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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'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for joining us, America. We're glad you are here. This is a show about you. The phone number here is eight eight two five five two two five.

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We take more calls here on the Dave Ramsey Show than any talk radio show that you listen to. Because you are the subject. Oh, you're calling to ask my opinion, but you're the hero in the story, you are the one that's leaving the cave, killing something and dragging it home. You're the one that's working the extra job to get out of debt, to change your family tree. You're the one that's having to make the decision to amputate the TAHO.

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You're the one making the hard choices. I'm just sitting here yakking for three hours a day. Mark, thanks for joining us. Open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five.

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Deborah is on the line in San Antonio. Hi, Deborah. How are you?

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Hi. This great day. Thank you so much for taking my call. My pleasure to be here. I listened to you for years and years and I just have a question today. I'm 64, I'm a federal employee, and back in 98, I've been an employee for 28 years. Back in 1997, I quit my job. I had two babies and I didn't think I'd be going back to work. So I took all my money out of my retirement account.

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My husband died a few years ago, so I went back to work. So now I'm wishing I hadn't taken that money out, but I put 26000 back into it. I owe 50000 dollars in order to retire. So my question is the best. What do you think the best way is to put that 50000 dollars that I have a home, I own it. I was thinking about home equity loan, but I know you're usually against that. But I don't have a personal loan.

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Would work as any any longer.

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Will you work for the government?

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I'd like to retire at the end of this year. I have 28 years and at the end of this year and I just want to travel, see my kids, my two boys and relax.

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If you don't put the 50000 back, you will still get a pension at the end of this year.

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Just not as much exactly the way small I might if I put it that my pension would be 3000 a month. Thirty six thousand a year. If I don't, it would be about six hundred fifty a month. And I couldn't live, really. Yes, because my first about 20 years, you got our numbers right?

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Yes, I had them run them for me. I didn't I knew I didn't say I took 14 years to raise my kids. You did say that.

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But 50000 should not give you a return of 24000 a year. That's somebody somebody to run some numbers wrong on a pension. That would be highly unusual. That's a 50 percent rate of return. That is it doesn't make sense, so because pensions are typically calculated at seven percent. And so what is your home worth?

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About 200000 homes are paid for and is I have about 140 in equity. OK, I own 60000.

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And what do you make a year? I make about 80000. Well, that's good. OK, it is. I'm blessed. That's a great job and I really love it. But I just feel like I need to do more with my life. Yeah.

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And well, I want you to get with one of our smart vestor pros, and I want you to go back to your your folks at the federal government and get a revivification on these numbers, because they're not I don't think they're right. They can be. It's possible.

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I mean, it'd just be a highly unusual scenario and it would have to do with the gap you took off to raise kids. That's that could be the way this happened. But it's it's I've never in thirty years heard one that that has these kinds of numbers, OK? They just typically don't.

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So I'm not I'm not saying it's 100 percent wrong, but it just it feels equally. So if let's pretend that you get with a smart Vesterbro and you get back with your folks at the at the federal government and you'd ascertain that this is correct, the 50000 gives you an extra four thousand a year.

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That's pretty bizarre. OK, that'll be awesomeness.

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All right, that's the kind of stuff I would sell my house to pull off right away because that's a 50 percent rate of return.

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It changes your life in retirement if that's available.

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OK, so the other question I would have then, because you don't have any other money, I assume I have 13000.

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I use a lot in my husband's medical bills, but I have 13000 in my IRA. That's all I have.

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OK. All right.

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Well, the other question I start to ask myself is, OK, how much of that 50000 can we just make up out of income you earn?

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And would it be worth it even though you want to retire right now and travel, would it be worth it to work two more years and just do it out of your income?

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It is, but the way I was looking at what my resources told me. Human resources, that even if I work two more years, you make 80000.

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I could come up with 50000. Making 80. That's what I was saying, Jack. Yeah, you could you could, Cash-Flow, the two that if you work a little bit longer making 80 grand, you just tighten up your budget and pretend like you had fifty thousand on a credit card and you throw at it. You know, you go you go beans and rice, Gizelle intensity. And if you're getting up 50 percent right of return. I'm Papa Dave.

