The Ramsey Show - App - Break the Family Cycle of Bad Money Habits (Hour 2)

Episode Date: October 2, 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 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, America. We're glad you are here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Christopher is in Georgia to start us off this hour.

Hi, Christopher. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So, me and my wife are newly married. We pretty much only have two debts. One back taxes from when I got mixed up being a missionary and didn't know how to do my taxes right. And my wife has a credit card that her ex-husband started in her name. And the court said that it was for $14,000.

She was supposed to pay $4,000 and then he was supposed to pay the remaining $10,000. We have saved up about $7,000 in the bank trying to, I was going to throw it all at my, um, taxes once it's in the CPA and the CPA is kind of dragging it out on trying to get that drop down or what to whatever it's supposed to be. And so, uh, I contacted, I contacted, um, the credit card and asked for, um, you know, what the payoff was, and they said they could do half, which is $6,000, but they don't list him on it at all for a cosigner. So I'm just running into the issue of which one to pay first, and if we pay the $4,000, they're still going to come after us because they don't see her ex-husband on the account?

I'm sorry, didn't you say they agreed to sell the $4,000, but they agreed to settle the whole card for $6,000? Yes, the whole card for $6,000. What's your household income? Um, I'm, I'm the sole provider and I work two jobs and it's probably close to 60,000. Okay. And she, you have children at home. Is that why she's not working or what? No, no. Um, I just always wanted to be able to keep my wife at home if she chose to, uh, her children are now grown. Oh, so yeah. Okay. Uh, she was actually looking at, you know, going back to work. We just didn't know right now if, you know, what she can do. She's always been a mother since, like, age 18.

So we just didn't know if that would be a plus in how much it's going to cost with gas and all that stuff. So we're kind of just looking. Yeah, it depends on what she wants to do with her life, yeah. Okay. Right. All right. stuff so we're kind of just looking yeah it depends on what she wants to do with her life yeah okay right um all right we're actually looking at going probably into the mission field so i don't know there's that too so what do you uh what do you think the tax bill is going to be when all the smoke clears with the cpa working on it well it started out at six thousand and then he started working on it and then they actually came back and said that it was

going to be it went up to nine thousand and um so but he said that he thinks it's going to be dropped down to two thousand okay and because it's it was it was just um it was because i got hit with four years of 1099s given to me at once, so it was all fees pretty much. Okay. All right. So basically $8,000 takes care of the taxes and the credit card. Six and two, right?

Yeah, if the taxes come down to two yeah and you have seven uh yeah that's okay get it in writing from the credit card company before you give them the money and give them the six thousand dollars okay and then save up and get ready for this tax bill and be ready to have that and start building your emergency fund very rapidly and make sure you've got an extra two thousand dollars in there or so to cover this tax bill when it does come up and be ready for it but here's the thing his name is not on there when she divorced him if he had stolen her identity and opened this card without her permission which is what you inferred is that correct yeah i believe so.

The fact that she did not address that in divorce court back then and did not claim identity theft at that time, she's taking this debt on. And so this is basically a credit card debt that is in her name. And it's a really sick, toxic, wasted way that we got here. But today, she has $14,000 in credit card debt. They're willing to settle it for $12,000 or whatever it is. They're willing to settle it for $6,000. So take the $6,000, get done with it.

It's over. Okay? It's not proper justice, but the time for justice was back when there was the divorce court. And that's when you would have settled that, and you would have gone, hey, this bo bozo committed fraud he opened an account in someone's name that wasn't his that's fraud even if it's your own wife that's fraud it's and if you do it for money it's called criminal fraud and so you're not liable whatsoever for that and i heard her attorney should have got all up in the court's face over that and should have filed immediately for him to have to pay all of it and got her name taken off of that account completely because it was never her account i don't know how she ended up being

responsible for any of it or maybe he opened the account then she started using it and maybe so the judge goes well you used it you accepted, and that may have been how the divorce court looked at that. Either way, we're where we are now. And so, yeah, just take care of it. That's the thing to do. Now, folks, you need to get identity theft protection. And believe it or not, well over half of identity theft is someone you know stole your identity. And some parents are such scum that they will open accounts in their own kids' names.

