Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollars 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 choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, Rachel. Kroos Ramsey, personality number one, best selling author, and my daughter is my co-host today.

Open Phones, a triple eight eight two five five two two five. That's triple eight eight two five five two to five. Jerry is going to start us off this hour. Jerry's in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Jerry. How are you?

OK, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Oh, I was just calling. My wife and I are retired teachers in Ohio in the way the pensions plan is set up. When one of us passes, the other one still gets the same income. We need to have life insurance.

Sure. OK, so the next question is, what if one of us can get policy?

Well, then I guess you're not gonna have life insurance. What do you mean? Why wouldn't you be able to get a policy?

My wife's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and we went through Zinder and they couldn't find a policy.

You know, you're not going you're not going to make a market on that. That's right. I'm sorry. OK, so. So she's got early onset then.

Yes. And the thing is, we didn't go through your book, but we are on step seven. We have no debt, we're investing.

Suncrest so everything's paid off and and her income comes to you as long as you're alive once she passes through the school system. Right.

Or vice versa. Yeah. Either way. OK, how old are you. Gosh she just turned 70. I'm 64.

OK. All right. And what other money do you have other than a paid for house and these two pensions.

We each have our own retirement age. I've got a feeling this will be how much we've got in those accounts. About three hundred. Fifty thousand.

OK, I think you're all right to call yourself self-insured if you want to. Here's the rule of thumb, OK? No, number one.

And the income the pension probably does. You're probably right. But what the other things that paid for house the 350000, it definitely is there because you've got some flexibility. So the question we ask ourselves is, at 64 years old, she's 70 and got early onset Alzheimer's or are Alzheimer's diagnosis if something happened to you? We've got to be concerned that she's cared for right now and we've already made that arrangement.

Yeah, well, the actual tactical care is one thing, but paying for it with your both of your pensions and the 350, I think she's going to be OK, right?

Yeah. So you're probably self-insured. You reverse the question, something happens to her. Are you OK? Well, even more so. You're OK, right? Yes. Right. So, yeah, you're self-insured. I'm good with that. OK. The purpose of life insurance is to make sure the one left behind has got food, right?

Yeah, well, we're both retired and like I said, we're actually still saving help and giving. Yeah, well, way to go. We're still investing.

And you did all this on a teacher's salary. Oh, yes. Congratulations. Your salaries. Well done.

So that's beautiful, right? I love that. Very cool. It's a position you want to be in. Well done.

Amys in Philadelphia. Hi, Amy. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Great.

Thanks so much for having me. It's good to talk to you guys. You too. What's up? So I have a question for you all calling for my mom. Actually, she was my grandmother's caretaker for years. She had to quit her job to take care of her. She had a great job, but unfortunately, she didn't save anything. And she now lives on her Social Security. My grandmother passed away a few months ago, and she did, though, just now inherit eighty thousand dollars.

So it's a great blessing. And she asked my husband and I to, you know, to help her with this. So I already had her in everyday budget. She lives in a small apartment. And, you know, we're just having her live on that. But we want we told her it was this is her nest egg and she really just doesn't want to mess it up this time, she said. So she wants to do it wisely, do a Cosway and we want to help her through that.

So basically, I'm calling you to see what would be the steps. You know, how do we walk her through this? How do we help her with investing? What would be the right way? She's not sure at this point.

Okay, yeah. I mean, my my first piece of advice would be to sit down with one of our smart VESTER pros because they're going to be able to lay out things like what a mutual fund is putting in and some kind of account like that that grows and that she's able to say, OK, how much is my lifestyle? How much do I need per year? How much return do I need? They're going to be able to really sit down and mathematically walk you through, because that's that's the answer she's going to need.

How much does she need to live on per year? What can this money do? What can it grow to? How much can she live off of? Yeah.

So you've got her set up now living on her Social Security.

Right, right. Right. And in our heads, we just thought you don't touch it and you just just invest it and just let it just let it grow a little.

I mean it'll grow eight to ten thousand dollars a year. OK, something like that, if it's invested in good mutual funds, I'm probably not going to invest the whole idea. I'm probably going to set maybe 10 aside as her emergency fund.

