Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality, best-selling author is my co-host today, as we take your calls about your life and your money. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Jack starts this hour in Cincinnati. Hey, Jack, welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, Dave, how are you this afternoon?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

I've dug myself a hole, and I don't know what the right answer is. I probably do know what the right answer is, but I don't know how to get out of it.

Okay. What happened?

Well, to make a long story short, my wife and I got married two years ago after dating for about six years. We went into all the kids were out of high school, and we could combine households a little more easily. After a big wedding, we started trying to pay stuff off, but the minute we got home from the honeymoon and when business became... When it became the business of a relationship, the relationship changed, and that's where the problem lies. In the process of paying stuff off, last July, we decided, because we weren't making any progress on the credit cards, We made it a really wise decision to take a 401k loan for $50,000 payable in two years to pay it off. But now the credit cards are coming back. So I've got a list if you want a list, but just not sure what to do with it.

So your core question is what?

How do I fix this and keep my marriage?

Okay, wow. All right, so you've got a total of how much debt?

120.

Okay, and 50 is a 401k now.

Thirty-five left, that's correct.

Oh, 35 of the 120. Okay. Thirty-five of the 120, okay.

Thirty-five of that 401k is left.

Okay, what else? Yes, so 35 of your 120 is a 401k loan. What is the other 85,000?

Okay, so we've got credit card with 11,8, credit card with 7,200, credit card with 19,2, credit card with 2,900, two cars at 31,8 and 22,4, my daughter's at 2,900, which will be paid off very shortly, and a trailer for my losing business at 4,300.

Okay. What's your household income?

About 200.

Okay. What's the losing business? What does that mean?

To fund an early retirement, I have a woodworking business that I do on the side. It's taking up 6-8 hours a night and every weekend. In the last two years, We've lost about $10,000 a year.

Okay. That sounds like an expensive hobby that's taking up a bunch of money and a bunch of time, both. That's an easy decision, isn't it? I need the eight hours to spend on my marriage. I need the $10,000 to spend on something else rather than a losing business. Close it and sell off the stuff. Why wouldn't you do that?

I could.

Yeah, you could. You'd have eight hours to spend on your marriage. You said you're spending eight hours a night on this?

Yeah, I'm normally in my shop until between 9:00 and 10:00 every night.

Yeah, that's good for marriage. Okay. Especially since you're not making any money. I mean, if you were making $10,000 a night or something, she'd probably be tolerant. But okay, so you have $200,000 You have cars coming out your ears, credit cards coming out your ears. Now, the credit cards are growing back. That tells us that you guys continue to spend more than you make. If the credit cards are growing back, right?

Yeah, you took the Heelock out for the credit cards. Tell me what you're spending this money on. Is this just putting food on the table? Is this funding your business? What's going on these credit cards?

Three of those cards are funding the business. One of them goes away in a week because I made a big sale.

Did you cut them up yet?

They're put away. They're not cut up.

Okay, there's the problem.

Okay. No, there's a different problem. I disagree. The two of you have not sat down and said with a written budget that we're going to live on less than $200,000 a year. Why?

To be honest, we have, but then it's something always comes in.

So you just didn't stick to it? Pretty much. An example of something that comes in is what?

A $4,000 collection item from Verizon from four years ago that we didn't know was coming. Or a foreclosure for her and her ex-husband on a timeshare of all things that paid immediately because his credit doesn't need to be affected.

I'm sorry.

I know timeshare is your favorite word.

No, I don't understand why his credit matters to you or to his ex-wife.

She was obligated to pay it in a divorce.

Oh, okay. She knew she had that, and the Verizon bill was hers, too?

Yes.

She knew she had that. She just didn't know when they were going to drop. But she knew these were unpaid bills. Bills if she's an adult? I'm missing something here, Jack. I don't understand why this is ending your marriage. Because the two of you can't get on the same page, or what's the problem?

The stress of the bills is way heavy. We go out and we go to a craft show on the weekend and we make a little bit of money, and all of a sudden we're all in and we're ready to go take this business into early retirement. But by Tuesday, when it rolls around and we're back out in the shop, it's, Oh, holy cow, we got to work again.

That's your side hustle.

You have a $200,000 income, and the two of you can't decide to live on that. That's what's confusing to me.

I think that your mindset is there's some place in your brain where you think you can windfall yourself out of this, whether it's, Hey, we'll just take out the heat walk, and that'll be our windfall to get out of this, even though it's not, or, Hey, we can go to these craft shows, and maybe we can make enough money to get a windfall and get out of this. I think what Dave is getting at is you guys haven't truly looked at your behavior together as a team. If you set a course and say, We're going to do this, no one else can make you follow that course of action other than the people in the mirror. That's what we're getting at.

Jack, if you wanted to have some dramatic moves forward, I can give you four things right now that if you go do them, by the end of the time you do those, which should be within two weeks, you're going to have a completely different scenario in your life. Sell both cars, sell the trailer, get out of the woodworking business, sit down with your spouse, and do a written, detailed budget where the two of you live on less than your day income. You guys could clean this mess up in no time. But you're screwing around with craft shows, losing $10,000 a year in eight hours a night and losing your butt, and you can't sit down and manage to make it through a $4,000 bill making 200K. So you can do this, but you got two stinking expensive cars. You got a stinking expensive hobby that you wish was a business, and the two of you aren't working together. That's the answer, right? Those four things. Hang on. We're going to put you through Financial Peace University, see if we can help you two. This is the Ramsey Show.

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Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, Jade, along with me and all the Ramsey personalities, Ken Coleman, Rachel Cruz, George Campbell, we're all going to be doing the total money makeover weekend here on the Ramsey campus at the Ramsey Events Center. I'm jacked about this. We've We got three big events coming up. This is the first one. It's May 10th and 11th. Gosh, just a little over 45 days away. It's going to be here. Tickets are selling like crazy. You're not going to be here unless you get your tickets soon. We're going to be talking about not only all the money habits and the baby steps and walking you out of debt, but how to deal with the relational parts of this, how to work on your income side of the equation. You're going to leave this weekend with a full experience. We're going to have a ton of Q&A, a ton of interaction with all the Ramsey personalities, pictures of the whole bit. But most importantly, we're going to talk to you about how to take over control of every area of your life and cause this to happen.

I'm excited about this, Jade. It's going to be fun.

Me too. I'm excited. It's right here on our campus, which is really cool.

Yeah, May 10 and 11. You can get your tickets at ramseysolutions. Com. It's the total money makeover weekend. You're going to get fired up and wired up, baby. Oh, and you can bring that friend or that spouse that thinks you're crazy crazy, and by the time they leave, they will be as crazy as you. So there you go. Show them to the Kool-Aid. That's it. We're going to serve Kool-Aid that weekend, for sure. Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials, an event I've never done before. I'm looking forward to this. I'm going to be doing this with George Camel, a two-night virtual event, May 21 and 22. I'm going to get my personal playbook out, How I buy real estate. Not some TikTok version. I own several hundred million dollars with the real estate. How do I do that? What do I do? What's the process I've used since the beginning and how much of that has changed in this current real estate world? Certainly how we look at basic investing, we're going to lay that in place. But also some of the detail stuff that, frankly, when I'm running around with friends of mine that have a 50 or $100 million net worth, what are they doing?

Spoiler alert, it's not Bitcoin. Okay? Spoiler alert, it's not gold. Spoiler alert, Real investors have a different mindset, and I'm going to talk to you about how to build that mindset. You want to learn how to do the real stuff, not some get-rich-quick crap off of social media? We're going to walk you through it, the 21st and the 22nd. I'm excited for that. That's going to be fun. I've never done this material before. I'm excited about it. Money and marriage get away is October 24th and 26th. That's Rachel Cruz. By the way, I left her out. She'll be at the total money makeover weekend. I guess we'll bring my daughter. Anyway, so her and Deloney doing this money marriage getaway 24 through the 26th of October, and they get into everything. I mean, everything on the marriage stuff. Real questions from the floor that, well, there won't be children there.

I'm still thinking about the dancing that I saw at the prom this last year at the event.

It was pretty cool. All of these tickets for these events at the Ramsey Events Center are at ramseysolutions. Com/events. We'd love to have you come visit with us. You can come in a little bit early. We do the show here every day, Monday through Friday from 1:00 to 4:00 on the glass. The cookies homemade are free. The If he's homemade, it's free. The show, well, it's free. There you go. But it might be worth what you paid for it, so be careful on that. Stacey is in Riverside, California. Hi, Stacey. How are you?

Hi. Thank you, you guys. How are you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

Okay, so I'm going to try to word this in the best way that I can. I guess I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing, obviously, like so many others, today for my best future. I am currently Currently, I've been a single mom for the last five years. I was married for 24, always a stay-at-home mom as well as a homeschooler. So over the last five years, I was given in my lap. I was trying to figure out how I could still homeschool my kids. They're two teens, and and work from home and make ends meet. So I homeschool my two teens still. I babysit three babies for the last five years, so I do in-home childcare as part of income. And I also have an LLC as a homeschool learning center that I run on Friday. And then I also teach homeschool classes. So I've got several different pots going. But I'm wondering... Okay, so along with that, I also get Alimony child support as part of my income. And of course, that will end in a year, one of my kids will drop off for receiving child support, and then in two years, another child.

I'm trying to figure out today what would be the best scenario for me going forward, knowing that I am going to take a huge hit in income and have to obviously ramp up the self-employment side. I don't plan on doing childcare long term once these two families that I have age out, I plan on being done and then try to do something a little more with the self-employed side, or Would it be better for me to start either taking classes now for a career or get a job now to have the benefits, the medical and all that? You're amazing.

