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. Thank you for joining us, America. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Jade Washaw, best selling author Ramsey personality, is my co host today. So we're going to take your calls. The phone number is triple 8825-5225 Leona starts off this hour in Fairbanks, Alaska. Hi, Leona. How are you?

Hey, Dave. I'm great. How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Okay, so I'm calling because I am pretty newly married. Not my first rodeo, but one of the things I did I made a mistake of is not doing my financial background check on my new spouse. And so, October. We got married in May. In October, we had realized that we are close to a million dollars in debt.

Wait a minute. Slow down. Wait a minute. Stop. I got lost in this already. I want to make sure I'm with you. So you're how old?

I am 45.

Okay. And you've been married before?

I have.

You said not first rodeo. Okay, so you met a guy, and you married him, and you said it was a mistake to not do a background check.

No. A financial check with him. Have conversations about money is what you're saying. I didn't check to see what kind of debt ratio did you ask him? No.

Okay. So you just kind of walked in blindly. He thought you didn't care. Turns out you cared. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. I got it. And so you've been married for how long?

For about nine months.

Okay. And then you woke up one morning and decided to ask, or he decided to tell you. What happened?

I wanted to quit my job. And so in that, I asked him if that was possible. We went back and forth. I said, I really need to see the budget, assuming he kept one. And I found out there that he didn't keep a budget. But when I started pulling things together, finding about 17 credit cards, I realized there's no way. And he was heavily reliant on my income as well, to pay.

How was he making it before you were married?

As a bachelor, he was just a heavy spender.

If he couldn't make it without your salary now, how was he making it without your salary? Before you were married?

Right. He bought a $500,000 house.

Since you were married?

We were married. My name is not on the title.

Since you got married. When did he buy the $500,000 house?

August. It closed, so we were married.

So you're married. You bought a house. Okay. You were aware you were buying a house.

I was.

So $500,000 is owed on the house, and you said there's a million dollars. What's the other $500,000?

There's another house that he had. It's a $300,000 home. We have it as a rental right now.

What's owed on it?

330.

Okay.

Did you not know about the rental? No, I did.

You just didn't think about it. All right, so 830.

Yeah, it was just moved.

$830,000. And now what's the other $200,000 in debt?

He has a HeloC loan and some medical debt, and then about almost $200,000 in credit card.

Okay, and so what's your question?

How do I not murder him?

A, it's not his fault, it's yours.

You didn't ask.

Well, he doesn't get murdered. You might, but he doesn't.

Right?

You walked around acting like nothing's happening, and he just assumed it was all okay. He's living his life, like, just happy as he can be. Happy as a little old clam. And then you came along, wanted to quit your job, and he couldn't do it. So you're the one that didn't do anything. I mean, he's got a mess. There's no question about that. We don't need to murder him. Does he want to clean this up?

So far, he's been doing everything. We have a financial peace university coach right now who's helping us untangle a lot of things.

Right, so both houses are for sale?

No.

Well, they need to be. Okay, y'all are broke people.

Yeah.

Because I'm guessing there's a little bit of equity in these houses you can use to clean up this stupid butt credit card mess. This guy spends like he's in Congress.

Hey, by the way, what do you guys earn? What's the income between the two of you? 200,000.

You can dig through it pretty quick. Then you might even get to keep the house you're living in. But the rental needs to go immediately. Yeah, and that's where the HelOC is laying, too, right?

I think the HeloC is on the new house, but our coach and I are both confused about that. It's just messy.

Okay. And so, number one, the two of you, next time you meet with the coach, you have to raise your right hand and swear before the judge. I promise to never do anything with money ever again without my spouse knowing it. Both of you. Both of you. You do not have the right to act surprised after this point. Up to this point, because you walked into it begging for a surprise. But now, after, from today on, he doesn't make any moves anymore because he's really not good with money. We really can't trust his judgment. He really sucks at this.

And honestly, you're lucky that he agreed to go through financial peace and has the wherewithal to want to change it. Yeah, you got lucky there.

Yeah. I think you guys get on a beans and rice budget. You sell the rental, follow what the coach is telling you. You may have to sell the big house, you may not. How much you owe on your stupid cars.

So that's messy. His wife passed, and there's one vehicle in her name and a motorhome in her name.

Was the dad in her name?

Yes.

Okay. But he kept the rest of the estate, too, right? Yeah. So it's not messy. Both of those need to get sold yesterday. Did he not probate a will or probate the estate?

No, he just actually told the bank, like, two weeks ago that she passed away. Two years ago. He just now told the bank that she passed away? Yeah. So the bank is pretty upset right now because he's had the stuff in possession for two years.

Okay. So this level of denial and deception that he has lived his whole life in has to change, or your marriage is not going to work. And this level of not bothering to ask and walking around with your head stuck in the clouds, the way you do it, that has to change, or your marriage is not going to work. So the two of you have to commit to a clean, clear way of living where we're not deceiving each other or anyone else. All right? And you can get these two cars sold. Do you have any debt on the two cars you guys are driving?

Well, the HeLOC somehow has his truck wrapped into it.

No, I do not. It just used the HeLOC to buy the truck, that's all. Okay, so how expensive is his truck?

I think it was, like, 18,000 that he paid. He told me he paid off.

That's not too bad. I'm not sure I believe it, though. All right, so, yeah, you guys just got to dig in, clean all the. Get all the tangles out of the hair, get everything straight, and then decide what you're going to cut, how much hair you're going to have left after you finish this haircut, and then you got to be clean with each other and everybody else, quit hiding stuff, both of you. Wow, what a mess. Girl, this is the Ramsay show.

Hey, guys, it's Rachel. I love movies with messages of empowerment and hope, and I know y'all do too. So let me tell you about a new movie called Cabrini from the director of the sound of freedom. It's based on the true story of Francesca Cabrini and her fight to improve living conditions for immigrant orphans in the late 18 hundreds. And I cannot wait for you to see her story on the big screen, starting on International Women's Day, march eigth. Get tickets for cabrini now@angel.com. Ramsay. And use code Ramsay 20 for 20% off your ticket purchase. That's angel.com ramsay.

Jade Washaw Ramsay personality is our co host today. I'm Dave Ramsay. The phone number is triple 8825-5225 Evan in New York asks, what advice would you give to a future millionaire? How do you mentally prepare for that day, and how do you avoid becoming a different person? That's a great question.

That's great. I feel like you're the one to answer that, Dave.

Well, I mean, both of us can, because you hang around with a bunch of people around here that are millionaires, and they hadn't changed a lick. I mean, George might have gotten a little snarkier.

No, I think that's just the way he was made.

And Rachel may have engaged a little bit more into conspiracy theories, but that's the way she's made. What usually happens, Evan, is that the average millionaire in our studies, it takes an average of 17 and a half years. From the time you decide, I'm going to get out of debt, I'm going to pay off my house, I'm going to invest in my 401, and I'm going to build wealth. And on average, it takes 17 and a half years. Some people do it in ten years. But my point being, either way, it's a gradual process, and it's not unusual at all for someone on the millionaire theme hour or the first time I meet them, and they realize they're a baby steps millionaire. They haven't even added it up. They didn't even realize it. It's like, oh, look, our 401K went up in value. The stock market jumped, and that put us over the line. So now we're millionaires because it's not a feeling. It's a math thing. And so you don't know it, like, in your bones. It's not like a cold wind blows through or something lets you know, right. If it takes you ten years to do something, you're becoming a different person during that ten years, anyway.

And it's not a snot or a snob or a rich jerk or something like that. You're just becoming a hardworking person who's diligent and investing and saving. And so you've evolved from an immature child, which we all start out as, into a very mature, forward thinking person. And so if you do change to a different person, it's very gradual, and it's not a bad person. It's a better person. Not because millionaires are better, but the things you do to become a millionaire, the habits are all positive. Character habits. They're integrity, steadiness, dependability, diligence, thrift, generosity. These are the things you do steadily to become a millionaire. And that makes you a great person, right? Well, yeah.

And I think that's very opposite of the stigma. I think in our culture, you think millionaire, and it's like a guy with a cigar, and he's greedy, and he's taking money from the poor and giving it. And it's like, that's not what this is at all.

The truth is, that's only in books or movies. Exactly. In the real world, I don't run into those people.

That's right. But I think that that picture has.

Made earning money, like Simon Lagree or something.

It's made it something to fear. Oh, if you make money.

What I do know, Evan, is this. Whether you get money fast or you get money slow, money magnifies who you are. And the more money you get, the more magnified it is. And so a generous person becomes magnified, and we call them a philanthropist. They support great causes all over the world and certainly in their own community, as an example. But a person who has anger problems and is very self centered, you get money, you turn them into a narcissistic puke. Right. You can only want to be in the same room with them. The rage level that they would have is unbelievable. I run into very few of those. And if there's crazy in your extended family, they get crazier. When you get money, it magnifies the good and the bad in your personal self and in your life. But again, generally, that happens so gradually that no one realizes it, and most of your path is positive. And so it's not really something to be afraid of. And here's an interesting thing. One of my Bible teachers used to tell me this all the time. He said, if you ask a question like this, it's not going to be you.

It's not going to be you. It's the person that would never ask this question that's in danger. But if you ask this question, you're a good man, Evan. You're fine. Hey, guys. I am really excited. While I was out, one of the things we launched here on the show is a brand new partnership with a company called Health Trust Financial to help with health insurance. Now, health insurance in the past 15 years has evolved and deteriorated, and the whole space is just a mess. It's hard. And basically, Obamacare has put about 70% of the health insurance companies and agents out of business. And so the health insurance business is completely different now. And to get proper care, you really need a pro in your corner. And the health trust guys, they've been one of our health insurance elps back in the old days, and they're the best people ever, and they really know what they're doing. They are now a Ramsay trusted partner. They're who we send you to for health insurance. And they've been serving Ramsay fans as Elps for more than 20 years. And they're the only health insurance company we recommend. They will help you get covered.

And getting health insurance under today's world, it's almost mandatory, but regardless, you should get it, because the number one financial cause of bankruptcy is not credit cards, it's medical bills. And if you got no health insurance and you run up, you have a little stay over in the NICU with a baby, or you spend a little time in ICU, you got a half million dollars laying on your plate, and you're gone for most people. And so health insurance is absolutely. It's part of your budget from day one. Life insurance is part of your budget from day one. We recommend Xander for that. Right. So, healthtrustfinancial.com, these guys, I personally know them. I've worked with them, as we said, for 20 years. They built a business in this new health insurance environment, which is very difficult, but they do a very good job, and it can be the only thing that stands between your wallet and a mess. So you don't want to go near. If you drive by a hospital, somebody called diagnostics sends you a $79 bill. I mean, the medical world is wild, and so you do not want to enter a medical situation without good coverage.

