The Ramsey Show - App - Are My Wife and I Financially Secure Enough To Start a Business? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's The Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Anthony O'Neill, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book, A Debt-Free Degree, is my co-host today here on the air as we talk to you about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Ruby starts off this hour in Kansas City.

Hi, Ruby. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hello, Dave and Anthony. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a little nervous here, but I had a question about a refinance. So I just got a home about two years ago. They gave me a 30-year fixed loan, but I'm wanting to do – I just recently started listening to you guys about a month ago. I went in and looked at my statement, realized that last year I only paid about $1,500 to my principal.

That made me mad. So I'm wanting to refinance to a 15-year loan. And my question is, I'm in Baby Step 2, I believe um and they're asking for three thousand dollars for closing costs they can't roll them into the loan um so i'm kind of stuck and don't know what to do it cannot be rolled into the loan because you don't have enough equity well um correct pmi will be they'll close out the pmi because um i've made up to the 20 percent value but in order to increase the loan um they wouldn't be able to do that i'm not sure why well because you owe too much on the house house yeah yeah uh well What's your interest rate? Currently, it's

4.75 and they will bring it down to 2.875. How much debt are you in right now, Ruby? About 20,000. Well, yeah, 20,000. No. You owe $20,000 on your house?

No. I mean, well, to my house, it's $20,000 on your house? No. No. I mean, that's separate. Well, to my house, it's $71,000. Sorry. So she's $20,000 total in debt right now. Plus $70,000 on the house. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And you're going to save around 2% on the interest rate. Yep. And have they quoted your closing costs? Yes. So it's $3,000. Okay. But you have to come out of pocket with that. Correct.

Yeah, I would wait to do this until after your baby step three. I would not come out of pocket with money while you're trying to get your $20,000 paid off. What do you think? No, I'm right there with you, Dave. And I know you're probably thinking, well, I'm saving 2%, but at the same time, you're taking away $3,000 from your $20,000 in consumer. What's your household income right now, Ruby? $53,000.

$53,000. Okay. And if you all go aggressively after this, how long would it take you to pay off this debt? I'm hoping 15 months is what my plan is. Okay. That's good. Yeah.

So I agree with Dave then. I would say, honestly, how do you all get out of debt next year? What do we need to do? Can we pick up an extra job? Can we pick up some extra income? So this way we can go ahead and tack this, get our three months set aside, and then go ahead and get this thing refied down to a 15-year fixed rate. But I would highly recommend that you do that.

And then look into Churchill Mortgage, and they may be able to help you out as well with your closing costs as well. If you can roll the closing costs in, I would go ahead and do it. Not to go from a 30 to a 15, but to go from a 475 to a 2875. I like that. That's the trick. If you had a 2875 already on your loan, I would just tell you to start paying extra on a 15 once you get your Baby Step 2 done. You don't need to refinance to pay a loan off in 15 years.

You just pay it off in 15 years, and you save the closing costs for doing that. But you've got a small mortgage, and so it's going to be a little more difficult to refinance because the one's under $100,000. A lot of the mortgage companies, they don't want to fool with it. Yeah. And so you're fine. I would sit right where you are. If you've got to come out of pocket with a closing cost until you get, you're out of debt and you have your emergency fund in place. And so that's about 18 to 24 months from now, you'll be in a position to have saved up and refinance and not be in debt and not have an emergency fund and pay cash for your closing costs out of pocket.

Rates are still down at that point where they are now, or thereabouts, still going to be a great idea. Jillian is with us. Jillian's in Knoxville. Hi, Jillian. How are you? Hi, Dave and Anthony. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? Okay, so in December, my 13-year-old car died. And so I had bought that car to me. So I've always been in the business of buying a new car and then just keeping it until it died. So I thought I was doing really good because I had just paid off about $14,000 in credit card debt. And so I went and bought a new car. But after listening to you, I realized this was probably a mistake.

