Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broken. Common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver.
Generosity is possibly one of the most important financial principles that you can bring into your life. When you give steadily, regularly, as a rhythm of your life, it changes you. It changes the attitude of your heart, the positioning of your heart, and you move along the spectrum from selfish to selfless.
Someone that has been giving for a long time and giving a lot for a long time is some of the most selfless, generous people, we call them, and they're the ones that hold the door for you at the grocery store. They're the ones that help you pick up the cans of soup that are rolling around in the parking lot because the cheap plastic bag broke. Generous people are generous people.
And they're more attractive. We all want to hang out with those kinds of people. They do. And they tend to prosper for that reason because they're more attractive. I mean, if you think about it, who would you rather do business with? Let's say your person that fixes your car.
Someone that has a heart of generosity and the car in the bay next to you is a 32-year-old lady who's lost her husband in the military, and he's donating the repair on her car, and she's sitting in the lobby with you telling you that this guy's taking care of her. Would you rather have your car fixed there or the guy who is going to squeeze every dime out of everybody?
And we know the difference. You don't even have to know the difference to know the difference. How many of you have met with someone or you just had a conversation with someone and you finish the conversation and you go, I think I need a shower. You feel gross after. This is a taker. This is not a giver. This is a parasite. This is not someone that adds value.
And gosh, don't we all want to be that? And we're inspired by it. And we teach people to live like no one else so that later they can live and give like no one else. And so this is our annual favorite show for George and me to get to do. We do it as one of our last broadcasts of the year every year. We're heading up into Christmas where we celebrate God giving his only begotten son for our sins.
And those of us that are Christians, that's what we believe, and that's what we know to be true. And he gave his only begotten son. God is a giver, and we're made in his image. And so in our very spiritual DNA, we are designed to be givers. And when you're not giving, you're not functioning in your design. When you start giving, you're more passionate.
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Chapter 2: How does generosity impact our lives?
You're more creative. Opportunities come your way because you're more attractive. Your marriage is better. You're more empathetic. You're a better dad and a better mom when you give rather than take all the time. I mean, the term that everybody throws around that's the opposite of giver is narcissist. And, you know, it's way overused. Everybody is accused of being a narcissist.
Well, anything you don't like. Anytime you don't like somebody now, you have to call them a narcissist. That's like a rule now on social media. But they're not. You just got your little feelings hurt. But still, that is, you know, that's the opposite. Very self-centered. self-oriented. So today we're going to take calls and emails and stories throughout the entire show all about giving.
So if you have given something and you have a story that will inspire the rest of us to be better givers, bigger givers, more often givers, because we're all in agreement right now that giving is the best thing you can do with money. It's the most fun you'll ever have with money. The most fun I've ever had with money is when we did a gift in person and you make someone cry.
because it blows their freaking mind that's the that's the most fun you'll ever have and so yeah i'm known for making people cry but not for that so but you're gonna cry in a good way today and so the good dave is here and if you make dave cry i guess we'll give you a book here so i cried an applebee's commercial what are you talking about man i cry all the time but the uh uh so no the
We need to hear from you. We want to hear your giving stories or your receiving stories. Inspire us to generosity today. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Try to get it. I'm going to do it. All right. Peridot's with us. Hey, Peridot, what's up? Merry Christmas, Dave. What an honor. It's an honor to be with you. Tell us your giving story. Sure.
So a few years back, I was actually the recipient of Outrageous Generosity, and it's really changed my life. So I was a single mom without two nickels to rub together, and a lot of times by the end of the month, we were really struggling to get food on the table. A friend told me about a food pantry that was out of a local church, so I went to get some food.
In line, I had to fill out a form with income information to confirm eligibility. When a church volunteer reviewed the details with me, he revealed that my income was actually above the threshold to where they could offer me assistance. So I was literally making too much to be that broke. Wow. The really beautiful thing is he took the time to actually like talk about it with me.
He asked me why I was coming for assistance when my income was so high. And I explained to him that my mortgage payment was about half of my income. He did say that I could wait around to see if there's any extra food at the end or what they could scrounge up for me kind of around the church, but I refused.
And with tears in my eyes, I told him that I didn't want to take food away from the people who need it more than I do, that I was fine because I had a bag of oranges in the car, a half a bag of oranges that I was going to take back to the grocery store to get us through the rest of the month.
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Chapter 3: What are some inspiring stories of giving?
That's why they're loud and showy. But, yeah, that's how it works. Zoe's in Omaha, Nebraska. Merry Christmas, Zoe. Tell us your giving story. Merry Christmas. Huge fan. Been listening to you since I was 16. Wow. Thank you. How's 17 treating you? I'm 27 now. No, my story, I was 19 and I had a job way out of my league, but I tried it and I got it.
And part of my job was to interact with the elderly people. And for Christmas, I picked people who didn't have family around in my company, bought hats, mittens, puzzles for those people who didn't have family around to celebrate Christmas with. Moral of the story, I was dropping off one of my gifts to one of my friends um, people. And it was actually a younger person, um, probably sixties.
They had kids at home. I walked into their home. I could see daylight through their house. Um, and the pair of gloves and hat and,
Chapter 4: How can we pay it forward in our communities?
