The Ramsey Show - App - Don't Make Major Life Decisions by Yourself (Hour 1)

Episode Date: October 3, 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 debt is done, 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. Kristen is on the line to start us off this hour in Ohio. Hi, Kristen. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm doing good. Good. How can I help? My husband and I have started your plan about seven months ago,

and in that time, we paid off $23,000. Great. Yeah. So really happy, really excited about the plan so far. We have about 70 total, 70,000 total from when we started. And I read your book and I read two of your books and I tried to get my husband to read the total money makeover. And he read about two chapters, decided that I knew what I was doing and just kind of lets me run with the budget and just asks for permission to spend on different items.

But it's not a collaborative effort. How old are you guys? I'm sorry. I'm 28. My husband is 32. Okay. And how long have you been married? Three years.

What's your husband do for a living? What's your husband do for a living what's your husband he's a deputy okay in the house in the house that his grew that he grew up in did his mom take care of everything yeah yeah yeah that's that's how he learned how to do this right so he's he's she's um a banker and i have a banking background no that's not the point it's not the point the point is when he know where he learned how to be married was watching his mom and dad and his mom did all the money and his dad brought in the bacon and was passive in the decisions and that's that's the only training he's had.

Does that make sense? Yes. By the way, it's wrong, but it's the only training he's had. Okay? Okay. And so here's how we break it. Because your husband is a man of honor. Mm-hmm.

With what he does for a living, he's a person of honor. Absolutely. He's a person of dignity. He would never in a million years think of burdening his wife. He's not that guy. He just was shown the way he was growing up that, you know, mom handles the money. Dad brings in the bacon. And so all you have to do is there's just a little bit of he just needs some new information.

He's 32 years old. He's a young dad, a young husband, whatever, right? And so here's how it sounds, okay? Honey, I need you to be my man. And let me explain to you what that means. That means I am not carrying all the responsibility of this household on my shoulders by myself. I refuse to be your mommy. I am not going to tell you what to do like I'm your mommy.

I want you to walk beside me, with me, and carry the weight of the decisions of this household. That's what a man does. And I'm not going to dole out money to you like you are on an allowance and I'm your mommy and I make all the big important decisions in this household. I am not going to do that. You and I are going to work together on this, and you are going to step up and walk beside me. And that's what a man of honor like you are would do. And he will do it once he understands that.

Last night we tried to have that conversation and he said it was putting too many hands in the honeypot. He's wrong. I know. Tell him he needs to man up. Okay. People that don't listen.

I am America's trusted voice on money. If anybody could do this without their spouse, it would be me. But guess what? I don't. I don't. And here's the other. I do it for two.

I mean, Sharon is involved in our major, in our financial decisions and all major decisions in our life. I don't do it by myself because I make better decisions with my wife involved. And when she's involved in the decision, if it goes sideways, I don't get an I told you so. Okay. So I have a secondary question then. Do you think that it would be wise for me to go ahead and spend the money to go to an FPU class? No. With my husband?

Unless your husband will go, no. No, I think he would go. If he goes with you, that's fine. And if he's agreeing to participate in this process, that's fine. But if you go over there, then you're just going to become the mommy. And maybe you want to be a mommy. I don't know, to your 32-year-old little boy. I don't know.

But maybe he needs to be a man, too. So I think he needs to step up beside you, and you guys make these decisions. He needs to man up. And he doesn't need to be overbearing to you. You don't need to be overbearing to him. We submit ourselves one to another, an ourselves one to another an act of unity an act of love sharon and i if we can't come to a decision we just don't do the thing we as an act of unity i don't go do stuff i don't come home and buy some expensive item she doesn't come home and buy some expensive

item and go look what i did isn't this wonderful now we make those decisions together now if i'm buying a boat or something like that she probably doesn't give a rip you know and she just like well okay whatever i mean she look at it but she's not all concerned about something i'm buying if she's buying some sharing thing whatever that is and there's plenty of those things but uh redecorating a room yeah that's like a constant. Okay, so if she's doing that, I don't give a rip, but I'm going to be involved because I want to know what it's going to cost, and, you know, we're going to actually use our brains in how we do redecorate the room.

