nice determination you can be intentional about your character you've got to be on the same page they were calling to let you know we're debt-free house and every you have done really really good and you're not gonna than a huge witness for us to be able to share that it was time to get serious intentionality people to success this is your show a mirror 22 what I know now our life would be better is the show that's changing the world you live it live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions it's the Dave Ramsey show where dad is dumb cash is king in the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW has the status symbol of choice I am Dave Ramsey your host this is your show America thank you for joining us open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five that's triple eight to five this hour in New York City hi Diana how are you I'm good thank you for having a good school we wanted to buy a house and one of them it would be wise buy a house still only on the corner and getting into that mortgage establishes we just left and follow your plan like he was saying about seeing me so the question really I always ask myself when I'm looking at something like this is knowing what I know today what's going to cause Diana and her children and her husband to have the most money in the best financial life 10 years 20 years in 30 years from today not the end of September okay so what is the best thing for you guys long-term what is the the way that I can be the most sure that you're gonna win with money rather than take a setback the way I can be the most sure is the way we say to properly buy a home and that is to be debt-free and have an emergency fund in place now that I know that what would I do if I woke up in your shoes I would move and rent for a year or two while I finished getting out of debt built an emergency fund and built a good down payment to buy a house you're broke right now when broke people buy houses it's not a blessing it causes all kinds of problems in your life the house is not a blessing it's a curse and everything that can go wrong will hot water heater will go out the heat and air will go out the roof a leak and you got no money now you're not gonna be broke for long because you're working a plan you never be broke forever you are gonna be broke by September still because you're just gonna be finishing up getting out of debt and starting your emergency fund so you know that I've been broke I know what it's like I just don't want you to stay broke and when you buy a house when you're broke it costs you out your ears so yeah if you want to move for school system I got that do it but just go rent does that make any sense at all is that where that's where you were gonna buy right yeah okay so I mean you're making the move the only discussion and you're making the move to upstate New York so the only discussion is whether you buy or whether you rent go move go ahead I don't care go to where you want to be I'll just rent for right now until you finish getting out of debt get your emergency fund and then save your down payment and so I don't mind if you I'm not saying you stay in New York City if you're if your goal is to be in upstate New York because you think those school systems are better I'm with you to go head to upstate New York Dinah that's actually what Sharon and I did we sold our home when we had one in kindergarten and one in the second grade and moved to a County an adjacent County that had a good school system and we rented for two years and I got to tell you I'm in the real estate business my whole adult life I've been a landlord almost all of my adult being a tenant was really humbling for me you know I mean I really had to believe what I'm saying to you but I did do it and I I ran in for two years Sharon hated that house I hated the idea of not owning real estate and a hated the idea of being a renter because I'm so against it and I grew up with the real estate business my never their own estate business so I it's just in my DNA to not want to be a renter it was really humbling for me but it was one of the best moves we ever did because that two years allowed us to finish cleaning up debt we got the school system so we were out of the private schools everything aligned we were able to get our money under control get a foundation under control with our finances and then when we bought we did it properly that for that two years and so that that's what I'm telling you hey good question and go ahead and make your move but just rent well as with us Will's in Grand Rapids Michigan I will how are you hey hey miss Ramsey how are you today better than I deserve Center how can I help I'm so it got kind of weird story I'll try to be quick my wife and I were in a vehicle accident last October 2016 she sustained a traumatic brain injury oh no it was actually the same day that we found out she was pregnant with our son this has been born and is healthy although she's still in neuro rehabilitation clinics she's doing better we communicate via head nods although she hasn't spoken yet and she's just she's just talking along and the boys don't have to be healthy as a father or as the boy's father and a loyal husband I'm trying to figure out the best way to proceed financially for us we received a settlement from our vehicle accident my wife and I have always lived that free sand our mortgage you know we tried to live by the the Dave Ramsey principle and and now that we have the settlement money I'm not really sure what to do with this and I was wondering if you would think it was advisable to pay off our mortgage I can't imagine what you guys have been through I'm so sorry just a lot thank you that I text you my brother we're kind of family don't yeah you are and you you'll get you'll make do but goodness gracious okay how much was the settlement the tenement was four hundred and thirty five thousand that sounds awfully low yeah well that's not the you know the stuff you see on TV is not the not the norm but that's insurance in Michigan itself so basically what happened is as a person have much coverage and you maxed out their insurance company correct yeah and then they were of cheese now in Michigan we do have auto no-fault which provides free it provides ongoing medical care for the rest of one's life for anything medically related to the auto accident so we're covered therefore any of her injuries okay and and so in a sense this 135,000 so to speak is clear because she's her care is taken care of you've got the care of a child by yourself that's gonna be more expensive than if she were at home with you but other than that your expenses associated with the accident ongoing expenses from this point forward are not an issue is that what you're telling me our two largest expenses right now our private health insurance because I took time off to spend with my wife and child after the accident so I've been not working for about a year and a half and living off of our savings we still have quite a bit of liquid assets whereas not so valid so what's the balance on your mortgage the balance of the mortgage is ninety five thousand and what's the balance on your liquid assets not counting this one thirty five settlement not counting any of the settlement money our liquid assets are thirty eight thousand [Music] I want to think about this just so I can hold with me through this break I want to make sure I get this one right this is the Dave Ramsey show [Music] [Music] all big-time extraordinary things start from ordinary things and they start from changing the ordinary habits in your day-to-day life [Music] in a heart filled with gratitude there is no room for discontentment it developed their identity by getting clues from you about what you think about them feel about them and hope for them and they become who you think they are conflict becomes the price we pay for a deeper level of intimacy to think that you can have somebody work that hard and get to the end of their life and have nothing okay you can create your entire business around your life versus your life around your work today could be the day and literally your life changes be open to that receive it and we believe it will happen when we start to try to control everything around us we get out of control of the only thing we're designed to have which is self-control I decided to take my life seriously I want to live and my life is that serious your decisions from today forward will affect not only your life but your entire legacy [Music] step one one thousand dollars to start your emergency fund step two pay off all debt using the debt snowball step three three to six months of expenses in savings step four invest fifteen percent of household income in Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement step five college funding for children step six pay off house early step seven build wealth and give let's face it life can be crazy between work school kids church and everything else under the Sun it can be tough to find time for the things that matter most even breakfast once we're good grains comes in good grains is an innovative cereal company committed to delivering health and happiness to our communities and beyond how good grains makes tasty wholesome cereal that you can buy online and have shipped straight to you they offer one-time and subscription purchases and they support local schools looking for a better version of your favorite cereal try golden o's one something gluten free for the kids check out their love grown line need a diabetic friendly cereal they've got that too each good grain cereal contains nothing artificial so you know what you're eating if you sign up for a subscription you can save time and money plus it all gifts back that's good grains sound good listeners of the Dave Ramsey show can receive a special free trial pack today just visit good greens comm slash Dave welcome to the best cereal on the planet hello America and welcome to the Dave Ramsey show I'm George camel thank you for joining us here on our video channel whether you're watching on YouTube Facebook Dave Ramsey calm or the Dave Ramsey show app so many ways to listen no matter where you're watching we are so grateful you're here we've got a great show for you today three hours of hope filled practical wisdom coming from dave and best-selling author rachel cruise will join dave in studio in the third hour so you don't want to miss it go ahead and hit that like button maybe join us in the YouTube chat and say hey and get ready for the best radio show in America to continue [Music] all right we're talking about will in Grand Rapids his family has been through a tragedy a bizarre car accident and his wife received brain injury she was pregnant the time has delivered the child healthy healthy child sense but she still um in a Center where she's not verbal yet and our prayer is of course in his is is that she is able to return to the family someday in full health they got a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars result out of the settlement but in Michigan the no-fault pays for all of her medical bills for her whole life her medical care for her whole life and he has a ninety-eight thousand dollar mortgage in third ninety two thousand or mortgage $38,000 in other savings is that a fair summary what you told me well yeah yeah the only thing we didn't include with the retirement thing so we do have a liquid assets as well right but what so how much is in retirement just curious about thirty two thousand five hundred dollars not much okay alright how old are you 32 alright here's the thing if you pay off the house today and that means then that you have about seventy thousand dollars in the bank and your income doesn't restart fairly soon that could get you into a pinch you're dangerously low on cash right now before the settlement came thirty eight thousand feels like a lot it's not a lot it'll go away pretty quick I mean how much savings did you start with when all this began I think we had it's been about a year and a half I think we had closer to about eighty thousand yeah okay so you made you made it a year and a half on forty grand what no you worked a part of that time right we didn't do we did okay all right so did you quit your job you got laid off from your job or you go no work was actually the work was actually very nice they paid for about two months while I attended to my wife in the hospital and and then I began to work with another friend for a couple of months after that just what is your work plan your income-producing plan going forward I've actually started a last month I started to point to several jobs here yeah and I have a job interview this Friday so okay we're Lauren's and a good enough spot where I think I'm ready to add back to work okay and your your child is your only child right and who's gonna go we get quite a bit of care from family members okay all right so you've got some some ways to take care of the baby during the day while you work okay yes sir good all right and what what is the the job you think you might be getting or whatever what do you think you're gonna be making when you're back to work I would say probably Loen maybe you were 45,000 to 50,000 okay all right and can you make it on that oh yeah absolutely okay all right yeah yeah my wife is she's I think she might be the only person that might give you a run for your money de god shadek ruble gotcha y'all have done very well okay well here's what I would do lets out of an abundance of caution let's get the job when your first paycheck comes use the settlement money to pay the mortgage off okay until then I just want to leave it there in cash because y'all been through enough hell without running out of money okay yeah no I understand that I don't think you're gonna run out of money I think you got this dialed in I mean you made it a year and a half on I don't think you're gonna go another year and a half and you could make it on 40,000 and you probably are okay nine times out of ten but you've just been through enough without running out of money so let's just let's just push pause just for a second let's skip a STEMI let's just just just hold up just a second get the job get the paycheck now we've got income going forward we don't have to worry about that there's nothing left on the list to worry about money-wise and yeah Levin let's write the check and pay off the house is that logical to you that sounds great yeah I'm so sorry you guys have been through that what and your wife Lauren yeah no I you know you don't need to be sorry David it's helped us grow closer together as couples so I mean with work we're gonna make it oh you're gonna make it mom I mean I wouldn't wish what you've been through on anybody but oh my goodness yeah I'm not saying you're not gonna make it but Wow uh hey thanks for calling in brother if we can help you more you just let us know open phones at Triple Eight eight two five five two two five our question today comes from blinds.com you upgrade your home with blinds.com the number one online retailer of custom window coverings now through February the 15th you can go to blinds.com slash Ramsey and get 20% off anything on the website blinds.com slash Ramsey today's questions from Tracy in North Carolina for years my husband would not consistently help with the finances he would be involved for a bit but then leave it to me to shoulder alone now he wants to get involved but I'm having trouble giving up the control and respecting his decision to be involved what do I do I think it's logical that you don't trust him because he doesn't play through I mean you even give up some of the control here and then he's gonna walk away again maybe I mean that that's what's bothering you in the back of your mind so I think what's going to happen is is that you guys are gonna say you're not going to give up the control the only control you're gonna give up is is that now he has a vote and he's always had a vote but now he's actually going to take his vote which means we're going to look at the finances together not he takes them over and you don't do anything and so you're not giving up control because your vote is still there you still have a vote the two of you look at the finances together and decide what you're going to do the only trouble you've got is is that he's giving input now and you're little worried that you know six months from now this may wear off again and that's a reasonable thing given your given his track record so the more he is around though the more you need to forgive the past and then just when he's plugged in the more you forgive the past and you move on and you know you get used to this but but you know I don't want you to you're saying respect his decision to be involved and that's really all it is it's having trouble respecting his decision about yeah I can't get that I mean you're like sick of this but but yeah I just you know it is the best way to handle money for couples work together and make decisions together and then typically one of you is the more administrative we call that person the nerd and that the more administrative people are usually the ones that actually implement the plan that the two of you put together and create alex is in sacramento hi Alex welcome to the Dave Ramsey show hi Dave hey what's up well question I'm just started getting into your show and I'm really really appreciative of all your advice my situation is I just finished all of the like actual final legwork of my chapter 13 I kind of had some major health problems so everything is gone literally and I was scared into paying a lot of my medical bills on credit so had to declare bankruptcy and so a my question is what do I do when is next three years is over what can I do to kind of get myself in a good situation I'm 33 and like I said no savings or anything I do have student loan debt which I'll have to tackle but kind of where I'm at my payment is manageable I have a car my car payment is outside of my bankruptcy plan so your said three years I'm a