The Ramsey Show - App - Facts are Your Friends (Hour 3)

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

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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 dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW and the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. The Orlando April the 4th Smart Conference is postponed to August 15th

with the exact same lineup in the exact same location, and all of you that have tickets will be transferred to that time frame. Obviously, a week from now, we are not going to be doing that. I guess that's obvious. If it's not, it should be. So we're not going to be doing that. So we invite you to buy tickets if you haven't already bought them for the Orlando event. Now it is August the 15th, and it'll be the same great lineup with Meg Meeker, Les Parrott, all the Ramsey personalities, and myself.

Again here, the number 888-825-5225. Jonas is with us to start this hour off in Georgia. Hi, Jonas. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, first off, I just want to say I appreciate you taking the time and answering the call for me. Sure. So I'm 22 years old, and I'm recently recently engaged and me and my fiance found out that we are expecting to have a baby in the early part of October. So I guess my question stems from over the past few years, I've started to try to start saving and I have about $30,000 saved up. I didn't know if now would be a good time for us to go ahead and start looking to buy a home. Uh, we have the option to stay with family,

um, at a much lower, uh, rent. Um, but I didn't know if it would be wise to stay with family in terms of, I don't want to cause me to, cause any distress amongst us, which we all get along. That's not an issue. But if that would be wise or if we should look into getting an apartment and then continuing to save in the meantime until we can start our home. Yeah. When are you getting married? It'll be on June 27th.

Okay. And I would get an apartment that you move into immediately following that. And then a year later, I would think about looking for a house. But I would rent for at least a year. And let's get baby here. And baby and mommy are okay. Let's learn to be a household, be a family. Let's learn to pay bills in that environment, run a budget in that environment,

stay out of debt, clean up any debts she's got. If she doesn't have any, pile up cash and have an emergency fund. Beyond the emergency fund, start saving up your down payment. You'll still only be 24, 25 years old when you buy a house. And that's still very young to buy a house, and you'll still be just fine. So you would recommend that we don't move in with any family no i would not do that okay stop just stop just a second the reason is real simple something happened with my kids and my kids are slightly older than you um they would you you know, sometimes come back from college,

graduate from college, stayed with us a few months, and then they go out on their own. When they go out on their own and they're paying their own bills, the electricity gets cut off if they don't pay it. They're buying their own groceries at the grocery store. They're vacuuming their own floor. They picked out their own apartment. Something happened in their emotional maturity. It leaped forward and leapt forward.

And you guys are getting ready to be a mom and a dad. You're getting ready to have a new marriage. And you need your own place. It is going to be good for your relationship. It's going to be good for your emotional development, your maturity, everything. And I would beg you to get out and get you an apartment. As a matter of fact, you probably ought to go ahead and do it now, and she helps pick the apartment because she's going to move in there

after you get married. And so that's probably what I would do right now, and you guys figure this out. So, hey, thanks for the call. And so that's probably what I would do right now. And you guys figure this out. So, hey, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. There's a good rule of thumb, by the way. I always tell young couples, and this would be people under 30 or so,

wait a year after you're married before you buy. I want you to buy a house. Well, rent's cheaper. Real estate's cheaper than buying rent. Oh, shut up. Just wait a year. Wait a year. Because it takes about a year of being married to know how close to your mother-in-law to buy you've got to get to know each other to make a better decision on what you buy you're the dynamics of your relationship are

going to form uh there's gonna be a lot of stuff happens in that first year for some people it's a really tough year so spend a year on your marriage not on hanging curtains not on painting bedrooms and doing a rehab spend a year on your marriage and then you'll make a better decision when you buy i do want you to buy i just don't want you to think that buying a house is so mandatory that you're never if you don't do it immediately you're going to die or something sean's with us in Oregon. Hey, Sean, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave.

Nice to talk to you finally. You too. What's up? Well, I started a machine shop, my own company, back in 2018, and I was working full-time at another machine shop that I was at for, well, I was there for about eight and a half years. And I finally quit back in October, and I guess I started doing pretty good back in January, and February was all right.

