Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where dad is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status simple of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Camel, Ramsey personality, host of The Fine Print on The Ramsey Networks is my co-host today. We talk about your mental wellness, your relationships, your jobs, your careers, and your money. It's your life right here on The Ramsey Show. The phone number is triple-eight, 825, 525. Austin is in Springfield, Missouri, to start off this particular hour. Hey, Austin, what's up?

Hello, Dave. Nice to talk to you.

You too. How can we help?

My question is, I'm 22 years old and I'm wanting to start investing, and I'm wanting to know which platform I should use.

Wise man. All right. You're out of college, you're working?

I did not go to college, I'm working. I actually own a construction and exited business of my own.

Way to go, man. That's incredible. Okay, so what's your income for the year? Household income.

My income is around $45,000 a year.

Cool.

And I do own my house. It's completely paid off. Wow.

What's that worth?

My home appraised around $220,000.

Way to go, man. Well, you're doing great already. Right off the bat.

You're killing it.

Do you have any debt?

No, I have no credit card debt or student loans, nothing.

You have an emergency fund? You have savings, three to six months expenses?

Yes. My emergency fund is around $25,000.

Would you run for Congress? At 22 years old, you have your crap together more than any of them at the island of Mismet Toys.

I wish. But I got a lot of my information from you, Dave, obviously, plus my family and my parents. They blessed me with a lot of knowledge and stuff, but no handouts, but a lot of knowledge, and I'm very grateful for that.

They raised a great kid, man. Well, let's talk about the investing side now. Have you invested at all in anything so far, or is this all new?

No, sir. I have not started investing at all in any type of cryptocurrency or anything.

All right. Well, here's what I would do. If I were you in your shoes, I would be investing 15% of my income into retirement accounts. Things like a 401(k), if you have access to that, I know you've got your own business, but you don't, so it may be a solo 401(k) or a SEP IRA for you. But IRAs and those kinds of retirement accounts is where I'd be putting that 15%. You can put a lot of money in there if you're self-employed.

Yeah, you can put $6,000 into just a simple Roth IRA. That's a very easy transaction, and that would be pretty close to your 15% at this stage of the game. What you do, just click on at ramseysolutions. Com, just click on SmartVester Pro. Sit down with one of the people that we endorse for investing. We call them SmartVester Pros. You're the SmartVester. They're the pro that helps you do it. You're a smart investor, and you are. You are. You qualify, dude. Well done. But they can set that up and you can have it come directly out of your checking account monthly. If you want to break it down monthly, be 500 bucks a month. If you want to do it one time in a lump sum, you can do that. I'd recommend just setting up a monthly draft because I like getting smart things on autopilot, so I never have to think about them again. I'm automatically smart.

I.

Like that.

I like that. If you can automate smartness, that's a... I don't know, smart is not a word. I'm not there yet.

Well, I'll get there. Smartness, smart, whatever it is. That's what I do. Whatever it is, it falls that wisdom. We're going to just put it on autopilot, where we automatically are smart. I've always tried to do that, tricked myself into doing smart things.

You learned to live on whatever's left, and then you're really winning.

Exactly. Well done, Austin. Sharon's in San Antonio. Hi, Sharon. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, guys. Dave, pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I'm in a position where I'm able to pay off my ex-husband's house for him. Why? I was wondering if you thought that would be a good idea.

What? Sounds weird. Who pays off their ex-husband's house?

He's a really, really, really good man, and he deserves a break. He needs a hand up, and I just wanted to help him.

I'm- So is George. Just send him the money.

I will take it. A lot of good people out there you could give to. That's some strange generosity.

Yeah, that's different.

Is that weird?

I don't know. No, it's okay. If you want to do it, I'm not mad at you. You have to admit it's highly unusual. Yeah. I don't think in 30 years I've ever gotten this call.

Okay, yeah, I'm not trying to buy his affection. I don't want to get back together with him. He's just.

A good man. He was a great husband. How much does he owe on his house? $135. You have extra $135,000 laying around?

Yeah, I have four and a half million in assets plus a trust fund that's two million. Okay. By the way, I'm working with one of your endorsed local providers here in San Antonio. Can I say his name? Sure. Jeff Whaling and the Whaling Wealth Team. Fabulous.

That's awesome. How long have you been divorced?

We got divorced in 2016. We were married for 18 years. No children.

Where did you get all this money? Where did all this money come from?

My parents and then they passed away and my brother was sitting on it, and then he passed away in 2020, and then he did not have a will. I had a heck of a mess on my hands. I had, excuse me, everything went to me. That was the.

First time that I had to- You're like what, you're 50-something years old?

I'm 53 years old yesterday.

What do you do for a living? I have.

A part-time job.

I do customer service over the phone. It's for a company here in San Antonio.

Okay. All right. Well, there's nothing legally wrong with this. There's nothing morally wrong with this. There's nothing mathematically wrong with this. There's nothing mathematically wrong with this. You have the money. You won't even notice out of $4, $5 million losing, giving up $135,000. I think it's just suffice it to say it's just strange enough that from a relational standpoint or an emotional standpoint, you might want to talk this through with your pastor. I'm not saying don't do it, but you have to admit that it's weird, and it is. If you want to go do it, that's fine. I don't know.

Yeah, I guess I'd wonder his situation financially, is he good at money management? Is this going to make him feel like he just got a free ticket? If he hasn't been handling his money well, you don't want to be enabling in that situation. But it sounds like he's got a normal mortgage, like a normal person, and she just wants to rid him of it. But I'm still taking a nice long pause before I cash the check. I just.

Think of a whole lot of things I'd put in line in front of it if it was me doing it. But you have a sweetheart, honey, there's no question about that. It's your money, and you're not doing anything wrong. Even if it's unusual, it's okay to do it. This is The Ramsey Show.

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George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. This is The Ramsey Show. Tom is with us. Tom's in Salt Lake City. How are you, Tom?

I'm doing great. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

My wife and I are at the end of the baby steps. We're debt-free, thankfully, in large part to you and your program and just some crazy life experiences that enabled us to get there. We've worked real hard and that's where we're at now. So we are both now looking into our retirement, but both of us started this whole journey in our 30s. And so our retirement investments were rather pretty delayed. We didn't start investing until, like I said, our early 30s. And so what we have now is we started with a fair and modest income. Now, my wife works and I have my own business, and we have a much larger income than we.

Had before. So what's your household income now?

Right now, we're close to 400.

Wow! Look at you. How old are you again?

I'm.

39. Oh, wow! Amazing. You're ancient. I can't believe you're getting around. And I know. Yeah. How much you have in retirement?

After this year, we'll have about 100.

Good for you. Good. Okay. How much debt do you have?

We are debt-free. It's taken us.

Eight years. But we've got everything gone. House and everything?

Everything's gone.

Everything's gone. House and everything?

Yep.

Way to go, dude. Way to go. What's the house worth?

I personally think it's worth probably about 400 or so. Good for you. But the market says that it's about 650.

Well, I mean, the market gets to decide. You don't get to decide. I'm calling it 650 then. Good for you, man. Well done. Well done. You're making bank. What a great business you do. This is awesome. Now all you got to do, you're what we call baby step seven. Now all you got to do is stack up cash now, dude. With a $400,000 shovel, you got to be able to stack it up pretty fast.

That's what we're really excited about, and we're looking at potentially retiring in the next 10 years.

Yeah, for sure.

What's your question today? Sounds like you're doing great.

My question today? Yeah. Well, my question really is, as far as the 15% of your income into retirement.

That doesn't apply to you. You're Baby Step Seven. That's only when you're on Baby Step Four.

You can ramp that up once you get the house paid for.

That's what I needed.

To hear. Baby Step Seven is save as much as you can, give as much as you can, live as much as you can.

Our 10-year plan, exactly. Yeah. Oh, that sounds so great to hear you say that. If we dump in 100-150 a year into this investment firm that we found through your Smart Investor Pros, they're helping us out because I am very investment unsavvy. So they're guiding us through that. If we just dump in 150 a year, then their forecast says that within 10 years, we could retire as multimillionaires and.

Live off into this. Oh, yeah, you probably have a couple of million in that alone, and the house will be worth a couple of million then. So, yeah, you're going to be $4 million net worth at 50 years old, what it sounds like to me.

It's good to hear.

You say that. Yeah. If you keep making this bank and you drop 150 in there, 150 for 10 years is a million and a half. Plus the growth during that time is easily another half million, probably another million, actually. 10 times 100 and 50 is 1.5 million, dude, okay? 39 to 49.

That's exactly what we're.

Looking at. Yeah, you don't have to have a calculator or anything to do that. You can do that one in your head. Then you just add some... The growth that you're going to make on top of that during that time is astronomical. There's another million easy on there in growth. In growth, yeah.

Should we double every about seven.

Years or so? Yeah, you're going to be in great shape. Just work with your Smart Mr. Pro, keep laying out of plan, shovel the cash over there. Here's the trick, is to avoid getting arrogant in the middle of this and blowing it up before you get there. That's the trick. Because what happens is you look over there and you got a million dollar paid for a house, and you got a couple of million dollars, a million dollars laying in mutual funds in your retirement. Then you go, I can afford to go do this stupid thing now. You can blow the whole thing up by derailing. Just dance with the girl that brought you. Stick with the program. Dance with the one that brought you to the ball. Just stick with the program. Don't get over here and go, Oh, now I'm going to... Bitcoin is now my answer. I'm going to put it all in doge. You get a little bit of hubris and suddenly your brain just fries out. So just don't do that. Just mutual funds and paid for real estate. Just keep it simple and stack cash and you're going to be in really good shape, man.

You've done a great job. Largely because A, you're paying attention, and B, you're.

Making a lot of money. It's a big shovel that helps.

Yeah, very nice. Proud of you. John's in Houston, Texas. Hey, John, how are you?

Good, guys. How are you?

Better than we deserve. What's up? All right, here's what I got going on.

We have recently sold some.

Farmland that we.

Had down in Florida, made some cash. The only thing we owe on is the house. We owe.

287 on.

The house. Cash on right now, including everything and our checking and everything else is 282.

That includes the farmland proceeds?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

I have some employee stock purchase, stock.

About 45.

Grand worth.

Perfect.

That's an individual stock.

I work in Houston, so it's oil and gas, so.

It's pretty volatile.

What are your.

Thoughts on selling that 45 grand worth, getting out of the individual stocks, paying off the 287, being completely debt-free. House's current valued about 650, 680.

The.

40 grand or so as the emergency fund, and then we can stack some cash from there. You just.

