Live Like No One Else - Dave Ramsey's Story

you most really big things start with a pretty simple story Ramsey's are workers i worked feels like my whole life i've never complained about I'm not whining about it I mean but I remember when I was 12 years old I came in I asked my dad I was gonna ride my bicycle I used to ride my bike down to the local quick sack it was about a about a mile down the road from us and came and asked my dad for some money to get an Icee at the quick-set and he says you know I hold you and I said your son I'm 12 you know these things and he said what that means you need a job you don't need money because that's where money comes from we said what could you do to earn some money and I said well some of my buddies are cutting grass I guess I could cut grass and even good getting a car so true story took me down on Nolensville Road in the Woodbine area there in old Nashville to a print shop and the old-fashioned print shop that used to do letterheads and business cards they printed up 500 business cards that said Dave's lawns when we got home he said you gonna knock on the closest 50 doors in the neighborhood and you ask them if you can have the opportunity to provide their lawn care needs and I did it and it worked I got 27 yards to cut it 12 years old I learned customer service and I learned keeping your word and I remember having all kinds of little businesses all the way through school might let little leather bracelets that you would stamp people's names on and paint them in and sell them on the out there hulking them by the lockers and I've just always worked and so when I graduate from high school at 18 years old i sat for and passed my real-estate exam I'm a dad Odin a real estate company and so I started selling real estate while I was in school then I took off the other end of the state the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and took my license over there work for a guy over there and I work 40 to 60 hours a week while I was going through school and I graduated from school basically broke but not deeply in debt because I've been working my wife Sharon Ramsey she is a central element a proverbs 31 woman who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies the heart of her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain Sharon and I got married and started literally with nothing you know I remember when we first got married we were so broke it was unbelievable we bought our first two pieces of furniture an old couch and this oh pedestal table if it could talk wow the stories it would tell but eventually after doing some selling of real estate for a builder I started buying and selling real estate in my very early 20s just a couple of years after getting married and it worked a little bit of family connection with some bankers and stuff that would new me and trusted me I don't know why I was 22 years old 23 years old but they started loaning me money and I got rich I ended up with about 4 million dollars for the real estate about 3 million dollars for the debt so that's differences a million dollar net worth and at 25 26 years old I was making $250,000 a year cash taxable income it was amazing I mean the neighborhood I grew up in 20,000 bucks a month that's rich I was rich I mean we we did all the stuff we had dreamed of doing and I'd always wanted a Jaguar that was my car I'd dreamed of having a Jaguar I set that goal back when I was in college and so I got my Jaguar man and everything seemed to be going right it was incredible and our first baby was born Denise and then and we're cooking along and you know about that time I start going to church and I met God in the process and weird thing happened it was right about that time that everything start falling apart September 22nd 1988 I remember that the banks got sold main bank we were dealing with we had 1,200,000 with them and 90-day notes because we were buying property and flipping it and that bank got sold to another bank and the guys in another state in another city looked down and said you know there's a kid 26 years old here owes us 1 million two hundred thousand dollars this is ridiculous let's limit this relationship which is banker talk for college notes and screw up his life so they called her notes gave me 90 days to come up with a million bucks there's no way started a crash I couldn't stop and word got out on the street that I was in trouble and I was in trouble and our second largest lender we had 800,000 out with them they called our notes about 60 days later after the first one so we had less than six months to come up with two million dollars and it's all in real estate you can't sell real estate fast enough to pay that bill we'd never lost money on a deal we've never been late a minute on a note ever that didn't matter though they just decided that they were going to limit their relationship they were in freakout mode in the in the economy that we were in right then and those two hits started a crash that we fought for two and a half years no one wins without paying a price the scripture says no discipline seems Pleasant at the time but painful we sold everything as fast as we could and it doesn't matter what you do when you pile up stupid as I as I piled it it's gonna fall down and you can't catch it all so no matter how hard I fought no matter how smart I was no matter how much I kept my word no matter how much I was gonna do the right thing and pay everybody it didn't matter I couldn't control the outside variables and I remember being so scared Sharon and I there was a lot of separation between us she's pretty freaked out and scared pretty ticked at her husband I have any answers I was the guy that had had all the answers the weird thing was we paid the four million dollars down all the way to three hundred seventy eight thousand was unbelievable but some of the little ones we had been sued hundreds of times it felt like