chapter 13 bankruptcy is a five-year plan minus three year I filed in Utah I don't know if that makes any difference when did you file when did I file yeah it was all official in August and then I moved to California okay so your bankruptcies just started and so you're in a chapter 13 for three years is that what you're telling me more okay well that's dialed in I mean that that's all setup and you've just got to play through on that the student loans outside the bankruptcy and the car is you left outside the bankruptcy so you can just pay those off begin to work through and let's get those get those debts cleared as soon as possible if you do get those to cleared then I would start talking to the trustee at the bankruptcy court about possibility of you pay prepaying some of your chapter 13 and getting out earlier oh I didn't even know that was an option yeah it is but you need to get these other two things paid off first and that should pay off my car and I want a smaller the student loan of the car debt the card okay yeah I get that one paid off first and then let's go and get the student loan paid off when they're both gone then let's contact the chapter 13 trustee and say hey you know there's a year left on this thing I'd like to go ahead and pay it out and be done a year early and they will work with you and put together a plan of all the people in the bankruptcy world the chapter 13 trustees are the smartest the best of the ones out there between the lawyers the judges everything 13 trustees are awesome [Music] I love to antique I love to go to vintage shows I can see something that's been old and I'm useful at the time be created and come out and be new welcome it's an honor to have you where do you guys live Bakersfield California wow that's a bit of a hike to Nashville we are David and Gail olds we're retired and in our retirement we came to the reality and conclusion that we were 82 thousand dollars in debt we had seven credit cards most of them maxed out we had been transferring balances doing various things we had a second mortgage on her home to pay for some taxes and we'd bought a new car so we had $82,000 in dad we were 65 retired I relied on him a lot of during the times for finances because it seemed like if I saw something I wanted I would leave it up to him to figure out how we were going to get it and after I had started a business an antique business we needed to kind of communicate better in the financial department I always thought throughout the years it seemed like I could control everything I could get another job teach next to a class teach at the college I was the the king of the credit card balance transfer I'd find the deal and move it over well in 2011 as we travel across the country typically what happens is Gail crawls in the back seat and curls up with her book or has a movie that she wants to watch and me I'm a sort of a radio talk-show kind of junkie and became familiar with this Dave Ramsey guy and his message that he was getting out and how he was encouraging people and helping people there was a common interest there I mean we had talked about our debt and we were concerned about those things like it's kind of scary when you think you're retired and whatever you're making now that's gonna be it forever I mean you're retired yes you got eighty two thousand dollars in debt it was a real turning point in my life at that point to realize that we could be doing something if we were out of debt our problem was that we were not out of debt and that was really a catalyst for me to kind of get things rolling to go through FPU and we started through the day's plan the baby steps I love to go to vintage shows so for me to have to give up going to those shows was very hard I had to also sell off many of my treasures David told me if you give it up now you'll have the freedom to go find those treasures again in July 2015 we came to Nashville into the studio and we did our debt-free screen all right David and Gail they got out of debt while they were retired and they did it with cash flow $82,000 paid off in 36 months making a hundred and twenty a year count it down let's hear a debt free screen three two one [Music] what was important to me was that we have our kids and our grandkids right there with us at the time that meant a lot to me it showed them that they can do anything in life that they need to do but they need to be debt free too and so to me they kids being there with some I'm getting choked out sorry it's just thinking about it well you've not only changed your life and giving a lot of people hope but your kids your grandkids are watching yes and they'll talk about this for 20 years you know they'll talk about this for 30 years I remember that time I watched my my grandmother and my grandfather do that you know it's it's it's never too late to start never too late to do that here we are retired I was 65 Gail's 63 and we were kind of cruising along there and we decided we're gonna start this so it's it's never too late to start and for us it's wow we look back and of course we had the regrets like why didn't we do this when we were 20 or 30 but you can't roll that time back but you can start now and and for us that was a new beginning for us and been exciting the whole mortgage home buying process is snow complicated more so today than their very intimidating you know what takes away the intimidation is not let's go and that begins the journey all the way down to the ultimate goal of baby step six and becoming a hundred percent debt-free house and everything one of the things we do is we provide homebuyer workshops these homebuyer workshops provide them great information we call it our smarter mortgage plane and it helps them get through step one two three four five and we actually focus then on step six and getting them in the home out of the loan out of debt so great too and that's why this partnership is work you guys are thinking about our listener who has a set goal how you can participate in them achieving it and that's the beauty of this Churchill with Ramsey solutions marriage [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thanks for joining us America CNBC reported that a record number of Americans are millionaires last year apparently there is about ten point eight million millionaires which was up four hundred thousand from the year before so how are these people doing it are they hitting the million dollar net worth status and how long did it take them to get there well you can find out when we interview only millionaires on our millionaire theme hour we feature stories of people like you and what they did that reached a millionaire status practical steps nearly anybody can do it for a list of ways to find the show just go to Dave Ramsey comm slash show the millionaire theme hour is tomorrow Thursday for most of you listening to me right now and make sure you tune in and listen it is engaging because it's me interviewing real millionaires now a millionaire is not someone who makes a million dollars a year income is now you calculate millionaire status once someone is a millionaire the very definition of it is a million-dollar net worth your net worth is what you own minus what you owe equals your net worth so if you're debt-free it's simply the total of what you own you're paid for house your 401k your rentals your company you own whatever it is you own add it up equals your net worth - of course what you owe equals your net worth when that equals 1 million dollars so if you have a $300,000 paid for house and $700,000 in your mutual funds and you have no debt in the 7 or thousand in your 401k 7 plus 3 is you know 10 or 1 million then there you go you have a 1 million dollar net worth by the way if you are a millionaire and you want to call them be part of that all you got to do is just get in touch with us that Dave on-air at Dave Ramsey calm one-word no-spaces no dashes Dave on there at Dave Ramsey comm Kelly our Associate Producer picks up those emails but millionaire the status and say I'm a mime a net worth millionaire and I'm willing to come on and be interviewed by Dave because I want to ask you how you did that so that other people listening can say I want to live the American dream of success I want to be financially successful I want to be able to leave my children better than me I want to I want to be the next notch in the family tree in a positive way how do you do that The Millionaire theme our this data is absolutely amazing it's amazing and we've been doing a detailed in-depth millionaire research project that we're pulling together the data on that chris hogan has been working on that is just absolutely amazing David is with us and Sterling Illinois hi David how are you good how are you better than I deserve what's up got a question I'm retired military and I have my investment account through USAA and curious if I should use that that service is free or should I use the smart investor and pay their fees to manage my investment well the only reason you would pay fees is if you got better returns on your investments that more than covered the fees that would be the only reason you would do that that would that be the only logical reason to do that so I've not had a lot of interaction with USAA's investment people generally speaking banks and credit unions which USAA is a credit union by and large they think like banks and credit unions they don't think like investment people and so most of the people that work doing investments inside of a bank aren't the top people in the business there's exceptions I've got a good friend that works for a bank that's an investment guy and he's a he's brilliant he knows his stuff but he's the exception and so if you've got somebody good and you're getting great rates of return are you invested in good mutual funds well I just took all my put it into a cash option everything was going in S&P 500 Ryan only and it's been doing very well but other people say you know it's kind of sketchy with the whole stock market right now with S&P 500 me it's so high yeah other people are stupid and broke okay the it is sketchy and the only short term it might go up or might go down but no I'm not gonna not be in the stock market just because it's up that's last year the S&P was up 19.4% those people that are worried about the stock market being sketchy just missed a 20% return on investment in one year that's how dumb that is okay so anyway aside from that I'm gonna stay invested in the market I do not invest as my primary vehicle S&P 500 I spread in mine across mutual funds that outperform the SP I personally use a smart Wester Pro to do that and so you know my the mutual funds that I have in my personal 401k have beat the SP every year and it's not you know it's really not rocket science to find mutual funds that do better than the SP and so it's you know very very very possible so like for instance over the last 20 years my mix has made eight and a half percent the espy's made two 7.12 over the last 40 years my mix has made 13 point oh four percent if some piece done eleven point eight just to kind of give you an idea and so that's the fun that's a particular funds that I have picked now you can pick funds however you want but but if you're USAA guy if they're all just saying do S&P 500 then you do need to move because you can do better than that okay and you would do enough better to cover the fees and put net of fees you would you can beat the SP so yeah check a smart investor Pro sit down talk to him about it but you're looking for someone that has the heart of a teacher in other words they're not telling you what to do they're telling you how it works and then you decide if you want to do that that's the way a proper investment broker assists you about 85% of people that do investment brokerage are in the sales business about 15% are in the teaching business you want the teachers you want the people with the heart of a teacher that will sit down with you and you come away knowing how to handle your money and you learn the statistics and the evidence and so forth like I was just showing you there and then based on that you make your decision and that that's the way to go at it so yeah I mean there's nothing to lose to sit down and talk to a smart investor pro just click on smart vest at Dave Ramsey comm put in your info it'll drop down a list of people in your area that we endorse that's the smart investor pros that have the heart of a teacher you can choose which one you want to sit down with and they don't charge anything to sit down with them and just go okay here's what I'm doing now can you beat that enough to justify your fees and if they say no what you're doing now I just stay with it then that makes a lot of difference it changes everything so hey thanks for the call open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five you know we're talking about millionaires and then we take that call one of the things we're finding is we're studying millionaires is that the vast majority of them seventy something percent actually used someone to teach them they have someone in their corner like a smart investor pro type person and and that's a big deal that's almost all of them I mean if you have them do it on their own but his question well he wasn't doing on your own his question was do you do it with a bank or with an investment professional and I just prefer investment professionals because more times you're going to get you know a higher quality again there's exceptions all you guys are so investments and banks I'm not mad at you you're just not in an environment most of those I mean the banks all they think about to getting people on debt they don't think about investing it's not what they're there for and of course investment professionals they don't deal with that so all they've got to do is help you with investments it's all they do so it's real easy you know the if you get somebody in your corner and you invest in good growth stock mutual funds I spread mine across a forth and each growth growth and income aggressive growth and international when I do that as I just said I've out prefer gonna pick funds that outperform the S&P then I I'll perform the S&P wallah it's really just not that big a deal this is the Dave Ramsey show [Music] my name is Patti Whitehead I grew up outside of Athens Georgia and I'm an attorney in Nashville so I just spent a lot of money on clothes and shopping and never really thought about it until I needed to house my apartment my dad's will open up a credit card some more months later when finals times came around and you were down to almost zero in your bank account Oh finals are over we need to go celebrate I started thinking wow this is gonna be this is gonna be an issue this time all my credit cards were maxed out and they have closed them but it got to the point where I couldn't feed myself that I went to my friend and said something needs to change here because I would just stay up at night crying and my friend is like you should go to Financial Peace University hey guys I'm Christy right I am so excited to tell you about the business boutique Academy y'all this is a crash course in business but it's a lot more fun and convenient than any college class this exclusive online community gives you everything you need to start run or grow your business so whether you're just getting started or you're currently running a small business the Academy gives you valuable tools and resources to turn your dream into a reality with the Academy you'll get your own personal business health check this is an assessment that gives you a customized report as well as personalized advice and action steps based on that report you'll also have access to the video training library where I teach you step by step how to grow your business and reach your goals another exciting part of the Academy is the community where you can connect with other women on the same journey as you you can also ask them questions get feedback share your progress and celebrate your successes together no matter where you are in your journey the business boutique Academy is for you join today at business boutique calm think about all the passwords your brain has to remember it's impossible right so instead of coming up with new passwords every time you open an account most people just give the same password over and over and over again that's not a good idea remember the yahoo breach yeah that one breach alone affected over 3 billion users yeah that's why I'm a huge fan of LastPass LastPass generates and stores and creates strong unique passwords to keep you safe and secure no more guessing your password and getting you locked out of your account LastPass manages and organizes all your accounts with your logins and unique passwords in one safe place and you can access them from your computer or your mobile device I personally use LastPass and I love it so join over 13 million LastPass users including myself and start managing and securing your passwords today try LastPass premium for personal use or LastPass families for your entire family visit LastPass calm slice knife and try it for free [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you for joining us America we're glad you're here Haley's with us in Atlanta Georgia hi Haley how are you Dave I'm good how are you better than I deserve what's up well I'm calling because I have a 2011 Hyundai Sonata that I got when I turned 18 I'm 21 now and it has 92 thousand miles on it and I still owe about 13 thousand on it it's only worth about three thousand but who said is worth $3,000 um when I took it to the Hyundai dealership that's what they told me okay that's not that's not accurate information so let's move ahead what's your question okay well pretty much I've taken luck on multiple times to get fixed my boyfriend husband went for about eight years has paid for to get fixed and within the past couple months we've spent about five to six thousand on it one and the last time I took it the guy told me that my car was a lemon and I should