Confronting George Kamel on credit cards, student loans, and financial infidelity

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I wear them all the time when we go on the pool with the boys. I'm excited to see what she picks out from Quince for me next. You're nice khaki shorts are from Quince. With the khaki that I wear like literally every day. Yep. Those are from Quince. You don't even know where your clothes are from, but if you had to guess, they're probably from Quince because I love shopping their min section as well for Matt. You can wear them in many different ways for many different seasons. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that unplanned sent you. It's the best way to support the show. I think you should be able to go in debt for Disney. I didn't know I was talking to a Disney at all. I think it's the reason she had me on, was to try the reason people get divorced over money is because someone was hiding something, someone was controlling something. If you have total transparency of a shared bank account, it is so much harder to screw this up. Those people can knock out their consumer debt in 18 to 24 months if they get tensed. No saving, no investing, no vacations. What if I want to go in vacation? Well, you pay so much to live in your house. So just think about it that way and treat it like a hotel. Today on unplanned, we sat down with George Campbell and his wife Whitney to talk about money. I know, that's probably just made you uncomfortable saying that out loud, but I think it's really important that we talk about it. Through the day Ramsey Baby steps, George and Whitney were able to pay off all their debt, including their house and reach millionaire status by age 32. We talk about why you should cut up your credit cards, why so many Americans are broke, and why you shouldn't have a car payment all on today's episode. What's up dudes and welcome back to unplanned. Sorry, I like, I'm losing my voice right now, but today we're with George and Whitney Campbell. He was yelling at us right before this. You guys don't know. Excuse me, George and Whitney Campbell welcome to unplanned. It's an honor to be here. Do you need it? Do you need, I get some, you know I have some vocals. I do. Honestly, I think this coffee right here and just this warm, fuzzy conversation we're out to have is the list and I have care grabbing in case it's in the side pocket of my bag in there. It's called entertainers secrets. No way. Are you a singer, George? That was my past life. He has no way. No way. I don't know how to delete my album off the Spotify. I have music on Spotify too. No way. Wait, what kind of music? So I did like singer songwriter stuff pop, should we collab? We should collab. Should we sing a song right now? Just two grown men trying to relive the glory days. He should tell us in a song. Yeah, what would you say your music was like? What artist? Oh man. I took a lot of, yeah, Ben Rector. Yeah. We danced to a Ben Rector song in her wedding. But I want to talk about you guys, not us today. Okay, you guys are in the hot seat. From what I understand you guys met working for Dave Ramsey, if I'm not mistaken, and like, was it love at first sight? How did you guys meet? What's the story? No, great question. I wish. I mean, it was for me. I'll say that. I can't speak for her. Oh, okay. Let's see, are stories a little tricky? So I'm like, where do we kick off? I'll let you kind of tell you a bridge version. Okay, sure. So I was friends with a guy named Michael here and Whitney was his assistant at the time. Okay. And so I was hanging out with Michael and his wife and they were like, hey, what do you think about Whitney? And I was kind of like, I mean, she'd never know me. She wouldn't, no, there's no way. No chance. And so I asked her out as a grown man over Snapchat. That's amazing. Okay. And I was tricky. And I'd given him my number for a work thing before. So he had my number. So I'm a loose guy. You forgot me. Was that just the immediate Ick? Was that a big turn off? I had just woken up from a nap so I didn't have as much a filter. And I was like, uh, what did I say? I was like, I'm going to church. I was like, I'll give you an answer after church. I was like, are you asking just to see what I would say? Yeah, I was just a real question. I was like, it was, he just threw it out there. So it was like a board, mission, a board, mission, delete, delete, delete. Do you remember what this picture was? Was it just like? No, he said, he said it was a message. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just the test said, Vicki thinks we should go on a date. That's all he said. He didn't say like, would you want to go on a date? It was like, it was a question. It was state George. Guys. It was a rough move. Yeah. It was a rough move. No, zero risk. But I told him I go on one date, which was looking back on it. I mean, there's, uh, there's a lot of backstory to that that I won't necessarily get into right now. But I said I go on one day and just thinking that we just have a good time. And then we'd move on. But I ended up loving the date. So I hated that I said just one. But we worked together at the time. And Ramsey then was a lot smaller. So it's like, when you're dating, you kind of need to like, know you like this person. Because all eyes are on you. Okay. Like, like watch you. You're the talk of the town. Yeah. If you're like the couple that's dating in the company. Now it's so big. No one even knows. And working, working for Dave Ramsey's not easy. I know because my, my cousin applied last year. He didn't get through. Which I, I'm saying like, I feel like you guys have a really, a really high caliber of talent and people here. So like, at by the time you guys were working for Dave, did you guys not like have debt? Was that a conversation you guys had at first over your first date? Like tell me about your finances. Was that what you guys did? I know. Well, it's funny at Ramsey. It's so easy to talk about finances. I guess because it's like in our everyday talk. So like, it's not weird for someone to like in a meeting to be like, I have 10,000 left to pay off. And I'm going to, here's my plan. Like, it's weird, but in like the real world, it's like, that's like weird to bring up. So, I don't think we ever had like a big conversation, but just working here, we knew we had a lot of the same. We never went, hey, it's time to have the money conversation. Yeah. It was just so natural that it probably just flowed in and out to talk about, you know, where you went to college and all this stuff. And so Whitney was completely debt free. That's amazing. I don't think you had debt. No debt at all. Well, before, before I worked here, I had a credit card. Yeah. So I racked up that really fast and it freaked me out. And that's why I started working here and I got rid of it. So maybe that's like was our initial conversation. Yeah. If you don't mind me asking you how much credit card that were you in? I was buying concert tickets because I just moved to Nashville. And I was buying them for like my friends and then some of them would back out and not pay me back. No. One of them, I probably shouldn't even say, but it was like Beyonce and it was so much money. How much? How much money? I lost sleep. Was it like $600 to take it for Beyonce? Probably around four at the time, which is insane. And I did not have that money. And this is what was this five or 10 years ago or? Yeah, I got around 10 years ago. So anyways, but they like said they were going to buy the ticket and then would back out. And so I would just like literally sleep over it. So it's just like little things like that after college. And then like rent here is very expensive. Yeah. So it's just like it's crazy how life just kind of happens to you really fast when you have a credit card to and you're just like spending. When you like start working for Dave, is that like do you take a pledge of like, I'm not using a credit card anymore? Or do you have like flexibility to kind of do whatever you want? You just wouldn't last long here. I feel like if you don't agree with the principles, you know, I think we just drive you crazy. Yeah, there is no one else. We try to buy guys. We try to buy a book at the bookstore with the credit card last time. And we were like, why isn't that going through? And she's like, oh, it's a debit or cash. And we're like, we don't have that. Yeah, they stick to what they've reached. They just give you the book for. That was what so I thought so bad. They literally just gave us the book. I was like, please return. No, not a life hack guys. Don't show it. But it was like, I don't know, it just speaks to the type of people that you guys have around here. It speaks to like, I don't know. I love the Ramsey principles and I love how nonsense it is, right? Because if you don't have a credit card, it's like, it's kind of impossible to spend more than what you have in your bank account with a debit card, you know? I love to tell people we are $1.2 trillion in credit card debt as a nation. That's 10. We are $0.1 in debit card debt. Are you serious? Yes. $1.2 trillion. Yes. So for everyone that goes, dude, just use a credit card and pay it off responsibly. I'm like, great, if we live in a perfect world before the fall of man, maybe that theory would work. Okay, but then I feel like some some troll out there to be like, well, George, I heard that you got your wedding paid for and you want a competition. So like, of course, you're not ending your debt. Can you tell us the story about your wedding and why you guys had a live camel at your wedding? Whose idea was having a live camel, by the way? Oh, me. I'm like, if my last name's going to be camel, I'm going to have a real camel voice. Yeah. Well, and truthfully, as I looked into it, there's a guy who runs an exotic petting zoo in Tennessee. It's like, I don't know where to say it. It was $700. Yeah. Okay. That's cheaper than flowers. Wow. The cheapest part of the wedding. That's amazing. To rent a camel. And we got them at a nativity scene at church. And I was like, hey, do you do weddings? And he was like, no, I'll try any. He did do weddings. And he called us. He was like, do you want two hump camel, one hump camel, for ready one short hair camel? Please tell me the pastor was like reading like in the in front of everyone on top of the camel reading the thing. Like when someone has a law where you can't ride exotic animals. So we wanted to do camel rides and we couldn't, you could only go and take pictures. Yeah. - Oh you got no camera. - But you guys won. How did you guys win this competition? - We didn't even ride a camera on the feet. - Oh yeah. - Much looser camera laws. (laughing) - Yeah. - Whitney found a local wedding contest somehow as she was researching for the wedding. - Venues and stuff. - And we were like, "Well, we'll apply." I mean, it can't hurt. It's probably thousands of people trying to get free wedding. - Yeah, it was not marketed well. Like it was a little tab on a website that I like just happened to see as I was scrolling through. And I think because of that, only like four people signed up for it. And the way you won is by YouTube likes. And at the time, George was host of the Ramsey show YouTube channel. - Yeah, really? - Oh, perfect. - That's really nice. - Can you go like this video on YouTube? - We crushed the contest. The funny part is like, I was like, all right, we won, but then no one reached out. I had to email them. They'd be like, "Hey guys, seven people entered. There was four finalists. We got the most likes." And they were like, "Oh yeah, you won." It was like anti-climate. - You had to go collect your own prize. - Exactly. But it was pretty incredible. - But that's like a huge prize too. - I think it was like a $28,000 wedding package. And so the caveat was, you could only have 50 people total. That included us in the title party. - No wayster. - So it was like. - So people all the time, like, "Oh, you won a free wedding." But we had to pay for a separate reception because they couldn't buy all our friends and family. - No, that's sad. - So as you'll know, that's where the real money happened. So every day, we ended up paying for a wedding. But we still got to have a really nice small wedding. - So you did that for your ceremony and then had the big reception. - There was ceremony reception and then another reception later that night. - You had two ceremonies. - No. - There was ceremony reception reception. - We had a videographer at Ramsey. Actually, he did just a quick summary of our wedding. Played it at the second reception so they could see the ceremony and then we come out for our second wedding. - So they got to see the ceremony. They got to see the great moments earlier that day. And then we got to party with them. So it actually worked out. - How long was this wedding? - It was an entire day. - It was a long day. - It was a long day. - It was like a nine a.m. to 11.30 p.m. kind of day. I'm just gonna stop, you know? - Yeah. - That's intense. - Yeah. - Where does the camel come in? Was that part of the free wedding or the-- - That's a free, yeah. - Just kind of like photo op basically. - That's amazing. - But some great photos. - When you got married, were you debt free or not yet? - Yeah, so I started in 2013 at Ramsey as an intern in temp. - Okay. - And so by 2016, I met her. I was debt free by then. I knocked out $42,000. - $42,000. - I'd mostly student loans and then probably another four to five grand in credit cards. And so I knocked those out over 18 months. So by the time we met, we were both debt free with an emergency fund. And so it made things real smooth going into marriage. We didn't have to like clean up any messes. - Walk somebody through who's new to the Ramsey way, what the baby steps are of getting out of debt. Because I feel like there's someone