today what I want to do is I want to show you how to get up on top of your financial house I want you to get up on top of your financial house and be standing up there it's gonna take you a few years it's not gonna be quick if you're looking for getting rich quick you're in the wrong room we don't sell microwaves here we sell crock pots I want you to I want you to get up on top of your financial house and be standing up there like rocky going Adrian yeah baby and how do you get up on top of the house that way in Tennessee if we want to get up on top house we use this thing called a ladder and ladders have steps and they have rules about the steps if you get up the ladder it starts moving if you're over 16 you come back down oh you did it too and you suck you steady the ladder and you do it again you repeat the steps but you take the steps slow and gradual you don't skip steps cuz otherwise you've been hanging upside down with your leg broke your neighbor will be laughing at you no step skipping be willing to come back down the solid ground and repeat the process these are the rules of using a ladder around our place we call these ladders these steps baby steps and you don't do baby step four until you've done baby step one there's a process here and there's a reason because you have to lay a solid foundation if you're gonna build a house you don't bring the the trim carpenter in and start you know start tacking up the start tacking up the crown mold if you hadn't done the drywall and laid and built the house on top of the foundation you start with the foundation and you build up from there baby step one we're gonna start with before we do anything else $1,000 baby starter emergency fund it's only $1,000 I want you get $1,000 as fast as you possibly can to start that so that's not your emergency fund that's your starter emergency fund I want you to get ten Benjamin Franklin's baby right quick right now fast get ten Ben Franklin's as fast as you can a month have a garage sale bust it get in gear quickly maximum of a month I want you get $1,000 save right now fast this is the easiest baby step because it's only $1,000 and it's the one you'll do the fastest in most cases this is the hardest baby step because this is the point you decide am I really gonna change my life am I really gonna buy into this stuff am I really gonna do something that other people are doing am I really gonna engage this process I'm not gonna keep doing it slopping it up the way I've been doing it I'm gonna get serious I'm gonna get focused this thing is going to change cuz you know here's the problem we don't like change human beings don't like change we tend to do the same thing over and over and over again some people work in a job that they've been with 50 years and they hate every day of it and the only reason they don't change is because they don't like change even if we're doing things and they're not working for us we defend it we protect and fight for our right to be stupid you ever done that I'm driving along the speedometer reads 80 miles an hour my wife's looking at the map says we're going the wrong way I said yeah but we're making good time we get stuck in our stuff don't we we're like a toddler sitting in a poopy diaper and no it smells bad but it's warm and it's mine we don't like change let me tell you if you're gonna win in this life you have to learn to embrace change because the only thing that never changes is we're going to change change is a way of life embrace it and you got to embrace it with changing and doing some new stuff with your money start with a thousand dollars in the bank you got to learn to save money what we're saying here is now SATA now look at that see I like those things like that that right there is why I get the big bucks isn't that deep you must save money man that's good innit you know what it is cuz nobody does it everybody talks about it everybody looks a goes over and nobody does it we're walking around with no money the richest country the world has ever known and and all the money leaves your house every month you have to make this a philosophical process a theological process a spiritual and emotional or relational and a mathematical process I'm saving money I'm sick of being broke well how you don't know about yeah I've done your budget up into a budgets for 20 years I do know about I know it's tough I know it's hard so who's being broke way step up there's some stuff to be done here so what we're starting here is the first step of savings it's the emergency fund grandma said to save for a rainy day emerges a visual aid this is what your emergency fund is 78% of Americans according to Money Magazine are going to have a major negative financial event in any given 10 year period of time you better be ready it's coming you need to be ready you need to save money for emergencies you're an emergency looking for a place to happen if you hadn't been kicked in the need of the tune of five to seven thousand dollars in the last three or four years you're overdue doc statistically it's coming get ready you need to build your emergency fund Dave you need to be positive I'm positive it's gonna rain get you an emergency fund that's how this stuff works this thousand dollars you don't even have to put this in the bank you could just you could just do like one lady did she went down to Walmart and bought a 8 by 10 picture frame and put it in there and framed it and wrote under this in case of emergency break glass you don't want keep it an underwear drawer because the pizza man will get it no the pizza man is not in your underwear drawer but I know what happens dingdong oh it's an emergency you