Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Camel, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. He's also the co host of Smart Money Happy Hour. And the host of the George Camel show. Very popular on YouTube. Both Ramsay network productions. And we'll be taking your calls. The phone number is triple 8825-5225 Brian starts this hour in St. Louis. Hey, Brian, welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hey, thanks for the call.

Sure. What's up?

My wife and I are trying to build a house, and we're discussing how much we should have saved ahead of time. I would like to have 100,000 saved, and she wants to start now. We're at about 40,000 saved.

Okay. So she isn't as concerned about the down payment as you are.

She's just excited to get going.

More so than concerned about the down payment, which you are. Yeah.

What does the payment process look like for this build? When is all the money due?

Well, we haven't started anything yet, and so I would like to save 100, hopefully get 200 out of our house, and then maybe go 350 total, and then just have 50 left to finish up.

When we're all done, what do you make which we could. What's your household in?

About 100.

Okay. So you're talking about a $350,000 build. Okay. And you got 40. How long does it take you to get to 100? If we went your way, what was your goal?

A little over a year.

So we're not arguing about 60. We're arguing about a year.

Right.

She wants to go now. You want to go in a year.

Correct.

Okay. Which means that if we go her way, you end up with $100,000 mortgage, not a $50,000 mortgage.

Yes.

Or $110,000 mortgage, to be precise. Right. Am I doing all this correctly, Brian?

Yes.

Okay.

How sure are you this home is going to cost 350?

Not sure. That's just the goal that we'd like to keep it under.

Do you have a blueprint?

No, we haven't started anything.

Do you have a builder?

We have nothing. Just discussions.

Do you own the land?

We have family land set aside.

Okay. Sidebar before. Sidebar before we keep going, family land set aside means that there needs to be a plat that is deeded to you. And you have the right to sell it someday if you all don't want to live there anymore. Otherwise, don't do this deal.

Right.

You don't build your house on daddy's land or your house on a lot that daddy gave you off his land, and he says you can never sell it. Neither one of those are both deal killers.

It would be purchased.

Okay. And you would own it. Oh, wait a minute. What does the land. The land is part of the 350.

Yes.

Okay. And then you would have full rights, emotionally, relationally, legally, to sell it later if you want to.

Yes.

Okay. I've taken that call a lot in the last 30 years. Someone that's stuck in a piece of property, because everybody's going to be mad if they sell their own house.

Right?

Don't do that. All right. Now back to the deal. So the land is how much?

40,000.

And that's included in the 350, did you say or not included?

Yes.

Okay. All right. We think. But we really have nothing to base this on except square foot. And you think you're going to build x square feet? I would tell you this. I'm in the middle of building a house right now. It took us nine months from the time we decided we wanted to. To get a blueprint, a builder, and a budget. Completed. Completed. I mean, from day one. And I've done it before. So I'm guessing that you can start on the process now, and it's probably going to take you close to a year.

Then you'll have that 100.

Yeah. Or not. It may take you nine months, and then you split the difference. Right. But I think you can go ahead and get started, because here's what's going to happen. When you start drawing this house and you actually start talking to builders and you actually start getting bids, you're going to find out your numbers are wrong.

Right.

Or they change, and I doubt they change down.

Right.

You got to watch the scope creep thing here. Yeah.

My fear is this thing is double what you thought it was going to be. And now we got to relook at. Is this the right next move, or do we just buy a place?

I think you got bigger issues than when to start. Okay. You can start today on looking at builders and looking at blueprints and getting it dialed in. And once all of that's done, if it's not been a year and you've got everything dialed in and you really can still do the numbers that you come up with, the real numbers, not hopeful numbers, then we can say, all right, I still don't want to start then. And what I would recommend back to your original argument is just split the difference instead of a year or starting now, let's say six months but believe me, it's going to be six months at least.

I don't think we're starting next week on this build. We got some time or not.

Builders aren't working as much right now, so you probably can find one that'll give you some attention because of the rates. That's a good thing.

Just slowed down a little bit.

Very few specs going up if builders that are working are doing customs. And so very few home starts on specs because the market's really slow with the high interest rates. Prices have held firm and have gone up in most cases, depending on the market. But the build rate, new home starts are down. Way down. Way down. And specs have just about disappeared in most markets. Wow. Which is not a bad thing. It's okay, except there's no freaking inventory. But for Brian, it's a good thing because he's probably going to get some good attention. Yeah. Versus builder and builder and subs. Builder and subs are going to be.

Available, going a million miles an hour. You don't want someone rushing through that.

Home build well, and you got 73 other clients instead of just. You may be his prize client right now. It's possible.

Now, on the financing side, how would you suggest Brian go through with this? Because there's different ways when you're working with a builder to finance it.

Well, if it's 50,000, he probably can go over at the credit union, just get a loan. Simple. If it's going to be 110, 150, then he's probably looking at a formal construction loan. And he'll have to get an appraisal on the plan. The general contractor, obviously, license will have to be shown to get the appraisal. And then they'll do that to get. And you'll have to get approved for your permanent mortgage. And they give you a letter called a takeout letter, which means that they will be there to take out the construction loan at completion. The permanent mortgage will.

It'll convert over to a conventional.

And you can do all of that with Churchill mortgage, every bit of that if you want to. But if you've got a little small loan, like a 50,000 out of 400 or 50 out of 350, probably just a credit union, they'll just make you a loan. Like a personal loan almost.

Yeah.

They're not going to put a lot of regulation on that. Not going to require the takeout letter. Not going to require an appraisal usually. But if you get up there over 100, then you're going to have a construction loan.

I just rewatched the big short over the weekend or this whole mortgage cris, man, it puts things in perspective how wild things were back in those days.

Well, the big short is all about all the fraud that happened.

Yeah.

And it was just people making up appraisals. And we got a whole new list of appraisal regulations in as a result of what happened in that movie. A whole different world. This is ThE Ramsay show. Look, life insurance has one job to replace your income for your dependence. If you die, that's it. So if someone tries to sell you high cost life insurance, that doubles as savings or an investment strategy scams like whole life, cash value variable life, then run term life from Xander. Insurance is a much smarter way to protect your family's future. Xander shops all the top companies to find you the most affordable term life rates. Then you can go build wealth with what you save, not by falling for those crap policies. Go to xander.com to learn more. That's xander.com or 803 5642. 80. George Camel Ramsay personality is our co host today. Open Phones at triple 825-5225 thanks for being with us, America. We're here to serve you. Our joy comes when we can show you what to do, and then you actually go do it and it causes you to win. Bing. Bing. That's how that works. That's what this has been about for 30 plus years now, and it continues to be.

Jody is with us in Springfield, Illinois. Hi, Jody. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi there.

Hey, what's up?

Well, I'm kind of embarrassed to ask this question, but I am a 50 year old widow who has been widowed for 15 years. I have helped put my children through college, and I have no retirement. So I am ready to start retirement, and I don't even know where to begin and how much to put in.

There's nothing embarrassing about any of that. It sounds good.

You make me feel good.

Sounds like you're a wonderful person. We just need to get on the ball, right?

Yes.

So what do you.

Make about. I was just sitting here figuring this out. I bring home about 36,000. Take home a year.

Okay. So your income is somewhere around in the low 40s, maybe 40. All right. What do you do?

I am a social worker.

Okay. All right. And do you have any debt?

I do not.

Your house is paid for?

Yes.

Well, that's great news.

That means most of your income can go toward investing. So you have zero saved right now.

Right.

What do you have in the bank?

Well, here's what I have. I have my emergency fund of $1,000. I have my three months. I have three months of my emerge in case something happens. But that's about all I have at this point. So I'm on the Dave Ramsey boat. I'm scared. It's to a point to where sometimes I cry because I'm like, what am I going to know? Because I don't know. Because when my husband passed away, I used life insurance and all that kind of stuff to pay my house off. So we had a roof over our head and all that kind of stuff because my kids were seven and ten when all of this happened.

Wow.

You've had a lot of life happen hard. I totally understand. We're not here to beat you up. We want to give you some good next steps to take. And if you're following the baby steps now, that puts you at baby step four because you have no debt, fully funded emergency fund. And really it's step seven because you have a paid for house. And so now the kids that are schools paid for. We got to put our own mask now put our own mask on. And that looks like investing for retirement as aggressively as possible. Do you have a retirement plan through your employer?

Here's what I have. And I didn't know what route to go, but there's a 403 b.

Okay.

I don't know much about that. I've kind of looked.

Do they have a match?

No.

Okay. I would not do that. Then I would first do.

Okay.

I mean, I may do some there, but we would first do a Roth IrA. Okay.

Just a plain Roth, not a traditional Roth, a Roth.

So what I want you to do is go to ramsaysolutions.com and click on Smartvestor and get a smartvestor pro in your area to sit down with you and they can help you run some calculations.

Okay.

Now let me give you an example. You bring home $3,000 a month. You do not have any bills except survival bills. You have no debt, no rent, no nothing. Okay.

Correct.

If you were to save, invest $1,000 a month for 15 years at 65, you're going to have right around a half a million dollars. Right around $500,000.

Really?

Yeah. Okay. What this means is not that you're rich and it's really not enough, but it's enough to make sure you're not cold and hungry.

Right?

Because it will produce. Then let's just reverse engineer this, which is very interesting. Okay. Let's pretend it produced 10% a year on the mutual funds after that. And that you retired and had no retirement income. And I suspect you probably have a retirement with your government agency, don't you, that they furnish you a pension?

Yeah, actually my husband, I get a pension off of him. But that thing.

But do you get a pension from your work when you retire?

No.

Okay.

It's just Social Security I pay into.

Yeah, absolutely. Which is horrible, but that's okay. All right. So if you had a half a million at 65 or 67 or whatever, and it was invested at 10%, 10% of 500,000 is 50,000 a year.

Right.

Without touching the nest egg, without touching the goose, it will lay 50,000 golden eggs a year.

Wow.

And so you'd actually be making more at retirement than you are now.

No kidding.

So you're going to be okay. That's the point. You're not going to be rich. But even if my numbers are off a little bit, and they might be one way or another, actually they probably are off in this case, because you probably will not be making $36,000 for the rest of your life. You'll probably be making more and so you could invest probably more later. Agreed.

Right.

Yeah. I did that based on $1,000 in your current income. So I want you to sit down with a smart vestor pro. And we don't know how the scenarios will compare to actual life, but you can run some scenarios like I just did, just to get the idea that I don't have to cry. Because if you'll start now, jody, and you'll start investing close to $1,000 or more than $1,000 a month, you get your budget tight and you do that, you're going to be okay. Matter of fact, you're going to be better than okay.

