The Ramsey Show - App - Bankruptcy is Not the Answer (Hour 2)

Episode Date: July 11, 2019

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🎵 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 a 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. AJ starts off this hour in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, AJ, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. I was hoping you could help me. I'm wondering whether or not I'm ready to buy a house or if I need to rent for a few years. I was hoping you could help me with that. Okay. What we teach folks to do, the best way to buy a home, because we want the home to be a blessing rather than a curse.

And sometimes people, when they're broke and they buy a house, the house beats them up financially. And, you know, because it's kind of tall. Everybody walks around talking about buying a house as if it's always a good thing. And it's not if you're not ready. So we teach people to be out of debt, have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, plus a good strong down payment, and then not buy a house where the payment is more than a fourth of your take-home pay on a 15-year fixed. And that's the guidelines we've used for years around here.

Now, that's kind of countercultural because everybody in the culture runs around going, buy house, buy house, buy house, buy house, you know, as if you're some kind of a reprobate or something if you haven't bought a house while you're broke. But if you're sitting with a car payment, a student loan payment, you know, a boat payment and everything else, payment, payment, payment. And, you know, you buy a house, the stinking house is going to beat the snot out of you. Does that make sense? Yeah.

So I'm in baby step three right now. Good. And I just wasn't sure because I don't make a ton of money right now, but I project that my income is going to increase pretty significantly in the next three to five years. What do you do? I don't know if I could maybe buy a house and kind of grow into it, if that makes sense. What do you do?

So I work for a family business. I'm currently a service technician on capital equipment, but I'll be kind of changing roles over the next few years into sales and eventually running day-to-day. Cool. How old are you? 24. Good. And how much do you make?

I take home between $1,800 and $2,600 a month, depending on profits and bonuses. Yeah. Okay. Well, once you get out of Baby Step 3, if you saved up a good down payment and you met those guidelines that I'm talking about based on your current income, not your future income, and you want to buy an inexpensive, it's going to be an inexpensive little starter house or starter condo of some kind. That's an okay thing to do. It's not the end of the world. It might be that it's okay for you to rent for a couple more years until your income, because I suspect your income is going to more than double in the next three years. Right.

Which would change the house. Yeah, that would change the house you could afford, right? Absolutely. So, I mean, it's not a sin to rent for a little while in your 20s. What I don't want folks doing is being a renter their whole lives, because you've missed out on a huge lift to your financial situation home ownership is good for you long term but the rush to do it quickly and prematurely will damage you you see what i'm saying yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense yeah so i don't know i don't want

you buying a house because you think you're going to make five thousand a month based on five thousand a month and no i don't want you buying a house until you finish you're going to make $5,000 a month based on $5,000 a month. And no, I don't want you buying a house until you finish your emergency fund and you have a good down payment. So if you were to buy, you know, next spring, which is probably how long it's going to take you to get to that point, you're going to buy something fairly conservative. And, you know, in three years, you might be moving again, which would be okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Okay.

I was just kind of worried because you're always starting to get your house paid off in 10 years i didn't know if i was going to put myself behind anything like that but you just keep aiming at that right right and so okay i mean let's say uh you're i'm guessing you're single right that's right okay so i'm you know let's say you're 27 and you had bought a, next spring you buy a little $60,000 or $80,000 condo, right? And you get the stinking thing paid off. That's, you know, then you sell it and buy another property and you take on a little bit of a mortgage and get it paid off in a couple years. You're still heading on your 10-year plan to have a nice paid-for property, right? Yeah.

No, I didn't think about that. You might be doing a little bit of a two-step here, but that's okay. You know, you can get around and do that. But just don't go too fast into these things. Don't push too hard into these things. So good question. Very good discussion. Thanks for calling in.

Ilani is with me in New Jersey. Hi, Ilani. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Thank you so much for taking my call. My pleasure. How can I help? I need your help. My husband and I currently lease a 2018 SUV, and we have 24 months remaining on our lease contract. And we called Toyotaote yesterday and the current buyout is about 43 000 um but the remaining payments is about 14 000 close to 15 so i just and we're upside down i checked kdb value and the car is currently valued at 30 to,000 to $32,000. We put this under like $13,000 to $14,000, which is the same amount as the remaining payment.

