The Ramsey Show - App - Choosing the Right Career Path for You (Hour 1)

Episode Date: August 6, 2018

The show about you

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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. This is your show. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. George is with us in Vancouver, Washington.

Hi, George. How are you? I'm very good, Dave. I'm a big fan. Thank you. How can I help, sir? Yes. I purchased my home on a 30-year fixed conventional three years ago, and I'm looking to refinance to a 15-year now.

But when I originally purchased it, it had an unfinished addition off the back porch, or off the back of the house. And let's see, it basically, it's a covered patio that someone framed in with T111 and two by four studs. It was covering my kitchen window and my dining room window from looking into the backyard. So I adjusted the wall, lifted the floor to house level, and finished it off. But I did not get a permit to do any of that. Is that going to show up when I refinance? Will the appraiser catch that as I refinance here? No. They don't pull building permits.

They're just going to measure it. Is it heated and cooled? I did, yes. Actually, I put a laundry room out there, a laundry room, mud room. But is it heated and cooled? Yes. I put a laundry room out there. A laundry room, not room. But is it heated and cooled? Yes. Okay, so it's a living space then, all right?

And so it should add to your square footage. It should add to your appraisal. But I've never seen an appraiser go pull a building permit to see, you know, go pull building permit records to see if something was done um you know that sort of thing now if they look at it and the construction technique is substandard then they that could you know cause a red flag and they might question then you know it is kind of what i was yeah it's uh most additions in our area require a stem wall with a mud sill and J-bolt, but this was not that. Okay. Well, I mean, he might red flag it on that and just not count the square footage. But you didn't count it last time when you bought.

Yeah. I don't think it's going to be like, oh, you have to tear this down in order to get the uh get to get the loan it's just um they may not give you full credit for it as finished square foot footage space but again i've never seen an appraiser pull uh pull a building permit unless it's on a brand new property i mean if you're if a brand new house they may you know they may want to see the CO or something like that to ensure that the property is, you know, occupiable by local code standards and so forth. But I've never seen that. It could happen, I guess, but I've never seen it.

They're usually, all they're looking for is just the comps, and they want to get the square footage, and, you know, and is there something that needs repairs? Is the roof bad? And so if you built a shanty on the back and it just looks footage, and, you know, and is there something that needs repairs? Is the roof bad, or is the, and so if you built a shanty on the back, and it just looks like crud, you know, it's a detraction because it's so poorly done, you know, that can cause you a problem. If you've got something falling in back there, that's going to cause you a problem, right? That sort of thing.

But it doesn't sound like that's what you're describing. It sounds like you upgraded what was there, and they certainly made the loan over what was there before. So it shouldn't be a problem. Sarah is with us in Miami. Hi, Sarah. How are you? I'm good.

It's great to speak with you. Thanks so much for taking my phone call. Sure. What's up? Okay. So I'm clearly in a situation. Financially, I'm fine. I have, okay, you're going to laugh at this, but I have $430,000 in cash and $110,000 in mutual funds.

I'm self-employed. I don't have a safety net. It's just me. I don't have ties with my family, et cetera. And so I've been sitting here on the market to purchase a residence. So, you know, I'm in the Miami market, and I'm certainly in the condos, and there's an issue with the condos with HOAs being extremely high, which kind of got me to start looking at a home.

You know, like I'm trying to figure out which way to go, whether, you know, a condo is a better investment or a home is a better investment or a home is a better investment. In addition to that, you know, we're kind of on a bubble, so I'm looking at the cash versus financing. I'm just kind of like in a, you know, kind of a death spiral here on this, and I can't get myself to really make a move. Okay, I think you need to continue to gather information and slow down a little bit.

There's nothing pushing you. There's nothing pushing you. Your hair's not on fire. You're fine. Go at the speed that you can gather information. The smarter you are about this, the more information you have, the more comfortable the decision is going to be. And so one of the things you did was you made a call to me today, okay?