listening right now who probably wants to be out of debt. But they just have absolutely no idea where to start. - Yeah. - And a lot of people are doing nine things at once that have good motives that are good in theory, but they're not making any progress. So the baby steps are meant to cause you to focus on one thing at a time. So baby step one is $1,000 starter emergency fund. - Okay. - Because a lot of people, they can't pay off debt and then an emergency hits and it throws them off. - Exactly. - And so Dave was like $1,000 to start. That'll knock out the ankle-biter emergencies. Once you have that, move on to baby step two, which is paying off all of your consumer debt. Everything but the mortgage. - Okay. - Using the debt snowball method. - Okay. - So pay the smallest balance first and make minimum payments on the rest. - But what if someone, I feel like the devil's advocate here would say, "Oh, well, what if your biggest debt is the highest interest?" So shouldn't you focus on the one with the highest interest, what would you say to that person? - Great question. - We get that a lot and we love to say, "Hey, if we were doing math, we wouldn't be in credit card debt, would we?" - Yeah. - And so it's kind of a. - That's good. - We got to focus on behavior. We know it ramsy that personal finance is 80% behavior. It's 20% head knowledge. We have access to all the information in the world and yet we are going into crippling debt. That's not an information problem. It's the person in the mirror. And that's where the baby steps into the debt snowball really works. Because it causes you to make progress really fast. - Yeah. - And it causes you to stop looking at the math and start going, "I'm going to make cosm momentum to happen by knocking out the smallest balance first. Take all of that payment I freed up onto the next one, onto the next one." - I love how you said that it's really a behavior problem because we're going to get to user questions that people submitted for you later. But somebody asked a question about like, "My husband and I make like a lot of money, but we somehow are still like falling behind. What's wrong?" And it's because people have behavior problems and I've fallen into that category too. I mean, it's crazy to me how even though I like to think of myself as a frugal person, it's so easy to increase your spending as you make more money. And it's amazing to me how there's like, there's doctors, there's lawyers, there's extremely successful entrepreneurs out there that make so much money and then they lose it all because they over leveraged or they spent too much. It doesn't matter how much money you make, but if you're making a lot and you're spending more than you make, you're still screwed. - Oh yeah. We get those calls in the Ramsey show and I tell them on the call, I say, "America has no pity for you. You make $300,000 and you're trying to find the margin to pay off debt." But the problem is, as you make more, you go, "Well, we can handle a bigger payment on the fancy cars, on the mortgage." And then life happens. You lose the income. Someone wants to stay home and all of a sudden things are tight and that's when they call us. And that's where the baby steps are really coming to play. - Back to baby steps too. - I did railed for a second. Most people can knock out their consumer debt in 18 to 24 months if they get intense. So this is not a 10 year plan to pay off debt. We're talking aggressive intensity. You're doing nothing else but paying off debt. No saving, no investing, no vacations, knockin' out debt for two years or so. - What if I want to go on vacation? What if I really love my trip to Florida every summer? - I think you're going to have to pause. I think we can have a staycation one year. - What do you do for the staycation? What's an idea? She's fun. - Camping? Maybe a little camping. - Well, you pay so much to live in your house. When you add up what it costs to live in your house, it's like a hotel stay every night. - Costions of breakfast is included. Breakfast in bed. The husband makes it. That's the key. - Like a date night at home where you do a little tent. We would go to Aldi and get like a steak and I would really try hard. Like cast iron. - The butter. - The butter. - The best sex I've ever had. - They're right on there. - You guys paid off your house in 26 months correct me if I'm wrong. So did you guys do at home dates to throw a ton of money to pay off your mortgage? - Yeah. Definitely was cooking. George would like watch. I feel like that's when TikTok was taking off so it's like you'd see the recipes and we would try that. And then I'm trying to think of what were creative ways that we were just. We love comedy shows and stuff like that. Those are usually pretty cheap or you can watch them on Netflix. So it's just like. - We didn't have any expensive hobbies. - Yeah. - So that's the thing. - So you like love golfing and it costs you 500 bucks a month. That's a hard thing to give up while you're getting out of debt. Paying off the house falls into baby steps six. So I'll get us there through the steps. - Yeah. - No, you're doing great. - I love it. - No, I love it right now. So I do apologize. - Just so people know where this falls into place. - Okay. - So baby step two we knock out the consumer debt. - Okay. - Now they're going well I need savings for my emergencies. So let's go back to the emergency fund in baby step three and fully fund it with three to six months of expenses. - Who would be a person that would need to save up six months of expenses? - Yeah, that's a great question. And there's a range for a reason. Some people they can stomach three months 'cause they're two people with stable jobs. Think about like a USPS worker and a teacher. Those are fairly stable jobs compared to someone who's on commission with a regular income. And so the more unstable your life is, the more you want to lean towards six months. And so if it's a one-income family, I would lean six months. If there's a lot of health issues in the family, I would lean towards six months. And if it's two people, stable jobs, you can lean towards it. Or if you're single person, you're like, hey, it's just me. No one's relying on my income but me. I can make this work for three months. - Or just for me, I have more anxiety around money just 'cause I didn't have as much growing up. So I lean more six months 'cause I want the security, even though we didn't have to have that. But I still, to this day, want the six months. - A lot of them. - No one's ever complained that they had six months and well that was a waste. - Yeah. - Do you always feel better and sleep better at night, having more? - Yeah, no it definitely feels good. I can speak from experience. We, and this is just speaking to like money mistakes I've made. But we got to the end of 2025. And we had like a lot of money in our bank account. And I was like, wow, this is pretty, I mean, this is awesome. We're like, we're killing it. We have like more money than ever thought. And the bank account tax guy goes, oh, by the way, like we actually owe a lot more taxes, you know, whatever. So like, okay, whatever. So then like, then like 60% of that money just prsh, gone. And I'm like, ooh, actually no, that was all of it. So all of it went to taxes. And we had our six month emergency fund saved up. And then I'm like, oh shoot, I probably should have done our monthly donations to charity. Like I kind of saved it for the, I usually save it for the end of the year. And I was like, I think we're gonna have to dip into savings or emergency. So I actually liquidated our emergency fund to make charitable contributions. Cause I was like, I don't, I need to like be a charitable person. Like I feel like when you're making money, you need to give back, you need to do good in the world. But a couple weeks ago, luckily brand deals came in. Revenue from YouTube and stuff came in. So we built it back up again. But I was like, for a little bit there, I was like, oh gosh, I hope I've like, I hope good karma comes back to me right now because like we literally, yeah, I was gonna save you. We got an emergency. So many to be charitable to you. You have started to go find me. I know that is tight. So yeah, there's baby step three. So if you think about the foundation, it's let's get out of debt and have money in the bank to protect us. That's the foundation, that's financial peace. Then we can begin building for the future instead of paying for the past. And that's baby step four, investing 15% of your household income into retirement. So household income 100 grand, invest 15 grand into retirement accounts. Tax advantage account. And then once you have that going, that's kind of an ongoing thing. So baby steps four, five, six, you're kind of doing them in order, but simultaneously. And so, babies have four investing 15%. Now, if you've got kids, let's start putting some money away for college in the 529 plan on the ESA. Because from 0 to 18, even 150 bucks a month, you could have 100 grand in there for a kid for college. Just to make sure on the same page. So baby step one is emergency fund or the starter emergency fund of a thousand bucks. Baby step two is paying off all consumer debt using the debt snowball method, baby steps. Baby step three is this three to six months of expenses for your emergency fund. Baby step four is investing 15 percent of your take home pay. Baby step five is investing as college and then investing is baby step six. So six is where you pay off the house early. So basically any money after you're investing for retirement and putting some money away for kids, you can use the excess to throw at the mortgage principle. Okay. So that's what we ended up doing. The stage we found ourselves in when we got married. I love it. So we got the house. We put a big down payment down on a modest town home, you know, 15 minutes south of here. And we just had this audacious goal of, hey, what if we were in our early 30s with no payments? What kind of options would that give us? Well, and also mortgage to me felt like that. Like it weighed on me as a consumer debt did. I don't know why because of all people that doesn't, but I needed that out of my life. So I feel that. She was more aggressive than I was. Yeah. Really? George made this plan. It was like a five year plan. It wasn't aggressive. We're going to come mortgage off in five years. And I was like, no, we're doing it in three. And so, and we did. That was your wife's idea to pay the house off early. Yes. Even earlier than I wanted to. No way. What? Okay. Speak to me about that Whitney. Like you seem like a risk averse person and you said that you grew up being around money problems of some kind. Yeah. I mean, we lived on the outside the like normal life, but there would be times like in college where I literally had $5 for the week to eat. And I'm like, and I didn't, and I danced in college. I didn't have time to go get like a side job or anything, but I don't want to like knock anyone in my family. But it's like they didn't have like excess money to also give me to live. Yeah. And so I just hated that feeling of like not knowing where like how am I going to get food the next week or whatever. And it's not like I was like majorly struggling, but I didn't like to always be like having that feeling that everything's about to just be like, I'm about to be totally broke. Yeah. Growing up saying that like money problems and stuff like my mom would work weekends and just try and like stay on top of things for our family and my dad too. But yeah, I think I just always, even after college, started racking up just like I told you all the consumer debt so fast and it just like would keep me up at night. And I remember some of my family said like after college, you will just always have debt. That's just part of being an American. And so said that to you. My mom said that to you. That's so sad. But I know it is sad, but that's how they live like they just always were under like insane amounts of debt. And that stress probably takes so many years off your life. Yeah, so I don't know why I just was different than that. Like I can't tell you why, but I just didn't want to live that way. And so obviously when I saw Dave and Rachel speaking about like not living a debt, I was like, I want that, you know, I don't want that anxiety in my life. So I don't know, I just didn't want to be like always wondering like where the next paycheck is coming from. What is going to like, I want to just be able to live our life. This is just a personal opinion question, like both of your opinion. So say someone like met someone when on a first date, they really hit it off and say like a couple months down the line, they find out that this other person has like a ton of debt. Is that like a red flag? Like you need, you can't take it any further in your opinion. Oh, definitely not. I would say it's like their mindset of what are they doing about the debt? Do they care about it? Are they like actively paying it off? Do they have a plan or they just like, this debt's going to go with me to the grave? I feel like that would be the red flag. Let's say it's like $90,000 in student loans or maybe it's like, you know, 70,000 in student loans. I'm saying like credit card debt or in 20,000 credit card debt, what's the green flag and what's the red flag? Like if you ask them about the debt and what response should you be looking forward to know that they're the right person. You're right. There are the different types of debt speak to behaviors. And so 20,000 in credit card debt is different than 20,000 in student loans. Okay. Those are bad. Hear me say that. But if I had to force rank them about like, what's going to take more behavior change? It's the credit cards. It's the, you know, spending more than you make versus well, I was told I needed to take out student loans for