Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show where debt is dumb. Cash is king. And the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. That's triple eight eight two five five two two five.

Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co-host today. As we talk about your career, your money and your life, we're here to answer your questions.

That's what we do here. Triple eight eight to five five two two five. Sylvia is in San Diego. Hi, Sylvia. How are you? Hi, Dave, I'm OK. Where are you? Well, I I'm sixty seven years old, my husband died about me going on three years right now and I have a house in San Diego and the value is like seven fifty three or fifty two right now. I oh I only over two hundred and thirty five thousand on it, which is not much, but not for me.

It's a lot and but the flames are too high and I and I and I think I have about four and a half years left to go to pay that off because it was a 50 year mortgage and. What else do I tell you? And so in in the house, what I've been doing for the last two years that I don't work. I we have a family business that we had to close because my husband died and everything was just demolished.

Right. So so then I started renting out my room like one or two rooms that I was broke. And then my my son built a little studio, so I was renting that out. And so then my son who got disabled, is living with me, with my daughter in law and my grandson. And she does not work well. And and and and why why does she not work? Well, I don't know.

She doesn't feel good. Or now it's because of covid or whatever the deal is.

So I'm sorry just a second, because I think I'm beginning to see how this is unfolding.

Electricity, water is the mortgage, internet. Everything, you know. How are you? How are you paying for all this? Did you have a nest egg? Well, I have I, I get about fourteen eighty seven from Social Security for my husband's Social Security, because I only get half because I had to make that choice between no income and security. So I took that because I had it was three years ago and I was too young to get the Social Security.

So then it was more so and so that the other income I got two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a term life policy, which I know wasn't a lot. We always had high per se, but because we got older, it started getting super expensive to pay for term. And so that was an issue.

So you've been using some of that money with your fourteen hundred just to keep the house.

So now I only have because I had to pay my husband's emotion's taxes and I still owed taxes, but I did all that and paid whatever business bills we had. And so now I only have one hundred and twenty thousand dollars left. But I'm panicking because I don't know what to do because I'm emotionally attached to the house. I still have all my husband's stuff in the room, in the closet. You know, it's a big house. It's about three thousand five hundred square feet.

What is the and what's the nature of your son's disability?

He has like cancer type nature, that's good ongoing stuff. He had like four years or three.

I'm sorry I'm late. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Sorry. It's OK. What, what what did you say? Your son has cancer. Yeah, like like a stomach, like a blood cancer type of thing. OK.

And so he has been declared disabled with cancer. Well, yeah, because he was he worked and then he gets really sick, then the job keeps him and then he goes back to work and then he goes gets off again. And so it's back and forth. So in between that, there's nothing coming in. So for a year, I didn't charge him anything year and a half. And then he started getting better and going back to work. So I would charge him a thousand dollars or twelve hundred a month even now.

But now it's back into that waiting mode. And so I'm always short. And and he said that, oh, maybe there's a problem.

So here's your bank account is not as big as your heart.

Yes. Your heart wants to keep the house. Stop, stop, Sylvere, stop your heart. Your heart wants to keep the house because it's got your husband's stuff and memories. Your heart wants to help your son. And your bank accounts are not as big as your heart and scared you're going to run out of money. That's why you're scared.

Yes, I. You know what? I have excellent credit. I try to. So here's what we're going to do.

OK, we're going to cry. Because this is sad. And we're good. And Sylvia and so we're going to we're going to move. What, because your husband's memory and your husband's legacy is not a house, it's the man himself, and you're going to pack up some of the things that you want to keep to remember him by, and they're going to be in the next house because that's what he would do.

Yes, you would, you know, to be like me, you're not dumb, you just have a big, beautiful heart. There's a difference. If you don't act on this, we might call you dumb later. I know what I do because you now know what to do. You need to put a sign in the yard. You need to have a big Thanksgiving dinner, and you need to tell your son and your daughter in law they're going to have to work it out and they'll work it out because daughter in law will get a job, you know, no matter what.

