Five from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show that is dumb. Cash is king in the paint 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 here on the air, open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. That's triple eight eight two five five two two five.

Dave's in Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Dave. How are you? Mr. Enzio, doing fine, thank you for asking for your your time, Zarabozo is mine, so I'll make it quick, OK? I mean, my wife just found out we inherited three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. Oh, yeah, it doubles every 10 years. And of course, like every every other normal, I guess, silly American, we have debt, bad debt.

We have we owe 150 on our house. We have eight thousand dollars in a credit card debt and student loans basically totals out to be an almost 200000 homes. So that would leave about 150 or so in the account. Hmm. But the thing is, we want to use that for a retirement because we can get more out of that than we can my retirement at work. So I was wondering if you would endorse the idea of instead of paying off the house, of course, or paying off the other day, that's going on to pay that off, but still paying off the house.

We put 50000 down on the house and refinanced it to a lower rate. And then we just slowly pay that off whenever and it gets paid off when it gets paid off. Yeah. How old are you guys? I'm 33. My wife is twenty six. How long you been married? Five beautiful years, and we had the only way, the only way we're leaving each other to death. OK, wasn't one question that trying to figure out where you are, OK?

Yes, I know. I'm very, very excited now.

So who passed away? Who left you the money? It was her grandma and her dad had her her granddad had was really good with money. And they left it to her. Mm hmm. Which of course, means marrying her. She signed it over into both of our names. OK. And so now we're here. OK, so No. One, let's back up a second. It gets an investment double's. There's a little nuance in mathematics called the rule of 72.

And if you if you divide the rate of return from your investment into the number 72, it tells you how often it doubles. So if you take if you put if you say I got 10 percent of my money, your money would double every seven point two years. So if you're telling me it's doubling every seven years, that means every 10 years, then that tells me it's invested at seven percent. OK, does that make sense? That's what that tells me, so no one's not doing really great in an investment, they're in good growth stock, mutual funds.

You should make considerably more than that if you invested that the way we taught you. But so the question is not what I would endorse.

The question is what what causes you guys at 50 to be in the best financial condition, to have the most possible money? Which of these strategies? And that's the way we look at it, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's the math of setting you guys up well in the future.

So what I would do if I woke up in your shoes is I would pay everything off and I would use the fact that you have no payments to become an aggressive investor then. And so I would max out all my retirement accounts for a one Cays Roth IRAs. Anything I can do, I do some other investing. I would increase my generosity.

The downside, the problem with that idea. Is you? You and your wife have handled money horribly. Yes, sir.

And if you keep doing that, after you pay off everything, you're going to wake up at 50 back in that. Yes, if you keep making the same stupid but decisions now, I used to make stupid decisions, that's how I can recognize them because I got a Ph.D. in Stupid and so Ph.D. in Dombey. Right. So I know what it feels like.

So the problem is you have to change your behaviors as a part of this advice or the advice is wrong. If you're going to continue to handle money like you're going to continue to handle it, I would recommend staying in debt.

That way you won't get further in debt, you know, but if you'll do it right and take those old house payments and old payments that you don't have anymore and use them to grow, then you're going to be fine.

And that's what I would tell you to do. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that will make granny smile, grandpa smile from heaven and say, hey, these kids are out of debt and they are on a budget and they're never they raise your right hand and put a brand in there, take a tattoo, whatever you want to call it. Where I say I never, never, never, never will dishonor my grandmother grandfather's memory by going into debt again, because I because I misbehaved.

Yeah, because there's a process that you are refined when you go through baby step two and you've made the decisions that you and your family are in debt, you work the progress and the program to get out of it. Their sacrifice involved. And through that sacrifice, majority of people at the end of it are like, oh, never again. I've made it through. I've trudged through this problem and I'm done. I'm never looking back. And for you guys, you guys were handed a gift, Dave, and that's not a bad thing.

I don't think that that's wrong. No. At all. And that's a blessing. But exactly to your point, the refining that people had through that process, a baby step to you guys are skipping that. And again, not bad, but recognizing and understanding that that, yes, those habits that you guys have had have to break. You have to change the way you're viewing money and you and your wife sitting down together and doing that. And then just on the more tactical side of it, you guys are young.

And so the whole idea of the retirement, you have plenty of time, plenty of time and money for retirement.

