The Ramsey Show - App - DAVE RANT: How to Do Survival Mode (Hour 2)

Episode Date: March 17, 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 BMW as the status symbol of choice. Some of you are really scared right now aren't you i understand i've been there i've been there where things were so out of my control that i couldn't and didn't know what to do and i couldn't breathe and it's funny it doesn't matter how many years go by and it was about it was 1988 when we filed bankruptcy,

so 40 years ago almost, you know, 30 years ago, over 30. But it doesn't matter. It's decades, right? I mean, I still feel it. I still remember that feeling in your throat, that feeling when your stomach is trying to come up through your throat, that feeling of pounding in the back of your head from stress, and just the fear. I didn't have any money, I couldn't get any money, and my lights got cut off, and my water

got cut off, and I got babies. And some of you are facing that right now. Right now. Let me tell you, if you were not afraid in the middle of something like that, you would be a psychopath. So it does mean you have mental health. If you're afraid when times are scary, that would be a normal thing. To be afraid about things that are not happening but just might happen, now that's known as a worry ward, right? And Dale Carnegie used to say, he wrote a book on worry, and the thesis of the book was 80% of the things we worry about never occur.

I don't know if you can actually statistically cover that, but I think life will tell you that's pretty close. I don't know if I can confirm that, you know, with actual research, but he was making more of a metaphorical statement, but I completely agree. 80% of the stuff I have worried about in my life never happened. Because there's something about all of us. We all anticipate worst-case scenarios, and very few people anticipate best-case scenarios and live with that. Very few people do that. Now, you need to be able to do both because you need to be able to look and see when, you know,

something's turning down and you prepare for it and you're smart about it and all that kind of stuff. But, I mean, we've got some small businesses right now that everyone's all jumping up and down and clapping and so happy that they were so patriotic and so forward-thinking that they closed down for the coronavirus. The problem is they'll never reopen. They're gone. And the families that work there lost their jobs. Now, some of you that are freaking out coronavirus freakazoids, you are so happy that they're not operating.

But the families aren't happy. They're gone. That family has lost their job, and that restaurant is never going to reopen because they don't have any money, and they've gone broke because they were forced to close and not have customers.

And they're gone. They're gone. Well, Dave, that's just what it is. You can't have the virus spreading. I don't want the virus to spread either. I'm just telling you the realities are that those servers and those chefs and those dishwashers, they don't have a job anymore. Those people that worked in that hotel, that hotel is gone. It's not going to reopen in some cases. Now, some of them will reopen. Some of the big ones will reopen.

Some of the restaurants are in good shape. They'll reopen. But some of these cities, I mean, when you take the pictures I saw in New York City this morning, it looked like the zombie apocalypse. There's not a soul on the street. I've never seen that in my life, and I'm 60 years old in New York City. And let me just tell you, that's a lot of businesses that are never going to come back. That's a lot of them, because those empty streets mean there is zero revenue, and they

are gone. And so there is a thing to be terrified of, and it's unemployment. The thing to be terrified of, your family has no income. That's a thing to be terrified of. And, you know, some of you that have gone completely berserk have not considered that in your hysteria while you were shopping in a grocery store who did, was open, and who did have people there. You're just not using good critical thinking skills. So, do I want the virus to spread? Dave Ramsey's irresponsible. Oh, shut up. That's just stupid. What kind of asinine person would actually want a virus to spread

or be irresponsible, intentionally causing harm to people? That's just dumb. Of course we don't want that. That's ridiculous. But what we do want, and I love small business. Small business is the backbone of America, and a whole bunch of them are gone. And next week a whole bunch more of them will be gone if we don't get them back open again.

And the families that used to work there are on the street unemployed. And if that's you, here's what you do. If at all possible, do not cash out your retirement. If at all possible, pick up a job delivering food because nobody's open. You know, get with Uber and deliver things. And you can get some income coming in, get some income coming in, and then you take care of food first at your house. This is your budget priorities.

