen Xers some of the quotes skateboard crowd remember those guys and all that kind of thing every generation has to have to push back and has to pull but yeah we're seeing some of the fabric of our culture and Ravel some of those values that are basic human things the the loss of civility though in the last 36 months 48 months has just this political correctness police you can't say anything that someone doesn't like anymore without them going absolutely bananas I mean they'll destroy a teenager's life whether it's all right or the left I mean the young man has stood up on the left from the school in Florida that there was a shooting I mean all right went after that kid and basically just ate him alive he's like he's a 17 year old boy leave him alone people and then this week the kids from Kentucky with the Magna hats on with our mega hats from baby we call it all that stuff but I mean the one thing you need to understand these cameras and audio you can make people say almost anything you want to say when they finish and I've had it happen to me a time or two and in print as well and so you can't believe what you see on the Internet I know that shocking the lack of civility to stop and let's just stop a second and did that pastor really do that and maybe did I mean maybe he's a absolute reprobate and he should be punished and he should lose his standing for forty five years of building that but did he actually do that and so I think we got to just stop a second and breathe before we just slit everyone's throat on the first possible offense oh my god were an offended people it's ridiculous and II get extra credit for being offended and you also had an extra credit for being the first person to go in for the throat slitting because if it turns out that you got it wrong well then you can sort of walk it back a little maybe apologize maybe you don't but if you get it right then yet all sorts of credit as being the first on the virtue signaling train exactly exactly and I'm in charge of virtue that's my job for everyone else and turns out a full-time job as a guy in my mirror mm-hmm well in a second I want to get to the final question for you here today here yeah exactly so here's the question the question is going to be on a scale of one to ten one being entirely risk-averse and ten being entirely risk tolerant how do you rank yourself because you're obviously an entrepreneurial guy you're a guy who's who's actually you know started a massively successful business but you're also somebody who says that you shouldn't take out debt you should so that seems risk-averse I'm gonna get the answer from you in a second but if you want to hear Dave Ramsey's answer you have to be a daily water subscriber to subscribe but go to daily where calm click subscribe you can hear the end of our conversation there well Dave Ramsey it really is a pleasure to have you here sir and it I can't express enough that if folks haven't checked out mr. Ramsey's stuff you haven't checked out des stuff you really should he's helped millions of people and including apparently half the members of my family so which I didn't even know is that Dave Rams take so much for stopping thank you sure [Music] avenge Shapiro shows Sunday special is produced by Jonathan hey executive producer Jeremy boring associate producer Mathis Glover edited by Donovan Fowler audio is mixed by Dylan Kate's hair and makeup is by Joshua alvera title graphics by Cynthia and hula the Ben Shapiro shows Sunday special is a daily wire production copyright daily wire 20 19 [Music]

Channel: The Daily Wire

Views: 520,106

Rating: 4.8948054 out of 5

Keywords: Dave Ramsey, finance, advice, self help, debt, personal responsibility, overcoming, challenges, college, money, work, business, radio, investment

Id: l-Kdq8cET1g

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 03 2019