And healthtrustfinancial.com, our new partner, can help you do that. I'm really excited about these guys. Like I said, I've known them personally for a long time. We've been working on how we were going to evolve our program that we recommend. And so this is now taking the place of the old ELP program for health insurance. There's one health insurance elp endorsed local provider nationwide called healthtrustfinancial.com. And they will get you some help in your area or over the phone or over the web, whatever you need. Healthtrustfinancial.com, they know their stuff. And you got to protect your wallet, people, these things, these health issues, medical issues are just, man, it's just devastating when you're not ready to go. Ben is in Peoria. Hey, Ben, welcome to the Ramsey show. Hey, Dave and Rachel. How are you guys doing?

Doing great.

How can we help? All right, well, I got to say, it is a pleasure to be speaking with you. I've been a longtime listener, huge fan of you guys. Cool. How can we help? So I am calling about, I've heard you guys talk about the high yield savings accounts and I'm just curious. My wife and I have our savings in just our small town credit union. What's it paying about? Zero point 65%. That would be sucking. Yes. And I've heard you guys talk about up to about 5% on the high yield savings accounts. I'm just curious, would you recommend specific savings accounts for that? Specific mean, there's.

Dave just did a whole thing on trusted services that we have and we don't have a trusted high yield savings account. Any ones that we mention are just ones that we personally use. And they've been fine for us. So I know that George Campbell uses Marcus by Goldman Sachs and I use Ally bank. They've got 5% interest. So honestly, a lot of them are those online banks. So it's low overhead and they can offer these higher rates. So just do your research and pick one that's good for you. That's what I would say. There's no endorsed provider that we have here at Ramsay.

But none of that was a paid endorsement.

That's right.

We've not checked those people out other than Jade and George put money in there.

And here's the thing, you have to be prepared because those companies, they're banks, so they're going to try to sell you debt and they're going to try to do all those things. You just kind of have to go.

Me and just also ask your credit union if they don't have something. See, I'm getting ready to pull all this money out of here. If you guys don't have a good yield product and put it over in one of these clickbanks and they may go, oh, we'll match it. They probably have something they just didn't bother to tell. I mean, most banks have banking products like this these days. It's the old money market. We've just renamed it and started a whole new marketing move around. High yield savings.

That's right.

Right. It's not really high, but it's better yield savings. This is the Ramsay show. I saw some recent financial statistics, and there was some pretty troubling news. When families were asked how long it would be before they faced financial hardship if a spouse died, nearly one third said they'd be in trouble immediately. Another 44% said they'd be financially drained within six months. People, it does not have to be this way. Term life insurance plans are just plain cheap. And companies have made it even easier by not requiring exams. In many cases, there really is no excuse to leave your family in this situation by not having life insurance. This is why I talk about Xander insurance every day. They're committed to protecting families with the only products that I recommend. And their team keeps the entire process simple and affordable. Go to xander.com for quick online pricing or call 803 564282. This has to be a priority. If your family is in this situation, you need to get this done. Jade Washaw Ramsay personality is my co host. Open phones at triple 8825-5225 Darley is with us in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Hey, Darley, how are you?

Is it Darlia? Darlia? I'll get it right eventually. It is Darlia, correct?

Yes.

Okay. How can we help?

Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. So my in laws loaned us $40,000 last year at 4.5% interest rate for five years so we could buy a house on a loan assumption. Oh, Lord. And that loan assumption came at a rate of 3.125 percent. So we couldn't let that pass by. So instead of going to the bank to get 40,000, we loaned it from that while they offered to give it to loan it to us, and we took them up on that offer. So I had a baby in December, and so now I'm staying at home. But before I had the baby and am staying home now. We got that loan down to $22,401 because we're kind of following the baby steps while we're trying to. Now I'm not working. My husband is a little iffy about going under $10,000 because currently we have $25,000 in savings. And I'm kind of suggesting, oh, should we just wipe out the loan with them?

What does he make up?

He makes $76,000 a year.

Are you living on a written budget with the every dollar app, spreadsheet and all. Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Well, you very much in control of every dollar.

Very much. We know where every single penny goes. Okay, so you said you're trying to follow the baby steps, right? Yeah. Well, wait a minute. He's just nervous about going under $10,000. Yeah, but any emergency comes.

Yeah, it's his parents nervous about it.

He probably feels comfortable because it's his parents. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're feeling it, and you're feeling it for good reason. For two reasons. A, it's debt, and your body's going to feel debt. And then two, it's debt that you owe to in laws.

Let's not make this Thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you eat with your master and the borrower is slave to the lender.

That's right. Yeah. Let's not make a complex situation more complex by adding debt to it. Right. So, yeah, if you guys have agreed this is the financial plan that we're following, then I'd hold them to that. And I'd say, listen, if we said we're following the baby steps, we need to pay off this debt and then rebuild our savings, that's what the steps say. That's what the plan is. We said we are following that. And I don't feel comfortable with this debt. As your wife, I don't feel comfortable owing your parents. And if for no other reason, this should matter because of that. Right? Yeah, I've told him that, and he definitely understands. They're amazing people.

We're not questioning their character. Yeah, you don't need to tell me three times they're amazing people. This was a stupid butt idea, and you all need to clean it up. It was dumb. You shouldn't have done it, but you did it, and now you have the opportunity to clean it up. Don't do it again.

You call so many people dumb that now I'm appreciating that I've gotten to that level. You're part of the club.

I did not say you are dumb. I said the idea. And what you did was dumb. There's a difference.

Yes.

I am not dumb, and I have done some dumb butt things in my life.

Quote, dumb butt decision. That's what it is.

I have done it. I have done it. So you guys clean this up. Get it out of your life. You can feel it. And this is not an indictment of saying our parent laws are bad people. They're wonderful people. They were trying to be helpful. They were helpful in a bad way, but they were helpful. They're trying to be sweet. They're trying to get you what you want in life, and they're not being mean. They're not calling you every week and looking at your budget and judging you. They're not control freaks. You didn't bring up any relationship issues. These are not bad people. That is not what the point is. The point is you have $22,000 in debt and you have $28,000 or $26,000 or whatever it is in your account. Write a check today and pay it off. That's the point.

Yeah.

If it was on a credit card, it'd be the exact same thing that we'd say. That was a stupid butt decision. You shouldn't have done that. Now clean it up. You got the money there. Write a check. It makes the more drama to the conversation because it's the in laws.

And think about it like this. Your life has changed since you took that loan. Now you're staying home with a child. That's an income that's gone. You have to ask yourself, okay, if we keep this debt around, what happens if there's another major life change? What if your husband loses his job? What if he's laid off? So there's a lot of variables here that a lot of times we don't let our brain think about because it's not pleasant. But when you carry debt, you are holding risk. I don't care who it's to because Dave talked about Thanksgiving dinner tasting different. It would taste a lot worse.

And by the way, we're not going to be at the 2000, $3,000 level for about ten minutes in this account because you're going to immediately start adding money to it, correct?

Oh, yeah. Right.

How much would you add to it a month? How much would you add to it a month without having these payments?

About 700 a month.

Okay.

And he's expecting a bonus soon and hopefully a promotion soon.

And a lot of that will go to. So you're going to be like, by September, you're going to be right back up where you need to be, right? Yeah.

We're going to be down to like $3,000 after we pay it.

And you got a bonus and you got $700 a month. Is $700 a month if you don't have this payment or currently $700 a.

Month if we don't have the payment, $700 a month.

All right.

Yeah. And it does freak them out because we were following the baby steps when I was working and when I found out I was pregnant, we were essentially just dumping money to this loan to them, and it freaked them out. They were like, what are you doing?

I'm not concerned about them freaking out. That's their problem. If they didn't want you to repay it, they should have made it a gift. Yeah, they shouldn't freak out. They ask you to pay them back, you're paying them back. Stop with the drama. Just write them a check. Pay them back. Be done with it. And please don't do this again.

Terrible.

I'm telling you guys, in the 30 something years I've been doing this, some of the saddest stories are the ruined relationships because somebody did something like loan their kid 25 or 30 or $50,000 to buy a house, and then something goes sideways, something gets out of hand, and all of a sudden everybody's torqued up and twisted up. And formerly nice, sweet people aren't for some reason, and it's bad. You all. If borrowing money on a credit card to do this is stupid, just make it stupid times two to do it with your in laws. All right? And again, I'm not calling you stupid. I'm saying what you did was stupid because I don't call people stupid, except people in the financial world that tell you to do stupid things. But you people that were trying to help. Our job to help you heal, is to tell you the truth. You don't want the doctor to go, I think this little bit of cancer is going to be okay. Why don't we just leave it there, right? You want them to say no, get it out. Get stupid. Try sunscreen, boy. I mean, seriously, right? Golly.

So you want people to tell you the truth. If they're going to be healers and we're not going to hold back, we're going to tell you exactly what it is because we got a lot of people to help and we love you and we want you to win. And that includes Darlia in Fredericksburg fence, Virginia.

But, Dave, there's so many people who, they are sitting on savings while they've got debt sitting over there in the corner. And the thought is, I don't like the risk of not having savings. But they don't entertain the other side of the equation, which is you must not care that much about risk because.

You'Ve got debt, because you've already offset it. Your balance sheet still represents a broke person.

That's right. The math has to math.

I don't want to be down less than $10,000. Well, try going into debt and using up all your money then. Right? There's a good way to solve that. And by the way, you can pass up any housing deal. It's too good to pass up. No, it's not.

Not if you can't afford it.

No, it's not. You can pass up the deal on that Bentley, too, because you can't afford it. Help you with that? That Louis Vuitton, that $83,000 purse? You can pass that one up. You can pass it up if you can't afford it. It's too good a deal. No, you can pass it up. It's possible. I see people do it all the time. This is the Ramsey show. This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Listen, if you can't even remember the last time you had half an hour to yourself, be honest. Ask why. It's probably because everyone else's schedules, priorities, and emergencies are driving your life. And when you can't keep carrying that load, talking to a professional therapist can be a game changer. Therapy can be a place to work through your challenges with time, boundaries, commitments, and your own self worth. Therapy can be incredible for figuring out what even makes you happy anymore and how to go make that happen. If you're thinking of starting therapy, try betterhelp. Because therapy isn't just for people who've experienced trauma. It's great for building skills to be the best version of yourself. Betterhelp is completely online, so it's flexible enough to fit your schedule.