This month's looking like it's going to be okay. So I had a truck loan. I ended up selling it a couple weeks ago, my truck, and I can't pay off the loan, the kind of loan that I had. It was like a personal, it got turned into a personal loan right away. Right quick, what's your question? should basically do my job part-time still, or run my company part-time and go on to working full-time at another company for, I don't know, a couple years. Why? Is your business not working?

Well, it's working, but... What kind of money are you making, profit? So profit, I've made about five thousand six thousand dollars each month so why would you need to get a job if you can make sixty thousand dollars a year yeah i don't know i guess i'm just getting kind of worried and stressed i've been working like insane hours at my shop to be able to do this. And honestly, right before I had a phone call with you, or right before I called, my customer actually called me saying that apparently this whole coronavirus thing,

I guess they have 100 shops that work out with them up in North California that all got shut down. So they're asking if they'd be able to send me more work my way. That's awesome. Wow. I'd raise my prices and work less hours and make more money. I think I'd be in business for myself. But hold on.

I'm going to send you a copy of the book Entree Leadership, see if we can help you. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. We've been voted one of the best places to work in Nashville 11 times. You want to know how we do it? Well, our team has been using LinkedIn jobs for years to find the best people from all over the country to come and help us change lives. Think about it. LinkedIn has more than 600 million active members. I'm talking about people who come to LinkedIn to make connections, grow their careers, and discover new job opportunities. In fact, 90% of LinkedIn users are open to new opportunities,

but not actively scanning job boards. This means LinkedIn Jobs gives you access to an entirely different demographic. Don't wait. One hire can change the direction of your company. Post a job today at linkedin.com slash Ramsey and get $50 off your first job post. That's linkedin.com slash Ramsey personality, Dr. John Deloney. And you're going to be hearing from him a whole lot more. One of his two PhDs is in counseling.

And so, hey, we kind of thought it'd be good to bring John on, even though he's brand new with us, to take some calls from you guys. And your headset's not working you can't hear john wait a minute john can you hear me no sir okay um you guys just come in here and fix it whatever you got to do we're going to get it going here it's all right uh we're he got it we're on i'm new dave i'm new i'm figuring this out you know where the now you know where the volume knob is that's good okay that's. That's cool. On switch on this thing. I had no idea where it was either, so there you go.

All right. Anyway, John's with us, and PhD in counseling, and he's stressed out already because his mic doesn't work. Not in audiology, though. That's right. In audio tech. That's it. Not in audio tech.

So we're going to take your calls. If you guys are, we thought it would be good for John to coach some of you guys on how to talk to yourself about the anxiety, the fear that's out there, how to talk to your family about it. You might be in a leadership role. We were talking about it off air during the break, some of the stuff, you know, some stuff I'm having to do as the leader in this organization right now. And, you know, how to talk to others, yourself, others, if you want to deal with that. The phone number here, if you've got questions for Dr. D, this is your time.

The phone number is 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225. So, John, talk about anxiety versus fear. We were talking about that the other day, and I loved your take on it. So anxiety is just an alarm system, right? It's just the fire alarm that could go off at any moment when it smells smoke, right? And you often hear about folks with an anxiety disorder. That just means the alarm's busted, right? And we've all been in the building when the fire alarm's going off and you can't you can't check your email and they say hey don't leave the building don't leave the building but the fire alarms are going off your brain's fried there you go from the hearing fear is that's something you're experiencing right now the building you look out the window and you see flames that's that's fear that's for real right

and so i think what we're seeing across the country is fear's real. And if you're not scared, if you're not scared on that you think people overreact in, you're not scared that we're all going to die from this virus, you're not scared about fill in the blank, you're not scared that you have ten kids at your house now that were supposed to be in school, right?

Then I think something's wrong with you, right? You should be feeling something. You should feel some angst. There you go. Some level of fear. That's right. So good fear is there, and then, you know, that keeps you from touching a hot stove. It causes you to analyze and use your critical thinking skills and really lean into a situation. Absolutely. Which is what we're dealing with right now. You might have a financial situation. You might have a career mess right now. You might have a health mess right now. And so fear in those situations are smart. Over-correcting with fear, what I've been calling hysteria, and it might not be clinically the correct term, but I'm calling it hysteria,

which is people that are just afraid. They're in panic mode. The difference in fear and panic. Talk about that. Panic is the response, right? It's screaming and yelling and running out the door. And the only thing that you're going to do when you scream and yell and run out the door is trip your neighbor, knock over their lighter so that you set the building off. Panic solves nothing. It solves nothing.