And I'm not going to pick all the colors. I don't give a rip about that. That's her thing. But we're going to make these major life decisions together, and handling money on a monthly basis is one of those. And if you don't do that, if you drive off from that, you're going to suffer in not only your relationship, but you're going to suffer in your wealth building.

High correlation, very statistically high correlation between couples working together on their money and the ones that become wealthy. Very few people drag a child bride or a child husband along and become wealthy. It's dead weight. And so instead we're walking together, we're working together, we're making wise decisions together. It keeps us from impulsing our butts off. It keeps us from making as many bad decisions.

Most bad decisions are made by just one person. Almost all the decisions I've made in my life that were absolutely sucked, I made those completely by myself. The Bible says, who can find a virtuous wife? Her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her, and he will have no lack of gain. I had to learn to involve my wife's input in our stuff because I'm perfectly capable of making decisions without anybody's help.

But I often make wrong ones when I do that. Good lesson for everybody out there. There's a high statistical correlation on your ability to build wealth and your ability to work together as a couple. Listen to that. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Business leaders, if you're not using LinkedIn jobs, you are missing out. Our Ramsey Solutions Company page on LinkedIn has over 100,000 followers. That's over 100,000 potential like-minded people our team communicates our current openings to. We also post on LinkedIn

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Terms and conditions apply. Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Dylan is with us in Maryland. Hi, Dylan. How are you? Hey, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve, man. What's up? Okay, so I've been listening for about a year now and due to some really bad life issues, I made some really bad decisions and I'm now, uh, 24, 25,000 in the hole. And I just, I don't know how to get out of it. Um, the debt is a credit card. So it's $800 on a credit card. So it's $800 on a credit card, um, 23,500 in a car loan. And then I owe my mom money for a car I just bought off of her so I could try to get out of the actual car loan. Um, the one with my mom, she's already told me that, uh, all my other bills need to come first, but I went to the dealership trying to sell this car and they said that I can't make

payments on the difference because I do owe more than it's worth. Um, so it looks like my only option is to voluntary surrender or private sell and try to save the difference. And I just don't know how to get out of this. And it's, it's causing fights with me and my girlfriend and I'm stressed about it and I'm losing sleep over it. Why is the car causing fights with you and your girlfriend? The car isn't just the financial stress that I've been under. Oh, just that, yeah, you're freaked out and so you're not fun to be around. Okay, I can go along with that. So how old are you?

18. Holy crud. How much do you owe your mother? I owe her about 800 bucks. Oh, good. Okay. And what do you make? If I work 60-hour weeks, I can make $1,600 every two weeks.

So $3,200 a month. So you're making about $50,000 a year. That's gross or net? Take home? Take home. Okay. Yeah, so you're making about $50,000. What do you do?

I work at Amazon. I load trucks. Okay. All right, cool. All right, and what is the Kelley Blue Book private sale on the car that you owe $23,500 on? Private sale is about $19,000. Okay. So you're $4,500 off, and the dealership won't work with you on that.

Who do you owe the money to? Chrysler Capital. Who? Chrysler Capital. Chrysler. No, they will not let you work out the difference. None of the car financing companies will. I called them, and they said my only option was to voluntary surrender.