Some kids are such scum that they will open accounts in their parents' names. And by the way, when you open an account in someone else's name and you steal their identity and it's someone you're supposed to love you are by definition scum you can look up scum in the dictionary we will see your picture that's what's going on you are a thief you're a low life when you steal your own kids identity and open credit cards ran into a lady just the other day that's my age and she's got kids in their 20s and she's just ravaged their lives because she's scum and she thinks that she's entitled because she brought them into this world to open accounts in their names no honey that's criminal freaking fraud criminal fraud scum look it up man, you cannot open accounts in anyone's name unless they are a minor and you are their custodian. You are their legal guardian.

And then you're actually opening the account as the custodian, not as the child. And so when you open a kid's checking account and they're 12 years old, that's what you're doing. And that's fine. But you can't just go open up a credit card in somebody else's name without a power of attorney. It's against the law. And if somebody does that to you, make sure you've got Zander Insurance's identity theft protection in place.

They'll assign a caseworker, and they'll go pin their ears to the ball and get this off your name. Because you don't owe stuff when people steal your identity. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Let me tell you a story about two families that are very much alike in a lot of ways. Both families have two working parents and a couple of young kids. Each has debt and has struggled to make ends meet. But they're starting to make headway with their budgets and smarter decisions with money. They have dreams and plans, and the only real difference

is that one family has the right amount of term life insurance and the other doesn't. Big difference. If one of the parents die, and that does happen, their well-being would be destroyed. Paying for the mortgage, utilities, food, and that does happen, their well-being would be destroyed. Paying for the mortgage, utilities, food, and other bills would be impossible, let alone saving for education or retirement. That's why every day I talk relentlessly about getting term life insurance.

Just go to ZanderInsurance.com or call 800-356-4282 and see how inexpensive it really is. Be the family that takes those deliberate steps to be different and responsible. It really does make you the hero of your story, and it puts you on course for better things ahead. Well, a lot of parents think that their kids have to go to college to be successful. And I believe in college. I believe in a four-year degree and learning things that you don't know. Knowledge is powerful. It's a good thing.

But not everybody has to go to school. And I've got to tell you, nobody should go to school with a student loan there's no excuse for that there are ways to select a college that you can afford and ways to get it paid for with work and scholarships uh that that math is very very doable our own anthony o'neill ramsey personality best-selling author has a new book coming out called debt-free degree the step-by-step guide to getting your kid through college without student loans and it comes out this coming monday if you pre-order the book we're going to throw in before monday forty dollars worth of free items and that includes a few couple of videos about three different video lessons from anthony and

dr beg meeker about parenting and about teens and about college. It includes the e-book to go along with the book itself, and all of that for just $20. You can buy the book today anywhere great books are sold. And certainly if you want those extra $40 worth of items, check out anthonyoneal.com and daveramsey.com and while you're there by the way if you have a teenager go ahead and sign up on anthony's site for our ten thousand dollars in scholarships giveaway we're going to give away a five thousand dollar and two twenty five hundred dollar

scholarships no purchase is necessary brought to you by speedy prep and we're going to do that in the month of october celebrating the launch of this book and all of these scholarship and college calculator tools that are on anthony's site did you hear me i said ten thousand dollars free money no purchase necessary you gotta be a teenager getting ready to go to college that's it so go over there and sign up for that money quickly no salesman will call all right jeff is in kentucky hey jeff how are you how are you doing today dave thanks for taking my call but my pleasure how can i help yeah i'm probably a little bit late on this call to you um i had just got done uh filing a bankruptcy and i was just um i felt like i didn't really have a choice i i'd kind of listened to you over

the years um but i maybe should have gave your program more thought prior to doing it i guess um but i just i really tried to get as much information as I could. This is something you don't know nothing about until you run out of answers. I hear you, man. You get backed into the corner with a gun in your face, huh? Yeah, yeah. I really felt like I was. You know, I tried to give myself good answers before doing anything

as far as figuring out what my net worth was where I stood. How can I best help you today, sir? I guess I was just wondering if I could give you some information if this fits into your show

and you tell me whether I made the right decision i guess and if your program would help me here forward any okay um well i'm not going to judge whether you should have filed or not because you filed you're you can't you can't unring the bell so we're just there now um the the question is how can we get into the best future the fastest and the easiest. And, you know, when I was 28 years old, I was facing the same thing. We went through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I lost everything.

