Live Like No One Else - Dave Ramsey's Story

Most really important things start with a pretty simple

story

. The Ramseys are workers I worked for. It seems that in my entire life I have never complained. I'm not complaining about that. I mean, but I remember when I was 12 I walked in and asked. my dad was going to ride his bike I used to ride my bike to the local Quick Sack which was about a mile away from us and I came and asked my dad for some money to buy an Icee at the Quick Set. and he says you know I have you and I said your son I'm 12 do you know these things and he said what that means you need a job you don't need money because that's where money comes from we said what could you do to make some money and I said well , some of my friends are cutting grass.

I guess I could cut grass and even get a car, so a true

story

took me to Nolensville Road in the Woodbine area, in old Nashville, to a printing shop and the old fashioned Print Shop that used to make letterheads and business cards . They printed 500 business cards that said "Dave's Lawn." When we got home, he said you would knock on the nearest 50 doors in the neighborhood and ask them if you could get a chance to do it. meet your lawn care needs and I did and it worked. I got 27 yards to cut it. 12 years. I learned customer service and I learned to keep your word.

I remember having all sorts of small businesses throughout school that could leave you short of leather. bracelets that you would stamp people's names on, paint them, and sell them around, piling them up by the lockers, and I've always worked, so when I graduated high school at 18, I showed up and passed my real - real estate exam I'm a father Odin, a real estate company, so I started selling real estate while I was in school, then I went to the other end of the state, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and got my license there to work for a guy there and I worked 40 to 60 hours a week while going to school and I graduated school basically broke but not in too much debt because I've been working my wife Sharon Ramsey she's a centerpiece a proverbs 31 woman who can find a virtuous wife because her value is far above rubies her husband's heart trusts her safely and he will not lack for gains Sharon and I got married and we started with literally nothing you know I remember when we first got married time we were so broke, it was amazing, we bought our first two pieces of furniture, an old couch and this pedestal table, oh if I could talk, wow, the stories I would tell, but finally, after selling some real estate for a builder, I started buying and selling real estate in I was in my early 20s, just a couple of years after I got married and a bit of a family connection worked out with some bankers and things that would know and trust me.

I don't know why I was 22 years old, 23 years old, but they started. By lending myself money and I got rich, I ended up with about $4 million for real estate, about $3 million for debt, so those are the differences: a net worth of a million dollars and at 25 26 years old I was earning $250,000 a year in cash, taxable income. It was amazing, I mean the neighborhood, I grew up on 20,000 dollars a month, that's rich, I was rich, I mean we did all the things we had dreamed of doing and I always wanted a Jaguar, that was the car I had dreamed of having. a Jaguar I set that goal when I was in college, so I got my man Jaguar and everything seemed to be going well, it was amazing and our first baby, Denise, was born and then we were cooking and you know from that time.

I started going to church and met God in the process and something strange happened. It was right at that moment that everything started to fall apart. September 22, 1988. I remember they sold the banks, the main bank we were dealing with, we had 1,200,000 with them and 90. one day notes because we were buying properties and selling them and that bank was sold to another bank and the guys in another state in another city looked down and said: you know, here's a 26 year old kid who owes us 1 million two hundred thousand dollars this is ridiculous let's limit this relationship that's bank talk for college grades and ruin his life so they called it notes they gave me 90 days to get a million dollars there is no way a crisis started that I couldn't stop and the word got out on the street that I was in trouble and I was in trouble and our second largest lender we had 800,000 with them, they called our notes about 60 days after the first one, so we had less than six months to get two million dollars and it's all in real estate, you can't sell real estate fast enough to pay that bill, we had never lost money on a deal, we have never been a minute late on a note, that didn't matter, even though they simply decided they were going to limit their relationship they were in panic mode in the economy we were in at the time and those two hits started a collapse we fought for two and a half years no one wins without paying a price the scriptures say there is no discipline It seems nice at the time but painful, we sold everything as fast as we could and it doesn't matter what you do, when you accumulate stupid things like me , you will fall and you won't be able to catch it all, so it doesn't matter.

How hard I fought, no matter how smart I was, no matter how much I kept my word, no matter how much I was going to do the right thing and pay everyone, it didn't matter, I couldn't control the outside variables and I remember being so scared, Sharon and I had a lot of separation between us. She is quite scared and scared, quite angry with her husband. I have some answer. I was the guy who had all the answers. The strange thing was that we paid the four million dollars throughout the entire process. The road to three hundred and seventy-eight thousand was incredible, but some of the little ones who had sued us hundreds of times seemed like I don't know exactly how many there were.

