From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show work that is done. Cash is king. And a paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Rachel Cruze Ramsey, personality number one, best selling author, and my daughter is my co-host today. You're on the air. We're taking your calls from all over America.

A Triple eight eight two five five two two five. That's triple eight eight two five five two two five.

And I guess we're in the second week of the preorder sales on your new book.

Yes. Now yourself, now your money on presell today, right now. So if you preorder before January, you get the free ebook, free audio book and a free video lesson. And yeah, I'm so excited about it. No yourself and your money all about discovering why you handle money the way you do and what to do about it. And it's just I mean, I think it's been so crucial for me personally just to have the self-awareness of understanding who I am and why I do the things I do.

And when when it relates to your money, it helps you win with money faster. It helps you and your relationships. It helps you overcome fear. It just gives you this this new level of understanding about yourself to really help you through this journey.

You know, so it's it's kind of like, are you a nerd or are you a free spirit or you spender or are you a saver? But on steroids? So you're going you're like going a lot deeper than that.

Here's the eight types of fears that people face with money.

And which of those bother you, you know, and and what type of family did you grow up in functionally as far as your your the money goes or dysfunctionally. And so how does that inform what you're doing now? And the material is really, really strong. It's a great book. We do have the the advanced copies and so we've got our little copies in that we sent to the press. They're called NERC and Advanced Reader Copy. So it's paperback, of course, in that case.

But the book will be hardback. It'll be out January the 5th and you can preorder now and again. You get fifty dollars worth of items, including the audio book, the ebook, and a video lesson from Rachel. If you preorder now Dave Ramsey Dotcom or Rachel Cruise Dotcom.

And another thing you may want to do, it was the order of the book or whether you don't as you can take a free money quiz that we have.

Are you a spender or a saver? Are you scarcity or abundance mindset?

And it'll walk you through and the quiz will really start to open up and give you a taste of what she's doing with this book and what this material is. It's completely free.

All you've got to do is text the word money quiz to 33 789 money quiz two three three seven, eight, nine.

And something like 30000 people have already taken the quiz.

I think thirty eight actually was. Yeah. Last week, so probably forty something now. Yeah.

That was well and I think it's just, it's one of those things, it's just fascinating to understand who you are in this quiz gives you a quick glimpse into that and it just gives you the language to be able to talk about it to to say, okay, this is who I am. And then you start to understand, oh, there's my spouse. So maybe that's why they're having a tough time getting on board. Or maybe that's why every time I present this type of, you know, idea with money that they hate the idea because they are a totally different person.

So it's it's been good to kind of have these realizations.

The new book is Know Yourself, Know Your Money, discover why you handle money the way you do and what to do about it. It's on sale now. And Dave Ramsey Dotcom. Tim is with us in Pittsburgh starting off this hour. Hi, Tim. Welcome to the show. How can we help?

Hi, Dave. It's great to talk to you. I've been listening for about six months. And and your your advice is really, really nail it, you know, almost all the time. And I'm I'm just grateful to be talking to you. Well, you too, sir. Can we help. Thank you.

I just retired back in March and I had two houses. I sold one of them and I now I have a lump sum of money and I want to know, should I invest that lump sum all in all as one unit or should I do dollar cost averaging and kind of make payments into investments over time?

OK, I'm assuming your other home is paid for it, right? Yes, correct.

OK, the biggest advantage of dollar cost averaging is the emotional advantage because as the market comes up, the market goes down. You don't feel like you've got all your chips slid to the middle of the table betting on one hand.

And but mathematically, if you just put it all in, you're going to you're going to end up making more money at the end of the day. And so dollar cost averaging comes into play, really when you're doing your monthly investing over a long period of time. And if you're if you're just uncomfortable or got a little skittish about the stock market and you want to roll it in, the emotional advantage of dollar cost averaging is there. But the mathematical advantage is not because the market's going to go up a certain amount between if you put it all into day or you put it all into more versus six months from now, you'll miss what it is.

Donder and that's six months. If you if you if you dribble it in, you know, so that's what it amounts to. And so, you know, but there is an advantage emotionally. And right now it's kind of weird out there. I mean, you retire in March, right? The perfect month to retire. Well, the. Is coming to a dead guy, man. Right. We're in the middle of a pandemic. And so folks are scared.