Shelter second. I'm sorry, utilities second. Keep the lights and the water on. Make sure there's food on your table. Then the next thing you do is you take care of shelter, you keep your house payment or your rent current, and then transportation. Food, shelter, transportation, and utilities. These are the four walls of your house.

If you keep that going, you keep enough of that going until you get reemployed back into your career field, just by keeping the wolf away from your door, you've done a great job, and you've turned the corner in a personal financial crisis caused by hysteria. And you'll make the turn. And I've been there, and I've walked lots of families through that. While they might not have had a whole nation around them at the same time doing the same thing, but I've walked lots of families through who were down to the last nub,

and we go, what can we do to create income? What can we do to create income? What can we do to create income? Let's get some income coming in. Get you a leaf blower. Rich people are afraid of leaves. Let's go, baby. I mean, let's get you a pressure washer.

Everybody's got mildew somewhere, right? I mean, let's get things going here. What can we do? Can we babysit? Can we dog walk? What can we do? I don't care. I'm not too proud to do anything. I'll shovel something. Let's go. I'll make, I just got to make a little bit of money and keep some food on my baby's table. And then once I do that, I can keep the lights on in my baby's room. That's all I got to do. And that's, you get your head around that and you get back out there instead of sitting around terrified in the corner, sucking your thumb in a fetal position, you get your head around that and you get back out there instead of sitting around terrified in the corner sucking your thumb in a fetal position, you get back out there and you start kicking doors again.

And it's hard because you're scared and you're overwhelmed, but in the middle of that, use all of that fear as energy to go make some money and create an income as fast as you can, as ridiculous, whatever it is. You can deliver pizzas. Believe me, there's lots of people delivering food, pizzas, and people right now. Lots of them. And some of these industries have gone up, really up. They're busy as crud right now.

So go get in that. Go make you some money and keep the wolf away from the door, meaning you're going to get the four walls taken care of, and then you can come back to the baby steps and stuff later, and I'll help you. That's how you do survival mode. That's how you turn the corner in terrifying times. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. We've been voted one of the best places to work in Nashville 11 times. You want to know how we do it? Well, our team has been using LinkedIn jobs for years to find the best people from all over the country to come and help us change lives.

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That's linkedin.com slash Ramsey. Terms and conditions apply. you guys know i have very few guests on this show but occasionally i have the opportunity to share one of my friends with you especially when they are doing something special. And I can't think of anybody this week that I would rather spend a little bit of time with. What in the world? Can you fix that for me? Hey, thank you, guys. I hit the wrong button.

Okay. That I'd rather spend time with, and I lost him completely. All right. Hang it up. Do it again. All right. We'll try to get him back on. All that set up, and then I'm screwed up the phones.

I think it was my fault. But anyway, Max Licato is who I was trying to talk about, and I can't think of anybody I'd rather talk to in times like this than Max. So he has a new book out. Finally, after doing 8,000 books, he did one that is simply called Jesus. There you go. The God Who Knows Your Name. It's good stuff, of course.

This guy, Lakedo, has sold 150 million books or so, something like that. Did you get him? Got him? All right. Let me see if I can do it this time. Max, are you there? I'm there, Dave. I goofed up, man. Max, are you there? I'm there, Dave. I goofed up, man.

I hung up on you. I'm so sorry. We need to talk to Max Licato, and the devil's trying to keep us from doing it. Boy, isn't that the truth. That in some ways is emblematic of all the things happening right now, isn't it? It is. It is. And this nation needs to hear from men like you right this second.

And this book entitled Jesus is obviously an encouraging word, and you've got the encouraging word, Max Licato Bible, out as well with Thomas Nelson I've got here on the camera. And, man, you launch a book in the middle of this. What timing. A book called Jesus right in the middle of this. Well,? A book called Jesus right in the middle of this. Well, we need encouragement, don't we, Dave? Yeah.

