The Ramsey Show - App - A Budget Makes You the Boss of Your Money (Hour 3)
Episode Date: January 8, 2020Home Buying, Savings, Taxes Tools to get you started: Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2Q...Eyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225.
888-825-5225. Jason is with us in Pennsylvania. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Mr. Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help?
Well, my wife and I discovered you and your program a year ago.
We went through FPU at our church, and we've been all in ever since.
Good.
We're currently still in baby step two.
We have about 18 months to go.
Okay.
We paid off about $40,000 in 2019.
Way to go.
My question is, I work as an operations manager. I have a degree in accounting
and one of the goals I've had for the last several years is to start a consulting company
on the side and see where I can grow it. Since we started your program, personal finance has
obviously become a passion because I've seen what it's done for us so far, and I want to be able to help other people do that too. So about six months ago, I went through one of
your webinars for your master coach training class, and I thought, man, that's great. I
definitely want to do that, but I'm going to wait until we get out of Baby Step 2.
Over the weekend, my wife actually came to me and said, you know what? I've been thinking
about that. And our church is getting ready to try to push FPU church wide. She said,
so there could be a lot of other people who need help and how great would it be if there was
somebody in our congregation that had gone through Dave training. And I said, I said, I want to,
I'm going to, and she said, let's budget for it. Let's put it in the budget, save up for a few months.
And then, and I just do it before we get out of baby step two. So I've been kind of conflicted
as to if that should be a baby step two item, or if I should wait 18 months
and do it after we're through baby step three.
Man, I appreciate your heart,
and I appreciate that you're wanting to help people.
And I think you could do a lot of help to folks just with your passion for it
and what you've already learned during the 18 months without having spent the money.
And it would be really hypocritical of
me to tell you people not to go out to eat but buy my core you know buy my right my expensive
my expensive you know uh master coach training program i mean it's not a it's not it's not a
it's not a hundred dollar ticket item you know so um uh i i i it would be inconsistent of me to tell you to do that i do understand your
heart because i was in exactly the same place when you when i was where you are and that's how i
started doing all this you know i went through a bunch of larry burkett's training and things but
it was after i got out of debt and i would tell you to do it after the 18 months i will tell you
this though sometimes depending on the size of your
congregation, your pastor can catch a vision, or your executive pastor can catch a vision for a
financial ministry that is run by lay people that have been trained, and they might pay for you to
go through. I would have a discussion with your church leadership, depending on the size of their budget, the size of the congregation.
But one of the things we're seeing in churches across North America right now is we're seeing a lot of stewardship pastors being hired as a full-time position,
and or medium-sized and smaller churches are using lay people to fill that.
And the stewardship pastor helps people that have benevolence needs,
meaning they run the benevolence funding and make sure that the folks are on a budget and that they're not trying to con someone that's hurting.
But if somebody has a legitimate need that before the church gives them money,
they meet and go over their budget, help them,
make sure you're really not giving a drunk a drink thing.
And, you know, they're the ones that lead the financial peace classes.
They're the ones that do the one-on-one coaching, like you're talking about doing, and counseling.
They're the ones that direct a lot of the generosity initiatives around the church.
And so stewardship ministry is a growing area in churches all over the place.
We're seeing a ton of it out there.
A lot of the medium-sized to larger churches are hiring full-time stewardship pastors.
But as a stopgap measure for your church and for you, they could pay for you to be trained early.
If they can't or it doesn't fit their budget or they don't catch the vision,
you can simply sit down with a yellow pad and a calculator
and show people what you've been doing and encourage them.
It's not.
The good news is there's very few things that are rocket science.
And if you get stumped on something, like, you know,
you're sitting with somebody and they've got a reposition
and you don't know how to stop it because you haven't been through the training.
Call over here.
One of our coaches will help you a little bit and make sure somebody's not left out in the cold.
But I can't tell you to pay for that while you're in debt.
That would be inconsistent.
And although I'm really excited for you that you're excited about this material, and I'm honored by that.