Saved me some wind. That's exactly what I was going to say. I'd cash it out, pay off the house, and that leftover becomes your emergency fund. Anything beyond that, you guys can do what you want with. Go take a vacation, celebrate.

I mean, John, you pulled it off here. You got the trifecta. You paid off the house, you got your emergency fund, and you saved George Wind. All in one answer. It was well done, sir. Well done. Yeah, definitely do all that, brother. It's an awesome plan. You're right on track. Good for you. What do you make a year? One hundred and forty. Yeah. Now you get your baby step seven. Just like the last caller, all we got to do now is save more than 15% into retirement, load your retirement. You can load your 401(k) up, you load Roth IRAs up in good mutual funds. How old are you?

Thirty-nine.

Same age.

As our last call. You're going to be a millionaire by the time you're 45, mathematically. Because as the value of the house increases and you save $25,000 or $30,000 a year for the next six years and the growth on all of those things, you're going to be over a million dollar net worth by the time you're 45. Well done. I'm loving this trip. You are truly a baby steps millionaire. George, there may not be another radio show or podcast in America where you can call in and be succeeding and prospering and find people happy about it.

We're happy about it.

We'll celebrate with you. We are happy that you are winning. We are capitalist pigs. We are glad you are winning.

Most shows are mad, they're angry.

We are not angry at success. These guys are crooks. We think success is amazing. We don't think you're a crook. We think you're awesome. We think you left the cave, killed something, and drugged at home. You are demonstrating work ethic. You are demonstrating character and perseverance, and you are causing these things to these variables to move. You are not waiting on Washington to fix your life. We love people like you people. When you call in here, you will get celebrated here. If it starts pissing off the left-wing nuts, that is just a bonus.

You're only fueling Dave, guys.

That's just a bonus. It's just a bonus, man. I just love it. I'm so… I got to make it 400K and he's 39 years old. That's just awesome. That's a.

Trend I can get behind. Forget Bitcoin, that's the trend of.

The problem. Let me just tell you. You know what that means? It means just helping a lot of people. Because people don't.

Give you money if.

You're screwing them. You got to provide value. They give you money when you're helping them. That's how this works. You're providing value. You're adding value to their life in some way. So when you're doing that, you are enhancing humanity. Well done. Well done. This is The Ramsey Show. Look, folks, with all these devices and time spent online, having an ID theft protection plan is an absolute necessity in this digital world. The only plan I've ever recommended is from Xander Insurance. Xander blends cutting edge cyber and prevention services together with monitoring alerts, stolen funds protection, and unlimited recovery services to make sure you are fully protected at the lowest cost. Kids are even included for free on their family plan. Give them a call at or visit zander. Com to get you and your family protected. George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Shane and Kelly are with us. Hey, guys, how are you?

Hi, doing great. How about you?

Better than I deserve. Welcome, you guys. It's so good to have you. Where do you live?

We are in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, right outside our capital.

Very good. Up in the Harrisburg area. Yeah. Very good. Good to have you guys. And all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream, how much have you paid off?

We got rid of 229,000 cash flowing 109,000 in 16 months.

Whoa! What was your range of income during that time?

We started out at 81,000 and increased to $132,000, and then any stimulus or child tax credit went right to.

Our debt. Right, cool. Did you sell something big, too? You had to.

That is part of our story.

Okay, all right, well, tell us your story. What happened?

In 2014, I got out of physical therapy school. I graduated with my doctorate in physical therapy. We had over $200,000 in student loans. At that point, I went on Pinterest and started looking up ideas of how to get out of debt, and I found the baby steps. In the same week, my little sister mentioned Dave Ramsey. I read the complete guide money in two days, total money makeover in two days. Oh, my gosh. And we attended FPU. Game on. Yes, we got gazelle intents at that time. But then we decided to start a family, and Shane became a stay at home dad at that point. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, the hospital I work for was offering a ton of overtime. So I worked from 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM, and then went to my full-time job until 4:00, and then Shane went to work from 4:30 PM to 1:00 AM. So we worked around.

The clock. Wow, but you were making bank. Yes. That was not 132. You made a lot more than 132 that year.

Yeah, that was our taxes for last year.

Oh, it was? With all that work?

Yeah, all that work. But we lived on nothing, basically nothing.

I mean, when we went gazelle and tents, we relied on Christmas for people to give us underwear and socks.

That's how we.

Wanted to get it done.

Okay, but you said you paid off 229 in 16 months making 132. That doesn't work. No.

The other part of our story is the debt was our SUV. Our student loans at that point were about in the 100,000 range. Then we own two houses right next to each other. Our long-term plan was to combine the two houses, but getting enough debt was more important to us. We decided to sell the smaller of the two houses. That got rid of the $89,000 mortgage, and then we put the $29,000 profit to our.

Student life. Okay, now my numbers are working. Good, okay. Well, good for you. Was it worth it?

It definitely was. I mean, it was just a struggle. I would say when we first got married because it was just like we were throwing money away and just money would go here, vacations, and now it's just we have that money now and we budget.

At the time, it was a struggle. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we.

Were probably only making like, I would say, $8,000 a.

Year maybe? When we first started that we got married like 12 years ago, but we found you in about and then went gazellintents in 2020.

Okay, so where did this come from? It sounds like just overnight. It was like a 180.

Yeah, well, like I said, we knew about you and we were gazellintents before children and then we went davish. And then in 2020, with the pandemic, we didn't have anything else to do. And like I said, my hospital offered so much overtime, so I was able to pick that up.

Yeah, and there were other side jobs that we had, just like babysitting dogs. I mean, we sold everything that we owned everything. I mean, the kids really did think.

That they were going to be next. I'm wondering if, because of all the opportunity for extra work, you mathematically could see that we can do this, and that got you back to intensity. Yeah. The hope made you go again. Yeah. You went from Gizelle to Davish or Ramsey-ish, but then when you saw, Hey, we could pick up this work and finish this, and you got to game on again. Yeah, game on. All right, I'm starting to understand what happened. Good. Yeah. Very good. Way to go, you guys. All right, what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

I would say hard work, dedication. You really have to put in the time. If you want something, you got to go for it. That was something that we wanted to change our family tree and for our kids to have a better life. I'm glad that we did it and we followed the steps.

I'd say work as well. Work, work, work, work around the clock, and also having a strong why. I appreciate that Anthony O'Neal says if your why doesn't make you cry, the price of commitment will. So having our strong why, our boys, and then also staying connected to the podcast and the Baby Steps Facebook group, I think we're really beneficial.

Staying motivated on the plan. And it sounds like the kids were a big driver for why this life change was happening. You wanted them to live in a debt-free home, live a debt-free life, and have opportunities you didn't have.

Yes.

Wow.

So you paid off the student loans, you sold the house next door. Did that include your mortgage you paid off? No. Not yet. So you're debt-free, but the mortgage.

Yep, we're on baby steps four, five.

And six. Perfect. Good for you. Well done. Well done. I'm so proud of you guys. Thank you. Who were your biggest cheerleaders?

Our good friends, Christina and Klaus, they attended FPU with us and cheered us along the way and our families. Yeah, of course.

Of.

Course. Well done. And each other.

Yep, for sure. Well, I'm telling you, you guys put in the hours. I mean, these 80, 90-hour weeks you're talking about here were real. That's crazy. You can do that for a short period of time. If you work like no one else later, you get to work like no one else too. You can work whenever you want if you don't have any stinking payments.

Yeah, that's actually part of our story too. Since we paid off the debt, I was able to go part-time as a physical therapist, and now I'm home with the boys during the day, and then ChainWorx full-time during the day, so we get to spend so much more time together.

Very good. You got your life back. Yes. Definitely did. You stole it back from Sally May. She stole it and you stole it back. Wow.

There you go. What do you tell that person who's got $200,000 in student loans and they're going, Well, wait for someone to forgive it?

Yeah, just do it. Get it done. Work, work, work, work as hard as you can because it's so freeing to be debt-free, and you can do what.

You want. Yeah, and we didn't rely on anybody else. It was just us doing it. We weren't going to sit around and wait for somebody just to give us a check and pay it off. But I'm so glad that we did it and we put in the hours and we're here.

Amen. Amen. Good job. Well done. All right, we got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you because for sure that is the next chapter in your story, and an extra copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give away to someone and completely cause a ruckus. Love your T-shirts. Cash is king. Live like no one else. Thank you. You brought the kiddos with you. Let's bring them in. What are their names and ages?

We have Roman. He's four and Hudson is two.

And the T-shirts say, I am a Y.

Oh, that's so great.

I am Y. I'm sorry I said it wrong. Oh, well done you guys. That's beautiful. Very fun. Huge kids. Very, very fun. All right, Shane and Kelly, Roman and Hudson from Pennsylvania, our $229,000 paid off in 16 months, making 81 to 132. Count it down. Let's hear a death-free scream.

Here's.

To baby number three, we're death-free.

I.

Think we snuck an announcement into that. Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Wow.

That's how to do it. Make your baby announcement to millions of listeners while.

You're at it. I think grandma and grandpa sitting on the sidelines, this may have been the first time they just heard that. I'm not sure, but looking at the reactions, it's a possible thing. They're excited. Is that the first time you did it? You just told it for the first time? All right. They're verifying through the glass now. Awesomeness. Very cool. That's a lot of fun. That's inspiring. Very inspiring. That's a lot of debt. I couldn't make those numbers work for a minute. But you know what happens? When people start working like that and they start going, Whatever it takes, whatever it takes, we'll sell the house. We'll sell that house next door, whatever it takes. You've got to work 80 hours, whatever it takes. Once you start saying whatever it takes and you mean it, you can make that go away.

There's nothing you're not willing to do.

But as long as you start going, Now, wait a minute. Tell me about the… What little thing? Is there a little angle? As long as you're trying to figure out some way to scheme and scam, it's.

Not going to work. No shortcuts here. Just hard work.

Yeah, it's whatever it takes. That's what you just heard. Whatever it takes. People change their lives when they finally say, I've had it. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's when you'll change. And not until this is The Ramsey Show.

Fake it till you make it. It's popular career advice, but it.

Doesn't work for very long.

If you don't love what you do, you can't fake the.

Enthusiasm and energy.

You need to win at work. You also can't fake your physical health and energy. Everybody knows we should eat more fruits and veggies, but fruit chews and vegetable chips don't count. If you aren't winning physically, I promise you're limiting your opportunities to win professionally. Folks, I know you're going hard right now to pay off debt and get ahead professionally.

You need another gear.

And that's.

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Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phone is at triple-8, 825, 525. Adam is with us in Toronto. How are you, Adam? Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, how are you doing, Dave?