So I bought the car. It was about, saying it's hard,, 27,000 with taxes and everything. And so after listening to you, I realized, cause I'm also trying to save up for a house cause I don't own a house yet. And so, um, but I checked my payoff and my payoff is $24,000 and the car now is only worth 19,000. So I'm trying to save up for a house. I have, um, you know, I have some money in savings, so I was just kind of, I was just always thought that a car payment was just something you always had. Um, so, but now listening to you, I'm,

I'm realizing that maybe I need to pay off my car before I start saving for a house, but I didn't, you know, the first year you pay a car, it's all taxes and all that stuff. So I haven't really gotten to the principle yet. So I don't really know what to do. Do I just continue to save for a house and build my savings account while still paying the car? Do I try to pay the car? I actually just put in for a salary adjustment. I just got a $17,000 raise, so I now make $75,000 starting next month.

You make $75,000. You owe $24,000 on the car. How much do you have in savings? Yes, sir. I have about $5,000 in savings. And you're $5,000 upside down. Yeah. And what other debt do you have?

I have $5,000 in savings, and I have no other debt other than the car. Yeah, and you're $5,000 upside down. Yeah. Yes, yes, sir. 24 over 19, right? Yeah. Yes, sir. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. I'm paying off the car. I mean, and even as a matter of fact, I'm looking at how can I, if I was in your shoes, how can I actually just sell the car and just go buy something cash? I could be 100% debt free. And then the next thing from there, Jillian, I'm not thinking about a house right now. I'm thinking about, okay, how do I get a fully funded emergency fund set aside six months? You know, and then I'll go into Baby Step 3B where that's when we go ahead and start saving for that but you know if i was you i'm looking at okay how can i get rid of this car go buy a reliable cash car

so i can get to my goal quicker um but you may say hey i like this car and i can pay it off it is your only debt but i'm just saying what i would yeah either one either one is fine we tell folks if you can be out of debt inside of two years and you uh and the car is less than the cars all the things you own with wheels and motors is less than half your annual income then you're okay so you're okay you could step down out of it if you wanted to and they go faster or you can just say i'm gonna roll up my sleeves and knock this thing out and be done with it as soon as that's done build your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And as soon as that's done, then you'll start saving for a house again.

But the car is between you and the house. We've got to get that knocked out. If you're smart, that is. This is The Ramsey Show. Technology and digital products are changing every single day. Ramsey Solutions is no exception. We are working hard to produce shows and design products that will serve people well. But in order to do that, we need people like you to join us on the mission to change lives. Yes, that's right.

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That's CAREERS to 33789. Anthony O'Neill is our Ramsey personality, is our co-host. I kind of fall asleep there with that bump music. I was just kind of, ah. Thought I'd take a little nap there right after lunch. Open phones at 888-825-5225. It's the Smooth Jazz Station. Oh, yes, it is.

That's what we're doing. Our producer, James, is very good. Yeah, he's grooving in there. You guys seemed a little rowdy. I was trying to calm you down a little bit. Oh, he says we were too rowdy. Okay. There's that, Anthony.

It's always you. Mike is in Orange County. Hey, Mike, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Good afternoon, Dave. It's a pleasure to speak to you both. You too. What's up? Okay, so I'm sort of in a semi-malformed baby step 3B, and I'd love to get your advice.

At the start of 2020, I decided to purchase my very first home. I was previously trying really hard to save up to 20%, but I felt like with interest rates being really low, plus with the Southern California real estate market appreciation, every year that I was sort of delaying was putting me further and further behind. So I took a $15,000 loan from my 401k in order to help boost the down payment. But the intention there was to rent out the extra room to a friend where the net profit after a year was going to be $15,000. So I could completely pay off the loan in a single year. The experiment went well, my friend is interested in staying for another year. So my question to you is, should I take the cash now and pay back the 401k loan or since the 401k loan interest is being paid back to me and he's going to stay for another year, should I take the $15,000

and put it towards the equity in the home so that the next time I refinance or re-amateurize, I'm closer, if not beyond 20%, and can drop PMI. Yeah, well, that would depend on whether you're going to follow our plan or yours. Right. I've been an advocate follower of your plan. I think this is the one point that I deviated. And then you're wanting to deviate more, yeah. Why would you say more?

Well, I would never tell you to borrow on your 401k to pay down your home so that you could get rid of PMI. Yeah. Why would you say more? Well, I would never tell you to borrow on your 401k to pay down your home so that you could get rid of PMI. Yeah. I wasn't going to borrow more. No. Effectively, by not paying off the loan with the money and putting it on the house, it's the same thing. Yeah. Oh, I see. Okay.