You know, I just think we need to be asking individually and globally, God, what are you saying to us? What are you saying to us? You know, it's such an unprecedented. We feel like we're living in a science fiction movie, don't we? And I think if individually, if we can each just go to God. I feel like Tom Cruise dropped the vial. In the movie, I feel like Tom Cruise dropped the vial and the virus got out. Isn't that the truth?

Isn't that the truth? It's got to be Tom's fault. It's got to be. It's got to be. Oh, man. So Jesus, the God who knows your name, he knows our name. He knows the number of hairs on our head. There's a plan for us to bring us hope, not to bring us harm. These are messages we just need right now. We really do. You know, it's an old saying, but it's a true saying, that if you feed your fears, then your faith will starve. But if you feed your faith, your fears will. Ooh, that's good.

So right now, the default emotion is to feed our fears. You can't turn on television and not feel a dose of fear coming your way. Yeah. So we have to make intentional decisions, Dave, to say, okay, I'm going to feed my faith. I'm going to find a way today to feed my faith. And that comes through prayer. It comes through reading the Bible. It comes through listening to good programs like yours.

It comes through getting online and finding a sermon, you know. It's just we've got to be intentional, though, because if we don't, we'll be sucked into this wave of anxiety that's out there. So there's no question that you have to guard our inputs. I was telling our audience yesterday, our old friend Zig Ziglar, when he was living, used to say, I read the Bible every morning, I read the newspaper every morning, so I can tell what both sides are doing. So, you know, it's a great joke line, but truthfully, your inputs, if you're in Scripture more than you're watching cable news, you're probably not afraid. As a matter of fact, you can probably gauge your fear to the number of hours of news you watch. You're absolutely right. You see what

happens, Dave. These thoughts come in through our ears. They go into our brain. They go down into our heart. Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart, a person speaks. So if you find yourself speaking words of anxiety and fear, odds are you are receiving too much fear through your ear, through your brain, down into your heart. So what you got to do, the Bible says, take every thought captive. And so just because you have a thought, that doesn't mean you have to think it. So you say, okay, I'm not going to let that thought go in. In fact, I'm going to replace that thought. I'm going to meditate on that which is pure, that which is good, that which is wholesome. I'm going to meditate on that.

And so just be careful. Let's all be careful what thoughts we're thinking because we need a quorum of people who are speaking words of hope and encouragement. And calm. Calm. For goodness sakes, calm. Calm. Oh, my goodness sakes, calm. Calm. Oh, my goodness. We don't make good decisions when we're freaked out.

We don't. So if we can take a collective breath, just trust in the goodness of God, trust that he's seen these things before. My goodness, the Bible is stitched together with stories of calamities and famines and pestilences and crises. This is not new. I don't know if I understand it all, but I do believe that God can get us through it. And I do believe we're going to be okay.

I do. All of these things are some kind of temporary. They are. Ten months, ten years, I don't know, but more like ten months probably, you know. I mean, the whole thing will be a distant memory in ten months. Ten weeks, the vast majority of it will easily be gone, I think. But I'm a glass-half-full guy, and I'm not, you know, camping out in the anxiety camp. You're just being faithful, Dave.

I mean, we made it through 9-11, didn't we? Yeah. In the midst of it, we thought, oh, boy, we're never going to survive this. But then we made it through 2008. Yeah. The swine flu and all these other flus. Swine flu. Yeah.

In fact, I was telling my wife yesterday, I said, honey, you know, we really, I really started studying finances in 2008. I'm sorry to confess it, but I hadn't paid attention. So I made some good decisions as a result of 2008 that make me feel better today about our situation. Now you got a wake-up call. You got a wake-up call. Got a wake-up call. It wasn't fun, and I had some anxious moments, but it turned out to be good. And that's what's going to happen here. It's a wake-up call. So what book number is this? How many books have you done?

Golly, Dave. You lost count? Yeah, it's in the mid. It's 44, 45, somewhere in there. Okay. I was thinking it was. When you get as old as I am, you start forgetting a lot of things. That is not true.

