The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Take Financial Advice From Broke People! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Ken Coleman answer your questions and discuss:   EveryDollar, budget for the life you want today for free: Click Here "Do I really not need to have a credit score?" "Should my husband quit and start his own business?" "Do I need to buy a house now before I get priced out?" "Should I use my 403(b) to pay off my house?" "What should we do with a million dollars?" Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Join a Personality-led FPU class. Click here! Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: Click Here Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: Click Here Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? Click Here Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods moving and storage studios, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where he talks about your career, your work all the time, every day, is my co-host today. So you want to talk about those subjects, he's here for you, and I'll try to stumble

around and cover some of it too. The phone number is 888-825-5225. The call and the advice is free, and some say it's worth exactly what you pay for it. Dana is with us in Pittsburgh. Hey, Dana, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi. I'm so excited. Well, we're excited.

How can we help? Well, I recently, first off, I watch you all the time. You, Rachel, Dr. dr john george love you guys you've saved my life in many ways thank you so much i truly respect all of you well thank you um absolutely so i saw something the other day that said poor people use debit cards rich people use credit cards i don't have any credit cards. I don't have any debt. I have great investments. I have money saved up. I only have living expenses. I have a great job. I don't have any credit cards. Should I? Well, I don't know who said that. I guess it sounds like you ought to stay off of TikTok. Yeah. You didn't see that at a Cracker Barrel,

did you? No, you didn't see it at Cracker Barrel. I promise you you did. Yeah, You didn't see that at a Cracker Barrel, did you? No, you didn't see it at Cracker Barrel. I promise you you did. Yeah, you wouldn't have seen it there. You wouldn't have seen it where actual rich people hang out or actual poor people hang out. Yeah, so I don't know. It sounded to me like they got that exactly backwards. Mine at worth several hundred million and I hadn't had a credit card in 30 years, so I don't know where they got that okay so but then don't i need a credit card to like rent a rental car or use it i haven't had a credit card i haven't had a credit card in 30 years and i travel more than any two of you put together so um okay now they they take a debit card i mean you have to work some of the situations you have to work at not every uh of the uh rental car

companies take them no and there are some situations where you have to work at not every uh of the uh rental car companies take them no and there are some situations where you have to do a workaround on it but it's not this idea that you you know so here's the thing people get credit cards for mainly one reason so they can buy crap they don't have the money to buy right and then they justify it going well i need to build my credit that's what they say because that's what rich people do rich people build their credit oh crap all the rich people that we interview say they get out of debt and stay out of debt and that's how they got rich they don't pay payments all the time because see there's only one way to build your credit go in debt right right why so you can build your credit why so i can go into debt why so i can build my credit why so i can go into debt why so i can build my credit it's a dog

chasing its tail it's called the great fico scam so that that's why i haven't had a fico score in 30 years really yeah really mine's mine's that they said I don't exist. I'm not here. I'm off the grid. Wow. Because I don't have any credit. I don't have any. I have had no interaction with debt in well over 30 years of any kind.

And so I have zero on my credit bureau report. So I have a zero credit score. They say it's indeterminable. I call it zero. Right. Dana, what do you think you need credit for? What do you think you need a credit score for right now? If I want to buy a house one day. Not true. You'd have to talk to George Campbell. He bought a house with zero credit score. And he got a mortgage, by the way. He did it with manual underwriting, it's called, with Churchill Mortgage. And got the same interest rate that people with an 800 score would have gotten

but you know what george did don't you they turn around paid the house off and so at 32 years old he and whitney are millionaires so you know that that's what they did and it wasn't because he makes a bazillion dollars here, because I don't pay that good. Actually, I do. But George got it paid off before he started making banks. So there you go. But anyway. And Whitney.

Whitney makes a... Oh, yeah. Two good incomes there. That's it. But anyway, they... Yeah. So, no, Dana, it's a scam. And whoever said that... I mean, listen, you got to be careful where you take financial advice.

Broke people walk around all the time with financial advice. Don't take financial advice from broke people. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. Don't, you know, your broke finance professor in college is telling you how you need to do stuff. And he's got no money. A broke finance professor is like a shop teacher with missing fingers. I mean, come on.

