The Ramsey Show - App - DAVE RANT: Quit Blaming Everyone Else for Your Own Decisions! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Dr. John Delony discuss: Why you shouldn't get sucked into the 24hr news cycle, Learning to stop blaming everyone else for your own mistakes, Should you make your kid get a job? Avoiding stinginess with money, Getting out of collections. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the 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. Open phones this hour. The phone number is 888-825-5225. You can get in if you dial at this moment. That's 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, best-selling author and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, is my co-host today. Open phones again at 888-825-5225. We're going to be talking about your relationships, talking about mental health, about jobs, about career, about money. We're going to talk about you right in front of you.

So, John, you and I were actually talking earlier this morning in a meeting discussing things around your new book coming out, that with all the wackiness happening in the world that i mean your book and some of the materials that you're putting out are all about dealing with your past um you own your past change your future is the title of the new book but this idea that that you know things that have happened to me as an individual or to you guys out there as an individual, the trauma that you experienced during COVID or the trauma you experienced from family or the trauma you experienced from a job or whatever trauma, wherever it was,

that's kind of like one set of anxiety-inducing things. You call them bricks in the backpack, right? And then there's a whole otherher set of anxiety inducing things and both of these affect money they affect job they affect marriage because it affects mental health basically uh but the anxiety inducing trauma type things are um i mean stuff like russia and ukraine uh stuff like out of control inflation used cars are going up right which makes me think i'm in a cartoon or something i mean instead of real life and this must be a pixar movie i mean how to use cars to go up is impossible

and uh you know uh supply chain stuff is just bizarre uh just trying to get something purchased and get it shipped to you uh is crazy so people are experiencing i guess environmental type things that are impacting us the new negative news we'll just call it guess, environmental type things that are impacting us. The negative news, we'll just call it. And then you've got things that are individual to you in your life. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Two different buckets.

How do you deal with those different buckets? You know, I was on an interview yesterday talking about this exact thing. And what I told the guy was, man, I tell people for a living to get off your devices. That's one of my cornerstone messages. Get off your devices and be with real people. And I found myself yesterday. I got up at 5 a.m. to go exercise and do my morning routine like I always do. And the first thing I did was pull out my phone to see if Putin had invaded.

And instead of looking at it and seeing there's tension and closing it and going about my day i sat there and sat there went to this new site and this new site this new site so alice went down a rabbit hole yes and i missed my workout i missed everything i grabbed coffee and i was able to high five my kids and head out the door instead of and here's the thing you know i can control about what putin's doing zero nothing there's not a thing I can do about that. Apparently no one else can either, by the way. There you go. What I could do was I could have gotten my exercise in.

I could have made my wife's coffee and brought it to her because I know that little tiny acts of service when I'm stressed out helps calm me down. I could have written a note to my kids and said, hey, I got an early morning of media hits. I love you guys. I miss you. I could have done some things that I know bring me peace and bring my anxiety level down instead of fed it and so

what i what i tell everybody do is look at the things in your life you can control and lean in on those and literally use the off button on some of these things you can check on russia once or twice a day and that's it nothing else is going to change and if it does there's nothing you could do about it right yeah or the inflation or the get your house unless you're on the joint chiefs for staff you don't need to be riding it all day long you can't ride it all day long and here's the thing because it'll ride you it will they will bury you it will bury you my heart rate is up as though america's getting shelled right now and we're not right we're not and so man take care of the people in your area take care of you and i'm not saying stick your head in the sand and

avoid it no this is a worldwide issue. We all need to be in the know on this. But get in the know and then get back out. Don't go swimming and bathing in the cesspool, right? Get what you need and then get out of there, man. And then deal with your people in your life. Yeah, the problem is inputs matter. I mean, incredibly.

If all you do is feed, and that includes who you hang around with it includes what you read it includes your screen time it includes if you're doing social media or you're not doing social media it includes podcasts you get off work and you listen to you listen to a murder podcast on the way home just so you can get to law and order svu right yeah for dinner like you're just feeding yourself this stuff yeah inputs matter because if you put if all your inputs are crap your brain's crap your brain is terrified all day it's fight or flight all day all day and then a real thing shows up like inflation like you go to the grocery store and you look at your budget and say oh i gotta make some choices on meat or vegetables this month that's a real thing that you need you need space and capacity in your mind and body to be able to handle those issues that is taken up by other fake drama, right?