But, yeah, and multiple, multiple, multiple bestsellers, well over 100 million copies sold of books. So after all of that, and obviously as a pastor, all of your books have something to do with God, something to do with Scripture, something to do with the life of Christ, something to do with a Bible character somewhere, somehow. It has been your whole set of, almost your whole set of writing, not 100%, but very close.

After all of that, why do you do an entire book on the works and words of Jesus? Yeah, thanks for asking that, because this is a unique book. I have long wanted to write a book, create a book, that would be equally helpful for someone who's never heard about Christ as someone who's always followed Christ. I wanted to be able to create a book that would be a good primer for somebody getting introduced, but a good reminder for those whose faith is being reinforced. And so that's what I set out to do in this book. It's all about Jesus, you know, start to finish,

all about Jesus. And so I'm hoping that it can elevate the person who saved my soul, the person I'm looking forward to meeting in heaven. But I think he's the most important person in the world, I mean, in the history of the world. And it's an honor to write these words about Christ. The book by Pastor Max Licato, titled Jesus, the God Who Knows Your Name. Yet another bestseller, I'm sure. And absolutely incredible. And times like this, we need men like Max pointing us to our Jesus. Max, thank you, my friend.

Thanks for hanging out with us. Thank you, my friend. My honor. Anytime. You stay in touch. Anything we can do to help you, we always will. Always for him. One of the nicest guys you'll ever meet on the planet.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. If you do this one simple thing that we all do, you are literally at risk of being hacked and someone stealing what you've worked so hard for. Do you ever use public Wi-Fi? I'm talking about getting online at a coffee shop, a store, the airport, or even at home. Hackers can use a simple $100 device to mimic Wi-Fi, and with just a little bit of skills, they can take over your financial life. This means you may think you're on your bank's site or app or securely making that purchase online, but hackers could see and steal that information. That's why I trust CyberGhost VPN. CyberGhost thinks about cybercrime so you don't have to. You can try it for free for seven days,

protect up to seven internet devices, and keep all of your internet connections secure. That's CyberGhost VPN. Download it today from your app store and be secure in seconds. Ryan is with us in Florida. Hey, Ryan, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, how are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? I went through Financial Peace University about 12, 13 years ago, and at the time didn't have a whole lot of debt,

but I did get debt-free and saved down payment on a house and bought my first home. So I'm familiar with the program and, uh, since then have, uh, increased income, gone through a unwanted divorce and, uh, racked up quite a bit of debt and, uh, just making stupid decisions. So, uh, I am, uh, just now I've got my emergency fund and I am, uh, getting ready to hit my snowball baby step too hard. And, uh, got a question. I need to refinance my house because I'm in a 30-year mortgage at a 4.875 interest rate, and it's an FHA loan, so I'm paying PMI. I won't talk about it.

And this is a great time to refinance. This week, rates are going down. They're going down right now. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to pull off. Now, I have about $30,000 in liquid assets that I was going just to dump at the snowball, just 100% of it knock out. Do you have any equity in your home? I do. I owe just $270,000, and current value is $410,000. Just roll your closing costs into the mortgage. Well, my situation is the broker I was dealing with,

and who I trust, I've known him for a long time, I'm probably going to reach out to someone on your website, one of your preferred guys. Check Churchill Mortgage. Yeah, Churchill, that's right, yeah. He's concerned that if I take that $30,000 and spend it to knock out a portion of my debt, that it's going to make it difficult for me to qualify for the best rate on a 15-year, you know, everything that I want based on your advice. Just because of debt-to- income ratio. Debt to income

ratio would go down if you had less debt. Yeah, I have $100,000 in debt and he's saying what he wants to do is roll me into a 15-year 2.25% and knock out the

credit card debt, about $45,000 as part of that and take the $45,000, as part of that, and take the $40,000 in closing as a down payment. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's kind of what I needed to hear. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It didn't sound right to me, but I didn't know how to pass it through that. But what's your income? It ranges between $110,000 and $130,000.