You know what I would just prescribe to you and make you worth ten million dollars. That's right. That's right. So paying everything off, there's this level of like you get you get a free to not everyone gets like the get out of free jail card. And you did. And so use it properly, get rid of everything or all the debt. And then you guys together continue to work the plan. And then that money that was left, it will grow and you guys will continue to contribute more.

Yeah. So I if I were in your shoes, that's what I would do. But I would be so afraid of myself because of what we're talking about. If I were in your shoes, I might even like ride out, you know, type it out on your computer, printed out a contract with myself and both of you sign it that because we did this in order to honor the memory that this inheritance comes from, we are we are pledging to always do a budget.

We are pledging to always live on less than we make. We are pledging to always be generous. We are pledging to never under any circumstances, for any reason, ever borrow money again and ride it out.

And both of you sign it.

And, you know, and then if you ever get like, you know, I got to buy, I we need a better car and you start whining and you start getting then you get that piece of paper back out and you go, oh, no, no.

Because if you don't do that.

So let's do this. I'm going to give you a gift to go with. The inheritance is a year's subscription to Ramsey. Plus, the two of you go through Financial Peace University. The two of you get on your every dollar budget and wait sixty days to do anything with this money. Just pass it to the side, pretend like you don't have it, and do this stuff for sixty days and you can give yourself the confidence that you are going to change instead of this.

Just I promise I'll do it to myself. Thank you. I would want to know that I want to go screw this up if I were you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Do you have student loans? I need you to tune in right now and listen, I've been telling you to refinance your loans with Splash Financial. Here's what I don't understand. Many of you who have been prequalified to refinance your student loans to better rates have not finished your dadgum applications.

So this is simple. Finish it. You could save thousands and you pay nothing to refinance. Go back to splash financial dotcom slash Ramsey. That's how they'll know you're one of my listeners. Splash financial dotcom slash Ramsey.

Rescue Crews Ramji, personality number one bestselling author, is my co-host today here on the air, author of the new book Coming out in January. Know Yourself. Know your money. Discover why you handle money the way you do and what to do about it.

What we have figured out is that Socrates was right. Know thyself, the unexamined life is not worth living. And for 30 years we've been telling people that 80 percent that personal finance is 80 percent behavior, 20 percent head knowledge. And we've taught you all the head knowledge during that time.

And occasionally we deal with some of the behavior things and make sure that you're adjusting your behavior to transform you. Rachel decided to get under the hood and say, all right, what does it take to really understand who you are? Because if you do, then you can say, I need to be the best version of that. That's exactly right. So walking through, you know, understanding not just who you are, but it really is. It's your upbringing, how your how your childhood classroom, if you will, influenced how and why you handle money the way you do today.

Your money tendencies, your money fears, your money dreams, even the amount of grace that you give when money mistakes happen affects your relationships. I mean, the whole part of who you are understanding that. And that allows you also to have the empathy for others in your life if you're married. So hopefully this book reveals things you like. Oh, that's why my spouse does the things he does or she does. And you really can understand the person, because when you understand you more, you can become a healthier version of that, which helps you create better money habits and win with money faster.

Yeah, and I think we start scratching the surface years ago and we said, OK, some of your nerd's, some of your free spirits and usually there's one end of each and a marriage. So you want to be a healthy version of a nerd, which is the detail administrative thing, but not the overbearing control freak. You want to be a healthy version of the free spirit, which is a person who enjoys life but does it in a mature way where you don't destroy the entire family's finances.

And so we started scratching the surface with that years ago. But you've gotten down into scarcity and abundance and safety versus status and quality versus quantity, which is one I had not really thought of.

That's an interesting let's go through them. Here's your quiz, because in the book you get in the book, the way I wrote it out was that there's there's a scale, basically. So you kind of put yourself on the scale between the two. So savor versus spenger, where are you on the scale? Me? Yep. Overspender. Yep. Which I think is probably surprising for some people.

Everyone just assumes and me too, they're like, oh, you love you teach about money so you love to save it. I'm like, I don't love to say, oh, Winston is a saver.

Insurance a saver. Naturally. Now I'm a good saver because I've learned it is the shortest method to spend more and to be more generous. Yep. I can't I can't give money away if I'm broke and I'm like you too.