OK, and in a separate in a separate bank account that's not connected to the ATM and it's not connected to a checking account or a debit card. OK, so it requires effort to get to it. OK, right. And then I'm probably going to do it exactly what Rachel said.

And that's sit down with a smart Vesterbro because you don't want to invest the money and she starts watching the news in the stock market goes down and she starts calling you in a panic. Instead, you know, she needs to understood what she's doing enough, she doesn't have to become a professional investor, but she needs to understand and what Rachel's explaining is exactly that, that they'll sit down with her and not only help with a budget and, you know, we're not going to touch this money.

We're going to leave it alone. Mom, you're going to live on your Social Security and OK, we're going to get this money roll in each month and each year as it grows.

And but you don't want to you don't want her to losing sleep over this because the market for feeling like she did something wrong in the way to solve that is to teach her and to teach you, both of you and to have a person in your corner that you trust that has the heart of a teacher.

So click Smart Vestre, Dave Ramsey dot com and sit down with them and they can help you do every bit of that. Very good question. Very good job. Well, if you're looking for some great Christmas deals, there's still some out there. Our team is using every reason we can to give stuff away. We now running a sale, the Green Monday sale all week this week at almost 90 percent off. And for the first time ever, we've even marked Rachel's contentment journal down to just ten dollars plus the window to preorder that.

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It's fun.

Lots of fun stuff happening. Yeah, closing out twenty. Twenty. A lot of people are going to be helped with this book. That's that's my prayer for sure. A lot of people and tens of thousands have already bought it. And it's when they get it and start reading it, they're going to spread the word. It's it's a very helpful set of materials. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Cooking at home is a surefire way to save money.

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Personality Rachel Cruise is my co-host today, open phones, a triple eight eight two five five two two five. Jay is in Atlanta. Hi, Jay. Welcome to the show. How can we help? Same day registration. Sure. How can we help? So I'm 24 years old and I got about eighteen thousand dollars saved up in Iraq GSP account from when I was on active duty in the military. So my question is, should I roll that over to a Roth IRA right now, considering the fact that I'm currently in school and I'm not working at.

You've left the military. Yes, yes, I would. It's wrath to wrath, so there's no taxes involved, and you don't you don't you're not going to activate anything and you've got 8000 mutual funds to choose from where the TSP has about six options and a sea option being the most violent of all of them.

But you can do a lot better than the TSB options in the open market with mutual funds to pick for your new Roth. And so, yeah, it's pretty simple. Get with a smart Vesterbro pro at Dave Ramsey Dotcom and roll it to a Roth IRA. We put it across four types growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international. We always tell you to take your 401k or your retirement plan, whatever it is with you when you leave with a direct transfer rollover to an IRA at the other on your own end because you've got more selection and more control.

That's pretty simple. And same goes here. Thank you for your service.

By the way, open phones at eight eight to five five two to five. Jessica is in Canada. Hi, Jessica. How are you? Hi, Dave and Rachel.

Thank you for taking my call. Sure. I'm currently on baby step number two. I'm sixty thousand dollars in debt. I recently started listening to you, so I'm being critical of going at it because I was pregnant and I paid off. Twelve thousand dollars so far, no, thanks. So I grew up with a very unstable home. When it comes to money, my mother is a very big spender and she never, ever had enough money for the month.

Well, I don't blame anyone else but myself for my financial decisions. She's the one who sort of pushed me or guided me in the direction to make poor financial decisions. And all my debt I have is credit cards and loans. So now that I'm being very frugal, she thinks I'm completely crazy. And she was pushing me to file for bankruptcy. And every time I see her, it's a constant battle because we are on different pages. And I can't seem to make her understand that what she's teaching is wrong and what she's doing is wrong.

So I wanted to know your input on how to approach that situation.

Mm. How old are you, Jessica? I'm twenty twenty eight.