So pay off the loan. Yeah, pay off the loan. Okay. And then work to pay down your principal, and then you'll have to get an appraisal and reset and get your PMI gone that way later. And, Dave, I want to call this out, too, because I want the listeners to hear this. We do not – that's not how we do things. We do not rob from our future. And I know this guy said, hey, it worked worked okay but we hear stories how it didn't work yeah most of the time it doesn't exactly and uh i want america to hear it's like we don't want you

to ride from your future it's kind of like you know if you put one round in the chamber and you have five empty rounds and you point it at your head and it didn't go off right does that make it smart heck no you know it's still freaking russian roulette it worked this time you know it's like yeah that's great it doesn't mean i want to pull the trigger again yeah that was so uh you know this is the that's kind of a violent bloody idea but still i just want to say that i said man that was a tough example dave well i mean the point is you know the thing is this i have done lots of stupid things yes sir that worked and the only downside of that is is that made me think it worked yes an example is uh we were 22 years old or 23 years old and we went

on our very first cruise. Right. We had never seen anything like that. That was luxury. We're country people from Tennessee. We got on that boat, and they were like, you know, they had swordfish, and they had all this stuff. And, I mean, the place was like a palace. Yeah.

Yeah. And my wife, bless her heart. What happened? Walks by this evil thing called a slot machine i'm just gonna try this i think this will be fun and i said what about losing money is fun i don't understand how's it fun to lose money she drops a quarter in and of course you know what happened she pulled the one-armed bandit the The stinking thing goes off like a Christmas tree, man. Quarters are going everywhere.

Woman won like $300 in quarters. You know what that cost me? About $3,000. About $700. We didn't have $3,000. I was 22. Oh. She put the whole $300 back in over the trip, plus another 500 looking for another 300.

Because stupid worked once. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And that's the thing about doing stupid. Just because it works once doesn't mean you sign up for it again. I've done it. I've done it half my life.

Me too. And I'm just going, look, there are, just because you, you know, you jumped off the building and you didn't break your leg because you landed in some a pile of leaves right doesn't mean jumping off of buildings is smart right but i've done it right i've done it half my life and i've just i had to quit i had to quit i had to go okay there are principles the law of gravity is a principle yes borrowing money and borrowing on your 401k is never a good idea let's reiterate why you don't borrow on your 401k number one you unplug a good mutual fund yes you do that would have been making 10 12 in order to pay yourself back five or six and somehow that seems smart i never figured that out i'm getting the money you're

getting the money the other way dummy yeah you know and so i don't get it the other thing is when you leave the company and you will leave the company when you die, you get fired, or you get a better job. Yes. You will be leaving this company. Yeah. Not if, when. It's a stable job. Yeah, pandemic breath.

Right. I got that. So, yeah, when you leave your company, you will, that loan is considered an early withdrawal, and if you do not repay it in 60 days, it is taxed at your tax rate plus a 10% penalty. You're going to get hit in the mouth with a 40% I got you, told you not to do this penalty. So that $10,000 costs you maybe $16,000. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, somewhere in there.

And you're just asking for trouble. Yes. Now, sometimes you can ask for trouble, and trouble doesn't come. Come on. And, man, I'll tell you, the reason I'm so passionate about this is I can look in the mirror and go, I'm a doofus. I have done almost every one of these things. I never had a 401K, or I would have borrowed on it.

But, you know, just because you got it, just, you know. The worst thing happened to me when I was buying real estate for nothing down. The banks gave me 100% loans because I was buying it and fixing it up. The worst thing that happened to me was I made really good money and flipped those houses easily on the first 10 houses. Yeah. So then I look up at 24 years old, 25 years old, with $3 million in debt on rental properties doing flips, and a bank gets sold to another bank and calls our loans. The worst thing that happened to me was the first ones worked.

