The Ramsey Show - App - A Baby Steps Theme Hour! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave 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. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. In the immortal words of Frosty the Snowman, Happy New Year!
Starting point is 00:00:55 Happy New Year, everyone. We're so glad to be with you as we're kicking off the new year. Lots of wonderful things happening for you this year, and we're honored to be part of it so thanks for hanging out with us are you ready to change things are you ready to transform are you ready to kick some stuff in gear like you've never kicked it in gear before this is your year baby it's a whiteboard it's wide open what are you going to do with it you could save for the future you
Starting point is 00:01:26 could build wealth you could get out of debt you could actually get control of this stuff called money all you need is a plan and that's what we're here for we're here to give you the information and the inspiration to go about the business of changing your life i know it sounds corny but we're a corn factory over here it's what what we do, and we're happy with that. We're all about you having the best possible turnout for your future that you could have. Now, we've been talking about this stuff for years. How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time.
Starting point is 00:01:56 You have to have a plan. How do you take an overwhelming task and make it workable? You break it into small pieces and put them in order of attack. Now, we did that with this whole personal finance thing some 25 years ago, and it's almost become tribal speak. Inside the tribe, you have to be able to speak the verbs, the nouns of the tribe, and it's all about the baby steps. And people call in on the show, what baby step they're on. They start out with that as if everyone in the world knew what a baby step was so we thought it was a great year just a great way to start out the new year to say hey let's go through the baby steps
Starting point is 00:02:33 for the whole hour we're going to take callers this hour from baby step one baby step two baby step three four five six and seven so you kind of get the idea of what's going on. The baby steps are in order. That's why we call them steps. If we wanted them in a different order, we'd have put them in a different order. If they work better in a different order, we'd have put them in a different order. Don't fix this. It's not broken. Baby step one is you save $1,000 for your beginner starter emergency fund.
Starting point is 00:03:01 Two is you pay off all your debt except your home. Working your debt snowball. List your debt smallest to largest. Pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one with a vengeance. When you're debt-free everything but the house, that feels good, doesn't it? Say yes. Then we're going to move on and save our emergency fund, fully funded emergency fund. Go back to that $1,000 account, raise it up to three to six months of expenses. And then, of course, we're going to move on to baby step four at that point. And four, five, and six, we do at the same time. Four, you put 15% of your income into retirement.
Starting point is 00:03:37 Up until now, you've not been doing money into retirement. And if you were, you should have stopped. And then baby step five is you start saving for your kids college above the 15% going into retirement. Any other money we can get our hands on is baby step six. We pay off the house early and with no house payment and money for kids college and retirement underway, there's nothing left to do in baby step seven, but become very wealthy and outrageously generous. You've lived like no one else. Now you can live and give like no one else. And again, we're going to talk to folks at each Baby Step. If you're on one of those Baby Steps and you want to talk about that, jump in.
Starting point is 00:04:15 The phone number is 888-825-5225. We are glad you are with us. Tiara is going to start us off with Baby Step 1 in Washington, D.C. Happy New Year, Tiara. Happy New Year. So tell me what's going on with you and Baby Step 1. Well, I started off this year, November, around November. I heard about the Baby Steps from a Facebook group called Black Girls in Social Work.
Starting point is 00:04:45 And we were talking about letting those of some of our generational issues. What's it called? Black Girls in Social Work. I love it. That's great. So we're all social workers. And they were talking about, you know, letting go of some of our debt and some of our generational issues. And I just kind of jumped on board.
Starting point is 00:05:04 Yeah, you know's that's a great discussion every one of us regardless of ethnicity need to let go of our generational issues don't we yes yes and some of them are unique ethnically and some of them aren't but everybody's got generational stuff like i don't want to do that like the other generation did it right yes exactly so very cool so you got started in january right now no no november is when i started oh okay all right very cool uh yeah so i started a new job um as a government contractor um in november and after being off of a full-time job for a couple months, so right now I have a full-time job where I make about $72,000 a year. And I have a part-time job where I'm going to probably make about $77,000 in debt.
