Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios at the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king in the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Anthony O'Neal Ramsey, personality best selling author, is my co-host today. As we take your questions about your life and your money, open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five. That's triple eight eight two five five two two five.

Melissa is with us in Las Vegas to start off this hour. Hi, Melissa. How are you?

Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So back in March, I was one of the people that lost their jobs to covid and unfortunately we weren't in debt other than our mortgage so buckled up between my husband always being the breadwinner anyway, just use your every dollar and really focused on budget. And we've actually been able to to save eight months for an emergency fund.

Wow. Good for you. Yeah. Yeah. As a family of six, not easy, but now we're at the point where January, January of this year and I talk to my husband about some goals I might have this year in terms of home improvements, maybe a vacation down the road after being on lockdown this whole time. And he's like, let's just keep stashing it away. Let's just keep it away. And it's sitting in a regular savings account.

Number one, I don't know where else to plant it, but number two, how do you get over that kind of guilt that we've done so well when you see others not doing as well? And at what point do you relax and take your foot off that gas and, you know, enjoy some of that really good questions.

I'm so proud of you. So what a great job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen to me, both of you all back to work right now.

I'm not working in the field that I'm in Vegas being a hospitality industry. It's just not there.

Yeah, you know for sure. OK, well, here's the thing. There's a couple of answers to your question. You had two or three questions. Number one, the first three baby steps, one through three are with Gazal intensity. And that's what you've done. And that's not doing anything.

That's not going out to eat. That's not going on a vacation. It's not buying anything. We're getting out of debt and getting the emergency fund in place. Those foundational items are an emergency. And to get them done, then when you hit baby steps four or five, six, you let your foot off the gas and you go from intense to intentional. OK, and what that means is you don't do anything by accident, but you allow yourself to do some different things, like, for instance, you could go out to eat them.

For instance, you could save up beyond the emergency fund and buy a car or go on vacation if you wanted that kind of a thing. Meanwhile, you're starting your retirement, you're starting your kids college, and you're beginning to work down on your home baby steps four or five and six. Right. And so from intense to intentional. And that's where you are, your emergency fund sitting in a savings is fine. You can put it in a money market.

It's never going to earn much money. Anthony and I always tell people it is not an investment, it is insurance, it's not there to make you wealthy, it's there to protect the things that make you wealthy. So don't expect that 8000 thousand dollars to make you rich and you really don't need to pile up more than that if that's three to six months of expenses.

Right. Any piling up you do beyond that?

Now, we have eight months of expenses. You have too much you have to say. Yes, that's where we're at.

We've set aside six months in a separate account just for emergencies. And don't expect it to do anything except sit there at your umbrella in the corner. You don't need to get it out of the corner unless it rains. Right? Right. And then I would take that to myself for you to answer. The next part of your question is when do we have a good time? And like, when can we really enjoy? So I would take that one month and enjoy it and take the other month and look into investing it.

But I think you have worked hard throughout the whole 20, 21. You went over and beyond. But you're right. I think, like Dave said, be intentional. And I think sometimes we have to be intentional and enjoy some of the fruit of our labor. And so I would take that one month, maybe just take you and your family out there, just breathe, stick within that budget, but then make sure you're still doing babies. That's four or five and six during this time as well.

You know, the way the brain works, it's kind of like a pendulum. If you think if you think most people are all the pendulums all the way to the left, they're disorganized. There's no intentionality. They just stuff happens to them. They don't happen to it. And they wonder why they're broke. Right. Is it then when you swing it all the way over to the right, that's Gizelle intense. And we're beans and rice, rice and beans.

We're not doing anything except piling up debt. Right. And now all I'm saying is when we get back to the middle, never go all the way back to the left. The middle is just being intentional, but not intense. And that's where Sharon and I have lived for many, many years, and the amazing thing is you can build a tremendous amount of wealth and be tremendously generous in the intentional phase. You don't have to say Israel intends to become wealthy.