My mind is spoiling with all of this. You have pulled it. You have stitched together a quil built to make the life that you wanted to make in the middle of a divorce situation where you have these two kids and you have this heavy desire to homeschool them and you made it work. You pulled together from the left, the right, from the top, from the bottom. You scratched Claude, you made it work. What I would point out, maybe, and it might be true, it might not be true, you can correct me, is that all of these businesses had to do with homeschool because you had to make homeschool work. Yes. Not because it was your dream in life. It was because you're a freaking warrior and you were making stuff work.

That makes me cry, but yes, I think as a mama bear, you do what you have to do.

Yeah, you did. I'm proud of you. You got to play through on that. You're not done. You got a couple of years of that left. But your question is what happens at the end of that? My opinion, looking in from the outside just for five minutes at how impressive you are is I think when the last kid leaves, it's Stacey time. What's Stacey want to be? What's Stacey want to do? Because you're an incredible incredibly noble woman. You've given up your life the last few years for the sake of these kids. I'm not sure the homeschool is what Stacey set out to do as a career if she wasn't forced into it by the circumstances.

Exactly. In fact, I've told my kids, I'm like, this Friday classes is for you guys. And by the way, I love the community.

I'm not saying you're mean. I wasn't saying any of that. It's not selfish for you to have some Stacey time now. It's the rhythm of life.

And by the way, what would that be, Stacey? If you could start out on a path, what would that path be?

If money and time were no object, what would Stacey be?

That's a great question. I know this is going to sound interesting, but I love finance. I have a part of my homeschool teaching. I've taught teenagers the personal finance way, the Ramsey way, and I love nutrition and health. Those are just my passions. I'm not sure, but I look at that like, What should I be doing now? Should I be taking classes to pursue both of those? Should I be preparing myself for when it is me time and what do I want to do and what is my next best step? Honestly, it's fearful. I don't really know. I've always just been that, with that label of homeschool mama and stay at home wife and then to be thrown into. Honestly, it's all God that has placed these other wonderful families in my life to allow me to watch their kids while I could still be home with my own and even provide homeschool classes and all those things.

But you're absolutely right. No one accused you of whining. You're anything but a winer. It's okay. You don't need to put any caveats in here.

Listen, we'll set you up with King Coleman's career assessment because I feel like that's a great place for you to start, to really see what your skill sets are, what you love to do, and then just take it from there. Throw in paycheck to purpose, Christian. I think that's a great place for you to start.

Yeah, going through his materials and try to assess. Okay, it's almost I think you're 18 or you're 22 years old, you just came out of college, and you can do anything you want to do. It's a whiteboard. What are we going to do? Ready, set, go. You get to choose.

I do think you're an entrepreneur at heart, though. I think whatever you do, it's going to be your version, your self-employed version of it. Let me just say that. Could be wrong, but I think I'm right.

If the financial thing is tickling you, one way to put your feet in the water might be just lead a financial peace class at your church. You'll end up doing coaching as a coordinator. You can't keep from doing it. Then you may want to evolve into one of our coaches. I'm not sure, but You can look at that, but it doesn't cost anything to lead a class. You can get on there and get your feet wet and go, Okay, this is adult to adult, dealing with money, finances. It's not really scratching my edge. Okay, or it is, and I want to go further. You can look at it either way. Hang on, we'll send you out that assessment. I think you're going to really be helped by it. You're amazing. Hey, you guys know this, but I'll say it anyway. College is freaking expensive, and student loans are out of control. The average private student Loan in 2023 was $55,000. So if you're in over your head with private student loan debt, don't beat yourself up. Look, we've all made mistakes with money in the past. What matters is doing something about it now. So if you're in distress with private student loans, call YreFi.

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Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 825-5225. Monica is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hey, Monica, what's up in your world?

Hello. I'm super happy to get to talk to you guys.

You, too?

I am 28 years old. I'm on Baby Step 5, and I feel like I'm relatively on track with my retirement investing goals. Good. Right now, again, I'm at Baby Step 5, so I'm trying to save up for prepaid expenses. No I have no kids, but my prepaid future expenses, the goal I have for myself, I'm trying to save up for a gas grant.

I'm sorry. Baby Step 5 is kids' college. You don't have kids.

Yeah.

So you don't have a Baby Step 5. You're on Baby Step Six.

Yeah, I'm just trying to save up for a future expense.

Okay, what are you saving up for?

I would love to start a guest lodge in the future. I'm trying to save up for, obviously, a huge amount amount of money to be able to buy a land. I'd love to have some guest cabins. It would be like a fishing lodge with horses that I would do guided horseback trails. It is obviously a very expensive target. I guess my question there is- What's your home worth? How long I can try to… Probably around 350 to 380.

What do you do for a living?

A senior demand planner.

Say again.

I'm a senior demand planner, so I work with financial targets, and then I buy product to hit that amount of revenue plans for the year.

I see. Okay.

Can I ask a question? What's that business that you want, the Lodge? What is that at its smallest scale? Because I feel like what you laid out was the big picture. What's the smallest achievable piece What's the cost of that to start with?

I feel like right now, just trying to look at land prices and the cost for very, very inexpensive guest cabins, probably at a minimum, I would be looking at 750K plus, and that's really just looking at land.

Okay. Let me ask you because there must be something in your background that leads to this that I haven't heard because everything in your life is very buttoned up and very tight and very careful, including even what you do for a living. Then there's this idea that's way out there. Where did the idea... I mean, did you work at a place like this when you were a teenager? Yeah.

I grew up riding horses, and then in college, I moved out West just for the summer. My junior year, I was a wrangler. You're a guide on horseback. You're working on a do-grant.

Yeah, you're working on a do-grant.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. So your experience has been as an adolescent working in these romantic situations. Do you have any experience on the business side of this equation?

No, I don't. I don't have any experience.

No, just- What you do for a living, I would think you would have laid out a pro forma that says, I can rent these cabins and this horseback, and the ROI on the $700,000 or million-dollar investment, where's the ROI on that?

I think the ROI is just like… I would probably have my husband do the fishing. He would run the fishing part of it, so he would take clients out.

Okay. What's your household income? 160. Okay. In what world does a fishing guide and a lady riding horseback make 160?

No, I'm a senior demand planner right now. I don't do anything with horses. So right now, I'm making about 90K, and he makes-No, honey, you misunderstood.

You both quit your jobs, and you're now running this thing that's in your dream. He's now a fishing guide, and you're the lady running the lodge and leading the horsebacks because this is dream you've laid out. I don't understand how you're making 160 doing that as a return on even wages equal to your current wages, much less a return on investment of a $750,000 investment or $800,000 investment. That's what I want you to get to, okay? Because all I'm hearing right now is an adolescent dream. That doesn't mean it's a bad dream, but it could become a real big nightmare if you don't put numbers to it like a grown up.

Sure.

That's what I want you to do. Rather than just go, I'm going to save up and buy this. No, you're not.

That's why I asked what the smallest form of that is because if there's a way to test when you get to the point to where you could buy some land in cash- I'm going to study best practices of other lodge and dude ranch situations and go, Okay, if a couple lives there and runs it, what can they expect to net on a 10-cabin arrangement, a horseback riding and fishing arrangement and the food services.

What's our cost of goods sold? What can we expect to net? Can we make 160 plus a return on the 750 or million dollar investment? You should be able to make both of those or this is not a grown up dream. It's just a memory from your 16-year-old self that's going to turn into a nightmare. I want you to think that through and put some numbers to it and go study some other lodges for best practices and try learn their numbers. You need to know a lot more about this space from a business perspective before you talk about saving up 750 or a million dollars and putting it into it. I'm not saying it can't be done. I've never run one. I don't know. But I'm having trouble visualizing a fishing guide and a lady running horseback making 200K. Might be. There might be a high-end arrangement, some luxury situation where you're bringing in people from to buy or something. I don't know. But you've got to figure that part out to continue down this track much further. Otherwise, you need to be doing straight-up investing and thinking through how this dream is going to happen.

It could simply be, We want a wonderful weekend retreat place as a part of our family portfolio. It might be that that scratches the same itch. I don't know. I'm not saying either one's wrong, but I am saying you need more detail.

It's worth noting, whatever you decide, I still think it's way far in the future because whatever you decide, you're going to have to pay cash for it. There's that. There's that. I feel like we crushed her dreams a little bit. No, no, no.

But I feel like we also gave her a very- We encouraged her dream. We crushed her nightmare.

Yes, there you go, Dave.

Crushing that hair. I am a nightmare killer. I will keep you from calling something a dream that's going to be a nightmare in a heartbeat, and I will kill it because I love you and I don't want that to happen to you. Yeah, that's right. I'm a nightmare. I'm death on nightmares.

Take it out back and shoot it.

Luke is in Detroit. Hi, Luke. How are you?

How are you all doing? I'm doing pretty well.

Good. How can we help?

I currently make a net of every month about six grand. I put two grand towards a mutual fund and a maxed out Roth IRA, and then one grand into a high yield savings account of 4.6 %. My question is, am I going too aggressive with this investing 50 % of my income because I don't live off of much, and I'm currently debt-free.

It depends on what baby step you're on. What baby step are you on?

I haven't really done the baby steps yet. I do have an emergency fund of currently about 10 grand.

You make 72,000 a year, right? Net, yes. Net, okay. What do you do?

I got out of the Marine Corps about two months ago, I had some things happen to me in there. I get 44 a year from the VA, and then I'm also a server, so I make about 24 to 25 a year from that as well.

So you're 25 years old?

No, 25,000 a year from the server job.

I Can I ask if you're 25 years old or not? I'm 23. 23? Okay, close. All right. What I can do is to show you the game plan on how to handle this the best. It's called the Baby Steps Jade alluded to it. I'm going to I'll give you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover. It's going to walk you straight through that, and you keep listening or watching, and we'll continue to teach you in this format. You're a good man. Keep it up. I saw some recent financial statistics, and there was some pretty troubling news. When families were asked how long it would be before they faced financial hardship, if a spouse died, nearly one-third said they'd be in trouble immediately. Another 44 A few % said they'd be financially drained within six months. People, it does not have to be this way. Term life insurance plans are just plain cheap, and companies have made it even easier by not requiring exams in many cases. There really is no excuse to leave your family in this situation by not having life insurance. This is why I talk about Xander Insurance every day.

