This Is The RIGHT Way To Handle Your Money

[Music] this is the ramsay show [Applause] [Music] you can be intentional about your character you can have money and a career you are the hero in your story [Music] live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions broadcasting from the dollar car rental studios it's the ramsey show where debt is dumb cash is king and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the bmw as the status symbol of choice ramsey personality number one best-selling author christy wright is my co-host today as we talk to you about your life and your money her new book soon to be a number one bestseller is called take back your time the guilt-free guide to life balance and it is available on pre-sale now it will come out september the 14th and she and i will be doing a live stream event on september the 16th on the same subject so if you want to talk about life balance you want to talk about money you want to talk about anything we are here for you the phone number again triple eight eight two five five two two five lavelle starts us off in raleigh north carolina hi lavelle how are you i'm doing great how about yourself better than i deserve what's up oh um i had a question for my uh car um that i purchased and i wanted to um didn't know if i should sell it or if i should uh just just keep going just keep going with it until it's paid off when did you purchase it um so i purchased it probably about four or five four to five months ago okay and what do you owe on it um i owe 18 000. what's your household income uh 45 45 000. are you married no i'm not single okay is that your only vehicle yes sir it is how much other debt do you have other than your house um i have about seven thousand left in student loan debt and um a thousand uh dollars left at the credit at my credit union for our personal loan okay well christy here's the principle that we always use on this okay a car lavelle is the largest thing we all buy that goes down in value another way of saying that it is the largest wealth destructor in our lives it destroys more of our wealth than anything else does that make sense yes sir because it's the most expensive thing we buy that goes down in value i mean if you buy a thousand dollar tv and four years later throw it in the backyard no big deal it didn't change your life but when you take a 25 000 car or 20 000 car and turn it into a 6 000 car which is what they always do right then you have destroyed a lot of wealth per dollars wise does that make sense yes sir and yet we all love cars i got cars i'm a car guy i want you to have i don't want everybody to drive a junker the rest of their lives but you need to understand that ratio wise the more crap you own that goes down in value the harder it's going to be to become wealthy so based on that idea the principle that we developed or the concepts that we developed are two number one can you be 100 debt-free not counting your house inside of two years and keep the car this is assuming you love the car and are willing to fight scratch and claw to keep the stupid thing do you do you lavell do you love it um i actually don't i actually have a buyer for it um that that wants to buy it next week i've put it on the auto trader and why did you put it on auto trader um because i wanted to i wanted to get out of i wanted to get out of bed and maybe get a cheaper car maybe pay cash for a car and go through my um credit union okay and possibly get the loan to pay off the difference and you know maybe get a little extra to you know two or three thousand extra to pay the car okay good i need to get his cash car yeah get you a cash car okay that's a plan go do that go do that i think you've got i think you've got a great plan i don't want to stop you from doing your plan it's a plan that i probably would do if i woke up in your shoes let me finish giving you the principles for the rest of our listeners sake and because you might apply them at some other point okay number one we have to be debt-free inside of two years or the car has to go you could pull that off it'd be a lot of hard work but you can pull that off you got 26 thousand dollars in debt you make 40 you could work an extra job live on beans and rice rice and beans and be debt-free in two years it could be done okay but you're not going to i understand but i'm just saying mathematically that's doable the second thing is is the is all the things that you own with wheels and motors because everything with wheels and motors goes down in value and again i've got a lot of stuff with wheels and motors i'm not against having it i'm just against it having you i'm against you being owned by this crap they all go down in value and when you add them all up do they equal more than half your annual income if they do you have too much juice tied up in things that are destroying your wealth instead of building your wealth and so you know people call me up i'm making seventy five thousand dollars a year i got a fifty thousand dollar truck well you might be a redneck if you know that's just that's just stupid and that principle applies whether it's uh paid for even if it's paid for is that what you're saying exactly yeah you see level you got things you know a 50 000 truck is going to be worth 25 about 20 seconds about 20 seconds i mean it doesn't take long at all no no one thinks about that about the fact that the car i like how you just said that cars are the most expensive things we buy that go down in value i mean like when you say you're like yeah that makes sense but no one looks at cars that way they look at it like hey i got a raise let me go get a bigger car they don't look at it as this thing that is two steps forward three steps back when it comes to building wealth and i think that's important i like that you pointed that out yeah when you when you put 50 000 in the middle of the table and over a series of four years you burn most of it with a match yeah that's a problem yeah it's just for unless you unless you make 150 000 then you can survive that but it's still a problem i mean i own cars that are expensive today yeah but just for the used cars i mean just for the new car smell that lasts about a month go get you some air freshener yeah like losing that amount of money for a new car for that very short-term feeling when it drops i mean gosh that just it drops so quickly in value and tom stanley discovered this the first time i read it was in 1992. uh he wrote the book the millionaire next door and he one of the things he discovered in his research of millionaires which we have done our own research these days but and that was the first time i ever heard it was the typical millionaire drives a two-year-old or older car because i had this thing that rich people all drive nice cars and the truth is that a certain level of rich does right but until you've got a million dollars in net worth buying a brand new car is mathematically stupid yeah now you can do it and get away with it but it's just stupid well even after you have a million dollars net worth you still look at cars differently because the principles that got you to that net worth or the principles you want to maintain not to your point not that you can't get a new car but you're going hey i could get one that's two years old it's depreciated 50 of its value and i'm going to maintain the value longer yeah like i said i got i got several vehicles with boats and sea doos and you know side by side on the farm and i i'm i collect i'm yeah i'm like a grown-up boy you know i collect things that go wood and wooden you know i mean and so but but when i i'm constantly running that factor and going all of these things added together need to be a very small percentage of my world because they're all just sitting here rusting down to nothing yeah money-wise meanwhile i could have taken the same money and put in something goes up in value which would give me more to give and more to do with yeah chrissy wright ramsey personality is my co-host today this is the ramsey show [Music] [Applause] [Music] life is full of firsts [Music] as the first and serving christian health cost sharing ministry chm has shared medical expenses for its members since 1981. we believe you should have the freedom to focus on your health while being supported by a community of believers giving you the opportunity to create many more verses [Music] [Applause] [Music] chrissy wright ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five most people make choices based on feelings or opinions especially when they're buying a house but when it comes to a real estate market feelings are not your friends facts are your friends you got to get people in your corner help you with the facts because it gets really emotional when you're selling a home buying a home and when you're doing it in some of these markets right now that are absolutely white hot it's crazy out there it is not amateur hour you don't want to get somebody in your corner that sold two houses and that and you're their third transaction good lord this is your most expensive asset get a pro in your corner we vet our ramsey trusted endorsed local providers to be some of the top agents high octane high protein in your area you can find the ones that we recommend and ramsey solutions dot com slash agent ramsey solutions dot com slash agent jonathan is with us in coeur d'alene idaho hi jonathan welcome to the ramsey show hi dave hey what's up well um unfortunately my uncle passed away earlier this week oh my sorry i'm a little nervous here it's okay i'm sorry to hear that were you close yeah yeah i was feeling like a dad to me oh man going through his paperwork and his will it looks like he left me quite a bit in his estate um total amount looks like it's probably going to be over half a million dollars not exactly sure what to do with it in cash or in what uh real estate a home that's worth about 400 that he owned outright and then the rest is i haven't figured out exactly how much it is but it's at least a hundred thousand in checking account a pension and another retirement account what do you make a year uh about 65. how old are you 33. okay you ever handled anything like an estate before i had with my mom but it was uh valued at probably about a hundred thousand so it's obviously a lot less than this okay so are you uh you found the will then yes okay so you've been appointed the executor of the estate correct and you are the only heir correct okay so my advice first would be to contact a good estate probate attorney to probate the will and get you put in charge of each of these accounts as soon as possible by the court okay and we actually did start the process on that but we still have to wait for the death certificate unfortunately it takes a little time but i'm glad to know you're already doing that good okay and uh well the emotion is real and obviously you know you guys were close he was like a dad to you and he was obviously loved you a lot he left you everything and so what do you do with five hundred thousand dollars when it's set in the middle of your kitchen table all of a sudden in 100 bills what do you do with that well obviously we want to be wise with it overall there's three things you can do with money you can give it you can enjoy it and you can invest it and those are the three things you can do and you really probably should do all three of those things with this money now we teach a thing called the baby steps and so my son is about your age if he inherited that all of a sudden i would advise him and he would already know because he's my son to walk right up the baby steps with that money and um you know where would that take you are you aware of all of that yeah so i actually have no doubt other than my house which you owe how much on them uh 159 so i was planning on writing a check for that pretty soon after everything's closed okay um then that puts you at what we call baby step seven where there's nothing left to do but build wealth and be generous you remember that does that sound familiar to you yes okay jonathan that's an incredible place to be but i know it doesn't feel like it right now yeah i know you're you're hurting um i think it's awesome that you're calling and you're getting wise counsel on what to do with this large amount of money you're already taking the right steps you've already handled this before it may have been a different amount of money but you've gone through this and so i want you to lean on those skills and let that give you a sense of peace and confidence as you as you walk this out again and then know as you do yeah you're in a really good position financially to do anything you want to you're young to have this what a gift that your uncle left you at your young age you'll never have dead again ever i mean that's an incredible gift and legacy that he gave you and um and i know you're hurting right now and it's hard to even feel that and that's okay too that's okay so one of the things i try to do um that i have done gradually i never got a uh in the early days anyway i never got a