Starting point is 00:06:06 $52,000 or $55,000 is student loans. I have about $7,500 left on a car that was due to be paid off this year. And so I just want to, so the rest of it is like personal, small things. I just want to make 2020 my year. Amen. Yeah. Amen. Well, you're going to so you how much of your baby step one have you got done i'm halfway through all right good quite a bit okay so you'll probably finish it up this month or so yes good all right well yeah then baby step
Starting point is 00:06:39 two just work it pure and all that means is you're going to list all of those debts not counting your home smallest to largest that big old student loan is going to be your last one. And you're going to pay minimum payments on everything but the little one, and then you're going to attack the little one. And so $77,000 in debt, and your household income is going to be what in 2020? I'm kind of calculating between $82,000 and $85,000. 85 000 okay how much you think you're going to put on debt in one year out of 85 i'm i'm really hoping that i could do like 25 000 good yeah i'm thinking 30 30 yeah that'd be 2500 a month and that'll put you out of debt in a little over two years okay so 30 000 okay i mean you may be able to do more even i don't know what
Starting point is 00:07:27 you're you know what what pieces of your lifestyle you've got living in dc that you can chop but what will happen is as you get more as you get the thousand dollars in the bank how old are you i am 29 is this going to be like the first time you kept a thousand dollars to the side and never touched it yes yeah see that's like a breakthrough emotionally isn't it yes it is that is a generational thing but it's also like a grown-up thing it's like i know people that make 80 and 90 thousand dollars a year that work in this system for the first time in their life they set that thousand dollars aside it's like mine i mean everybody has a thousand dollars flow through your fingers right that's not what i'm talking about but i'm saying when you set it aside and it's there and you're not going to touch it, it changes everything.
Starting point is 00:08:09 So you definitely got this. 2020 is definitely going to be your year, Tiara. And very cool. I'm glad you found out about us in your Facebook group. And we're honored to walk with you through this. You call us back as you walk this journey. Baby step one almost complete. And then head straight into, of course, Baby Step 2 with a vengeance, baby!
Starting point is 00:08:31 Happy New Year! This is The Dave Ramsey Show. I can't believe 2020 is here. If you're paying attention, you're already planning your new budget. For most of you, your mortgage is your single biggest line item. Lowering that payment could have a dramatic effect. My friends at Churchill Mortgage want you to save big. So if you get a free Churchill checkup this month, and it makes sense to refinance, you'll get an extra $200 off your closing cost.
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Starting point is 00:09:46 Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. For a limited time only, this offer is applicable to closing costs and is not combinable with other offers. Happy New Year, America. We're walking through the baby steps in detail, taking calls from people in each of the baby steps. This baby steps theme hour to kick off the year. You need a clear plan to execute.
Starting point is 00:10:19 You execute exactly, not ish, but exactly like we talk about. You're going to have the best year of your life financially. And if you want to mess around with this and go reinvent your own thing, you can do that. But we're talking about what works, what millions and millions of people have done. And it's a proven, clear path called the Baby Steps for implementing common sense and biblical financial principles, getting out of debt, saving money, investing, having money for emergencies. How do we do all of these things? How do we build wealth? How do we increase our generosity?
Starting point is 00:10:55 How do we increase the position to change our family tree? The shortest path is through these steps that take you first out of debt and then into wealth building. And we covered them in the first segment. We're taking calls from people about each of the baby steps as we go along, which brings us to baby step two. Stephanie is in Pennsylvania. Getting out of debt is baby step two.
Starting point is 00:11:18 Working the debt snowball, paying off everything but your home. Hey, Stephanie, how are you? Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? I'm good. Better than I deserve. Happy New Year. Thank you so much. So how'd you get started on this journey?
Starting point is 00:11:34 So my brother actually went through Baby Step 1 and 2, became debt-free, and then he bought me the kit and the class December of 2017 for Christmas. So I've been doing it since January 18th. Okay, so a year ago you took off, two years ago, you took off on your journey in Financial Peace University, and you're on your way in Baby Step 2, getting out of debt. So what have you done so far? So, so far I have paid off my credit card, and then three student loans. Wow. In that time. And how much debt have you paid off total? So I have paid off $40,000 towards my debt.
