Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollars Car Rental Studios, that's the Dave Ramsey Show. That is dumb. Cash is king and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Dr. John Timoney Ramsey personality 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 two five.

Chad starts off this hour in Provo, Utah. Hi, Chad. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, John and Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my question is, we're fairly new to the baby steps, we've known about them for a long time, but we're currently on baby steps. Number two, we own a duplex that we used to live in. And if we were to sell that, we would be able to go straight from baby step two to baby step four or five and six.

But I do have a few reservations about that. And so I'm just wondering, what would you what would you do in my situation?

We don't recommend folks sell their homes to get out of debt unless they're going to sell them anyway.

We do. We own another home that we live in currently. So used to live in this duplex. And also it's a it's a rental.

It's a rental now. We moved out about five years ago and held on to it. The plan was to just keep it and use it as an investment property.

But OK. And so much debt. Do you have. What's the currently about seventy five thousand dollars, what's your household income?

Household income is around 90 thousand dollars. OK, well, what does 95 with with the income from the property?

Let's just take a set of scales and put the rental house on one side of the scales and the number of years that it's going to take you to pay off 75000 making ninety, which is two years.

OK, no more than that. So do you want to fast forward a year, get out of debt plan by two years? Badly enough to sell the duplex? There's not really a wrong answer here because you can get out of that fast enough. If you want to keep it, you can keep it, but you might want to be out of debt more than you want to duplex. And that would be a not a wrong answer to. Right.

And that's that's kind of what we're looking at. One of the things that we have going on, my wife works as a cosmetologist, hairdresser, and so she's taken a hit this year here in Utah and she's been able to work that any time she is feeling under the weather or a client is feeling under the weather, they basically have to cancel. So income goes down there. Also, we have a daughter that last year was diagnosed with type one diabetes.

And so we're fully funding our HSA. So that takes some of our money there. And so.

So do you want to do you want to sell the house? I kind of do some of the reservations I have are, you know, it'd be nice to be out. You want to be in those later steps, but possibly, you know, having that physical aspect, there is kind of a hedge against inflation. And we don't know what all this printing of money is going to do, whether or not there's going to be some major inflation that goes with that.

OK, all the things that you know about your life and all the things that you perceive about the future, which of these two avenues gives you the best life and the most wealth ten years from today. And that I don't know why I go back and forth, I can tell you this, but that's how you're going to answer that.

That's how you're going to have to answer the question. You know, every decision has some pluses and minuses. There are a few decisions that don't have some minuses. And you can make a list of the pros and the cons on keeping the duplex, a list of the pros and cons of selling the duplex and getting out of debt.

I think I hear that the reasons that you bought that you wanted to own real estate in the first place are the only reasons you're trying to keep it, even though your whole situation has changed and you're stuck with your old I think you stuck with your old reasoning and that and you're trying to use that in your current reasoning. And so I think you're I think you're selling the duplex, but I'm OK. Dave Ramsey is OK with you doing either one.

If you want to roll up your sleeves, buckle down.

And in the midst of the diabetes, in the midst of the irregular income, in order to hold onto it and fight through the dad and get rid of it in the next two years and beyond, beans and rice for two years, there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's not against our plan, you know. So you go do what you want to do.

I and again, I'm somebody who would want to sleep at night and knowing my my daughter's clear, my regular income, we can weather that because I don't know anybody anything in the world. Right. But I think it comes down to a risk tolerance. Right. And in exactly what to do. And it beans and rice. I find this a lot that especially people who are tend to be more anxious, tend to be more control oriented. Man, you can project into the unknown, mysterious future any normal number of wild scenarios, man, and they can paralyze you in the present.

And you just got to sit down and make some decisions.

Once you make it, go for it.

Yeah, I think you're selling it because I think you're going to get more peace that way. And I think you're probably going to end up with more money that way at the end of the day.

And are we going to have hell to pay with all these trillions of dollars? Yep. Right.

Someday we are right. I mean, I'm I have a lot of people in my world. I have you know, when they get to the end of their career, they. Right. The world's coming to an end book, of course. And I'm not going to write that book I promised myself long ago. So the world is going to come to an end, but I will not be predicting it.

And that includes all of this ridiculous debt that Congress has continued to pile up my entire life. And it's unbelievable. And yes, eventually there's going to be some kind of a reckoning. But give yourself peace now.

I remember reading the book, Bankruptcy 1984. Oh, no, 1994, 1994. That was a book that came out scared to death.

