Dave's story
Question: Jeff on Twitter wants to know Dave's personal story of how he became a huge radio star.
Dave Ramsey's advice: The huge part is debatable. There are a lot of elements to that story. For the financial part, my wife Sharon and I got married right out of college and we started buying and selling real estate. By the age of 26, we had $4 million in real estate and were making $250,000 a year. But the bank I was dealing with got sold to another bank and they called our notes.
During the next two and a half years, we lost everything we owned. We were sued, foreclosed on, and declared bankruptcy on September 23, 1988. There we sat, scared out of our minds with a new baby, a toddler and a marriage hanging on by a thread.
At the bottom of that mess, I decided to find out how money really worked. I was a big money guy and supposed to know all about money, but I didn't have any. I did financial counseling at my church as a ministry, and I started teaching a class that grew and grew. Then I started charging a small fee while I was still selling real estate so my family could eat. I also self-published my first book, Financial Peace.
In 1992, I was on a radio show as a guest, and the phones lit up because we were talking about how to stop a foreclosure. Some time after that, the radio host quit, and a buddy of mine said we should do that show together. The station was in bankruptcy, and we went on the air for free.
Later, my friend quit, and I started doing it solo. We changed the show name to The Dave Ramsey Show and we started adding stations. We are now the largest syndicated talk radio show in America that is not corporate owned. We're here to help people.
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