You do need to go. Gazettal intends to get the mess cleaned up, number one.

And number two, to carve new grooves in your brain because the old grooves in your brain that most people use are stupid and they don't work.

Right.

And that's what you did by this this period this year. Prove to yourself and to each other that we can do this money thing. Right, right, but you can't you can't sprint a marathon and you've been sprinting, you sprint the first, you know, mile here, but then you got to let up and get into a rhythm.

And that's where we do when we go across baby step three. That's really, really good question as far as all the other people and where they are, the guilt about that guy.

Dave, I just be grateful for where I'm at and acknowledge where they are. But at the end of the day, I'm grateful that I can take care of myself and my family and I serve and help whenever I can.

Yeah, what I don't like is Dave Ramsey followers on social media trashing people who aren't doing it all. You got to just go, hey, I'm doing it. This is what I'm doing. I get to talk about you. You don't have to go fix everybody else. And if they don't win, it's most likely. I mean, there's several reasons people don't want to win money. Most of them are our own fault. Most of them are the person in my mirror, sometimes those outside forces that impact it also.

But most of the problems with my money in my life are caused by me.

And that's that's the thing.

So you can't, you know, you know, because someone didn't have the advantages of knowledge that I had.

You know, some people didn't have the benefit of having been homeless like you. Right. Living in their car. And I haven't had the benefit of going broke like I did. Right.

And holding my baby brand new baby in my arms and not knowing how mobile the food.

Some people have never had that benefit. And I say it's a benefit. Yeah, it is. It's a privilege. I'm privileged in that regard. You're privileged in that regard that you lived in the back of your car because it changed your life forever. It changed your paradigm forever. And not everybody is that benefit. Some people had to just live medium and they never they never get off a medium because medium is good enough.

And here it is, the reason why it changed your life going broke, but your life was changed to change others.

Her life was changed when she lost her job. Daigo, I scared them. Yes. I got four kids. We're going to get on a plan. Yeah. And they got an eight months saved now in the middle of a dadgum pandemic. Look at you now.

I mean, everybody's got an opportunity to do something. It's just a matter of what and when it is. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. 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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Lindsay is in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Hi, Lindsay. How are you? How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So my husband and I are on babysat for five and six and we are looking at selling our rental property, but we are currently using the income that we receive from that property to fund our retirement. And it is about four hundred dollars a month. And then my husband put it in his company for a long time. So my question is, we are looking at between how much we can keep on the mortgage and the possible list price of the home.

We're looking at about eighty thousand dollars. We need to know what to do with. So since that house is funding our retirement, where the debate is, do we use it to do we put it in a savings account and then just pull out monthly what we need for our to continue our 15 percent retirement? Or do we what we just need to know what to do with it?

I guess you should be able to do 15 percent of your income into retirement out of your budget. So our monthly budget currently doesn't have enough room for the four hundred dollars. So what's your household income? Should be about sixty seven thousand. And how much are you putting into retirement?

Well, we put the four hundred dollars a month from the families and came from the property, and then my husband does his fall and came out Solicitors' forget exactly how much that is.

There's just six or seven thousand include the money you're getting from your rental properties, or is that separate just from your job? It does not serve the sentence. OK, so I think what David's asking, are you doing 15 percent of the 67000 without the rent apartments at.

Yes. So so the 67000 does not include our income from the rental. I got that. Got that part. Yeah. So are you putting. Are you investing 15 percent of your six or seven thousand? OK, all right. Because you should be at about ten thousand dollars, you should be about eight hundred and something dollars a month going in and 400 dollars a month coming out of your husband's check or whoever's check, you should be able to do eight dollars a month on a sixty seven thousand lower income without the you without having to supplement it.

OK, something's wrong, but budgets are budgets being something else. Yes, it is with our current our current mortgage. So how much is your mortgage with? So currently monthly, we pay. 14000, I think you pay our mortgage fourteen hundred, fourteen hundred. Yes. Oh, yes, sorry. Hundreds. Sorry.