And it takes a situation and compounds it and makes it worse. Everybody, the guy who trained me in crisis counseling, Dr. Andy Young, used to always tell us before we went into a situation, calm is contagious. You walk into a situation and you're running and screaming, you just take everybody else's temperature up with you. Walk in, assess the situation, slow down, bring the room down, and then you can make good decisions. I had a—when I was 22 years old, I was working for a guy, and we were building custom homes.

And he used that technique in a little different way. If we had a customer that was irate and sat down in the office, the louder they got, the quieter he got. That's right. The louder they got, the more he lowered the octave in his voice intentionally. It just became like Chris Hogan is, real quiet and calm. And what it does, it just sucks the drama out of the air. My dad was a hostage negotiator. He used to drive me crazy when he did that to me as a kid, right?

I'd come in all freaked out, and he would just kind of bring it down, bring it down. That's right. Yeah, the volume down and the octave down and the pulse rate down, because no one makes good decisions when they're panicked. That's right. And when we experience fear, naturally it's wired into us. We start scanning the environment for fear. Now we're in a world where there is no shortage of people trying to sell us fear.

And so it's coming on our phones. It's beeping on our wrists. It coming on our phones. It's beeping on our wrists. It's on our TVs. It's everywhere. And it's really contagious. It's insane. Clinically so, right? And so it's how do you turn the noise off?

How do you turn it down, bring it down a notch? And I think some of the times what happens is, and when I was talking to our team yesterday, I was describing to them the idea that the physiological response to fear and anger is pretty close. The same things happen to your body in both cases. You know, you have the same, your eyes dilate, you have a protein endorphin release, an adrenaline release, your heart rate changes. You know, so fear and anger feel a lot alike.

They are cousins, aren't they? I think physiologically you can say that that's fair yeah and then just how we choose to name it in those situations whether you're what's your default mechanism is my default is anger my wife's default is fear i've got a good friend whose default is fear and that doesn't mean anything it doesn't mean you're a fearful person or an angry person it just means that that's that's how you interpret a situation how you choose to go at it if you don't stop and breathe. And wisdom is knowing what my default setting is, catching myself before I do something,

and surrounding myself with smart people who know that's my default setting, right? I've got a group of guys in my life who know I'm about to – they'll roll their eyes and say, that's Deloney, right? They know where I'm about to head with something, and they're there to kind of rein me back in. Yeah. The phone number if you want to talk to Dr. D about these things that are going on in the marketplace, 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225.

One of you is going to be the first call he ever takes in his radio career. You have that opportunity right now. That's like winning the sweepstakes right there. I'm going to, yeah. And that, I don't know what that wins you. So in most situations, in my experience, when the threat is real, people rise up. And in situations like this where the fear has spread to a real threat to the point that the reaction does not match the threat. And, you know, from the times you've done where you've been in

crisis counseling with folks you've been in situations like that do you see that people have a tendency uh just the human animal has a tendency to do that i think you just said it best it's you you kind of devolve to your animal instincts right which is to either say all the information we're getting stupid or all the information we're getting is the right thing. Or I'm going to start buying toilet paper as though we're having a mass diarrhea epidemic. Right. I mean, it's this people are responding irrationally. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Dysentery is not one of the symptoms.

Not one of the things. Not one of the things. Yeah. It's not what's causing it. But I have no idea. And water being in the water system is not one of the methods. A couple of weeks ago when it started to sell water. You couldn't get the bottled water. I've got a hose.

I don't know, man. I just don't get it. What are you doing? If there was a run on meat or a run on vegetables, I could go with that or a run on vitamin C. Water. Water. I've got a sink, man. I've got a bathtub.

I mean, we're, yeah. As if the public water supply was going to get tainted. Who knows? But again. What was going through people's minds? Nothing good. Yeah. Nothing thoughtful, I guess.