And so you're going to get some information there. But that's not your stop. That's not the last piece of information you'll gather. So get with a good realtor that you can ask these same kinds of questions to and go, okay, why is the stinking HOA so high over here? And, you know, why in the world would they have a HOA payment this high on a condo like this? And then you can dig into the budget and find out that the HOA was poorly managed, and they're trying to make up ground on your back.

And so, you know, you may have a situation like that. Or a special assessment may be due because the HOA was poorly managed. That's not that unusual, sadly. And so you really want to get into the health of the financial health of the HOA if you're going into a condo. But, I mean, you got $540,000 access to it between mutual funds and money markets. So, yeah, you need to pay cash for the house. As far as your question of house versus condo, all things being equal,

there's a larger market for single family. But all things are never equal in the real estate business because you're around the corner and down the street, and all of a sudden the neighborhood changed. And so it's never equal. I mean, you can have a high end, very nice condo that completely outperforms a poorly located old beat up house. Right. And so but if you're dealing with similar ages, similar neighborhoods, similar square footage, similar prestige, those kinds of things, the single family, there's more demand for it. And so it will do better investment-wise in the long term.

But you've got to mess with the maintenance. Exterior maintenance is all on you. And you may, as a single lady, may not want to fool with that. And that wouldn't be a problem for me. I'd be fine with you getting into a condo. But then you're looking at the HOA fee, and you're saying, okay, is this properly managed? Is there a professional management company managing it?

Do they have money set aside for roof replacement and parking lot replacement later? Are they going to hit us upside the head with that, with a special assessment? You know, does the thing need some work and they don't have the money set back for that work? They're going to hit us right now? You know, that kind of thing. So you really study a little bit about your HOA fees if you're going in that direction. And a good real estate agent can help you do all of that. You check DaveRamsey.com for a real estate ELP that we recommend. And that'll be someone with the heart of a teacher that can answer more of your questions.

Keep gathering information. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, y'all. I'm Christy Wright, and I'm all about equipping women to make money doing what they love. One of the questions I hear all the time is is how do I know what business I should start? Some people have a ton of ideas while others have a hard time coming up with one. Finding your idea can be overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. I can help. I'm so excited to tell you about my brand new course, Business Idea Bootcamp, the four-step course you need to go from dreaming to doing. In this course, I'll show you how to brainstorm all of the ideas from the most important areas in your life. How to identify which ideas to focus on, how to test and narrow down your ideas,

and how to identify action steps that bring your best idea to life. By the end of this course, you will be ready to chase your dream and turn your idea into income. I can't wait to start this journey with you. I want to help you find your best business idea. Sign up for Business Idea Bootcamp at businessboutique.com. That's businessboutique.com. Thanks for joining us, America. Brian is in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Hey, Brian, how are you?

I'm great, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I have a late condo that we were selling. You're not. Listen, you're muffled. Hey, you're muffled. You need to speak directly into your phone, please. Okay. Can you hear me better now?

Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. I have a late condo that's in the same town I live in. We decided that we wanted to sell it because we can pay off our house. The payoff of the sale is going to be just about the same to pay it off, and we'll be debt-free. With that being said, we put the condo under contract for sale about two months ago, and it was scheduled to close tomorrow. Yesterday, I got a call from my realtor saying that their mortgage company said that it is in the 100-year floodplain

and that they're going to be required to get flood insurance, and they're wanting to back out of the contract, but their contract specifically said that they may be required to purchase flood insurance. You buy a condo on the lake, that would be like a possibility. Hello. Right. Yeah, like near water. Yes, it is on the lake.

I looked at the floodplain map, and it barely touched the front of the building, and the floor space of the condo is about five feet higher than the floodplain. And I don't know how much of that matters. I don't either. It depends on the type of mortgage and what their underwriting guidelines say the mortgage company certainly has a right to make sure that they are covered in the event of a flood a hundred year flood is pretty much a noah event they're very very very obviously they almost never happen that's why they call them that that's the very outer rings of a floodplain map um okay you know other words, it's not going to flood in your lifetime.