No, that's not the only option. You've got to cover the difference. You do not want to voluntarily surrender this car. We're going to work this out. Okay. Okay. How much is your rent eight hundred dollars a month okay all right so here's the thing to start with we're going to

take a little pressure off and uh you don't have to pay your mom anything right now and when you sit down and do a written detailed budget with $3,200 coming in, and you pay the payment on the rent, and you buy some food to eat, and you keep gas in your car, and you work 60 hours a week or more, you have the money to pay the car payment for right now. It's a dumb purchase. It was crazy. You shouldn't have bought it, and yes, you need to get rid of it, but you do not have to turn it in. You can pay the payment for now, okay? I don't

want you to keep it. I'm going to help you get out of it, but you need to get yourself organized with your monthly expenses on a budget. So go to EveryDollar and download the EveryDollar app. And when I take $3,200 minus $800 for your rent, minus some money for food and gas, and minus a car payment, I got money left over here. Now, you're not going out every night partying, and your little girlfriend may not see you for a while unless she wants to come over and watch TV. But we're not going to be running around spending money on anything. We're in the middle of a crisis. Agreed? Yeah, agreed. I'm not a party anyway.

Okay, good. So we just got to get you organized because you have the ability to make enough to pay these bills for now. But then we have to get you out of this car because it's land of stupid. All right, so you need $4,500. There's two places we can get that one is you could save it up or two is you could borrow it somewhere else okay so i want you to go talk to your local credit unions around the area i want you to go talk to some small uh small banks in the area uh and see if you can scratch up a $5,000 personal loan.

Crap, man. Even if you put it on a credit card, you would be $5,000 in debt instead of $23,000 in debt. That would be a good move. Agreed? Yeah. Now, so you're already in debt. All we're doing is restructuring and reducing the overall debt by getting rid of this car so you need the 4,500 and then you need a buyer you don't need

a buyer till you have the money okay and don't borrow the money just get the loan arranged okay so the bank has approved it the credit union has has approved it. They say you can come get $5,000. Then you put the car up for sale, and then a buyer comes along and hands you a $19,000 check. You run over to the bank, pick up the $5,000 loan, put it with the $19,000 check, send it to Chrysler. They send the title. You give it to the buyer. That's how this works, okay? Okay.

Now, that's going to get you out of the car. You do not voluntary repo it. Here's why. They will sell the car after repo, voluntary or otherwise, not for $19,000, not for $15,000, but for about $10,000. It's a repo sale. And guess what? They're going to sue your butt for the difference, $13 if i'm right on my pricing and so you go from a minor problem to a major problem okay you lose control of the sale price when you hand them the

keys you follow me yeah and you got to cover the difference either way so another problem the other problem is of course you'll have a repossession on your credit which is you know like a foreclosure a bankruptcy or an irs lien these are the four worst things that can happen to your credit and or car repo and so we don't want to start you out at 18 years old with that that's not a good plan so we're gonna we're gonna get tight on the budget beans and rice rice and beans no life we're paying rent car payment and the budget, beans and rice, rice and beans, no life. We're paying rent, car payment, and food and gas, and that's about it. And we're going to hold on, hold on, hold on until we can either save up the $4,500 or we can get a loan for $4,500 or $5,000 or whatever it is,

and we get a buyer lined up with it and get the car sold. If that takes you three or four months you can make it if it takes you five months you can make it i don't want it to i want you to get rid of the stupid car i want it out of your life and i want the stress gone just for you okay and then you've learned your lesson you're not going to borrow money anymore and for god's sakes don't borrow money from a relative anymore stop borrowing money but the good news is you can clean up those other two little debts real fast, $800 and $800, right? Yeah.

As soon as we get this car problem solved. But I want you to pay minimum payments on those right now, and let's get this car problem solved as fast as we possibly can. So let's save up the $4,500 or get a loan and get out of the car. Did all that make sense to you? Yes. Any questions? Do you still think I'll be able to factor in,

there'll probably be about $250 worth of insurance costs per month. Yeah, okay, $3,200. How much is your car payment? $480. Okay. So, $3,200 coming in in a month, right?

Yeah. Minus $800. Minus $480. Minus insurance. Minus gas. Minus food. I've still got money left, dude. You following me on the math here?