Starting point is 00:12:17 Wow. Good for you. And what is your income, Stephanie? So my income, I make around $43,000 a year. Wow. That's the two jobs that I have. Wow, you're doing great. Okay, very cool. Thanks. And you're paying off $20,000 a year so far out of $40,000 income. That's impressive. Very good. And how much have you got left to go? So I have about $30,000 to go. I have three loans left. So yeah, so they total up to around $30,000. Okay. And since you've already done $40,000, you know you can do $30,000, right? Exactly. Very good. Good. How can I best help you today? Well, so I have, like I said before, I have the three loans and each loan has a significant amount of interest rates. So I wanted to know if it's beneficial to consolidate those loans or to keep them separate.
Starting point is 00:13:15 What is the interest rates? So my highest one is 10.75%. They're all student loans? They're all student loans, correct. Okay okay 10 10 and what's the other rates uh nine and six okay and you can consolidate to what rate have you gotten a quote on a consolidation i have not no okay i would think you could probably get down to six or so uh are they federally insured student loans so So the one that's 6% is a Fed loan. The other two are private through Discover. Okay.
Starting point is 00:13:49 The private ones are harder to consolidate. Okay, so let's say you've got $30,000 worth of debt. Let's say you went from 10% to 5%, just to make it easy. So 5% would be $3, five five percent would be uh three thousand dollars i'd be fifteen hundred dollars a year you're saving okay that's helpful that helps get rid of i'd like to have fifteen hundred dollars if you send it to me i'll take it but but it doesn't solve a thirty thousand dollar problem okay so i i don't mind you consolidating because it helps a little but it's really 95 percent of the reason you're going to get out of debt is you you are the special sauce
Starting point is 00:14:33 the interest rate is not the special sauce you are so it's okay to to affect it by you know three to five percent or something it helps a. But the fact that you are doing such a good job on $40,000 a year, attacking this and making such good progress, really. I mean, I'm not just trying to give you a false compliment here. I want you to understand you really are impressive. You are the secret sauce. So you stay excited. You stay game on. You stay out of the restaurants. You stay off of vacations. You work the secret sauce. So you stay excited. You stay game on.
Starting point is 00:15:05 You stay out of the restaurants. You stay off of vacations. You work the side hustle. You work and work and work and work and work and save and save and scrimp and scrimp and hustle and grind. And that is light years more important than the interest rate. But if you want to consolidate them and get them on a lower rate for the one year that they're going to be around you or so, then that's helpful. it's it's helpful 97 of the reason you're going to get out of debt it's going to be you three percent is going to be the interest rate mathematically that's actually
Starting point is 00:15:34 true so uh you know it's okay to work on it but uh don't look for that to be the saving grace you've already found the saving grace she's in your mirror she's your secret weapon her name is stephanie and she's impressive well done kiddo proud of you open phones at 888-825-5225 we're going through the baby steps today stephanie is in baby step two plowing through man she started off with fifty50,000 in debt, $60,000 in debt, and has plowed through 40 of it already. That's pretty impressive. I mean, it's amazing.
Starting point is 00:16:13 And making no money. I mean, making $40,000 a year. She's not making $400,000 here. So very, very good. Very, very, very well done. Okay, so Baby Step 1 is $1,000. We did that in the first segment. Save that. Our first caller, Tiara, very well done. Okay, so Baby Step 1 is $1,000. We did that in the first segment. Save that.
Starting point is 00:16:26 Our first caller, Tiara, was halfway there. Baby Step 2 is pay off all your debts except your home, listing them smallest to largest in that order. That's what Stephanie's in the process of doing and doing such a good job. Once you're debt-free everything but the house, that moves us to Baby Step 3 where Kathy is in Oregon. Hey, Kathy, Happy New Year. Thanks, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.
Starting point is 00:16:49 Tell me about your Baby Step 3. How are you doing? Good. So my husband and I are currently obviously in Baby Step 3, and we will have three months of our emergency fund saved by next month. Good. And I'm curious if I can squeeze Baby Step 3B in between the three months and the six months because we have no insulation in our walls and we keep our house at a balmy 60 degrees because it's upwards of 100 to 140 per month to keep our house at 60.
Starting point is 00:17:22 Are you moving? Is that why you say 3B? No. Oh, you just want to buy insulation? I just want to buy insulation for the walls. Well, that wouldn't be really 3B. That would just be a budget item that you want to put in, which would slow down things after you get your basic emergency fund in place.