got to keep it where you can't get to it too easy but where you can get to it if you need it baby step one is one more time thousand dollars quickly get a thousand dollars get that thousand dollars set aside get that minimum baby step that that beginner starter emergency fund ready to go personal finances eighty percent of behavior it's only 20% head knowledge you've got to change what you're doing in order to get a different result you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result the 12-steppers call about the definition of insanity maybe step to the debt snowball pay off all of your debt using the debt snowball accept your home we're gonna list our debts smallest to largest we're gonna pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and we're gonna attack the little one with the vengeance when the payment is gone there we're gonna take that payment and the other money we can squeeze out of our budget in our life and we're gonna attack number two when number two is gone we're gonna take the payments from one and two and everything we could squeeze out of our life we're going to attack number three and every time this snowball rolls over it picks up more snow to where by the time you get to your largest debt except your home which is typically a student loan or a car payment isn't it say yes when you get to that student loan or car payment the average family in America is paying between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars a month in payments not associated with their home non mortgage payments when you start paying 1500 or 2000 dollars a month on a $10,000 car loan or a student loan that sucker is gone in just a few months you get the idea we pay this off smallest to largest well babe would it not be mathematically proper to pay off the highest interest rate first yes it would if we were doing math we wouldn't have credit card debt this is about behavior modification when you go on a diet it's a good idea to lose weight the first week that way you will keep doing it because it's too much work to not eat into exercise it makes you grouchy it does me anyway oh you too I see okay so you know the deal is this I gotta see some results for my pain you're with me and when I can knock off that little one and knock off that next one and knock off that next one I'm getting that pumpup thing going I'm going this is doable my belief kicks in my faith is built my hope grows and I get more and more and more and more intense as I go down the thing that intensity that focus causes this to happen and I noticed that intensity and that focus in the intimacy of talk radio as people are calling in I've got to where after years of doing this I can kind of tell if they're gonna be able to do it could hear it in their voice I can hear it in the the cadence of their speech in the words that they're using out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks the Bible says and I can hear what's going on there can I can say I can discern what's happening not every time but I started noticing that I can tell that one's gonna make it now it's not because they'll call up and they go like it's not that extreme but sometimes it is but you get this thing coming up out of them you can feel it I've had it Les Brown the great motivator says people change their lives when they have finally say I've had a moment where I say that's when you change your life you got to get to that point you can wander into debt but you can't wander out you got to have this moment where you say that's it I'm tired of working my butt off and I don't have anything to show for it but an empty payment book I hit the Discovery Channel and there were the gazelles they were out there go selling around and I went dude I just read about you see get out of there deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter and I sat there for just a moment because you know the Discovery Channel is not there if just the gazelles are there you know somebody else is there the hunter is there he's there he's got a plan he's the fastest mammal on dry land and the gazelles have a cheetah detector behind there they go cuz baby they're getting ready to be lunch cuz the cheetah is faster than they are he can go from zero to forty seven miles an hour in four leaps this is the fastest mammal on dry land he's looking to eat you this is how you get out of that you deliver yourself like the gazelle from the hand of the hunter you ride like your life depends on it can you see what he'll do he picks out the college-student didn't he Hey come here hey hey you are free hat hey hey I got a t-shirt over here hey hi you need to build up your FICO score hey come here kid come here come here come here now the way you get out of dead babies you gotta run you gotta go go go go you can't let up this guy's after you he's gonna take you down you gotta run run run you gotta get gizelle intense the people that get out of debt that you can wander in you can't wander out you get this is a deal man it's gotta happen this is how you get up you deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter you deliver your self like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter I'm not gonna do it for you the other one's got a ride you know how long we had to look for a clip where they got away but I will tell you this the fun thing about this funny little example up here that you'll never forget the rest of your life it's one of those powerful moments in the whole day now I don't know how long you got to run I don't know how fast you got to run but you gotta run you cannot let up you gotta bust it if you want to be somebody in the area money you want to