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I get it. You want to be with the grandbaby's you want to travel. I completely understand that you and I are the same generation. I'm just a couple of years younger than you. And so I get what you want to do. But for a 50 percent rate return almost or suck it up and work two years, huh?

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So you think I could do that 15, 20 years?

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Yeah. Twenty five thousand a year out of 80 grand. You can do that.

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Yeah.

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Well, maybe our friends that I know, I mean, if you put two thousand a year aside for two years, you get 2008, I mean 2000 a month aside for two years you get 2000 a month for the rest of your life.

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That's what that's what these numbers said. And that that's worth doing.

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Rather than selling your house just to your early. I'm working to 66 if I'm you and doing that if these numbers are right. But please, before you make that decision, verify them from two different sources. Have the smart Vesterbro go over what your HRR team gives you and let's relook at those numbers. But it could be a mathematical anomaly in the pension there.

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It's not supposed to be that way. Pensions are supposed to be set up not with a fifty percent rate of return, but with a seven and a half to six and a half percent rate of return. So I don't know how they but there's all kinds of crap happens and it is the federal government. So it's one of the great mysteries of life. We're not supposed to understand it. That's how it works. So anyway, go check it out with them and check it out with the smart Vesterbro and then you can make your decision.

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That's a way to do it. You don't have the money otherwise. And no, I'm not going to tell you to borrow the money. You knew that for you called. This is Dave Ramsey and I would probably just melt down and go through a hole in the floor with dry ice and saying What a world, what a world.

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And there would be stuff. If I was told to borrow money, that'll be it. I just sink right through and that would be it.

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Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show and is in Seattle. I am. Welcome to the show. How can I help?

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Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call. I love your books and your show and all the personalities. Thank you for your podcasts. Even helped me lose weight because I walk and listen all the time. Wow. Honored.

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Thanks a I can't help. My question is my husband and I are workout free except for our mortgage and the mortgage of our rental property. And our question is, which should we tackle first? Now we're making 15 year payments on both, but we've been going round and round on should we get the rental knocked out and put that went towards our primary mortgage?

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Or if they're equal, if they're equal or the rental is greater, I would close to equal pay your house off first. If the rental is a tiny little debt, you might not get off first. So how much do you own your home, your primary home?

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About 500000 is 499. What about the rental 340? OK, it's kind of borderline. And your household income. 550 a year. Whoa, what are you guys do for a living? You're lucky. I am an aviation sales manager and my husband is an operations manager for a pharmaceutical company.

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Oh, wow. We a lot of time on the road.

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Good job sacrifice there.

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Yeah. And you're making us bank, so. OK.

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Well, it doesn't matter because with that kind of income versus 840000, 550 versus 840.

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Right. They're both going to be paid off. You know what, 200 a year, 300 a year you're jumping on these things with. So four years, five years are both paid off, right? I mean, if we put that much towards them, yes, I mean, well, I mean, you're baby step six, you put in 15 percent of your income away for retirement and still have a very, very nice life. Make sure kids college funding's going in there.

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I'm chunkin at the house. Chunkin at the other.

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So anyway, five years they're both gone. Maybe that's. That's all 150000 a year. OK, so that's between two you put 150000 a year on 840000 in five years, is that not right? That's 650. I missed it by a little bit. So it's 200 times five would be so that it's a 175 one one one 60, something like that.

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It's in that range to knock it all out in five years. So let's just say five years. They're both done. So it doesn't matter much which one you do first.

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I probably would pay down my house first. And it's just simply because there's something that happens when your personal residence has no mortgage.

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That's what we were leaning towards, the psychological effect. Yeah, it's also in my world, it's also spiritual because the borrowers slave to the lender, of course, getting rid of all debt is a spiritual thing in that sense, too.

