Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollars Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show where dad is dumb. Cash is king and the paid off home mortgage. Taking the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice, I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. This is a show about you and your life, common sense for your dollars and cents, triple eight eight two five five two two five is the number.

That's triple eight eight two five five two two five.

Starting off this hour, Sarasota, Florida. Jaimie's calling. Hi, Jamie.

Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hello, Deakes doing today better than I deserve, what's up in your world? Wonderful. Well, Dave, it is no surprise that 2020 has been a very challenging year for everybody. Freaking dumpster fire. Absolutely.

That's a very good way to put it. I want something at least good to come out of this year. So I'll just go straight to the point. I have thirty three thousand dollars in savings. I own my house. Thirty two thousand. And I'm not going to lie. I'm very tempted to pay it off. So I could say I ended twenty twenty and something good that happened in twenty twenty one that I paid my house off. I understand that I would be depleting everything, but I do want to let you know that I do.

I bring about maybe 60 to 70 thousand a year and I do have a steady job. I'm very grateful for that. But obviously you know, maybe I don't know if it would be a good idea to pay off the home and then restart the so-called emergency emergency fund. And again, so. So what is your take?

Dude, you've done really good. Thirty three thousand dollars. That's more than most people ever seem to go. Yes.

And and the only 032 on your house are pretty good. You make 60, you got a steady job. Are you at your 100 percent out of debt other than that, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I'm on baby statistics.

So the way you're using your words, it sounds like you're single. Actually, no, I am married and with a child. Oh, how old's your baby? Yes, my baby is one and a half.

Oh, perfect. OK, good. Yes, very cool. Well, you are what's known as an abundance guy. You think in abundance. You don't think in scarcity. You think good things are going to happen. You don't think bad things are going to happen. Otherwise you be unwilling to go down to a thousand dollars to your freakin name with a one and a half year old, OK.

So, yeah, I am too. And so I'm kind of like you. And the way I'm wired, there's nothing wrong with being wired either way. You just kind of recognize what you are and say, well, that's going to affect my tendencies with money. Rachel's new book, Know Yourself, Know Your Money, talks about this kind of stuff, as a matter of fact.

And so but the thing is this. I have learned, in spite of the fact that I always believe everything's going to turn out. It doesn't always on the short term. On the long term it does. But on the short term, you can get kicked in the knee. As a matter of fact, with a young family and a one and a half year old, if you if you intentionally took yourself all the way down to almost no money, that's like sending out an e-mail to Murphey that says, come screw up my life.

Now you're asking for trouble, is what I'm saying. And yes.

And so the beautiful thing about when trouble comes and you have 30 grand in the bank, you just go trouble wronged house, dude, go next door to the broke people right now. Leave me alone. Trouble. I ain't here.

When you break something and you have money, it's an inconvenience. When you bring something in, you're broke. It's a freaking drama. And so that's this is the way things work. And I love your question. And I'm the guy that wants to be out of debt more than anybody else on the planet. So let me ask you this.

This is October. Thank you. Yes. And my brain is coming back now.

So could you not save up like three or four or five thousand dollars by the end of the year?

Oh, sure. I in fact, I actually I have three more paychecks coming this year and I'm probably saving about roughly about two grand each month.

So six grand plus one grand is seven thousand dollars and a household income of sixty. That's a little bit below your three to six months of expenses. But we could probably say that's an adequate emergency fund and we could probably give the mortgage company the the glorified pinky on on New Year's Eve.

Sure. And you would and you wouldn't you wouldn't have a problem personally with that. You think that would be a smart idea? Just kind of get rid of one thousand dollars?

No, that's not smart. 8000 dollars. Yes, I can go with.

OK, but even then, I'm going to hold my breath through February and build that own up a little bit more because I want to really help the emergency fund because I found that the emergency fund is MURPHEY repellent.

So but it's a really good question.

Number one, you got thirty three thousand dollars, your stud way to go. Number two, you're thinking I want to be out of that. Number three, you think good things are coming in your future. And I think it'd be a great way to end 2022 on New Year's Eve at the party push submit on the payment button and be done, baby.