They're committed to protecting families with the only products that I recommend, and their team keeps the entire process simple and affordable. Go to zander. Com for quick online pricing or call 800-356-4282. This has to be a priority. If your family is in this situation, you need to get this done. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Guys, we appreciate you. The ratings and rankings and miscellaneous things on this show are the highest they've ever been. As a matter of fact, last week, while I wasn't here, they were the highest in 32 years. I don't know how to take that exactly, but that is actually what occurred. Dr. John Deloney's show added 12 million people last week alone, just his show. So the Ramsey Network is blowing up overall. Our numbers on podcast and YouTube and radio on this show are crazy good. Thank you, guys. That just means you're telling people about us. Thank you. If you want to keep doing that, we would love it. If you click subscribe or follow or share Share the show, click a link out, cut a link out, send it to somebody, go, Hey, look at this, whether it's a YouTube clip, a podcast clip, anything.

I mean, whatever it is, and leave a nice five-star review. All that stuff bumps us up in all the different rankings, and you guys are the ones that make that happen. If you want to say thank you for what you're getting here for free, that's how you say thank you. You click follow, share, subscribe, five-star reviews, that stuff. Yeah, we thank you. Daymar is with us. Daymar is in Missouri. Hey, Daymar, what's up in your world?

Hi, my name is Demar. I was calling to ask if I should pause the baby steps temporarily to I have an emergency fund because I'm going to be losing my job in the next few months. I'm currently on Baby Step 2. I went a little bit out of order, and I bought a house about a month ago and then found you guys. Then I started the baby steps.

Pretty crummy timing buying a house and losing your job. Kind of why we tell you not to do that, huh?

Definitely. I should have found you guys a month earlier.

When does this all take place?

A couple of months, you said?

Yes. I closed on the house about a month ago from last week. Then after that, I paid off my credit card, or I guess I put the $1,000 in savings things, paid off my credit card, closed that out, and then started paying on. I have a personal loan with about $21,000 left on it.

What do you make?

I make $88,000 a year.

What do you do?

I work in nuclear logistics in the Air Force.

You're in the Air Force, and you're going to lose your job. How does that happen?

I'm going through a medical board process. I just found out I have an autoimmune disorder. Just within the career field I work in, it's a disqualifier. It's not for certain I'll lose I'm on a job, but they're pretty sure just because there's not really an option to cross-train me into something else with how short a time is left with my commitment.

So they discharge- Not being able to.

Yeah, they probably will be. Then next couple of months.

Is that a medical discharge?

It will be. I think there should be some compensation. But from what I understand, there's usually a two to three-month gap between when you get out of the military and when VA benefits start.

Yeah, that's true.

Sure.

At best, because they're not exactly known for efficiency. Yes, sir. All right. What are you going to do with your life, man?

I've had a business on the side that makes them almost $500 a week on not very much time just because I have the day job that I'd like to spend a lot of time doing. But in the meantime, until I get this debt paid off, I'm going to stick with having a real job that has stable income until I get this debt paid off.

Doing what?

I was thinking temporarily get a job locally, trying to do something in logistics. I have one friend who works for a company back home in Wichita, Kansas. And so I was going to reach out and try to get in touch with them.

And what would that pay?

So starting pay for that is $75,000 a year.

What's your side business?

There's opportunity for justice. It's a consultation newsletter.

It goes with you then?

Yeah, it does. I can do that from absolutely anywhere. That's why I'm not…

Well, to answer your initial question, should you pause Baby Step 2? Obviously, the answer is yes. You're going to pause and save up as much cash as you can. I would continue to do what you are doing, which is look for opportunities because it sounds like there's a 95% chance that you are going to be discharged. Even If you do receive some compensation, we know that there's a gap there. I would keep doing what you are doing and land something and be prepared for whatever that is, whether it takes you to Wichita or whether it's something in your area to replace the income that's going to be lost.

Exactly. That's all you can do. If you do what she said and you pause it for two months and then you lose your job or three months, how much money would be in the account?

I think I'd have four or five months of expenses. I think I could save about $3,000 a month.

Okay, so you'd have like 10 grand? Good. Okay, so let's work this through, all right? You got 10 grand in the bank, you pause your baby step two, you move to Wichita, take a job making 75, Two months later, your military disability kicks in for another two or three grand a month. When we have $500 a month, maybe going to a thousand on the newsletter on the side, you're suddenly making now over $100,000 $1,000 a year. Yeah, this is a pretty good deal.

I do have a question, though. In that case, if I move, should I just sell the house? Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

You don't need a house in Missouri if you live in Wichita. Definitely. Yeah. And just get you something to rent, and then you take all the money. If all that works and you don't use any of the 10 grand because you land the new job straight out of the old job, then the 10 grand acts like a signing bonus, and you throw it at the 21 debt as soon as you get settled in Wichita.

Awesome.

Yeah. This time, you don't turn around and buy a house in Wichita until all your debt's clear, and then you've saved up an additional 3-6 months of expenses, and then you can start thinking about a down payment when you're settled and all that's in place.

Exactly. Here's the deal. What people do is they save up the 10 grand, and then they Coast along until the 10 grand is gone. No, you line up the other job, boom. As soon as you step out, the Air Force, you step straight into logistics, boom. Then two months later or three months later, the VA kicks in, boom. These dominoes start falling, and you're making some dadgum money, and this whole situation turns into a blessing.

Hey, are you going to get your money back on the sell of this house?

I should get about exactly what I have into it. I have made a few extra payments on the house already.

Don't do that anymore. Right now, you need a big old pile of cash. I really want you to commit to lining these dominoes up so they don't miss each other. If you push a domino and it misses the next one, it just lays there by itself, dude. When you step out of the Air Force, I want you the next day to be in Wichita working because you've already done the interview process and been hired. Because they're not going to do this suddenly in the Air Force. They don't do anything suddenly. Well, they don't do anything having to do with you guys suddenly. They do concerning the enemy suddenly. But you guys, you're going to see this coming a mile away. It's not going to be a shock to you. You already We're seeing it coming a mile away. So just go ahead and start working the Wichita thing. If the whole thing with the Air Force doesn't happen, then you can stay there and you want to stay in, fine. It's just all you've lost a little effort, and you really You haven't lost any ground on your get out of debt because the money's all in the account.

You're just going to turn and throw it at the debt when the smoke clears on the storm. So you're okay, you're in good shape. But where people screw up is they don't deal with the obvious thing that's in front of them, and then this stuff becomes a crisis when it shouldn't have. That's true.

Yeah, I think he's done well to think ahead and plan ahead for this, because if he hadn't done that, this could look very different. Exactly.

If he doesn't continue to do that. That's right. It's going to be a mess. That's right. You're going to be calling me back going, I'm further in debt because I didn't work for four months because I didn't do what you told me to do. No, don't get it. Get after it. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. George is with us in Newark, New Ramsey. Hey, George, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, George. Hi, Dave. I'm sorry, it's Georgeette. Oh, Georgeette.

Okay, I thought they had misspelled it because it didn't have the et on there. Okay. Anyway, I'm sorry. How can I help.

That's great. Thank you. Thank you for taking my call. I'm very excited to talk to you guys today. I have a question in regards to my daughter and her survivor's benefit and 401k. Unfortunately, my ex-husband passed away from COVID in 2022, leaving a $32,000 in 401k, and she also gets a $1,200 per month survivor's benefit, which I religiously deposit into a custodial bank account for her every month. And since last January, I have invested 32,000 of that into a two-year CD with an annual interest rate of about 4.3 %. Of all the money she has in the bank up to today, it's about 80,000, and I estimate that by the time she's 18, it will be about $140,000. I have three simple for you guys today. If you have the time, as a fellow parent, seek in guidance, how can I leverage this money, considering that she will go to college and she will also probably receive scholarship? She's a pretty smart girl. Next question is, how do I steer her towards choosing an in-state college and avoid any form of the student loan pitfalls? My third question is, how do I introduce her to the Gramsci financial education and at what age.

How old is she? As I would love for her to have this research. She's 13, and I want to have this resource available for her so she can have financial knowledge before it's too late.

Most 13-year-olds don't listen to their parents. Does yours?

She does. She's a smart kid.

I didn't ask that. I asked if she was respectful and believed what her mom said.

I would I hope so. I think so. She's good.

You think you have a good relationship with her and she trusts your wisdom?

I think so, yes. Okay.

That's different than being crazy wild. True. Okay. Just trying to find out what we're dealing with. Jade?

I have a question. This 80,000 that you think is going to be up to 120,000 or more, when she's 18, does she have full control of it or is she able to disperse that in any way?

I actually…

Are you hear me? It's hers. It's going to be fully hers.

It's a custodial account. It's hers. No. No, yes. When she turns 18, honey, it's hers. It's in her name, and she gets control when she's 18. That's how it works.

Then- Right, but I am thinking that before she is 18, I could somehow transfer it into my name where I can be the moderator of it instead of her since at 18, she'll probably make dumb decisions.

That's why I was asking about what kid she is. Okay. And whether she's listening to you or not. Because the only way you transfer it to your name is called stealing. Because it's not your money. If you just move it to your name and she decides to get a Jack leg lawyer, she can sue you. I might do that if she's doing heroine rather than let her kill herself with it. I'll take that chance. Good luck. Find it, and I'll just disappear with your money, kiddo, before I let you kill yourself with it. But I would do that. But in general, just to make her behave, no.

Does she know about the money? Does she know how much it is? Have you guys had that conversation?

She knows that I am trying to save for her so she can have a better future, but she doesn't know exactly how much it is. She just has basic knowledge of mommy putting away some money for her.