That makes me cry just being happy.

Yeah. So I want you to sit down. But it also needs to make you get on the budget and do it. It also means you to get on the phone and get on with those smartvestor pros and go sit down with them and learn. And let's get this stuff started. Not next week, not next here, now. Okay. Right now. Because every day you put this off, it gets harder. If you put it off a year, it's going to take 1200.

Yeah.

Don't put it off anymore. You put it off as long as you can. The fuse is burning. So I want you scared enough that I scare you into action, but I don't want you terrified anymore. So you're paralyzed.

I got it. I'm on it. I'm doing it. Today.

I love you. You're awesome. Call us back and let us know how it's going, okay?

Okay. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Sweet lady.

Love that. She just needed a little motivation, that she's not doing as bad as she thought she was. And the time to start is today.

What's interesting about what we do for a living, when we talk about getting out of debt or we talk about building wealth, numbers actually give you a result that gives you hope when you run math. Okay, I got $100,000 in debt I'm never going to get out. What's 33,000 a year for three years? I mean, it's $2,600 a month and you make 150,000. Shut your winding up all of a sudden. The numbers give you hope, right? The math gives you hope. In her case, it's $1,000 a month for the next 15 years and not missing a month and getting started immediately and getting good returns and good mutual funds, which probably that 403 B does not have. That's why I directed her away from that. Let's go first to the Roth IRa.

With more control, more options, a lot.

Better options, a lot better mutual fund options out there. Now, I can be off, and if you all want to argue with my numbers, that's fine, argue with my numbers. But here's the point. Get with it. If I'm half wrong, she's still going to have 25, $26,000 a month coming in, or 25, $26,000 a year coming in versus nothing, which your little plan, you critique, critic. People out there creates nothing. That's what critics create, nothing.

Well, the new one, Dave, is. Well, a million dollars isn't enough anymore, Dave.

That means a half million dollars is half of not enough. But it's more than you got if you be broke and crying about it. Hello.

Yeah, we'd love for you to have multiple millions, but, I mean, in this case, you could see 500,000 would still change your life.

The only way she's going to get to over a million is she's going to raise her income substantially so she could invest twice as much. Because 2000 a month for 15 years at 12%. My mutual funds have averaged 12% for the last 30 years. My personal portfolio. And I'm not a genius. The market has averaged 11.8% in the s and P. So, by God, shut up and go do it. So could you end up with a million dollars in 15 years? Yes. Two grand a month. That's it. Roughly. I mean, there it is ding ding. This is the Ramsay show. Fake it till you make it. It's popular career advice, but it doesn't work for very long. If you don't love what you do, you can't fake the enthusiasm and energy you need to win at work. You also can't fake your physical health and energy. Everybody knows we should eat more fruits and veggies. But fruit chews and veggie tips don't count. If you aren't winning physically, I promise you're limiting your opportunities to win professionally. Folks, I know you're going hard right now to pay off debt and get ahead professionally. You need another gear.

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Lifetime price as a preferred customer. That's balanceofnature.com with the promo code Ramsay for 35% off your first order. George Campbell Ramsay personality is my co host today. Open phones at triple 8825-5225 so our team handed me this. This is cool, George. In March, Andrew came and did a debt free scream with me. And Dr. John Deloney was on the air, and we celebrated him paying off $303,000 in 49 months. Wow. His student loans, car debt, home improvement loan, credit card, and a house paid off his home. And then we get an email from him that he had a chance to go back to his alma mater, his high school, to one of our foundations in personal finance classes, Warshaw High School. And he put this quote on Facebook. 2009 WHS grad. This is what they put on there. Andrew returned to his alma mater today to chat with the senior financial planning class about his financial journey and becoming debt free. He completed the Dave Ramsay class and paid off his debt. This class is also completing the high school version of financial Peace University. Thanks for coming, Andrew. Which is called foundations in personal finance.

Very cool.

What a great poster child. These kids are going, oh, this. I got to watch another video. And then they're seeing this guy who.

Was from their high school, who graduated from the same SAT, the same desk.

They sat, who has no payments in.

The world at a very young age, 100% debt free. Wow. Ding, ding, ding, ding. House and everything, and go in and tell the high school seniors it can be done. That's how we do it.

Some social proof.

Yeah. We've got the foundations in personal finance high school curriculum that now 6 million students have been through since we started it. It's been in 48% of the high schools. It's currently in like 40% of the high schools. And more and more states are now making personal finance mandatory.

I love it.

And so we've been adopted by, for instance, the Texas whatever, the Texas state school board or the adoption process to adopt the curriculum. And we were just adopted in Florida.

Oh, that's right.

A couple months ago.

It's a big one.

So Florida's got a big push, brand new push. Texas has had it for a while. And they've got their second push coming to get all the seniors before they graduate, through our kids, before they graduate at some point as a senior or junior, whatever, through a personal finance curriculum. And we have the largest, most successful one. And Florida just adopted ours as well. Now they've got other brands that they can do. So now each of the local school boards are selecting whether they're going to use Ramsey or whether they're going to use something else. But really excited about it and happy to be in Florida. Thanks, Florida. We appreciate you. And actually, I got to meet the state senator. We were down there doing an event in Orlando.

I remember that you met him, too.

He was in the green room.

It was incredible.

And that sponsored the bill that got passed in Florida to make personal finance a mandatory. It's not elected a mandatory class for graduation at a certain date in Florida high schools. And that precipitates then the high school curriculum or personal finance curriculums getting adopted. And we're one of the high school approved, adopted curriculums in Florida. So excited about that. So if you're around one of the Florida school boards or you're a teacher or whatever, and you want to push for our curriculum being in your school, we would appreciate it. And way to go, Andrew. Thanks for going back to your school. I don't know where Washaw high school is, but it's not on this. But it's pretty cool that a guy does that and goes back and speaks to the class.

Everyone going, they don't teach this stuff in school. We do now.

Yeah, it is in a bunch of the states now. And that's obviously been doing it a very long time, very successfully. We meet all the benchmarks. We've got a Ramsay education solutions department here that we've been running for, I don't know, almost 20 years now. And the guys and gals in that department that put this curriculum together that we use in the high schools are from the education world. And so our stuff meets is the easiest for teachers to operate because the lesson plans are done, the testing is done right. It's all built out to where it's as low lift as possible.

Former teachers going, I wish this is how it was created.

I wish everything was created this way because our guys are putting it and it meets all the educational benchmarks and legalities and so forth that we have to meet in order to be in a public school system. And so we do every bit of that. And, man, we're just thrilled, thrilled. So many people are getting able to do this. And this is cool that Andrew did that. That's a lot of fun. Isaac is with us. Isaac is in Huntsville, Alabama. Hi, Isaac. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Thanks for having me. How are y'all?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

So my wife and I are fixing to be going through our first divorce, and she's going to keep the house that we currently have. And thanks to a wonderful support system, I'm going to be able to move back in with my parents while I get back on my feet. And at this point, I'm just wondering kind of what's next? How do I start over from here? What should be the correct step I take?

Sorry.

I am 32 years old.

How long were you all married?

About five years or so. Maybe.

You have children, a five year old son? Yes. I'm sorry. What do you make?

About $33 an hour? About $4,000 take home a month.

Okay. Well, to answer your question, you're just going to start laying out a game plan to build enough financial life that you move into this next chapter. Right. I mean, first goal would be to get on your feet enough that you had a little bit of money saved and you go get an apartment. Right.

Right.

Obviously, your parents are providing a safety net, not a hammock.

Correct.

And so you're just passing through, and like you said, that's a wonderful thing, and I'm not upset about that at all. But I would give myself a number of months, like three or six months or something, and say by then I'm going to have enough saved to have deposits and get an apartment, get my own place, get some furniture, get restarted in terms of, like, almost as if you were moving out after high school or college. Right, right. Once you've kind of got a standard of living set and a place to live, then you start doing the baby steps and you make sure you get out of debt and you build an emergency fund and you start investing and you're going to figure out that there's another chapter to this life after 32 years old. Right?

So this setback is going to be a comma, not a coma. So keep that in your mind. This is temporary. You're going to have a whole another life on the other side of this thing. This doesn't define you, but it will refine you. And so now is the time to make some choices that will set us up for the next ten years. So, do you know, as the dust settles, what the financial picture looks like as far as child support, alimony, the house debt?

So I will be taking the car that she's currently driving and she's going to take the car that I'm currently driving because it's paid off. And the car that I will be getting is not somewhere around 21,000 on it. The way we've worked everything out between us, everything's very amicable, so it's going to be uncontested. So the way we have it worked out, no child support, no alimony or anything, it's all going to be, we both put in everything we can for.

Him and she's keeping the house. And you're not getting any money out of this out of the house deal.

Correct.

Okay.

I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not a lawyer in Huntsville, Alabama. I don't think a judge is going to approve a divorce decree that does not include child support.

Okay.

You probably need some legal advice not to create a stink, but I think you're going to be under the law in most states, required to do something for the kid. From a legal perspective. I know you were going to, from a moral perspective, but I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about. So you need to check that out because I had fireworks go off in my head.

But it can't just be handshake agreement.

I don't think it can be. You check me out. I could be wrong. Okay, so the house, what's the payment on the house?

$550 a month.

What does she make?

Bring home is about 2000 a month.

She's going to struggle with that. And your name is still on the mortgage. And if you try to have a new life five years from now and she hasn't paid the bills on time, then your credit is going to have been damaged. So I'm not sure this is a great plan, brother. I know it sounds like it's all nice. It's all nice until it's not. And then when she gets in trouble losing her job, you end up paying a house payment for somebody you ain't married to anymore because you're still on the mortgage. This is the Ramsey show.

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George Campbell Ramsay personality is my co host today. Open phones at you. Jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Johnny is with us in Irvine, California. Hi, Johnny. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi there. Thank you for taking my call. How are you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

Great. Well, I'm calling to see what you guys would do if you were in my shoes. I'm 22 years old. I fully support myself. I take home about $5,000 per month. I have zero debt. I have $60,000 in savings, a $3,000 emergency fund. And I've been listening for the past year or so, and some of my friends and mentors are into long term real estate investing, so I've been saving towards that for the past couple of years. Ideally, I'd like to start building some long term wealth. And so I just wanted to see what you guys would do if you were in my shoes.

Wow. You are beyond, ahead of the game. Well done. Very well done.

Thank you.

