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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 am Dave Ramsey, your host Crystal Wright is my co-host today. Ramsey, personality number one, best selling author, open phones as we talk about your life and your money.

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It's a free call. Elite eight two five five two two five, elite eight two five five two two five. Roundy's in San Francisco to kick this hour off. Hi, Randy, how are you?

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I'm doing great, Dave, and thank you for taking my call. I listen to you religiously every night when I'm working out my garage. Thank you. And I was motivated to call you. I've told so many people about you at church on Sunday. I mentioned about your program and my pastor's wife spoke out. Yes. Oh, that's Dave Ramsey. I was telling her about this. So you you are very popular out here. And I'm what I call cancer fornia.

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Well, I appreciate that. I'm going to help.

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Yeah, well, I'm sixty six years old. I've been working with my company as an employee for twenty seven years, anticipating I would stick around for another three years. And it looks like it's they're going to shut down my division, so I will be out of work. I'm having a little bit of anxiety about pulling money out of my savings to pay my house off. I was thinking maybe I should just move from here in about two years so I would be OK with paying the house payment or if I could just go ahead and pay it off, I could pay it off.

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And that that's the only debt I do have left. But I'm just I'm anxious about in my own money mindset. Should I really let go of that much money? Or maybe I may need it, you know, for something. But I'm just kind of vacillating whether to, you know, pay off the home or don't pay off the home, leave the money alone. It's a cushion. What do I do?

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Why are you staying after you lose the job?

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I was thinking, like, maybe stick around for a year and then, like, you transfer. And I don't know. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, well, so should I. So maybe it's OK to have to get on the house and probably end up going to be selling it.

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If you don't if you're going to lose the job I put aside in the yard and go ahead and just accelerate your thing because you're leaving in two years, had a lot to do with your staying in this job for two to three years.

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Yes, sir. And that's all changed now. And so you just accelerate your move out and then that takes the question off the table. No, I would not pay a house off that is up for sale. OK, if you're going to stay here for two years, I might I don't know.

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This California real estate thing is very hard to figure out what's going to happen. I'm hearing as a matter of fact, I heard this morning from a guy that lives in San Francisco that the rents inside the city themselves, not out in the suburbs, but inside the city, have dropped 30 percent yet because the renters all left.

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And I live I live right east of San Francisco, where you put a house up for sale and it's usually gone that week. And I'm still hearing that.

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I talk to a guy who had a long talk with a guy from San Diego the other day, and he said houses are still selling in three or four days for full price.

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So even though there's a seems to be this mass exodus, because I'm hearing in every state, Californians moving in all across America and there seems to be this mass exodus, eventually the lack of demand is going to cause real estate prices to drop. We're already seeing that with rentals, rent rates inside San Francisco. But we've not seen the house prices drop yet because there seems to be enough demand still to drive the sale. I don't know what two years is going to bring if this exodus continues, though, I'm a little bit afraid for your real estate values two years from now.

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So if I'm in your shoes and I'll lose my job, I'm out of there.

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Yeah, I mean, the commodity out here are U-Haul trucks.

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Yeah, yeah. I heard a guy say that they five grand to get one. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Right. Well I feel better about that. I'm thinking. Yeah. Maybe I should just go ahead and let this wine down and a year and then put the house on the market and just, you know, get out of here and go back east. Yeah.

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I have a sense just talking to you, that you've you've done a really good job with your money and you've got a lot you got enough pay your house off. So we know you've done really well. That's incredible. And it's a San Francisco area house, so it's not a cheap house. So, you know, we didn't ask numbers, but I think you I think you're set. It's just a matter of your having to reset your timelines on where you're going from here.

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And I am not predicting the crash of California real estate, but supply demand curves are pretty simple things when demand goes down or anything. Yeah, prices go down. When demand goes up, prices go up. Yeah, it's pretty simple if there's if there's an oversupply, if supply outpaces demand, yeah. Prices always go down for whatever reason. And example, Kristie, when we were during covid.

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The the ports closed and the oil, you know, we had we had a glut, this huge glut of oil to the point that that we had people weren't driving cars and so there was no demand for gasoline.