OK, well the hard part of the relational aspect of money is that some people just don't understand. And the hard thing is you can't control them to force them to see that they are wrong. So I would say on her end, unless she's asking and wanting to learn, I wouldn't push, you know, your your stuff on her because she's she's not asking and you talking about it unless it's celebratory. You're like, hey, mom, I just picked this off and I'm excited.

And you have that kind of conversation knowing that it's probably not going to spark. And I have the best response. I would probably just leave finances out of the discussion. If she keeps bringing it up, then there needs to be a boundary put in place because it's not worth the strain on your relationship. You're doing something that is wise with your money and you're going down this journey. She doesn't agree. And so being able to put up a boundary and say, hey, mom, didn't you keep bringing it up?

This is what I'm doing. I'm 28 years old. This is why I'm doing this, because I want stability. I want peace. I want money in the bank. And you can give her your reasons why and say and if you don't understand, that's OK. But I need your respect enough for me not to negatively keep talking to me. You I mean, just having that. Sometimes you have to just have a boundary that says we can't talk about this subject because if we are going to talk about the subject, we are not going to do well.

And I'd rather I'd rather do well. I'd rather have the relationship. For instance, I have a relative that votes wrong. They just vote for the wrong people every time they have a knack for it and and they blindly vote for one party regardless. And so which I have no use for voting wrong or voting for the wrong party regardless, or voting for a party regardless, no matter what. I vote for that party. No, that's just ridiculous.

And so but I love them. And what I have figured out is, is they're not going to change. And so I would just constantly berating them about it is not going to help. And talking to them about is not going to help because it makes me mad.

So the best thing to do is just not talk about politics with that relative because they're just wrong, you know, and that's kind of what you might have do. Your mom is just like, mom, I can't talk about money with you because you and I don't agree on this. And we're just going to find something else to talk about because we love each other. And it's just that, you know, how's the weather? How about them, Titans?

I mean, you know, I mean, it's just, you know, it's just how about the football team? And I mean, you just to find something else and you put that boundary in place like Rachel saying, but it's very difficult to do.

And, you know, probably the most difficult boundary is mother, two grown daughter. That is one of the more difficult relationship boundaries because both are relationship animals and they feel entitled. They feel like they have rights to speak into each other's lives. And so they don't you know, sometimes they just don't do well with it. And it's OK to set some boundaries in place. And Jessica, I would say for you, I mean, I heard a little bit of your tone and the way you even framed that, the question that there's a little bit of hurt and resentment towards your mom.

I mean, you said the way I handled money today is because of what I learned from her. And I'm just in a terrible spot because of it. And so there is this interesting dynamic now that you are a grown adult and you're working through, oh, wow, my mom, you know, did things in my childhood that I don't agree with. And now because that's how I was raised, I almost just didn't even know to do any better.

So that's how you got to this place is I'm glad you're changing everything because there's a rule, Jessica. And the rule is once you're 30, you can't blame your parents.

OK, you always say that. I don't agree that I put blame, but there is real hurts and things that go on know.

But you can't blame them. You can you can be hurt. Here's my quote. I love this quote. When it comes to talking about your parents, you're not here to bash them. And I heard a little bit, right? Like, oh, I heard about them. We're not here to defend them. We're here to tell the truth. So tell the truth. Just tell the truth of of what you experience and then learn from that and grow.

And so I think both of the other ends extreme are unhealthy because you're not getting to the root emotion of your mom. So there's a relational aspect there, too, Jessica, I would really dig into and if there's a level of hurt and resentment, you may talk to someone about that. I mean, there's I think all of that is very healthy. I don't disagree with you.

I always say that once you start, you can't blame her parents. Well, you can't and you can't. It's not like you're not blaming them. I'm not blaming it. We're in agreement. But you just don't like the statement.

But awareness. But once you're past 30, you can still have hurt from your pain.

You can have hurt that. You can't blame them. But I'm not speaking out of experience. He has never, ever done anything else. Oh, yeah.

We should start a new radio show. Yeah, we should start a new one here. Confessions, Confessions of the Rams, the.

So there's a difference. There's a difference in hurting blame, though. All right, Dr. Gentiloni, tell me.