Well, I probably have a different view on real estate investing than your mentors. Sure. And I probably own more than they do, given that I own about 600 million worth. Okay. But anyway, I do not believe in borrowing money, Johnny. And you've heard that listening to the show, and I don't. For my real estate investing, I pay cash for it. And so the first real estate investing I did, and I've always loved real estate. That I did after going broke and starting completely over. And with this new I don't borrow money thing as a part of the guidelines, was I didn't do real estate investing at first. I just started piling money in mutual funds. And when I got enough in an index fund is what I used, an S and P 500 index fund. It took me about five years to buy my first income producing property. I paid cash for it, and then I took all of those rents, net of expenses and any other money I could, and I threw it in an index fund until I had enough to buy another property. And then I took all the rents from the two properties and any money I could scrape together from anywhere else, book royalties or whatever else, and I bought another property for cash.

And every time I bought another property for cash, I had more cash flow to buy another property faster than I did the one before. Does that make any sense?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

That is a very long term play versus what you have been considering until this phone call.

Sure.

Cause you're thinking about getting up a down payment and going buying a nice little duplex in California.

Exactly.

Yeah. And I'm telling you to wait and pay cash for it, which your friends aren't going to like, and I don't really care. They're wrong.

That's true.

But you called knowing you were going to get a different take, which tells me you're actually interested in this take.

I am. Yeah. I've just been curious what to do, because I feel like I've been saving decently, and I'd like to continue that. But once you get a certain amount of money, I feel like it burns a little bit of a hole in your pocket. You're ready to jump into it.

Yeah. And you've done really well, Johnny. I mean, let's face it. You're 22 years old, you have $60,000 in the bank and no debt at all, and you're making five k a month. You're killing it. Dang. Dang. I appreciate that. Very impressive.

And it doesn't sound like you lead a super luxurious lifestyle. You're a saver.

I try to be. For sure there's a balance.

So the key is to keep living on less than you make.

What would be interesting, if you want to be really nerdy. I don't know how nerdy you are. I'm real nerdy. Is. And I've done this a couple of times, and it always works. That's why I'm putting you up to it, is if you say, all right, when I'm 42, would I rather own $10 million worth of real estate with $8 million worth of debt, or would I rather own $3 million worth of paid for real estate? Yeah.

I think the clear answer is the 3 million.

Yeah. And then here's the exercise. Run out the purchase. Snowball, which is not a debt snowball. But the way I talked about a while ago, rents buy more, buy more, buy more, buy more. Everything's folded back into the next deal. And the slower start ends up with a faster end. The faster start ends up with a slower end. My way is slower start, but has a big time payoff at the end because it hockey sticks from an exponential mathematical equation perspective. Does any of that make sense?

Yeah, definitely it does.

Because when you get all this property that's sitting there paid for, you are buying more property faster than you would have if you had a whole bunch of property that's not even close to paid for. And it's not cash flowing nearly as generously. So the math says I can buy more property faster now. It's ridiculous what my real estate fund now looks like from my real estate income now, because I'm at the back of the story, right? But I can't get people to think long term. And I might have just got 122 year old to do it, though.

I'm impressed. He sounded interested. Yeah, we can just get off TikTok.

We'll get there for real. Jake is in Des Moines, Iowa. Hi, Jake, how are you?

Hey, guys. It's an honor to speak with you. Thanks for having me.

Our pleasure. How can we help, sir?

Yeah, so I'm 35 years old, have no debt, and am about to step into baby step six. And my question is, you talk about baby step seven, living and giving like no one else. I have no problem with the giving aspect of things. The part that is a little tricky for me to wrap my mind around is the living like no one else, because I am a pastor, and so to be stepping into baby step seven, hopefully here in the next five or six years. I'm trying to imagine life in my 40s living like no one else while being a pastor and living in the community of people who have paid for my financial success. You could say, I don't know how else you would put it, but how should I think through that as I look forward to the next five or ten years?

Yeah, well, don't muzzle the ox as he treads out the grain. You've probably read that scripture right.

Yeah.

And a worker is worthy of his hire. You probably read that scripture right. So are you a good pastor and you're worth what they pay you?

I sure hope so.

Then if you use that money wisely. In Christianity, we would call that good stewardship, wouldn't we? Yeah. I think you're modeling for those people what the results of good stewardship are. That it ends up with wealth. But we're taught by Karl Marx, not by Jesus, that wealth is evil. Wealth is not evil. People are evil, particularly some of them in your church. I'm kidding. No, but not much. But, yeah. Anyway, so you're always going to have a hater whether you win or you lose. If you do it at scale. Yeah, if you lose, you weren't a good steward, and you're horrible and you worked your whole life and you have nothing to show for it. And we call that being a good steward. That's not a good steward. That means you did a bad job handling your money. So you're supposed to model for your congregation, how to be a good husband, how to be a good dad. Right.

Right.

How to be a great leader. We're supposed to model. In Christianity, it's called a witness. And yet my friend Craig Rochelle says, why is it that wealth is the only blessing from God we're supposed to apologize for? And I've got several friends that are pastors that are a decade and a half ahead of you, and they're facing the exact same thing because they have systematically, carefully invested in their 401 ks and in their Roth Iras and in their retirement programs. And some of them have bought real estate carefully. And they don't have jet airplanes. They're not on tv. It's none of that junk. They're just good guys as a pastor, and they've been careful with their income. And most of them are millionaires because they did the stuff I teach. But now there's always some doober that says, well, pastor should never be a millionaire. Yeah, that's what I want. I want my pastor to be broke and stupid. No, I don't either. Pastor should never listen. I want his marriage to be something I can look up to. I want his kids to be something I can look up to. I want the way he handles money to be something I can look up to because obviously the book he is reading has having an effect on his life.

And I want to know more about what that book called the Bible says then, but not if you're. But you're always going to be criticized, Jake.

Whether it's about your message or the car you drive, it's going to be someone out there.

And if you're a Christian, you have to drive a used accord, because that's what Jesus said. They were all in one accord.

Oh, that one still gets me.

This is the Ramsey show live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's the Ramsey show, where we help people build wealth do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. Open phones here at triple 8825-5225 George Campbell Ramsay personality is my co host today. He is the host of the new, extremely popular YouTube channel the George Camel with a K YouTube channel. You got to check it out. He's also the co host of the very popular podcast and YouTube show Smart Money Happy Hour with Rachel Cruz. So both are happening right now and you can check them all out. Open phones here, triple 8825-5225 Michael's in Washington, DC. Hey Michael, how are you?

Hey Dave, doing great, thanks for having me.

Sure man. What's up?

So about a month ago my son had an asthma attack and ended up getting airlifted out by helicopter. And we're trying to figure out if he's doing fine now. But we're trying to figure out if we stopped paying on the car, we were going to have paid off in September or put money into a savings account to kind of prepare for the bills that we know are kind. They're starting to trickle in, but we don't know the exact total yet.

Lifelike. Covered by your health insurance?

It's still pending, but they think it's going to be, yeah, there's no reason it shouldn't be covered.

Sometimes it doesn't. And when the bird flies, it's ten grand minimum.

Yeah, that's what we're kind of waiting on. We have an out of pocket maximum on the health plan of 8500. So I talked to the insurance company, they think it's going to be covered, but we don't know until we get the actual explanation of benefits in.

So what's the worst case on this is your out of pocket Max?

Yeah, it should be 8500.

How much money do you guys have right now in savings?

About eleven.

Okay, so this thing is covered completely either way. But you got the car to pay off what's left on the car? 15 and that's all of the debt?

Yes.

Okay, so we were going to throw the eleven at the car or most of that at the car very soon and that's what we're going to pay it off in September. But now with this.

Yeah, I think you're going to cover the 8500. You got a bill you know is coming and so we're going to earmark your savings 8500 and then we're just going to attack the car with cash flow and as long as it doesn't come in over 8500, then that'll be a perfect plan, right?

Yeah, it would just delay the car a little bit. But that's life.

Yeah, but that's unexpected. If you had to make that choice, you'd make it. And you did take care of your child, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Was he remote or something and couldn't get his breath? What was the story?

Yeah, we just kind of found out that he had some asthma issues recently, within the last, like, probably four or five months. And then he got a cold and it turned into a pretty severe asthma attack. And we took him to the local hospital and they transferred him to the children's hospital pretty quickly by a helicopter. So all happened pretty quickly. Yeah.

Wow. Scary. It's good that he's okay. How old is he?

He's five.

That's super scary then.

It was very scary. Yeah, very scary.

Well, I'm glad he's okay. I'm glad. It's only that you got good health insurance in place. And this was not an er thing. This was not where you were in a remote setting and they had to fly life flight to you. This was hospital to hospital transfer. So that may fall in the insurance differently. In a good way, because I've run into, over the years, too many times that health insurance did not cover life flight. Flying to a rural situation to pick someone up and then flying them 50 miles out of town or something like that, where you can't get an ambulance to them. Right. That kind of thing is a different thing. But I'm so glad everything's okay. What's your household income?

$130,000.

Okay. All right. Yeah, it was a speed bump. A bump in the road that delays everything. And it's one you didn't choose. But we're glad the baby's okay. And, yeah, you just play it through, set 8500 aside out of the savings, and then attack the car as fast as you can after that. And just be thankful that you're able to do all of it. Wow.

Yeah.

I'll be debt free either way in a few months.

Yeah, it's one thing to get sick. It's another thing for your kid to be sick. You feel so helpless. I was even worse. Grandkids sick. Because you're not even allowed to raise hell. You have to have the parents raise hell. I mean, where's the nurse? You can't do that, right? You just have to stand back because know you can't do. Papa, daddy, be quiet.

That's called boundaries, apparently.

That might have. Know it might have. So is that Rachel?

I can't tell whose voice that was.

I'm not going to say I'm not going to say because they were right and I was wrong. So we're not going to throw anybody on the bus. But Dave.

Smart man.

Yeah, but it's man health stuff. I was going to say it takes your breath away. You cannot say that kid had asthma.

You're known for those over 30 years.

I've done this repeatedly. Anthony is with us in New Jersey. Hey, Anthony, how are you?

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Sure. How can we help?

All right, so I had a situation, was looking to get some advice, basically, when I was 18 or 19 years old, I'm 22 right now, I had an online business, and I was able to accumulate a good amount of capital. And with the help of my parents, I invested in two real estate ventures. I got a little house that I rent out, and then I got a shopping strip. The house pays about $3,000 a month, and the shopping strip pays about $10,000 a month.

So you're 22, you have a $13,000 a month rental income.

Yeah.

Good God. How much money did you make with your online business?

I would say about two to 3 million.

Wow. So impressive and bizarre. Yeah.

Wait, say it again. Sorry.

Impressive and bizarre and wonderful.