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But there's something about your house being paid for that flips a switch inside of you being free because, you know, in a worst case scenario, both jobs went kaput. Right. You could just dump the rental and it would cause you a little bit of emotional pain, but not much. And so then you'd be a hundred percent debt free. Right.

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And if you had this horrible situation occur, which is not going to happen, OK, but but, you know, some kind of looking at it through a risk management lens, if you will, in a horrible worst case scenario, that's not going to occur.

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What I want to dump or lose to keep from or dump it, to keep from losing it will be the rental over the house.

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Right. My home. So I'm probably I'll knock out the house first here. Let's say this rental was only one hundred and you're like doing it in a year. I might go ahead and put the rental in front then you see, because it's just going to be over with so fast.

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But it's a pretty good sized both of these pretty good sized mortgages.

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So I lay out a game plan, do the math on it and set yourself a goal instead of just randomly throwing checks at it. Lay it out and go, OK, it's eight hundred forty thousand here. When do we want to have that done? Making five fifty. And you don't have to go into super sacrifice mode or anything, I just want you to be intentional and set a very detailed goal because you make a lot of money and you sacrifice a lot to make a lot of money.

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So you want to make sure you get something for all of that money.

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Good job. You guys are awesome. Evan is in Charleston, West Virginia. Hi, Evan.

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

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OK, so I just wrapped up my third year of college and I'm currently studying business management. Good things are going well and I'm on track to graduate after one more year, so I'll be graduating on time. The problem is, after being in college this long, I now realize I would rather get a finance degree instead. But the problem with that is the school I go to is kind of a smaller school, doesn't have a fine arts program. And there is another school that 30 minutes away that has a program for finance that I could transfer to.

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But I would have to I would be behind and I would have to spend more than one more year in school. And it cost me thousands of extra dollars because of the extra time in school.

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So my question pretty much is, should I keep doing what I'm doing and finish what I've been going after, which, yes, I would finish the degree you've had.

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And anything you want to learn about finance, you can learn. OK. The only thing you're after is you want to go be in the financial world, right? Yeah, you don't have to have a finance degree. You don't have to have a finance degree to do that. You do need an understanding of finance and you are taking some undergrad finance classes, one or two at least, aren't you, for a business manager?

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It's in the curriculum. Yeah.

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So you've got basic you know, you got basic present value, future value stuff in front of your amortisation charts in front of you, compound interest. You know, you've got the basics of finance and you know how to do weighted cash flow analysis to all that stuff will be in those first two semesters. You'll have some really strong undergirding. And then if you wanted to go into a certain industry, there would be industry specific things you could go do.

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For instance, if you want to be a financial planner, you could go get a CFP. But those are all aftermarket after graduation.

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Things you would do if there's something lacking in your actual knowledge base, you could pick it up with one or two classes just as an audit from that other place and still have your managed business management degree. I guess I wouldn't just be like locked into the management field and no, go ahead. I know now I got a degree in finance specialization in real estate. Because I was a real estate geek, I thought I was going to be some kind of a big real estate guy.

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I actually ended up owning a bunch of real estate, but just because I love it. But the point is, is that, you know, the way you're going to use the basic statistics, the basic accounting, the basic marketing, the basic finance classes you got in the curriculum you're in now, the way you're going to utilize those things, you can go into anything. It's a wonderful, well-rounded degree that you've got. I would just complete it.

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And then as you move into a particular field, if you want to pick up some classes at the local university and just pay by quarter by semester, hour or whatever, you can do that. Or you may choose to study a specific industry certification process in one of the areas of finance that you would want to do.

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OK, I think that saves me a lot of time and a lot of money because I was I was really thinking about just scrapping this degree and.

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No, no, no, you're too close to the finish line and it's got the stuff you need to go live what you're wanting to do.

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No, it's not like you wanted to go, OK, I want to I think I want to go to med school. Well, crap.

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Yeah, you do have to start over, OK? If you're doing that, you're not changing fields. You're still in the same field. It's just a matter of some specialization on the classes.

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I mean, if you're really, really concerned about it while you're doing your senior year, go ahead and sign up at the other place and take three finance classes over there and just pay for them rather than change your whole major.