Yeah. There's issues here. So, yeah. All right. Open phones, folks, at 888-825-5225. shop teacher with missing fingers i mean come on yeah there's issues here so yeah all right open phones folks at 888-825-5225 you know ken what's interesting is if you look around you say okay the vast majority of the population is something i don't want to be yeah then don't do yeah what they're doing that's right the vast majority of them look good and have no money. They have cars they can't afford, vacations that they're still paying for after they got home.

Their net worth is horrible. They're counting on the government to provide for them when they get to retirement because they're not saving for retirement. Their children are a student loan looking for a place to happen because they're not saving for college. This is normal in America. 78 of americans live paycheck to paycheck that means 78 of americans are not worthy to give out financial advice because they're freaking broke so when your broke friends have an opinion just smile yeah no thank you that'd be like me having an opinion on growing hair on my head. Yeah. Yeah.

That'd be dumb. Yeah. I mean, there's none up there. Well, you could be an expert on what not to do. Yeah, but I don't even know what caused it. I know you didn't. It's DNA. I can claim it's DNA. So here's what's going on, Dave.

We live in a world. I can claim it's going broke. That's right. I can claim my hair fell out for a lot of reasons, but at the end of the day, I'm not good at growing it on the top of my head. So you should not take my hair on top of your head advice. So here's what I want people to hear. Just because it's marketed so heavily and everybody else has bought it doesn't mean it's true. We have marketing messages that have been going on for decades. You pick an area of life where

you see a commercial. Let's take the uh prescription drugs they are marketing these things are good for you but the list of side effects are longer than the actual thing it's helping and but they market it with these happy ebullient people in the commercial commercial is the disclaimer you know let's just know and so it's it's marketing and so you know we've got to understand that it's been marketed to you that you need a credit score. It has been marketed over and over and over. The most aggressively marketed product by time spent on the air, dollars spent on advertising of any product in history of humans. Exactly right. MasterCard, Visa, and American Express's combined marketing budget is billions a year.

It's way more than beer. It's way more than, I don't know, cars. Put all the car companies together, it's a tenth of what the credit card, just the three credit card companies. I'm not talking about people like SoFi, who also advertise to get you into debt, or other people like this. It's nothing like that. I mean, Bank of America, God help us.

You know, I mean, put all those budgets together to get you into debt. Oh, my God. It is the most marketed product in the history of the world. And guess what? It's also the most purchased. That's why this show is so popular because people are up to their eyeballs in debt and can't breathe. Highest percentage, Dave, of all time of six-figure earners that are living paycheck to paycheck. And it's largely credit card debt.

Man, when I was a kid, if you made $100,000 a year, you were automatically rich. Yeah. Now you're just automatically in debt. This is The Ramsey Show. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Olivia is in Indianapolis. Hi, Olivia. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? So, my husband is a software developer, and I'm a UX UI designer, and he works full-time. I mom full-time, and we are building this application on the side for a client, but we want to like turn it into a SaaS application, like be able to take on more clients. And right now his most recent proposal is that we just don't have time to like work on it, I guess. We have three kids and a house and a dog and um he's wanting to quit his full-time job um and then get like a part-time job and then devote the rest of his business hours to this application um and that kind of sounds terrifying to me

I'm a little scared too. Scares me a little. What does he make now? He makes almost $100,000. Okay, and what's the client paying you for the side gig? Well, we've made around $16,000 total, but it's not going to be, this is,'s a closed application like i understand i understand this is a one-time application versus software as a service i understand so sas you said correct yeah so you want you want to launch it out there to other people on a subscription basis

and then constantly iterate it constantly maintain it and market it yeah what does it do uh it's an order management application. Okay. How are you going to market it? So we plan on introducing it at a conference for like the particular industry that we're working for. There's one every year. It's usually in like February or March. Okay.

All right. So go get $200,000 worth of orders at that conference and then quit. What if we don't have a product that's good enough to convince anybody to quit? And he doesn't quit. Pour a pot of coffee and put the kids to bed and work. You know when Financial Peace was written? Financial Peace has sold 3.2 million copies. You know when it was written?