But I want you to have the healthier your emergency fund is between now and then, the more comfortable you should be with the baby.

It's not me. I'm going to pay your bills, but I was going to say the more comfortable I would be. But I doesn't change my comfort. It changes yours so the more comfortable you should be if you have that emergency fund bill. So good question. Thanks for joining us. You know, over the years of doing the show that a lot of questions, I'm not poking fun at Jamie at all because he had a really good question. The number of people who say I want to do such and such with the emergency fund, if you ever ask yourself that, here's a way to solve it, OK?

Is what you're asking, an emergency? If the answer is no, then you shouldn't use the emergency fund for that. I think we're going to go on a vacation where he's part of our emergency fund, you have an emergency vacation. Now, some of you are so freaking immature and entitled that you have emergency vacations, but those of us that are grown ups, we don't have emergency vacations. Although you get to the point sometimes where life beats the crap out of you and you feel like you deserve a vacation, but if you don't me money, by definition, you don't deserve it.

OK, sorry, no whining. So Sharon and I were laughing about that this weekend, the first thing we bought once we kind of got in a cool position was we bought this little bitty brick house down on the lake. It was our lake house. It was just a little bit better than camping. It's kind of like house, like house, but we pay cash for it, of course, and we would drive down there. We had little kids and little kids and there were three of them driving nuts.

We love them, but they drive you nuts.

And Sharon would be getting down there on Friday to the lake house and she would always just say, I need a vacation.

I need a vacation, so then we bought the lake house and she'd like you to spend our vacation money. I know this is your vacation.

We're going the lake house. Yeah, but I got to work all weekend at the lake house. You know, it's not a cook. And still there's kids are still here, so, you know, I still have to work.

And so I actually had this I don't know what you call the thing, like a planter made at the local print shop and they engrave in the side of the the pottery and it says Sharon's vacation. And I put a fern in it and put it on the front porch of the lake house. We still have that thing 20 something years later. It's in the new lake house now, by the way. And which is way better than camping. But yeah, Sharon's vacation emblazoned in the side of the planter.

We all get there. We all feel like in quotes we need stuff. But it's not a need. It's a one. It's not an emergency. It's a one. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Well, we all have enough on our plates, right?

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So the Ramsey personality and I have been hanging out around Fox News for about 20 years. I had a show for a little while on Fox Business Network when it first opened up. I failed miserably. I'm horrible at TV.

I have a face for radio and but I do a lot of three minute and four minute type hits on the different shows over the years and all the networks. But certainly on FOX in the process of doing that, I got to be friends with a lot of folks there, and one of them is my friend Megyn Kelly, who joins us now from New York. She's kicking off a new podcast. Of course, she's not with Fox these days. She was there for about 13 years, did five presidential debates, has interviewed every who's who on the international stage in the last 15 or 20 years, a world renowned journalist, but also just a great lady.

Hey, Megan, how are you?

Hey, Dave. I'm great. How are you? It's an honor to have you. Thanks for hanging out with us today for a little bit. So honor is all mine. So a new podcast. Way to go. How fun is this?

You know what? This is the place to be for me, because I'll tell you, having worked for a brief stint at ABC 13 and a half at Fox and then another brief stint at NBC, I have realized No one, I'm no good with bosses.

I've been working for a boss anymore. Dave, that worked out so well. And number two, I just need to go someplace where I can say what I want to say. I'm like like a lot of Americans. I'm just I'm sick of being told what I can and cannot say. Thank B do. So I love the idea of just going to this alternate universe where I can say whatever the heck I want to say. You don't like it.

You don't have to listen. You like it. Stay with me.

Yeah, that's the reason the Dave Ramsey Show is the largest syndicated talk radio show in America that's not corporate owned. I own it. It's called the Dave Ramsey Show.

And so I get to say what I want to say because I freakin own it. And if you don't wanna listen, you can go somewhere else. I've been saying that for twenty years. It's fun.

