The Car Won't Start and What To Do About It
03/31/25 The Monday Blueprint: Used car prices are going to suck, the final installment of the Debt Lie, and the stock market flinches like it's a character in the latest Scream film franchise.
The Debt Lie: What They Never Told You About Money
This is Part Three of a three-part series, The Debt Lie: What They Never Told You About Money. In Part One, I broke faith with the gospel of no debt—calling out the fear-based advice of Ramsey and Orman and telling the truth about how playing it safe nearly wrecked me. In Part Two, I made the case for discernment over discipline, showing how the only real levers we have are to spend less or earn more—and why frugality alone won’t save you.
Now, in Part Three, I’m going all in. This essay dismantles the shame-based mindset that treats debt as sin and reframes it for what it really is: leverage. Power. A system, not a scarlet letter. I’ll show you why your credit score isn’t the scoreboard you think it is, why debt-to-income ratio is a better compass, and why sometimes the smartest move isn’t to pay off debt—it’s to use it. Because real financial power doesn’t come from austerity. It comes from knowing when to take the damn loan.
To every thing there is a season,
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted,
a time to break down, and a time to build,
a time to get, and a time to lose,
a time to keep, and a time to cast away,
a time to keep silent, and a time to shout a new story from the rooftops.
—from the Bible, sort of. More of a Steve-ism, really.
The thing about being poor is that everything feels hard. Every decision costs something—time, money, pride, opportunity—and you don’t always know which season you’re in. But there is a season for austerity. And there is a season for leverage. And if you mistake one for the other, you might starve through the harvest.
That verse from Ecclesiastes gives you clean lines: either this or that, black or white. But life doesn’t work in binaries. Especially not financial life. The seasons bleed into each other. Sometimes you’re planting and tearing down at the same time.
If you’ve followed me through Part I and Part II of this series, you know the truth of my ledger:
I leveraged debt for an education.
I leveraged debt to launch my real estate business.
I leveraged debt to get my daughter to New York City, and I’ll do it again to send my youngest to Italy—and then, later, to college.
When I build my house, it’ll be debt that helps me raise the walls.
Each move had a financial cost. But not every move was strictly financial.
Because here’s the other lie they tell you:
Every dollar spent must justify itself financially.
That if it doesn’t return threefold, you failed.
That debt is only valid if it builds profit—not people.
However.
Some decisions are about ROI.
Some are about who you decide to become.
But because we’ve been sold a belief system, a worldview that wraps shame around spending, that moralizes financial struggle, that teaches us to fear our own instincts, we end up building very small lives.
And no one preaches that gospel louder than Dave Ramsey.
Ramsey sees debt as evil and budgeting as salvation. In his world, the only path to financial peace is through radical behavior change—cut up your credit cards, live on rice and beans, and hustle like hell until you’re free. To Ramsey, personal finance isn’t about math—it’s about morals. He teaches that all debt is bad (except maybe a 15-year mortgage if you’ve prayed on it), and that borrowing money is a failure of character, not circumstance. His flagship method, the debt snowball, has you pay off your smallest debts first—not because it saves you money, but because it builds “confidence.” It’s less strategy, more psychology. His tone is southern preacher meets motivational speaker, heavy on discipline, light on grace. And while his system has helped some folks escape chaos, it only works if you have money to begin with. Ramsey assumes a stable income, a steady job, and room in the budget to budget. He sells shame as structure and treats all risk like recklessness—because in his world, if you needed debt, you must’ve already done something wrong.
Suze Orman’s entire philosophy is built around one thing: protect your future self at all costs. Financial security, in her world, comes from self-denial, ironclad discipline, and treating every purchase like it might ruin you. Her cardinal rule? Live below your means—always. And before any major decision, ask yourself three times: Can I afford it? Can I afford it? CAN I AFFORD IT? If the answer isn’t yes, you already know what’s coming—“Denied!” That was her catchphrase on TV, and she delivered it like a financial exorcism. Orman doesn’t trust people to make good decisions, so she sets up walls: don’t loan money to family, don’t cosign anything, don’t take on student loans unless the ROI is bulletproof. She’s not here to help you grow. She’s here to make sure you don’t collapse. Her tone is sharp, almost scolding—less preacher, more authoritative aunt with a CNBC segment. And while her advice has guarded people from disaster, it also guards them from opportunity. In her world, risk is the enemy, not the engine. She promotes absolute security, even if it means you shrink your whole life to fit inside a Roth IRA and a paid-off mortgage. Because deep down, she doesn’t believe most people can learn to manage risk. So her answer is simple: don’t take any.
