The WORST Debt George Kamel Has EVER Seen...

0:00 What's the worst story you've seen

0:01 on the street?

0:03 I met a guy who at Disney,

0:05 they were 180 grand in debt in consumer debts and they were at Disney drop

0:10 and they told me they were dropping a,000 bucks a day to be there for a week.

0:14 And that's the clip that went viral on Instagram.

0:17 That that was the picture of what you expect at Disney, right?

0:19 This person who's in crippling debt going, I just want to go on a trip.

0:23 I need a vacation from my the reality of my life, which is crippling debt.

0:27 So, that one stuck with me cuz I felt for them and I talked to them afterwards

0:30 and I gave them the every dollar budgeting app

0:32 and and kind of coached them a little bit,

0:34 gave them some next steps cuz I hate to the point of those man

0:37 on the street videos is not to make someone feel bad about their vacation.

0:40 The point is to to create a little bit of conviction that I can do better and I

0:46 know how to do better now and therefore

0:48 you kind of are ignorance was bliss until now.

0:51 I kind of pointed it out.

0:52 Have you kept in touch with them?

0:54 I haven't, but I think I think he's messaged me once before.

0:57 So, I'm going to try to get back in touch to see where are they

0:59 now and and try to see if I can get them out of this thing.

1:02 It's interesting because that actually sounds exactly

1:05 like someone who's addicted to drugs because

1:08 their life is falling apart and it's because of the drugs that they take,

1:12 but then they take the drugs to escape that life.

1:15 The same thing goes for this person

1:17 in $180,000 of consumer debt or other people.

1:19 Well, maybe not this person exactly, but like generally speaking,

1:22 like you're going on this trip to Disneyland,

1:24 you're taking on more consumer debt in order

1:26 to escape the stress of being in consumer debt.

1:30 So, it's just a vicious cycle that feeds itself.

1:32 Yeah.

1:32 Dr.

1:32 Arthur Brooks calls that the doom loop.

1:34 And it happens with all kinds of addiction.

1:36 And when you translate it to money, it's the retail therapy.

1:41 I buy a thing, it wasn't enough, the dopamine wore off.

1:44 So, I I need to go kind of do more of it, go bigger.

1:48 And with debt, you see this kind of add it to my tab mentality of, well,

1:51 I'm 180 grand in debt.

1:53 What's another 10 grand onto the pile?

1:55 And even f I have family members who do this.

1:57 You know, they're they go to med school and they're 350 grand in debt.

2:01 So adding a car payment to that is like a drop in the bucket to them.

2:04 And that's the scary part is this is like monopoly money to us.

2:08 And we don't realize the ramifications.

2:10 And that's the side we get on the Ramsay

2:11 show when life didn't work out perfectly.

2:13 when they were laid off, they were fired,

2:16 a spouse wants to stay home because they had a kid

2:18 and all of a sudden we have to tell them,

2:20 "Hey, you got to sell the house or hey, that car is about to get repoed.

2:23 You're about to get foreclosed on." So, those are the heartbreaking calls.

2:26 Everyone takes on payments when they're doing okay

2:29 in life and they can afford the payment,

2:31 quote unquote, and eventually they have a misstep.

2:34 Life happens.

2:35 They have an emergency that they weren't prepared

2:37 for, and then the whole house of cards crumbles.

2:40 So, what's the worst thing you've seen on a call?

2:43 Oh my gosh.

2:44 The worst thing I've seen on a call,

2:46 the one that is burned into my memory is I

2:49 don't know if you've heard of this, the sovereign sovereignty movement,

2:52 sovereign citizen thing.

2:53 Sovereign citizen.

2:54 What is that?

2:55 They believe that the government is basically operating under false pretenses

2:59 that taxes are illegal and therefore I'm not going to pay taxes.

3:05 I'm not going to pay back my debts and because I think it's unlawful.

3:09 And a woman called in and said, "My husband is a part of this movement.

3:13 He's sort of fallen into this cultlike mentality,

3:17 and the car is about to be repoed.

3:19 Their house is about to be foreclosed on cuz he's not making mortgage payments.

3:23 And he owes the IRS $300,000." And I'm And I told her, I was like,

3:29 "Hey, you might go to jail, too.

3:31 Like you might be able to claim innocent spouse if you're lucky,

3:33 if you get a good attorney and get out of this, but this guy

3:36 is going to drag you into prison with him if you're not careful.

3:39 So those are the scariest ones where someone is I mean I think it's a it's

3:43 a mental illness at that point of that level

3:45 of sort of paranoia and you know deranged behavior.

3:49 What was her response?

3:51 I think she was a little bit of, you know,

3:53 just shock mode of she didn't really know what to do and there

3:56 was a lot of next steps to to handle all of it and is,

4:00 you know, I didn't think the marriage was going to survive in all of this.

4:03 It's hard to, you know,

4:04 you're so far removed of like that's not the person I married, you know,

4:09 and so that that was a really difficult call to take that's hard

4:12 to nail down in seven minutes on a radio call to help her.

4:17 And so that that's the hard part is you always think about them later on and you

4:20 kind of have to like a surgeon or a doctor go like all right next caller.

4:25 You know, you have to kind of compartmentalize it

4:27 and not let it stick with you too much.

4:28 This seems to be more of like a psychological question,

4:30 but that also seems to be the same thing that leads people to believe that it's

4:35 a good idea to put debt on to take on debt in order to get a Coachella ticket.

4:41 It's like all just like being disillusioned basically like being deluded,

4:44 seeing reality for something that it isn't.

4:47 What do you think is all?

4:48 We don't see money anymore.

4:49 When is the last time you guys saw $10,000 in cash?

4:52 Now Graham probably has cuz it's sitting in his safe at home.

4:55 But most people money is just is just like this digital thing.

4:59 It's just a number in a bank account.

5:01 And therefore, when we take on debt, like a car payment,

5:04 it's $50,000 for that new car.

5:06 You didn't have to actually exchange anything for that.

5:09 All you had to do is promise to make

5:11 a $750 payment next month and the month after that.

5:14 But that balance sitting with that car

5:16 lender of $50,000 isn't really real to you.

5:20 Similar to a mortgage.

5:22 And that's what I think we need is to bring friction back.

5:24 Bring the reality back that even if you have 20,000

5:27 in savings and you have 50,000 in debt, you are not okay.

5:30 You are not safe.

5:31 There's a real deficit there and you are you are in the red.

5:34 You think it has to do with delayed consequence?

5:37 Because back in the day,

5:39 let's say if you if you didn't pay the IRS or if you wanted to take on debt,

5:44 like I feel like the consequence of doing that could not be stretched so far.

5:48 Oh yeah.

5:48 You'd be borrowing money from like the mob or like from dude

5:52 and then your legs get broken when you're like a day late.

5:55 Yeah.

5:55 That doesn't happen anymore.

5:56 Now what you do is you uh you file bankruptcy,

5:59 you pay a couple grand, get on a payment plan or they,

6:02 you know, repo the assets or foreclose the home

6:04 and then you got to get out of jail free card.

6:07 Now your credit shot,

6:08 your financial world is ruined for, you know, about a decade.

6:11 But people just go, I'll file bankruptcy again.

6:13 That's sort of the mentality now.

6:15 And people see bankrupt, I mean,

6:16 we get so many calls where people say, should I file bankruptcy?

6:19 and they are $12,000 in debt,

6:22 but they just somewhere learned along the way that there was

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