The Ramsey Show - App - Diligence Is Rewarded With Prosperity (Hour 3)

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where net is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Keith is with us in Kansas. Hi, Keith. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, thanks for taking my call, Dave. Sure, what's up? My wife and I are working on Baby Step 2. Just recently started. We don't have too much debt. But the one thing that's bothering me is I had a student loan

back in 1986. It was only for $2,000, but I don't believe I ever paid any money on it. Every once in a while, I get a letter in the mail from always a different collection agency on this. And they say that, you know, it was backed by the U.S. government, education, whatever. But it's never shown up on my credit report or anywhere else. All I get is, you know, an occasional notice from a debt collector. Is there any way to check on if this debt is still valid? Is it something that I need to still worry about? If it is unpaid, it is still valid because there's not a statute of limitations on student loans. Federally insured student loans survive forever until they're paid. And so, you know, you could check with the Department of Education and see if they have

a database search process. And I would pull a copy of all three of your credit bureaus and see if it shows up on any of them. And, of course, if you don't find any of that, then the next time you do get a letter, then engage with those people and dig in and get the um try to get some detailed information and an audit on the account rather than just the general thing of you owe us some money and here's how much i want to know how you arrived at that figure because i suspect it's going to be pretty substantial. I mean, that's a lot of interest here we're talking about from the 80s to now.

And penalties and other things that you probably have to negotiate through. You're not going to negotiate through the principal or the interest, though. Kim is in Idaho. Hi, Kim. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking our call. Sure.

What's up? What's happening is my partner and I are going to be blending our family, and we're in a weird conundrum where I sold my business, and it's a 10-year buyout. So I'll be getting about $62,000 a year for the next 10 years. Do we use that income or do we say we're not really sure what to do with the $62,000? If we live on it, if we touch it, if we use it as part of our monthly income, does that make sense? What are you going to live on if you don't use it to live on? Well, right now his growth is $120,000, and I make around $50,000 a year.

Okay, so you have $170,000 to live on, so you don't need the $60,000. So you could easily use it to reinvest, right? I could, yes. What else would you do with it if you didn't do that well we solve our mortgage payment all that money we owe 220 thousand dollars okay are you married we're not married no well you know when you start combining assets and paying each other's debts when you're not married you leave yourself very very vulnerable to not only relationship issues but all kinds of potential financial trouble and i know everybody says oh it's not gonna end it's not gonna end that's not the point nobody gets married thinking it's gonna end but it does sometimes and so if you sold this business

and you use this to pay off a house that you own together you have no protection whatsoever in some kind of worst case weird scenario like for instance god forbid something happened to him uh you would then be stuck because you'd be dealing with his heirs, and you're not his heir. Live-in girlfriend is not on the list of legal heirs unless he has a will. And even if he has a will, they might come in and try to challenge that. So marriage solves a whole lot of these things. And when you talk about blending a family,

it usually involves legally blending the family and that means you are legally married so i highly recommend that by the way so um anyway uh it let's pretend that that was the case then we would have a household income because our household would be legally one of um 170 plus 60 and so we're at 230 and i'm going to use that household income to accomplish that household's goals right up the baby steps debt free emergency fund 15 of your income going into retirement kids college and above that get the house paid off and so what that tells me is the 60 and anything else i can find out of this previous 170 000 in a combined household because you're married again reiterate that uh because that's the only

way this this system works otherwise you have a roommate technically legally speaking and um you don't pay off your roommate's car you don't pay off your roommate's car. You don't pay off your roommate's house, and that's the situation you get into. So if you've solved that, though, I would just walk right up the baby steps, and it sounds like you with a fabulous household income, you're going to knock off that $220,000 house mortgage really, really fast. Very, very cool. Good for you.