If it does, it's a very unusual anomaly. Statistically, it said it had 1% chance of flood within a one-year period. Well, that would be a 100-year floodplain. Yeah. A 30-year mortgage. Yeah. 1% – 1 is 1% – one year of 100 years. Yeah.

So that would make sense. But if they, again, and your floor plan, your floor space is above that. However, is there a unit below yours? No, mine is on the bottom. So your unit is not in the floodplain. Some of the rest of the condominium is. Right. Yes. The corner, there are two facing the lake.

The one to the left of me, the floodplain barely touches the corner of that building, but doesn't even really touch my unit. Then my unit's about five feet higher than the floodplain. Yeah. And so I think there's a logical argument to be made. There may not be any help here on that. And how much earnest money is held by you on this buyer? My realtor did not take down any earnest money.

That's dumber than a rock. Why? I don't know. They said that no one does earnest money anymore. The problem I'm running into is they pretty much pulled this off the market. Yeah, that's what earnest money is for, is to keep them earnest. Tom Cassell was doing the summer. He pulled me off the market for two months, and just we're using it as a vrbo uh we just sold all the furniture everything pretty much disrupted my business uh do i have any legal

recourse to make them stick to their contract sure the contract says you might have to pay for flood insurance and it comes in and says you got to pay for flood insurance you don't get to back out you know you can be sued for what's called specific performance to specifically perform on this. And, you know, the judge could literally make them buy the property. It's very difficult to go through that type of litigation. You more than likely would end up settling that they would give you some money to go away. And I would not use that realtor for anything ever again. I would never sell a piece of property without taking an earnest money check.

A large one. A large one. And I keep the earnest money then when they back out on the deal. And that ends up being liquidated damages in a lot of cases because I'm not going to bother to chase some moron into court. I've got other things to do. But I will keep a lot of their money if they don't close their contract. Now, searching my own soul on this is, would there be anything ethically wrong for going in and asking them to do this?

I mean, they're saying they can't afford it. Flood insurance is going to be $400 a year. They say they can't afford it. $400 a year they can't afford it? My response was they couldn't afford to buy the condo in the first place. Exactly. They bought it side unseen off the internet. They put in their offer.

I think people that make those rational decisions are going to get into these situations, of course. Exactly. Listen, they qualified for the loan. The only thing that's required is $400 a year. I'm going to threaten to sue them and everybody in sight just to see if I can wake everybody up here and remind them how this deal goes. You definitely need a new realtor dude you don't

pull something off the market off of an internet buyer site unseen with no earnest money so you're learning your lesson too um you know and get a new realtor there's no way i mean this is an impulse buyer that has never even seen the property this deal was jinxed before it started and um the only way i'm going to hold them to that is i'm taking you know i'm going to take about ten twenty thousand dollars worth their money and put it in my pocket when they walk away and uh that keeps people honest is what that does reminds them how things work because people do they just think they can just walk in and walk out of stuff nowadays it's kind of weird and i'm kind of an old-fashioned guy i just think if you give your word, you ought to keep it. I don't know.

It's kind of weird. But, you know, so that's what I would do. I would go at them. I'd get me a new realtor, get the thing back on the market. I don't think you're going to cause a closing to occur, you know. And I would challenge the realtor on the other side of the equation. If yours is on both sides of the sale and the listing both, i would challenge them to see if they can argue through this floodplain thing with the mortgage company but i don't think that's what's at fault here i think you had a weak

deal to start with and the weak deals falling apart and nobody listening this is shocked your deal didn't close uh with what you've described no earnest money they bought it sight unseen on the internet and then they want a weasel there's a shock i mean you once you lay those things out you got a trend line here that pretty much predicts that this deal is not going to close from the start and uh somebody with a little bit of experience in real estate should have known that going in not you but your realtor so uh i'm really being hard on them, but I think they screwed up. I think they really screwed up. So they got the chance to redeem themselves if they can either talk to people in the closing under the threat of a lawsuit and or talk the mortgage company into waiving the flood insurance.