Just fill out a short questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. Learn to make time for what makes you happy with betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com deloney today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. He lp.com deloney Jade Washaw Ramsay personality is my cohost today. Thank you for joining us, America. A lot of you got questions about taxes because it's tax time, which means people are confused and pissed off. I'm not confused. I'm just pissed off all through tax time. It just makes me angry.

I feel bad.

Dave, what's the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit? Oh, that's a great question. A tax credit of $1,000 reduces your tax bill by $1,000. Tax credit is superior to a tax deduction by three x. So a tax deduction. If you have $1,000 tax deduction, $1,000 less of your income is taxable, and so if you were in the 30% tax bracket, as an example, and you have a $1,000 tax deduction, it lowers your income by $1,000. $1,000 less is being taxed at 30%. So the savings is $300. But a tax credit, the savings is $1,000. It's a one for one. And there aren't many tax credits. They're usually associated with something like a solar program or something like that. There were a few back in the day, 1000 years ago on some real estate stuff we used to do. If you did, like a lower income housing development, you could get tax credits for that, stuff like that. But most things are, if there's something associated with this will be called a tax deduction. And basically, you don't want to pay to create a tax deduction that you didn't need, because basically you're going to spend $1,000 to save $300.

So it's trading a dollar for a quarter. I feel that tax credits are better than tax deductions by about three x, roughly. So there you go. Go to ramsaysolutions.com if you need more information on taxes, we can hook you up with one of our tax pros. If you have a complicated return, and these Ramsey trusted tax pros are excellent. And there's hundreds of them all over the ramsesolutions.com slash tax. If you've got a simple return, just use our simple Ramsey smart tax software, and it's a lot less expensive than the other guys. And we're not going to try to sell you a bunch of crap like they do. They're trying to get you in credit card debt and everything else. Get you to borrow money on your refund, all this other stupid stuff. We're just going to help you do your taxes, and it's less expensive and no hidden fees on that smart tax. So check both of them out and we'll help you out. It's what we do. All right. AJ is next in Dallas, Texas. Hi, AJ. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, Dave. How you doing today? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

Yeah. So I've lived here in Texas for most of my adult life now, and everything is going well. I'm completely debt free, paid for house, own a business, and I've also been single for most of my adult life, but happened to meet a lovely woman who lives in California, and she has her heart set on staying in California and would like for me to move there. And I know the cost of living discrepancy and I have a bit of sticker shock about the prospect of moving out there versus trying to convince her to move here or at least have a hybrid situation where she were to live here part time and I were to live there.

What kind of work does she do? Does her job keep her in California?

Yes, it does. She's in the medical field, so she has to stay out there? No. What does she do in the medical field? She's a therapist. Okay. They have therapists in Texas, correct? There's a bunch of them, yeah. Luckily I'm in a position where I can work remote, I have an e commerce business and I can work with anyone. How can we help? So, you know, just wondering how to best approach this, whether it's getting a second residence in California while maintaining a residence here. It's not that. Listen, you need to decide if you're going to have your cake or you're going to eat your cake. You can't have your cake and eat it too. We're either all in and we're married in California, or we're all in and we're married in Texas, or this is a mistake because our values don't match up and we're not going to be a good couple, even though she's sweet and pretty and all that. But it doesn't match up. In other words, if she wants to live in California more than she wants AJ, that may be a reason to tap out.

How is she doing financially in California? Does she earn enough that her quality of living is fine and she has no debt?

Well, and that's the thing. She doesn't have any debt, but she doesn't save any money either. Whereas I've accumulated a whole bunch of money over the years and I am financially know. My house here would be probably three or four times as much if I were to buy it in southern California. So what is it that's so appealing to her? Because California has lost more people in the past 36 months than any other state in the union. Really? It's a matter of her family being close by and she doesn't want to move away from them.

Is your family in Texas?

No, my family is on the east coast. I don't really have any ties here other than I've lived here for a pretty long time. Yeah. AJ, I think the only advice that I can give you that is accurate is to not try to create some kind of weird thing that makes you think this works. This really is going to come down to you deciding, I want to be in California with her more than I want all of the things I have built in Texas, the life I've built in Texas, or vice versa, it's a matter know heart, know the financial part of it. And they both play in together in a lot of ways. I guess it works both ways. I was going to say it's a little bit off putting that the only way you get me is you live in California. But if you go the other way, too, the only way you get me is if you live in Texas. So that's just as off putting, I guess. But what you're saying when you say that is you like being near family. You like living in California more than you like AJ.

And if you say that to her, you're saying, I like Texas, and I like my situation here and the cost of living and the fact I can save money more than I like you. If you're not willing to come over here, I'm staying.

But here's the thing. I think both of you can approach this with the mind that none of it has to be permanent. Right? Maybe there's a situation where you go, okay, let's try it. Let's try California. Let's try it for five years and we reconvene after this. Is it too expensive? Is it getting crazy there? After being married 17 years, it's like so much changes. Like, over the course of a year. Over the course of three years, forget 510 years or a decade. So I don't think it all has to be set in stone. But to Dave's point, I do think it is worth exploring what's most important to you.

I think you're early in this relationship, and neither one of you are willing to give up your current life for the other one. And that's a red flag for me on both of you. That's a red flag. Yeah. It's hard to teach old dog new tricks. You guys are pretty set in your ways, both of you. I understand that. I mean, we had the opportunity several years ago when we built this complex, this campus for Ramsay. We had a lot of other cities in other states wooing us to bring this 1100 jobs somewhere else, and we were able to work a deal with this county in this state and stay here. And also, the other thing that happened over the years is they told me back in the day when we were doing talk radio that you can't make it in talk radio. You're never going to be a big deal if you're in Nashville. You got to go to LA or you got to go to New York, to which I said, I'm not going to be a big deal. I'll be in Nashville because I am not going to live in LA or New York.

I'm the same way. In other words, I'm just as stubborn as she is or you are.

Well, I want to cast my vote on this only because I think our votes will be different.

Okay.

I would cast my vote for California simply because if he had said, oh, she's accumulated all this debt, I'd say, wow, she can't afford to live there, but she's debt free and her family's there, and he doesn't have family in Texas, and he's doing very well financially. His job is remote. For that reason, my vote would be California. Not that this matters at all, by the way. It's just me saying my piece.

My vote would be, get a different girlfriend.

Love it. For that reason alone, we're out.

Tap out. There you go. Yeah. I'm just thinking, nah, this was a miss. Good swing, but miss, what do I know, though? I'm old, I haven't dated anybody other than my wife in 43 years. So I don't know nothing. I don't know nothing. I'm an out of touch boomer. If you don't believe me, just read the comments. 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. Jade Washaw, bestselling author Ramsay personality is my co host. Today, open phones at Mohammed is in Asheville, North Carolina. Hey, Mohammed, what's up? Hello, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve, sir. How can we help? So me and my wife, we make a pretty good income. Combined, we make about 500,000 a year. Wow. Way to go. Thank you. No, mostly her. So a few years back, I invested basically everything that I have into this business. It's a franchise business that I bought into and it's been struggling for quite some time. But I wanted to know how I could separate myself from the business and all those sort of things, because right now I'm really taking feeding from my bank account into the business.

Bank account. Your business is losing money. Correct. It's not profitable.

How much money?

Correct.

For how long?

Yes, I think all in from origination, I'm probably 800,000 in the hole. So what is the belief that this is going to turn? We had hurdles mainly because we had a manager that was not showing up, employees not doing the jobs, and it was really difficult because I no longer live in the area of where the business is. So I couldn't just hop in. And what I've done is I've revamped operations, specifically working with the entire team, having weekly calls, all these sort of things to establish that cadence. What kind of business is this? It's a franchise. It's a fitness industry. Okay. And did you lose money last month? Yes. Why do you keep doing this? That's a great question. So initially when I went and trying to buy into this. No, I'm talking about from today forward, what is your hope? What is your belief that causes you to keep doing this? I understand there's things in the past that are not replicated, but you either need someone to shake you out of your denial and say, sell the stupid thing, or you need to tell me that there's a real reason you can see a light at the end of the tunnel that is not an oncoming train.

Other than I just think it's going to get better because I of a feeling. Gotcha. So I have considered selling know I have listed it. Hey, Mohammed, answer my question. Why do you think this is going to get better? Well, because I've seen the numbers go up in the past month or two. Okay. So there is a trend line in losses and the lines are getting ready to cross and you're actually going to be even or profitable soon. Is that a true statement? That is a true statement. I think I'm about three to three months away from being hitting break even. Okay. That's a valid, logical reason to keep going. Okay. That's what I was trying to get at because I've lost 800,000. I had some hurdles. The thing is in another location, I'm having to tighten up. Tighten up, tighten up now when it starts making money.

More questions though, because you're $800,000 gone in the red. So you just breaking even on my side of the table, I'm still like, okay, but that's not profitable. That's just you not losing money. It's not breaking even because you haven't gotten back the $800,000.

Well, it is breaking even monthly.

Monthly.

It's not burning more cash. We don't have a burn rate anymore.

Sure, but how long until we're starting to actually be profitable? Not just month over month, but in.

The big picture, that's a lot. All right, let me ask you this way. What is your plan twelve months from now with this thing? I'm hoping to sell it by the end of this year. Okay. We're going to try to get it up where it's not in the red and then get it sold, because in another city it's not been a fun experience, and we're just going to write off the experiences. Ouch. Right. Okay. Because you're probably not going to get 800,000 for it, right? Probably not, yeah. Okay. All right. So you're going to take a loss and move on. I didn't mean to beat you up. I'm just trying to get in there with you because I do all this entree leadership stuff with these small business people, and I love small business people, but this sounded like a nightmare. And it has been, hadn't it? Yeah, it's been a nightmare from the get go. We had a lot of hurdles due to. So what is it you're wanting to separate to protect? It sounds like you're afraid somebody's going to come after you personally over something that's going on with the business. Is there a loan on it?

Yeah, there's a loan on it. Okay. How much of a loan do you have on it? About 520.

Yikes.

