The Ramsey Show - App - Don't Keep Putting Money Into a Pocket With a Hole in It (Hour 2)

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

Chris Hogan, Debt, Budgeting, Insurance Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. My co-host today, Ramsey personality Chrisris hogan number one best-selling author joining me here to answer your questions open phones at 888-825-5225 dallas is in missouri hey dallas what's up hi dave thank you for taking my call sure what's up okay um so my husband and i have been married it'll be five years in june and we are debt-free except our house. Good.

And I am wondering, would it be wise to take out loans to start a family? I'm so confused. Yeah. Are you adopting? Hopefully IVF. Oh, okay. Okay. Expensive. AllF. Oh, okay. Okay. Expensive.

All right. Yes, very. Well, I get this question about IVF and about adopting all the time, both. And I got to tell you, I can't think of anything more important than having children for those of us that want to have children. It's been the greatest joy of my life, except for grandchildren. And if I'd have known how great grandkids are going to be, I'd have been nicer to their parents. But, you know, in other words, I think the question you're asking is extremely important. But here's the thing.

As you know, there are no 100% procedures with IVF. Right. And 100% of the time, you're going to have those payments. Right, right. And so what's your household income? This past year, it was about $52, right. And so what's your household income? This past year it was about $52,000, but it should go up this coming year because I've taken a higher-paying job. Okay.

If I woke up in your shoes is how I answer questions here, I would be willing to do almost anything to make these attempts, okay? But I would have to pay cash for them. Because I have a really, really close friend who has had three attempts and one, four attempts. One was successful, three were not. And the successful ended in an early, early, early miscarriage. And so it's been a lot of emotional roller coaster for them, as you might imagine. If you add to that the stress of debt, you multiply the stress in the situation exponentially.

So I want you to do this, but if it was me and I woke up in your shoes, if I was your husband, I'd be delivering pizzas to pay for it, or I'd be doing more. I mean, I'd take an extra job and get the $7,000, the $12,000, whichever plans you're doing. You're not going to do the $25,000 you're not gonna oh it's not 30 no that's not true there's one plan that's 30 insurance no it's without insurance you know it's not 30 30 is a okay unlimited attempts possibly or something like that that's okay that's the cadillac gold package or whatever but uh you need to you need

to investigate what your options are on how you can go about this uh you know it might be less expensive if you had multiple things on a 30 but it's no it's the guy i'm talking about it's not spending yeah and i i think dallas too you and your husband sitting down and really talking about how important is this for each of you and then what are you willing to sacrifice to do this i've been willing to sacrifice almost anything yeah and and taking on extra jobs uh but committing to to really saving up the cash to be able to do this uh one of the people that i remember coaching years ago uh paid for three rounds of it uh it did not work uh and they were reminded of the it being unsuccessful every time they had to make a payment.

Yeah, that's what I mean. And they were constantly reminded. And it did add to the sorrow, Dave. And so it's just a thing. I would, like Dave said, be willing to do just about anything but taking that on. And I wish you all well as you move forward doing your research. Make sure you're talking to a couple of doctors and you're getting the adequate stuff. But more importantly, make sure you and your husband are together and you guys are in lockstep

on this. Yeah. But again, I would cut lifestyle to nothing. I would work like a crazy person, five jobs. And then if it works, it's paid for and it's greater joy. If it doesn't work, it's paid for and it's less sorrow. That's right. That's right.

Because when you add the financial burden to it, in either case, it diminishes the joy or increases the sorrow. Yeah. And that's the problem. So I'm with you, though. We're praying for you, and we want you to have as many babies as you want to have. I hope it all works out. John is with us in Texas. Hey, John, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call today sure how can we help so i've got a little situation with my student loans um in 2013 2014 roughly i was told they were going to be forgiven um due to the bank doing some fraudulent stuff and uh i recently ran my credit board credit report and it is still on my credit report saying that i have an open account for nineteen thousand dollars and uh so i was just kind of stuck on to do who told you that that it was going to be forgiven uh um the bank themselves i guess they had a uh they got sued for doing some fraudulent stuff i don't even remember what it was but i did call them today and they said that it was pending so they were on the fence whether it was going to be forgiven or whether it wasn't going to be.