You're going to like it honestly. And to your point, Dave, like when I was coming up with, you know, what I wanted to do and how it would look, I had a lot of offers for investments. Right. Like I'll pay for the whole thing as long as I can have this percentage. And in the end, I was like, you know what, screw it. I'm doing it myself. I'm going to set off on this thing.

We'll start small. We'll build in there if we do well. But I want to own it because I don't want anyone telling me what I what I can and can. I say I've had too many years of that. And it's just it's not the wave of the future, especially now with the total collapse of media. Yeah.

And they just are falling all over themselves. The but what's interesting, I'm you've already put a couple of episodes in the can and so see if you've had this experience. What's interesting is, is the the percentage of what you wanted to say that you did, that you were told not to say or told to say or something like that. It's very small.

It's just aggravating. Yes, in other words, we're going to we're going to get like 99 percent the Megan Kelly we already know. That's absolutely right, but the thing is, like political bias pushes you one way or another when you're in what they call legacy media now, right? And that's true at Fox. And it's definitely true. The other networks, even more so, I would say FOX is the most open minded to letting me say what I wanted to say within certain bounds.

And then the pressure is enormous elsewhere to to be, you know, one way or another. And I try to resist it as best I could. But at those big networks, you only have so much control over the final product because it's like working for a newspaper or the editors get their hands on it and then it's no longer your product. So I'm sick of that. But more than that, you know, our country is getting into this weird place where you can't discuss sensitive issues openly and freely.

It's basically just agree with my point of view or you're terrible and your job is terrible and I'm going to cancel you.

Yeah, you're a bigot. You're transphobia, xenophobia, sexist. You're all the folks and stop talking. And that's just no way forward. We have to be able to talk about everything. It's un-American to be stifling people. And now you're getting to people around dinner party, starting to whisper their thoughts to you. And I'm thinking to myself, what is this East Germany where she's like, you speak up. And now more than ever, people do need to speak up, because I think we're being we're sick of being shamed into submission on things that are dicey and complicated and require complex thought and idea exchanges.

Well, the interesting thing is when you actually can have a discussion without screaming or yelling with someone that has a brain that disagrees with you, you end up learning something. But when you completely know, when you completely do away with that.

What was the phrase? That was a good phrase, shamed into submission.

Yeah, silence and submission. Because, you know, what's happening is first sort of the mob wants to silence you and then they want you to submit. Right. To sort of battle. And then what really happens is you need to join them. It's actually not enough just to be neutral. And here's the problem.

I was I was just preparing a talk I'm giving in this week and this morning, just afternoon.

And the problem is, even if you acquiesce, even if you go along with all of it, there's one little tiny sliver that they still get pissed off about.

You can't make these people happy. Absolutely right. It's funny because this one woman who works in one of my doctor's offices, she is a lesbian, she's got the tattoos, she's got the piercings, she marches against Trump every other weekend. She's very barely woke. And she was on some website. And I use the term like she guessing about somebody and she started to get shamed. You know, it's a she. How dare you presume the pronoun?

And she basically looked at this group and she was like, look, I do enough, you know, I'm totally OK.

Leave me alone. But there is no amount of focus for the work. I was just sick of it. It's like, come on, you're a good human being. Just get off of it the least least generous lens used on every human being. And it's just not the way we are. We actually have real problems we need to be focused on, not this nonsense.

So the new podcast, The Megan Kelly Show, and I assume you've got it on all the platforms.

I do. And if you're anything like my mom that you, Dave, but any of your listeners got to go to the app, the App Store on an Apple podcast and just download that button. And then once you've got the podcast button on your phone, you type in up that simple. My mom, like, I don't even know what that is a podcast. How do I even get that on my phone? I'm like, I will send you an iPhone with a little button already on know.

Once she gets addicted, though, she'll be on. I mean, my wife is podcast fanatic and I never listens to me, of course, but she's a podcast fanatic. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a really catchy. Yeah. It's really, really a big deal. Very cool.

So you got our friend Ben Shapiro on one of the first episodes. I see.

He's one of the reasons I'm doing this. I know Ben well and have been friends with him for a long time. I was actually one of the first people to put him on TV on the Kelly file, and people were like, he talks really fast and he's really incendiary and he's really young. And I was like, shut up. He's a star.