I was stupid. I signed up for a whole bunch of debt, and I got myself in trouble, and I couldn't get out. I had babies, and my wife thought I was crazy because I was crazy. I'm a lot older now and that's what really starts scaring me. The point, though, is it doesn't matter. The age does matter, but it doesn't mean you can't do it because you're older. The trick is if you're going to go through something that hurts this bad,

and this hurts, I mean, this makes you cry in the middle of the night. This was never an option. This was never an option until it felt like it was the only option. Yeah. And so if you're going to go through this much pain, the trick is to learn something from it. And you've got to figure out what puts you there and never do it again. And that's how I developed the stuff we teach here. I figured out what put me there was a bunch of debt and no plan and no system and no you know no behavior with money that was reasonable and i had to stop doing all that so i just cold turkey we don't borrow money

anymore 30 years ago for anything ever and one thing about going through this much pain is you really don't care what anybody else thinks after this so i mean all you people don't think think you could send me stuff on twitter and change my mind you can just kiss my butt i mean i've been through this stuff i'm not changing nothing a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion and i don't care what people think because i've also now got 30 years and tens of millions of people under my belt that have done this stuff and so i do know it works and if you disagree with me and you live in your mother's basement that makes you wrong so that's that's

one of the benefits of this for you is you just get that you reach that point that i'm gonna do whatever i have to do to never be here again and to turn this thing around. And so what I'll do, Jeff, is I'll put you on hold and Madison will pick up and I'm going to put you in our Financial Peace membership, which has everything in it. That's the nine-week class Financial Peace University. It's got the every dollar budget connected to your bank in it. It's like $1,000 worth of stuff. I'm going to give it all to you for free.

And I want you to go through every bit of it, and i want you to figure out how you got in this mess so that you never repeat the same thing if you file bankruptcy because you run up a bunch of credit card debt and then you think credit cards are grand after you come out of bankruptcy you're what's called stupid that's what puts you there so don't don't do the same stupid stuff over and over again figure out what got you there i know what't do the same stupid stuff over and over again. Figure out what got you there. I know what put me in bankruptcy. It was me, and it was debt, and I don't do those things anymore. And so I have a whole new way of looking at things 30 years ago,

and that's what you need to come out of this with, and then you've got plenty of time to turn it around. Go make you a bunch of money and keep a bunch of it this time. Hey, thanks for the call, brother. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jen is with us in Florida. Hi, Jen, how are you? Hi, how are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Thank you. I was just calling because my daughter's biological father passed away in July, and I am going to be receiving Social Security survivor benefits for her of the amount of $668 a month. And I have never gotten any money from him before in the past and always did fine.

And I'm just trying to figure out what to do with that money that would be in her best interest. How old is she? She is 10 years old. Oh, you just put it in your budget just put it should i be putting it away for her though i kind of am getting a lot of conflicting advice no no no okay the money is for her care stop stop stop it's not her money okay it's for her care and feeding and you spend more than six $600 a month on her Karen feeding.

I'm sure I do. I'm positive you do. Yeah. And so you're not doing anything wrong. You're not stealing the kid's money. Now, you need to get about the business of taking care of your kid, but you're already doing that, aren't you? Oh, of course. And you're going to be saving for the kid's college, right?

Yes. We have already about $8,000 put away for her. See right yes we have already about 8 000 put away for her there we go and so you you know no you are not required morally ethically legally or any or even common sense to set this money in a separate account just because it's coming from social security in the kid's name the money is for the kate taking the purpose of a survivor benefit to the minor of a person who's passed away is to take care of the child. The child's already being taken care of. So it's just part of your budget.

Okay. Make it like you had a part-time job that made you $628. Put the top of your budget. Then use your budget to take care of you, your family, and this includes your kid, your kid's future, your kid's college, your kid has a shelter, your kid has electricity and warmth and cooling in the summer and has food, and your kid gets to go on vacations, and your kid gets all kinds of stuff that's way in excess of $7,200 a year. It's a joke. So now, whoever's telling you otherwise is meddling in your business.

If you weren't taking care of your kid, then we need to do something else. But normal people, this is just a part of your budget. Same with child support people. Child support doesn't need to be set aside. It's part of your budget because you don't ever get enough child support that it equals even what it costs to take care of the kid. It never happens. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Debbie is in Ohio.

Hi, Debbie. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay. Well, I have a question for you.