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The demand for gasoline dropped like 85 percent for two months there. Consequently, the oil companies had all this oil left over because they didn't need it to make gasoline because gasoline was selling. They had tankers sitting in the harbors and they wouldn't offload them. Wow. They were full. And some of these harbors, harbor cities were full of tankers, oil tankers. They didn't cost too much to offload it because the price dose, because there was an increase in supply, the supply outpaced demand any time that happens.

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And so anytime you have a situation for whatever the reason that there is a shortage of something, prices are going to go up. When there's an oversupply, prices are going to go down.

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Well, I think he brings up an interesting point, too, because I've seen people do this and I've even kind of struggled with this in my life at different times. Something in your life changes, but you hold your feet to the fire of your original plan. It's like, OK, you're you had a timeline of two to three years. You're now your job timeline is changing, but you're holding your feet to this original plan. Now, when things change, you need to change and adapt.

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I'll give you an example. I went to the University of Central Florida in Orlando for college, out of high school, and I thought I wanted to live in Florida. I thought I was gonna make my home there, get married, have kids, settle down. And about a year and a half in, when I realized I couldn't get in-state tuition like I thought I could after living there for a year. And when I realized I didn't want to settle down and spend my life there, I just went ahead and transferred to Knoxville because my plans to change I wasn't going to live in Florida the rest of my life.

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I could stay safe on in-state tuition at UT Knoxville and you have to be willing to adapt. So I think your advice is so great, Tim, because it's like, well, why are we waiting two years? We don't need to. You can move now. Now that things have changed and be on the front end of still having a good chance to sell your home when the demand is high and you're going to get a good price for it.

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So I think it's good to remember that before these curves cross because I don't know if they're going to cross or not. But California real estate has always had a little bit of gold rush to it.

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Manhattan, on the other hand, is pretty much always just gone up. But it's it's experiencing the exact same thing. Yeah. When there's nobody wants to buy it, prices go down. When you can't get a renter rental, you know, what you charge for rentals goes down. Right. It's real simple.

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You know, the old saying you can't give it away and because they're everywhere.

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And so these movements of humans brought on by, you know, governors that are out of control, brought on by pandemic's, brought on by whatever you can blame on whatever you want. But the fact is that a lack of demand is going to destabilize an economy. Well, this is the Dave Ramsey Show.

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If you really want to win with money, you have to learn to spend less. A great tool that's helping my listeners save money is called Honey.

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Christian Trigrams, personality number one, bestselling author, is my co-host today, open phones, a triple eight eight two five five two two five. Our Question of the day comes from Blind's dot com. They have a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you miss measure, you pick the wrong color, they will remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping. And with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more the promo code.

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Ramsey will get you the deals. Cristie, our question.

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Yes, this is from Lonnie in California. She writes, I'm a single mother and I plan to finish baby step one this month. I have 50000 dollars in debt, including student loans, and I make about sixty five thousand dollars a year. I attended a business boutique a few years ago. As I have aside, Etsy business crocheting. I had to put Etsy on hold to help my summer school during the week as he was failing high school with my weekends opening up, should I focus on building the business again to get more income for the baby steps, even if it costs me money to start off again?

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Dave, I get this question a lot. And the thing that I always challenge people, especially in a business like this where you're talking about crocheting, you can start with almost nothing. You don't have to go buy a ton of supplies, a ton of equipment. You'd have to get a ton of materials. You can start with what you have and start to get income into the business. Now, my question would be, which is going to make you more money, a part time job on the weekend or your Etsy business?

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And it depends on which one is going to make you more as far as how you should use your time. But I want to challenge that. You have to spend a bunch of money to start crocheting again. The supplies for crocheting are not too expensive. So I would say not if you're not buying a tractor trailer load. No, no. I mean, you're not going to buy enough to do a blanket and sell or whatever it is and then go sell it.

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Yeah. And then get some more. And so any time somebody says in the baby, step two, I'm trying to start a business to help get out of debt, the only thing I wanna know is how quickly are they going to recoup. Yeah. And so if you spend five hundred dollars and you go make a thousand that month. Yeah. Start the business, you'll spend fifty thousand dollars, you're going to recoup for three years. No, don't start the business.

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You're not in a position to you're broke and in debt. And so that's, that's what we teach. And so if you can recoup really quick and there's no question with this, she could. Yeah, but then your challenge is probably even more valid.

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I don't have any idea what crocheted things sell for. Not exactly your target market, but the. But my guess is that per hour you might do better doing something else.

