The Ramsey Show - App - Dave’s Feelings About Modern Day Tipping Culture (Hour 2)

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Dave Ramsey & George Kamel answer your questions and discuss: "I'm bitter after my husband took out a HELOC", Dave's thoughts on modern tipping culture, "Should I pause paying off debt to pay for my son's school?" How automating your savings and investing will help you win with money. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Join a Personality-led FPU class. Click here! Enter The Ramsey Cash Giveaway for a chance at $3,000! https://bit.ly/TRSgvwy Shop our bestsellers during the $10 Sale! https://bit.ly/TRS10Sale Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods of Moving and Storage Studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour with Rachel Cruz is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Lisa is in Indianapolis. Hi, Lisa.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Oh, my goodness. I'm really nervous. That's okay. We've never lost a patient. What's up? Okay. Okay. Good. So, just to get to the point here, about 15 years ago, my husband took out a HELOC. How many years ago? About 15.

15 years ago, he took out a HELOC. Okay. Uh-huh. For an. Okay. Uh-huh. For an investment opportunity. Uh-huh. And the last few years it hasn't been paying dividends. It's with his company. And we started Jade's class a few weeks ago. And I love her.

She's awesome. And we're going through the baby steps, and I just feel like we're so out of order because we had our house paid off. And then he did this investment opportunity, and now I feel like I'm a little bitter, and I'm having a hard time being on board to pay this off together because I'm just upset about it. Where were you 15 years ago?

I had two babies, and I said I don't agree with it. And you signed the papers anyway. No, I didn't sign any papers. Yes, you did. You don't get a HELOC on someone's personal residence without the spouse's signature. I didn't sign it. I didn't know that. Okay. And, well, it doesn't matter now.

There's a HELOC on your house. Okay. Yes. But, yeah, it might matter. I don't know. Okay, so what do you want to do? I don't know. I was motivated to get. how much is the debt it's up to 283 000

what does your husband make the main debt we have about we probably bring in about 10 000 a month what was his investment into his company? He bought into a partnership or what? So it was a family-owned company and he had initially had shares with the company and then when it sold to a private firm, he made all this money off the shares. Where did that money go? So he reinvested $500,000. First, he paid off our house, which is great. And then the rest of it, about $500,000, he reinvested in the company. And then I guess he was so excited, he decided, oh, well, you know, we're getting a dividend of $600. So the investment into the new company is in what form?

Is it a publicly traded company or what? No, it's not. It's just the company shares. He still works there? A private. Uh-huh. Okay. So what percentage of this company does he own?

I don't even know. He has about 75, 000 shares and i asked him what are the rules to get out of it can he sell them i asked i asked him that too and he said oh no we can't sell them and i said well let's talk to let's talk to whoever's in charge of this and see what we can do yeah to sell it yeah so that's kind of on his assignment because you know when we started this class a few weeks ago that's not gonna do with the class it's got to do it's got to just do with common sense we need to clear we need to clear up this mess you made and you're playing russian roulette with our house it ain't cool dude it's not have you shared with him your feelings about this

strongly saying i don't feel safe i want this debt gone is he actually listening to that or is he going well just trust me trust me i got this well when i bring it up you'll either leave the room or last week and we were listening to Jade's class, I just started crying and talking about it. And the thing is, he's like the nicest person in the world. He's not like a jerk. He doesn't go out and buy things for himself or anything. Oh, I beg to differ. Yeah. I think he bought a lot of stuff for himself like five hundred thousand dollars worth

while putting your home at risk yeah so yeah we need to liquidate this it's not a it's not paying dividends it's not working uh so i'm kind of i'm kind of worried about the quality of the company at this stage of the game um and whether you're ever going to get a half a million dollars out of it or not and b uh you want to get your house paid off and uh that you know he basically borrowed on your home to invest in a business that he's a minority shareholder in which is just dangerous as can be that's just dangerous because he got no vote he can't you know if you don't have if you're not a majority shareholder meaning 51 you don't control the outcomes of the company and so other people vote your prosperity in or out right and that's what's happening here i can i

can tell by the way you've structured this conversation yeah, he needs to, this sweet man needs to get his money out of his company and pay off his home and never sign his wife's name again without having a power of attorney. Because I don't, unless Indiana has different laws than most states, you don't get a home equity loan without both spouses signing on a property, on your personal residence. Now, you could do it on an investment property in some states, but you can't do it on your personal residence. Title company won't cover it.

