The Ramsey Show - App - A Budget Makes You the Boss of Your Money (Hour 3)

Episode Date: January 8, 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:01:11 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
Starting point is 00:01:33 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,
Starting point is 00:02:23 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.
Starting point is 00:03:04 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
Starting point is 00:03:45 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,
Starting point is 00:04:41 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.
Starting point is 00:05:15 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
Starting point is 00:05:43 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.
Starting point is 00:06:06 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.
Starting point is 00:06:26 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.
Starting point is 00:06:44 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?
Starting point is 00:07:25 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
Starting point is 00:07:58 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.
Starting point is 00:08:19 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?
Starting point is 00:08:27 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.
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Starting point is 00:09:46 800-356-4282 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,
Starting point is 00:11:29 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.
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Starting point is 00:12:15 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.
Starting point is 00:12:25 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.
Starting point is 00:12:51 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
Starting point is 00:13:39 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
Starting point is 00:14:23 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,
Starting point is 00:14:43 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.
Starting point is 00:14:59 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,
Starting point is 00:15:18 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.
Starting point is 00:15:44 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.
Starting point is 00:16:16 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.
Starting point is 00:16:37 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.
Starting point is 00:17:19 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
Starting point is 00:18:01 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.
Starting point is 00:18:21 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,
Starting point is 00:18:36 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.
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Starting point is 00:21:22 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.
Starting point is 00:21:45 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
Starting point is 00:22:07 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
Starting point is 00:22:23 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
Starting point is 00:23:18 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.
Starting point is 00:24:03 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.
Starting point is 00:24:53 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
Starting point is 00:25:42 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
Starting point is 00:26:33 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
Starting point is 00:27:18 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.
Starting point is 00:28:08 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.
Starting point is 00:28:23 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?
Starting point is 00:28:46 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.
Starting point is 00:29:02 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
Starting point is 00:29:41 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.
Starting point is 00:29:57 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,
Starting point is 00:31:09 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.
Starting point is 00:31:44 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.
Starting point is 00:32:35 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?
Starting point is 00:33:00 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
Starting point is 00:33:25 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?
Starting point is 00:34:01 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.
Starting point is 00:34:54 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,
Starting point is 00:35:32 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?
Starting point is 00:35:58 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.
Starting point is 00:36:12 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
Starting point is 00:36:37 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
Starting point is 00:37:11 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,
Starting point is 00:38:11 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,
Starting point is 00:38:44 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.
Starting point is 00:39:14 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.
Starting point is 00:39:29 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
Starting point is 00:39:52 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.
Starting point is 00:40:21 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.

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