I don't know exactly how many it was it was close to 100 easy and one of those little lawsuits decided on that they were going to execute on the judgment and they arranged with the Sheriff's Department to come take a furniture out of our house on Friday morning so September 22nd of 1988 we met with a bankruptcy attorney that night we signed bankruptcy papers I'll never forget that he filed him on Friday morning so we filed bankruptcy on the 23rd to keep the sheriff out of our house and keep him from taking the baby bed well we I was out of gas I didn't have enough emotional energy to fight anymore I mean we were just beat up and beat down right after that we started finding out God's Word had something to say about money and this really wasn't the end of the story so I met God on the way up but I got to know him on the way down without a doubt I started studying Biblical Finance and comparing what the Bible and common sense has to say about money comparing that with what I had learned in academia because I've got all these letters and licenses after my name that says I'm supposed to know something about money but their asset broke I started applying new ideas like a budget and like an emergency fund and like getting out of debt staying out of debt and we had a guy at church come up to me MacGregor not long after and said hey can we have a cup of coffee with you and your wife we're going through financial garbage and you know it's about to tear our marriage apart it looks like y'all made it how did you make it we're like going we barely did so we'll talk to you that you know so we had a cup of coffee with him I guess it was my first financial counselling session probably I got a budget out I remember getting the yellow pad out saying dude you got to do a budget tell me weren't you and I'm sitting there trying to look at his numbers I thought man I can really work I can really show people how to win with this and I could see it instantly in other people's situations I guess because we had been there at a friend of mine says having a testimony is a great idea but getting one is a pain the scripture says no discipline seems Pleasant at the time later on however it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it we've spent a lot of our time and effort in not only being educational but being aspirational to lift and to make people believe because when you believe you can do a lot of things that really don't even make sense it's crazy what people can pull off when they believe they can and it's crazy what they can't pull off when they don't believe they can I've watched a lot of people file bankruptcy that were not bankrupt they're just scared the light at the end the tunnel was an oncoming train for them they didn't believe that there was anything out there that was real that they could turn the corner they they were hopeless and that broken spirit there's almost nothing that can overcome it but the fuel is the hope when we did the class we cut up the credit cards I took them and ground them all up I looked at this thing every day I shook my fist at it you're going down you're going I lost my job hi um and I'm so behind on everything pretty freaking scary it oh my god you have no idea yeah to have been there I think you're going to have 100% of it paid in less than a year that's what I predict not having a future plan for our kids really was a big big motivator to us to say hey we can do it look at all these people that are doing it thing that kept us going is the support group that the radio station really is and what you're doing I'm glad we were able to help you and if you need some more help you call me anytime that's what we're here for it doesn't make sense in our story that we were able to pay down from three million dollars in debt all the way to three hundred seventy eight thousand dollars in debt in two and a half years and I was 26 years old that doesn't even make sense it's not logical and we still didn't make it but but the fact that we got that far into it was because we really believed we were going to make it and when it ended was when we didn't believe anymore so that sense of hopelessness I got a barometer I've got a meter I can smell that on people I can feel it on the a call that's coming in when I'm sitting in a book line I can look up see in somebody's eyes and I just stop a second and talk to him and pray with him and give him a couple of little pointers or hook him up with one of our counselors because they came in there they weren't looking for a book they were looking to believe again our mission statement lamp oh group says lipo group provides biblically based common sense education and empowerment which provides hope to everyone in all walks of life that has been our guide it's not a brochure or filler it is who we are it is our mission that's what that says we realized really quickly that people whose numbers would work they couldn't turn it around because they didn't believe they could turn it around Zig Ziglar is to say if you think you can or you think you can't you're right that's hope I was a kid we would build campfires on by the lake we'd go camping with our families everything they'd make the kids get up all the driftwood and then we'd be ready to light the fire and it was always wet new couldn't get it light everything else and so one of the old redneck guys would always have a can of gasoline and you know he'd throw some gasoline on there and we'd like to guess little minced on fire right but that's what hope is it's like the gasoline on there it sets you on fire and allows you to do things that you never dreamed you could do we open a little counseling office Russ Carroll joined me we taught our very first class in March of 1994 called life after death with a bad suit an overhead projector I thought well teach this financial stuff I've learned the hard way and the little class had 37 people in it and when I finished