Do you have in writing the other discussion that it was going to be forgiven? No, I don't. How old are you? I'm 26 years old. What kind of school was that? It was automotive. Okay. And what's your income?

Roughly $45,000, $50,000. 45 50 okay all right here's the thing you've got to get every discussion with these morons i mean these bankers in writing okay because if it if it's not in writing it didn't happen you know it's an illusion and so the people you talk to aren't there the next time you call back. You notice that, right? And so, yeah, you've got to get everything you deal with in writing. And so what I would do is call them back and say, all right, I need an email of who's handling this case. And email them so you can they do not forgive this loan and give you official documentation of that forgiveness, within 10 days that you're going to turn this over to your attorney and you're going to sue them

because you've always wanted to own a little bank. Okay. You need to get after them. Yeah. Because if you hit them really, really hard in the nose, they'll bleed. That's exactly right. And you've got to keep that nose, they'll bleed. That's exactly right. And you've got to keep that paper trail, my friend. That's your proof.

And I would write down the name of the person you called when you follow up, the date and the time. Get it all in writing. Get it all in writing. Keep it all for the court case. Make this job number one. And just be all up in their business until you get written documentation of the forgiveness well because i'll guarantee you that it ain't pending i'll guarantee you they know they're screwed and you just need to remind them of that fact this is the dave ramsey show folks i love telling you about well-made well-thought-out products today i'm talking

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Plus, I like the way these guys do business. Grip 6 is determined to help build and modernize American manufacturing. To learn more and get this month's Dave Ramsey special, visit GRIP6.com. That's GRIP6.com. Kirby is next in Tennessee. Hey, Kirby, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave and Chris, thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? Oh, I just, well, I wanted to say before my question

that the Ramsey name has gone full circle officially in my house because about 10 years ago, my parents went through FPU at my church, and I didn't know as a little kid. I didn't know about any of that talk and didn't care about it. But now that I'm an adult, I have to care about it, and I've rediscovered you, so thank you for sticking around and helping us out. Well, thank you, sir. It's always good to talk to a financial peace baby.

Yeah, yeah. So my question is, I'm a self-employed musician here in Nashville and obviously affected by everything. And my industry is shut down. No bars, no concerts for the foreseeable future, probably the summer, maybe the year. So I'm actually successfully collecting unemployment, the 275 plus the extra 600, which adds up to actually more than I would make if I were working. So I really want to know how to not screw this up and save absolutely as much as I can before that runs out or I go back to work.

Just any tips on that. Okay. Well, the written plan, the budget, is always a money stretcher. Okay. So jump on it. if you don't have the every dollar budget loaded onto your phone jump on and load the uh world's best budgeting app it's free to use it's called every dollar and it'll help you put together your budget because money that is told what to do behaves a lot better than money that runs wild right and you just it just goes further and so you know you're just making choices because you're choosing to say rather than this impulse or luxury yep or

whatever it is even if it's a minor luxury rather than that i would rather have the money in savings for when this runs out and so you make these choices very consciously when you put it on a budget right in front of you. Yeah. And Kirby, you're already thinking the right way, my friend, where you're going, hey, you don't know how long this is going to last. So you don't know how much of that you're going to need. So, you know, so you being intentional on the front end, what you're going to do is

end up protecting that money from running around and leaving you. Okay, so what baby step are you on right now? So I would like to reach, I don't know if it's two or three, the three to six months. Okay, that's baby step three. I got my emergency. The only debt I have is my car. I've got no credit card debt or even student loans. I didn't go to school.

So I would like to have that three to six months by August. Yeah. Well, you're not really working the baby steps right now. You're in the middle of a crisis. So what you're doing is you're just going to pile up cash. Yeah. Okay? Because we would have you pay off the car before an emergency fund.