Yeah, I thought, well, it was a it was a, you know, a scientific detailed with economic with proven great economic minds that the that the hockey stick of debt was going to crash the economy in the year 1994.

Hmm. Probably can't even find a copy of that book now though. You can. There's one on my shelf. I kept it because I wanted to remember not to write that book, but I think it was Nassim Taleb.

It says everybody's throwing darts backwards and somebody hits and they turn into the hero of the super predictor of the world, right? Yeah. Eventually enough people throw a dart backwards. You're going to told you so. Yeah. You can never do it again, right?

Yeah. It's it's not a repeatable act. Right. So anyway, all that to say if I woke up in your shoes, what would I do? I love rental property probably more than you do. And I would sell it because I would want the freedom faster. And it just goes to show this rental property doesn't mean you can save up cash for another rental property later. And it's a lot more peace. Right. And later in your journey.

And it's not like you're going to lose the ability to ever own hard assets or ever owned dirt and bricks and mortar. And, you know, if I were in your shoes, I'd be done with it.

But, you know, as a matter of course, on the show and giving advice, I don't know if it was a car, I'd sell it in a heartbeat. But it's a but it's a rental property and there's some reasons to continue to fight for it if you want it. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Not only do I.D. thieves commit crimes related to financial fraud, but now we have to deal with home title fraud, thieves are using your personal information to take ownership of your home so they can take out loans and you end up with a pile of debt and foreclosure notices.

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Today's question comes from Lisa in Kentucky. She writes, My husband and I are debt free. The house that we live in was purchased as a gift to us from his parents. The house is completely paid for. However, there's always a however, Dave, the house is not in our name. I do not feel secure without the house being in our name. We have a great relationship and I trust my in-laws, but I have an issue with this.

What should I do? So my first thought here, Dave, is if somebody buys a house for you and gives it to you, but it's not in your name, it's not your house. Is that a poor way to look at that? No, it's not like they bought a house and let you live in it. No, there's not it's not a gift until it's in your name. There you go.

So is it out of line here to have that conversation?

Yeah.

And I think the way you always have a conversation like that is it's very, very important to put a lot of icing on the cake before you start talking about this and the icing that a lot of sweetness and that's gratitude. Absolutely. How grateful you are. And I would never want to seem ungrateful and we're not ungrateful and we are so thankful and so forth. It does make us uncomfortable that it's not in our name.

And we want to know when we're going to get it into our head or we're getting a will done and we need to make sure all these assets flow in a certain place.

That's fine. But but bottom line is, is that this is weird. Yeah. Yeah.

I would not give my kids a house and leave it in my name. OK, it's just because then it's not their house.

It's their house. Yeah. I mean, let me give you an example, OK?

Her father in law is working second shift and he falls asleep at the wheel and he goes across centerline, hit somebody and a kid is killed on the car.

They're taking that house to take in that house.

That's right. Because it's his asset when they sue him for five hundred dollars million. The judgment line will be on the house. That is not hers.

Right. Hmm. And that's called an accident, right. That I probably say the father never did anything wrong.

No, no. I didn't call him a drunk one. Drunk driving. I didn't call him anything. I didn't say anything negative about it.

Right. But it's just, you know, he could you know, he could have a business go bad and get an IRS wrestling. And guess what? They are selling his own all of his assets. All right. And this house is his asset, not hers. Right. So and the other piece of advice I would just give you is you don't talk. Let your husband talk. It's his parents. You can sit there with a smile on your face, and the only thing you're allowed to say is how grateful you are.

Right. I want you to know how grateful we are. Right. You're not allowed to make the. My body language or grimaces or words that are part of this. Conversation that has at its essence, conflict in it, because you're going to get labeled as the cause of it.

You're going to be labeled as the descension in the family. Yeah, right. Yeah, the evil. It would have been OK if he's my son, but his wife got involved. There you go.

So they say something along the lines of, well, we will we're not comfortable doing that now, but we will in my head. I immediately switch to this isn't our house. We are living rent free of my parents house. We now are saving up for our own place. And then I'm off to the races there. Exactly.

I'm going to you're not going to lose sleep over it. Thank you. What are the free rent? Are you going to use that to save up and buy my own house? I'm not going to throw a fit about it. I'm not going to whine about. We're going to go buy ourselves a house.

Yeah, well, you said it was a gift. We're moving on. We're moving on. We're just going to look, if you're not going to put it in my name, it's not a gift. You've got to have that clear logic in your head. So the other thing about this, Lisa, is, is that you want need to hear loud and clear from John. We're saying you're right. Absolutely. Yes, you're right. You're not crazy.