How much do you think you're going to get for it? I'm hoping to get 600 just to kind of get rid of that. I mean, 500 would be fine, too. Okay. And I assume this is like an SBA loan or something like that that you signed personally? Yes, sir. Ouch. Okay. You can't protect yourself from that. You signed it personally. That makes you personally liable. All of your personal assets and future income is exposed until you clear this. So it is absolutely vital that you get this thing sold and get this monkey off your back. Okay? Yes. There's not a risk management tool that will handle this. It's after the fact. You can't buy fire insurance after the fire. So you've signed personally. You took out a $520,000 credit card, and you can't get away from it until you pay it off. And so you didn't take out a credit card. I understand that, but I'm saying that's exactly the same thing. It's a personal liability on this loan, and your income and anything you own or anything that has your name on it is exposed until you get this paid off. And so, yes, I would try to get that thing as profitable as I could, as quick as I could, and get it sold as fast as I can.

I want this thing out of your life for a whole bunch of reasons. 520 of them. Thousand of them, to be exact.

Dave, talk about sunk cost fallacy. Because I feel like that's at play in many ways when you've just put so much money into a deal.

That's what I was fishing around. I was trying to figure out if that's what he was doing. So sunk cost is he's not doing that because he's got a $520,000 loan he's trying to clear. But sunk, let's say he had put $800,000 cash in this, okay. Which he might have in addition to that.

I was going to ASK if that's in addition tO.

But anyway, whatever she put $400,000 in whatever it is, and sunk cost is you're trying to recoup something from the past and you're not giving an accurate view on the future. And the way you avoid sunk cost analysis, and you can do this with your personal items as well, is if I had that same amount of money today in my pocket. So let's say you could sell that. Let's say you owned a business completely separate from this discussion or anything. You had to own an investment, let's call it that, that you have $200,000 invested in, but you can sell it for $100,000 a day. If you had $100,000 sitting in the middle of the table, would you buy it today? Lord no. It's awful. Well then sell it today. But I got 200 in it. You're not going to get the 200 back because it's awful. So that's sunk cost analysis. You're worried about the 200 you put into it while ignoring what you project the future to be, right? You do your decisions based on what you project the future to be, not what the past was, not what you've got in it. It's what you think it's going to do from here.

That's your decision making paradigm.

Hey guys, it's Rachel. You've heard me talk about christian healthcare ministries, a health cost sharing ministry, but I want you to hear from one of their members. Abby racked up a lot of doctor bills with a recent pregnancy, but she said ChM shared all of her eligible pregnancy related medical expenses and their staff was consistently attentive, helpful and considerate. That's Abby's CHM story and it could be yours. Learn more and join chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Jade Washaw Ramsey, personality, is my co host today. She's a bestselling author and been covering the microphone in my absence for the last little bit a little.

You know, I try to do my best here.

Thank you.

No one can fill your shoes, though. Let's just be clear.

Well, sure, they could, actually. The ratings went up while I was gone. So we had a record month on YouTube, a record month on the podcast while I was gone.

We did. But there were also a lot.

I wasn't on the air. There's a correlation here. I'm just saying.

That's true. But there was a lot of people wondering where you were, and I read some of the comments.

Dave, where's Waldo?

Yeah, I read some of the comments and they said Dave needs to come back from his backpacking trip in Antarctica.

I don't like backpacking and I don't like cold.

Okay, well, what about this one? Dave needs to come back from his hiking trip to the top of Mount Everest.

You just hike up there, do you?

These are real comments from the YouTube show. Dave needs to come back from his feeding baby elephants in nairobi already. Baby elephants, Dave, baby elephants. Really take you for that guy. How about.

Actually did that. But yeah, there you go.

Dave needs to come back from the rainforest.

The rainforest, yeah.

Or this one. Moto mom 1311 says Dave needs to come back from his wine tasting trip across South Africa.

I did do that, but not on this trip.

All right. Not this one. Well, maybe it's this one. This is my favorite. Twelve days ago at Negriff says Dave needs to get back from his Middle east peace talks asaP.

Yeah. Because I'm known for my peaceful demeanor.

When I saw these comments, I was like, this is too funny not to talk about.

Well, they got kind of started on a thing there. Dave needs to come back was like the theme.

Yeah.

Okay, that's funny. Be careful what you wish. For real?

For real.

No. We were in Cabo for six weeks, and I've never taken six weeks off in my entire life. So it's the first time I've ever done it. I am 63, so that's about as close to retiring as I'll ever get. I don't retire. I'm not going to retire. I'm going to keep talking on this microphone until I don't make sense or until the ratings are so bad when I'm on that, you all won't let me come on anymore. But anyway, I'll still be hanging out. I love doing this, and I love doing the events that we get to do. We're doing a big total money makeover event. We're in a planning session for that this morning. That's going to be done in May, and a virtual investing essentials event in May. I'm planning both the content pieces on that with the content team this morning, and I love working on this stuff. It's a lot of fun.

Well, listen, Dave, you were gone and I was here, and I may have pissed a few people off good while you were.

Well, that's why the ratings went up. You took over for you. Because Rachel's just too nice.

She is nice. I've seen her get a little snippy, though. I've seen her.

Yeah, a little, but not much. She needs to get what you do.

Well, I may have said.

You might have said.

I might have said that people need to understand that the glory days of inexpensive living are over for now. Like, prices have gone up and inflation is up, and buying a home is very difficult. And I've been hearing a lot of back in 2018 and in 2020 and in 2021, and I said, as long as we're not looking at today and we're looking in the past, you can't go forward. And I think it's keeping a lot of people in a state of discontent. And it's hard for them to be happy. It's hard for them to find gratitude, because we keep comparing today to yesterday.

Yeah, you're right. But there's not a glory day. Well, it's just more than it used to be. So my parents bought their first home in 1963 for $12,230. Okay. That house today would be, what, 400K? Right? And they don't live in that house anymore. But I mean, that house today, that's what it would sell for. I know right where it is. It's just over the hill over here. And I still live in the same area. And that was 1963. You know what my grandparents said? How can any young people buy a house for $12,000 on a 30 year? You're going to pay on it till you die. It's awful. And you know what the interest rate was? It was four and a half percent.

Oh, God.

That's what my grandparents said, dave.

This was supposed to be my rant.

But I mean, that's all that's happening, right? I mean, and so I'm looking at these prices, and I'm like, my grandparents, right? I'm like, God, this is ridiculous. How can any of these young people buy a house? Bless your heart. And the young people are looking at it. And of course, social media gives you an inordinate ability to bitch and whine. Some of you people whine and wallow in the victim stuff from now on. Yeah. You boomers bought your house with two buckets of strawberries. You all don't know what's going on. And it's like, oh, God, your whining is unbelievable.

It's a lot.

It is a lot. But I understand because it's scary.

I do feel trap, and you've never experienced that up until this point.

But my point is it's always been that way.

Exactly. It's always been that way.

And it just depends on when the house prices are worse than they've been since 1980. Yes, that's true.

But every generation has their version of that.

I was doing an interview with an NPR lady yesterday who's doing a thing on real estate. It's going to come out later, I guess, whenever the NPR does her thing. And she said, so what do people do? What do they do? Because wages, it's systemically broken. What do they do? And I said, well, there's always been a time and there's always been a place where someone lived in a neighborhood they could not afford. When I started doing the show 35 years ago, you could not live in Los Angeles or Manhattan downtown unless you made X number of dollars. You can't afford it. What's not trying it is. What it's not a fair is where the tilt of whirl and the cotton candy is. There's not a fare. Okay? It's a math thing. And so you can't afford to live in Los Angeles today or San Diego today, or certainly in San Jose or San Francisco today if you make $50,000 a year.

Some people feel like they can't live in whatever the suburb is of their normal sized city, like in just a normal.

Well, that might be true, but they might be outside the suburb then, because every city, unless it's contiguous to another city or contiguous to a mountain or water, has what we call in urban growth ring theory. You drop a pebble in the center of the city and every ring that goes out gets cheaper unless it bumps into a view of water or a view on a mountain or something else that drives the price artificially. Sure, okay. But generally speaking, you drop a pebble in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, you go 30 miles out, you got one price point. You go 100 miles out, you got a completely different price point. And that's true around America. Okay, it's true in Columbus, Ohio. It's true in Austin, Texas. It's true in Dallas, Texas, except you run over there into Fort Worth because they're beside each other. But other than that you're going to get a ring going out of that area. And the further years ago, 25 years ago, I started going to Dallas. 30 years ago I started going to Dallas. McKinney was an exit, and now it's a metro building. Now it's a metroplex. Right. North Dallas.

Right. North Dallas.

Same thing here with Spring Hill. Exactly.

Spring Hill was a wide spot in the road, and now it's a legitimate bedroom community. And you should have bought there 20 years ago. No, you should have bought there 40 years ago. No, you should have bought there 20 months ago because it's always gone up everywhere. Now, here's the truth. The truth is, it is very hard to buy a house right now. And it shook some people up. And I am sympathetic to that. I'm not sympathetic to victimhood.

Right.

And you're whining about it, but I'm sympathetic to the fear.

I agree with that.

And the sense of being stuck.

And that was the intent of my post. The intent was to say, listen, you're right, it's not the same. And like John Deloney would say, you have to grieve that. Grieve what was and grieve what won't be anytime soon, and then decide how.

You'Re going to live.

Yeah, decide how you're going to live.

Because you don't get to yell and scream, and they change prices because of your whining. Never once has a real estate price been changed because of people's whining.

And that's what people are saying, well, what do you want us to do, Jay? Just sit back and accept it?

And I'm like, no, what I want you to do is quit yelling at the wind and adjust your sales.

That's good.

Don't. Yelling at the wind doesn't do anything. Adjust your sales. And so you need to decide maybe I used to think I could live in this city making this much money. So I've got to adjust my income with my career choices.

And by the way, that may be.

Very uncomfortable, or I've got to leave this area.

Another uncomfortable.

I can't afford to live in San Francisco. I can't afford to live in whatever. Yeah, I may have to live 100 miles out of a city instead of 30 miles out of a city if I want to own a home. But your income has to go up in order to buy more expensive things. It's a math thing. You don't get to whine about that and fix it. There's not a systemic thing that's broken. It's a broken brain. Adjust your sales. The wind moved. This is the Ramsey show. Jade Washaw Ramsey personality is my co host today. Guess what? In the lobby of Ramsey solutions on the debt free stage are some young people who have managed to exist in this economy. They have adjusted their sales and have decided to go win and have not whined. I know this about them because they're here to do their debt free scream. Hey, guys, this is Landon and Delaney. Welcome, guys. Good to have you. Hey, thanks for having us. Where do you guys live?