Now, Dave, I've heard you talk about agreeing with your spouse on financial decisions, and you and Sharon do this. So if you say, hey, I want to invest this money over here, and Sharon has a strong feeling, as you say yeah is it just not happen what's the conversation we argue about it until I'm right but you know I'll argue about until she's right but you know we come to a conclusion but we're not when in doubt don't is the rule and and so uh and you know these days Lisa what your what your role is the same as Sharon's, because this is the type of crap I did in the old days. I'm not signing her name, but I'm not 100 percent sure he did that.

But I'm kind of thinking he did. But the but this idea of I'm going to do this, this is the right thing. And she's got two kids and she's like, whatever you want to do, go ahead. And she would say, like, whatever you want to do, honey, which is Southern for you wreck it by yourself, Bubba, and then I'm going to make fun of you. That's what that means. And so, you know, no, we need to have a meeting of the minds.

We need to be, and Lisa, your role from this point forward is speak up loudly. You have a voice, you have a vote. And both of you get a vote. And if both of you don't place your votes, you stand a much higher probability of losing money on things and buying the wrong things at the wrong times. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy. So if you feel like the system is working against you,

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George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Our question of the day is sponsored by Neighborly, your hub for home services to repair, maintain, or improve your home. Researching dozens of providers is a thing of the past. Neighborly is all hub for home services to repair, maintain, or improve your home. Researching dozens of providers is a thing of the past. Neighborly is all you need to remember for a nationwide network of local home service pros. Great company, by the way. Visit neighborly.com to find help near you. Today's question comes from Ben in Florida.

He writes, I understand tipping 20% at a restaurant when I'm dining in, but am I obligated to tip at a restaurant when I place a to-go order? There's no service provided other than making a meal, and I drove to pick it up. Am I wrong here? I'm curious what your thoughts are with how crazy tipping has become culturally. This has been all over, Dave, as self self checkouts now have tipping screens you've done some really funny bits on this we have there's social media stuff on george camel look him up on social media making fun of the uh the spin tip move where they spin the thing around at the fast food joint and ask you to tip well and it's always the uh it's just gonna ask you a question

like you don't know what the question is yeah you know it's always the other one scenario the other one i saw the other day i was cracking up and you we teach generosity let's just be clear okay one of the reasons to get your money together is to be crazy generous but the other one was it's like i go into this guy said i go into a grocery store and they're like do you want to add ten dollars for hungry children he's like no i want this mega corporation to pay for hungry children i'm not adding ten dollars it's like everywhere you go i'm checking out buying a dog collar do you want to help dog oh yeah they have it on online i mean pet smart's got a thing right everywhere they've got a done for ten dollars for starving something and uh listen

i i totally believe in taking care of pets i totally believe in taking care of uh starving children and all that but i don't do it at the uh when i'm checking out i'm more thoughtful with my generosity and much larger with my generosity than that now having said all that the uh the spin move is this is kind of middle ground here on the to-go order it's iffy it's iffy i think dining in i'm outrageously tipping valets i'm outrageously tipping a they're out in the rain the sun b they're driving my really nice car and i don't want ferris bueller's day out i'm outrageously tipping okay so uh all right so now we've covered that stuff i believe in tipping i always leave uh a really nice large

bill as a tent on the uh bed when i leave a hotel room sitting right there on the end so it's obvious what it was for the uh the person that's nice enough to clean up that room for me uh and i didn't have to make my bed that day life is pretty good so uh you know i tipped i believe in tipping there was some physical services providing tipping at a fast food joint no tipping at the starbucks line no no no no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Tipping your driver. Sure. Tipping your bellman. You're better. Yeah, big time.