half million dollar check at one time come into my life but what i did gradually is i increased my knowledge uh by putting experts in my corner to teach me and that's kind of where we came up with the saying with endorsed local providers or with smart investor pros when you're meeting with people in the money space you need someone with the heart of a teacher not someone to boss you around and because i hate it when people say well i couldn't buy a car my advisor told me i couldn't i'm like it's not your advisor's money youtube it's your money you tell your advisor what to do they just give you advice um and so that's just a cop out meaning i don't have enough so i want you to have enough backbone to make your own decisions as opposed to that person i just outlined but i want you to put some advisors some teachers in your corner and so you know you do need to meet with a smart vester pro and learn about some investing options um what are your thoughts on the house you you uh you're probably not going to keep it if you want to keep it as a rental you can i i think it's going to be troublesome i don't know if you're going to have the money with everything you've outlined to completely pay your house off unless you keep it number two when you run out your uncle's house and a renter doesn't take care of it one time that's going to be very very very emotional um people don't realize that like when you move out of a house that you lived in and then you rent it out it's a it's renters are even the best people in the world including when i was a renter it's not your house and it's just a weird feeling to go back in there and go oh look what they did to them yes my little boy's bedroom you know it just does that to you you can't keep yourself from doing that so i doubt you're going to keep it if you want to fight to keep it that's fine as a rental i wouldn't keep it sitting there empty as a museum to your uncle i think that's a bad idea but so you need a good insurance person in your corner that's an independent insurance broker that can help you with all the different kinds of insurance you need in your life you need a good investing professional in your corner that you know like a smart investor pro that it has the heart of a teacher and will lead you in each of those areas you need a good tax person a cpa in this case you've already engaged a lawyer to help you with the process so all of these different experts in these different areas are to teach you something about that area so that you can make good decisions they're not there to boss you around they actually work for you you're paying them and so they need to keep that in mind i've had to fire a couple people in the professions over the years that decided their job was to tell me what to do with my life instead their job is to teach me and then i get to decide what i'm going to do based on that knowledge with my life they must not have known you very well well i mean i just know that would not fly away no that's probably true but i mean i i remember you know uh well it's just it doesn't matter but the the uh an attorney one time that was just telling us that this is the way this has to be and i said no it doesn't have to be that way i'm not doing it and he goes well you know that that yeah you know yeah and he just the arrogance of it and finally i just said look i think we're i think we're done what do you mean we're done i said i think you're fired because i'm not gonna i'm not here for you to tell me what to do i'm here for you to teach me and convince me that this is the wisest and in the multitude of counsel there is safety and that's what you want you want a group of counsel in your life that'll walk with you through this jonathan and teach you and that'll help you keep from making unwise decisions and and of course the overall arching rule is don't take financial advice from broke people including your broke friends and they all have a lot of opinions right now this is the ramsey show [Music] [Music] [Music] christie wright ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt-free stage matthew and alicia are with us hey guys how are you doing good dave how are you better than i deserve welcome good to have you where do you guys live we lit we live in uh washburn just a little bit above knoxville here yeah from tennessee okay awesome welcome to nashville good to have you and all the way here to do a debt-free scream yes sir love it how much have you guys paid off we have paid off 54 266 dollars in 14 months i love it good for you and your range of income during that 14 months 60 000 okay what do you guys do for a living i'm a psych nurse part-time and a full-time mama okay and i am a 4-h extension agent for the university of tennessee awesome cool very cool i love it very fun well welcome to nashville and congratulations what kind of debt was the 54 000 we had a little bit of everything we had a farm loan a student loan truck loan credit cards furniture cell phone we can keep going if you want us to cause we're normal you had everything very never met a debt you didn't like a wide variety yeah had a pretty famous saying you can't have anything without having debt all right it might have been wrong [Laughter] i might have been wrong ouch i took a real man to stand up on that stage and say that i'm just saying brother that was good it hurt i might have been wrong oh that's a hard one yeah good for you well what happened what's the story for 14 months ago we'd better back up just a little farther about six and a half years ago right before me and alicia got married my father-in-law or soon to be father-in-law he uh offered to put us through financial peace university and i was a pretty good commercial for huggies and i decided i was a big kid now and uh i said i can manage my own money i don't need anyone to tell me what to do so we tried that um of course i shared with you how that worked out but about three years ago right before madeleine our youngest was born um we got to a point that money was getting pretty tight alicia was getting ready to go on maternity leave and uh she got to the point that she was hiding money because she knew if it was just sort of left out and around in the bank account i would spend it and so uh that got her attention a little bit and she started paying off a few loans on her own she said i want to do this i said well okay you go ahead do what you want to i said i'm not going to stop you but then just after that one of my 4-h volunteers that we work with she she come to me and said i want to use one of your buildings that you all rent out i said okay she i said what are you using it for and she said the financial peace university i said hey my wife would love to do that [Laughter] she needs it as a matter of fact her father said we should do that so so from there we uh we sort of got in line to do that and then just just after that she came back in the office and brought me the total money makeover book and her husband had wrote a note in there uh telling us to sit down and read the book and to start with the last chapter and so uh i did that over a bowl of cheerios and dave i had a meltdown it's true that grown men do cry and i realized the shape that i put our family in and the opportunity lost and i said we've got to do something um and that was in january of 2019 or 2020. oh just in time for trump and time for coal and uh so we got our emergency funds in got our uh or got our starter emergency fund and then started in on the debt snowball come february and 14 months later we're done wow wow that's impressive yes so uh lots of opportunity before you very little behind you that was lost you're okay yeah you got plenty of time you guys are heroes you took control of your lives that's right that's pretty impressive and you're young thank you how old are you two i'm 27. and i'll be 33 in just a little while all right very good well congratulations you guys very proud of you too very proud of you so uh i'm guessing alicia your dad is grinning yeah i'm guessing he's going took a little while but it got there yeah yeah that's good i like that little i told you so along the way wow yeah you probably earned it okay okay that's okay and you're the kind of guy i can take it you're alright you're all right you're you're you're a stand-up dude well done well done there's something uh powerful uh about realizing that i've got a huge potential in my future and i've messed up and the how quickly you turned on that matthew it was that's powerful the way you told that story yeah um there's a little story behind that dave i lost my dad three years ago to pancreatic cancer and he said something of course you know dads always say stuff they're pretty unforgettable sometimes it's taken the hard way but he shared something in a hospital bed on how to beat this thing this thing being cancer and uh my stepmother at the time she said how's that be really strong and fight hard he said no he said be weak just be weak and let god work and uh you know i had a lot of pride and i had to put my pride aside now and let a little weakness in so that god could work and that's how we done it so i'm guessing that the last 14 months have been pretty impactful on your marriage as well oh yeah turned it completely around yeah that's so powerful what you just said though matthew because there are people lots of people yeah there's single girls out there going this guy got a brother sorry i don't but there no listen there there are a lot of people that do not have the courage right to realize what you realized and even say what you said i was wrong they'd rather stick to their guns defend their mess keep keep sticking to their their motto if you can't have anything without debt and making excuses the rest of their life yeah and the fact that you the courage to go i was wrong and i'm going to do something different you're now so young and completely debt-free and you have the rest of your lives to build wealth and do anything you want to that's incredible and it's it came down to that moment and you having the courage to do that well done people what do you guys tell people the trick to getting out of that is a lot of communication good communication and trust in your spouse amen budget's a pretty big deal yeah knowing where that's where that money's going pretty big deal um and of course we we've done financial peace university with our church we facilitated that oh and uh well it was our honor it was a it was a pleasure to get to do that but one thing we shared with them um going into it it's not a money thing it's a god thing you let him control you and he'll take care of the rest of it he'll fall in order okay very cool and you brought the kiddos with you what are their names and ages let's get them in the shot we have addison she's five and madeleine that's two awesome how fun oh they're so cute what a great trip what a great trip very cool we've got a copy of legacy journey for you that's definitely the next chapter in your story you have changed your family tree over in so many many ways i'm so proud of y'all yes what a neat couple and of course also a copy of the total money makeover and you can write in the front of it and give it away to somebody and get them going as well that'll be great pay it forward very cool stuff again very very proud of you guys very very well done thank you matthew alicia addison and madeline just took off north north of knoxville over in east tennessee where i'm from 54 000 paid off in 14 months making 60 a year count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one we're dead [Applause] yeah you do this uh uh i saw a signed bumper sticker this weekend that i hadn't seen before god is god says u-turns are legal i like it so yeah when you're going the wrong way and you go and you turn and you go back the other way in christianity we call that repentance yeah but everybody else just calls it a u-turn yep whatever you call it sometimes we need it so i mean matthew he slammed on the brakes did a did a slide into a donut and did a u-turn i love it powerful powerful [Music] [Music] [Music] christie wright ramsay personality is my co-host today welcome to the ramsey show common sense for your dollars and cents as we talk about your life and your money elisa is with us in atlanta hi elisa how are you hi james hi christy i'm doing good how are you guys great how can we help um so my husband and i have been following your plan for a while but we in the last year or two here have become self-employed and we've really had like an income problem trying to keep uh cash flow going so even making progress on paying off the debt has been difficult um we're in a situation right now where we've had some medical bills come up that have increased our debt we also didn't because of the cash flow issues didn't have enough saved up for taxes uh for 2020 so we you know set up a payment plan with the irs and all that want to get that out of the way um but we're also trying to make sure we save up taxes for the coming year um properly and i know that you say like baby step zero is