Between 10 p.mm and 2 a.m at night when the kids were in bed and my wife was in bed yeah where yeah i mean we've been doing that for two years now well if you've been working on it for two years and you still don't have a product a market worthy product you got other issues shouldn't take two years to build something like this something's not adding up olivia so the answer back to the primary question is no he should not do this this this something's not working you guys aren't working enough something's not adding up here he certainly is not leaving his full-time job making 100k he's got to work extra hours burn the midnight

oil get up early you guys got to figure this thing out it's not ready let me let me tell you a hundred percent of the projects that i have in my head work not a hundred percent of the projects that i have in my head when i put them out in the marketplace, survive. As a matter of fact, only about 5% of them survive. 95% of my ideas suck. That's my ratio. And pretty much our ratio of failure around Ramsey, too, by the way. We try to not let them suck in ways that cause fatal failure. In other words, failure that takes us down because we bet the whole freaking farm on them.

Walking out of $100,000 a year job for something you wish would work but you hadn't found time to work on and only made $15,000 on is not wisdom. But do go do this, by the way. Go live the dream, but don't turn it into a nightmare. I'm serious. Go get the problem. When's the conference to sell it? When's the conference to sell it? When's the conference to sell it? February, end of February.

Good. You got all kinds of time. Yeah. Sit down and say, we're going to go all in on the midnight oil. You're going to go all in on mommyhood, and you're not going to whine about your husband not doing something because he's working on the dadgum app. Okay? For nine months, y'all are going to go go all in and you're going to take it at the conference and if it

sucks and you can't sell it all you lost was some sweat and some midnight oil but you need to be testing this though olivia you guys both have the brain power to do this so the reason it isn't working you guys can probably identify we don't need to spend any time on that. But this needs to be tested, tested, tested, tested before February. Yeah, you've got to get your bugs. You've got to get built. You've got to get the bugs out so that you can. But you need a marketplace. Prove it.

Because right now, the only place this is successful is in your mind. True. Fully, yeah. Yeah, and you don't quit for that. You don't quit for that. You quit when you have some proof. You need social proof, meaning yeah. Yeah, and you don't quit for that. You don't quit for that. You quit when you have some proof. You need social proof, meaning money. Yeah.

When people pay you money for something, that's when you know it works. Until then, it's a freaking theory. This is a business. It ain't a hobby. And that's actually a very good point. If I had the husband on the phone, I would ask him, how bad do you want this because there is the idea of it versus the actual hard work of sweat tears blood failure getting back up and and if you're not willing to do it now i'm not sure you're willing to do it when you take a part-time job that's my concern

it's not gonna work it's not you know what i mean if you can't keep from it no no it's a good idea it's worse than that the thing is an abysmal failure and does not sell. Right. Because it was wrong. Right. And now he's just screwed. Right. No, that's why you don't take a part-time job.

Because you just, you don't know. Listen, when you're taking a shower or you're doing your morning walk or you're sitting on the back with a cup of coffee, all your ideas are good. They're all good. And by the time you get to the office a couple of them are bad but not but 98 of them are still good out of 100 but when you put them out in the marketplace the marketplace is going to look at you and go you suck you're horrible that's a dumb butt idea i'm not giving you any money for that yeah and i've had that happen to me in 30 years a whole

bunch of times i mean the stuff you guys know us for are the 5% of the ideas that worked. The rest of the ideas are a distant memory or you never heard of them, but they're psychological scars for me. That's right. It's so true. If you aren't willing to lose sleep, to lose time with family, to just get an idea proven, you probably shouldn't go after it full time. You've got to prove it.

You've got to prove it because it all works in your head it always works in your head good question good question olivia listen i'm terrified you need to say that to him very clearly there's a reason you're terrified it's not because you're an irrational person it's because you're the wiser of the two that's why you're terrified i'm terrified listening to the story and i don't even live up there okay i'm down here so uh you know it is terrifying what you're describing so hey all right ruth is in new york city hi ruth what's up hi dave hi ken um so thank you for uh hearing my question um so my husband and i we just got married a couple of months ago, combined our finances and everything, and it was par savings together for a goal for our home down payment, and we have a total of $1030,000 so we could put a larger down payment for a home and also have the closing costs off, obviously, and also like a little home emergency fund. But I've been hearing in the news that like housing is going to increase by like 7%,

like the prices of the houses are going to increase by 7% in the next year or in the next 12 months. And a lot of the areas we want to purchase a home is like we're like almost priced out, and I'm just really nervous that we're going to be completely priced out by next year. Never buy a house based on fear. Okay. Never. Are you debt-free? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah on fear. Okay. Never. Are you debt-free? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And you have your real emergency fund. I don't know what your little house emergency fund thing is, but you have a real emergency fund of three to six months of expenses? Oh, yeah. We have a six-month emergency fund. Good. How long have you been married?