Talking about what you were talking about in your book, Rachel, The Fear Factor when it comes to investing.

Yeah, people freeze up. Fear really paralyzes you. It narrows your brain. I was talking to Marcus Buckingham about this on my show. And I mean, it's amazing what fear can do to you. And again, it doesn't take into account any creativity. You can't think beyond. It literally narrows your mind. So I think that's what a lot of people experience here in the pandemic. Their their minds were narrowed to this one thing and that fear dictated it.

But as we have moved on through this and we've gotten more facts, we understand more of what's going on. And look at the market. You know, there's still a point that I mean, I know you would you would say this to you believe in the American economy enough to know that it's over time. It's still going to go up. Is it going to go up and down? Sure. It's a roller coaster, but over time, you're going to make that money.

So for those of you who don't know what. Tim is speaking of dollar, cost averaging is meaning that what ends up happening is, is that you buy shares at this month and then the market goes down, you buy more shares with the same amount of money the next month and then the next month it goes up a little bit. Well, those shares have all gone up then. And so you're you're buying some cheap shares when the market cycles and you're buying some expensive shares when the market cycles and the dollar cost averaging of that creates a very cool effect mathematically that causes you to end up with really good money, a really good return on your money.

And you have the benefit of going, oh, when the market's down, I'm not panic because I'm kind of excited. I'm actually buying shares. I'm buying into the mutual fund.

At that point, when the market's up, you're like, it's up. So my account looks really good, but I'm not buying as many shares.

So you've got this process that you use. And so investing professionals and investing advisers and people like me have taught dollar cost averaging for years and shown the benefit of it. But but when you reach the end of it, 12 months later, 12 individual payments do not equal more than the return on the lump sum over the entire 12 months. Yeah. And so because you have not had the whole thing invested, that's what it amounts to. So good stuff.

Good stuff. Thanks for calling in, Tim. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Finding the right pair of sunglasses on a budget is difficult. They're either too expensive or they don't hold up. But recently I got a great pair of sunglasses from a company called Shady Raise. They are a game changer. Chagres offers premium sunglasses that protect your eyes and are completely affordable. I'm talking the best overall value in sunglasses. Plus, they also replace your shades with a brand new pair if you lose or break them.

And I'll do that all the time. Right now, you get 50 percent off two or more pairs at shady res dotcom with the promo code. Ramsey Qadi res dotcom code Ramsey.

Joining me today on the air, Rachel Kroos Ramsey, personality number one, best selling author or in presale on her new book, No Yourself Know Your Money. So ever since 1994, when I first start teaching Financial Peace University, we have had volunteer coordinators. Back in the old days, it was a VHS tape put into the VCR, then a DVD, and then later, of course, we've streamed the lessons.

And there Rachel and me and Chris Hogan, Anthony O'Neal teaching the Financial Peace University lessons.

And then a volunteer coordinator sets the class up at usually a local church. About 50000 churches have now had a financial peace university class and over 20000 something people have been volunteer coordinators at any given moment. There's anywhere from five to 15000 volunteer coordinators running a class. And so this week we decided we were going to pause for a second and just honor some of these coordinators. They have done absolutely incredible things, leading classes and have had a front row seat for people transforming their lives.

And so if you're a coordinator, you get to watch the people in your class transform. Now, of course, everything went to Virtual back in March. And all of our classes right now are the vast majority of our classes or virtual classes. But we wanted to jump on with a couple of coordinators and we have done so this week. On the line are good friends of ours, John and Dorothy Bridges. Hey, guys.

How are you doing? Great. How are you doing? Great doing great, man.

Awesome. I didn't know I was going get to talk to you today. That's an added bonus. So very cool.

So you guys are out RV around the nation. Are you still coordinating?

We are. We are. Yes, we are. We actually started the virtual before it was really necessary. So we started doing virtual actually in 2019, doing a virtual class. It was great. It was amazing. Yeah.

It makes a lot of it. It made a lot of sense in your whole situation because you're moving around all the time. So that's perfect.