basically like getting uh current on all your bills and not going to into any more debt and that sort of thing so i've been just a little confused on what order i should be attacking these things in because these medical bills are technically current um but we also don't have the money to pay them right now we had like a couple of emergency rooms so what's going on with your business what do you what do you both do and what do you make um my husband has a video production business right now he's primarily doing some video editing freelance work as that and then i have a proofreading freelance you have a what freelance proofreading proofread okay and what do y'all make combined uh last year our uh income on our taxes was uh oh crud i just forgot i think it was about 32 000 um or probably less than that yeah what what did you do before that sorry how many kids how many kids do you have it's just the two of us okay what did you do before this you said you recently became self-employed what did you all used to do that and and what's the story there uh so last year actually in the middle of the pandemic my husband launched his video production business and that was a good move because before that he was working a pretty low paying server job i was a full-time employed as a proofreader and then i i've done like some over eats driving and stuff since then and and one other w-2 job for a few months this year but that ended up not working out yeah you know what i'm calling bs back and forth i'm calling bs your husband made more as a server than he did in the video business it was not a good it was not a good it was not a good thing it was a good thing in that servers disappeared during kovid but in terms of he launched into he didn't exactly go make a fortune you guys are living up i think your 32 000 is wrong all you've told me in the first five minutes you've been on the air is how like six different times is how you guys have absolutely no money i think you're living below the poverty level and y'all are running around calling this a successful business it's not it's failed you need to get jobs i i don't know here's what i'm confused about alisa is what you just told me in terms of your you know y'all went through the debts and getting your bills current all that what i hear though is you sound okay with the amount of money you all make and you don't make enough money why are y'all not out there getting second and third jobs and getting your income up well i actually no like we're aware that we're struggling and we need more money i've been working i think you are what i can't figure out for you i'm getting the okay um i will say that the numbers have been going up the last few months significantly where we're looking at we're looking at him bringing in bringing home like 2 000 at least this month uh which is a significant increase and it's been trajectory upward um are you all charging enough say that again are you are each of you charging enough is it a lack of uh not the right pricing or do you not have enough clients or both do you know what those what the source of the income problem revenue problem is uh the primary problem has been lack of clients uh what the clients he has right now are definitely paying appropriate amounts for the video editing work he's doing okay yeah he's not working much he has been the last couple months we had a lot of issues with like the first six months this year yeah but but like i mean two thousand bucks video editing in a month he's not working much well and my other thing though at least like okay so today's point about like what we're both saying about this income issue is like starting a video production business you can do video editing almost anytime you want you can serve at a restaurant lots of different options of shifts and hours i don't know why he's not doing both video editing on the side working as many hours as he can as a server he could double his income right there if he had kept the server job yeah that i agree so here's what i'm hearing and you you can correct me what you're saying you can you can go you can go do whatever you want to do lisa but here's what i'm hearing okay he launched a video business and he loves to do the video work and he's good at the video work itself he is not good at marketing and getting new clients and he's not good at running a business because he's starving to death and you're starving to death with him meanwhile you're over here trying to plug up the 42 holes in this boat with only two fingers and you're working like three different jobs while he's working one that's not working it that's not working out so if i were to come into your all's lives what i would tell him to do today he needs to do one of two things he either needs to go get a job in the video business and make four times what he's making now working for somebody else that knows how to go get clients and then builds him out as an editor or as a producer or as behind a camera or whatever he's good at um or until he gets or if he's going to keep doing this he needs to get three side jobs in addition to this and i want him working 80 hours a week starting now with uber with deliver with delivering pizzas with working at the restaurant serving so that he can keep his video business alive so his family can stay alive while he runs his video business and learns how to be a marketer and learns how to learns his business acumen to run his business because he's killing you he's killing you sitting on his butt listen the way these ducks land on your plate cooked is you have to go leave your house and shoot them and then you have to pluck them and then you cook them but they don't fly in the door and land on the plate in business you have to go get them and he hasn't developed that skill yet he's not a bad guy he's an artist and he's probably very good at his craft and he's probably not lazy he's just not got a good game plan right now he's got to go duck hunting meanwhile he needs to go make some freaking money and this is why we tell you all we tell you all this all the time not just you elisa i mean every one of you listening that's why we tell you start your new business idea on the side build it up in addition to your full-time income because nothing will kill your dream like not having any money and getting to a place of desperation it takes the joy right out of it elisa if you will stay on the line i'm gonna have kelly give you a live stream ticket to our business boutique conference you and your husband can watch it together the business principle supply regardless it will give him and you tons of tactical steps of what to do to market your individual businesses and your services in order to get more clients and make more money stay on the line kelly can give you that and that will give you guys something to to get started in this direction in addition to everything else we're telling you to do but stanford listen my wife has never been a wife in 39 years that wasn't supportive elisa but she also her method of supporting sometimes was to tell me the truth and you're participating in delusion with him the language you're using the way you're taking up for this failed business endeavor it's a hobby it's you're starving to death he is not a success yet can he be yes but not doing what he's been doing for the last year and a half and two thousand dollars you know you make that in two weeks delivering pizza you know so we're not successful yet don't participate in that so love him enough to walk with him encourage him i think he can be a big deal but he ain't yet he's not even a little deal yet this is the ramsay show [Music] this is james childs producer of the ramsay show did you know the ramsay show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcast [Music] this is the ramsay show [Music] you can be intentional about your character you can have money and a career you are the hero in your story [Music] live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions broadcasting from the dollar car rental studios it's the ramsey show where debt 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 thank you for joining us open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five christy wright ramsey personality number one best-selling author and author of the newly released on sale as a pre-sale anyway new book called take back your time the guilt free the guilt free guide to life balance so we'll be talking about your life and your money this hour it's a free call triple eight eight two five five two two five and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it all right nick is with us nick is in colorado springs hey nick how are you i'm good how are you doing better than i deserve what's up hey i had a question about uh whether i should finish my debt spellball paying off my student loans or if i should refinance at this time since the rates are so low um i owe about ten thousand dollars on my student loans and my rate right now and i could buy down the 15-year mortgage for one point seven five you i mean your rate currently on your mortgages how much uh three and one eight three point one two five okay and you said you were quoted what uh 1.75 on my 15 year fixed rate six straight bunch of points how many points right now they've gone down a lot 0.875 so a little under one percent uh sounds low okay i'm a little suspicious i i don't think mortgage rates are below one percent or below two percent yet um yeah unless i missed something over the weekend uh which is possible but i don't think i did okay so they always have the best rate i have my mortgage with them right now okay oh it's a local credit union what's the balance on your loan uh 295. okay well that's a below market rate i'll just say it that way okay so that's not bad so let's just call it two percent down from three you would refinance just for that but we don't roll your debt into your mortgage yeah i didn't want to load in so what's that got what's the eleven thousand dollar student loan got to do with the equation then oh i'm just going to that's the one i wanted to see if i should finish paying the debt or if i should refinance money oh i see is there any cost uh out of pocket to refinance oh no then why would it affect you that snowball because it because the payment's going up going to a 15 year yeah it's gonna go about five six hundred dollars ah okay now i'm catching on okay i'm a little slow on the uptick sorry about that all right um okay so the big concern is not money out of pocket um it's not rolling the student loan into the refinance it's simply you're going to have a higher payment and that's going to slow down how fast you can get your your student loan paid off right what do you make uh about 95 000 okay it's a good question took me a minute to get to the bottom of it because i'm like i said i wasn't gathering i was i was telegraphing where you were going and it was none of those places okay so um yeah yes you do this it's not gonna slow it down that much 500 bucks a month increase in payment changes your cash flow six thousand dollars a year making ninety thousand that doesn't keep you from getting out of debt okay it does slow it down a little bit but it might slow it down by two months or something is always yeah on that income yeah it's it's so different than the call we just had before the break too because you have such a great income nick you're gonna get out of debt quickly whether or not you refinance or not so you can refinance and get a debt still in a very short amount of time because you have such a great income that's the reason we talk to people about getting their income up whether it's through business taking a second job third job the bigger shovel you have the more progress you can make on your goals whatever those goals are but if you don't have an income there's you're just you're tight there's not a lot you can do that's right you're doing great nick that's awesome luke is with us luke is in charlotte north carolina hi luke how are you holiday hello christy hi so as with most as with most questions you guys probably answered this before however i haven't quite heard it be asked in the time i've been listening so dude i've been answering the same questions for 30 years that ain't no thing go ahead and ask it we're ready all right so my question is just kind of determining whether or not i'm on step six or seven um so i've had i have all milestones essentially met the conundrum i'm in is that i still rent so i technically don't have a mortgage uh even though step six is paying essentially paying off the mortgage could i consider myself as kind of paying myself a mortgage payment a month on top of what i've already saved for my down payment which is above your recommended amount or would that kind of put me in a step 7 instead it doesn't matter you're doing great i'm so proud of you how old are you uh 28. all right man you're doing good well done so the bottom line is you don't have any debt you have an emergency fund in place and you're putting 15 of your income into retirement right yep wow look at