Hey, thanks for calling in. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. If you've talked about selling your home before, you probably heard this from your know-it-all neighbor. The market's good, and you'll have no problem selling. But what your neighbor isn't telling you that it is not even a good real estate market can guarantee that your home will sell fast and it'll sell for what it's worth. As a matter of fact, the biggest factor that goes into you selling your home for top dollar is not a hot real estate market. It's an experienced real estate agent that takes advantage of the hot market with good marketing, proper pricing,

good negotiating, and the deal gets done. This is not a monkey with a license. This is an experienced person who really, really, really knows their stuff. So you're going to want to get 100% for the house price, and you want to sell it as fast as you possibly can. And I tell you, man, the Pareto principle is very real in residential real estate. 80% of the income is made by 20% of the people, and it probably goes again,

meaning that 90% of the income is probably made by 10% of the people. So we get the high-octane, high-protein, high-producing agents in your area, high-character people that do things and think the way we do, and we vet them, and we make them the people that we then can recommend in your neighborhood as real estate-endorsed local providers. Don't lose money hiring an amateur. That's ridiculous. You'll get yourself in trouble. Go to DaveRamsey.com slash agent or DaveRamsey.com and click on ELP for real estate, and you'll get some help.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. One question I get asked all the time is, do I need life insurance? Listen, the whole point of life insurance is to replace your income for someone who counts on you. So if you have a spouse or you have kids, yes, you need term life insurance. It's the only way to protect them until you're out of debt and have built up your wealth. You're only digging a deeper hole if you waste money on cash value plans since it robs you of the ability to make real progress. And that's why I send you to Zander Insurance, and I have for 20 years. That's where I get all my insurance, and they only offer the plans I recommend.

It is not expensive. It's not complicated. And Zander will be there as your guide every step of the way. Visit Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. You need to get this taken care of. I can give you the advice, and I can tell you where to go, but it's really up to you to take that important step to get your family protected. That's zander.com or 800-356-4282. Betsy is in Texas.

Hi, Betsy. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. First time I've ever called a radio program, so I'm a little nervous. No problem. We've never lost a patient. How can I help? When my husband and I got married, my father-in-law set us up with a financial advisor to start opening a Roth IRA.

And just as we've gotten raises, we've upped it and contributed more. But we might have talked about in the beginning what to invest in. But since then, I haven't even met with him in a few years. I just send in the check, and I get statements, but I don't know where it's going to, and I didn't know if that was a big deal or not. It's a huge deal. Okay.

This is what people say right before they tell me the story when they lost everything. Oh. So it's not his job to manage your money it's your job his job is to advise you and teach you and then you make the decision and so this is a lot of money just to just to throw over in a pile in the corner and hope somebody else sweeps it up so now you've got to get in there and learn what it is, why it is, review it, what it is, why it is. You can meet on the phone for 30 to 45 minutes a year and be fine once you

establish what you want to invest in and that what you're investing in is that and what it's doing and how it's doing. So for instance, buy, and I have suggested for 30 years here on the radio, that my personal 401k, it does the same thing, is in four types of mutual funds evenly, 25% each growth, growth in income, aggressive growth in international. And so what I would do then is I would open up my 401k statement maybe twice a year, and I would open up my IRA statements maybe twice a year and see how that group of mutual funds is doing. If they're down, I want to look and see is the overall stock market down.

Oh, well, that would explain why the mutual funds are down. If they're down and the stock market's having a record year up, I might have a problem. I might have some bum funds, right? And so I want to compare the funds to the other things in their space and to the market in the space that they're in, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international, and say they're there. So I'm not going to compare the international to a U.S. stock growth fund. I'm going to compare it to international stocks and see how it's doing. And by the way, that category is the weaker of the four.

So you need to understand what the money is invested in, why it's invested there, and how it's doing each year in comparison to other things in that category. Do not put money in things you don't understand because your father-in-law said to use this guy. He might be an okay guy, but he hasn't done a very good job because his job is to make sure you understand what you're investing in. His job is to be a teacher, not a salesman. And so he hasn't done a good job of that because were I your financial advisor, I'm not in that business, I would have demanded that you understand or I won't go forward.

Because that way you don't wake up in the middle of the night after you heard some news story about the economy going down, wondering if your money is going to be lost by that crooked financial advisor. It's not his fault. It's your fault. You don't know what to flip your money's in. So lean in, learn what's going on, learn how to learn about it. You don't have to become an expert.