And your take home pay. He is 38. Yeah, you got to you have a high mortgage payment, your payments, Weegee stories, it's about it's about forty two percent. Until recently we when we got the mortgage, I was also working full time. And I recently said, what's the interest rate with our daughter? What's our interest rate on our mortgage mortgage for the rental property or for all your current property? Our current property. It's forty four point two, five percent.

OK, here's here's our fix. OK, refinance the home and put the 80000 dollars into the refinance. OK.

And that will lower your payment and your interest rate. Both. Then you'll have room in your budget to save 15 percent.

The reason I knew there's something wrong with your budget, because I've done, you know, tens of thousands of budgets over 30 years and you can save 15 percent of your income if you don't have to make a house payment and you're out of debt.

Right. And, you know, at any income, you can do that if you don't have too much allocated to housing.

That's why it's a ratio. That's why we don't have a set amount going into retirement. We say 15 percent. Yeah. So, yeah, if you want to if you want to splurge, carve off a little of that and, you know, hit a hit towards a kid's college and baby step five as you dropped by to six, that's fine.

But I think if you'll refinance your mortgage with eighty thousand dollars down and get you a cheap, more cheaper interest rate and while you're at it to a 15 year, you're probably going to end up with a lower payment at that point.

And when you made the choice to come home with your baby, that's OK. But you might have made the choice if you hadn't sold the rental to sell your home because you got a home you couldn't afford at that point. Yeah.

And so but it looks like you can now that you've done all this. And so it worked out.

I was gonna say that farm, is that an option to sell both and then go buy a property that, you know, that is below the 25 percent or right. At at least a 25 percent. Yeah, because if they can sell that current property and have 80000 equity, depending on what the house is, they got 100000 dollars they could put towards a good home.

Exactly. And what what I would do before I tried that is let's try to get the 42 percent fixed. Yes. Because the problem with the payment, that's 42 percent your Take-Home Pay is what we just discovered. Right. It took us a little while to get there.

But what we just discovered is that you don't have room because of your house to build wealth and you become house poor. There you go.

Because you've got too much tied up in your monthly payment on the house. So the fix for that is sell the house, number one, or do something that gets that payment down or get your income up.

Yeah, but if you're going to choose out there, it's OK to choose to quit your job and. Come on, baby, baby.

Yeah, I'm fully supportive of that decision. But sometimes when you decide that unless his income that is on an upward trajectory, you're also saying we have a house we can't afford.

Yeah. And and I think America, I want you to hear this, too, and I really wish I don't miss this. She was through baby steps one through three. She already had. She was out doing good, doing great, but still living kind of stress because he wasn't being intentional about making sure that they can get that 42 percent down to 25 percent, either his income goes up or in this case, we found some money to get the mortgage down.

Yes. Or the house has to go away. Yes. So, I mean, you don't have to do it if if it's income, you know, if two years from now is incomes going to double because he's on some kind of upward trajectory, you can hang on and be OK. But, you know, it's not a two month thing. It's not you know, nothing's on fire here. But the point is, mathematically, you can't fund retirement adequately and other things.

You know, next time you get ready by car, it's going to be a payment because you hadn't had the wiggle room in your budget to save up for a car and get you in trouble. So, Lindsay, you guys are doing a really good job overall. Just a couple of adjustments there. And I'm I'm really proud of you. Good work. Next with us in Jacksonville, Florida. Hi, Nick.

How are you? Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. I'm very well sure. God, how can we help? Well, let me give you a little info. I am 35. I'm divorced. I just finished my associates degree. No alimony, no kids. But I do have 33000 credit card debt, 32000 student loans. I just started my first semester of my bachelor's degree. I'm very excited about that. And my goal is to finish my education without taking any more student loans.

