The Ramsey Show - App - Deal With the Behavior Problem, Not Just the Math Problem! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love love and create actual amazing relationships dr john deloney ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host today and a host of the dr john deloney show on the ramsey networks which is going crazy good ratings are nuts thank you guys we appreciate it we're here to help you with your life your money whatever's going on the phone number is 888-825-5225 we're going to start off this hour with james in springfield illinois hi james how are you oh pretty good how are you guys doing better than i deserve what's up well i've got a question about paying off student loan debt. So I've got a mortgage with a 6% interest rate, but I've applied for an income-driven save plan that

because of my family size and my income has zero percent interest. I'm wondering if I should pay off the mortgage first or keep that money going towards the student loan. Student loans. As soon as possible. Fast. And that crap you signed up for is going to keep you in debt for 40 years. So it's not going to do any good at all. If you can get zero percent, that's fine.

But then I want you to attack this thing. How much student loan debt have you got? $31,000. What do you make? What's your household income? I make $110,000 a year. How fast are you going to pay off $31,000? I mean attack it.

How fast are you going to do it? Well, so the thing is I have a family of seven, so it makes it a bit difficult to set aside money to attack it. It's an excuse. Right. When are you going to pay it off? It's not a pet. Right, right.

So my thing is it seems like I'm leaving money on the table. James, you still haven't answered the question. How fast can you pay off $31,000 if you put everybody on beans and rice, rice and beans, you stop going out to eat, you stop going on vacations, you sell so much stuff, one of those seven kids thinks they're next. I mean, how fast are you going to pay this $30,000 off? Yeah. I've got about...

James! It's an answer. I could pay it off quick. How fast? You're right. How fast? Give me an answer. Three years.

Three years. Do you have any money saved at all? Yeah, $6,000. Okay. All right. Three years is ridiculous. I want you to do it in less than two. I'm serious.

You guys are not. You're saying, we've got a large family. They eat a lot. Yeah, they do. And yes, they have to have clothes. And yes, they have to have shoes. And yes, that's a real thing. I know all that.

But dude, you have never sat down and written all this out in great detail and decided to attack it. You were trying to figure out a way to keep it around like it's a family member. It's not a family member. It's crap. You need to get it, you were trying to figure out a way to keep it around like it's a family member. It's not a family member. It's crap. You need to get it out of your life. It's killing you guys. How long have you had this student loan debt? About five years now.

Yeah, see, there's my point. And you've done nothing. You sound beat up, man. You're avoiding it. Yeah, why is your head hung so low? Well, so bills have been tight with all the kids and I've just, you know, my wife had triplets, which is why we have so many children and bills have been tight because of that. When did the triplets come six months ago okay all right yeah yeah that that's a legitimate thing but here's the deal as you know i mean yes that's a wonderful blessing and also

whoa yeah and yeah and so uh but the good news is the older they get the less they cost right okay until they get to cars and colleges and stuff. But anyway, so you've kind of got this, the shock of the system mathematically is just about over. And you guys have got to sit down and do a detailed plan. You've been overwhelmed by this overwhelming number. I mean, you almost doubled your kids in one fell swoop right that's emotional it's hard parenting wise there's a lot of duties a lot of responsibilities a lot of chaos and that's translated down into your money and then you're just going well we got a bunch of

kids we can't do it we got a bunch of kids we can't do it yes you can yes you can we have people with large families stand on the debt-free stage every single month that do the Ramsey stuff, but they're doing a written budget with their spouse. They're both saying, this is very important to get this out of my life. I'm not going to use a 0% interest rate as a justification for not dealing for this. You got to deal with it. You got to knock it out because if you don't, it's going to hover and hang around forever no one's coming to fix this you are the solution even even if i can if i can get that mortgage down quicker and say man i'll tell you what here's the deal brother it's it's 63 times i'll tell you something yeah you got to get your head out of the math game

because what's killing your household you're only in the math game because you gave up it's not yeah it's not four or five percentage points what's killing you it's not about interest rate yeah it's about getting it's about you haven't dealt with your crap yeah and every time i bring it up all you do is sidestep and try to do math like some sixth grader. Dude, go deal with the problem. Go deal with the problem. It is a lot more complicated than six versus zero percent. It's a lot more complicated. Number one, you've got five years of denial in your behavior patterns.