She'll get a job when when hunger hits her doorstep, she'll start working. But right now, you're carrying more than your bank account, gives you the power to carry. And you can see the train coming down the tracks at you and that's why you're terrified. So here's what's weird. When you step off the track, even though it's going to be painful to tell your son, he has to move, even though it's going to be painful to box up your memories when you step off the track, you're going to have a sense of relief.

That's going to be unbelievable.

Because you're a smart woman, you see the train coming. And I thought I was holding on to it, like right now I got a shirt downstairs. You can't. You can't, you can't. It's killing. It's all in your voice. It's all in your voice. The steals over. Your voice sounds frazzled. Well, only because I'm struggling to know you're struggling. Why struggle? You have a half a million dollars in equity, one hundred twenty thousand dollars in the bank.

Sell it, move to a cheaper area to live and take your memories with you. It's just a house, darling. It's just a house. It ain't worth it. That's what I would do if you were my older sister, I told you exactly the same thing I just told you right now, but we'll cry with you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. You wouldn't trade your education for anything, but what about your student loan debt? Well, that's got to go and splash financial can help splash financial helps you save money on your student loans, period.

They give you access to the best network of lenders and the technology to quickly get the best refinance offers that suit your needs. Take advantage of historically low rates with splashy financials, low rate guarantee you can't go wrong. Sign up today at Splash Financial Dotcom Slash Ramsey. Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co-host today. You're on the air, this is The Dave Ramsey Show. Brandon is with us in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Hi, Brenda. What's up?

Hey, Dave Camp, thank you so much for taking my call. So I'm going to jump right into it. My wife and I started our free journey about 21 months ago. We had three hundred and thirty two thousand dollars in debt. And we are down to our last nineteen thousand eight hundred seven dollars and forty six cents. It's on a twenty nineteen Honda Odyssey. So Private Sale Bluebook is about twenty nine thousand and we've been trying to sell it for about six months now.

We've had it listed all the way down to twenty six thousand and we still haven't been able to get rid of it. So we took it to CarMax and they offered us twenty three thousand cash. So at this point, do you think I should just cut my losses and get out from under it or should we keep trying to privatize it or it'll take us about eight months if we continue in baby step two to pay it off. And I'm at a loss for what to do now.

Well, Charles Qld.. Income sixty five thousand dollars a year. Also the car worth. It's worth about five hundred, but I paid cash for it. Mm hmm. OK. And so you'd have thirty one thousand dollars tied up in cars and you make 65. That's about 50 percent. That's the most we would tell you to have tied up in cars. If they're paid for, then do you like the Odyssey? I do like it, I don't like the nineteen thousand eight hundred seven dollars, unfortunately, or I'm sorry, 46 cents, but I don't want it.

Yeah, OK, so if you sell it for twenty three thousand more, you're going to. We talked about going down. My wife doesn't work, she stays home with the kids, so we're going to go down to one car for about three months, three or four months, get through baby step three, and then save up cash and buy an older model, Oddisee Cash. OK, like what price range? Probably about 10 to 12000. Actually, that fits your situation better than the current Oddisee does.

OK, and so that plan gets you out of debt and you're in a because the other if you keep this current car, you're at 50 percent of your income tied up in cars, which is the max we tell people.

And I'd rather just because it's the max.

I mean, you want to go to it if you know. So, you know, if I was going to prescribe for me, if you didn't know any cars and I said and you said, I'm going to own 20000 hours worth of cars or I'm going to own 32000 hours worth of cars and I make 60, I would tell you, you know, 20 is a good number, paying cash, of course, along the way. And that's what you're going to end up with, with a 12000 dollar odyssey and an eight thousand dollar what you're driving.

Right. And so, yeah, I you know, that's a lot of trouble to go through that. But that's a very doable move and it gets you under control instantly. OK, so, yeah, it isn't like you haven't tried to sell this and, you know, I might push back on Carmac, see if they'll bump you another thousand just for the fun of it. And I might shop at my shop it to a couple other dealers and see if somebody else bump it another thousand.