get this stuff off of you you want to share these chains it is not a game you gotta bust up into it in an unbelievable passionate way you gotta have a level of focus a level of intensity that you may have never had in your life and when you do you will win you will be free because I've watched hundreds of thousands of North Americans do this exact thing because of the Total Money Makeover because of the Dave Ramsey show because of Financial Peace University no because we made them believe they could and they ran that's what happened deliver yourself that's how this works but I promise you it works baby if you keep doing it you get to chase the cheetah so now we don't have any payments but a house payment we're at baby step two we're 18 to 24 months ins that feel pretty good say yes now our next goal is we're totally with ghazal intensity going to continue to focus with focused intensity we're going to build up that thousand dollar account until it reach a fully funded emergency fund which is three to six months of expenses emergency funds should be easy to access or liquid put them in a money market type account with your mutual fund company check riding privileges it's not going to earn much interest and I want you to put three to six months of expenses some of you that'll be 10 15 even 20 thousand dollars just sitting there boring but ready for life to happen everybody's bored by murder yeah it is boring no see here's the deal your emergency fund the problem we get is we get mixed up about it it is not an investment saying not an investment your emergency fund is insurance say insurance here's the difference investments are money that make you money insurance costs you money to protect your money that is making you money you buy insurance to protect your house to protect your health you buy insurance to replace your life and the money you make if something happens to you called life insurance insurance is an expense that protects assets your emergency fund is not an asset it technically is in accounting terms but you'll need to look at it that way in other words if it earns a little interest that's just good but it's not there to earn interest it's there to protect your 401k because if you have to dip into your 401k because you didn't have an emergency fund and the government takes half of it in penalties and taxes that's what's known as stupid because you didn't have an emergency fund I never had an emergency fund any time in my life when I was a multi-millionaire when I was a millionaire doing doing the real estate stuff I wanted a multi-millionaire I was a millionaire doing the real estate stuff I didn't have money saved everything went back into the deal back into the deal everything we spent everything we consumed no money no liquidity no cash and that's one of the reasons I went down because I had no wiggle room there was no grease in the gears and that's what this is it puts a pad between you and Murphy you knew Murphy is if it can go wrong it will and let me tell you what you don't have an emergency fund Murphy will move in your spare bedroom and bring his three cousins broke desperate and stupid and your life will look like a country song that's what will happen won't it that's how this deal happens so you don't put it in a CD a certificate of depression because if you cash that out early they charge you a penalty that's not liquid that's not easy to access so a simple money market account with something like your mutual fund company and you put three to six months of expenses in there money market accounts are easily accessible men say things about the emergency fund like it's boring it's not sophisticated enough Dave you let me take 20,000 bucks and let's sit there and make only three or four percent maybe I could do a lot better with that I could do a BBD a bigger better deal I got this game plan I got this shock at this my wife says I'm scheming and scamming and when I do that kind of stuff and guys are always trying to do this very fair few women do this stuff see women on the other hand say things like it's the most important key to our financial plan and here's why let me have all the men in the room stand up please I may have all the men stand up please guys I don't know if you know this or not but women are different guys I don't know if you know this or not but right down in here inside of your lady there is a security gland and when she's feeling insecure over the money stuff she's not feeling good over the money stuff that glands spasms and it is attached to her face insecurity makes your wife ugly and mean because she gets afraid in a place you don't even have and she will attack you and you know that's happened it happened in my house that woman about clawed my eyes out I had no idea and then I discovered the security gland guys if you want to make one of the best investments you'll ever make in your life she's wired by God naturally to be smarter than you on this subject her nature takes her to the place to be calm and secure in this area this emergency fund causes her to relax in a place you don't even have when you do the investment in the work and the budgeting to participate in the process and this emergency fund is put in place she'll relax and she'll look at you through a different set of eyes this is one of two things I'm going to tell you today for those of you that are married or ever want to be married that will revolutionize your marriage because she will feel completely different at that point not because she's weaker because on money things a lot of times ladies are actually stronger but because on this subject that's how she's wired and she'll look at you in