Well, you can you can you can be hurt. Yes. And admit that there's a wound there. Yes. But you can no longer let that be the reason that you're not winning. Yes. 100 percent. That's what I mean. You can't blame him. You not blame is someone else's fault.

I'm not winning. Yes. That is not is not your parents fault. You're not winning. Once you're thirty, it's your fault. I know why you keep saying thirty. This is why I just made it up. It's not it's not a scientific fact. It's just a Davis. OK, all right guys. She's got twenty eight. She's got two years to go. She's still OK. Oh good. Yeah. Just got plenty of time. Jessica, you're going to make it.

Oh crud.

Open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money.

But that's a lot of what I talk about, though, in the new book with the classrooms. So she grew up in an unstable money classroom where the emotional, the emotional communication was very stressed and the verbal communication is probably very open, knowing how her mom is out. So she felt a lot of that conflict and tension growing up. And so that unstable many classroom, it it does affect you.

All the classrooms affect you. And that does leave a hurt. It leaves a wound that you learn to overcome. Absolutely not not to blame for your dysfunction. And that's why I know yourself know your money is going to be great. Yeah, that's right. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Well, we all have enough on our plates, right? The last thing we need is to not get a good night's sleep. Think about how effective you're going to be during the day if you can't even think clearly because you didn't actually arrest.

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Rachel Cruze Ramsey personality is my co-host today as we answer your questions about life and money, open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. Zach is in Nashville. Hey, Zach, how are you? Hey, Dave. How you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Thank you for taking my call.

My question is, me and my wife, we are both in our early 30s. I'm currently thirty four. She's thirty two with pretty little debt free. I guess my question is eighty thousand dollars on my house right now. I'm in the position to pay it off. I haven't invested in anything and I'm still learning that process. But I guess do I pay the house off now or do I maybe start the authorities or was that real? I don't know what the best answer is.

And that's that's the reason for my call.

You said, Zach, that you can pay off the house. So does that mean you have, I'm guessing, a lot of savings?

Yeah, yeah. About a hundred thousand dollars a year. My wife borrows and like I said, I believe it's about twenty. Mm hmm. I guess I've been pretty focused on in the House office. I keep track right now. I'm paying an extra to the principal to probably put me at about five years. I guess I'll have it paid off.

Yeah. How much do you make a year? About 60 to scrape.

Well, what I would do, Zach, is considering you have no other consumer debt, you have a good amount of savings, I would work to still fund some money into retirement. I mean, the earlier you can start this, the better off you're going to be, even three to four years. The fact that you guys can start in your early thirties is going to be huge. And so I would fund about fifteen percent of your income into retirement.

So opening up a Roth IRA, if your work has a 401k, do that. Do you guys have kids?

Yes, I've got two little girls. One's seventeen and one's a year and a half.

OK, do you have any college savings for them at this point? I do not know. Very new to the baby steps. And like I said, I was trying to figure out what this would be. No, you're doing great in the position. Yes, absolutely.

Well, you're yeah. You're in a fantastic position on paper for sure. So, yeah, I would fund fifteen percent of your income into retirement. Then I would go and open up some college funds for your girls. So either an essay or a 529 plan, put some money there and then anything extra that you have that you want to throw at the house? I would do that. I would make sure you still have an emergency fund on the side of three to six months of expenses.

But anything beyond that, I yeah, I would look to talk to people in the house down there.

I hear you right, that you have one hundred thousand dollars in savings and eighty thousand people. The House of. You correct, yes, I know that money's just sitting there. I know I'm just asking if I if I understood you right. And I wasn't being sarcastic. So if I understood you right, then Rachel's advice is perfect. But I would write a check today and pay off your house.

OK, and then Michael, then the other the other 20 thousand, the other twenty thousand moves over into your emergency fund and then out of your income without a house payment boom right now in your monthly budget, you set up a drawer going into your 401K or your Roth IRA, just like Rachel is talking about, are your companies plan or whatever, or sit down with the smart Vesterbro and you may want to sit down with them anyway and then have you know, if you just start one hundred bucks a month per kid, it would go a long way towards a college as young as your kids are.

