Five Things That Will Make You Wealthy

While I have my views on retirement and investing, I always like to educate myself further by listening to the seasoned pro’s like Dave Ramsey.  If you don’t know the story of Dave Ramsey, make sure to check it out.  His content is awesome, and you really can learn a lot by listening to his takes on wealth accumulation.  Today’s video and transcript is about five things that will make you wealthy.

Dave Ramsey Outlines 5 Things to Make You Accumulate Wealth

Dave Ramsey: Now the stuff we teach here and have for almost 30 years is proven. It’s no longer an opinion, it’s not a theory. “I don’t agree with Dave Ramsey’s advice,” which would make you wrong. I know you’re writing a blog from your mother’s basement, you’re looking for clickbait using my name, I understand that, but you’re wrong. It’s always humorous to me to see people who are broke, on Twitter ragging on the advice that I give. Or a broke 26 year old journalism student deeply in student loan debt, writing an article about me. That’s humorous because it’s stupid.

Here’s the thing, here’s the advice that we give you. If you do these five things from the Bible and from your grandmother, they’re called common sense, you will win with money 100% of the time. Now I don’t know exactly how long it will take you and I don’t know what win with money will mean because I cannot predict your income and I cannot predict the tragedy that you will have to overcome, but subject to your income to tragedy ratio, to the extent you do these five things you will win with money, you will become wealthy in North America. If you will do these five things over and over again.

Number one you need to have a written plan, a budget. Jesus said don’t build a tower without first counting the cost lest you get halfway up and you’re unable to finish and all who see you begin to mock you and say this man began to build and was unable to finish. No one accidentally wins at anything and you’re not the exception. “I don’t like Dave Ramsey’s advice.” I don’t give a crap, you’re wrong. You have to do a written game plan with money are you going to lose.

The second thing is, you got to get out of debt. Your most powerful wealth building tool is your income and when you spend your whole freakin life giving your money to banks who fill up the skyline and have furniture nicer than yours, that makes you stupid. Get out of debt. When you don’t have any payments you know what you’ve got, money. Do I care if you get out of debt? Yes, I want you to win, I want you to have a great life, but do I care if you agree with me? No, I don’t care if you agree with me. If you don’t agree with me about this money stuff you’re what’s known as wrong. I’ve been doing this longer than most of my critics. They were peeing in their diaper while I was doing this stuff.

They’re wrong. Live on less than you make, number three. In the house of the wise, there are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all that he has. If you spend everything you make you are a fool. “Well Dave you don’t know about my situation in America today wages are stagnant,” so why are they stagnant at your house? You know where wages are stagnant? On people who are stagnant. You only got stagnant wages if you decide to stay there and keep getting those wages.

This is not Russia, you can quit. “I don’t like how much Walmart pays, I don’t like how much McDonald’s pays” so don’t work there stupid. Go to work for somebody else. “I don’t like out my company treats me,” so leave. Go be somebody. There’s no reason that you have to be stuck somewhere because some liberal journalist said you were stuck. You’re not stuck, you’re stagnant. Don’t be stagnant. You know what stagnant pond water does? It gross scum on top. You don’t want to be stagnant, you get scummy. You need to go be somebody, you need to leave the cave, kill something and drag it home.

You need to decide that my life is not good enough the way it is and so I am going to control the controllables, I am going to change some things because guess what nobody in Washington is going to fix your life, Santa Claus doesn’t live there baby. Have you noticed that the Democrats and the Republicans, neither one could freaking add? Have you ever had any of them send you money? No, they are not going to fix your freaking life. You are going to fix your life. You’re going get on a plan, you’re going get out of debt, you’re going to live on less than you make and then you’re going save some money. You know how rich people get rich? They save money.

Wow. “I don’t know if I agree with Dave Ramsey’s investment assumptions,” I don’t give a crap if you don’t agree with my investment assumptions. You know what my investment assumption is? My assumption is you’re going to be broke until you save money, that’s my assumption. You need to get up off your assumption and go do something. You need to get up off your assumption and start investing some money. 100% of the people that don’t save money, don’t have any. Wow, how’s that for insight? Doesn’t take a freaking rocket scientist to figure this out. You know what the problem on your investments are?

The problem with your investments is not your rate of return, it’s not your expense ratio, it’s not no load versus load, it’s not your nerdy, twisted up, toxic, bad opinion about some investment, your problem with your investments is you don’t have any. That’s the problem with your investments. 100% of the people that build wealth save money on purpose a lot. Some people do it poorly in a stupid money market account and make no money on their money.

Others do it wisely in mutual funds that outperform the S&P or real estate that they pay cash for that outperforms the S&P. Others are just passive and do the S&P and they all write books about it and all have a freaking opinion and make money off of you, while you’re stagnant. That’s stupid. Don’t be stagnant. Invest money, save money. You know how you’re going to do that? You’re going to be on a plan, you’re going get off out of debt, you’re going to live on less than you make and voila, there is money in the budget, it’s called margin baby.

Now you got the money to be rich, you got to act like rich people and that’s not going to spend a bunch of money moron, because rich people don’t go spend a bunch of money. “I’m going go buy a Ferrari, I’m acting like rich people,” no you’re acting like a moron. Ferraris aren’t rich people, that’s the ultra-rich. You don’t buy a Ferrari if you’re a millionaire, that’s crazy you people. “I’m going act rich, I’m going rip people off,” that’s just a liberal nonsense. Rich people don’t rip people off. They ain’t get rich by ripping people off. That’s just stupid, don’t be stupid it makes you look bad, don’t do that.

If you don’t get out of debt and you don’t invest and you live on less than you make and you have a plan, then you can do the last one. It’s the most fun you’ll ever have with money. You could be outrageously generous, randomly generous, lavishly generous, but broke people can’t do that because they sit around and discuss their investment philosophies while they invest nothing. There’s like people smoking weed discussing the meaning of life, they ain’t getting nothing done. You need to get up off your assumptions and go do something. It’s your turn.