And he's so we're good. He's so smart. So smart. He actually is the smartest guy in the room. You know how most people think they are. Yeah, he really is. And he's so smart. He's not even self-deprecating about it.

He's like, yeah, I am and I know.

But anyway, so he called me up about a year, a year ago and he was like with an MBA. I don't know what you're doing next, but consider this podcast world and I didn't really know much about it. I at that point, I'd only been listening to like Dateline, which I highly recommend, by the way, just falling asleep to the sounds of murder is very soothing. But he was telling me how it could be made into a viable business for news and kind of walk me through it.

And I went out there and met with him and his partner, Jeremy Boring, his business partner, and they helped me a lot. So they're one of the reasons I'm into this now.

Yeah. Met in the cigar room with a dog. That's right, yeah, right, been in been in that room myself. Yeah, but that Rose Garden speech, my neighbor now he and Jeremy are moving to Nashville. You know what, and who could blame them? They're having the same situation in L.A. that I'm having on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Yeah, not what it used to be, you think?

Yeah.

Yeah. So they they got out of California and are setting up shop here as our neighbors. I've been in touch with them and we're friends as well. So I'm excited for you to have him as one of your first guests. And then the second is with Hugh Hewitt, huh.

Hugh Hewitt came on to talk about the presidential debate last week. We had Glenn Greenwald, who is he's a lefty, but he's unconventional like you. Don't you never know where he's coming at things from an episode with Ted Cruz, but I just dropped one yesterday are not sorry today with Adam Carolla, which I have to say I absolutely love. I hope people go listen to this because it's all about Cancio culture. And Adam is like a seven on that movie.

No Safe Spaces guy knows what he's talking about. Well worth a listen, Megan, we're proud for you to be praying for your new show. The Megan Kelly Show were great podcasts or found good luck and God's blessings. Thanks, Dave. Right back at you. At Takeover's, we believe a great pair of cowboy boots should be comfortable right out of the box so you can stand with confidence no matter what the day throws at you.

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My co-host here on the air today, Ramsey personality number one, bestselling author Christy Wright joins me.

Open phones here at eight eight two five five two, two, five. Let's go to Daniel in New York. Hi, Daniel. How can Christina help? Oh, hi, Dave and Christy.

Thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate it. Sure. What's up? So, 60 years old, work for the company, a Fortune 100 company for 32 years now and wasn't planning on retiring for another three, maybe five years somewhere in that window, but was just offered a early action pension, early retirement plan. I don't know how to evaluate it since I wasn't really looking to retire in the first place, but the numbers seem pretty decent that it's something to think about.

Hmm. So what are the numbers? All right, well, the second part of it is they want to also buy out my pension and that amount is close to it, just around it off about eight hundred thousand dollars.

OK, well, you lump sum your pension, you lump sum your pension, that's not a big deal. I mean, it's a big deal. 800 grand. But I mean, it's not that's not really a big plus. So what are they giving you? Severance.

Severance would be approximately 18 months of my annual of my weekly salary for basically you. And then what do you make of your 200000? OK, so they're offering you 300 K to walk, right? OK, and you were only going to stay three more years anyway, so it's halfway through that, right? Correct. What do you do? And certainly. OK, an insurance agent, I work for a company, I'm not a broker, I don't have my own business.

I work for them.

OK, what type of insurance, property and casualty is there a non-competing involved in this? Yes, two years, I believe, and it doesn't mean they can't work in the same industry. I just can't approach my current clients with their clients. That's OK. All right, cool. So so you're going what are you gonna do now? Well, that's the thing I wasn't you know, I would go back to work forever, so I really don't have anything to do.

But just to throw a little bit of a spin on this also is the reason I was going to work three to five years is I have a rather large mortgage on my house. And we were in the process of thinking either downsizing, selling the house and using the cash to buy something else and adding a little extra cash and buying something, you know, outright or paying the mortgage off, which is why I needed that extra time. So that's going to throw me off to throw you off on the downside.