Good, man. What's up?

Oh, nothing. Well, I shouldn't say nothing quite a bit, but just a little bit of a recap. Back in 2016, my wife and I did, as you say, stupid with zeroes on the end of it, spent a lot. And in 2017, paid off about $65,000 of debt in 11 months. I never did it up getting down for a debt-free screen. But anyway, so fast forward now in the last, I guess, couple of years, COVID has destroyed my industry. I'm a pilot. And in Canada here, it really took a bad hit. It's just recovering now. And so with the stress that that brought about, we've got some marriage issues along with it. And wife is in a really bad spot right now. I guess we both are. And it's not sure if she wants to work on the marriage or what she wants to do. And we're in a bit of a stalemate, but in the resulting aftermath is that she has decided that she's going to spend however she wants to spend and go back to... She's saying, We make too much money. There's no way I should have to have any restraint. We're spending about, I'd say, about $2,000 a month over what we make.

And as a result, I've depleted our emergency fund almost down to nothing. She signed up for an elective surgery to the tune of about $10,000. And when questioned on the timing of it, she said, Well, either we fund it somehow through us, or I'm just going to look at my own credit card and do it myself. But every time I bring up finances to her to talk about it, she says, You're obsessed with money. You've got to stop being so obsessed. But I'm trying to just bring her to the reality that we're spending more than we make, and we're gradually bankrupting the family. We've got four young children, and trying to put money aside for them as well. And retirement, now that we're both getting back on our feet. We do make good money, but the reality is we're just spending way too much and she has no desire to even talk about it. She'll stonewall me every time I try to bring it up. I'm worried that I'm going to tip over the edge in the marriage if I talk too much about finances, but if I-.

Your marriage is already gone.

Well, yeah, it's the thing. I feel like I'm giving the drunk a drink.

No, you didn't hear me. Your marriage is already gone.

Yeah, well, I mean, she does give indications that she does want to make it work.

No, she doesn't. No, she does. She's not ready to do it right now. No, she doesn't. People that do the things and say the things that she's doing have no desire for this marriage to continue. Yeah. When you say things like, If you don't pay for this $10,000, I'm just going to put it on a credit card. Screw you. You don't have a vote. This is not someone that has a marriage anymore that wants to work at all. What I would do if I were in your shoes is you would say, I'm going to go see a marriage counselor, and it's either going to be with you on how we learn to get back on the same page and we have a future together that's going to include us both being grownups. If you want to go with that, that's fine. If not, the marriage counselor is going to instruct me on how to bring this marriage to an end.

Yeah, we have done some counseling. She did work. She did work. A couple of times trying to get her to come back to it is the hard part, and she's very reluctant.

Yeah, you're begging her to do stuff, and she has no desire. She's obstinate, she's angry, and she's done. She's done. The marriage is over.

I mean, it's tough to say that because she does say that she still does want to.

Make it work. She's lying.

What she says is not what she's doing, and so that's the problem.

Yeah. Again, the.

People that want their marriage to work do not behave the way that she is behaving.

Yes, I would agree.

Okay.

So she's lying. Yes, lying.

Elective surgery for $10,000 when you're broke and the family's in financial stress? That's so selfish and assinine. I can't even put words to it.

Yeah, I know. That's my thought too.

No, it just is. It's a fact. It's not an opinion. That is her screaming in your face that she's done.

Yeah, I know. I don't really like to think of it that way, obviously, because it's not a nice outcome for anybody in this space.

I'm not sure you did it. I think you're just the one that's going to admit it.

Yeah. Now, I would agree with you going back a couple of months that she was done. However, she had some influential people in her life in the last month or two that have helped bring her around. Her attitude has changed.

Well, then that would involve you guys getting with a good marriage counselor immediately. Yes.

But that attitude needs to turn into action.

Yes. She has admitted that that is an option. I did confront her about it a couple of weeks ago, and I said, This is what I want to do. I have some referrals for the focus on the family. And she said, Yes, that is an option. I'm just trying to not push her because she.

Does- No, I am going to push her. It's not an option. You don't understand. It's time to push her. It's time to push you. The house is on fire. It's burning down around you. Get out of the house. Push somebody.

Yeah, I definitely am. I'm bringing stuff up fairly regularly but I'm teetering on the edge and not wanting to push her over one side to get her emotional side to engage.

Honey, what you think is being nice is not nice. You think you can beg and be sweet and cause this to happen. I'm not asking you to be mean to her, but you're acting like that you can beg her into wanting to do this. She has to stand up, square her shoulders and say, I'm going to re-engage in this marriage and re-engage us two adults on how to run our household. She has to do that under the heading of a therapist, and the two of you learn to work together again. You cannot beg her to behave.

Yes, I agree with that totally. I can't change her. She has to decide to do it. It's a matter of we're trying to get obviously lots of prayer and other friends of influence who had to get around her- Absolutely. -to change her heart and.

Stop that. What Dave's saying is this is an emergency.

You're sitting around. I'm just saying you guys need to be sitting with the counselor and she needs to be going. If she's not going, then we need to admit what that says. But all this, there is not a financial technique that's the problem here. The financial problems and the financial spending are all about her obstinence, and you try to talk your way around it to where it's all somehow okay. It's not okay. It's not okay. It doesn't work that way. If Whitney decided to just start telling George what she was going to do, George would have a think, Here's what we're going to do. I don't tell Sharon what to do. Sharon tell me what to do. We sit down, we talk about it to adults, we devise a plan on how we're going to do the calendar, how we're going to do the budget, how we're going to live our life. We work together towards common goals. This is called a quality relationship in your marriage. But when people start throwing it around, they're just like, I'm going to do whatever I want to do. They get all head-bobbing thing going.

You shouldn't have got married.

Then you've got a mess on your hands, and you've got to go back and try to learn how to be married. That takes both people. You can't beg someone to behave. You cannot control someone else's behavior. Your behavior is the only thing you can control. You put it in a situation to go, If you do this, then you're choosing to opt out. If you do this, you're choosing to opt in. But I can't make you choose. That's the only thing you can do is present options to her. But this idea of I'm going to let her be go ruin our family and bankrupt us so that by being nice and letting her do stupid butt stuff that's going to ruin our family, then that causes her to go to counseling, that's a false narrative. That doesn't work. If the auspices for her going to counseling is because she got bribed by you, you're putting up with a bunch of crap, then no, that is not how you start rebuilding this thing. Now, you guys need to desperately both of you need to sit in the counselor's room immediately or you're not going to make it.

The spending stuff is just… I'm not going along with it. If you don't like it, it's part of what we can talk to the counselor about, or it's part of what we can talk to the divorce judge about, one of the two. It's one of the two. But I'm not going along with this because it's not right. I'm not suggesting you leave today. I'm suggesting that the two of you get into the counselor's office four years ago, but right now, for sure, that's the only best option. Best time to plant an oak tree 10 years ago. I think she sees- The next best time.

Is today. Oh, yeah, it's a great quote. She sees him as basically a doormat at this point because she knows, Well, I'm just going to do what I want. He's not going to tell me off.

He's not going to have the conflict with you. You have to stop being scared that you're going to cause the marriage to end by pushing the marriage to succeed, that is not going to work. It's not going to work. You're going to end up nowhere but bankruptcy court and divorce court at the same time. Oh, man. I'm so sorry. Sorry you're going to try that. What a horrible thing you're going through. I sure hope she comes around. I hope the two of you get in counseling, and I hope it saves your marriage. But you participating in crazy is not going to make crazy go away. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where dad is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off-home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, host of the Ramsey Podcast, The Fine Print on Ramsey Networks is my co-host today. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. We're glad you're with us. Open phones at triple-eight, 825, 525. Thank you for being part of the program.

Melissa is in Jersey City, New Jersey. Hi, Melissa. How are you?

Hi, Dave. Hi, George. Thank you so much for taking my call. It's an honor to speak with you today.

You too. Thank you. My question is my.

Dad passed away a few months ago. I know he was your typical everyday millionaire, had a net worth of about.

1.3..

After I split that with my siblings, obviously, my share will be a third of that.

One of the things he left.

Is an annuity, and I'm just not sure what to do with my share of the annuity. I don't know if I'm supposed to cash it out or roll it over or just like... I don't even know what to do with an annuity. That's my question.

You are one of the beneficiaries on the annuity, I assume?

Yes, sir.

Okay. I would just take my money.

Okay.

And then do with it wherever you are in the baby steps. You don't need an annuity. You don't want money in an annuity at your age unless you're in a very unusual situation. How much money is this?

That's about 42. The annuity is only about $42,000 out of the 1.3. Yeah.

Where are you in the baby steps?

Well, let's see. I guess I'm four, five, and six. I've been contributing 15% into fully funding my retirement.

With.

This inheritance from my dad, I'll put away a big chunk from my kids for their college, and then the rest, I guess, put towards my house.

You're going to use this 42 on five or six, and the same with the rest of it.

Is the 42 before the split with the three of you?

That is before the split.

Okay.

You're only getting $15, $20,000.

Of the.

Annuity, yes. Definitely. Definitelyonly take the money, just use that probably towards the kid's college or wherever it doesn't matter. It's free money. You don't have any income tax on it. You don't have any penalties on it. You don't have anything on it. I'm so sorry for the loss of your dad. So sorry. What a horrible thing to go through. Bryan's with us in Chicago. Hey, Bryan, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hello, how are you? Great, man. What's up?

Well, I'm divorced. I've been divorced for about five years, and I'm currently paying, and for these five years, I've been paying my ex-wife spousal support payments of about $2,100 a month. That was based on my income at the time of $110,000, but now my income is only $60,000 due to a lot of COVID damage to my business and so forth and not able to make as much money. I wanted to seek an adjustment to the spousal support payments. It's up in the air how much it could be adjusted because it's up to the judge. If we were getting divorced today based on my income, I would only owe her about $600 a month.

But.

When you seek a modification, they don't necessarily apply that same principle. They leave it up to the judge and how much he feels it should be adjusted based on the change of circumstances.

Got you. How can we help today?

Well, in the discussions of trying to get this modified, my wife has floated the idea of she'd be willing to take a one-time buyout. I'm scheduled to pay her for life or until she gets remarried, or maybe when I retire, it could be adjusted. But she's willing to take a buyout of about $50,000, and I'd be pretty much a one-and-done payment and would not owe her anymore. But due to my financial situation, I don't have that money. The only way I could get it is to take it out of my IRA. But I'm age 60 and I've only got about $70,000 in an IRA.

How old is she?

She's 54.

No, you can't afford to do it.