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Yeah, it's a good chance. And it also depends on she says she had this business before. I'm just curious if she already had a demand, already had a customer base, that type of thing where she would be relaunching to that might change things. But I think that I think the premise of the question that I have to buy a bunch of stuff to be able to do this is false. You don't have to buy a bunch of stuff. You can start with what you have.

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You can spend a few bucks at a craft store wholesale to get you your supplies for crocheting, turn that into something you sell and put that money back into the business. But it really just kind of depends on what's going be a better use of time. Fun week around here at Ramsey.

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We launched the beginning of the week Rachel Kruse's new wallet, the new and improved wallet made fun of the zippers because once we sold years ago, had bad zippers and made a lot of fun, a lot of jokes about broken zippers. But anyway, this thing is fabulous. It is made by a partner with an awesome fair trade company in India that gives people a chance to get out of poverty and have the future that they want while working. And so are you buying these wallets helps do that.

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This is completely leather. It's designed with only high quality materials. It is an amazing piece. And it's it's the type of wallet that was so for several hundred dollars. I understand it has a leash on it.

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I mean, a wrist that's a wristlet on it. Look like a leash to me, but keep you from losing it and there are sixty eight dollars. You can get them in. Dave Ramsey Dotcom and our store are you can call the Ramsey concierge team at eight twenty two piece. Also this week, we have launched the new Living True forty days.

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Back to you. Devotional matter of fact, that happened today for Kristy, right? Yes. And this is so fun to you because this has been a couple of years in the making. But it's just amazing how often I hear women say those words. I want to get back to myself. I feel like I've lost myself. I don't even know who I am anymore. And whether it's a season of life that feels overwhelming or in parenting or in a job, it's just easy to feel like you lose yourself.

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And so this is a forty day journey to help you get back to you. And more than that, get back to God who created you. And so it's been a really special project. I'm so excited now that it's out in the world and and I can't wait to see what God is going to do through it.

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The team is getting geared up for the live stream event tonight with Dr. Henry Cloud and Ian Chron from the Enneagram and of course, our own Dr. John Deloney joining Rachael Cruz on the Know Yourself, Know Your Money Live Stream event tonight. It's only fifteen dollars to watch it. If you're listening to this live, you'll be able to jump in. It's Wednesday, October the 28th at seven p.m. Central Time. If you want to.

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If you want to watch it and get the book, the book comes out in. Selling the book, no yourself know your money, you get all of that for twenty five dollars, that's effectively getting the buck for ten dollars. So still the last few minutes, we've had thousands and thousands of people sign up for this. It's pretty cool in the last few minutes for you to get into right now. And you can watch it this evening if you'd like.

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Go to Dave Ramsey Dotcom and just check on the advancer. Click on Know Yourself, Know Your Money. The live stream is what you're looking for for tonight against only 15 bucks. And it's a huge lineup of people. Very, very well done. So lots of good things going on there. Open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. Shonna is in Lexington. Hachani your question for Christi and me.

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I guess they thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? Not a question. My husband is 40 years old and he currently is employed with the railroad and has been for 21 years. He plans on retiring in 10 more years, though between 50 and 60. He won't be putting anything into his four one K. He currently has four hundred thousand dollars in his four one K input's, 10 percent of his one hundred and five thousand dollar.

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The salary in a year. So when he turns 60, will he still have a good nest egg?

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Yeah, if it's and I don't know how it's invested, but if it is invested and it's making around 10 percent, it's going to double every seven years. So the 407 years from today would be 800, seven years later, would be one point six, seven years later, will be three point two million. And that puts you out there at 21 years, so from today. I was just curious from where that 10 years of that will have no contribution go into it at all.

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Yeah, I'm just talking about the existing 400, not counting the other contribution that existing 400 will double every seven years, give or take, if it's invested in good mutual funds and averaging around 10 percent. That's just a rough-and-ready figure, but it gives you an idea of where you're going.

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I think there's another issue on the table. I have known lots of guys who retired at 50 years old and are 30 years old or the shoulder company of 45 and retired and they go fishing or go play golf, and about 36 months later, they are sick and tired of retirement.

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He actually wants to go drop the school bus when he retires because he he worked he doesn't work locally. He works all over. He wants to be able to stay local for a while. The reason why he wants to retire. Yeah. Four years.