And here's the thing, Daniel, that I hear in your voice, you're going to do something, even if you take this and walk, you're going you're the kind of guy that likes to work. You're going to do something you may not be doing exactly what you're doing and the exact same way, but you're getting a year and a half jump start plus your pension. And I think, you know, you can still work three to five years. You just might be doing something different.

I don't think it's derailing your goals, I guess, is what I'm saying, just because your goals are not going to be achieved in the timeline and way that you thought they would. Doesn't mean they can't be achieved. It's just forcing you to look at a little bit differently.

How old is this information? How old is it? Yeah, I mean, once you find all this out. Well, September 1st, she has to make a decision by October 16th. OK, so you've been stewing on it for a month, OK? Exactly. And I'm going vacillating between looking for what's going on.

Well, if you stay, what does that look like? You stay in the position to. Yes, if I. I don't think there will be much with any change at all. What I do. Well, in some ways I don't think so. So I think staying wouldn't cause any issue, except that if I do say I'm going to do go to retirement. And so there is no option of a lump sum pension, you have to take the annuity at that point.

That may change. But right now that's the way to do it. Mm hmm. This is just a special option if you take early retirement now.

So really, we're talking about the lump sum pension versus 150000 dollars off the back. Yeah, I know. 200000 are not another 300 off the back side.

If you work three more years or 18 more months, not beyond the 18 months, it's another 300 schwing. So, you know.

I think you're partly grieving that they did this to you after 32 years and it has taken you 30 days and you're still kind of hurting and pissed a little bit.

I would be if I were in your shoes, maybe I'm extending my emotions onto you, but that's how I would feel after 32 freaking years. So, I mean, God, guys, come on. It's not like you are closing up. So but I'm taking the eight I'm taking this because of the 800 K, and I'm going to roll that to an IRA because obviously when you die, a pension dies with you, except for survivorship benefits.

If you're your wife, if you got them, maybe even even then when you're both dead, the money's gone forever.

It stays with the pension.

When you roll almost a million dollars into a mutual fund, it stays in your name upon both of your death. So this is an eight hundred thousand dollar swing. I'm taking this deal. So then the only thing I've got to decide then is what am I going to do in my 60s?

Which can be a very, very productive decade income wise, because you're very smart now, you've got a lot of stupid stuff in your rearview mirror. I mean, you can get you can go open an independent agency and start selling PNC and just, you know, and make 150, 200 a year, probably fairly quick, you know that.

You know the drill. An independent an independent agent just set up several lines of business, right, you know how to do it right. And, you know, you probably get that get some income coming in within six months. I mean, by summer, you're going to be making money. So you do what you want to do if I'm in your shoes now. Again, I didn't work one place for 32 years. I'm very entrepreneurial. So this stuff doesn't scare me like it does some people.

But I'm gone, dude, 800 grand worth of gone.

And just just to give you one of the information out there that the severance package, these 18 months applies, I'm not sure exactly how they work this out, but the bulk of it could be rolled over. They're going to dump them into a pension plan where you can roll it over. Also, if you can survive without it, that's amazing. If you need the cash flow to eat, then you may have to take it otherwise. Right? Don't dump it in there if you're going to need it to open the next business or to eat with how much other money you got.

Other preferred between my wife and I, one point one million, in addition to this, in cash, you can get your hands on early retirement.

That's that's retirement money. In addition to this.

That's without this if you have any money that's not tied up in retirement. Yes, about one point two million, mostly money markets and things that aren't. So you've got a two and a half million dollar net worth plushest pension. Just right. Yes, so why don't you paint off your house what you own Mr. Brown Daniels, like, dang it, that minor detail. How much is this expensive house?

Well, it's not that expensive. Well, considering where I live, how much? 870000.

OK, yeah, I'm paying off the house this week and I'm taking the new job and I'm going to have some fun. Dude, you're worth several million dollars. You got no issues here. Don't don't stick around there. They don't want you and you don't want to be there. And there's 800000 dollars on the table. All kinds of reasons to go.

Yeah, it's like what you said, Dave, to it's there's the grieving process of I didn't see it turning out like this. I had a plan of three to five years, Zazie. I was like they came to him with this offer.