It's not any pressure, and you haven't done anything evil or horrible, but you've just been a little lazy, intellectually lazy. And so you and your husband need to physically meet with this person and tell them the expectation going forward is is that uh you understand that their job is to make sure you understand what you're investing in and how it's doing relative to other things in its category each six months to a year and if we can't stay on that plan we need to get a different advisor if he's arrogant and says you need to just do it because i said do it then fire his butt he's not worth nothing because his job is to have the heart of a teacher not the heart of a salesman

and that's how we pick our smart investor pros that we endorse in our smart investor program i'm not in the business but i'm not going to endorse someone that doesn't have that heart of a teacher that doesn't come forward and make sure that our listener knows what their money is going into. Don't put money in stuff you don't understand. The good news is it doesn't take long to understand what you're doing. It's not rocket science. You don't have to have a PhD in economics to figure this out. It's not that that complicated but they can show you how mutual funds work how to pick a good one based on its track record all that kind of stuff so hey thanks for the call open phones at 888-825-5225 tom is with us tom is in oregon hey tom how are you

hi dave how are you doing better than i. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, my wife and I have been following your program for about four or five months now and, you know, doing the paying off debt stuff. And we've paid off a considerable amount. At the end of this month, it'll be about $10,400 we've paid off. And I have a couple of debt collector accounts on my credit report that I tried to get a hold of them, but I can't seem to get a hold of them. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to contact them.

There's been no correspondence for probably three or four years from these two debt collectors. Medical bills, one's for $119 and the other one's for $409, I think. Do you have any idea who the original medical provider was? I think so, but I'm not certain. And so I thought if I were to call the original provider, they probably wouldn't give me any information other than that they have already turned it over to collections. That's probably right, but I'd give them a hard time about it and say, I'm getting ready to send you a check, and then if you don't cash the check and clear my debt, I'm going to sue you.

Yeah, we've been just diligent, and, you know, we've been doing your beans and rice, rice and beans program, and we're really gazelle intense to get this stuff paid off yeah that's what i just said and yeah and so just getting into what i just said what i just said was you've got to activate somebody and get this mess cleaned up and if they can't get you to a collector and help you get this cleared then let them know i'm going to mail you a 119 check because i don't owe a collector i owe you and if you don't clear that debt then off of my credit bureau i'm going to sue you yeah that'll get them moving yeah because i don't because i don't want that stuff on there i want to get everybody paid off i want to be completely debt free i don't want any debt collectors anymore

i just i want it done good good you're on track man you're fired up and getting it that's what you gotta do but i mean you're right when you call hospital x and you say oh you're 420 from eight years ago they're gonna go i don't know what that is you know i know but dig it up and help me get the collector because i need to get it paid and they may very well still own the debt they've just turned over all those accounts they lose so much money that stuff over to a collector and then they've never thought about it again but and so you just have to push somebody to answer the phone here and be willing to say i am the agent for or the owner of this debt and i will accept this amount and the debt will be shown as cleared and then

they need to report that to the credit bureau and clear it up. And then you can dispute, if they don't, once you have proof that the debt is paid, you can dispute the entry on the credit bureau, and the whole thing will be removed if nobody responds. Somebody responds, then you get what you wanted, and you can solve the whole thing. That's another way to do it. So, hey, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Dave, I'm on Baby Step 4.

I work for the government where they take out just over 12% for my pension. Do you recommend saving 15% on top of that for retirement? No, but I wouldn't count the whole 12 either because you don't have any control over it. You don't have any control over what it's invested in how it does or when you can take the money out or anything else they control everything so i generally count mandatory pension contributions at about 50 percent towards the 15 percent so i'd count this at about six or five or seven or something like that and then out of the 12 and then you know do another 5 or 10 somewhere else and that's the way

I'd look at it. Hey man thank you for joining us. This is the Dave Ramsey Solutions on the Debt Free Stage, Daniel and Sarah are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Hi Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve. Where do you guys live? Whitehaven, Pennsylvania. Cool, good to have you. Welcome. And how much debt have you paid off?

We've paid off about $200,000. Very good. And how long did this take? About 14 months. Great. And your range of income during that time? We started at about $43,000 and we ended at about $75,000. Okay. What kind of debt was the $200,000? We had a car, credit cards, personal loans, a cell phone. We were over-withdrawn on our account, and we sold our house in the process. I was thinking, okay, these numbers. So how much of the $200,000, what did your home bring when you sold it? We sold it for about $140,000.