Well, like I said, unless I take it out of the IRA.

You can't afford to do it. If you take it out of your IRA, you're going to get charged a penalty of 10% plus your tax rate. You're borrowing money at 35 or 40% interest to buy her out. That's not a good deal.

Well, I don't think there's a penalty because at 59 and a half, you can- Oh, that's true. You're 60.

Okay, so you're just going to pay your tax rate. But no, I'm not going to clean out yourdo write. I don't know. Okay. You don't have a financial advisor, do you?

Well, I do, and I talked to him, and he wasn't totally against the idea because when.

You compare- That wasn't what I was asking. What I need him to do is I need him to do a net present value calculation for you on $2,100 a month for 20 years. Yeah. What is that going to come out? That's $24,000, $25,000 a year for 20 years. Yeah, 50 grand is probably not a bad offer.

Right. I mean, it would really help me out because there's no signs that she's going to get remarried or anything right now, and I could be paying her indefinitely for many, many years. That's a tremendous drain on my finances to.

Pay her. Yeah. What are you doing to get your business back?

Well, I've done all sorts of marketing and advertising. I've done some networking and online stuff, and it's just very difficult. It hasn't been working, so I'm really struggling.

Okay. I want your financial advisor to do a net present value calculation on this and tell you what your rate of return is, because there's a thing called a discounted value. In other words, a stream of payments is not worth the total. Twenty-five thousand for 10 years is not worth 250,000, but it might be worth 50,000. Okay. And it probably is. It probably is. That's probably a very low discount rate or high discount rate. You can have your financial advisor explain that to you and run the calculation, Dave said, on net present value. I think it's going to be north of 50,000, so I think that's going to make this a good deal. Now, what you've got to do then is you have to take the $2,100 a month that you don't have anymore as a bill, and you have to get down and dirty about rebuilding this nest egg ASAP.

Yeah. George? Yeah. I mean, what I'm saying here is you can see what the adjustment is, but I don't want you to limit your income because you now have this new payment where you go, Well, I don't want to make anymore because they're going to adjust it again. I'd rather you get this income up and do what Dave's saying and see if we can fix this thing once and for all instead of paying.

This for life. I like being rid of the bill and her. She's the ex. Both of these are good things, and I like every bit of that. It's not a bad thing. I just want to make sure the calculation's right, and I can't do it in my head right now. But I'm thinking what I am doing in my head is leading me to the north of 50. God, that's a big alimony payment. This is The Ramsey Show. Protecting your family comes with important responsibilities and potential pitfalls. Because self-defense in today's world is more complicated than ever, that's why the US Concealed Carry Association is giving away one of their most popular resources right now for free. It's called the Complete, Concealed, Carry, and Family Defense Guide. Inside it, you'll find 23 family defense strategies, six post-incident tips, defensive training, legal information, and more. Go to usca. Com/ramsey and get your free guide from a company I really trust. That's usca. Com/ramsey. George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co-host today here on The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on The Debt Free stage. Page, Austin, and Laura are with us.

Hey, guys. How are you?

Fantastic, Dave.

Welcome. Where do you guys live?

About our south of Kansas City, Missouri.

Okay, what town?

Butler.

All right, welcome. Good to have you guys. And all the way down here to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. How much have you paid off?

Paid off $146,885.

Way to go. How long.

Did that take? Four years and nine months.

Love it. And your range of income during that time?

We started off around 92,000, got up to by $101,000 and ended around 95,000.

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

I'm a district operations specialist with Syngenta.

I work in sales and marketing, and I'm also a Ramsey Solutions Financial Coach.

Oh, wow. Very cool. Thanks. What debt was the? 147. Our mortgage. Our house. -our house. Look at that weird people. Way to go, you guys. That's pretty incredible. How old are you?

I'm 31. I'm 32.

And a paid-for house. What's this house worth?

Between 250 and 300. It's a house, shop and a little bit of land.

Man, look at you guys. It's all yours.

It's.

All ours. No payments in the world.

Not a one.

And you're 32 years old. Oh, my gosh.

We're seeing a trend here, David. It's a good trend. It is a good trend. Young people paying off their homes.

You, them? Yeah, young people paying off.

Their homes. This is incredible. Four years, nine months, you guys really went for this thing. What caused this journey to start four years and nine months ago for you?

Yeah, it actually started a little bit before that. I actually got on Dave's plan about eight or nine years ago, had a wake-up moment, got on his plan and I was able to pay off my existing debt, save up $12,000 and paid for an engagement ring before I ever got married. I had a really good start going into the marriage.

Yeah, and I wasn't really familiar with Dave or the financial piece or anything until Austin came into my life, but I was fortunate to get a good job. I didn't have a whole lot of expenses, had a company vehicle and things. It was a little bit shocking to me at first. Whenever three months before we got married, he made me start keeping track of all expenses and teaching me budgeting and whatnot. He just sprung it on you. Yeah.

That's strong words.

He.

Didn't tell you.

Ahead of time that was.

Part of the deal. He waited until we're about to get married and we're about to get married. This is the deal.

I joke that there's actually five Gospels for Austin.

There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Dave.

My theme for life is if Dave says it, I do it plain and simple.

Oh, wow! That's dangerous right there. I tell people to jump off a cliff. That's power. I don't know if I can handle.

But we actually.

Then did.

Take Financial Peace University right after getting married, and we've led a couple courses. Thank you. I learned the process pretty quickly after we got married.

He brought me along.

Now you're teaching it for real.

Right, exactly. Well, I feel like we're the poster child for the house buying process because it went through every year after we got married. We bought the house a year later. We had a really nice down payment. We went on the 15-year mortgage. We planned to pay it off early. We set everything up to do exactly like you recommend. We were very excited in that making that plan take place, and it went even better than we hoped. It went even better than we anticipated by following your exact plan and process. That was our guidance shift through the whole time that we made that purchase happen and got ready to pay it off early.

Yeah. I mean, along the way, every single extra dollar that we got went towards paying the house off. We were focused in on, That's our goal. We're going to get it done. We're going to get it done early, just as quick as we possibly can.

Now you make 100K a year and you don't have any payments. Exactly. Now you can do anything you want to.

We had things that could have set us back. Our basement flooded within the first year of living there. But we had the emergency fund. We were able to take care of everything and then get right back on track on paying off the house. We had.

Transmissions go out. We actually bought vehicles with cash while we were doing this. We cash flow to Kizbers. We were doing a lot all at the same time when this all happened. Whenever I factored everything in, whenever we bought the house, I would have been self-employed for the vast majority of the time, so I had variable income I was dealing with. I said, Okay, we're going to make the payment based on your income. What we know we can do everything I can make. We're going to throw out an extra. There was months where we didn't have the $1,000 a month extra we really wanted to put on, and there was months that we had some nice bonuses or some nice checks, so we could put another $2,000 on it. Just that ebb and flow really made us just focus and say no to a lot of things, but know that this is where we want to end up being and we're going to do whatever it takes to get there. Wow!

There's a lot of intentionality rolling around in here. How much money did you guys put down on the down payment?

We have about 40% down. Wow.

Just like the last debt-free screen. I'm just seeing a trend here, Dave, and you said.

They planned. A big down payment with a 15-year fixed, and they're sitting here at 28 or 30 years old. It's not an accident. Their case is 32, right? And this is the last two in a row. You guys are listening. What this means is you can do this. You guys are just, like you said, poster children. The thing is this. If you find a system that is proven, work the system. We can joke and call it the gospel day. That's a little bit blasphemy. That's pretty blasphamous right there. We may all get struck by lightning, but we can joke and say Dave's rules. We can joke and call George rules. We can call whatever we want to call it. None of that really matters. All it matters is it's a proven, you got to have a system and you got to work the system and it's a proven system. You don't need to fix a system that's broke, that's not broken. You guys are incredible.

I'm so proud of you. She's got a funny story.

Whenever it came time where we were actually going to pay off our house, Austin came into the house and he says, I got something really crazy that I want to just run by you.

This last year we had a lot of things happen in our life that threw us off course and honestly questioned if we're going to be able to get it paid off in time or not based upon where we're going, and I was driving down the road one day from our farm, and God just put it on my mind, goes, You need to think about this debt pay off. We were on track to get it paid off in about seven, eight years. All of a sudden, I realized how much our loan balance was, and we had extra money sitting in savings. We had money. We had actually started investing for some land in the future, and we had some money that we had just been budgeting to pay off on the mortgage from our normal jobs. I factored all those numbers together, and it came to within $100 of the exact amount of our loan balance. I came home, I said, Honey, you want to pay off the mortgage tomorrow? I think my.

Eyebrows raised and I was like, You're crazy. There's no way. We don't have the money to do this. Then just sitting down and doing the math is like, Actually, it is there. We can do this. We can live without this.

We just had to change the name on the account from the land account to the mortgage reduction.

Exactly. Yeah.

Wow.

You guys are amazing.

That's it. Now you're free, and now you can just pile up cash like crazy and go do the land and go do whatever.

You want to do. Exactly. That's our plan.

Yeah, so good. Good job, guys. Well done. Well done. Well, we've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. You probably already have a copy, but we'll get you another one because it's definitely the next chapter in your story for sure. You're on the way to do that. Very young, very sharp, very well done, extremely well done. Copy a total money makeover for you to give away. I'm sure you'll run into somebody to do that. You guys are incredible. Thank you so much for everything you're doing. You're just an incredible example. You brought the kiddos. What are their names.

And ages? Yes, we have Haley, who is three, and Reagan is one.

All right, this is the family tree that was changed by mom and dad's courage to decide to address the issue that nobody likes to talk about in America, money, debt. Now here they stand completely debt-free house and everything. You're incredible. Austin and Laura, Haley and Reagan, 147,000 paid off house and everything, four years and nine months, making 92 to 101 to 95. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two.

One.

We're debt-free. Yeah, look at that. Those kiddos. Man, that's awesome. That is absolutely awesome. So fun. I love this.

It never gets old.

It does.

Not get old. What I love is there was the decision before the decision. They pre-decided that we're not going to do things this way. We're going to save up a giant down payment. We're going to pay it off early. They decided all of that before they ever went about paying off the home.

Yeah, it wasn't like they woke up in trouble and then had to go get themselves out of trouble and then got out.

Of debt.