a different way when that emergency funds in place it's an investment in your marriage am i right ladies I rest my case an emergency fund turns a crisis into an inconvenience if your transmission goes out it's $2,700 to fix it you have $15,000 you go dadgum transmission went out that's a pain transmission goes out and you are broke you go it changes your whole life the drama starts to leave your life when you have this emergency fun stuff in place it is absolutely powerful that is baby step 3 emergency funds in place and now the baby steps take a different flavor you only do one till you get one done the only two - until you get two done you only do three until you get three done four five and six we're going to do at the same time and so we're going to limit our investing here in four to only 15% because I want to work on the other two baby steps at the same time instead of going 22% of 28% in savings only 15% invested into Roth IRAs and 401ks this is a mathematical explosion that stuff we talked about where there's interest on the interest on the interest now you got a different kind of ball snowball rolling it's rolling down the hill and you're chasing it instead of it taking you now you get to see wealth start to build your money starts to make you money this is a plan right here $100 a month invested from age 25 to age 65 at 12% and a decent growth stock mutual fund is 1 million one hundred seventy six thousand dollars I just gave you a formula to be a millionaire straight up thirty to seventy is the same numbers 35 to 75 the same numbers a hundred dollars a month that's pizza money in some of your houses it's your cable bill but don't turn on fox business you know I'm saying you know you consume a hundred dollars in lattes ooh now he's getting personal and they're having like a withdrawal back there caffeine thing happening a hundred bucks a hundred dollars and you're a millionaire every single month Roth IRAs and 401ks are secret government formulas to wealth now you don't have any payments for the house payment now you can find 500 bucks not in a real world yeah in the real world let's do the numbers the average household income is 40,000 816 dollars that's 3333 dollars a month that's what it is you take home pays about 2,700 bucks average family making 40s got a house payment of about $700 $2,700 take-home - a house payment of 700 leaves 2,000 bucks you got 2,000 bucks to eat pay lights oh I don't have any debt payments hmm maybe I could save 500 out of the 2000 could I say yes and then you might end up with some money in the process this is real I didn't just make this up today we've done this for a long time and it works and see here's what's interesting about those numbers the Roth IRA grows tax that's a good word let's do it again tax because it doesn't happen very often this is Washington and they're a freaking parasite so tax free is a good idea it's very unusual it's a good idea now tax free now let's think about it six thousand dollars a year for 40 years what's six times four twenty four that's 240,000 dollars that went in hmm this is interesting 240,000 dollars went in and it grew 5.8 million dollars so out of five million eight hundred thousand dollars five million six hundred thousand of it you didn't put in wow it's all gross the whole thing is growth it's the snowball adding snow and the fact that its tax is huge because taxes on six million dollars would look a lot like a million six hundred thousand dollars which means this word Roth is worth in this example somewhere around $400,000 a letter the 401k is a secret government formula to wealth because you do that investing pre-tax if you take $1,000 of your income and bring it home by the time it gets home it looks suspiciously like 700 but if you put it in pre-tax the whole 700 plus your 300 you would have given to Congress goes in why is that important because 240,000 turns into 5.8 million so we want as many of these government dollars as we can gather up that would have gone to them earlier we use them they do a lot of heavy lifting so every one of them are multiplied bazillions a times over so every dollar I can keep in my hand to grow money with with pre-tax investing is genius oh my me no company doesn't match I'm not putting money in the Horo 1k by the way you get back at them by you being broker that's smart but the trick is you need to start you need to start right now being an Arthur illustrate that fact for us been invest starting at age 19 he invests $2,000 a year and a good growth stock mutual fund all the way up until age 26 then puts in sixteen thousand dollars for eight years $2,000 a year that's sixteen thousand dollars and then he quits investing because you see at age 27 how much did been put in zero one more time how much had been put in at age 27 he quit investing it's not a trick question and the money grows and the money grows and the money grows his brother Arthur wakes up and says whoa I've been dumb I need to catch up I'm gonna start investing $2,000 he starts at age 27 invest two thousand dollars a year from age twenty-seven all the way to age 65 he puts seventy eight thousand dollars in and he never catches up the guy who put in sixteen thousand dollars beats the guy who put in seventy eight thousand dollars by seven hundred thousand dollars some of your going that's a real neat chart if I was 19 how many of you in here are under 25 raise your hand hi hi so I can see you good you understand if you've gathered this information you put it in your brain and it changes your heart and causes you to handle money differently the rest of your life this one section right here this one chart will make you a