And you ran up $100,000 in debt in this divorce financial hangover? No, I mean it's not just because of the divorce. And about $45,000 is credit card debt. I owe $13,000 on a vehicle. And then I've got two other purchases, one of which I bought into the solar market before the subsidies were really making sense. So I've got about a $26,000 30-year loan on a full solar system, which I have said is a utility cost, but it's a dump debt.

I need to pay it off. Okay, that's attached to your house? It's not attached to the mortgage. No, I'm just saying that solar equipment is on your home? Correct. Yeah, I would go ahead that solar equipment is on your home. Correct. Yeah, I would go ahead and roll that into your mortgage debt. That would be fine. Okay.

All right. And that will help you move this along. But, yeah, your credit card debt, you need to chop those up and work your way through them, and the rest of that you can chop them up and work your way through them. No, we're not. See, your mortgage broker gets paid based on the size of the loan sure now there's some insight uh so he wants a bigger loan yeah yeah that's what he wants so nope nope i would do a three hundred thousand dollar loan which is a 271st and put the solar in it and i'd put it on

a 15 year fixed and i'd roll my closing costs into it, and I'm going to throw my cash right after that or right before that, depending on what Churchill tells you to do, at your debt snowball. And I would get this debt rate locked in this week. These mortgage rates are really good right now. It's a good time to refinance. If you have a high rate, who would have ever thought I'd be refinance if you have a high rate who would have ever thought i'd be calling 4.875 a high rate but if you've got a high rate or an adjustable rate or a balloon mortgage or any of that stupidity and while you're at it put it on a 15 year if you're sitting on a

three oh you're probably not going to refinance that. But, you know, gee, these rates are amazing. One of the benefits of these down times is the stocks are on sale. Your mutual funds are on sale. Stock market's running a sale this week, if you hadn't heard. And so is your mortgage company. Yeah. There's got to be something good come out of all this manure. Something's got to grow, right? And so that's the two good things that can happen right now.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Good question. All right. Dave's in Ohio. Hi, Dave. How are you? Pretty good, sir. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? All right. First-time caller, long-time listener. Changes with money, I'm not really the most educated. As of recently, I've become really motivated to start taking control of my financial situation. And I just had a question about a car loan that I'm in. Kind of dependent. I know it can probably be postponed given the current state of affairs of the world but i was i had a question about refinancing what do you owe on the car

car currently uh finances 18 250 18 250 what's your interest rate my interest rate is terrible at 8.8%. Okay. And have you investigated what kind of a rate you can get? I called my local credit union. I haven't done much more shopping around, but with my current credit score ranging between 670, 680, working on fixing, I can get 5.75% and a full 12-month shorter term limit. Okay. So what's your household income? Between my wife and I, take-home would be about $75,000. 000 okay what's your other car worth i have oh my wife's car yep uh help me out with that i think she's about the same 19 000 okay she owes that much on it, that's how much she owes.

Holy crap. So you have $40,000 in car debt, and you only make $70,000 a year. And you know what? I took your class a couple years ago through my employer. Apparently you flunked. And I had another car. Absolutely. And I had a car that I was holding on to and trying to come up with justifications to hold on to it, and I just recently sold it.

So to me, that's a step in the right direction. You sold it and got an $18,000 debt? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The car was paid off before I sold it, but to fund the money into a savings account. Okay. You guys have too much invested in vehicles that are going down in value based on your income and based on the total debt that you have. And so you probably need to select one of these vehicles. My guess is it'll be yours and sell it and move down into a hoopty. And then let's work a plan with you and your wife together, which is what

we taught you when you were taking the class. You don't have a herd car, your car debt. We have $40,000 in car debt, and that's way too much when we make $70,000 household income. And so we are going to have to reduce our car debt, and then we're going to have to get out of debt completely. Maybe step one is you save $1,000. Two is you list all of your debts, smallest to largest, and you pay minimum payments on everything but the little one, and you attack the little one. When you're doing that, you look at your cars and say,