pretty much get probably trade it in for a new car yeah but he did okay yeah you're gonna fix with the dealer why you're getting it fixed at the dealer I'm not the dealership I brought it to someone that someone that my grandpa knows but she's always taken his card to get fixed at home but it still was costing what do you I want it fixed about 13,000 on it I assume you don't have any money no not to what is your income throw at the car yearly is twenty four thousand three hundred okay we mean not to throw a car you have some money no I've been out of work for a little while so you don't have any money have a thirteen thousand dollar loan on this car that's a piece of crap okay gotcha yeah alright I think it's worth more than three though I think that's probably the wholesale value and they saw a 23 year old young lady standing in front of them and so it's probably even below wholesale when I want you to is jump online at KBB Kelley Blue Book dot-com and look at where I've at sale on a 2011 Hyundai Sonata with ninety two thousand miles enter all that information in and it will tell you what you can put it on Craigslist and sell it for my guess is it's probably more like seven okay maybe eight somewhere in there that's my guess oh you're still in the hole though okay yeah yeah and pretty much I believe that they said it was only worth that much because after me my boyfriend who we lived together we were in a car accident and so he had a used my car for a while and he wrecked the side of it and so that's about three thousand like five hundred worth the three thousand five hundred worth of damage he wrecked your car and you didn't get it fixed yeah right there and gonna get it fixed he does have the money to get it fixed but we just we just haven't done it yeah how much money does he have um he has about close to seven games that was insane okay um alright so here's what we're gonna do okay you need to find out what the car will bring even with the ding on it okay really not and that dealer is gonna buy a car in such a way they can resell it for a profit okay that's what that's what they're trying to do and there's nothing evil about that it's just what they it's the business that they're in when you sell the car with a ding in the side what can you sell it for and you've got to figure that out by doing some research Kelley Blue Book is a good place to start okay now maybe he should give you the money since he tore your car up for what the car is worth versus what it should be worth it were it fixed that'll help with the situation and he did the damage yeah maybe you should have done that already okay but uh tear up somebody's car you ought to give them the money to fix their car it's a pretty simple equation so alright so then that now who do you owe this money to the car loan is through Wells Fargo is that a local bank you've been dealing with or just something you got the car lot um just a local bank okay go in and sit down and talk to your banker it's gonna be tough with Wells Fargo but usually we'd like to see a credit union or a small local bank Wells Fargo's you're more of a number but go sit down with them and see if you can get them to loan you the difference to sell the car so let's say that the car will bring six thousand dollars as is your boyfriend gives you the two thousand dollars for tearing it up that's eight then that leaves you five in the hole we need your bank to loan you that five and then you need to get a very very very very inexpensive car like a thousand or two thousand dollar car okay you're actually gonna know it thank you yeah you're actually gonna move down in car temporarily until you can get the debts cleared up and then save up and move back up in car so hey thanks for the call I hope that helps you open phones at triple eight eight to five five two to five Adrian is in Phoenix Arizona hey Adrian how are you I'm doing better than I deserve what's up I just got picked up at a or I just finished flight school so I just got offered a position an airline where they're offering me a ten thousand dollar bonus good I've got about twenty two thousand dollars worth of debt and what my question is my car I owe about forty five hundred dollars on so I was gonna pay that off with the bonus but my wife's car is paid off but it's got about a quarter million miles on it and I feel like it's on its last leg what I was wondering is taking the other five trading in the wife's car and going on buying you know something used that we can afford with cash instead of throwing the rest of that bonuses debt does she work outside the home no she's pregnant now and she's bringing in money from her GI Bill so she's bringing in about so with fifteen hundred bucks a month so with your new job what will you be making yeah it'll be about fifty a year okay plus she's got eighteen so your household income is now sixty eight thousand a year if you throw forty five hundred and the car debt out of twenty two thousand right then that gets us down to about seventeen five making seventy if you use the rest of the money for another car okay yes so is her car runs though right yes but the transmission pump is starting to fail and I really don't want to put in a newborn baby in an O six outback that's you know driven across the country five times already also give her give her your car what was that I said so give her your car I it's a stick she doesn't know how to drive stick I've tried all right yeah any cuz you're gonna be out of town you'll be flying yeah I'm probably gonna buy her a little bit of a car here but whatever you do you pay cash for okay in no circumstances no debt and then you and then you guys have to commit to with no car payments we're gonna rent a new job we're gonna roll up our sleeves are gonna be on a written budget and we're going to tack this over seventeen five and debt with a vengeance oh yeah we've been college students living off the GI Bill and it's been a variable income for the last two years that's been kind of rough okay well just keep living like that and throw all the money at the debt all right yeah that's what the plan was I just didn't know what it was you know should I go out and buy something or should I risk cars so it's not a lot of car and yeah and plus whatever hers will bring it's not gonna bring much but so maybe a six or seven thousand dollar car whatever the old one will bring but yeah that's that's probably smart thing to do it gives you a basis you're out of town you're not worrying with you know your new job as a pilot you're flying you're gone and you're not worried about your wife or the baby on the side of the road that doesn't make sense in this case but we're again we're not buying too much car and we're certainly not only to do it if you're going into debt to do it I would just say sell your car and get her a better car and you drive the old beat-up piece of crap but you could do that actually still because you're not driving much except back and forth to the airport so you're done you just got to get to the airport so you get doing you can actually Hoover over there if you wanted to so you could go that direction but this is okay it's an OK way to do it long as you lean in and finish out but paying off the debt as soon as possible make sure you do that because it sets your family up to win dude this is the Dave Ramsey show [Music] [Music] one of the things that makes the Dave Ramsey show unique from other shows is that we genuinely care about our listeners that's why we're intentional about choosing advertisers that we know will serve our listeners well blinds.com is no exception for years I've been telling you how amazing these guys are blinds.com offers high quality window treatments at unbelievable prices and their customer service is unbeatable they make buying measuring and installing blinds fun affordable and shockingly easy and if you accidentally miss measure or pick the wrong color they'll remake your blinds for free when you're looking for window blinds the only place you need to go is blinds calm with blinds calm you get free samples free shipping and when you use the promo code Ramzi you'll save even more take advantage of this week's special promotional offer when you go to blinds.com and use the promo code Ramsey [Music] [Music] so we had some friends over and their whole people like me I mean in their late 50s early 60s that kind of thing and we were all sitting around talking we said what are some things that we miss that are no longer made from our childhood items and there are some funny things that came up but one of the guys piped up and said I miss having a car I can work on you see in our era we could turn a wrench I changed the engine out and my cars changed the transmission out in my cars and certainly change the spark plugs and set the timing with an old thing called a distributor cap that you don't have anymore all these kinds of things and you know I kind of miss it I kind of don't miss it I like having cars I don't have to work on right thank goodness we financially graduated to that point there was something uniquely do-it-yourself about if your car broke you can fix it the battery went out on my wife's car the other day I couldn't even get the stuff off from around it Martin Lee to get the bat to get to it to try to charge it and then when I did the computer all shut down and you know you had to reboot the car as ice out of my league now so one of the things I like her I like cars so I I just bought a 1960 because I was born in 1960 classic Corvette one of the benefits of that that I didn't think about is is that I can actually work on it the other day I had a little trouble getting it started and I knew exactly what to do to tinker on it to get that engine running it's kind of fun now that's a great car I mean it's a hot rod it's been rebuilt and the suspensions not much because those old suspensions weren't very tight now I've also got I'm a Corvette guy I've also got a new Corvette now the chances of me being able to touch that new Corvette under that engine zero couldn't help anything if it was broken I'd be done I'm completely done I've hired someone else to work on something I don't know how to do during your taxes exactly the same way back in the old days I don't know taxes were simple the your life was simple it's not simple now and there's nothing simple no matter how simple your life is about your taxes and so doing it yourself on your taxes is like me trying to work on that new Corvette now I understand the mentality because I've got the old one and I enjoy that idea but I don't do my own taxes anymore and I don't work on my own cars anymore now is that because I'm some rich guy no it's because I've learned to hire someone to do work I don't know how to do it's done more efficiently I don't break things it saves me money the average person using software spends 791 dollars more on their income tax bill than the average person using an income tax professional there you go don't do it yourself it's like working on one of these new cars it's kind of dumb get somebody else to do it and you save money and you don't bust your knuckles up hey I'm Rachel Cruz as you'd imagine growing up as Dave Ramsey's kid I learned a lot about how money works everything from working giving saving spending and avoiding debts now the things my parents used with us kids growing up is now a tool that you can use with your own kids and secretly it's something I'm so excited to use with my own children it's called financial peace jr. this amazing tool is designed for kids 3 to 12 years old and it's so easy for you parents because it comes to them and a fun workbook for your kids full of exciting activities and with a magnetic tour chart your kids are actually going to enjoy keeping up with their chores yes I'm serious they'll understand that working hard brings rewards and why it makes sense to keep working they'll also get an envelope system something I use growing up with saving spending and giving envelopes to introduce the idea of managing their own money with financial peace jr. you'll also get a digital copy of the number-one New York Times bestseller that I wrote with my dad smart money smart kids and you'll get two free video lessons from the smart money smart kids class now is the time to start teaching your kids how to handle money and it's even more fun with financial peace junior order financial peace junior today in anticipation of Rachael Cruz joining Dave in the third hour I thought I'd read a little excerpt from her best-selling book love your life not theirs enjoy too many people allow cultural expectations that is other people to dictate their own values and family priorities I've been there too I know it's an empty and endless battle to try to keep up you feel like a hamster on a wheel running as hard and fast as you can and ultimately going nowhere doing that for a lifetime will leave you completely exhausted but your life doesn't have to look like that there is hope there is an antidote there is one and only one cure to comparison living and that is contentment well said Rachael well said sacrifice determination you can be intentional about your character you've gotta be on the same page today we're calling to let you know we're debt-free house and everything you have done really really good and you're not gonna quit than a huge witness for us to be able to share that it was time to get serious intentionality people to success this is your show America I know at 22 what I know now our lives would be better is the show that's changing in the world now you don't listen you live it live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions it's the Dave Ramsey show where Dad is dumb cash is king in the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice I'm Dave Ramsey your host thanks for joining us open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five that's triple eight eight two five five two two five Terra is with us in Sacramento California hi Tara welcome to the Dave Ramsey show hi Dave are you better than I deserve how are you I'm good thank you it's an honor to be talking to you you too how can I help so I'm a pretty new listener and I am just starting on the baby steps so I'll try to make it quick I mean my fiance together make about 50,000 a year this year we're hoping to get sixty to sixty five thousand we are sixty-five thousand in debt and in the summer of 2020 my fiancee is going to go to medical school and medical school is going to cost about 125 thousand so I'm between just trying to save they face they face so we don't have to be in any more debt or should I be working that debt snowball will be kind of like a zero when he starts medical school gotcha what uh what is it what kind of debt is the 65,000 mainly student loans I've got twelve thousand on a car forty-eight together in student loans and four thousand and motive for gotcha okay all right yeah I'm with you I think the first step is to the first step to getting out of debt is to not borrow anymore yeah and given that this has come given that this is coming at you fast only two years away you've got to get really really serious to pull this off and pay cash for it yeah that's that's how I'm feeling and he just got a second part-time job you in school doing its prereqs right now and I'm currently working looking for like a side gig you know so we can just try to make as much money yeah I mean here's the thing when you get up enough money in the bank to go to med school or it's within sight you know it's it's pretty close then you would start your debt snowball but I I'm not going to you know have you pay off debt then turn around borrow that's just that's that's yeah counterproductive and so yeah we don't borrow on one and pay off the other that doesn't make any sense at all so yeah let's just go in and say this is our goal we're gonna aim at this this is a special you know exception in our lives it's a special time in our lives and so you know we're gonna cash flow med school and then once we've got that going we're gonna be debt-free and start where I start working the debt snowball it's exactly how I would work it hey thanks for the call open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five Joan is with us in Baltimore Maryland hi Joan how are you come on Dave I'm fine how are you better than I deserve what's up mmm god bless you I was saved six years ago when my husband got diagnosed with ALS and so I spent I'm 64 I spent quite a bit of time living in the world making all the wrong mistakes and just recently I was introduced you in September took Financial Peace University and I'm currently in baby step number two yeah unfortunately with all the mistakes that my husband and I made and he since passed away but I'm blessed I have a great job and make 105 thousand a year um yeah except that I have a lot of debt still left that we haven't been able to pay off and I'm still putting the hundred dollars away in my 403b company doesn't match it because I'm so fortunate enough to have a pension but should I stop doing that and roll that into the debt snowball I I kind of feel like I'm at this point in my life I'm so close I'll never get a chance to build the wealth although I know the Lord can do whatever he wants so how much debt do you have now I have a parent plus one for my daughter 51,000 and I owe my mom 75,000 we had sold our house is on a short sale and we couldn't get a loan so she graciously gave us the money to buy all one for mobile home and I need to pay her that money back and because it's my mom and it's a bad witness and so I really have to search they only took that's the only two dads well I have about 6,000 in like store credit cards in a first line like an overdraft but that is being rapidly paid down on this step do it yeah okay why is your daughter not paying the Parent PLUS loan she has her own student loans she actually does the Parent PLUS ones are taken out of my name you know the agreement was that you were going to pay it when you took it out why it isn't actually like make an