Dave Ramsey: Here’s When I Revealed My Net Worth to My Kids
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
Edited by
Cory Dudak
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Host and financial guru Dave Ramsey explained on his Sept. 27 radio show how (and when) he told his own kids of his net worth.
He said he didn’t tell them that the family had millions when they were kids.
“As a teenager I don’t think they could have processed it, so they did not know,” he said, adding that he didn’t tell his children his net worth until they graduated from college.
“They did not know X number of dollars was the net worth,” Ramsey said. “I only disclosed that to them after they had graduated from college.” He went on to explain more about why he chose to do it that way.
Wise To Keep Net Worth, Lottery Winnings a Secret
Responding to a 50-year-old caller who won $22 million in the lottery and kept it under wraps, Ramsey noted that this was a wise decision.
The caller said his decision was partly guided by the fact that he had read one-in-five people lose their lottery winnings (or go bankrupt) within 10 years, as if “you tell too many people and you get too many people at your door asking for this or that.”
“My wife and I made a conscious decision to kind of keep it under wraps. We haven’t even told our two teenage children we don’t want to grow up being waiters, you know, waiting for us to die,” the caller added. “I want them to go figure out what they want to do in life.”
Ramsey responded that he agreed with this premise.
“You’re being wise — what you’ve discerned is that some of the people in your life cannot handle the equation,” he said.
Ramsey explained that by the time his kids were teenagers, he had begun building substantial wealth and was a multi-millionaire.
Yet, he waited until they were adults to reveal his net worth, adding that the only thing his kids understood was that the family was “doing okay.”
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