Before he was a financial guru, Dave Ramsey was deep in debt. The CEO of Ramsey Solutions joined TheStreet to discuss his personal journey from bankruptcy to building a multi-million dollar empire.
Transcript:
CONWAY GITTENS: So you mentioned you hit rock bottom and you had to file for bankruptcy. What was the Phoenix like moment. Like what was the first step. That’s what I’m trying to get at. What was the first step. Because there’s somebody watching this who says, OK, I’ve hit rock bottom. I’ve hit rock bottom, but they don’t know how to move from the bottom to get to where you are. So walk us through that process.
DAVE RAMSEY: Well, it hurts when you hit because it is hard. It’s not a soft landing. It’s a splat. You know, one guy said, How’d you bounce back. And it didn’t bounce. I splatted. It hurt. You know, it hurts bad. And so if somebody is at rock bottom and they’re watching, I’m with you. I understand it hurts. And what I had to do is just what Sharon and I did. We just took inventory. We said, OK, what about us personally and what about our behaviors and our habits and our decisions and our values was wrong that brought us to this moment because we weren’t victims. I mean, we caused it. You know, no one did anything to us. It was evil or nefarious. It was us doing so. So we had to say, all right, what does stupid look like. And let’s stop doing stupid, you know. And so we said, all right, we don’t borrow money anymore. And I never had a credit card since then. And I don’t borrow money. And so we were driving an old beat up car. It was awful. It was a lot worse than what we’re talking about a while ago. It was horrible. But I it was so bad that I was highly motivated to save money to get out of that car. So we saved a bunch of money really fast. I worked like an animal. And so, yeah, you start writing it down, write down where your money’s going. You do anything you can to get your income up and keep your outgo down and you get an agreement with your spouse and you lock arms and you say, hey, the rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason. What happened in the past is in the past, I don’t have to live like that anymore. I can make a decision to change and go, so we’re going to do a budget. We’re going to increase our income. We’re going to stay away from the things and the decisions that brought us into this mess in the first place that caused the splat. And then when I started doing that, people started asking me, what are you doing. Because your life seems to be turning around after that horrible, stupid thing you all did. And I said, well, I’m staying out of debt and I write it down and my wife and I are in agreement and we saved money. And they said, that’s it. You got to tell somebody that. And so we spent the next 30 years telling people that.
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