So how do you talk to your teen right now, your college student that has been infected by this fear, and help them have the wisdom to address the actual threat without an overreaction. I'll default back to another thing we learned in crisis counseling, which is facts are your friends. Be honest. Be straightforward. Be direct, which is we've never experienced this before. Some people are saying this. Some people are saying this. Some people are telling us to do this. And in this house, here's how we're going to handle it, right? And be pretty clear. I think having a plan for the next couple of weeks on here's what our days are going to look like.

Here's how we're going to interact with each other. Here's how we're going to honor one another. Here's how we're going to limit our screen time in the house. I think there's all kinds of things we can do, but you've got to be intentional. Same as you would start in a business. Same as you would trying to have a great marriage. You've got to be intentional. Okay.

Facts to your friends. New Ramsey personality, Dr. John Deloney joining us. We're talking from his perspective with a doctorate in counseling about the fear and the anxiety that's out there right now, the panic that's out there,

the hysteria that's out there, how to deal with it personally, how to deal with it with others. Phone number here is 888-825-5225. Back with your calls. If you do this one simple thing that we all do, you are literally at risk of being hacked and someone stealing what you've worked so hard for. Do you ever use public Wi-Fi? I'm talking about getting online at a coffee shop, a store, the airport, or even at home. Hackers can use a simple $100 device to mimic Wi-Fi, and with just a little bit of skills, they can take over your financial life.

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Joining me this half hour, Ramsey personality newly minted Dr. John Deloney. He works in the area of counseling and a lot of crisis counseling. And so I thought it would be a good idea to have him on right now because folks are facing a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear. And some of it has evolved all the way into hysteria. And maybe the idea of how do you talk to yourself during this time or how do you talk to your kids during this time or how do you talk to your team if you're in a leadership role during these times? How do you handle these things? You ready to take some calls?

Let's take some calls. All right. Let's start off with Garrett. Garrett is in Utah. Hi, Garrett. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, sir. Thank you very much for taking the time for my question.

You bet. Hey, Garrett, you're my first call ever, so thanks for calling in today. Oh, I'm honored, sir. Thank you very much for taking the time for my question. You bet. Hey, Garrett, you're my first call ever, so thanks for calling in today. Oh, I'm honored, John. Thank you so much, sir. Well, wait until I answer before you're honored. Yes, sir. How can we help? I'm in the military. I don't make very much money or anything like that. My wife and I, we have a little retirement from when we used to be over at Delta and we're

just really concerned because we looked at it today in the last couple months it's dropped down by about you know 25 percent of what it was just a month ago and we just we're just trying to know what to do I mean I'm not a panicky person or anything I just want to know what your advice is, sir. Yeah, what is it invested in? I'm sorry? Your phone's breaking up. Can you hear me, sir? You're invested in what? So it's in the Delta stock.

It's in the 401k retirement plan. But you've got it all invested the Delta stock. It's in the 401k retirement plan. But you've got it all invested in Delta stock. I believe it's in Delta stock. It says I'm pulling it up right now, so I apologize. That's okay. All right, here's what you've got to do. You need to find out what you're invested in, and you need to be in good mutual funds um and uh if you're in delta stock yeah

you lost a bunch that's a real scary place to be right now i would never have you in a single stock investment anyway and um i would have you in good mutual funds that would be a lot more stable than a single stock of any kind but right now you happen to be in the one of the industries that's the hardest hit by this the airlines and i'd like to say if you're looking at this every day and checking it and watching your investments we say he's a young guy he's a veteran appreciate your service man stop like watching this watching your retirement accounts right now right yeah once you're convinced that you're in the right thing there you go then then you don't check it every day because it'll drive you nuts i don't check mine right and i do this for a living so um but yeah once you know you're in the right thing but

i think where he's getting fear right now is his lack of knowledge he doesn't know what he's in can't even describe it to us and so um you need to get with one of our SmartVestor pros and get some coaching on what to put this in. And it's not just all things when you say stock market are not the same. Single stocks are much more risky than mutual funds. And even all mutual funds are not the same. You look at the track record. But if you say I've got a mutual fund that I've researched with my broker, I understand it. It's got a long track record. For instance, I own one that's 70 plus years old and has averaged over 11% a year for 70 plus years.