It's just going and going and going and going and going. So you do really need to identify causes of stress and put them in one of two buckets. Things I can do something about, things I can't. That's right. Things I can't, you need to limit the inputs. Absolutely. All day, every day. Just stop. I had a friend who was watching CNN and inputs absolutely all day every day just just just stop

i had a friend watching cnn watching fox all day long i think we're i think he's in a rubber room now yeah i mean if that's your only input is a 24-hour news cycle all day long 100 of it is hyped yep exaggerated and bad yes that's exactly i mean it's just like you're gonna eat i'm gonna eat chocolate bars all day long 24 7 and then think that's going to. I mean, it's just like, you know, eat, I'm going to eat chocolate bars all day long, 24-7, and then think that's going to work out from a nutrition standpoint. I mean, you know, or whatever negative thing you can come up with to eat. But, I mean, it would gag you if you got past four of them, you know. But it's just, your mind is gagging.

That's right. And it's important to know, we all should be a little bit heightened right now. We should all be anxious right now. This is a big deal, right? And I'm anxious to see what my government's going to do to participate or not participate and what my leadership's going to look like. All that's true and real and good. Prices are real.

The gas, I can't even, like I have to double take when you drive by a gas station, right? All this stuff's real. And then what can I do about that? I can't fix the gas prices today. And so I'm going to see it and I'm going to go, man, that stinks. I'm going to have to make some adjustments in my budget with my wife, and then I'm going to go about my day because doubling down on that, man, it's going to make me a ball of rage that's going to affect my kids, my wife,

my family, my neighborhood, and my work. You've got to control the controllables. And set the rest of the crap down. You can't control the things that aren't controllable. That's right. That's why they're not called controllables so i mean this is not hard yeah and yet we have gotten into this between social media 24-hour news cycle um i mean it used to be uh you know walter cronkite for 30 minutes in the evening your local news for 30 minutes in the evening and you had a newspaper

some of you don't know what that is you could look it up on the internet but um and that was you know you were stuck with that yeah and a lot of that was hours and hours and hours behind but then you had to go sit down with real humans and you got dinner you got the pontification circles well i think this well i think this you're engaging with real people and a real human would say i think that's dumb i think this and well i think that and you had real interactions and your body actually goes okay we, we're safe. I got a real person right here. I got a real person right here. We're exchanging ideas.

And now it's just grenade, grenade, grenade, grenade. Digital grenades. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Which are about as bad as digital courage. Yeah. Wow. Scary times, man.

Scary times, but. You have to control the situation. That's right. You have to control your environment. You're not going to get out of this otherwise. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality. Dave Ramsey. The phone number is 888-825-5225. You've got a lot on your plate, a job, your home, your marriage, and your growing family.

While you're enjoying the present, you can't help but think about your future and your finances. As you explore your options, consider Christian Healthcare Ministries, or CHM, for your healthcare. Their generous maternity program and budget-friendly monthly programs have been a blessing to members welcoming children into their families. Visit chministries.org slash budget to see if it's right for you. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Over the last 30 years, we've helped people with a lot of stresses around the money subject. We've also witnessed a lot of other kinds of stress, anxiety, and loneliness. We're just talking about in the last segment, Dr. John's new book is out.