multimillionaire I just made you a millionaire if you've got this am i right old people how many of you in here that are over 40 like me raise your hand be proud of it yeah I'm thinking deep down inside you probably got a message for those people under 25 you probably got something you want to say to them you probably want to yell something like do it ready 1 2 3 Wow young people you just heard the voice of regret yeah let me just tell you some people say am I too old to save money not if you're still sucking wind besides that you can't go backwards this is your only option start where you are and let's go I'm 52 it's too late so shoot yourself I mean what are you gonna do let's go from here let's go from here we got to go somewhere with this I know people to make the most money they were made in their lives in their 50s lots of people never do anything until they're 60 Colonel Sanders never fried a chicken commercially until he was 67 years old Grandma Moses never painted a painting until she was 84 years old she did 1500 works of art 450 of them she did after age 100 everything you know Winston Churchill for he did in his 70s everything you know golden my heir for she did in her 70s it's not over to you quit but with the money thing it's easier if you start now now we only put 15% of our income into retirement at baby step 4 because I wanted to save some money to start working on the kids college fund if you have kids and you want to do a kid's college fund baby step 5 is where you do it you don't do the kids college fund while you're still in debt because you don't have any money it's all going to payments you don't use the emergency fund to send the kids call it to college that's not an emergency and by the way when they go to college they could learn to do something like wo RK it won't kill them how many of you worked while you were in college I rest my case it's not child abuse college funding make sure the kids are fit to an educational savings account the education IRA is what it's nicknamed as it's the ESA is like the Roth IRA or college it grows tax you're allowed to put two thousand dollars a year into this account you put two thousand dollars a year into it it will grow tax-free from zero to 18 two times 18 is there are 86 thank you $36,000 went in $36,000 went in but you will have about a hundred and twenty six thousand dollars in there twelve percent when they reach 18 and that means you have somewhere around ninety thousand dollars in growth that you pay no taxes on because this is tax so do this for your kids college the educational savings account in good growth stock mutual funds take the time to research the cost of college you need to think about that when they're little you need to think about that as they get older some of you have kids that are 1314 years old right now you haven't started saving for college and so you're not gonna have enough to pay cash for college they're gonna do some things and they're not you don't have enough to pay cash for some big expensive private school unless you put them deeply in debt instead you could do something like send them to a school you could afford oh there's a thought but see we go crazy with the word education we worship at the altar of the Diploma in this culture let me tell you what your college degree is worth nothing it's worth nothing the knowledge that you got on the way to getting that degree if it is applied in the marketplace is the only thing that has value knowledge is the currency of this millennium knowledge is important continual learning is important it's not over when you leave college you need to read and do some other things continually get better like you're doing in here today continual learning is the only way you're gonna win teach your kids that think about what you're getting for what you're spending because let me tell you what is the only thing that's more useless than your degree is your pedigree totally useless I'm happy for you if you graduated from Wharton or Harvard or Yale I am NOT putting those schools down I'm not putting down Vanderbilt but let me tell you what if you're gonna go there you better be ready to pay for it and if you're telling me it's worth $100,000 in debt to there I can economically prove to you you're an idiot the average college student is graduating right now with twenty seven thousand nine hundred dollars and student loan debt this is crazy and another six thousand dollars in credit card debt by the way first rule of college pay cash pay cash pay cash pay cash now we're sailing we've got we've got the retirement going we got the emergency fund in place we're doing the kids college into the educational savings account now every other dollar above that that we get coming in put it on the house pay off the house pal thousand five thousand pounds think about it what could you do if you had no payments I mean if you just take a house payment put that puppy into a mutual fund every month you know I quit that's a million dollars really quick you've been looking at these numbers all day long you're beginning to see how this stuff works I mean what could you do if you had no payments you'd have control your most powerful wealth building tool which is your income that's the muscle of your ability to build things it's that simple myth it's wise to keep my home mortgage because I get the tax deduction how many of you ever heard the tax deduction meant I don't want to pay off my house I'll lose my only tax deduction that's one of the biggest ones and I'm amazed that CPAs are so stupid they do this really I've got a degree in finance and I'll tell you who taught me this this old farmer with overalls