you freaking rock star and then every other dollar you save right now is called down payment money because the bigger the down payment the smaller the debt the faster the house does get paid off when you buy it right absolutely so just make it real clean anything that's not an emergency fund that's in savings is increased down payment we don't have to have two categories of it just pile up a big old pile of money and go in and buy a house and almost pay for it or pay for it i'd love it how much you got saved already for the house about 53 5'3 yes way to go you're doing awesome what is your income uh 91 000. good for you yeah you're rocking this man so um i'm so if you bought a 200 000 house today you put down 25 that'd be cool you know and if you you know and if you wait three or four years you probably just pay cash for it yep yeah that's kind of where i was going with this question is uh considering how concerning how much i have i feel it's quite difficult taking out the debt considering how much i'm able to save per month luke you're awesome i'm in no hurry to buy you're awesome here's the reason you don't fit in one one of the baby steps just perfectly is because you're not normal normal people have a house payment and car payment and student loans and all the debt and we walk them through which is great because this plan works for the normal person has normal debts you're not normal you haven't bought a house yet you're possibly saving up to either put a huge down payment or pay cash you're just gonna fast track yourself to baby step seven you're doing amazing ding ding yeah i love it well done sir yes open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five if you don't have it on your calendar yet september the 16th christy wright will be doing a live event on life balance and she's allowing me to participate since i owned the freaking company so nice of me yes it was so sweet of you you're sweet that way you're good to me give the old man some work to do so anyway she's she's the star of the show and i'll be the uh i'll be there for the window dressing or whatever so check it out uh it's all about life balance it's on september the 16th you can check out getting your tickets getting your reservation for the live stream at ramseysolutions.com [Music] what makes our show unique is that we genuinely care about our listeners we're intentional about choosing the best advertisers to recommend blinds.com is no exception they offer high quality window treatments at unbelievable prices and they make it simple to shop blinds shades and interior shutters with easy online ordering free shipping and a guaranteed perfect fit go to blinds.com and take advantage of this week's special savings [Music] do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] chrissy wright ramsey personality is my co-host today thank you for joining us america we're glad you're here if you like your job but you feel like you don't have a plan for what's next or you need help climbing the career ladder we got some great news for you ken coleman america's career coach ramsey personality has poured his years of proven experience into a new book from paycheck to purpose the clear path to doing work you love it's available for pre-sale right now and you need this book there isn't another how-to guide out there that will show you exactly step by step what you do to get into your dream job and to promote a long way and grow your career if you pre-order today you'll receive the get promoted bonus pack for free it includes an audio lesson on promotions the disk assessment free live stream access to kins from paycheck to paycheck from paycheck to purpose live event and a 30-day free trial to ramsey plus and more it's over a hundred dollars almost two hundred dollars worth of stuff free when you buy this 20 book on pre-sale at ramseysolutions.com also we're giving away 500 cash every week this month and a grand prize of three thousand dollars at the end of august and while you're there christy's new book is also on pre-sale take back your time the guilt-free guide to life balance we have two books right now coming out this fall both of them in pre-sale right now christie's will actually launch on september the 14th in ken's in early november uh enter at enter daily for extra chances to win the ramsey cash giveaway no purchase necessary you got to be 18 years old or older text cash for the free cash to 33 789 and you can enter for the giveaway that's cash to 33789 our question of the day comes from blinds.com they have a 100 satisfaction guarantee meaning if you screw up if you miss measure you pick the wrong color they'll remake your blinds for free you get free samples free shipping and with the new promos they run every month you'll save even more use the promo code ramsay to get the best deal today's question comes from mandy in washington i have a cleaning business that provides services to vacation rentals in a nearby tourist town i have many long time clients an excellent reputation for detailed work because finding workers is difficult these days i've had to increase what i pay them by five to ten dollars an hour the cost of supplies has also gone up i recently let my clients know that their cleaning fee would increase in a few weeks several rental owners understand and agree with it but if you are just rude one of them wants to know what i charge all my other clients what's a good response to this type of request bye-bye i haven't even finished the question you can't help yourself i have no clients coming on board at the higher rate so there's no lack of business right right you just answered your own question mandy i have new clients coming on board at the higher rate so there's no lack of business they're gone bye just like dave said bye they're gone here's the thing there's such a fear in business that if you raise your prices you're going to lose people and the reality is you will and you'll lose the ones you need to lose you'll lose the ones that are rude that you're spending all of your time and energy on that are headaches more often than not if someone is demanding to know what you charge and what you do that is none of their business at literally it's not their business i mean literally it's your business not there yeah that's a good point that's a good point that's where the saying comes from yes and so you don't have to feel bad if someone is rude yeah they no longer are a client and you wish them the best thanks for your business best luck out there i mean it's to me this is a very simple i know it doesn't feel like it when you're dealing with actual people and and you care and you wanna you know but but if someone's gonna have the nerve to be rude to you you have to have the nerve to kindly show them the door yeah you're right so here's what happens um you don't get hard-hearted or calloused hopefully the longer you're in business but what experience does give you is the knowledge that cutting those folks loose is you didn't realize how much time they were already taking of yours that's exactly right because people that are going to be a rude client are usually your highest maintenanced clients always they take up more of your time you make less money on them and so there's always a percentage of your business of your revenue in business that you should always consider firing so that you can spend time on the it's it's what we call bad business it's business that you're doing it's not it's not good it's not worth the trouble right and but you know someone that says oh you mean you mean you're having to pay more for labor and you mean your supplies costs went up uh and uh oh the way i'm going to respond to that is i'm going to be rude to you um instead of saying you know what gosh i've always enjoyed working with you but i guess i'm gonna have to clean it myself because i can't afford it right to do that and so it's it's been good though right that's the way you leave if you can't afford it but people that can't afford it sometimes are the meanest yeah or they can't afford it they just don't want to and so they're mean and that's where it comes down to you having the yeah you having the confidence to let them go and know that you're going to be okay you've already said you will be mandy you have no lack of business and so you have permission to set these people free you know how my mom would do it dave she would fire customers in the kindest way so she was obviously in the wedding cake business so she'd get some bridezillas momzilla's all the whole gamut you can imagine yeah and so what she would realize is is truly she would spend 90 percent of her time and energy on her 10 most difficult customers the rest of them are easy right and so when she found it was time to fire a customer which she got good after 30 years of doing this identifying those red flags early on here she'd say something like this like you know what this is your wedding day and i want you to be happy you should be happy and i can just tell by us talking about this i'm not gonna be able to make you happy and i want you to be happy so here are some different places you can go check out for wedding cakes that'll make you happy i wish you the best isn't that the nicest thing you've ever heard but this but what she did was she fired them well you know and the beautiful thing about this is the net effect was she sent all the ugly customers to her competitors i knew you were going to point that out you got a stack of business cards or your your competitors talking i'm out i think that's genius yeah you're so nice you're high maintenance go see my competitor put it back on them you go you should be happy absolutely clearly i want i can't meet all your expectations you put it right back on them jesus couldn't make you happy darling so you need to go yeah you know what's interesting though every now and then one of them would straighten up oh no no no no i no this is fine and they would start to behave as a good behaving customer but she taught them hey if you're going to do business with me you're going to respect the way that i do business and i'm going to respect you and so on but every now and then one of them was straightened up and they could stay but if not they have to be fired most of the time it's not most of the time so what what we're saying is when i when i interrupt in the middle of you reading that and i say bye-bye that's from 30 years of the first time i did it i almost cried i was no you did yes i did because i was so scared that i was going to mess up the whole world and somebody wasn't going to like little dave ramsey yeah you know and then once i figured out crap about half the world doesn't like dave ramsey we just need to get that's okay now you know it's like the other half's doing pretty good for me it's all right you know i'll be all right you know so you know twitter trolls and everything else so you just you reach the point you go it didn't kill me and it didn't kill them yeah and that also gives you the power to be nice it does like your mom was because she knew it wasn't they could get a cake made somewhere else absolutely and what's interesting is you don't realize how much of the emotional energy and time that were wrapped up in those people and you're so much freer yeah you're so much freer when you let those people go and you know there's once you've done it for a decade and you go i've turned loose of five to ten percent of my business every year i let them go in the name of they're not worth the trouble yeah and i did it in a kind but powerful and strength way based way once you've done it a bunch then you read something like this you can get halfway through it and go bye-bye yeah and it's not hard-hearted it's not calloused no it's like they're gonna live through it it's just freaking getting your house cleaned they're gonna live through it they self-selected by how they behaved yeah but how they treated you they chose that not you exactly and then there's the other bunch that are just crazy yeah they gotta go too yeah there's about two percent of the public should be institutionalized and you really just don't want them as a customer for sure so you just fire them quick and that's a little more joyful but but you know don't there's no reason for you to i don't like our customer care people don't call and yell and cuss at them because i tell them we'll just take you out of the database we don't get they don't get paid enough to put up with your crap call in here with a problem and be nice and we'll help you with it this is the ramsey show [Music] [Music] [Applause] christie wright ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host today her new book take back your time the guilt-free guide to life balance is on pre-sale right now jay and heather are with us they are in minneapolis and it says on my screen you guys are debt-free congratulations thank you dave congrats how much of you guys paid off 128 000 good for you awesome how long did this take it took us 15 years okay cool and your range of income during that time 45 to 80 000. okay cool what do y'all