This has got some weirdness on it. There's something weird here. And I don't know what it is or maybe a simple thing that they've they haven't had good tax planning, that nobody showed them how to do it without getting in it, without getting a gift tax bill, because, you know, if they'll see a good tax planner, they can teach them how to do to transfer an asset that size as a gift without having any gift tax under the Unified Estate Gift Tax Credit and one piece of paper with their filing of their taxes this year.

And unless they have an estate over twenty million dollars, it won't affect their estate taxes a dime. So there's lots of ways to do this. I may just not know how to do it. And there's, you know, but but if that's the only reason. But I'm going to guess and say that's not the reason.

I know something about this. Feels like Dave Shepard. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And there's the daughter in law asking. Right. Interesting that the son didn't ask the question. He's the guy I want to talk to in this. Yeah, he's the one because he's the one I have to do the talking right now. If this is handled properly, he needs to deal with his mama, not his wife, dealing with his mama.

Yes, because I can just tell you, this is how this is going to go down. Do you feel like paying off your dad is going to take forever? Well, it's a new year and paying off your debt won't take forever. We can show you how we do it all the time. It's what we do here. Ramsey Plus is where you get out of debt faster, you'll become debt free. You'll be spending money without worry. You're going to be building wealth.

You're going to be outrageously generous. We're going to show you how to do all of it. There are three apps that work together to help you pay off your debt as fast as possible. Of course, that includes Financial Peace University. Of course, that includes the baby steps tracker. Of course, that includes every dollar premium. Of course, it includes a whole bunch of other stuff. We're going to show you step by step, day by day, what to do for the first 90 days.

And you get a free trial at Ramsey plus by texting trial to thirty three, seven, eight, nine trial two three three seven eight nine. Jackson is in Oklahoma City. Hey, Jackson, what's up?

Hi there. How's it going? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

So I'm going to be moving to Florida in two days. I can't live in Oklahoma. I'm going to be doing work from my girlfriend's parents. They own a roofing company down in Florida and estimated to be between five and nine thousand a month. You know, it's a sales job. So it's kind of it's kind of a rough average. I have about 5000 currently in savings. And then so it's may not come back roughly with twenty thousand after the three months, they'll give me twenty five thousand dollars to put down.

I was thinking of putting down on a duplex and then renting out the other side of the house to make them pay for that mortgage. Do you think I should hold on and still work a little bit more and that's more money. Or whenever I come back based on the number, purchase a duplex. Yeah, I would just wait.

I appreciate the idea that you're trying to create some assets and trying to create, you know, a baseline here to start to grow your wealth. But no one wants you out of debt.

Do you have any debt?

I have a car loan that offers about three thousand let on. So, I mean, I can go ahead and pay it off. I could do that now.

Well, as soon as you make the move, one of the two things you get your first check in. Let's get that cleared up and then you need an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And then if you buy a duplex and 18 months later are married to this girl, you're going to sell the duplex and buy a house that she wants to live in because she's not going to live there. And so instead, I would just short circuit that and let's wait and pile up the cash for after the marriage to buy a house, OK?

And then I also have about eight thousand dollars in a mutual fund and then four thousand. And just like a lot on that account that I've been investing in, I'm going to pay the car off today, OK? And then whenever I get to purchase a house, do you think I should liquidate that? And then you get that as a down payment or go and keep those in there? Yeah.

You have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and a simple savings account just. Four rainy days and then everything else has gone down on the south because the goal is to pay the house off as fast as possible after you buy. OK, well, the main thing about Duplex is I wanted to hold on to it in the news as a rental property down the road, but you think I should go in there and purchase a home? Yep, yep, yep.

I want you to get some rental property later, but I don't want debt on the rental property. And and I don't want you learning to be a landlord while you're learning a new job and while you're dating the boss's daughter. Yeah.

I don't want you counting any future dollars that you're earning from the father of your girlfriend. That just man, you set yourself up for heartbreak, brother.

There's just so many things can go wrong here when they go wrong, they're all going to go wrong off the roof. Officer, I don't know what happens. So, yeah, brothers. Yeah. Let's count those checks after they're in your hand, man. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds fun. So like you got an adventure ahead of you. Oh, that's the most passive aggressive thing I heard you say today, Dave. It's an adventure. I would tell you're crazy what you are.