So I got a 23 from them. You want to go more with a couple of dealers on a wholesale basis. Yes, sir, I think I think we kind of knew the answer before I called, I just needed that knowledge because when we sat down and looked at the number and how much of a hit we're taking and how much we're losing on it, you know, it was kind of like, do we do this? Do we not?

But I think looking at it logically and following the baby steps of progression and getting out of that, I think we we're kind of ready to do it then. Yeah.

You've been working on this hard for a while, I can tell, because you're thinking really clearly. Yes, sir. You guys have been blessed that you've sacrificed to get here, hadn't you?

We have. We sold our house. I sold my truck. We financed we had sixteen thousand dollars worth of furniture finance that we sold pretty much everything except for a coffee table and a couch. And then we've just been digging at it and it just seems like we're just ready to be done with it. I'm waking up at three o'clock in the morning to look at my spreadsheet to see where we're going to save a dollar here and there so we can just get this thing done with.

I can tell you're ready to be done with it. How's your wife doing? I think she's on the same page, she's not psyched about going down to a single car for the three to four months, but, you know, I think she's kind of on board with whatever I want to do. It was just really explaining to her that we're going to take the hit now. We're never going to go into it again. We're never gonna make this mistake again.

And it's just going to be a lesson that we've learned. Yeah, that's painful, but I think I like your plan as long as the two of you were on the same page to do it and not her just going along with you, her enthusiastic about it matters because she's the one you're selling her car. That's true. Yeah. And you've got to work through that, the emotions of that. But there's tremendous momentum, though.

I just I think I want I want the audience to hear it in his voice. He's waking up at 3:00 in the morning and he's really, really dialed in on this thing. This is just the intensity. It's Gazelle. And he and I have to honor that. Gizelle intense. You got to finish it now. I know it's going to be difficult. There's no question about it.

The next three or four months is a good word to honor the honor, the momentum step into the step into the flow.

Yeah, keep keep it going. Because now what happens? There's no waking up at 3:00 in the morning and he could transfer that intensity to now on the other side of this deal, now we're now saving money for the emergency fund.

Then we're saving money for the replacement Oddisee.

Yeah, don't lose momentum is what I would do. Everything in my power to not lose momentum. Yeah, and you've got momentum, karma, the tail.

Oh, he's he's rolling downhill. Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's a good point. That's good observation. Jesse's in Huntsville, Alabama. Hi, Jesse.

How can we help. Hey, it's so good to talk to you guys. I'm so happy to be communicating with you and I'm very confused about what to do financially. And just to be honest with you, I've never once had an adult figure in my life and my parents were not good with money. I grew up on food stamps. A lot of the times just never really have known how to handle it. And so I'm constantly trying to teach myself how to.

About a year and a half ago, I moved out of the house that I bought with my ex-boyfriend no longer in it. Since then, I've been living with a friend. I feel very disempowered living with her because I just feel cramped in this one small room, like a child, almost. I am at a job where I thought I was going to be able to get full time, but they just sold the company and now I'm not able to I don't get paid hardly anything at all.

I mean, it's decent, but it's not enough for me to sustain myself. So I guess nothing at all. I'm trying to be generous to them, but I don't have health insurance. I don't really have any debt. I have a thousand dollars left on my car. I have fourteen thousand in savings, which I feel like I should invest into a little bit into an IRA or, you know, no, I just don't know what to do with it.

I don't know what next step to take. And I don't have a college education, but I want to go back and finish by five percent. But because I want to feel. Actually confident in the skill set, which I've learned so much, I'm 27 and I've learned so much while my friends were in college, I was managing a nonprofit that a lot of marketing for local businesses. So I feel intelligent, but I want to be very skilled at certain applications, which I think will give me a higher capability.