do for a living these days i'm an i.t director for a library system and i'm a stay-at-home mom of nine kids and i homeschool them nine kids you guys have got a lot of mouths to feed and still got your way out of debt huh yup we started off with one kid when we started the baby steps and we added eight along the way and they were all paid for with cash no no repossessions to date huh okay that's good that's incredible heather i can never complain about being too busy with my three children again that's amazing so uh 128 yeah so 128 000 is that house and everything house and everything 20 000 student loan and that was paid off in the first 13 months and then the mortgage after that wow wow way to go you have a paid for house look at you man did you ever think you'd have a paid for house not before the plan but once we got on on track and knew the plan we knew we'd get there oh definitely yeah but i mean back in the day like because people don't think walk around going you know i'm gonna have no mortgage when i'm older you know people don't say that much good for you man how old are you guys i'm 45 and heather's 42. okay cool awesome so tell us the story what got you started on all this 15 years ago well um we had our first kid and we were wanting to heather to be able to keep staying at home and to be able to home school and money was tight um i heard you on focus on the family way back then and then i got excited about your message i got the book uh financial p or uh yeah financial piece first um and then i introduced you to heather and it turned out she'd already heard your message somewhere months before that and couldn't get me couldn't get it through to me of course you came around when it was your idea right jake exactly man that was long enough ago probably dr james dobson was still on there wasn't he it might have been yeah it was this long time yeah that's cool very neat very fun and so you start you you she now that she uh realized that it was your idea we could start this and here we go right yes exactly i love it very cool and you paid off student loan quickly so what do you tell people the key to getting out of that house and everything with nine kids yes well you have to want it and then you have to start it's it's not something you can just want and and just want and get it it's hard work it's not easy to keep going when it gets rough when you have you know oh we need to get a 15 passenger van now that's kind of discouraging but you just keep going um with the the mortgage it was challenging because we didn't have that debt snowball to build all the momentum with so it was just a slog once we got to the mortgage also envelopes are very important plastic just takes way too much discipline even if it's just a debit card um okay lots of envelopes at your place then oh lots of bundles okay cool this is so interesting so sometimes i read uh ridiculous posts on social media that say things like well that dave ramsey stuff doesn't work if you have a large family and then i have large family people chime in and say it's the only thing that works yeah it really is you know it's it's bad enough you know all the things you have to think about with a big family but to have those debt considerations in the back of your mind just nagging at you it's it's very freeing that we just have one less thing to think about now yeah no house payment a major thing that you don't have to think about no house payment that's that's like yeah and and so all we do is we all we just make enough to feed all these baby birds and clothe them and make sure we have a 19 passenger van and all that stuff man that's pretty incredible dude that's just beautiful i love it i'm so proud of you guys how does it feel thank you i think it feels fun we actually get to make choices with our budget now instead of just buckling down and moving along like the tortoise now we get to you know hop around and have fun and we can give some and we can go i'll go out to eat as a whole family which is something we very rarely ever have done yeah how was it how was it with the kids with those nine kids in a variety of ages range of ages i'm sure in there through this journey was that something y'all talked about as a family kind of getting everybody bought into this this vision as a family of what you are doing well you know we started early enough that we didn't have to get anybody to buy in we just told them how it was going to be yeah well that's that's for sure it's really turning out good now as we have a 16 year old and heather has been working really hard to get him through college without any debt and without a huge amount of money in a college fund because we just have baby college funds for everybody so she's been doing a lot of testing for credit and he's starting uh post-secondary post-secondary enrollment here in the fall and he's probably going to get out with only a few dollars out of pocket to get his degree wow his very first car this week debt-free wow all right what did he buy oh it's just an old 2003 taurus it's uh you know your hooptie yeah what do you pay for it one thousand dollars i love this kid go you too he's going to school he's gonna go to school debt free and he bought his first car for a thousand bucks cash he's 16. he's already planning to go to college debt-free absolutely he's basically halfway done already hey america you know what that's called parenting [Laughter] wow yeah the inmates don't run the asylum when you have nine they do what they're told that's amazing guys you guys are incredible i'm so impressed with you yes man what a man what a great model very very cool very cool well uh we've got a copy of the legacy journey for you because for sure that's the next uh chapter in your story without a doubt and a copy of the total money makeover for you to give away to somebody and get them started uh you've got a lot of arrows in your quiver that you'll be able to release and it sounds like they know how to fly straight already which is good parenting and so um you know the they're just fabulously done you guys very very well done 128 000. all right i tell you what we need to uh we don't need to break tradition here we need you guys to name off all nine names and ages before you do your debt-free scream quickly all right we've got caleb 16 james 13 joshua 12 anna 10 micah 8 gideon 6 lydia 4 timothy 2 and ruth eight months all right oh there we go awesome 128 000 paid off house and everything we're talking to weird people 15 years it took them to do it making 45 to 80. count it down let's hear a debt free scream [Music] [Applause] all those little voices in the background that is a family tree changed and it's a big tree it's a big tree well done you guys well done okay so moral of the story you don't have to make a gazillion dollars to be debt-free no more of the story large families not only can do the principles we teach living on a plan getting out of debt having an emergency fund in place living on less than you make these simple but hard to do concepts that we teach every day actually are the only shot a large family has yeah you got no wiggle room you got no margin for error when you have nine mouths to feed right yeah no that's true and it's interesting too because whether you have a big family small family or whatever your circumstances you can find an excuse if you look for one oh we got a big family oh you don't understand my situation yeah you can look for an excuse and you'll find one or you can just look for a way to make it work and it does work and we see people call in from all ages all stages all different careers industry industries and family sizes and they're making it work because it's a principle that can be applied regardless of your family and i just i love that example because that's such an extreme example yeah well these principles are the truth yeah it's like the law of gravity is the truth it works it works for large families too this is the ramsay show [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] christie wright ramsey personality is my co-host today mia is in sacramento hi mia how are you mia how are you me it might be on mute maybe uh maybe i didn't push the button right i'll put her back on hold and all right let's try sean in minneapolis hi sean how are you hey i'm good how are you guys doing good relief to hear your voice what's up yeah i'm good um so i have recently picked up your total money makeover from a used bookstore i'm really glad that i did i saw a crazy looking guy cutting up a credit card and i thought what is this about um and i just i totally dove in and i am dead set on paying off all my debts and i can't look forward anymore to the day where i can come on stage and do my death please scream with my girlfriend anyway so good for you my question is my question is about the budget and more specifically the things that you budget for that could change on a month-to-month basis so like doing your bills and your mortgage is relatively easy because they don't really change much at all if at all but i'm kind of struggling with the idea of like how much money should we be setting aside for groceries or clothing um things like that i guess like do you guys go off of like a percentage or is this like a flat amount per person in the family what do you recommend have you is this your first time doing a budget i've always had like a a half but budget where like i said i'm doing the easier things um but it wasn't until i started using the every dollar free app that i really started so yeah i'll tell you how i did it and that i wasn't really doing it 100 yeah i'll tell you how i did it when i got started budgeting and i think this is how we teach it dave correct me if i'm wrong but um what i did for my very first budget is i looked at my bank statement for the past three months to see what was the average that i had been spending on groceries or that type of thing and it's not because i always needed to spend that but it gave me some type of range so i'm not setting some ridiculously uh unrealistic number and then i come up the range okay i typically spend about this much and then you can kind of stretch yourself to a goal from there um you know for for some of those things that can fluctuate but because you do a budget every month so for example um i it's august right now and um i just went back to school shopping for my kids they needed some new clothes they've outgrown some of the clothes and so on so i know august is going to be a higher clothing month before the month yeah you can predict that right right before the month i know august is going to be a back-to-school shopping month whereas um you know in july i'm not going shopping for clothes for example so you will sit down before the month begins every single month and it's a it's a it's the best guess you can based on past track record and in line with your goals of what you want to spend and where you're going am i saying that right you did perfectly okay perfectly and stuff like even utilities will change from month to month like we're in tennessee and so it's really hot in the summers and so our air conditioning bill our electricity bill is higher in the winter i heat my home with natural gas and so my electric bill is fairly low but my natural gas bill goes up in the winter and so i can predict that december's gas bill is going to be different than june's okay as an example right and i can look at last year's i can look at last year's and guess pretty close to what it's going to be and on that kind of thing you want to guess a little high so you say okay you know last year's gas bill was i don't know i'll make it up 235 or whatever okay well just go ahead and round that to 250 and put that in there and that way you got yourself a little wiggle room if something comes up and um and that's how you do it and then the last piece is that a lot of people including my wife uses the envelope system and we don't use it for everything but for a few things you mentioned groceries by the way a hint on groceries is whatever you think you spend on groceries before you actually start living on a budget you're wrong it's more yes okay if you think you spend 500 it's probably more like 800. if you think you spent 800 it might be 1200. i'm not talking about restaurants i'm talking about groceries only separate groceries and restaurants apart because restaurants are entertainment and groceries are food yes you get food at a restaurant but most of what you pay for is the experience of having someone else cook it for you and uh clean it and all that stuff so um you know go that route with this and you'll be much much better off now so the envelopes all we do with that is we say okay for the month i think we're gonna spend eight hundred dollars and put 800 cash in an envelope and write food on the outside that envelope don't buy anything out of that envelope except food and don't buy any food except out of that envelope no cheating and so you are using cash that does two things one is when that envelope gets empty you know you've run out of money and there's a little