It's going to work out. It's going to be honest. It'll be good. It's going to be awesome. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today, this is The Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at eight eight two five five two two five. Rob is with us. Rob is in Atlanta, Georgia. Hey, Rob, how are you?

Hey, Dave. Today. How are you guys doing? Great, man. How can we help? I am baby step seven. Praise God for that. I mean, my wife, we've I've always been the nurse. She's always been a free spirit. I've found we are on baby steps. And by the way, thank you, Jack. But yeah, I've always found that on my sweet let financial peace university probably close to a dozen times, but I just recently found some like credit cards that she had had that I didn't know about.

Nothing on them necessarily. I'm always kind of had to drag her to meetings and stuff like that. And oftentimes I answer for this is go to counseling within to counseling within maybe twenty six years have been counseling many times. And her ultimate response to all of it is you are who you are. I am who I am. And now see the point going any further. Much so I'm kind of had a and I just think, well, maybe step seven, she has a job as well that she does that we don't incorporate into the regular budget.

She does kind of her own self care, like hair, nails and stuff like that.

Hmm. Just never been completely on the same page, but have great success ultimately. So it just in some guidance looking for some guidance from you guys. Yeah.

Brother, this isn't a baby step question. This is a yolla on two different pages, man.

And this I can't imagine this isn't showing up in other places in your relationship besides just financially. Where else does this show up?

Well, I mean, we're on as we are on the same page and in so many ways, spiritually, parenting, sexuality, things like that.

So so it's just money. She says you be you and I'll be me. I'll keep my paycheck. You pay for the rest of the house, I'll take care of me. I'm going to hide stuff and be deceptive, even though I know you're out like leading classes on how people can live whole connected lives. Everything else is just above board. No good.

Yeah. I mean, we have a very healthy. So here's what I'm telling you, that you don't have to do it.

You don't it's not as easy as you think it is, is.

And I mean, if I'm the first guy to tell you that I'm ashamed of the counselors I've worked with the shamed of your connect your community that surrounds you guys. But there are some deeper rooted issues here, because this is something that means a lot to you that you've put on the block, that you've gone up and presented yourself in a certain way to your community members, to your church, to your friends, to your family. And she's gone behind your back and been deceptive.

That tells me there's deeper cracks in this thing or just straight up about up her back and said, screw you, I'm to do whatever I want do.

I mean, that's the message. You got its message. I heard that.

Yeah, I'm a grown up. I have the right to do whatever I want to do. And, ah, you know, the fact that that is contrary to everything you believe doesn't matter. I'm going to do whatever I want. And it's not about whether you have a credit card or not. It's about the disconnection. Yes. This is about about marriage. I mean, if you're not on the same page and there's a level of disrespect here and, you know, if you were doing this to her, it'd be the same thing.

I mean, if and so I'm. You know, I don't know, John, I mean, he he said, you know, I'm more counseling, but I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm doing good.

So I don't know, what do you do to me? You sit down and you. Yeah, she's not being fully known and he's not being fully known. They're not being fully honest with one another. And the temptation here is he's trying to measure the success of his marriage by the size of his bank account and.

That's not how that works, and you can have a remarkable marriage without seven figures in the bank and you can have a train wreck of a marriage or marriage number six or seven or eight with seven figures in the bank. And at some point you have to sit down and say, I'm going to have to put all the cards on the table.

I'm heartbroken over this and I need to know what else is there, because I've never this is the first time I've ever heard of everything firing on all cylinders in a relationship and somebody saying, but I'm just I'm going to lie to you and deceive you and not do this thing over here, but everywhere else. It's OK. That's just not how that works, man.

So there's something there that people aren't incongruent in one area and can grow in another area.

Not that not that sharply. Right. Yeah. And so there's something else here. You're right. If she says I'm not going to counseling, what you may want to do is go on your own and say, I need to work on myself, because that's all you can control in this moment. You can't fix her. You can't solve her, you can't help her. She's going to have to want to be plugged in.

Well, and in here to find a good counselor, I can coach you on how to interact. Right, right. Differently than you ever have before. Maybe it creates a different result.

And without talking to her, there may be things that, you know, that Rob, you're bringing to the table that make you not a safe place for her to come home to that make her have to hide stuff because you're somebody that flies off the handle. You are fill in the blank, fill in the blank. So I don't want to dump all this on her. But I'm telling you is, man, it would be the first of my of my experience that you guys are just humming along, except for this one place where she lies to you and is just completely dismissive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just a strange. Yeah. Hey, thanks for the call. That's hard. Wish I could be more help but so the recommendation you were right Rob is more counseling that you get a different one and someone that's a little more bold and that calls you out on your stuff and also trains you up on how to interact with her to draw her back into the conversation again. Because couples who look at each other and say, yeah, you do.