For all their differences in delivery, Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman preach the same sermon. Both believe debt is dangerous. Both frame financial discipline as moral virtue. And both aim their advice at the financially fragile—working and middle-class folks terrified of losing what little ground they’ve gained. They don’t teach systems thinking or structural analysis. They don’t ask what kind of economy we’re operating in. They teach you to fear your own instincts. To live smaller. To say no more often than yes. Ramsey shames you into control. Orman scares you into submission. But the message is the same: you can’t be trusted with risk, so you shouldn’t take any. Their advice isn’t about power—it’s about protection. Which might keep you afloat. But it’ll never help you build anything bigger than the lifeboat.
Ramsey and Orman’s sermons make you chase perfection metrics. But even those metrics are built to betray you.”
You’ve probably been taught that your credit score is everything. But here’s the truth: it’s not a measure of financial wisdom—it’s a measure of how profitable your debt behavior is to someone else. It doesn’t reward people for living well. It rewards people for staying in just enough debt, for long enough, while making every payment on time. If you have zero debt and always pay in cash, your credit score will suck. Because the system isn’t built to reward discipline. It’s built to reward usefulness to lenders.
That’s why I don’t play for a high score anymore.
I play for debt-to-income ratio.
Because unlike a credit score, DTI doesn’t care if you’ve been “good.” It cares if you can handle more power. Because that’s what debt is: a lever. Not a sin. And when you learn how to hold that lever correctly—when you know your numbers, your goals, your timing—debt becomes something else entirely. It becomes liquid leverage.
Your DTI is simple: it’s the percentage of your gross monthly income that goes toward debt payments. Mortgage, car loan, credit card minimums, student loans—it all adds up. Lenders look at that number to determine whether you can handle more borrowing.
For most banks, a DTI under 36% is healthy. Under 30% is ideal. Under 20% is where things get powerful. You’re nimble. You have leverage. You can make moves.
And here’s the key: if you live your financial life around maintaining a strong DTI—not obsessing over points and payment history and balance churn—your credit score will take care of itself. Because DTI isn’t about being good. It’s about being ready. It’s the number that tells you, Can I take this loan and still breathe? Can I make this move without suffocating?
And if you tank the DTI? If you blow it out during a bad stretch or a big leap?
You manage it the way you would manage anything with ratios: you either decrease the numerator or increase the denominator. You pay down some debt—or you go make more money. Or both. That’s it. Just math and rebalancing. Because DTI isn’t a moral grade. It’s a dashboard. And the people who learn to drive by that dial? They don’t crash less. They crash smarter. And recover faster.
Listen to me here because security isn’t playing small. Security is learning how to move fast, make sharp decisions, and use systems to your advantage. It’s not about hoarding pennies or avoiding risk—it’s about knowing which risks are worth taking, and how to protect yourself when you take them. Playing small doesn’t keep you safe. It keeps you stuck. Real security comes from agility, not austerity. From understanding how money moves, how leverage works, how debt can be a tool instead of a trap. It’s knowing the rules of the game well enough to bend them in your favor. And when the moment comes to leap—whether it's launching a business, moving your kid across the country, or building something that doesn’t exist yet—you don’t freeze. You move.
Hopefully, you’re getting something completely different from reading me. I’m not here to shame you. I’m not here to hand you a checklist and tell you to skip the latte or cancel your dreams. I’m not trying to be the next guru in a blazer yelling about compound interest. I’m here to tell the truth—the messy, nuanced, sometimes uncomfortable truth. Debt isn’t weakness. It isn’t failure. It’s a system. And once I stopped treating it like a moral flaw and started treating it like a lever, everything changed. I’m not selling virtue. I’m sharing experience. This is what I did. This is what it cost. This is what I learned. No shame. Just strategy. Just the raw, unvarnished math of trying to build a life that doesn’t play by the rules of people who already won.
The biggest lie they sell you is the illusion of stability. That if you budget hard enough, deny yourself often enough, avoid debt religiously, and never make a misstep, you’ll eventually reach safety. But safety, in their model, is just a smaller and smaller life. It's a future built on fear—of failure, of risk, of needing help. I lived that model. I played it safe. I followed the rules. And when things collapsed, no amount of austerity could save me. Because what they never tell you is that frugality has a floor, and systems fail even when you behave perfectly. Security doesn’t come from shrinking your life. It comes from understanding how to move within the system without letting it own you.