Every step was intentional. Every bit of it from day one. Wow. The power of this stuff, especially when you start early and especially when you pre-make the decision. That's a good way of saying that, George. Very well done. This is The Ramsey Show. I get heartbreaking calls and emails all the time from people dealing with the loss of a spouse or parent, and many of them can't even grieve properly because they're too stressed about the money. This is exactly why you must have term life insurance. You cannot leave your family in this situation. Let the team at Xander Insurance help. I've trusted these guys for over 25 years, and I know they are caring and professional. Go to zander. Com or call (800)-356. 4282. George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones here on The Ramsey Show. It's a free call. Some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Triple 8, 825, 5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Kyle and Jessica are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Great. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Austin, Texas. Austin. Very cool. How much debt have you.

Paid off?

$175,000. How long did this take?

It took us three years and one month.

Three years and one month. And your range of income during that time?

We started at $72,000, and.

Right now I'm.

Making about $160,000.

That's a nice jump. Yes.

What happened to the income? I got to ask.

Just different.

Job opportunities and saying yes. Like somebody wasn't working, now somebody is? No, it was just me. No, both of you just went.

Way up. I'm a stay at home mom for our two kids about to be three, and he just got some great job opportunities.

What do you do for a living?

I'm a software engineer.

Oh, okay. Okay, all right.

Way to go. A good one, definitely. That's amazing.

What's the debt? Was this $175,000?

$25,000 was car loans and.

The rest was.

Student loans.

Whoa, 150,000 of student loans. What's your degree in?

Computer science.

At least this one's paying off, huh? Yes. Yeah, you're making some good bank with it. Pretty quick. How old are you guys?

Twenty-six, both of us. How long have you been married? We are coming up on five years in a couple of weeks.

Okay, so a couple of years into marriage, you're making 70 grand. You got a $175,000 monkey on your back.ouch. This doesn't sound fun. Not at all. You're 24 years old at that point, right? Oh, my gosh. This sounds like it was awful.

Yes, it was a lot. Whenever he graduated from school, it was all student loans on his end. We sat down and looked at the numbers and we were really intimidated. But we'd heard about your program before and we sat down and looked at it and it made the most sense. We decided to start. It didn't start right away because we were making so little whenever he was finishing up school and I was working. But around a year and a half into marriage, whenever our daughter was born, we started paying off. Then three years later.

Here we are. I love it. Wow. Well, one thing about a software engineer, when they see a system, they work it. Yes, sir. That's it, man. It's like you're a process guy. You saw the process, ding-ding, right? That was it. Yeah.

Wow. What were your payments? Do you remember all the debt added up? What were those payments every month?

Oh, my gosh.

She still feels it, I can tell her. Yes.

I'm trying to think. Minimums were about 2,000 a month, but we always paid extra for the most part on those, so at least 2,000, but we usually paid quite a bit more.

We're $2,000 a month richer.

Yeah. Oh, it's amazing.

I mean, it's quite unbelievable.

I mean, we feel it every single day. I don't think we've forgotten about it since we paid it off. I mean, you can feel the weight off of your shoulders.

Yeah, you physically can.

Feel that. Oh, yes, every day.

Oh, my gosh. You guys are 26. I mean, you must have a lot of friends, probably other software engineers who are sitting there with another 150 in loans going, Well, I'm just going to pay this off until I die. That's the only way.

Yeah, we figured we were already pretty broke college students, and so it wasn't really a big jump going to... Because even though we were making more once we graduated, we just pretended like we were still those broke college students. So all that extra money that we were making, we just put towards loans and forgot like we had. We just lived as frugally as we could in the meantime.

Wow. Wow. Okay, so people find out you paid off $175,000. That's impressive. You all are studs. This is amazing. You guys are power couple, man. This is so cool, so proud of you. Thank you. When they find out you did this, they say, How did you do that? What do you tell them?

Well, one thing that was helpful for me was just having that vision of what you want life to be like in the future and just every.

Sacrifice and everything you.

Have to do.

To make that happen. If you hold that vision, it helps it.

Be more real.

I think just being a team, because we were always on the same page from the beginning and that made it go so much quicker. Just realizing that we could still have a great life in the meantime, we could still have fun together. We just found a lot of free activities. We would go hiking with our kids all the time and things that didn't cost extra money. We just learned to live and enjoy life in the moment. We learned to make it fun even when it was really hard.

That was three years is a long time, but in the scope of your life, it ain't spent. Exactly. You live like no one else. You got the rest of your life to live and give like no one else. Man, you got a great career choice, so you be able to make good money, and you control a lot of your own destiny here. You guys are really... This is impressive.

Thank you.

This is impressive. If you guys accomplish this in three years, I'm like, What are you going to accomplish in the next 30? I'm scared. You guys are going to do so unbelievably well.

We can't wait. We're excited as well. We've been dreaming big.

What's the next big thing? Buying a house. Yeah.

Yeah, take some trips and save that down, pave it up, and get a house now.

Very good. How many kids you got?

We have two daughters, and then we're pregnant with our boy right now. That's the.

Ramsey lineup, two daughters followed by a boy. Yeah, that's good. We're excited. Very good. We ought to be. It's great. Good times. Well, congratulations, you guys. We're proud of you here. Thank you. You're the people that we love helping, and you're very impressive. Thank you. Very impressive. You're heroes. You took control of your life and just beautifully, beautifully done.

Gives me hope for this generation, Dave. It turns out they're not.

All bad. Oh, we knew that. We knew that here. We knew that. We see it all the time. That's impressive. Very cool. All right, we've got a copy of the Baby Steps Millionaire book that comes out next week, an advanced copy. Because that's the next chapter in your story, you'll be there before you know it at this rate. Bing, ding, man, you're just zooming right along. Zooming right along. Very well done. And a copy of Total Money Makeover as well, so you can give that to somebody, disturb their life, help them get on the same track, teach them the system you used because they're going to ask. They're going to ask because you start to walk different and smile different when you don't have almost $200,000 with a monkey on your back. Definitely. Pretty stink and incredible. You guys are amazing. Very, very well done. Kyle and Jessica, Austin, Texas, $175,000 paid off three years in one month, making 72 all the way to 160 during that three years. Nice jump. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three.

Two.

One. We're debt-free. Yeah. That is how it's done, boys and girls. Oh, my goodness.

The future is looking bright for that couple.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing. We see continuously in all of the millionaire data from Baby Steps Millionaire and from the Ramsey research on millionaires, all the data that we've got that people who are in industries that are process-oriented have a chance. They have the best chances. So the number one most likely career field to become a millionaire in all the millionaires we've studied is engineer, software engineer here, right? The engineers are process-driven, one plus one equals two. We don't have to have an existential argument about it. By God, one plus one equals two. Accountants, number two. Teachers, number three. If you don't know anything about putting together a lesson plan or running a classroom full of animals that's called teaching, then you know they are process-driven people. Number three, managers and entrepreneurs. Number four, lawyers. If you've ever dealt with lawyers, they're process-driven human beings. The five top career fields of people who end up being millionaires are all process-driven. Now, that's not to say that if you're an artist, you don't have a shot. You have a shot. But you need to understand that there's a correlation between following a freaking process and becoming wealthy.

That's why we wrote The Baby Steps Millionaire. It's a process to become wealthy, and you have to submit yourself to a process, not try to be an artist with it. It's science, it ain't art.

Yeah, that's a great way to put it. You're right. There's this level of you can't just wish for it. You can't just hope for it. You have to put the behaviors in play to make it happen.

But those of us that have a creativity binge, you and me included, I'm a process guy, but I've also got a creativity binge, meaning that I always question everything, right? I have to go, Well, I don't care about your baby steps. I want to bank my own. I'm the same moron out there that some of you are that are listening right now. Don't go make your own. It's painful. Follow the plan. You know what that guy did? He never even questioned it. He just did it. Follow the plan. He just did it. This is The Ramsey Show.

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

George Campbell, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Max is in Corpus Christi. Hi, Max. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Howdy, Dave. Thanks for.

Taking my call. Sure, man. What's up?

So.

I'm a.

Second year mid-shipman at the United States Naval Academy, and I'm just trying to figure out how I want to set up my outlook going forward. So I'm going to graduate here in two and a half years with no debt, or I have the option.

Of doing that.

Or I can take what's called a career starter loan from USAA or anything. No! Well, it's a 0.75 % interest loan.

Okay.

Because the idea was to cover your car and.

Home to get started. With it. You're not covering your car. You're borrowing money for a car.

Fair enough. That's what my brother-in-law said.

You'd say.

That was easy. Hold on. You said the other option was graduate debt-free?

Yeah. You can go 50 grand in debt, right?

32.

Yeah. What's wrong with the first option? Somebody ought to smack those people for doing that to you guys. You guys are serving your country. Thank you so much for who you are, young man. Thank you. Please don't go falling into a ditch.

Okay. Because all the.

Financial.

Investors are like, Well, most people that do it beat the interest of a year in the stock market.

Let me tell you what they are. They're full of crap. Let me tell you why I know that. I'm not just making this up. We studied, Max, 10,000 millionaires. The largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. Do you know how many of them told us that they borrowed money at 1% interest and invested it in the market and that caused them to be millionaires? Precisely zero. Zero. Zero. None of them!

Very well.

They weren't trying to get a commission off of a young mid-shipman to get him to borrow money at the freaking credit union to put it into his mutual fund. You need to run from those financial people because they haven't got your best interest at heart. You are sharp young guy. You're getting ready to go. I assume you're going to be an officer, correct?

Yes, sir, you're in the Navy of the Marine Corps. I'm hoping to fly for the Marine Corps. Yeah.

Oh, you're going to fly? Oh, even better. Wow, good for you. Man, that's amazing. Your future in an aircraft, military or non-military later is bright. Your income is bright. Everything is there. Don't saddle yourself with these kinds of problems all in an effort to accelerate your wealth-building process because there's no data points to back it up. That makes sense. Okay, man, I appreciate who you are, and I really don't want you to do this. I hope you're hearing me loud and clear. I'm not just being a smart elit with you. I am being a smart elit with the morons around you, though. Oh, my gosh.

What a great young guy. Anyone who's selling him on the benefit of $32,000 in debt is not looking out for them.

Let me just walk this through, George, for a second. It's important because it sounds like we don't know how to do math to people like those people that are advising him. For you morons out there that are teaching you, some young guy, stuff like this, here's where you're wrong. At $32,000, and he can borrow the money at 1% or so, if he invested in mutual funds and he made 10 or 12%, does he not make the spread? Yes, he does make the spread. However, what you need to understand is that your formula that you have used is A, naive and incomplete, B, short sighted. Let me explain. Naive and incomplete means you have not factored in risk. Let me show you how I know you've not factored in risk. It didn't bother anyone that this young guy is going to borrow $32,000 at 1%. Let's just put some X's on it. If $32,000 at 1% makes him profit if he could do 3.2 million at 1%, should he? No. What's the difference?