So if that thing happens to be down a little bit right now, I'm okay with that. Right. But if I don't understand what I got, then it freaks me out. So Jim Collins and I were talking when he was talking about leadership stuff, John, and he said that people can handle bad news but they can't handle ambiguity they can't handle not knowing what's going on exactly it's there's a lot more stress with not knowing what's going on than there is bad news facts are your friends tell the truth be direct be clear and if you don't know what you're talking about be quiet absolutely all right let's go to Susan in Texas. Hey, Susan, your question for Dr. D.

Hello. My question is, we have three adult daughters, and two of the three of them, one of them has already been furloughed on 60% pay, and my oldest, who's there in Nashville on a VIMRA event in the hospitality industry, is really confident that she's going to be furloughed with any day now. Um, very, very close to the edge financially. And both of them call me almost every day. And you can hear the panic, particularly in my oldest, that she's just going to topple off the edge and be just not ruined, but what am I going to do?

What am I going to do? And for the first time in my life, I don't have a ready answer with, well, honey, let's try this. So I could use some tools on how to approach this with adult children who can make their own decisions, can make their own, but how do we help them? I love that call, and I appreciate you. Where in Texas are you calling me from? San Antonio. Excellent, excellent. I'm a Houston kid. That's where I was born and raised, right down the street from you.

Oh, so good. So here's a couple of things I'll pass along to you, and then I'd love to get a little more insight from you. The first thing is I want to hear from you. How are you feeling? My heart is just breaking for them. But I don't want to, you know, my first instinct is I just want to go and scoop them up and bring them home. And go, don't worry. But realistically, with our job as parents to have independent adults, I need to support them as adults.

So I'm high-fiving you from Nashville back to Texas here. Here's the truth of this matter is this. You can control two things on planet Earth, your thoughts and your actions. And so you know know, your daughter's better than anybody in the world. And I think it's, it's our, as parents, I've got two little kids. Um, it's, it's my instinct is to try to, like you mentioned, wrap my arms around them, take care of them right away. Um, say, Hey, this is going to be okay. This is, I don't want you to be upset. I don't, I don't like to hear the fear in your voice. And the reality is this is new for us, and this is scary.

And so I think, number one, making sure you're anchored, that you've got a good support network there in San Antonio. And then the second thing is going to be knowing each one of your individual daughters, who they are, how they respond. It may be that one of them, say 60%, they've been okay with their money, they're going to be all right, and you say, hey, tough it out. The other you may say, get in the car and come home. The other you may say, hey, you've made this bed, we told you not to move to Nashville, and here you are. Hopefully you didn't, it's a great community here. But I think it's going to be specific for

each child, but I think the most important thing that you can provide them is a sense of calm, a sense of you are anchored in, and at the end of the day, you can't fix this situation for them, and you can't control where they're going to head decision-wise. Does that make sense? It does. They are diametric opposites in temperament, in how they approach things, in how, and my youngest, this is her first job. She just graduated from school in May. This is her first real job. So on top of that, you know, she's thankful for the 60% pay and, you know, her job is shut down right now. But in the back of her mind is I'm the newest employee. I'm the newest

employee. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. They're going to get rid of me. Oh no. So she's the one that would pull up and pull up stakes and move in with us in a minute. But then my oldest, fiercely independent, but very close to the edge financially. Sure. And I think, are you, do you have a husband there? Are you married? Yes. So how have you all approached the conversation with them moving back in with you before?

Before this happened, what was the boundaries you all had established conversation with them moving back in with you before, before this happened? What was the boundaries you all had established for when they can move home? We never really had any because they all got great jobs out of school. Sure. Been great, so it would do as an old dad is I would just start asking a series of questions about, you know, what are some side plans? What are, you know, and what if this happens, what are you going to do? What's your next plan on what are you going to do while you're furloughed? Are you going to go look for some part-time jobs?

What are you doing with your budget? How are you doing on cash? How are you doing on your rent? How are you doing on, and start to just pick the thing apart and the thing is as they answer those questions that's probably the first time they've thought about it rather than just having a general worry you start to unpack where they are actually and they will um they'll probably find their way through it so um john's giving you some good pointers as well they're going to find their way well. They're going to find their way through it. They're going to find their way through it. They need you to be solid and you to be anchored.