I'm Eileen. Way more on the spender. And again, extremes on both on all these scales can be unhealthy. So get the the moderation is key, but you lean one way the other scarcity versus abundance. Abundance means you are going to be the same person, safety versus status. And what this is is meaning that why you want to. Why do you want to win with money? For some people, it's completely out of safety. I don't want to worry about it.

It's there. I'm OK. Some people want it in order to live a fun life, to go on vacation. So status isn't bad. If, like some people read, the status is not bad. There's an unhealthy version of it, but it's so that I can enjoy life, go on vacation, maybe drive a fun car like I want to use it for things in my life versus it just being there that I'm OK.

But so that would often be the safety would be the saver and the status would be the spender would sometimes.

Oh I mean I think we could be a. Are you more safety. Definitely stoutest. Me too.

Yeah.

OK, quality of versus quantity.

Quality and quantity. Oh I would rather have like twenty pairs of earrings that you're like you get like ten dollars into the Costco.

22 pounds of peanut butter thing. Yes I love. Yes I like having more stuff versus like one nice pair of shoes. I'd rather have ten that are like ok yeah. That I have to my voice. But you like quality, you'll research and buy the best of the best even if it's just one thing you just have the one.

I've got a pair of cowboy boots that I've had since college. But they are top line. I mean, I resold them three times, yeah, but not only are they broken in and they're perfect, but obviously they had the ability to last 30 some odd years. That's pretty good.

So they were quality boots and, you know, that's fine. And I'd rather wear them than new ones because I don't like them in.

When you spend money, is that more on experiences or things?

Hmm. I do both. I don't know. I'm probably in the middle on that one. OK, you're an experienced girl. Oh, yeah. All the way. No question. Give me a nice dinner out. Give me a vacation. Go to the zoo with the kids. Like I'll, I want to do stuff. Yeah.

Versus having like a thing. Yeah.

Your mom's is on things, you know, she does both because she's like, I mean they kind of do what I want to go on vacation. I can do both. Yeah. Well can't do both you know.

But this was a good one for I'll say for me and Winston because for the first probably two or three years of our marriage, even when we did our budget and all of this, I just valued our out to each category. I was like, I love going out to eat. And he always if we went especially at the beginning of marriage, if he was like, I'll just get a water, I don't like to drink, have a drink.

Like, he's fine. And he's like, no, no, it's so expensive. Like, no, it's fine, it's fine. I'm like, oh my goodness. But I enjoy that whole experience where he again would buy something. And I'm like, why did you buy like like it made no sense. Yeah. But finally when we had the communication around it, I pinpointed it. I was like, oh that your value around where you spend your money on.

That's what it is. Yeah.

OK, plans giving versus spontaneous giving. Well, this is a brain versus a natural, my natural brain versus heart. My natural response is spontaneous. Yep. And yet the vast majority of our giving is very planned. We even plan our spontaneity.

I mean, so we have categories in the Ramsey Family Foundation. That's just money that's just sitting there. So if something comes up, we can you know, a single mom needs some help with something that, you know, pops up. We had we had an opportunity through the legal system to help a family that was messed up beyond belief the other day. And we, you know, we had the money, so we'd planned to be able to be so I don't know.

But but personally, just walking up and giving somebody some you know, I leave a large tip that for me.

So it fun, spontaneous, spontaneous, and I guess it is spontaneous giving. Yeah, I'm spontaneous too. I'll hear like this, you know, some amazing organization are doing and I'm like, we will give it to you, we'll give to you for the rest of our lives. Because I guess I just want to help and like it's amazing until I see someone else. Yeah that's right. Yeah.

So those are the seven money tendencies as part of the book and breaking down the the good, the bad, the ugly of each one. Some roadblocks that could be ahead for you depending on where you lean on the scale. But having those in the back of your mind helps you understand. This is why I do some things I do with money.

What we have known it, Ramsey, and what you've really clarified and putting it put a lot of work around. Is that the biggest obstacle between where you are today and becoming wealthy is not opportunity. It's not your income. It's you controlling you and you understanding you, helps you control you so that you can win. The problem with my money to the person in my mirror, we've said that for years. And what you're doing here is to say, OK, if I'm going to be a nerd, I need to be a healthy nerd.