So whatever is left of over, do you want me to put that into a debt snowball or save it? No, put it in the savings because we're trying to come up with a $4,500 if you can't get it borrowed from a credit union. Okay. If you get it borrowed from a credit union and you get rid of your car, then you start using it to work your debt snowball and get these debts paid off. So when you lose $5,000 on this car, I want you to remember this the rest of your life.

You learned a very valuable lesson as a very young man, and you don't have to learn it twice. The bad news is you're paying $5,000 in stupid tax. The good news is you learn not to impulse a stupid butt car again and never borrow money on one again. That'll change your whole life if you learn that lesson right now at 18 years old. Folks, let's cut through the bull. Interest rates are exceptionally low, so you're missing out if you have not called Churchill Mortgage to see if you can save money on your home loan.

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Do it today while rates are low. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumerAccess.org. Equal housing lender. 761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Yeah, Alyssa and Aaron are with us.

Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, Dave. Hi, Dave. Welcome, welcome. Where do you guys live? Chicago. Fun. Welcome to Nashville.

Thank you. And all the way here to do a debt-free scream. Yes, sir. Good for you. And how much have you paid off? We paid off about $76,000. Good. And how long did that take?

18 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? We started at about $100,000, down to $80,000, and then back up to about $100,000. Cool. What do you all do for a living? I'm an accountant. I'm a registered nurse and a lactation consultant.

Very cool. Good for you guys. Very well done. What kind of debt was the $76,000? It was $1,000 on a credit card, about $7,000 to a personal loan, and then the rest was student loans. Cool. How long have you two been married? Four years in June. All right. So after a couple of years of marriage, you looked up and said, what? What

happened? What started this process? Well, I guess for me, it kind of started with, we had just had our baby and Alyssa was on maternity leave for 12 weeks. And during that 12 weeks, she was getting paid, but only up until her PTO ran out. Um, so we were, um, just living way above our means at that point. Uh, we were making enough money to cover up our stupid. Um, but when those checks for Melissa's work quit rolling in about halfway through maternity leave, um, I could see the bank account starting to go down and I wasn't making enough to maintain our lifestyle. And I saw, I saw a down, and I wasn't making enough to maintain our lifestyle. And I saw a train coming, and I knew it was coming fast.

Fortunately, we had enough money in the bank at the time to get through maternity leave, and then she went back to work. But I knew something had to change. I tried to mention it to Alyssa, but I did a typical guy thing. And I said, hey, I'm going to cut up my credit cards. I think it would be wise if you did the same. And she kind of went, whoa, I don't think so. So yeah, so we kind of came to it a little bit differently. He came to it on his own. And I had heard about you growing up because my brother listened to you all the time. So I'd heard your name, but I didn't really know much about you. And then he came to me and he kind of said, like, hey, I think we should get out of debt,

which was all good on paper. And then he mentioned cutting up my credit cards, and I was like, whoa, like, I'm good. I'm frugal. I pay my credit cards off. Like, why am I being punished? And so I shut that down pretty quick and didn't really talk about it for a while. I'm not even sure how long, honestly. And then, like you said, this was after we had our baby.

So our baby was born in May of 2017. And I had pretty terrible postpartum depression. Yeah. So that was a pretty terrible like eight months for me. And my sister, who's with us today, she's from Atlanta and she listened to you a lot. And so one day on the fly, she was like, Hey, I mean, you're sitting on the couch all day anyway. Why don't you listen to this show with me? Like, um, it's really motivational. It's inspirational. You know, I think it would be good for you. And so we listened to

the show together that day. I don't remember anything about the show personally. But when he came home from work that night, I was like, hey, I'm on board. That was it. And you don't even know why. What happened? I don't remember exactly. I just think it was the motivation of it and the inspiration of it. I was always really a goal-oriented person in college. But I think having a baby kind of turned turned my world upside down postpartum is

real yeah that's a real thing and um having a goal helps work through that though doesn't it exactly i think that having the goals and knowing what we're working towards um gave me a reason to get off the couch and uh yeah and i think that that honestly like when i look back that was a pretty um pivotal moment for me um working through that depression and getting out of it. Yeah, so you're the other side of it? Yes, so thank you. So the tears are just remembering the pain. Yes, it was, yeah.