agreement and she has her and student when she just did now get a job she's got a fairly decent job making about $15 an hour so she's kind of getting on her feet okay well your your trailer loan is your baby step six item okay and so I feel like I need to get it to my mother sooner rather than later she's 89 and she needs the money back okay are you not paying her monthly payments I'm making a small monthly payment but she's had to go to assisted living and so that's running through her money and I'm getting worried she's gonna run out before I can get her all the money back you're not high I couldn't live myself with that mm-hmm okay and so what is the monthly did you have an agreement that you're supposed to pay monthly payments or what is the agreement with your mother no I'm supposed to be paying her $400 a month that's the agreement yes and you've been doing that yes okay all right and okay so are you the only child no I have a sister and a brother and and they and my sister actually does help her out financially with a lot of things but um yeah I'm the one that has you know the next biggest chunk of our money and I feel a responsibility because I don't want to damage our relationship with them no well you if you if you made an agreement with your mother and you are honoring the agreement I do not understand how the relationship is damaged okay I guess it's just me being guilty okay that's a different that's different then okay so yeah we've got to just manage that but that's different than you know somebody changing the deal on you so if you want to out of an abundance of guilt raise that four hundred to a thousand dollars a month you can do that just say I'm gonna pass dollars a month and then get the Parent PLUS loan paid off okay and then you do have plenty of time because you're gonna knock this all out within a year and a half you're only 64 you're making good money I mean you're probably gonna continue to do this job for until you're 70 but then you'll be once once your debt free house and everything you'll be able to really pile up some cash with me 50 thousand a year for four years or 200 thousand bucks plus you got the pension so you're gonna be okay it you just plan on working to 70 and you should have these cleared up by then of course so she passes away in the mean time that just comes out of your portion of the estate and that debt goes away [Music] what if you didn't have a car payment how much more could you be investing or listen what if you attack the house with baby step number six you've got a list of the baby steps at the front of this section and you didn't have a mortgage anymore and some of you are sitting in here you're like Chris I'm a little bit behind what if you were to take that mortgage payment because you paid off your house and you started to invest that mortgage payment how much ground could you catch up on how much traction could you gain and so you start to look at that I want you to realize regardless of where you are this plan works for any age at any stage and that's what I want you to do is start to wake up and see it for what it is so use baby step six as your house as an investment yes start to pay that payment toward investing sit down with an investment professional and really walk it through and talk but there's one thing that we're never gonna allow to go with us into retirement and that is debt I don't want you to carry debt into your retirement I had one guy he was a economics teacher at a university he goes Chris I was coaching him he goes mathematically speaking he said you and Dave talk about paying off the smallest card first that is mathematically incorrect and I just looked at and he goes you should pay off the highest interest rate first and I thought oh I can't wait for this one I said sir if we're doing math you wouldn't be in debt to begin with they just looked at me and he said proceed and he shut up right because you and I know it ain't about math this is about getting mad mad at the opportunity cost mad at stop building their legacy and let's start building your own so it's about momentum I want you to pick up that little debt you got first you know that little tiny one the little three four hundred dollar one it's probably like a Lowe's or store Department card attack it and I want you to put a line through it because what that line represents is yes you can and then I want you to take all the other payments and pay minimums on the rest and attack this next one have a garage sale sell some stuff get this debt out of your life and what happens using the debt snowball is as you gain momentum and you attack things you start to move forward and get more of these out of your life now some of you sitting out here you may have some student loan debt those are a little bit bigger they take more time but don't ever consolidate your debts I want to keep them separate so I can attack them and feel the momentum surge and listen if you've got dead it can take 12 to 18 months to attack it and get it out of your life it depends on how big it is but you've got to see and understand how important it is the opportunity cost and that your income is your number one wealth building tool [Music] so I purchased the timeshare back in 1997 because I was looking for something to do with my kids over the course of 15 or so years that we used it and we went a lot of really fun places irreplaceable memories no doubt by 2012 I had a third child who was then 9 years old but my older two had graduated from high school times did change and we wanted the freedom of being able to enjoy vacations wherever we can go when we can go then I did see some advertising for timeshare exit team I was absolutely elated because I had had so much regret and remorse over the years for having gotten into the timeshare and I was extremely impressed with how professional they were and how straightened to the point they were in getting me out of my timeshare time changes everything if your timeshare no longer fits your life call the team that can talk to you about options for your timeshare called timeshare exit team today or go to timeshare exit team comm [Applause] [Music] thanks for joining us America we're glad you're here this is the Dave Ramsey show Paul is with us in Arizona hi Paul how are you better than I deserve sir how can I help would you like a financial background before I ask my 401k question to my employer no I'll just go ahead and fire it and we'll work into it okay give me an 8% I put any percent they put in 6 December 4% and it's percent the next two so it turns out to be about a 14% employee and company contributions okay they sent me a packet of all these funds and what I read on everything it says US bond unless bond cash it doesn't thinking about mutual funds in here at all and I was wondering if this is something I want them guys traveling in or probably better off going into a store investor Pro and setting up some Roth IRAs my wife and I highly unusual like almost never happens that a 401k has no growth stock mutual funds in it okay you must be reading something wrong because then they would leave themselves exposed under ERISA guidelines 404 Rome and so they there's something wrong there I mean they they have to offer all 401ks need to offer a bond fund they need to offer you know a cash account on a money market type account a guaranteed type account and then offer a series of different kinds of mutual funds is the typical pattern now if you've got only bond funds that you're seeing I wonder if you if your packet is incomplete sponsor six which is even I mean I can't stand in Wells Fargo but they at least should know what I'm talking about here I mean so you're saying how many funds are how many options does your 401k have what's about 20 different investments I could get into okay I'm sorry American balance did you say American fund yeah American Growth Fund american funds american balance are for conservation of capital don't read me the description okay the thing is the american funds is a brand of funds okay within that brand there should be a huge possibly you saying there's four or five different funds from american here you said balance that's one of them and that that's not all bonds that's partially bonds but it's not all bonds you've got american 5 0 pacific growth okay euro pacific grove as an international okay alright and what else see that's only ones left on american so there's some more dodging and it comes women you just said there was four and then I've only heard - yeah I thought there was four my foot my apology okay alright and dodging and who else is in there Metropolitan West hole he wrote the king real price excellent good good there'll be some of those are growth stock mutual funds probably okay you call them and actually find out what all these are you can have them dissect them one by one yeah if you read the name of it of the type of fund the title of the actual fund itself not-not-not they over in other words american funds is a brand american balanced fund is a particular fund instantly I know what that is American Europe Pacific instantly I know what that is okay and so once you look at that because when he says Euro Pacific once I tell you you're investing in Europe and in the Pacific right that's what it means and that and that's going to be an international stock mutual fund and which by the way that particular fund has done very well so that's an excellent international to put in if you're picking the four I talked about what are your t rowe price let's just work on in a second what does son do you see the names of the funds and the t rowe price i do it says p real price retirement 2016 retirement 2040 they just five years okay that sounds like those are groups of funds not a jungle fund okay okay look at the 2040 and does it have any breakdown in it yeah gives us the amount of stock non-us stock the US bond in the cash okay now that may be a particular fund and i wouldn't wear that named any of them about that far out but that one's probably gonna be one of your growth stock funds because it's probably thinking long term so here's what to do okay just holler to smart mister pro tell me you're looking at opening an IRA and um look at your 401k stuff they don't make anything on your 401 k but they'll help you with it and they'll sit down with you and unpack that and or you can get with your personnel team and do it but i'd rather you do with a smart mister pro and then you can you know you can reward them later by giving them your business if you want to do additional stuff in the IRA or you want to get your kids college fund started or something along those lines but it sounds like this 401 k with twenty different options i heard a couple of things there that i know we're probably okay and I'm gonna guess and say tiros a good family of funds when I guess and say you're in they're not a fan of MetLife at all anything to do for that matter but but look at the fund I mean maybe it's got a good track record I've just never bought it and there's because I can't stand that company but you know just look at it and figure out you know what you're doing there and and so forth and so by the way it's a MetLife as a whole life life insurance company just in case you guys are not grasping what my deal is here so that decided to get in the mutual fund business no thanks it's not where I'm going but uh anyway so that that's what I'm under and yeah I get with your smart Vista Pro and have them help you unpack it line by line and you can get into it I don't I don't think it's gonna work doing it on the radio it's a nice try but I think the I think you've got what you need there and you're getting a good match so I'm probably going to do that 401k before I would do Roth IRAs with the smart Wester Pro liz is in Tacoma Washington hi Liz how are you hi Dave thank you for taking my call sure what's up so we currently own a home my husband and I we have a take home pay about fifty three hundred dollars a month and our mortgage is nineteen sixty a month so it's about thirty six varies because I'm self-employed so some days it's more but it's about thirty six to forty percent of her take-home and we're thinking of selling it we bought it as a you got it as a good deal we have enough equity where we would sell that we would make a good chunk of money and so we are wondering if this would be a good move for us or not if your incomes are not going to go up dramatically in the next two to three years yes no they probably won't okay why you're self-employed why's your income not going to go up well we have small children we have three small children and for me to keep working more I have to put all three of them and daycare and that's really expensive for us gotcha okay because I mean if you got your income from fifty four hundred about seventy four hundred all of a sudden this house makes sense if you like if you like the house do you have other debt no we don't we only have this house and we were thinking of if we sold it we stopped contributing to our kids accounts because you know we had to feed them and I had to keep working so we had to pay for childcare so we were thinking that if we sold it we could catch them out catch ourselves up with our savings account for emergency fund and then start saving and we would really like to buy something and have it paid off like buy something cash I love that idea okay that goes to the other end of the spectrum I don't have a problem with you selling it it's just if you love the house and you see your income trajectory going up fast enough that it's not a permanent thing but it sounds like it's stressing you on several levels and has been for awhile and so it sounds like it would be a relief to be out of this thing the way you're describing the situation so I'm with you yeah I'd sell it hey thanks for the call this is the Dave Ramsey show [Music] [Music] [Music] so like these lights right I bought them just the way that they are slob they've got chips in them they've got cracks in them they've got like little brush marks that I can't seem to clean away but I think they're gorgeous these lights kind of connect to that journey in the sense that they're not perfect but they do exactly what I need them to do and so I I collect old things and try to make them new again because I think it's part of loving and embracing your past but still seeing how beautiful those things can be for your future okay so my name is Michelle I am from Detroit originally and I live in Chicago what else did you want me to tell you I didn't have debt until I went away to college so I was lucky and that I got a lot of support to go to college but I ultimately did have to take out a small amount of student loans but then you know like after I graduated I was quote unquote successful so I was supposed to be living the dream so I acquired more debt and more debt birthday so I think it just began to snowball from there my father always said god bless the child has its own so my thing was if I want it then I need to own it myself I need to have it myself but I also had a very strong sense I guess what Dave would call stuff entitlement like I needed to reward myself for all the good things that I've ever done so shopping is my gig tonight I bought a condo before I got into you and I thought I've got this condo and I can't furnish it unless I use a credit card like I just didn't want to do that so I guess you could say that was my turning point I read the book and then I also start listening to the radio show so the radio show was super impactful to me and my journey because I would hear these families making less money than I made alone and I think I'm thinking to myself why is this so hard for me if it's so easy for them they have four or five miles to feed and it's just me and I don't eat that much I don't think and the first maybe two or three credit cards were very small it was very easy sounds like this is a piece of cake I can do this and I cut those cards up but I had two cards that had large credit lines thank you large limits so if I cut them up and close these accounts I'm gonna do 80% of what Dave tells me and the 20% means I'm not cutting nice cards up before you know it it goes from being paid off to being edits limited and so the first time it happened I said to myself okay you're human it's okay to make mistakes and I took the cards and instead of carrying them with me I put them in a drawer in my bedroom of course it charged the cards back up again for the third time I don't think it really hit me until I paid off my student loans I could have been out of debt so much earlier had I just cut the cards up so once I got like extremely frustrated and went ahead I cut the cards up I closed the accounts which was a little unnerving but after I paid off my my last big debt which was my student loans and saw how quickly I saved my baby step number three it gave me a sense of relief a big sense of relief [Music] [Music] what is it that you can do to be your life more seriously how much you have a written plan for your life and I want you to have it for your money learning to steer clear that helps you live caliber of your life is going to depend upon the choices you make right [Music] listen up small business owners no one knows better than I do how important it is to keep track of your business expenses I remember those days if just one person doesn't pay it can throw your world into a tailspin and that's why I'm excited to tell you guys about fresh books fresh books is a cloud accounting software that makes billing painless it's ridiculously easy to use and it allows you to track time capture expenses and customize and create professional-looking invoices you can also get paid online right from your invoice meaning you get paid faster plus fresh books lives in the cloud so you can securely access it from your desktop phone or tablet wherever you are find out why over 10 million users just like you are already using fresh books start your 30-day free trial today at FreshBooks dot-com / Dave Ramsey and make sure