Thank you. So my situation comes where next year, the mortgage I got, it was about.

You got two to $3 million and you took out a mortgage?

No. Right now we paid about 850 for it. I put 400 down and then the rest, we did a private mortgage.

Where's the rest of your money?

Hold on, I'm going to get to that.

Okay.

So like I said, we paid 400.

For it.

Down, and then we put the reps in the mortgage and the mortgage will be paid off next year. So after that, like I said, the 13,000 will be completely no payments, no debt, no nothing. Because the house I mentioned, we paid full in cash.

Okay.

Now, when I was talking about the two to 3 million, I was just taking into account all my assets, because from 2019, when we bought the property, to now, it's gone up that much, just looking at.

But your online business, how much did your online business make?

Okay, online business, it was about like $800,000 to a million. Okay.

And you use 400 for the down payment here and you use some for the other. Where's the rest of that money? Taxes.

I have $100,000 in cash. Okay. I have about $50,000 in stock.

And what's your question then? What are you wanting to do?

So my question would be, since I'm very young, I'm very grateful for the guaranteed monthly income. But I was wondering if it would be a good idea to maybe, once the private mortgage is paid off, to take out another mortgage on it now and try to do something else.

No. You've got good money. You have a brain, an unusually good brain. Use it and keep your properties paid for, and let that be your base of operation. Do not take out another debt. This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Hey, it's Dr. John Deloney. This time of year can be great, but the holidays can cause anxiety for a lot of people, especially about giving gifts. Maybe your family makes super thoughtful, handmade things, or they demand you buy really expensive things.

Or maybe you just like experiencing time together.

Or you all just pick up random gift cards last minute. No matter how your family does gifting, remember to take care of yourself. Whether it's going easier on yourself during tough moments or treating yourself to a day of rest from everyone and everything, remember to give yourself some love this holiday season. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give betterhelp a try. Betterhelp is flexible because it's online, so it can fit into your busy holiday schedule. Just fill out a short questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists anytime for no extra charge. In the season of giving, give yourself what you need with betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com deloney today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp he lp.com deloney thank you for joining us America. We're so glad you are here. We are constantly asking you guys and a bunch of you have we appreciate you to leave a five star review on the show. It helps with the algorithms. And also, of course, we invite you to share the show. Click the share button or share a link or tell people where you listen to it on the radio or whatever it is.

And it's always a good idea too. To follow the show, click the follow or the subscribe on YouTube or on the podcast. All three of those help us a bunch, and we got a five star review in. We've gotten a bunch of them in, but this one caught our team's attention. I must admit, being left leaning from the west coast my entire life, listening to the Ramsey show came as quite the culture shock. It was hard for me to not immediately associate the tone of the show with a laundry list of cultural values I've been conditioned to avoid. I kept listening anyway because I love Dave's straight talk. It was super refreshing and after a while, it was obvious he's in fact, a really kind, brilliant person that just wants to instill some fiscal common sense back into our society. What I love most is how he talks about the importance of stewardship and how it's not just about the money, it's about how your money can help the world. Amazing stuff. Jumping past some of the personal story then listening to these episodes makes me acknowledge that I just need to be accountable for my poor decisions and stop feeling helpless.

I can get myself out of this situation and it shouldn't even be that hard. I just have to make some common sense, tough choices and go without for the next few years. Hi, my name is Eileen and I am irresponsible with money. I'm ready to put the work in and be accountable for my own actions. And I will win at this game of life, passing these values down to my young kids. Thank you to the bottom of my heart for Dave and the entire team for achieving what my parents have failed to do my whole life. Getting me to be fiscally responsible. Wow. That's very nice.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. Very kind.

I love that. We appreciate bringing both sides of the aisle together, Dave.

I'm all about unity. That's me.

That's amazing.

I'm honored. I'm very honored. Very nice. I'm glad we are honored. It's the whole team here. It's a team effort. Open phones at DJ is with us in Baltimore. Hey, DJ, what's up?

Hey, guys. So I wanted to see if you had some suggestions on how to approach a situation that my husband and I are trying to tackle. So I'm about two years away from going to veterinary medical school and I also was diagnosed with an illness last year that kind of limits me quite a bit. And it also means that I have to renovate our home in order to make it work for my condition. So we're trying to figure out what's the best way to approach paying for those two very high cost things without putting ourselves into a bind when we're not currently in one.

So, sorry, what's the nature of your illness?

So I am highly susceptible to bacterias and molds to the point where it causes my body to go into paralysis.

Why does that sound extremely incongruent to vet school to me?

Because it can be. So there's one option for vet school. It's a brand new school being built in New Jersey that would be preferable for me to be in during.

But I can't think of anything that has more bacteria and mold than animals.

Animals actually outside molds it's not the same as the type of molds that would grow, like, in your home due to water damage. So they're two different kinds.

Okay.

So it's basically issues with water damaged buildings.

I got you. Okay. So you've got a mold problem in your current home.

Yes. And we didn't know about that. We bought our home in 2020 and.

It was how expensive to eradicate it to be ready to sell.

It would cost like about $500,000.

No.

$500,000 for mold remediation.

No.

Yeah.

Not to make you healthy, to be ready to sell.

To sell it. As far as.

I doesn't take $500,000 to remediate mold in anything except an office tower.

No.

But I just did it at my lake house. I spent three grand.

Yeah, that's definitely not the bid set we were quoted for sure.

I don't know. Is the whole house eaten up with mold?

Yeah. So basically any of the water sourced areas, so all of the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the basement.

You need to get three more bids. Because let me just tell you, the mold world is full of drama queens. Not you. I'm talking about the contractors that do eradication, and they'll come in and go, you're all going to die. They do this, and it's part of their sales pitch.

You got it completely.

You got to start from scratch. I got, like, five bids on the lake house, and they were everything from $1,000, which wasn't credible, up to $35,000. In this case, it was only mold under the crawl space. Do what now?

Yeah. So the bids are upwards between 40 and 60 per area that we're looking at in our home. To remediate and then to renovate them.

Yeah, I wouldn't stay there. I love you, and as your brother, I'm telling you to move. You shouldn't stay there if you have a condition that paralyzes you. This house has got real mold problems. And so I don't know if we're going to have to burn it down or if we're going to sell it as is to some investor who remediates it or we find a better remediation thing. But I don't think this house is renovated for you. You need to move.

I don't know. I'd move to.

Can you guys go rent somewhere for now while you deal with the selling of the home?

This creates paralysis for you, you said? Yeah, it scares me to death.

I know. It's really frustrating because especially this region that I live in, like the area, you know, it's quite wet, quite humid, so I really don't know where we.

Would also, you're going to go to.

Vet school in New Jersey. So it sounds like you need to move to New Jersey if you're going to do the.

It's a part of New Jersey that's closer to where we live, so it's commutable for me.

So you've established if you're going to go this vet school, you're going to stay in the area.

Yeah.

And every house in Baltimore does not have mold. You know that, right?

I would hope not.

Come on, DJ.

I would hope not.

Come on.

We love our home. Yes, I understand what you're saying, but we do love our home and wouldn't want to move if we didn't have to because we just long ago.

You have to move.

You are not going to spend a half million dollars.

Your health is at stake. And this place is apparently rotting down with mold. I mean, you can't stay there. And there are other houses in the Baltimore area that don't have mold. We live in hot, damp Tennessee, which is worse than cold, damp Baltimore for mold. Mold is a way of life in our area. It's everywhere and it's not everywhere. It's not in every house. My current home does not have mold. My lake house got some underneath and it was $3,000 to eradicate it. And I've got a bunch of rental houses and we've had a couple of those we had to do some work on, but I've never had one that was completely roted down with mold. And I have had some contractors and some tenants that thought that it was because the drama around this is never ending. And I'm not suggesting you have the drama, DJ. If you've got an illness that is mold and you have an extreme mold situation in your house, and that is in conflict with your health and in conflict with your ability to go to vet school, sell the house for what you can get for it, and go rent something and go to vet school and have your health.

It's a real simple program. I would not be in the mold renovation business if I had an extreme illness related to mold. It's the last thing you want to do because the more they tear into it, the more it stirs it up. You can't live there while you're doing it anyway. If it's a massive thing, we fog it. You got to leave. You got to do all this stuff. You can't have too many things conflicting for one goal, we have three goals. Health, housing, and vet school. What takes priority? Health. What's next? Vet school. What's next? Stupid house. This is the Ramsey show. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co host today in the lobby of Ramsey solutions on the debt free stage. Sarah is with us. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi, Dave.

Good to have you. Where do you live?

I live in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid off?

$26,750.

Love it. How long did this take you?

Eight and a half months.

Good for you. And your range of income during that time?

I started with 42, and then I ended with 50.

Good for you. What do you do for a living?

I was in investing, communications, and now I'm in digital marketing.

Good for you. Very good. What kind of debt was your 27,000?

It was in a car. Bad decision? Yeah, it was a lot of money, and I totally regretted it when I got into that debt.

So did you sell it or did you pay it off?

I ended up paying it off.

Okay. And kept it. All right, good for you. Fun. What kind of car?

It is? A Toyota rav four 2015.

Of course it is. Okay, good. Very good. Cool. So how'd you get connected to all this Ramsay stuff?

I actually am a Ramsay baby. My mom and dad followed your plan. I didn't take their advice at first. I wish I did.

They failed as parents.

But they did get me on the right track.

No, they didn't. You knew what to do. You knew they weren't going to like what you did.

Oh, yeah. They were not too happy about it.

What was that conversation like?

I just took out a $27,000 car payment. Yeah.

They told me I should get a beater until I can really pay cash for it, but I didn't listen. And they helped give me advice to dig me out of the hole I was in.

Yeah. And no money. Just advice. They didn't give you any money?

No money.

Good for them. I like it. These are great parents.

Yeah, they are.

Very cool. How old are you?

I'm turning 26 in June.

Okay. Did you learn your lesson?

I did.

Never a car payment again.

Never again.

You're going to be a millionaire.

Exactly.

If you stay away from car payments, you'll be a millionaire.

I will.

What was your car payment?

It started off around 600.

And then.

Yeah. So then I ended up putting my savings down on it. Kind of followed the plan of the book, and then I brought it down to around 300.

Okay.

That's a significant portion of your take. Home pay at that point, yes, it was really bad. And that's when you went, I did.

Dumb.

Let's undo this.

Yeah, I did have a good bit saved up because my parents really instilled in me I need to save. Save. I graduated college debt free thanks to them following your plan. And then. So, luckily, I had some savings to put down on it to really drop the payments.

How much did you have in savings?

23,000.