college as an investment in my future. Both things are still wrong, but I do think the type of debt matters and their mindset around it matters because if they're going, well, I'm not worried about it. I'll just maybe it'll get forgiven one day or, you know, this is not a big concern for me. I'm still going to use my credit cards. And off at some point, that to me is the red flag. But the fact that they have debt, it would be insane to be like, I'm not going to date you because you have debt. Now we get the calls where they find out. And so the, the honesty is the key here. Are they honest about the debt? Are they hiding it? Do you find out during the engagement process right before you get married that they've been hiding $200,000 in debt? Yeah. That's the scarier part to me. That's the red flag. But if they are honest and they're working on getting rid of the debt, those are green flags. Yeah. So it's not the debt that's the problem. It's the person and what they're going to do about it. And are they willing to live a debt-free life? Is that a value for them that they want to become debt-free and stay debt-free? Now I am going to be a devil's advocate here because I, this is another trap I fell into. As we started making more money, we had some friends that were way more successful than us. And I was like, do you guys do a car payment? What do you do? And they're like, oh, yeah, it's like arbitrage. So we just, we have a car payment. And then like the extra money that we could have used to buy the car cash, we just put into the stock market because our payment is like six percent on the loan payment arbitrage. So if you're making ten percent in the market. What is that? So if you're making ten percent in the market, but you're paying six percent on the loan, the difference is four percent. So arbitrage is, it might explain that, right? Yeah. It's all about trying to make a spread. So you're sort of leveraging the debt to try to make more money over here, which then can maybe pay off the debt later. It's sort of like, well, I'm going to trade, I can make more money over here, so why would I pay off this debt? What would you say to that person that comes to you like, oh, yeah, I can just take out a car payment and use the extra money to put in the S&P? Well, I'll tell you this, arbitrage is it's a trigger word for me because it tells me that you've been watching too much TikTok. And I believe that a puppy stops wagging its tail when you use the word arbitrage because what it says is it's a ten dollar word for I'm going to do something risky and stupid to try to get a little greedy, because I'm not, I'm not happy with the money I could make over here. I try to leverage debt at risk to my life so I can maybe make more money. So here's the truth. You are dead as a fixed interest rate that you have to pay every month. There's a forced amount that you're paying for the pleasure. The stock market is risky. And so young people go, well, it's been great so far. And if you talk to someone older, they go, I remember when it was negative 30% or the crash of '08. Or drops 50%. Didn't it? Like, I want to say, there's a time period. I mean, crypto has. And the early 2000s though, there's a time like if you had invested a thousand bucks into an S&P 500 ETF, you would have literally seen in a matter of a couple months, I believe, it go down from a thousand dollars to 500, because there's been correction periods and downturns the market that have been that severe. So yeah, I mean, you're right. And human behavior says you're probably not going to invest the difference. Now there are people who are the super nerdy ones who do it. Which that was us. We did do that, but I am proud to say we did pay off our cars. So that is something we did that three, three years ago. Nice. It did hurt though, because we bought brand new cars, because it was around the time when cars were like, it was almost like the used ones were more expensive than the new ones. Was that the 2038? I never did that. Yeah, I remember hearing that. We got those calls in the Ramsey show. I wouldn't buy the new one. It's actually cheaper. And I'm like, is it though, it apples to apples. The used car was still cheaper and there was still depreciation hit on the new cars. Now we'll say it made me feel less guilty when I heard the Dave Ramsey recommendation that you can buy a new car if you have a net worth of a million dollars. But at the same time, it really, really hurt when I looked at the value of our Model Y after buying a brand new and wanted to do those EVs. They dropped. Elon was like, yeah, let's just drop the price of the Model Y. Our car depreciated by like 60% in a matter of like a year or two. It was crazy. I know. But it's crazy. But at least, it's paid off. So it would suck if it's like, there's people that have cars that are worth less than what they owe on it. Yeah, they're underwater. And we're seeing that all over. Here's the Ramsey show for 10 minutes. Everybody's underwater. And a harsh. And so here's what I tell them, if you pay cash for a car, you can never be underwater because you don't know money on it. And so you don't have to worry about the drop in value. And when you buy used, someone else paid the depreciation for you for those first few years. Okay. Can we talk about you going to Disney World? No. I wanted to bring that. No, you bring this up. You bring this up. You bring this up. I have a bone to pick about Disney video. I don't know. I don't know. I was talking to a Disney adult. I think it's the reason she had me on was to try. I wanted to do it. And I was like, Matt, I know he's going to debate me and make this. My argument's so dumb. Oh my god. No. Abby Howard, you did not say that in the day it brings us to one. There are only little kids. Abby, going to debt for Disney? Come on. No. If it was Fred and came to me, I would say send it. Here's the thing. I don't know people watching agree with you. And they're like, Yasqueen. Yeah. I actually don't know. Because their husbands might be like Matt and be like, Abby, that is insane. Okay, what's your response to people like Abby? Well, here's the thing, what they're not thinking about. All they're thinking about is the starry-eyed, wonderful experience of the amazing memories they're going to have. They're not thinking about the payments and what it's going to cost them for six months or a year after the trip is over. Yeah. And you have that regret of, oh gosh, we're still paying off this Disney card. And the people I talked to, we did a man on the street at Disney Springs. So not even on the Disney, like, in the park. Yeah. Well, we filmed on a phone, and so we got away with more. There's your life hack, kid. That's legendary. Because everyone's got a phone out of it. That was a high quality phone. That is a legendary move, by the way. That video is so freaking wonderful. Yeah, it's our second top performing video ever on the channel. I saw it. And it was being voyaged. Like, 50 times. Yeah. And people were telling me, honestly, and here's the funny part. The comments were like, wait a room in their vacation, George. I was like, I don't even think about that. I was like, wah, wah. The Grinch of Disney comes around. Now that's a title I can handle. Well, they're telling me, yeah, we're like $200,000 in debt. Somebody said that. Yeah. Yeah, we put it all on the credit card. We have other-- because that was my theory. Either you paid cash and you're debt free, or you're encrypling debt, and you're just adding to the pile, going, what's another 5 grand going to do? So that's my fear. Is it just, what's another 5 grand here? What's another 5 grand there? It's not just the trip to Disney, then it snowballs into it. And I don't think you enjoyed as much. Because in the back of your mind, you know this is borrowed money. And when you save up and pay cash and you book that trip, you're like, we did it. There's a level of just that feeling of, we did a really hard thing and sacrifice to be here. Versus we did the easy thing, took the shortcut, and we're going to pay in the long run. And so I want everyone to go to Disney. I'm a Disney fan after going recently, and I went, it is magic. But there's ways to do it. You know, that would cost you an arm and a leg. Now the park tickets are the park tickets. But you can stay off property. You can bring your food in there. There's ways to make it not cost $5,000. But you want the foot, well, I want to stand the resort. And I want the kids to have the character breakfast. And you know, in your mind, you're like, "If you're million, you're gonna have to hand it." If you've been networked of a million dollars, like send it, you know, if you have the money. Well, the fear is, if you can't, if you don't know how to save up $5,000, that speaks to a deeper issue in your life. Now it might take a year or two to save up for that trip. And the kids don't know any better. You know, whether they're three or five, you're still gonna have a great time. And a lot of the times it's really for the parents. It's for the mom to feel like, wow, I did it. I'm the mom who took their kids to Disney. More than it is for the kids. And Rachel Cruz will admit that. She's like, no, I went to Disney. It was for me. It wasn't for the three-year-old. Our kids ask every morning to go to Disney. Oh, wow. Where do they get that from? We did, I will say. We gotta be careful not to spoil our kids too much. She's saying. No, I will say this 'cause I wanted to have a conversation with them present. We have the Disney Landpaces. We've gone a lot recently. We've gone a lot. But they think that so Goofy's Kitchen is like the character's dinner, character breakfast, things like that. And they'll come down in the morning. They're like, I think I want Goofy's Kitchen for breakfast. And so, and I was talking when we went to Disney this last time. I was like, oh, should we go to Goofy's Kitchen? And they're like, get on your phone. They were basically saying, see if it's available. And I was like, well, let's have a little conversation about cost and expenses. So then we had a conversation. And then a couple days later, it became clear to me that my three-year-old deduce from that conversation that you work so you can go to Disney. - Wow. - For some people, that is the mentality. - He told me he's like, I need a camera and a puter. So, and 'cause in his mind working, he's like being a Q2 for a whole life. - Oh yeah, he's like, that's the life. - He's mom and dad. - He's like, this is their life. - I need a camera and a computer. He wants to go to Disney. - So now it's so cute, you guys. He brings his little camera with him. Like dad say cheese. So he'll take pictures of me, 'cause like in his mind, he's like, yeah, I gotta be a videographer guy - So he's like, mom and dad, get to work. - Yeah. - I gotta go to Disney. - No, that does get bring. You have a similar age like daughter. Like how do you already start those money conversations? Do you use real life examples of like going to Disney or just make it confusing for them? - I mean, that's a great question. Like, we're already running into that like at the store how she just, so we go to like a trader Joe's or a target. And she just starts scrumming things in the car. - Little cars. - Oh, the car's a trader Joe's. - Yeah, I love just throwing things in there. - And I go, no, we can't get that. That's not what we came here for. - The worst is when you leave the place and they had everything on display and your kids like, I want that toy, I want that toy. - And that's what they do, they put that stuff on the lower shelf. 'Cause they know. - Marshalls are always down there. - I know, Marshalls, what is that? - Marshalls always find their way into it. - Yeah, the marketing is unhinged, she's this. But what we do, she has a little like an ice cream stand, like a toy one, and so that came with fake money. And it came with a fake credit card. - Uh-oh. - And so I'm always keeping her. - Yeah, it's like a little like tap to pay or you can put the chip in. - No way. - It says credit on it. So I have to keep telling her, hey, we're gonna use the cash today, okay, we're not gonna put the card in. - You can't just see into a D real quick. - Exactly. - Well, I have to teach her like, hey, if you want the ice cream, you have to give me those $2 in your hand. And so she'll have to pay me to get her fake ice cream so I can teach her that there's a transaction that happens here. - That does bother me that they're like marketing credit cards to literally- - Barbie comes with a credit card now. - What's the purpose? - Why are they doing that? - I think about it. I guarantee you, these credit card companies are in the pockets of, you know, Barbie and Mattel, going, hey, indoctrinate them now. - They're probably, and they have so much money too, they're probably just like, it was like $50 million, if you can, I mean, not maybe not that $50 million, but they're probably giving some serious cash to these toy manufacturers to just put a little credit card in the toy. - Well, we're teaching our kids, yeah, that is, I wanna run down that rabbit hole with you on a separate issue. - Let's do it. Yeah. - I bet we can get to the bottom of that. - Some of the credit card lobbyists is over there at Mattel. - Seriously. - Yeah. - Well, here's the problem. Our kids are going to live in a frictionless world, where there's no exchange of money. They just wave a wand. You can literally hold your hand over something and then get it. - Yeah. - Yeah, you hold your palm and it reads your palm and pays. - Yeah. - So we need to teach our kids that we should add friction back into our lives to feel the pain I purchased. Otherwise, they're just gonna spend wildly and going to crippling that. - Okay, what about this though? Maybe I'm just an oddball, but when I have cash, I wanna spend it. Like, it's like free money in my mind. 