Jesse, let me ask you a question. If you knew you couldn't fail and you didn't have to commit the next 15 of your 15 years of your life to a job, what would you try tomorrow knowing there was no risk or what would you want to do? What is such a great question that I've never been able to answer? I mean, to be completely honest with you, I know this is vague and vagueness will not get me anywhere. I know that.

I just here's what I want to do.

I want you risk free if we're just talking. You mean Dave? I think, you know, one answer. And I don't care if it's kind of I don't care if it's fuzzy. Let us dig into it. Tell me, what would you do?

Top of your heart. Say it. I've really been thinking that I want to get into real estate. OK, take us 10 years, 15 years down the line, success in real estate for you is what?

Describe it. Success in life in general for me would be having a job that I'm genuinely passionate about and I feel like I can work harder to earn more money, not a nine to five where I'm stuck making an hourly or hourly salary wage. That's also limiting to me.

So you're Rokko, so you're rockin, you're selling homes. You got a lot of freedom in your life. I'm a pastor today, but I'm going to tell you something. You got 14000 in savings and you're a thousand miles on your car. You pay the car off today.

And Dave, I mean, I think she's she's now she's got 13000.

And I think she needs to get real serious about stepping in a real estate real fast. Let's give her a copy of my book, The Proximity Principle. I want you to read this and I want you to go talk to three real estate.

That's right. Beginning next Monday here about what it takes to get started with them. And you're going to be working some part time stuff, maybe like six part time things instead of one bad one until you get your real estate career up and running. But six months from now, you should be full time in real estate, having worked part time doing anything, you can get your hands on the eat in the interim and you probably do need to get your own apartment as soon as you get your income up just a little bit.

Hang on, Kelly. I'll pick up we'll give you a copy of the proximity principle to get the real estate business. Yes. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. In an uncertain world, being a good steward of your money is more important than ever. While some circumstances can't be controlled, there are items within your budget you can take charge of, such as your health care costs. For nearly 40 years, Christian health care ministries, or has provided a budget friendly means of sharing for medical bills when our members need it.

Learn more by visiting ministries. Duggie Budget that S.H. Ministries. Duggie Budget. Steve and Margaret are with us in Houston, Texas, says on my screen, you guys are debt free. Congratulations. Thank you. Well, Don, how much have you paid off?

Ninety seven thousand two hundred ninety dollars. I love it. How long did this take? About 30 months.

Good for you and your range of income during that time. Well, we started off about 85000 combined, and now we're sitting about 150000 combined. Wow, nice job.

Yep. What do you do for a living? I'm a contract attorney and I'm in sales. OK, so you just did more of each?

Yes, I was working kind of I had less contracting time when we first started this, and now I've been contracting full time at this point. So you jacked it up to get out of debt? Yes. Yeah. Cool. What kind of debt was the 97000?

All of the above. We were normal.

We were normal IRS credit cards, student loan, auto loans, family loan, you name it. We had it for you had loan after that. We did. Oh, my gosh. How old are you two.

Fifty two.

OK, so what happened two and a half years ago that completely changed the direction of what you're doing.

We got married. Oh, that'll do it.

OK, well, three years ago but it was discussing. OK, yeah. We just got married.

What are we going to be doing with the rest of our lives and you know, what are we going to do when we're a little bit too old to, you know, go hit the grind and try and pay off all these darn bills at once and had to sit down and we went to you and went through it and we started working it.

He wasn't too thrilled about it the first time, but he was the guy in there who was really glad that you were funny. Yeah. And after the first day, he was hooked. Whatever it takes.

Right. Dave, your humor helps the medicine go down, right? Yeah. Spoonful of sugar, right. Wow. Very cool.

So you don't get in it. You get married, you get into Financial Peace University and you dive into this headlong and you just bust it.