If I had lost my butt on the first one, the whole story would not have occurred. Yes. But instead, I'm like Sharon, this will be fun, and I put the thing in the slot machine, you know, and there you go, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Hold on, let's do this again. Robert Kiyosaki must be right. Let's go deeply in debt with nothing down machine you know and there you go and ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding oh let's do this again robert kiyosaki must be right let's go deeply in debt with nothing down you know oh my god i'm gonna sign up for grant cardone i don't think so you know no i'm not gonna do that i love robert i love grant they're both great guys actually and robert's a friend of mine but

philosophies are but we don't agree on those subjects as all because i had a different experience and a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion and i'm right there with you i had the same experience dave not the same but in the same area same same ideas yeah so this is why we're picking on you mike because we love you man yeah we love you and we love to pick on you you caught into the dave ramsey show well i mean that's it the thing is just because you got i mean what if the roommate had been the roommate from hell and hadn't paid him the money? Well, he'd never gotten his call because he wouldn't want to extend it. Yep.

Wouldn't want to keep doing it. He wouldn't want, oh, I violated a principle and I got caught. And I think. Well, if you put the quarter in there and go, this will be fun, and it just keeps your quarter, it's not fun. And I think for me, Dave, I just I'm scared to play with my future. I'm depending on that 401k. I'm depending on the Roth IRA. I'm depending on that to protect my 60, 70, 80 year old self.

So I just I don't want to play with it right now. If that means I have to move a little bit slower into getting to where I need to get to today so that my future has a solid future. I am OK with that. You know, you're right. There is a... I was out at the farm with my grandson the other day, and he was a little bitty guy with his daddy, and we were shooting. Okay.

The first time the little guy shot a gun. Yeah. I want to teach him to be afraid of guns. Yes. They're dangerous. Yes. Yeah. I want to teach him to be afraid of guns. Yes. They're dangerous. Yes. Yes. I don't want to teach him to be so afraid of it that he can't shoot one.

Yes. But I want him to have a healthy respect for this explosion that's going off in your hand. That's so good, Dave. You've got to have a healthy respect. And you've got to have a healthy respect for these principles. Yes. Because it'll go off, man. Yeah. And when people don't have respect for it, these principles because it'll go off, man.

And when people don't have respect for it, that's when they get hurt. This is The Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. I am Dave Ramsey. Thank you for joining us, America. Patrick is with us in Grand Junction, Colorado. Hey, Patrick, how are you? Hey, Dave. Hey, Anthony. Thank you so very much for taking my call. Our pleasure. How can we help? Well, my wife and I read the Total Money Makeover just two weeks ago. Wow. And yeah, I am 41 years old and we paid off our debt on Friday, just three days ago. Wow. Well, now, Dave, I got to tell you, someone gave me one of your books when I was like 22 years old.

I'm not even kidding you. And from that time till this time, I've been on the Dave Ramsey envelope system. I have been real serious about not being in debt. I bought my wife's wedding ring for cash. I paid for the wedding in cash. My wife and I have really been blessed because of a book we read of yours, I mean, forever ago. So the total money makeover the other day was just a tune-up then? It was because I haven't been listening to the podcast.

I haven't read any more of your books. And my wife and I just looked at where we were and we're like, you know what? We need to get on track. So we only had $12,000 in debt. We had one automobile. We paid it off. I bought the total money makeover. It was the last purchase I made with my credit card.

The book came in the mail, and there you are on the cover cutting up credit cards, so I felt like a dum-dum for that purchase. It's blasphemy. Yeah. But here's where we're at. We're on baby step three, but we have been investing a lot of money because we haven't been on the plan up until a couple weeks ago. Got it. My question is, do I pull some of that out for my six months of fully funded emergency fund?

How much do you have in non-retirement investing? We have $435,000. Yes. Take enough out today and call it your emergency fund and put it in a money market. Now, let me explain that to you because it doesn't make sense. Yeah, because you're going to hear me cry in a minute. I know, but it's not that much money. It's not that much money. What is your three to six months of emergencies? How much should this fund be?