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The major will not keep you from getting a getting a job in the financial world. It just won't. It's not that's not a problem for you. Hey, good question. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at eight eight two five five two two five.

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You join, you join in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Kyle is on Facebook on the Ramsey baby steps community. What point and networks do I need to consider having additional umbrella insurance? You can buy an additional one million dollars of liability insurance for about 200, 250 bucks to cover car and homeowners. If someone got hurt in either case and would sue you, you'd want an extra million dollars for two hundred fifty dollars a year in coverage.

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Why would you want that? If you were a target? Why would you be a target?

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Well, if you had a sizable net worth, half a million dollars million or greater and or if you just make a lot of money, you just have a really good income, you might be a target. In either case, you'd want to pick up the liability umbrella policies. Good question. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. You know, I don't sit back and just trust that politicians have my best interest in mind, which is why if I had student loans, I would not be waiting around for the government to save me right now, splash financial as some of the lowest rates they've ever had.

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If you have private student loans, get your rates down. Now, no one's going to fix this for you. Take control of your own money. Go to splash financial dotcom slash Ramsey. That's how they will know you're one of our listeners. Splash financial dot com slash Ramsey. In the lobby of Ramsay Solutions, Ross and Natalie are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, Dave. Good. How are you? Better than I deserve.

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Welcome. Where do you live? Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Cool.

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Well, good to have you all the way to Nashville to do a debt free scream.

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How much have you paid off?

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Paid off 68000 in 21 months.

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Look at you. Good for you and your range of income. During that time. It started at 19. Went to about 100. Very good. What do you do for a living? I'm a mechanical designer. I'm a veterinary technician.

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Excellent. Very cool. What kind of debt was this? Sixty eight thousand dollars.

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It was two cars and two student loans. Oh, you were fairly normal. Very normal. Yeah, just normal people going along. And 21 months ago, something happened.

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What lit the fuse while we were married about for a year. And I just remember we got our taxes done and Natalie looked at me like we made.

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How much and where did all go? I don't know. It was like, uh, taxes, a mortgage. I don't know, like I had no idea. And at that time, it just made me put, like, a mock budget together. Mm hmm. And it came out to like one hundred dollars extra two hundred dollars a month. And I'm like, man, is this what it's going to be like for the rest of my life?

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Like, it's got to be something better than this. And at that time, Natalie said, oh, we're going to take this financial class at church. And I'm like, OK, sounds good to me. Financial peace. It sounds great. All right. Two words that don't go together. Let's try.

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Yeah. Yeah. Because you so you kind of felt like a rat in a way. And you had that moment, that aha. Moment when you're doing the taxes where you go, wait, this is, this is, this is.

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And then about that time the class appears at your church.

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Yeah. The church you attend already. Yes. All right. Very cool. Which churches is. This is Grace Community Church in Willow Street. Excellent. Excellent.

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Very cool. You guys fun. So you go to the class, both of you. Willingly it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. You're like, OK, let's do this. We're going to figure this out. I'm going to live like this. Life's too short. I won't be a rat and we'll just run, run, run, get nowhere. You know, there's no no chance attraction. OK, so what did you. Get from when you to the class you thought you were going to get one thing and you got other stuff, you know what I'm saying?

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Oh, my God. Were some surprises in the class. What what surprised you?

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I honestly never heard of your name before. We took financial piece and it was just like, I know the gates let loose or something. And I just want Dave Ramsey crazy. And I started watching all the YouTube shows. I started to listen to it every day. I was into the rabbit hole. Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. And Natalie, she was along with me every day.

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And so, Natalie, what did you kind of got this thing started? You're like, OK. Where did this money go? And OK, here's a class. Let's go to class. So when you went to the class, what did you learn that you didn't see coming?

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Well, I guess just the whole budget part of it not really being able to spend what we were spending, so it's pretty tough, just keep with it, but it's definitely worth it. Very cool, Ron. Yeah.