We're from St. Joseph, Missouri. Close to Kansas City.

Yeah. Know it well. Very cool. Good to have you guys. And how much debt have you two paid off? Paid off? $51,000. And how long did that take? Two years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? About $75,000. Very cool. Do you guys own a home there? No, we do not. So you were getting out of debt. Now you're getting ready to think about buying a house. Can you afford to do that now? Getting there now that you don't have any debt?

Oh, yeah, for sure.

He's smiling at me. I'm not sure you got a little.

Bit of time to save.

Okay. You got time now you're on your way though, right? Yeah, absolutely. Good for you. Okay, so what kind of debt was the 51,000? It was my student loans, all mine. Wow. What's your degree in? So my degree is sports management. Good for you. What do you do for a living? I actually do sales at a TV station in St. Joe. KQ two. Shout them out. But I do sales there and marketing. Good for you. Cool. What do you do, Delaney?

I am a registered nurse.

Awesome. Very good. Well, you guys are doing great. You have the student loan debt and. Two years. How long you all been married? Two years. Okay, so you get married, you come home from the honeymoon, you, uh oh, Landon's got student loan debt. Tell me about. So you know, when I was in high school, I was going to get free college because my dad worked at a university in New York, Kansas City. I'm from my whole, my whole life in high school, I was like, I'm just going to get free college. This is great. And then my senior year, some things kind of happened and my dad didn't work there anymore. And then they kind of went away from things that we didn't agree with. So then I had to make a decision when I was a senior and I was like, I didn't save any money for college. So I was like, oh, I can get a loan. Everybody else does it. It's fine. And I didn't know any of the risks of it or what it entailed at all. I knew nothing about it. My parents just kind of said, here's what you do, and I did it.

Here you are.

Sign right here. Press hard. There's three copies and $51,000 later. Here we are. Okay. So you guys get married and decide to attack this. How'd you get aligned on this Ramsay stuff? Tell us about all that.

Well, I grew up listening to you. Like, my mom told me about it. We had the little junior Dave Ramsay thing.

Oh, you're a financial peace baby. Okay.

Yes. So I was already aware of it. And throughout college, I worked, lived at home, paid for it throughout college. So I kind of mentioned it whenever we were dating and engaged. And thankfully, he was kind of willing to listen. And we had a financial peace class at our church. And his father in law, my dad was like, you guys should do this before you get married. Our teachers are here with us today.

Oh, really? Cool. What a great premarriage class. Absolutely. Yeah. So Landon goes in there and goes, I don't know what this girl's gotten me into. She's cute, but what is this class? Yeah. So, I mean, my father in law, apparently, he has these ten things I have to do before I marry her, which is, like, I have to live in the woods for a day and kill a deer. Yeah. Ask me if I did that. I didn't do that. So sorry. But he still gave me the blessing. I missed the deer, but went to FPU. Missed the deer. But he volunteered me to do FPU. And so that was a part of the agreement to I like him. Yeah, you probably would like him. Was it bad, or did you like it or did you learn? I loved it. And the thing that really stuck with me is the gazelle speed. I was like, kind of how you described it. There's other things you need to go at, but the gazelle speed is so important to hit that immediately and continue and do not stop. And that's kind of the philosophy I took. And here we are.

Yeah. And you guys knocked it out fast. Very fast. Yeah. And so he's going, hey, I did good. Yeah. He's proud, I guess, right? Yeah. Good. Very good.

Some people will look at this and go, two years. That's a long time. I can't sacrifice for two years. I can't cut back for two years. I should be able to live my life. What would you say to that person?

Well, I think that's just false. And I think people, they look at what they have in front of them. Like, I remember there's a quick story I'll tell. But we thought I paid off my Sally May loans and I don't like mentioning her name, but I can now because we paid it off. See you later, Sally. Bye bye. Anyway, so I paid off about 15,000 in Sally May. And I thought it was done, but they kept calling my phone and said, you need to pay right now. There's debt you still need to pay. And I was confuzzled. I'm like, why are you calling me? Quit calling me. And they said, well, there's two accounts under your name. And I opened up another account and there was 20,000 plus dollars. And it was really discouraging. And I can let Delaney speak on what she said to me, but we kind of just felt, yeah, we had to regroup. I mean, it was like, what do we do?

Like, you thought you were done and suddenly the finish line moved, right?

Yeah. And these loans had like twelve to 15% interest rates, which is unbelievable. So we just kind of felt this peace from God saying, I'm going to get you through this. And at first it's really discouraging to look at all these loans in front of you when you work so hard. But with your gazelle speed philosophy and the debt snowball, it was like, just like that, we're done.

Just like that.

And God's like, look what I did. And you trusted me, so we give the glory to God. Amen. Honestly, well done, you guys. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Well done. Very cool. You can do anything if you can do this. Good point. You killed the dragon, man. Well, Missou plays an SC tournament today, so we need that philosophy. They can do anything. There we go. Good luck, Jesus. In sports, I don't know, but there we go. How come Jesus is always on other people's. Yeah. What do y'all tell people? The key to getting out of debt.

Is, I would say just like you say, changing your mindset of it, because I think a lot of it is how you look at things and kind of like, to answer your question earlier, just a momentary suffering, I guess if you want to say it, of looking at it versus a lifetime of just peace, it's totally worth it.

And the feeling we have now is incredible. Yeah. I mean, it's like I almost go to bed some nights thinking we still have debt. I can't go to get chick fil a, but it's like, well, I still got chick fil a when I was in debt, so you can still do that. Congratulations, people. But I'm just like, wow, I can go to bed feeling great. We don't have any debt. This is. Yeah, yeah. We always say, live like no one else, so later you can live and give like no one else. It says in Hebrews, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. Delaney, how old were you when you did financial peace, junior?

Maybe like, ten.

Okay.

We also went through it in my high school as well, so I did it.

You couldn't get away from it.

Yeah.

Okay. Financial peace, junior. And then you go on the dadgum teachers teaching it in econ Ramsay curriculum. It's in 48% of the high school, so there's a probability that's going to happen. And, wow. Way to go. Okay, so I'm just bringing that up for all of you that are listening, that have kids, and your kids are rolling their eyes, someday your kid will be a beautiful little 25 year old married to a guy who had some debt, and it'll all be cleaned up because you're laying some foundational things that make this feel a little bit more normal. Because this didn't feel weird to you, it felt weird to him because it was new information. But for you, it was like, this is how you live. I mean, it was in high school, I was ten years old, on the chore was on the refrigerator, and here we go. You're normalizing common sense in your home when you do this stuff, folks. And Rachel always says, when I'm talking about teaching kids, more is caught than taught. And so watching your dad and know sets you up for this whole thing. And so this is a second generational move here that we're seeing, and someday soon, we'll see the third generation.

So there we go. That's cool. Good for you guys. I'm so proud of you. Thank you. Very well done. How old are you? I'm 24.

23. Wow.

24, 23. I called you 25. I'm sorry.

That's better than what I get normally.

And I usually get 35 with our haircuts. Yeah. I'd like to tell you it's going to get better, but I can't tell you. Probably not. All right, Landon and Delaney, Kansas City, St. Joe area. Really? 51,000 paid off in two years, making 75,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream. All right. Three, two, one.

We're debt free. Let's go. Yeah.

That's how it's done, boys and girls. Hey. We're going to give them a one year subscription to the everydollar app that connects to their bank with the everydollar plus. And of course, we're going to give them two of them. One to give to a friend. So not bad at all. Way to go, you guys. See, there's the whiners, and then there's those folks.

Sale adjusters.

Doers. And the whiners. The victims. And the victors. And the victims. Write in the comments, the victors seldom.

Do love that.

Buying or selling a home is one of the biggest deals you'll ever make. And that comes with a ton of pressure. But you can close on your home with confidence and keep on top of your financial goals. You just need a roadmap showing you the right way. Which is exactly why I wrote my new book. Real estate. The Ramsay way covers everything I've been teaching people about buying, selling, and investing in real estate for over 30 years. To get your copy, visit ramsaysolutions.com store. Jade Washaw Ramsay personality is my co host today. Thanks for joining us. Open phones at triple 825-5225 we appreciate you guys being with us. Tony is on the line in Knoxville. Hi, Tony. Welcome to the Ramsay show. How's it going, guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, my wife and I, we've been busting our butts, and basically all we have left now is the home mortgage. Cool. And we're down to, like, 89K in our home loan. We've been paying. We did the 15 year and we're paying that off early. How old are you? How old are you? 47. Okay, and what do you guys make? About one hundred and twenty k a year.

You're doing great. Way to go, Tony. We're trying. So I guess my question is, do I keep throwing every extra dollar into paying off this home mortgage, or is it okay to do some home renovations? It's okay to do some home renovations. All right, now, here's the thing. When you move from baby step three, where you have your emergency fund and you're debt free, but the house and you're in what we call four, five, and six. So you should be putting 15% of your income towards retirement. That's four. You should be putting something aside for kids college, if that applies, that's five and six. The house should get everything else. When you're in one through three, you're in gazelle intensity mode. When you move into four, five, and six, you're in intentional mode. And so what we're doing is we're sitting down, looking at the budget, and we're saying, we have a lot of goals that are competing for the same dollars. Okay, I want to get a better car. Mama wants to get a better couch. We want to renovate the kitchen, and we want to pay off the house. The more we do of any one of those means automatically, mathematically, the less we do of the other.

Does that make sense? 100%. So you're just being intentional. You're looking at it and saying, okay, we have a couple of goals here that I've heard so far, and that one is renovation and two is $89,000 mortgage. Both are good goals now. So what I would look at is say, okay, what level of renovation can I do that scratches the itch that I've got, but is not hog wild, so that I can also get about the business of getting this mortgage paid. Look, that's why Sharon and I did it, okay? In other words, you don't have to do all one or all the other. Or you could say for six months, we're going to do the home renovation, and then after that, we're going to turn that off or whatever it is. So what's the renovation and what's it going to cost? We haven't gotten quotes yet, but it's our bathrooms, which can be expensive, but ours aren't too big. So I loosely price it out with the local construction, but I got to get more. Are we going to guess? Twenty k? I was thinking between ten and 20. I'm going to call it 20.

All right, so we have $109,000. We need to accomplish both of these goals, right? When are we going to do what? I mean, do we want to do it zero extra on the house till we knock out the baths? That wouldn't be bad. With your income, you'll be there before Christmas. True. Okay. And then once we've done the baths, we're going to pledge to not do any other renovations till we go ahead and knock out the house and just talk that through and get alignment with your spouse. And that's how we do it. What do you all do?