to enter the Dave Ramsey show in the how did you hear about us section [Music] [Music] thank you for joining us are you starting to prepare your taxes we want to encourage you to pay off debt this tax season and we're excited to announce that we have an all new debt-free bundle for only $39.99 it helps you get organized and pay off your debt the debt free bundle includes the Total Money Makeover book a starter envelope system the debt snowball DVD the dumping debt DVD the cash flow planning DVD the every dollar guide the budgeting and the high performance achievement audio lesson it's an incredible bundle of information get you pumped up get you own tasks get this going ready for tax season it's the debt-free bundle $39.99 you can get it at Dave Ramsey calm in the store or you can call customer care they'll help you do it triple 822 peace triple eight two two seven three two two three Lauren is in Tampa hey Lauren how are you hi Dave to talk to you today what's up I just really started understanding more of the emergency fund part so I do have a thousand dollars saved up in my emergency fund but I'm kind of in a little bit of an issue right now so I have no debt no school loans anything pay for school off myself and I have a car that has two hundred and something thousand miles on it and it probably will last me about a year but I don't have my three to six months expenses saved up and I do I am you know investing in retirement but my question for you is should I focus on my three to six months of expenses or focus on you know building a car fund so I can pay off a car you know in cash because I I don't want to have a car payment which one would be more important what is your income I make 43 a year you're single yes in your home I'm 25 good good for you what do you do for a living I am a store manager a retail company yes okay good very good okay so you sounds like you kind of a drive-by understanding of the baby steps but let's go back and review when you're doing baby steps 1 2 & 3 you don't do anything at all no saving no investing until you accomplish each one of those in order then when you get to baby step 4 that's 15% of your income going into retirement and so what that says is you should if you're gonna follow the baby steps plan which is obviously what I tell people to do then you're gonna stop investing temporarily okay temporarily okay now we're stop investing temporarily now man you have one thousand dollars saved so far yes I have about three thousand dollars total but I do you know live by myself so I have all the goals for myself to pay okay but youyou say you have three thousand dollars not one thousand dollars yes yes always an emergency fund and then my rent and stuff like that same yes the other 2000 is doing what just hovering in the checking account to pay bills you know apartment stuff like that yeah that's like last month's paycheck you're saying yes all kind of I I try to keep it just in case something does happen to my car because it is you know about thirteen years old let's stop all right you need to have a budget each month where your paycheck is spent on paper completely before the month begins any money that's not in that as monthly expenses needs to be set near emergency fund if you have an emergency with your car you use some of the emergency fund so take that two thousand dollar slush money that's just kind of slopping around in the checking account and move it over with the thousand to keep your hands off of it and then start doing a monthly budget and then if the car gives you a problem you reach over and get a little of that money and fix the car wait okay so start doing a budget with your monthly check but you're saying that $2,000 is kind of slush money it's kind of us a pad right yeah let's just move it over and call it what it is or what it should be which is an emergency fund it same thing you're using it as an emergency fund only thing you might be using it for in addition to emergencies is if you sloppily don't do your budget well okay all right so we're gonna fix that because you're gonna get on every dollar calm get your budgeting app it's free downloaded start using the every dollar budget app and do a monthly budget where every dollar has a name every dollars under control every dollar has an assignment now we got three thousand and we're working on what we call baby step three you stop your retirement savings temporarily and let's add to the three thousand very very very quickly I think you can add a thousand dollars a month okay yeah to that okay and so once you do that if we start with three and we do that for six months that gives us nine okay right and then I want you to start saving in a separate account nine is enough for your emergency fund that is in the three to six months of expenses range isn't it yeah okay yes I was gonna say almost ten so perfect night okay if you want to make it ten I don't care then open a little savings account another one and start throwing as much as you can a thousand minimum but more if you can for your car okay and when we got five six thousand bucks in there let's move up in car perfect in cash so if we do this at $1,000 a month starting today in one year you're driving a $6,000 $6,000 more expensive plus your car whatever it brings okay so an $8,000 car that's paid for in cash you have $10,000 in your emergency fund then you will be ready to start your baby step four restart your retirement it'll take you about a year to do that if that if you only do $1,000 a month now if you tighten this budget down and you do 1,500 a month you're either going to get there faster or you're gonna get a better car one of the two we're gonna pay cash so and you know and if you take an extra job and you do some other stuff on the side you know boom you pick up some extra hours I don't know whatever I don't care but you know if you if you added 10,000 dollars to the equation somehow over the next 12 months Wow I mean not only are not only you get there faster but and you get a better car but then you're going to get quicker and get your retirement plan started back again and at that point you start putting 15% of your income away as your baby step 4 and then if you want start saving towards the houses that's when I would do it so that's the reason for laying these things out in very specific order instead of trying to do three or four things at once so you're trying to kind of keep a slush fund trying to work on the emergency fund trying to do the retirement and now we're trying to do the car so no one at a time stopped the retirement temporarily do the emergency fund tighten up the budget then move on to save them for the car then move back to the retirement then you're gonna do each one of those well in that order so really good question you're gonna do this if you need some help but you're working on it call me back that's what I'm here for open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five I'm glad you're with us America it's a free call a triple eight eight two five five two two five cody is in Fort Wayne Indiana hi Cody how are you doing are you better than I deserve what's up well my wife and I are wanting to buy a house come this time next year um we make thirty five thousand a year combined at the moment I plan on that and going up this year she didn't raise within the next couple weeks and I'm supposed to be getting a raise as well at work I don't have much debt I do have a tool bill for work I'm I work for an auto dealership and they are clicking through a through training to becoming all the technician through them right so now you're a major and oh I've got a double when that's completed right I sure hope so as long as the work is there there's a lot of Easter family when it comes to the auto profession but you have a toolbox and build air tools that I have how much is your head on your tools that's about four grand okay all right well we teach folks to do Cody is you guys take these incomes as they're going up here which is good and you manage every dollar make every dollar behave build your emergency fund get your debt paid off first and build your emergency fund and then and only then start saving for a house I don't know if you're gonna make it by next spring unless your income goes up dramatically during that time it might though I mean your income could double during that time and then you might have a good down payment plus your emergency fund plus fee debt free that's the way to get after that problem [Music] being debt-free makes me super confident and knowing my value in my work and what I what I can contribute and what I'm not willing to take I will tell you that I'm at a point in my career where I'm a little brazen and I think I feel that way because at the end of the day if I lose my job tomorrow I'm gonna be okay so I got my first tattoo last weekend I've got to show you guys it says persevere on my arm and the reason I got this tattoo is because it means something to me and I want to be able to see it every day I want to be able to see it to remind myself that anything I put my mind to I can do it I want to remind myself that I paid off one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and 27 months I want to remind myself that it was not easy just like getting this tattoo was not easy it was very hard even when I thought I was gonna tell the lady to stop once she did the fee I allowed her to keep going and that was you know kind of what my financier journey was right it was these moments where I thought I wasn't gonna be able to go and I had to start all over again and get paying off my credit cards three times but I think everybody can persevere my advice to anybody who wants to become debt free or who wants to just accomplish any big goal in life is to just take it in small digestible bites and know that it's not always gonna be easy you know that you may have to persevere and know that at the end on the other side you will come out stronger and better for having going through it and you know being debt free as my Testament [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey guys George camel here did you know that every five minutes a like button goes unliked on a screen near you pitch in and do your part and donate alike today you might even save the like [Music] people all over the country are in need of a good dentist but don't want to break the bank at the same time great dentists are looking for new patients to help at one dental calm our task is to help connect the two with discount dental plans a discount dental plan is like a membership club where you pay a little each year and save a lot each time you use the plan this works because there are over eight million members dentists like this too because they get more patients and can keep their practice running to start your savings pick the dental plan that's best for you choose a dentist that's nearby and save 15 to 60 percent on the dental work you need join us today at one dental com there's no waiting and you can use the plan immediately everyone is accepted and there are no limits on use one dental com [Music] [Applause] [Music] thanks for joining us America we're glad you're here open phones of triple eight eight two five five two two five matters in Fort Lauderdale hey Matt how are you hey thank you for taking my call enjoy meeting you this weekend thank you sir how can I help okay I've got a question about my son he is I've got two boys once doing great ones doing terrible he's turning 18 on Friday just graduated high school this week he was living with me for about four months I had relocated to a different home so that he would have room for him and he could go to college down here he is in rebellion multiple arrests drug use if I repeated what he called my wife just before he left and went to his mother's I get you thrown off the air he's now in living with his mom and incredibly angry at me calling my wife all kinds of words and I'm trying to struggle with the balance between do I help him with at this stage in this state of mind with tech school no absolutely not absolutely not okay and how do I struggling with feeling selfish about not doing that dude anybody calls my wife that doesn't get any of my money ever okay if it's that simple I appreciate ya I mean I had a fifteen-year-old daughter one time I won't say which one was saying stuff to her mama as I walked in I said you may be willing to talk to your mother that way but no one talks to my wife that way and lives okay you know I mean really that that's this little guy I mean he's crossed the line he's crossed the line so listen you want my help then you play by my rules and my rules are good for not not selfish it's not selfish you're protecting your wife okay and you know and for that matter if you endorse this behavior by giving him money that doesn't turn him into a 30 year old man he's a little twit now he turns into a thirty year old man but right now he's a twit you and I have to agree to that you know yeah he could turn around I mean I was a twit when I was 18 you know but I mean he's got a that he's not on a path that's gonna lead him anywhere positive okay no I appreciate and I guess it's the corollary that the heart being the question then is listen he does have a come-to-jesus moment you know and I pray for that every day right man and that does happen you know I put him through private school to finish his high school because he couldn't be survived in a regular environment there's a battle Oh battle well every time something something gets hard it's a major ordeal to get in to continue right I don't want to get on the hook for tuition or anything like that so my thought process is everybody go out pacing the first semester I don't even want to hear how you do it I will reimburse you up to X number of dollars upon completion of the semester with a great point of a 3.0 or better yeah let's stop a second the thing we want to do here once we have a come-to-jesus meeting a repentance okay right until there's a repentance a turning from this behavior you cannot endorse it infant financially because it's not good for him if you're giving a drunk a drink you're rewarding his misbehavior and no one else in this world is going to reward this kind of behavior you know he won't be able to all a job he won't be able to hold of marriage he won't be able to hold anything with the way he's acting and so what's good for him is for life to get hard and push him to his knees now once he's there then you give you say all right the way you ask yourself the question is how can I help him in a way that causes him to be the 30 year old man that he needs to be okay what is the what are the steps and if the step is the one you suggested there then that's an okay that's the way if that's the way you answer the question okay I think the best way to help you is let you gut it out for one semester and then I'll get involved or you know the best way to help you is I'll match you you know whatever you come up with output some with it but the instant that you stop behaving in a way that represents good moral character and politeness to family members as part of that then you're you're gonna get no more money that instant and I'm not gonna beg you to go to school or do your studies you're freaking 18 years old so if you go and you study and you get good grades and you live a life consistent with a moral character and you know politeness and manners and decisions that are gonna lead you to being a good 30 year old man I'm gonna support that track financially because it's good for him see there's nothing selfish in this discussion at all it's all in how are we gonna help him but you know if he's doing heroin and we give him money because we feel selfish what have we got we're gonna kill our kid they're gonna die of a heroin overdose right true then all that is is one kind of misbehavior this is another kind of misbehavior you cannot finance this behavior it's cuz it's not good for him/her okay he's not gonna turn out unless he changes exactly he's gonna end up in a ditch all of his life due to his selfish immature rebellious ways and hey a lot of us went through stuff like that a lot of us were stupid man I mean mm-hmm I was I was a half a notch better you know and so I'm not I'm not I'm just saying that we you know the only way you can reward this kid with anything even your presence and your polite your politeness and so forth is you're rewarding a positive direction but we don't I wouldn't tolerate any person on the planet treating my wife that way okay okay no that definitely clear that definitely help say about you appreciate it sure and I gotta say it's really hard what you're going through I'm sorry your face - I appreciate your wisdom and I am looking forward to my first waffle house Thanksgiving this fall it doesn't have to be waffle I was a metaphor pick up the book boundaries by dr. Henry cloud and it will help you clarify some of the stuff that that we you and I were just discussing it'll give you some some verbage around it and some constructs around it Henry is a one Christian guy and is a brilliant brilliant psychologist psychiatrist and so really this book is it's a life's work of his and it's you got to read it it's perfect for this situation and it'll give you good guidelines but yeah you can't allow someone that's being that way around your family that's awful though it's sad that young man's acting that way but we're not gonna we're not gonna tolerate that stuff so open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five you know let's extend that little Bell we've got a large number of you listening that have a young male under 30 that's living in your basement and is in some cases is behaving in a way that you wouldn't tolerate off of anyone else so you're enabling not only their lack of productivity and their lack of emotional growth to become a standalone adult in the real world but you're also enabling their misbehavior and so the rule of thumb is if you're gonna have a grown person in your house they need to abide by your