Both of us got our job. We'll be good. How long have you been married? Since May, end of may just the other day okay congratulations um if you buy a home in the next year you're not going to get priced out okay you're fine you're fine yeah you're you're gonna be okay if five percent keeps you from buying a home you weren't getting ready to buy a home anyway. If 50% gets you priced out, but 5% increases, 7% increases, don't price you out of the home market.

That's all very doable. Interest rates could move one point and it changes the formula right back to where you were. Down. They'd have to move down one point for that to happen. But I mean, yeah, you're fine. You're fine. You got house fever because you're newlywed. Breathe. Be wise. Buy the right house at the right time that you're both in agreement to. You got time. You got lots of time. You're going to be okay. Sometime in the

next year, I would buy a house if I were you. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy. So if you feel like the system is working against you, try a biblically-based alternative to health insurance, Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM is a health cost-sharing ministry that's helped hundreds of thousands of families like yours take care of over $11 billion in medical bills since 1981. And CHM has also helped them stay

true to their values and avoid miles of red tape. And CHM support goes far beyond meeting financial needs. They'll also help meet spiritual needs. Members become part of a family who will pray with them and for them when they experience a medical event. So listen, y'all, there's no better way to take care of health care costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget at chministries.org slash budget. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Jeremy and Katie are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Hi Dave, hi Ken. Welcome, where do y'all live? Washington, Iowa. Oh fun, welcome to Nashville, good to have you. Thanks for having us. Very cool, and how much debt have you paid off?

$975,000. Whoa, how long did this take? Seven and a half years. Wow. And your range of income during that time? We started around $180,000 and we're around $260,000 or so now. Wow. What do you all do for a living? I'm an engineer and a hog farmer early in the morning. And I work for a hog company doing logistics for them. Okay. Wow.

Look at you guys. Amazing. Amazing. Great income and $975,000 over seven and a half years. I'm guessing you might have paid off the house. We did. Wow. Look at it, weird people.

Love it. Yeah, we paid off the house and the hog building. Love it. What's all that worth? Oh, together, a million dollars. Okay. And then how much have you got in your nest egg? $250,000. So you're worth over a million and a half dollars yeah congratulations how old are you two i'm 34

and i'm 32 you're amazing wow that's unreal and they just flashed a picture of the hog building up there that's no little building that's a monster no. How many square feet is that? Oh, I don't know. It holds 5,000 little pigs. Uh-huh. I bet it does. That's a big building. Yeah. Wow.

Congratulations. And that's what you do before you go to work. That's right. Yeah. Goodness gracious. Yeah. I pictured in my head, because one look at me, you know, I know nothing about pigs, but you know, I pictured this pen.

This is a massive building. How many people do you employ? Just myself. It's this guy. What? Get a little help occasionally. He's's an engineer he's got it all automated okay now little pigs get fed automatically wow yeah and then they're not little anymore and that's the whole idea i like it all of a sudden i want bacon day we can hook you up got a little yeah i like it congratulations You guys are amazing.

You work your butts off. We did, yeah. And you still are. Yep. Wow. Amazing. Very, very cool. Okay, so tell us a story.

What happened seven and a half years ago? How long have y'all been married? Ten years. Ten years. Ten years. Okay, so a couple years into marriage, something changed. What happened? Yep.