Jennifer is with us.
Jennifer is in Georgia.
Hi, Jennifer.
How are you?
Hi, Dave.
I am better than I deserve.
Good.
I want to start by saying that several years ago I wasn't a great dealer yet.
And so I'm happy to be calling with seeking advice today from where I am now.
And that's thanks to you.
Cool.
Thank you.
So I, a month ago, listed my townhouse for sale.
I'm looking to just move to an area.
I'm a single mom.
I have two young boys, and I want them to be in a neighborhood where they can go outside
and play and ride their bikes.
Okay.
Nothing fancy.
But I have about $80,000 equity in my townhouse.
I have $45,000 in savings.
And I am just trying to, being in Atlanta, home prices are very high.
You know, and so I'm really trying to stay realistic and i'm trying to figure out
how much money is reasonable for me to pull out of the 45 000 dollars
what should your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses be
well it should be about 30 000 dollars,000. What's your household income?
About $75,000.
That's six months of your income.
Your expenses are that high?
No, no, no.
Three to six months of expenses.
Oh, expenses.
If you lost your job, what would it take you to survive a month?
It would probably take you to survive a month it would probably take three thousand dollars okay so three months would be nine thousand six months would be eighteen thousand okay so let's round it to 20 you're a single mom you probably
had your share of fear over the over the years um yes and so let's round it up to 20 and that
gives you 25 to put with your equity for your down payment.
Okay.
You see how I did that?
Yes.
I went a little over six months of expenses.
Okay.
It's hard to let go of that 45 in there because it's really good.
You're not.
You're keeping 20 of it.
I know.
That's right.
Okay.
Thank you, Dave.
You've done a great job, by the way.
Have you noticed?
I have, and it feels really good.
Yeah.
You should feel good.
You should be very proud.
I'm proud of you.
This is The Dave Ramsey Show. For over 20 years, I've recommended Zander Insurance and their term life programs.
I'm still amazed at how many families have no life insurance or not enough
and would be financially devastated if a spouse or parent died.
It's inexcusable since the cost of term life is just plain cheap.
And Zander really has figured out a way to make it simple and straightforward.
They only sell the plans I recommend, and their system is built to your needs.
You pick your path. If you want to work
online, you can compare all the companies and handle everything over the web, even signing up
and getting your policy electronically. If you have questions or you need that personal touch,
well, they're there to help. It's all about serving you like no one else so you get the
protection you need. There really is no excuse not to get this done. Call
800-356-4282 or go to zander.com. You pick the path to getting your family protected. Thank you for joining us, America.
What if I told you I know one thing, one new monthly habit that will equip you to start crushing your financial goals?
Start doing one thing new.
You'd want to know what that is right if you do one thing new
and you do it every month and it'll cause you to crush your crush your money situation
that one thing all the 30 years of me doing this is budgeting. A budget makes you the boss of your money. And when you start budgeting every month,
you free up more of your money to crush your goals. No one does stupid stuff on purpose.
You do it by not paying attention. And when you're doing a written plan and every dollar has an assignment every month,
that's all a budget is.
It's a spending plan.
You're not going to do stupid stuff.
And you're going to find money and you're going to do smart stuff with the money.
And those of you that are married are going to learn to start working together.
And that's a big deal.
It's so easy, guys.
No excuses.
Budgeting.
The one new habit you have to pick up every month of this year,
and you'll change everything.
Every dollar makes it easy.
Every dollar is the world's best budgeting app.
Over 7 million people are now using it.
It's completely free.
Go to everydollar.com today and get signed up.
Dave is with us in Michigan.
Hi, Dave.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hey, Dave.
Thank you for everything you do.
I'm a huge fan of your show.
I'm honored. Thank you your show. I'm honored.
Thank you.
How can I help?
Hey, so my wife and I are in Baby Step 7 and have really appreciated your help over the years.
And I feel like we're living the dream.
But I have a work-related question for you.
So we had the option, the privilege, I suppose some would say of getting a corporate
Amex card when we got bought out.