But I don't think it has anything to do with $400 a year. I think this is their excuse to try to walk away. They were looking for an excuse to go sideways on you, and they think they found it. But they don't have a contractual out is their problem. So I'd seek the advice of an attorney. I'd bump my realtor really hard, and I'll give you a 10% probability this deal ever closes. So I'd be working to get it back on the market with somebody else pretty quick. Jeremy is on the line. Jeremy's in Grand Junction, Colorado. Hi, Jeremy. How are you? Hi, Dave. Good. Good. How can I help? I have a moral question for you. So I lost my wife about

three weeks ago. Oh, my Lord. And she told me that I should talk to this insurance guy after she passes. And the insurance guy comes around and says, yeah, we're going to pay you that insurance. I'm like, what insurance? We don't have any life insurance. And he says, no, about five months ago she took out a policy. And so now I'm staring at this check and I start putting things together. I think that she knew she was sick and went and applied for life insurance. And, you know, I ask the insurance agent, I say, well, I think that she knew. And he says, well, don't be stupid. Just cash the check. And I, you know, don't, I'm an honest man, you know. I be stupid. Just cash the check. And I don't... I'm an

honest man, you know? What was her illness? Breast cancer. I'm so sorry. It ran in her family. She lost her mom and several... It's just a feeling you have. You don't have any facts.

I don't think she went to the doctor. Yeah. You don't have any facts to back this up don't think she went to the doctor. Yeah, you don't have any facts to back this up. I don't know. If I had facts, I would be forced to return it on an ethical. But on a feeling, I don't think you're forced. I don't agree with your insurance agent's statement. But on a feeling, I don't think you're forced to return it. I'm so sorry.

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Call 888-LOAN-200 or visit churchillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. 761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Thank you for joining us, America. Ben is with us in Pensacola. Hi, Ben. How are you? Hi, Mr. Ramsey. How are you doing today, sir? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help?

Awesome. Awesome. Hey, I'm just calling. I have a few questions for the future. Currently, I'm in the Reserves Air Force, and I'm also working as a civilian contractor. About a year out from my bachelor's degree. From there, I'm not sure what I want to do. A couple options I have is just going to active duty officer and then going that route, or possibly staying in the Reserves as a civilian and then pursuing my master's degree, and then just pursuing a private sector career from there. So I was just curious what your thoughts were.

I know the pension from an active officer at retirement is great. So just curious what your thoughts were on that. Okay. Well, thank you for your service either way. You know, the thing I always try to do is to back up, and it's a little hard to do sometimes, but at least try to think along these lines. How old are you? I'm 22. If you think along these lines and you say, okay, what do I want to be doing when I'm 42?

And which of these two paths takes me most directly towards that? And so if you are doing the reserves, you know, to serve your country, and it scratches a patriotic itch for you, and you enjoy the military culture and so forth, and you've enjoyed the free education that came out of that, that's part of the package, but you really just always want to be in business, then, you know, get your master's in business, and like you're talking about doing, and then let's go have a career that way, and you can always serve in the reserves.

But if you have always had a desire to, you know, be military brass and you want to roll into that. And that's, you know, when you're 42 or 45 and you're sitting across the table looking at me and you're saying, is this the, you know, is this the guy I wanted to be? The trick is too many people do things on accident. It's like they just, well, I was in the reserve, so I just became an officer. I don't know. I didn't think about it much. Well, think about it. You know?

Don't do stuff on accident. Do it intentionally. Don't look up and say, I've worked for this stupid company for 30 years. I hate this company. Well, whose fault is that? You know? Right. You know?