on who was paying cash for a piece of property $90,000 and he reached right there and closed the sale and I'm fresh out of college and you know when you're fresh out of college you have all the answers and I'm like excuse me sir but and I'm thinking I'm gonna be sophisticated and teach this old guy how money works right because he obviously doesn't know I mean he's in overalls just paid cash for $90,000 a lot but he's in overalls which didn't occur to my arrogant little head you know what I'm saying and he looked at me and he said son didn't they teach you anything at that school and I said what do you mean he said well apparently you didn't learn dad let me show you what he walked me through and I've never forgotten it has changed my whole mind on this idea of tax deductions now take a tax deduction if you have one for goodness sakes don't send too much money to Washington but staying in debt because of a tax deduction here's how that works think about it for a second if you had a $200,000 mortgage at a 5% interest that means the interest that you paid that year would be 5% of $200,000 which is $10,000 does that sound right say yes by the way in this there's no trick answers I'm not gonna trip you okay so you're safe now if you do that and you make $70,000 a year and you have a $10,000 tax deduction and you have make 70 you don't pay taxes on 70 if you have a $10,000 tax deduction you pay taxes on 60 hmm and so if that's the case you're in a 25% tax bracket you saved $2,500 in taxes because you if you if you're Dave Ramsey crazy crazy man came down paid off mortgage then you wouldn't have the $10,000 in interest payments so you would lose the deduction and you would not pay taxes on 60 instead you would pay taxes on so that extra $10,000 of income is now taxable and if that's the case you're in the numbers I'm using you're in the 25 percent tax bracket that means 25 percent of $10,000 is what I cost you yet you're extra tax bill or $2,500 so what we're saying is a tax deduction mathematically is sending the mortgage company ten thousand to keep from sending Washington twenty five hundred let me try that again it's sending the mortgage company ten thousand to save sending a taxes of twenty five hundred to Washington I may have to wait till y'all get this here's an idea pay off your mortgage give your church ten thousand and you get the exact same benefit [Applause] myth it's wise to borrow all I can on my home because I can invest it and make more on the investment if I borrow money at six and a half percent and I put it in a good mutual fund making 12 Dave am I not making a five and a half percent spread the answer is no because your little formula is naive out here in the real world where we all live if you make 12 you're gonna pay taxes on it and your after-tax yield is nine point four and out here in the real world if you're smart you don't compare zero risk investments apples to apples with risky investments myth I'll take out a 30-year mortgage and a promise to pay it like a 15 you're lying to yourself the truth is no one does something will go wrong it's called prom dresses transmissions and the muffler falls off the car it will rain every month something old best laid plans of mice and men I meant to do it I promised myself I was going to do it you know the interesting thing about a 15-year mortgage they pay off in 15 years or less every time you know many times the 30-year mortgage pays off in 15 years or less unless it's refinanced two percent of them pay off systematically in 15 nobody does this stuff everybody talks about it and thinks well if I you have a little problem I'll have wiggle room that way well your life is a little problem that's what happens and 15-year mortgages pay off in 15 years so here's the deal with the house only buy a home after baby step 3 you're debt-free you have the emergency fund I recommend paying cash what you're crazy I recommend it's hard I don't borrow money there is nothing on the planet I want bad enough to go back into that effort the borrower is slave the lender I got that okay I got it all the way to the soles of my feet I don't even want to have anything to do with a bank unless I'm buying it that's simple but if you're gonna go get a house never take out more than a 15-year mortgage and never take out more than a 15-year mortgage where your payment on a fixed rate is more than 1/4 of your take-home pay you're buying too much house and if some ripoff loan shark subprime greedy banker is gonna stick you with a prepayment penalty with an adjustable rate mortgage with an interest-only mortgage with a balloon payment with an above market interest rate just cause if I get a hell it's my life for be good back off you're not ready to buy yet back off do not be conformed to this world but be transformed how are we transformed by the renewing of our minds transformed have a total money makeover people don't get the best use of their money and/or have money problems for two basic reasons number one is ignorance don't get mad at me I'm ignorant about some things you don't want me doing brain surgery on you or fixing your car in either case there be parts leftover ignorance is not lack of intelligence ignorance is lack of know-how I don't know how to do those things I'm an intelligent guy but I don't know how to do those things you can do that we could hire people to do brain surgery you can hire them to work on your car and I highly recommend it in both cases but don't hire him to manage your money you need to learn how to do this stuff you can bring CPAs in to teach you you can bring in an investment guy in the mutual funds to help you a real estate gal over