The Ramsey Show - App - Get Closure on Your Debts so They Don't Come Back to Bite You (Hour 2)

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

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Music Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Chris Hogan, Ramsey Personality. Number one best-selling author is my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225.

Jared is with us in Monroe, Michigan. Hi, Jared. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, guys. How are you? Great, man. How can we help? So my current employer has a pension program, but they're trying to move to a 401K. Well, it'll be a 401A because it's a county government job. So I'm curious what the better of the two options are and your opinions on them. How much are you required to put into the pension?

Into the pension and the 401A will be the same. It'll both be 4%. That you put in or they put in? They will match up to 6% in the 401A. In the pension, I put in 4%. Okay. And that requirement would be lifted and you could put your money anywhere you wanted to put it and they will match the first 6%. Am I understanding you right? Yes. I have to choose one of the two. So if I choose the 401, they will match up to 6%. Okay.

When you put in 4%, what do you get with the pension? They will also match 4%. With the pension. They match. As far as I know, I just get my years towards my pension that I have to be vested towards. And then once I retire, I get 75% if I get a full pension, depending on how long I stay. How old are you? I'm 25.

Okay. Chris, you can chime in on this, but mathematically, I'm going to say it's a no-brainer to do the 401a yeah because you're not that i was thinking yeah you're in control you're going to put it in a better investment it's going to grow to millions of dollars more than the pension would have grown to and if you die you lose the pension and when you die your 401a is in your name that's exactly right and jared if you were to leave or move on then you can just do a direct rollover of that 401A. So you're going to have more options to invest inside of that 401 than the pension. So that's definitely the route I'd go, my friend.

Now, remember, just because they're matching you up to 6%, you want to be at 15% yourself. Don't count the match that they do as part of the 15 right okay okay and then they also like anything i put over that required is going to have to go into a 457 so i don't know what that actually is is it kind of the same thing or what it's very similar 457 is deferred compensation and it's very it works very similarly if you put over the 6%, you're saying that's when they're going to make you do that? Yeah, anything I put over the required amount will go into the 457. But they match up to 6? Yes.

How are they matching up to 6 when you're not putting 6 in? Well, I have to put 6 in for them to get that match. I know, but the other two can't go in the 457 and then match it. That doesn't work. Okay, see, that's what they were saying. We're currently in union negotiations, and that's what they were saying. Yeah, you've misunderstood, or somebody has. Okay?

Because 457, just pretend they're two completely separate accounts. They can't match 2% over in the 457 and 4% over in the 401. I guess they could, but it's not the same match. In other words, they can't say we're going to match up to 6%, but you can only put in 4%. That doesn't make sense. Okay. So you need to get some clarification on that.

Now, what I would do is go up to 6 there and get all your 6 match, and then I would go to Roth IRAs on your own to get to the 15% that Chris is talking about. Because here's the thing, Chris, he's going to end up with millions and millions of dollars more going this route than he would if it's in a pension, because he's going to be making good mutual fund rates of return from 25 to 65 for 40 years versus a pension return. That's right. And he's 25, like you said, he's 25 years young. He's got so many years ahead of him of just massive growth that you don't have to worry

about losing if you pass away. That's the way I'd go, confidently. And it's what you mentioned. It's portable. It leaves when you leave. That's right. If you want it to, you can roll it to, and I would always when I leave that's right if you want it to you can roll it to and i would always when i leave a company leave an organization a government job whatever i would always roll it

to a good mutual fund yeah it's always the plan love that love hearing a 25 year old out of debt yeah investing i mean again people tell me you know millennials they're just walking around in flip-flops and t-shirts and stuff and not listening. It's not true, people. I'm talking to them every day on the Chris Hogan Show as well. They are investing, Dave, and I'm serious. I mean, I'm talking young people paying off $125,000, $150,000 in student loan debt. Yep. Because they said their parents taught them.

They got serious about it. They kept lifestyle in check, and they chopped it down. Yeah. It's awesome. It's not all immature YOLOs. No. No, it's really not. There you go throwing around in words again. That's it. I know what I'm talking about. It's awesome. It's not all immature YOLOs. No. No, it's really not. There you go throwing around them words again.

That's it. I know what I'm talking about. Danielle's in Daytona. Hi, Danielle. How are you? Hey, I'm good. Thank you, Chris and Dave, for having me. I appreciate it.

Sure. What's up? So I kind of have a feeling what you're going to say. So my husband and I just got married in September of this year. Last year, it's been crazy with his health. He is a patient of Mayo Clinic now, but he was, we almost lost him last year as well in ICU. And we just adopted my step-nephews last year. So, things have just been chaotic. And the situation that we have is we don't have credit cards, thankfully. But we are right now paying for three vehicles.

