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101. Breaking Free from Broke: Preventing Financial Stress for Long-Term Teaching Success with Special Guest George Kamel

Apr 09, 2024

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As teachers, we often didn't get into the profession thinking we'd be rolling in the dough, but we at least expected to receive a livable wage. The fact of the matter is that many teachers are feeling stress and burnout often from their finances. And while, teachers should be paid fairly according to their experience and education with systemic change, at some point, we can be proactive.

That's why I am excited to have special guest, George Kamel, on the show to chat all things financial freedom and budgeting for teachers. George Kamel is a national bestselling author of Breaking Free From Broke and a personal finance expert. Following Ramsey’s proven money plan, George went from negative net worth to a millionaire in under 10 years. Since 2013, he has served on the Ramsey team, speaking across the country, co-hosting top-ranked Ramsey Network podcasts, like Smart Money Happy Hour and The Ramsey Show. George has. been featured on Fox News, Fox Business, and The Iced Coffee Hour, among other networks. On his YouTube channel, George educates and entertains, exposing the financial system designed to keep you broke. His goal is to help people spend less, save more, and avoid money traps so they can live a life with more margin, options and freedom. Follow George on TikTokInstagramFacebookYouTube, and X, or online at georgekamel.com.

TOPICS COVERED:

  • Addressing teacher financial stress and advocating for a livable wage.
  • George Kamel's financial freedom journey and expertise with Ramsey's methods.
  • Budget management essentials for teachers, featuring the EveryDollar app.
  • Debt elimination strategies and financial stress relief for educators.
  • Revealing statistics on teachers achieving millionaire status.
  • The importance of zero-based budgeting in educator financial planning.
  • Investment strategies for teachers, including Roth IRAs and 403(b) accounts.
  • Common financial pitfalls for educators and how to avoid them.
  • Preventing burnout through effective financial management.
  • Insights from George Kamel’s book, "Breaking Free from Broke."
  • Ramsey’s educational initiatives, including teacher giveaways and curriculum.
  •  

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The Resilient Teacher Podcast is the show that will give overwhelmed educators the support, tools, and mindset to reduce teacher burnout and keep teaching sustainable. Each week, Brittany Blackwell, M.Ed. & her guests will share inspiration and actionable steps to avoid or recover from the dreaded teacher burnout. You'll be inspired to individualize self-care and learn to prioritize your well-being and mental health, all while making a bigger impact on your classrooms and community.

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TRANSCRIPT:

[0:00] As teachers, we often didn't dive into this profession with visions of swimming in cash. I mean, I think for the most part, we all had a pretty clear idea that we weren't going to be rolling in dough. Yet, what many of us might not have fully anticipated is just how financially challenging this job can truly be. Teachers around the globe are feeling the pinch, financially speaking, and it is adding to a hefty load of stress to an already demanding job. I am a staunch advocate for ensuring that teachers receive a livable wage because, let's face it, systemic change is truly overdue. Our dedication to shaping the future generations should be met with financial respect and security that we truly deserve. So while we push for these broader changes, I also think it's crucial that we equip ourselves with the tools and the knowledge to navigate our financial realities, Find some relief, maybe even carve out a path to financial freedom within our current constraints.

[0:56] That's why I am super excited to have George Camel here on the show to talk all things financial freedom with us. George Camel is a national bestselling author of Breaking Free from Broke. He is a personal finance expert, and following Ramsey's proven money method, George went from negative net worth to a millionaire in under 10 years. Since 2013, he has served on the Ramsey team, speaking across the country, co-hosting top top-ranked Ramsey Network podcasts like Smart Money Happy Hour and The Ramsey Show. George has been featured on Fox News, Fox Business, and The Ice Coffee Hour, among other networks. On his YouTube channel, George educates and entertains, exposing the financial system designed to keep you broke. His goal is to help people spend less, save more, and avoid money traps so that they can live a life with more margin, options, and freedom. When I tell you that he drops a crazy statistic in this episode, I mean, I was completely shocked.