That’s what I’m trying to offer here. Not guilt. Not shame. Not some virtue-signaling performance of “good” financial behavior. I don’t care if you bought the latte. I care if you knew why you bought it. I care if you’re making decisions with eyes open, not clenched shut in fear. I’m not here to hand out rules. I’m here to offer a map. What worked, what didn’t, and how to know the difference. Because this was never about earning gold stars for financial purity. This was about learning the game well enough to build something that lasts.
I’m not preaching discipline. I’m preaching discernment. The power to look at your financial life—your goals, your debt, your tools—and make sharp, intentional choices. To know when to say no, and when to say hell yes, I’ll take the loan, I’ll make the leap, I’ll build the thing. Discipline without discernment just leaves you broke and proud. Discernment builds power and lets you walk into debt as a strategist.
I didn’t come to this way of thinking through theory. I came to it by watching my dad hit what looked like the end—and find, instead, a reset. In Part One, I told you about the Maxwell House can full of cigarillo ash, and weeks before my wedding when he said he had nothing left to give. His business had collapsed. The debt had piled up. And he filed Chapter 7. It was the most emotionally vulnerable I have ever seen him.
And here’s what I see now, all these years later: the system didn’t fail him. It gave him an out. An escape hatch. A second chance. The same second chance that companies like Apple, General Motors, Marvel, Delta, Kodak, and Hostess Brands have used. Bankruptcy isn’t for disaster. It’s a legal tool in a system that understands something Ramsey and Orman refuse to admit: sometimes you need to wipe the board and start again.
Because that’s what Apple did. That’s what Chrysler did. That’s what Lego and Starbucks and American Airlines did. They didn’t shrink. They reset. They used the system—not just to survive, but to evolve.
You know, I talk about my own personal debt as if I have zero intention of paying off that bill.
And in some cases, that’s exactly right. For example, I will probably never be out from under my student loans and will continue to pay on them after I’m dead (for a little bit—I’ll be setting up a trust so cash goes to my kids over my bills but that’s a whole other blog post). Because paying off debt isn’t always the goal. Managing it is. Leveraging it is. Living well alongside it is. Not every debt demands a payoff. Some are meant to be tools—not chains. And if that makes your skin crawl, ask yourself: who taught you that payoff = virtue? Because I was raised on that too. But I’ve come to believe something else entirely: debt is just a contract. A financial agreement in a particular season. And seasons change. What matters isn’t how fast you kill the debt. What matters is what that debt made possible—and whether it still serves the life you’re building now.
You know, my dad didn’t bounce back with a billion-dollar company, but he got his life back with a completely valid financial tool. And I think there’s something holy about that.
LAST WEEK IN THE STOCK MARKET:
In the Shadow of Havana and Liberation Day, gold ticks up and the magnificent seven falter.
Last week, we said the market was tiptoeing down the hallway, ears pressed to the door, listening for trouble.
Well—something creaked.
This wasn’t a market crash. (Yet).
More like that moment in a horror movie when the doorknob turns slowly, and everyone freezes.
The S&P dropped nearly 2%, the Nasdaq over 2.7%, and mega-cap tech finally flinched. The “Magnificent Seven” didn't stumble—they gave the whole hallway a wobble.
We didn’t find the trouble.
But we heard it.
Mega-cap momentum stocks, especially in tech and EVs, finally caught their breath (or stumbled, depending on your lens). Tesla dropped over 3.5%, Palantir fell nearly 5%, and NIO tumbled almost 6%. Even Nvidia, which has been carrying the AI torch, lost ground. It’s becoming clear: gravity still works.
Meanwhile, gold surged, closing the week at $3,118—up nearly 1%—while crude oil declined, and Bitcoin barely moved. Investors aren’t fleeing just yet, but they’re hedging, hard.
Top Losers read like a warning shot across consumer and growth names:
Tonix Pharma: –24%
AAR Corp: –16%
Lululemon: –14%
PayPal: –5.4%
Arm Holdings: –4.1%
The message: It’s not just small caps or biotech getting clipped. It’s starting to feel like everyone’s in the house—and the lights just flickered.
Big Themes to Watch:
1. The Fog of War: Weaponized Ambiguity and Economic Paralysis
Trump’s tariff strategy is deliberately opaque, flooding the zone with threats and symbolic deadlines like “Liberation Day.” The ambiguity becomes the weapon, paralyzing supply chains, pricing models, and monetary policy. The White House has learned that suspense moves markets as effectively as substance.