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Well, there's certainly no shame and certainly no shame in driving a school bus. But that's not exactly shooting for the moon on the career chart.

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But at 31 years of constantly state to state.

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Yeah, but that didn't mean you could do all. You could open a business in your town and never leave town.

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There's a ton of things you could do. Yeah, yeah. I'm challenging the idea that it's a good idea to start sitting on your butt for the next 45 years. I just I just don't think that's a good for him.

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I don't care about the money part.

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So, I mean, Christie, I've already put him on notice around here. I'm not retiring. I'm going to continue to come around anymore. Even when I'm not running the place, I'm going to come around, spread hate.

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And we know we are ready for that. We expect it. And I'm going to be on the air until they have to push the dump button because I make no sense. Or if I make no sense, maybe I should run for president. Leatherwork. Yeah, so there you go.

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But yeah, I mean, when I get to where I'm just feeble minded, I guess they'll pull me off by my by my neck or something.

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But, you know, I really, I like what I'm doing. I haven't needed money for a very long time. I do this because it's fun and it's helpful and it's fulfilling and so forth. And so and I enjoy that part of running the business as well and working with you on a new project like this new devotional and working with virtually even working with Rachel on her wallet, which I've made fun up to no end. But but at the whole, you know, working on this stuff is fun.

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And so I just I I'm OK if you work part time or something or you do something that really lets. I answer your question, though. I think he's going to be OK financially if he's got that money invested. Well, so she is smart Vesterbro and make sure your money is invested in some good mutual funds. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Well, one of our favorite things to do is have a debt free scream right here in the Ramsey Solutions lobby on the debt free stage.

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The only thing better than that, this one is one of our own family, one of our Rampy team members. And we got that today. Hadlee Brown is with us. And her husband, Andrew, had been with us for about a year working on the Ramsey plus team.

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Welcome, guys. Thank you for having us. Congratulations. How much have you paid off?

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So we paid off about forty three thousand dollars in six months. Wow, that's awesome. During the time you've been here. Yes. Yeah. OK, very cool. So what kind of debt was this?

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So. Well, we got married in March. Well, technically we eloped because our our big wedding.

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I think they call that a marriage. Yes. You got married? Yes, we eloped in March.

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And so at that time, we currently had a car payment and a bunch of student loans and a little bit of medical debt. So you had a big wedding planning? covid nixed it?

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Yeah, about a week before our big day. Oh, man, no. A week before the venue turned up on you or what? So I actually found out that our wedding was going to have to be postponed on the day that we had to leave the office. So it was big.

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Oh, what a great day. Wow. Yeah. Oh, gross.

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Yeah. We shut the office down, send everybody to work from home and that day you find out you. Oh, gross. So what the venue, the venue canceled on you.

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So we none of our family could come in so we just we decided to postpone it. We did have a big celebration in September, so we were able to celebrate because of the family. We at school, we had to cut it down a little bit. But okay, so you come here with forty three thousand dollars in debt, then you get married and get ready for this.

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Been a big year. Yeah, yeah. It's like the best. A tale of two cities. The best of times and the worst of times. Yeah. Wow. What kind of debt was the forty three thousand.

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So you know we so we had my car and we paid that off in May and then we had some student loans. The first thing that we did, I think it was literally the night that we got married, we were in Pigeon Forge for like our quote unquote honeymoon because everything was closed down. But we literally logged on to his medical debt. We immediately paid it off together.

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So and so romantic. What we do on our honeymoon, we paid off medical debt. That's great. I love it. That's fine.

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So you combined your finances immediately upon marriage, but had not done so ahead of time? We did. And the combined debt was forty three. Yes. So so technically the forty three thousand was what we had on March 28 when we eloped. OK, yes. OK. And then you knock it out in six months following that. Yes.

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In the middle of a pandemic. Yeah. Cool. So Andrew was your job stable through. The shit was gone. It was gone. I'm a freelance musician.

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Oh God. The thing was gone. So God, it's just over. Yeah.

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Literally overnight we watched he was going to have probably the biggest April that he's ever had. And literally overnight it was just like text after text after text. Canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled.

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I've talked to some big time artists that are friends of mine and they're like, they got hammered. Yes. They lost their self. Yeah, for sure.

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And it's still going on. So, yeah. And he won't do this. So I'm going to do it for him.