[1:49] You will will definitely want to stick around and check out the easiest way to explain finances that I've ever heard in my entire life. So without further ado, let's get into it.

[2:40] Hey, George. Welcome to the Resilient Teacher Podcast. Hey, Brittany. It's so good to be with you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. George, I would love for you just to share a little bit about who you are, what you do for the teachers who are listening today, because I know that this is a topic that they are super interested in. So take it away. way. Absolutely. Well, my name is George Camel. I'm a Ramsey personality here at Ramsey Solutions. If you know the name, probably because of a guy named Dave Ramsey. And so I've been at this organization for 11 years now. Started as an intern who was broke, $40,000 in debt. I followed the Ramsey baby steps that we teach to AT. And here I am a decade later, a net worth millionaire, helping students, teachers, adults all win with money, get out of debt and build wealth. And And that's my hope for everyone. And if you can get it early, like the teachers teaching the students, it's a game changer.

[3:34] Absolutely. Absolutely. And you said $40,000 in debt. And I've been there. I don't know any teachers who maybe haven't had that experience, especially if they had to take out student loans and things like that. And one of the things that teachers really struggle with is burnout. And so that's obviously what we talk about here on the podcast. But so often we don't think about how finances cause stress. And that is something that I think teachers don't realize is contributing to their burnout. What are some of the things that they can be doing like right now to try to alleviate the stress from finances? Well, the first thing you gotta do is pay attention to your money. And I know I'm on team pay teachers more and I wish that we could just snap our fingers and make all of that happen. But what you can do is take control of the money that you do have coming in. And teachers are not known for living lavish lifestyles, spending out of control, but it's the little things that add up and we all wanna do better with money. So the way you pay attention to your money is simply by doing a budget. And we created a free budgeting tool, an app called EveryDollar that you can use.

[4:41] And it's really simple. You put your income up at the top and then all of your expenses down below. And the goal here is to have a zero-based budget, which doesn't mean you have zero bucks in your bank account. It just means that you've accounted for every single dollar, so income minus expenses end up equal zero. That means you gave every dollar a job, and that's super important to do. It's scary at first because that also means you have to list out all of the debt and the minimum payments, and you kind of can't breathe for a second. But once you put it all on paper and face the financial reality, you can take the right next step. I started doing the zero-based budget. I do a combination of different things, but that really initially was super scary. Then once I did it, it was like, why didn't I do this sooner? Because I was actually spending more money than I realized I was before I started the zero-based budget.

[5:34] So tell me a little bit about, there's a recent study of millionaires and teachers are like the leading career. I thought that that was the craziest thing that I have ever heard because nobody thinks of teachers as millionaires. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Absolutely. Yeah. A few years ago, we did a study called the National Study of Millionaires. It was the largest one ever done in North America. Over 10,000 millionaires were studied, interviewed, interviewed and we listed out careers and number one was engineer number two is attorney number three what was our sorry number two is accountant number three was teacher and so that was pretty wild to find in the survey that it wasn't doctor up there it wasn't celebrities and athletes it was teachers and the more we dug into it the more we found okay engineers accountants teachers they're all very process driven people right you have an agenda you have a schedule you have a curriculum.

[6:28] And so they're used to following a plan and that's all you really need to do to build wealth. It's a lot simpler than we think. And other lifestyles, career choices out there can lead you to try to flex and try to have this show of wealth. In teacher world, you're just trying to survive. You're not trying to impress with the cars you drive, the houses. And so we found that teachers generally invest into their retirement plans consistently for a long period of time. Teachers have long careers. They're not jumping around and moving around a lot. And so what that does over time is create compound growth. And that compound growth ends up creating a bigger nest egg. Bada bing, bada boom. You have a bunch of teachers who are millionaires. So it's a really encouraging stat and a shout out to all the teachers out there for just following that proven plan with consistency over time. Yeah. So, okay. Zero-based budget. Okay. So we're going to start out. We're going to look look at everything. We're going to actually start paying attention to our money because then we might could be a millionaire according to this study. What's the second step that they need to start doing?