So you just got to be intentional. And that's all I want you to do. Either one of those are uh honorable good career paths neither one of them are some kind of crazy man talking you know right and so you know go get your master's and move in into a direction of a career that that takes you where you want to be when you're a 50 year old man um or if you want to have been the guy that served 20 years in the officer corps and, um, you know, uh, then retired and got that officer pension, that'd be awesome and move into a second career. Maybe that's your plan, but whatever it is, make it by plan. Don't make it by accident and don't let it be that, you know, my mama told me to do this or my best friend was doing it. So I signed up and oh Lord, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that with your life. You know, my mama told me to do this or my best friend was doing it, so I signed up. And, oh, Lord, no.

No, don't do that. Don't do that with your life. You know, be intentional. But both are valid, good career paths. Everything you laid out here, there's nothing wrong with anything you're saying. So there's not a bad answer on the table. The only bad answer is to accidentally do something. Because here's what happens folks um to all of us ben's just a 22 year old example for all of us he's a whiteboard for us to write

on right but here's what happens to all of us by not choosing intentionally you choose what you chose was other people control your life instead of you controlling your life. But you, one of the most powerful things you have is choice. You don't live in Russia. You can say, take this job and shove it and go do something else.

You can do whatever you want to do. If you work hard, tell the truth, you know, read a book, take a class. I'm not as smart as a lot of people. It takes me longer to do things than other people, but I do more things than most people because I'm doing them on purpose. You know, I'm sitting in a meeting this morning with a bunch of people a whole lot smarter than me that work for me. They're discussing all this stuff on the digital applications and our web design and the front-end, back-end developer. I had to stop. I'm going, guys, you're going to have to stop a minute and slow down because the old man doesn't understand what you're saying, and he owns the place.

So we've got to do this again because i'm not they're smart i got a lot of people on my team a whole lot smarter than me the only difference is a i got here first and b i did it on purpose be intentional i love ben's question because it just opens up inside of me something that I think is so important and so lacking. This is why one of the reasons we have a student loan crisis is this very question. Because people don't freaking think. The mom and dad don't think. And they don't speak into Junior's life. And so Junior goes and gets a stupid butt degree in something that absolutely has no use in the culture whatsoever.

They get a degree in German polka history and then complain because they can't find a job. Well, there's not a job market for German polka history. Let me help you with that. Think. Think. I don't want to tell my 18-year-old what to do. Well, why not?

You're freaking giving them money. I'm going to tell them what to do. I remember being 18. I was too stupid to make decisions by myself, and yet I did make a bunch of them by myself, and I made a mess. Love your kids enough. You're controlling. I'm not controlling. I'm loving.

I'm not going to allow you to run your dadgum car into a wall because you don't know how to drive. I'm going to walk with you through this. Make decisions on purpose about your career path. It changes your income. It changes your joy. It changes the quality of your relationships. It changes your spiritual walk. Do it intentionally.

Do it on purpose. It's so important to do things on purpose as soon as you identify what ben and i were talking about you look out there into the future 10 years or 20 years and you say that's where i want to be you can call that a desired future if you want you could call it a goal if you wanted to. As soon as you do that, then you know what the steps are to get there. Let me ask you, if you're 16 years old and you want to be a doctor, you want to be a medical doctor, does everyone listening know what the steps are? You better dadgum get a 4.0. You're going to take an undergrad in biology and you better get another

4.0 or you're not getting in med school right and then you're going to go to med school for two years and then you're going to go to residency for a year right you guys know this is what it takes so it takes an extra what you know you're going to be in have been in school for two decades of your life before you're a doctor in including grade school I'm talking about, right? I mean, you will have spent a lot of time in school in order to be a doctor. We know the steps. What do you do to be a dentist? You go to dental school after you got a 4.0, right?