Okay. And so you end up cash-flowing about $60,000 in addition to that during the 14 months making $43,000 to $75,000. You're still on beans and rice. That's right. But we did sell her car, and we got about $14,000 for that. Okay. That helps these numbers. All right.

We also sold anything in sight. Okay. If it wasn't bolted down, we sold it. All right. So where are you living if you sold your house? We started renting. We moved into a little place more in... I'm sorry.

It was about 15 minutes outside of work, so it was a lot closer for the commute. Okay. So you moved into town a little bit. Yes. That's right. Closer to work and then renting, and that got rid of the house mortgage, and also the equity was freed up to pay off a bunch of these debts. Yes.

Very good. Well, we actually didn't have any equity when we sold the house. We had to write a little check for $85.14. Wow. Okay. All right, so getting close to home or getting out of that mess and getting closer to work was a good reason to rent for a while. Yes, and then I was able to also pick up several part-time jobs Getting close to home or getting out of that mess and getting closer to work was a good reason to rent for a while.

Yeah, and then I was able to also pick up several part-time jobs when I moved close to my work because we were in the city area more. So I was able to work all the time. I'd come home from my first job. I'd eat a little bit, kiss my kids goodnight, and I'd go right back to work. Wow. What was the best paying part-time job you had? Well, any side jobs I could get. I'm a contractor, so any side jobs I could get was the best paying part-time job you had well any side jobs i could get i'm a contractor so any side jobs i could get was the best but uh most of the money came from working um instacart and then i also did doordash okay very good so what happened that set you two on

fire like this 14 months ago well our smallest child was about to be born and i was on the phone with my brothers trying to uh figure explain to him my finances on how i was going to balance everything off and make it all happen but uh he looked at me or i'm sorry we were on the phone he told me uh i should listen to dave ramsey i'm like, Dave Ramsey? Is he related to Gordon Ramsey? And he told me to listen to you because you have this great plan on getting out of debt and getting our lives in order. So I did, and I didn't buy any products off the bat. I was skeptical, and I wanted to do a little research into you.

So I watched your YouTube channel. Good for you. I would be, too. I found your book on YouTube. It was the audio version, the Total Money Makeover, and I listened to that. And I came home and told my wife that I think we should give this guy a shot. I think we should try this. And then the next breath, I said, we should give this guy a shot i think we should try this and then the next

breath i said we should sell your car whoa how about that went over well no not okay so what happened what happened later on that made you actually decide that was a good idea sarah other than daniel's presentation which sucked yeah well just seeing the situation we were in, we were just scraping by. We knew we needed to change our lives, and it was either do it or don't. And we just jumped on board and just went for it. Wow. Wow. Good for you guys.

Way to go. So what do you tell people now that you did all of this? You sold the car. You sold the house. What's the secret to getting out of debt? I tell people that the secret to getting out of debt there's only two things you need to do you need to want to do it and then if you want to do it you just gotta listen to dave ramsey and do everything he says everything he says no ands ifs or buts about it

well that's awesome thank you sir, sir. You're very kind. Good for you guys. Who were your biggest cheerleaders? I'm guessing your brother was cheering you on. He was cheering us on. It's funny. He's not really on the program. He's just a big fan of yours.

Our biggest cheerleaders are the kids. The reason I would go out and work is because I'm trying to build a future for them. That's a big motivator. Yes, sir. Very, very good. Way to go. And you brought them with you to do your debt-free scream? Absolutely.

All right. Let's introduce them. What are their names and their ages? We've got Amelia. She's six years old. All right. We have Andrew. He's three years old.

Uh-huh. And Gabriel. And Gabriel. He's 18 months now. All right. And Gabriel. He's 18 months now. All right. Way to go, Gabe. All right. Here we go.

Good job, you guys. We're proud of y'all. Well done. How's it feel? It feels just relieving. Like we can sleep at night. Yeah. It's peace.

Yeah. And now you can spend time with the kiddos, and now you can grow your career, and be able to save up and buy a house again, and this time do it differently. Everything will change. That's right. Yeah. Well done, you guys. We're very proud of you.