That way I don't kill my free spirit that I'm married to, you know, and run them into the dirt. And you turned Ramsey's name into a cuss word and all those kinds of things. And so know yourself, know your money. We're throwing in over one hundred and fifty dollars worth of free stuff when you preorder right now, including for a short time longer, not very much longer.

A free financial coaching call. If you preorder the book with a Ramsey preferred financial coach, 150 dollars worth of free stuff, including the audio book that she's in the process of reading this week, literally.

The e-book and of course, we will ship you the book as well, you can get it all at Dave Ramsey dot com or you can call the Ramsey concierge team.

A triple A, 22, triple eight, two two seven, three, two, two, three, it's very workable for you.

So the thing is. That if you're not careful, you end up with your your money problems aren't really problems. They're the symptoms. The real problems are under the surface and if you whack on a money problem, it'll pop up somewhere else.

It's like whack a mole you won't be able to get until you get down under it and you say, OK, that's what's going on. We're not communicating about this. Why we can't get our budget done. That's right. You're always screwing up our savings account.

That's exactly right. Yeah. Your money problems are usually masquerading as life. Huge problems underneath the surface. So you go and say, OK, it's not that my spouse can't get on board, it's because, oh, well, we have some marriage issues here. We're not trusting each other. We're not communicating. There's lots of other stuff where you can get under that surface, though, yourself, your money, some acknowledgement. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt free stage, Scott Nerika are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, Dave, how are you? Great, welcome. Thank you. Where do you live? We're from outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Oh, fine.

Welcome to Nashville all the way down here to do a debt free scream. How much have you paid off? A little over sixty three thousand dollars.

Good for you. And how long did that take? Twelve months. All right. And your range of income during that time around 46 to a little over 200.

Wow. What in the world? OK, so what kind of debt was the 63000 credit cards and student loans?

OK, so what happened 12 months ago and what the flip happened to your income? Well, Scott and I started dating in early 2013 and by about four he mentioned this guy named Dave Ramsey. And I was like, oh, boy. Not a real romantic guy, aren't you, Scott?

You have to listen to something when you're going to a date. Yeah.

So kind of throughout the year, we talked a little bit about finances. Finances have always been kind of a sore subject for me personally, just having a lot of debt working, you know, 60 plus hours a week and feeling like I'm not getting anywhere and just, you know, the same old same old that you hear everyone say towards the end of 2018, Scott paid off his house while he did ninety eight thousand dollars and one year. And I was like, OK, this is weird.

No one at 32 has a house they paid for.

And this is marriage material. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of this guy's a keeper. Yeah. So much so. He gave me Total Money Makeover for Christmas and I was like, oh goody.

Oh thank you. Yes. Guess they just keep on coming. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So it was 2019 that I finally got serious. You came to our church in February of nineteen for smart money. Yeah. And so I was like, OK, I know everything that's going on. I had read the book I had to with the Christmas present. So I was like, OK, I'll start. And so that was February of 2009. At the time, we were already living together and we knew marriage was on the table for us.

He proposed in June of nineteen and then kind of, you know, just doing my thing. I sold stuff that I didn't need. I just used a budget because whoever uses those before and just, you know, I saw money that I thought, you know, hey, where is this money going? And I actually saw it go somewhere. And it was, you know, relief to pay off, you know, eighteen hundred dollars student loan that I thought I would have forever kind of thing because it was eighteen hundred dollars, a lot of money.

So and then Scott had a really wild idea. End of 2019. Yes.

My idea was that if we got married sooner rather than our planned wedding date, that we could combine our incomes and really knock the debt out.

Yeah. So we actually got married officially December of last year, but we had our official wedding ceremony with all our friends and family this past Saturday. Oh, wow. So we're actually on our honeymoon officially. Oh, that's cool.

So, yes, we knocked it out on February 29th. I pushed settings and paid off the last debt and then covid hit and we couldn't be any happier. Wow. Wow.

What the timing. That's what I was thinking. I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I do it all in December. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And that's amazing. Yeah. Well, well done. Thank you. How's your feel.

I mean it's exhilarating. I mean I had the one credit card I had was seventeen thousand dollars that I had had since I was twenty since 2009. And I was like this is that, you know, a credit card that I used to cover other people's expenses.

And I thought, I'll never get there. We're breaking up. I'll never get that money back. It is what it is. And I'll just, you know, but then at the same time, I told, OK, I'm not going to use it for anything, but then I was willing to go get gas here or, you know, McDonald's is a quick dinner kind of thing. So I would just, you know, pay a little off and then I put more back on kind of thing.