'Cause for me, my spending, I just look at our bank account and I look, I do use credit card, sorry, but I look at like the money coming in going out. I just like literally give Georgia a heart attack. But that's like the one Dave Ramsay principle. I don't follow, sorry, guess. I'm probably gonna get kicked out here. - That's like their main principle, by the way. - But if I get lightning striking in the studio, I might have it. - But let me just say this though, like the principle of spending less than what you make, spending less than what you make is just like, that is the key. - That is like the golden rule of personal fine. - Yeah, it's amazing. - And the debit card is just the tool to make that happen. If you can't spend more than you make, if you use your own money. - And to tune my own horn, which I know you disagree with this, which is totally cool. - No, to respect that. - To tune it away. - I'll tune it. Like when I first got a credit card in college, I would pay it off like literally multiple times a week. I treated it like a debit card because I did want a credit score 'cause I thought it would make like maybe buying a house or you know using credit to maybe get insurance or rent because I asked for your credit score. I thought it might make the process smoother for me. So that's why I did it. And I treated it like a debit card. I know your philosophy is so different than that. It's like, you can buy a house that a credit score. You can rent a rental car without a credit score. Speak to the people like me who are like, oh, not having a credit score makes your life way harder. - Yeah, well I think at the heart of it, there's some justification there of, I don't want my life to be any more difficult. And therefore I'm gonna do another difficult thing, which is trying to manage this credit card and pay it off every week. I feel anxiety thinking about having to do that. Instead of just going, I paid for it, it's over. Like it's out of my brain now. Instead of, oh, I gotta log in and make sure I pay that and make sure it's on auto pay and I can't miss a payment 'cause it'll charge me 29% APR. That's how most people live their life. And then they wonder why they have so much anxiety. - Is that what the rates are now 29%? - Yeah, I mean the averages are 25%, 27%, so for us, you're right. Like when we bought that town home, we didn't have a credit score because we didn't have any debt. We had no open credit accounts. No credit cards, nothing. But how did you buy that, isn't the underwriting process a lot more challenging if you don't have a credit score for lenders to look at? - I might have just had to give more documents, but it wasn't. - Yeah, I've looked at a few more documents. - Yeah, tax returns, utility statements. Basically, they wanna see that you've paid other bills on time. - Got it. - And when you think about it, this was a new process 'cause back in the day, your parents, there was no credit score. It's only existed since the '90s, which is all we know. But back then, it was a person looking at your financial statements, a person who had a relationship with at the bank, going, oh yeah, I trust Matt, he's got the money, he's good for it, he'll pay us back. So manual underwriting is the process instead of automated underwriting, which is what you're talking about. And as long as you truly don't have a credit score 'cause people go, can I bypass my credit score to do it without a score? I don't know. If you have a score, they're going to use that. But if you don't have a score and you have the proper documentation, you have on-time rent payments for at least a year, you have proof of income, you can get a mortgage. And you gotta do it the way, which is 15 year fixed rate mortgage, 10% down at least. That's what's gonna get you the best rate, so you're not paying more than someone else. 'Cause still, I know you say all that and I'm like, it has kind of nice doing, not having to do a manual underwriting 'cause it seems like a lot more work in my head. It's upload and click two more documents, that's it. What about renting a car? Like if I go to rent a car, don't they want to see a credit card so that I can just, you know, get moving and get grooving? Like what do you have to show them when you're renting a car if you only have a debit card? - That's a great question. And you're right, there are times where it can be more difficult. And I actually outline in my book, everything you're talking about. - Love your book. - Love your book. - Love your book, by the way. I know the answers to a lot of these, I'm just asking them anyway. - No, it's great, I love it. - And the truth is every major rental car company has a debit card policy. There's a way you can do it. You just have to understand it and call that location or contact them and say, "Hey, I'm renting with a debit card. What are the restrictions or guardrails?" - Yeah. - And that's it. And I've been able to rent, we've traveled all over the country with just a debit card. So people make it out to you. - How do you travel without like points and miles? I don't even understand how that works. - It's crazy. If you just live on less than you make, you have the money and you just buy the flight. - No, I don't think, see, I think when you travel, you're supposed to use like points and miles. - It's supposed to be free. - Because I don't think, yeah, it's supposed to be free. - You need to spend $50,000 on the credit card to get $2,000 back to make the trip free. It is funny though looking like we have a 1.5% cashback business card and we spend a lot of money on our business Because it's like we buy expensive mics and cameras to you know record our podcasts and stuff and I'm like Oh, this is cool. We like we got like a thousand bucks cash or it's like we got $1,500 cash back And it's like yeah, cuz you spend a hundred thousand dollars and I'm like, oh my gosh the annual fee Yeah, plus any fees or interest that was you know, I don't like the fee. I don't like the cards with fees Those are not like I'm not doing that. Okay How do you feel about this Abbie? I'm curious. I try to have what's like of money Well, do you just like relegate it to Matt and go well, it makes him happy. I know it's not right. I I fully know I'm like we've had a lot every I feel like every year like we're gonna do it now. Yeah, we're gonna have this conversation. I'm like I'll just never spend money ever again He's like that. We can just talk about this. I will say though. I I've actually gone back and forth recently about cutting up her credit cards and the reason is the reason is Did I get in your head? No, I just love for sure. Here's what I love about your shoulder I love what I love about you and Dave and and the whole Dave Ramsey family is It's such a no-nonsense approach to finance. It is bulletproof. You cannot eff it up Like you could if you follow all of the baby steps to a T It is almost impossible to like screw it up. Now maybe if okay I'm sure there's someone that like they get cancer and they get crazy medical bills That's it. That's like a you know, that's rare right but like for most people just following the baby steps They're going they can become a millionaire like in your book You talk about how you are average George you're an average dude that was in consumer debt and student loans and you got out of all of it You became a millionaire by the time you were 30 I think 32 32 between our retirement accounts in our house We had a million dollar net worth and that just gives me fired up. I just I love that for you that inspires me That in and and so like I don't know listening to your book I've never been more likely to like cut up our credit cards than listening to your book Seriously, if I can just get in your head with that book. I think I've done the Lord's word And here's my challenge to you and I put this in the book just for 30 days Put the credit card in a drawer somewhere and just use your own money and compare your spending Yeah, see how you felt see the actual numbers and what I found is people save more than their 2% They would have gotten cash back. Yeah, just by using their own money because you're more think about if you bought the equipment You might think twice and go hey, what could I get a better price on this same equipment if I just did a little bit of research and you're You're totally right because he always does that well like and and look we right now. We're running like 10 different social media accounts. We're running multiple different like media businesses Modern media companies with our podcast and our YouTube channel or TikToks and Instagrams So I effed up recently where I didn't move enough money over to our checking from our savings I told you this before the podcast and I got charged It was the first time ever with our credit card that I paid a couple hundred bucks in interest because I didn't it wasn't It went unpaid for like two three days and it made me really mad Yeah, I was like I paid this on time is on auto paid set up all the time I called the credit card company I've been a loyal customer of you guys like I know you make 3% off me whatever like you guys may have made so much money off of all the spending I'm done using your card like can we just wave this this 400 bucks couldn't do it and Look, I guess have we made way more than 400 dollars in our in our points and stuff sure But just the sheer principle of them charging me 400 bucks to for me going like two days without paying it because I needed a It was just waiting for the savings to process to the checking just made me so mad. Yeah, and that that I think is You know That that that really was the reason why I was like it's pretty straight. It's why Dave always says you play with snakes Eventually, you're gonna get bit. Yeah, like these companies are not your friend and the marketing makes you think hey We're always here for you. Here's a more line of credit. You deserve it. You work hard Yeah, and they make you think that you're winning because they're letting you go into more debt Yeah, and nobody no millionaire out there's like, you know what the secret is to become a millionaire my credit card My credit card my credit card miles in place arbitrage doesn't work, you know, it's just it's just silly So I like I like your principles. I think it's bulletproof. So you're saying you're gonna go without a He's the money guy, so I'm like if you said that I'd be like yeah, I'd rather do that than have to figure it out on which like I don't know and my I guess in my head right now I kind of view it as like I know the day Ramsey principle is if you have a net worth of over a million dollars It's okay to buy a new car and so in my head. I'm like I kind of view credit cards the same but that's in cash Yeah, yeah, and most people go oh $50,000 in my own money right now It hurts my soul and I go maybe let's rethink buying a $50,000 car. Yeah, you're doing that with payments over time plus interest Yeah, you're paying $60,000 for that car over time Yeah, and that's the problem is because we spread it all out and go into debt We don't feel the pain and I think we need to bring back that pain and friction into our lives Yeah, because America is just broken exhausted. I want to circle back I know we talked a little bit about you guys having having kids you guys recently welcomed a new baby five months ago Right Henry congratulations on your son Henry. That's amazing. How how are you guys planning to talk to your kids about money and teach them About these money principles and and talk to them about it in age appropriate ways. It's a great question You know that people think like well George probably you know drills down mutual funds with his daughter in flashcards at night You know, it's got to be age appropriate at two and six months. There's no conversations and over time you start to step it up And so teaching them that hey if you do this chore that's outside of the family work You can get money for that you can get a dollar and so just teaching them that principle that money doesn't just come from mommy and dad He's a account from the money tree. It comes from you doing something that adds value What's the psychology of that with paying your kids for doing chores is is that something that you think is good? Oh, yeah, I mean we call a commission around here because that's how the real world works Yeah, nobody just gives you an allowance to exist. No Like that's crazy that we just teach our kids that hey, you're just getting allowance than one day That's on you now and they go what that's where entitlement comes from yeah, and so we teach that you know Don't punish your kids cover all their needs But if they want something that is outside of that boundary like they want a video game Teach them how to save for it because they're gonna treat that video game differently than if it's just another one mom and dad bought It's gonna go in the trash and the unused but if they had to save up $50 over six months to get that game It is like gold. They're like put it in a frame and not let anyone touch it And so I think that that that shows you that we value things differently when we work hard for them Yeah, and that's the thing you want to teach your kids so for us We don't have the conversations now obviously But I think more is content. We say that a lot so the way that our kids see us talk and Handle money is way better than anything we could tell them that's great So when do you think that extra allowance times starts like as they get old enough to actually do things on their own? Yeah, I don't trust my two-year-old to do almost anything right now Great help We started with them is like when I'm putting the clothes from the washer Right each transfers that to the dryer Yeah, that to me that's just a family thing Right, you don't want to teach them that anything you do in this house is commissionable Yeah, it needs to be the extra