Be outrageously generous with tipping. This one is kind of in the middle. It's not really fast food. It's a dine-in nice restaurant or a semi-nice restaurant that would have given you the opportunity to tip were you to have sat down and had a waiter which you did not have but sometimes they assign a waiter a host a person to work this table yes and that's the the caveat here is there is physical effort involved with packaging up all your stuff making sure the order's right adding the utensil all of that but it's not the same level of service as i walk up to dave 17 times to make sure he's got water make sure he's got

what he needs you know showed him the menu, recommended some wine, whatever it is. So I don't see it in the same category. I don't tip 20% on to-go orders unless it was a giant group order catering. They out-served me. They were amazing. But generally, it's a buck or two, maybe 10% on a to-go order. And some people actually force it now. There's one restaurant in town that I get to-go orders from they have a 10 service fee built in to to-go orders so businesses are just going we're going to force a gratuity which i'm not a fan of but they can do what they want to do and i'm choosing to participate they didn't force you to shop there no i chose to still eat there all right so that's the caveat uh but i don't like the guilted generosity or

the forced generosity guilted that's the thing with the I don't like the guilted generosity or the forced generosity. That's the thing with the starving children in the grocery store thing. So should you? I think it's a nice thing to do, and I think it's a great reason to get your finances in order just to be able to do that. But if you feel guilted into it, I wouldn't do it out of guilt. I'm going to make eye contact while I spin the screen around and go custom tip 0.00.

There we go. That's the way. That's the flex. You're savage, George. So savage. But I got hate on this, Dave, because we posted a funny meme. Oh, you did get big time hate on it. And all the comments, and they're saying, I work in the service industry, and I can't

believe you don't tip 25% for to-go orders. You don't work in the service industry if you work in fast food. Let me help you with this. You work in a fast food place. That's not the service industry service industry is where you provide service not where you hand food over the counter that someone else cooked no that i'm sorry you're a cashier if you work in the fast food well what where does the line end dave our grocery stores are we going to start tipping i mean they bag our groceries should we not tip the guy takes them to my car those guys absolutely

getting a tip. Absolutely. But just for scanning it through the checkout line, I don't think it qualifies as gratuity. No. And I was in Mexico and went to a nice, they have a whole different set of customs, right? A nice grocery store, a high-end grocery store, so to speak, if you can get that right in your head but um it's the whole this is not this is not a this is not this you know this is a nice place and they don't they don't do bags you bring your own bag right and if you don't have your own bag there's these nice little uh 90 year old mexican ladies standing at the end of the thing

boxing the stuff up in boxes that they brought from the back and helping you out. And I always overtip those ladies. There's just something about them that just says big money, big money. So yeah, I want to do that for sure. This one, I'm kind of going to be 50-50. I got two thoughts on it. One is I don't want to be guilted into anything.

I'm with you. And B, I never, there's very few times, I say never, almost never have I regretted being generous. There's very few times I look back, unless I was guilted into it, okay? But there's very few times I look back that not counting being guilted. Wish I didn't give them that five bucks, that 10 bucks. You know, because they're in there working and i'm just trying i'm doing well god's blessed me why not you know why not just be easy

with it don't be so that's a goddamn hard case but i do resent this spin thing at the counter and that is guilting i'm not doing that i'm not doing the ten dollar thing i skip the starving children add-on at the thing. I'll take care of starving children through one of the ministries at the Ramsey Foundation. That you vetted, that you trust. That we support, that we vetted, and that we spend a whole lot more than $10. I can promise you that.

And give a whole lot more than $10 to that. So we're doing our part, so to speak, but just not through XYZ grocery store. Yeah. And usually there's a compliment as they spin it that's, hey, you know, I love your hair. You ever get one of those? compliment as they spin it that's hey uh you know love your hair you ever get one of those that though that they never say that to me i never get love your hair that's sad if they tried that you'd get a really big tip from dave if you try that it never comes up no i it wouldn't because that would not be real it would be well there's an expectation

if dave ramsey walks in smart ankle you love my hair what are you what's wrong with you but do you feel pressure as a public figure known for money and generosity you know absolutely no they're going to tell this story and when in doubt when in doubt if i'm going to give them a dave story it ought to be a good one that's right so uh when in doubt god's made giving me a lot of money to manage and so i'm it's easy i don't that i don't feel guilty about. But I'm just very careful. And Sharon's like, you way over tip. And I'm like, yep, yep. And when I get to heaven, no one's going to go, nope, you're not getting in here because you over tipped.