I'm going to pose this question to Dave because out of all of us, you're the that has the most experience with telling a child about a sum of money that will one day be theirs. What's the best way to… I can think about how I might frame that up, and I think your questions are good.

Early and often. You got five years to train her. Okay. And part of that's exposure. And part of that is the reality. Because if you're 18, you think $80,000 is a lot of money if you've never seen $80,000. But if you've been having mom tell you for the last five years that it's not that much, and you can screw this up really easily. So we have to be very careful, and you've got to go to a state school so you don't burn through this money. And you can't go running off to decide, I'm going to take a cap here because I'm Rich. I'm rich. I'm so rich. You're not rich. It's 80 freaking grand. It'll be gone in 20 minutes. Three restaurant stops and it's over. I mean, it's crazy how fast that will be gone. Start training her. This is what rich people do. They talk about money at the dinner table, not because they're obsessed with it, but because it's part of the rhythm of their life. So you sit down, you'd say, Hey, here's how money works. Here's what's going on. You've got some money coming to you. I'm handling it for you now.

It's going to be a responsibility. It's not going to be a lottery moment where, Woohoo, party's on. We're going to talk about how we use this because this little bit of money, and it's not much, but this little bit of money that your daddy left you, if we can use that right, if you and I can learn to do that together, honey, over the next five years, we can turn this into your having a really bright future with you, or you are going to have the legal option of being a complete freaking fool because it's going to be in your name and you can destroy this. All you're going to have to show for it's regret, which is a really nasty tasting fruit. You just talk to her like that all the time. I taught my kids that all their lives, and Then when they came home from college, we actually had the discussion. When the last one came home from college and the other two were married, we sat down and said, Okay, here's what the whole Ramsey estate looks like. They had no idea what our networth was and no idea what my income was because we didn't use it in any way in front of them.

They had a decent life, but they still had that moment. I said, Look, this is a responsibility. It is not a windfall. You need to feel the weight of managing this. It's God's money. It was passed to you through your dad, and God has given you a blessing, and you have a responsibility to handle his money in a way that is a continued blessing to you, not an immature child. That's why we're starting to talk about it when you're 13, and when you're 14, and when you're 15. If you're doing something really severe by the time you're 18, out of control, and you're going to hurt yourself with this money, you'll never find it. I'll hide it from you. Good luck fighting me because I'm a mean mama. These are the discussions we're going to have. That's what we had at the Ramsey house. This is what responsibility looks like. Money is a blessing, but it's also a weight. It has a responsibility to it. You need to feel that weight early and often and build that muscle over the next five years. Don't surprise her at 18 and have a party and go, Look at her.

That's horrible idea. That'll be a bad plan. This is the Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-828. Com. 5, 5, 2, 2, 5. Jade, we were talking with the last lady about the situation with her child having money coming in from a father who had passed away. But in general, The idea that Rachel and I wrote about in the book Smart Money, Smart Kids, which was a number one best seller because you guys bought it. Thank you out there. In general, what we have figured out is the people who have high functioning adult children, especially in the area of money, that occurs because of parents age appropriately engaging from three years old on on the subjects that matter to that family. What are the things that family values? One of the things the Ramsey family valued was learning to handle money properly, which is... At every age, you need to be learning the age-appropriate lessons of giving, saving, investing, spending, and work. You need to learn to work, age appropriately. We don't send three-year-olds to the salt mines. We might send a 13-year-old there.

No, I'm kidding. But we don't... So age appropriately. Then that gives you all of these natural rhythms, not single, not like Tuesday night's mutual fund night or something like that. Instead, it's like the part of the rhythm of our life is we get to talk about this. Today in the mail, your mutual fund statement for your college came in, and our kids had a college fund, and here's what your college fund is, and here's how you calculate share price times number of shares equals the amount that's in the mutual fund. So find out the balance on your mutual fund without looking at the statement even. They learned to do these basic things, and they were told over and over and over and over, they have a college fund, college fund, college fund. So I was brainwashing them, you're going to college. You were suggesting, even on that last call or at the break, that brainwash her, tell her, This is what this money is for. This is how we're doing it. This is what we're doing the money. This is what we're doing the money. Just for five years, have a weekly constant discussion at dinner that this is what we're doing.

I think there's an inclination for parents sometimes to keep details, even if they're age-appropriate, details about money and amounts, and to keep that hidden for some reason. I'm not really sure what that is, if they feel like maybe it's just an old-school thing. But I just remember even growing up in my household, and a lot of my friends, it's like, we don't talk about exact numbers. We talk about, Oh, there's some money for college, or, Oh, there's some money for your wedding, but it's like, I don't want to tell you how much it is, and why is that?

Well, I think people are afraid that the kid is going to go off. The kid is more likely to go off if they discover suddenly that they're rich. You're 18 years old, you didn't think you had anything, and you find out you got 500 grand.

Yeah, it's play time, party time.

They cannot handle. Their brain can't process that. But if the weight of that has been increasing from 3 to 18, then they are ready to go with it. That changes everything. It's a big deal. It's like rich people have money as a part of the rhythm of their discussion, not because they're obsessed with money or greedy people. It's because they see the importance of children understanding, not feeling weight, but feeling the appropriate amount of weight, understanding the cost of their decisions. When you buy Celebration Barbie and all your The money's gone, you realize at seven, you might have bought, should have had a party barbie instead of Celebration, right? We're going to buy the cheaper version or whatever it is, right? You're going to learn these purchase decisions have consequences and let them experience some negative consequences under your wing as they go along. That's the stuff we talk about in Smart Money, Smart Kids. In other words, it's like if you grow up on a farm, farm parents don't really have to talk to their children about where babies come from.

Yeah, they see it happen in real life.

They know exactly the whole process, start to finish, of where babies come from and how babies are fed and so on. You don't have to discuss that with a farm kid. It's just part of their life. A rich kid, you don't have to discuss how money works, that it comes from work, and that you need to save some, you need to give some, you need to spend some. Rich kids, they grow up. It's just like being on farm. You don't have one single, We're going to have the sex talk. No, instead, it's like life right there in front of you, darling. This is how it works.

That's a good point. I would definitely not diminish the impact of what you see and hear on a regular basis as a I mean, I think about something as small as when you finally get to college and you've got a little bit of your own money and you go to the grocery store for the first time, first thing you do is buy what your mom always bought. You buy the same brands, you buy the same thing until one day you realize, I guess I don't have to do that. But by that time, you're already in a rhythm. Yeah.

Because Rachel says all the time, more is caught than taught. That's right. So they're watching what you're doing. This is how you train up kids. Because I'm often asked by people when they become Baby Steps Millionaires, How do I... I did all this. I got my house paid off. Now, I don't want to screw up my grown kids by leaving them a bunch of money. I think I'm going to make them suffer. Well, you could do that, or you could just leave them a bunch of money if they're capable of handling it because you train them to be capable of handling it. Money is not evil. It's the love of money is the root of all evil. The Bible doesn't say money is the root of all evil. You're not damning your kids to hell by leaving them money. But you will screw up their lives if they have no character and the ability to handle money, you will magnify that by leaving them money. You've got to build out over a period of time a gradual process. This is where babies come from, this is where money comes from, this is how this It works.

It's part of our life. You brush your teeth and you do your homework and you're on time and you say, Yes, sir and no, sir, and thank you and thank you and please, which means you know how to be grateful because grateful people are highly attractive and you This is raising kids. Yeah.

Listen, I have to tell my five-year-old, almost going to be six. Every time I go to the store, he likes to scan the thing before I pay for it. I tell him when I pay for something, I was like, Do you know how I have this money? It's because every day when I go to work, I go to work to earn this money. Papa goes to work to earn this money. Even things as simple as that, teaching them it's not just an endless supply that comes out of the plastic. There's effort that's put forth to get that, and it's not unlimited. You can start that very, very young.

It's even fun with the grandkids because the grandkids call our house Mimi's house.

Dave has nothing to do with it.

I've had to explain to them, Papa Dave's house. Mimi gets to live here.

They don't like that. Well, my favorite My story is the one you tell about Daniel. We're doing pretty good.

Yeah, we were in a car. We bought a decent car, and Daniel was like, Five or six years old. He leans back, We're doing pretty good. I'm like, We aren't doing anything. You are a broke child. I have money. You have nothing. We aren't doing anything. That was one of those daily money lessons. Don't be confused. Don't feel entitled, right? All right. Akeem is with us in St. Louis. Hi, Akeem. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, how are you guys doing? Great. How can we help?

Just to be on the show, but get straight to it. Okay, this Saturday, I'm scheduled to meet with a person from Bank of America to talk about investing with, I guess, their Merrill Lynch side. And long story short, I'm at a place... I'm already investing in my 401k. I'm a mailman, so I got a TSP. I'm doing a 5% match there. I know you say do 15%, I'm looking to start a Roth IRA. From my research, from social media, YouTube, all of that, do I need a financial advisor?

You don't need someone to do money for you. You need someone to teach you and guide you so that you do money for you better. Bank of America is not on the list. They suck. Okay. Cancel that appointment. If you want to get somebody to sit down in your corner with the heart of a teacher, just click on a smart vestor at Ramsey Solutions, and it'll be a real investment advisor, not a Bank of America person. Gag. They'll sit down with you with the heart of a teacher, because what your job, Hakeem, is to learn what they teach you. I still have a SmartVestor pro that's in my life and Sharon's life. Obviously, I teach this stuff for a living, but he occasionally brings me an idea that I haven't heard of before. I learned something from him, and I go, Oh, I could do that. But he doesn't go and do stuff without me knowing it because he's smart and I'm dumb. That's right. We never do that one. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. John's with us in Dallas. Hey, John, how are you?