And so they have a place to tether off from. Dr. John Deloney, new Ramsey personality. Got another call we'll take with him coming back from this break. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our scripture today, Proverbs 10, for a slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. Robert Collier says, success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out. Ramsey Personality, Dr. John Deloney, we call him Dr. D, Ph.D. in Counseling, is with us this half hour

answering your questions about anxiety that's out there right now, fear that's out there right now, hysteria, panic that is out there right now. How do you talk to yourself? How do you talk to your family? How do you talk to your team if you're in a leadership role? How do you talk to your team if you're in a leadership role? How do you talk to your customers if you're in business? Fear just messes up everything in the brain. And panic makes people that are normally smart look really dumb. And, you know, that's all of us.

So we're going to take a call next from Andy in Missouri. Hey, Andy, your question for Dr. D. How are you doing? Hey, Andy. Hey there. I have two teenage boys, 15 and 13. Our 15-year-old has passed me up

height-wise. He's got a JARS permit. Congratulations. Thanks, I haven't arrived, have I? He's got a JARS permit this last year, and he suffers from what we call teen brain. It seems to be like a close cousin to the know-it-all teenager.

Our 13-year-old quite hasn't got there yet. He'll get there very quick. Yes, he will. He's catching on quick to what he's learning from his brother. That's right. That's right. How do I combat said teen brain while also getting my or our point across and also allowing him to still feel kind of unsmited and not being hurt by, you know,

kind of being called a carbon or something? I think it's real clear and real quick and real easy. And you set boundaries. You're the parent. You're the dad. This is your home. I think it's always good facts are your friends um being real clear about here's when you drive my car and my house and in my neighborhood it's

going to be done like this um i think there's a lot of folks uh parents today that want to be friends with their kids that want to buddy up to their kids and what kids are craving is boundaries they are craving boundaries they are craving somebody to say this is the line this is as far as you go and this is how much i love you because i'm going to hold the line here and so um having a 16 year old's gonna be the funnest adventure you've ever had um and it's getting uh if you're not balding already it's coming um so congratulations to you late um yeah too late well they could have come back and they're not coming back um but i i've seen it over and over especially um i say especially

all kids all teenage kids crave crave boundaries andy um be the dad that loves their kids and give it to them give it to them direct yeah and and just you know we had i remember hours we we had a i heard a guy say this one time and i actually ended up using it on one of my mouthy daughters um i walked in the kitchen and she was she was just dressed she was just yelling at her mother and i'm like wait a minute stop you might talk to your mother that way but no one talks to my wife that way that's right yeah i will take you out and make another one look just like you i mean you are not doing that and that all that is is like you know uh no that is not even a possibility that's going down as you said in this house that's right you know and so uh and then the other one we

would always do is just listen and trapped inside of every teenage body is a 4-year-old and a 34-year-old, and I just ask them, which one am I talking to right now? I like that. Because if you're talking to a 34-year-old, I'll talk to you like a 34-year-old. We'll have a conversation. I'll persuade you like one of my friends that this is a wise set of principles to operate your life on. If you're going to be a 4-year-old, I'm just going to tell you what to freaking do, and you're going to do it because I'm in charge here.

That's great. I'm going to mess this up a little bit bit there's an old mark twain quote that said when i was 14 my old man was the dumbest guy i'd ever met in my life and when i came home at 21 i was stunned at how much he had learned in seven years right so you're entering the season where it's natural they're gonna want to they're gonna want to pull away they're gonna want to show you how big and tough especially the one that's bigger than you. I think some practical tips involve them. Be a dad who says, I'm sorry when you do something that's not right. Honor your wife. Honor your community. They are going to watch and learn, right? You can say everything you want to. They're going to learn how to go to the next step of their

life by watching how you live your life, Andy. So it's important that you model the steps that you want them to take. Donovan is next. Donovan is in Oklahoma. Hey, Donovan, your question for Dr. D. Hi. How are you guys? Good. How can we help?