I just inherited about a half a million dollars through a death of my brother. And I also, yes, and I also inherited his home, which I'm now living in, should I pay this off or should I just refinance because the interest rate is a little bit high on this mortgage? How much is the mortgage? The mortgage is $103,000. And what other nest egg do you have other than this inherited $450,000? Well, my husband's going to be retiring, so we have his 401k. We have his pension coming up. How much is in the 401k? Almost a half a million

dollars. Very good. And I have an emergency fund of about $70,000. I have a couple small IRAs. We have no credit card debt. We have no car debt. So the only debt you have is this mortgage that you inherited? Yes. Where were you living before? I was living in another home, which I sold very fast. And so we ended up selling that and then moving into this home. Where's the money from that home? That money is in the bank. And that's the $70,000? That money is sitting in the bank. Yes.

Okay. Good. And you guys are how old? I'm 64. My husband's 63. And your household income today is how much? About $80,000 probably. Okay.

And he works. I do not not okay um i haven't worked yeah so with this inheritance and with the money that you all have saved and done a good job with with the fact that you are already debt free you're millionaires you have a net oh my you have a net worth of over a million dollars. Right. And you make $80,000 a year, and you have a $100,000 mortgage. So I would write a check today and pay this house off. There's no way I'd carry a mortgage on this. Okay. Well, there's people that are saying, you know, don't do that.

There's a lot of broke people with opinions about money. Mm-hmm. Okay. So let me tell you what we found. When we studied millionaires, we just did a study last year, 10,000 millionaires. You know what the average millionaire did to become a millionaire? They had a paid-off house. Mm-hmm.

And they had money in their 401K. Mm-hmm. Sounds kind of like you guys. Yeah, I think so. It doesn't sound like the broke people giving you advice. No, no, that's for sure. And that's why I called, just to see, because my mortgage rate is 5.9%, and it's a 30-year mortgage.

Well, if the idea of borrowing on your home in order to make the spread made sense, you'd go borrow a million dollars on it, right? Mm-hmm. But it doesn't make sense. That made your stomach jump up in your throat when I just said that. Right, right. Which means that you have common sense and you know how to measure risk, unlike people. People always have an opinion.

So, no, I'd write a check today and I'd have that house paid off. And then I would just use the fact that I have no house payment, an $80,000 income, to enjoy my life and to invest and to be outrageously generous. Ryan is with us. Ryan's in Michigan. Hey, Ryan, how are you? I'm great, Dave. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Sure. How can I help? I could use some financial guidance. I look up to you a lot, and I watch as many episodes as I can to try to gauge what I should do with my current situation. But I can't quite do it, and the call means a lot, to be honest. But I have a rental property, and it's worth, it's valued about $205,000 right now, and I owe $113,000 on it. And I'm trying to decide whether I want to hang on to it, keep paying it down, or sell it and delegate that money elsewhere. Do you have other debts?

I do have on my primary residence. I owe $190,000 on that house, and I do have some loans for $22,000. And what's your household income? I make, as a single income, about $92,000 a year. Okay. Well, the only way I would keep this rental is if I had a firm commitment to living on beans and rice and get the debts cleaned up, other than the two mortgages,

and then you start investing and saving 15% of your income, you start working on paying off both these mortgages, the rental property and the other, and that's only if you really love this rental. I don't really have an attachment to it. I definitely want to do what makes the most sense long-term since I'm pretty good as far as my day-to-day job and what I bring in. If you're going to ride a mortgage for 15 years on both of these it doesn't make sense if you're going to get with it and get these two mortgages paid off in five or ten years

then then it does make sense to hold it if you're going to get it all paid off but if it's just going to sit there and just labor along and your house is going to sit there and labor along forever then it doesn't make sense because you're not making any money on the stinking thing. There's no cash flow here. You may have a little bit of gross cash flow, but a little bit of vacancy and one big repair and your cash flow on this deal is gone because you've only got about 50% equity position. So it's okay either way, but the only way you keep this is if you have a firm commitment to clear up the $22,000 and then walk on up these baby steps and build out what you need to do to knock out these mortgages after that.