Number two, the house is going up in value. The student loan is going up in balance because the thing you signed up for is going backward all the time. You've got to lean into this and blow it up. You've got to change your view on this and quit trying to figure out a way to act like it's not there. It's there. It's almost like he's trying to find a second job without you know to help with all these kids and he's figured out maybe i figured out a loophole

as a way to get some more like i'm trying to think of the psychology just get this thing out of your house man just get it out of the house get out of the house get out of the house you've got to dump it you got to dump it it's that simple you got it you got to push it and It's that simple. You got to push it. And, John, this is the psychology of this. I cannot. People will get lackadaisical and quit on their student loans because of the size, I guess, of the loan, where they'll turn around and take a car, and they'll get mad and pay it off, or they'll take a credit card and get mad and pay it off. But the student loan just seems to lay around like dadgum.

You know, it just says, okay, we're just sitting in the swamp. Well, look, number one, the federal government dangles this. We'll take it away from you, so just keep putting it down the road. And all your friends tell you, well, you're stupid, and you should do this, and here's a zero interest here, and here's a 6% here. You're broke friends giving you financial advice. Well, it goes back to um i saw the great dr peter attia ranting the other day it was fantastic he said you should not be able to post

on a health and fitness instagram account until you can do 100 push-ups until then i don't care what you have to say i don't care what your opinion is about a thing right because you're stepping over hundred dollar bills to pick up pennies. That's what's happening here. I'm stepping over peace. I'm stepping over, I got six kids and I can focus on them to try to pick up an interest rate gain.

And it's just, I want to hug the guy, man. But I can see the chaos as clear as day. It's all over him. Yeah. The whole thing, everything in his life is chaotic. Get a sense of order, a sense of discipline, a sense of direction. Follow a proven plan. Game on, game on, game on.

Quit trying to calculate your way out of this. Pay the stupid thing off. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Larry Burkett used to be on the air a thousand years ago, did a Christian radio show, Money Matters, it was called, about what the Bible says about money. And he's one of the guys I learned from. I certainly learned what the Bible says about money from Larry a lot.

He passed away several years ago. We became friends before he passed away, but at first I was just a fanboy. And he used to say, debt is never the problem. Financial problems are never the problem. They're always the symptom. So you need to keep that in mind because that's how we're going to view it. Personal finance is 80% behavior. It's 20% head knowledge. So if you have a student loan debt that you've made no progress on for five years,

the student loan debt is not the problem. The new triplets that just came were not here for the last five years they're not the problem the interest rate is not the issue this is not an interest rate issue this is a you problem and john when people get to the bottom of that that's the beautiful thing about the work you do in counseling with a phd in counseling and the work that that the reason you do in counseling, with a Ph.D. in counseling, and the reason you joining this team as a Ramsey personality is a perfect overlap to our approach to money because the interest rate is irrelevant because you haven't dealt with you. That's the thing.

When you deal with you, you're not only going to get financial peace, two words that don't go together like airline service, but you're also going to get progress and wealth. Until you deal with you, you're not going to get any of that. Right. And it's hard to sell somebody on that when they're so convinced from a TikTok ad or a TikTok swipe or whatever, where they got the information. And I think a lot of us sit in our house, man, and we just spin out with life's problems. I can't imagine having triplets just show up after having a couple of other kids. Whatever your problem happens to be, you lost your job, your marriage is falling apart, whatever it is. And it's so much

easier we have so much distraction in our world we can just spin our wheels and jam that gas pedal into the bottom of the of the car thinking we're going real fast and we're going nowhere we're just avoiding but money is such an interesting topic because it lets us um it lures us to our own death because it makes us think we can fix it by fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem. The math is the symptom. It's not the problem. The problem is our spending, our income, our lack of control, our lack of working together. Our choices.