rules and your values in other words if you're gonna live under my roof you're not gonna do drugs you're gonna live under my roof you're not gonna come home drunk every night you live under my roof you're gonna get a job or six of them and keep it if you're gonna live under my roof you're gonna be in church on Sunday morning if you don't want to do that it's okay but the people that live under my roof that's what they do if you're not under my roof it's okay you can decide whatever you want to them some of you don't like that that's fine you don't have to live under my roof it's okay but I'm the king of that dadgum castle and I make the rules there and even the dogs go along with that they're gonna behave in a way that is good for them and good for our household even the pets behave and that's not me it's not nasty and it's not a disciplinarian it's not any of those things it's a simple thing of we've got a set of values that we've ascribed to our family that caused us to win long term what are you going to be when you're thirty if you're 26 right now if you're 23 right now you're living in your mother's basement what are you gonna be when you're 30 and what's the best set of circumstances to get you there to manhood to womanhood you know think about this Tokyo you know any Eagle the stays in the nest too long is known as a turkey that puts this hour that I've Ramsey show in the books [Music] [Music] I need to breathe for survival like many of you do which is why I'm really excited about our friends at filter by you've probably heard about them on the Ken Coleman show hey George Ken what are you doing on my front porch well I was walking by like I do every morning and some package I every morning do you live around here no listen Ken I love filters almost more than anyone but not as much as you tell me what's so special about these filters well it's not just the filters it's the filter by service they send my filters customized for my house so they're all the right sizes they ship them for free George and they ship them when I need to change them so this is my reminder I gotta change these in just a bit of course you're gonna save money because you're being more efficient by changing these your HVAC system is running better and that also extends the life of the HVAC system so I'm not spending as much money long term and I'm always happy now to change filter so I'm so happy I'm gonna do it right now we'll see you guys at the office what I got for breakfast can get how about toast bacon or eggs are all right well you need filters head to filter by comm and if you need breakfast don't go to Ken's [Music] [Music] the first couple days were really a blur here in the hospital you're drugged up they do surgery to stabilize the spine I remember a nurse you know coming in and she was being you know very helpful and everything oh you know you'll get out of here and you know you know a wheelchair and your friends will call you you know give you a nickname like wheels or something like that she was trying to be nice but I didn't take that the greatest way because I didn't want to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life I wanted to watch while I'm David from Winter Garden Florida and I grew up in Michigan little town called Ludington Michigan right on the beach so it was a fun place to grow up my parents have a Christmas tree farm so we grew up at the farm life and that involved a lot of early mornings so I think you know I learned a lot of sort of you know really disciplined from that and in high school you know I was kind of the you know played sports did well in class and that sort of thing but I was definitely a math and science person so when I went to school at the University of Michigan I went into engineering and chemical engineering to be specific as I got towards graduation I kind of figured I would go into oilfield service and so I was gonna work for the auto companies out in the fields out on the rigs you know I'm out in the Gulf up north wherever it would about because I liked working outdoors I was out celebrating the end of school and I had a little bit too much to drink and led to some poor decisions where I actually fell off a second-story porch and that was about a 10 to 12-foot fall and I landed on my back and crushed my spinal cord and because of that I haven't be able to move my legs or walk independently for 14 years now it was a huge change for a guy you know who was just about ready to go be on his own to suddenly be completely dependent upon friends and family again probably getting out of the hospital and those six to nine months after I was out was probably the most difficult time you know because you're not getting out as much as he used to and just getting out amongst people and friends you know is a big part of staying positive and sort of keeping your spirits up so there was a lot of tough stuff in there but I knew I know I kind of saw maybe not lights at the hotel but I had goals that I still you know could reach and I knew that I wasn't gonna just be able to you know hop out of the chair and go run or walk that obviously was not in the cards and so I remember being at my parents house you know maybe six months after the injury and my dad say well if you don't you want to go out and and try and do some of this so we went out into the driveway and my parents driveway has a little hill to it and so we parked the wheelchair at the bottom and I got up on the walker fortunately my dad was walking the wheelchair behind me in case I got tired I probably went ten steps and then just fell back into the wheelchair but we went out and we do it the next day and it was a few more steps and you know day after that I was a few more steps and you know it's just it's a long long process but it was worth and then after that it was obviously well you know what am I gonna do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] in honor of Rachel Cruz being on the show today I thought I'd talk to you all about her wallet in clip system if you haven't seen this it really is beautiful we've got two colors here black and tan and what's really cool about this is not only is it a very functional beautiful wallet but it comes with these little colored Clips here and as you can see I'm struggling and so you clip these for your different budget categories so let's say you know pink is for food and blue is for fuel and purple is for clothes and yellow is your blow money who knows but it's really neat and it keeps all of your cash contained and guess what you spend a lot less when you're having to pay with cold hard cash as Dave talks about so you can get this at Rachel Cruz dot-com maybe get one for a friend or if you're trying to get out of debt this is the way to do it folks sacrifice determination you can be intentional about your character you gotta be on the same page say we're calling to let you know we're debt-free house and everything you've done really really good and you're not gonna quit than a huge witness for us to be able to share that it was time to get serious intentionality people this is your show America at 22 what I know now our life would be better that's the show that's changing the world you'll live it live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions it's the Dave Ramsey show where dead is dumb cash is king and the paid off Home Mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice I'm Dave Ramsey your host this is your show America thank you for joining us open phones this hour at triple eight eight two five five two two five that's triple eight eight two five five two two five joining me this half-hour ramsey personality rachel cruz number one bestselling author of multiple books the latest love your life not there's seven money habits for living the life you want also happens to be my daughter welcome back Rachel thank you thanks for having me back on cool a lot of things happening in your world you and mr. les parrot are getting ready to fire up the marriage and money events coming up I mean April 14th is Valentine's Day April 15th the next day as a marriage and money event not about Valentine's Day gifts right money in marriage it begins we did one last fall when I was out on maternity leave here in Nashville and streamed it actually to the every dollar users which was fun so got great response from that and yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be fun so four different cities and yeah I'm excited to be back on the road yeah it'll be great and you guys have tweaked that material it's got some new material in it for you yes yeah yeah my part yeah we did three cities two seasons to go event season wise and there was you know great content and everything it was a great event but I thought okay I would if we drove even deeper into our subject matters and different things right so people out there that have taken Financial Peace University I had done some of the relating with money things before and then this go-around I tweaked a bunch of it so it's all pretty much brand-new material even for our rooms e-solutions message so digging into that more we just did a survey with about 11,000 people about money and marriage specifically and the debts they're bringing into marriage and in the stress level and the fights and all that so we have good research as well which will be fun to bring into the season now April 15 Sacramento California money and marriage less Parrott Rachael Cruz Washington March the 7th April the 18th Grand Rapids Michigan May 17th San Antonio Texas and of course Rachel will be participating with us in the smart conference in Boston on April the 7th which is the day-long event that includes Henry cloud and Meg Meeker and les parrot as well as our Ramsey personalities Chris Hogan Christie right Anthony O'Neil Ken Coleman Rachael Cruz yes okay I'm done on there interesting not last season maternity leave so it's probably that's what it is it's kind of nice from last season that's exactly what got you okay or maybe we'll make it a mystery maybe I'll be there maybe I won't you'll have to buy a ticket and come and see I think it's too late I think we've blown the mystery all right Phoenix Arizona is on the line David your question for Rachel and me hey how are you doing today great how can we help well I'd have a question my wife and I are are at currently in baby step number two and based on our budget we want to set aside $300 to do eight nights twice someone's and we're just kind of wondering with Europeans on we're on that how much $300 on two different date nights while you're in baby step two yes sir someone would have to do it towards babysitting cost and then we're not exactly expecting to spend a whole $300 but just to start awesome scale about how much stuff do you guys have left to pay off okay well when I get questions like this specifically about baby step two because my philosophy in life is I want you to enjoy yourself I want you to have fun and Dave is a little bit more beans and rice rice and beans so the truth of the matter is the deeper you sacrifice meaning if that $300 goes to paying off debt mathematically the faster you will get out of debt so the deeper you're willing to make sacrifices the greater the gain is going to is going to happen the gain will be but I know with talking with couples getting out of debt and you guys have six figures of debt household income our net take-home is seventy four four hundred seventy four hundred dollars a month I know we're taking a month to sixty two hundred dollars a month okay ashay making about a hundred thousand a year okay so what I was gonna say is that through the through the process if there are milestones that you guys want to celebrate I think that's great and I think that's fine but making it a consistent part of your budget month in and month out I wouldn't advise you to do that so I would say maybe once you pay off you know for different debts then you say hey we're gonna get a group of friends and saying don't do date night you're just saying don't spend money on it right a lot of the dates that you and Winston do that aren't expensive dates right sure but I mean what he's saying is you're gonna be paying for a babysitter you're going out to eat I mean I'm with you David that that's gonna be $300 twice a month so I'm saying scale that back and find more creative ways to do date night we're not paying for it or paying way less so somebody's eating pretty nicer so is the babysitter 150 bucks for one night sure if you're paying a babysitter $15.00 an hour and you're out for three or four hours a hundred bucks on dinner okay all right or if you go to a movie maybe they go to Wendy's and then they go to a movie but I mean like it adds up quickly it really does so when he said that I was like yeah I mean that's date nights are expensive so what I would say is hold the show at the right time David do you have you have an advocate $300 a month on date night if I were in your shoes I would find goals within the baby with him baby step two to say okay after this baby said after this debt is paid off then we're going to go out to eat maybe find a happy hour find something cheap you can do and find friends that will watch your kids and you'll watch theirs and get free babysitting so we've learned you gotta get creative get creative so don't just like write it off that it's going to be a hundred fifty bucks a day yeah I think a a milestone occasionally I'm not scream about 300 bucks a month I'm is killing me go the park and throw a frisbee you know the romance yeah yeah well I mean you can spend the purpose of date night yes is not yes there's been money the purpose of that night is to spend time with your spouse there's a lot of stuff you can do on the cheap and and a lot of people listening right now are going bananas getting out of that they're going what I know that's why I told him I said I would not don't put $300 towards date night a month and it was interesting as I'm doing all this money on marriage you know research and everything there was a study that showed when you actually do something when you experiment and you have an experience with your spouse other than just dinner Outland dinner if you go do something different right you said frisbee in the park I thought yeah I mean seriously something like that or if there's free I saw an ad for free swing dance Inc downtown Nashville in Centennial Park and I was like parents I would never go do that but that's something fun you can go do if you go do an experience with your spouse not only does the memory stick but your romantic level with them actually raises versus something traditional like a like a dinner up get out of the rut yeah totally and you could do that for free you can find creative ways to do it now we're getting there I had a build empathy with David because David I get it and if I were your wife I would want the same but it's not good you got to sacrifice that 300 bucks a month yeah I might do 150 dollar date night only on milestones but not twice a month I agree all right there we go I don't mind eight nights but I'm not spend that kind of money on it while you're in baby step two great that's the beans and rice thing so see the she she and Chris Brown are both trying to be the nicer version of me that's all the more fun version no that's it okay this is the Dave Ramsey show [Music] ah boy meets girl girl meets boy they start falling in love and whoa $60,000 in student loan debt what happens I don't know [Music] so I've had a lot of people ask me hey if we're engaged should we be debt-free before we get married my answer to you engaged couples is no remember number one you don't have to be debt-free in order to get married debt shouldn't you know be part of the reason that you hold off a wedding you can still be married and pay off debt point number two start working on your debt free journey together here's the deal if there's debt in the picture don't pay on each other's debts I've heard too many couples or they're engaged and then they end up breaking off oh great I paid him $15,000 to pay off his credit card debt and now we're not together and he's dating some other girl who bitterness not good not good what you can do is say hey I'm gonna start saving up money on the side so once we get married I'll pay my fiance's debt totally great and remember once you're married you become one together so I don't want to hear any of this oh well I'm debt free but you know my husband has $15,000 in debt mm-hmm we we we we we we have $15,000 in debt you combined when you get married but until then start your journeys together but don't combine until marriage and number three don't be digging in the debt hole while you're planning the wedding which means don't go into debt for wedding expenses Oh put the gown I want it's like awesome I don't have the money but it's totally worth it mm it's not worth it trust me I don't even know where my wedding dress is right now like it's not worth it okay so do not go into debt for wedding expenses more of the left story this vlog is you don't have to be debt free to just get married you can still have that get married fall in love [Music] pay off visa so romantic [Music] we all subscribe to things we don't actually use maybe you subscribe to a fancy magazine that sits on your coffee table so that when your friends come over they think you're refined and upscale or maybe you subscribe to that gym membership and it's been a while you know who you are Jeff but one thing you do use is the Dave Ramsey show YouTube channel you're already here it's the one thing worth subscribing to and it's free all you have to do is hit that red subscribe button and I promise you won't pull a hamstring doing it Jeff knows I'm talking about [Music] we all have smartphones isn't it time for a Smart Plan pure jakk USA offers simply smarter Wireless that covers 99% of Americans stop overpaying for Wireless unlimited plans start as low as $20 per month and include the same great coverage you never pay for any data overage fees and pure talk USA never turns off