That's right. If you were working the baby steps. But right now, you're in a crisis. You don't need to do that. You need to pile up the cash. And also, I want you to rethink how you might use your musical talent, what the venue is. It's not necessarily a honky-tonk situation. Maybe private parties, maybe Zoom sings for something. I did one of those this week.

Oh, great. All right, so how can you deliver your service, your artistry, in different ways than this. In the meantime, and then hopefully it will start to get back to normal at some point, but Nashville's coming back slower, as you've already discovered, than the rest of the state. The city itself, the mayor there, is held a lot tighter than the rest of the state has on the reopenings. So that's what you're sitting in the middle of.

Hey, you know what? That brings up a point. Maybe you move, not move, but maybe you offer your services outside of Nashville in the surrounding counties. The adjacent counties are opening. Yeah, that's a great point, Dave. There might be some things you can do legally, you know, under the current reopening that the governor's doing that's applying. Maybe there's – I don't know who this is, but there's got to be some locations that might consider hiring you. You probably got some competition because everybody's on the street in your world.

Oh, absolutely. And they're thinking. But here's the thing. As Dave pointed out, if your hours have been cut or your job has been lost, you're going into conserve mode. You're piling up money and saving it. However, once things do stabilize for you, you've got that money into savings now that if you were on baby step to an attack in debt, you would just go to that savings and apply it to the debt following the order.

So it's a temporary pause until you stabilize is the most important thing. This is not money that's just going to fritter itself away we got to be intentional with it yeah and so i i think what if i'm in your shoes a combination of the cash i can pile up and the uh unusual side gigs i can get hustling grind side gigs i can get the combination of those two things will allow me to be ready for when the unemployment runs out, and if things are not back to normal by then. And so that's some really good planning on your part. So jump online and get the EveryDollar app going.

As a matter of fact, you may want to do the 14-day free trial on Financial Peace University, and that sets you up into the EveryDollar Plus app as well. And, folks, if you haven't heard, we're giving away for the first time in 30 years. And that sets you up into the EveryDollarPlus app as well. And, folks, if you haven't heard, we're giving away for the first time in 30 years a free trial to Financial Peace University for 14 days. So those of you around the country in the states and the municipalities that are still quarantined, still staying home, there's a lot of things you can do with your time there. And going through Financial Peace University while you're home during a 14-day free trial would be a great idea. It not only includes all the videos, but it also, of course,

includes the EveryDollarPlus, it includes the Communities, it includes the Ask a Coach app, it includes the Baby Step Trackers app. There's all kinds of things there to help with and so um you will make it to the other side of this and some of you have this has been your wake-up call and you went okay i'm really now ready to do this i really do want to be out of debt i really do want to have an emergency fund because i don't want to be here the next time something happens in my life or in the culture that leaves me in a mess obviously this is a weird anomaly that we're in but it could be your wake-up call are you going

to answer the phone you know that's the thing is this your time to change because every time something happens to us we get the opportunity to you respond by saying, how are we going to react to what has happened? So DaveRamsey.com slash hope to get your 14-day free trial to Financial Peace University. And if you'll hang on, Kirby, Kelly will get you signed up for that 14-day free trial and show you how to do that. Yeah. Hey, Dave, by the way, so you know I go around and I speak to the rookies of the NFL. Different teams will bring us in, and I'll do stuff for rookies and veterans.

So a rookie class that I spoke to three years ago, I took them total money makeover, and we walked through the baby steps. I just protected them. There was one gentleman there that told me that day he was going to go to the bank to get a truck loan for $75,000, but he wasn't going to go now. He said, I heard you, what you said about debt. I'm going to wait and save up, okay?