I'm going to keep these for five years. Our behaviors and our principles by which, but we somehow think we can unplug from all of this stuff that's called our life and set this money thing over here to the side and just fix it with just math. And the reason you can't is it doesn't unplug it's sitting there right in the middle of your freaking life because your life is impacting it it's impacting your life you can't just set it over here in a test tube and go it's a math thing six percent versus zero it's not a math thing and let's let's i want to speak to the person who's

listening to this or to the gajillions of people who are listening to this who are five years from today away from triplets or a job loss or a mom calling and saying i have cancer or a husband saying i haven't been faithful or whatever the thing is that choice starts now because five years ago, if they had been hell-bent on paying these things off, life would still be chaotic, but I want people to listen to that man's voice. It just sounds cooked, right? It's heartbreaking. And you can celebrate the chaos of three kids coming home

or not be able to breathe because there's no room for three kids. I remember when our oldest daughter, Denise, had the third one. Her husband, Bill, said, well, we just went from man-on-man to zone defense. My buddy said, man, it was all cool until we went from man-to-man to zone. They win. Taylor is in Indianapolis. Hey, Taylor, what's up?

How are we doing today? Thank you for taking my call. Sure, man. How can I help? So I'm thinking about doing a job switch. Right now, I drive a dump truck, and I'm in the union and everything, but I'm looking to be a pilot. But I have

$5,000 in debt, and it's going to send me back another $85,000, but I plan on having the $5,000 that I have now and paying that off this season before I get laid off. You're asking me if I think you should go $85,000 in debt to be a pilot? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, if you think it's a smart job. No, it's not. Okay. Under no circumstances would I do that. Now, should you go become a pilot? Yeah, probably. How old are you? I'm 30.

Okay. Are you married? I am. Okay. I would talk to the Air National Guard and see if they have any programs for training pilots while you serve your country, weekends weekends and two or three sets of boot camp a year um that wouldn't put you away from your family necessarily uh or not for long periods of time uh and let's see if they'll pay for it they have lots of wonderful programs i know

that um i i also would start talking to the local airport about how I can get my hours there after I get a – I would pay to get a certain number of hours to get my first set of – are you licensed at all? No, right now I drive a dump truck. No, I know. I heard that. But have you gotten any pilot's hours in at all? No. How do you know you want to do that?

I worked at the airport about five years ago i wanted to do it about then that time sorry but i never pulled the trigger and i ended up just going to get my cdls and i've been at this for about five years now okay all right i'm with you on living your dream i just don't want you to do it in such a way it becomes a nightmare so let's figure out a way that we can walk into this a little at a time, start getting your hours in while you keep driving truck, because you're making some good money on the truck, but we just don't want to be doing that 10 years from now. You want to be in the air, right?

Yes. But I don't want to try to do it at super high speed because I don't want you going $85,000 in debt because you might not make $65,000 the first year. It's very possible. If you got your commercial hours in and you can actually fly a jet, and that may cost you more than $85,000 to get to that point where you can actually pick up a regional job doing some of these puddle jumpers,

they don't pay anything, man. Yeah. Entry-level pilot pay sucks. Yeah, from what I heard, it's about $ about 55 000 a year but then yep i would be going with lift academy to say i get on with republic and i pay 94 an hour starting off so maybe maybe maybe but hey you're about to walk into the trap brother where you borrow a bunch of money and you've done some napkin envelope on the top carrier paying a top dollar and you've made that math work yeah and there's a lot of maybes and maybe not some probably and