The pre-sale on it is out own your past change your future you can change the story on your future your past has some legitimate things that have happened to you most of us have experienced that right and uh you can learn how to deal with all kinds of different kinds of kinds of trauma get connected to a community make friends as an adult your mental health matters you'll get a free bonus including a one including a month of free one-on-one therapy so pre-order your own copy of own your past change your future it's only twenty dollars at ramsey solutions.com it'll be out in april and we'll get it shipped to you so it's 20 bucks and you get all

the pre-sale items if you get it on pre-sale for 20 bucks day at ramsey solutions dot com dale is in boise hi dale welcome to the ramsey show yeah thank you for having me on sure what's up um so i've got a question for you i mean we pretty much have followed you know all the baby steps owned several pieces of property free and clear, pretty much dumped all our money into paying everything off. But here, later in life, we decided to build a fast as we would like to because there's a really hefty repayment penalty. So it's like, well, what do we do with the extra money that we can't run like we usually do? You know, keeping everything paid off, low profile. I mean, we've had low profile i mean we've

had the same cars that we've had for 25 years we don't just go what's the balance on the sba loan uh 1.8 million ouch and it has a prepayment penalty on a $2 million loan? That's highly unusual. Ten years. It's 2.38% interest fixed for 20-year amortization, but we can't pay it off for 10 years. And how many years on the 10? How long ago did you do this mess?

We just flipped from the construction takeout to the permanent financing good lord have you done the math on the difference between the prepayment penalty and the interest you would save by paying it off early it's um 25 percent of the loan so it's substantial you know you're looking at you know 425 000 prepayment only at what point in the process did you not stop and go this is a dumb butt idea well the the cash flow makes it worthwhile of doing, but the longevity of that is... Hypothetically, unless nobody comes to an RV park because there's a pandemic, and then you go bankrupt.

And you took out a prepayment penalty of 25%, and willingly, knowingly signed up for that. Wow, dude. The government didn't have a gun to your head you signed the paper the the lender can make up whatever wacko terms they want to you have you have feet to walk away and you're supposed to use them oh my god all right so do you have any money uh very little cash on hand right now most of all of our uh s fast money has went into the

construction because the prices of everything have went up 200 to 300 percent hold on hold on it's not hold on it's not because of the prices it's because you chose to spend it yeah your whole orientation is everybody did this to you. Yeah. Like it was out of your control. Like you didn't have a choice to do all this. All right, you've done it now. I'm going to quit beating on you. So here's the deal.

What you've got to do is you need to save up $1.8 million as fast as you can and set it in an investment to the side so that when the 10-year clock goes ding, ding, you write a check. And you need a tremendous amount of liquidity. No, you don't need to pour anything else into this freaking RV park. No. You're already deep in it. So what you need to do is take any money you can find from anywhere and begin an investment pool on the side to pay this loan off the day it hits the um the the day it gets

down small enough that you can that you want to bite the bullet on the prepayment penalty or the day it hits the 10-year mark and you write that check so you need a mutual fund that the target on it is i want to put 1.8 million dollars in and you better hope that gas doesn't get up to four dollars and 50 cents a bear i mean a gallon that people quit taking their RVs out as much as they have in the last few years. Yeah, again. Dang, man. That's heartbreaking. You're going to be stuck in your old cars for a season, man.

You put yourself in a big old hole. Interest rates go up. You know what happens to RV sales? They stop. And when gas prices go up, people quit toting around the country. Man. We're just barely good news today but um anyway but yeah that's good happened you call today too yeah so yeah the answer to your question is no you don't put money back into the business

yes you pile money on the side as fast as you can pile it as high as you can pile it so you've got liquidity because you have a bigger mess on your hands than you perceive and that's why we're both kind of we have both have both of us john and i have a little panic in our voice that you are not experiencing in your body and when that does hit your body someday i want you to have a big pile of money because it's coming yeah it's um take ownership of your choices brother take ownership so guys um i could feel it on you, man. All right. Joy is in Cincinnati. Hey, Joy, what's up? Hi, I am so honored. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. Dave and Dr. Johnny, I am a retired law enforcement officer. I get a pension, but I listened to Dave Ramsey and I went back to work part time. So actually, I'm sitting in the parking lot right now getting ready to go in.

And every time I quit, I keep saying, nope, Dave will say no. Anyway, my husband was an active duty career Marine. He also retired. He gets a pension, but he does have a lot of service-related problems. He did get a full-time job with the post office, but it just got so bad on him. He had to quit his full-time job with them. We still get a pension, but we're struggling just, you know, I want to get us out of debt. And I'm struggling, I should say. What's your question for our run out of time?