Another gentleman the next year texted me the other day. He said, I read the book, and he sent me a kissy emoji. He goes, I love you and Dave. He goes, we've got an emergency fund. He's too big, Dave. If he wanted to kiss us, he's going to. Okay. I'm faster than you, so he's going to catch you. But he was so grateful for the information. And so it's just one of those things where you go, you know,

sometimes you plant seeds. Sometimes you talk to people, and it might be two or three years later that they decide to apply it in their lives. i'm just so grateful they have that info what we're experiencing is a ton of people that have kind of been on the outside looking yes at all this financial peace stuff like it's a zoo animal or something you know they suddenly got past interested and now they're starting to get invested they're starting to go i think maybe this is something I need to do. Yes. Not just observe other people doing. Yes.

And I'm going to get out of debt. I'm going to have an emergency fund. I'm going to become wealthy. I'm going to be outrageously generous. I'm going to learn about investing. I'm going to learn about insurance. I'm tired of getting screwed. Yeah.

I'm tired of being the guy that's always on the other end of the stick. You know, the short end. Yeah. That one. And people reach that point and that's always on the other end of the stick, you know, the short end, that one. And people reach that point, and that's why this 14-day has been so popular. You know, 75,000 people have already taken the 14-day free trial. Halfly, really. Yeah, and just like in less than 40 days. Come on, we got space. We got space.

You can still get in there. You know, most of us are spending a little more time at home than we used to. And with that extra time comes cleaning out closets, working in the yard, and if you're smart, protecting your family with term life insurance, especially when Zander makes it so easy. Look, Zander is open for business. Their whole team is equipped to work from home at full capacity, and they are ready to help you find the best rates from the top insurance companies in the industry. Their commitment to serving their customers, even through uncertain times,

is just one of the reasons that I am a client and why I have recommended them for over 20 years. Don't hesitate on this, folks. No matter where you are in the baby steps, if you don't have your term life insurance, then move this to the top of your to-do list. Visit Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. While rates are low, now is the time to get this taken care of. That's zander.com or 800-356-4282. Thanks for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Chris Hogan, my co-host this hour, Ramsey personality. We appreciate you being here.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Peter is in North Dakota. Hi, Peter. How are you? I am wonderful. How are you, gentlemen? Great. How can we help?

Say, my wife and I are new to FPU. We're working the baby steps on step two. Um, and I think we've done everything the opposite of how you teach it. That's how we learned to teach it. Yeah. Uh, so we're working on cleaning up that mess and going to start with some whole life insurance policies that we have. Um, we each have a half a million dollar whole life policy. Together we pay about $1,000 a month for premiums. I bet. So we're $18,000 into that, about 18 months.

In order for us to break even with our cash value, we'd have to go 10 plus more years. Not happening. Just wondering, do we hightail it and run and walk away from the $18,000 mistake and learn from it, or do we go until we break even, or what are your thoughts? Yeah, the mistake is a hole in your pocket. You don't keep putting money in there. Okay. There's a hole in your pocket. You discovered the hole, and so we don't keep putting money in the pocket that's got a hole in it.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, sorry about the money that's gone. That's, you know, I've paid a lot of stupid tax in my life, stupid stuff I've done, including I actually bought a whole life policy in my 20s, and then I had learned the hard way how to do math, and it just destroyed me when I realized what I had done. So are you guys healthy? yep good okay yeah we the way our i say financial person the insurance agent who sold it to us it was take out big term life convert it to whole life and that's how you retire

so um which again like i say now now that we're learning the right way to do it. Peter, how did you get connected with Dave? My brother said, check out Dave Ramsey. We did the 14-day free trial. Okay. And then we kind of binge-watched and said, holy crap, we've got a big hole to dig out of, and we've got to start doing it the right way. Are you still in your 14-day trial?

No. Okay. I bought that and used all the tools, and like I said. Oh, you did buy it? You stayed in after the 14 days? Yeah. Okay. Well, jump back in there and watch the insurance lesson again

because i don't want you doing things because i said i want you doing things because you understand but uh when you go through that whole life at lesson in there again you're the insurance lesson you're going to see how the whole life works and and um what you're discovering is is the first uh two to three years 100 of your money that's supposed to be going into an investment goes in their pocket because you've got zero cash value right now, right? Yeah, we've got about, yeah, $100 of cash value. Meanwhile, you've paid almost 10x for the amount of insurance you've got that you should have been paying, and that's why this is such a bad deal.