teaching in a few years later there were 350 in it so obviously we touched a nerve we'd found a need and pastor came by one of my associate pastors and said you need to write your story in a book because God gave you the story and it's different than other people's stories gives people hope so I came home that night and I wrote what was I thought the opening chapter to financial peace ended up being the forward and so we're just living hand-to-mouth doing real estate and yet I got this bug about this financial stuff and so at night I'm over at the church doing a counseling session or at night I'm sitting at my computer typing and so that little blue financial piece book was born we took it to a printer and printed up the first thousand oddly enough I'd been on a radio show as a guest and this guy was doing this show we used to laughingly call it the bad financial hour like a Saturday Night Live skit nobody listened this station so we went on there he and I talked about that for a little while he had gone broke in real estate too and so we just started having this conversation about going broke and I said yeah I'm actually helping people over my church sometimes that are in foreclosure and stuff and the phone started ringing and we took some calls and he goes that was pretty cool you ought to come back let's do that again and then the guy quit and a buddy of mine call me I mean the mutual funds business and he says hey we need to go down there do that radio show that got quit and he goes listen it'll be fun I'll do it a couple days a week you do it a couple days a week and you know you can look at it as a ministry and and he knew about the book I had just written and he said who knows you might himself some that stupid little book you wrote you got to get this cleaned up for the sake of your child right then worth it though well good for you when you keep doing smart stuff for five days you have a good result you do smart stuff for five years you really start to see a thing take on a life of its own you're making good progress kiddo yeah we're trying there was immediately gravitational pull because uh we were offering instruction which gave hope human answers that stuff nobody talked about out loud it was like the secret that nobody discusses the dirty little secret that everybody looks good but it's broke and we open that can of worms and it just blossomed weird thing is is that we went on the air June 25th of 1992 that same week the phone rang printer was on the line and he said your books are ready and so I drove out and got my books and we filled up the car with them and put them in the trunk and strapped the trunk down with a big piece of rope and the cars driving like this and I'm driving home and I remembered in my prayer time that God had told me he was going to give me a way to sell the book and it's gonna be so unusual that I wouldn't be able to take credit for my marketing genius and I'm driving home and I suddenly made the connection that little radio show was gonna be how God was gonna sell this book and I just became overwhelmed I to pull over saw the road not a southern cried for me it was amazing and to this day I don't take that for granted all of this stuff started from primitive humble beginnings that would give you no indication any of it was going to succeed but I want to challenge you live like no one else so that later you get the opportunity to live and to give like no one else I look back and go this radio show one of the largest talk radio shows in all of North America right now the book financial peace and how it took off as a result and it's now had literally millions of families go through it over the last several decades you know there's no way I could take credit for it I've worked hard but when I look at the the way that stuff lined up that was just God's gift it was just what's called a blessing we're just regular people from Antioch Tennessee we're not anything super special we just did the stuff I've been teaching you and tried to figure out what God's telling us to do and doing it on a regular basis we're just Joe every guy I started with nothing did stupid stuff to fail your part and the belief that I can still go out there and win everyone's story has an arc to it everyone's story has a problem and the opportunity to overcome the problem and then a resolution sometimes it's more or less zeroes sometimes you know it's someone from a little different culture where they started from a different mindset a different family upbringing but they still have that same story arc and it's still a story arc of folk and so we unashamedly use our story to help people to make them believe that they can win sharing a story or handing off a story or connecting to a story in our case you would do it because it's someone that needs hope I can hand this Total Money Makeover book I can hand this financial peace book I can hand this class or tickets to a live event or are just a link to the radio show I can connect this hurting person with this story of resolution we're all intertwined that way because it turns out our story as always your story they connect and that connects to another one and that connects to another one and that's how this whole thing is happened there's nothing about the story we would change we would have changed it while we were in it but looking back on it there's nothing about the story we would change

Channel: The Dave Ramsey Show

Views: 980,066

Rating: 4.9220161 out of 5

Keywords: the dave ramsey story, live like no one else dave ramsey story, dave ramsey life story, dave ramsey story, dave ramsey live like no one else, dave ramsey's story, live like no one else dave ramsey, live like no one else, dave ramsey documentary, dave ramsey testimony, dave ramsey motivation, dave ramsey total money makeover, david ramsey, dave ramsey live

Id: r1NJzEYARlM

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 15 2014