And so, yeah, I'd sit down and get at least one hundred bucks a month going per kid and at least 15 percent of your income going towards retirement. And without a house payment or any other payments in the world, you're going to plenty of wiggle room in this budget to do that.

Yeah, and that's kind of been my question, because it frees me up a lot once you say that once I pay the house off. Yeah, I just didn't know if that was the best move.

Let me just tell you, I've been doing this 30 years and I've been telling people for 30 years to pay off their house every chance I got. I've never had anybody call me up and was pissed because they paid off their house.

But that was the worst part is you ruined my life, Dave. I've never heard that. Not one time. People get pissed at me about a lot of stuff. I get a lot of hate, but it's never been about paying off your house. So, yeah, I get I do apparently. I make most people mad about a lot of things, but that one, not people don't get mad about that and say, hold on, I'm going to give you a copy of the Total Money Makeover, which has the baby steps outlined in it on steroids.

Every detail, every nuance, every question answered about the baby steps shows you exactly what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And it will verify the conversation that you had with Rachel and I and put you in a great position here, brother. And what an amazing thing. 34.

Yes. Why go man paid for house tomorrow. Dang if you wanted just like that.

I mean the number of people do that. Almost nine, almost nine.

And then to the point though Zach, of not having a House panel, you have no other debts when your income comes in and you're completely debt free, you have no other payments, that 15 percent is easily put away. And then you guys because because I could I would think living with the one hundred grand of cash over here feels good, like there's a level of security there. And when that strips down to twenty, there's going to be like, oh wow.

But building that back up without a mortgage payment is going to happen so quickly.

Twenty thousand is plenty of an emergency fund with a sixty thousand dollar income.

No, it is. But I'm just saying just the thought of. Oh yeah, we could go buy, we could do things with that money. Yeah. That's short term savings is going to happen so quickly without that mortgage payment. So that feeling of it. But listen to this. This is what they call thirty two to sixty two. Thirty two to sixty seven. Thirty five years. If he just invested, if he never gets a raise.

Now if you go forty years at your job and you never get a raise, you're a loser.

OK, but if he never gets a raise and he only invests fifteen percent, not more, just fifteen percent, that's going to be in good mutual funds in a Roth IRAs, he's going to have between five and seven dollars million. Making 60 grand because he did this so early, that's the kids on fire, man, that's cool. So that's what that's why we tell you to pay off the house, because it makes you rich. That's right.

Yeah. And you can be in a position to be outrageously generous. You know, what you can do is five to seven million dollars, anything you want.

I mean, and what if I'm half wrong? They still OK. I mean, still. OK, that's unbelievable.

So this is why nobody gets mad at me for telling you to pay off their house. So I get mad about everything else, but they don't get mad about that.

Open phones, triple eight eight two five five two two five. James is in Philadelphia. Hi, James.

How are you? Hi, Dave. How you doing today? Good. How can we help? Good. I just had a quick question. So my wife is in one hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars of student loan debt. We recently just purchased a home about two months ago. Really, the only debt that we have is the house and her student loans. We have no car payments, no credit card debt, nothing like that. I just want to know the best way to tackle her student loan debt, whether we like pay half of it and then refinance it or just save up for the whole thing.

And I don't know the best way to tackle how much you guys make, James, a year. So my my wife makes about forty to forty two thousand a year. I am a loan officer. I work based basically commissions. But my year to date should be about like two hundred and sixty thousand this year.

Why did she go one hundred and forty thousand dollars in debt making. Forty thousand dollars a year. What is she doing.

So she went to a private institution. She was originally going for the fashion merchandising, marketing, very niche market to really break into. So it was pretty hard to find a job. But yeah.

So here's what I would do. If you make three hundred thousand dollars a year and you have one hundred thirty thousand dollars in debt, I would pay off your debt in one year.

OK, 140, 140 from three hundred leaves you plenty to live on.

OK, we have we have about sixty six thousand fifty six thousand in the bank now good.

Right, that write that check against it and then you pay it off in six months. OK, you're not going to do any of this, are you? No, no, I am. It's just it it's hard to let go of the money. Yeah, I mean, that was that would be draining the bank account like that would be completely accurate. You have to get rid of this.