probably not in between you and that dollar amount man so you're trying to jump from the dock into the boat and the boat's not close enough to the dock that's what i'm saying so i want you to pull the boat closer to the dock. And how's that sound? It sounds like going over there, starting to get some of your hours, paying for your first level of licenses, maybe get a weekend job as an instructor once you got enough hours under your belt, and they'll pay you to put more hours down and you can start to build your hours up because the biggest cost is not the actual certifications. It's the hours to get ready. And then if you want to take because if when you take

a job at 55 or 60 versus what you're doing now union to dump truck you're taking a pay cut to move into this dream initially and i don't care if you found one off at 94 that's not that that's not an industry the industry is 55 or 60 right now for entry and i want you to go do that because you can make your way up to two or three hundred thousand someday but please don't go eighty five thousand dollars in debt and rush this do it a little bit at a time and or talk to the air national guard let's see if you can figure out where you get some hours working for your country and they'll pay for the whole stinking thing possibly i don't know let's see what they got out there this is the Ramsey Show. Thanks for joining us, America.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. So, John, the Ramsey cash giveaway is here, $3,000. John sat down and saw $3,000 laying here. He thought I was giving him like a bonus. I was like, man, Dave. You did something good. You usually give me a high five. I will take it it usually just shows up like in your account is this how you're telling me that that's not for me this is not yours all right it's not even mine because it's actually earmarked i'm going to be giving it to someone we're going to

be giving it to someone so here's the deal the ramsey cash giveaways here you could win one of our 500 weekly prizes or the grand prize of $3,000. Hey, how would you spend $3,000 if you won it? I hope you'd work the baby steps with it, right? Entering the Ramsey Cash Giveaway takes about 15 seconds. There's no purchase necessary. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash giveaway. You do have to be 18 years old to win, and you've got to put ramseysolutions.com

slash giveaway. So while you're there though check out our best sellers they're there at 20 off like dr john loni's book building a non-anxious life is on sale for the first time ever his uh questions for human cards on sale baby steps millionaires my latest number one best seller is also on sale 20 off and shop the sale ramsey solutions.com check out the store while you're there but be sure you register for the three thousand dollars that could be a fun game just to uh kind of work through what do we think people would spend three thousand bucks on

just to run here it would like ken would buy some incredible clothes he's a sharp dressed man james would buy a guitar george would buy another cherry flavored vape pen whatever millennials george would buy something to charge his car up he would yeah he'd buy another double a battery charger yeah that's it that's what it is so what's rachel cruz buy with that that can't even cover her latte it won't it won't even It won't even get her attention. That won't even. She wouldn't even stop to pick that up. Yeah. That's it.

So there you go. I'm thinking ammo. Of course you are. Of course you are. I don't have a problem with guns. Can I get another framed photo of my raptor? I don't have a gun problem. I have a problem with guns.

All right. Here we go. Nicole's in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Hi, Nicole. How are you? Hi. I'm great. Thank you so much for having me guys i'm a big fan well we're honored how can we help you um so i guess my question today is just how do i stay motivated to continue on to baby step two um with pain upset while i have a child with a severe medical condition. And then what sort of emergency fund goes in with that? Yeah, I'm just kind of at a loss.

So what's up with your baby? What's the deal? So my daughter will be six next week. She has a severe medical condition. She has a heart condition. She's had four open-heart surgeries before she was one years old. And we were basically living in the hospital here in Iowa that entire time. She's a fighter, though, has been doing great. However, she will need more surgeries in the future.

And she actually is looking at another surgery here this summer sometime. We just don't really know quite yet. And my husband and I have previously gone through Financial Peace University prior to being married, again, after we had our daughter. And we do really good for a little bit, and then we just lose that intensity. And usually it's related to something happening with her, just where we're like, oh, crap, we're back in the hospital. You're saying that like you did something wrong. You did everything exactly right.

