The Ramsey Show - App - Can I Buy a Motorcycle After My Girlfriend Dumped Me? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

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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. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Anthony O'Neill, Ramsey personality. Number one best-selling author is my co-host today here on the air as we take your questions. We're going to start with Joe in Hartford, Connecticut this hour.

Hey, Joe, how are you? Good, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I got a little situation. I've been dating this girl for a long time, and I can definitely see marrying her shortly in the future. And her brother-in-law is kind of involved with a lot of her finances right now, and I've been pretty good at convincing her not to buy a brand-new car.

And her dad is kind of out of the picture, so he kind of plays like the alpha male role. And they have like a close-knit family, and he tends to take charge quite a bit. And he's been definitely pushing her to buy like a brand-new Hyundai Palisade or something. And I've been trying to convince her to do otherwise. She's going to have a really good job this time next year, paying really well, and I've been trying to tell her to pay cash with something that she could afford and go from there. I'm not really sure what I should do in my position, you know,

being the boyfriend and all. What do you want to do, Joe? I mean, because you said you're the boyfriend. Why do you want to get involved? Let me ask you that question because I think you know the answer, but why do you want to get involved let me ask you that question because i think you know the answer but why do you want to get involved well one because i i know she'd be in over her head with a brand new car and two i really really care about her and i you know like i said i could definitely see paying her in the future and you know i'm head over heels for

it i just i don't want to see her make a bad financial mistake but i don't want to overstep how long have you been dating uh quite some time about about a year now and i've been friends with her for years all right so it's naturally progressing after a year towards marriage and you don't really uh you got two problems with this one is uh that her brother-in-law has too much influence over her, and two is she's about to make a stupid decision. Right. Yes, sir.

Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. So how can you say those two things nice? That's the thing. I don't think you can. I think you can. I think you can.

I mean, nicer than I just said it, but I'm not known for sugarcoating stuff. So but if you know, I think, you know, you're going to have to help here because you're the single guy, right? That's what I'm saying. I don't think we can. So you're just you're just going to jettison the girl. I'm just going to tell the baby that's a stupid move. That's not a wise decision. Don't do it. OK, well, here I'm going to try again. All right. So it might sound like this. You know, it looks like we're progressing towards making this a very, very serious relationship.

And I know this is you talking, okay? things I've got input on, that being in agreement on our finances is the number one cause of divorce and marital problems. And so if we're going to continue to progress, we're going to have to move towards being in agreement on our finances, because not doing so sets us up for divorce, if we wanted to get married. And so we have to, you and I have to deal with this and get on the same page because that's a deal breaker. It's a deal breaker before marriage or after marriage, one of the two, but it's a deal breaker. It's the number one cause of divorce.

So, you know, you really want to deal with the number one cause. And so, you know, and in light of that, you going deeply in debt on this car is a problem. It's not wise. And I want you to be in a position to have a good life, not just have a good car. And because I care about you. And the second thing is this. The number two thing that causes problems in marriages is uh extended family who can't stay in their lane interfering mother-in-laws interfering father-in-laws

interfering brother-in-laws that can't stay in their lane and so we got two of the four issues that cause problems in marriage in play on this one subject and so you and i you know i i care about you and so i've as a part of us going forward we've got a i've got to talk this through with you in some kind of kind way and and you gotta you're gonna have to hear me on this because it's a it's a big deal but now day let me ask you this question for joe because joe said he's already told her no so it was like that's why i was saying for me it seems like i'm framing it in we have to solve this as part of a long-term relationship not just you're buying a stupid thing i got you i got you there's a reason that you need to listen to this because you not listening to this is is going to cause serious

problems in our relationship yes because we've got interfering in-laws with too much dominance, and we've got a bad decision on finances. Yeah. And those two things, because what this projects, Joe, for you is, 10 years from now, this is worse, not better, if it doesn't truncate now. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. You'd have a field day with this guy. I mean, he's already's already in like over a million over his head with a brand new marina that's just the start yeah he gets into debt like it's his day job yeah well he's not he's not gonna

make it and it's gonna be sad and you're gonna be sad for him because you're hopefully gonna be married to his sister-in-law and so so you're going to get to witness the family going through financial destruction when he crashes, and he will because he's a reckless dube. And so, you know, but the bottom line is if you project negative things in a relationship into the marriage 10 years in, in other words, if you marry a princess and you think she's not going to be a princess 10 years in, you're an idiot. She's still going to be a princess. Okay?