catch mechanism there it's empty versus if you've got plastic or even writing checks in the old days you know you could just keep going there was no there's nothing to stop you and go uh oh we've overspent the budget yeah and you could do that for the back to school clothes you could have a back-to-school clothes envelope for august and say that's it because you know you got little boys going back and that little boy stuff's cute is it little girl stuff just about it's good i mean it's fun dressing them up you know and you could go crazy in there easy enough and blow your amount and not and have all kinds of rationalizations and justifications but if you're looking in that envelope at real hundred dollar bills real 50 bills and they are leaving it slows your butt down because you feel it yeah i got a question about the envelopes and maybe you've talked about this and i've just missed it have you talked at all about the so envelopes have this like built-in discipline right like because it's visual you can see it you know since the pandemic dave everybody has so much so much online shopping yeah and amazon man add to cart is so easy well i mean if you're if you're having you're not using the envelope and i used to i'll tell you one that's changed over the years when we first started teaching this 30 years ago you did not pay for gasoline at the pump yeah you walked inside to pay for it right i do remember that old school uh-huh i remember that and so i used to carry and teach to carry a gasoline envelope with cash to pay cash for your gas and then when it goes up five dollars a gallon you're like pissed at the president right and so um that kind of stuff right so now but i haven't paid with my uh we haven't had a gas envelope at the ramses in years we pay with a debit card right like you're doing online right at the pump but so you've still got to budget that and keep track of it and you've got to have some way and the every dollar budgeting app will let you know but yeah you've got you got to categorize each of those expenditures yeah and when they pop on your debit card especially if you've got the premium edition where it's what automatically logs and all that right then you go okay drag and drop drag and drop you're dragging that expense over into the food category at amazon dragging a food expense over there oh and we've got some cash over here then you look up and go crap we just went 500 bucks over this is not gonna work i can't do this well every dollar makes it so fun and makes it so easy to do but you're right because you might have a grocery budget or clothing budget and you spend the majority of your monthly expenses out of that envelope out of that category in cash but then there's a percentage you get amazon fresh or that you get a couple clothing items off off online and you've got to be able to reconcile that this is all coming from the same budget line item and it will drop down when you start dropping those things over that are that are transactions like you're talking about but it's it's it's important to pay attention to because you've got things coming out of different places and if you're not careful that add to card will get you man not that i know anything about that add to cart yeah i don't even know what that is so you can add stuff they suggest people like you buy things like this and then you add to the cart it's it's like it's not even that dave it's like sometimes you're just having a day you're like i don't i just need to add some things to my cart just any cart like this the cart wasn't already had anything in it no this is just brand new this is just generally online shopping dave this is not listen i guarantee you all the women listening are going like yeah i mean they make like doormats you're just sitting around boards and going i need to buy crap i mean it's a real thing they make they make dorm mats that say like amazon man please hide the boxes from my husband online shopping is a real no i know i knew i know but i mean i didn't know but i know oh my god like like you'll see on instagram a meme that says it's an add to cart kind of kind of day okay so now you know retail therapy online style 100 i'm glad i can help them today boredom spending yes it's a thing well i'd just be ashamed i would just be ashamed i don't not only do you know about it but but you've done it oh my god i'd just be ashamed if i were you i felt no shame maybe i should i just don't i feel no shame i'll do what i want uh i'm christy right that's it that puts us our the ramsey show in the books [Music] hey it's kelly associate producer and phone screener for the ramsay show if you would like to do your debt free scream live on the show make sure you visit theramsieshow.com and register we would love for you to come to nashville and tell dave your story [Music] this is the ramsay show [Music] you can be intentional about your character you can have money and a career you are the hero in your story [Music] live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions broadcasting from the dollar car rental studios it's the ramsey show where debt 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 christy wright ramsey personality number one best-selling author of the book business boutique her new book on pre-sale take back your time the guilt-free guide to life balance on sale now for twenty dollars at ramsey solutions includes 200 or 100 worth of goodies to go with it including a live stream event that she and i will be doing on september the 16th she'll be doing and i'll be doing a little bit of it but i'll be there and uh he'll let you guys in on some uh some life hacks when it comes to balance she's gonna walk you through the process open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five melody is with us in dallas hi melody welcome to the ramsey show hi guys hey what's up hi thank you so much for talking to me sure how can we help um so my husband and i um we have four kids they make about 50 grand a year and that's just him i stay at home with the kids and we kind of got in over our heads with our mortgage it's a little bit tight at the end of all of our bills we have about less than 200 that's able to go to savings um and we're just wondering if we need sorry i'm nervous you're doing great take your time we're just wondering um what we need to do because we're we're stuck here um and he kind of he's open to working a second job and um you know saving money until he can go back to school or something but he doesn't want it to be like you know he lives his life working two jobs um so he's kind of like i don't know what to do here if i should try to work up in my company because he likes his company but he's just not making enough right now when you said i'm question i'm curious about one part of your question melody said we're stuck here uh what do you mean by that i just want to question that before we dig into all this oh yeah well we really like it here and everything we feel great about the area but it's um it's a new developed neighborhood and they said that they don't want anybody to sell for at least a year from buying so i don't work can they determine that i don't think so can they i don't know i was wondering is that even legal i don't know no it's not that's what they told us it's not there's not a you don't have a need restriction that prohibits you from selling for a year that's just uh okay so uh how much is your house how much is your house um it's only at a thousand right now but they said that because of um for tax purposes it'll be more like 14 next year okay and then we have a mud taxes for water and it just adds up so fast yeah it was fortunate yeah after taxes and with four kids yeah yeah realistically we have to have a path for his income to go up or you need to sell the house one of the two so you're asking right you're asking the right questions and it doesn't matter how much you like it it's whether you can afford it and you can't prosper with what you've got there your house payment is probably about 40 percent of your take-home pay and to your husband's what we figured at this point yeah to your husband's point melody he doesn't want to work two jobs forever as the path to keep this house that he never gets to see so that's not a good plan either you know what i mean like short term if that could change something that's fine but not long term let me direct you to kencoleman.com ken is our ramsey personality that teaches people um how to find what they're good at what they love and what gives them some passion and then start and only then start asking the questions what do i have to do to be one of those what do i have to do to get he calls it get clear on what you want to do and why you want to do it what's your talent your passion um what is it that um you'd love doing and what you're good at um and then from that you go okay i don't i don't necessarily have that degree or i don't have that certification or i would need to go be an apprentice to do that from there you say all right i've got to get qualified and then i've got to get connected those are the first three of his steps of his path stages to getting the work the dream job that you love so moving up inside of his company might be the answer but only if it's moving towards something that he loves doing and that he's good at and that he's passionate about and he sees himself jazzed on sunday morning on monday morning he's not there right now yeah so we need to say okay five years from today three years from today two years from today what could i be doing if i could be doing anything i wanted to do and i had all the necessary degrees and there was nothing holding me back what's my favorite thing in the world and i could make 80 000 a year maybe okay start asking yourself that and then you don't take something just for money for sure that's a bad idea but you also don't take something just because it's in front of you and you didn't see anything else lately which is how he got here he just took a job yeah yeah and that's what most people do it's not a bad thing but the good news is the house is kind of giving you the wake-up call so i think you guys are to sit down together with the kids in bed and you do some soul-searching about what he's going to do with his career and is that then going to manifest itself into more money fast enough to keep our family from being broke due to this house and i think you i think when you run those scenarios melody you start looking at the numbers and go what does he need to make in order for you guys to stay in this house and feel good about it and afford it and then yeah you know and is that possible with this track that he's on but then you look at the other option it may actually be both it may be changing careers and you still realize this isn't the house we need to stay in in this season and that's okay when you start to lay out all the options you have change careers second job sell the house some combination of that you just start to feel more in control because you realize you're not painted in a corner with two bad options you have more options than you think so just spend some time just like dave said when the kids are down where you can just lay out all the options on the table and that will immediately reduce your stress because you can see all of the paths to get you to where you want to go and then you can make the best decision does that make sense yeah for sure i also did want to ask you if you thought it would be realistic for me to try to do something from home having four kids they're five and under be tough but it can be done it would it would require you to give up any time that you have by yourself right now so it would be before they wake up or after they go to bed that would be when that would happen realistically yeah and so it's just i don't even know where to start i don't have any kind of yeah i tell you what we'll send you a couple of things i'm going to send you a copy of christie's book business boutique which will help with your ideas of what you m where you might start and i'm gonna send you a copy of ken's book the proximity principle and i want your husband to get on ken coleman.com tonight because we need a track towards making 80 grand and i don't care how what the track is or if it's three months three years two years one year five years whatever i need a track if you're not gonna put that track in place you need to put this house up for sale this is the ramsey show [Music] stop paying your overpriced wireless provider and switch to pure talk they use the same network as the larger providers for much less for just thirty dollars a month get unlimited talk text and six gigs of data with no contract the average family saves over seventy dollars a month by switching to pure top just go to puretalk.com and enter the promo code ramsey to save 50 off your first month pure talk simply smarter wireless [Music] [Applause] welcome to the ramsey show christy wright number one best-selling author and ramsey personality is my co-host today answering your questions about your life and