Wow. Okay. All right. Very good. So eight and a half months later, we're done.

Yeah.

That's very good. So you actually had enough cash to pay for a decent car?

I did.

You had the savings muscle there. I know, but you went, I'm going to finance.

You just got the fever.

I know. I talked to too many friends.

Got the fever. Yeah.

You could have got a great car for 20 grand in cash.

I know. Well, it was also when the cars were really overvalued, too, so it was really a bad time for me.

Worst time ever.

Yeah.

What were you driving at the time?

A 2012 Chevy cruise.

Okay. Yeah.

And it just blew up on me one day.

Oh, then you went to drama mode and said, I need a new car today.

Yeah.

I got to finance a $30,000 car.

Yeah, I made some bad decisions.

Hey, I'm proud of you.

Thank you.

We're giving you a hard time, but everybody's done a whole lot dumber things than you've done. The good news is, you did it at a very young age, and you learn your lesson. You never go back. And you have parents who didn't bail you out. No helicopter blades in the background here. No one let you lay in your mess and clean it up, and you did. You became like a full grown woman and did your stuff. Way to go. How old are you again?

I'm 25 turning 26.

You're smart. Way to go. I'm so proud of you.

Thank you.

Very well done. How's it feel to be free?

It feels amazing. I actually had to get a new tire the other day, and I wasn't freaking out because I had money to pay for it.

Yeah. Like one car payment will buy tires. Yeah, one of the old car payments anyway. Yeah. Good for you. Very cool. Okay. Now that you've gotten out of debt, I've got a 24 year old listening that all of these 23 year old listening, 24, their stupid friends are telling them to go buy a car on car payments when they got the money in savings to buy a 15,000 or $20,000 car. What would you tell that person? That was you back then.

I would say, do not go into debt a depreciating asset.

Why?

Because it's a waste of money.

Okay.

Yeah.

It'll drain your bank account and it stole your piece.

Yeah.

What little bit of fun it was was all taken away by the weight, wasn't it? It was the weight. The heaviness. That weight not having to wait patiently in line, but the heaviness of it. Way to go. Wow. Very good. And the secret to getting out of debt is what?

A lot of side jobs. I found a lot of side jobs doing like walking dogs, pet sitting, house sitting. I did some freelance work in additional to my full time, sticking to a budget and paying cash.

Wow. Good for you. Well done. Well done. Now mom and dad are smiling. Now they're smiling.

Oh, yeah.

Now it's all going good now.

Well, most people listening are going, gosh, I wish I figured this stuff out when I was 25. And you're feeling like I wasted all this time and you got so much time left to make good decisions that will far displace.

There's a 37 year old listen that we've still not listening that we're still.

Not convinced they're about to go get a new car.

They're going to be 42 before they catch on. Yeah. Way to go. Good job. Very good job. Very good job. Hey, we've got a copy of the baby steps millionaires book for you because that's your future. That's where you're headed. I promise you, you are $600 a month. You know how fast you'll be a millionaire? Real fast. Just investing that it's serious money and total money makeover book as well. Hand that out to one of your friends and go, don't do it. And the same stuff your parents did. But, yeah, that's okay. So it's smart. Very smart. And a financial peace university membership. Have you been through the class as an adult yet?

I have not.

Good. Take it and go through it.

Okay.

Go through the nine lessons because it'll help you accelerate your process into millionaire. Now, because you got the basic debt stuff figured out and the budgeting and the hard work and the extra jobs part. So now we just blow through. Make sure you get the emergency fund in place and let's get that compound interest working for you. At 25 years old, you could be worth ten or $15 million at retirement. You really could. It's very doable because you got the right start. You got this in a financial peace baby. You got everything going.

40 years of investing in compound interest.

Yeah. So the two books and the financial peace. University membership is the live and give bundle. That is, people buy it all the time. It's a box that comes and you can take a book out for yourself. Give a book to a friend, take financial peace or give it to a friend. So it's live and give. It's for both things. And so we'll give it all to you. Thanks for making the trip over from Raleigh. You're inspiring. You're a wonderful young woman.

Thank you for having me.

Very well done. And your mom and dad are over there grinning like they know you're not going to move in their basement. Yeah, it's great. It's amazing. So very cool. Very cool stuff. Good stuff. All right. It's Sarah from Raleigh, North Carolina. She paid off the car she shouldn't have bought, and she learned a lesson in the process. 27,000 paid off in eight and a half months, including using some of her savings and walking dogs. $42 to $50,000 income. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

I'm debt free debt. WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP.

We love to see it.

I think we need to do an informal survey on how many rev fours. It's just something about a rev four, right. That's come up a lot lately. A lot of calls I've taken. A lot. It's a very popular vehicle for young.

Broke people, and it's one they go, well, it's worth. It's a safe, reliable, great car. I'll have a long time. I'll finance it. That's the theory.

The center of gravity on that thing is really high. I watched one do a flip.

Oh, really?

That's scary. Forward flip. Wow. Yeah. I'm not against rav fours, I just am seeing that.

Well, your truck will eat a rav four.

I know you want to be in a monster truck. Yeah, but that's not the point. It would also eat your Tesla, but it would spit it back out.

It can't handle the battery, Dave.

It can't eat that thing gag right on the battery.

Battery will last forever.

And it battery acid in your throat.

But it's true, people, we justify car purchases all the time, especially the younger you are.

We all do. We all do. Even old people do it.

Yeah, it's safe, it's reliable. I work hard. I don't want to drive the beater around. But listen, freedom on the other side of that.

Let me just help you $15,000 is not a beater. 1500 is a beater.

Yeah.

Okay. So, wow. But she's great. She's amazing. She's going to do so good. Big things for sure.

I hope she inspired a lot of other people out there to go.

She inspired.

I'm going to be like her. I don't want a car payment.

That's right. I mean, people who will stand up and look in the mirror and go, done. That's inspiring. That's inspiring. This is the Ramsey show here at Ramsey Solutions. We're on a mission to bring hope to the hopeless. We've helped millions find peace in their money and their life. And we need people like you to help us. We have open roles in our sales, marketing and technology teams. We offer financial, developmental and health benefits to help you live a balanced life while doing life changing work. You want to join the crusade? See our open roles@ramsesolutions.com slash careers and apply today. That's ramseysolutions.com slash careers. George Campbell, Ramsey personality is my a co host. Okay, let's clear something up. If you listen to the show for 10 seconds, you know, we hate debt and some people, for some reason don't understand that. I don't know why they think you need debt and credit cards to build your credit. Yeah, well, you do. Why would you want to build your credit? So you can go into debt. And why would you go into debt? So you could build your credit. And then why would you go into debt?

So you could build your credit. Why would you build your credit? So you could go into debt? Because you need a good credit score to buy a house, right? No, you do not. The truth is, living a debt free lifestyle, eventually you won't have any credit score. And you got to find a good lender like churchill mortgage. It can do what's called manual underwriting. George and Whitney did that for their home, and they have survived zero credit score. And you got the same rate as someone with a good credit score when you did it. So you don't have to pay more. And you need to get a real estate agent who will actually help you find a house that you can afford on a 15 year fixed rate with a good strong down payment and a payment of no more than a fourth of your take home pay. All of that can happen at Ramsey trusted. We'll hook you up with a good real estate agent that knows what they're doing. High octane, high protein. That gets it done. I meet them all over this nation when I'm traveling. We were just in Salt Lake City.

We talked to a bunch of them, good quality people. I'm always inspired by the fact that our team has done a good job to put the quality of person they put in our ELP program. So you want to find out who's Ramsey trusted to help you with your real estate transaction, click on that@ramseysolutions.com. Slash agent our question of the day is brought to you by neighborly, your hub for home services. When you're trying to get things done around your house, sometimes you need to run into a problem or a project that's more than you can handle yourself. Neighborly.com is your source for the best pros in your area to help with home improvement projects. Great company. Neighborly.

Today's question comes from Zach in Alabama. He asks, I'm reading more and more about de dollarization and countries moving away from the US dollar as their basis of international trade. Will this affect the strength of the dollar, and should I be concerned about how I'm saving and investing as a result of this?

Number one, Zach, you're spending too much time on the Internet, first and foremost, okay. Because you've gotten into the conspiracy theory blanks here. Now, what is really going on? Okay. I'm concerned with how it's going. Let me see. Moving away from the US dollar as their basis of international trade. Let me just tell you, China and Brazil and Russia are the three main players in this. They already don't use the US dollar as their basis of international trade. Russia has its own currency. So does China and so does Brazil. And there's a conversion rate between that currency and the US dollar. So many dollars equals so many yen. Okay. And when you go to Mexico, a whole bunch of pesos equals a dollar, right? Like 20 of them. So you got a conversion rate from one currency to another. What these particular, the three largest countries, and they're talking about bringing in some of the oil countries as well in the Middle east are doing, is they're trying to come up with one currency that they all use, and then that would be in international trade, converted back and forth to dollars, much like Europe did with the euro, which, by the way, kind of didn't work.

We had this exact same crap when France did away with their own currency. The Brexit was the big deal, whether the UK was going to get involved or not. And the euro was traded all over Europe and they did away with their basic currency. And now us is just going to have. It's a one world currency. It's the end times of revelation. And this is what comes up. Right? Okay. But all it is is these countries, if they did all agree to use one currency, it'd be much like when Europe went to the euro and then that's going to exchange for the dollar back and forth. Are those countries going to be able to devalue the dollar by doing that? No, because while they do take up a lot of land mass, they do not take up a lot of the gross domestic product of the world. The United States still is the vast majority of the gross domestic product of the world. Still, China is big, Russia is basically horrible, and Brazil is in a failed economy, like times ten and is tiny as far as economics go. In other words, like, I suspect I haven't looked it up, but I suspect Texas has a higher gdp than Brazil as an example.

For real, I'm not kidding. I haven't looked it up, but I bet you that's true. Look it up. I know it's got a higher gdp than Egypt because I looked that up one time. I know it's got a higher gdp than Sweden and about five of the other countries that were talking about natural gas crap a few years ago because I looked that one up and that was going to be the end of the world and they were going to take over. But they're tiny but little countries. And so when you put them all together, they don't have the muscle to take down the dollar. They just don't. Mathematically, it's arithmetic. They just don't have it. Now, what they are going to do, if they all do put it together, it's not a de dollarization. It's not doing away with the dollar. They've created their own currency. They're still going to have to trade with the 800 pound gorilla, which be us, okay? And you're going to have to trade with us in dollars. So whatever little currency you create over there in your little fantasy world that you live in, you're still going to have to trade it for dollars.