Starting point is 00:17:41 Okay. And yes, I would definitely budget for insulation in the walls after i had three months set aside and then if you want to go back you know the only difference in three and six months is just you're beefing it up it's not that you don't have one now if you said i i want to i want to stop and do insulation before i have any emergency fund other than my baby step one i would say don't do that but get the but get the three months done first, and then that gets you done, and then you can go do some other stuff that's kind of edgy right now, which is insulation things kind of edgy,
Starting point is 00:18:15 and then before you do some more luxurious type spending, which you can do in baby steps four, five, and six, you may want to go back and beef that up a little bit, and that would be okay too. Hey, guys, we've got a free preview for you for Financial Peace University. Over 6 million people have been through this class in the last 25 years. And here's the thing. We're going to put a free preview out Tuesday, January 7 at 7 p.m. It's a YouTube event, but you have to have a link.
Starting point is 00:18:43 If you want to watch a link on YouTube, a free preview to Financial Peace University. It doesn't cost a thing. And you're going to get some real information out of this, some real motivation out of this. This is not just a commercial, an infomercial. It's really going to help you. You're going to want to see this lesson that we're putting out there to start off 2020. How do you do it? You text the word WATCH to 33789.
Starting point is 00:19:08 Text the word WATCH to 33789. How would you like to get to the end of this year and be almost out of debt? We're going to show you how. It's a free event this Tuesday night. How would you like to be able to invest and be outrageously generous? We're going to show you how. It's a free event this Tuesday night. Text the word WATCH to 33789 for a free preview to Financial Peace University. Business leaders, right now you have the opportunity to take your business to the next level this new year.
Starting point is 00:19:58 You can start by hiring the right people to help your business grow. At Ramsey Solutions, we post on LinkedIn Jobs because they are the best at matching the right person with the right job. LinkedIn Jobs screens candidates with the skills you're looking for so you can hire smart and fast. The thing I love about LinkedIn is they look beyond just the work skills and put your job post in front of qualified candidates who match your business requirements perfectly. That's how LinkedIn makes sure your job post is seen by the people you want to hire,
Starting point is 00:20:29 people with the skills, qualifications, and other interests that will help your business grow. It's no wonder a hire is made every eight seconds on LinkedIn. So this year, set your business up to succeed. Get started today and get $50 off your first job post. Visit LinkedIn.com slash Ramsey. Visit linkedin.com slash Ramsey. That's linkedin.com slash Ramsey. Terms and conditions apply. happy new year america we're doing the baby steps theme hour to kick off the new year today and that means we're taking a caller from each of the seven baby steps to illustrate what
Starting point is 00:21:22 they are we've already talked to someone someone building up their $1,000 baby step one, someone paying off their debt using baby step two, using the debt snowball, baby step three, finishing the emergency fund at three to six months of expenses. Tuesday night, January the 7th, we're going to have a very special event, a free, free, free, free, free is a good word, preview of Financial Peace University. If you would like to watch it, we will text you a link, and you have to just send us a text to get that link, and we'd like to let you see how Financial Peace University works.
Starting point is 00:22:02 Over 6 million people have been through Financial Peace University and learning to walk in detail these baby steps and walking them with a positive peer group, right? A group of people doing the same thing you're doing instead of making fun of what you're doing. That's a big deal. So how do you watch on January the 7th at 7 p.m.? You have to have a link.
Starting point is 00:22:22 How do you get the link? Ah, there you go. You text the word WATCH to 33-789. 7-8-9. Text the word WATCH to 33-789. And it's all free. And you can, you know, you've always wondered about this Financial Peace University thing. here's a way you can watch it for free a preview of it anyway on tuesday night so check in with us baby step four is saving 15 of your income into retirement and ronda is on the line
Starting point is 00:23:02 with our baby step four question our person working Baby Step 4 from New Jersey. Hey, Rhonda, how are you? Hi, Dave, doing great. It's a pleasure to talk to you. You too. So tell me your story. How long have you been working these steps? So we started, my husband and I, with FPU in around February of 2017,
Starting point is 00:23:22 and at that time we had a little over a hundred thousand dollars in debt we were able to clear that for just under two years Wow and yeah so we were feeling really good about that and as we get into the new year for 2019 that's when we started to work our baby step three so over the course of 2019 we saved 45 000 for baby step three and now we're heading into baby steps four five and six so you paid off how much debt total so far a little over a hundred and save 45 000 and you basically did that in a year and a half or two years yes wow pretty impressive nice january start for you a while back there huh yeah january is a good time to start all this stuff yeah that's how we feel
Starting point is 00:24:13 for sure very cool so i mean you have no debt and 45 000 in the bank in two years you were deeply in debt and had no money how's that feel amazing the only way to describe it, amazing. You're on your way to everyday millionaire status fast, aren't you? Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so now you're on baby step four, and how much do you guys make? What's your household income? $265,000. Oh, okay. Making some serious bank.