So how long have you guys been coordinating classes? Well, we took the class ourself in 2003, and right after we took the class, realizing the difference it made in our lives or was making it our life, we started calling for you right after that, after we took the class. So we've been doing it now for ever since 2003. So. And we started on a 13 week with the VA, which we did. Wow.

So you guys you guys started courting after you took it. So what made you just jump in and start coordinating then?

Well, I think for me, I was just it was such a huge relief. I think it was something that I had wanted in our marriage for a long time. John and I had been married for 20 years. We just always seemed to live paycheck to paycheck. We had decent income. But, you know, it was just but we just couldn't get on the same page. And so when we took the class and just immediately started seeing the difference, as I said, we need to share this.

We we have to share this. So very cool.

So you started doing virtual classes back in 08. So you've done some things, the pandemic here, then?

Yes, yes, yes. We just finished up this Tuesday night with one of the master classes who are all pastors. Oh, that's cool. OK, yeah.

Yeah, we gave it we gave it to a bunch of pastors as a gift to say thanks for serving. And so that's perfect that you guys were the coordinators for some of those for one of those as well.

So all those years, you guys have done just a bazillion of these things now and lots of people come to any particular stories of people coming through that stand out to you?

Oh, my gosh. We have so many, so many everything from the single mom I'll never forget. I think it was the first class we led to was fleeing from a bad, bad marriage and I mean literally fleeing from California to Alabama and, you know, came into our class with an infant. And we immediately wrapped arms around her and just walked with her. And we are still in contact with her today. Even 17 years later, this infant now has grown up and graduated high school.

It's amazing. But, you know, and even in the virtual class, probably our most recent story that just sticks with me is a divorce lady that was not introduced to you. She realized that her retirement drawings were going to come true. She kept living the way she was living. And anyway, two years later now, as of last week, she just closed on the sale of her home and is preparing for retirement within the next year. And she's going to go move closer to her grandkids, which was her dream.

And just to be able to see that come to fruition and to see how hard she has worked and continual continued to to stick with it. And we actually got the opportunity to meet her in Nashville last year.

Oh, wow. Well, that's cool. Very cool.

Well, well done. So why should somebody listening think about coordinating a class? Why would they do it?

Well, if if they've gone through it already, they'll know what a difference it makes in their lives in it. And it did for us. It is very easy. You guys have gotten with the the new age of getting all the technology, getting all the everything in place to just make it a very simple process for someone want to do this. So it's not difficult. It's just follow the guys and follow the plans that are out there and you'll do well.

Yeah. And it just helped, you know. Well, when we started doing it, it was sort of on a selfish reason because it helped keep us accountable and helped us to stay on track. But when you get into it and you start saving lives, actually transform in front of you. When you see people actually get it and they start getting excited about living and about their dreams, it's like, I can't I cannot just share this, you know.

So what we said, even if we just had one person in our class get it, it was worth it. So, yeah, it's amazing that home run.

Well, thank you guys so much. It's good to talk to you, my friend. Dorothy, good to talk to you. Yeah, I will see you. But yeah, I think that, you know, one of the powerful things is life was not meant to do things alone. You're meant to do things in community with people. And there's a power in that when you're around people doing the things that you're doing, it motivates you. And so it's one of those she said it.

But I know so many people like. Because they're going through it, too, and you can kind of you just create this community around you and the amount of motivation that comes out of that is is tremendous. Well, that's right.

We got 16 million people unemployed right now. And as a community, as a nation, we can give these folks hope. And so if you set up a class and you're, you know, running a virtual class this fall with us, if you want to do that and be a coordinator, we will give you Ramsey plus as a membership free for an entire year.

And that gives you access to the every dollar, whether it's a budgeting app or syncs up with your bank, syncs up with your spouse, syncs up with everything and of course, all the content, financial peace university, one of them. But Rachel's put in several new lessons. Hogan's put in some new lessons that are bonus lessons that are available on budgeting and on investing in other things.

In addition to Financial Peace University, the Smart Money Smart Kids curriculum is in there. It's all there. It's all free to you if you coordinate a class virtually in September. And we've got a lot of people wanting to go through these classes. So a lot of people need the help. So people need help right now. Join this community of coordinators by texting Unity two, three, seven, eight, nine. That's text unity.