So it's not going to take down the dollar, is not going to be worth anything. And I don't know how to invest because it's going to collapse because freaking Brazil. Brazil. Seriously, Brazil. I mean, when you look at the math, it's mean. Russia we always think of as know in the rocky movies or something, they're going to come bomb the United States or whatever and all this stuff. But when you look at their, even though it's a huge landmass, their economic production is pitiful it's pitiful because communism sucks. And so it just doesn't create a lot of gross domestic. So really when you get into it, that's what you're going to find. So am I worried about this? Absolutely not. Absolutely zero. Russia is pitiful. China has no labor force. Their labor force is aging out because they stopped having babies legally. And so they have no young labor force coming on. So about several economists are predicting that their economy is really going to be in deep doodoo in 20 years because there's going to be nobody to work, nobody do the work. And so all this stuff that China is creating right now, they're not going to have anybody to do it.

This is a lot of just fear mongering. It gets clicks and views.

It gets a lot of clicks and views.

But should you be concerned about how you're saving and investing? No, I wouldn't change a, I wouldn't bet against America long term.

It's a bad, and it's not arrogance, it's math. It's not like I'm blinded by the flag or patriotism. That's not it. America does some stupid butt stuff sometimes, but even when we do, we do it on know. It's like, come. No, listen, I'm old and I'm getting tired because when I first started there was like a conspiracy theory that the.

World was, you've seen them all at this point.

There's a guy, here's one I was telling a friend of mine, a friend of mine was asking me about this the other day and I said my answer to him was, I read a book in 1982 called bankruptcy 1984. It was predicting the end of the US economy in 1984. It was written by an economist that was brilliant named Peter Grace. He was in charge of the Grace commission in the Reagan administration and they were studying the increasing national debt and that the national debt was going to cause the economy to collapse, which I think the national debt is stupid and out of control. Okay. But this guy said it's going to hockey stick and the monetary policy is going to turn upside down. We've sucked all the cash out, used it for government stuff and the economy's got no cash to operate on and so it's going to collapse in 1984. Apparently wrong. And then another friend of mine wrote a book called Coming Economic Earthquake didn't happen. And then another guy wrote a book, talk about the collapse of the economy. And then another guy wrote a book.

Well then we had y two k a lot.

The y two k was going to collapse the economy. And then when the planes hit the towers, the economy was not going to recover because 3000 people died and two towers fell in New York City. So the entire US economy was going to collapse as a result of that. And that went around for a while.

And Silicon Valley bank, that tiny little.

Bank over in San Francisco that no one knew what it was except venture capitalist, has the power to bring down the entire us economy. It's just asinine. At some point, it's like, okay, george, if I ever write the book on the end of the economy, would you please smack me?

I'll do that. Just make sure you plan it till after, long after your death, so we can't blame you for it in person and go, nah, nah, boo boo.

No, you're wrong.

You would anyway. You would go, I know he's dead, but he was stupid.

No one's going to say that about you, Dan.

Yes, they will. They say it while I'm alive, so it probably won't. This is the Ramsey show, live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's the Ramsey show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Camel, Ramsey personality host of the popular YouTube channel, George Camel. Camel with a k. Check it out. He is the king of snark. You will love it. And he and Rachel Cruz do a wonderful afternoon show called Smart Money Happy Hour.

Ding.

Yeah. They might have a drink on the show, so you need to check them out. And they get rather funny after they drink, so check them out.

Sharon Ramsay loves it. And that's the only review you need, America.

That's it. That's all you need to know. It tells you everything you need. Sharon listens to it, and she doesn't listen to this show. So. Wow. I know that that's there.

There's some hurt feelings to my left.

I think there's bitterness here. But it could be after 30 years, she's not impressed anymore. 30 years of being on the air and 40 years of marriage, she's not impressed at all.

Takes a lot to impress Sharon. Yeah, we've managed to do it.

There you go. So check it out. Smart money happy hour. Hey, this is a baby steps millionaires theme hour. What is that? That is where we talk to real millionaires. If you're a real millionaire, call in. Let me help you with what a millionaire is, because some people don't know, including a congressman I heard speaking the other day who is an idiot. So a millionaire is not someone that makes a million dollars a year. Mr. Congressman, Mrs. Congressman, you were wrong. A millionaire is someone who has a million dollar net worth that is different than your income. Your net worth is what you own minus what you owe. Assets minus liabilities equals net worth. When that is greater than $1 million. When what you own minus what you owe is greater than $1 million, you are officially, by accounting definitions, a millionaire. Well, I don't feel like. It's not a feeling. No one should have that much. It's not a moral construct. It's not enough. It's not a question of how much you need for retirement. It's a math thing. When you have a million dollar net worth, you're a millionaire. That's all it is.

We can answer and have those other discussions if you want to have them. Moral construct, is it enough? And all that kind of stuff. But it is a million dollar net worth. So if you actually have a $1 million or greater net worth, we want to talk to you and find out how you got it. Because there's a lot of mythology floating around about wealthy people in America today. Let me say it another way. There's a lot of stupid lies that are told about wealthy people in America just by the uninformed, ignorant, and people with an agenda trying to get you to vote the wrong way. And so there you go. Check us out. If you're a millionaire, George and I want to talk to you. We want to learn how you did it. The phone number here is triple 8825-5225 Sarah is in Cincinnati. Sarah, what's your net worth?

Good afternoon, sir. Very much an honor to speak with you, longtime listener. My net worth is 1.9 million.

Very cool. Good for you. Give me a little breakdown on that. What's the categories that make up the 1.9?

Okay. I have six buckets plus a retiree medical account. My house fully paid for house, $425,000. My bank checking and savings is currently at $250,000. I've got that amount in there. I know I'm at the SDIC limit. I have a Roth Ira at 232 371. Taxable brokerage, 268 26, an Oprah's 403. B, retirement at 501, and a deferred comp that's also with my public employment at 190,000. 862. And then my retiree medical count is at $85,000. I just checked all my numbers Sunday, and that brings me to $1,945,000.

Check it again. It's probably over two now. Way to go.

Way to go.

How old are you?

I am 54 years old.

Cool. And how much of this? 1.9 million. Did you inherit?

Dollars. I actually inherited after I hit my million dollar mark in 2017. After an uncle I was caring for passed away, I inherited $213,000. A gift from him.

Awesome. That's very nice. But to be clear, you were already a millionaire.

Yes, sir.

You did not become a millionaire with inherited money, correct, sir. I just want to make sure everybody hears that loud and clear, because that's one of the numbers we hear about all the time. Way to go. All right, so what do you do for a living?

I am a registered nurse public in public health. I recently acquired my master's degree in May of 21.

Okay, what was your GPA?

Probably about a 3.4.

Good for you. Okay, and your best working year, what did you make and your worst working year since you've been working? What's your lowest income and high?

Yes. Last year, because of mandated overtime, I was at 117,000. When I first started working as a nurse in 1991, my pay was 1350 an hour. Prior to that, I worked as an aide. A nurse aide at 550 an hour.

Wow. So 1350 an hour would be like 16,000 a year? Correct.

And now I'm at 46 an hour.

So most of this time, you've not even made 100,000, correct?

Oh, definitely not. But in 2021 and 22, I just cleared 100,000 because of mandated overtime. But prior to that, I was around 90,000 a year. But really, over the last 20 years, my average is probably about $60,000, because when I started in public health, I was only $22 an hour.

Wow.

You are like the poster child for our national millionaire study. We found a lot of them. They didn't make six figures, and inheritance didn't cause them to become a millionaire. And you just consistently invested over a long period of time?

Yes, I started the Roth. I wish I would have started in my 20s, but I started the Roth about 30 and then also put back in the taxable brokerage. And then when I started with public employment, they match at 10%. They take 10% of mine and match it at ten.

So, 326 year old nurses are standing around the coffee pot, and you walk up and they're saying, no way a nurse can ever be a millionaire. What do you tell those three?

Oh, I encourage this all the time. In fact, I refer them to your information, but I talk to them all the time about putting back, at least in a Roth, to start in a Roth, because I do know a lot of the healthcare systems don't have very good programs. Necessarily. Public employment is a little different, but I encourage them to start a Roth Ira and max it out.

But basically you're telling them they can do.

Oh, yes, yes. I've even know that I have built wealth that way. And they can do it, too. That my house is paid for. They usually encourage to hear that.

Sarah, you're amazing. You're amazing. You're an absolute amazing lady. Congratulations. 54 years old, 1.9 million average income through her working life of 60,000. Only in the last two years did she even break six figures. Wow. And she's got a $1.9 million net worth. To be fair, 200,000 of the 1.9 was inherited after she was already a millionaire. 79% of America's millionaires by the largest study of millionaires ever done. And you can get that in the millionaires. The baby steps millionaires book. The study is in the back of the book, the entire white paper on it. You can unpack the details for you that nerds, if you're having trouble sleeping, put me right to sleep. I know that, and it's my study. So 79% inherited precisely zero. 5% inherited a small amount like $5,000, not enough to make them millionaires. Another 5% inherited money after substantial money, like her after they were already millionaires. Five and five and 79 would be called 89. That's nine out of ten of America's millionaires are not millionaires, according to Stone cold data, because of inheritance. So when someone tells you the only way you're going to be wealthy is have a rich uncle, they're full of crap.

It's simply not true. Don't let the lefties tell you this stuff. That's not true. It's a baby steps millionaires theme hour. If you ever experienced financial peace university, you know how life changing it is. And there's no better way to share that hope than by leading an FPU class at your church. This is the time of year when lots of people are ready to get their money right. They're looking for help. And you can be the one to step up and lead them to hope, just like FPU did for you. It's easy to get started. Plus, leading a class is totally free. Start making a difference as an FPU coordinator by going to fpU.com slash lead. George Camel Ramsey personality is my co host today. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour. If you're a real millionaire with a net worth of greater than a million dollars, what you own minus what you owe, we want to talk to you. I don't want your broke brother in law's opinion. I want real millionaires as to how they really did it. Triple 8825-5225 let's do a little mental exercise. Look ahead 90 days from now.

It's July. You have $1,000 in the bank. You paid off two of your credit cards and you check out at the grocery without having a panic attack. You know how that would feel? Peaceful. Financially peaceful. Financial peace. Some of you have never had that in your entire life. But today is the day that you can take back control of your money. It starts in financial peace University. It's our nine week course that's helped millions of people beat debt, build wealth and become outrageously generous. We're going to teach you everything about how to handle money step by step, so you don't have to worry about it anymore. The average student going through financial Peace University has an $8,000 turnaround in 90 days. $5,300 in debt reduction, 2700 in savings. That's the average total of 8000. Not a bad return on your time. If I could give you $8,000 in three months, would you talk about it? We should talk about it. That means before summer break is over, you're going to feel different. Go to financialpeaceuniversity today@ramsaysolutions.com. FPU and get signed up. You'll be amazed at how inexpensive it is. Get plugged into a group where people love you, encourage you and hold you accountable.