Yeah.
So I, of course declined.
I haven't owned a credit card in like 10 years.
Um, and instead I just, you know, I incur expenses, uh, you know, flights and hotels
are paid directly by the company, but everything else I just put on my debit card, expense it,
everything's fine. But we just got an email saying that this training budget that we've had,
it's about $3,000 per year, and I can attend technical conferences or basically anything I
want for professional development. And we got this email saying there's this new requirement that you have to use the Amex
to pay for those trainings. So I'm not going to get the, I don't even know if I can get the Amex
with no credit. I'm not even planning on that, but I also don't want to not take advantage of
this benefit. So just hoping you had a thought of what I might be able to do. I suppose I could
ask my manager if he would pay for it. Maybe he wants the miles, but I just feel weird doing that.
No, I wouldn't ask him to pay for it personally, but I'd ask for him to waive the policy. The
policy is ridiculous. Right. I mean, just get an exception to the policy. How large a company is
this? The parent company is about a hundred
thousand people that's who sent out the email or the subsidiary did it's it our company sent
sent the email but it's like come down from corporate essentially yeah well as you know
the problem with the corporate amex card is you're personally liable i had heard that yeah i think i
read that on somewhere on your site.
Yeah, and it's a piece of crap.
It's an absolutely horrible product.
And the fact that corporate America has gotten duped by those people
is unbelievable.
It's a bad company and a bad product.
Yeah, I'd stay away from it.
I hope you can figure this out,
or at least they'll reimburse you if you pay for it.
My gosh.
Right.
You've got the money.
You're a baby step seven.
You're not hurting for money.
But, I mean, I wouldn't want to just come out of pocket and pay to be trained
when nobody else is being paid to be trained.
They can do this.
You know, if somebody else has got a corporate Amex,
they could run yours on it, that's fine,
because that's the company paying it.
As long as the company pays it, they don't have a problem, right?
Yeah.
So a lot of people just don't perceive this risk,
and I've had people with these corporate Amex cards,
when the company went sideways or just decided they were going to deny the charges,
they come after the individual, and it's just a, man, it's a bad situation.
So I'm not signing up for that under any circumstances.
But my hope is you can just give them the way, you know, give you an exception to the policy.
It wouldn't be that unusual to say, you know, I got one weird employee over here,
doesn't borrow money, and, you know, he just wants to be reimbursed.
And, okay, you know, he's a good guy.
He's great on everything else.
And so he just got
this one weird quirk because he doesn't borrow money you know and you probably can get an
exception depending on how whacked out your your group is that you're working for but um
i would you know i don't know how to solve it other than that maybe you know possibly someone
put it on the corporate mxx. That's the worst option.
The best option is you get an exception,
and then the other option is just not do the training, which is not a good option.
But I'm not taking out the Amex for it.
Not a chance.
Shannon is in Pennsylvania.
Hi, Shannon.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, how are you? Better than I deserve.
What's up?
So I'm currently in a place where I'm contemplating whether or not I want to go back to my master's degree.
I have a bachelor's in psychology or continue my photography business.
It's doing okay, but, of course, photography, unfortunately, kind of not the best business to be in.
But that's where my heart is. The psychology
is also definitely where I want to be, but I have no experience, unfortunately. So we have a good
amount of debt right now between school and a little bit of credit card debt. So I just don't
really know where I want to go, if it's worth going back for my master's or if it's not so much.
I don't hear 100% completely sold out.
This is what I have to do with my life,
or I'm going to be unhappy and regret my life when I'm 80.
It's just like there's something there I could do.
No, I would not go get your master's photography is a
very lucrative business if you put together a business model that works i know wedding
photographers that make a couple hundred a year yeah i just i don't think i'm in the right area
unfortunately so we also contemplated moving but every so you're in a very rural area or
we're near philadelphia um philadelphia has photographers that make 100k yeah i guess
we're about an hour away and i get a lot of people that are on the suburbs part of it so um not too
much in the actual city but well i think what we need to think about is just what you want to do
with your photography business and look at the business model of your photography business and what you could do to get that moving.
