Don't you just love when you're scrolling social media and it actually educates you?

It's an amazing thing. And that happened recently. I was scrolling through and I saw the stats

that 70 to 75% of global luxury spending is actually driven by middle and lower income consumers. So if this is true, which is just

wild, let's talk about why this is and how we can prevent that in three simple steps. Now,

before we jump in, make sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode with a friend. So the idea has

actually been a part of what we do here at Ramsey so often where we talk about,

hey, luxury items, the things that you see do not indicate that you actually have wealth.

It's kind of like the idea a guy pulls up next to you at a stoplight in like a really nice car

and you're like, oh, wow, he must be doing really well. Well, no, he could just be making the payment

and he can't afford the actual car and he has no no money in his account, versus someone else who's in, like, a 10-year-old Honda Civic paid off, and they've got, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars in the bank. But the way our minds work when it comes to our culture is we actually see things like luxury as you are winning. And so one of

the taglines actually for the Dave Ramsey show for so many years was this is the place where

the paid off home mortgage has been replaced by the BMW as the status symbol of choice,

meaning the paid off home mortgage is actually the status symbol that you want, not necessarily the BMW,

but our world is the opposite. People want to look like they're successful, you know,

regardless or not whether they're actually doing well financially. So when there are labels out there,

you guys, and you see like brands and people are kind of flaunting them and all of that,

like it says something, right? And so this whole idea of quiet luxury versus like loud spending, if you will, and

flaunting has really become a trend.

And I kind of actually appreciate it.

Because the truth is, there are thousands of reasons why people might have nice things, right?

You might see someone and you're like,

oh, yeah, you know, maybe they saved them and paid for it. Maybe they used debt to buy it.

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