I'm doing wonderful. How are you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

Thanks for taking my call. I guess a little bit of background. My wife and I are in our early 30s. We have a young, growing family. In the last year, we purchased her family home for my mother-in-law. Some things changed in our lives recently and decided we needed to move home and spend some more time with her. We are currently, I'm going to say, in between step six and seven. Home has paid off. We've been basically banking everything else. We're in a position where we're going to have to- If the home is paid off, you're in seven. Yes. Well, the reason I say it that way, we know we're going to have to do some pretty serious renovations to the house to make it work for us long term. It's on a decent amount of land. It's on a good school district. We see our family growing there, but there's going to be significant changes that need to be made to support our family long term. I'm wondering, is a Helic the right way to do that? I went into the renovation process with the mindset of, we do a little bit at a time and just pick away room by room and talking to the general contractor, the changes that we're going to have to make, that's not really possible to do it that way.

It's an all-enressing thing, I think, in their minds.

They're not paying the bill.

That's true.

If they won't pay the bill, they get an opinion on that. I understand that they have a structural concern or the approach to the construction, but they're not taking into consideration your family. What is your household income?

Last year, low 200s.

Okay. What's this project, if we looked at it in total, going to cost?

The current budget is right now 150 to 250, and some of that, they're not going to determine until- That's not a budget. Well, they need to get inside the walls and inside the attic and the structural things. We're not to that point yet.

We're not going to start a project when we don't know within $100,000 what it's going to cost.

Okay.

You don't have a contractor. You got a guy who wants some money. No, we're going to have this dialed in in detail as to what we're going to get into here. This range, let me tell you what that will turn into, 350 is what that will turn into, because this guy's making this crap up as he goes. No, thank you. No. Anyway, all right, let's just pretend it's a $200,000 tight, detailed budget that we know is accurate as opposed to what you're dealing with now. Let's use that. You make 200. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to break the project down into chunks as small as I possibly can, which is what you were trying to do room by room. You may not be able to approach it room by room. You may have to have another angle on it. You may have to say, Okay, the first chunk is 75,000 bucks because we got to do this whole whatever. Then the next chunk is 10, and the next chunk is 30, and the next chunk is whatever. Just break it out in chunks, and then you save up and do a chunk at a time.

If the first one is a big one, you hold off until you save that much money making 200K. I'm not going in debt to do it. Why would you need to? You make plenty of money, and you're They're going to be there anyway, so you can do this over time.

What are they telling me? Is there a danger?

Is there a- It's an inconvenience.

I think it's a convenient thing. I think there's some load bearing walls that really to do it, I think it's going to be the first big chunk. They're going to do all that together. Then I think there are some separate smaller chunks they can break it into.

I tell the guy, you're either getting paid or you're not. So You're either getting paid a little or nothing at all.

What's his house worth? Not counting the land.

That's a harder question. Probably $2.50, maybe.

The house is worth $250, and you're going to pay $2.50 to repair it?

That's the… Yep.

Wow.

That goes back to the emotional element of it being a child at home. It's on a decent amount of land and would It'd be hard to replicate for that price elsewhere, too.

I'm hearing it's a bad idea. If you don't have a good architect, and you guys don't really spend a bunch of time thinking this through, you're going to build...

Overbuild?

No, you're going to build a horrible property because you're trying to take something that was not designed to be a $400,000 property and turn it into that. It's going to feel like what we call a country house where you just add rooms and move walls around. Every time the kid's born, we add another room to it or something. That's Country builds, what we used to call it anyway. It doesn't mean that if you build a house in the country, you're doing it wrong. That's not the point. If you're doing it this way, it's wrong. I'm afraid this is such a massive renovation, ratio-wise. What you're trying to pull off is very hard to do. Let me say it that way. It's very hard to end up with a great end product that is a reasonable thing when you spend as much on it as it's worth. It's almost easy. From a tactical standpoint, not a financial standpoint, it's easier to push it down and build something else. A lot easier than try to take this clay pot that's already been through the kill and reshape it. It's very difficult to do what you're doing. Minor, if you told me you were going to spend 50,000 or 60,000 on a $250,000 house, you can do that.

You can do a lot of stuff for that. That's a different thing. But you're talking about basically rebuilding this whole house, and you could really end up with a piece of crap.

I feel like there's a way that he could do that and still salvage parts of it and use that for the rebuild.

It is what I'm saying. You really need to think. You need an architect to lay this out so that when you're done, you don't build something that looks like a pretzel. It doesn't look like old man, old lady in the shoe or something. Because that's what this stuff, it evolves into a grotesque thing all because of the emotion of it being a childhood home, and then you made a bad decision. It can be done, and I'm not telling you not to do it, John. I'm saying you got to really back up from this. You got to have a good, solid, detailed, accurate budget that you're going to hold everybody accountable to. We've got to break it into parts that we can cash flow, and we really need a good floor plan, engineering plan, wiring and plumbing plan that we end up with that looks like somebody thought it through instead of like, Well, we need an extra bedroom. That's the sheesh, man. It's a mess. What you're trying to do is very hard to do for somebody who's never done it before and not end up with a mess. It's very hard to do. Be very careful, sir.

Get every T crossed, every I dotted, everything thought through before you raise a hammer toward a wall. Everything dialed in. Because if you don't, you're going to end up in a financial mess with a bad product and something that takes years and years and years to accomplish and shouldn't. And then when you're done, you don't have a good thing. It's very scary. It honestly is a lot easier to build a house from the dirt, a whole lot easier, and end up with a great product than it is to do even a 40% or 20% rehab, much less 100% rehab.

Yeah, that's It's just got to feel tough because he's already paid it off. He's paid it off, and then he's demolishing the thing.

Yeah, but I mean, a lot of people do teardowns just to get the lot. That's true. Obviously, we're not going to get to tear this one down because it's childhood home. Yeah. But and all the emotion, he brought that up three times. So obviously, we're not bulldozing it. But wow, tough, tough, tough. You can do it, but you really need to lean in on the details. You need to be project manager extraordinaire. This is The Ramsey Show. Folks, changing your family tree takes more than rice and beans and side hustles. It's also about transferring the big financial risks off your family by having the right kinds of coverage in place. That's why my team created the Coverage Checkup Quiz. It only takes about five minutes to find out what types of insurance you need and don't need to protect your finances. Make this quiz one of your regular checkups starting right now at ramsey ramseysolutions. Com/checkup. That's ramseysolutions. Com/checkup. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thanks for joining us. George and you are Doing a budgeting live stream on YouTube on the 11th.

That's right. You're right. I'm excited about this. We do these as an extension, as the Ramsey show, where we can have callers and people call in and ask questions about it. But this one's going to be on the 11th of April. We're really just answering those top questions that people have about budgeting, which is, Jade, how do I even get started doing a budget for the first time? How can I budget and still enjoy my life? Also, people want to know how they deal with changes that come up throughout the month because obviously a budget is a living, breathing organism and also how couples can budget together, married couples, specifically. Those are four pain points that we want to talk about because those are the things that you've told us that are issues for you. So stay tuned for more details on that livestream. But just know we want to hear from you. If you have budgeting questions that you want us to answer, you can always email us your questions at ask@ramsysolutions. Com. So again, Join that livestream. It's going to be on YouTube 411, and you can set your reminder so that you don't forget about it.

Today's question of the day comes from Jacquelyn in Ohio. Yes.

She says, How do I tell myself that saying no does not mean that I'm failing as a mom? I just started reading Jade's new book, and it's really unpacking some deep ingrained thought patterns from my childhood. I grew up the oldest child of four, raised by a single mom. We had financial, housing, and food instability. I was constantly aware that we were not okay, despite my mom doing everything she could to protect us from knowing that. Now as a divorced mom, I've got a decent job, own a home, and provide for my daughter, but it is a struggle to make ends meet. I often find myself telling my daughter, I'm sorry, but we don't have money for that. This makes me feel like I'm failing as a parent because I can't provide for a want in the moment. How can I retain, how can I restrain, retrain my brain to see that saying the word no does not mean admitting failure? And that's really, really good. I think she's talking about in the book Money is not a Math Problem, I talk about how sometimes what we experience as a kid feels very different, obviously, as a child than as an adult.

The thing that I've had to learn, Jacquelyn, is a couple of things. Number one, your child is not you. You experienced something and you filtered it through the lens of whatever your reality was in that moment. Sometimes we can project that onto our kids, but your child is in a much more stable position than you were. You have to remember that. But also, there's nothing wrong with saying no, and there's certainly nothing wrong with saying no for children. But I do think that, and I talk about this in the book, there's a way, especially if it's things that they feel they need in a moment or something that's important, I do think there's a way to say no that doesn't steal hope and doesn't steal the feeling that there could be a future. I talk about in the book all the time, I grew up hearing the phrase, We ain't got no money. We can't do that. I ain't going to buy that. We can't afford that. I heard that all the time, and it just made everything feel impossible. But I talk about in the book, if you can do a vocab rehab on that and say things like, That's not a priority for us to spend money on right now, then there's the idea that, Okay, maybe in the future it could.

Or if we say something like, Hey, I don't have the money to I've end on that right now, but we can find a way for you to say for it in the future, and giving them a plan. I think about Jeremiah 29:11. People want plans for hope in a future. If you can gear your responses towards that, I think that's something that's really powerful, not only for you, but for the children, especially as they get older in your household.

If the parent is not freaked out when they say no, the kid is not going to be freaked out when they hear no, except that they didn't get what they wanted. But you don't have to instill fear with no. In other words, let's just change this to something else, okay? Papa Dave will not allow you to eat a huge bowl of candy and then throw up in my bed. Okay, right? No. But I'm not freaked out about it. It's just no. You can have a little bit of candy, no. Or you can have some candy if you clean your plate or whatever rule Papa Dave wants to come up with in the moment. This is talking about grandkids. With kids, it's the same thing. It's no. It's a complete sentence I love you, I care about you, and you're not doing that right now. That's actually enough. I think so. As long as it's not like, Oh, God, I feel so bad, coming out in the tone. But a parent who never says no is not a parent. They're running anarchy. Because of course, you say no. No, you can't play in the street.