You all do me. This is not a couple. This is a roommate, right? Yeah, it's a business partner. You have done well as a business community. Way to go, man. You made some money. Now, Sage is where the sage is in Tallahassee, Florida. Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

OK, my husband's job is probably about four months and we have about fifty eight thousand dollars in cash and about one hundred and eighty thousand in our four one K and about twenty thousand in stock. We are completely out of debt except for our home. We have paid one hundred thousand dollars of it off this last year. So I'm down to the hundred and sixty seven thousand. My question is he's 63, so he's losing his job. We're wondering if it would be smart to take off for a week and pay our house off.

If you keep it, if you had more money, I would, but it's going to bring you down to almost nothing, because by the time I buy that, you're going to have to pay the taxes on that 401k. And by the time you do that, I mean, he's over fifty nine and a half, so he doesn't have any penalty, but you have taxes on it. So if you told me at 600000 in there, I'd say, yeah, I'll do it, pay the taxes on that much and pay off the house today.

But you're going to end up with no nest egg and a paid for house.

Well, I have a rental house that's completely paid for that my elderly parents living in and so I didn't have with. Now, once they are no longer with us, that house right now is worth about probably three hundred fifty thousand. OK, so that gives you a little nest egg.

That's helpful. But still, how old are they? They're in their late 80s. OK, well, they're not in the best of health. I don't I don't want to set up a scenario by paying off the house with your only cash money that you've got, not counting this piece of real estate that put you in a position that your parents have to die for you to be OK money wise. That ultimately is going to happen. We all know that.

But I don't want you to buy. I won't be financially wishing for their death, you know, so that we can get some money because we're broke except for this house that they're living in. I don't want to do that. No, I'm not paying off the house today. You don't have enough cash to do that and and be in a safe place. And your husband's career is not over. He needs to go to work. He's going to have to go back to work.

And it's not done. This is not time to you're not in a position to retire. And I've got two parents that found new careers in the early 60s making more money than they did before doing something similar or totally different, depending on which one of my parents is possible. But you're going to have to suck up your ego and your pride and you can have to go do it. There you go.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Dr. John Maloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today. You can join us at triple eight to five five two two five when it comes to making big money or life changes like buying a home, getting married, having a baby, the last thing on your mind is making sure you have the right insurance. But maybe it shouldn't be the last thing. I get it. Big changes are overwhelming. What if not have, but if not having the time or the energy is what's keeping you from getting the right insurance coverage.

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Let's go to Rob in Portland, Maine. Hey, Rob, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. John, how are you? Better than we deserve. What's up?

Hey, I'm at a big crossroad in my life. I am going to be forty seven years old next month. I am also going to be at the twenty fifth year of my career as a police officer and eligible for retirement with a 50 percent pension. Wow. My question to you is I'm looking at making a dramatic change in moving from Maine to middle Tennessee to the metro Nashville area with my family, my wife, a 16 year old and a 12 year old.

And I'm not sure if I'm making the right decision or not, but making that move, I my pension will be approximately 50000 dollars and I'll have my wife's salary is sixty thousand. And we're fortunate enough that she's able to work from home. So she's going to be able to keep her job. And I am looking at starting all over and law enforcement down there, down there. So my pay hourly will almost be cut in half by starting all over from what I make now.

So I'm just looking for some guidance, if that's the right thing to do or if I stay where I'm at, I get two percent towards my pension for every year I stay. Why do you want to move a little bit? Well, we found Middle Tennessee because our oldest boy was stationed at Fort Campbell and we visited him quite a bit. He ended up marrying a young lady from there from Hendersonville and spent a lot of time there and liked it, like the school districts that we saw in.

So that might be a good change for us. Does it get you excited to think about moving? It does give me excited to think about moving, what I get less excited about is starting all over in a career that I've spent 25 years in.

There's nothing financially wrong with what you're proposing. Obviously, you're going to have plenty of income and you won't have any issue leaving Portland, Maine. I've been there many times. I love it. It's a wonderful town. Obviously, I'm a fan of Tennessee. I live in middle Tennessee and have my whole life.