activity and maybe for them It's something they hate doing like brushing their teeth How I'll give you a quarter every time you brush your teeth I'm going to put it in this jar and they get to see the jar start to grow so things that are visual really help kids Because if it's in like a piggy bank, they can't see it's kind of hard for them to feel it and so we have clear Clear banks that we sell as part of our financial piece junior products where it's clear So they can see how much they save spending give so that's another principle to teach your kids early on There's only three things you can do with money kids can understand that we can spend some we can save some we can give some All of those things are good and healthy. Let's focus on giving first Then we're gonna put some money in savings then spending comes last. Did you end up spending? It's plurging on that like bedjet thing for your bed to cool it down. Oh, yeah, you did you guys got the bedjet I know that was like that. There's some it seems like there's some friction. Oh, yeah with with that purchase in the household Yeah, I forgot about that. I did end up here's the thing because of my massive influence. I got Whitney a free Bedjet no ways shut the front door. I saw how worth it was wow own because he always had people that don't know not a sponsored Product, but it just it shoots like temperature controlled air through a magical sheet. Okay, and now we have one that's separated So Whitney has her own the shoots heat so I don't mind the shoots cool air. Yeah, so instead of putting our house down to like 66 at night, and I'd be so angry now He could just do some of her podcast like it's actually scientifically better to sleep in a cold house Literally, imagine that yesterday in our hotel. I was like my nose. I know it's 68 degrees You guys would have never survived the pioneer time In the hotel, so he doesn't have to pay to cool down I cool that's frugal. I'll do 70 I'll do like seven. I'll do between 68 and 70 degrees in our own house that night depending. I've gotten a little crazy Now that we that's the one thing I'm not frugal about is air I'm like, I want to be comfortable my own home. I'll pay an extra 40 bucks this month to have it at the temperature It's probably our biggest argument marriage is when he turns down the upstairs, which is the kids rooms. It's not even ours I like one degree. I go from 70 to 69. I promise our our newborn now is five-month-old Sleeps worse when it's cold and so he and he does it one degree I'm like, dude, that's your child. He's like it was burning up in there when I was rocking I was like, I don't care if you're hot. I need him to be like the right temperature Welcome to our parenthood, guys. Have your needs don't matter anymore, dad. How's your electric bill going up? Significantly with George's AC addiction. Yeah. I mean, it's high. Yeah, I keep track of it and it hurts my soul Have you considered solar panels? No, I haven't I can't stomach the maintenance the first of all the initial cost 60 grand, right? It's insane. And then to ROI on that and break even on that. And then the maintenance and repair you need to do to keep those, you know, the tiles break and they need to be repaired. And so I'm like, it's not worth it for me, right? Well, I got a quote. So I had Tesla quote our house for solar because we live in Arizona. I feel like Phoenix is, yeah, it's a different bulging. It's so hot. And with the AC on, our lecture feels like $800 in the month of July. Wow. So I, we might send it because I think it'll save us money over time. Here's my thing. If you do it with cash, cash, cash, cash, because most people go, well, the guy at the door that came to sell a solar said we can get it on 200 dollar payments. And don't buy it from the guy at the door because the guy that door is making a massive commission off of you. You want to step for them? No, no. I mean, if you're, if you're, if you're rolling and you just have like money to throw away, sure, but like that's your money that you worked hard for. So hey, if you want to, Abby will fall for it. If you go to Abby and sell her something, she needs to support a small. No, she dropped $250 on popcorn for her cousin. What your cousin came to the door? No, he sent me a link. Oh, the kids don't even work in these days. Sorry, he couldn't come to my door. Yeah. That's all right. He didn't even do a sales pitch when I was a kid doing door to door sales. Door to get set for my school. Nothing. I won the contest. I went to every house in the neighborhood and all the neighborhood. Nowadays is the Girl Scouts. Every time I go to the grocery store, they have their pitch. And so every time I go, I have to get another box of cookies. That is something I will. I'm sorry. I agree with that. If you're hustling, I want to support you. But if it's like your mom sent me a link to support you. I'm like, listen, man, I'm not buying your Tumblr for your school marching band. You say that, but you do. You do say that. I do have a question. Oh, yeah. So you, this is something that we talk about a lot because when we were in our like extremely frugal years, yes, there are certain things that were instilled in us that no matter how much money we make down the line, we will probably, like it's going to still, we're never going to change things. Like not saying money on water, like we will buy water. Oh my god water really bothers us. Like we want to always fill up a water bottle. We're like water should be free. It's like a renewable risk. Like are you trying to go green or is it not that it just makes me angry that like you're at, yeah, if you're at Disney or six flags or the airport and it's like, yeah, it's only five to nine dollars to buy. Now it's like, I've seen bottles of water for like 10 dollars. One day I just like saw Matt. One day I really flexed on Matt and I drank the water bottle that came in the hotel. I was like, I was like, you could pay for. Dude, I went to Vegas for F1 with my brother. It was 15 dollars for a Fiji for a Fiji water in the hotel room. I'm like, are you F and kidding me? It was more expensive for the water than alcohol was down downstairs. I saw Backstreet Boys in January or beginning of January and I was so thirsty I couldn't find water anywhere. So I had to, I've never done 19 dollars. 19 dollars. 19 dollars. 19 dollars. And she even text me like, hey, just FYI. Like I had to do this. And it was also like 11 o'clock at night. I didn't want to go out by myself and Vegas and try and find water. Yeah, don't do that. I just was like, I will eat the coffee. But it crushed me. Even when I checked out and I had to like pay for it, I was like, this is insane. Do you have things like that? Like no matter what, we will still like never spend money on this or never. It's so funny. You do mention the water thing. So I'm at the airport now. I've just recently like in the past year let myself start buying water. I know it's crazy. It is more convenient. I still am the frugal research one. Even if it's like on principle, I can save three dollars. I'm going to do it. Tell them about your public store just the other day, the dollar at the customer service. Oh yeah. So you went to customer service. Yeah. So well, it was supposed to be a dollar off in my public's app. And so it didn't ring up. And so then I'm like, I checked out and I got to go wait in the line for customer service. And they go, hey, I just checked out. We're supposed to take a dollar off. And he's like fighting me on. He's like, well, it's a dollar. And I was like, yeah. Hey, guys, do you really want a dollar? Yeah. Oh, I'm the same way, dude. And so he finally rings it up and gives me a dollar bill. Dude, he was like an if to buy it. And I was like, I don't know. Hello, you're shopping at public's like, it's supposed to be a pleasure, man. That's kind of expensive. So I mean, I, I mean, I were servers at a pizza restaurant in college. And I studied, like, I studied our pay stuff because I was like, something that's not right lining up here. I realized that I was shorted 20 bucks by our employer. When our allergies was less than $3. Yeah, our hourly was like around three bucks an hour because you make tips at the restaurant. This was gosh, seven years ago. Anyway, we ran, we went back to pizza restaurant recently and my boss brought it up. He's like, I still think about how you gave it to me. One me to pay you the money that I owe you. And I'm like, yeah, I love the guy, but I'm like, yeah, dude, like when you're getting paid $3 an hour, yeah, I'd like to be paid the $20. I have an injustice thing. I don't know if I was like, because I was bullied growing up, but I could take advantage of it. Well, first of all, I'm Middle Eastern. So my dad, like, growing up, we, Sunday, we would get the paper with all of like the coupons in it for the grocery. And we would sit there and cut up. Oh, yeah, coupon. It was like a fun experience. Yeah, my mind. I coupon drawer in our house. Yes. And so I just love those days. And it was exciting to like see how they still have coupons. They still exist. A lot of their digital now. And they're like, you scan them in an app or whatever, but that's still instilled in me. That frugality of like, don't get taken advantage of get the best deal you can negotiate, which makes Whitney cringe, because he cannot handle any negotiation. Happy hasting negotiations, too. I kind of love it, though. I love it. I love it. It's a sport for me. It's a sport for me. I'm not athletic. So this is all I have. I know that. No. So yeah, Whitney stays in the car or just doesn't go. If I need to make a big transaction, I know when to walk away. Whitney, what's car dealership? What's an uncomfortable situation you've been in, Whitney, because of George trying to negotiate something down. Gosh, so many. I feel like the most recent. Well, I don't know. Anything that's like a return. I'm so I'm so curious. She doesn't go with me to make return. She'll be like, Hey, I bought a bunch of stuff. I'm going to return most of it. Who gets to make the returns and fight me? Maybe if you're not comfortable sharing the recent one, but like, what's the story of an negotiation? George did that made you uncomfortable. Gosh, can you think of one? I'm trying to think there's so many, but I feel like they're like. There's big and small because I know I'm fairly petty when it comes to these things. So it's not about the dollar amount. Now, the bigger the dollar amount, the more I'm going to fight, you know, with like a car, which I did. I didn't go in a dealership because it was across the country. So I had to fight over the phone. I like the ones that that stick out to me the most. I can't think of a specific situation right now, but it's the ones where the person like the customer service person can't actually do anything about it. Like they're literally telling George like, I don't have the power to do this. I think one was like an apple and he was getting charged extra for something and the guy was saying, like, I cannot give you that discount. And so George is still like, come on, there's like gotta be something. And he keeps pressing then. And so I feel bad for that person. I'm like, they're just doing their job. So I get that they're like being like a sickler on this, but he does usually win in the end because I'll call over or supervise or something. Well, then I just say, well, is there a manager I could speak to? I'm just firm. It's not one reasonable stuff. I'm not making a scene. I'm not like yelling at anybody. It's just like, what was the manager I could speak to? And usually George is right. It's like a fee was out of that shouldn't have been. That happened us with internet. Or just being competent. Like I try to return something at Target. And they said, no, it's not in the system yet because I bought it at a different target that day. And so they're like, I'm like, I have the receipt. Can I return this item? And so they said, so I just said, wait, if I don't have a receipt, I can do a no receipt return. So I literally crumpled up the receipt, put it in my pocket and said, now can I do the return? And the target employee said to me, like, did he just find a glitch in the matrix and they did the return? So it's just like, I'm just like, be a competent person and think if this was me, what would I do for that person? So if I was in customer service and I've worked those jobs, just do what youth, do for one what you wish you could do for many. Regardless of a policy, I think everyone just sewed by the book now and they don't want to get in trouble. Yeah. That they just are so scared to treat someone like a human being. Some of our viewers submitted questions for you guys. These are good. Which I think are really, really great questions, very practical to 2026. And then I also asked them agree to disagree questions to that. It's okay because a green disagree is like a really fun game. We like to play on the show. But first off, this is from Abby. She said, advice for buying your first house in today's economy as a young couple making $100,000 combined. What the bank says to loan you is not the amount you should be taking on alone. And so we have to reset expectations. And that's really hard to do. To go, yeah, I wanted to live in this neighborhood in this kind of house. And so I always tell people, don't get starry eyed scrolling Zillow going that has to be the house. Yeah. You have to hold everything loosely and go, we got to compromise on something either location, the home type, the timing, the the amount we're going to put down. And so there's always a way to around it. So don't get discouraged. But it might take you five years and you need to hire down payment and you need to make more money. And you need to go further out and get the townhouse to start. And so get your foot in the door and don't go, well, I need the house my parents have right