Yeah. So it sounds like you're going to lose $14,000. You're either going to lose it over the next several months or you're going to lose it instantaneously. I would just keep the car and pay the $14,000 and drive the car. Okay. And never do this again i know i i learned my lesson where i'm babysitting this is the thing that's been nice how much time is left

on the lease um 24 months yeah yeah you know you've just lost that much money and it's just a matter of might as well drive the car while you're losing the money right all right now make sure you don't go over on your miles and make sure you take care of it so when you turn it in you don't get stung well you know with miles uh mileage overage or with uh you know not being in good condition and they ding you for that okay so take excellent excellent care of the car and don't drive it more than your miles. Learn what your mileage limit is and stay under that because otherwise this formula starts to break down and you're not going to come out ahead. But yeah, you're right. If you're going to pay 14 to get rid of it or you're going to pay 14 by keeping it, well, we've lost 14. So let's drive the car and lose 14.

That's what I would do. Folks, the car fleece, we call it a fleece like you've been fleeced like a sheep like bad idea see what i did there yeah the car fleece is the most expensive way to operate an automobile. It's the worst way to handle your car needs. The most expensive way to handle your car needs. Most expensive way to operate an automobile. That's according to my calculator, Smart Money Magazine, Consumer Reports. Everybody's done articles on it. All you got to do is just back the numbers out, and they suck.

You're much better off to pay cash for whatever you're going to drive. You're going to take a butt kicking on the depreciation, and it's built into whatever method you use, financing, leasing, or paying cash, you're going to take a butt-kicking in depreciation when you drive a car. It's that simple. So you're not going to get away from that. And then when you add hidden charges and cost of capital, you get hammered with these fleeces.

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Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call and being willing to trudge through the floods with me here. Oh, my gosh. What's going on? Well, unfortunately, I am in the middle of a divorce. I have a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old, and I want to stay in my home for my children's sake. And apparently I need to, looks like I need to refinance my house and cash out so I can pay my husband his half of the equity in our home. Can you do that? Well, I'm looking at doing that.

And, you know, in California, everything here is kind of crazy. Can I give you some numbers here on the house well so if you were to refinance it on a 15 year fixed um what percentage of your take-home pay would your payment be oh that's probably climbing to about 40 i think yeah i can't tell you to do that um i know you're in a situation where your heart's broken your kids lives are turned upside down and you're being mama bear and trying to protect their lives and cause them to not go through any more pain than they're already going through by moving but putting yourself in a financial bind is not really good for your children either. Right.

You know, maybe I didn't understand your question on that. Okay. I said, how much is your payment going to be on the house after the refinance? Oh, okay. So maybe I didn't. So, well, it kind of depends. So currently my house is worth, just from what I looked online, about $515,000. We've done your baby steps, and we have absolutely no debt except for the house.

Good. And we put it on a $15,000 a few years back. So we currently owe $154,000 on it. So the difference, of course, is the equity, right? Right. So I'd have to pay my husband about half of that. Mm-hmm. And so what would be the loan amount?

So from what I understand, the loan amount would be half of that equity plus the 154 because i have to refinance the whole thing correct uh and that would be like 334 000 which gives you a payment of how much on a 15 year uh on a 15 year it'd be a little bit high for me i think it would be about 25 2600 a month currently we're paying about $2,300. Right. But you're not going to have the same income that you currently do. No, I won't have the same income. You're losing his income. Now, what is your income?

What's your take-home pay? You. I make about $6,100 a month. Okay. And so your house payment is going to be almost 50% of your take-home pay. Right, right. Plus, I get another $ like 1200 and uh child support okay well that helps i put you at about 33 of your take-home pay and so i put it at 20

yeah i mean you can put it you can put it on a 15 um is your do you think your income's going up it will go up and then it'll go down when the kids leave because you're going to lose the child support. Correct. At 18. Okay. So here's the thing. Normally, I mean, you're right on the bubble. If you want to try this, try it.