I'm sorry. We have a 19-year-old son at home. He's our only child. We started late. My husband treats him like he's still six. My husband's a marshmallow. I'm the mean one i want him to get out of the house get a job and help you know if he's going to stay there i want him to pay like almost rent

and he won't he won't get out of his room he sits on his computer and plays games i don't want him to hate me because i have to be the mean one to get him to do something. Your husband's the mean one. Yeah, your husband's handicapping that poor boy, hurting him. He doesn't see it that way. And my husband also has traumatic brain injury. Sure. So I'm walking on eggshells with that PTSD, traumatic brain injury.

So if you take your 19-year-old and you tell him that he's got 30 days or 60 days or 90 days to go find a job and get out he's going to be mad at you and he's going to say mean things if you let him live there till he's 30 then he's going to hate you when he was four and you made him brush his teeth he got mad too and it was the right thing to do but we still made him brush his freaking teeth that's right because we love him and he needs teeth when he's older it feels like he might be a blanket a security blanket for your husband right now and i'm not Don't make him brush his freaking teeth. That's right. Because we love him and he needs teeth when he's older. It feels like he might be a blanket, a security blanket for your husband right now. And I'm not saying that facetiously.

I get that he's probably a therapy pet for your husband right now, right? He's somebody that your husband can count on. No, not really because he stays in his room. He needs to get out of the house. And listen, he stays in his room because y'all allow it. He stays in his room because y'all allow it, right? It's got to stop. He needs to move out, Mom. You've got to love him enough to move him out.

He needs to get his time. It's time. He's functioning on a 14-year-old level because you're letting him. And it's not going to work out well. Because he's not ever going to meet the special someone because they're not going to come to his room. Thank you. Welcome back. We're glad you're here america dr john deloney ramsey personality is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your life and your money joe is in st louis hey joe welcome to the ramsey show hey dr john and dave thanks for taking my question i'll try to make it brief we are in baby step five thanks to you you guys' plan. Good for you.

And we kind of did like a 3B to save for my car. I've got an old Corolla, and it's still running great. Would it be okay to take some of that money and then max out our Roth IRAs for the year and then kind of rebuild that 3B back up? Just because the market's down, I figure it's probably a good time to invest. Oh, I see. So you would be putting in over 15 percent uh into our rocks if you if you put this into retirement you're currently putting 15 at baby step four already into your retirement are you not yes we are but right now we're kind of doing it we just drafted out monthly oh you're saying put

a lump sum in it right now? Yeah, yeah. As long as the total for the year is not more than 15% of your income, that'll be fine. Yes. Yes, that's correct. Okay. But if you're saying, should I invest more into retirement than 15% of my income while I still have a mortgage? No, I would not tell you to do that. No, yeah.

We just have the money for the car, but corolla just keeps going so we were just uh wondering if we could do that there man well and it's a crummy time to buy a car because they're outrageously priced right now so um you know i mean you can get a car but if you and sometimes people need a car right now but if you just you got a car that's working and you don't have to move it so uh what happens if the corolla lays down what are we going to do uh well like we still have uh enough to buy something that would work and if we needed to i guess take an extra two or three grand out of the emergency fund we could do that yeah then as long as you're not over 15 you got

you kind of thought through the uh what ifs then, yeah, I'd dive in on it for sure. Have at it, bro. Solomon is with us. Solomon is in New York City. Hi, Solomon. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi there, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? I'll try to keep it short, but basically, I called the show a couple months back, and you told me that because I'm so young, I should just stash away cash for now, savings. And so now I've been doing that, but I'm keeping, obviously, a couple hundred in my checking account. And I've been recently, I got approached by a few people who are collecting for charity besides the tithes, and I can't help but be a little bit, like, have a bad feeling when I'm giving them money or not giving them as much as I could. You know, so my question is, how do I stop that from happening?

That feeling? Yeah. I have never been able to stop it from happening and it doesn't matter how much money i give and how much money i have allocated to give there's always wonderful things that need help wonderful ideas of helping people uh there's a whole lot more places to give that are valid than I'll ever have money. Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like. Yeah, and so when I kind of get that, my wife makes fun of me, and she says, that's Jesus' job. That job's taken.