So we were thinking six months should be $36,000. Okay, so move $30,000. That's enough. You'll be fine. Because you got $400,000 other than that laying over there. Right. Okay. So it's not that much money. Now, here's the point. That $30,000 has a new mission now. Its old mission was to

grow as an investment. Your emergency fund is not an investment. If you can swallow that, it'll make this easier yeah it's not an investment it's insurance now if you think about insurance versus investments insurance costs you money to protect the things that make you money your house going up right you don't want it to burn so we buy an insurance policy to protect it so insurance is defense investments is offense so we're moving 30 000 over into defense to protect so we don't have to cash out some of that 400

at exactly the wrong time because let me tell you what will happen if you think, I'm going to use the $400 if something happens. That's what most people think. What happens is you'll go, I still can't cash out the $400, even though I need $7,000 to do dot, dot, dot emergency. I just can't do it. And you'll pop it onto a credit card. Yep. emergency i just can't do it and you'll pop it onto a credit card yep yeah and so the emergency fund is the completed proper step in a good finance in a good financial plan but anthony it's very important that we change it emotionally from offense to defense absolutely dave defense

is very very important i love how you called it out that so you know what he's going to see that four hundred thousand dollars over there i don't want to touch that i'm gonna go take out a loan i'm gonna put on the credit card and and the next thing you know he's right back into what took him about 20 years to pay off everything yeah and so defense sets you up for effective offense okay and so i love how bday broke that down but thirty thousand30,000 out of $400,000, it's not a lot of money. Yeah. Just ask Tampa Bay. Wow.

Defense sets you up for an effective offense. That was a good one, Dave. No question. I was going for the young man, but, man, you just hit us hard with that. I mean, it's just I'm not a fan of either team. I'm not a hater on either team. It's just an observation of the game. True. You know, it does. It sets you up to win and defense wins games and defense you know we've heard that and that's that's not only true in football it's true in finance and so

because here's what can happen you can be smart smart smart smart smart smart smart yeah and then have a moment and this is not the case with patrick okay yeah Yeah. But just as another example, like I've seen people who build up, and they got 400 grand laying there. Right. And they've been smart all those years because Patrick's been very smart. Right. And then suddenly something comes along that's shiny, that looks like a cool investment that their friend wants to get them into,

and you could put $200,000 over here, and all of this in one stroke of the pen, you get stupid. Yeah. And I've seen people just suddenly, boom, they just lose it. Yeah. And so that's the, you know, you've been really good at offense, but you didn't have a good defense to keep you from stepping into stupid tax. Yeah. And I've done it. I've never done it on the stage.

The time I went broke, I did it. Yeah. But, I mean, since then, I've even done stupid things that cost me money. But I have been smart enough after I went broke to do them small enough to where they weren't game-ending. And there's one other thing, too, I would suggest, Dave, and tell me from Roankear, that other $360,000 that he's going to have there sitting there, give that a purpose. Why is it sitting there? It needs to go

ahead and do baby steps four five and six yes so if you've got a home yeah mortgage pay off your i'm going to start moving towards that with that other with that other balance that's going to even be harder yeah and another discussion but we'll get through baby step three first right zachary is with us zachary's in lexington kentucky hi zachary how are you i'm doing well dave can you guys hear me we can how can we help good deal wanted to get your guys opinion on whether my wife and i are financially healthy enough to try and start a business okay uh we are 23 and 25 our only debt is we just built a house for 350 000 we currently owe 270 on it okay uh no student debt no car debt and we got about 25 000 in liquid cash um built up you guys are on fire yeah what's your household income we're trying to be um our household income last year was $170.

What kind of business are you wanting to start, and what's it going to cost? Wanting to start a business that is a solution for treating household hot tubs and pools. I developed the product based on my own personal sufferings in that, and we've got to develop prototypes. And the next step would be... Is this a chemical product or a robotic cleaner? A chemical product. Chemical product.

Okay. So you can do it all by yourself to start off, right? Yeah, me and one of my friends, he's a stay-at-home dad currently. He's also debt-free outside of a mortgage. So it's kind of something that we'd be taking on together. No. My biggest drawback is I've got a very good job, and I've got about a guaranteed – I work in sales. I do logistics for a living.

Yeah, so what do you want to spend to start the business? Very minimal, only $1,000. Well, why wouldn't you? Yeah. And you don't need him. And you don't need to leave your job. You don't need him, and you don't need to leave the job. Just start it.

Yeah. Yeah. And start selling it. And after you sell $100,000 worth, then you can quit your job, and he can work for you. There you go. But you don't need a partner. The only ship on sale is a partnership. I got you.