It was pretty terrible. It is, it can be bad. Yeah, that and like one other thing at my life in that point were like where I can look back and be like, that's whenever it started to get better. There's something people who treat clinical depression, not postpartum, but clinical depression, tell us. There's something about having a goal. There's something about exercise. There's something about you've got to get outside yourself somehow and look out past yourself, and then that helps you walk through that stuff. That's what the people in the business tell me anyway.

So that's pretty cool that that happened for you guys. I'm so proud of y'all. Thank you. Well done. So what about Sister? How does she feel about this? Is that your biggest cheerleader or at least one of them? Yeah, she was definitely one of the biggest ones, yeah.

So she's my little sister, and she's debt-free as well, but she didn't want to do the scream thing. All right. ones yeah so she's my little sister and she's debt-free as well but she didn't want to do the scream thing um but yeah so um yeah she was definitely one of our biggest cheerleaders so once you get off the couch that day your game on that night you guys lean into it 18 months later 76 000 is gone that's gotta feel weird it does i don't know if it's quite set in yet yeah it's crazy i was just telling him it's not it's now it doesn't seem like it's quite set in yet. Yeah. It's crazy. I was just telling him. Now it doesn't seem like it was that bad, but I know it was because all I felt like I did was just drop my kid off all the time. That's all I felt like I did. You just worked.

I just worked. You just worked. Well, in your world, you can work a lot. You can pick up OT easy. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And now it's done.

It's done. Now it's done. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? For me, it was take the shift. Just take the shift. It was, no, just don't think about it. Just take it. Great place to go when you're broke to work.

Yep, just take it. Just keep taking them. I think the whole thing was, I mean, for me, anyways, it was communication. I mean, sitting down and having budget meetings and talking about goals and motivated i think both of us and um and just i mean honestly it helped our marriage we started communicating better i mean it was it just um kind of completely flipped everything upside down and things just were running more smoothly yeah so she walks out of the living room that day after listening with her sister and says i'm i'm i'm in game on you're like who are

you and what'd you do with my wife pretty much where'd that woman go that wasn't gonna cut up her credit cards yeah i was just like wow okay let's do this yeah don't don't look don't don't ask questions just do it yeah right yeah that's great and we definitely like kept each other accountable too like oh there are plenty of times whenever he wanted to do something i was like i mean is that really something we have to do right now? Yeah, I just work the shift. I'm the spender, too, so I find ways to spend money. He's the spender. I'm definitely the spender.

All right. Fun, fun. And your baby's how old? Two. And her name? May. Reagan. Reagan.

So she come with you for the scream? Yep. All right. Very cool. Well, let's meet her then. Oh, she's cute. How fun. Look at the pigtails.

That's precious. All right. Look at the pigtails. That's precious. All right. Very fun stuff. All right. It's Reagan, Aaron, and Alyssa in Chicago, Illinois. We got a copy of Chris Hogan's Everyday Millionaires for you, and that's the next chapter in your story. You're going to be millionaires now. That's where you're going next.

Way to go, you guys. $76,000 paid off in 18 months, making $100,000 to $80,000 to $100,000. Great real story. Thank you for sharing. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

We're debt-free! Yeah! Reagan's looking around trying to figure out what just happened. Oh, you'll find out in 20 years, darling. That's fabulous. Oh, well done. Well done. Real stuff.