If you marry a guy, girls, that doesn't like to work much, he's lazy, don't expect him to suddenly get ambitious after there's a ring. Okay? That's dumb. Yeah. And so you can project these behaviors into your future relationship, and that makes them, if they're bad enough, a deal breaker on the relationship. I mean, well, you experienced this in your dating life. You've told me stories about. Absolutely.

But I think that's why I'm still single, because I took the old Dave Ramsey philosophy. I just like that stupid. That's crazy. You know, I just come straight forward. But that's I totally agree with you. I think for me at 36, I'm 36, I'm done trying to be soft. This is what I think, and this is what I... I mean, you can cut to the chase pretty quick, but you don't have to go a year into it to

figure this out. Yes, sir. Like 26 minutes into the first date, you go, nope. Nope. Ding, ding. 26 minutes. Takes me 10 minutes, y'all. Oh, whoa. All right. All right. I don't want to know anymore.

I don't want to know your techniques. You don't need to tell them over the air. I mean, no. You may write a book on this someday. I mean, but if someone says, hey, I want to do finances or, you know, I want to purchase a car or I want to stick with the credit card 10 minutes into the game. Well, I already know this is this is not going where I want to go yeah and if they're belligerent about it particularly exactly i mean if they go well you could probably talk me out of it okay well we'll keep talking let's do that if they're like and you're not gonna change me i don't know who you think okay i won't check please check please anthony o'neill my co-host this hour. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. folks i love telling you about well-made well-thought-out products today i'm talking

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and get this month's dave ramsey special visit grip6.com that's grip6.com Anthony O'Neill, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today on the Dave Ramsey Show. Kevin is up next. Kevin's in Salt Lake City. Hi, Kevin. How are you? Doing well. How are you guys doing? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Hey, so my wife and I are probably going to wrap up Baby Step 3 this month. And so that means we're going to start on Baby Step 3B. We are renting currently. And so we're looking to be in Baby Step 3 for quite a while. My question is, do I start investing during Baby Step 3? Like, can I start my 401k and my work again? I've been off that for about a year trying to get things stabilized with Baby Step 3.

And so is now the time once we start Baby Step 3? So you have the emergency fund almost done in Baby Step 3, right? Right. And when will that be done by the end of this month okay and then is when you're talking about this question right correct okay all right well people do it two different ways and either way is okay with us one way is that they do some investing while they're saving for their down payment on their home. Okay?

Okay. And that obviously then slows down the amount you can put into the down payment fund. Agreed? Right. Or sometimes they say, I'm going to hold off on Baby Step 4 investing until I get my down payment for my home built. And so they pause right in the middle of Baby Step 3B and pile up cash for the down payment, which obviously makes the down payment come a little bit faster, depending on how much you would have put in the investments.

But either way is fine. We just don't want you saving for a house until you are debt-free and have your emergency fund, which is where you are. Kevin, how old are you and your wife, man? We are 29 years old. 29 years old. And what's y'all's annual income, the household income a year? Yeah, my wife stays at home and I earn $36,000 a year.

Okay, $36,000. So how much are you looking to save to put down on a home? We're hoping to do 10% down, and so for us that means about $30,000 just to, you know, give ourselves some wiggle room. There might be houses on the market for $300,000, but we could also go, you know, in that $200,000 range. So you're anticipating your income coming up dramatically? Yeah.

No. You're not going to qualify for a $300,000 loan dude on 36 grand right yeah yeah i agree i'm i'm working to get that income up um i'm kind of working on side hustles but uh i'm also working on um moving up in my company but yeah it'll be a while before i'm i'm making what i want to be making for sure you may buy a starter house cheaper than that before you buy that house you're talking about as an example. So that changes a lot of stuff. But, yeah, it's all about the trajectory of your income because, you know, you're sitting there at about 40% of less than half or a little more than half of about 60 percent of the average

household income in america right now but you're just getting started in your career there's no shame in that yeah and so you've got a um you know you've got to build up that income though to be able to save the down payment to be able to qualify for a mortgage and you may end up buying a hundred hundred and fifty thousand dollar house first or dave uh and correct me if i'm wrong but i would say in his situation, I would keep renting probably a little bit more, go ahead and start investing, get my income up, then start

looking into buying a home. That might be. That might be a way to do it. At 29 years old, $36,000, get the thing up to around $50,000, $55,000. Go ahead and start saving a little bit towards a home, but go ahead and start investing now. And then when you get to right around that income in the next maybe hopefully a year or two years you can aggressively go after