It was about 100 easy and one of those little lawsuits decided that. They were going to carry out the judgment and agreed with the Sheriff's Department to come and remove a piece of furniture from our house on Friday morning, so on September 22, 1988 we met with a bankruptcy attorney that night and signed the bankruptcy papers. I will never forget. He filed it on Friday morning, so we filed for bankruptcy on the 23rd to keep the sheriff out of our house and prevent him from taking the crib. Well, I ran out of gas. He no longer had enough emotional energy to fight.

I mean, we just got hit and hit right after that, we started to discover that God's Word had something to say about money and this really wasn't the end of the story, so I met God along the way, but I did. I met on the way. Without a doubt, I started studying Biblical Finance and comparing what the Bible and common sense have to say about money, comparing it to what I had learned in academia because I have all these letters and licenses after my name that say that He supposedly wanted to know something about the money, but his assets went bankrupt.

I started applying new ideas like a budget and an emergency fund and how to get out of debt and stay debt free. A guy at church came up to me, MacGregor, shortly after and said, "Hi." Can we have a cup of coffee with you and your wife? We're going through some financial shit and you know it's about to destroy our marriage. It seems they succeeded. How did they achieve it? We're like we barely did it. So we'll talk to you, you know, so we'll have a cup of coffee with him. I guess it was my first financial counseling session.

I probably got a quote. I remember taking out the yellow notebook that said friend, you have to make a budget. Tell him I wasn't you and I was sitting there trying to see his numbers. I thought, man, I can really work. I can really show people how to win with this and I could instantly see it in other people's situations. I guess because we had been there, a friend of mine says that having a testimonial is a great idea, but getting it is a pain. The Scriptures say that no discipline seems pleasant in the aftermath, yet it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained in it.

We have dedicated a lot of our time and effort to not only being educational but also having aspirations to uplift and make people believe because when you think you can do a lot of things that really don't even make sense, it's crazy what people can do. . They quit when they think they can and it's crazy what they can't accomplish when they don't think they can. I have seen many people declare bankruptcy who were not bankrupt, they are simply afraid to see the light at the end of the tunnel. To them it was an oncoming train, they didn't believe there was anything real out there that they could turn the corner, they had no hope and that broken spirit there is almost nothing that can overcome it, but the fuel is hope when we did it. in class we cut up the credit cards I took them and shredded them all I looked at this thing every day I shook my fist at it you're going to fall you're leaving I lost my job hello um and I'm so behind on everything it's pretty scary oh my god no Do you have any idea, yes, having been there, I think you will pay 100% in less than a year, that is what I predict, it was really not having a future plan for our children.

It was a big motivation for us to say, “We can do it.” Look at all these people who are doing it. What kept us going is the support group that really is the radio station and what you're doing. I'm glad we were able to. to help you and if you need more help, call me at any time, that's what we are here for, it makes no sense in our history that we have been able to pay off a debt of three million dollars until three hundred and seventy. eight thousand dollars in debt in two and a half years and I was 26, that doesn't even make sense, it's not logical and we still haven't made it, but the fact that we got this far was because I really believed we were going to make it and when it was over It was when we didn't believe anymore, so that feeling of hopelessness I have a barometer I have a meter I can smell it on people I can feel it in a call coming When I'm sitting in a row of books I can look up, see someone's eyes and I just stop for a second and talk to him and pray with him and give him a couple of little pieces of advice or put him with one of our counselors because they went in there they weren't looking for a book they were looking to believe again our mission statement lamp oh group says that lipo group provides Bible-based common sense education and empowerment that brings hope to everyone in all walks of life that has been our guide is not a pamphlet or filler, it is who we are, it is our mission, that's what it says, We realized very quickly that the people whose numbers would work couldn't change things because they didn't believe they could.

Zig Ziglar is to say if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right, I hope I was a kid, we built bonfires by the lake, we went camping with our families, anything that got kids up. the driftwood and then we were ready to light the fire and it was always wet, new, we couldn't light everything

else

, so one of the old hillbillies always had a can of gasoline and, you know, he would throw some. There's gasoline in there and we'd like to guess a little bit stung in the fire, but that's the hope.