Real stuff. Blinds.com gives us our question of the day. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Even if you mismeasure or you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your window blinds for free. Free samples, free shipping, new promos all the time. Use the code RAMSEY. Suzanne says, Dave, what do you do when a debt collector refuses to send you an email to verify the agreed terms of payment? According to them, that's a violation of federal law.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, how stupid, stupid but is that it's a violation of federal law to send you an email that says what you just agreed to that's an absolute freaking lie uh they told me they can send a letter but by the time i would get it the offer will expire uh you've taught us to never this guy's a con artist darling uh you taught us to never send payment do we have terms in writing absolutely my son needs to resolve this and get this off his credit report he's attempting to This guy's a con artist, darling. You taught us to never send payment. Do we have terms in writing? Absolutely. My son needs to resolve this and get this off his credit report. He's attempting to enlist in the military.

It is frowned upon to have a debt in collections. You're about to get screwed. You're dealing with scum, and they are not going to do the deal they said. And that's why this guy's messing with you there is absolutely no reason whatsoever federal law or otherwise that this moron cannot send you an email with the terms that you just agreed to and don't you dare give him a dime until he does just tell him to jump off a cliff your son will get in the military with one dead in collections just fine believe me lots of people in the military have a dead in collections this is the Dave Ramsey show Thank you for joining us, America.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ryan is with us. Ryan is in Michigan. Hey, Ryan, how are you? Good. Thanks, Dave, for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Hey.

So my wife and I, growing up, have always been taught debt-free is the way to go. That's how we've lived. Didn't really find you until a while back. Don't have any debt. Working on paying off our house. Going at a pretty blistering pace at it uh my wife and i uh are on the same page but she's starting to i want to slow down a little bit um and i want to actually knock it up a notch and get this house out of the way um trying to how much do you own your house uh 86 5 and what is

the schedule that you're currently on with your blistering pace to pay it off? How fast? Well, if I just did minimum payment. No, I wouldn't ask. I said with your blistering pace that you're currently on, when will you pay the house off? Year and a half, two years. Okay. And how old are you?

31. What's your household income? 140. Okay. And she wants to slow it down instead of a year and a half or two years, wants it to be three or maybe four? Yes. Because she actually wants to buy a couch or some food.

Yeah, maybe take a vacation, that type of thing. Yeah, she's right. You need to slow down a little. Is there a suggestion that you have for maybe appeasing both of us? No. I mean, I have some. No. I think what the deal is, you know, what we teach is, and we've taught it to millions of people,

when you get to baby steps four, five, six, which is where you are, you're putting 15% of your income into retirement, you're taking care of kids' college if that's appropriate. And now you're putting everything else on the house to get the house paid off. You're going to have your home paid off at a very, very young age. You are doing a really, really good job. It's okay to calm down just a little bit. When you hit that, we say you don't have to be the blistering pace. You don't have to be at the gazelle intensity. I do want you to get your house paid off.

And, dude, if anybody else in America just about called me or talked to you and they said, I'm 32 years old. I'm going to pay off my house in four years. We would say, touchdown, you're a stud. Most everybody else is going, I'm going to stay in debt the rest of my life, right? Right, right. You're so far ahead of the curve, man. You're so far ahead of the curve.

You're doing just fine, and it's okay to take a light vacation. It's okay to, you know, buy that couch she's been wanting or whatever. I'm not asking you to go on a spending spree, but if you slow it down by just a little bit, you're going to win her, and you're going to win the war. Lose a battle or two so that you can win the war. Now, that makes sense. I just, you know, I have goals. I'm with you, man.

I'm the same way you are. If you were single, you could lay your ears back and just go do that. But you have the opportunity here to build your relationship and a permanent partner for the next 50 years on your wealth building goals but if every time you come up with a new goal it means she suffers you're going to struggle with your goals and getting her involved the rest of your life no i agree with that i do agree with that because i'm listen the only reason i know all this is i did it just like you i'm i'm 60 almost and i was dumber than you are by far when

i was 30 it was in terms of how i dealt with my wife and i because i just go for it man you know you can tell my personality from listening to me on the air i go i go man everything's wide open i have two i have two speeds wide open in the sleep you know and so i know you i am you i'm just a little older version of you okay and i think you're awesome by the way i really do i think you're a sharp young man i think she's got a great husband and she should count her blessings that she's got someone who's actually thinking like this uh i get the other call where i can't get the husband to step up, and you're beyond stepping up. You're stepping on it. So just dial it back just a little bit, and you'll have more fun in the journey here.