if our cars total more than half our annual income, we have too much invested in vehicles. And if we can't get out of debt inside of two years, everything but our house and a vehicle is keeping that from happening, we have too much invested in vehicles. And if we can't get out of debt inside of two years, everything but our house, we have in a vehicle is keeping that from happening. We have too much invested in vehicles. Both of those tell me you have too much invested in vehicles. And so I would not refinance your $18,000 car. I would sell it. Not what you were looking for. But actually, dude, if you do this stuff, you're going to look back a few years from now and go, I don't have any card debt because that Dave Ramsey guy was a jerk when I called him on the air.

Because I love you, man. I'll smack you, too. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Thanks for joining us, America. Jay is with us. Jay's in Florida. Hi, Jay. How are you? How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, so good to be talking with you, man. I just have some questions. I really wanted to seek some good advice on them. The Bible tells us to get advice on matters. Good. My wife and I, we're actually expecting twins here in September.

Congratulations. Thank you. That's your first one? Well, we thought it was going to be our first kid, but it turns out to be our first kid. Yeah. Cool. Very cool.

How exciting. Yeah. Double trouble. Yeah, double the trouble. So really right now I'm going through a situation with the whole COVID-19 thing where both she's a schoolteacher and I work at college, but with that being shut down, we won't be starting jobs here. Well, she's getting paid, but I won't be getting paid here until about the summer.

I have a job lined up for the summer. And I really just wanted to know where we should go here from the jump. I personally have about $7,000 in student debt. She graduated with no debt, so that between both of us, that's about our only debt. We don't owe anything on our cars. We both own our cars, which is a blessing. And we just really wanted to know what we have to go here we uh we uh being a veteran i do have access to my va

home loan um but i'm not sure if i i don't have the proof of income i would guess you would say for a bank to grant me a loan because i wouldn't know where to start i don't really make any income as of now yeah that's great that's true and you don't need to buy a house right now anyway, because you don't make any income. So, yeah, you know, that's a, that's, thanks for your service. So what we would tell you to do is walk up what we call the baby steps and baby step one is to save a thousand dollars. How much money do you guys have saved? Yeah. So, um, we see your baby steps steps we have our emergency thousand dollar fund and we also have a savings account with about twelve thousand dollars in it good saved up okay so do you have money coming in to eat with right now yeah we're covered on that aspect of uh money coming in to eat we're just you're retired you're retired military retirement her teaching pay what

no i'm not retired i I just served my seven years. Well, I did seven years and I got out. I got you. Okay, so is her teaching check coming? Her teaching check is still coming. And that's what you're using to eat with? Yes, and my pay from what I get paid for working at the university. But since it's shut down now, we won't have that coming in for now about the next four or five months.

So they're not going to pay you. They furloughed you. Yeah, the semesters, as of which I got an email today, the semester's canceled until the rest of the year. So we're just done now. Okay, so since you're not working there, you're not going to get paid until when? Until May. I graduate here, and I start my job in May. Oh, a new job.

Okay, good. Okay. All right. Well, what I would do is say you're in the middle of a financial storm right now, and I would tell you to just pause. I wouldn't work the baby steps. You certainly don't need to buy a house. The instant that you got your incomes and you're feeling comfortable that your incomes are there,

probably like when you start work, I would push play again. When you push play, I'm going to take the money out of savings and pay off the student loan, and that makes you debt-free except your home, and you don't own a home, correct? Yeah, we don't own a home. And you would be 100% debt-free when that occurs, right? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, and then you have twins on the way, and we're going to build your emergency fund

all the way up to three to six months of expenses. After that is done and after the babies come, then I would start saving for a down payment. You can start saving early, but I wouldn't. I'd just separate it. Get your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, and you're debt-free. Only then would you buy a home, and only after the twins come would you start talking about buying a home, probably after her maternity leave.

