Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.

From full global headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. This week we are celebrating Independence Day with our financial independence special.

We're going to revisit two of our favorite interviews. We'll talk to consumers.

We'll talk to consumer advocate Clark Howard later in the show. But we kick things off by talking with Dave Ramsey.

My guest this week is the author of three New York Times bestselling books and the host of the Dave Ramsey show, which is heard every week on more than 450 radio stations by more than 4.5 million listeners.

Dave Ramsey. Welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Well, thanks Chris. It's an honor to be on here. This is cool.

It is an honor to have you on because our show, like yours, is on a lot of radio stations if you back out like 420 or so. So it's just if you use some creative work, you can do it.

We're on roughly the same number of radio stations.

We still secure it hasn't settled to a head fund though. Exactly. Now, I want to talk about your radio show. But first, I want to go back to earlier in your career by your mid-twenties. You had a net worth of more than a million dollars. How did you do that?

And what happened? Well, stupidity. It was a house of cards. I started from nothing and I started buying and selling real estate. And this was back in the early 80s. Before there was people on cable TV telling you how to buy a new TV.

And I grew up in the real estate business. So I was flipping houses before they even called it that. And we had started from nothing and ended up with about 4 million dollars.

We had a lot of money. We had a lot of money. We had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money. And we had a lot of money.

And it was pretty stupid the way I did it truthfully. And you ended up having to declare bankruptcy, didn't you? Yeah. That's the stupid part. That's where we had borrowed so much money. And then the bank got sold to another bank. And some guy on another city freaks out because a kid 26 years old owes him a million and a half. And they call our loans. And we spent the next two and a half years of our life losing everything we owned trying to pay our bills. And so we had a meteoric rise and a meteoric crash. And learned a lot in that process.

When you do something with that kind of intensity and that kind of result, even if it's a size of scale like that,

there's always some very valuable lessons that are literally seared into your soul.

So what was the turning point for you in terms of turning your finances around?

Well, I've got all these letters and licenses and degrees after my name.

It says I'm supposed to know something about money and there I set broken bankrupt and couldn't feed my kids.

And so I kind of had this revelation that maybe some of the things I had learned were wrong.

Maybe and possibly this plan isn't going to work in that Dr. Phil moment.

How's it working for you?

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