But don't you feel like there's a difference between those- No, you can't jump off the 10-story building.

No, of course, we say no.

But don't you I feel like there's a difference between requests that are like- Yeah, there is. Those sorts of requests. It's like, Yeah, you can't eat a whole bowl of candy.

My point is your tonality. There's no sense of entitlement or no sense of I'm a bad parent when I say no Because it's not good for you.

For your own good, 100%.

By the way, buying everything you ever wanted is not good for you. Yeah. That's called spoiling a child. If you were raised in the '60s, that's what we call it, you were spoiled. You're a spoiled a kid. They never heard no. They got everything they wanted. We spoiled, ruined. When you have spoiled milk, it smells. Spoiled kid. You don't want a spoiled kid. That's a kid who never hears no. So of course, kids need to hear no. It's good for them. Dr. Deloney would tell us, they get a sense of safety when there are boundaries and fences.

That's true, but I also think- Anarchy doesn't give you any sense of safety. That's true. But I think in a case where if you're talking about money's tight, there might be things that-Yeah.

You need that. You can just say, No, not now. Yeah. Right now, it's not our priority, just like you said. But what you're doing when you're changing the vocab rehab is super important with the overlay of I'm also going to change my tone, my body language, my eye movement.

Because you make it a big deal.

Because you are saying, I feel horrible with your body and with your tone. They catch that. And with your verbiage. And so change your verbiage and everything because it's all just you're going to have to learn to hear no in your life, kiddo. Unless you're in Congress, you have to hear no. And even congressmen have to hear no from each other. So they don't hear no from anything else, but oh, my gosh. But the point is the kid needs to learn to accept that. Now, on a money thing, no, not now. Yeah, I love that. Maybe we can figure out a way to do it later, but right now we're not doing that?

Yeah, because I think you have an opportunity to teach them that whatever your current… For me, the opportunity is you can teach them something about money, which is your current situation does not have to be the long-term situation.

For instance, if you say, Okay, that toy is one of the items you're going to buy from your commissions from doing chores, and you don't have enough right now.

Right. So you're going to have to wait.

So you're going to have to wait until you save up more money. Exactly. That's no, not now. But that's not, I feel like I'm a horrible parent because the kid... Because they're going to have a meltdown anyway. Exactly. Because they didn't get what they wanted because they're children. The meltdown goes with the territory. Drama goes with the territory. But how the parent feels is that that's the part you can control.

That's right. Yeah, because she says, How can I say no? Does that mean that I'm admitting failure? No. No, there's no failure in saying no.

Matter of fact, that's my whole soliloquy here. As a matter of fact, you are a failure if you never say no.

Yeah, and you have to say no to yourself, too. It's just part of existence.

There's always something you can't buy no matter who you are. I mean, even Bill Gates or something he can't buy.

But even in personal self-taught as adults, when you get on a budget, there is something to that where you can't spend money on everything that you want to. So you're telling yourself no-Not now. On a constant basis. But exactly, when you can reframe that and you put the control back in your seat and you say, I'm choosing not to spend money on that, or I'd rather put my money towards this than that, it puts you in a position of power where you're controlling it as opposed to, My budget doesn't let me do anything. That's not a fun place to be.

Mom and daddy, they blame everything on the budget. Don't blame it on the budget. That's right. Don't blame it on what your mother said. Don't blame it on your father said. Don't blame it on the budget. How about just no? And with a little explanation. A little something to the side. I mean, no, not now or no. We'll figure out a way to do it later.

Or no, it's not that important right now.

It's not a big deal. If you want to make a big deal out of it, you can do that. But the answer is still going to be no, because it's a complete sentence. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. We're going to talk about your life and your money The phone number is 888-825-5225. Sanjaug is in Seattle to start this hour. Hey, what's up?

Hey, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. My wife and I We're first-generation Americans, and we did Financial Peace University about 14 years ago when I was still in the military, and we had a very low income. We had about $50,000 in debt back then, which we've since paid off. We got all the way to Baby Step 7. We wrapped it all up, had a paid-off house, but we needed to move closer to work, so we ended up getting another house and another mortgage, but turned our old house into a rental property. We built our networth significantly over the last 10, 15 years, but we've lived, obviously, very, very frugally. I want to buy myself a new car. Well, technically, we've always purchased used cars, and I'm open to getting another used car as well, but I'm trying to figure out a budget for that car. I don't know how much to spend because we've never spent a lot of money on toys like that.

What's your income?

A little over 300,000 take home every year.

Okay. This mortgage that you have, what's the mortgage on it?

The mortgage outstanding is about 1.5 million.

What's What's your net worth?

About 2.5 million. Good for you.

Well done. Congratulations. All right. The car you're going to purchase, you're obviously paying cash for it, right?

That is correct. We have about $140,000 in cash. Obviously, that includes our... That's also our emergency fund included in there. I'm just trying to figure out how much of that we can actually spend on the car Again, I'm not in a reason.

How much of that is your emergency fund?

I tried to overdo the emergency fund, obviously, because we have a one and a half million dollar outstanding mortgage. Our mortgage payment is reasonably high. I normally try to keep about $100,000 as an emergency fund for us.

Are you thinking of spending more than 40 on a car?

Yeah. We're not buying right away, so we'll have some savings. We save about $10,000 every month from our income, and that's after contributing to our 401k.

Well, what do you want to spend on the car, ideally? What's the dream car we're talking about? What does it cost?

Well, so I'm trying to spend between 50 to 80, and I don't know what the number should be in between that and if I should pull the trigger on something that's $80,000.

Well, yes, you're fine to do that because The rule of thumb is don't own things all added together with wheels and or motors that equal more than half your annual income. You got $150,000 limit there. The other car is not that expensive. So, yeah, you can afford the 80 if you pay cash for it and don't dip into your emergency fund.

We obviously have a bunch of brokerage account investments as well. We would save- How much is in your brokerage account that's not retirement? A hundred thousand.

Okay. How much is your mortgage again? Half a million?

Yeah. Our mortgage outstanding is about 1.5 million.

Oh, 1.5. Okay. All right. The last part of the conversation isn't anything you ask about, but it is you need to develop a game plan to quit building up the brokerage account. Let's get this stinking house paid off. I mean, we have to do it today. It's not an emergency, but I don't want 100,000 million in brokerage while I got a mortgage.

Okay. Yeah.

I mean, that's baby steps four, five, and six. You start chunking everything. 15% of your income aside for retirement, everything else, investment and savings-wise, $10,000 a month beyond your emergency fund plus your brokerage. That's all going on this mortgage until we get the mortgage gone. If we're not consuming it or giving it, it should go. We want to systematically clear that, but that's a sidebar. But yeah, you can afford an $80,000 car if you pay cash for it in your situation, and you've done a great job. Congratulations. All the way from 14 years ago, broke in the military, 50,000 in the hole, and now has a two and a half million dollar net worth and make it 300. So nice move. Well done. First generation Americans. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, very good. Well done. It can be done, boys and girls. He did it.

Let me ask you a question right quick. In a perfect world, in a Ramsey world, would you- That would be a perfect world. It's Dave's in the world we just live in it. He had a mortgage that he paid off, kept that as a rental, and then picked up- Yeah, I wouldn't have done that.

Wouldn't have done that. I would have sold that house and put it to have a lesser mortgage and get the mortgage paid off.

Just want to clear that up for the listeners. I'm thinking that that's a great move. Not to be inconsistent.

But I'm also not going to just... He called to ask about a car. He's here now. I'm not going to pile on a two and a half million success story. That's right. You're good. But yeah, we would have sold that. Might even sell it now.

Yeah, to clear In order to clear the mortgage. That's what I was thinking.

I want that mortgage gone. I'm going to start working towards that. It's going to be my new goal if I'm him. All right, Daniel is on the line in Fortworth. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. How are you?

Better than we deserve, sir. How can we help?

The basic question is, is $30,000 enough for my emergency fund? The background from it is, I'm feeling very anxious, very nervous. My wife lost her job back in February.

Has she been reemployed?

She's starting a new job next month, but it's about half of her income what it was. What was her income?

Last year- Why is she making half? I'm sorry. Why is she making half?

Out of every interview she's gone to, this is the only one that's She had accepted her interview so far.

Okay. What was she doing?

Administrative. She was the Administrative Officer at a building.

Well, it's not to say that if I were her, I'd continue looking because it's only been a month. You said she lost her job in February, and we're not out of March yet, and she's starting a new job. It's not to say that she can't find something to replace exactly what she was making or more. This is just her first That's what I've been trying to encourage her to do.

We just got out of debt last year, around October. We saved up a $30,000 emergency fund.

Can you live on your income for a few months if you tighten up while she gets a job?

That's my question.

No, can you? It's not my question.

Do you have an every dollar budget? That's what you need.

No, we do a paper budget.

All right.

From now on- Can you live on your income? Yes or no? Yes, I think so. Okay, then you won't even be touching your emergency fund. There's no reason for anxiety about it. The only anxiety is when she's going to get a proper job.

Yeah, we're going to set you up with every dollar, though, and you're going to plug those numbers in, and you're going to see exactly what it looks like to live on your income alone. Then she's going to keep applying for jobs, and she's going to find one that makes what she was making or more.

Yeah, maybe more. Maybe it was time for a raise instead of half. Half sounds like I got scared. If you've taken 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. Because right now, someone you know in your church is struggling. Bad. They're drowning in debt. They're scared to death and don't know what to do. You can be the one to step up and give them hope, just like your FPU coordinator did for you. Start making a difference as a coordinator by going to fpu. Com/lead. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Folks, a lot of you have questions about taxes. We get it. Taxes are confusing. To help you get a better handle on them, we get questions all the time from our listeners. Here's one, I'm a new business owner. What are the most important things I need to do to make bookkeeping for my business easier? Treat your business as if you are operating it for someone else. Don't co-mingle the funds at all. You need a separate business checking account.