Um,
what you've been doing has not been working.
I will accept that.
So we need to,
but,
but I don't accept that photographers in Philadelphia don't make a living or
in the suburbs of Philadelphia don't make a living.
They do all over the place.
So,
um,
there's plenty of them that go broke because they like taking pictures,
but they don't run a business well.
And so, you know, you've got to have a business model.
You've got to have a way of doing this.
And it can be something that's very, I mean,
something that you maybe do some creative artistic type photography things
and other things maybe you do for money family portraits sports
teams all the little soccer kids get their picture taken right whatever i don't know
i mean you but there's a lot of people that make bank with the click of a camera so um
you know that that i'm probably going that way in your situation because i did not hear from you
that psychology is your dream since you were a little
girl. It's just something that you could do, yawn, and that's not what you go spend money for a
master's for. Thanks for the call. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. I love talking about companies that know how to do business right.
You've heard of Grip6 belts, right?
Well, if you haven't, it's the only belt you can get online with no holes, no flap, and no bulk.
I'm talking weightless.
And the buckles come in really cool designs and are interchangeable.
I personally own a number of these belts and they're so comfortable you forget you're wearing
it. Plus these guys have a great story. BJ Minson started Grip6 on Kickstarter from his garage in
2014 and now sells hundreds of thousands of these American-made belts to customers all over the
world. As a mechanical engineer and a minimalist, BJ took his dislike for heavy, bulky leather
belts that never fit right and created the perfect belt, a high-quality, minimalist belt
that gives the strength and support of a belt without even knowing you're wearing one.
I'm really proud of these guys.
Check out this month's special offers for my listeners at Blinds.com.
They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
That means even if you mismeasure, if you screw up and pick the wrong color,
they will remake your window blinds for free even if you made the mistake.
Free samples, free shipping, new promos all the time.
You save all the time.
Use the promo code RAMSY to get the best possible deal.
Ben is in Texas with our question.
He says, my wife's dad owns a timeshare.
If he dies, it will pass to his heirs.
We don't want it.
How do we make sure we don't get stuck with it?
Well, if you never take title to it, you won't have any issue.
A timeshare is not an asset.
It's a liability.
It's just a problem.
It's one of the worst products in America today, and for that matter, around the world.
Absolutely horrible.
That's why we recommend Timeshare Exit Team to people to get out of their timeshares.
And Timeshare Exit Team is doing a really good job getting tens of thousands of people out of their timeshares. And Timeshare is doing a really good job getting
tens of thousands of people
out of their timeshares because
people hate them. I mean, it's got a
93% dissatisfaction
rate. What product has a
93% dissatisfaction rate and stays
open? Why do you
people keep buying them? They suck.
Anyway, the
situation has been when he dies, the things that are in his name,
for instance, this timeshare, which really just represents the liability of the annual maintenance fees,
if you do not allow them to title it to your name, you will have no issue.
Now, his estate is responsible for his bills if he dies when you die what you own stands good for what
you owe and so if you have ten thousand dollars cash in a bank account and you have a two thousand
dollar credit card and you die and that's the entire explanation of your financial existence your
estate doesn't your kids do not get to take the ten thousand dollars and they're not responsible
for the credit card but what happens is the ten thousand dollars two thousand of it goes and pays
the credit card then there's eight thousand to split among the heirs. And the same thing would be true here. You sell off the assets to pay the bills,
and what's left is what is distributed.
When you die, no one inherits your debt.
But what you own first must pay your debts before it can be distributed.
And so this stupid timeshare would have to be cleared up,
gotten rid of, canceled something,
before you could distribute the other assets of your wife's dad
to his heirs, to his kids in this case.