She probably got paid maternity leave, right? Well, in Florida, I believe through the school system, through the public school system, it's not much. I think it's only about maybe two months or something like that, two or three months. All right. Will she go back to work after that? And she can go back to work after that, yeah. Okay, good. See, when all that's happening, then you start talking about being ready to buy a house with a good down payment.

When you do that, I would not use the VA loan. The VA loan is the most expensive loan between VA, FHA, and conventional. Conventional is a better deal unless you are a disabled veteran, are you? No, I'm not. Okay. Then it would be cheaper then. But the fees and interest rates associated with the VA loan are not a good deal. That's a shame because your benefits for having served your country should be make it cheaper than regular loans that everybody can get.

But don't use the VA. Use a conventional with a good strong down payment after you're debt-free and after you have your emergency fund completely in place. So very well done. All right, Brandon is with us in Minnesota. Hi, Brandon, How are you? I'm doing good, sir. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? So last May, I graduated from college and I got a job right away out and been working since then.

Good. And Sally, thank you. And Sally May has just started coming knocking on the door looking for her cut. And it kind of freaked me out at first, the payments that they were asking for. And so kind of reconnected listening to you. I used to listen to you in high school and got on every dollar. I got every dollar accounted for, cut up all the credit cards, closed them all out. I'm going to debt. Good. And so thank you. So with everything kind of going on right now with, with COVID-19, I'm, I'm trying to be calm and,

and kind of not freak out with it, but I'm kind of worried that I'm starting to think about, um, things are going to come up and I don't want to accidentally get off track with my goals. So I'm going to be aged out of my parents' insurance in November, and so I'm wondering where I go in terms of what I should do to get myself covered for medical protection and if I should have any other types of insurances. Yeah, good question. Okay. Yeah, you need to make sure you have health insurance lined up when you age out, and your company you're working for does not offer health insurance? They do. I honestly know nothing about how health insurance works, though, and so I don't even know what questions I need to know or where to go to get things lined up so they fall in place when I turn 26. Well, have the HR people teach you and work you through what your options are

and what those options mean. If they have an HSA plan, usually that is the cheapest plan per month and gives you the best coverage assuming you're healthy. It leaves a big deductible that you have to pay out of pocket if something happens. But if you're healthy, we're not worried about that part. It covers all the huge stuff. The huge stuff is what we're worried about. Okay.

And, of course, the other kinds of insurance, car insurance, are you renting an apartment or a house? I rent my apartment, and I do have a car, and I have insurance on that. Okay. You have renter's insurance on the contents in the apartment? Yes, I do have that. Okay. My tenant required it.

Your landlord? Good. Okay. Good. So you've got renter's insurance. You've got car insurance. Check. You need to learn what your disability is through your company, long-term disability.

I suspect they furnish you a long-term disability policy. It sounds like it's a larger company. And, you know, you just work through those things. So probably what you need to do is spend a little bit of time with your HR folks understanding your benefits a little bit more. And they'll help you with that. They're usually very good at it. It's what they do.

But my guess is you'll move to an hsa and you don't need to do that until you age out of that other policy but you do need to have researched it understood it become taught about it so that you go okay it's kind of a no-brainer this is what i'm doing i'm gonna line this up and as soon as we get towards november i'm gonna just pull the trigger on it and make sure i get in at the appropriate time so that there's no hole in the coverage, no gap between the ending of your parent's policy and the start of your new one. That's the other thing you've got to learn about is how much notice you have to give to get onto the company policy, all that kind of stuff, and get it all lined up, and you'll be just fine. You're asking all the right questions,

and then work your way through this debt snowball. Good question, Brandon. We appreciate you joining us. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer. Zach Bennett filling in for Kelly Daniel today. I am Dave Ramsey, your host, and we'll be back with you before you know it. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show.

Once again, you made The Dave Ramsey Show one of the top four most popular podcasts last year. To get your daily dose of motivation and inspiration from the Ramsey Network, subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.