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I'm going to brag on him hardcore right now, because probably within a week he pulled out his push lawnmower and literally started texting, going door to door people's neighborhoods, because even though everyone was all at home, nobody still wants to mow their own lawn. I guess so he true.

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He he made up most not all of his lost income, but most of the lost income just by pulling out his lawn mower, hard core mazing, raising money for, hey, when you got to scale, you can always whip it out, right?

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Absolutely. I love it, man. You know what the skill is? Courage and hard work. Right. That's a great skill.

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You married a good man. That's good stuff. Well done. Very well done. I love it. Yeah. Because a lot of people would sit around on their pride, not do anything are on their assumptions or whatever. Yeah. Waiting on the government to fix them. Instead you get up and go watch some grass baby game.

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Oh I love it. Well done. I'm so proud of y'all. How does it feel. Like one of the first order of business in one of the craziest years of the world you paid off all your debt.

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Feels amazing. Absolutely amazing. It feels nothing short of a miracle. And and I will just also say not only with the help of of my amazing husband who stepped up to the plate and really took care of the household, but also to my my Ramsey family, there was probably about three weeks that we didn't didn't know what was going to happen.

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I was scared. My husband was scared, but. I was hired by the mayor and my leadership stepped up and they came around us and said, we've got you, we've got you. And without, you know, every dollar, without the baby steps, you know, even though I work here, those those things still translate so, so well into our life. I mean, we literally were like, OK, so let's say you don't make a single dime.

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Let's say nothing happens with mowing. We'll just go to our every dollar budget. We cut everything out. We're like, what is this look like? Worst case scenario? And it never got to that point because this leadership came around us and said, we've got you. Wow.

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Yeah, we were we were blessed. We worked really hard, all of us. And not a single person missed a check. So and not not a lot of companies were that blessed, um, obviously into our live events thing. Brecon disappeared and evaporated, but we we were able to make it up in other areas and not a single person missed a check or was laid off or anything else or furloughed or anything. So it was you know, I'm real proud of our team.

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And the result of that is just you guys.

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I mean, here you are, newly married. You're one of a thousand people on the team.

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And and that's how important it is that we do that stuff in leadership because it's you you know, you're it. That's that's the thing. I'm so proud of you.

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Well, and you just kept at it like it would have been so easy in March and April when you looked at those numbers to go, oh, well, the goal is out the window. We're just hanging on.

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We're just going to reset everything. And and you still just kept forging ahead and you just found new ways to do it. And you pivoted and you got scrappy and you got creative and and just that drive and persistence paid off. Like, it's just it would be impressive to do what you've done in a year, but especially this year. It just shows how quickly you guys adapted. Well, that's amazing. Thank you.

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Very, very cool. Very cool.

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So other than Ramsey, obviously got you got a lot of positive peer pressure around here.

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This is about that young colt you're part of.

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But, you know, but the other than that, the who are your biggest cheerleaders? Our family. These are my parents. They drove in from East Tennessee today.

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All right. Yeah. LCO area. Yeah. Yeah, I was born in Marrable so and so.

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And then at least family's well over here.

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I mean, we just had a great, great support system behind us and them. Wonderful. Yeah.

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OK, we also had a financial coach so even threw out the baby steps. We decided that we needed somebody like a third party position to help us out, motivate us. So we had a financial coach that stepped in and even before we got married, I was working with her one on one. So you were already kind of dialed in on this before you can work here?

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Yes, definitely.

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It it amplified as soon as I got here, but that's not optional. Yes. So it was actually Andrew who introduced me to you. So his grandmother, who is watching today, she actually gifted him Total Money Makeover. And so he I love your brain. He he read the book while he was on tour. And when he came back, we were just dating at the time, he said, I read this really cool book. You should check it out.

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And at the time I was like, I know how to deal with money. Like, my credit card is fine, my lease car is fine. I'm fine.

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I got this. Yeah, I got this. Here we go. I love it, but I read Total Money Makeover after his suggestion and was instantly hooked. I love it. And he's actually the reason why I work here too.

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He was he was like, you should go over there. I got them.

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All right. Hadley and Andrew, I had like being a part of our Ramsey plus team. What a great story. Forty three thousand dollars paid off in six months after the huge marriage. Oh, it's an elopement. Yeah, I love it.

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Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

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Three, two, one word free.