All one word two, three, three, seven, eight, nine. And we will give you again financial peace or rather, Ramsey plus, which accomplishes all the things as a free gift for an entire year.

You'll have access to that.

So it's like getting Netflix for an entire year free, except we don't have Tiger or we're selling some set. Yeah, it's another great show. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. If you struggled during a normal year to pay for that time share, how big of a burden is it now? Get out of it. Call time share exit team. When the time share turned you down, time share exit team will go to bat for you and get this.

When you hire time share exit team before the end of the month, they'll give you a huge savings for paying by cheque or auto draft. Call eight four four nine nine nine exit or time-Share exit team dotcom. Some exclusions apply see site for details. Thanks for joining us, America, Rachel Crooge, Ramsey, personality number one, bestselling author and my daughter is my co-host today here on The Dave Ramsey Show. Sarah is next in Albany, New York.

Hi, Sarah. What's up?

Hi, Dave. Rachel, thanks for taking my call today. Sure. How can I help? So my husband and I are on baby steps three B and we have twenty three thousand dollars saved towards a house down payment. Wonderful. And we are looking at a house around to two hundred fifty thousand dollars. We haven't found one yet, but that's our ideal number. And my husband's parents have told us that they have money for us and their words are you can either have it now or after we die.

So they have said to us, like, just give us a number and we'll give you money toward the house. And my husband and I are feeling a little icky about it because they gave us money for our wedding and that didn't go so well that time around.

What do you mean didn't go well? They gave us some money and then they were upset when we didn't choose things that they didn't like. And our wedding. OK, how long how long you've been married? Three years, OK, so it's pretty new, I mean, relatively speaking, coming out of that event and having that, you know, it's like if it was 15 years ago, it'd probably be a different discussion, but it's just been three.

So it's pretty recent. So I kind of see two options. You guys have the easy option to say, you know what, it's not worth the relationship stress. It's not worth it. My husband I mean, you guys have saved twenty four thousand dollars for a down payment. You're almost at 10 percent if you want to 250000. Our house, like you guys are rocking it like you're doing great without their help. And so you could just keep on track in and just saying, hey, you know what?

Yeah, if they have an inheritance when they pass, that's great. That'll just be, you know, a blessing giving us so continue their legacy and that's it. So you can go that route and you guys would be 100 percent totally fine if you went the route that. OK, maybe we do take a little now to help us kind of jump start the house process. You would just have to have extremely clear boundaries and lots of communication. And and it's to the point that you're like, OK, you know what?

This happened at the wedding. Have you guys you guys had a conversation about what happened with the wedding in the money?

Definitely not, because it got really awkward. Yeah. Actually, like, hung up on him because we didn't do something right with the flowers that she wanted. And it was like the first time she had ever hung up on him. So it was it was a really weird situation and it felt strange.

Absolutely. Well, there's some dysfunction there. I mean. Right. I mean, like, that's that's a pretty big statement. And so I would say if if you guys go forward, you have to go back and revisit and say, hey, this is our experience with you guys, with the money, we were very thankful that you guys gave us this amount. But this conflict happened. It made us very uncomfortable. And so how can we assure that that's not going to happen again, that if we choose to use this money in a way that maybe you don't approve of the house we're going to buy, like, how is that going to make you guys feel?

We don't want to make you uncomfortable. We don't make you angry. So if it's easier for the relationship, maybe we just hold off. But I just see that lots of communication around these topics. You kind of just get the get the fuck out of the air, talk about it. But then you guys have to know that, like, you cannot control their response and they choose to respond is up to them. And so my knee jerk reaction here, if I was in your position, it's probably not worth it.

And I'm like, you know, I think we're going to be fine on our own doing our own thing instead of messing with it.

OK, yeah.

If you are going to go forward, I would what Rachel said, I think it's your husband's job because it's his parents. There is a possibility that the house sits in a different place in his mom's emotions than you stealing her baby boy.

That was the thing.

So in other words, she might not be as emotionally invested in the House deal as she was in the wedding deal. That's a possibility. So we could give her a little bit of grace in that regard.