And that'll ensure that this works. FinancialPeace University ramsaysolutions.com Slash FPU David is in Milwaukee. Hi, David. What is your net worth? Hey, Dave.

George, thanks for taking my call. My net worth as of last night is $1,065,000.

Look at you. I like it. Very good. And give me a little breakdown by category. How's that made up?

So cash is around 90,000. Retirement accounts with four hundred and one k and Roth Iras around 190. Brokerage accounts with 50,000. And real estate is the big one here at 735 thousand.

Very cool. Good for you. How old are you?

I'm 32 and my wife is 30.

Good deal. And how much of this 1.1 million did you inherit?

Zero.

All right, zero. Precisely. Okay, so you've been working ten years or so. What was your best working year? Household income and worst year?

When my wife and I were both working together, we were probably in the 220 range. I would say at her best year. Since then, she's become a stay at home mom. She's been working at home, and we're probably around the 200 mark now.

I would say that's your worst year ever, is 200.

No, sorry. About 100. And 2120 on the low end.

Okay, cool. What do you all do for a living? What do you do?

I'm an electrical engineer.

Okay. Very good. All right. And what was your GPA?

Bachelor's was 3.83.9. Master's like 3.5 ish, I want to say.

Okay, good for you. Well done. Well done. So, you think this can be done today? If you got somebody out there listening, that's an engineer just coming out of school at 22, 23 years old. Can they still become a millionaire in ten years?

I think as long as you have a vision of what you're trying to accomplish, and you can lay a goal in front of yourself and put together some simple steps and then just have discipline on repeating those steps month after month, year after year, I think it's an inevitable fact, honestly.

So I'm curious, David, because you're so young, and people like to poo poo on folks that are young who have built wealth because they just don't think it's possible for them. So what would you tell that person? Was it the paid for? How intentional were you over these ten years to do this? Or did you just look up one day and go, oh, my gosh, here we are?

No, we were extremely intentional. And this started off in 2015 when I got out of school in 2015, I had a net worth of negative 50,000. And the first thing was jumping into FPU. Jumped into FPU. Paid off those student loans in the first twelve months of my career, and we started saving for our first house. And paid cash for our first house. Right out the gate, it was a duplex. Two years later, we paid cash for another rental property. And now we've moved into a third place as well. So we've been really just slow and steady. Like Dave always says, the slow and steady wins the race.

Wow.

The whole get rich slow plan works, and here you are at 32. It didn't take you 30 years.

Well, sometimes I hear all rich people are crooks. How much of this did you steal?

As far as I know, zero.

Unless.

My CPA messed up or something. But zero. As far as I know.

Well, I just had to ask. I want to make sure we get all the facts out here. Hey, man, I'm proud of you. Way to go. Congratulations. Very well done. Jason in Lexington, what is your net worth?

Hey, Dave. It is 1.3 million.

Good for you. Give me a little breakdown by category.

Yeah.

It's about a third of it is in our personal property. A third of it is in retirement accounts, 401, iras, and a third of it is in investment property.

Okay, so real estate. All right. Very good. How old are you?

I am 49 years old, and my wife is 47.

Excellent. How much of this did you inherit?

Not a darn penny, unfortunately.

What do you do for a living?

I am in technology sales, so I actually worked for one of those big, large tech companies that had all the layoffs, and coincidentally enough, my commission check hit. I'm in sales while I was laid off. So technically we became millionaires while I was unemployed.

That's impressive.

I'll take it every time. What's your degree in?

It is in computer science. I was a developer for many years. Started listening to you back in 2007, started looking for an opportunity to get a bigger shovel, so I moved over into sales.

That's interesting. And what was your GPA in computer science?

It was about a 3.2.

Okay. And what was your all's best working year since you've been working? Household income and worst working year range.

So this year will be our best year. It'll be somewhere around 700,000. It's a bit of an outlier. You know how sales go. Worst year. I'd have to go all the way back to when I was in the army to have my absolute worst year. But let's just go in the last ten years, about 180,000.

Okay. All right, so 700,000, and you got laid off.

Exactly the best year I've ever had. It's like, laid me off every year.

Wow, that's so interesting. I wonder what the correlation to that is. We don't want to pay this guy $700,000. We're going to lay him off. Okay. But they had to pay the commission that was on the books, right?

They did pay what was on the books. So I guess if there's an ethical way to fire people, they did it.

Wow. Call it a severance check, and next year they just won't have all those sales.

Exactly. But I've already landed a new place. It's a better place. And the nice thing is, when I got the email, and, yes, I was fired over an email. I just looked at my wife that morning. I was like, well, I guess I'm taking some vacation.

That's what you can do when you got financial peace.

Amen. When you're 49 years old and you're worth 1.3 million and you don't have any debt. Way to go, man. Way to go. So tell the young techies out there, can this still be done, or is all the opportunity in America gone?

It absolutely can be done. And doing it the right way, doing it slow growth is always less painful, is always better. In the last 16 years, we've had lots of different economies. We've had certainly different types of presidents, and it's never affected me one bit. Keeping my head down, concentrating on what my wife and I can control within our sphere of influence and what we can affect has always been the right approach.

In the last 25 years, which will put you down to 25 years old, what's the dumbest thing you did with money?

We were really young when I was stationed in Germany. We bought a brand new car, 1994 Dodge Avenger. We put $300 down on it, went home and freaked out, went back the next day and canceled it. We did not get our $300 back. So out of all the things you can do, stupid, with money, $300. We'll take it. It was a well lesson learned.

Yeah. Wow. And just took the car. That's amazing. Yeah. Sweet car. I'm glad you didn't get it. Very cool. Are you a reader or a tv person?

Oh, I read. I try to read two books.

A ah, okay. High correlation between people who build wealth, they read books instead of watching.

You're saying love is blind? Season four will not help me build.

Wealth, and I'm pretty sure neither will tiger king. Dang it. But strategy could be wrong. I'm just helping you people out here with your inputs. Inputs matter. Wow. Way to go, man. Good job, Jason. This is a baby steps millionaire theme hour.

It's no secret we love a good deal here at Ramsay, which is why I don't want you to miss this one. Right now, when you preorder my new book, breaking Free from broke, you get $100 worth of bonus items for free. I'm talking ebook, online, Q and A, and enhanced audiobook, all completely free and all chock full of what you need to know about credit card schemes, to investing traps, to mortgage myths, to building wealth. All the research is there. The offer ends January 15, so do not wait. Go to ramsaysolutions.com store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.

George Camel, Ramsay personality is my co host today. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour where we're talking to real millionaires about how they really got there. Not your broke brother in law's opinion, not somebody trolling on the Internet. These are actual humans that have actually done it, which is really probably a pretty good source of information. James is with us in Miami. Hi, James. How much is your net worth?

I'm sitting just shy of 1.1. I'm 1,075,000.

Perfect. Give me a little breakdown by category.

All right, well, about 450,000 is home equity, 255,000 is in my TSP. I've got 250,000 throughout Roth IRA mutual funds, a couple of single stocks in HSA, about 80,000 in cash, and 40,000 in paid off vehicles.

Good for you. Cool. How old are you?

I am 28.

28 year old millionaire. Look at you, man. Way to go. How much of this did you inherit?

Zero.

Zero. And what's your best working year and your worst working year, income wise?

The worst working year was back in 2015 when I started entering the workforce. I made about 50,000 that year.

Okay.

And my best working year was last year, made about 250,000.

Cool. What do you do for a living?

I'm an air traffic controller.

Okay, so is that a lot of overtime or what?

Yeah, it was mostly overtime. The whole pandemic, we just started going crazy with the overtime. Jumped up my salary by about 30,001 year in 2021 by just taking a bunch of OT, and then in 2022, same thing, just a lot of overtime.

Very cool. What's your degree in?

I actually don't have a degree.

Okay, cool. Votech or anything.

I went to college for about two and a half years. It was a four year program, and about a year and a half into it, the government changed their minds, which they always do, about how to hire people. So you don't need a degree for that field anymore.

Wow. Okay. And your GPA in high school then was what high school?

I was pretty good student, probably about a three, five, and about the same in college for those two and a half years.

Good for you. So what do you attribute the fact that you're a millionaire to? 28 years old. How did that happen? What do you call that?

I think a lot of it is. I want to throw it back to my parents, how I was raised through that and how they instilled that work ethic in me. They both put in 60 plus hours a week, and my mom was a small business owner, and just seeing her hustle and grind was really a big driving force towards it.

But they didn't give you any money. They just gave you an example.

Correct. And also, I got to work in the business growing up, so I got to start earning my own money from a young age.

Okay, so what were the specific steps you took over the last seven, eight years? Were you doing 15% retirement? Did you wait and get a bigger down payment? What were the tactical pieces of this?

I kind of messed up. Probably about two years into the job, I got a big pay raise. When I started getting checked out and certified on positions, I took that pay raise and I got a brand new car. So that was one mistake there. But after that, I learned and I started investing all the other rip pay raises after that.

So you just lived on less than you made after that and went, I'm going to sock this money away in retirement and pay down the house, and I'll get to millionaire status. Was it intentional to get there?

Yes, it was very intentional. I always had the goal, I wanted to be a millionaire by age 30.

And you did it.

And suddenly, a couple of years ago, I saw the end insight and was able to see million dollar coming up on it.

Yeah. Way to go, Rob. Excellent work. I'm sorry, James. Excellent work. Very well done. Good job. Rob is in Atlanta. Rob, what's your net worth? Hi.

My net worth is right about 4.24.3 million.

Very cool. Give me a little breakdown by category.

Yeah. I've got 2 million in 401.3, about in just mutual funds and things like that. About $800,000 in the house, and the rest in just cash and a few other things.

Good. Very cool. How old are you?

I just turned 58.

Good for you. And how much of this 4.2 million did you inherit?

Basically zero. My mother in law passed away this last year. So we got $90,000 just in the last year.

But you were already multimillionaires. Exactly. So what's your best working year income and your worst working year income?

Probably my worst was in graduate school, probably $8,000 a year, and my best will probably be this year. I think my wife and I will probably make about $300,000 together.

Good for you. What do you all do for a living?

I work in research and development in a big consumer products company.

Okay, cool. What's your degree in?