So but it feels liberating to be so sure.

So how you guys are in your early 30s now? Yeah, I'm 32 and I'm 34. OK, yeah. And that put you baby step seven then.

Yes. Automatically think yeah.

Automatically ding ding. Yeah.

What's a house worth about 250 right now with all the renovations I've been doing. Yeah. I love you. Speaking of which, when you're, when you're in baby steps and you start a kitchen remodel and you find like rotten floor joists and a cistern with water underneath the kitchen that you didn't know was there. Oh, that's handy.

It's kind of handy not to have to, you know, not to have to wonder where the money for that and expenses come. Hundred year old house, of course, that's going to be some surprises.

Yeah. And they're never cheap surprises. It's never like, oh, look, we don't have to spend that. No, it never happens that way. So you got the money.

You don't have any payments. No, we own everything from the shirt I'm wearing to, you know, the house that we live on.

What are your shirts? I can't quite see it from here. Our shirts say we might look like adults, but. Actually were weird Gisele's baby steps. Yeah, yeah, I have a little felt letter board in our kitchen right by the door and that's who I love.

It gets the conversation started. Oh, did anyone that comes in our home, people say, what? Wait a minute. You have your house paid for what? You are weird.

Yeah. Yeah. And Scott had a really fun, unique idea for our wedding exit song that we played on Saturday that got the convo started.

It was Baker Street after we had lots of people who came up saying, is this Dave Ramsey? We're like the way we're going.

They're so fun. Here's their complimentary tone while you make over the door.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Your parting gift for the reception, is that your bachelorette gift? So you guys, I mean, your story, you had kind of two separate lanes. You were going for a while. And once the marriage had, obviously, you combined it and it was and it was gone. So, Erica, for you on that journey when you were doing it on your own without his income coming in before you're married.

Yeah. What was the hardest thing for you during that time?

You know, everyone says budgeting was so hard and, you know, they need to do that. But I think it was just learning that money is not evil. You know, it's a tool that God gave us and it's a tool that I need to use responsibly. And I hadn't been using it responsibly, but I also feared it more than I should have and that it was money that I worked really hard for, you know, doing 60 hour weeks and, you know, feeling like I didn't get anywhere because, you know, I got to shift money here or there and hopefully it can make it work and.

Well, I got nothing to do X, Y or Z thing, but just money is not evil. It's just how you use God's tool that really, you know, taught me. And I was a little nervous, too, because, you know, I sold my car, but it was, you know, a 4500 car that it was just a car that I had financed when I was 19 with my family and, you know, spent all of college.

You know, that was the only thing I worked for was rent and paint my my car. And I was like, oh, I don't want to give this up. But, you know, Scott said it'll be money that, you know, it'll help, you know, go through that credit card. That was just a plague on my life. And you never again Chase Bank ever. Yeah.

You had, like, past anchors with you, that credit card you'd have forever, that car. I mean, there was like a lot of symbolism and kind of like the redemption of your story and you're cutting it off to start this whole new life and the way you view money. And so I love that the your heart and your mind behind it even shifted so much. Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah. Powerful.

Who are your biggest cheerleaders, Scott? For sure. It was my biggest cheerleader, but I would honestly say with a B Ramsay Facebook Zephyrs Facebook group is was really just you know, I didn't want to have one more thing in my life that scream Dave Ramsey, you know, everything I look at. But that really became a group that, you know, I enjoyed reading questions, being able to answer questions as I went along and my journey and joining Rachel's Facebook group and everybody else and just listening to all the podcasts, I really was just this community that you and your team have built with everybody.

Yeah, very cool. Very cool. Well, that's why they're there. You need a, you know, positive peer group instead of one teaching you to spend like you're in Congress or something.

Yeah, I can feel isolating. Right. If you're on a journey and no one around you is doing it, I mean, it's no, obviously you have your man next to you doing it. But like but yeah, having that group, that community is is a huge wave of support for sure.

Yeah. Well, we got a copy of Chris Hawkins book for you. Every Millionaires. That's definitely the next chapter in your story. We're gazelles. Well done. Very, very well done. I'm proud of you guys. Thank you. You're heroes. You took control of your life. Very well done, both of you. Excellent. Excellent job. All right.