So back then, Jeremy drove about an hour to work and I drove about 30 minutes. And our friend Vince from college took us on to the podcast and said, I think you guys would like this during your drive. And as we listened to the podcast, we thought, let's pay off the car. Let's see how that goes. And as we went, we had a couple of credit cards that we paid off each month but we thought let's pay off the credit cards and cut them up so we did that and then uh we tested out doing the budget and then from there's history we just kept on going so you tried a couple things that didn't it didn't ruin your life no it didn't and it kind of got better and so you thought i think we can do

this yeah yeah yeah you guys sound like an engineer just kind of eas better, and so you thought, I think we can do this. Yeah. Yeah, you guys sound like an engineer, just kind of easing into stuff here. Yeah, don't want to break something in the way. Yeah, you baby-stepped the baby steps. You're like, I just want to try this. So once you finally paid off the credit cards, that's when you were like, okay, let's try the budget, and the budget changed the game. And you guys got really process oriented yeah the budget really really changed uh how we handle our money of course but how we talked with each other and how we communicated work together uh yeah it really really changed things for us we're both pretty conservative spenders but we didn't really ever talk about anything um so once we got four months

into the budget or so it was just clicking right along so what was the house debt versus the hog uh building debt yep so we had about 320 or so on the house um and then the hog building was like 620 yeah so were you just pouring profits back into the building more or less yeah yeah but once we paid the house off especially especially. So right as we started this, we had just signed with our contractor to build our house. So we didn't have it yet. So our hog building is about eight years old. And before that, Jeremy was waking up at about 2.30 in the morning to go chore because we lived about 20 minutes from there. And then he had to come back home and shower and go to his daytime job.

My goodness. So we thought, we've got to build build a house we have to live closer to the hog building um so thank god we found your plan when we did because we uh really tightened down the budget on what we are going to build we still built what we wanted but we put a lot of sweat equity into it as we nice house yeah thank you yeah yeah good for you guys yeah that building looks i'm trying to calculate 50 000 feet probably yeah it's so i'll call it 250 by 70 yeah okay all right what kind of profits is that spitting off the hog business oh it does all right oh there we go no reason to get in competition here. No reason to draw people in. It's too hard to work.

You're not going to have any competition. He has worked himself into a fabulous situation. Dude, I want to honor you for working hard. 2.30 in the morning. Can I just tell you? That's some daggum grit. Good for you, dude. Yeah, so when we built the Hawk building, so we're contract caregivers.

So we own the barn and we get paid for our labor. And then another company owns the pigs. So when we built the barn, we thought we had no risk. We thought we'll do this all day long. And then as we started listening to the show more and more, we realized there is risk involved there. You know, the company we grow for, something could happen for something could happen something could happen to the hog industry and we won't be needed anymore and that was a significant part of our income so well and you knew that you had to pay a dadgum payment on 600,000 bucks wow no little piggies we got a problem right yeah serious, my gosh. Way to go, guys. Thank you. Way to go.

How does it feel to have all of that done at 34 years old and be free? It feels pretty good. Yeah, you got some wiggle room now. Yeah. Yeah, we had life happen along the way. You see our three kids here, and then we lost a six-month-old son. Oh, no. About a little over a year ago.

I'm sorry. So, you know, besides the hard work, it's been a ride. But without you helping us put us in the position we are, it would have been much harder. I can't imagine anything harder than that. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry. Wow. What victories and sadness all wrapped in together. A lot happens in seven years.

It does. It surely does. That's a lot of ground to cover. Well done. A lot of ground to cover well done a lot of wisdom in that now when you look back did you realize it was good was it easier than you thought it was going to be when you get to the end or was it harder than you thought it was going to be when you got to the end um between the two of us it was easy we knew what our plan was but this is weird i mean when you're standing looking at it first first it's like 900,000 bucks right yeah okay was so when you got to the end and you went oh my gosh

you got I got this it's easy but it was harder or that's gonna be really hard and it was easier which was it um at points you know when we became the nerds and we did the math we knew it was going to be easy but then when real life happens and farm ground comes up for sale around us that we really want to buy but we can't yet we're not there um so those were the hard things so the numbers were both numbers people so that was easy the emotional side was the hard thing yeah good for you good for you what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is i would say you know you gotta work together if you're not working together it's not going to work and then working together but also working hard um and be disciplined being willing to say

no even though you don't want to um you know it's all nothing fancy but um and it works yeah wow wow way to go all right bring the kiddos up here what are their names and ages But it works. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Way to go. All right. Bring the kiddos up here. What are their names and ages? We have Caroline. She's eight years old. We have Will.