➡️ Watch for: Delayed capital investment, cautious hiring, and volatility spikes around any policy “reveal”—even if no new action occurs.
2. Sentiment Crack Before the Structural Break
The economy’s surface data is still intact—jobs are being added, and a recession hasn’t arrived—but public sentiment has already cratered. The latest consumer surveys show inflation fears and job loss expectations hitting levels not seen since the 2008 crisis. This is a reverse of the usual pattern: emotion is collapsing faster than reality.
➡️ Watch for: Discretionary spending pullbacks, drops in consumer credit confidence, and early signs of business retrenchment based on “vibes, not facts.”
3. The Return of Gravity: Tech and Growth Lose Their Immunity Cloak
Mega-cap tech finally flinched. The giants led last week’s correction. Tesla, Palantir, NIO, even Nvidia all declined sharply. These were the “hallway stabilizers”—and now they’re trembling too. Investors are rediscovering risk because even the Magnificent Seven can trip over creaky floorboards.
➡️ Watch for: Capital rotation away from growth into commodities, utilities, and international value—especially Europe. A potential tech-led drag on Q2 performance.
4. Europe as Counterweight: Rotation or Refuge?
In a surprise twist, European equities are now the outperformers of Q1, beating the S&P 500 by a record margin. Fueled by undervaluation, defense spending, and tariff avoidance, Europe is becoming a safe-haven trade because it’s not America. Still, this outperformance is narrow and fragile.
➡️ Watch for: Continued capital inflows to Germany and defense-aligned industries, but also signs of fragility if US pressure extends to EU exports or global supply chains.
Looking Ahead:
1. April 2 – “Liberation Day” or Bluff Day?
Trump’s self-declared “Liberation Day” looms, but details remain sketchy. Are we getting a full tariff onslaught, or was this a strategic bluff to extract leverage? Markets are holding their breath. If reciprocal tariffs drop on autos, pharmaceuticals, and foreign goods broadly, brace for a sentiment shock. If it’s smoke, we might see a relief rally.
2. March Jobs Report – The Last Bastion of Confidence?
Friday’s labor report is expected to show hiring slowing to 135,000 new jobs. It doesn’t need to collapse—just underwhelm—to trigger fears that stagflation is becoming real. With sentiment already breaking, a soft labor print could yank the rug out from under the “resilient economy” narrative.
3. Powell’s Speech – Will the Fed Blink?
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak shortly after the jobs report. With inflation sticky and sentiment sinking, all eyes are on whether the Fed acknowledges mounting downside risks—or doubles down on its "wait and see" stance. The room for error is tightening.
4. Corporate Earnings Season Prep – Warnings Incoming?
Q1 earnings don’t kick off in full until April 11, but pre-announcements and guidance cuts may start this week. With negative guidance running hotter than usual, companies exposed to autos, tech hardware, and international trade may start waving red flags early.
In other economic news, my oldest daughter officially kicked off her hunt for a car. First step: stack the cash. She’s got good credit and a strong plan—but if she needs a co-signer, I’ve already told her I’m in.
Still, I can’t help but flinch. When I purchased my last car not long after COVID, prices were sky-high—used car values had shot up overnight because of chip shortages and stalled production lines. I overpaid. I knew I overpaid. And now… we may be staring down a similar storm.
One auto dealer in the news said he rushed in 186 new cars to try to beat the Trump 25% Tariff Clock. And Bloomberg’s reporting warns these tariffs could reshape the entire U.S. auto market, pushing prices even higher.
The term they’re using for this shift?
“Cubanization.”
Rick Newman at Yahoo Finance explains it best: after the U.S. embargo, Cubans had no access to new American cars. So they patched together what they had—1940s and 50s Chevys, Buicks, Fords—with parts from wherever they could find them. Not because they wanted to… but because they had no choice.
And now?
We’re looking at the early signs of that here.
More people keeping old cars. Fewer upgrades. Safety features and EV adoption slowing. Used car prices rising again. A shift not just in supply—but culture.
It’s easy to hear about tariffs and stock slides and GDP tweaks and forget that behind all of it are people. Families. First-time buyers. Kids trying to get to work or college or wherever the hell life is calling them next.
So yeah, the S&P dropped 2%. But what I noticed this week was my daughter trying to figure a plan to buy her first car. And in that shadow of Havana—fins, chrome, and all—we are lurching just a little bit closer.