Scott and Erika, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 63000 paid off, by the way. He paid off his house before that.

Then they get married. It's a long story, but you heard it. Twelve months, Meghan, 46. Now, Meghan, 200 as a couple counted down. Let's say you're a debt free scream.

Three, two. What word? That phrase. Well, that's how it's done. I love it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Ramsey personality, Rachel Krooks, number one best selling author and my daughter, joins me today as my co-host here on the air. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Sarah is with us in Concord, New Hampshire. Hi, Sarah. How are you? Hi. Good. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up?

I guess my husband and I are being subsects and I'm kind of just figure out establishing some kind of balance, moving forward with paying off our house and recently refinance from months to an eight year mortgage. And we I'm wondering about, though, so our emergency fund is like twenty five thousand dollars. And I think it's probably a little overkill. Both of our jobs are super stable. And we had some suggest to us pulling out some of that money to top off a Roth IRA account.

And I think that you're probably going to that the phone had idea. But I guess I'm just wondering about about doing something like that. I mean, we're saving four thousand dollars a month, pretty much. So we could probably just Cash-Flow that for what is right up for. Sir, I don't have a memorized or in front of it, is that your retirement? Where are you going with this, that we're doing more than that? OK. You know what?

Stop. You're not supposed to be doing 15 percent and the rest of it would go to the mortgage. Our house. Yeah. And so if you say I'm going to adjust my emergency fund down because I think it's too noob to beef up, then you would just throw it at the mortgage.

OK, so make sense.

And you need to make your adjustments on your retirement accounts down to 15 percent. Let's get the mortgage paid off.

OK, Sarah, what's the what's the pressure of the Roth? Is that you feeling that?

Is that a financial adviser is pressuring you invited. I said yeah. A financial adviser. Yeah. We have like four hundred thousand dollars in our retirement savings right now. So I think we're doing like I'm thirty one and he's thirty five. I think we're doing pretty well. Yeah, I think you're doing pretty a bit.

So you're getting. Yeah. So what's happening there I think is you're getting conflicting advice. So it's confusing to you. You're going to a financial adviser and was like, no, no, no, no matter what, you max out the Roth, you max out the Roth. Well, yeah, that's 50 percent of your income. You do, but you only we just talked about this day before the show, even on an Instagram live, about why 15 percent, because a financial advisor is going to say, you know, max out that Roth.

But the baby, some financial adviser will tell you some of them are going to you never pay off your house.

But yeah, but all the data, all the data on the millionaires that we studied, which are actual millionaires, not financial advisors, shows that the shortest distance between where you are and becoming a millionaire, meaning building wealth, is to get the house paid off. Meanwhile, putting some money into the nest egg. So if you're 400 doubles every seven years. OK, and we have. We got four times or five times it's going to double. So the first time it if you don't add anything to it, the first time it doubles, it's 800.

The next time it doubles is one point six. The next time he doubles his three point two. So that tells me you're going to be worth just on that 400 somewhere at your age, somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million dollars.

Well, so I don't know why you need to worry about maxing out your Roth today when the primary goal should be knocking out the debt, you may need a new financial house because his financial adviser doesn't make a commission when you pay off your mortgage, but he makes a commission when he gives you a Roth IRA.

So and when we refinance our house or we're in the process of, I guess I should say, our our credit union is actually doing it for only one hundred and fifty bucks to refinance from a 15 to an eight year. And they the interest rate is pretty low. It's two point twenty five. Yeah. Good. We cut it doesn't mean they want to keep it. Right, exactly, I mean, we have a big dog, but small doesn't mean a lot, you know, I mean, get rid of it, you know, get rid of it as soon as they can.

Yeah, because we could probably pay it off in much fewer years than six years, I think. Well, we could do it in four or five years if they wanted.

And then you're done and then you go and you max out everything from anything you got available to you because that's a baby step seven.

At that point, you guys are doing awesome. I just really you know, and you're questioning I can hear you questioning because you're you're confused and you're like, oh, I'm getting this advice. But saying that. So it's it is so just the clear path and that's the way to hopefully this call.