But hold this house with an open hand, not with a death grip. This house is not going to make this horrible thing you all are going through okay. It's still not going to be okay. Yeah, I get it. And sometimes people are trying to hold on to a little bit of the past there. They're trying to make sure that the house is, you know, we're not going to upset the children. Well, those children are already upset. You know, just that's part of what y'all are going through it's just a yucky sludgy thing like you said sludge through the yuck and i'm sorry you

guys are going through that but i don't i don't want you to jump from the frying pan into the fire by taking on a house that sinks you later all with good noble motivation because you're trying to protect your children you know that's a good noble it's about as noble motivation as there is it's a wonderful motivation but don't let that cause you to be illogical and you're on the bubble here i mean you you're taking on more than i'd like to see you take on but i see how you're getting there and if you can get your income up but if you just got to promise yourself and you can promise me if you want to i don't care but it's more importantly that you promise yourself that that if this thing starts pinching you it's a house you dump it later okay right if you get if you get it gets to where this house is

owning you instead of you owning it, and you're just struggling all the time just to hold on to this silly house, then dump the house. The kids will get over it. Right. No, we lived that life before, which is how I found you to begin with. Yeah. You don't want to go back there.

Right. You know, and especially as a single mom, divorcee, you know, it's terrifying to get back there you're right so don't let your motivation to protect the children drive you back there that's my whole speech okay i think you're okay it's higher than i like you know it's 33 with the child support child support's going to go away but during that time the income's going to go up you're still going to be around 33 it's it's it's it's tight but i think you can do it and as long as you promise yourself that you're not going to let this house break you okay okay if you do that then you just you hold it with

an open hand you're going to be okay and it's not your salvation and it's not your children's salvation it's a house it's a house it's just a house there's a house. It's a house. It's just a house. There's a house on every corner. Hey, thanks for the call. I'm so sorry y'all are going through this pain. It's so tough to do. Such a mess. Our question of the day comes from blinds.com, the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. With them, you get free samples, free shipping.

And with the new promos they run every month, you get to save even more. Use the promo code RAMSEY. Jonathan's in Pennsylvania. What do you do if you can't qualify for term insurance? I tried with multiple companies, including Zander's Options, and I've been denied by all of them. I'm 29 years old. Well, you've been denied not just for term insurance. You've been denied for life insurance. Because if a term insurance company will not issue life insurance, a whole life company won't issue you.

You're not insurable because you have some kind of medical condition that's keeping them from qualifying you for that. Long term, what you do is you build wealth to take care of you and your family since you don't have this short term you can buy some expensive insurance called guaranteed issue and it's uh sometimes you see these things on cable television it's guaranteed issue they're not usually big policies they're 10 000 20 000 that kind of a thing another place you can get guaranteed issue is if you have a mortgage, mortgage life insurance, which is about 5X of normal term and cost, about five times as much as normal term. So we don't recommend mortgage insurance, but in your case where you can't get anything else, if you want to spend a little more money and at least get the mortgage paid off if you died, you can usually get mortgage insurance or mortgage life insurance, not PMI, not private mortgage insurance. That's different. But mortgage life insurance is a guaranteed issue item, and you can look to try to do that as well.

It's that kind of a thing that you're looking to do is to patchwork together some of those things. Sometimes you can get some life insurance through work, through your group health policy, and sometimes those are 10 15 even up to maybe fifty thousand dollars worth but what you're looking for are guaranteed issue and they're never a good deal there's not a good deal because they know if you're doing guaranteed issue that it's because you couldn't buy less expensive term insurance, you know. And so you get stung that way. Well, guys, it is officially summer. Hotter than hot outside.

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CASHCHRISTMAS to 33. 789. Thank you. Thanks for joining us, America. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Rebecca is on Twitter. Dave, how come you never consider bankruptcy if individuals are deep in financial crisis. Well, Rebecca, there are good people that sometimes go through bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a devastating, life-altering decision. Divorce is a devastating, life-altering decision. And I don't tell people to do either one.

I'm not mad at you if you do either one, and I'll help you if you do either one. But I'm not going to allow you to say, Dave Ramsey said for me to file for a divorce dave ramsey said for me to file bankruptcy so that makes it okay because then you're going to go through hell and i'm going to have that on me so you may decide to go through that and again i'll help you but it's not it in either case i put them in the same category. It should be your absolute after you've tried everything else and then tried everything else again. It ought to be your absolute last thing on your list of things to do. And so I find people with bankruptcy. I've been through bankruptcy.