now. Like we're trying to fast forward and short cut it. And you know, yes, the boomers did have it easier as far as income to house ratio. But that doesn't mean that we can go take out a bunch of debt just because we want to now. Like we move three times to get to the house. Every three years, we've moved. And you always buy the house cash whenever you move into a new house. We try. Yeah. The first one we paid it off. We got another one. That one got paid off even faster. And then the next one was cash. Did you turn your old houses into rental properties or did you move the one over? No, because we wouldn't have had the cash to do it. So the way we did is you buy the house, it appreciates and we pay it off. And we 100% equity. We take all of that, roll it into the next one, which means small and mortgage. We knock that out fast. Yeah. And then we're able to save up and pay cash for the next one. So it took time. I mean, this is, you know, it's been, what, seven, eight year journey. Yeah. And we're a lot of our friends like just bought their forever home first, but they're going to have a mortgage for 20 years. Yeah. Because they put very little down. It's a bigger mortgage one. So we always wanted a small mortgage that we could knock out fast. So we, yeah, we did 20% down, but I didn't realize that you guys recently updated your recommendation that you can do that that it's okay to do five, right? Five to 10% down if you're a first time home buyer is okay. Okay. Okay. You still follow the other parameters. Yeah. And you're still going to have PMI, which is probably the mortgage insurance that extra fee every month to get the lender if you don't do. Why did it point for you? I'm not going to always warn me about that. Yeah, why? It was like, don't do drugs and avoid PMI, just why the, why did the recommendation change? I think just realizing the current state of affairs in America that a 10% down payment could be $60,000. Yeah. And so that might be unattainable. So if you can get, you know, five to 10% down on a $250,000 home, that's a little further out. That's more reasonable to get in a home faster because we know like it's a moving goalpost. I don't want people waiting 15 years to buy their first home. Well, it's sad. I mean, the area where we love the family area we're in of Arizona, but the average home price is like $750,000. And just look at the payment because if you make five grand a month and the payments three grand a month, that's unsustainable. Yeah. And what happens is like Whitney wanted to stay home when she had her first kid and it wasn't a financial decision for us because we didn't have a mortgage payment. And so it just gives you more options later. It's not about being gunned out of the mortgage to make Dave happy. It's this is going to give us flexibility down the line and too many people become inflexible because they took on this giant mortgage. And this question comes from Ashley. It's actually for you, Whitney. It says, I would love to know if Whitney has any frugal hacks she uses in motherhood. That's a great question. So many. And a book on this. Well, I do feel like when you're first about to give birth, I don't know if you just too. But if you sign up for a million different registries like any of them that you can do like Target, Amazon, you get a certain amount off like 15% off for Amazon. For example, like the first year. So I would just keep adding diapers or things like that to my Amazon registry. And if you were making them through the registry, I would always get it. Yeah. So then I can just keep getting the percentage off even though it's not someone else buying that for me. Wait. Actually, curious question. What's your favorite diapers? We've switched. We're actually at Millie Moon now. Oh. That's our good. Yeah. And they're surprisingly not like they're good praise. Yeah. Actually, they were cheaper than Pampers. That's why I know. We're a Pampers pure family forever and yeah, it was more because my daughter's skin issues. This is from Lexi. She says, "A mortgage would be cheaper than my rent. Is it dumb to buy a house even though I have debt?" Ooh. This one is so tough. Because if you just in a vacuum look at those two numbers on paper, you're like, no does. I should buy a house. Yeah. The mortgage is going to be cheaper based on what I could get. Number one, home ownership is not for the faint of heart. It is expensive. It's a headache. You are the landlord that you have to call to fix the issue. Yeah. And so people don't think about that. When you're in debt and you have a mortgage that's right up to the line and it's 30 year. Now that emergency hits and it's $5,000 to replace the HVAC, when they are going further into debt. Well, George, we have two rental properties. We have one that was built in like 2020. The other one was built in 1958. 1958. Wow. Something breaks at this 1958 house. I swear to you every week. Every week. Oh wow. And it's not like a little thing. It's like a major. It's been the biggest thorn on my side. So I grew with you. It's like home, if you're going to, yeah, it's not a one-size-fits-all for home ownership because depending on the age of the house or who built it, there could be some serious stuff that goes wrong that then you have to front the cost for it. Yeah. And it's just, again, it's inflexible. You bought a house. You can't just get out of that easily like you could renting where it's, I broke a lease and we're good. Yeah. And so there's a lot more responsibility and finances that you need to think about when it comes to home ownership. And I like this question from Mary goes right hand in hand with you guys moving to you being a stay at home mom, which is so cool that you're able to live off of Georgia's income alone. That's really impressive in today's economy. As Mary said, how can we budget well with the goal of having kids young and being a stay at home mom? It's like such a hot debate. Yeah. I know so many moms in this position where it's like they want to stay home but they don't feel like they can financially or their husband wants them to work because they're like we need both income. Because it just gets too tight, too much pressure on that one person who will come. Yeah. Yeah, that's a real, and we see that a lot of like Whitney has a lot of friends who want to stay home, but it's tough because you need the dual income. Yeah. And so the way you budget for that is you do a test run, just ignore that other person's paycheck, the person who wants to stay home and see if you can live on it. That's good. And if you can't, and that's why we tell people to follow the Ramsey plan. If you become debt free with an emergency fund, it's a whole lot easier to stay home than what we still have our car payments, still a bunch of student loans. And so it just gives you more options and it is tough. And for some people, it makes sense to do daycare. Like if you make $85,000 a year and daycare is much cheaper, then it might be worth it for you to work. But I always tell people it's more, it's more than just money. Right. And so if you're willing to make the sacrifices needed and you want to stay home and you're going to downgrade your lifestyle or maybe move, then it's worth doing. Yeah. I tell George all the time, like, if he lost his job tomorrow, we just like lost all the income. I would, because it means so much to me to stay home. I would truly like move into like an apartment or something, which is that's not a bad thing to do, just saying like going from a home to an apartment would be very hard for some people. There are like major lifestyle changes that I would be willing to do just to like have these years, because I didn't have that with my parents. And I think it does matter a lot for me personally. Right. I think that's the key there is that like people want to continue to have their same lifestyle and not work. And then that's just. Which I get it. It's hard. Yeah. That's just the math problem of it. It's like, well, it's not going to add up then. And this question is from Diana. How does Whitney put up with George's tight financial decisions? I ask the Lord every day. I still don't know. Let's see. Your tight ones. - I do feel like clothing can be our biggest one that he doesn't understand. - You're kidding, what clothing? - I think it's because as a female, and I've had two babies now. I don't know my size. - Say it. - Say it. - So if old nabies have an crazy sale, I need to buy like three of these pants in different sizes 'cause I don't know what I am. - Right. - And so he just sees the initial coming through. I'm obviously not spending more than we have. - $1,000 that would maybe. - Like it might be a couple hundred, but it's because I know I'm gonna return almost all of it. - It's just the girl math. - So she'll immediately tell me, "Hey, just so rare, that I do that." So that's where I get like, "You know I don't ever shop." Like come on. - And truthfully, I'm never angry. It's just more like, "Why, what was this?" - Yeah, that's how it was with the $30 popcorn. - Oh, I was just like, wait, it's just making sure we didn't get. - That's always what I did. - Do you just spend $250 popcorns on every thing? - And I called them right away. I was like, "Hey, you're gonna see something crazy." And then he literally his response was, "You just feel generous today?" And I was like, - Whoever this entrepreneur is that started this like kids popcorn company, they're probably loaded. - Gee, yeah. - 'Cause it was like 10 bags of popcorn. It's like a teeny little bag. - It was 24 bags of popcorn. - I bet you this cost them 20 bucks to make the popcorn. And this dude just pocketed $230. - It was good popcorn. - And I don't believe it. - And I'm trying to give like 20 bucks to the kids. - Right, maybe. - It does trigger me though when he sees a tax come through with the amount. And he'll text me about it. And I'm like, I'm allowed to spend this money. - But really, he's had identity thefts. So he's trying to make sure like, - Gosh. - Like someone else says this thing. - And I feel like maybe you can, like Matt is very much a stickler with the finances. But that actually makes me feel safe. Like when he's like very strict about things and like sees things coming through, I'm like, "Oh, like that kind of district over." - We put more, yeah, we invest more than what we spend. - Yeah, it's the same. - Like you're savings rate. I'm just kind of treating our job. Like we're professional athletes 'cause professional athletes, like it all goes great one day. - And the longer we do this, I'm like, "Hey, maybe this actually isn't gonna go away." But I'm treating it like it will, 'cause I just don't wanna be stuck in a situation where me, a college dropout, that dropout college do TikToks. Like, is then stuck in there. - Yeah, right. But so we're just, we're just playing it safe. And I feel like. - Well, you never know. It's gonna happen like 2020. So if people lost their jobs. - Right. - So I rather, and that's why a big goal of ours for this next year is to pay off our house, 'cause I think it'd be, I think I would just sleep better knowing that our house is paid off cash. - Right. - It's so nice. - Yeah. - Okay, so this is from Zo. She said, "How do they discuss finances together? Is it weekly meetings, random times?" And I'm honestly curious how you're gonna answer this, 'cause I would love to learn how we can have more money conversations. - Yeah, I will say this. We used to do like very formal sort of budget meetings. - Yeah. - And now it's become more conversational. It's usually like a Sunday check-in. Kind of before the week starts, "Hey, what's going on this week? What do we need to be thinking about? Do we need to move any money over?" - And honestly with a little kid, you're so exhausted. Like say he'll start giving like his like money run down and I just, I was literally telling him, I can't handle it right now. I need to go to sleep like, it's hard. Like it's just the right time. - So it starts to our numbers or acronyms at me? No, acronyms. - Like I was gonna talk to you about ETFs. - And I was like, - And I was like, can we not bring that up in the conversation? Like I don't know. - It actually turns switch off in her brain. - I said, I accidentally just stopped listening. And I really just didn't mean to. But I knew it was 'cause you said an acronym. - Just call me if you want to talk ETFs. I'll be happy that it's doing it. - I love VOO, I'm a Vanguard guy. I love Vanguard. - Yeah, it's a solid fund. - Huge fan. - We gotta get to agree with you for it. - Oh yeah, we're talking about it regularly is better than trying to make one big meeting happen or it feels so formal. So just kind of make it a regular pattern. - But that's a big thing. - And last question before we get to agree disagree, this is from Shellian, how do you start saving? So many of us are living paycheck to paycheck with no wiggle room. I'm just sensing a lot of fear from Shellian 'cause that's, I think a lot of people are that low. - A lot of people. - Yeah. - Well four and 10 people don't have anything in savings. Zero dollars in savings. So they fall into that bucket of, when you're paycheck to paycheck, you're like, well, I don't have any money to put in savings. And so that's where the budget becomes your best friend. 'Cause when you lay it all out number one, you feel better because it's not all in your mind floating, it's real numbers on paper, it's facts. 'Cause if you know, well, hey, based on what I made this month and what I spent, I'm a 500 bucks in the hole this month. That's just. - It's a six grand over a year if I continue this. So that's when you go, what can I cut from this budget? There's probably subscriptions that I forgot to cancel. There's probably ways that I could be spending less on groceries. I could cut eating out completely. I don't need that gym membership right now. I can scale down. I can try to make more and do a side job for a season. And so all of those things help. 