That's what we do. I mean, we're literally right where you are. It's paying extra towards the house and doing renovations. And right now, we've pushed the pedal forward on paying extra on the house, but we've decided that when we hit a certain point, we're going to switch it and the 80% is going to go towards renovations and the extra 20 is going to go towards the house.

Yeah. And just a little back and forth. So in other words, the answer is not no, the answer is just which is first. Right? Because neither one are evil. Now, if you told me, I want to do $300,000 worth of renovations, let's just full stop and let's have a whole nother discussion. Okay. But I didn't think you were talking about that. And you weren't. Okay. Now, it's like we got a dengue bathroom, and it's like, I'm good with that. That's actually good money spent on a house because you'll get it back. That's not wasted money. But even if you wanted to do something where you're not going to recoup all of it, like, say, putting in a pool. Okay. Seldom do you recoup all the money you put into a pool when you sell the house. Very seldom does it raise the value of the house equal to the investment in a pool. So you've got to enjoy the fun of it as consumption of it as part of the equation. But even that, if you're going to say, we're going to spend 20K on a pool, which wouldn't be much.

I wish that you could spend 20K on a pool.

You can blow them up, but get your little. Anyway, if you. Did you just say, okay, I want to buy a boat. Okay, there's another one. Okay. That's going to go down in value. It's not a good investment, but it's a lot of fun. And I want to spend 20K on a boat. You could have that exact same discussion. But if you say, I want to spend 300K on a boat, then you go, no, because you're going to be all your life screwing with that instead of getting your house paid off. So that's the only check and balance in this. But typically, you can do all in on one or heavy on one or light on one, and then switch back off.

Yeah, I like what you said. Just enough to scratch the itch.

Yeah. Again, because here's the problem on renovations. It's once you start, you keep going. It's like a thread. You want to keep pulling it.

That's what I'm saying. You can't just do the kitchen and not do the floors. And you can't do the floors without doing the floors in the bathroom. And if you do the floors in the bathroom, well, then, now you've got to do the bathroom.

You get scope creep is what you get. It turns into a thing. So, yeah, it's very interesting. It's very interesting. You got to set very clear, project oriented goals and give those projects time limits and dollar limits, set a budget, and then stick to it. And especially with construction items.

Yeah.

Because those things all get scope creep if you don't. We're building a house right now. We're fighting scope creep. Not with each other, but we have the money. But we could jump over that budget. But right now, we're ahead of schedule and slightly over budget.

Who's voted most likely to want to up the budget, you or Sharon?

Me.

You.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't. Just as a matter of pride, because I just don't want to. I want to hit budget.

That's good.

Just like the builder is going to be early as a matter of pride.

I feel like that's lucky that you have that switch inside of you, because usually the spender doesn't have that switch, and they need the other person to switch.

Mean, we do look at stuff, and sometimes Sharon wants something, and we can afford it. Of course, it's not like we're breaking the budget if we do it. That's not the question. It's the question of, at what point.

Are you just being sure?

You know, it's like, I mean, who needs an oven that large? But apparently we do. You do? That's okay.

Have you seen that mechanism? I thought of you. There's a mechanism called chefy that prepares the food for you. You install it in your kitchen. It's robotics. And you can just say, I want this, and it makes the food for you. Dave, add that to the budget.

No, it's too late. The appliances are already scheduled. Sorry. Too late. You need to stay away from Sharon. Sharon can my wife. We have some very interesting appliances in this thing, but, yeah, because there is no end to it. No matter what you have, there's always a bigger one, a better one, a shinier one. There's always a more expensive one. And if you don't freaking pay attention. And we live in this ridiculous neighborhood, and some of these people will dial up something and then fly off to another state, and they're building this house, and they don't even look at it. And then they come back, and they overspend change order because they don't manage the project. They just don't stay on top of it.

Well, they think, I've got money to blow. It's not a big deal.

They do have money to blow, and they do blow it. Yeah. Oh, gosh. We built a house, a large custom home. Several years ago, a country music artist, a young one, built across the street from us. Our house literally was within 400ft of the same square footage. It was half the price and we built it in half the time. Wow. Because you were managing it, the artist.

Don't say names. Don't name names.

That person, that artist had change orders stacked like phone books. We had two change orders and built it in 14 months. Because you build it on paper before you break ground, people, you manage the project and you manage your own expectations and you put together a project and a budget. It's called being a grown up. Oh, man. It's bizarre. It's a bizarre world. You got to be careful with it. It's dangerous. I'm preaching to myself right now. 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour. What that means is that Jade Washaw, my ramsey personality, and my co host today is going to talk to. We're going to talk to real millionaires and ask them how they did it and ask them some things about their lives. Why? Because if you hear enough of those things over and over again, you'll recognize you would want to do them. That is, if you would like to have a million dollars or greater net worth.

Now, there's a lot of confusion out there about this stuff because there's a lot of whining and so forth happening in our world today. So let's clear up a little bit of that as we get going. We're going to talk to real millionaires. There is only one definition of a millionaire. There's not two. There's not six. A millionaire is an accounting term. There's one definition. It is the net worth of $1 million or greater. Your net worth, by definition, is not your cash, it's not your stock. It's everything that you own. Because you could sell everything that you own at someday, it might take some up, take a little longer than others, but it's everything you own, what you own minus what you owe, your assets, minus your liabilities. It's called a balance sheet in accounting. And when you take what you own minus what you owe, if that equals $1 million or greater, you are a millionaire. Now, I know one guy that has a multimillion dollar net worth, 10 million plus, and he has over $1 million in cars.

Wow.

Because he's got collectibles. And he's a car collector. Okay? He can sell those cars for that million dollars if he wanted to, probably more, actually. But that is a valid asset today. That's what they're worth. So today they're part of the equation of him becoming a millionaire. It is not your income. I heard an actual United States congressman, which is just distressing to me that they're this stupid, say, well, he's not a millionaire. He doesn't make a million dollars a year. That is reelected this person to the United States Congress. That's how dumb we are. But, yeah, so what a fool. So you're not a billionaire because you make a billion dollars a year. You're a billionaire when you have what you own, minus what you owe. Now, here's the other thing. There's a lot of mythology out there about where wealth comes from in America today, and we'll talk about that. But the four greatest lies that are told is that you can't become wealthy in America today unless you inherit it. It's all inherited. Lie number one. Lie number two, only extremely smart people become millionaires. You have to have a 4.2. You have to be the valedictorian.

Lie number two. Lie number three, all rich people are crooks. They stole it all. That's just so stupid. I don't even know how to address it. But that's a lie that goes around the lie number three. I can't be a millionaire because I'm not a famous country music star, rock star, professional athlete. Only 1% of America's millionaires are recognizable due to their fame. Almost none. Okay, so we'll go ahead and put that one to bed. But these are lies that people. So I started discovering that there's all this angst out there and this lost hope. And some people are hope stealers, trying to steal people's hope by telling these lies, because they have an anarchist mindset.

Well, if they don't have hope, they don't want anybody else to have it either.

Or they have a communist know. We need to burn America to the ground because the little man just can't get ahead. And the interesting thing is that what Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist, actually said a few years ago is that today, throughout human history, today in America, the little man in the United States of America, starting from nothing, has the best chance of building wealth of any human being in history on the planet.

Wow.

It is the system that gives the little man the best chance.

What do you think about? Because this is just something I've observed, I think when you're here in the states and you were brought up here and you lived here, it's almost like you get numb to how blessed we are.

Whereas immigrants are better off than most people around the world.

Yeah. Immigrants will come into this country, see the opportunity, seize it, and change their whole family tree and become decimillionaires.

The truth is, if you are a legal, we'll clarify that. Okay? Make sure I pronounce that correctly. Legal, meaning you did this properly and so that you're documented, so you can do business and all that kind of thing. If you're a legal immigrant to this country, first generation, you are four times more likely that's what I to become a millionaire than one of us good old boys. Because we get numb to it, we get to taking it for granted. And we hear all these people go, well, the great american dream is just dead. The little man can't get ahead. And I'm like, yes, he can. I talk to him every day. They become baby steps millionaires. They do everything else. So we're going to talk to real millionaires today whether they won the lottery, whether they inherited it, whether their grandmother sent them money. I don't care where, or maybe they scratched and clawed and they were a first generation immigrant. I don't care. Wherever your money came from, I'm going to ask you about it so that we can show all of you, viewers and listeners where millionaires really come from. Now we know, and we're not setting these calls up.

Anybody that wants to call that is a millionaire. We're not going to put anybody on this. Not a millionaire. I don't want your broke brother in law who doesn't know how to vote's opinion. I don't care what he thinks because his proof text is not there. He's shown he doesn't know what he's doing. So your friend, who is a college professor, who hadn't got two sticks to rub together, but is a communist, I don't need his opinion. He's broke.

And I'll say, if you've never shared an episode of the show, this is an episode you need to share because a lot of people will never hear this kind of conversation and it will blow their minds to hear some of these calls and the things we talk about in this hour.

Yeah, and one of the things we'll bring up as we're talking to some of the millionaires throughout the hour today is we ended up because of doing this hour. I kept hearing this stuff over and over. And I was running into people on the street. And you and I go out at the commercial breaks and we take pictures, and someone, they'll always come up and they say it real quiet, hey, Dave, I'm a baby steps millionaire. Love that. They're not loud about it. They just tell you the stuff you do works, man. I did it. Followed the baby steps, and I'm there. Well, Dave, a million dollars is not enough. That's not the question that's on the table. I'm not sure $10 million is enough. But it just depends on what enough is and what you want to do, right? If you have the money to do God's will in your life, you have enough. That's the definition of enough. So I don't know if you need a million or 2 million or none. I don't know what you need. But it's not a moral construct. It's a math thing. It's an accounting function, and it's a valuable goal to aim at.