You're an over tipper. It didn't work. St. Peter's never gone. Nope, you can't come in. You over tipped, Dave. It's bad use of money. Because to me, it's a form of generosity in the appropriate situations. This one, gee, this one's right down the middle for me.

So what I'm going to, I'm trying to visualize walking in, because I don't do this very often. Yeah, like if we go to get a bunch of barbecue, like you said, a big order. That's what I'm saying. Like we got a family reunion coming up. Sharon will send me up to the barbecue place, and I'm picking up like boxes of crap. You know, pickles, like 80 gallons of pickles. I got to go to these parties. All this stuff, man.

Well, there's a big family. And so when I'm doing that, somebody has worked their tail off on that. Yeah, I'm definitely going to jack that one up. But if it's Dave's Pad Thai, where do I have a single person's order? That's generally my situation. I don't personally do that, so I don't know how I would react. I probably, when in doubt, though,'ll be generous you never messaged up but is it a mandatory cultural thing no is it a generosity move if you do it yes this is the ramsey show george camel ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the

debt-free stage Colin and Olivia are with us hey guys how are you hi good how are you better than I deserve welcome welcome where do you live we live in Portland Michigan all right what's that near um Lansing ah okay gotcha cool welcome to Nashville and how much debt have you guys paid off so we paid off about 61,000 in total um we got married in the process so together paid off about 49,000 ah okay of which 49 since marriage yeah gotcha okay and how long since you started working on the 61 back um 13 months in total. Okay, very cool. How long y'all been married? Since September. Oh, wow. All right. Very good. Still fresh. There you go. And what's your range of incomes in the last 13 months? So I started as an intern making about 49. And then when we got married, I got into my

career and we got married at about 130. Excellent. Cool. What do y'all do for a living? So I'm a packaging engineer. I'm a field service tech for heavy equipment Excellent. Cool. What do you all do for a living? So I'm a packaging engineer. I'm a field service tech for heavy equipment. Very good. Good for you guys. What kind of debt was this $61,000? So about $54,000 was student loans. I had a car loan, a furnace loan, and a credit card.

Okay. The way she says that, Colin, you had nothing. He was, he actually had nothing. No debt at all. I was the baggage. No debt at all. Okay, all right. So when you got married, you kind of stepped into this journey she was already on.

Yeah, yeah. I actually got home one day and I walked in and the credit cards were cut up on the kitchen table. I was like, okay, well, we're doing this. It just got real. Were you shocked by all this as she started the debt-free journey uh no i uh went to high school and we kind of had a financial peace class so i always i knew about it and i was all for it from the beginning yeah so what got you fired up and on track olivia um so i was on my internship um right before I graduated college and um what's your degree in um packaging science oh okay of course so um was on my internship and I got a

call from the bank and I had 300 a month in interest payments and they called just saying that they needed more money and I was like I don't have more money so and I was not sure what to do and I started crying at my desk and my my co-, Chris, was like, have you heard of Dave Ramsey? And I was like, I never have. And I didn't learn about this in school. So he turned me on to the podcast. And it was just like that same day. I mean, all day, every day while I was working, when I was going on a walk.