You get into dental school, and you go pass your tests, and you learn how to be a dentist. What do you do if you want to be a car mechanic? You go to the school where they teach you how to be a car mechanic. It's not a four-year degree. What is it, ASC or whatever it is, right? If you want to be a jet pilot, what do you do? We know what to do, but you need to identify out there in the future

what it is you're going to do, and then what are the steps, what are the prerequisites to becoming one of those, and along the way being excellent at one of those so that you're one of the best paid ever. Intentionality. It's all about intentionality. Are you going to do it on purpose? As soon as you do that, it changes the game. Here's what the studies show.

When wealthy people are studied, do you know what their planning window is? Meaning when they make a decision, they ask themselves, how is this decision going to affect me 10 and 20 years from now? When they study poor people that remain poor and never get out, and they ask them what their planning window is, you know what it sounds like? Thank God it's Friday. Party! Oh God, it's Monday.

They have a planning window of a gnat. There's no horizon in their life. No intentionality. So you can change. Ready? Set. Go! no horizon in their life, no intentionality. So you can change. Ready, set, go. You know what I've learned after talking to so many people who have been victims of ID theft? They feel violated and they have a sense of fear and intrusion. It can be overwhelming.

It's scary and infuriating at the same time. People question your character. You try to figure out how it happened and you worry it's going to happen again. Then you have to deal with cleaning up the mess. Bill collectors, credit bureaus, even the police just make the nightmare worse. And trust me, ID theft is not going away. That's why I personally work with Zander Insurance to develop an ID theft plan that provides the best protection and value, smart strategies to help reduce your risk so you don't feel

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Phone number is 888-825-5225. Jonathan is with us in Nashville. Hey, Jonathan, how are you? Beautiful afternoon to you, Dave. How are you doing, sir? Better than I deserve. How can I help? For the last couple of years, I've been growing on the side of business. Business is doing great. I don't want to quit my full-time job with benefits, but at the same time, I'm starting to run into time

constraints on how much time I can spend with this on the side business to grow it. So my question is, when you started 25 some odd years ago, how did you know when to pull the trigger and go out and hire that very first employee to help grow it? I don't want to hinder my business, but I don't know when's the right point to pull that trigger. Well, the first thing I did was to go full-time, and we were doing real estate deals, and I walked away from that business and said, okay, financial peace, full-time. And as I did that, simultaneously, I hired a lady to help us there in the office and answer phones and, you know, set appointments and so forth. And so we had all of that, you know, kind of built into the plan to go full-time. As far as just, you know, generally how to answer that, what kind of a business are you

doing on this side hustle? It's coin sales, online coin sales across the country. Coin sales. Okay, what would you hire someone to do for you? Help sell, of course, help push the sales, push and help with photography. Okay, so what are you Push the sales, push, and help with photography. Okay. So what are you – how would they push – how are you pushing sales online?

Actually, you know, spend time with the post. A lot of times people have questions, help with those, and actually close the deals when someone wants to make a purchase, things like that that I take care of in the evenings now with my full-time job. Okay. And how much are you making on the business now? I'm on track to make roughly just under $10,000 this year. Okay. All right. make roughly uh just under 10 000 this year okay all right um i think i'd do some stuff to get my profits up before i started giving away some of my precious 10 000 you don't have much room here

to pay somebody no no you're going to be losing money if you pay somebody very much um and and at best you'd be paying them part-time even then. Correct. And so I think you probably work on your business model to get your profits up. And, of course, there's two ways to do that, and that's increase your volume or increase your prices so that your profit per hit is increased. Either way, I don't care. But one way or the other is something you need to do before you start talking about hiring somebody. So what we're saying is that it's not worth your time today to do this.

And the first step would be to make it worth your time. And then you go, okay, we're making so much money here. I got more business than I can handle. Life is good. Now we start talking about putting on somebody part-time, maybe even work from home in this situation. They could work remote with you. But I don't think you're at the position to do that right now. I would keep my $10,000 and do the work, or I would, well, what I'd do is increase my profits by either increasing my volume or increasing my price, one of the two.vin is with us in memphis hey calvin

how are you i'm doing great how about you better than i deserve what's up so i'm calling because i'm 16 and um i decent i make ten dollars an hour and i have six right now i don't know if i should put my 1600 at 1680 at $1,680. Should I do that with an emergency fund, or should I start saving for, like, when I'm after 18, you know, like apartments and all that, or, like, rental and all that? Are you planning to go to college? Yeah, but I plan on going to this community college.