[7:32] Well, the second piece is getting out of debt. And a lot of teachers, they're trying to do a lot of great things at once. We're trying to put away money in the emergency fund. We know we should be investing in retirement, but we also need to upgrade the car. We want to go on that vacation. And we also need to, and it becomes just too much at once. And so when you try to do 17 things at once, you end up doing none of them very well. And so the key here is to focus on one thing at a time. That's why these Ramsey baby steps are so powerful. Baby step one is just a thousand dollar starter emergency fund. Now, most teachers probably have that sitting in a bank account, ready to go. Baby step two, let's knock out all of the consumer debt, so everything but the mortgage, using the debt snowball method. And that's where you list your debts from smallest to largest, ignoring the interest rate, which I know hurts for the mathematical-minded teachers who are like, wait, wouldn't you pay off the highest interest first?

[8:22] This is about motivation, behavior, progress, psychology. And what we found over time is when you knock out the little debt, it gives you this amazing feeling called hope. And that helps you knock out the next one. And mathematically, you free up a payment when you knock out the smallest debt. You roll that payment into the next debt and into the next debt. And we find that on average, 18 to 24 months later, people become totally consumer debt free. Then we can focus on getting a fully funded emergency fund. Then we can begin investing. But the problem is most people aren't investing more than three or 4% because they don't have the money to. And once you become debt free with an emergency fund, it really frees up your greatest wealth building tool, your income. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of teachers out there right now that are saying, you know, like, I can't even afford to buy groceries right now. Like the amount of money that we're making is just not enough. What would you tell that teacher who is like, I literally don't have anything? What would be what would be something that you would tell them? Yeah. Well, number one, I feel for you. Inflation is real. It is here. It's probably not going anywhere anytime soon. So that is a real problem affecting your bank account. But number two, we can't just wallow and go, whoa, is me for too long. We have to do something about it. We still have to get up at 5 a.m. and live life again. And so the best thing to do is follow that budget and look at other places that you're able to cut. And sometimes you look at it and you go, I got nowhere. look.

[9:46] Man, I got nothing else to cut, but there's a lot of money leaks, as I like to call them. These are all of those little subscriptions that don't feel like a lot, but they add up. It's those little treats, that morning coffee, the little breakfast, the little brunch here and there that adds up. And it's also the big things like your insurance. A lot of people have had the same insurance for years. They haven't reshopped it. And I use an organization called Zander Insurance. They've been with Ramsey for years now, and they help people, independent brokers. They help you find insurance from all of the top companies, and that's how I've been able to save hundreds a month just by reshopping once a year going, am I still getting the best deal possible and the best coverage?

[10:26] So that's kind of an interesting place you can find some money in the couch cushions. And then lastly, another place to look is your tax withholdings. If you're getting a refund every single year of $2,400, well, that really means you just let the government hang on to $2,400 interest free all year, and then they gave it back to you. This was not a bonus for being awesome. I wish it was. I wish teachers would get a giant bonus at the end of the year from the government.

[10:50] But this is what you can do is change your withholdings to get that $200 a month back in your bank account.

[10:56] So all of those little things really add up when you start to figure out how can I spend less? How do I make more? And that's where even side jobs can come in and tutoring. And I know teachers are so busy as it is. They're like, you want me to do something else on top of all this? I know it can be a lot, but for a short season, maybe a year or two, getting that side hustle can help you kind of stop treading water, get your head above it and start making a plan. And so those are all little things you can do. I walk through this in my new book called Breaking Free from Broke. There's a whole chapter called Margin is Breathing Room, where I help you find so many ways to find that margin so that you can live a little easier. easier. Yeah. I didn't know you had a book, so I'm excited about that. I will definitely put the link down in the show notes for everybody to go and check out because just listening to some of this, I know that there's a teacher out there who's like, wow, I didn't really think about it like that. And maybe I should, maybe I need this book. So definitely going to put that in the show notes for them to go check out. You talked a little bit about kind of a mistake that teachers we're making. And I think, especially for teachers who want to stay in the profession long-term and the stress that money has, they're not making a lot of money. They have all of these kind of mindset blocks that are happening with that. What are some of the financial mistakes that they might be making and how can they make this a sustainable career financially long-term?