It was just a total mindset shift from then. So he really turned me on to it. Very cool. Very cool. Well, congratulations. Thank you. total mindset shift from then so wow he really turned me on to it very cool very cool well congratulations thank you so nothing like a little a little stress to make you search out a wake-up call oh yeah definitely yeah there was definitely um a point where i would not go check my mail and i was like i just can't i can't live like this anymore i needed to go get my mail but i was afraid of the bills and i was afraid of the payments and I would just never I didn't even know how much debt I had until I

started listening to the show because I was afraid to check so you don't add it up exactly yeah to all of you out there who uh see a co-worker crying at their desk and recommend Dave Ramsey thank you yes we appreciate you never know that is one of our more uh popular marketing techniques actually yeah well it's a risky one because you know a lot of the times Dave Ramsey thank you yes we appreciate you never know that is one of our more uh popular marketing techniques actually yeah well it's a risky one because you know a lot of the times people don't listen what caused you to go I'm open to it were you just at that kind of rock bottom moment where you went I'll try anything yeah definitely I think that it was like um one of my my co-worker had said if what you're doing isn't working then you obviously need to change what you're doing and I

was like well it's not working. Why not? Yeah, exactly. I had nothing to lose at that point. And even if it didn't work, I was like, well, I mean, I tried. And luckily, I did. The first thing I tried, I wasn't into, you know, I wasn't really big into the financial game. So this is the first thing I tried. It was the only thing I'll probably ever do.

Good. Well, it's all you'll need to do if you keep doing it. I promise you. Wow. Way to go so how does it feel to be completely free just a few months into your all's marriage feels so good yeah we're closing on our first house on friday so we're so excited i love it well congratulations thank you that's a long way to go from not being able to pay your 300 bill

yes yes very cool congratulations good stuff all right what do you two tell people a young married able to pay your $300 bill. Yes. Yes. Very cool. Congratulations. Good stuff. All right. What do you two tell people, a young married couple out there that's thinking, I don't know if I can do this or not. What do you tell them the key to getting out of debt is? I'd say just be consistent. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's super dim. Don't listen to the people around you because they're all dumb and they don't know what they're doing. I'd say just, just except for that one guy except for my friend when you were crying yeah yeah just sticking with it and just like if you know what you're doing is not working um you need a solution and you need a way out so i mean just

find it within yourself to be mad at yourself for doing that so yeah and i think the big thing for like me me at least was i'm pretty visionary learner i guess so we had like a chart on the fridge and we'd color it as we paid off debt and yeah watching that debt go down was kind of that debt thermometer thing that's a big deal man you got to have that i think we're all that way uh to some some more so than others but but everybody it never hurts to have it right in front of you and go hey i'm winning hey this sacrifice is paying off right hey we're you know it's like looking down the scale you lost some weight if you're trying to lose weight you know yeah i think i can drink a little more water this

is working you know so whatever it is you're doing you keep doing it because we're moving the needle finally in the right direction yeah very good good stuff wow you guys are impressive there's so many couples out there that go yeah we have we have the debt, but we really want the house, right? So they just do everything all at once, and then they wake up one day and they go, this ain't it. And you guys did it slow and steady. What would you tell those couples who feel like they want the house?

Homeownership is such a dream, and you guys waited and you did it the right way. I would probably just say one step at a time. Like, get a goal, finish the goal before you move on. I mean, I think the focus is just all of our friends and family were like, this is crazy. But I'm like, the one step at a time and the focus, one thing after another, it makes so much of a difference. Because we had been looking at houses when we were in the process of paying off debt. And I was like, I just can't do it. I didn't feel right until it was gone you know yeah well it's you know and now that the ones that were uh you know they were kind of saying

you're crazy now look at you i've only been married since september and you're dead free and got a house yes ding ding so how you like me now you know right i like it so well done you guys proud of you excellent work hey we've got got the Live and Give box for you. It includes the Baby Steps Millionaire's book, latest number one bestseller. That's the track your own to be millionaires. And the Total Money Makeover book, which is the process you followed to get out of debt. And a Financial Peace University membership. If you've not been through the whole class as a young married couple go

through it now even though you're out of debt it's not only about getting out of debt it's about handling money all the way to wealth all the way to generosity so take it if you're not taking it yet and i will give it to you all as our gift for coming to nashville to do your debt-free scream awesome proud of you guys well done colin and olivia from the lansing michigan area 61 000 paid off in 13 months making 49 to 130 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one we're debt-free yeah yeah that's it!