When your daughter is in the hospital having open-heart surgery for the fifth or sixth time and she's six years old, you should not be intense about money. You should be intense about loving her. Okay. Which is what you did. Yeah, you're a good mom, Nicole. You did everything right. Thank you. intense about money you should be intense about loving her okay okay which is what you did yeah you're a good mom Nicole did everything right thank you yeah how many bags of Fritos have you had for dinner out of a vending machine

in a hospital right uh-huh you're right that's yeah there's been a lot of a lot of days where that you saw so maybe your workout plan is not on track with your daughter getting surgery oh Oh, well. You know? Oh, well. You're surviving. So here's the thing. Number one, you're dealing with a thing that's gone on over seven years.

Is that what I heard? She'll be six this year. Okay, six years. Six and a half-ish. Six years. Okay. Yeah. And so that's a long period of time.

And the entire six years was not in crisis, just at different moments. But when the crisis hit, it throws everything off because everything's full stop to deal with the situation, right? Exactly. Yeah, it drains all of your emotions. It drains all of your attention. It drains all of your bank account. And it should. She's worth it.

Oh, yeah, for sure. You're doing the right stuff okay now the trick is uh number one i want to not only give you permission but also more importantly to uh tell you your uh your instincts were correct continue the path you've been on which is when we are dealing with a crisis we we're full stop. We push stop on the total money makeover. We're in financial survival mode because we're going to pour everything we have into this crisis until the crisis subsides. So let's walk through a possible example. If my daughter, granddaughter, either one, was going into surgery for open heart this summer, I would not be worrying about making progress right this second on my financial goals.

I would be worrying, praying, focusing on that surgery, the prepared, walking up to it and walking out of it. Now, a year from now, she's home healing, doing well. Well, I need to push play again and get back on the, get back on my game and start, you know, start a year later, start focusing on that. But, um, but you, you've done the right thing. It sounds to me like John, what are you? Yeah, I was just writing down, Nicole. Um um are you finding you and your husband y'all finding you're heading back into that um feeling you had five years ago where you just feel powerless yes uh for sure i i struggle with some anxiety anyways and um it's

just that ptsd moment we just had our son four months ago too and had medical stuff with him. Because why not, right? Yeah, it just never stopped. Here's what I want you and your husband to do. I want you to hang on the line. I'm going to send you building an unanxious life as my gift. I want you all to use these six choices as your roadmap, but I want you and your husband to take a morning and ask someone from your church to come by, ask a friend to come by, a coworker to come by, and just watch the kids for a couple hours, which you probably haven't done in a long, long time.

And I know it sounds crazy, but I want you to do that, and I want you all just to sit with each other for a second. And I want you all to write down on a piece of paper, all right, we're heading into surgery this summer. What are we going to need? And I want you to challenge the people around you, not for real challenge, but give them an opportunity to love you. Say, I'm going to need this many meals because I'm tired of eating out of a vending machine. I'm going to need, if you can help with a gas card,

I want you guys to practice some of these things that really chip away at your health and at your money, like these little nickel and dime things things you got the big million dollar hospital bill fine but you just get run over with we got to go grab some dinner go grab some dinner hey let's go grab some of this hey we need to grab some of this i want you and your husband to be honest about writing that stuff down you see this one coming this time you didn't see it coming when she was born you see this one coming and let's write some of this stuff down and let's give our friends who love us an opportunity to show up maybe they won't but maybe they will right and then yeah i mean we definitely learned our first time around with our daughter so i mean uh we we have family we have friends who do love on us really well um it's it's always hard to ask for help yep yep and that those days are over. But you need help. You need help. And you need to say out loud, we're temporarily pushing the pause button on baby step two

and intensity. We're going to use all of those calories, all of that energy to love each other and to deal with the emotions associated with this life or death situation i want i want to face all that i i want that given i want to give everything i am to that and then when that has passed and it will pass it ebbs and flows right oh yeah when it has passed then you push play again and you go okay um now now we can focus on that thing. Let's get Baby Step 2 jacked up. Let's get going again.