And so, but never fear. You're not going to inherit his so but never fear you're not going to inherit his credit
card debt you're not going to inherit his car lease and you're not going to inherit his timeshare
none of those things become your uh your bill when he dies but don't expect to get any money
from his estate until those bills have been cleared so that's the problem with the
timeshare so um he's sitting there thinking he owns something and he doesn't own anything he
owns a bill jennifer is with us in california hi jennifer how are you i'm good how are you dave
better than i deserve what's up um i have a question about baby step 3B.
So I understand that you're supposed to stop your retirement contributions in step 2 and 3.
But for my husband and I, the area that we would like to live in and buy property,
it may take us three or four years to save up like a good down payment and i'm just not clear are you
supposed to continue with stopping the retirement contribution during 3b or people do both they do
a smaller contribution or they do none while they say for the baby step 3b is you're out of debt
you have your emergency fund in place that's baby baby steps one, two, and three. That's not negotiable. And years ago, people started saying, when do you buy a house?
When do you save for a down payment? And we almost laughingly started calling it baby step 3B,
meaning after you're out of baby step three, before you start saving for retirement,
I'm going to save up for a down payment on my house. Now, sometimes people, instead of doing
baby step four, 15% of your income going into into retirement sometimes they'll put three percent in and get the match or something
while they save for the down payment sometimes they do nothing okay but i would not want to stay
i would not want to do zero retirement or dramatically reduced retirement investing
uh for more than about three years okay yeah that would make me nervous yeah and that's
that so you you said three to four years a while ago and so you've got a good gut feel for this
your your sense about it is very accurate i mean i'm not suggesting you wait 10 years to start your
retirement so you save up a down payment that'd be silly right right one two three years is fine three anything past three years i start to get pretty
nervous right okay okay that makes sense hey thanks for the call i appreciate you joining us
tyler's in ohio hi tyler welcome to the dave ramsey show
good evening how are you better than i deserve what's up so my wife and i are just getting
started on our budget we've got the
every dollar app and we started budgeting yesterday we're starting to discuss what to
do with our tax return and we have made plans to pay off a small bit that we have of about
$1,200 good and we are going to use part of that if we can to put an air conditioner unit in our house so that
my kids and wife aren't dying in the summer
but i was discussing with her the cost benefit analysis of instead of having a larger refund at
the beginning of the year uh decreasing my withholding so we can put that towards funds
to pay off other debts later or use it for holiday fund or other things like that yeah you need you need to take the money
and do something with it because all you're doing is loaning it to the federal government
at zero interest then they send it to you in april and you act like santa claus lives in dc
exactly my thought i know overpaying in taxes so i want to do that but she's not so convinced
and i'll discuss that with her it's a bad savings account that's all it is it's a zero return
savings of what you got it yeah okay so that's that's what i'll do then uh i will adjust my
withholding appropriately yeah where you get to zero on your on your estimated refund and you want to over-adjust it where you end up paying more out of pocket.
But all you're doing is overpaying your taxes.
That's all a refund is.
And then they give it to you saying, why'd you do this?
But people do it all the time.
Kelly is with us in Georgia.
Hi, Kelly.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
How are you so far?
Better than I deserve.
How can I help?
Okay so I'm trying to figure out if I should move now or wait until my debt is gone.
Where are you moving and why?
Anywhere but the town that I'm in.
Probably a bigger city.
Why?
I didn't, I didn't.
Okay.
So I graduated from college five years ago and I didn't know what I wanted to do.
So I decided to be an idiot and go back to college, even though I knew I didn't want
to do what I went for.
Um, and I dropped out of that, thank God after one semester, instead of paying for the whole
degree, I knew I didn't want.
Yeah.
Um, and then I worked happily as a barista for three years at a company that I thought was pretty cool. Um, and kind of didn't try to get a job
because I was around a bunch of other people that, um, also kind of like to whine about our
situations a lot and, Oh, the whole system's against us and all of that. And, um, I kind of,
I'm about to turn 30 in two weeks and, um, I kind of realized I don't want my life to keep being
like this and I don't want to life to keep being like this and i
don't want to keep working like dead-end jobs and all that so i got a good job a year ago um and
it's not it's not a great job at the call center i like it yeah what are you doing and how much do
you make i so for me it was a lot of money because up until now i've never made more than
sixteen thousand dollars a year but last year i than $16,000 a year. But last year, I made $26,000 a year.