I filed bankruptcy when I was 28 years old 30 years ago and uh it was hell it was awful to go through the the leading up to it was hell going through it was hell it is not a fun process being that broke and broken and then going through your underwear drawer and want to know every little detail of your life and everybody's got rights on your head it's not a good thing so it's not something to be entered into until you've tried everything else and too often i find people think it's going to fix their stuff and it's really not going to fix your stuff your stuff is so screwed by the time you get to bankruptcy if you really file that you're that you ain't got any stuff. It's over.

So here's an example, okay? Here's the things to remember. Bankruptcy does not do away with child support. You still owe it. Bankruptcy does not do away with IRS debt 99 99 of the time you still owe it bankruptcy does not do away with student loan debt you still owe it bankruptcy does not do away with secured debt if you reaffirm the debt to keep the car or the house. Secured debt is something that debt against an asset.

If you want to keep the boat, if you want to keep the car, if you want to keep the house, if you want to keep the couch, if you want to keep whatever they have a lien on, you have to agree to pay the debt. You don't get to keep the item and knock the debt off. And so I run into people who reaffirm their car debt, reaffirm their house debt. They've got student loan debt and an IRS lien and some back child support. And so they come out of bankruptcy with all that still there. And they end up having net, net, net, having filed bankruptcy on $8,000 worth dollars worth of credit card debt well that's dumber than crap you didn't do anything

so if you're going to reaffirm all the secure debt to keep your crap to keep the stupid stuff that you couldn't afford in the first place then you've you've screwed up the whole thing it doesn't work and so if you're going to give up your house you're going to give up your car you're going to give up your life you're going to give up everything and walk away from the debt and start down at the at ground zero in the dirt you can do that and it does clear off everything everything but student loans child support and irs or um any criminal restitution you're not getting rid of that you're going to Everything but student loans, child support, and IRS. Or any criminal restitution.

You're not getting rid of that. You're going to pay that as well. And so, you know, or I'm going to pay payments in bankruptcy. Chapter 13 bankruptcy is what that's called. Wage earner's plan. Which you're forced to do, by the way. You're not allowed to do a Chapter 7 if you have the income to pay payments. So people go in to file bankruptcy, and they're forced, by the way,

the calculation that the law requires your bankruptcy attorney to do, that you can't file a Chapter 7 and wipe off the debt. Instead, you have to enter into a Chapter 13, which is 60 months of payments. If you're going to do that, you can do that without filing bankruptcy. You can pay 60 months of payments without filing bankruptcy. Well, they're after me. It's out of control. They're bothering me. Well, I know.

They're going to bother you. You don't think they're going to bother you in bankruptcy? They're not going to call you. But you try missing one of those payments. Now they're really seriously going to come down on your head so the problem is is that you know if you have a really good fight with your wife and then you divorce it doesn't solve your problem because all you've got is a relational problem and the relational problem is still there and if you get behind on your bills and you just file bankruptcy, you still got the problem. It doesn't solve the problem. It treats the symptom.

And so I, you know, again, I'm not mad at you for filing bankruptcy, but I'm not going to be the guy that gave you permission to file a life-altering thing in your life that caused you to go into hell. Okay? life-altering thing in your life that caused you to go into hell, okay? And most of the time, there's other options that are better when you actually net out what the actual net effect of your filing is. And so a Chapter 7 is what most people think of when they think of bankruptcy. That's the total liquidation 98 percent of the chapter 7 filings in the nation are no asset filings meaning the person had no assets left to pay against their creditors so they're not sitting on a bunch of money they've already used up their money or whatever in the process right and so

there it's a no asset case they don't have any money to pay bills with and so then you're looking at turning over any of your secured assets or you're going to pay those payments anyway you don't get to keep the car without keeping the car payments you don't get to keep the house without keeping the house payments you don't get to walk away from student loan debt you don't walk away from irs debt you don't walk away from criminal restitution you don't walk away from student loan debt it's all staying it's all surviving your bankruptcy. So, again, by the time I net all of that out, I have most of the time you're filing bankruptcy on a few thousand dollars, 20, 30,000 bucks, 15,000 bucks, 10,000 bucks. And it's really just because you didn't have any hope. No one showed you how you could scratch out.