It's a bigger number.

The bigger number makes your heart measure the risk you feel. Some of you just got tight in the chest or your stomach raised up just a little bit, even when I suggested that the young man be $3.2 million in debt. But if the math works at 32,000, why wouldn't the math work at 3.2? Because at 3.2, you finally physically felt in your chest the risk, but you didn't feel it before, so you thought you were some BA with your math. You left out risk. You left out risk. Risk is math, and you have to insert risk in the process, and otherwise, you get your freaking head taken off. Just because the risk feels small doesn't mean it's not there. Your formula, 1% versus 10 or 12%, spread is incomplete because you left out risk. Number two, it's naive because you didn't take into consideration the fact that you have a young man getting into the cockpit of a fighter jet, some of the most sophisticated equipment on the planet, where you can kill someone over the horizon and never see them, or be killed by someone over the horizon and never see them. It is a bizarre set of technology, the world's best in humankind history.

You have a young guy in his early 20s getting ready to climb into that cockpit, Oh, and let's go ahead and put in the back of his mind that he has $32,000 worth of debt and act like that doesn't matter. Of course, it matters. The number three cause of dishonorable discharge in the military is financial responsibility. They lose their security clearance and they lose their battle readiness because they're preoccupied with crap in the back of their mind because some moron financial advisor suggested there was a spread between one and ten. There's more to this stuff, folks, than meets the Eye. That's my point.

You also have to wonder how much paymentsget payments where he goes, All right, well, I've already got the storage 2,000, why not go get a car loan? Why not go get payments over here and run up a credit card?

It just becomes- Normalizes it.

Yeah, exactly.

I got to tell you, man, these guys preying on the military people, it pisses me off. You leave a military base and if you go to a military town, you leave the gates of the base. As soon as you leave the gates of the base, there is stupid on each side of the road for about two miles. Every dumb human trick you can do is on one side of the road or the other for about two miles. They are set up like a bunch of freaking pirana to feed on these guys from payday lenders to whoever else out there. This is an innocuous loan he's talking about. There's nothing to this loan. But the horrible financial products, horrible deals on cars, horrible behaviors they can engage in, none of which are good for them, none of which are good for their battle readiness, none of which are good for their military career. It's sad that these people are preying on the very people who are young people are not making a lot of money in most cases, and they're here to service. Yeah.

What do you think makes them more vulnerable to these kinds of decisions?

Well, they're the same age as a college student who went and got a degree in beer pong. You got stupid outside the college. As soon as you walk off the college campus for two miles, you got stupid on each side of the road, too. It's the same thing. They're preying on the young that are inexperienced at life and think that I want to try all these new things that look like fun and will bring death. Death to your finances, death to your relationships, death to your future relationships. I mean, it's a problem, man. It's a problem. I'm not suggesting legislation to protect it, but I am suggesting that the military really ought to do some orientation. It's like a college should do an orientation. It's not just about what's happening on the campus. It's about what's happening just off the campus that'll kill your butt and mess you up and set you on a trajectory that takes you 10 years to recover from. You're turning a guy, 18-girl, 18-years-old loose with their first paycheck unsupervised. The first thing you do is drop them in a pool of parana. It's just, Oh, my God, man. That pisses me off.

Can you tell?

I can tell.

I mean, we just love the military, and we've worked with them for so many years with Financial Peace University. They're the vast majority of them are young, very young, and are susceptible to this thing. And it's harsh. It's really harsh. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show where Daddy's Dumb, Cash is King, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Camel. Ramsey personality is my co-host today. As we answer your questions about your life and your money, we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Open phones at Triple Eight, 825-5225. Jennifer is with us in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Hi, George. Pleasure to speak with.

Both of you. You too. What's up?

Hi. I have an IRA that was from a past job. I rolled over into its own account. My question is, should I move that money into my 401(k) where I'm currently investing and putting my 15% or leave it in that separate IRA account?

I would just leave it in that IRA account.

Okay, even though no money is going.

Into it. Correct. But it is sitting there in Good Mutual funds, correct? Yes, it is. Okay. If it's in Good Mutual funds, I would just leave it alone. You've got more control of it there. We never recommend you move old IRA money into new, or old 401(k) money into new 401(k)s instead of putting it out in an individual retirement account. You can pick the same mutual funds if you want, or better ones, and you've got better access and better control, and it will grow at exactly the same rate or a better rate than it would if you moved it inside the 401(k). Georgia is exactly right. Joel is with us in Cleveland, Ohio. Hey, Joel, what's up?

Hey.

What's going on, Dave? I'm a new listener, so I'm going to give you a call.

I'm getting married in three weeks. Congratulations.

Thank you very much. My fiancés and I have been living together for the last year. We've tried different budgets.

We've tried.

Different ways, different websites. Nothing seems to quite work. We end up just a race to zero.

We've got a.

Combined income of about $100,000. I've got about 5,000 in credit card debt. She's got about 3,000 in credit card debt. We've got.

4,000 in savings and I've.

Got about 20,000 in mutual funds.

Okay. Any card debt?

No, no card debt.

Student.

Loans? She's got about 20,000 in.

Student.

Loans. Okay, all right, cool. I do not.

We're just trying to figure out- Well, typically there's two things that cause people to not be able to stick to a budget. One is that they're using a wrong technique, which we can help you with. Two is they're not really committed to the idea. In other words, if you write it down on paper and have no intention of actually doing what you wrote down, then guess what? You're not going to do what you wrote down.

Yeah, since combining.

A bank, I just feel like we've had less control.

I guess.

It's harder to pay for two than pay for one.

It just seems like a lot quicker than it used to be.

This is extra confusing. I mean, if you've got multiple incomes coming in, you should only have more there versus less. But we recommend a zero-based budget, and I don't know if you've checked out every dollar. It doesn't sound like you have. That's our budgeting tool. I will gift that to you guys as a wedding present, including Ramsey Plus. You'll have access to all the videos inside a financial piece. But once you start your every dollar budget, it's super easy. We want to list out all of your income, and then we're going to list out all of your expenses.

And when you subtract that particular month.

When you subtract the expenses from the income, it should equal zero, meaning you have assigned every single dollar a job. We don't want any of your dollars unemployed. Once you do that, and then by the way, you have to stick to it and actually track it and go, How much money do we have for food when we go grocery shopping? Then we're going to stick to that budget. That's how you're going to get that control. But I can write down a workout plan every week, Dave, and if I never work out, I'll never get in shape.

You assign every dollar a mission and every dollar a name. That's why we call the app Every Dollar. Both of you look at that before the month begins. It's unique to each month because every month is different. Okay? Okay. Then once you've assigned every dollar, both of you look at it, both of you make changes until every dollar has a name, no extra slush money laying around, every dollar is assigned. All the income you have coming in net that month to work with is assigned to something. Then it's assigned to something. Both of you agree with the assignments, you agree with the mission, and then you pinky, swear, and spit, shake. This becomes a freaking contract that says if we're not going to spend more than X number of dollars on restaurants, then by God, stay home. Don't go to the restaurant. You're contracting with each other. We're not going to spend more than this on clothes this month. I don't care if the purse is on sale. We have agreed- You.

Have to do that to make that.

Extra-trip to target.

We agreed that this is what we were going to spend. Don't lie to me. That's what you're saying to each other. You're contracting. You have to make it a very serious relational commitment. That's why both of you need a vote in the formation of the thing, because otherwise, you're bossing her around or she's.

Bossing you around. Becomes a weapon.

But instead, you're to, as a couple saying, Our goals are X, and the best way to achieve our goals is this list of expenditures this month, and we're not going to do something other than that unless something really nasty bad happens, and then we have to come back together and together decide on how we're going to change our budget before we do it. You don't come home from Target, you don't come home from the grocery store, you don't come home from happy hour and go, Well, honey, look what I did. That's not cute. That's childish. That's the thing where I'm talking about you committing to sticking to the plan. But laying out the technique that the technique is every dollar has an assignment. As George said, that's called a zero-based budget. The two of you coming together and agreeing that this is what we're going to do, that's the technique. Now, typically we always say, Joel, you said you're new to this stuff. We always tell folks, typically a married couple. One of you is more of a nerd that's into the details, and one of you is more of a free spirit that's less into the details and isn't going to think this is fun.

The nerd thinks doing a budget is like great fun.

Correct. I'm the nerd, I'm.

More free-spirited. Now, that would be normal that the nerd calls and asks this question. Okay, how do we do a budget? Free spirits don't ask this question.

She's at Target right now. There we go. We figured.

It out. Yeah, she's getting her nails done right now. But in my house, I'm the nerd, my wife's the free spirit. And so same as at your house, Joel. What we had to do is this, nerds need free spirits in their life so they have a life. Right. Free spirits need nerds in their lives so they don't retire and have to eat alpo. Correct. You need each other. If two people just alike get married, one is unnecessary. You need each other. You need to be working off each other's strengths. Both of you have a vote. This is a coming together of a value system. It's not you bossing her around her, bossing you around. You're not the boss of me.

Welcome to marriage. And this might take 2-3 months to get dialed in, so don't give up. If the first one you go, Well, we couldn't do it. Let's give up. We can't do a budget. Stick to it. And Kelly will pick up. We'll gift you guys a year of Ramsey Plus, which includes every dollar, our premium budgeting tool. Let us know how.

It goes. And go all the way through the Financial Peace class. It's included in that. We just gave you a great, expensive wedding gift. Here at Ramsey Solutions, we're on a mission to bring hope to the hopeless. We've helped millions find peace in their money and their life. We need people like you to help us. We have open roles in our sales, marketing, and technology teams. We offer financial, developmental, and health benefits to help you live a balanced life while doing life-changing work. You want to join the crusade? See our open roles at ramseysolutions. Com/careers and apply today. That's ramseysolutions. Com/careers. Well, I love tax season, said nobody ever. Questions about taxes, though, they're coming in, and we'll help you with those. Here's a question from one of our listeners, Dave, We normally have someone do our taxes, but our accountant retired. I think we have a simple return. Should we try to file ourselves with Ramsey SmartTax? Well, you can use the Ramsey SmartTax software. It's very easy to use. The more complicated your return, the more likely you would want to use a professional. I personally use a professional, but mine's the size of a freaking phone book when I get it done.

That's different, obviously. We're working with the tax pro. If you've had a major life change, like we retired, got an inheritance, adopted a child. If you own a business and file a long form on that, probably a pro. You're not confident? You're confident, though. Or you want to save time and stress. These are reasons that you'd want to do this. But if you get into it and it's just like, God, I hate this. Okay, there you go. That tells you right there. I hate it anyway. I hate just signing the thing, much less preparing it. That's the whole thing.