He's six. And we have Theo. That's three. And what's the name of the one that's in heaven? Lucas. Lucas is in heaven. All right. Perfect, guys.

Hey, we've got the live and give bundle for you. That's the Baby Steps Millionaires book and the total money makeover book and the financial peace university membership any of that you don't have you use it if you do have it give it to somebody it's live and give to say thank you for coming down you guys are an amazing power couple and these kids have no idea about their mom and dad and how special they are but they will someday when they look back and they go oh man paid off the hog barn by working too dirty in the morning you know they'll talk about you and their grandparents i like it well done you guys very very well done all right jeremy and katie and team from washington iowa 975 000 paid off baby steps millionaires in seven and a half years making 180 to 260 count it down let's

hear a debt-free scream three two one we're debt-free wow wow what a story amazing this is the Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones, 888-825-5225. Carolyn is with us in Virginia. Hey, Carolyn, how are you? I'm doing great.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My question is about paying off my mortgage early. I just retired this month, and I want to know if I need to consider the tax implications of paying off my mortgage since the money would have to come out of my 403b. How old are you? 61.

Congratulations. How much is your mortgage? $145,000. And how much do you have in your 403b? Once they put in the partial lump sum, it'll be a little over a million. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah.

Okay. So you're a millionaire. Look at you. Yeah. Okay. So you're a millionaire. Look at you. Way to go. Yay. What's your house worth? About $550,000. Way to go.

Are you single? No, I'm married. Okay. So that's your household situation or your personal situation? My personal situation, my husband has a 403B that's about $200,000. And he has Social Security, and I have a pension that will help us live. Okay. All right.

Yes, you'll pay income tax on the $140,000 that you pull out. So calculate that in and pay off your house today. Really? Absolutely. out so uh calculate that in and pay off your house today really absolutely i'm just worried about how much i think it's going to put me in the next tax bracket that doesn't matter for one year zippy it's not it's not much money so the the deal is this okay it doesn't the way we can tell to do this is if we're wrong it doesn't matter you're still in great shape okay if you told me you had 250 000 to your name that was your whole nest egg for your whole family and i was going to clean out i don't know 200 of the 250 to pay this house off i would have pause on that because i don't want to get you down to no money.

Okay. It doesn't matter that my mortgage is – Okay. Done such a good job. Thank you. It doesn't matter that the mortgage is only at 2% or anything. It doesn't matter. Nope.

It doesn't matter because you want to be free. That's why you work this hard. I really do. I really do. If the mortgage being at 2% mattered, you would have borrowed another $400,000 back when it was at 2%, but you didn't go further into debt because it was so wise to have a 2% mortgage. Right.

Right. Just because it's smaller doesn't mean, no, no, we're not going to keep it. It's not a pet. It's not as ugly as other pets, but we're going to keep it. No, no, no, no. It's still ugly. Yeah, it's not a pet it's kind of it's not as ugly as other pets but we're going to keep it no no no no it's still ugly okay yeah all right yeah because think about what you're going i mean if you if it was paid off and you had instead of a million you had uh i don't know what you have 800 000 in there okay and you wouldn't go borrow money to put it in investments no yeah same thing.

Even if you could borrow it at 2%. So you're free. You're free. You're free. You did so good. Thank you. Hey, how much of your... Well, I know it's in 403B, so you didn't inherit this money.

No, I didn't inherit any money. This is all just... What'd you do for a living? Did you return from... I was an educator in a public school. I was a principal of an elementary school. There it is. Yep.

There it is. Hey, well done. Love it. Congratulations. I'm so proud of you. Okay. By the way, number one career field for millionaires in the largest millionaire study ever done, done by Ramsey, engineers, hog farm guy.

Yep. Okay. Engineer. Yep. Number three, teachers. Yep. number three teachers Carolyn okay I mean come on and teachers can't be millionaires well you just probably ought to call Carolyn up and tell her that then oh my gosh apparently you can be apparently somebody did it so there you go teachers number three number two account, accountants. Number four, business executives. Number five, lawyers. Doctors, MDs didn't even make the top five.