That's good. And so right now I make about forty six hundred a month net and my outgoing is thirty eight hundred and I cut my expenses where I can, paying five hundred a month on my credit cards. Since I'm still in school, I don't have to pay student loans yet, but I'm paying about seven hundred a month out of pocket for tuition and my car payment is for twenty five months now. I know ninety four hundred on my vehicle and it has a trade in value of about seventy four hundred.

But I got an offer to trade it into the dealership at an unspecified above value. I was looking at similar vehicles and it looks like I could lease a similar vehicle for 200 a month. I've got two years left on the six year loan for my car. Should I traded in and lease a vehicle for two years so that I can put an extra two hundred dollars towards my debt, not stick with what you got.

Yeah, it's it's a real tough benge, but it's a short it's a short pitch. And your worst case scenario is you got to pick up some extra work while you're in school, which can be very strenuous.

But if you could kick your income up a thousand dollars a month, it changes all this equation. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're doing a great job, I love how you brought down your hammer. Yeah. You know where you are. That's a big deal.

That's huge mess. I agree with Dave. Stick right there. Get a little bit more income, you will be all right, bro. Two years. Yeah, this is tight and you know where you are and you know what you got to do. And so you're looking at options.

But no, I here's the thing. The right financial decision almost always is harder in the short term and better in the long term. The wrong one is always better in the short term and worse in the long term. And most people do the second one. That's why they're broke. And that's where this this falls in that category. This is the day Ramsey Show. Anthony O'Neal Ramsey personality is my co-host today, open phones, a triple eight eight two five five two two five.

Check out his episodes. The table on YouTube is You Tube shows. Call the table. A lot of folks around the table having a discussion at different times and thus the name, but always good content or fun stuff to get it and thought provoking all of that kind of stuff. So check out the table on YouTube. New episodes every Monday from Anthony O'Neal. Of course, his book, Destroy Your Student Loan Debt.

One of our Remzi Quick reads, as well as the whole idea of debt free degree, which was a number one best selling book, full on book there.

And all of that. Anthony O'Neal's ways of serving you guys, Anthony O'Neal, Dotcom, you can learn all about it. Open phones at eight eight to five five two two five. Christopher is in Lubbock, Texas. Hi, Christopher.

How are you doing? How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? All right. So we have a question back in February 2020. My wife and I, we close in on the house that we're not living in due to the fact that my wife is in residential hall supervisor at a college. And so we after we closed on the house in March, we found out about Bagram's in the whole baby said. So now we're kind of stuck.

Should we sell the house, even though we will have to stay off around six thousand dollars out of pocket and walk away with no profit from the sale? Or our next best option is to rent it out or ask someone to live in it for free. But they would have to pay the utilities only because we need somebody living in it. We don't live in it. And we'll be living here at the residential hall for two more years. And the closing costs would be like about five thousand two hundred twenty dollars.

Who said Ms. Just we used it to your piece that you have on your on your website. We talked to the realtors in the local area, and so they gave us they ran the numbers around that. We're still trying to figure out which is the best way to go it. So we're still in that process right now.

Mm hmm. OK, but what works, what you're basically saying is you didn't put anything down on the house and you don't have any money. You see almost nothing down, thus you have no equity, so when you try to sell it, you're going to write a check. Just because of the closing costs, yes. No, because you don't have any equity, because you're putting down payment down. Yeah, OK.

Yeah, and that but the net, the closing your out of pocket, they're estimating, is going to be five gram. Yes, in order to get it sold, because you don't have any equity at all. They say, and the houses and love you so no. So we live about 45 minutes outside of Lubbock and that's where my wife is, the residential hall supervisor. And so we paid off 27000 in loans early since we started the baby steps in March.

And now we're here with the house. Wanted to sell it or to rent it to see what's best for our income and family. We have an income of about 40000 right now.

How much how much debt is currently still have, Christopher? Her student loans combined with ninety eight thousand six hundred. OK, and how much is the mortgage payment right now? 630. OK, you can save up the 5000 in two months based on the rate at which you paid off the 27000. And yeah, save up the 5000, write a check and sell the house.