You know, it is a combination of what the 12-steppers say. She said the line twice. If you don't like the results you're getting, you know, continuing to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. That's the 12-steppers, right? And if you don't like the results you're getting, it's time to change the recipe. If you're baking a cake and it keeps turning out chocolate and you wanted vanilla change the recipe something's wrong right you're not getting what you want out of this thing

you can't keep doing the same thing so she made a change that is such a basic human thing and yet so many people just continue to do the same thing go well i don't know you think that we elect a new president maybe i'll be okay no doofus it's you you gotta change you me i'm looking in the mirror i go you you guy in the mirror doofus you gotta change you you're the problem and that's exactly what olivia did and she changed everything yeah i mean it's one of the greatest gifts god has given man is free will to stop doing stupid stuff and do smarter stuff. That sounds like a theologian right there. I don't know if that made it into the Bible. Free will to stop doing stupid stuff. That's my spark notes. Second hesitations. There we go. This is the Ramsey Solutions.

Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Paying off debt is smart. That enables you to save and invest, which is smart. Enables you to be generous, which is smart. But also you not only play offense, you need to play defense, and that's good insurance, protecting your finances from emergencies. There's 10 kinds of insurance that you might need and a whole bunch of kinds you don't need.

And we built a tool to help you figure this out. It's completely free. It's called the Coverage Checkup Tool. It tells you which types to add, which types to drop, which types to adjust, even ranks your coverage list by importance. We'll email it back to you from our Ramsey trusted insurance providers. You can get the plan in place fast and it might be the most important five minutes of free you do this year. Could end up saving you a ton of money because sometimes we're buying the wrong kinds of insurance

or buying insurance the wrong ways. So visit RamseySolutions.com slash checkup. RamseySolutions.com slash checkup. Alvin is with us in North Dakota. Hey, Alvin, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Good afternoon, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Sure. What's up?

Well, my question is, should I pause Baby Step 2 to stack up cash for my son's private school, or should I cash flow it monthly when he starts to attend? How much is it? It's $6,000 yearly. $6,000 a year dollars a year yes sir and what do you make what's your household income um ninety one thousand a year okay all right um is it all due is it is it normally paid they have a monthly plan is that what you're saying yes sir do they charge an interest or an extra fee have a monthly plan is that what you're saying yes sir do they charge an interest or an extra fee on the monthly plan it's a 50 fee to pay monthly one time or each month one time okay um

i probably would just make it a monthly just put in my budget what do you think george well i think putting you know 500 bucks as a line item in your budget and still allowing you to make headway in your debt i like that plan better than just waiting until you know we have the money because what's running through my head is either way you're going to have to put it as line item in your budget you're sinking fun now i put a line item in your budget. You're going to have to say, I'm building up a pile of cash here, and I'm throwing $500 a month at that for 10 months or for 12 months, so I've got $6,000. Or, you know, whatever, $600 for 10 or however you want to break it down, $1,500 for four.

Whatever it is, some way or another, I'm going to end up having a line item in my budget, and I think I'll just make it a monthly payment. What's left on your debt? I have $15,000 left on my debt. Okay. All right. And you can do this. It's not an outrageous percentage of your household income, which might lead me to an objection for private schools

whether or not you could afford it but i think you can afford this and still get out of the other stuff don't you yes sir i think they can yeah yeah i think you just i what are you leaning towards alvin which way would you rather do it there's not a wrong answer okay as long as you're paying for it you're not putting it on a credit card, we're fine. So which way would you rather do it? Would you rather do it monthly or just back it up and do it? I was leaning toward packing it up and paying it at once. Okay. But then I also fear that if I have all that money set aside and an emergency happens, I'll be looking that as so that i need to use that now

yeah well i mean if you can't uh you know pinky swear and spit shake you're gonna keep your money's hands off of it then if you if you're not comfortable you're gonna keep your hands off it then i wouldn't i would not stack stack it. What kind of debt is the 15? It's auto loans. It's my only debt. Yeah, how quick are you going to have that clear? Without the private schooling, I would be done in 10 months. Okay, so you're not necessarily doing the private schooling.