your data no contracts no hidden fees no surprises if you're thinking are absurdly low cost means less coverage think again if your talk USA operates on the largest GSM network in the US to ensure you're connected virtually anytime anywhere and our 4G LTE network provides the fastest internet speeds like more expensive carriers you can keep your same phone and your same phone number add multiple lines to save 20% off your total bill go to pure talk USA are and do something smart today unlimited talk and text plans start at $20 per month no contracts no activation fees no reasons not to try come to pure talk us a calm and see how much you can save enter this promo code to receive 50% off your first month [Music] [Applause] Ramzi personality number one best-selling author Rachael Cruz joins me this half-hour answering your questions love your life not there's seven money habits for living the life you want is the book the 14 day money Finder is available at Rachael Cruz calm that's CR u ze Rachael Cruz DICOM the 14 day money finder is a free two week series you sign up for it's an e mail thing we will send you an email once a day and on a place to find some money and the average person is saving and are finding an extra two thousand dollars a year this has been a really popular series yes so I was actually just in a meeting earlier this morning we were talking about you know different things we can do and someone was like well do we replace the 14 day money finder and Evan was like no it's been so successful and people love it and it's working and that's the great thing it's not just you're putting out something that you hope works it is working and so it's been fun because it's simple tasks easy things you can do in a short period of time during the day and it just gets you in a habit and in a place where you're starting to find money Rachael cruise you can follow her on at Rachael cruise primarily on Instagram best place to catch her and of course YouTube she's got a huge YouTube following and our own channel there yeah we just hit a hundred thousand subscribers yesterday oh yes Monday yeah it's a nice milestone very cool well the Rachael Cruise channel at YouTube be sure and check that out she's always posting fun stuff there and of course Instagram that's kind of for you the way you use instant story is almost like a little miniature YouTube it I love it's introduced in stories so you all need it you guys need to you know message him and say do more in sasori's you'd be great in stories I would have to learn how to do it is the problem yes alright Jake Jake is in Logan Utah hey Jake your question for Rachel and me hi thanks for taking my call so I am graduating from college with a master's degree in mechanical engineering in May good for anything the process right now of looking for jobs wow it's awesome so one place where I interned with last summer before I left the president sat down I mentioned to go back and talk to them before I graduate and he mentioned that they have the option for profit sharing I've never I don't really know much about it so I was just hoping that I could get your opinion on profit sharing and maybe any things to look out for ok well it's a fairly simple idea it means obviously what the words say they're sharing some of their profits with the team and that's where the commonality ends meaning that as many different companies as there are there are different profit sharing plans I mean you can just decide to do it however you want to we share profits here we have a profit sharing plan here in our organization but it's a formula frankly that the CFO and I made up you know and the compensation team here makes it up and we adjust it periodically and so forth we have a we have a more and not immoral we have a value here that we're going to share our profits ok and pass that we explain to the team that if the profits are up they get more if the profits are down they get less and that kind of thing but it's not something that you know so I guess what I would say is learn the formula yeah as much as they will tell you well cuz first this place for us specifically it's kind of a it's an add-on right so if you're going in for a $60,000 your job that's your if that's your salary that's what you're gonna be paid and then you get profit sharing on top of that it's like almost like a bonus or a gift if you will for some people and is incorporated in your compensation plan and so that those are questions that I would ask like is this gonna be part of you know if you're being paid 60 grand is the profit sharing does that include the 60 grand or is it on top of that that kind of thing so but for a lot of places I think they mean a lot of small businesses that I've talked to it's more of this mindset that you're gonna get paid and then you get if you if you participate in helping the company win which you are because you're working there then we're going to share some of the profits with you yeah so the thing I would ask is if to what extent they will disclose how it's calculated how do I know how much it's gonna be do you you know do you show us how the profit is calculated and and then the second thing I would ask is how much has been paid out over the last several years what's the trend in other words if you can kind of see the trend over the last two or three years you can see maybe what next year is gonna be right which would be the one you would get in but you know so and then sometimes in an engineering setting like that depending on the size of the firm profit sharing could mean that they're talking about someday making you a partner and I would happen if for clarification on that it probably didn't mean that but it could because architectural firms engineering firms and law firms those kinds of things it's not unusual at all for them to be run and you quote make partner after a period of time and but that's that usually is separate from profit sharing but sometimes they interspersed those two words or two phrases back and forth so my point is is it simply means they're gonna share profits and then you gotta ask what he meant okay yeah and when I talked to him he kind of made it sound like it was he almost talked like it was a stock but being a really really small business there's like 15 people that work there you know I so that's where I was kind of worried cuz I know that you're against stock and you know I don't want to buy into something and then kind of get stuck there no he wanted you to pay for it she did mention that there's a buy-in but he also said that the company usually like fronts the money for in your behalf to buy you in kind of a thing this was all in a conversation at the end the last summer so I hope you get some more information yeah I think you got to get clarity on that okay if they front the money and expect you to pay it back no thank you out of my salary I'll pass into a 15-person firm and you have absolutely no control over the bottom line because they're making all the decisions on the expenses they could choose to spend every dollar that's made and there would be no shop no profit to share because they decided to you know expand the computer system or something right and you got no say-so over that whatsoever you're just standing there with your hand out hoping there's that there is some profits to share you've got no control over that now if you've got controlling interest in that situation I'd do it no I wouldn't pay for profit sharing if they want to front the money meaning they'd give it to you as a signing bonus we're gonna give you some shares of stock so to speak or some a position to share in the profit of percentages or something a small firm that that's fine but no thank you I don't want to pay for it I hope that helps you thanks for calling in open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five Kewanee is with us in Nashville hey Kalani how are you I'm good I completely blew your name up tell me how it's pronounced it's pronounced warming co-main okay now I got it better how can I help sir my girls and I just moved to Nashville and I'm the first time and our church take us on a free class of FPU and we're about ninety five thousand in debt and we both have two colors or at least the problem with mine is is that I have thirty six thousand miles that I can't so it was my limit and I'm already at 31,000 within the first year I did a lot of stupid before I started listening to the show so I'm wondering how can I get started on getting out of this okay well the basics is what we teach here is the debt snowball and so what you'll do is list out all of your debts smallest to largest regardless of the interest rates pay minimum payments on everything and pay off the smallest debt first and then once that's paid off you roll it over to the second smallest debt and so mathematically that's how you're gonna go about it but there's definitely you guys going through Financial Peace University I think is is amazing and exactly what you need to do because in that process you're gonna learn how to budget and how the budget affects paying off debt even faster what it looks like to sell things the cars right that kind of thing and also getting an extra job the emergency fund all of that but just the simplicity of getting out of debt that's exactly what you do smallest debt two largest debt so what's your household income our household income right now the price is about 1/100 or about 1/10 my work a full-time Commission job varies okay good all right and is that your income or both of your incomes together that's both of our income she actually works at her chill mortgage she makes about your girlfriends so keep them separate don't pay on her debt you pay off yours you know separate them but I think both of these cars are gonna be sold to get out of these leases yeah and then you'll be able to attack the 90 just get you a couple beaters to drive while you attack this you got a process to go through will walk with you you call me back if you need help as you go along this Rachel stop Rachel Cruise thanks for stopping by thanks thanks this is the Dave Ramsey show [Music] so I had crushed my back and I was you know working on getting more independent and obviously at this point I'm just on Social Security disability which is you know you're basically living at the poverty level it's it's gonna be a very difficult life if I was gonna do that the rest of my life so you know I knew that my mind was fine you know I could still process you know things that way so I started looking at ways where I could continue to use my engineering degree and one of the ways that I came up with was an law which is a field of law where you basically you're helping people to give pens on their new inventions or you're researching their new inventions that sort of thing and so I applied to a few different law schools and I got accepted to the University of Miami and so I graduated with about $75,000 in student loans and I start paying back just the minimum payments you know month by month and and you're gonna be paying on those for 20 years or whatever it is getting out of debt you know has a lot of parallels with you know me coming from an jury to the point where I could walk again because you know at the very beginning both of those goals were so so far away you know if I had had sat in the chair the whole time I was never gonna be able to build it up to the point where I could walk you know a hundred feet or 500 feet or a thousand feet and it's the exact same thing with your debt you know if you look at that number and get frustrated from the beginning you're never gonna start so four years out of law school I've been paying the minimum of payments on these student loans and it's slowly whittled its way down to about seventy thousand dollars and I had also been saving up for and bought a brand-new truck during this time so I bought the truck but of course I had the student loan debt and right around this time I had also purchased a house I was driving in the truck one day and I had heard Dave Ramsey before on the radio he must have taken a call or been talking to somebody that day and he was talking about the risk that your debt carries and I hadn't really thought of it that way before because I figured well I've got a job I can make the payment on my student loans I can pay my mortgage they don't let Emagine you know something could happen you could get hurt if there ever was that was the turning point in my debt free journey where I finally began to hear what Dave was saying and to hear you know what type of risk debt posed in my life and so I got home that night and I wrote out my budget and started doing it exactly the way that he teaches where you know you're not looking backwards at your money you're looking forward and by this time of course I'm listening to Dave pretty regularly on his podcasts and it really fires you up I can make my extra money if I work extra so I took extra work you know I'd work you know the evenings rather than watching some television or I'd work a little bit on the weekend instead of sleeping in late and so you know this money just starts you know hammering at the student loan and less than two years later it was gone you know once I did that you know I took a look over at my mortgage so what kind of debt is the two fifty-two well there was a student loan from law school in there and my mortgage you paid off your house and your law school debt exactly just like that I guess one of the ways that I like at it is that I don't have it that bad there's always somebody else out there that's we've been through something even worse I think the the reason that I decided to get out of debt was you know you hear the relief in people's voices when they're calling in today's show on their debt free you know just being able to take that that sort of stress out of your life you know allows you to sleep so much better you can focus on other things in your life your friends your family your relationships your health you know there's no reason for me to sit at home and feel sorry for myself and say well like you know I can't accomplish this you know yeah of course you can accomplish it but it's gonna be hard work and you need to be willing to put that work in to do it the grand total debt that I paid off was two hundred fifty two thousand dollars and it just it happens faster than you think it's gonna happen you know start today to start tomorrow it gets started because you know a year from now five years from now ten years from now you'll thank yourself for doing that hi three [Applause] our high health care costs getting you down are you confused trying to navigate the health insurance world do you wish you could find an affordable biblical solution to your healthcare costs based on New Testament principles Christian health care ministries are CHM helps Christian families churches and businesses join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs as a CHM member you can go to any doctor or hospital you prefer you aren't bound by an approved health care provider list and all treatment decisions are made between you and your doctor no treatment approvals are ever part of the CH and experience for tens of thousands of Christians CHM is a trustee affordable and biblical health care solution and it can be the solution for you as well visit us online or call today to learn more about how we can serve your family church or business Christian health care ministries one eight hundred seven nine one six two two five CH ministries dot org [Music] [Applause] thanks for joining us America this is the Dave Ramsey show we're glad you're here open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five Rebecca is with us in Chicago hi Rebecca how are you hey I'm doing great thank you for taking my calls it shows you to stay secure you too what's up we are debt free except for house by God's grace our kids just graduated college debt-free I know amen we live in Illinois which isn't a strong financially state and we're thinking about selling and moving to Tennessee we can actually sell here and pay cash in Tennessee my husband's a computer program so he can work remotely keep his job here we want your opinion on Tennessee is that a good state to live retire tax wise housing is that increasing the market we are looking at northwest of Nashville area like the Clarksville area okay Clarksville is a wonderful market it's a primarily a military market 101st airborne and so forth is there and so a lot of the economy in that area in the Clarksville market is driven by the military other than the military it's a small town and the military itself is a small town there's enough folks there but it's a wonderful community because it's got the military value system around it and so you're gonna find you know discipline people people that behave and so forth by large right and so it's a you know it's it's a great you know it's a great I think a small town mix with military is about as good as it gets you know far as I'm concerned but and Clarksville you're gonna get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of housing and so forth because you're far away from the Nashville market which is on fire is white hot and as shooting up the values are shooting up very very quickly of the different economies within tennessee nashville the immediate nashville area would be the hottest that but all of tennessee in general is is very very much in a boom and there's a lot of industries come and probably a lot the unemployment rates almost it's the lowest it's ever been in the history of the state since I've been keeping records right now and most of that in my opinion is associated with the fact there's no state income tax and there's actually a state constitutional amendment that says there will never be a state income tax and the state is required to balance its budget each month as a constant time each year as a constitution as an unlike Illinois yeah I don't know it's probably one of the worst run States out there it's a disaster but in terms of the