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So when people say, how did you do it? How did you pay off sixty eight thousand dollars in 21 months? What do you guys tell them.

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It's you've got to have a budget. You've got to stick with your budget. I would say make the budget easy on yourself. I know it's it's really daunting that first couple of months when you do it, you're just like, man, what am I doing? Like, this is really tough. I can't follow this budget. Like, if I can't even follow this budget to start, how am I going to do it? But you can do it.

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You can definitely do it and just make it easy on yourself those first couple of months and and you'll get there. Yeah.

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We always tell people whatever you think you're spending on food, put extra in that category because you're spending more than you thought. Yeah, I'm sure people used to come into class with one hundred dollars a month in the food budget. I'm like, I don't think so, Bob. I don't think that's going to work now. Well, good for you guys. Congratulations.

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How's it feel? Oh, it feels amazing. Absolutely amazing financial piece. There's a piece to it for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Well, who were your biggest cheerleaders? I think our biggest cheerleaders were definitely each other. Um, I'd say my parents, they were pretty, they were pretty big cheerleaders.

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They were all all the supporters.

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So our leaders at church, the Steve and yeah, when I give a shout out to Steve and Joe, our few coordinators in church, it wasn't for them. We wouldn't be here. So thank you guys. Very cool.

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Very cool. Well, congratulations. You guys were very proud of you. Thank you. Thanks for coming all the way down here to do your debt free scream. Absolutely. We've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you. Every Millionaires. That's the next chapter in your story. You are on the way, baby.

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You did it. I love it. All right. It's Ross and Natalie from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Sixty eight thousand dollars paid off in twenty one months, making 90 to 100. Count it down. Let's say you're a debt free scream.

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Three, two, one word free.

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Love it, love it. Well done, you guys, very well done. Excellent, excellent job.

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Our Question of the Day comes from Blind's Dotcom.

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Find out for yourself why Blind's Dotcom is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code Ramsey to get the best possible deal. Today's questions from Rachel in Texas. I'm confused on how to begin baby step two. If we are behind, how do we get ahead? Meaning our monthly income will not cover all expenses with mortgage due at the beginning of the month.

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It puts us behind and lacking the money we need to get through the remainder of the month to accept credit card payments just to get ahead. OK, Rachel, before you start the baby steps at all, your budget has to balance the baby steps is what you do with extra money you can find in your budget. You not only don't have extra money, you are short each month is what you're saying. You're saying your budget has more money going out than you have coming in.

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You're not Congress that has to change. How are we going to change it? Well, you have to increase your income and decrease your outgo. I see a part time job in your all's future. Or two or six. I also see you selling something with payments on it. Because it's killing you. You know, I see you having a big garage sale and knocking out a few of your smaller credit cards with that money. I think what you've got to do is you have to get current before you start talking about the baby steps.

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You're not on baby stuff, too, if you're not current, because you shouldn't have a thousand dollars in the bank if you're not current. You have to get current first. Now, are you padding to some of the categories in the budget?

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I don't know. Your every dollar app will help you with that. And here's the thing. The every dollar app has all kinds of blanks in it to prompt you to not forget something that you're really going to spend.

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In other words, make a budget that is actually real, that you can really use. But no one but God has enough money to put something in every single blank in the every dollar app. And so it's not designed for you to hire is no mandatory thing. You have to put something in every blank. All you have to do is give every dollar of your income an assignment, every dollar a name, thus the name every dollar for your every dollar budgeting app takes about 10 minutes to set it up.

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It's completely free to use the app and you can put it on your phone or on your desktop. So that's how you do that stuff now.

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Then once you've done that, if you've been if you cover your payments and your basic necessities of life food.

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Clothing, transportation, car, gasoline, that kind of thing, and you're still coming up short, then you have to take on an extra job and you have to sell something that's got payments on it. To get the logjam busted through because you've got to get on the upside to where there's more money coming in than going out in order to make progress.