You're not him. You can't solve everything by yourself. All you can do is solve what's put in front of you with a reasonable ratio of what you have and then release it because you're not going to be the answer to all the world's problems in other words neither am i and i have to relearn that because i feel that's the exact same tension i felt it this morning because we have a budget an amount laid out that we do giving on our family foundation and a thing popped up into my email this morning from my daughter that's the director and and i wanted to do more than we should because i like

the idea of what it was and my wife said nope that's what we're doing and i'm like yep that's what we're doing because we're not jesus it's his job i feel that i feel that same thing i think everybody does so yeah here's the thing you will not become stingy because people that ask this question never become stingy you don't have to worry about being selfish but what you do have to learn to manage is the tension of you can't solve everything be everywhere have enough money to fix everyone's hurts and if you give yourself into a hole go back to college i used to pick up tabs tabs for people or fill their gas up if they looked like they needed it, but I did it on a credit card, right? I dug myself a hole thinking I was being a hero, and it didn't work, right,

that you run out of air at some point. So make sure you've taken care of yourself. You're not good to anybody if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not whole. So, you know, there's two things. One is you're not a selfish person because selfish people don't even ask this question. Right. And when you get more money, you become more of what you already are. So you're going to be okay.

Yeah. Number one. Number two, you're always going to have attention and you have to release it and say, I'm not God. That's his job. He's going to put in front of me what I can do and I'm going to do what I can do and not bring harm to my family while I'm helping other families and other people and um and that's the balance of it uh so that that's how that's how I've done it but I I will tell you that I feel this exact same tension sometimes yeah so uh Josiah is with us in Omaha hi Josiah how are Doing well. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

So I have a Vanguard retirement fund that tracks. It's just a mutual. I always get confused ETFs and mutual funds, but it tracks with the stock markets. And what I was reading is that we're going to enter into a bear market. And that one article suggested I invest. I do dollar cost averaging invest in commodities so I was looking at a mutual fund that just temporarily did you read the article that said

you're supposed to send it all to Dave Ramsey or John Deloney because that article is out there too no it's not it's not out there but just because you read on the Internet doesn't mean it's right. As a matter of fact, that probably invalidates it. That's true. So otherwise I wouldn't be here. But it would still be, you know, I know that in times of volatile times, you know, you're not supposed to have knee-jerk emotional reactions. Exactly. He who jumps off a roller coaster in the middle of the ride is he who

gets hurt finish the ride my brother exactly finish the ride my brother so continue to invest but i do you know what the main question i guess is like of the 10 000 millionaires that we studied that became millionaires the number of them that jumped out of their investments into commodities because they read an article and that made them wealthy when things were scary in the news was precisely zero. None of them did that. None of them did that. They kept investing, and they kept investing, and they kept investing

when it was scary, when it was wild, when it was fun, when it was good, when people are smiling, when they're frowning, when they're cussing, and when they're singing joyful noises. All the time, they just keep on investing, just keep on investing, just keep on investing. You can call it dollar-cost averaging if you want to call it that, but that's not the advantage to it. The advantage of it is you don't stop investing, and you don't change horses in the middle of a flood. While you're in the middle of the stream, you're going to middle of the stream you're gonna drown no no no

no no no and quit reading stupid butt articles on the internet because it'll cause you to do this stuff oh man i had a friend that got cancer or he's got a cancer scare yeah may have cancer may not and um i said listen do not listen the cancer might get you but i will 100 guarantee you i'm going to kill you if you google and start reading about cancer on the freaking internet because you are going to get bad information a bunch of goobs on there with opinions about tomato seeds or whatever else they dream up and i'm going to pound you if you open your computer and type in the word cancer. There is one, whenever I see articles like this, I always go to, what's the incentive? And there's somebody who's got a commodities trading office that makes money on the exchange

that looks for precisely folks like you, Josiah, who are trying to pay attention, who love their families, who are a little bit scared, and they say, hey, come over here, come over here, and you're going to jump off and you're going to give them your money. Don't do it. The other thing is this. Very seldom do you actually get conned by a real con man, but you can get conned by an enthusiastic ignoramus.