here a good mortgage broker over here an insurance person to teach you but they all need to have the heart of a teacher because all you're looking for is counsel you're not looking for a babysitter you're not looking for a daddy or a mommy because it's your job to manage your life and the multitude of counselors their safety you gather the information but you make your decisions don't let someone else do that for you now we got the house paid off now the kids college is underway now retirements underway see when you get all that done baby step seven there's nothing left to do except build lots of wealth and give it away you're gonna have the most fun you've ever had with money when you hit baby step 7 when you launch into this area of wealth you're gonna look at things through a completely different lens that you didn't even know you had in your camera it's a whole new way of seeing things your most powerful wealth building tool is your income when you get control of that it will launch you and you don't have to be on the radio and you don't have to have best-selling books to do it regular people making fifty sixty thousand dollars a year do this stuff all the time wealth is not an escape mechanism it is instead of tremendous responsibility if you think your life is gonna get better just because you get money you're wrong because you become more of what you are if you are a jerk and you get a bunch of money you will become a very large jerk if you're generous and charitable and you get money you will have a huge impact on people around you you'll never sit down in church next to a single mom who's crying because they're light building paid but once you just reach over and pay it to the end of the year but you really don't do it right then you do it after you get home so she doesn't know who did it because it was really God that did it it wasn't you you don't need to be taking the credit anyway [Applause] there's only three things you can do with money you can have fun with it you can invest it and you can give it and you need to do all three you better be having some fun money's fun if you got some you need to be investing it so you got some and you need to be giving it because it is the most fun you'll ever have with it giving is possibly the most fun you'll ever have with money that's the deal you know Winston Churchill said he said we make a living by what we get we make a life by what we give Andrew Carnegie who was the Bill Gates of his day in the year 1900 Carnegie steel Carnegie Hall and started most of the public libraries in America today the wealthiest guy of the year 1900 used to say the surplus wealth is a sacred trust to be managed for the good of others if you'll bear with me for about two minutes and not move this last section is very very important there's two things I want to cover with you one is this each of you are perfectly trained perfectly designed four-cylinder engines you need to run on all four cylinders to be able to win we're physical beings take care of this you get one don't go to McDonald's eat 62 Big Macs and go Lord bless this for the nourishment of our bodies take care of this you get one eat less exercise more it's not hard just be cognizant of what you're putting in your mouth people don't sneak in your bedroom the mill a night stuff food down your mouth it's you you're the one doing it I know cuz I put the sign on my desk it's the food stupid I know it's me it's my job to take care of me the second thing is we're emotional beings if you had something bad happen to you in your life and most of us that are breathing half you may need to sit down with your pastor or with a good counselor and unpack your baggage life's too short to go through it with the Samsonite it's heavy it's Carol Dave I came from a dysfunctional family we all did they have people in them I'm not poking fun at you I'm just saying I know what it means to hurt and it's okay to get some help when you're hurting it's kind of dumb not to the third thing is this we're intellectual beings feed your mind read read read read read read read read read the average college person hasn't read a nonfiction book 70% of Americans haven't read a nonfiction book since their last day of formal education Charlie tremendous Jones says that five years from today you will be the same person you are today making the same money you have today with the same problems you have today except for the books you read in the people you meet now you can be an intellectual you can feed your intellect and grow you can take care of your body and you can take care of your motions but if you do those three out of four you are not running on 3/4 or 75% power until you plug in the fourth one the other three don't work right and when you plug it in it takes you to more than 100 percent power takes you to 110 percent power it kicks in the joy it kicks in the celebration of life it kicks in the passion of life it increases your creativity it changes everything about the other three what am I talking about talking about the spiritual this step by step baby steps program is steeped in common sense biblical wisdom it is an absolute process that is proven literally to date millions with an s of Americans are somewhere in those baby steps there right now working this exact process millions and tens of millions even hundreds of millions of dollars of debt has already been paid off whether this stuff works is not in question the only question that remains this evening is what you're gonna do don't wake up five years from now and wish you changed your life go home this week it starts do it right now it's as you will it Thank You Dallas [Applause]