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And the 200 team members that are not working are out there cheering. That's awesome. We've got to cheer them on. That's great. That's very cool. So fun. What a great young couple. To love that guy grabbing hold of. Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love that. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our scripture, the day Joshua one nine, have I not commanded you be strong and courageous, do not be frightened, do not be dismayed for the Lord.

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Your God is with you wherever you go.

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Mark Cuban says, I fear I fear failure, but I won't let it stop me.

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Sometimes you just got to do it or else it doesn't happen. I fear failure. And you know what? Not doing it because of fear will 100 percent of time calls it. That's right. I mean, you know, you just it causes it every single time Kerry is with us. Kerry is in Peoria, Illinois. Hi, Gary. How are you?

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Hi. Good. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. Okay, Christian. I hope so. We all know this has been a tough year for us. We've been very blessed because we've had a jobs. My husband's a machinist until today and he is in the Army Reserves, so he saved up twenty four thousand dollars and we had twenty thousand dollars back at that. Mm hmm. So we're wondering if we should just bite the bullet and just pay it all off and leave slightly behind us or just do some of it and have like our emergency fund that we don't we wouldn't do partial.

[00:30:37]

We're going to do one of two things where they're going to keep doing what you're doing, piling up cash, or we're going to push play on the baby steps and immediately pay off, use everything but one thousand dollars and pay on the debts, which is sounds like you get really close to or pay off your debts, one of the two.

[00:30:53]

So the only reason you would push pause is if your financial life is unstable, not because the world's gone crazy, but you're looking at your situation going we could lose our incomes. There's a high likelihood we're going to lose our incomes or a high likelihood something else is coming at us. But just the general B.S. in the world that's going on.

[00:31:16]

No, we don't push pause on that because some people are having the best years of their life. And it sounds like you guys are doing fine.

[00:31:23]

We have two children, two. They're pretty young. Yeah. So that's why we're kind of like hesitant about paying it all off, I guess. Why? I'm sorry. Why do young children make you hesitant to pay it off? Oh, I mean, like there's nothing different to the hospital visit and everything, OK, well, that's just a general question that has nothing to do with Pandemic or this year. Yes. So that's just when you should decide if you're going to work our plan or not.

[00:31:51]

Oh, yeah, I want to. My husband is more positive about it. Yeah, I understand. The thing is this. Refresh my memory. Now tell me, how much debt is there? Twenty thousand. And how much money do you have in your account? Twenty four. OK. All right, so we tell you, baby, step one is 1000 dollars. After you pay off all of your debt, you're going to have two thousand dollars and you will have finished baby step two.

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And you have no payments right now.

[00:32:20]

And with no payments except your house payment on a tight budget. Are you doing a written budget or are you doing your every dollar budget with your husband? Yeah, I mean, I'm the one that I write everything down. OK, good boy needs to get involved.

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I know I can't write stuff down, but you you here to write stuff down?

[00:32:38]

He needs to look at the budget with you and the two of you agree on it and stick to it. Yeah, he's hesitant because he didn't know what the flip's going on. Yeah. You're not his mommy. Yeah, you're not supposed to be like a grown man and the two of you working together on this thing and that that that's where his hesitation is coming from, is he doesn't know what's going on. He's got this vague sense of things.

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So here's the thing. If he was involved in the budget and the two of you were looking at the budget and we're both in agreement, we're unified and you write a check and pay off all the debt. And you look at your budget and you go, you know, we can save two thousand dollars a month. We already got 2000 dollars in there. So next month we have four thousand. The next month we have 6000. The next month we'll have eight thousand.

[00:33:22]

Then all of a sudden, all this uncertainty starts to go away because you're going to build this emergency fund really, really fast, but only if the two of you get on the same page. Yeah, so the reason you're struggling with all this is your half, but doing all of it now. He didn't get it.

[00:33:37]

Yeah, you cannot make cake without putting in the sugar. There's a recipe and the recipe is you do the written budget and the two of you work together and you're both fully informed. There's a tremendous power in that, Christine.

[00:33:51]

Yeah. And when you're not having the conversation, that's where all the ambiguity, that's where all the confusion. If you simply have a conversation, explain the why. Get on the same page with the what and the how. Then I think the hesitation will he will have the hesitation, but he's just he's not in it. You're doing it. Yes.