'Cause the way to get margin is spend less and make more. All the way to do it. And then you take that first. It's like eating your vegetables first. Put the money in savings before it has a chance to slip through your fingers and to spending. Yeah. So cover your four walls, you know, food, utility, shelter, transportation, cover your insurance. But beyond that, make it a priority to put that money aside so that you don't see it. That's good. And our new every dollar app actually has a really amazing onboarding experience where we'll help make recommendations for how to find that margin in just 15 minutes. And so it's a great one to go download and try out. Okay, and I know we're running out of time. So I want to get into a greedy disagree. If you need to leave by the way, like I don't want to go to hostage. Yeah. But this is my top priority. Wow. You want to do a greedy disagree? Yes. Can we start with this? Okay, you just actually know what you do it. Start with the last one. That one's a fired one. Okay. That like a greedy disagree question. Matt wants to come in hot. I'm coming in hot with this. The government needs to step in to fix America's housing problem. Agree or disagree? Three, two, one. Agree. Yes. No. No disagree. But it's because I honestly have not. I don't know enough. Wait. Okay. So why do you say disagree? I agree. Based on the actual problem with housing right now, which is supply and demand, there's just not enough homes on the market. And so there are things that the government can do. Now, you know me. I'm not a fan of the government solving your life's problems. 100%. But I do think government regulation could change to free up more homes to be built, which would then actually increase the supply and lower the price. And couldn't they put a stop to all the, I don't know if it's private equity or investment groups that are just buying up all these single family homes and jacking up rates for everyday Americans? Yes. I just saw that bill come through to stop that now. That's happening. When you look into it, it feels like a bigger problem than it is because when you look at the numbers, it's like one or two percent. Mm-hmm. So is it going to move the needle? Probably not. But it is a good thing to do. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And so that will help. Obviously the rates coming down. That could help. It could hurt because think about it. If rates go down, people flood the market. Well, now home prices are going to go up. You have more competition. Yeah. You get nine people bidding on that same house and they have more buying power. So people will just raise the price and go, "Oh, people will pay more." So I don't think interest rates is actually the solution. I do think it's a looser regulation and allowing home builders to build more homes. That's what we need right now. And we need the boomers to sell their homes they've been sitting on. Yeah. Which that's where interest rates coming down could help because people go, "Well, I'm willing to move now because I'm not tied to my golden hand cuff low interest rate." Okay. I can actually switch homes, which frees up more inventory. Yeah. The house for most Americans is where we build wealth, right? For a lot of people in America, that's kind of like they're almost like built in savings account in a way. Not that it should be their only account. No, it's a four savings plan. We found in our millionaire study that about a third of their net worth was their home. No way. And so we're thinking about it. That's a big chunk of your millionaire status and net worth is your home. And it's not going to create income, but it's still something. It's an asset. I'm actually so curious. What percentage of your net worth does your house make up if you don't mind me asking? Right now it's too much, I would say it's over 50% right now, but that's because we went so hard. Our focus was, let's create a beautiful home because that's Whitney's office. Yeah. That's where she works. That was our main focus. We don't do big trips. I don't have any hobbies or home was the main thing. So over time, what'll happen is compound growth and investments will take over. So the house will end up being a smaller and smaller part of our world every year. Can we get people fired up for a second about compound interest? Because I think that was the first thing I ever learned about. This is the last thing we need to get fired up about that. I want to get back to what you just agreed to. But I think the reason I became such a big Dave fan when I was 19 and read his book as someone that wanted to get married young was I learned the numbers of compound interest. And it just, oh, it just, it made me so excited to save. Because I was like, wait, so you're telling me if I live like no one else right now, and like my friends make fun of me for not buying ice cream for a dollar, we go out for ice cream. And I just save as much as I can. I'm just a psycho about it. And I put all this money aside, you're telling me that like 20, 30, 50 years from now, it's going to like, you know, 10, 20 X. I mean, not, it doesn't 20 X. No, I mean, if you're young, think about it. Every dollar you put into an investment, if you're in your 20s, is worth $20. So you put it in a dollar. You're going to get $20 back. Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. So you're talking like 50 years. So you put money aside, assuming 10% interest, because that's like what the market ish does, you're saying, put money aside in your 20s, 50 years later, that $1 will turn into $20. Yeah, think about it. If you put $1,000 in, it could be $200,000. That has crazy. Decades from now. That's crazy. And so as you get older, that same dollar is worth less. If you're in your 50s and you put a dollar in, you might get $2 out for every dollar you put in. And so that's where starting early is so important. And if you're young, like you have time on your side, that is your greatest asset. And we're assuming that we're not touching this money, but what about the person that's like 40 or 50 and they're like, oh shoot, I'm just learning about this now, I need to get money fast. What do they do? Where do they start? It's not too late. You can still, I mean, if you've got another decade or two of a working career, you can build some serious wealth, but you have to get serious and knock out the deck, get the emergency fund and then start investing heavily. Okay. So you have time to catch up. Yeah, just so nerdy about this that he lost like hours of sleep the night just looking at the compound interest of if he kept working this amount of time. Oh, it is. It's over. It's over. We should hang out. Dude, let's run. We're part of it. Yeah. We're part of it. Yeah. We're part of it. Yeah. We're part of it. We're part of it. Yeah. We're part of it. We're part of it. We're part of it. We're part of it. We're part of it. Yeah. We're part of it. We're part of it. Yeah. We're part of it. We're part of it. We're part of it. We're part of it. We're part of it. Yeah. that's why I said 15 year fixed with it and I actually work this math out with a mortgage loan officer which you guys you you have on the day rams You website you have like churchill mortgage yeah churchill mortgage is that who will do manual underwriting yes they're the number one of the country They specialize in it because our fans go to them. I love it. That's amazing. I love that. We're going to show me who's going to get a better interest rate And if you do 15 year fix 10% down at least I'll get the same rate as you I love things considered It's fine to keep small financial secrets from your spouse. Oh major disagree Three two one disagree. Why do you guys say disagree? Oh, that's horrible I mean now that obviously if it's small it's one thing but what I found is it starts to spiral and if there's a problem There's so much shame and guilt and fear around it that it stays a secret and it eats that person up while compounding the problem And so I think financial infidelity is it's it's the reason people get divorced over money It's because someone was hiding something someone was controlling something and there's just not that honesty and transparency Well, this is an extreme an extreme example, but like in a fair to just happen. It's like these little steps that like get to that So I feel like just the small wise over time is what lead to the big ones. That's good Is it when you guys see this on the shows it usually gambling is like what's the the most common reason people are Not being financially transparent with their spouse. Well usually it's they don't have they don't have a shared bank account And so it's easier to cause financial infidelity when well it's my money and his money We have a shared account that we pay bills from but otherwise I get to do what I want with it Yeah, that's dangerous because your spouse might wake up and go wait you have $7,000 in savings Yeah, and I'm struggling over here to do XYZ. Yeah, that's where it causes a lot of friction and sometimes I dig in I go what is he actually spending that money on her? She's spending that money on yeah, because sometimes there is a Moral failure. There is some gambling happening some infidelity happening And so again if you have total transparency you have a shared bank account It is so much harder to screw this up and that's why we do that So then what's your take on prenups couples that do a prenup are you for that or against that it makes sense in certain situations for The average couple it just doesn't make sense. Okay now if one person comes in and they have like a family business That's worth a ton of money or they come in with worth two million dollars and this person is in debt Yes, it can make sense, but it's more to protect each other from crazy family members Then it is of a distrust that makes sense and so it makes sense for fewer people than you would think okay, but I'm not anti It's all about the motives and what's the heart behind it because it comes out of a distrust. Yeah, don't do it It's like why are you even getting married then? Yeah, yes, this one says a couple should be financially stable before having kids This we just talked about this and we couldn't come to like a three two one a three is it just that's what I said really well, we were financially stable before having kids yes I know, but I should that yeah, that should they and so we always say that having a baby is not a baby step If you want to have a baby have a baby. I love and just know you're gonna have to make sacrifices Yeah, will it be so much easier if you have no debt and money in the bank? Absolutely, you know you have less stress But I'd never tell someone hey wait until you're completely dead free with savings to have a kid because we know in this world It might be really difficult for you to have a kid especially as you get older and so if you want to start a family start it Yeah, if financial part will deal with that after we have to make sacrifices. I guess speaking from experience for me the change of like, oh, my time is not my own now, was like hard to get through. Like I got like low-key, like women get postpartum, somehow I got postpartum. I was like, why am I depressed right now? I don't know. - I got hand postpartum. - But I got through it. I got through it and I feel like if I would've had the financial stress on top of that, I would've. - Oh yeah. - I mean, I ended up getting early, I had to depressants, but hey, I mean like, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. - Yeah, but it's true, it adds more stress if you are in a financial bind. - Yeah. - I know what you're gonna say to this one, but generosity should come after you're out of debt. - Three, two, one, disagree, oh, I love it. Why should you be generous even if you're in debt? - I've just found that if you are a generous person, it's a habit that you have throughout your life, and I love what Rachel Cruz says. Give a little until you can give a lot. - Yeah. - And so it's hard to actually turn the switch on when you've been so intense to then say, well, I'll be generous when I have this amount, 'cause the goal post always moves. And so I found that if you're generous and you're on your broke, you're gonna be super generous when you have money. And if you're a stingy jerk when you're broke, you're gonna be a stingy rich jerk later on. - If you were in my position in December of 2025 where I liquidated the emergency fund to make our charitable contributions, would you have done the same thing? Would you have kept the emergency fund and just funded the done charity maybe a month later when the money came in? - Precisely. - Okay. - I would have not, 'cause what you did was you kind of added risk to your own family. - I did. - To be like, well, I have to get, like it became almost like a rule of like you have to give. And I would have just said, "Hey, let's wait." You can do a big generous gift later on - In January. - Once we have money outside of the emergency fund, but it worked out for you. - Rending is throwing money away. - Three, two, one, disagree. - Disagree. - What do you think of others, me? - What do you think about it? Why do you disagree with that, Whitney? - Well, man, I want George to give his Ramsey answer if he doesn't agree with me. - No, I like booze. - I like booze, I have a lot of questions for you. Whitney, women want to hear what you have to say. - I feel, by the way, I feel so honored that you came on our show. - Can I tell you, I was legitimately shocked. I was like, "Hey, they asked you if you want to be on the podcast." It's fine. - The amount of sleep I don't get these days was made it scary, but it's been fine. You know what I mean? - Yeah. - I told her I was like, "There are gonna be a great time." - Yeah. - But I totally