Mm-hmm. But I don't't know because i'm doing hvac eventually i'll get the company from my father and um so i don't know if i need to call it it's kind of it's not really set in stone yet how many employees does your father have um just me and then he's actually he's a contractor so it's like he has other companies do stuff for him but he doesn't have any employees he has one other one okay all right so it sounds like the first thing you need to do is once you're out of college is to learn the trade is there a trade school that he recommends you go through and does that is that available at community college um yeah it is um right now i'm getting my apprenticeship apprenticeship this um good this summer good and then i'll be okay if there's anything you need to pay for for education to make

your career work that's why i'm fishing for with these questions you need to make sure you have the money to do that first and foremost. That's more important than investing in mutual funds because your best return is to invest in Calvin. And so you going through getting some trade school designations, certifications, whatever it is in the heating and air world, along with the apprenticeship you're doing is going to be your best route in making sure that all happens.

Do you have a car? Yeah, I just got one. And I paid $3,000, and it's worth about $4,200. Okay. You pay cash? Yeah, it's paid for. Good for you. Well done.

I'm going to hold the $1,500 as an emergency fund slash I may need it to take some classes when I get out of school fund. And for now, I'm just going to hold it back for that. It's not going to make you any money today doing that, but what's important is not what you're making on today. What's important is what it could do for you tomorrow, and that being upon graduating from high school. Now, if you get out of high school, you finish whatever training you need to do,

and you're full-time in the heating and air business making some money, and that money's still laying there, then we start talking about investing that, building a real full-on adult emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, having your own place, your own apartment and so forth, and then beginning your Roth IRAs because it sounds like you're debt-free. Very well done, sir. Michael is with us. Michael's in Connecticut.

Hi, Michael. How are you? Good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? Good. I first want to let you know that you're awesome.

Well, thank you. And I am actually debating whether I should do solar panels on my roof, on my house. And I would need to finance it, but I would go through a 1% or 0.99% finance on the panels. I wouldn't do it if you have to finance it. Okay. Even though I'm paying right now with my electric company, I'm paying over about $310 a month on average. Yeah, that's how they sell solar panels. Yeah.

The break-even analysis that you're trying to give me is a sales pitch you were given. That doesn't justify going into debt because you need to pay cash for these things. How much are they? They're $27,000. Okay. And how much debt do you have? I have just my mortgage, which is about 15 years. How much money do you have in savings?

Probably about $80,000. Well, why don't you write a check? Yeah. Well, I was thinking almost like the 1% that I'd be getting. I was thinking the 1% loan that I'd be getting would be almost like free money. The gentleman who had actually... What if you could borrow $10 million at 1% and put it in the stock market? Would you do that? No, I would not. Why?

That's very risky to me. Oh, same thing. Okay. Yeah, same risk. See, what I did by scaling it up is I made you feel the risk. Right, okay. And that's what you're not feeling because it's only $27,000. Is this move going to bankrupt you?

No, but I'm going to tell you, wealthy people do not do what you're talking about doing. This is a middle-class trap that you're falling into. This idea that you're going to borrow money on something like a solar panel in order to invest. And by the way, your $80,000 is not even invested right now. It's sitting in your stupid checking account. So, pull $27,000 out and buy the solar panels or don't buy them. But don't borrow the money to buy them. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hey guys, it's Blake Thompson, Chief Production Officer for the Dave Ramsey Show. This hour's up, but you'll find more on our YouTube channel, where we have over 6 million YouTube views each month. You can find debt-free screens, millionaire hour clips, Dave Rants, and so much more. Go check it out. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs?

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