100% of your business income goes into that account. The only thing that comes out of that account are business expenses, and when you pay yourself. If you need to buy groceries or buy something for yourself, you take it out of the business account as paying yourself, put it in your personal account and do so. Then your business checking account is instantaneously a cash basis accounting system. It can be transferred fairly easily at a very primitive beginner level into some simple software, and your taxes are instantaneous. It's a schedule C if you're a sole proprietor. It's really not hard to do. If you have a complicated return, folks, you need to have someone help you with return. If you don't, go to Ramsey SmartTax and get our SmartTax software. It's very It's very expensive. It's very easy to e-file that way. Boom, it's very, very quick. Check it out, ramseysolutions. Com/smarttax. If you need a tax pro to help you, we've got our endorsed local providers that we've vetted that are excellent to help you with a more complicated return, ramseysolutions. Com/taxpro, and tis the season, boys and girls. All right, Shane is with us in Springfield.

Hi, Shane. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

What's Well, a little bit of a complicated question. Got divorced in November. I got the house, my two vehicles, and now working through getting the vehicles out of a joint name and to get that in care of. Got the mortgage on the house at 177,000 dollars, trying to figure out, A, how do I get her name off of it since it was part of my property and the divorce decree? I've got about I got $9,000 in consumer debt, and I've got a 13 and a 15-year-old I'm trying to take care of with all this.

Okay. What is your household and what is your income?

About 98 a year.

Okay. So you can afford the house?

Well, yeah. For right now, I can. My job was based off of being based in a different city. I have a feeling they're going to I'm going to pull back on my pay at some point because I'm not there. Because after the divorce, get the house, the kids. I now base out of Springfield instead of Kansas City. So I'm afraid they're going to pull back on some of my pay by probably about $20,000.

Okay. Do you leave there and go to Kansas City, or do you look for a new job?

Well, that's when I'm leaning towards looking for a new job.

Okay. Because you're probably That's probably worth 100.

Yeah. I mean, in my field, I'm on the very high end in my field. About 80 is probably going to be the peak if I go somewhere else.

Okay. Or you move to Kansas City.

Well, the hard part is the investment with the kids here and the family. I'm in that neighborhood, in that area where I can leave my car and walk by accident and not have to worry about it.

That's all well and good if you can afford it.

Right.

The house, do you get it as it is, or is there equity that she has to get out of it? How was that decided?

She walked away with basically her clothes in the rice cooker, and that was it. She said, I want out, and left. Wow.

Gracious. What a heartbreak. I'm so sorry. You got everything, including the kids.

Well, we have joint custody on the kids, but she doesn't really do anything to help. It's just basically me.

There's no child support coming to you?

No.

Okay. You basically have the same exact lifestyle financially as far as the debt and the bills, but one income is what you're saying?

Well, it's always been one income. She was a stay-at-home mom for 13 years.

Okay. All right. Really nothing's changed as far as that. The second car you are now in possession of was her car?

No. We had a truck that was an inherited truck. It was paid off. I had my car. I just paid it off two months ago. So both vehicles are frame clear.

Okay, so the truck's just sitting there.

Well, the truck's for the 15-year-old. He's learning how to drive. So that's going to be his mode of transportation.

And it's not an expensive truck.

I was about to say what's it worth. It's an '02 Silverado.

So it's just the mortgage. What else is there? The mortgage and the divorce debt, the lawyer fee? The not-thou.

Well, so there's a 9,000 of my consumer debt that I took. We divided up our expenses.

The only way to get her name off the mortgage is refinance it.

Right. That's the scary part because I'll be gaining 2%, probably on the mortgage, unless the rates go down. Yeah.

What's the timeline requirement in the divorce degree for the refinance?

There was no timeline. They didn't set a timeline on it. That's stupid. It wasn't written in.

Let's just say if you did that refinance sooner than later, what does that put you at as far as monthly? How tight does that make it for you?

Well, we'll probably add a million $200 a month. I've already done the numbers a couple of different ways.

When was the divorce final?

November. Let's see. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I don't remember what date that was, but it was November of last year.

How are you and the kids doing emotionally?

It's up and down. They're having to go from seeing her every day to seeing her for a couple of hours on Saturday, if at all during the week. That's tough. Okay. But my biggest fear, too, is she's probably got $45,000 in credit card debt that she accrued while we were together. She took with her.

She got her name only on it?

Well, right. But they've already… She put me as authorized user on some of them.

Authorized user doesn't make you liable. Okay.

Well, of course, again, I've listened to broke people for most of my life, but I was told that they'd come after me if she defaults.

No, they can't. You didn't sign the card. You didn't cosign the card. Okay. I can put Jade as an authorized user, and it doesn't make her liable.

I hope I didn't cosign the card.

Well, check your credit. Check your credit report and see what's on it, because anything that you used credit for is going to show up on there. So check and make sure, because if there is something you want to get ahead of it, close it out, pay it off, be done with it.

So your question is how to stabilize the situation, okay? First thing we got to do is address the pain and the heartache and the emotions. The second thing is address the job and decide what's going to happen there. Are we taking a new job? Are we going to take a pay cut? What are we going to do? Then, and only after those two things are settled, am I going to worry about refinancing the house? There's no rush. I don't know what rates are going to do. I don't know if they're going to go up or going to go down. But at the end of two years from today, you should have refinanced this and had completed the break. You need a clean break. You don't want to drag it out forever. But that'll give you time to get the rest of the stuff done. You might do it in one year if the rates drop a little. If you see them dip and you got things stabilized on the job, jump over there and get the refi done now, right?

Right. I guess the question would be, should I throw everything... I mean, not new to your system, but just take everything, try to get rid of the consumer debt, maybe throw some money in.

To throw what the- Build an emergency fund. Yeah. Get rid of the consumer debt, build an emergency fund. Baby steps one, two, three.

And addressing the job really does come before the mortgage situation, because if you decide to move, then that makes that decision for him.

He's not taking the house with him. If the job situation changes and you're not able to stay, there's no point in refinancing. That's right. If it changes real negatively, it might go up.

You never know. But you would have to get her to sign off on the sale if he doesn't refinance.

I don't know whether they did a quick claim deed in this or not. They could have done a quick claim deed. She could be on the mortgage and not on the deed.

That's a good point. Okay.

Usually, based on what he told me, I was assuming she'd done a quick claim deed, but we'll This is The Ramsey Show. Listen, I know a lot of you would rather watch paint dry in slow motion than file your taxes. But thankfully, you don't have to dread filing when you've got Ramsey SmartTax.

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It's a no-brainer. Just go to ramseysolutions. Com/smarttax and see how simple tax filing can be. That's ramsey solutions. Com/smarttax. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Terry is in Chicago. Hi, Terry. How are you?

Hi, I'm I'm Ramsey. I'm fine. Thank you for taking my call. Sure.

What's up?

I'm a single parent. I have a 16-year-old who is interested in working, so she is new to the working world. She's been on her job for a couple of weeks now. She will be receiving her first payroll check this week. I got stomped because I know that I'm trying to get myself to financial freedom. So I got stomped on trying to give her advice on what to do as far as investing, like which route should she take as far as investing. I want her to be financially secure in her future. I thought of you when I thought about that. I'm like, Let me call Mr. Ramsey because maybe you all could give me some pointers on just guiding her on what to do when she's fresh with everything.

That's very kind. Very good mom.

Good for you. Yeah. I just don't want her to fall into the same rabbit hole that I did listening to everyone. I have student debt.

Well, this is a good time This is a good time to bring up, obviously, the conversation of college, if you haven't already. Then we always teach, there's three things you can do: give, save, and spend. Teaching her the balance of that. Obviously, like you said, you're still trying to get your financial situation together. Now is a good time to teach, obviously, not only what to do, but what you've seen not to do. Don't fall into the trap of debt. That's a great segue into the college conversation, because if she's starting to work, this is an opportunity for you guys to start talking about school, her saving up for school, you telling her what you have saved or don't have saved for her school. Right now, at that age, the two thoughts I have are college and car, and that's about it.

No investing. There doesn't need to be any investing. She's 16. That's right. She's got some things right in front of her she needs to work on, and she needs to learn to make money and control money and start discussing going to a school that we can afford. That may mean community college for in a couple of years.

Definitely in-state.

A lot of areas that's free. It would certainly mean in-state unless you got a big pile of money. We start shopping that. We start looking at that and say, Okay, we need to start setting some money aside towards that or towards your car, if you want a car or towards whatever. But no, she doesn't need Roth IRAs and doesn't need to be an investing genius while she still got cars in college in front of her. Those are the things that are going to take her money right now. And some spending and some generosity. But the good news is you're asking the right questions and you're heading in the right direction. Good job. Dustin is with us in North Dakota. Hi, Dustin. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

I got a question. I just became a new… Well, just on that, I'm going to be a father here in the next year.

Congratulations.

Thanks. I'm freaking out a little bit about money. I shouldn't be. I'm not in a hole or that much or anything like that, but I got a $30,000 auto loan, and then my wife has $20,000 $2,000 in student loans.

Well, I'd say that's a bit of a hole.

Yeah, a little bit, but I'm not struggling by no means. When she graduates here in May, the job she's got, they're going to reimburse her $16,000 over the next five years for student loans at $3,200 a year. My question is, I guess, is do we continue to focus on paying those down or let them- Yes, you need to get rid of them.

Don't wait five years.

Don't let them pay- I'll let them pay some of it while you're working on the rest of it.

I mean, pay the car off, pay the student loan off last, so you may get two a year's worth of this or something. But we're not going to stay in debt just so these goobers can give me $3,000.

Okay.

What's your household income now? What do you make?

I do a lot of traveling for work. My day salary is only supposed to be about 58, but the last two years, I made six figures, $100,000.

Okay. What will she be making at the new gig?