But but I think he's got to sit down with his mom and dad and probably maybe you're not even there. Or if you're there, you don't say a word.

That sounds good to me, and he needs to handle his parents because otherwise you're you're going to end up at the narrative is you're the bad guy.

Yeah, we don't want you being the bad guy at the end of this because and it would just sound like mom and dad, listen, I mean, Mom, you hung up on me over the flowers at the wedding and felt like you had the right to tell us how to do things at the wedding because of the gift.

If this gift for the home has that kind of a thing going. It's not it's not worth it.

And we don't want to do it. But if you can assure us that you will allow us to make our decisions about our house and you'll enjoy our purchase with us, then we would love to accept the gift.

But we can't if if we're because I don't want you angry with me again, if I, if I if I buy a house that, you know, doesn't have enough trees to suit you or something, you know what the flippers should be.

Yes. Bedroom. Yeah. Yeah.

You don't like the guest, but it's also the truth, just like the human condition is it wasn't the flowers, truly the flowers, et cetera. If it's truly not going to be the specific house, it's everything underneath that that's going on in her, whether it's the control aspect, whether it's you took her baby boy from like whatever it is, there's that underlying thing that's under there that's kind of her issue. And so it's just to the point of like, hey, do you want to do you want to face it?

And honestly, money, I talk about this in my book yourself. Now, your money, the boundaries that you have to have in relationships with people, whether it's friendships or in laws or family, whatever it is that those boundaries are so crucial because money makes things so strange and you choosing not to take the money is not you avoiding it. I think it could be you guys being wise and just saying, you know what, there's other issues there that she has and more likely it's a reflection of her.

And that may not have changed in three years.

If you think that having that conversation will clear it up, then you can consider it. If you think there's a 50/50 chance that conversation clears it up or less, don't consider it. Just walk away. Yeah, but you guys know more how things have been during the three years since and so forth than anybody else. Maybe she's just having a really bad week, you know, I don't know. But it's an emotional thing to go through a wedding for all parties involved, not just the bride.

And so having done three weddings with three of our kids, I've experienced that as the dad. And I've watched the various moms experience it different ways. And so in just the Ramsey house anyway, so it's a process to go through emotionally. So, yeah, you know, just what do you think the probability is? If you think probability is high that this is going to be a repeat, then what if it's low? And you think one conversation of clarity by your husband talking and you sitting and saying nothing while he talks would do it, then maybe you take the money.

It's OK. But a gift that has strings attached is not a gift.

That's when it comes down to Alexandra or Alexandra is with us in San Francisco. Hi, Alexandra. How are you?

Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Yes, my husband and me entered four or five and babysat for five and six. And with that, we finally had decided to make some changes, i.e. his job. And he's joining the union out here for his trade, which will be more money, more benefits paid. And the question we have is because they don't have a Roth IRA, they contribute twelve dollars and some change to his pension every hour he works. And then he they also put into a four on a six dollars an hour he works at.

From them themselves without us contributing anything. OK, good.

Yeah, and we have a private Roth IRA right now and his question he wanted to know was, should he do max out a Roth IRA first and then contribute to the 401k that he can or do the a monkey and then the Roth match you get you're getting the money from the union that you described, whether you put money in or not?

Correct. Correct.

OK, so there is no match then if you put more money, if you put money in, are they going to give you yet more? No. OK. So Saddam Outmatch is first and you don't have a match. Second best is Roth. Third best is traditional mathematically after taxes when it's all said and done. OK, and so match is not there. So we're going to max out Roths and then we'll go to the 401k and get to 15 percent.

What they put into this has nothing to do with your baby. Step four, it's just a nice gravy on the biscuit.

What you're putting in is 15 percent of your income into retirement. That's a baby step for you are putting in 15 percent. So you can max out to Roths and you're probably going to do some into that 401k based on what you're telling me. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

Rachel Cruze Ramsey, personality number one, best selling author, and my daughter is my co-host today here on The Dave Ramsey Show.

Our Question of the day comes from Blind's Dotcom. Find out for yourself why Blind's Dotcom is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos that they run all the time, you'll save even more. Use the promo code, Ramsey, to get the best possible deal.