Other gifts that I gave them, I knew wasn't enough. So I felt, and they were so grateful just for that, but I felt called to go and get them more. So I went and spent my own money. Around five hundred dollars on snow pants and snow boots and warm stuff and some Christmas toys for the kids and toothbrushes and stuff like that.
While I was at the store, I ran into two people who I told what I was doing. They also gave me one hundred dollars each. So that was like seven hundred dollars. I got stuff for them. I brought it back to them. We all had tears in our eyes. And you were 19 years old. I was 19 and $500 was a lot of money for me. It's a lot of money, yeah. But I just felt like it was right.
And the feeling that I felt giving it to them, I think felt better than how they felt, but it felt so amazing. And it's like something I will cherish forever. Amen. Well done, Zoe. Proud of you. Wow. The impact it has on the giver, just as powerful, if not more, than on the receiver. Changes you. Changes you permanently. Hey guys, you know those too-good-to-pass-up holiday promos?
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It's our annual giving show, Crystals in Arizona. I keep a stash of $20 bills in my wallet just for restaurant birthday emergencies. The second I hear the happy birthday song, I'm already across the room handing the bewildered birthday person a $20 bill and announcing it's a family tradition.
They don't know if I'm generous, unhinged, or both, but the act has created an incredible amount of surprising joy. I love that. You know, why not be both? Why not? Unhinged generosity is a fun category. This stranger just had to be at 20 just because somebody sung Happy Birthday. And then you find out they were singing Happy Birthday just to get the free cake and it wasn't really their birthday.
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Chapter 5: How did a family gift a car to a deserving teenager?
And I heard the stories of some of the cars that they were like coming across. And so I said to Perry, I was like, why don't we give our car to his daughter? And so we were like, it was an easy decision. I don't think there was much discussion. It was just timing of when we want to get the new car and all that jazz.
So once we decided we wanted to do it and when we could do it, Perry came up with a great idea of how we wanted to gift it to her.
Yeah, so basically what we did was we had him have a kind of dad-daughter meeting, talking outside about budget and college and everything like that. And we parked around the corner. I had bought a key chain with her name on it. And the plan was we were going to be walking with our kids around the corner.
Chapter 6: What are some impactful stories of generosity shared?
And then essentially I acted like I found a pair of keys in front of their house. And so I just said, oh, excuse me, did you guys drop some keys? And she looked at her dad and she came out. No. And I go, are you sure there's a name? I don't know whose name this is. And then she looked and kind of looked at her dad and was like, what's happening right now?
And so then we got to break it to her that that was her car and we were giving it to her. That's so fun. That's great.
Chapter 7: How did a community come together to support a family in need?
So what kind of car is this? It was a Hyundai Santa Fe. Oh, that's a great teenager car. Yeah, it's still working. It's still driving. She's had some good road trips in it, so we're happy. Yeah, good. That is so cool. Well played, y'all.
Yeah, it felt just so great to be able to be in a place that we were able to just give it and not have like, yeah, does that money, would that money be great? Sure, we have twins. There's a lot of expenses, but it was so much worth more worth it to be able to gift that and be in a place in our life now, thanks to getting out of debt, that it's like, it was an easy decision. So that's great.
Amen.
Chapter 8: What lessons about generosity can we learn from personal stories?
Well, it's fun that in this environment at Ramsey, that kind of stuff happens all the time. And so you've kind of got that in front of you to prompt you and go, Oh, we can do that instead of like where it's never going on. You know, there's stuff like that happens around here every day. And it's just, this place is very weird, but weird as normal around here. Weird in a good way.
But yeah, it's, it's, Yeah, that's fun. Way to go, y'all. And what did you guys get? What kind of cars did you buy for the twins? Well, she wanted a minivan, and I fought it really, really hard. So I did everything I can to kind of... You got three kids, dude. You're in the minivan zone. So I somehow won, and we got a really good deal on a Volkswagen Atlas. Oh, yeah. Beautiful car.
So it has the three, the two rows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've explained to him it would be so much easier if we had a minivan to get to that back row, but...
He'll give in eventually. Eventually we all succumb to the minivan. That's so fun. It's just a phase. You don't have to live there forever. It's just a phase, a minivan phase, and then you can move on to other stuff. Very good. Congratulations, y'all. Well done. Hey, thanks for telling us that story. That's absolutely very, very well done. It's close to home in these walls. Good stuff.
Good stuff. The number of times, the first time we ever gave a car, it was a disaster.
Yeah.
We did it at the Christmas party. The lady has now passed away. Her name was Joy. And she'd gone through a nasty mess of life, a nasty divorce, and she was broke. And I'm like, we're going to give her this car. And so I bought this car, and it wasn't super, like $8,000 or $10,000. And at the Ramsey Christmas party, we always do some bizarre giving and stuff.
And so we bring the thing inside the building where we were doing the Christmas party. And they said, you can do that, but you have to unhook the battery because they're afraid it's going to blow up or something in the building, right? So we unhooked the battery. When we hooked the battery back up, gave it to her, and it wouldn't start. Oh, boy.
So all the guys end up pushing this car outside, and we get the jumper cables out of my truck and jump off. It kind of took the edge off the gift, you know? Yeah. It's just like, this is a, you know, it's like, okay, this thing's such a piece of crap, it won't start, and we just gave it to you. Good luck with that, right? And it's like, are all the team members now watching this occur?
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