Starting point is 00:24:38 What do you all do for a living? So my husband's a doctor of physical therapy, and I am in marketing. Ah, you're both doing very well. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Okay, so you're saving 15% of $265,000 is the goal starting now, right? Yes. And your question's what? So the question is, now my company offers the Roth 401k, which I plan to max out.
Starting point is 00:25:01 My husband, however, works for a small physical therapy practice and they don't offer a 401k. So for him, we were going to do the traditional IRA since we can't do the Roth, but that only brings us up to about 25, 26k. And then we still need to figure out what to do for the rest of it. I'm under the impression and hopefully i'm wrong that i can't do a traditional ira because i'm already doing the roth 401k you are wrong yes thank goodness thank goodness yeah so yeah you're in uh you're in great shape you're going to be able to do all kinds of stuff here so i mean you can do 19 000 in your 401k you need to get 39 up 39 to 40 right in there going in that's going to be 15 of your 265 so if we put 19 in your 401k that leaves us 20 to go uh and both of you can do roth iras
Starting point is 00:26:03 but you cannot do them directly because you make too much. You have to do what's called a backdoor Roth. This is what I do every year. Now, how old are y'all? I'm 36, and my husband's 39. Okay, so you can do $6,000 each. And what you do is you can do it once a year. I do it in one fell swoop here in January is when I do it.
Starting point is 00:26:21 And I just open an after tax traditional not a before tax traditional okay an after tax traditional IRA and 20 seconds later I roll it into a Roth okay and you that's called a backdoor Roth if your income is too high to do a directly into a Roth you have to do a directly into a Roth. You have to do a two-step procedure to get there. If you get with one of our SmartVestor pros, they can walk you through that and show you exactly how to pull that off. It's just a little two-step is all it is. It's got an extra piece of paperwork or two with it.
Starting point is 00:26:59 But I do it every year, and I make way too much to qualify, hit the actual qualifying guidelines. Now, see, that only gets us to 12, though, and we've got another eight to go. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. You need to get to 39, and you've got 19 at your place, and then we're putting another 12 in, and so we need to go eight more.
Starting point is 00:27:20 Does your husband have anything available at work, nothing at all? Nothing at all. Does anyone have any self-employed income no none at all okay then you don't have any other retirement options the only thing you can do now is just to start saving in a traditional mutual fund and uh i'd allocate another eight thousand dollars going to that a year and uh you the the probably what i would do there, you can meet with your smart investor pro and they can walk you through some options, but it's just a regular investment. There's no tax break at all. What you're probably going to want to look for is what's called a low turnover mutual fund,
Starting point is 00:28:00 and that means they don't sell the stocks inside the mutual fund very often, and so there's no taxes on the growth until you cash it out the good news is when you cash it out it's going to be taxed at capital gains rate not at ordinary income rate okay so that's nice so i use like an s&p 500 because they almost always have a low turnover ratio and they have low commissions too and that's what i throw extra money in that is not qualified in any kind of a retirement plan. But I don't think you've got any other, other than backdoor Roths and your Roth over at
Starting point is 00:28:30 work, I don't think you've got any other options you can go to at this time. But you're going to do fine. You're going to be just fine. You're going to be in great shape. You guys are killing it. Way to go, Rhonda. Way to go. Great, great, baby step four lindsey is up next and lindsey is in california for baby
Starting point is 00:28:49 step five talking about saving for kids college happy new year lindsey happy new year to you sir so tell me your story how much have you guys done so far how long has it taken you to get to baby step five so our journey actually started in 2015 when my husband and I got engaged. And my father-in-law has followed you for many years and said, you know, my wife and I will help you pay for your wedding if you read the total money makeover. So we were driving through reading your story, which has been a blessing to our family. So with their help, we were able to cash flow our wedding and ourselves with my parents $35,000. So big wedding. So we came home from our honeymoon. We're kind of Dave-ish, settling into our new life. Found out we were pregnant and went into stork mode, saved all that. That was in 2017.