The question from blinds calm is my wife and I have gotten to the ends of baby steps for only debt is the house and saving 15 percent. We are hoping to have kids, but haven't yet. Until that is more of a certainty, should we put extra cash into the mortgage? Or if we're hoping to have two kids who start putting cash away for college? Now, Murf from Connecticuts know if you guys don't currently have kids, continue on with the baby steps and then once you get pregnant, then at that point you can say, OK, considering your past baby step three, then you can look to to open up a kid's college savings.

But I honestly wouldn't even really even do that till the kids born. At that point, you have plenty of time. So now continue to stockpile money away or I'm sorry, put money towards the mortgage and pay off that house.

Exactly. Exactly what you would do. We don't say for kids, college dollars, kids. And so, you know, and you'll need a Social Security number to open a college account, a 529 or an essay. And so I'll be waiting them. And so they have to be born to get the social. So you just you got plenty of time. You're not going to miss out. You're going to be, you know, be OK. And, you know, the more you check on that house, the further along you're going to get on that.

And that's going to put you up in a position to do some really, really cool stuff. Then coal is us in Chandler, Arizona. Hi, Carl. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

A day, Rachel, thanks for taking my call today. Absolutely. What's up? Well, I'm getting married in about a year and one year ago. My fiancee and I thought it would be a good idea when money was tight for her to do her brother a favor and sign for a loan on a car. And the terms of that deal would be that he would get gap insurance and then also that he would either pay the car off or transfer it to a loan in his name within a year.

And, you know, he's been making the payments, he's not delinquent or anything, but we're here a year later and she still owns this car. So I'm wondering, how should I handle this, knowing that we're going to get married in a year? And yeah, and there's a Ackerson car out there with you with which eventually will be, you know, your name because it's sintering. It's going to be your wife. Well, have you guys asked him have you talked to him about it?

Why he hasn't transferred it over to his name?

No, and I feel like that's where this leads, where we kind of have the confrontation discussion, we've just kind of made little remarks of, you know, my car looks really great out there or something like that, but I've sort of aggressive.

OK, so we're going to cut the cut all that.

And you guys just need to sit down adult to adult and say, hey, what's his name?

What's the brother's name? You don't have to say that if you don't. Well, have your wife that it's her brother. So she needs to lead the conversation. And maybe it's just heard him talking. You can be there if you want, but she needs to have the conversation with him that, hey, we said that we were going to do this and I just need to know why and just talk to him, have the conversation. So that may come up out of that, that you realize you say, you know, maybe we'll give him a little bit of grace during this time here.

There. But I mean, but the goal here is to get her name off of that of that Cali's and so or that car loan that's going to be that's going to the ultimate goal. Yeah.

You just got to say this is what we said we're going to do. It doesn't appear we're doing it. So what's the problem and what's it going to take to get this done? And obviously, he hasn't done anything about it or you would know about that.

So it might take him a month to scratch around and do it or two months or something. But that's better than just this going on and perpetuation forever and ever, because you don't address it. So and that's also one reason you never co-sign.

And even though he's not late on his payments, which is great, there's still there's still this ownership. You guys are still she's still attached to this car in some way.

And so it needs to and I'm not positive the way you describe this, that she actually cosigned.

It sounds like it's her car and her name. Is the way you described it, and if it's her car and her name and her loan and he's supposed to buy the car from her for the loan balance during that year, that's also a different transaction than a co-sign. It sounds like she bought him a car and he's been driving a car that's in her name for this year and acting like it. She isn't paying the payments. And so she needs to get that out of her name because if he wrecks it, she's the one gets sued.

She's the more the driver can get sued and the owner can get sued. And so if he hurts somebody with that car, you could get a five million dollar lawsuit on you. You know, if it went above your insurer, his insurance, if he has the insurance in place. So there's a lot of scary stuff here. If it's more than just cosigning, it is an actual ownership position. You know, when you say, well, that's my car sitting out there in the driveway, ha ha ha.

That makes me think it's titled to her rather than just she signed on the loan with him.

So, yeah, this needs to be brought to a head. He needs to get it done or I mean, I'll give him maybe two or three months or something since you guys have not addressed it and you've just kind of stood there and looked at it. But you give him a little room. But not I mean, I've come and go. You got three days. But, you know, within the next month or so, you come up with a deadline that you all three agree to.