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It's not optional. That's the only way you can do this. You're not in Congress, so I hope that helps you. It's a good question. Thanks for writing it in to us for our Question of the Day for Blind's dotcom. Well, folks, it is that way, isn't it? We have to live on less than we make, no matter what we make when you make a lot or whether you make a very, very little and you have to change some of those variables sometimes.

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This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our Scripture of the day, Colossians 312, therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, C.S. Lewis said true humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less. Noel is with us in Lubbock, Texas. Hi, Noel, how are you? Oh, you doing better than I deserve. How can I help?

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I just recently turned down and I was looking for recommendations and advice as to where and what to do with the money that I have there in my name for himself from like a Roth, for one thing about the for that and the other money work somewhere else. Yeah, exactly.

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I always take your 401k with you when you leave a company. So you take the existing 401k and roll it over to a an IRA in good growth stock, mutual funds and then at your new company you start the Roth 401k there. Now in order to do that, if you don't have a broker, click on Smart Investor at Dave Ramsey Dotcom.

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It'll drop down a list of the smart VESTER pros that are there in your area.

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One of them will sit down with you after you choose who you would like, and then they can show you how to do that direct transfer rollover and they'll teach you what I teach you that we suggest putting it in four types of mutual funds with long track records, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international.

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And you want to pick mutual funds that have outperformed the S&P and you can do that with their help. Robert is in Dallas, Texas. Hey, Robert, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

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Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? So new? Listen, my wife and I've been listening for a couple months now, and in looking at the baby steps and everything, we've kind of been doing some of those, but out of order. So we've got that thousand dollars because we actually have about twenty thousand dollars in our savings account and eight thousand in cash that we use for our bills and whatnot. And then our biggest debt in our home is my twenty thousand dollar car note.

[00:32:40]

And so my question is, would be better just to pay that sucker off, like dip into the 20000 and just pay that all off and then start to rebuild towards our three six month or just hang on to it and just keep make an extra car payment.

[00:32:54]

So the only debt you have is a car loan in your house loan. We have a little bit of credit card debt. We have 5000 of credit card, but your bank, as we're saying, you know, tackle the most extreme ones first, that we're not baby steps to tell us, baby, let's walk.

[00:33:09]

Let's walk through it. OK, sure. What we teach people to do is to stop investing and stop saving until they reach that step. And so there's a reason that these are in the order that they're in because they take you the fastest with the least risk to wealth. OK, and they actually they actually don't violate common sense, so maybe step one's a thousand dollars.

[00:33:37]

And what we would tell you to do is any money that you have other than a thousand dollars that is not in a retirement account, any investments you have any savings. You have eight thousand dollars in your checking, twenty thousand dollars in your savings. Anything else? You got a mutual fund with five thousand dollars in it. That's not in a retirement account, anything like that. We're going to cash out and pay on all of our debts, listing our debts smallest to largest and pay them off in that order.

[00:34:06]

That is baby step two.

[00:34:08]

Once that's done, you now have control of your most powerful wealth building tool, which is your income. A one percent savings account is not your most powerful wealth building tool, your most powerful wealth building tools, your income that you're giving to a car company right now.

[00:34:25]

And now you're going to take every dollar you can squeeze out of the budget once you're debt free, everything but the house and build your emergency fund at three to six months of expenses. Then once that's done, we will start or restart. Then we may have temporarily stopped 401K and Roth IRA investing to the tune of 15 percent of your income going into retirement. That's baby step four. Do you have children?

[00:34:54]

Yes, I have a two year old and a three month old. Great. Then after we're doing 15 percent in baby step four, we'll move on and start funding their college and baby step five. Any other monies that we find above four and five, we do those simultaneously. We're going to start throwing at the mortgage and paying off the house. The average family doing this program is paying off their home in between seven and 10 years.

[00:35:18]

OK, so what that means in your situation is you need to write checks tonight to be debt free and you have no money, right?

[00:35:28]

That is exactly what it would turn out to.