She told me 23 an hour working at a hospital.

Okay. You all be making 100,500 a year then? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

And plus or minus her over time, right? If she picks that up. We'll take advantage of that. But with $150,000 a year, you got $57,000 in debt. You need to clean it up.

Yes.

Now, immediately. The faster you clean it up and you don't have any payments, the faster you're going to build wealth.

Okay.

Do you have any money saved?

Yes, I got $10,000 in for an emergency fund, and then I have $4,000 in just a normal savings account.

Okay. In a normal non-baby coming life, I would have told you to clear that $14,000 down to $1,000 and pour it all onto your debt. But technically, since you're having a baby, this is the time to stack up money and stack up what you can. Then once a baby is born, take all that money, including that 13,000 that you had sitting there, plus whatever you have saved and throw it at the debt once the baby gets here.

Okay.

Yeah. Exactly. Sure. I will. Your debt snowball. You have two debts that are basically equal or very close to equal. I'll pay the student loan off last so that if you get two years' worth of the 3,200 from her job, we'll take that, throw it towards the 27. Just knock that car out really, really fast after the baby comes, though. Okay?

Yeah. Because we live comfortably just fine on my paycheck alone.

No, you're not. Quit saying that. You're $57,000 in debt. You're freaking broke. If you're comfortable, you shouldn't be.

Well, and that's the problem. If you feel comfortable with this, you're going to pay off this car, and when the time comes to get a new car, you're going to get a car payment.

Do it again. Don't be comfortable with this. It's bad. Just because you got used to it doesn't mean it's good. Just because you can pay your bills and make it through Friday, but you're not prospering when you got 57,000 in debt hanging around your neck.

Yeah, that's a dirty diaper. It's warm, but it's mine.

Smels bad, but it's mine. Oh, my. Okay. Hey, there we go. Here we go. Here we go for sure. All right, open phones at 888-825-5225. Clint is in Mobile, Alabama. Clint, what you got? Hey, how's it going? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

Well, great. Well, me and my wife are expecting our first child. We're super excited about it, but we're trying to decide if we should sell one of our cars to help pay down on some debt.

How much do you owe on it?

We owe about 39 on the car.

What's it worth?

It's worth about 32.

Okay. What's your household income?

Eighty.

Okay. How much What other debt do you have?

We have about 7,500 in student loans, but other than that, that's it.

Okay. The other car is paid for? Yes. It's worth what?

It's worth about 26.

Okay. Well, good rule of thumb is to not have more than about half your annual income in things that have wheels and motors, and you're violating that. You've got a 26 and a 32, right?

Right.

So 58 and you make 80. Yeah. So yeah, I'd sell the car. You have too much car.

Okay. In this time that we're… I mean, we're still pretty early on in the pregnancy.

It's not necessary you sell it before the baby comes, but over the next year or so, I'm going to be out of this thing and be in something I can actually afford. You bought a car that's… Your two cars added together. You have too much tied up and things that are going down in value. That's where we come up with that. It's a formula that all Americans, we love our cars. We love them to the point that they end up owning us if we're not real careful. We have so much invested in things that are going backward. We can't figure out why we're not prospering because all the money is tied up in stuff that's going down. If you had a mutual fund, did what your car did, you'd have a fit. This is the Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Galatians 6:9, let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we will reap if we do not give up. Peter Marshall said, Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do. Our trouble is that we don't want to do it. Elisa is with us in Chicago.

Hi, Elisa. How are you?

Good. How are you, Dave and Jade?

Good. How can we help?

I am a 23-year-old college student, majoring in finance and economics. I'm considered a homeless student. I was raised by a single mother and breaking a lot of family curses and a lot of first-generation college student. That is all to say I want to create financial freedom for myself, and I believe I have the right mindset of doing so. This pertains to my question of me being a believer in God, and how do I handle the comments people make, not necessarily financially, saying that I can never get there, but why should I in the first place? Why would I want to? The mindset of being financially free, and they say, Jesus says it's easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to make it to heaven, which is true, but they pretty much make it seem I'm evil or I'm doomed given I want to be wealthy. I know being wealthy requires intent, It's so I have to stay focused, but it's starting to mess with my mindset of like, Oh, is this wrong? Because I value Jesus and I.

Who are the they? Who are the they that are saying these things to you?

Just people I come in contact with, whether it's even family or- Well, honey, you're going to come in contact with ignorant people your whole life. Yeah. I wanted to know- I don't mind answering it for you, but we can't fix their biblical illiteracy.

Okay. For instance, I can take that scripture and let's talk it through, okay? That comes from the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and he said, Master, I want to follow you. Jesus said, Go and sell all that you have and serve the poor, and then you can follow me. The story says he went away with his head hung low because he was very wealthy and he didn't want to sell his stuff to follow Jesus. Jesus turned to the disciples and said, I tell you, it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. The disciples, if you keep reading, were greatly amazed. They were blown away by that statement because it was believed in those times that wealthy people could buy their way into heaven. And so the disciples said, Who then, master, can be saved? Jesus said, No one can be saved. No one comes to the Father except through the Son. Meaning that this is a teaching on grace through the cross of Christ. It is not a teaching about wealthy people not going to heaven.

Wealth people don't go to heaven, nor do poor people go to heaven, except through the Father, through the Son that gave his life on the cross. That's the teaching that Jesus was doing there. What you have here is someone who's doing Twitter or worse than that, TikTok doctrine, meaning they've abbreviated it and didn't follow through and read the whole thing so they don't know what the flip they're talking about because it's not what the Bible is saying, nor was it what Jesus was saying. He wasn't saying, You can't get to heaven because you're wealthy. He was saying, That young man didn't go to heaven because he wouldn't follow Christ, not because he wouldn't sell his stuff. But Jesus looked into his heart and said, You have an idol in your heart, and you have something between me and you, and it's your stuff. If you worship stuff, you have a problem. That's not a Christian act. Christians aren't supposed to have idles. As a matter of fact, most of us that are believers actually believe that we don't own anything. We're managing all of it for God. And part of our management is to take care of our own household first or we're worse than an unbeliever.

So this is someone who didn't finish reading. And because they grew up poor and they heard poor stuff, and somebody told them in a poor church somewhere that being poor is somehow holy. Poor is not holy. Rich is not holy. Holy is holy. And this is somebody that's jealous and small-minded and so forth, because they don't deal with scriptures like Deuteronomy 18 that says, And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth. Why would it say in the Bible that God gives you the power to get wealth and then say you can't get to heaven after you did that? That would be inconsistent. But it's not inconsistent because that isn't what Jesus was saying. He didn't say that money is the root of all evil, did he? You know, Alicia, he said that the love of money is the root of all evil. This is a form of heresy. It's called Nosticism that has invaded the poor-mouth American Christian. Here's the real problem with it. It's actually so statistically off that it's astronomically bad. Those people, if you were to ask them that made those ridiculous statements, if you were to ask them, so you're saying the people with the top 1% of income in the world would be named wealthy?

Yes. You would be saying those people aren't going to heaven? Yes. Well, here's a startling number for you. If you make $30,000 a year, you're in the top 1% of income earners in the world. So you're going to hell based on that ridiculous doctrine that is so biblically illiterate. But you can't convince those people of that. But this is how, once you understand that, then this gives you permission to go be the winner that you're planning to be without guilt. Now, I don't want you to worship money, and I don't want you to be a greedy jerk. I always want you to be generous. Those will Christian activities. I want you to put others first. I want you to be thoughtful. I want you to be managing all of this money in a way that makes God smile and it takes care of your family and takes care of your community. But guess what? Poor people don't feed hungry children. Rich people are the ones that feed them. You know who's getting people out of Haiti right now? Rich people. That's who's getting the orphans. I was with a friend this week, and they dropped some serious money getting 15 orphans out of a cave to keep those gangs from raping them and turning them into sex traffic.

It wasn't poor people did that. These rich guys chartered a freaking helicopter with some ex Special Forces guys, went in and got 15 kids out. That won't be on the news. But rich guys that are in America did that that are Christians. Poor people didn't do that crap. I'm just telling you. This is what you do when you get some money. You serve the poor, you take care of people that are hurting, you lift people up. But you can't do that when you're freaking broke. This is how stupid this doctrine is, this wrong, toxic version. It makes me angry. Can you tell? Yeah.

I wanted to give you this slow clap, but it's inappropriate.

It's so good. Lisa, I'm going to send you a copy of the book I did on this subject. It's called The Legacy Journey, and it's got a whole bunch of these things in there that I just outlined for you, and it'll help you. Give you permission to win. But What you've got to do is you have to be careful who you let have your ear. Don't let these people speak into your ear. Like you said, you're breaking generational curses. I grew up in a neighborhood where people said stuff like, Little man can't get ahead. Rich man always holds the little man down. If you believe that crap, you're always going to be a little man. But I grew up in that neighborhood, and I'm so stupid. I had to become a millionaire twice. I had to do it two times just to prove it could be done, I guess. You're a rock star, kiddo. You're amazing. Don't let anyone tell you you shouldn't or couldn't or won't win. Go win.

Dave, I'm not going toe to toe with that. I'm not going toe to toe with you on that. That's great. That's one of the best, I'm going to call it a rant. That's one of the best rants I've heard in a long time. I think a lot of people need to hear that.

Well, it really It hurts me because it violates our faith. Yeah, it does. It's an inaccurate portrayal of our faith. Then it means everyone who says they're a Christian that's wealthy, that started from nothing and built wealth is going to hell. How ridiculous is that? It's absolutely ludicrous. It's obviously not what Jesus was saying. That's right. My goodness. Good word. That puts us hour of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey, folks. Dave Ramsey here. You know budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind, and that's EveryDollar. The EveryDollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with EveryDollar for free right now. Just go to ramseysolutions. Com/everydollar and download the app today. That's ramseysolutions. Com/everydollar.