And you're grieving that it also, to your point, the alternative, if he would have stayed, you think about like, well, what's that experience like at a place that no human, no human, no human likes should be told they're not him?

No, not important. No, I'm important. Don't tell me I'm not important. Yeah. Pisses me off. Yeah. Don't tell me I'm not important. I think I'm important. You think you're important. Right.

Well I'll tell you thing. He's like I've been loyal for 32 years and I mean, you know, there's a there's the prosody. They are I mean, we have no intellectual allusion to that.

But the four year old version of us that's inside of all of us goes, but that's right there.

All right. I do it to you. Not fair. The man treated me like I'm not important. We have that inside of us. I do it. I can hear that kid's voice, man and man. I get some of my biggest fights when somebody treats me like I'm not important.

So I think I'm important and that's the dumbest thing. But we do it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Christy Wright Ramsey, personality number one, best selling author, is my co-host today here on the air, open phones, a triple eight eight two five five to two by Bryans in New York.

Hey, Brian, how can we help you do? How's it going? Good man. What's up?

Oh, you know, of course. And, you know, I feel like I'm in a pickle here. So I'm currently I'm currently a student and I work full time. You know, I did something stupid. And I you know, I ended up buying a property and closing this week with that property.

Besides that, besides this property, I don't have any any other debts, I paid off my car bomb, got a car, paid off, I got all my predictions paid off and everything. So the closing was today or it's later in the week, later on this week. So what happens if you don't close? It's well, it's under contract already. I would talk to the attorney and they said, once you sign this contract and everything, it's it's it's it's like don't no, it was not done until you close it.

A contract as you made, I promise to close.

How much money do you put up? 4000. OK, you lose that and and I have an additional 10000 that's due on the close and you know, you won't lose that because you're not going give it to. OK, so how how stupid is it? You said you did something stupid, that's what you said.

Well, was it 5000 dollars worth of stupid? Well, I don't know, I mean, I you know, my parents are pushing me to get out of the house and I was doing when I was just using that as a motive to get out of the house and it not the same way as much as rent.

So now you're now you're arguing with yourself. You called and said I did something stupid. Now you're telling me how stupid you're not stupid. Well, just stupid or wasn't.

I don't know. I tried to justify it. Yeah.

Yeah, I think. OK, justify it. All right.

So are you what do you make of your. I make thirty two hundred take home around seventy thousand a year salary.

OK, and what is the house payment supposed to be if you close this home is supposed to be 13 months, OK? Right.

And so why do you think this is stupid? Why did you tell me this was stupid?

Because I still have student loans and I'm still in school, so I still have a lot more school to go. But I just I just felt like it was the only alternative since it's like a good alternative because of the price and the interest rate and everything that I was able to get in and especially considering the same thing as any market around where I am.

OK, so what's your question for us? I'm questioning to see if I don't know, what should I do? I don't know what to do. I mean, I still have a lot of student loans and I. Am I OK? No, you're not OK. OK, you're not OK. You bought a condo you can't afford and you're broke. You're OK. It's not like all of a sudden I'm going to tell you this is smart, but I'm just trying to figure out where you're going to go.

Is it going to bankrupt you?

I don't think so. But was it a bad idea? Yeah, definitely a bad idea. And I guess the question I have for you as well, Brian, is what will you do if you don't close? Will you continue live with your parents? Would you rent like looking through your options and your scenarios here? Because it is an interesting question, because you're at this fork in the road with, like, you know, a date to decide, you know, you haven't closed.

We got 5000 dollars on the line. You know, you're right in the middle there.

How much is in your bank account? Right now, at the moment, it's around twenty thousand, OK? Where'd that come from? Oh, just a bunch of savings and let's consider it after I paid off my car, which cost like twenty five thousand as well.

And you have a hundred thousand and student loans. Yeah. Yeah, a 100000 student loans. Yeah. OK, I tried to pay off some of the items.