I have a master's in chemical engineering.

Okay. Something you're using in r and d every day? Yeah. Good for you.

Okay. Kind of, yeah. I'm in management now.

Yeah. But I mean, you know, the formulas. What was your GPA?

3.2 undergrad and 3.9 graduate.

Yeah. Way to go. Cool. So I think this is an underhand pitch, since you're a master's degree chemical engineer. But are you a book reader or tv watcher?

I'd say I'm an information gatherer. I don't read a ton of books, to be honest, but I gather information.

From all over the place. Your field is somewhat like medical field. So you're reading articles all the time?

All the time. And just personal stuff. Car repair. I enjoy doing that kind of stuff. Anything where I can use my hands and learn how to do something I enjoy.

Yeah, but didn't see every particular episode of Downton Abbey.

No.

Well, now he's got time to watch it. He's got millions.

Now you can catch it. That's what we aspire to, right? I love it, brother. Well done. So your advice to the 28 year old version of you?

Yeah, well, I think, like everybody else, spend less than you make. It makes things a lot more comfortable. Another one that I haven't heard too much is I really don't like to pay somebody else to do something I can do. So I'm willing to work pretty hard to do things that other people might just pay somebody to do, and I really don't do much of that.

Something I get. People sometimes criticize me on not asking, and I think it's a valid criticism. Do you or your wife smoke? No. We need to start asking that because I think there's a high probability they don't. Because, a, it's obviously a medical issue, b, it costs a lot. And I'll bet you we find a correlation. I've never asked it before. Yeah, it's an expensive habit because it just costs a lot and you go through a couple of packs a day. It's a big deal. Interesting. Very interesting. Hey, man, very cool. I'm proud of you. Thanks for the call. We appreciate you calling in. It's a baby steps millionaires theme hour. Now, the mythology, if you listen to the Internet trolls, the Reddit fools, the Tic tac people, whatever they are, or your broke brother in law who votes the wrong way, they're going to tell you that wealthy people all inherited their wealth. We've already told you 89% did not become millionaires. Stone Cold research. Because of inherited wealth. We can prove it to you. You disagree with that, you're what's known as wrong. This is data, okay? The law of gravity is data.

It works every time. It's called facts. The vast majority of wealthy people are crooks, George. Have you heard that one?

I've heard that one. We got to be evil to make.

Money, Dave, which is very interesting, because if you own a restaurant and you rip people off. People don't come back and they tell people to stay away. If you own a car repair place and you rip people off, they don't come back and they tell people to stay away. I'm confused how the crooks prosper over the long haul. Now, they might prosper that week, but it's very difficult to become wealthy. It's easier to become wealthy with actual high integrity because your customers will come back, because you can't keep your job if you lie and steal and all that. And they're all famous entertainers. They're NFL athletes, they're country music stars, they're rock stars.

I didn't get a single call from them today.

Yeah, engineers.

I haven't talked to one of those salespeople. The truth is, the data tells us that it's less than 2% of millionaires are celebrity types. Almost none of them are celebrity types. And celebrity types have a horrible reputation of handling money well, by the way, as a general rule, some do a good job, but the reputation is bad, to say the least. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour. Scripture of the day, proverbs 425 and 26. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet, and be steadfast in all your ways. George Lucas says you simply have to put 1ft in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour. We're talking to real millionaires. If you want to know more on this subject, the book number one bestseller, this is my 8th number one bestseller, is called Baby Steps Millionaires. And it came out about 14 months ago. And it's stories of real millionaires that really did this stuff. And it's data from the actual millionaire study. The study is published as an appendix in the back.

And we go through exactly how people walk this process out and exactly how over 30 years I've observed them doing it. And we defeat all of the lies that the hope stealers put out. And the hope stealers are out there. They were trained by Karl Marx in the college classroom. And it's just not true that you're stuck or that America is so broken that you can't win. Yes, there's lots of problems. Yes, there's lots of obstacles. If being successful was easy, no one would care about being successful. Everyone would get a participation trophy, and we'd call it a day, and we'd call it communism. But there's a real way that real people get up, leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home, and they become real millionaires. And no, they did not inherit their money. And no, they're not crooks. And no, they're not rich people. And, oh, by the way, if you're so stupid that you think a house, George was telling me this at the break, that a paid for house does not count in your net worth, then you don't understand basic accounting, and they don't teach that on TikTok. All right?

Basic accounting. If you take accounting 101, they're going to teach you what a net worth is. A balance sheet. And a balance sheet net worth is your assets minus your liabilities. It's very simple and very clean. And your assets are anything. Cars count. You have $100,000 in cars. That counts towards your net worth. Now, I hope to God it's not much of your net worth, but it counts as part of your net worth. If you own whatever. If you want to say someone's a cash millionaire or a liquid millionaire, that's a different definition. That would be a million dollars cash. Or liquid assets, mutual funds that you could get out, not in a retirement account, but your retirement accounts, your hard assets, even valuable personal items. Okay? If you had a bunch of collectible art that counts in your net worth, I don't recommend it, but in terms of a high percentage of your net worth. But it counts. And if you don't think so, you're what's known as wrong. So really, you have to start dealing with facts here. It doesn't count. Why do you want it to be impossible? Were you whiners? Why wouldn't you want it to be impossible?

Someone hurt them, and they just can't get over it. Maybe it was a breakup. Maybe it was some childhood trauma, I don't know. But they're in the YouTube comments, Dave. And I got to deal with them. Someone's got to.

Well, because you actually look at the YouTube comments, that's the.

I just. I can't help. See, idiots just get to be free.

You have to deal with them.

The problem is, I think it was a Mark Twain quote. If you start a fight with an idiot, they'll drag you down, and onlookers can't tell the difference.

Don't argue with a don't. Don't get in the mud with a pig, because nobody can tell which is which. That's the thing. But our goal here, we want to prove to you that you can win. It's that simple. And it's not Pollyanna. It's not fake if it goes against your little victim mentality. Well, good. That's what we're trying to do, is break your little victim mentality. Amy's in Dallas. What's your net worth, Amy?

2.2 million.

$2.2 million? Way to go. Give me a little breakdown on that.

You're breaking up.

Honestly, you're breaking up. We need a new phone.

I'm sorry.

There we go.

Maybe I'll spend some of it on that.

You got a deal on the phone?

1 million in retirement, which is 401k in Roth Iras, 400k, I'm guessing on the house, 700k in brokerage accounts and company stock, and then 100k in cash. And I do apologize, Dave. I did not incorporate things with wheels and motors.

That's okay.

Because they go down in value.

That's okay. I'm not yelling at you for that. I'm yelling at people who say that George's house has a million dollar net worth. Doesn't count because he's got about a $700,000 paid for house, and he's 32 years old, so of course it counts, right? Yeah, that's just dumb. Anyway. All right, so how old are you?

I'm 34, and my husband will be 33 this year.

Excellent. How much of this did you inherit?

I think about fifty k. My husband did when his grandfather passed away, but that was well after we were already millionaires.

Okay. We rest our case. All right, cool. And what do you guys do for a living?

We met in college, and we were both studying electrical engineering. He won the lottery. I was the only female in class.

Yeah, we double dipped on the electrical engineering. What was your GPA?

Mine was 3.3. His was 3.1.

Very cool. What do you tell people if they want to be a millionaire by 34 years old?

Honestly, God's money that you are entrusted to manage. And the biggest thing in your Bible verse today was perfect. Be okay with the laid gratification, understand the path. And it's okay that you're not going to have the flashy cars right now, because you're going to have it later.

Live like no one else. So later you can live and give like no one else.

Yes, sir.

Yeah. And the Bible verse, another one, is no discipline. Seems pleasant at the time, but it yields the harvest of righteousness. Amy, you're amazing. Congratulations. So, George, we had a 1.9, a 1.1, a 1.3, a 1.1, a 4.2, and a $2.2 million net worth. Today, 54 years old, 3249-2854 or 58 and 34 years old, none over 61. Under 32. In their 30s, is a young crowd today. Average GPA, 3.43.83. So they always think one of the other mythologies is you have to be unusually brilliant to be wealthy, and you can't be unusually dumb. The 1.6 doesn't show up. Okay. If you played beer pong in college, you're probably not going to show up here. If that was your graduate degree, is in beer pong. But most of the time, the average millionaire's net worth is a little over three. Mine was a little under three, 2.97, to be precise. And I'm very bitter about that. 3100.

Just bump it. Round it up.

Three one. Hundreds of a point, and I missed it. Yeah, there you go. So I graduated. Thank you, Lodi. That's what that means. So there you go. But anyway. But, yeah, that's the average millionaires right around that three mark. Very few of them are certified geniuses, but very few of them are dumb, and a lot of them are engineers. Number one category of careers, by the way, is engineers. Number two is accountant. Number three is teacher. Number four is business. Number five is attorney. Number six is medical. So medical didn't even make doctors. Didn't even make the top five. Wow. And we had them all here today. We had engineers, tech sales, air traffic controller, r and D nurse. See that? You see? Yeah, it's represented. Engine lots of engineers, chemical engineer, electrical engineer, electrical engineer. The first call, 54 year old nurse, single, had been in public nursing her whole life. Never made over 100,000 until last year. Year before last, yeah. So one third of millionaires never make over 100,000 in their life. One third of them in a study. So why do we do all this? Because we want to tell you can do it.

It's possible.

And the mix is interesting, too. There's nothing real sexy in this mix. It's just I paid down my house, got it paid for. I put money in my 401K. I've got a brokerage account with some mutual funds in it, and I've got cash.

There was not an Elon Musk or Bill Gates on the list.

I was waiting for something crazy, but there wasn't much in there.

Kind of boring, but it just works.

What's not boring is having financial peace and retiring when you want to.

Amen. Amen. There we go. So, hey, this is how this stuff works, boys and girls. It's slow and steady wins the race, and we invite you to join the race. Congratulations, America. Check out baby steps, millionaires. Check out financial peace university. We'll get you going. It's what we do here. Good show, George. Well done. Well done. That puts us hour in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there is ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.

Hey, George Camel here. If you love the show and you want a deeper dive on your money journey, we've got a weekly newsletter that gives you helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramsesolutions.com today to sign up for the newsletter. Again, that's ramsaysolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

If you're a leader, your personal growth matters for your organization because whatever you lead can only grow as much as you do. I know from experience I've been CEO of Ramsey solutions for over 30 years, and now I'm sharing that leadership and business coaching experience with you on the entree leadership podcast. I'm taking your calls and helping you figure out how to overcome challenges within your organization. One episode could change your business. Check it out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or on the Ramsay Network app.