Yep. What was the hardest part for you? The hardest part for me, starting out was just trying to do a budget. I just you know, I run a checkbook register and it balances to the penny. And I could not get past that. Every single thing had to balance down to the penny. And I'm the nerd and I was overthinking it. And so my wonderful free spirit helped me out that, you know, this is this is a plan.

It's not, you know, carved in stone that comes down from off of Mount Sinai. You know, this is a living, breathing thing. And we can do this. And once I did that, OK, we can do this and moving to cash. Yeah. And that was that was a big deal, too, because we'd always lived on plastic. Wow. That's that's definitely my big breakthrough would have been because I was the guy who I'd go in and get, you know, get a soda in a donut in the morning and put it on my debit card and, you know, do that regularly, various and sundry, you know, through the day and everything.

And I'd get home and my check register there was. Well, so what did you spend today? Oh, my God. Why don't you just this is just nuts. Why do you keep using that thing instead of, you know, and, you know, moving to cash? It's like, OK, well, I've got I've got here I've got my money clip here and this is what I need. And I pay for it with the cash and I see the change and that gets thrown into a little little bin in my car.

And the next time I go through and I need a soda, maybe I've got to change right here. Here's your exact change. Boom. Let's go.

Did you give up the sodas and donuts for a season or did you keep did you just figure out how to do it in the envelope?

Doughnuts? No. Doughnuts? Yes. And that's a separate story completely. But no, I mean, that's one. I will get a soda and I'll get it getting home, drink half of that and then use the rest of it to come into work the next morning. And, you know, it's you to have your caffeine and you know, I don't drink coffee, so, hey, give it give it to me any other way you go.

I love it.

Well done, you guys. Very well done. So the first order of business in a new marriage in your 50s is get out of debt.

Was it worth it? Heck, yes, absolutely. What has it done for your marriage? Oh, I think opened up even more possibilities where we're not we can we can live out our dreams instead of living our living through our past and still paying for our past and paying for it with interest. And there's no knee-jerk reaction. I mean, we're we're you know, we're operating in the now, but looking towards the future. I love it. You're both 52 and you're dreamin.

What would you say to people in their 40s, somethin's and early 50 somethings if they think they can't get where you are?

Get off the pot. Well, I don't know. I don't know what you mean. People.

All that you can you you can do it. If we can do it, you can do it, right? Yeah. I love this. It is it is not just possible. It's probable if you work at it, if you want it and if you work at it, you can have it. I thought, I thought that my student loan was going to be something I was going to be paying on to like a mortgage for, you know, for 30 years until I really looked at the map and I'm paying six dollars a day for this thing.

This thing has got to go. And when you really take a look at what you're actually paying, not just the payments and, you know, the interest and stuff, but you start doing the math on it and seeing how much you're losing every single month and you decide that I'm not going to do this anymore. I want out and I want in on a on a on a future on a life that that I can I we can breathe. We have peace.

Yeah. And we don't fight. Way to go. Very, very cool you guys. Very, very well done. Love it. Love it.

We've got a copy of Chris Hoggins book for you every day millionaires. That's the next chapter in your story for sure. Well done. Very well done. You guys are heroes. You took control of your life and you took control of your future by doing that. It's inspiring. All right.

It's Steven. Margaret Houston, Texas. Ninety seven thousand dollars paid off in 30 months, making 85 the 150. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream three to one.

Where's that free?

I love it, Steve is debt free, but not caffeine free. We should point out. Well, me too. That's right. I'll join him in that. That's my problem. Coffee every morning.

Very good. It's not a great couple. I mean, she was preaching there at the end. I hope, folks, you're listening. I think that's incredibly inspiring. When people think I'm in my 50s, my ship has sailed. That's not true.

They are living in the now and planning the futures, what they said.

And yet I meet people on this show and you meet them on your show where they talk about an event. That shaped their lives and it sounds like with the language they're using, like this divorce, this job layoff, this death in the family, and they're legitimately harmful tragedies, horrible things to go through.

But they discuss it and I'm listening to them and it feels like it was two months ago.