It's like the gasoline in there, it sets you on fire and allows you to do things you never dreamed you could do. We opened a small counseling office. Russ Carroll joined me and we taught our first class in March 1994 called Life After Death with a bad suit and a projector. I thought it would be good to teach these financial things. I learned the hard way and the small class had 37 people and when I finished teaching a few years later, there were 350 there, so obviously we hit a nerve, we had found a need and the pastor reached out to one of my associate pastors and told him that he needed to write his story in a book because God gave him the The story and it is different from other people's stories gives people hope, so I came home that night and wrote what I thought the opening chapter towards Financial peace ended up being the breakthrough, so we

live

d day to day in the real estate sector. and yet I have this mistake about these financial things and that's why at night I'm in church doing a counseling session or at night I'm sitting in front of my computer writing and that's how that little blue book about finances was born that we took to Una printer and printed the first thousand, interestingly I had been on a radio show as a guest and this guy was doing this show that we used to call it, laughingly, the bad financial hour as a parody of Saturday Night Live, no one listened to this station, so He went on there, he and I talked about it for a while, he had gone bankrupt in real estate too, so we started having this conversation about bankruptcy and I was like, yeah, I'm actually helping people in my church who are sometimes in actionmortgage. and stuff and the phone started ringing and we took some calls and he said, "That was great, you should come back, let's do it again" and then the guy quit and a friend of mine called me, I mean the mutual fund business and he told me He said, "Hey." We have to go there, do that radio show they left and he's going to listen, it'll be fun.

I'll do it a couple days a week, you do it a couple days a week and you know you can look at it as a ministry and he knew about the book I had just written and he said who knows, maybe you'll write that little book yourself. stupid thing you wrote, you have to clean this up for the sake of your child at that time, it's worth it though well, it's good for you when you keep doing smart things for five days you get a good result you do smart things for five years you really start to seeing a thing take on a life of its own you're making good progress kid, yeah, we're trying, there was immediately gravitational pull because uh we were offering instruction that gave hope human answers to those things that no one talked about out loud was like the secret that no one discusses the dirty little secret that everyone looks good but is broken and we opened that can of worms and it just blossomed.

The strange thing is that we went on the air on June 25, 1992, that same week the phone rang, the printer was on the line and said your books are ready, so I went out and grabbed my books, we filled the car with them, We put them in the trunk and tied them up. the trunk down with a big piece of rope and the cars driving like that and I was driving home and I remembered in my prayer time that God had told me that He was going to give me a way to sell the book and it will be like this It was unusual that it didn't I could take credit for my marketing genius and I was driving home and all of a sudden I made the connection that that little radio show was going to be how God was going to sell this book and I felt overwhelmed and had to stop.

I saw the way, not a single southerner cried for me, it was incredible and to this day I don't take for granted that all of this started from primitive and humble beginnings that wouldn't give you any indication that something was going to succeed, but I want to challenge you.

live

like no one

else

so that later you have the opportunity to live and give like no one else. I look back and I go to this radio show, one of the biggest radio shows in all of North America right now, the book Financial Peace and how it took off as a result and now literally millions of families have been through it over the last few decades. .

You know, there's no way I can take credit for it. I've worked hard, but when I look at the way things lined up. above, that was just a gift from God, it was just what you call a blessing, we're just regular people from Antioch Tennessee, we're nothing super special, we just did the things I've been teaching you and tried to figure out what God He is telling us what to do. do it and do it on a regular basis we're just joe all the guys i started with nothing did stupid things to fail your part and the belief that i can still go out and win everyone's story has an arc everyone's story has a problem and the opportunity to overcome the problem and then a resolution, sometimes it's more or less zeros, sometimes you know it's someone from a slightly different culture, who started with a different mindset and a different family upbringing, but still has the same arc plot and it's still an arc of people's story and so we blatantly use our story to help people make them believe that they can win by sharing a story or passing on a story or connecting with a story.

In our case, you would do it because he is someone who needs hope. hand out this Total Money Makeover book can I hand out this financial peace book can I hand out this class or tickets to a live event or are they just a link to the radio show can I connect this hurting person to this story of resolution we're all in? intertwined way because it turns out that our story as always your story connects and that connects with another and that connects with another and that's how all this happened there is nothing about the story that we would change, we would have changed it while we were in but looking forward There is nothing in history that we would change