So make sure you have term life insurance in place before you drop this. Okay? And so it may take you a month or two to do this. But, you know, go ahead and get it in place. Get in touch with Zander Insurance. They can help you do that. Zanderinsurance.com. Get some inexpensive term in place, the proper amount,

and then go ahead and put in the order and drop this you don't want to drop it and then have a car accident or something god forbid in the meantime before the term is issued so you want the overlap that's right dave a thousand bucks a month that's not unusual for five thousand good grief yeah i mean you know and so you know we we want insurance to be insurance that's why we talk about term. You want your investments to be investments and you want your savings, your emergency fund to be the emergency fund. And this whole life stuff, it has a personality disorder. It's trying to do too much. And so just multiple. It is multiple person. It really and truly is. And so, Peter, I'm so grateful that your brother told you about the free trial of Financial Peace University because you wouldn't have known. You could have gone another five to ten years. So, great job. Very cool. Robert Swetherson, Virginia. Hey, Robert. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How's it going? Better than I deserve deserve what's up that's what i hear so uh um i'm all

mixed up as far as uh the order of the the way you describe things i've just started listening to you and started uh paying attention i mean i've got pretty good control but i'm not like in order so i've got a I've got an emergency fund. Good. I've got a term life insurance for a million dollars on myself. I've got the only debt I have left is my wife's schooling and my house. Okay. So we own both the cars.

We own everything. Good. How much is the student loan debt? $30. And how much is in your emergency fund 47 write a check today it's so here's my struggle as i'm thinking about this all right here's my struggle i want to pay the house first because the snowball effect that you talk about isn't worth it in my mind. I'd rather pay more interest up front for the school loan and pay off the house first. That's my struggle here because I'm paying $170 a month. We don't use the snowball effect on your home.

The snowball effect is in Baby Step 2 where you pay off all of your consumer debt. You only have one left, and that's the student loan debt. At the end of the day, you owe 30. What did you say, 30? Mm-hmm. On the student loan. That's just called 30. 30 on the student loan.

Okay. And how much is owed on your home? $215. Okay, and so why would you want to keep $30 around for all that time while you're paying off $250? Because I can do it in 10 years. You can do it in 10 minutes if you write a check today. You can be debt-free in 10 minutes on the student loan, and then you're freed up from that, and you're down to then baby steps four, five, and six.

Well, you're going to have to go back and rebuild your emergency fund all the way up. But then you'd be on baby steps four, five, and six, and you'll be working on your retirement, working on your kid's college if that's necessary uh uh then start reach over and start smacking that house you only got one thing left to to just punch on and that's the house at that point um and there there is a power in this process robert to focus and the fact that you're getting rid of this mosquito in comparison to the elephant, it gives you your focus. That's exactly right. And, Dave, you take what, you know, Robert, you can take what you were paying on the student loan debt and start to throw that at the house after it's paid off.

After you get that emergency money. Well, you said something, Robert. You said, I'm all mixed up, but I'm now listening and paying attention. Well, I hope you're listening and paying attention. Because if that's the case, then you're going to write the check, pay off the student loan debt, get this thing out of your life. You won't regret doing that. And you will not. I promise you won't regret it. Yeah, you're going to feel, okay, that's done.