But if you're going to be kind of medium about it, I'd just sell it. And if you're not going to turn up the burner and really get this stuff done. Justin is with us. Justin is in South Carolina. Hi, Justin. How are you? Good, good. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? So I'm pretty sure you're going to tell me I made a mistake, but I ended up leasing two vehicles between me and my wife last year. You did make a mistake. You made two mistakes. So I got a company vehicle that I can drive for personal use and I'll just be charged the taxes on it throughout the year. Um, so my question is, should I get rid of both, get rid of one? Cause no matter what, I don't have enough money to go out and just buy a new car, but I have the luxury of using my work vehicle for personal use. So I can get rid of one easily. Just kind of wanted a second opinion on what's the smart way.

You leased them both last year. What was the sticker price on both of them last year? $32,000 and $48,000. And what's your household income? $150,000. Okay. And you have $80,000 worth of cars. And both vehicles are about $450,000 a month.

Yeah. Okay. Well, it is very, very difficult mathematically to succeed financially when the total of your vehicles, things with motors and wheels in them, motors in them or wheels on them, equals more than half your annual income and yours do. Yeah, so these cars are really in the crazy zone. They really are. Even if they were paid for, they're in the crazy zone. And they're not paid for.

They're a disaster um you know i'd probably sell both of them and let's just get back let's just get back in the land of smart i mean you're probably gonna write a 10 you're probably going to borrow ten thousand dollars to sell them because you've been driving them a year and you're probably upside down as you can be on them but you have to find out what the early buyout is versus the private sale. You're going to find yourself upside down. But these things are insane. It just makes no sense.

It was a completely impulsive, really, really bad decision to buy these two cars. And I think it'll just be a good exercise for you all in your relationship and in just your emotional maturity to just go, you know what? We screwed this up. We're just going to stop. Rather than try to struggle around, keep one, back and forth, and then get you a $5,000 car and use your company car and the $5,000 car until you can save up money and buy a better car for cash.

And you can do that pretty quick with your income as long as you get rid of $1,000 a month in car payments. Shoot! This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hillary is with us in Texas. Hi, Hillary. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

I am calling because I think this is my last weekend in the Financial Peace University. And last week, I learned all about insurance and life insurance and everything. And I had reached out to my parents to find out if they had life insurance and they were covered. And both my parents are almost 70 years old, and they do not have life insurance. And I don't know if they should have life insurance right now because they are almost 70, but my mom's response to me was they have put all their trust in God to lead them on the right path without life insurance, and I don't know how to respond to that.

Well, when somebody plays the god card on something stupid it's difficult to trump it um and they do that all the time in my world and so i'm just um but um you know it's like god told me to buy this car i can't afford no he didn't right um you know i'm going. Right. I'm not going to prepare for my family, and I'm not going to take care of my family's needs, and I'm going to blame that on God. That's not a godly activity. But anyway, aside from that, they may not need insurance. They're 70 years old. Do they have any money saved?

I don't know. I was not really raised to save a whole lot of money, so I know that they like their impulsive spenders, because that's how I was before I started this Financial Peace University. So you suspect they've spent everything they've made. So you guess they probably have zero savings. Yeah, if they have savings, it's not enough. How do you think they're living?

They're living on Social Security right now. Okay. So that's their entire income? Pretty much. Okay. All right. And how old are you? I am 32 with three little ones,

and we're trying to get out of debt ourselves, my husband and I. So I just worry that it's going to fall on us. Well, nothing falls on you. You may choose to help someone with something, but it doesn't fall on you. So, you know, if they call me up and ask me for money, I'm going to have a hard time going. I thought God was going to take care of this. So I would have a real hard time with that. But sarcasm is my spiritual gift.

But anyway, well, number one, you can't make mom and dad behave. Right. Nobody can make anybody else behave. And they can't make you behave. You can't make them behave. We don't have that power. And so she's got an answer to every question, and it's the God card. And so you're probably not going to be able to make them do anything.

The only thing you can do to get ready is just to get yourself and your family squared around. And the wealthier you guys are and the less debt you guys have, the more you'll be in a position, if you want to choose, to help them by paying for a funeral or help them by, you know, after one of them passes away, the Social Security is going to drop down. They're going to really be struggling. Right. And so you may have to help them just with food money at some point,

or you may want to help them just with food money at some point, or you may want to help them in spite of their misbehavior, in spite of their impulsive spending, in spite of their toxic view of God and all of this. So, I mean, that's the thing. But you can't really go over there, and I really probably would not tell them to buy life insurance anyway. I would just tell them. I mean, they have just a few dollars to work with with Social Security.