Way to go, hero. Great job. Daniel, Sarah, Amelia, Andrew, and Gabriel, $200,000 paid off in 14 months, selling their home for $140,000, selling the car for $14,000, and other stuff, working extra, $43,000 to $75,000 worth of income. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Way to go, you guys. Way to go. Well done. Very well done. Well, one of the beauties of the Debt-Free Scream is it comes from people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all incomes, all kinds of different levels of sacrifice to get there, all different incomes on how they're able to address this, and these guys are absolutely fun.

They did a wonderful job, and they changed their family tree, and that's what Daniel wanted to do. And he went out there and paid a price and worked and worked and worked. You know, if you work like no one else later, you can work like no one else. If you live like no one else later, you can live and give like no one else. The Bible says there is no discipline that seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. It changes everything. When you have a plan and you're intentional and you execute, whatever the area of your life is, money certainly is what we're highlighting here. Debt, debt reduction is what we're highlighting here with this whole idea of

the debt-free screen so way to go you guys we're very very proud of you excellent excellent job james is on instagram my wife and i are on baby step three and looking forward to four five and six finishing up our emergency fund looking forward to investing in college paying off our house how much do you think is reasonable to save for college our kids are one and five well james people do this two different ways and both are okay when you're at baby step five four is 15 of your income going into retirement above that we say address kids college now sometimes people will just get an account started you know 100 bucks a month or something per kid get a mutual fund

started to say okay we touch we check the box we got something going we're building the college muscle a little bit and then they move on with any other money and get the house paid off because with a paid off house when the kids get to school you're really in a position most of the time to help cash flow or even just pay for college out of your cash flow if you got a house paid for by then sometimes people go out that way other times people have some lump sums coming in bonuses and other things and the college is a big deal to them and so they reach over at baby step five after they're putting 15 of their income in for retirement and they reach over baby step five and put big chunks in there like 10 000 a year per kid for two or three years and as young as

your kids are if you load that 10 grand a year into a good 529 growing tax-free in good growth stock mutual funds i mean you set 20000 aside, as young as they are, it's going to grow to enough to send them to school by the time they get there. You can chart all of that out with your SmartVestor Pro, your investment advisor, and figure that out. So you can either start with a little bit at a time and then get the house paid off, or you can attack it with a vengeance and kind of get the whole college thing behind you and move on. Either one's fine with us.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 13, 4, The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. Theodore Roosevelt said, Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. It's true. Tremendous dignity, tremendous satisfaction in being tired from actually having worked hard it's a good thing and um you know it can be something as silly as i remember i was a little kid um barely old enough to reach the

end of the middle bar on the push lawnmower meaning the handle reached up to an adult and i was the little guy standing in front of it in the middle. But I felt like I mowed the grass because my dad drug me along while he was doing it. And then when we finished, we'd always, you know, this may be a guy thing or maybe it's a redneck thing, I don't know, but we'd always stand out in the street and look at the finished yard after everything was edged and raked and trimmed and the mulch was weeded and all that stuff, right, the whole thing. And we'd stand out there and just take a moment and just say, hey, job well done.

It could be something as simple as that. I think that's why I like to pressure wash because you can see that you're making progress, you know, and you're tired when you're done. At least I am at my age. So, you know, it doesn't matter what it is. It can be something really simple like that or it can be something very lofty and big and carrying on i spoke for the entire day on friday to the entre leadership master series on family business some brand new curriculum on successfully transitioning family businesses and successfully operating family businesses and the data that

we've found as we've researched that and interviewed hundreds and hundreds of companies that do a great job and we personally walked in it ourselves with our family coming into Ramsey Solutions and so we shared all that I was on stage all day on Friday and when I got home I was tired because speaking will speaking will drain you especially if you're half exciting and you're not asleep yourself, right? So I hadn't done that in a while. I hadn't spoke the entire day in a while. I usually do a couple hours here, a couple hours there or something.

But that was a long one. But it was fun. It was brand new materials, energizing to me to teach it and for them to hear it. It's tiring. Far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Proverbs 13, 4 says, The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. The diligent prosper.