Box checked. Now, let's get the emergency fund rebuilt because we just drained it down a little bit too low. 47 over 30, right? It's going to be 17 sitting there yep and then uh we need to build that back up and then let's make sure we get the emergency get make sure putting only 15 into retirement yep doing the kids college is baby step five and something towards that and then reach over and start knocking that house out you're gonna knock the house out in no time if you'll do that but this is very progressive it's very focused it is it's a little bit linear in the sense that you do this before you do this before you do this and there is a you know uh 30 years of case studies here at ramsey on why you do that uh

that that clarity uh that that clear path um it it just cleans up your brain it does and there's a power to this focus that's again we see it in all the data points with the millionaire study we sure do which we need to talk about as a matter of fact

when we come back in a minute Chris Hogan joining me this hour here on the Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, since you're spending more time at home these days, why not make the most of it? Now, I know not everyone has the means to do a full renovation, but thanks to our friends at Blinds.com, there are some small changes you can make to help improve your home. Blinds.com makes it incredibly simple to shop top-quality blinds, shades, and interior shutters from home with easy online ordering

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This is the Dave Ramsey Show. My co-host this hour, Chris Hogan, Ramsey personality, author of two number one bestsellers, including Everyday Millionaires. So, Chris and the team, it's been almost three years ago now, I think, commissioned and began running the team at Ramsey Research, along with an outsourced research firm that checked our data collection process and our controls to make sure that the research was airtight to confirm, because we knew that people wouldn't like if we came up with answers they didn't like. So we did what became the largest study ever done in North America of millionaires. Tom Stanley, his daughter Sarah, still doing work in that space. Tom wrote the book in 1992 called The Millionaire Next Door.

His sample size was 750 millionaires, and he got a lot of criticism for that by people who don't understand statistics it's actually uh statistically significant particularly out of a pail of millionaires to study 750 but we thought really just to get past that criticism we would do a study now all these years later uh what 30 years later almost yeah um and that said okay we're going to study i said when we set out we said we're going to do 10x we'll do 7500 since he did 750 um and we ended up with 10 160 something if i recall that we actually surveyed and got the details on and got their likes and dislikes their habit patterns we really learned about millionaires we really did did, Dave. And I'm going to tell you something. It was eye-opening to be able to hear the stories and see the facts of what these people have done over time. And so you have an opportunity.

Those of you that have gotten the book, and a lot of you have picked it up, you've read it. You said, Hogan, I love the stories. I love the stats. But I wanted more information about the study. You people that like details like that. I said, Hogan, I love the stories. I love the stats. But I wanted more information about the study. You people that like details like that. I said, you know what? We might have something for you. And so here it is.

You have the National Study of Millionaires that we use for the book Everyday Millionaires, How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth and How You Can Too. And you now have an opportunity to be able to get this and to be able to dig into it and see all the details. Dave, there are graphs. We put it out on PDF a year ago. We sure did. So now we've bound it. That's right.

This is basically the white paper on the research. That's right. So it's sleeping matter. Put you to sleep. It will definitely open your eyes and give you a lot of information. It closes my eyes. Well, Dave. I fell it well i fell asleep reading okay see that's rude i'm trying to tell you didn't write it well i had people rude about you people do it it's a white paper it is no but i mean it's a white paper you wouldn't have written that that's not your writing style it's not what i do dadgum research paper but uh but you know those of you that there's 140 stats in chris's real book

yes okay and actually they're all on sale for ten dollars right now but you know those of you that there's 140 stats in chris's real book yes okay and actually they're all on sale for ten dollars right now but the national study of millionaires white paper is now available in written form yep bound with chris's pretty face on it and um uh and if you want you know if you're having trouble sleeping during coronavirus get you on and you can learn all about millionaires till you pass out. But we did find some. I got a cheat sheet here in front of me that 96% enjoyed what they did for a career. Yeah. 64% said they loved their job.

Loved. Very strong language. 73% never had a penny of credit card debt in their life. Ever. Think about that for a second ever that meant inside of their almost 70 of them said that they had learned about money from their parents so the lesson was passed down and it was not only taught as my friend rachel cruz would say it was caught and so these people remained allergic to debt and were able to be very very

intentional over a 20-year period of time and yet 79 percent received zero inheritance yep another five percent received less than enough to uh become a millionaire because of the inheritance and another five percent received money only after they had become a millionaire. So where I come from, that's known as 89% did not become millionaires because of inherited money. That's 9 out of 10. That's right. So these jokers that are out there saying that the American dream is dead. It's not possible. You can't manage your own money and end up being a millionaire. All of the millionaires, virtually, nine out of ten, did not become millionaires because of inherited money.