Answer the question one more one more question. Just like at this stage of at this point where we're kind of we're paying off our house and we're not like Gizelle intense anymore in terms of, you know, you're not supposed to, you know. Right. How do we balance having fun and cash flowing like toys are like trips or experiences or things that we want to do and rewarding ourselves for being successful to the point that we're at, but also maintain like moving forward and paying off our house?

Yeah, we go from gas, so we go from Gizelle. Intensity just to simple intentionality and intentionality says after I do my fifteen percent towards my retirement, no more and after and then I look and I say, there's only three things I can do with money at this point past that, and that's pay off my mortgage.

Give money away and enjoy money. And all three need to be in your budget, enjoying can be a purchase of a toy enjoying can be going on a trip. Both are enjoying, but those are lifestyle choices to a nicer car is not a necessity. It's a cool thing. You should do it, but it's a toy, as you said.

And so both of those are just a lifestyle. And so what you just do is you look at your budget and say, you know, we've got this number of dollars.

How many of those dollars are being put to us? I mean, others and the house.

Yes. Is there. So I would say that you and your husband need to decide, OK, our our our end goal. Right. The finish line is paying off that house. Like, that's the last big thing. How quickly do we want to do it? And you guys need to agree together. We want we could do this. Same for if you do the math. Yeah, we could. Or we could do it in five. We could do whatever it is.

We could do it in five and go on more trips right. Back it out and you guys decide and then whatever money is left that's not going towards the house is what you guys can use, that percentage of it to enjoy and to give. And then I would still recommend upping a little bit of your giving during this process. And that was a great callout. But having the end in mind and then backing out, because when it's like there's that ambiguity of like, yeah, we want to pay off our house soon, but I don't know when he gets in the numbers in the budget, I totally get how it gets foggy.

And you're like, I don't know if this is OK or not. Well, is it OK with your whole like that's what you guys need. That's that's your answer.

Yeah. I mean, I would not suggest that you have no fun and no lifestyle increase and pay off the mortgage in four years. I would rather you pay it off in six years and have some of each. So, you know, if that's the number or maybe you pay off in three years with no fun and four is a little bit of fun and, you know, run some numbers.

Right. And you guys actually run some numbers. OK, yes. That feels like too much fun.

I'd rather I'd rather do the other one, you know, like Scott that was on the debt free stage, paid off his house. And I could just assume Scott's not here on the microphone. But I would think Scott's like, you know what? I'll sacrifice one for two years to get my house paid off. You could just tell that was him, right? Like, yeah. And he did it. And that's great. So it's your choice.

But you and your husband, 98000 in one year. Yes. Right.

So you and your husband together need to agree with that goal as if it's short. Lots of sacrifice. Agree if it's like, hey, we're going to spend another year or two, agree on that. But that's the key.

Put actual numbers to it. So it's real simple. Take your balance on your mortgage and divide it by six. Balance on your mortgage, divided by five. Balance on your mortgage, divided by four. Those are your numbers. And then you say how much? And here's how much I've got to work with divided by twelve with each other.

But usually it's usually it's used up. I've got this much disposable income after my fifteen percent going into retirement. No more need to back that back down.

And you say, all right that gives us X for toys, Y for toys, Z for toys based on the for the five or the six. And then it'll be right there in front of a year ago. That one.

I feel good about that one. And you'll probably both agree to it instantly. But you're right.

The ambiguity where you don't have if you put numbers in front of you on it, the numbers will talk to you.

And they'll tell you, because you you know, right now you've kind of got well, I don't know about the feeling and I just feel like I should do this. And it's hard for me to transfer from Gizelle intensity to simple intentionality. And I don't, you know, but put the numbers down you go.

Oh, well, that's the one. So that's the one. And you go, I can buy a car, a nice car for that. I can go on a nice trip for that and still pay off the house and that number of years, you know, and so it'll be right there in front of you. And it's not going to end up being don't pay the house off early at all. And it's not going to end up being on the other end where you have no fun.

You don't want to do either one of those.

And so I'd rather you get it done just like you've got a substantial income or are they going get it done? But let's just lay it out when the numbers will say, oh, that's the one. Oh, and by the way, when you get a raise, all of it goes to the house.

After that, if you've already set your lifestyle budget, not upping it with the. Yeah, that's a good point, too, with an income increase. Exactly. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. I have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsey advice in their life. Let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It's a quick head of advice about life and money. Under 10 minutes, check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast.

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