I escaped poverty and now I can’t stop saving. George Kamel says my strength became my weakness

A public safety worker called The Ramsey Show with a problem most people would trade for: he can’t stop saving. He and his family escaped Vietnam after the war, lived in poverty, and now he’s built real wealth. He and his brother bought two Teslas back-to-back, both paid off. Yet any dollar that lands in his checking account gets swept into investments almost reflexively. “If money’s just sitting around in the bank or something, I feel like I’m not getting a lot of interest off of it. So I end up just investing it.”

He knows where it comes from. “My parents came from a communist country. We escaped Vietnam after the war and we lived really poor. I guess I can’t switch it off. My brother’s the same way.”

George Kamel’s response cut straight to the diagnosis: “What has been a feature is now a bug. The feature was, man, you’re so good at living on less than you make, so good at saving, and now that you made it, it is a bug that we need to debug.”

The verdict: Kamel is right, and the math is uncomfortable

Kamel’s framing is correct, and it applies to far more readers than the one who called in. Scarcity wiring is genuinely useful when you have nothing. It is the same instinct that gets people out of debt, builds emergency funds, and turns modest incomes into seven-figure portfolios. The trap is that the wiring does not turn off when the bank account hits the number that should make a rational person exhale.

Consider what compulsive saving actually costs once you are past the danger zone. Take a 50-year-old with $750,000 invested, a paid-off house, and a stable public-sector job. If he saves an additional $1,500 a month he didn’t need to save, and lives another 35 years, he leaves the workforce with a larger estate but loses 420 months of small experiences he could have funded along the way. The dollars compound. The decades do not.

The financial concept underneath is opportunity cost, and the relevant currency is utility rather than return. A dollar invested at 30 buys a future dollar at 65. A dollar spent on a trip with your kids at 45 buys a memory that cannot be purchased later at any price. Once your savings rate exceeds what your future self actually needs, every additional dollar saved is purchased with present-day life.

The macro picture sharpens the point. The U.S. personal savings rate sat at 3.7% in the first quarter of 2026, down from 6.2% in the first quarter of 2024. The average household is saving too little. The caller’s problem is the opposite, and it is just as real.

The variable that decides whether this advice applies to you

The factor that flips the answer is whether your portfolio already covers your realistic retirement spending. Run the number honestly. If your invested assets, times a 4% withdrawal rate, comfortably cover your annual expenses, you are in the caller’s category. Saving more has stopped building security and started buying anxiety relief at the price of present-day living.

If that math does not yet work, keep saving. Kamel’s diagnosis does not apply to you. The scarcity wiring is still doing useful work.

Rachel Cruze gave the behavioral prescription for those who have crossed the line. She calls it “mandatory fun spending” built directly into the budget. Her warning is the part worth printing: “Money can control you on one end. If you’re broke and you have no money, there’s a level of control there because you’re stressed out all the time. But it also, on the other end of the spectrum, can have the control where you have this false sense of deep security.”

What to actually do this week

1. Run the 4% test honestly. Multiply your invested assets by 0.04. If the result clears your annual spending with margin, your scarcity reflex has shifted from protecting you to taxing you.
2. Budget a fixed monthly “mandatory fun” line. Treat it like a bill. Pick a number that feels mildly uncomfortable, not reckless. The discomfort is the point. You are retraining the reflex.
3. Consider therapy if the reflex won’t budge. Kamel recommended this directly to the caller, and the reasoning is sound. Scarcity wiring formed under genuine trauma does not unwind because a spreadsheet says it should.
4. Automate the abundance side. If you have automated 401(k) contributions, automate transfers into a spending account too. Removing the decision removes the guilt.

Cruze’s closing line to the caller is the one most disciplined savers need to hear: “Maybe you’re doing better than you think you are.” If you built the habit, the habit worked. The next skill is learning when to spend what it earned you.