Okay.
And doing what?
I don't have a bunch of debt.
Just sales.
Okay.
So what are you going to do when you move with your career?
Here's what I would like to do.
I would like to get into social work.
And there are a couple of social worker opportunities that this is what I thought I wanted to do originally,
but almost all of them require a heavy use on a vehicle,
and there's like some volunteer positions in my community and things like that.
But I'm driving this amazing car that has lasted me way longer than I thought it would.
Okay, in order for you to move, you need to have an exact career plan of exactly what you're going to do.
I don't want you to end up being a barista again.
I want you to move up as you move out. Don't run from something, run to something. our scripture of the day romans 5 3 through 5 not only that but we rejoice in our sufferings. Knowing this suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character,
character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Hope is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Thomas Edison says, our greatest weakness lies in giving up.
The most certain way to succeed is to always try just one more time.
Rebecca's with us in New York.
Hi, Rebecca.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
It's great to talk to you.
You too. What's up?
Question. We just finished Baby Step 1, and we have been taking $200 a month for our savings to make our emergency savings.
So now we're starting Baby Step 2 and paying off debt.
And my question is, do I take take the 200 that we've been putting
aside for savings and put that towards our lowest credit card or do i keep it in savings and find
money somewhere else to start paying off the debt you have your one thousand dollar baby step one
yes i do and what's the 200 again i'm wondering'm wondering, like, we did $200 a month from our budget to make the emergency savings.
Okay, now once you get to $1,000, then you don't do any more saving.
Oh, you don't do any more?
Okay, so I should take that $200 and start putting it towards the credit card?
And any other money you can find, like from working extra or selling things.
Okay, great.
That's what I needed to know.
Then when you finish that, all of your debts are done and baby step two,
then you've got a lot more money because you don't have any payments anymore, right?
Right.
And then you would put all of that added to the $1,000
until you get it up to three to six months of expenses.
Then you would stop that saving,
and baby step four is you would start saving, investing 15% of your income.
And so it's a start and stop thing all the way through
until you get to baby step four,
and then you will continually do that 15 percent or more
the rest of your life more would be after your baby step seven john is with us in maryland hi
john how are you hey mr ramsey i'm living the dream how are you sir better than i deserve what's
up hey so i'm a college senior currently i I'm applying to a couple of business schools in the fall.
I work two jobs, and I have about $1,000 saved up I was looking to put into a mutual fund.
But considering I'm getting ready to possibly take out a loan for business school,
what do you think the best course of action would be?
I thought you were a college senior.
What do you mean business school?
I'm applying to get an MBA in the fall. Okay. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, I would pay cash for
the MBA and go to work. Yes, sir. That's what I would do. And you need to save everything you can
save towards that goal. No, you don't need to be investing. You're investing into an MBA right now.
Why are you getting an MBA? Yes, sir. Well, I'm currently an undergrad psychology major studying sport management
and entrepreneurship, and my end goal is to own a gym, and I feel like earning an MBA would give
me the best opportunity to do so. Yeah, as long as you don't go $60,000 in debt to get it.
Yes, sir, absolutely. So what are you talking about spending on your MBA?
I mean, I'm looking at in-state schools like the University of Maryland.
They have a really excellent program, and I think if I were to pay cash for that,
I think it would be the cheapest option, but I'm also looking at schools such as the current school I go to now and then also a school like Georgetown or Harvard.
Well, unless you you got huge scholarships
at georgetown or harvard i wouldn't go yes sir the difference in what you get an mba there or
what you got the university of maryland wouldn't be spit it really isn't yes sir not for what
you're talking about doing particularly so an mba is a wonderful thing to do as adult education,
meaning there are a lot of MBA programs that are night school
while you're working a full-time job,
and that would allow you to pay cash for it.