I mean, it's a best friend kind of deal. It won't be. Bringing other people up with me. Yeah, well, that's okay. He can work for you, and you can pay him out of the profits. That'll bring him up. That definitely will. Yeah.

And, Zach, hear me clearly, man. You're a young man, and I get it. We want to be entrepreneurs. Do not leave your job. Keep working it until this can take care of your actual salary you have coming in. Or close. Yes. But don't quit, bro.

Don't quit. Start it out of your garage. I talked to a young man the other day. He started a thing in his garage seven years ago. Did $25 million this year. Good gracious. Yeah. Not gracious. Yeah. Not bad.

Started out of your garage, and when it gets up close to your current salary, then you can quit and walk away. And you need to have your friend work for you. He doesn't need to be your partner. No, you don't need a partner. You have the stuff. You've got the money. You've got everything here. Anthony O'Neill is Ramsey Personalities, my co-host today here on the air. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

And Sherry is up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Hi, Sherry. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? So I had refinanced my house about six months ago.

And the company that my mortgage was sold to, this would actually be a second refinance that I've done, I got screwed, basically. They told me I would get refinanced and I would get $500 cash back. And when the underwriter came to do the paperwork, I never got my money. So I called my mortgage counselor guy and I said, where's my money? And he said, oh, well, you're not getting any. I said, no, you told me I was going to get $500 cash back, where's my money? And he said, oh, well, you're not getting any. I said, no, you told me I was going to get $500 cash back. Where's my money? And he said, well,

they determined that you weren't going to get any cash back. I said, that's not what you told me. I said, where's my money? He goes, I said, you know why I asked you about that? And he was, yes, I know your gutters are falling off your house i said right and he said well you could take out a home equity loan and i said so you want me to go into more debt after you promised me i was going to get five hundred dollars he's like well i'm sorry i said that doesn't cut it where's my money and then he said oh my other phone is ringing i gotta go and he hung up on me okay so where are we where are we now right now i refinanced my house and i'm on a 30-year mortgage and i do the ba mortgage because i'm a veteran okay and i had actually reached out to one of your churchill mortgage people after that happened and he said well let me look at your paper so i sent a copy of him to him he

was like huh and then he asked me who the mortgage company was because he said well let me look at your paper so i sent a copy of him he was like huh and then he asked me who the mortgage company was because he said i know a lot of companies in michigan and i told him who it was and he said i have never heard of that company ever before so what can we help you with today i was wanting to know would it would it be worth my while to refinance for the more reputable company? No. That's what I thought, but I wasn't quite sure. The disreputable things that they have done are in the past. A VA mortgage is a very precise mortgage.

It's going to be only one thing, and they can only do one thing with it. They can't go in and just you know just decide to change something so they won't they can't change your interest rate they can't change your terms they can't change how they deal with a veteran all of that is dictated by the veterans administration and so um and very likely if this is a small fly-by-night organization they're probably going to sell the mortgage anyway. They're probably not going to keep it. This is the company that it was sold to, and I didn't even know it was the actual mortgage company.

They use a collection agency to get their mortgage payments, and I thought the collection agency was the mortgage company because I didn't even know who the real mortgage company was until they wanted to refinance. Yeah. Why was there a collection agency? Because they came to me to refinance they wanted to refinance. Yeah. Why was there a collection agency? You weren't paying on time? Why was there a collection agency? The collection agency is, the company uses a different agency, which is a collection

agency out of California, to collect all their payments. I thought that was the actual mortgage company when my mortgage was sold to begin with. And then I find out a year later, two years later, that that's not the actual company. There is another company that oversees or that uses this other company, this collection agency, to collect their mortgage payments. Yeah, if you refinance, when you finish refinancing with Churchill, that mortgage is going to be sold to someone. Churchill doesn't hold mortgages.