I am doing it. He's enrolled. Okay, so I don't think without the private schooling is not an option then? No. So without it's 10 months, you're saying it'll take an extra, what, six months beyond that? Yes. Okay. I would also find a way to make it up and go, how can I make an extra six grand over the next 12 months so that I don't hold back the debt payoff process?

Yeah. Let's shack this up. Tighten down the budget and raise the income if possible to add some fuel to the fire. If you aren't comfortable that you're going to leave the money alone, if something pops up, then I would not stack it. You know, just one of the things I have to do is I have to put systems in place to guard me from me. And I do that quite frequently. Like there are no donuts in my house.

Because if they're there, I will eat them. And so I just don't have donuts in my house. That's a temptation. That's a system. I have no donuts in my house. And my wife does not bring donuts into my house. Well, Sharon wouldn't touch a donut. No, she's health food nut.

But she knows I'll eat them. It would be vegan and gluten free. Dave's like, I don't even want that. That's not even a real donut. That she's health food nut but but she knows i'll eat them it would be vegan and gluten-free dave's i don't even want that that's not even a real that's not real food not real donuts but yeah so i mean you have to build systems in to keep you uh automatic like i put a bunch of our investing stuff on automatic draft and then i've not thought about it in 15 years it just automatically comes out every month i've got a big chunk that comes out of my uh personal account and goes into a s&p 500 for investing in real estate later it's a big old check every month and it's been coming out there

forever and i'm just not used to it not being about it it's like it's not there you know it's auto so there's a book many years ago that was a bestseller david bach wrote called automatic millionaire yes and his concept was put as many things on autopilot as you can and i i don't disagree with that it's easier than trying to trying to form a habit uh that our friend james clear would talk about from atomic habits but but two good books both worth reading but the uh uh yeah that's that's the way to look at it. So Alvin, I try to protect me from me. And you said that about you, so I'm putting yours on payment.

That's the first step is self-awareness. Putting it on payment is what I'm doing. I'm just going to pay the extra 50 bucks and let it run. I did that with early in our budgeting career. I put the budget billing on the utilities. It keeps it even. Which made it the same amount every month, and then once a year there's a true-up. You're either over or you're short, and there's a true-up once a year.

And it's not dramatic because their estimating system was pretty good back in those days. We don't do that now. But that helped me smooth the budget out. So I always knew what utilities were going to be except once a year. And you pay a little extra fee for that. And I actually had my car insurance back in the day. Because when I first started doing this stuff, I had quarterly car insurance. Talk about a nightmare.

Wow. Once a quarter, you've got a big pay. Save, save, save, pay. Save, save, save, pay. It's a mini sinking fund. It's like it was all the time it was always paying it's felt like so i just put the thing i paid an extra i don't know like he said 30 bucks a year or something and just put it on a monthly and never thought about it again until i finally

wasn't using that company and i just went to an annual many years well now it's easier because i use every dollar and they have sinking funds you can set up in there so once a year i pay my annual insurance premiums but you have to what, the trick of that is you have to emotionally divorce yourself from the money. Yes. Like it's gone. It came out and it's over there in the education kids private school fund and I don't own that money anymore.

It's like it's gone emotionally. It's like that money coming out for an investment. It's not there. I can't buy a toy with it because it's not for toys. It's for investments. It's gone. And you kind of, if you get, you have to get some maturity. Well, that's just.

And discipline. I've done it for 30 years, so it's easy. But I had to set it aside. I had to have a separate account, savings account, just for the emergency fund. Never touch that one account that's the account that has a do not touch stamp on it and i've never touched it oddly enough i've never had an emergency big enough in in decades you couldn't get close to it that i

couldn't cash flow yeah uh and some of that is i've got pretty good cash position but uh but but it just it's not there that money good cash position, but it's not there. That money is not even in my emotional equation. And that's just really important, folks, that you set yourself up for winning like that. Those are good thoughts from, and really, in a sense, that's what Clear talks about in Atomic Habits as well. So good stuff. George Camel, Ramsey Personality. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host.

That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app in your favorite app store today.