your money if it feels like no matter what you try to do or how hard you work you cannot get ahead i know the feeling it's exhausting it's stressful and sometimes even terrifying you do not have to live like that if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired decide that you're ready to do something different so that you get different results it's time to commit to a plan that actually works financial peace university is the step-by-step plan that's helped millions and millions of people pay off debt and take control of their money combine that with a premium version of the every dollar budgeting tool and you'll make progress right away it's the own it's only available with a membership to ramsey plus decide today to break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck this month only we're taking 30 off the price of a 12 month ramsey plus membership and it's got tons of stuff in it financial peace university in every dollar are just part of it start with a free trial of ramsey plus today by texting trial to 33 789 text trial two three three seven eight nine michael is with us in las vegas hey michael what's up hey how are you doing dave better than i deserve how can i help hey so um i've never had any like financial teachings except for like youtube and that's where i found you um i owe 280 000 on my house and i had 50 grand in the bank and i was wondering should i just put that 50 right toward the principal or put it in the market and once it reaches my house payoff then pull it out and pay off my house do you have any other debt no do you have any other savings yeah i have uh i have 50 000 in my uh deferred comp retirement thing but i can't pull it out until he's retired well first of all way to go on being debt free uh that's awesome you're in a great position you do want to have an emergency fund you want to have a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses so i don't know what that would be for you but you want to make sure you set that aside and that's going to be in cash in a savings account that you can access anytime it doesn't need to be invested it doesn't need to be complicated and you don't want to put that towards the house because you need to access it if something goes wrong but then the rest what you're going to do is if if you're not already investing on baby step number four you want to invest 15 percent um on baby step number four and then you take the rest and just put it towards uh put it towards your house and uh and drop that down you shouldn't have any type of fees or penalties for paying a larger sum at one time and that will drop your uh drop your balance down and you're just making progress at the same time well maybe step six so michael the deal is this um i i i'm honored that you found us on youtube um it uh scares me that that's your only source of information um and i don't think we we lack credibility we do we do this for a living but you probably need to get some books and some other things i'll send you a copy of our best-selling book the total money makeover which will walk you through the whole process process of building wealth and christie's exactly on track there we teach a process that literally tens of millions of people have done called the baby steps which is the shortest distance between where you are in wealth which was the underlying question you asked what's the fastest way for me to get wealthy meaning pay off my house have some money is it put the money in the stock market or does it pay off my house with the money so you need an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses as she outlined and you put the rest of it on the mortgage the reason we say to do that rather than invest the difference is that um the data that we have having studied ten thousand millionaires among those that became millionaires uh north of 80 of them did so by two primary things which is most of them in other words they got a they got their home paid off and that was a big chunk of their net worth and they steadily invested into their retirement accounts whether it's deferred comp 401k roth iras something along those lines but usually it was 401ks and roth iras deferred comps usually down the list so um you know that's what i would have you to do is let's work to get the house paid off and then when that's paid off not having a house payment enables you to invest a lot of money per month and the advantages that you're able to build wealth very very quickly then sela is with us in vancouver washington hi sila how are you hi dave thanks for answering my call sure what's up hey um so i am 24 years old i'm married i just had we just had our first baby he's 10 months old now um congratulations and thank you it's been fun um inexpensive so so my question is um here in vancouver washington as you guys probably know the cost of living here is astronomical um a decent house in a decent neighborhood is anywhere from and this is a minimum of 325 350 but you know if you're going to get a sizable house if we want to have another baby and have a three bedroom it'd be like four hundred thousand um and so the twenty percent down payment is very a very large amount and um i'm just wondering for people my age especially the millennial and gen z generation um the option of zero down so uh we have 16 000 in our savings account um we've got 2 000 in stock so we're going to have 40 000 by august of this next year and um but we're just wondering if we should just do zero down versus doing all of the versus wiping it out if that makes sense well zero down i would not buy a house that means you're it means you're if you don't have any money you shouldn't buy a house that's a bad plan you're gonna get yourself in a pinch so you need an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and you're debt free before you start talking about buying um on a first time home buy i don't think we don't tell people you have to put down 20 percent it's just preferable because if you don't you're going to have pmi private mortgage insurance which is going to run you about 75 to 100 per 100 000 borrowed per month so it turns out to be a lot of money going to an insurance program that pays them the mortgage company in the event you get foreclosed on that also applies to first-time home buyers and home buyer programs so there are no first-time homebuyer programs that don't have some kind of mortgage insurance backing on them and so it gets to be very very expensive and the you know the whole premise of a first-time homebuyer program is that first-time homebuyers don't do not have any money and they need to buy a house anyway well that's a dumb butt idea and so i stay away from those programs uh they're really not a big blessing uh you know and if you don't put down 20 i'm okay with that but put it on a 15-year fixed where the payment's no more than a fourth of your take-home pay and let me tell you what if you think vancouver washington is an area you cannot afford to live in under those guidelines then that means vancouver washington is an area you can't afford to live in uh you may not be able to afford to live in silicon valley either or in manhattan island very very expensive real estate there's a lot of areas people cannot afford to live in because they don't make enough money to live there i don't think that's true in your case i think you're out there looking around at houses and you just saw some you liked and then you started crafting this narrative in your mind that you can't afford that the only houses that you can afford or are the only ones you like are the ones that all they have and that's just not true so i think you take your time you continue to learn the real estate market you get a good down payment in place it does not have to be 20 20 down but it does need to be a 15-year fixed and where the payment is no more than a fourth of your take-home pay if you don't do that you're going to slow your wealth building dramatically because you use the wrong set of assumptions to handle your money it's going to put you in a pinch yeah the other thing i would just encourage you to think about is even if you want to have more children in the future you can look at getting a larger home when you have more cash in the future you don't have to have your first home be the house with all the bedrooms and the location you want start a little bit further out of town maybe smaller less bedrooms and then in a few years that home value has gone up if you want to sell and you get more cash saved you'll have more options you don't have to do it all right now you don't have to rush it absolutely this is the ramsey show [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] christie wright ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt free stage bill and stephanie are with us hey guys how are you doing great how about you better than i deserve welcome where do you all live jacksonville florida oh fun welcome to nashville and i hear all the way up here to do a debt-free scream how much did you pay off 365 000. wow nice and how long did this take you 37 months oh wow kicking it and your range of income during that time 280 to 450. wow what do you guys do for a living i'm membership sales with a freedom boat club okay and i'm a pharmacist very good good for you guys well done so uh 365 000 dollars what kind of debt was that uh my student loan auto loan and a lease cell phones furniture and 401k loan and our mortgage oh look at the weird people house and everything wow so how much of the 365 was mortgage and how much was the pharmacy student loan the student loan when we committed to the plan was about 35 000 but it was 78 at the beginning oh okay so you weren't i was thinking and our mortgage was about 265. oh okay so that was the lion's share actually excellent so you guys just got 37 months boom boom once you decide to do it it's gone huh that's right yeah just like that all right so i got to hear this story what in the world got you so fired up well we have to go back um so about six years um ago you know looking at our marriage was not in the best of shape and amount of debt and so i began my own plan um looked at our you know my student loans and in nine years had paid off 13 000 towards the principal and 45 000 in payments and that was my i'd had monet moment and so i began tackling the debt in secret um without my husband's awareness to alleviate some of the marital stress and so um fast forward to the fall of 2017 we got planted into a local church through our children and family who had been praying for us for years and our son was saved that winter and um him and i were baptized that spring wow wow yes and so we entered in to a fast and a tithing challenge and so that's when i had to basically confess to bill that i had been paying off debt without him knowing and that didn't go over well um so we had to get through that and essentially you know had to ask for forgiveness and once i got him kind of on board it was on our way over to nashville driving over from my grandpa's funeral that we were listening to your show and he agreed to do it with a with me and so then we began and a year later had paid off all of our consumer debt and established our emergency fund and and then began the mortgage and so um let me see here give me one second what's the church celebration church oh yeah jacksonville great yes it's a great church yeah wonderful yeah very cool they've been a great family for us she drug me into that kicking screaming and into the dave ramsey program kicking his feet i'm forever forever grateful for it yeah wow wow so you both met god as adults in this process yes we did wow wow that's amazing very very cool okay so in 2017 um she comes in and goes i've been secretly paying off debt so what was it that uh pissed you off about that the fact that it was a secret and you had been deceived because like i have less debt doesn't make anybody mad usually yeah i think that the big thing was i kind of like everybody else i always think you know you can put that money into you know some kind of investment and make more money than what we were paying off for our student loans i think that was the big thing you know it's always talk about about it at work with a few dad and nobody likes secrets yeah that's not cool at all yeah okay that's fair okay interesting so you're right you're making the trip into nashville the radio's on you guys are listening and uh you're like trapped you can't get out bill in this car and she's got the radio dial on there and so you but something you heard started clicking what was it um i think the biggest aha moment for me was um she said i want to get rid of my infinity lease and go buy a used car i think that's that's what ultimately made me say okay who's this dave ramsey guy what the heck yeah yeah this is he's got way too much influence here i need to learn about this character for sure it was a huge turning point for me yep it was cars were a big thing ah okay and he knew that yes they didn't pay attention so for you to say that bill's like whoa this just got real it did yes