I see it like buying back your time and mental sanity when you work with a pro. Now, if people have simple situations.

They've got a W-2. If you've got a 10-40 easy, do a Ramsey SmartTax. You can do that as fast as you can do a 1040 easy. Don't pay somebody 300 bucks to do that. I mean, it's just.

Filling up. You can pay 20 bucks on.

Your own. But I haven't had one of those in my life, so I've always been self-employed.

Nothing about Dave's life is easy.

I don't have an easy button anyway. But yeah, I've always been self-employed or had some weird income or something going on where I didn't trust my own level of tax knowledge to do it. Either way, if you want a pro or you want to use the Ramsey SmartTax software, just go to ramseysolutions. Com/tax. Our question today comes from our brand new sponsor, Neighborly. We are so thrilled these guys are on board with us. It's brought to you by them. They're your hub for home services, stuff like Mr. Rooter, Mr. Electric. You'll see those at Neighborly. So if you need to make repairs or schedule routine maintenance or find local help for home improvement projects, Neighborly is your source for reliable home service providers in your area. Go to neighborly. Com and start your search.

Today's question comes from Claudia in Mississippi. She's asking, Under what scenario do you have to pay capital gains tax on real estate. Here's my situation. My grandfather quit claim, deeded his house to me. The house is completely paid off. He paid $24,000 for it in 2013, and it's now evaluated at $190,000. I'm wanting to sell in hopes to buy a new property. I've lived with them since 2020, and I took ownership in 2021. Under this scenario, would I be liable for capital gains?

No. Because it's been your name for more than two years. It's been your personal residence for more than two years. A single person can make a profit of a capital gain of up to $250,000. That'd be $274,000 in your case, because his basis was $24,000. A profit of $250,000 was zero income tax on your personal residence. However, this was stupid. You almost stepped in it. You accidentally are okay, not because you had a plan.

If the numbers were different, the house value was much higher, this could have been a different scenario.

So never did property to someone prior to your death like grandpa did. Here's why. Let's pretend that she didn't accidentally fall under this personal residence exemption for $250,000, which saved her bacon, okay? Let's say that she didn't live in the property. That would do away with the personal residence bit, get it? Okay. Now, grandpa lives there, but grandpa wants to make sure granddaughter gets it, and he doesn't want to deal with the wills and stuff because he knows how those lawyers are, right? This is the crap people do, okay? Then he deeds the property to her with a quit claim deed, which is a usually a one-page thing and costs $6-$10 to register at the courthouse. It's very easy to do this stupid move. Now, here's what happens. When you give someone property or a capital asset, stock, if I give George money, if I give him a share of Home Depot stock, if I give him a piece of real estate, his basis when he gets ready to resell it is based on what I paid for it. In this case, grandpa paid $24,000 for it, so her basis is $24,000. If she had not lived in the house for two years, it would be called investment property, 100% of everything over $24,000 would be taxable.

Major mistake, $150,000 worth of taxable income created here. Instead, had he deeded it to her in his will at his death, it went to her. You get what's called a stepped-up basis. Her basis becomes the value at the time of his death. Apparently, he's still alive. But at the time of his death, let's say he passed in this situation, her basis would not be $24,000, it'd be $190,000. She turns around and sells it for $190,000, zero capital gains. The fact that Duber, deeds this thing before his death, grandpa, dad, gum, sweet, but dumb, okay? Could have cost her taxes on $150,000 or more here. It didn't because she happened to live in the property for two years. But so don't give people stuff. Let market value at the time of their death be their new basis. It's a lot higher than what you paid for it. Control the ownership vehicle not by an early deed, but with either a trust or a will or both.

When does it make sense to use a quick claim deed?

What scenarios? Divorces. Even then, though, you can get into trouble because most divorce attorneys make a huge legal error. I'm calling you boys and girls out. Because here's the thing. Husband, wife get divorced, there's a $260,000 mortgage. Husband doesn't get to keep the house. Wife is going to get the house because the kids are living in the house. Divorce attorneys say, Well, just part of the settlement is you're going to quit claim your half of ownership to her. He fills out a one page, quit claim as part of the divorce decree. Boom, there we go. But guess what? Husband still has a $260,000 mortgage. That's messy. In his name.

On a house he's not a.

Part of. Five years later, he gets remarried and wants to have a life and buy a house, can't do it. Still got a $260,000 mortgage in his ex-wife's name. Doesn't own the property, but still got the mortgage. Dumb. You're getting a divorce and doing a quit claim deed? Force a refinance or force the sale of the house. One of the two. Either the wife, the ex-soon-to-be ex, or whoever's going to get the house, refinances and gets the other person's name off the mortgage, or we sell the house and get the name off the mortgage because you're going to get stuck. Divorce attorneys do this all the time because it's easy. It's easy, but it's wrong. Okay, same thing here. This is for a different reason, though. When would you use a quit claim deed? I just moved property from one LLC to another the other day. I used a quit claim deed to do that.

To switch the ownership.

Yeah. I own both LLCs, so it's a non-issue, right? Okay. When else would you use a quit Claim Deed? See, a Quit Claim Deed means you... Here's real estate theory for you. A warranty deed is what usually transfers in most states a piece of property. That means if I'm transferring property to you, George, I am giving you a warranty on the title, that I have the title. I am the owner of the title, and I am willing to warranty that and transfer that to you. Then if I didn't own the property and I did that, then you would have recourse back on me, okay? But I could give you a quit Claim Deed to someone else's property, because all it says is I quit claiming whatever ownership I have. If I have no ownership, I quit claiming it. Wow. I gave you nothing when I quit claiming it. I could give you a quit claim deemed to James' house.

I'm in.

It wouldn't do you any good. James looks so scared of the booth. I'm going to quit claiming all of my ownership, which is nothing. If you don't have pure ownership and you quit claim deeds something, it's of no value. You can really get into all kinds of crap there. Sometimes you'll use it to do some title cleanup if there's something more nuanced than all of that.

I've only heard it mostly in the context of divorces.

Divorce and estates. Grandpa doing a dumb thing like this, or a state planning attorney is doing a dumb thing without forcing a refinance. I mean, divorce attorneys, not forcing a refinance. Then you get stung and you're stuck with a mortgage on a house you don't own anymore with a woman you aren't married to anymore. There's something about this that seems miserable to me. There's a lot of yikes. This is The Ramsey Show. If you ever experienced Financial Peace University, you know how life-changing it is, and there's no better way to share that hope than by leading an FPU class at your church. This is the time of year when lots of people are ready to get their money right. They're looking for help, and you can be the one to step up and lead them to hope, just like FPU did for you. It's easy to get started, plus leading a class is totally free. Start making a difference as an FPU coordinator by going to fPU. Com/lead. George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the Debt Free stage. Tony and Brandy are with us. Hey, guys, how are you?

Hey, doing well. Good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. Welcome. So good to have you guys. Thank you. How much debt have you two paid off? Thirty-four thousand. All right. How long did this take? About five months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? $150. Wow, good. What do you all do for a living?

I'm a UPS driver. I'm a nurse. I work in outpatient surgery.

Cool. What debt was your $34,000?

My student loans.

I'm sorry. Let's see here. Where do you guys live? We're from Wilmington, North Carolina. Oh, yeah, fun. Okay, cool. What starts this journey five months ago? What happened?

Well, it really started like three years ago. My organization offered Smart dollar, and I was like, I'm the free spirit. I was like, Well, I'll look at it. I don't know anything about financial stuff anyways. Then I was like, I'll tell Tony about it. I got into the first video where it was saying, sell all your stuff and gazelle intensity. I was like, That's not going to work for me, but I'll tell Tony anyways, and we'll just see. I was like, Have you ever heard about this guy? He was like, Oh, yeah, I know Dave, Ramsey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, Well, I mean, he has a lot of point, but it sounds like it's more for the destitute, which we are not. But we went ahead and listed all of our debts out and we paid off a right good bit. I think altogether we've paid about $71,000 off in the last three years. But then five months ago, he's the one that really got intense about it.

Yeah, I know. I just felt like we were.

Making that type of money and just.

Never.

Getting ahead. You'd have money and then.

Something would.

Come up and it was gone. I think the biggest thing is we hadn't combined our finances. Once we combined our.

Finances, it was just a complete game-changer. We were on the same page and we started making moves together. Instead of.

Saving up four grand and then spending three, we just went through this whole process and $34,000 in five months. It was incredible. Boom, just like that.

How long have you been married? Nine years. Okay. In nine years, you just combined finances when you started this journey five months ago?

Yes. Wow. We had two separate checking accounts, two separate savings accounts, and one joint checking account that we put all of our bills in. Then based on our income, Tony put in a bigger percentage than me because he makes more than me. Then we all just... Well, I just spent all my money because I don't ever save anything hardly until now, and he saved it all. If something came up and he would have to pay for it, he would be resentful because he's like, I've saved up all this money, and then I would be like, You also make more money. It was always a fight back and forth. Since we combined.

Everything- Now we have an account. -yeah. -now we have an income. -yeah. Now we have savings and we do spending. Yeah. Okay, so I certainly have a theory about this, but I'm curious, why do you think the combining accounts caused such an increase in efficiency and lowered the resentment, you're saying? Well, I think that it just puts you on the same page. Instead of working in different directions, you're working in one solid direction. I think just everything just seems to fit that way. When you're doing things separately, you're, I'm buying something, she's buying something, and you.

Never.

Know what one side is doing and the other side is doing.

You're just.

Never on the same page that way. But also, I think it just helps your marriage and helps you become a stronger grouping instead of just two individuals running through life together. Okay. Brandy, you would have been the one most resistant to that because you had it made. I mean, you just spent it your whole check, right? Yeah. Why give that up? What would you say the benefits are now that you guys combine them from your perspective?

Well, I think it was now both of our money, so I wasn't feeling like I was getting nickel. I used to joke, and I would say, Man, you've been nickel and dime in me since we were dating. We always split it. It was 50-50, 100 % 50-50 the whole time out of my account and his account. We weren't like, Oh, I paid for this. You owe me this. It was just like, Okay, well, we got to pay for this, and this is what we're doing. Since I'm a nurse and I really love to chart, so every dollar app, it was real fun to chart everything. I didn't realize how much money we actually had left over after we budgeted.

You get to do spending because you got to vote, right? Yeah. You're not like you're living on beans and Rice or something. You didn't have to do that. Just knock this out. You make a lot of money. You just popped it in the head, right? Just reach over. I like that charting thing with the every dollar.