No one showed you how you could make it. No one showed you how you could turn this around. And it really wasn't. You weren't that far away from actually turning the corner and i can show you how to do that so that that's the reason and and in a few cases where you know someone has a five hundred thousand dollars in debt and they have zero income and they're going to file bankruptcy and that five hundred thousand is just going to go away in a chapter seven bankruptcy i'm not going to file bankruptcy, and that $500,000 is just going to go away in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, I'm not going to yell at you for that.

I'm not mad at you. I'm not making a moral statement about you. I'm just saying, from a practical standpoint, is it worth the cost? Did you move the needle? Did you change your life? Because you are going to change your life in a negative way? I've been through it. It's hell.

It is not something you want someone you love to go through. And then a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, again, is a series of payments. That's the two primary types of bankruptcy, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Get this, 78% of the Chapter 13 payment plans fail because the very mess that's in people's lives, the inability to live on a budget, the income problem, whatever the problem is, is still there when you go into bankruptcy, and so they don't make it through the pay and the payments,

and they end up rolling into a seven after all so these things it's just it's a it's if it helps you if it really helps you i'd be all for it and i'm it didn't oh man please i just i just want to love you well that's all this is the the Dave Ramsey Show. Katie is with us in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Katie. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you, Dave. I'm happy to talk to you. You too.

How can I help? So I'm 24. I live with my parents and I work from home. Me and my sister really want to move out, but we're worried if we move out, we'll sink deeper into debt and just be stuck. My mom wants us to stay and pay her off and buy a house with my dad as a co-signer. So I want to move out in the next couple of weeks, but I'm not sure what to do, to stay and wait to buy a house with my dad as a co-signer. So I want to move out in the next couple of weeks, but I'm not sure what to do, to stay and wait to buy a house or rent. Okay.

What's your income? I make $35,000 a year, but even then, I feel like I'm always living paycheck to paycheck. Why? Where's $3,000 a month going? Well, a lot is taken out for tax. So I get about $1,200 every two weeks. And I try to pay off as much as I can on credit cards. But then I just end up using the credit cards because I have no cash. Where's $2,400 a month going if you live at home?

Just expensive. I don't know. I don't even know where my money goes. I pay off credit cards, and I buy food and go out, but I don't think it's that bad. I just feel like I'm spending so much money, and I'm never paying off my debt. Yeah. Well, it is that bad because $2,400 a month is disappearing,

and you have no idea where it went. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, I'm paying off old things. So, like, I bought a car and I bought a car like old cash. So I have a $15,000 car that I bought with old cash. But when I bought it, I took all my money and gave it away. So I started using credit cards at that time.

And then that piled up and I've since been paying off those expenses. Now, you started using credit cards because you refused to live on $2,400 a month. Well, I took all that cash and bought a car with it. No, $15,000 is gone, and you bought a car with that, but you have $2,400 a month every month coming in after taxes, and can't live on that and you live at home there's something wrong with that well i can live on it i just i i i'm fine no you can't you haven't how much credit card how much credit card how much credit card do you have just one okay how much debt do you have on the credit card about four thousand okay all right so here's what you need to do you need to start telling your money what to do instead of

wondering where it went let's go to every dollar and download the app for your phone and i want you to build a budget tonight on $2,400. Okay? That's what you're bringing home a month. And so $2,400 goes at the top of the page, and we pay the minimum payment on the credit card. What expenses do you actually have in your budget? It's only like $200.

I pay for car insurance, $92, and I pay my phone around $80 a month. Okay. And then I pay as much as I possibly can on credit cards. No, no, no, no, no. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Okay. You're still bouncing all over the place. $2,400 is there at the top of the page. That's a pile of money on the table, okay?

Mm-hmm. And we're going to pay the car insurance, and do you have to pay for food at home or only if you go out? No, I go to the store and just buy whatever once in a while. Okay, so you need a food budget, right? Mm-hmm. What do you think you actually spend at the store on food?