I would recommend you do that while you go ahead and get a full-time gig.
Start making as much money as you can make and do your –
I bet you the University of Maryland has an evening program for adults on MBA.
Most schools have an MBA program for, quote, non-traditional students, unquote.
And that's what I'd recommend you do.
MBA is nice.
Is it necessary for you to learn how to run a business?
No, it's not.
There's some good qualities to it.
I've got a lot of folks that have MBA work for me.
They do a great job. I've learned a lot of folks that have MBA work for me. They do great job.
I've learned a lot from them.
They're smart people.
Uh, it's a good thing.
I'm not, I'm not against education and MBA is a quality thing.
Is it necessary for you to become successful?
No.
Is it something you can get as a non-traditional student while you earn a living and earn enough
money to pay cash for it?
Yes.
Or could you get a job working for someone
who has an education benefit that pays for it for you yes even better all right brandon's with us
in california hi brandon welcome to the dave ramsey show hi dave how are you better than i
deserve what's up hey i just found out about you around three weeks ago i'm uh i'm debt free except
my home and i want to know if there's any benefit in refinancing my loan to a 15-year
or keeping it and how it is and just trying to pay off that how it is.
I would just pay extra on it as it is.
The only reason you refinance is to get a cheaper interest rate.
If you can get a cheaper interest rate,
then you may want to refinance for that reason
and while you're at it make a 15 but if you pay a 30 if you calculated out your 30-year mortgage
at your current interest rate and you calculate a 15-year payment and a 30-year payment and you
pay that difference as an extra principal payment every month you will pay off your 30-year loan in exactly 15. And there's no benefit with removing
PMI? Always the benefit of removing PMI. That's a different issue as well. That's like getting a
lower interest rate. So those are all good things. And while you're at it, take a 15. So what's your
current interest rate? It's a 4%. 4. And what is your home worth? It is worth about $190 to $200,
and I owe $141. Okay. You know, you could price out a refinance, and with dropping the PMI,
that's a savings, and you probably can lower your interest rate a half a point down to about
three and a half on a 15-year right now. And so with those two items, calculate what that is per year in savings,
compare that to your closing costs. And let's just pretend that it saved you $1,500 a year
by doing that. You probably isn't far off. And your closing costs were $3,000, probably not that far off,
then it would take you two years to recoup your closing costs
with a slight savings in interest rate and a good saving on the PMI.
And while you're at it, you're on a 15-year.
Does that make sense to you?
Makes perfect sense.
That's exactly how you do the break-even analysis, it's called,
where you divide your savings into your closing costs
and it tells you how long it takes to recoup
or how long before there's any gravy on the biscuit.
In other words, how long before you're making any money from this transaction.
But you do not refinance just to move from a 30 to a 15.
If you're in everything else is good,
you're sitting there with a 3.25% with no PMI,
you would simply pay your 30 like a 15 and be done with it that way.
So, hey, good question.
Honored to have you as a new listener.
Thanks for hanging out.
YouTube, Shane is there, says,
Dave, I know you say you should not buy a house unless you have zero debt.
Correct.
What if buying a house is less than renting?
It's not.
I realize there are risks.
There are, as I would have to pay for things rather than the landlord taking care of them.
That's it.
And increases in insurance, increases in taxes, all kinds of crap happens.
And it's an illusion.
You've got house fee for Shane.
Go take a cold shower
wait to buy a house when you buy a house and you're broken in debt you are inviting problems
into your life murphy will move in your spare bedroom bring his three friends broke desperate
and stupid and they will hang out with you everything that can go wrong will because the
house becomes a curse rather than a blessing
because the only analysis you did was payment versus rent, and that is not a proper analysis.
It's an incomplete picture.
That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books.
Our thanks to James Childs, our producer, Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener.
I am Dave Ramsey, your host.
We'll be back with you before you know it.
In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace,
and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.
Hey, 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,
make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com slash show and register.
We would love for you to come to National and tell Dave your story.