[12:20] Absolutely. Yeah. There's teachers out there who are very comfortable because they follow all the baby steps. And it really isn't about income. A lot of people out there, whether they're teachers or any other profession, they always think if I just had more money, I would get my act together and I could really hit my money goals. Well, the truth is there's this mistake called lifestyle creep. And it is the more you make, the more you spend. And I know we all think we're not going to be that person. And if you gave me a $10,000 raise, I would keep living exactly as I am. But we live in a fallen world and humans are going to human. And so we want to just spend a little bit more and increase our lifestyle and maybe even increase generosity and investing. And so lifestyle creep is one of the biggest factors, I think, holding people back. And, you know, depending on where you live, it's really tough because there's a high cost of living in a lot of these cities. And it's not like they just give you a huge bump just because you work in the big city. A lot of teachers, even here in Williamson County, which is, you know, some of the best schools in Tennessee.

[13:20] Right here. But the teachers can't afford to live in Williamson County because it's one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. And so they're commuting long distances to just to go to work. And so one of the mistakes people make, number one, is that lifestyle creep. And number two, it's realizing that payments are not normal. And a lot of people make the mistake of just going, well, you're always going to have a car payment. I need reliable transportation. So I'm going to keep around that $500 car payment and just roll it into the next car and the next car. And that, I think, is one of America's biggest wealth killers today is the car payment, because we've seen car prices keep going up. And just like we saw with college tuition, what happened? Student loan companies kept giving people monopoly money. The colleges just kept raising tuition, knowing people would just keep taking out more monopoly money. And the same thing has happened with cars. They've raised the prices. Now, the average the average car payment is now seven hundred thirty seven dollars a month, which just hurts my brain to think about. out. But people keep doing it because debt is easily accessible. And so we have to start having this paradigm shift where we go, you know what? Payments are not normal. Just because it's become normalized doesn't mean it's normal because normal is broke. And you've got to be weird, at least for a season, if you want to get above that and rise above this toxic system. And the other ones are the student loans. I just ran into a teacher yesterday at Trader Joe's. She ran into me. She said, you would not believe this. We paid off $200,000 of our debt. in two years following the Ramsey plan.

[14:47] And she's been a teacher for 20 years now. And she was telling me of just how difficult it is to change that mindset around debt and go, you know what, we're not going to live like this any longer. It's not worth keeping the student loans. And she ended up actually getting about 24,000 of the 200,000 forgiven. But it was after, get this, 17 years of trying to get forgiveness through these programs. The first one was 10. The next next one was five. And then finally, two years after that, she finally sent her ninth application in and got $24,000 forgiven, which is a drop in the bucket out of the $200,000. And so a lot of teachers out there, they want the forgiveness.

[15:27] I'm not angry at it. If you're on the cusp of getting it, it's fine. That's great. It's a blessing. But don't bank on all of this to try to solve your life because it could be a long time coming. Yeah. Okay. So you were talking about all all of these things. I'm like, oh, I made that mistake. Oh, I made that mistake. And I know that there are other teachers who are listening to that too. With my student loans, I had to work in a Title I school for five years to have a certain amount forgiven, and it was $17,000. And that, again, was a drop in the bucket, but I was banking on that. While I was banking on that, I was not putting in payments, which then had that interest rate, I mean, the interest increase and compound and then it was like, why did I not put payments in there? Why did I not do that? But then I also heard that lifestyle creep.

[16:17] And I have fallen victim to this lifestyle creep. When I was a single parent, I had it really budgeted out where my income was paying for everything that I needed for my house, for my car, all of these things. But as soon as I got married, it was like, oh, let's just not worry about it because now we've got two incomes. So we don't really have to focus so much on that. But what ended up happening was we were spending money out to eat. Okay. There are seven of us. Okay. Okay. If you, seven of us going out to eat is insanity. I imagine every time you leave the house, it's like $200 is going to be gone. I mean, that's what it was. It was like a hundred dollars for every, I mean, to go to McDonald's. It's like, what, why does it cost so much to go to McDonald's? Well, there's more of us.