saving up for the house that's good that's a good point because there's three knobs to tune here yeah and which of those is the most important buying a house investing or getting your income up for him to be when he's 49 yes a millionaire yes uh of those three in his situation it would be income yep that's the most important one yes uh and uh then buying the house and starting to invest would be somewhat tied right because both of those things need to occur to hit the millionaire yes in 20 years so really really good stuff man hey thanks for calling in we appreciate you listening matt is in washington dc hi matt welcome to the. Hey, Dave and Anthony, thanks so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it. Sure. What's up? Hey, question. So I don't know if I'm overthinking this or not,

but I'm 25 years old and I just moved to D.C. to be closer to my girlfriend and we broke up. And so I'm thinking about buying a motorcycle for about $5,000. And I don't know if I can afford it or not. I make $120,000 a year. I've got about $150,000 cash just in the bank. And I've got another $100,000 just sitting in $50,000 in single stocks, another $50,000 in my 401K. You're kidding.

You've got all of that and you're calling us about a $5,000 purchase? What's really going on 46 000 i said again i'm sorry i said what's really going on here how much is the motorcycle five thousand dollars well i also got 146 000 in debt oh well write a check and pay all that off and then we'll have a discussion about a motorcycle and then by the bike yeah i don't i have two investment properties i rent where i live and i have 24 grand on a car but i don't know if i'm overthinking it or not but i guess if you know i don't know i guess you're saying maybe i am overthinking it one percent of your life worries is a five thousand dollar motorcycle 99 of your life worries is 146 000,000 in debt. Yeah. Got it. Write a check, pay off the debt, go buy the motorcycle. Are you buying a motorcycle because you're grieving over the

girlfriend? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I want something to do. I mean, I thought my weekends would be with her, and now I'm, you know, we're not together, so I just want to go out and make friends and just kind of have stuff to do, you know? You can make friends without a motorcycle, man. Why do you need a motorcycle to make friends? The only negative part about the motorcycle is, number one, the debt's in the way. Number two, it sounds like it might be some grief spending, grieving over the relationship. Right. And not that it's because it's not going to kill you financially. You can afford to buy the bike.

You can afford to buy the bike and set fire to it in the driveway and not worry about it. It's not going to kill you financially. But what you can't afford is to get into a situation where you react to bad feelings in your life by spending. Yes. You can't put that groove in your brain. That groove will destroy you long term. Yeah, it definitely will. It definitely will.

And hear me clearly, man. When you pay off this debt, I want you to go ahead and get your emergency fund back up. Because I've got to give it to you. To have that kind of money at this age, that's great. You're just doing a little bit backwards from what we teach. So go ahead and pause all your investments right now. Because I want you to go ahead and get out of the debt. And then make sure you get your three to six months back up. I think he's got enough to do that. He probably just needs

to allocate it. It sounds like there's a couple hundred grand if I understood right. Well, it was $150,000 in his savings and $100,000 in investments. Yeah. So use some of both. Let's use all the savings. Yes. $146,000 you're paid off. That leaves $4,000. Right. Okay. Pull some out of investments and make sure it's set aside as an emergency fund and buy the bike. Cool. Great. And you get all three done.

Then you've got your first three baby steps. We call them in place, Matt. But just search your own soul and look in the mirror and go, dude, am I just grief spending here? Yeah. And that's not something you want to get into as a long-term thing that every time I feel bad, I spend. Every time I feel bad, I eat. Those kinds of things. You you know what dave this is why we teach don't move until you

are married don't make a life-changing move because he said he moved to this place for his girlfriend i mean that's that's a different subject i mean we own the dave ramsey show hey it's anthony o'neill show whatever it's all good with me it's all good with me so don't you're saying don't chase girls and boys around the country don't do it and not unless you and not unless you are married like why move to the city hardcore why move in with the person you are hardcore i mean what dave i didn't say move i'm not saying on that but yeah but i mean chasing somebody you know moving to the city with the person versus... Moving in?

No, I didn't say moving in. So you... Into the city, not the house. Oh, yeah. See, if my daughter came home and said, I'm moving to another city so I can be closer to my boyfriend, I will have a problem with that. Yeah. I mean, it's not wrong. I'm just saying.

You're up and rooting your whole life for the possibility of this thing to work out. I think I'd want some circumstances listed out around that before I would make that call. Okay. If it sounded like immature and flighty and like she was being used up or manipulated, definitely. But if she's a strong woman, make her own calls, that's a different issue. This is the Daveave ramsey show My co-host on the air today, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, Anthony O'Neill. He's doing a deal. So phone number here is 888-825-5225.