Starting point is 00:29:40 Baby came home. We kind of twitched gears a little bit and went out of Dave orders. That's where we went Dave-ish. Saved for a 3B instead of 3. Bought a new home, and I had our I've had it moment in December of 2018. We were, you know, bought this new house. I was afraid, you know, we have no emergency fund, and what are we going to do? So my husband had been putting into retirement, and so had I. So I sat down with this giant spreadsheet.
Starting point is 00:30:09 All right, I'll tell you what, I'm going to hear the rest of the story, and we'll talk about your question for five when we come back from the break. It's a Baby Steps theme hour here on the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time. Happy New Year! It's a Baby Steps theme hour on The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, you can join us for a free preview of Financial Peace University Tuesday by texting the word WATCH to 33789. Text the word WATCH to 33789. We'll send you a link to a free preview to Financial Peace University.
Starting point is 00:31:14 We're covering all the baby steps today. Lindsey is on baby step five. All right, Lindsey, so now we're on baby step five, and your question about baby step five is what? So my question is, we're expecting our second child in May, and my question is what we should be telling our money to do. If we should be increasing retirement to 15%, going into stork mode, or potentially saving up for a new car, which our Ramsey car is getting ready to die on us.
Starting point is 00:31:45 Okay, saving up for the car is a budget item, and any time you add something to the budget, it lowers your ability to do four, five, six. But we start with baby step four before we do anything once you're out of three, and that's 15% of your income going into retirement. Beyond that, you're saving towards a car, and that's going to reduce what you can put into five and six and you start but you need to have something steadily going into these babies accounts in baby step five for college i don't care if it's 50 or 100 a month it doesn't have to be a lot but let's get something let's get the muscle of college savings built and then uh you know once
Starting point is 00:32:23 you've got that going and you've got everything else handled then we'll be there it sounds like you guys need to work on your budget sounds like you're still a little bit ish flying around uh because you're saying i'm gonna skip out on the 15 percent now baby step four is 15 before we move on to baby step five and uh then of course that brings us to baby step six which is where michael is in texas hey michael happy new year happy new year dave how are you doing better than i deserve sir so you're a baby step six guy working on paying off your house congratulations how long you've been working the baby steps uh five years january wow so january another
Starting point is 00:33:03 january guy january is a good time to start this stuff. So how much debt have you paid off so far? $693,000. Good Lord. January of what? What year did you start? January. We actually went through financial peace in September of 2014,
Starting point is 00:33:26 and we made a commitment to it. And January 1st, my baby girl was born, and we drove her home in a $500 car. And we knew right then we were in it to win it. I'm loving it. And you paid off $693,005 from Financial Peace University. Yes, sir. So good. So now we're to baby step six, paying off the house early.
Starting point is 00:33:51 You're already putting stuff in retirement and kids' college. So what's your question? My question is, we can finish this up in 24 months. You know, we owe $99,000 on the house. But we have a real strong desire for all of our kids to go to a Christian school. And our 5-year-old, she's already been in the school. And in two years, our 2-year-old will start. She'll be eligible to start the school.
Starting point is 00:34:22 We can hold her off for one more year and put her through Mother's Day out at church, and we can knock this house out. Or we could back off the house a little bit and start her in the 4K at the Christian school. Yeah. What would you recommend? What's the school cost? $7,400 a year. And what's your household income?
Starting point is 00:34:47 $120. Okay. So this is a $7,000 question after you paid off almost $700,000. Yes, sir. I think you're going to be okay either way, dude. And I probably would do what your heart tells you to do, which I'm guessing is start your kid and delay slightly paying off your house. But it's not going to delay it a year.