[00:34:07]

The luxury of throwing grenades at your plan. And he's just sort of pretending to go along with it. But he's not. He's not. He's not. I don't get it. He's not going along with it.

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And here's the problem, Carrie, that increases fights in marriage and it decreases the probability that you're going to win with money when the two of you aren't working together.

[00:34:24]

Almost all the millionaires we interviewed for Chris Hogan's book, Everyday Millionaires, 10000 of them said one of the keys was what they were working in tandem with their spouse. None of them were dragging along dead weight. They were working together and they were tuned in together. And there's a high correlation on that.

[00:34:44]

This is like one of you disciplines, the kids and the other one doesn't. You know, that's just, you know, my dear daddy gets home. Oh, that never happened in my house.

[00:34:53]

We going to wait for daddy. We already got it for he got there, you know. And so we knew. We knew I was coming from whichever direction. If we're going to misbehave and we say that over our kids, either, you know you know, if when you misbehave, you can expect a problem from anybody that's an adult in the house, you know. And so same thing here. You got to both be on this and you can't he needs to step up.

[00:35:13]

He really does need to call him out on it.

[00:35:15]

And you can be kinder than I'm being carry.

[00:35:17]

But the you should be, actually. But the the truth is, it's it's paramount to the probability of you winning.

[00:35:25]

And that's why I'm so concerned about it. Aiden is in St. Louis. Hi, Aiden.

[00:35:29]

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dad. Hey, how can I help? So I was just wondering what you should treat yourself.

[00:35:40]

What are you talking about? What do you talk about? What do you mean?

[00:35:45]

So I understand that, you know, you want to save as much money as possible and such, you know, but I'm seventeen and I don't have any debt or anything, so I just want to. But I also want to say so I just want to know when I should allow myself to take out money to buy stuff for, like extracurricular activities and such. Well, OK.

[00:36:05]

I'm curious that Dave has to say on this because it's interesting because you're seventeen. So, I mean, how much money do you have? What are you doing?

[00:36:12]

How much money you got? Well, at the moment I have about eighteen hundred dollars saved up.

[00:36:17]

What not what would you buy if you said, OK, permission to treat. I really like classic cars and such. All right, well, I have I have an old truck that I just got of been and then I want to say for after I'm supposed to graduate early and so I might be going to college and such. And so I just don't really know.

[00:36:41]

I mean, eighteen hundred dollars. What is it you have an itch to buy right now.

[00:36:45]

It's not a classic car. I mean, nothing really. I guess so.

[00:36:50]

OK. All right. Well, here's the thing. Here's your general principle that you can use throughout your life. There are three things you can do with money.

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You can give it you can spend it on fun and lifestyle and you can invest it even. You should do all three all the time. OK, you should always be giving some of what you earn, you should always be saving some of what you earn, and you should always be enjoying some of what you earn. I recommend that you set percentages on that. Oh, that's a great theologian. Wesley said if you give 10. Save 10 and live on 80, and that would be as an adult, you will always be prosperous and that's really not a bad formula either.

[00:37:37]

So I'm not suggesting that necessarily.

[00:37:39]

But you ought to allocate some percentage to fun and splurge or whatever the word was you used a minute ago.

[00:37:47]

But and then you can have your savings be for bigger goals. Maybe someday you want to save and pay towards your education or you want to save and do buy that classic car. Someday it's going to be more than 1800 dollars, depending on how I mean, it's there's classic and then there's whoopty classic. But but yeah.

[00:38:05]

But the you're going to move up past the eighteen hundred, but you just got to get some of each going on. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's cool because depending on your stage of life and depending on what your goals are, you can adapt the percentages. Let's say that you know, if you have have this big savings goal, the classic car, you're 23, you can say, OK, I've got I'm going to keep my expenses low and I'm going to save 20 percent, 30 percent.

[00:38:26]

You can see that you can get more aggressive with your saving and change it depending on what your goal is. But, yeah, you need to do all three. You need to have fun. You need save. You need to get. That's a good rule of thumb. We teach. Good job today. Thanks as fun.

[00:38:37]

Ben Hill on the CAAMA as James Childs out today. Madison on the phones with Kelly stepping out. I am Dave Ramsey. Your host will be back with you before you know it.

[00:38:49]

In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's football daily with the Prince of Peace writes, Jesus, I have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsay advice in their life.

[00:39:11]

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[00:39:27]

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