And then I find out it was a decade ago and they're still living back there instead of today.

And going forward, those guys had a back there. We didn't even hear their back their story. They had a life before this started and they'd made some mistakes before the start, but they weren't living back there, never came up, didn't come up. That's a good point. It's a vision thing. It's where your eyes are looking is where you're going to go. Are you looking in? Are you spend all your time looking long, longingly and mournfully in the rearview mirror.

Are you looking out the windshield? There's a reason the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. It's called Grace.

Every morning you get a chance to start again with a whiteboard. Yeah, and that's what they were caching. They're catching that chip in. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful.

I love I mean, we don't know second third chances, but I love the multiple chances. What a great story. They sit down early on in their marriage and got real intense about it. And what a fun couple.

What a what a great couple. I love that store.

I love all the debt free screens because it reminds us all that we can see a better future and we can achieve a better future. Well, we got to get serious about. I love it. Get off the pot. There's your there's your phrase of the day. What do you tell him? Steve, get off the pot. Get off the ladder. Oh, this is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our scripture, the day Ecclesiastes for nine and 10 two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil, or if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.

But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Henry Ford said coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

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You can enter our Ramsey Christmas giveaway daily to increase your chances of winning one of our weekly 500 dollar prizes or our 5000 dollar grand prize winner at Dave Ramsey dotcom slash give-away. Plus, if you're looking for life changing gifts for family and friends, our famous week long Black Friday sale is here. And that means you can shop our best selling books, bundles and kid's products for up to 83 percent of our number one bundle.

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Open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. Josh is with us in Youngstown, Ohio. Hi, Josh, how are you?

My dad doing great. Thank you for doing the service. Well, thank you.

How can I help? So my girlfriend turned me on to a couple of weeks ago, and this thought has been in my head ever since, I understand your love of credit cards in our lives, right? My question is, if a person has the discipline to live within their means, not overspend and stay within their budget, would it be permissible, so to speak, in your system to use a credit card if they can accumulate you money? Like I have one credit card that I've ever had that gives me five percent cash back on certain things at certain times.

And not only can I use that money to accumulate for future purposes, so to speak, as credit, I don't have to pay towards, but I can also put that money straight into my account and tax free if I choose. Again, I think the main word is discipline. But me personally, I have no debt and I've used this to my advantage many times. But I was wondering how you felt about it.

Yeah. How old are you? Thirty, thirty one, thirty one. OK. When we did Chris Hogan's book, The Everyday Millionaire, we studied did the largest study.

Of millionaires in North America ever done? Over 10000 of them. And so we have really good data on what makes someone wealthy. Out of the 10000, 167 millionaires that we interviewed, not a single one, said Dave, I made all my money with my credit card points. I took advantage of a multibillion dollar corporation who has more invested in studying me and my behavior patterns, and I whipped their butt. None of them said that. None of them said I'm going to join up for their game and play it and think I'm going to win, none of them said that.

And so I consequently, when I started talking to wealthy people, when I went broke, I was 28 years old when I went broke. I'm 60 now. I lost everything because of debt. It wasn't credit card debt, but it's because of debt. And I started studying this stuff. And when I started studying wealthy people, I have never found anyone that thought that was under the illusion that they're actually winning at the credit card game.

So I got out of the credit card business. I carry a debit card and by the way, the debit card to everything the credit card will do except accumulate these points, which we have established in the last few moments, are not a wealth building method.

Yes, technically, I do have a debit card with my bank, but I rarely use it. Yeah, that's what I have and that's all I have.

And I just decided not to play their game, OK, because they let me tell you how complicated and sophisticated these guys are when you call Citibank. Your zip code shows up, your NSX on your phone number shows up in a thousand zip code, meaning the first three digits of your seven digit zip code, and it pre selects a script based on the area of the country that you're in and it pre selects the person who's going to be speaking to you and what accent they're going to have.