Starting point is 00:35:09 It's a $7,000 question. Yes, sir. It's going to delay it a little bit, but, I mean, you've done so much, so fast, so well because of your intentionality. And here's the beauty of this. There's really not a wrong answer to your question. You could go either way, and it won't hurt you. The beauty of this is you are choosing to decide this on purpose instead of acting like you were a victim to your choices. Like, oh, we had to start
Starting point is 00:35:38 the kid to school so we didn't have any choice. And now you're saying we have a choice and we're going to decide which one's best for our family. When you act like that with intentionality, you're always going to come out ahead, dude. You're always going to win. Very, very proud of you, Michael. So, so very, very well done. Excellent, excellent job, man. Really well played.
Starting point is 00:36:02 All right, baby, step seven is when you're debt-free, which is where Michael's going to be soon. House and everything. You're putting money away for retirement. You're putting money away, and now you're on baby step seven. That's just when you lived like no one else. Now you're able to live and give like no one else. And that, of course, is where Rick is to finish out our baby steps theme hour congratulations
Starting point is 00:36:26 rick you made it to baby step seven very cool thank you dave how long you been working this stuff well we started in january 2010 again another january start yeah um and then yeah so we hit baby step six in January 2016. Wow. Good for you. And here we are 10 years later, and you're cooking with gas, man. I mean, it's game on still. You're doing this, huh?
Starting point is 00:36:55 Yes, sir. So how old were you when you started this? My wife and I were 55. Okay. And so now you're like 65. Close to it. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Cool. So what's your question about baby step seven? So we're on baby step seven. And so, so we're nearing retirement talking about more and more about retirement every day. Um, so how do you know when it's time? Uh, with you, it should be not a question of money it should be like when do you want to work and
Starting point is 00:37:29 what do you want to do you got plenty of money don't you yes sir i mean you can quit if you want to now but you there may be some you know if you stay a few more years you may be able to maximize this or that might be worth it um if it's a toxic environment you want to get on out, there's no problem with that. If you've got something else you want to do that's your encore career, you want to let the curtain come down, curtain come back up, take a bow and go on to the next thing, then you've got plenty of time to do that. A lot of people make a ton of money from mid-60s to mid-70s because they step out and do something they've always wanted to do
Starting point is 00:38:06 uh and now it's just for fun it's monopoly money you know you're not trying to feed babies and stuff so um you know you can do any of this anything you want um you know i'll tell you my situation is i intend to work until i die because it's not work for me i enjoy what i do i like doing this show the only thing the only way i'm not going to be on these shows is if I quit making sense and they take me off. But until then, I'll be coming down here and, you know, I'll be going, I'll probably be graspy or something with my voice, right? But, you know, I'm just going to keep doing it,
Starting point is 00:38:36 and I enjoy speaking and that kind of stuff. Now, I'm not going to continue to run the company. That would be unhealthy for the company as the CEO, so I'll step aside from that in a few years. But for now, I'm both. But my anticipation is I never anticipate not doing something because I get joy out of embracing the marketplace. I'm an entrepreneur, and I like to teach. I like what I'm doing.
Starting point is 00:39:01 So if you find something like that, I would say retirement, you know, is not retirement. Uh, you know, retirement for so long has been cast as I hate my job and I can't wait till I get to 65. So I don't have to do it anymore. Well, you passed that a long time ago, man. I mean, so it's just, what do you want to do with your life? You know, you get to wake up like you were 18 and go, I'm going to dream. And what is it I want to do? And do I want to just keep doing, I'm making really good money. I'm going to keep doing a few more years. Cause I like piling up these Benjamins or I'm, I hate this place. I can't get, can't wait to get out of here. Well then get out of there, you know, but find something to do, to lay your hand to,
Starting point is 00:39:37 you've got more joy in your life when you're productivity. I mean, when you're productive, that's just, we all do when you're serving, you get more joy than when you're just sitting around on a fishing dock. I mean, there's only so much golf and fishing you can do, right? And so on. But hey, have some fun, though. You've earned it. Congratulations, Everyday Millionaire.
Starting point is 00:39:56 Well done, well done, well done. Well, we, again, this coming Tuesday, January 7th, a free preview to lesson one of financial peace university did i mention that it's free free is a good word text the word watch to 33 789 let's text the word watch to 33 789 happy new year america make 2020 your baby make it happen guys this is the d Ramsey Show. We'll be back with you before you know it. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for the Dave Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show,
Starting point is 00:40:47 make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com slash show and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.

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