Yeah. Yeah, you bought a house when you were deeply and you bought a house when you were deeply in debt and broke. Yeah. Yes, and it's become a curse to you rather than a blessing. Yes, sir. Yeah, I'm sorry. What a horrible thing to go through, but good news is you can learn this lesson at your age. You never have to do it again, right?

Yes. So what do you what are you doing? Yeah, go ahead, man. I just. Should we get a personal loan if closing costs are too high for us to cashflow? No, you should cash flow in the next two months. Yeah, you should be able to save 5000 in two months based on the fact that you paid off 27000 since March. You see that same rate of paying off debt, you can save up 5000 in two months and then by, you know, get the house on the market in one month, it'll take a month to close it anyway.

And by then you'll have the cash to write a check and you won't have any loan to in order to get rid of the house. I don't want you to get a loan. I just want you to get rid of the house, right?

Yeah. And I was going to say to as well, Christopher, figure out a way, what can you do extra on the side to generate another 10000 dollars this year to help you go towards your debt? Yeah, but because 40000 dollars is is I mean, that's OK. I mean, be real with you, but you need more so you can get out of this 90000 quick 98 ninety eight thousand. So nearly 100000 dollars of student loans be thinking.

And here's the plan. OK, when the two years is up, if you're not going to be getting free housing anymore, you are a renter.

Yes. With ninety eight thousand hours of student loan debt. You're still going to have some of that student loan debt at that point, and you are a renter until that student loan debt is gone and until you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses saved and until in addition to those two things, you have your down payment saved up to end it.

Were you in that situation right now? You wouldn't have ever called me.

Yes, because you would have had equity in the home. And if you didn't, you'd have had an emergency fund to write the check to cover the closing costs to get rid of the home. And you would have had also more wiggle room in your budget because you would not have had ninety eight thousand dollars in student loan debt. So do not buy a home. Folks, this is exactly the reason we tell you not to buy a house until you're out of debt.

You have your emergency fund and you have a good down payment in addition to those two things. Yeah, it'll bite you.

And look at it. If he went in there thinking he was buying something, that's going to be a dream and now it's a nightmare. He's trying to figure out how to get out of it. Yep. You know, and so instead of you making money off of the house, you're spending more money to get rid of the house that you fell in love with. So this is why we teach what we teach, because we want your dream to become and stay a dream.

Yeah, that's a good point. Good point. Tomorrow night, Chris Hogan, Rachel Cruise and Greg Rochelle and I, Pastor Craig will be at his church at Live Church TV in Oklahoma City doing a live stream. They'll be close to 200000 of you watching the reset live stream.

It may be over 200 by then. It's it's approaching it now. And it was 173 this morning. And it's yesterday was like 30000. So it's probably over 200. But anyway, doesn't matter.

My minor issue, we're going to teach you how to reset after 2020. 2020 was your wake up call. It either scared you or it punched you in the nose and you lost your job or you had a real problem or whatever.

But hopefully you got a wake up call and you said, hey, we're never going to be vulnerable again when the big bad wolf comes around. We're going to be in the brick house, so we're going to talk about that tomorrow night. It is a free livestream, January the 12th, Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. again, Chris Hogan, Rachel Cruze, Craig Groeschel, me. Rachel is going to be talking about no yourself and your money, the content from her new book that came out a week ago.

And thank you for the number of you that have trusted us with that absolutely incredible number of sales on that book. And Craig Ghoshal, Pastor Craig's talked to a talk. I asked him to do that I'd heard him do before. And he suggested a little bit on discipline.

And it is absolutely amazing.

And of course, Chris Hogan and I are going to walk you through the actual tactical things you need to do with money and go to, you know, if you want to watch this live stream live, all you have to do is text the word it's free.