And most mortgage companies that originate loans do not hold mortgages. So you would just jump out of the frying pan, potentially into the fire. So I think you're perfectly safe where you are now. The only reason you would refinance is if you could get a dramatically lower interest rate, and that's what you're looking for. But I don't think that's the case here. I think you probably are locked in. And, Anthony, one of the things when you're doing a mortgage or anything like this,

it's just it comes with experience. But I've had to make myself, and I've done it more in the last 10 years probably than in the other 50 years of my life, that when something feels wrong or smells wrong, it's because it is. And we have this tendency once we're on a track, even though there's warnings, to continue. You get a bad sense about something, but you continue anyway. And I have learned to just stop and get off. Yeah. And it takes a lot of emotional energy to stop and get off of something that's already underway.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But every time I don't do that, I get bit later. Yeah. And I like how you said stop. And I even say sometimes just pause. You know, just do a hard stop, pause the journey and just step back and just look at everything. And then for like younger people, I even say get wise counsel, ask questions.

I come here and I'll pause. Like, Dave, I'm thinking about doing this. I'm thinking about doing that. You may see something or experience something like you said that I have not experienced. Then now it goes from pause. So I'm off of it or i go from paul's well that's that's right anthony now i can get back on the journey because now i have a wise counsel in the process and so i think you're absolutely right dave i've i've gone down a road that i wish i would have asked somebody or i wish i just would have stopped and got out of the situation, especially with mortgages now.

Andy Stanley wrote a book about the proverb that says along the lines of I can't quote it exactly, but it says that the wise when they see danger, seek refuge. Yes, sir. The simple proceed on and are punished for it. We are. And I have been both. Yes both yes i know the difference uh sometimes i've been simple but it's like when i know something is wrong there's a pattern here of misbehavior or lying or weird feelings every time i'm around this person i get a weird feeling there's a pattern there and when i ignore that i'm being simple and i'm going to be punished for it the

wise stops seeks refuge and isn't punished by continuing forward in what ends up being a bad relationship a bad job a bad money decision a bad career decision whatever it is and uh that is so hard to do though because once something's underway, it has a certain inertia, a certain momentum to it, and to stop in the middle of the deal and push pause or in the middle of the deal push stop and say, you know what? I think we're done here. Would you say, Dave, that's because the wise calculate their risk

and then the unwise are like, oh, that won't happen to me. It's happened to everyone else, but it won't happen to me. Well, it's happened to me before, but it's not going to happen to me again this time. Right. We ignore even our own experiences. Yes. I've done that. I can look back and go, I knew this was bad.

I knew this was bad. I knew this was bad. And I kept going. Yeah. And I smelled a rat. And then there was a rat. And I was surprised. Why was I surprised? I smelled a rat. Yeah. I shouldn't have and then there was a rat and i was surprised why was i surprised i smelled a rat yeah i shouldn't have been surprised there was a rat there yeah you know

but it's just i'm dumber than a rock man and i have to learn everything the hard way it seems like and um and there's a little bit of that in her story yeah that that she knew in her knower that there was a problem with this company but she just went on and got the refinance done waiting on that 500 bucks for the gutter refinanced a whole mortgage a whole house over some gutters five hundred dollars yeah and then five hundred dollars becomes the issue but see that that was you know that right there tells you tells you you're off off the track and so um that's not picking on her i'm just saying i'm saying i've been the king of this but and i teach our leaders around here.

We're dealing with a vendor, and they keep screwing up, and they keep not delivering, and they keep screwing up, and they keep not delivering. And I look at one of my leaders, and I go, why are we continuing to do this? You might be mad at them about it, but if you expect them to not, to change the pattern of what they've been doing whether it's misbehavior or proper behavior they're not likely to change that and dave you taught me this earlier today at lunch when we sat down i won't say the name of the company but you said hey because of this what this particular company did i just canceled everything because

i i don't trust them they showed me exactly what they're doing so why go down that road let's go a different route. If they screw me here, they'll screw me there. Yes. I mean, it's not a hard concept. Yeah. And so you just got to be thoughtful about it. That's a really good principle that Andy wrote about.

He did a whole book on it. He's spoken here on our devotional on it. Do you remember the name of the book? It's called The Principle of the Path. The Principle of the Path. The Path. Don't continue on the path. Okay.

You know, is what it amounts to. That's right. Proverbs 23, I believe it is. All right. Anyway, that puts this hour for The Ramsey Show. Did you know that over 16 million people listen to The Ramsey Show every week? And a lot of those people listen on one of our 600 plus radio stations across the country. To find a station near you, head to DaveRamsey.com slash show.