Sallie Mae is an ugly old woman and she's in your house and she won't leave until you throw her out. And the faster you throw her out, the faster you're going to get on with your life. Let me tell you the problem with paying off your student loan debt. You're not going to do it. That's the problem. You're going to get on this like it matters. And if you don't, it's going to hang around for another 10 years and you have a bunch of theories and still have Sallie Mae in your bedroom.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Our Scripture of the day, Hebrews 13 16, do not neglect to do good and to share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Ralph Waldo Emerson said The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

And oddly enough, by the way, I'll add that that will make you happy.

Go figure.

Michael is with us. Michael's in Dallas, Texas. Hey, Michael, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I had a quick question.

I have a two part question if I may not have enough time. So my uncle pretty much just purchased a new vehicle and I was trying to teach your ways to him and, you know, just trying to find out why he didn't just buy it out cash when he has the money available to him. And his response was, you always knew the line. You always need something open a line of credit open in my head. I don't want to argue with them.

So I'm just thinking in my head, well, why would you want the line of credit open if you have the cash and you have no debt?

You just created yeah, that's just that, you know, people have these sayings around that, that because debt is so normalized and they don't even think sometimes when they say stuff about how ridiculous what they're saying sounds, I mean, what he just said is I always want to be in debt. Yeah, it's kind of and or anything like that, so that's always just like, yeah, but you have a credit card, you know, you just fired plants and stuff like that.

OK, I can understand that. But no, I don't even understand think. My second question was I have my kids in a Gerber savings plan and I was trying to find out because myself, I have a lot of accounts and I was trying to see about how do I go about to see if I'm able to transfer the funds that are in the Gerber account into a Roth IRA or what would be good for them?

It wouldn't be a Roth or an IRA would just be opening a 529. And it's not transferring. You just cancel that garbage and get a good mutual fund in your kid's name for for a 529 plan. Gerber is baby food company. They're not an investment company. And they sell gimmick life and whole life life insurance as a savings plan. That's a piece of crap and it's horrible. Absolutely horrible. So if I were in your shoes, I would get with a smart Vesterbro open a 529 or an essay for your child and just cash this stuff in and use that money to fund it.

Yeah, okay. Go a step further because you said it's horrible because I get as a mom when I had babies, all the baby stores, now you're pregnant, so you get all these brochures. So you get I mean, I got so many of those flyers and it's horrible because the rate of return of what they're taking is so small.

I explain when you say it's horrible to a new listener, what does that mean? Well, it's a whole life life insurance policy for children. And so they don't need life insurance. Say it's a savings vehicle that pays almost nothing and it's housed in the life insurance world. And, you know, any time you get around insurance of any kind, that is a gimmick, meaning it's aimed at some kind of little weird corner of the world. Like this is life insurance for children, for babies, for God sakes.

It's a savings program for babies brought to you by the same people you buy your baby food from. You should that right. There is a clue, you know, so, you know, gimmicky insurance is like cancer insurance, OK? You have health insurance that covers you. If you have cancer, you don't have heart attack insurance. Why are you buying cancer insurance? Because you already have health insurance. That's why you're not. And those are gimmicky things.

Another gimmicky one is accidental death.

Like you're more dead if you die by accident, you're still just dead. It doesn't matter. You're not double dead, you know. And so your family needs money regardless of how you die.

Well, I'm likely to die by accident. No, you're not.

That's why it's so cheap. It's a gimmick. It's why, you know, it's like an extended warranty that only covers one side of the television. The other side it doesn't cover, you know, it's like, all right, you know, it's that kind of thing. So you just don't get into that.

And then you have, you know, other other issues.

So, yeah, it's just a bad, gimmicky, ineffective, low return life insurance product for children and. Yeah, and it's it's yeah. It's one of those things where the parents that company knows you have this emotional need to when you have a baby, to do something good for them and think about their future and your noble calling as a parent. And they tap into all that. And so you crap. All right. Seth is with us in Dallas, Texas.