OK, so here's what you got. You have two choices. One is you walk away from a deal that you made a promise on and you lose the 5000 dollars. They could sue you, but they won't. And you go rent an apartment and you move out because Dad's already told you to leave and he's right. OK. And then you start working on your student loans and then you save up and buy a house later if you get a student loan debt.

Of course, that's what we would have signed you up for because you knew when you called, we tell people not to buy a house while they got student loan debt or a bunch of other debt, for that matter. You knew that. That's how you started this conversation. OK, option number two, as you close on the deal, you move in. And you buckle down and you say, I have no life until I get the rest of my school paid for and I clear these student loans.

And don't talk to me about going on vacation because you're special while you're in the middle of this, I will knock you out, OK? You have nothing to do but clean, get you a big shovel and shovel manure for the next four years.

That's all you get to do because you've got a pile of manure. You could also get from a roommate, possibly, Brian, you could possibly sell the car. You're in New York.

Don't know how much you need a car, but you and thousand dollar car, when you make 70, you can get creative here.

You can go ahead and sell the car and get a five thousand dollar car, too. And then let's start working on these student loans after you move in as fast as you can. But dude, you have to cut down to nothing. Beans and rice, rice and beans, and you got to clean this mess up and you need to quit making decisions based on you feeling trapped. Every time you tell yourself you're trapped is right before you do something stupid.

All of us or that desperation precedes stupidity.

It has in my life, my whole life, every time I can look back, go, that's the dumbest thing I ever did. It's always because I convinced myself in my little brain that I was desperate. And you feel like you are painted in a corner with two options and you never just have two options. You have lots of you can get creative and you have a lot more options. I would love it if you would speak to the whole renting versus buying thing, because I think that his thought process, though, a lot of people go through that.

Well, if I'm going to rent, I'm just throwing money away. Speak to the whole the reason the baby steps are in the order of buying a home after you're out of debt and it's not throwing away money when you rent and do it in the right order.

Well, because landlords have to pay the bills. And if you're the landlord for yourself, you get to pay all the bills. People say, oh, well, I can rent for X and for even less I can have a payment. Yeah, even less plus or minus the heat in their system you get to fix plus or minus the hot water heater that goes out plus or minus the increase in taxes, plus or minus the increase in freaking insurance, plus or minus.

You get to pick up all the big boy bills when you the owner. Yeah.

And so this calculation people use this the same price to rent as it is to own per month is stupid because you do not know what you're talking about. You have left out all these real world expenses of owning a home.

Owning a home is more expensive in a given year than renting. The exact same home right beside each other is more expensive in a given year to own it than to rent it in most markets. Yeah, there's some exceptions, but by and large, that's the case. Now, where home ownership comes into play is a long term view, but you can't do the long term view when you are broke.

Yeah, well, I would imagine most people going through this thought process are first time home buyers. They've never bought a home. So they know that like you're talking about like, oh, 13 at all or starting out. It's the same. Let's just put it towards a house. It's not wasted money. They're now renting, renting while you're working. A plan to get a solid foundation under you is not wasted money. It's called patience. It's not wasted.

You're going to come out ahead over a 10 year period of time, a 20 year period of time, if you will, rent until you get out of debt and have your emergency fund and then have your down payment and not be an impatient, immature.

And I deserve this. And I'm going to go buy a condo because it's the same price. And and your parents told you to do it. You know, it's always great.

And so so you just you can't you have to look at things long term and then it makes sense to own a home. Yeah.

And I'm a huge believer in real estate. I own a bunch of real estate. But the point is it's not cheaper in the coming 12. Yeah, in the coming 14.

And you cannot afford a thirty five hundred dollar heating system when you're freaking got car payments coming out your ears. Sallie Mae has her own bedroom. You just and this is what happens to people and they go, yeah, I thought renting was cheaper, I thought owning was cheaper.

It's not it's so you got to stay in it.

You got to stay in it. Think long term. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Once again, you made The Dave Ramsey Show, one of the top four most popular podcast last year to get your daily dose of motivation and inspiration from the Ramsey network. Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcast. Money isn't the only thing we talk about around here, get life changing advice on your career from my good friend and career expert Ken Coleman.

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