Dave Ramsey has made a career out of telling people to avoid debt like it's radioactive. Turns out, he's been following his own advice all the way to the bank. The personal finance personality just revealed that his company Ramsey Solutions pulled in about $300 million this year, the best year of his career. His reaction? "God's been good to me," he told host James Dumoulin during an interview on "The School of Hard Knocks" YouTube channel.

For those keeping score at home, Ramsey's journey to becoming one of the wealthiest financial educators in America wasn't exactly a straight line. By age 26, he was making around $250,000 annually and had built a net worth of roughly $1 million. Then the whole thing collapsed. His heavily leveraged real estate investments went south, forcing him into bankruptcy. He rebuilt from scratch and turned his hard-won lessons into a financial education empire.

The Anti-Leverage Philosophy

Today, Ramsey owns approximately $850 million worth of real estate, and here's the kicker: he bought all of it with cash. No mortgages, no leverage, no borrowed money. When Dumoulin asked why he doesn't use debt to scale faster like major corporations do, Ramsey doubled down on his trademark philosophy.

"Debt equals risk and the borrower is slave to the lender," Ramsey explained. "We've gone slowly because we did it with organic cash and so it took us a while."

That slower approach means his business can weather serious downturns without the vulnerability that comes with debt obligations. It's the financial equivalent of building your house on bedrock instead of sand, even if it takes longer to finish construction.

Building a $650 Million Campus, One Dollar at a Time

Ramsey walked through how he assembled his real estate portfolio patiently over decades. The headquarters campus of Ramsey Solutions alone is now valued at around $650 million, but it started with a simple dirt purchase.

"The first time we bought this particular piece of acreage, it was $10 million for 48 acres, a long time ago," Ramsey said. "We didn't have the money to do anything with it. We just bought the dirt. When we got the money and we began to save and watch the cash flow, and company was growing and just kept dumping everything we made into this concrete thing here, and it turned out to be a really, really good investment."

That's the debt-free playbook in action: buy what you can afford, wait until you have more money, then build. Repeat until you have a $650 million campus.

Crisis Shopping Pays Off

Ramsey also revealed that he bought several properties during the 2008 financial crisis when prices cratered and everyone else was panicking. Those investments turned out quite profitable, which probably surprised no one who understands basic buy-low principles.

His argument is that real estate purchased without debt can generate "crazy cash flows" if you manage it properly. Plus, once you get that first property generating income, it creates momentum.

"You get this positive snowball working in your favor," Ramsey said. "The hardest one is the first one. But if you buy good properties and you know how to manage them and you get the cash coming in off of them, it'll lead you into another property."

It's worth noting that Ramsey's approach requires either significant patience or substantial existing capital. Most people can't drop $10 million on empty land and wait years to develop it. But for those playing the long game with cash to deploy, his track record suggests the debt-free route can work, even if it feels painfully slow compared to leveraged growth strategies.