On the debt-free stage right here in Ramsey Solutions Lobby, Max and Carla are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Better than we deserve, Dave. How are you? Just the same, sir. Welcome. Where do you guys live? About an hour outside of Washington, D.C. in Lanesville, Maryland.

Okay. Baltimore area, then? Closer to D.C. Closer to D.C. Okay, cool. Well, welcome. Good to have you guys. And you're here to do a debt-free scream.

How much have you paid off? Following your program, sir, is about $65,000 in 17 months. Wow. But in your program serves about 65 000 in 17 months wow but in total is 90 000 in 28 months okay all right and so what was your range of income during that 28 months uh 56 000 to 90 000 okay cool how long you guys been married uh three months oh there we go just like that all right very cool huh so 65,017 months and so it sounds like max this was you yes all student loans okay and you were working on this and then she just joined the parade uh carl i've been dating for about nine years before we got married um so we were on the same page about a lot of the same things money was always the one thing we butted heads on and

that kind of came to a head in December of 2018. Her and her sister got really into your podcast. And me being a finance guy, didn't want to listen. I was paying off the highest interest rate first. And I was making good progress on that. But like you said, you have to pay off the lowest amount first, follow the baby steps with the debt snowball. Because you really make the emotional but psychological progress,

which is the biggest part. Because I felt that I wasn't making any progress. I paid $25,000 off in about 11 to 12 months. Wow. Wow. And you just went nuts. Yeah. Gazelle intense. Ding. Okay. So it was more than just listing them smallest to largest versus highest interest rate. It was also, you started to believe if you leaned into this, you could knock it out. Absolutely. It was doing the FPU program. Bought it. Started in January with Carla and her sister Emily. Oh, wow. Every Friday night for about nine weeks, got together, had pizza, and watched FPU.

That's fun. We had our own little group. That's good. That's so good. Yeah, you had some support groups, some cheerleaders, everything. Yeah, it's all good. Very good. Good for you, dude.

Very neat. So now that you've done it, it was all student loans. Absolutely, all student loans. What's your degree in? Finance and Information Systems. Of course. Okay. And now that you've done it, what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

Two parts. They're a little cliche, but you have to do the budgeting. You have to have a why. Budgeting, do the every dollar budget, assign everything a category and stick to it. It takes a little bit to get used to, but that was really the biggest helpful thing for me and the why as well. I wouldn't have it all paid off before Carla and I got married. I fell a little bit short of that, but about the day after we got married, we paid it off

together. Finished the last little bit. Finished the last little bit. That's fun. Yes. That's a way to celebrate. Good. Very good.

So your main why was to pay your debt off before you got married to Carla. Yes. How did you feel about that, Carla? Well, we grew up really different financial philosophies with our families. And my parents never followed Dave but had really similar ideologies. So I grew up with that idea of like you always pay off your debts. You don't invest until you are like totally free and clear. And so I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. And it really worked out that doing FPU made sure that we were totally like money is

like not a problem anymore because we're able to like totally talk about it. So more than just paying off the debt, being on the same page was like really an awesome benefit. That's a big deal. Well done. Yeah, again, the baby's done zero. Yeah. Very, very well done. All right, Max, you and I were both trained academically the same way. So our brains moved to math before heart. Yes. And so we immediately, it's still painful to me to give advice after 30 years of doing

it and knowing it's right. Sometimes it's the nerd inside of me struggles with saying, okay, this isn't mathematically correct, but it's still the right thing to do. So the debt snowball, listing your debts smallest to largest versus highest interest rate, is mathematically incorrect. It is not as efficient mathematically. But the winner is that it is behavior, obviously. And personal finance is 80 behavior it's only 20 math so guys like you and me are out there listening to this conversation right now and you know they're saying i'm not doing this ramsey thing i'm gonna be ramsey ish and i i do

the what they call that thing the debt avalanche is what somebody calls it to do it the other way right and and ramsey's debt snowball he just. That's what somebody calls it, to do it the other way. And Ramsey's debt snowballed. He just doesn't know what he's doing. Answer their question. They're wrong. The first episode I listed here is... Why? I felt like I was making zero progress

paying that $25,000 that first year following the highest interest rate. It was just the same large payment to the same lender. And I just saw these little guys just sitting there. It was like, still, it was like $27,000, $30,000 in that range at the end of the year. And it's like, I haven't even touched these. So they were all going to interest. And the psychological thing just works. I can't say why exactly, but it worked for me. And I think it works for everyone. Your program is amazing. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I wasn't looking for that part. I'm just saying the thing is. No, your program changed our family tree forever.