It's not the only goal, and it won't make you happy, but it'll make you in a better position than when you were broke. So let's talk to real millionaires on a baby steps millionaire theme hour. Jade Washaw Ramsey personality my co host today. Here's the thing about investing advice. You can find it just about anywhere, but that doesn't mean it'll always help you with your personal goals. Here's another option. Check in with a smartvestor pro. These financial advisors can review your plan or help create one that's personalized to you. To find a smartvestor pro in your area, go to ramseysolutions.com slash smartvestor. Go to ramsaysolutions.com slash smartvestor. Ramsay Solutions is a paid non client promoter of participating pros. Learn more@ramseysolutions.com slash smartvestor. It's a millionaire baby steps millionaires theme hour here on the Ramsey show. Jade Washaw Ramsey personality is my co host. If you want to know more about this subject, I wrote a book that ended up being a number one bestseller called Baby Steps Millionaires. As a matter of fact, it was my latest number one, come to think of it. James is in Dallas. James, what's your net worth? My net worth is about 1.2 million.

Cool. Give me a little breakdown on that. By category, what is the 1.2 composed of? Yeah, I've got it consolidated. So our house equity is about 565,000. Retirement is 440,000. Cash and money markets about 56,000 brokerage investments of about 51,000, and then college for the little ones saved so far in 529 of 56,000. Cool. Well done. How old are you? 32. Wow. Young millionaire. All right. How much of the 1.2 did you inherit? I inherited about 10,000 from my grandfather in a living trust, so not much, but he did leave some for me. Yeah. How long ago? Over the past couple of years. So you were probably almost a millionaire before you got that? Oh, yeah. Mathematically, it's safe to say you're not a millionaire because of an inheritance. Is that fair? That's a fact. Okay. All right, cool. So your income, your best year since you've been working. Your worst year since you've been working. Give me the range. Started in 2014 at like 57,000 a year, and now I'm up to, like, 230 a year. Cool. What do you do for a living? Most of the time I work for the same company.

It's been in either sales or business management, but now I work in international sales for a chemical company. Okay, very cool. And your degree? Do you have a four year degree? Yes, I do. I have a degree in sales and marketing, and then I finished my MBA about a year ago. Good for you. What was your GPA and your marketing degree? It was about a three four in undergrad and then like a three nine for my MBA. Most people do better in grad school. Okay, good. So how much of this 1.2 million would you say you have because you borrowed money to build wealth? Nothing except for a mortgage. We pay cash for our cars, everything, right? So, zero. Okay, cool. All right, so what advice do you have to the 22 year old version of you that's listening to this? Can it still be done? Absolutely. I wrote down a few things. So the first is the usual. So start early, utilize company matches, and contribute as much as you can. Put 20% down on your house and then pay cash for everything. Like I said, track your progress. Every month we sit down and add it all up to see where we're progressing.

Third is run your personal finance like it's your job. Push yourself and make money work for you, not against you. Fourth is set goals. So our goal is to be millionaires by 35 and have a life where my wife could stay home with kids. And then lastly is reverse auction all your major services, projects, and large purchases, like cars. So go out and make suppliers give you a competitive bid. Then make those companies bid against each other. So, for example, like when we bought cars, if you save $5,000 and it takes you 10 hours of work to negotiate those bids. It's like you're paying yourself $500 an hour. So you save big money that way.

So did you guys. Just a question. What about your car situation? Were you people that drove brand new cars or did you drive used cars?

I'm sitting in my 15 year old beat up pickup right now.

I bet you are.

We've paid cash for cars. I haven't bought a car in nine years now. And when we got married that was an eye opener for my wife. But she's come along for the ride and we bought her a used car a couple of years. No pun intended. Yeah. Long for the ride in the used pickup. Yeah. Good. Way to go. Man. I'm proud of you. Very well done. That's awesome. Sam is next. Sam. What's your net worth? Mr. Ramsay. Great to talk to you. Sir. You too. Man. I am. 1.2 million in Roth. Four hundred and one K and five. Two nine. Twenty K in cash. And then we have our house paid off. And we have our rental property paid off. So what's your house worth? I think comps in the neighborhood are maybe at 800K. So you got about a $2 million net worth. Is that what I'm hearing? I think. And the rental property probably bumps that up even some more. So what would you call your net worth? Let's see. 2.3. Okay. If we include the house and the rental property that's included in your net worth? Yeah. Thank you. How old are you?

46. Good for you. And how much of this did you inherit? Zero. Okay. And your best year working income. And worst year. Worst year. Boy. Starting off in the military. I think I made thirty five k one of those years. And then since I've been retired from the military and working in sales, I had a real good year at like 200K. Okay. So you're in the sales. Okay. So you served in the military. Thank you for your service. Did you get a four year degree? I did. Yes. In what? In business management. Okay. In business. And what was your GPA? Got undergrad. I think maybe 3.0. Okay. Cool. And sometimes people say the only way you can become wealthy is to borrow your way into it. Did you borrow your way into this or did you just do something else? No. Same as the previous caller. The only borrowing I can think of is the mortgages. Which I really want to say thank you. Because you were the first person to put the idea in of paying that off early. And just the worry free nature. Once you get your home paid off is excellent.

Yeah. So you probably are attuned to what's happening and being said in the culture, or people say, this can't be done. Now, do you think it can still be done? Yeah, I was thinking about that, and I just kind of wanted to be on the show and maybe talk to anybody who's in the military and the reserves and those young people, they do have some time when all your living needs are taken care of. You have your housing allowance and you might be on a deployment. And that was the key for getting it done for me is that during my deployment, I always just thought, this is an opportunity to save and then get the down payment for everything done. It bumps your income and depending on if you're in a zone or not, you get tax free, right? That's correct, yes. And there are also some other benefits where you can essentially get a bond for the time you're deployed as well. Yeah.

Wow.

Good advice. Good stuff. Yeah. Thank you.

Tell me, I'm always going to ask about the cars because I tell people all the time that the car payment, that's the gap between middle class and wealthy. We know people are carrying car notes of 700, 800, and even $1,000. So tell me, did you buy new cars? Did you keep car payments around?

No, I never got the new car. And that is the status punchline on military bases, that the young soldiers get the fanciest cars with the highest interest rates.

And you were like, I'm not going to play that game.

No. What do you drive right now? Oh, a beat up Subaru. What would you tell the 22 year old version of you, if they're in the military to take advantage of that stuff. Anything else, any other advice you got for them? Yeah, I would say that, thankfully, somebody just kind of came to me and said, there is a way to kind of never pay retail and to pay cash for things. And so just kind of get the things that you need and get it on sale. And that alone, the idea of just kind of putting a little bit more away every month, it just kind of becomes a game. You never get a deal if you don't ask. So always ask. Yeah. And very seldom are someone offended because you asked. Sometimes they just grin, giggle, look at you and go, no, but they are never offended. And I'm amazed most of the time that you ask, is this getting ready to go on sale? Oh, next week. Can we go ahead and do that now? Because they just work there. It's not like their money.

Right.

And so they like making a sale. I mean, my gosh, just ask. I love that. That's very cool. Well done, Sam. Good work. You're a hero, man. So here's the rule. Here's what we found. We studied 10,167 millionaires. 79% of them. Eight out of ten, received zero inheritance. Another 5% received a small inheritance. Not enough to make them a millionaire like the other guy. Ten grand. Another 5% got good money. But it's after they were already millionaires. Five and five and 79 is 89. That's nine out of ten of America's millionaires are first generation rich. If you disagree with that, you're what's known as wrong. That's airtight research. That's data. It's not an opinion. Nine out of ten millionaires in North America started from nothing and did it without an inheritance. Folks, changing your family tree takes more than rice and beans and side hustles. It's also about transferring the big financial risks off your family by having the right kinds of coverage in place. That's why my team created the coverage checkup quiz. It only takes about five minutes to find out what types of insurance you need and don't need to protect your finances.

Make this quiz one of your regular checkups, starting right now@ramsaysolutions.com. Checkup. That's ramsaysolutions.com checkup. Jade Washaw Ramsay personality is my co host today. Open phones at triple 8825-5225 well, all wealthy people become wealthy became wealthy by stealing their money. Well, the problem is that that's another lie that we're doing a millionaire theme hour here that doesn't hold up. Let's think about this, okay? Because a lot of these folks, if you're at work working for someone else and you're stealing money, what do they do? Give you a raise? No. Promote you? No. Give you more money to steal? No. They fire your butt. If you steal money when you're at work and you work for someone, from the customer or from the office, they fire your butt. So explain to me how you work for someone else and you get rich by stealing. That's just ridiculous. It's all these business people. Okay, well, let's try that one. All right. When you run a business and you steal money from your customers or you cheat your customers, what do they do? They send all their friends to do business with you? No.

They write a crappy review and never come see your business again.

They trash you on every form of social media and say, this guy's a crook. I took my car over there to get it fixed. He owns a repair place. He ripped me off. And no one goes over there that they know. But if you do a good job and you're an auto repair guy, everybody sends people to you because you're kind of rare.

Well, what about this one, Dave? My job. I can't be a millionaire because my job doesn't pay enough. It's only for people who make $100,000 a year or more.

Yeah. 33% of the people in the millionaire study that we did, one third never made six figures. Here are the five top categories of jobs that we found among the 10,167 millionaires. Number one, most likely job most often occurring. In other words, if you'd had this job, you were more likely to be a millionaire than any other job. Engineer number two, accountant number three, teacher number four, business and sales. Already had two sales guys on here so far. Number five, attorney. Number six. Didn't even make the top five, was docs, doctors, medical doctors. They're notoriously bad with money. The only people worse than them with money are professional athletes and music stars.

True that.

They're notoriously bad because they're arrogant, a lot of them. And so we work with them all the time. I see a lot of broke doctors out there. They're everywhere. But they top six in the top ten. But this thing of, oh, it's all doctors and lawyers. No, it's not. Teachers number three. So we couldn't figure it out when we first found this in the research because we couldn't figure out what the correlating thing between these engineer, accountant, lawyer, business, and sales teacher. What do these I have in common, because it wasn't a high income.

I'm going with they're systematic.

They're systems people.

Personalities.

They're systems people. They're all process people. There's a way to build a bridge and it doesn't fall. So that's how you build it that way. It's a system. If you're an engineer, there's one way to do accounting. Accounting is not an art form. You follow the system, or the accounting is wrong. Generally accepted accounting principles gap. There's only one way to do accounting. You flunk the class. If you don't do it, you go to jail for embezzlement. If you don't do it, your customer goes to jail if you're doing their taxes. So there's one way to do accounting. If you're a lawyer, there's only one way to litigate.

That's interesting.

I mean, you go before the judge, there's a series of processes. You have to do filings, you have to do proper procedures. You have to follow teachers, follow a lesson plan. The number of teachers that were married to policemen that became millionaires was huge. Again, policemen, believe it or not, follow a very set protocol.

Makes sense.