And there's a whole lot more of those than there are con men. You just described social media. I did. You did. In one phrase did in one phrase one phrase this is the ramsey show Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. As we talk about mental health, as we talk about mental health as we talk about relationships jobs career money it's all right here on the Ramsey show by the way we're going to be doing

a relationships and mental health theme hour soon which will of course include Dr. John Deloney and that's so we're going to take questions in that hour about marriage parenting family friendships boundaries your own mental health anxiety depression all the things that fall in that hour about marriage, parenting, family, friendships, boundaries, your own mental health, anxiety, depression, all the things that fall under those categories, relationships of all kinds. So if you want to be part of that, you can go to RamseySolutions.com slash ask, put mental health in the subject line. Kelly will get back to you and schedule you for a call to be part of that theme hour.

If you have questions about those things, you can talk about them today, too, here at 888-825-5225. RamseySolutions.com slash ask. Put mental health in the subject line, and we'll do a relationships and mental health theme hour together, you and me and Dr. John. All right, Matthew's in Buffalo, New York. Hey, Matthew, how are you? I've seen better days, but I can't complain if I'm being honest. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help? Better than I deserve, too. I love hearing that. I'm a little nervous. Bear with me.

I just want to say thank you, Mr. Ramsey and Dr. John. You guys have helped me so much that you guys won't see the back end of, but emotionally, spiritually, financially, I want to thank you guys for all that you do. I listen to the YouTube channel all the time, almost every single day. Thank you. How can we help today, sir? So my question here today is, I have made a giant mistake and I've neglected a couple bills and they've gone to collections. And so, a little background, I'm 19 years old, I'm young, I'm stupid, and I'm glad I'm making the mistake today so I don't have to make it with a bigger mistake later. And like I said, these collection companies and get these

sorted out through a credit card or through my debit card because if they go through and overcharge me and it goes through a credit card it'll be easier to dispute it with the credit card company versus the debit card company I've had issues with both and it's been fixed with the credit card much easier than the debit card and getting my money back. So I just want to get your advice and thoughts on what I should do, where I should start and that's it. So thanks for that. Okay. Thank you. What are the bills for? What did you not pay? So I did not pay some toll bills for, like, driving over bridges and that kind of thing. And, like I said, they're up to $800. Oh, it's all that one thing?

Yeah, it's all one thing over the course of about a year now. And I was young, stupid, and neglected them. Okay. All right. Thank you for taking responsibility. Yeah, we've all been there, man. That's a good first start for all of us to take responsibility for what we do and cause. So, no, I would not use a credit card because, as you know from watching YouTube, I would not have a credit card.

So, first thing I would do is take some scissors and place across that thing and squeeze hard, have plastic surgery, and, yeah, then close that account. So, okay, that answered that part. Now that part now the debit card yeah you're right i would not give them electronic access to your checking account which your debit card does do and so i would not use that to settle a collection so you were on to something there what i would do is just find out the amount exactly by having a phone call or an email exchange with the collector and say all right if i get back on the phone with you in a few hours uh what will be the amount okay and then go buy a prepaid debit card for exactly that amount to the penny and then give and then give them that and then cut that up because it's a one-time use item.

Gotcha. So what about a money order with that? You could do that too. That's fine. Or you could do a wire. You can do a wire if you want to, as long as they're not having your debit card or they don't have your checking account number. And, Matthew, I have a – it's a digital version of this. I have a service that I use that's free.

It's online that I put my debit card number in, and it gives me an unlimited number of numbers, of debit card numbers that I can use for vendors online, and I get to say what the max payout is. So if it gets taken, you can't go any further. Does that make sense? What's that called? Privacy.com.