Diligence is excellence over time. You can be excellent for a moment, or you can be not excellent over time. But if you're excellent over time, that's what we would call diligence. And the diligent people prosper. That's what the Bible says. And so that means that if you are more diligent than someone else, you should have prospered more than someone else. And that is fair. It's just not fair that so-and-so makes more than so-and-so yes it is it's completely fair i'm not as pretty or as smart and hasn't worked as many hours as some other people that are

prettier than me smarter than me and uh has worked more hours than i have and they have more than i have as a result and i'm not mad at them about that. And a bunch of you need to stop your dadgum jealous, envious stuff. Self out here. Where you're jealous of everybody else and you're envious of everybody else. Instead of tearing down success, why don't you get your butt in gear and go be one? Instead of trying to tear down everybody else. The diligent prosper.

The soul of the sluggard sluggard that's just such a good word the sluggard those are words we don't use anymore what if you just walked up someone said you're a sluggard i've had people that worked here that were sluggards. They're not here anymore. The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing. And, you know, if you sit on your butt and you have all the reality shows memorized and you know every single thing about every sports team and you don't play on any of them and none of them pay you and you're not any good at your job and then you demand

because you're entitled to a fair wage you're not entitled to nothing. Twerp. You're a sluggard. That's even better than twerp. Sluggard. Maybe my new word. I'm going to get stuck on that. Calvin's with us. Calvin is in Vermont.

Hey, Calvin, how are you? Hey, good, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate all that you and your team do. Thank you, man. How can I help? So my wife and I, we have, we're taking my call. I appreciate all that you and your team do. Thank you, man. How can I help? So my wife and I, we're in a house. We started listening to you and started getting on the baby steps and just looking at what we should be spending where as far as guidelines.

So we're a little over, and we've been debating on selling it, looking for your opinion on it. So how much is your house payment? $987 a month. Okay. And what is your take-home pay? $65,000. Your take-home pay is $6,000 a month? I'm sorry. $1,244. I'm sorry. Those numbers don't go together. Your monthly take-home pay after taxes...

I'm sorry? $5,400. Sorry about that. That's okay. Your house payment is 20% of your take-home pay. You follow me? Yep. And we say don't be over 25%.

So I don't think your house payment's out of line. How much is your car payment? I don't have one. Good. You have any other debt other than the house? No. Okay. And how many. Do you have any other debt other than the house? No. Okay. And how many children do you have?

Two. How long have you been married? We have been married for six years. You're 28, 29? 31. 31. Close enough. Okay.

Cool. All right. The only thing I hear missing in this equation, this should not be a tight budget with what you just described. You should have all kinds of room in this budget. $5,400 minus less than $1,000, 987 house payment, should leave you $4,400 for lights, water, food, and taking care of a couple kids.

That should not be out of line in vermont so i think you're probably not on a written plan yeah our taxes are 6600 a year is that not built into that house payment no it's not oh okay so that's another 500 on the house payment, right? And how much is your insurance? It's about $863 a year. Okay. All right. And so if we add another $600 to your house payment, now we've got a real house payment.

So you have a $1,600 house payment on a 54. Now we're approaching 25%. Actually, a touch over 25%. But it's still not house poor. House poor would be if your house payment including taxes and insurance was 50 of your take-home pay and i run into that all the time and you can't breathe when you do that or 40 you can't breathe when you do that in your case that'd be like a almost a three thousand dollar house payment okay so still i'm gonna make the case that you're probably not doing your written plan because a written budget, get on everydollar.com and download the app.

It's free to use. It takes about 10 minutes to lay your budget out. Go over it with your spouse. The two of you decide that you're going to tell every dollar what to do before the month begins. When you give every dollar an assignment before the month begins and then you stick to that, and it'll take you about three cycles, about three months to get it dialed in your first month you'll suck at it second month you'll be a little better third month you'll be an expert okay takes a little bit of time and then when you get that dialed in you're going to call me back and go being on a budget makes me feel like i got a raise because the

efficient organized use of the money makes you feel like you've gotten a lift because you did get a lift. You can do this, dude. Hang with it. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer. Kelly Daniel, wearing a Viking jersey. Lost a bet. We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify? For all the ways to watch and listen, check out our show page at DaveRamsey.com slash show.