governmental aspects of it I mean but obviously Chicago I love Chicago it's great town but but I'm talking about the government so you're asking about that anyway the it a the difference in Chicago and Clarksville is about as dramatic as you can get I mean there's not gonna be Broadway plays and mobile to star restaurants in Clarks I'm not I'm not a city girl so that's not a problem all right I mean it's what you're looking for I mean Chicago's got more of a New York feel then you know and Clarksville is a is a small town in Tennessee and again great people I could live there and be very very comfortable but it's all what you're looking for if you won't live on the beach obviously Tennessee's not the place to go it's what you're looking for and you know in any small town you're probably not going to see the property appreciation shoot up like you are in a more dynamic metropolitan area property values the general and they generally lag behind and and just know that coming in and so you know what the property values have done in Chicago they're not going to do in Clarksville went up about 200,000 in the last ten years yeah and that could happen but I don't I I wouldn't I wouldn't think it's going to I wouldn't come up with that anticipation I would say everything moves slower and that it would include the numbers and the people and the culture and it's just a you know you're just gonna crank down everything about ten notches and but you know your traffic to mount anything and you know it's a again it's a high quality of life if that's what you're looking for and so you know I personally again it's just a personal thing I could do it in a heartbeat because I just that's how I'm wired I'm a I'm a hillbilly by nature and I like you know being around southern people and so that that you know if I had to live in New York City I like New York City a lot about three days and then I'm ready to come home you know if I had to go up there to do a show and live there there's not enough money on the planet for me to do that so it should but that's just personal taste it's not that I don't like New Yorkers or I don't like New York City I just don't live at that pace I don't know I got three stoplights between me and home you know and and I got an eight minute commute so but you know you design your life around what you if you want to since you've done a good job with money you're designing your life you're living like no one that you've lived like no one else and now you're ready to live like no one else so you decide what that means and what that dream is but yeah I'm a huge fan of the state of Tennessee I'm an ambassador for the state of Tennessee the governor that we currently have is a friend and truthfully he's probably the best governor in the history of the state his ability to govern an ability to get legislation through an ability to very quietly and calmly and affably get stuff done has been amazing he's a two-term guys getting ready go out in the fall and just an incredible job and and you know part of the the fruit of that is the place is just booming it's just booming there's just no unemployment in this state you know we've got a labor shortage is what it amounts to so that that's kind of what you're coming into it's good news again you're gonna get a different flavor if you come into Nashville then if you're in Clarksville you're gonna get a different flavor if you are in Memphis than you are in Nashville or Knoxville you know on the other end the state either one that's the mountains and stuff so so whatever you want to do but I'm I'm an ambassador for this state this is the I'm a Tennessee and this is where I live and where I want to live and I've chosen to live and so you know you're not gonna get anybody talking not going to get me talking about Tennessee in any way but good ways cuz I love this state hey thanks for calling in open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five Jerry is on the line in Johnson City Tennessee hey Jerry how are you fine Dave how are you today better than I deserve how can I help well I'm 63 years old still working I'm beginning to look into long-term care insurance for my wife and myself they conduct a very thorough screening of your current health and your medical history to qualify for long term care and my question regards in the event that one or both of us would for some reason not and meet their qualifications and could not obtain long term care insurance what could I possibly do financially to be more prepared to take on this obligation should it should present itself in the future that one of us would need it well you're talking about self ensuring through the deal the average time spent in a nursing home in the u.s. is two point four years well okay and so if you want to double that it'd be five years right right and if you look and say well in your state you know nursing home is going to be around fifty grand give or take a year so five years that's two hundred fifty thousand bucks what's the size of your nest egg I've got about four hundred thousand and retirement and 401 and a couple hundred thousand and equity in the home okay so you could burn a portion of that right you know and typically seventy percent of the ladies outlive their husbands so the normal scenario is Papa goes in the nursing home burns up some of the nest egg or all the nest egg and leaves mama that's why we say get long-term Kay um and so the normal coverages for long-term care are three to four years sometimes you can get five years for women you usually don't get long-term care now for life and so that that's what's going on out there so I would just you know you could look at self-insuring through it but the number of people that stay longer than three years it's less than 1/4 of the people that stay longer than three years in a nursing home so three years in under covers 75% of the time if you're trying to figure out that you have to self-insure through it but again if you can get long-term care insurance above sixty years old we highly recommend it good question thank you for joining us this is the dev Ramsey show [Music] everything about money is learning to control your behaviors or habits because personal finance upset about now sometimes it is 80% behavior it's 20% of head knowledge so when you can give people hope that they can win at anything then they were are willing to enter into sacrificial behavior I'm not gonna exercise at the Y and give up boots that I love sweet foods and big old hairy wonderful dinners unless I get a result in my body but if by giving up a few of those things occasionally some mornings so that I can get out there and do my run our be down in my gym or something like that I'll give those morning's up endure the pain if I get a result but you won't change behaviors and enter into discipline the Bible says no discipline seems Pleasant at the time but it yields the harvest of righteousness you won't change those behaviors unless you think you're going to get a result and so hope enters into changing behavior the other thing that it is into it is for someone to just take a deep breath and become very passionate the word I use this morning on Twitter was fierce you need to be fierce about changing your behaviors fierce about saving money fierce about making the money that you've worked so hard for behave fierce about the way you treat your team when you're in leadership the way you treat your spouse you need to engage these things engage your life don't just let your life happen to you because the only way habits are changed is with a fierceness our only habits are changes you have to you have to break the orbital pull of stupid the gravitational pull of stupid and the only way you can break a gravitational pull is to explode to pour in energy that is not currently there that's the only way you can do that I'm Dave Ramsey and I'm so excited to tell you about a brand new movie called I can only imagine it's hitting theaters this March yes it's based on the popular song from my good friend Bart Miller but it actually reveals parts of journey to why you wrote the song and how powerful the redeeming love of God is Bart it's amazing song how'd you do this you know I've never told anybody in my story I can my dad was a monster I saw God transform him and you've got can forgive everybody else why can't you forgive me so I wrote this song my dad I can only I can only imagine I absolutely loved it my wife Sharon loved it go see it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] our scripture today Matthew 5:16 in the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven Jackie Robinson said life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives thanks for joining us America we're glad you're here this is the Dave Ramsey show where we give you the same financial advice your grandmother would only we keep our teeth in it's called common sense us way is with us in Delaware I host white how are you hi Dave doing good good how can I help Santa question my employer provides between 401k direct contribution and a associate sharing program I get shares in the company it's a total of fifteen percent um I'm actually not quite on the baby-step of the 15 percent because I had to use some of my savings for an emergency but anyways the question for you is does that count for that 15 percent into retirement or should I be doing 50 percent on top of that so this is direct contribution I get from them without any match but without requiring any match for me so it's free money wonderful that's fabulous Cheryl well I mean you can do whatever you want to do obviously the more money you save the more you're gonna have right and so you could say a lot more money so I'm going to do 15% myself and all this other stuff is gravy on the biscuit you know that that's you know there's nothing wrong with that or you can say I'm trying to reach over and get my kids college fund funded and I'm trying to reach out my house paid off and so I'm gonna count some of this and I'm still gonna do some myself I would recommend you do something yourself okay and so I you know I would do seven percent or more yourself I'm gonna cut it about a half okay I think you're gonna be okay I mean if you stay with this job and even if not if you roll this over and then started doing 15 percent yourself you'll be okay you're gonna be fine so let's talk about these other goals kids in college or what yeah I got five kids so it's it's a big hurdle Joey and how old are they from nine all the way to a one-year-old okay and your household income I'm at around 120 good very cool okay yeah so I'm probably gonna back this down and get you know get a pretty serious start on the college thing right get something going for each kid the older the kid the more you will allocate to them monthly and so open five 529s or five ESA sit down with your smart mr. Pro and do some calculations because it's going to take more for the nine-year-old to have the same amount as the one year old there's a compound interest right so you know you know calculate some of that out you might not fully fund college at this point but let's get a pretty healthy start and maybe I'm probably gonna do 7% if I'm you in the of your own money into retirement and then above that I'm gonna start getting really on this College thing pretty hard because you got a bunch of kids and nine years old you're gonna blink you're gonna have an eighteen year old and and then the house maybe step six is it until I get this College thing really comfortable I got kind of got it in my sights that we're gonna get it you know then I almost not quite money on the house that was my question the priority between the investing for retirement versus paying off the house which I kind of want to do even more so as well so you'll get the oil that's been my balances of not putting any additional because I was paying off it's on the house already yeah but you're not doing enough for college right I'm more concerned about college because you're gonna get to the house and if you don't deal this College it's gonna come at you with five kids you're gonna feel like you walked out into a traffic jam man interstate so no III wouldn't stop I wouldn't do nothing I I just there's something about the touchstone of you know touching all three bases that's good it's just how hard we touch all three bases so if I'm in your shoes the I want you get the house paid off to believe me here and this is Dave Ramsey you're talking to you know but but but I'm I'm gonna put that as a lower priority today let's do a few years of the rhythm of a small amount you put into retirement five to seven percent something like that let's get pretty strong on the college and if we can find some extra bonus comes in little inheritance comes in or we sell a boat or something whatever happens you throw that at the house okay but then reach over and you'll reach a point that the college is you know is almost done either because you've saved enough or because we've worked your way through them getting through school and then you'll just reach over in the house will almost be knocked out anyway but as an eighth matter of nature and so you're gonna get there you're gonna be fine because you're focusing on all three you're working the baby steps properly you're asking these questions correctly as far as I'm concerned and so I think with your intentionality and your income and this wonderful benefit that you have thank goodness then you're gonna be okay all the way around you're gonna get to do all three you're gonna have paid for house a lot of money in retirement and all the kids are going to go to college you've just got to think it through as to how to let the but let the ebb and flow of this money across baby step four five six which one so right now I'm saying I'm going to hit five a little heavier with a fairly light on retirement and if there's anything left that the weight after the wave goes over I'm gonna throw it on over to the house but and then once I kind of get five under control in my mind get a little catch-up going there and looks like we're gonna be okay nine year olds gonna go school with no student loan debt then I'm gonna reach over and might get a little more serious on the house at that point so hey good question ma'am thank you for joining us that changes if you change jobs and lose this benefit amber is where this amber is in Phoenix hi amber how are you hey Dave I'm good how are you better than I deserve what's up hey I have a question for you I think I I know how you'll answer it but I want to see if maybe it does differ a little bit every year I get a bonus that Matt's about twenty thousand dollars wonderful and now I have a car paint or a car payoff amount of 7,200 and a signature loan at 9500 total monthly payments on those two is six seventy two fifty and my husband's out of work so money's kind of tight at home and if I were to pay these two off that frees up at 675 but they're not my small as that okay so why are y'all as Dutch I've got some credit card loans I mean one is as low as 95 dollars and I go up to 2200 the minimum monthly repayments on those as 264 a month but the bigger portion of the 672 is the car of the 672 by far the a portion is the car well yeah and so you can end with 20,000 you could pay off all your little ones in the car mm-hmm and then leave the signature loan 370 to work your debt snowball perfect okay cool and then I have another question in the same sequence because I have the bonus coming in and I think our HVAC may fail this summer here in Arizona so can I keep a little extra for that knowing that that expense is going to come it has a strong potential to come okay I probably would yeah yeah yeah because I mean the air conditioning is an option some places it's not in Arizona it's not in Phoenix 20 degrees it's a dry heat no it's like sticking your head in an oven okay so shut up it's hot yeah you need air conditioning okay perfect okay hey thanks for the call open it's a triple I mean in the south and the you know southeast here you know you can you can fly in and get you a window fan right and make it through but I mean that's that's thinking bake your brains out over there man it's unbelievable it's big-time big-time Darrell is on Facebook can you close a credit card account without paying it off first and is there a benefit to closing the card you can close it to further charges but the account is not closed until the balance is paid and you can certainly chop it up today and that would recommend that that's called plastic surgery or sometimes known around here as a PLAs secta meat there you go and he says should a six-month emergency fund be based on six months of essential living or normal living normal living reasonable normal living not super spending thanks to James childs and Kai Daniel in the booth they make this show happen I am Dave Ramsey your host we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there is ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's the walk daily with the Prince of Peace arise Jesus [Music] [Music] hey guys i'm rachel cruz and i'm happy to announce that we have a new addition to our family that's right baby number two is here Winston and I are so excited but as every parent knows when your family grows your priorities begin to change suddenly you find yourself making decisions for your kids future over your own after all it's all about them right it's their future you want to preserve and protect that's why term life insurance is so important for you and your spouse I'm so grateful that dad taught me the importance of life insurance early on as I travel the country I hear so many stories about young families left with nothing but debt struggling to survive it doesn't have to be that way term life insurance is so affordable and so easy to get for almost 20 years Xander has partnered with the Dave Ramsey show to help families like yours protect their legacy give them a call or go to their websites I know they will take good care of you and your family [Music] [Music] [Music]