And feel zero guilt about the time we took off from the plan, the money plan, to go work on more important things, which is your daughter and each other and your marriage and the whole situation. So good stuff. You're a great lady. Thank you for calling. This is The Ramsey Show. Thanks for hanging out with us, America. We're so glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Building a non-anxious Life is his latest number one New York Times, our number one bestseller, national bestseller. We're glad you're here. Thanks for hanging out. Hey, it's on sale, the big Ramsey sale. It is. First time we've ever done that.

RamseySolutions.com. Go pick it up. Plus store. 20% off on all these bestsellers. So be sure and check them out. And a deal on the human conversations cards too yeah man that's pretty good so uh hey if you guys want to help us out further we would appreciate that click share and share this show with someone

or cut the link out and send it to somebody however you do it and click follow and subscribe any of that helps the algorithms big time here. We appreciate you guys, whether you're YouTubing or whether you're listening on talk radio or one of the many different other forms that carry the show from satellite radio to, um, uh, of course all the podcast platforms with Apple and Google play and Spotify, everybody out there. Thank you guys for all the different ways you're, you're getting ahold of this. But tell people about us. We appreciate that. It helps a bunch. Scott is up next in Seattle. Hi, Scott.

How are you? Good. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? Good to hear. I'm calling to get some advice on making a first home purchase. My fiance and I are getting married later this year.

Yay. And we'd like, yeah, thank you. And we'd like to get into a house, ideally within the next two years. We have no debt, and we think we could save up about 50% of the down payment for the house. Wow. In that time frame. Good for you. Thank you.

We appreciate it. That being said, we've heard some advice that putting that amount of cash toward the house doesn't make like 100% sense. And sometimes in some situations it can better be put towards investments if the interest rate for the mortgage is pretty good. That would be advice from broke people who don't know what the flip they're talking about. Well, that makes it pretty clear. I would 100% do this with my family in my home. If I were you, I would do exactly what you're talking about doing.

And let me back that mouth up, okay? We did the largest study of millionaires, not broke people with an opinion, millionaires, people that have a $1 million or greater net worth that's ever been done in North America. We studied 10,167 of them. The number of them that said, out of 10,000 millionaires, the number of them that said we became a millionaire because we invested our cash instead of putting it down on the house was precisely zero. No one said that. Rich people simply do not do what you're talking about.

Broke people talk about it and say that rich people do it, but they simply do not do it. What we found instead, Scott, was that the typical person how old are you 30 30 and you sound like you guys are making uh 250 are you what are you making between the two of you uh around around 150 total pre-tax the that's your combined income after you're married correct okay wow you're aggressive savers then. Very good. Okay, either way, so here's what we found. By the time you're 42, if you fit the plot profile,

the typical template that we found, the case studies of these average millionaires, the typical millionaire that we went through, they had two things primarily that caused them to hit their first $1 to $5 million of net worth, and that was that they got a paid-off house, $600,000, $700,000, $800,000 paid-off house. By the time you're there, it'll be more than that. And they've invested simultaneously into their 401ks and Roth IRAs and built those up. And so they're sitting with $500,000 or $600,000 in each,

and so they've got $1.2 million, $1.5 million, $1.8 million net worth, something like that. And that's the first, the two biggest things that we saw that people did, financial products, so to speak, financial pathways, that caused people to actually hit that level of wealth. A paid-off house and a loaded-up retirement. It was that simple. There wasn't a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