By the way, did I mention it's free? Text the word reset two, three three seven, eight, nine, reset because this is your chance to reset for 2020. One, two, three three seven eight nine three seven eighty nine.

And if you're interested in getting into Ramsey plus they are running a huge reset deal right now to get you ready for the year with of course, financial peace university, of course, all the other courses in there and the the premium version of every dollar which connects to your bank, the world's best budgeting app, all of that you can do a free trial at Dave Ramsey, dot com slash reset for Remzi, plus lots of free stuff today.

Check out the free trial to Ramsey. Plus it, Dave Ramsey, dot com slash reset and text the word reset for the free reset livestream tomorrow night. Text reset two three three seven eight nine. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Anthony O'Neal Ramsey personality is my co-host today, open phones at triple eight, eight to five five, two to 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 measurer, you pick the wrong color.

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Dave, today's question comes from Caleb in Iowa. He says, I'm 23, making 120000, all those gross. And so far I've been able to earn my way out of the dumb financial decisions I have made without really changing my lifestyle. And I've struggled following a written budget I've been at, babysat for without really ever really changing my lifestyle on more than one occasion, but always end up relapsing down to steps two and three.

In the next few weeks, I will once again pay off the non mortgage debt I have and have my three month emergency fund. Any tips on getting on board with a more responsible lifestyle at this step so I can quit this cycle? Twenty three. Twenty three. You are the problem and I think the in our sedan and respectful way. Caleb, I think you you're asking us for advice. I think you need to look in the mirror and tell yourself it's time for discipline and intentionality.

OK, there's no reason why you should be going back and forth. You don't have nothing major happening in your life. It sounds like you're just making poor decisions and always he's just a 23 year old. David, at the caliber of your future will be determined by the choice you made today. And he's not making the right choices.

And that's true. A 53 year old who. So, Caleb, I think you're halfway there by recognizing the problem. When you don't recognize that there's a problem, then you don't have to address it. My dad used to say knowing that there's a problem is 90 percent of solving it. Yeah, a lot of people are just unaware that there's even a problem there in the zombie apocalypse and just wandering around. Right. And just in a zone. And so I think you're halfway there just by recognizing that there's an issue and.

What happens is as we go through our life, we have different things that come into our life that call us to a higher level of nobility. For instance, when you get married, you have your first child, suddenly you will do anything to protect and provide for that child.

It it takes someone who was self-centered and they grow up almost instantaneously. You know, they they become other centered, that little baby, other centered, you know, and that's one time that it happens.

Other times you can just. It's a matter of luck where you are, Caleb, it's just a decision like for sometimes I run into people your age, Caleb, that aren't married, don't have a kid, but they're looking at a different kind of a Y.

You need a big Y is what we're talking about, a reason to not lapse.

Yeah. And that baby is an example of a reason to not lapse.

But another one that I was talking to Anthony and I believe we're talking to the young man is a strong faith.

Oh, yeah. And his reason for that was he didn't want to disappoint God. He wanted to be a faithful servant. Yes. He wanted to be trust worthy, worthy of trust before. So it was a thing between him and Jesus. It was not a it wasn't. It wasn't. I don't want let Dave down or Anthony down. It wasn't my wife's going to be mad at me. It wasn't. My kid can't eat because I'm misbehaving.

It was I just don't want that Jesus down. I want I want to be worthy of trust. I want to be a good steward, a good manager of God's resources as an act of his faith became his wife.

Yes. Yes. And so I don't care what your wife is, but right now you don't have one.

Yeah. Yeah. And. You know, you need a real reason, I'll give an example, OK, somebody who wants to lose weight to to look nicer in their clothes is not nearly as motivated as someone that the doctor says. If you don't lose 50 pounds and get your cholesterol down, you are going to die.

I have a different why fitting in your clothes versus dying. Yes. OK, it's a different kind of a Y. Yeah.