So I would tell them to start trying to build up a burial account. You know, they need $10,000 in a savings account to bury one of them. Okay. And that will keep it off of you. Do you have brothers and sisters? I have an older sister, but she is not good at saving money either either like yeah no family edition yeah gotcha okay but you're breaking the chain you've changed i am and we're yeah that intensity right now i love it selling stuff and we're we're chugging along.

Well, I'm very, very proud of you. Thank you. And I appreciate that your mom loves God. That's a good thing. But if she's coming at this from a Christian perspective, the Bible is very clear that, you know, Jesus said, don't build a tower without first counting the cost, lest you get halfway up and you're unable to finish.

And all who see you begin to mock you and say, this man began to build and was unable to finish. In Proverbs it says, In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil. Wise people save money. The mind of man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps and so it is not an act of faith to not have a a series of diligent steps to have a plan to be out of debt to have a will to have proper insurance in place to take care of your family because if you don't take care of your own household you're worse than an unbeliever scripture is just real clear about all this and so to stand back and spend everything you make impulsively and and with immaturity all the way into your 70s and then go, well, God's going to take care of me, that is not the God of the Bible.

And so it's offensive to those of us that are people of the book because it makes us look bad. And we're not that naive, and that is not an act of faith. An act of faith is believe God's love letter to you. Believe what Scripture says and act on it. There are very clear things. You're going to reap what you sow. You know what a farmer has if he plants nothing? Dirt.

But God's going to take care of him. No, no corn's coming up. He didn't plant anything. You're going to reap what you sow. What you put into your life and into the ground is what's going to come up. If you want corn, you best put some corn in the ground, some corn seed in the ground. That's where that comes from. And if you want soybeans, plant soybeans.

And then don't be shocked that corn didn't come up. You're going to get back what you put in the ground, what you put into your life. These are all scriptural principles from the God of the Bible. And so, you know, that's where we just can't go there. Now, again, I'm not preaching at your mom, but there's a whole bunch of people that make statements like that, and they go, well, you know, God knows when the sparrow falls. Yep, he fell, though. Keep that in mind, you know. He knows the number of hairs on your head,

which for me is not a big job, okay? But, I mean, we get this. I understand the faith aspect of this. I'm not against the faith aspect of it at all. But there is a part where faith requires action. We work like it all depends on us. We pray like it all depends on God. It is an immature christianity

that is sitting on your front porch in a rocking chair hoping god uh roasts a duck and drops it off on the front porch for you no you go out duck hunting that's where ducks come from the end of birdshot and this is how you get one of them and you know you just there's a process here that is a thing. So, again, not picking on you, honey. You're doing fine, and you just get your act together. You're changing your family tree. You're breaking the cycle.

But you just gave me an excuse to get up on the soapbox for a minute because I hear this stuff all the time. I'm in Nashville. It's the buckle of the Bible Belt, y'all. And so, I mean, there's more Baptists here than people. This is like everything's Christianized in this town. And I grew up in this town. And I got to tell you, sometimes when Christians that are friends of mine say they're praying about something,

it's because they're praying about something. And sometimes it's code for I'm too dad-blamed, trifling, and lazy to get up off my butt and go do something about it. Sometimes it's one of those, you know. And so you've got to watch as you know. I'm waiting on God. Yeah, there's a time to do that. There's a time that that's doctrinally and theologically correct. And then there's a time that you're using that as an excuse of inaction because you're lazy.

And you're using Christian code words to cover up your laziness or your passiveness or your inability to act on something that you know you need to act on. And so there is a one-two punch here. There is faith and works together. You are going to reap what you sow. You plant the corn in the ground, and then God makes the sun come. God makes the rain come. You don't control the rain and works together. You are going to reap what you sow. You plant the corn in the ground, and then God makes the sun come. God makes the rain come. You don't control the rain and the sun.

That's blessings from above. Our Heavenly Father provides those abundantly to us. But if that sun and that rain comes, and you didn't put any corn in the ground, you know what you got? Mud. Mud. And that's the rule of life. This is how it works

that puts us out of the day ramsey show in the books Hey, it's Blake Thompson, senior executive producer for the show. You know you can listen or watch anywhere with the Dave Ramsey Show app on your smartphone. Catch the full show or watch the highlights and check out Dave's upcoming guests. Head to the app store and download it today.