Of course, a nurse would mention it's like charting. I like that. I've never heard that analogy, but it's perfect.

Budgeting is like charting.

I love this story, though, because we get this all the time. People go, Well, Dave, I'm not going to combine finances. This guy got a thousand reasons: trust issues, fear, selfishness, financial infidelity. But when you guys combined this, there was an accountability there. There was a connection that could not be broken, and it obviously caused you guys to win financially.

Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome.

Yeah, we actually had planned for us to pay that 34,000 off by this April, but we paid it off in November. Now we're four, five, and six. We already got our emergency fund, and now we're to four, five, and six now. We finished it seven months early.

Look at the spender all up in the knowledge here. I know. I'm very impressed. She knows exactly where she is. I love that. She's starting.

The budget. She's got her spending under control. Shout out to your employer for having Smart dollar as a benefit. Thank you. Very cool. For those that don't know, that is our financial wellness program that we offer to businesses, organizations to help their employees get control of their money. So it's very cool.

It's an employee benefit program that teaches our class is what it amounts to. And so very cool. It's cool to see the impact. The husband or the spouse could actually get involved and then it turned, Oh, my gosh! Then it.

Goes, Wow. We encourage that.

That's awesome. Be careful we get Tony involved because it'll get implemented then. Well done, you guys. You're fun. It was good to talk to you. You got a real healthy outlook on this whole thing. You're comfortable in your own skin to talk about it. That's a positive for everybody listening. It sounds like you were doing fine. You could just do better. Now you did better, and now you're free. How does it feel to have zero debt? Did you notice a change? Yeah, no, it's like the tension in your shoulders just drops. You don't know anybody. Now it's time to go tackle the house and.

Start moving in that direction.

In our mid-40s, we could have no debt, period, house, everything. Brandy, you said that was student loans from you. Yes. How does that feel for that all to be gone? Did you notice something when it left, or you're just a course of business? Okay, check.

Well, I was happy. I don't get super really worked up about stuff. I guess that's a nurse in me too. Stay calm. Yeah, but I was like, Man, we paid it off. That's great. It was actually from my undergrad. When I got my bachelor's, I paid my job paid for it, and now I'm getting my doctorate, and we're actually cash flow on that too. We're paying for my doctorate and paying all this, all of the dead off and doing all the other stuff.

Good for you. Awesome. Good for you. Good for you. Well done you guys. You're a power couple. That's awesome and stuff. Now you bring the kiddo with you to do a death-free scream? He did. How old is he and what's his name? He's five.

This is Reed.

Reed. Has Reed been involved in all this? He know what's going on?

Oh, yes. Yeah, he listens to The Ramsey Show quite a lot.

With us in the car. I'm sorry, Reed. We should get you some good.

Music to listen to. That's a scar childhood right there.

Well, we got a copy of the Baby Steps Millionaires book for you. That's definitely the next chapter in your story as well as a total money makeover book for you to give away to someone and stir up a holy ruckus with that thing somewhere. Tell them what you did. I'm proud of you guys. Well done. Very well done. You're a great couple. Tony and Brandy and Reed from North Carolina, 34,000 paid off, due mainly to combining their accounts and their goals and their values. Did it in five months, making 150. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.

We're.

Debt-free. Yeah, look.

At Reed. He stepped up. He's in it, man.

Yeah, go Reed. He understood the assignment. Way to go, buddy.

That's.

Awesome. Oh, man. It's amazing how people can share a bed, share DNA, share a child, but they won't share a bank account, Dave. That's just too personal.

Wow.

I love a story like that.

Oh, man, that's awesome. Way to go, Smart dollar team. Good work. Yes. This is The Ramsey Show. Psalm 77:14, You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples. Our scripture of the day. John Rockefeller said, Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people. That's probably true. We probably are all our average people that we learn to do superior work. A little snobbish there, Mr. Rockefeller. But it's okay, I'm going with it. I like it. Open phones at triple-8-8-25-5-2-25. George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Boise, Idaho is up next. Justin's on the line. Hey, Justin, how are you?

Hey, Dave, it's Jesse.

Oh, I'm sorry, Jesse. What's up?

I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I went back and forth all week on what to do. I'm like, Dude, I need some help. I've been here for two years. I've been here for two years. I've moved my family over here to take a job. I've been doing this for 16 years, the same work, the same job. Eight of those 16 have been running my own crews and stuff. But when they got here, some promises were made and then I couldn't find out they were lacking that anyway. That's the.

Training we were on. You just drove by that. I have no idea what you just said. Promises were made and what?

There were some promises made. If you come to work for us, then we'll give you this and this after a certain amount of time. Well, that was just to lure me in because they were so short on guys, it seemed like anyway.

So you no longer trust the integrity of the people you work for.

Exactly. I don't know if I trust them.

Oh, no, you just said you didn't. I know.

Right, exactly. Okay, so I don't trust them. This winter, sometimes we get laid off due to weather and stuff like that. We were laid off for a month or so. They ended up working a couple of guys that were new guys that… The way it works is that you start from the top and you work your way down to the guys lower on the totem pole, right?

No, I don't know what you're talking about. What are you working down to? Most people work up the totem pole, not down.

Right. No, I'm saying in the wintertime.

When they're laying off- In terms of who you're firing.

-laying off due to whether-.

You lay off the expensive guys first. Okay, I got that.

Well, guys with lack of experience is usually where they start, the newer guys. Anyway, so I went and-.

Jesse, what's your question? I don't have it. I want to.

Get to down to- Okay, I put in the resume. I got an offer from another company. The other company is willing to pay me for the same work, $52 an hour. Well, I make $30 an hour right now. What's the problem? They offer all the same thing. Well, 401(k) is where I get to. I get to 401(k. They offer 401(k).

Dude, you don't need a 401(k) when you double your income.

Okay.

You go get a Roth IRA, screw it. You're going to double your income. You go from 30-52, that's almost double. I'm not staying anywhere for a 401(k) for doubling your income. Is the other place a good place to work?

Yes, I went up, checked them out, drove around with them. They treat you right. None of those promises that can't be kept. They told me, This is what's going to happen, this is what you're going to get.

And this is how it's going to be- What do you do for a living?

I guess to sum it up, if I was to build design, engineer roads, all the stuff that you would basically. Okay. It's the road, subdivisions, parking lots, all the underground stuff that goes into it.

Are you a heavy equipment guy?

Yes.

Okay.

All right, cool. Like I said, I have eight years running... I'm like, running crews. So when I came over here, they were like, Well, yeah, you can run a crew here. We'll put you on... But oh, hey, wait a sec. We don't have enough guys, so would you mind working with these guys for a little bit longer? It seemed like it was just to lure me here because they were so short on guys. They were desperate. They needed guys.

The second company or the first company? Who's luring you? The first company.

Just leave the first company. You got a great offer. What's stopping you at this point?

Because the first company, they do great 401(k) matches.

Forget the 401(k) you hate it and you don't trust them, and you're going to get paid almost double. Okay.

What do I do? If I'm putting in, like right now I'm putting 10% in my 401(k) and they're matching it at 6%, I go to this new company, how much do I put into that?

You roll your old 401(k) with a Smart Vista Pro to a traditional, and you open two Roth IRAs, one for you and one for your wife if you're married. But dude, regardless, you can just save money in mutual funds if you have to, once you maxed out your Roth IRAs. But retirement plan is not what the problem here is. Retirement plan is a two on a scale of 1-10. No integrity is a 10 on the scale of 1-10. Doubling your income is a 10 on a scale of 1-10. This is what's known as a no-brainer. Take the new job, quit the old job, leave. No-brainer. You'll work out the investment stuff later. But you don't stay at a company making half the money that you don't trust because they have a 401(k)? No, not even close. That's the deal right there.

I think I lost brain calories on that one, Dave. That was a lot for me. That was hard for you. I was trying to track, man.

Well, it was circular.

We got there.

But we got there. Jarik is with us in Texas. Hi, Jareke, how are you?

I'm good, Dave.

How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

I'm a college student, freshman by year, sophomore by hour here at Texas A&M University in Canyon. And I actually took your I took your finance course my senior year for Money Matters. And I had some questions about saving. I have some money saved up just from work, graduation, presence, scholarship refunds, that thing. And I just don't want to put that thing in the brick and mortar bank. It doesn't make nothing. So I've been looking maybe like a high yield savings thing, something with high liquidity, so I can take it out if I have to pay.

For something. You noticed what high yield was, right? You noticed what high yield was, right? Did you look at the percentage on the high yield?

Yes, sir, it's only.

0.5. Yeah, I know. It's not exactly high yield. It's an oxymoron.

Well, compared to.

The other- It's a 0.25 versus a 0.5. I mean, the whole thing is irrelevant. It's just a parking spot for your money that you're not going to lose it. You're not going to invest it because you need it for college. You don't need it right now, but you're going to need it later. You're just going to park it somewhere. If you want to park it at a high yield that's not really high, then that's okay. If you want to put it in a money market, that's okay. None of it's going to earn over one right now.

How much money are we talking?

Some 4,000-6,000.

Yeah, just park it. You're going to get pennies on it either way. Just park it.

You can put it in a shoebox. It's not much different. But just park it because you're going to need it later. Keep your hands off of it. When you have a semester where there's a little bit of a gap in there and you got to do some you're going to need that 4-6 and it'll help you graduate college completely debt-free as you push your way on through. But you just need a parking lot, a parking spot for your money. You're not having to pay for it. They're going to pay you a tiny bit to park your car there. That's all it is. Just park it in the parking spot and get back to it later. You've done a really good job setting your life up here. Very, very, very well done, Jareek.

Very good job. You've got your whole life to invest. So don't worry about that right now. We want you to get through college debt-free, get your emergency room in place, get a great job, and then we have 20, 30 years to invest, you're going to be just fine.

Yeah, you don't need to worry about investing right now. You're the investment. Get through school debt-free. Well done. George, good hour.

Fun.

Times. Thank you. Good job to the booth people. Well done, booth people and booth folk. It's all good in there. And all of you, there were 17 people in there earlier. I'm not naming them all. I can't even call the role. They're all employed. I don't even know my children's names. Let's put that hour in the books 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, it's Rachel Cruz, co-host on The Ramsey Show.

If you want to do.

Your.

Debt-free scream live on the show, visit ramseysolutions.

Com/debt-free-screen. We'd love for you to.

Come to.

Nashville and tell Dave.

Your story.

That's.

Ramseysolutions. Com/debt-free-screen.

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