That's exactly right. Seventy-nine percent did not attend prestigious private schools. Ooh. Now, you hear that. Sixty-two percent went to a public state school. Yep. Eight percent community college, and 9% never went to college. Never went.

And so inside of here, inside of the study, you're just going to see more and more stats, more information about that, how old the average car is that a millionaire drives, how big is the average house. I know these answers. I'm not going to tell you because I want you to read it. But it opens our eyes to realize that we are in control. The American dream is not only alive it's available i need to take out a student loan to go to my college yet 51 of the general population has student loans uh however 70 of the millionaires never borrowed a dime on student

loans yeah nope that's just i mean that you know most of the time when you do surveys if you can get something where you say well 53 which is a huge number you know or 57 none of these are those kinds of these are all 70 80 and 90 percentiles that's right average millionaire pays off his home in 10 or 11.2 years the average average Ramsey millionaire that we did a distinction, we studied some Ramsey tribe, pays theirs off in 10.2. One year faster on average. 93% still use coupons when shopping.

Average age that they hit millionaire, 49 years old. So they're not, you work all your life and you don't ever have any fun and you're too old to enjoy your money so i'm gonna no i'm gonna yeah yolo yolo yeah yeah no i don't think so no low no it's possible what you have to do is focus no yo lolo this is getting confusing it is very confusing Dave. I was confused before I started.

But 97% of millionaires believe they control their own destiny. That's the one I was just getting ready to go to. 62% of the public believe they do. 97%. Control their own destiny. And so they don't have the victim mentality. They're not looking to blame anybody. If they mess up, they own it.

And they're ready to move forward being intentional which is just absolutely fantastic two main contributing factors that showed up in almost every one of them um eight out of ten basically of the millionaires the if they were had if they had a net worth of under five million dollars which the vast majority of these that we studied we weren't studying deca millionaires, we were studying millionaires. So Deca millionaires, 10 million or more, okay? But so these are, you know, $1 to $5 million net worths on average. The primary method was they did two things that caused them to become millionaires. And the first one is, is that they used their company-sponsored retirement plans.

401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs, and Roth IRAs. Even if they weren't company-sponsored, they did Roths. They did Roths. So they were putting money aside, being very, very intentional. Retirement plan. Yes. Being intentional and letting compound interest work for them. The second one was they paid off their home, as we mentioned earlier, in 11.2 years on average.

And at 49 years old with a paid for $500,000 home and a million dollars roughly in their mutual funds and their 401ks and Roth IRAs, they got a million and a half dollar net worth and they're debt free. There it is. And that was the typical. Yeah. That's the persona, the debt that we found as we did the largest study of millionaires ever done. So your little friends who have a political agenda and have an opinion about where wealth comes from are stupid. They don't know what they're talking about.

We did the largest airtight piece of research ever done. We actually studied the real animal. Yep. We know what the animal looks like. We know what color it is. We know where it comes from. And we studied it all across the country so don't tell me that we just talked to people in the northeast or the southwest we went all across the country you know there was a little bit of a thing based on where they live but we really couldn't find any correlation that

said oh you're much more likely to be me if you live in this area. That's right. Not at all. That didn't come up. Top three jobs, engineer, accountant, and teacher. Oh. Teacher was number three. Don't believe me? Get the book and read it. Yeah. National Study of Millionaires, now available in white paper form. It exists.

If you're struggling with sleeping because of your stress. Or you just want to read it and learn some stuff. This is the thing to buy. For $10, it's worth it either way. It is. DaveRamsey.com, ChrisHogan360.com. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. In the middle of these uncertain times, Ramsey Solutions wants to give you some hope.

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