They're notoriously stupid with money. It's like a stereotype. They're like music people or something. I'll tell you what the truth is. The truth is docs are like music people. The music people in Nashville that I know, there's one of two types. Dumber than a rock with money or genius that they don't really there's no middle ground and i find the same thing with mds the mds are really smart with money or they're just arrogant and stupid it's just nuts

and they i'm a broke doctor yeah you are you worked your whole stinking life to be a doctor and then you're broke yeah because you get off get off, and they apply their, oh, well, anyway. Yeah, way to go! Yeah, this flies in the face of the notion that the American dream is dead, that you can't get ahead. This is just a woman and her husband who they just lived on less than they made. They lived like no one else, and now she's going to live and give like no one else. And it's just, I love these stories, because you don't see this in the news you don't see this data point six hundred thousand dollar paid for house now right uh eight hundred thousand in her now 403b he's got 250 so they got

a million dollars in cash that's right and a six hundred thousand are paid for house that we know of their net worth is 1.6 that's right that we know of 61 years old um and doing just fine thank you very much doing just good it's better than not million dollars is not enough yeah but it's more than you got so maybe you ought to go get it and then talk about whether it's enough or not everybody everybody's got a dadgum opinion about something they've never done right you never ridden a bicycle you should not not criticize bicycles. I mean, come on. Do something and then talk about it. You just said something beautiful.

Go get it is what you said. People want it given to them. They want the higher salary. They want all the stuff given to them, but they can't manage it when they do get it given to them. These are people, these everyday millionaires, baby steps millionaires, they are the people that go get it.

They get it. But she didn't. It wasn't like some big no it was like steady the tortoise not the hair it's not there jamie is in washington state hi jamie welcome to the ramsey show hi ken and dave um my question is is my husband and i are expecting to receive over a million dollars in a buyout situation, and we're not sure what we should do, if we should take it in one way or another. Party! I wish, but I'm not that type. I'm kidding. I just couldn't resist.

I was like, I'm not sure what we should do. I think I can find something. Okay. Wow, what happened? Was he hurt or something? What happened? No, my husband was involved he had a partnership in a business and they decided to buy him out oh cool that's awesome okay so you got a million bucks and you're trying to decide what to do with that

correct and we owe 390 on our, and that's our only debt. Okay. And our nest egg is $225 around that. Okay. Well, then we've got $600 left because we just paid off the house. Okay. Now what are we going to do? How old is he? He's 41.

Awesome. What's he going to do now? We don't know. We kind of feel like the options are open um yeah infinite yeah i got 600k to play with yeah let's go do something we're not interested in maybe staying in washington so but interest rates we're concerned to move yeah yeah well you don't have an interest rate if you have a paid for house my interest rate's zero because I don't have one. Correct.

And yours is, too, now. What's your house for? So where are you moving? We would like to go back to Idaho, where we're from. Well, you can buy a house for cash in Idaho. They'll let you do that. Okay. Sell the house you got.

Sell the house you got. Put some cash with it. Buy you a house for cash in Idaho. Now, you don't know what he's going to do for a living yet? Yeah, no, not yet. Okay. All right. Should we take it in one lump sum?

Yeah, sure. Or should we be concerned about taxes? They don't want him around. I'd get my money away from them. Okay. They might screw this thing up and not be able to pay him later. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Whoa whoa i just hit a nerve yeah correct yeah yeah get your money now yeah you're gonna have a little tax on it but oh well

such happens when somebody gives you a million dollars but not gives you but you earned a million dollars and yeah pay your house pay cash for the house is step one step two is develop a game plan because he does need something to go to not just from yeah this is not his defining moment it's his first it's the first act what's he gonna do in the second act and the third act and the encore when he comes back out on stage and the applause continues i'd like to give him a gift dave i'd love to give him the get clear assessment along with From Paycheck to Purpose as he figures out the path forward. This is a great time for him to go, what do I do best? What do I love to do?

What results do I want to put in the world? He now has the freedom to do that. Whiteboard. You can do anything you want to do. And you got the money to go do it. This is very cool. It's a great time, Jamie. I know it's sad for y'all in a lot of ways, but you really ought to just be smiling.

This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Ken. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey baby steps, go to RamseySolutions.com and click on the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com and click get started.