[17:03] And so like just starting to go down to that zero-based budget and have a way that we were just focusing on what was for dinner, what were, what were we eating and really just looking at those, that was saving us hundreds of dollars every week and then every month. And so that was just a huge, that lifestyle creep that you just talked about. I've never heard that term before, but I have fallen victim to that. I'm glad I'm reading your mail. And thank you for your honesty and sharing with us. That takes some vulnerability there. For sure. For sure.

[17:39] So, you know, we've talked about, we've talked about some of the steps that teachers can start to take. You talked a little bit about investing, and I did have some questions from the audience who they were wanting to know, what are the things that they need to look at as far as investing initially in order to get that financial freedom? And then maybe, can you talk a little bit more about how teachers can experience that financial freedom? Oh, absolutely. Investing has been a hot topic, especially for young people. I mean, even the students now in the classroom, room, they're all wondering, how can I build wealth? What's the right side hustle? I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be a YouTuber. And so this has been a big topic. And I addressed this in the book in two chapters. One is investing traps, because I think just as easy as it is to build wealth, it's even easier to fall for these traps that we're seeing out there on social media. Everyone wants to make it look like this is the next thing to get rich quick. We want it to be easy. We want the shortcut.

[18:34] But I always say that it's a lot more like a crockpot than in a microwave. So it's going to take more time, but you also don't risk the chance of burning your nest egg because it was in the microwave for one second too long and your timing was off just by a little bit. And so the investing traps chapter lays out all of the bad things that we sort of screw up when it comes to building wealth. And then later on, I have a chapter called wealth as patience, where I show you the correct way. And so I'll give you the spark notes from the the book Breaking Free from Broke Today.

[19:01] And really, it comes down to three, it's a five word investing strategy. And so if you can remember this, you should be okay when it comes to building wealth. Match beats Roth beats traditional. So it's kind of like rocks, paper, scissors here, but there's a method to the madness. So when we say match, a lot of people have an employer match and a lot of teachers have probably a 403B plan. And so if you have a match, you want to start there and you want to invest up to the match. Let's say that's 4%. Then we still want to get to 15%. That's baby step four in the Ramsey plan. And so we have a ways to go. So next you can move to any Roth options. And a lot of teachers now have a Roth 403B. And you might be scratching your head like that's a lot of numbers and words. I don't know what that really means. Roth just means it's a type of an account where you use after-tax money. So you don't get it deducted from your taxes at the end of the year like you do a traditional. But once that money is put in there, the government never touches it again. It's such a beautiful thing. That money grows tax-free. You can withdraw it tax-free. So if you have a million dollars in a Roth 403b at retirement, you have a million dollars of net income that you can then use to live your best life. And so I love the Roth account. It's awesome for teachers if you have access to that. Then you move on to traditional. So match beats Roth beats traditional. Traditional is the last place you can go to fully fund up to that 15%. And when we talk about these accounts accounts to 403b, the Roth 403b, an IRA outside of an employer.

[20:30] These are just shells. You have to actually put something into this cookie jar. You got to put some cookies in. And so you have to choose funds that go into these accounts. And we recommend growth stock mutual funds. And all that is, that's a big fancy word to say, it's a giant group of stocks. So picture stocks from 90 to 200 different companies all in one basket. And what that does is it diversifies. We've all heard the term, don't put all your eggs in one basket, because if that basket drops, there goes your eggs. And so with 200 different stocks, we're kind of hedging our bets that we're not betting on a single racehorse. We're sort of buying the entire race track. And that gives me a lot of peace. I'm not worried about one company taking a dip or going up. And we've all seen the tickers on the news and Apple just took a dip because of this news and Tesla's up and down today. But hey, this is a giant group of stocks that investors like teachers like me all come together to fund. And that's why we call it a mutual fund. And so if you just select some decent mutual funds, you don't even have to be a prodigy. We found in our millionaire study, these were very average investors. They were kind of mediocre. But the key was they just invested consistently over a year after year after year into these funds. They didn't jump in. They didn't jump out. They just stayed in the game.