And, you know, I might even write that down and just initial it that, well, this up.

And I just even wonder, having the conversation. I mean, I was like the call we took on the other and the other segment about her and her in-laws and giving them money. People naturally are just fearful and want to avoid conflict. That's like in the human spirit, people do not enjoy going in and having conflict. So it takes a level of maturity to say, you know, I'm going to go head to head, have a tough conversation, because just because something is hard doesn't mean that it's wrong.

And so sitting down and having an uncomfortable, awkward and you can even say that sometimes I do that if there's like an awkward conflict, I'm like, OK, this is making me uncomfortable. This conversation is not going to be fine. I wanted to say it out loud. We're all not going to like it, but X, Y and Z has to be said and have a conversation. I mean, that's it. I mean, it's it's so key.

And again, if you're not used to conflict, it's so uncomfortable, but it's so much better to clear the air and get out of it than doing all these passive aggressive statements. And that's with any of your relationship. So, I mean, it's sometimes it's not fun entering conflict, but it's the healthiest thing for the relationship and for you guys on the other end.

Yep. Don is with us. Don is in Chicago.

Hey, Don, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave thinks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So a question for you. So I'm on baby step number two. I should have that completed at the end of next month. And so my question really revolves around baby step three mile estimations. It's going to take me probably till the end of February of twenty, twenty one to get to a six month emergency fund. That on itself.

However, I do have a small brokerage account. So my question is why should I cash that out and apply that to help speed up the process? And then my other question is, in regards to 401K, do you stop making for four one K contributions to get to your emergency fund? Yes.

Yeah, we stopped the 401k contributions until you're past baby step three and then we restart them because they're having an emergency fund and being debt free.

Everything but the House is is just essential to being able to move ahead mathematically. And it's a temporary thing. The power of focus here is absolutely amazing. So, yeah, I would temporarily stop the 401k and liquidate the brokerage account. And then now you've got this brand new goal as you finish up baby step two, and that is to get your emergency fund in place, because do when you have no payments but a house payment and you have fifteen or twenty thousand dollars or whatever, your baby step three represents sitting in cash in the bank and weird stuff like a pandemic hits.

You're the little pig in the brick house. And the wolf is huffing and puffing and frustrated, you know, life comes at you and you have financial immunity.

Yeah, absolutely. That piece is. It really is. It's unbelievable. And again, I think some people, when they talk about money, they hear, you know, even you pausing the 401k, it makes some people be like, oh, my gosh, why? But I'm going to lose so much ground. But again, it's just pausing it for a short period of time because getting that piece, getting that strong financial foundation under you of having no debt, having cash in the bank changes your perspective completely.

And then you go back up and pick up that 401k.

Yeah, it's it's so foundational emotionally, relationally, spiritually, financially, mathematically, everything to have those couple things done. And it really does put you in a completely different position than to invest long term. That's why we do it, because it's so the reason I'm pushing so hard is it sounds weird to stop investing, but it sounds weird for people that love to invest, you know, like me.

And so the nurdin, you guys know. But but, man, I got to tell you, man, Pandemic will straighten yourself out and work on your theory. You know, this is the Dave Ramsey Show.

This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. On your smart speaker, you can add our skill by saying, Alexa, open the Ramsey network. Still, from there, you can listen to all our shows as Dave. Many questions like how do I invest my money for what is the debt snowball? Find out more about Dave Ramsey.

Dotcom smart. Feel like you're in a rut and living life.

Just going through the motions, build confidence in yourself and learn to trust the God who created you. Check out the Christy Wright Show, where Christy inspires you to break through your limitations and create the life you're proud to live. Hey, all, I'm Christy, right? You know, it's so easy to feel stuck. You live life just going through the motions, doing dishes, doing laundry, carpool lines and a whole list of commitments that bring you no joy.

Why do we live like that? That's why I want you to check out the Christy Wright Show. Each episode will help you build confidence in yourself and the God that created. You hear more from the Ramsey network, including the Christy Wright Show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, it's James, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services you've heard about during this episode. Thanks for listening.