There wasn't a bunch of, oh, I'm going to borrow on my mortgage because I can make more in the market. I'm going to put the money in the market, and that arbitrage, some TikTok guy learned a new word the other day apparently. It's an old word. But anyway, that spread I'm making is going to make me rich. learned a new word the other day apparently um you know is it's an old word but the um anyway that that that spread i'm making is going to make me rich and so scott that's you know it's social media bullcrap is what it is so the reality is is that wealthy people simply pay off their house so

i i i am so impressed that you can put 50 down in two years what that also tells me is in two to three more years you're going to completely paid off off. Pay it off, man. And you're going to be 35 years old with a paid-off freaking house in Seattle and the stupid thing's going up like a rocket ship, and you're going to be sitting on a million-dollar house that's paid for in just a handful of years. Dave, I'm convinced that the age of the influencer is coming to an end because I think people have been doing this nonsense for several years, and like the caller we had at the beginning of this hour hour you still got your student loans after five years you still got this you still got that like and this people who just learn a new fancy word and try to sell it

and tell everybody go do this thing it just doesn't work after one two three four five years doesn't work it doesn't work it doesn't work yeah the well the influencer is the um the not wise it's the stepchild of reality tv right okay so reality tv is you became famous for what being famous all right you did nothing you're on tv you just were on tv being absurd and you're the absurdity was somewhat entertaining and you you were pretty, or you were something, right? But you're basically an empty suit. You know, you've got nothing to say. You are nothing. But we're all watching you anyway, like we're a moth drawn to a flame, you know.

And then they start giving advice. And then the next step is we go from that to people who are empty suits, who have never done anything are now influencers right and they have absolutely zero earned the right to have that influence not at all teaching a generation of people not at all things that are going to ripple through their family tree for a long time but it's the sick child of reality tv is the influencer and so you're exactly right we're seeing the data the data scientists are coming out i mean we study this stuff because of social media and because

of the platforms that we're all involved in and and we've got about four different sources coming at us right now that are very credible john's been nerding out on this stuff but we're looking at it as a company right now because ramsey's in the broadcast business. We're in the content business, the business of influencing you, but we actually are not empty suits. We actually have the knowledge, the degrees, the experience, the things to tell you this, and back it up with the research. So Scott's not any of that. He just caught the back end of that.

Sorry, Scott, you're doing great. Scott, you're doing great. 50% down, get that sucker paid off. I mean, you get married and you can save that kind of money in the first two years and you go put a big old chunk on the down payment. You're going to be glad you did. And don't take financial advice from broke people. That's what we're saying.

And don't take life altering advice from somebody that had a single experience. Well, here's the thing. If you're going to be a life coach, you should have first had a life. Correct. Right. Well, and here's the thing. If you're going to be a life coach, you should have first had a life. Correct. Right. Well, and here's the thing, though. I love folks. They go through, you know, somebody cheats on somebody,

and they go through three years of hard therapy. They rebuild their marriage, and it's amazing. And they reach out, and they say, hey, we want to write a book on marriage, and we want to become marriage speakers. And what I always have to break their heart and say, hey, you had an experience in your house. You did. That does not make you the person, right?

You have all the letters. You know what you're talking about. And you have a personal experience. And I think the cornerstone to wise counsel is you've walked with millions of people. And so you have the academic stuff. You've got a whole bunch of different stories. And you know what it's like to have to go tell your wife

we lost everything. All three of those make you a credible person to listen to. Not just you went to school because we got plenty of that nonsense and not just because

you got a bunch of people that show up at your house. It's all of it together, man. And you got to be careful about who you take counsel from, especially when it comes to your health, especially when it comes

to nutrition, especially when it comes to your money. The Bible does comes to nutrition, especially when it comes to your money. The Bible does not say in the multitude of counsel there's safety. It says in the multitude of wise. Wise. That's right. Counsel. That's right.

Safety. And that's what we're saying. We're actually seeing the data that the power of the influencer is starting to wane. And, you know, someone just is now someone who can garner some likes, garner some clicks, is telling you what to do with your money. You know, and I think Gen Z is the one killing it, because Gen Z is sick of it. They're sick of things that are not authentic.

They're watching their parents, and it didn't work. They're watching their older brothers and sisters. It's not authentic, and Gen Z can smell a rat a mile away. And that's one of the reasons we love gen z around here this is the ramsey show Thank you.