Around $60 a week i think okay so let's set that at 300 bucks okay so 300 goes in an envelope write food on the envelope 2400 minus 300 is 2100 then i got to pay 100 in car in car insurance that's 2 000 left okay you see what i'm doing and i want you to give every dollar an assignment on paper on purpose and then i want you to stick to that because you're just a dog chasing his tail right now you have no idea where this is going you're just going in chasing its tail right now. You have no idea where this is going. You're just going in circles. And you have to stop that and say, okay, this pile of money, I'm going to be very deliberate, and I'm going to buy my food. I'm going to allocate some for going out, but not much.

You're broke right now, and you're trying to move out. But you can't move out right now. You're broke, and you have no idea where your money's going so for the next 90 days i want you to tell that two thousand four hundred dollars every month exactly where to go and then make it do that make katie live on katie's plan okay can i ask you another question sure I have a car that I bought. The car is worth $15,000. I wanted to sell it and pay it off and kind of live without a car for as long as I could

and then buy a cheaper one that I could actually afford and then move out. Is that something that I should be thinking about doing? Not until you learn to control your income. Okay. You don't know where your income's going. You've got to get control of Katie. Because you're going to burn through $15,000 just like you ran up that credit card debt. Yeah.

And then you're going to be sitting there with no car and no money. So I think you're fine to sit on that car. The car is $15,000 and it is paid for, correct? Yeah. Okay. I think you're fine to sit on that car. The car is $15,000 and it is paid for, correct? Yes. Okay. We might move down out of it later in order to come up with a down payment on a house. After you move out, buy you a $5,000 car, have $10,000 in your pocket, start moving towards a house, that kind of a thing.

That ought to be okay. But right now, I really want you to get control of the $2,400 and make it behave for a little while. That's going to give you confidence and traction financially and mathematically. So download the EveryDollar app and spend the next 90 days making that $2,400 behave. Let's pretend that out of the $2,400, you took half of it, $1,200, and you paid it on your credit card for three months. Your credit card would almost be paid off. And then you'd be 100% debt-free. That sets you up to move out. But most importantly, what sets you up to move out is you have learned to control Katie. You have learned to control the $2,400 income and making it behave every month. So that's what I would tell you to do. Download the EveryDollar app and start using it. Thanks for the call.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. We're building a new office building that we're starting to move into this week. We've been building it for two years. Our 900 team members are moving to the new Ramsey headquarters. I spent three hours down there this morning. I got up at the crack of dawn. I'm so excited, and I went down. And, of course, there's 9 million construction people down there crawling all over it this week,

trying to put the finishing touches on things before we do begin the move. And actually, the elevators were all in use moving furniture around and that kind of stuff. And I don't want to interrupt people actually doing real work, so I was using the stairs. So as I'm going up the stairs, there's a young guy running a vacuum. You know one of those vacuums you put on your back? Yeah. Kelly knows. She's got one.

And, you know, he's got that vacuum on his back. He's vacuuming the stairs, you know, the construction dirt out of the stairwell because it's all freshly painted and nice and it looks very nice. He's done a great job. He turns off the vacuum as I walk by and goes, hey, Dave, I'm using the EveryDollar app. It's changed my life. I'm completely out of control. I was completely out of control. And now I've got money saved for the first time in my life.

Very cool. Very cool. That's what the EveryDollar app is for. And Katie, if vacuum guy in the stairs can do it, you can do it. And if vacuum guy in the stairs can do it, I forgot to ask his name. I'm sorry. I should have. I just said, man, that's awesome.

I'm proud of you. And I kept running because I was going to the next thing. But I need to go back and ask his name. But it's a great story because he was just beaming. He was just like, man, I got this. I'm doing this. And if he can do it using the EveryDollar app, you can do it using the EveryDollar app. Because it's all about you telling your money what to do instead of wondering where it went.

When you make your money behave, when you crack the whip on the money, you get the chair and the whip and you're a money tamer. Any of you old enough to know the chair and the whip with the lion tamer, right? Okay. Probably going to get picketed by animal people now, but oh my God. Anyway, that's how you make your money behave. You make it behave. You tell it what to do. And in the process, you're making yourself behave.

And that's the beauty of this whole personal finance thing. You get to control you. It's a privilege to do that. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but if you heard about a product or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry. We list everything that is mentioned during this episode in the podcast show notes section.

Thanks for listening.