An exact, it's called the law, but they also are trying to keep from getting killed and they're also trying to keep from getting sued or something else. So there's a whole set of safety protocols, legal protocols, very precise to be a professional law enforcement person. And so these people that are systems people are there. When you're involved, when your brain is involved in something that's more free form, it doesn't occur as often that you become a millionaire because you refuse to follow the process. You think the rules don't apply to you.

Well, that's good to know, especially as a musician, any creative, you know now, okay, I'm going to have to dial it in.

Well, what happens with the creatives? The reason they become millionaires is they just make so stinking much money. Can't help it if you're a Hollywood a lister, you just make a pile of money. You're a country music superstar, you make a pile of money. Now, some of them are excellent people. I know a bunch of them. And some of them are excellent with money. They're great business people, and some of them are dumber than a rock, but they just outearned that, and that's true with a lot of people. But the systems thing is a big deal. So the point of all of this is to give anyone out there listening hope that you too can do this. Danielle is with us in Connecticut. Danielle, what's your net worth?

Hi, Dave. Hi, Jade. It's 1.1.

Cool. Give me a little breakdown on that by category. How much in retirement?

It's pretty simple. It's about a third in each bucket with retirement house and savings.

Good. How old are you?

28.

Wow. Young millionaire.

I want to know more.

Yeah. How much of this did you inherit?

10,000.

10,000. So you're not a millionaire because of the inheritance. What's been your range of income since? Worst and best.

Depends when you want to start that.

Well, I mean, when you were an adult.

Yeah. So out of college it was 67.

Okay. And what's your been your best year?

And then our household income. I'm married currently is 316. Nice.

Cool. What do you all do for a living? What's your careers?

We fit that stereotypical list that you just ran through. We're both engineers.

You're both engineers. I love it. So you've obviously got engineering degrees. What was your GPA?

Mine was 3.6 and my husband's was 2.9.

Wow. Good. Okay. And how much of this 1.1 at 28 years old is there because you borrowed your way into wealth?

We did have a mortgage of, depending on how you look at that.

This is cute.

Paid off.

That's precious. I love it. Way to go.

You're amazing.

I mean, do you not sit back and pinch yourself and go, I'm a 28 year old millionaire?

Yeah. It feels normal, though, honestly, like you were saying on your show earlier, because it happens gradually. Yeah. I feel like a very normal person. I think it's just because when you're not spending your money and you're investing. Yeah. Then you live a very normal life.

Yeah. It's just cause and effect. If you build a bridge this way, it doesn't fall. And if you put money in savings, there's money there.

I just love people like you.

That so? Common sense.

Just give the finger to all the things that we talked about earlier, which is no one can get ahead the way these prices are. And you're 28, like you are in the prime time of when complaints can complain. You know what I'm saying? You're right in the middle of that. And you are like, not me. That's crazy. I got to know, how often are.

You in a room where you just have to sit and smile because all the other people are bitching? I don't.

That's a real question.

I thought so. Some of my friends, she's got pictures in her face right now. She's thinking of Marge right now.

Man, that is so crazy.

Wow. That is awesome. Way to go, Danielle. I'm proud of you. You're a hero. Michael, what's your net worth? Michael? Michael. Hello. What's your net worth? Hi. That's okay. What's your net worth? It's about 4.5. Cool. Give me a little breakdown by category. Sure. So I have my house for about just under a million dollars. I have investment property, a little over a million dollars. And then between stocks and CDs, well, CDs, 1.2 and then. All right. I want to keep talking to you after this commercial break, but I'm being run off the air here. So you hang on. I'll be right back with you. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour scripture today. First, thessalonians 518, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. William Walter Ward said, feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. Thank you. Yeah. That's why I'm better than I deserve. No question about it. This is a baby steps millionaires theme hour. We were talking with Michael before we went in the commercial break. Four and a half million dollar net worth. 1 million in house, 1 million in investment real estate, two and a half million in mutual funds and stocks.

How old are you, Michael? I'm 48. 48. Very cool. And how much of this four and a half million did you inherit? No inheritance. No inheritance. Okay. And your range of income, your best year working and your worst year working? My best year, I would say probably 1.3 million. Wow. Which was a rarity. Okay. Yeah. That was a way off year. That wasn't like a regular amazing. I wish I could have made that every year, but I had, like, two years of that because of COVID mainly because I was in real estate valuations. So I did real estate valuations, specializing in, mainly bankruptcy, estate settlement, and I testified about real estate values, basically as a real estate expert. Interesting in values. And what's been your lowest year since you've been working? Probably 40 ish. That was probably around maybe. So your job is, you're an appraiser? I was an appraiser. I retired about a year and a half ago.

That's awesome.

Okay. But in your appraisal field, you kind of took it up a notch, did some court cases and did some other things. More than just appraising the local house, right? Yeah, I found a specialty niche. Yeah, that's what it sounded like. Mainly litigation. Yeah. And then the COVID thing really just poured gas on it. No pun intended. Yeah. Okay, cool. Very cool. So do you have a four year degree? Yes. In what? In what? Business? Management business. Okay. All right. And your GPA on that? Probably 31 or something like that. Okay. And how much of this 4.5 in net worth do you think is there because you borrowed your way into wealth? None. I never take out any loans. I don't owe anything. I don't owe anybody. That's why I was able to retire, because I don't owe anyone real estate in any cars or anything like that.

Did you buy your rental in cash, too?

No, actually, originally I put out, like, a really small loan, like a couple of hundred thousand dollars, over a million. But then you just turn around and paid it off as fast as you could. You've seen debt as a way to slow you down. Not to speed you up, is what you're saying. Yeah, it's never good, especially being in business, because I can't control my income. Anything could happen. I can go down anything. It's not really a business business. It was more of a self employment, like any small business. If you go down, you go down.

Hey, let me ask you a question. When you look back on all of this, this 4.5 million, honestly, what role did a credit score play in this? Do you look at that and go, you know what? The reason I was able to make this million is because I had an awesome credit score.

It keeps your cost down. Insurance wise, it keeps your cost down on different things like that. I was able to rent out my office at one point, so they ran my personal credit because I was a small company, so I wasn't like IBM, so it was all on me. So if I had bad credit, they wouldn't have rented my office to me at that time. Okay. If you had no credit, they would have. If you'd have put down a deposit, though. Yeah. Okay. I probably would have had chunk them on yourself. Yeah. I think you're okay. I think you did okay. But I guess Jake's point is I don't think you have 4.5 million. Because of Fico? No, because the FICO score is touted as being the answer to everything. And it's really not. That's her point. I think the biggest thing is cutting expenses. Just, like, for myself. I keep my expenses really low. It's just really just paying my utilities, my insurance, my taxes. That's really it. Living on less than you make, Michael, I'm so proud of you. You did great, man. You're a hero. Congratulations. Very well done. Excellent. Excellent. All right, Eric and Amy, we're against the clock.

What's your net worth? 1.9, Dave. Very good. Give me a breakdown by category. Sure. And then our savings and investments is 1.3. We have about 37, 38,000 in cash. Our vehicles are 50,000, and our house is 550. Okay, cool. So it's investments in home is the bulk of it. Okay, very good. How old are you guys? I'm 58 and I'm 57. Very good. And how much of this did you inherit? How much did you inherit? Nothing. Inherited nothing. Okay. And what's been the range of your income in your working life? Your best year working and your worst year working? Our worst year is when we first started, the combined income was 41,000. And our best year is probably right now we're at about 255 I have a pension. Very good. Okay. What's your career? I retired as a state trooper after 25 years. Awesome. Okay. And what was your career, Amy?

I'm in marketing and media as a social media strategist.

Okay. All right. Very good. So, marketing. Perfect. And you guys have four year degrees?

I have, actually, a master's degree.

In what?

Business administration.

An MBA. Okay. And what about you, Eric? I have a bachelor's in police science. Okay. All right, perfect. And you both used them. Okay. What was your GPA, Eric? 30. Good for you. And what about you, Amy?

I strived for the 30, but I only made it to 2.9.

Me, too. I had a two nine, seven, that three one. Hundreds of a point. Still pissing me off. Yeah. I love it. Hey, you guys are amazing. Congratulations. Very well done. There it is. A policeman and a marketing specialist again. Told you. These people show up all the time. So here's the tally for the day, folks. Zero are we had 12345 different people we talked to. 1.22.31. None because of inherited money. 32 years old, 30, 46 years old. 28, 48 and 58. No 87 year olds.

That's right.

Okay. And nobody. It was a rocket science major with a 4.4 GPA. They were all in the threes, by the way, the average millionaire GPA is 3.1. For those of you that don't know, I'm a little below that. And we don't find many of them with a 1.6 because it does require some gray matter to get this done. But we don't find any of them that are, like, perfect students and valedictorians either. Okay? So you don't have to be brilliant, you don't have to be famous. You don't have to be a crook, and you don't have to inherit it. It's statistical data that is indicating that you, in America, have a chance. That's good news, Jade.

It's great news. And I'm looking at the mix of their investments. It's their home, their retirement account, and cash on hand for the most part. Two of them had rentals.

Yes. And nobody borrowed their way into. I'm going to be a TikTok star, and I'm going to put nothing down and buy 73 houses. And it's going to make you bankrupt, you idiot. That's what it's going to do. None of these people do this. There are none of them doing the stuff you see on TikTok. None of them. And it's not just because they're calling this show. You can't find them out in the wild that do this stuff. They're not there. It's mythology. So it's the tortoise beats the hair every time I read the book to my grandkids. Slow and steady beats. Flash and sexy. And I'm cool. Look at me. Nobody cares what you look like. Be an ugly tortoise. Steady step. Shut up. Step. That's how you do it, boys and girls. That's how it happens.

Even the 28 year old did it that way.

And she was an engineer and just kind of bored with it all.

Yeah, she had to sit silently in the room of complainers. So great, her peers.

She was awesome.

Yeah, she was great.

They were all great.

They weren't driving new cars.

Hey, we don't tell these people what to say. We just interview real millionaires, not whiners and complainers from social media. These are real people. So, guys, our purpose of doing this is not to say we're right, although it does say that our purpose in doing this is to show you you can do it. There is hope that puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace. Christ Jesus.

Hey, folks, Dave Ramsey here. You know, budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind, and that's everydollar. The everydollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with everydollar for free. Right now. Just go to ramsaysolutions.com, slash everydollar and download the app today. That's Ramsey. ##solutions com everydollar.