Okay. That's what I use. You can try that. Is it free? It's free. Yeah, it's fantastic. But I put my number in that way. Privacy.com. Do what? Privacy.com okay that's what i use you can try that is it free it's free yeah it's fantastic but i put my number in that way do what privacy.com yeah and i put my debit card in there and then any of my online purchases i don't want online companies having my access to my checking account

and so i can say you can own the any purchase can only be this much amount but again there's probably a dozen of those kind of companies out there. And obviously do your due diligence. But like Dave said, yeah, don't ever give them access to your account. Yeah, that's the big thing. And, you know, get in writing. It would be great if they just send you an email back and say, if you pay by the 15th of March, then it will be this amount. And then you've got that in writing, and you keep that in a file in hard copy, and you keep a hard copy of whatever methodology you used to pay in the file

so if this ever comes up again, you've got proof that it was all settled out. And the great news is you're now on top of your money, and you're going to handle things. Pay your tolls, Matthew. Well done. There you go. All right, Christy's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Christy, how are you? I'm good, How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I have a, well, two kids. One's already in college and my son is a high school junior. He's 16 and

started working and he saved about $5,000 so far. His goal is to be debt-free. His college, he wants to have a debt-free degree. Right now he has $3,000 in savings, $800 in checking, and he had bought some stocks. He invested $700, and then it went up to about $1,500. It's down to about $1,200 now. And I called one of your coaches earlier and asked. He wanted to know if he should invest part of that savings, the $3,000 savings, into a mutual fund. And they said no, because he'll need the money in fall of, he wants to go to community college first and then to a state school. So he'll need the money in fall of 2025. And they said no, don't invest into a mutual

fund. I forgot to ask him about the stocks, whether he should keep those. Well, they're more volatile than mutual funds, you know. Right. But he already had those. He said not to invest more of the savings into mutual funds, but we didn't know what. Should he sell those stocks and put that back in savings? I'd cash it out and put it in savings. Okay.

All right. Trap your wins and avoid the losses. And there's two reasons for that. One is that we're protecting the money that he has made, and it's not going to go down further with geopolitical events in the air. We don't know exactly what the stock market will do in the next six months. It's not a time to be screwing around with single stocks. The second thing that's more important than that,

because the $700 or $1,200 or whatever it ends up being, is not going to cause him to be able to go to school or keep him from going to school. It doesn't answer. It doesn't solve the problem. So if we lit it on fire, it doesn't end him going to school theory, right? Right. So what we really do with it doesn't matter that much but what does matter is what he believes causes him to win and if he starts to see himself as a wonderful stock market day trader he's setting himself up for losses for the next three decades before he figures out that's a dumb butt

idea um and so i don't want to strengthen a muscle that i don't want people using yeah that was kind of his fun money that was that was not his work money i know but it's kind of like it's kind of like let's say he dropped by the casino and dropped a quarter in and it came out 300 bucks and but and then he did quarter in and it came out $300. And then he did that again and it worked again. Then he starts to think that's where wealth comes from. Yeah, see, we let him buy those stocks with the thought that it would probably go down and he would learn his lesson. You're brutal.

Hey, listen, if when I was his age, I would have taken that money and bought Laffy Taffy. So y'all are way ahead of the game. Matter of fact, you might do that probably wouldn't try to take most of my ramsey paycheck um to the taffy and the dentist but but yeah shift that man he's on the right track just shift where he's aiming those that financial that financial weaponry and um something that's more sustainable yeah what When you're teaching kids about money and letting them participate in different types of financial instruments, understand that the actual dollars that are moving around don't matter much, but the lesson that you're teaching them is this is the way to do it. And that's, you know, it's like, well, he'll learn to be responsible if he has a credit card.

No, he won't. He'll learn to use credit cards. That's right. You know, don't give a teenager a credit card. Dumb or a rock, because you're going to have an adult with a credit card later No, he won't. He'll learn to use credit cards. That's right. You know, don't give a teenager a credit card. Dumb or a rock because you're going to have an adult with a credit card later. This is The Ramsey Show.

Hey, it's John Deloney, co-host of The Ramsey Show. Did you know over 18 million people listen to The Ramsey Show every week? A lot of those people listen on one of our 600-plus radio stations across the country. To find a station near you, go to RamseySolutions.com slash show.