yeah okay which for my wife uh the car that she drive drives i'm a lot more concerned about it than she is i can't i'm like you need a better car i don't get a cat car it's not her she doesn't cars are not her thing but you got to know the hot button though oh yeah that's interesting yep very cool you guys very cool so your son was how old when all this happened when he was eighth grade he was in the eighth grade so he just went with a friend to church so he there was a friend that he knew went to celebration and had been talking to him about it and so they woke up on sunday morning 8 a.m dressed and ready to go and we had take we had tried to take him to church a couple of years prior and it was a train wreck oh yeah and but god was in this and he was leading the way and what the moment we walked in the doors we felt like we were home also he he got up and got dressed and talked you all into taking him he didn't go with his friend no the friend just had invited him yeah the whole family went yeah both our son and daughter yeah like we're going to church this these are the hours this is the youth program and it was all based on their friend not but they had they hadn't been to the youth program at all they hadn't and and uh when they were on spring break with my dad and stepmom they actually picked out a church you know got online picked out a church because they always went to church with them when they went down south wow found a church that was similar and got us plugged in wow that is cool that's amazing that's so powerful i love this story and now no debt house or anything what's this house worth well according to zillow and the current market it's around 500 000. it is paid for it is it's yours how does that feel amazing our neighbors directly across the street just paid theirs yes wow and so we come out and cheer each other on i love it that's awesome well what's the secret what's the worst thing one takeaway they're like you got to do this if you're going to get here i think the biggest thing is really doing it together and and getting god involved in it that's good and just being obedient yeah and um being determined yeah and not giving up when it gets hard because it does get hard yeah it gets hard and it's so worth it look at you guys now it is on this side of it it is there is a peace and a contentment that is undescribable how's this affected your marriage uh it's totally brought us back together yeah we're doing things as a as a couple doing things as a family now that's awesome yeah that's really cool it's been amazing you guys are impressive yes i love it that's man what a three year journey powerful boom bomb was dropped on the place it's not even the same people living in that house it's completely changed very very cool very cool and i see our own kim little sitting out here so you're plugged into the official baby steps community oh absolutely very active okay so you're a big deal in that community then huh well i think i am yeah kim if kim's sitting here if kim's sitting here you're a big deal because there's 200 000 300 000 people in there so if she came out here then you're a big deal that's fun i love kim that's cool all right 365 get the kids in what are their names and ages bill is 17 and our daughter olivia is 14. all right 365 000 paid off in 37 months making 280 to 450 killing it on the income too count it down let's hear a debt free scream three two one man i love that story cool that was really cool this is the ramsay show [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] our scripture of the day romans 5 4 and 5 patience produces character and character produces hope and this hope will never disappoint us thomas edison said what a man's mind can create man's character should control christy wright ramsey personality number one best-selling author and uh is my co-host today ramsey personality uh deanna is with us in jacksonville florida hi deanna welcome to the ramsey show thank you sir um i'm actually a truck driver i'm 49 my husband will be 60 in a couple of months he was my co-driver but he went out on medical issues two years ago and has been being totally disabled um we were fortunate enough to have a long-term disability but we have to fight for that each month for him to get that check but he is getting his uh 1200 a month social security disability and i did my and i make 837 a week bring home and i am on salary and that is after all the insurances and life insurance comes out of my check all that comes out ahead of that number okay so um my husband is not on board with me um downsizing all the credit and getting rid of the cards i've been discovering about a month ago and i had a conversation with him this morning his main focus is his everyday i'm only home six times a year so i don't get to go home he's at the house and he mainly focuses on him and what he's feeling um and we also have two joint accounts this check goes into his account the rest of the stuff goes into my account and i pay the majority of the bills um and his check takes care of his medications and his food and all that kind of thing so you're over the road yes yes and i'm i'm on a job that i that i like they take care of us they took care of my husband when he had a problem they worked everything out and helped us get his long-term disability initiated so he's getting ssi and long-term disability while he meets the quote-unquote criteria okay you guys are hard working thank you i'm fortunate to have my brother as my co-driver now so um but my my credit card debt is uh twenty thousand seventy seven dollars we've got a seventy six hundred dollar motorcycle that my husband really can't drive anymore but we still owe the debt on and if i if i turn that back in i would owe 1500 on it um to the credit union just to just to get rid of it i did check on that and we um because i married a widower um we have been constantly paying off stuff from his late wife situation she died of medical issues um probably 10 or 12 years ago yeah um because we got married for eight and uh we still are paying on a truck that he thought that they paid for that they didn't um all right let's pull up here for a second christy yeah the the first thing that stands out to me is is the fact that y'all are operating in separate lanes i know there's a lot of variables there's a lot of debts there's a lot of bills you got checks coming from different places but the fact that you all have separate accounts and you are responsible for these things and he's responsible for these things that's a piece of it that's influencing how you view your approach to money more than you realize it's not just the account that the money sits in it's the way that you approach it and so putting your money together into one joint account where all the income goes in and then you guys sit down and do a budget maybe for the first time together so starting these conversations and putting money on the same place will will give you something different to work from whereas right now when it's like well this is mine and this is yours it almost implicitly you all have but with when he came off the road the thing that you had in common was gone he sits at home you're not home ever yeah and um he has a he has a set of problems and a set of money you have a set of problems and a set of money and they're completely separated as if you aren't married is what you described so even when you talk to him about being on board with the plan the framework that you're operating in isn't even conducive to that plan i guess is what i'm saying so i i'm not saying he'll be super excited about the plan if you were to combine your accounts but i think that's an important first step you're like the ideal roommate you're never there well i mean we're very fortunate to find each other and we wouldn't trade each other for anybody i'm not suggesting i'm not suggesting you divorce i'm telling you that on a practical level your day-to-day lives are so separated that it's very difficult for you all to have a common goal and so what you need to do is step back from this and set a common goal for the two of you and the common goal would include you being taken care of and him being taken care of so he he's got this he's dealing with the emotions of not being able to work and he was a hard-working dude and he's not able to do that now and that's emotional for a guy uh it's emotional for most people and um and then you're looking he's looking at a bike over here he can't ride anymore and you know you come home from the road and go your best ideas sell his bike and that that's that's not gonna fly real good you know and i'm sure i'm sure it was not a good conversation so but the reason for that is i know that the reason you're not wrong to tell him to sell the bike the bike needs to go i agree but the the point is is that he's got this set of needs and once over here and you've got a completely different set so we you need to dial back from that and you guys need to get on phone get on the zoom call get get back in town and reset and say okay you're 65. when you're 75 and i am 59 where are we going to be where do we want to be what do we want our lives to look like are we still going to be operating the way we're operating now with careers whether you're gone all the time at 59 is that what you want to do it's not a bad thing you just have to decide to do that on purpose and where do we want to be with our money and then what is the steps that we need to take with our money to cause that future out there to occur well and i think you bring up a good point because with her husband going out on disability and i don't know how recently that happened but the effects of that you're still dealing with and so i wonder when you start to have a conversation about a common goal even asking him some questions like in this transition what is something he could get excited about and i don't know what that is what how he spends his time how is there something he could do a hobby some something that that within his abilities in this new reality that he could get excited about and that will then flow into the conversation about money and goals but but in this transition i'm sure it's been incredibly hard but when you start talking about values and dreams and the future like you're saying dave then then you know what to do with the money but but just to zoom out a little bit because you're right they've got they're they're running in completely separate lanes and you got to come together on what that desired future looks like what is something you're both looking forward to and working toward and that brings you together to work toward it in your individual ways yeah and and you know the thing is the umbrella can of what we want our lives look like should be big enough to have both of you under yes yeah you know and you say okay sharon dave where you all want to be in 10 years okay we're 60 when we're 70 where do we want to be what do we want our lives to look like oh crap we need to make some moves to cause that to happen to cause that desired future as henry cloud calls it that that view of the future that vision to occur and if you don't make those moves because what's happening now is you're making all your decisions based on what happens by friday and what happens by friday for you is distinctly different than it is for him yeah very distinctly different but what hap what you want together for 10 years is probably a lot more similar than what happens by friday yeah but then you can both give up something that happens by friday to get to the long-term goal because the motorcycle's not in the 10-year plan yeah you know it's not but you can come with a new 10-year plan yeah and something else could be in the 10-year plan right something else it should be yeah should be in the 10-year plan so that that's the way to aim at it and get it going in that direction hang on i'll tell you what we're going to do dana we're going to put you into ramsey plus for a year and let you and your husband work on that that's something you can both do and discuss while you're on the road both of you can be taking the class at the same time and that'll help give you a way to talk through these issues hold on we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace christ jesus [Music] have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of ramsay advice in their life let them know about the ramsey call of the day podcast it's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes check out the ramsey call of the day podcast wherever you listen to podcasts [Music] you

Channel: The Ramsey Show - Full Episodes

Views: 33,441

Rating: 4.9228072 out of 5

Keywords: dave ramsay live, dave ramsey, dave ramsey channel, dave ramsey live, dave ramsey live show, dave ramsey live stream, dave ramsey podcast, dave ramsey radio show, dave ramsey show, dave ramsey show full show, dave ramsey show live, ramsey, ramsey solutions, the dave ramsey show, the dave ramsey show live

Id: MtQt8-50iVo

Length: 121min 15sec (7275 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021