And when you get to the goal, it'll be that much sweeter. So, hey, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life, your money. That is the second call I've had in two days about slowing down while in Baby Steps 4, 5, 6 and letting off the gas a little bit. And so, guys, it's just you've got a longer slog there.

When you're doing Baby Steps 1, 2, and 3, most people are through those in about two years or less. You can do anything. baby steps one two and three most people are through those in about two years or less you can do you can do anything extreme levels of pain extreme levels of sacrifice bizarre stuff for 18 months or two years it's a lot harder to do it for seven or eight or nine without just leaving lasting damage in your relationships and even in your psyche for that matter so it's okay to go go hard till you get past baby step three. When you're debt-free, you've got your emergency fund in place. Until you do, you ought to run like your hair is on fire.

Get after it. But once you get there, then don't let the foot off the gas completely. We're not going to coast to a stop. We're not going to go in reverse. But just let the foot off the gas just a little bit, just a little bit, where you can enjoy the scenery a little bit as you go here. And then you go on vacation, a reasonable vacation. You buy a reasonable couch if you had one.

The reason I keep bringing up couches, we had one that the springs in the thing were like sticking you when you sat down. And so that was like a thing to get rid of that couch when we busted through and we didn't go spend a you know we didn't go spend twenty thousand dollars on a couch i mean we went and bought a used nice couch at a garage sale actually rich into town got this like eight thousand dollar couch for about 800 bucks and but it was such a move up from old spring boy into your butt you know that it was uh it was such a breakthrough but i remember the emotions of that and um and i remember having to kind of okay my wife is driving a car that is an absolute piece

of crap and i've got to get her up out of this car before i move on and start doing some of my other little goals and we did we we she was driving y'all remember those blue, two-tone blue Astro vans? It had to be one of the ugliest cars ever made other than the Gremlin, you know? And so she had that blue Astro van. It was on the second transmission. The first engine was going down. It had 100-something thousand, I mean, almost 200,000 miles on it. It was garbage.

I mean, it was garbage. And so she's like, I need to move up a little in cars we moved her up into a little SUV um like a little Suburban or something I used one and uh that was pretty big move up though it was a big deal to stop what we were doing and go buy something after we've been hitting all these goals and uh but you know um happy wife happy life kind of thing right yeah well i mean within reason that's a good that's a good thing to keep in mind so not happy princess happy wife you can't keep a princess happy but uh happy wife a full-grown like woman you know who makes mature decisions so um you know that that guys this is very important stuff that you guys learn the rhythm of this

to be able to make your decisions as you're going through these different steps. The average person working our stuff is still, even with what I'm talking about, paying off their home in seven years. That's average, which means some are paying it off in four, like our last caller, or some are paying it off in 10. But either way, you're so far ahead of the general public who's broken clueless. I mean, you're so far ahead of Joe average, stupid American. You know, you get your house paid off in seven years. You're just stud, stud at man. I mean, that's just, that's incredible stuff and you

put yourself in a position then to build serious wealth and to fund your kids college funds and to live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else it changes everything that's a really good question from that young guy he's a sharp young dude i mean he's getting after it so you just uh uh there's a few times that if you'll if you'll give up on a couple things at least temporarily you'll get everything you ever wanted and i'm a lot of years and a lot of dollars the other side of those kinds of conversations now those conversations are several decades old that i'm talking about but uh uh and i'm now sitting in just ridiculous situations where, I mean, our decisions are very easy now because there's not any issue. So, got financial peace after all these years.

Who knew? That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Our thanks to James Childs and Madison helping us out in the booth. And we'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, stick with us. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com slash show and register. We would love for you to come to National and tell Dave your story.