And so, you know, it's not like you're downgrading your lifestyle or standard of living or quality of life or tremendously upgrading it. Because Portland's a quality town. It's not a it's not a dump. It's not a dump. It's a good place. And obviously, we're a little warmer weather here. Politics are a lot different than they are in Maine.

But that's another reason to south so long as you leave the politics up there.

You're welcome.

I agree. I agree. Hey, so, Rob, I did this recently after my family. We packed up and moved across across the country. And there is something I repeat often is the best part about moving is you have a new adventure. You got to you got to find new parts of yourself. You get to learn new things. And I relish that part. I like that challenge.

The worst part about moving is that you go with you. My marriage probably stayed the same. My insecurity stayed the same. My waistline didn't suddenly fall like all that stuff stayed the same. And so when I got to Tennessee, I had to work on those things that I was having to work on in Texas, too. And so whatever challenges you and your wife have or blessings that you have, all that comes with you. Right. And the common denominator in the stories.

Yes, that's right. So if you're up for an adventure, you're up for an adventure, man. And if you're not, you're not. But. I always say go for it, but that's just me. There's a tremendous amount of refugees moving into finishing the yard. I saw a great bumper sticker today. It was from a doctor who just relocated from California to Texas and had a sticker on the state of Texas. And it said, do not California our state.

And it was just as blunt as it could be. Leave it there. I meant well, all that aside, you've got the money.

It sounds like the other thing is, other than the fact that your job is going to be different forever, everything else could be undone.

Right.

You could move here and three years from now move back. You would not be able to move back into your role at your old job. But so what? And so if you hate it and the adventure. That's exactly right back. It doesn't have to be permanent. And theoretically, your pension stays put your wife's job. She can work from home. So you guys have a lot of options. You have a soft cushion to fall on if this thing goes sideways.

Yeah. And and there's no requirement that you take that type of law enforcement job and start over at a big cops rate.

I've actually my my old man had several compadres that would be in this very same situation. They would work all the way up till their late 40s when their first kid was about to go to college. They'd pull their pension and retire and then they'd go make 35 grand as a college campus police officer and all the kids go free.

Oh, that's not so. They get their pension plus a small salary and free tuition. All their kids go to college. That's not up.

And that's a smooth move. Right.

And getting it on the right college would be the chief of police. And that's it. Well, that you work through. So you've got all kinds of options, right? It's just thinking it's get your head around the adventure. And I love the adventure part.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm up for that part. Yeah. A good question. Thank you for calling in. Blaesing is with us in Detroit, Michigan. Hey, Bletchley, what's up?

Hey, Ryan, great, how can I help? So I am 22 years old right now, and I just graduated last year in May and coming out of college, I landed a full time job by God's grace. And I yeah. So I saved up a pretty penny in my bank account right now, about thirty one K. And I'm kind of wondering in this sort of stage in life, a lot of people have been telling me that I should start investing that money because it's just sitting in the bank.

However, I don't know what's the safest money you have saved. I have about thirty one thousand. Good.

Well we suggest in your 100 percent debt free, right? I am glad for you. We suggest that you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and I would set that aside. And your situation, I go and sit six months aside because you've done really well and you've done a great job saving money. And that's in a separate savings account, never to be touched except for emergencies that your rainy day fund. Only if something really bad happens do you touch it, OK?

It's not I want to buy a couch fund or go on vacation fund. Then the other money you can save past that you can begin to invest. And we suggest at that point what we call baby step four, where you start putting 15 percent of your income into retirement and and then in and around that as well, you can start saving for your first house. And so I would not save any more than 15 percent to a retirement of your income and anything above that you would if you want to save more, you would save it towards a house.

But I'm saying I would not invest it in a retirement account, a Roth IRA, a 401K. That's a Roth with a match in good mutual funds, all of that.

And so hang on, I'm going to send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover, to show you exactly how to do that. It's the step by step plan that we recommend, and it's a number one bestseller for many, many years in a row. Hang on. We'll help you with that. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show, you can listen to Dave, Rachel Kroos, Chris Hogan or the rest of the Ramsey network anywhere with the Ramsey network app on your smartphone, get you all of our full shows, browse by topic or send clips to your friends at to the App Store and download the Ramsey network app today.

Hey, if you've got questions about retirement investing and becoming an everyday millionaire, go bigger and broader with my man Chris Hogan on the Chris Hogan Show. I am excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to focus on your calls and it's going to focus on building wealth investing and how to become an everyday millionaire. Subscribed to the Chris Hogan Show wherever you listen to podcast.

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.