understand if you don't, like your job is not to be on camera. - Yeah. - But she has so much more wisdom than me that I was excited for her to come on. - I think people like hearing the women's side of things. - Yeah. - Because sometimes you have people on there like, "Well, who's buying all the groceries, the daily things for the kids here for those people?" - Yeah. - That's true. - So to answer your question about renting, like my parents are in this situation right now, they wanna move to this area, but it is so expensive to buy a house. And so to them, they're like, "We don't wanna rent, "just throwing away money." And I'm like, "No, that actually buys you time "to keep saving for what you want." - Yeah. - And also, I know the rent is high, but you're not doing it forever. So it's like, then you can get something more that you want and you have more security around it. So I just throwing all of your money into this big home purchase. So, it's good. - Yeah, that's fine. - My parents rent so they can live close to us. - Oh, that's awesome. - You see, mom will listen to that. - Literally two minutes from each other. It's so fun. - Amazing. - And the math says that renting mathematically is actually a better move for most people right now. - No, she's only like, it's a brand new apartment. She's like, "Something broke. "They just come and take care of it." - We're losing money on our rentals right now. - Yeah. - There you go. The person who's renting it is getting sweet. - That's why I changed my strategy. At first I was like, "We're gonna, "the passive income of real estate is amazing. "We're gonna own all these rentals, and I'm like, "Actually, it makes way more sense when you look at the numbers to just keep putting money in the market. "We just keep investing in ETFs because you don't have to manage an ETF. "It's just just buy and hold." - That's truly passive income instead of real estate. - Yeah. - So, I'm a big fan of that. - This one says, "Financial freedom matters more than loving your job." - Three, two, one. - Degree. - Degree. - Oh, I say agree. - That was a hard one though. - I would say agree because the stress of debt and the stress of money problems can be so overwhelming that like having the job you love doesn't even matter anymore because you're just so stressed out. - I was taking it this way. Financial freedom matters more than loving your job. It's saying, "I will work a job I don't like if it gives me more financial stability." - Wait, did I answer that wrong? - I think so. - Yeah, that's what I was saying. - Oh yeah, no, okay. I changed my answer in Georgia's answer. - Yeah. - Cheatered off my head. But yeah, I see this a lot. This guy literally called the Ramsey show and says, "Hey, I only want to make a ton of money. I want to get rich. I don't care what the job is." I said, "You are doing this completely backwards to do a job you hate to make money so that you can have freedom." That was his goal. I'm like, "You won't survive it." - I think it's a balance. Like, I think it's good to take a season of living like no one else so that one day you can live like no one else because that hard season is so worth it. And it's like going to the gym five days a week for a month and eating right and then you look at yourself after a couple months and you're like, "Look at what I did. I feel great. I'm in an amazing place." That's kind of how I look at it. - Yeah, I just see them as connected. I think you should do the job you love and have that help you lead to financial freedom because you're going to excel in it. You're going to want to grow in that field. You're going to want to become an expert which in turn, you make more money and that leads to that financial freedom. So don't do a job you hate for the money, please. - I'm kind of surprised you said that actually. - Splurging on travel is never worth it. - Three, two, one. Disagree. - Oh! - But you guys aren't big travelers. - I mean, I'd like to be, but right now I can't leave my house. There's the problem with two babies and a couple of dogs. - No, I think splurging on travel is worth it if you do it with cash. - Yeah, I mean, it's fun to go to Disney World and get invocations. - Splurging to me feels like I'm going to splurge and put it extra on my credit card. - I do agree, the splurging does kind of insinuate, you don't have the money. - Nothing feels like a splurge because it's all within our means. So it's kind of like, splurging doesn't exist if you're doing it our way. - Yeah. - But yeah, I do think as you get older and you become more financially stable, take the nicer trip. - Yeah. - Skip the one with a layover. I just did that for Whitney from Backstreet Boys. I had booked her one with a layover because it was like $200 cheaper. - Yeah. - And then it's weighed on me and I was like, gosh, she's finally getting away. She deserves to have it directly. - Yeah. - And so I pownied up and I switched the flight and paid the difference. - We're a note. - We fly business. - We don't fly business or anything, but we'll be fly. - We fly frontier, allegiance. - But we like to go direct. - Yeah. - Yeah. - We'll just because it can mess up your whole travel. - Yeah. - That to me is a splurge. - College isn't worth it. - Three. Two. One. - Disagree. - Agreed. - Yeah, agree. Wait, saying it is not worth it. - Agreed. - I think it's not worth it. - Yes, I am. - I am. - Yes, and you're talking to the guy who thinks most people shouldn't go to college. - Wait, no. - As a blanket statement to say it's not worth it, I think is a little too, you know, a lot in the same time. - But reading your book though, I was shocked at how many people have student loans. I was shocked at the average cost of private university is like over 50 grand and people are taking out debt. - So let's caveat it, going to a super expensive school for a degree that won't really turn into a great job in going to crippling debt, not worth it. - Orable decision. - But if it's a field that you're going to be working in, this is what you really want to do, and you leave without student loan debt, I would say it's totally worth it. You know, education itself is worth it. But paying the price of 200 grand in student loans to go to some name brand school for the experience, that's the stupidity that I'm seeing. - And is it honestly the parents that are pushing their kids into this? - Yeah, oh yeah. - I haven't given my mom enough credit. Thank goodness my mom encouraged me to go to the cheap state school with Abby because we followed each other to college, and both went into the acting program in Missouri State. - It's called stocking by the way. - No, we just wanted to go. - We have to go together. - We auditioned at like 20 different acting and musical theater schools because we wanted to go to school together and we're like, we need to find one that we both get into. And so my mom encouraged me to go to the cheap state school, which is totally in move because after a semester, I was like, I kind of want to get married and acting is not going to pay the bills. So I'm going to switch this, I'm going to go into finance. And then the tick-talk ended up working out and I dropped out. So at all. I dropped out and had 100 grand in student loans that changes your options. - No, that changes. - Change is the job you have to work. - Yeah. - And so that's, it was a caveat. I can't say it as a blanket statement, but I agree in most cases, it's a waste of time. - The wealth disparity in America is getting greater because the rich. - The rich are getting richer in the poor, getting poorer. - I think that's what this is meant to say. - Okay. - Three, two, one. - It's disagree. - Oh. - Well, because the rich are getting richer in the poor, getting poorer. Maybe let's rephrase it. Let's just say like. - But is the wealth disparity growing? - The wealth disparity is growing in America. - Sure, I agree. - Which is sad, honestly. - Yeah. - It's really sad. And I hope that changes. - We've seen post-COVID, what happened is housing skyrocketed. So if you were a homeowner or you had multiple homes, you just got a whole lot wealth here. - Yeah. - The stock market last few years has gangbusters, 16% up, 23% up, 22% up. So if you were investing, you've done really well. And if you were broke, not doing any of that, you sort of stayed where you are while inflation took over. And so that is true that there is a growing gap because of that. But I rebuke the idea that it's because of the rich that I am poor. - Yeah. - Now are there situations where there's corporate greed and private equity ruining things? - Sure. - But you've got to look in the mirror and go, I control the job that I have, the skills that I have, the education that I have, the way I spend my money. And so that to me is you've got to take personal responsibility to and go, I'm going to climb above the suck bar and not be average and not stay broke. - Would you say if a poor person came to you right now, like, I want to build wealth for my family, I want to be out of that. What do I do? What would you tell them in like one sentence? - Your income is your greatest wealth building tool. And so we've got to work on your income. It's really hard to become a millionaire making minimum wage your whole life. And so that doesn't need to, people are like, we need to raise minimum wage. I'm like, or just make more than that. Yes, Anne, but you need to go find a way to make more money and you're not stuck where you are. find a way to do something that you love to do that you can make good money. Would you hit him a cop? of your book as well. I honestly would. I would give them every dollar in my book as like a here's a primer that I hope encourages you and motivates you because that's what they need. They need hope. They don't need a game plan and a ETF to invest in. Yeah. They need hope that they aren't stuck where they are. And that's why that's why the debt snowball is so powerful because you pay off that smallest debt first and it gets you fired up to keep going, right? Yes. That's good. If someone asks you should I read Breaking Free from Broke or Total Money Makeover, which one would you say? If it's a younger person, I honestly would say Breaking Free from Broke. If they're Gen Z Millennial, I think my book would because my book is it was made for that crowd who's like, I need something that is speaking to me for where I'm at in this current economy with humor. And Dave's book is still the go. I mean, you can't be Total Money Makeover. So I can't compete with Dave. So maybe should we have George choose the last one? No, there's only one left. Oh, and it segues nicely, but it's also really it's a hot one. Is it spicy? Oh, what is it? The wealthy don't pay their fair share and taxes? Oh, dang, that is a hot one. Three, two, one, disagree. I don't even know. I go back and forth because I feel like every time they get like people like raise the taxes, the rich figure out of way or they figure out a loophole and then the middle class gets hit with the tax bill, right? You are correct. And these are legal loopholes because when you think about it, now we got to define wealthy people because I'll tell you right now, I pay a crap ton in taxes as a W2 employee who doesn't run a business like it hurts my soul to see how much I pay in taxes. Now if you're a billionaire, like you're Elon Musk, well, think about it. He doesn't have income. He owns stock in his company. And so he can borrow against that without paying taxes on it and continually avoid paying giant amounts. But his company, I mean, our business ramsy solutions, the amount we have to send to the government to exist and make money is insane. Is that public information? I don't know, but I know it's millions and millions of dollars that we paid the government in taxes. So to say that I think people don't understand and they're looking for someone to blame and it's easy to say, well, they just paid more taxes. It would be easier on me. But do I think the tax code should change? Absolutely. How should it change? I think a flat tax would be a good move and moving to consumption taxes versus income tax. Tennessee doesn't have state income tax. So it's one of the best places to be. Consumption taxes, okay. So like think about the vices and people's lives. I won't charge more for that. If you want to buy cigarettes, you know, and you want to gamble and buy lottery tickets, let's charge high taxes on that stuff. But don't poor people fall prey to those things? Like is it those don't doesn't like the lottery industry in the in the cigarette industry? It's predatory towards lower income areas. Yeah, and like just like the credit card industry, like that's another reason why I thought of credit card just because it made me mad that when I do get the points and the the miles and all that, it's because the credit card companies make money off of poor people. It's subsidized by people who paid interest, you know, or broke in part by that. Plus their fees that they charge small business owners for people using their credit card. I hate when the little guy gets screwed. I don't like that. Agreed. And so this is not me saying I think the wealthy, you know, should do nothing. But I think this is not the main problem. Is that wealthy people aren't paying taxes and therefore I'm broke? George Whitney, it was seriously such a pleasure getting you to sit down with you both today. Where's the best place for people to connect with you on socials? At George Campbell's, the place to find me, the book is breaking free from broke. The budgeting tool is called every dollar. You can get it in the app store. And I mean Whitney's not really, I'm on private so. Yeah. All right. So you good luck. You can keep up with her through me. There we go. There you go. Well, guys, thanks for tuning in and we will see you in the next - Because that was so good. - Peace out, dudes!