[00:35:30]

You have twenty eight thousand dollars in cash is what I heard. And you have an eighteen thousand dollar car note and a five thousand dollar credit card that I hear you correctly. No, it was 5000 on a credit card and 23000 dollars. Oh, you're exactly right, we would have just enough to be completely broke.

[00:35:50]

Yeah, except you need to keep the thousand dollars because that's baby stuff one. So you're going to have a thousand dollars left on your car after tonight.

[00:35:59]

Gotcha. And that scares the crap out of you. Yeah, and don't do this, don't do this if you're not going to play through and do the whole system. Right, because I don't want you to sit there broke, I immediately want you to pay off that car. What's your household income? Last year we made about. This year we should be at 140 because I'm an independent contractor.

[00:36:23]

So you're taking home 10 grand a month. So next month you're going to pay off the car and you're going to start rebuilding this emergency fund. Right, and by Christmas, you're going to have twenty thousand dollars in savings and no payments to. That's where you're going, but you're going to be on a written budget that shows you and your wife that you can do that to stop at the point I put you out tonight would be ludicrous.

[00:36:51]

Right. I'm not suggesting that not for failure.

[00:36:53]

It's just a moment in time. And every moment from this day forward, the savings account will heal rapidly back until Christmas. And so really, the only it's not like we're going to stay this way for 40 years. We're going to stay this way for 40 days.

[00:37:10]

Hmm. You know, and then you're going to have already put back five, six, seven thousand bucks because you guys are making bank. Right. And when you start managing it with a budget and the two of you together are locking arms and saying, hey, we want to get to building wealth here, we want to get to putting money aside for these kids college here. Hey, let's talk about getting this house paid off.

[00:37:33]

We could be millionaires. That's where you're heading if you follow this through, and that's I wouldn't take you there willy nilly, I wouldn't take you there on a whim.

[00:37:42]

But if you play through and you do exactly what I taught you to do right there, you're going to be fine.

[00:37:49]

But it scares the crap out of you because you're human. And it would scare the crap out of me because what you're afraid of is you're going to stop there and you're not it's just not who you are.

[00:37:58]

You're too smart. You don't you don't make 140 grand at your age if you're dumb. OK, so you're too smart to stop there, but you got to do the other parts that will give you comfort is what I'm saying. When you go ahead and lay your budget out, jump on every dollar, dotcom, download the thing, work on it this weekend if you want. I don't care. You don't have to do it tonight. But the point is, that's how you would apply our baby steps to the math you gave me in your situation is you are debt free with a thousand dollars in the bank and a thousand dollars debt on your house.

[00:38:28]

Your car is all and next month you're going to have that paid off and put 4000 bucks towards your, you know, starting to rebuild. And by Christmas, you're easily going to have 20 grand in savings for your emergency fund and then you're going to move right up the ladder. Click, click, click, click, click right along. You're going to do just fine. You're going to be great. So that's what I would tell you to do.

[00:38:48]

It's what we've told millions of families to do over the last thirty years, and it's made a whole bunch of them into millionaires. Because, again, the typical millionaire pays off their home in ten point two years and they fund their 401k and the Roth IRAs and these are the things we found when we studied 10000 millionaires. That's the data points. That's how they get there. And that's not how you get to 100 million, but that's how you get to five million and then you figure out the other stuff as you go along.

[00:39:17]

So a good question, man. Thank you for joining us. We're honored to have you in the listening audience.

[00:39:22]

That puts us our the Dave Ramsey Show in the books will be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there is ultimately only one way to financial piece, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace Prize. Jesus.

[00:39:42]

Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over. But if you heard about an event, product or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry. We list everything you've heard about during this episode in the podcast show notes section or head over to Dave Ramsey dot com and click. Dave recommends. Thanks for listening.

[00:39:59]

Money isn't the only thing we talk about around here. Get life changing advice on your career from my good friend and career expert Ken Coleman. Oh, my Ken Coleman show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion.

[00:40:29]

We will help you discover what it is you were born to do, and then we'll help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman show here. More from the Ramsey network, including the Ken Coleman Show, wherever you listen to podcast.

[00:40:49]

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