And so if you're calling from the South, you're very likely, if you're calling customer service to get someone from the South, if you're calling in to collections, you're going to get someone from Brooklyn because that's like fingernails down a chalkboard for someone from the south. And their goal is to irritate you if you're in collections. It's very sophisticated.

They know the type of bottled water you would likely drink before they pick up the phone. They know your buying patterns. They know your income levels based on the zip code that you're in and you're NSX, the data that they're operating with is highly sophisticated. The chances of these guys losing money on a transaction with you is almost zero. And so this is like playing with a very large old snake that knows this stuff. He's going to bite your freaking head off, so I wouldn't do it.

You do what you want to do, but I wouldn't do it. And I've got friends that they pay off their credit card every month, and some of them are wealthy, but none of them are under the illusion that their points or their airline miles caused them to be wealthy.

Nor are they under the illusion that they're actually winning at a game with freaking Citibank or a game with JP Morgan or a game with I mean, can you imagine? Oh, no, no. So I wouldn't play with it. Sir, you asked my opinion and I think you already knew it before you asked, but that's what I wouldn't do. How long has it been since you had a credit card?

When we first when Stacy came to work for you, we Cuttack we only had one was 20 years ago. Yeah.

Yeah. You don't even know the difference. I mean, it's again, like you say, the debit card can do everything. It's real purchasing versus this myth and you can just fall into a trap. You just never know when some emergency happens. If you don't have the baby steps in place and you don't have a real emergency fund in place.

Josh, you know, you just it's too much of a temptation to then say, oh, I've got it. I'm going to use it now. You're now you're behind.

On the other the other pieces of data we've got is that they any kind of non-cash transaction debit credit of Apple Pay. Oh, yes, that's right. Any of these what are called low friction transactions, when you spend with cash, it activates the pain centers of your brain. And it doesn't when you do a low friction transaction with plastic and actually credit cards are lower friction because somewhere deep down in your psyche, you know, you don't have to pay it.

You don't have to have the money in the account today. Mm hmm. I just got to get my paycheck by the end the month, or I can pay one of those easy payments. And somewhere down in your psyche, your intellect tells you that. And so you have a tendency to spend more and all kinds of different pieces of research showing that you spend more with credit cards than you do with debit cards and more with debit cards than you do with cash.

Yeah, that's just again, because you it's a psychology of behavior and it doesn't matter how disciplined you are. I'm disciplined. I teach this stuff for a living and we're on a cruise ship. And of course they can. There's no money on cruise ship these days. Back when we used to have cruises. Remember me and your Dorcy, your Dorcy will buy anything on the boat. And I find myself buying the kids, you know, six dollar ice cream cones or whatever.

Same thing.

Disney property, your Dorcy, your work. It's your it's your own property. And you can buy stories. You can buy one of those 63 dollar raincoats and not think anything about it because it rains every afternoon. Disney arranged through.

And so, you know, but you just don't you don't realize it emotionally that you're overspending and that you're spending more than you are, even if you're disciplined. I'm pretty dadgum disciplined. I teach this for a living. Right. But I get back to the room number one, bad gum and you can afford a lot of things.

We read some stuff. I can afford it, but I'm just looking at the bill going. We bought some stuff, you know, it's like swipe, swipe, swipe right.

And, you know, I said, do you say this once we were talking about this one time, we have a mutual friend who posed that one time we were hanging out at his house and he was literally asking all this. And you said the same thing.

And it's funny that really wealthy people don't need airplane miles. They don't like real wealth. They have money. They don't have their own plane. They don't care about the miles because they go, hey, I think I want to go here tomorrow. Oh, yeah, I'm really rich. I can do that.

Well, there's that there's that puts us our the Dave Ramsey show on the books.

Ken Coleman, good show. Thank you, sir. James Charles is our producer. Kelly Daniels, our associate producer and a phone screener. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial piece, and that's to Walt Daily with the Prince of Peace. Christ, Jesus.

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