Yeah. You guys are amazing. I'm so proud of you. You're heroes. And you, Carla, for showing this guy the way and then marrying him up. It's all good. Yeah. Life is good.

Yeah. You guys are amazing. You're going to be in great, great shape. Other than Carla and her sister, who were your biggest cheerleaders? Our parents as well. Okay. Wow. Wow.

A lot of eating at home. Yeah. And we lived at home at the time, so. So I lived at home pretty much for the whole time I was paying off my student loans, commuting an hour and 20 minutes to and from the office. Wow. Just, you have to make a lot of sacrifices to do this. You had a lot of time to listen to the podcast.

Yep. What was the hardest sacrifice that you had to do? Selling all my investments when I first started the program. It was single stock investments, had some bonds that I was just holding on to until they hit maturity, but that was one of the hardest.

Once you get past that numbers part of it and just start following, thinking about it more, listening to the podcast, listening to your support system, it all just falls in place yeah well here you are debt free yeah you don't have any payments how's it feel amazing i'm proud of you dude well done very well done you guys are heroes very well done we got a copy of chris hogan's book for you everyday millionaires that is uh what you're going to be that's the next chapter in your story you're going to be. That's the next chapter in your story. You're going to be there. So very, very well done. Max and Carla from Washington, D.C. area.

$65,000 paid off in 17 months, making $56,000 to $90,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Woo! This is how it's done right here, man.

Wow! I love it. Yeah. So Carla comes up in a household. She's a financial peace baby in a sense. They weren't financial peace people, but they were living by that of uh being conservative with money staying out of debt saving money and those kinds of things and no parent ever wants their kids to experience the panic of being unprepared for a crisis a lot of parents had to watch their grown kids through during covid

freaking out yes because they were in a mess and uh we got your back. We can show you how to do this. We have a fully digital self-study course for your teenagers. And you can rest assured your teen will know the right way to handle money and never make the same money mistakes that millions have made. The best part is there's no instructor needed. The courses are self-paced. If your teen has a tablet or a computer, they're all set. It's a home study for basically homeschool in a sense. Self-study for home for your teenagers, for middle or high school students.

Go to DaveRamsey.com slash self-study. DaveRamsey.com slash self-study. And never again worry about your kids being unprepared. Here's one way you could look at this, Anthony. You could look at this, Anthony. You could look at this, and if you buy this and then make them do it, it's they won't live in your basement in the future insurance. It's an insurance policy. It is.

To move them out. And Anthony's the primary teacher on it. Anthony, Rachel, me. Yes. I think Hogan's in some of it. Hogan is in some of it, but, I mean, again. It's mainly you. The best communicator on that uh platform is myself which i

i would definitely say humility i mean absolutely you know but i'm just saying it's going to be fun dave i watched all of it and i'm telling you right now um it's fun but i mean your kids will learn learn something laugh and they will grow mature yeah well the cool factor anth Anthony brings to it and the wisdom I bring. So there you go. There you go. Let's just keep going. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. 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. Um, and the company that my mortgage was sold to would actually be a second refinance that I've done. Um,

I, and I got screwed basically. They told me I would get refinanced, um, and I would get $500 cash back. And when I got, 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, 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 goes, yes, I know your gutters are falling off your house. I said, right. And he said, well, you can 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 $500? He was 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 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'd use a 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 paperwork. So I sent a copy of it to him, and 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 be worth my while to refinance with a 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 decide to change something. So 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 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 a company that 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.

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 didn't, 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'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 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 yeah you you get a bad sense about something but you continue anyway and um 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 and eat but but you if 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 this just do a hard stop pause the journey and just step back and just look at everything and then for like younger 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 pause. Well, that's right, Anthony. Now I can get back on the journey because now I have wise counsel in the process. And so I think you're absolutely 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 his 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. So I know the difference. 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 there's a little bit of that in her story. Yeah. 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 for the gutter, refinanced a whole mortgage, a whole house over some gutters. Just to get $500. Yeah.

And then $500 becomes the issue. But see, that tells you you're off the track. And so that's not picking on her. I'm just saying I've been the king of this. 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 i go why are we continuing to do this right you might be mad at them about it but obviously 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 it's not a hard concept yeah and so you just gotta you know you gotta you gotta be thoughtful about it it's uh 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. It's Proverbs 23, I believe it is. All right. Anyway, this is The dave ramsey show hey guys this is kelly associate producer of the dave ramsey show did you know over 16 million people listen to the dave ramsey show every week you know over 16 million people listen to The Dave Ramsey Show every week? And a lot of those people listen on one of our 600 plus radio stations across

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