[21:45] So those are really the keys. I wish it was more complicated than that, but that's really all you need to do. If you fully fund a Roth IRA for the year, you contribute to that 403B, you get your house paid off before you retire. Those are really the keys that we found in these millionaires.

[22:01] Wow. You know what? I've never understood anything financial until just now. You just explained that so, so great that I mean, like I could finally understand the differences between those types of things just in the way that you explained it. And I know that there's another teacher out there who's like, holy crap, I have tried to read books and I just don't get it. And this guy just explained it so great. Right. That's what I try to do because I have the brain of about a fifth grader. That's my it's my reading level, my speaking level. And so I try to go, how can I understand this? I love the term explain like I'm five because it forces you to go, OK, what's the simplest? There's a cookie jar. We need cookies in there. It's great to have a jar, but we need something inside the jar. OK, this is wonderful. And so that's what we try to do here at Ramsey's. Put the cookies on the bottom shelf, as we like to say. Yeah, I like that. I like that so much. You have a giveaway that Ramsey is doing. So can you tell a little bit about that? Because I know, you know, there's going to be some, there's money to be gotten. Absolutely.

[23:00] Yeah. So our team at Ramsey Education, who puts out our amazing foundations and personal finance curriculum that's in high schools all across America, even homeschool now, it's in 48% of high schools. Over 7 million students have gone through this. It's so encouraging. So every year we do this big teacher giveaway just to say, teachers, we see you. We love you. Thank you for what you do. And so we are giving away a $5,000 vacation of your choice at ramsaysolutions.com slash teacher giveaway. So if you go to that website, teachers can enter. And I believe you have to be like accredited K through 12, yada, yada, yada. You'll see all the fine print there of who this applies to. But this is just a great way we can say thank you to the teachers and let them know about our amazing foundations and personal finance curriculum, which I'm biased because I got to be the host for that and come up with a lot of fun ideas to engage with the students and teaching it as well as the expert.

[23:55] It was a blast. And I love meeting students now who go, wait, you're the guy. I saw you in my class. I paid off my, I went to college debt free, or I bought my car with cash because of you guys. Thank you. And it warms my heart to meet these students to go, imagine if that was you as an adult going back in time and knowing all of this stuff, right? That's always the sentence we hear, man, I wish I knew about this stuff when I was young, man, I wish they taught this in high school. Well, we do now we are trying to be the preventative medicine for these students and And teachers are a huge part of that. So if you want to learn more, you can go to RamseyEducation.com. And to get that giveaway, RamseySolutions.com slash teacher giveaway. Yeah. And we're going to put the links for everything down in the show notes, especially about that curriculum, because I know that that is something that parents are wanting their students to learn more about in school. And there are ways that we can kind of incorporate that into our regular curriculum. And so definitely going to put the link for that curriculum down in the show notes as well. So, George, I just want to tell you that this has been a really eye-opening conversation.

[24:57] I thought I knew what I was talking about as far as finances go, but just the way that you explain things was just fantastic. And the tips that you gave are so actionable to start right now and just be able to do that. And so, just want to thank you for coming onto the show and chatting with the teachers today. Oh, absolutely. And if they want to learn more, this is a great place for teachers and students. I've got a YouTube channel that really, it's super fun. We have like pop culture clips in there and I do exactly what I did here, but even more fun. And I try to just make it really simple to understand complex topics. And so you can find it George Camel with a K on YouTube. You can tell the students to subscribe. It's family friendly. And then of course the book Breaking Free from Broke, a great resource, whether you have a 17 year old or you're a 57 year old and you never learned this stuff, Breaking Free from Broke puts it in very simple terms, and it's like the financial handbook you wish you had. Yes. We're going to put the links for that down in the show notes as well. Thanks again, George. It was great to talk to you today. Thanks, Brittany.

 
 

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