It raises you to a different level of motivation. And the interesting thing is that you can just decide that item is there. Now, you don't have to decide you're going to die. I don't mean there, but you can you can just go. I'm just disgusted with myself. And I'm not going to do this anymore, you know, that's a decision and he's kind of heading towards that. There's verbiage is getting increasingly frustrated with the guy in his mirror.

You see it?

Yes, I see it. I mean, here's a thing or two I want to say. Caleb Davis talking about a why. And one of the things I talk about on my channel is if your wife doesn't make you cry, then the price of commitment will make you cry. You need to dig very deep into yourself and find something that just activates that emotional side of you. As a young man, what can make you care deeply? Yes. Yes.

And when you can identify that, then you will never go back to what you're saying you do not want to go back to. I could never go back to sleeping in the back of my car. I can never go back to living paycheck to paycheck. I can never do that because what I care about so deeply on the inside just gets me so emotional that it pushes me forward even when I feel like sometimes it's how people break major stuff like addictions.

Yes, they have to have a Y. Yeah, yeah. That's something that's better than the drink. Yep. They have to have something that's better than the drug. They have to have something that's better than the porn or the gambling. It's a it's more important to them than that item is and you got to care deeply.

And so you could take those kinds of ideas folks and. Just by putting some thought to it, some prayer to it, some meditation to it, and in a sense, you are manufacturing your nobility, your wife.

And the beautiful thing about Caleb's situation is he's asking the question, yes, most people in our culture are so oblivious that they need to even ask that question.

And even if someone asks it of them, they become offended. So, you know, Robert is with us in Chicago.

Hey, Robert, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi there. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'm a pretty new listener, I just got married in October, so congratulations a little bit more seriously. Thank you. So I've been bingeing episodes and I read The Complete Guide to Money and I realized I was raised by pretty wise parents because I was starting off in step four, three, six. Yeah. And I had a bunch of money in savings, so we just paid off the house this week.

Wow.

Oh well we don't buy that, Robert. Congrats, man. Yeah. You know, we have obviously no kids yet. And so a couple of questions are I'm not sure how much life insurance I should take out since we have the house paid off and I don't have kids. And and then also my I've been investing in retirement, but not quite the 15 percent. And because my income and having to do a back door at Roth, I'm kind of figuring that out.

But I'm not quite sure about the other. As you say, our growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, international and at least in my brokerage, things aren't labeled like that. So I don't really know what that what that means and what type of labels I'm supposed to be looking for, for the mutual funds. A lot going on there.

Yeah, the very first one man. How much do you make a year? What's your household income? Household income is around two thousand two hundred thousand.

OK, so what we what we teach here is ten times that, you know, that should be at a minimum on your life and your life insurance and as term life. So that's not a whole life. That's term life. Right.

And even with because I've heard you guys talk and some of the other episodes about, you know, you're thinking about the stuff that you want to get taken care of with that money so you could reduce it in your situation, because it's really it's really ten times to 12 times what it's going to take her to live.

Yeah. Yeah, OK. And she probably doesn't need 200000 live with a paid for house if you die tomorrow in a car wreck. Right.

So but, you know, it's at least a million on top of where you are because we want her to be well cared for. And that would provide somewhere in the 80000 dollar a year income range instead of the two hundred. But I'm guessing she's a professional as well. And primary. OK. OK. And then when you have kids and when you have kids, it'll change even more so. But I would start with at least a million and you could go up to as high as two million if you want.

It's not very expensive if you're healthy as far as your investing goes.

If you want to sit down with one of our smart Mr. Pros, they can walk you through the details of the types of mutual funds. The biggest thing is there's a clue in the category title.

If it says growth, it's growth stocks and it's five. It's a company that's growing. It's in there if it's aggressive growth, which means by definition, it's going to be more volatile. If it's a foreign fund, obviously it's going to be overseas stuff. And that's what you're you know, the title tells you what's in it. And sometimes they use different titles, but it means the same thing. I have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsay advice in their life.

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