Hey, Seth, how are you? I'm doing well, are you doing better than I deserve? What's up? So I have a well made a genius decision and bought a car. I got it on a zero percent car loans and could potentially pay it off. It's a five year loan, but I could pay it off in about a year's time. Does it make sense for me to put that money in some sort of investment vehicle or should I hang on to the loan?

Has zero percent. I have met with thousands of millionaires, I've never met one that said, Dave, you know, I made all my money borrowing zero percent on my car and investing it. Sure. So the answer is get out of consumer debt, because that's what all millionaires do. They stay away from payments of any kind. All the studies, all the data points we have from 30 years of doing this all say that the people who build wealth are the ones that stay out of debt of any kind, or if they find themselves in debt like you have, sir, they work their way out as fast as they can.

And so I would either sell this car or I would get it paid off in about nine or 10 months. I can do that. That's pretty much what I was looking for. And then you take those payments, you never do this again. You pay cash for your cars from now on. And that's the shortest distance between where you are and millionaire. That's the point, because the payment, your most powerful wealth building tool is not the manipulation of interest rates.

It is your income not given to some stinking bank in the form of payments. And so stay out of the payment business and use the power of your income to build wealth with. And that's that's what the borrower is slave to. The lender means. It changes everything. When your income is completely freed up and you invest it and you just watch it grow while you're sleeping. I mean, it's just it just it literally is working for you. Money works harder than any employee you ever have.

It works all the time. It works 24/7. It never gets sick. It doesn't whine. It just works. It's amazing. I mean, it works hard. Brian is in Owensboro, Kentucky. Hey, Brian, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

How's it going? Good. So my question is, I have a hard time saving money. My wife gets on my back about not not saving, but my problem is, as I grew up, not having a whole lot. So when I get paid, I'm like, I want it. I'm buying it now instead of thinking about anything else, OK?

So I need to know, how can I make myself clear that I have and save for my family? You know, I'm already told. Are you? I'm forty three.

But can I give you one example? Sure. I'm getting ready to do a job in Spring Hill, Tennessee, next week at the GM plant. Yeah, I will be there for about three weeks and in that three weeks I will make about eleven thousand five hundred. Good for you.

And now you're growing up and you decided that you probably shouldn't spend it all on Friday and then say, thank God it's Friday, that it's Monday right now.

But my big thing is like I'm short on time.

I will make Rachel jump in here. What do you think? Well, Brian, I mean, I would I'm glad to recognizing it. So I would sit down with your wife. You guys need to do a budget together and you need to start saving, can you, to save a thousand dollars. You guys need to be working to get out of debt and then save three. Is it three to six months of expenses? And it's literally the habit, the habit of changing.

And you're always going to be a natural spender. It's OK. I'm a natural spender. Actually, you're a natural spender. But you if I'm not, why do you save?

Yeah, for me, my motivation to save is so that I can do stuff. Yeah. So for some people to buy something better later and I bet your wife would say she saves for security. She wants the level of security. We're going to be OK. I save so that I can do things. So it's not like you could never do anything again. Brian, you're just going to save for it and make sure you have that cushion, though, of of an emergency fund.

I figured out I can spend more if I save and I can give more if I say. And so I don't save for saving sake. I save for those other things. And that's why you can do it. There's a purpose to it. Yeah. That puts us are the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial piece and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace.

Jesus. 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, it 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 section or head over to Dave Ramsey Dotcom Eclipse Dave recommends. Thanks for listening. Feel like you're in a rut and living life, just going through the motions, build confidence in yourself and learn to trust the God who created you, check out the Christy Wright Show, where Christy inspires you to break through your limitations and create the life you're proud to live.

Hey, all, I'm Christy, right? You know, it's so easy to feel stuck. You live life just going through the motions, doing dishes, doing laundry, carpool lines and a whole list of commitments that bring you no joy. Why do we live like that? That's why I want you to check out the Christy Right show. Each episode will help you build confidence in yourself and the God that created. You hear more from the Ramsey network, including the Christy Wright Show wherever you listen to podcasts.

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.