Oh, man, I'm trying to do okay. I'm working in Oklahoma. I'm working in New Mexico in the oil field. And I'm actually in New Mexico in the oil field. And I'm actually a salesman in the oil field. And today I started going to rigs, and there's no sales calls allowed due to the coronavirus, this, that, and the other. So that's the general state of the oil field.

And my wife works as an RN for a health department. And I'm out in New Mexico trying to go through the debt snowball. But my wife is knee deep up into Corona. And she's taking things a little more seriously than I am until this morning, whenever I realize that now, I realize that was a little serious. And so I'm kind of freaking out. But I'm about to go. I'm on my way home from New Mexico,

trying to figure out what the heck to even, how to approach this, how to be, you know, how to say this. But, I mean, fortunately, I'm not laid off. I just can't work out there, so I'm going to be basically about half pay. There you go. So I just moved here from Lubbock, Texas, and so I get the oil field. I get the ups and downs. I get the roller coaster. Just pushed through Lubbock myself.

Well, God bless you, man. Wave to him. I'm in Florida right now, actually. There you go. What I would tell you is this. You've got a couple of things that you mentioned to me. One is I'm scared that I'm going to have to go home and tell my wife that I'm not bringing home as much money as I am. And I'm scared for the woman that I love who's out there serving this community in a scary, messy situation. And I'm scared for her too. And so I think the greatest

gift you can give your wife right now is to sit down at the kitchen table and hold her hand and look her in the eye and say, I'm scared and I love you. And we're going to get through this together. And then together you will make a plan for what tomorrow's going to look like and the next day. And that's going to include finances. That's going to include how you're going to honor each other when you're both scared and nervous. That's going to include how you're going to help her with the laundry when she's got to come, when she's rotating scrubs on and on and on and on. But it's about making a plan, making a plan together, and being vulnerable with the woman that you love. This is a scary moment for you financially.

It's a scary moment for your wife health-wise. And it's scary for everybody around us. And it's going to be that calm, collected response. And you look at her in the eye and say, I love you, I'm with you in this, and we're going to get through this together. Have you guys been through Financial Peace University? Yeah, Dave, we have

and I'm actually I mean, we have been through it. Yeah, we've got the membership and the whole deal and we're going through it together and we're on our debt snowball and we've paid off about $30,000. Good for you. Congratulations, man. The good news is that you guys know.

My point is you've got the tools then, not necessarily the debt-free, but you know how to handle the money. And so you've got the tools to sit down and say, with a reduced income for a short period of time, we're going to do a budget. We're going to lay out a game plan of it where every dollar is going to go. We're going to do a budget with our time. We're going to do a budget with our energy on where it's all going to go. And what John was just saying was brilliant.

And you just have a game plan, and you share the vulnerability, and you share the game plan. And, dude, you guys can fight through anything. You're not the kind of people that this is going to take out. You're going to be just fine in 60 days. You're fine. And there's nothing that drives my wife crazier than when I try to bow up and act like nothing's bothering me. Because she can feel it right she knows and so there's something magic about sitting down and saying i'm scared but i love you yeah i mean and you don't have to do that every 20 minutes no you do it once you make a plan

right you know the one time i mean or the two times i mean until you just say what's really going on right then yes you know Just be out loud about it. And make a plan and follow the plan. There's something about putting the truth on the table in the spotlight that causes the demons to run for the corners. Doesn't it? Every time. They can't stand the light. Every time.

Even if it's ugly truth, it's the truth. That's right. And fear just dissipates. And how many guys have you talked to over the years that would call you and say i realized i was going to be half pay so i started borrowing money and i got my now i'm over my head right yeah and he's not gonna do that he's not gonna do that no plus she's working a lot of hours she may make up the income uh and what a blessing she is to these communities out there yeah absolutely health care workers thank you for

her good for her dr john deloney newsey Personality. Thanks for hanging out and answering folks' questions. Thanks. Good times. We're going to be okay. That puts this hour of the day Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. Praise Jesus. Hey guys, it's George Camel, host of the Dave Ramsey Show video channel.

You can now listen to the show on your smart speaker. Just tell your Alexa or Google device to play The Dave Ramsey Show or find out all the ways you can benefit at DaveRamsey.com slash smart speaker.