And one of them is garnishing my husband's wages. And it's my fault i i'll take the blame for it um and i feel horrible as a wife as spouse um but i can't figure out how to get out of this why do you take the blame for his car getting repossessed um well we voluntarily repot it um It was my fault. I thought the grass was greener. I wanted a newer vehicle. And with our credit at the time, the dealership wasn't going to have it with us being so far upside down. So they were like, well, the only option for you guys to get out of this monstrous van is if you guys maybe would, you know, call. How long ago was it repoed? Two years ago, and then they legalized it. And what's the deficit balance?

How much do you owe them? $16,000. Okay. Do you have any money at all? No. No. No. We just got married.

We just finalized adoption. We're paycheck to paycheck. What's your household income? Almost $70,000. Okay. adoption. We're paycheck to paycheck. What's your household income? Almost 70. So I hear a whole series of things that you're doing that you can't afford to do and you did them anyway. Yeah. When are you going to stop that? Now. Are you? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I thought you said he was at mayo so there's his company still paying him he's a he's a patient um they so he was out of work for about how much does he make a year um he makes 38 is he back at work he just returned back at work? How much do you make a year?

What you need to do is scratch together about $1,500 to $2,000 and offer that as a settlement on this because repos bring somewhere around a nickel to a dime on the dollar on the deficit. That's what you can settle it for in a lump sum in writing. And for goodness sakes, kiddo, get your hands around this stuff. I get the privilege every day to talk to smart, creative entrepreneurs doing great things for our economy. GRIP6 is no exception.

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Chris Hogan, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host this hour. Open phones at 888-825-5225. No one accidentally wins. Winning is a series of intentional acts. Budgeting is where you're intentional with your money. You're telling it what to do, the money, rather than wondering where it went. And we made the world's best budgeting tool, who better to do that than the Ramsey Bunch, called EveryDollar.

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yourself for Christmas. Don't wait. Make your budget work for you. Text the word BEGIN to 33-789. That's BEGIN to 33-789. Mariana is with us in Santa Clarita, California. Hi, Mariana. How are you? Hi. Getting yourself? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Okay, so my husband and I started your program in January, and we are on baby step two. We started off with $86,000, and then we're down to $24,000.

My question is, we did have a broken lease, so we moved out of our apartment in March when the quarantine started, and they shut down the office and everything. So what we did is we turned in the keys. We did a written note, signed off on it, and then I emailed them and also kept trying to call until I finally got a hold of them. And they said they would get back to me with the closing statement that they would they were processing everything and so I finally got the closing statement they gave it to me last week and they said they said we were still living there up until October so they're charging us all those months and if we don't pay within 30 days we'll send it to collection so my question is do we wait until we're done with baby step two and three and then and then attack that because we want we wouldn't have uh the full amount for within 30 days honestly

okay so was the lease up and you gave them 30 days notice or you just walked out on the lease and sent them an email well we did give them a notice i know but did your lease allow for that were you on a month-to-month rental if you have a 12-month lease and you just walk out in the middle of it you can't cancel that with an email yeah that's what they were seeing it yeah that's right obviously it's a broken lease so so that's why i mean i know we kind of we did screw ourselves over because we were trying to as much as we're trying to have a broken lease fee and that month and we were going wanted to pay that but now they're charging us everything which i know they have so the the lease limit the lease has a fee written into it that you can pay and break the lease in the

written lease yes how much is that fee yes it was one month one month fee seventeen hundred dollars okay and you said and you have copies of the emails that you sent them? Yes. Then you're not paying through October. Because you let them know that you were breaking the lease and paying the lease cancellation fee, correct? Yes. Okay. That's all you pay then. So they're trying to charge you from March to October? Mm-hmm.

But you were gone. You were gone. You were out of the property. Yes. Do you have any proof of that i mean i i don't know what other proof than just not being there well where were the keys mariano where did you turn the keys into into the drop box because the office was closed when quarantine started so in the drop box we put a note with it fine and they're saying they got none of that they're saying they don't have the keys that's also in the closing statement the keys for the fees for the keys they said we left

nothing okay um and so the difference here is ten thousand dollars right yeah you need a lawyer okay because it sounds like it sounds like these people shut down and we're not doing business and you half but handled this so part of you brought this on to yourself but it sounds like you have a valid case for you have canceled the lease you can prove the lease was canceled. The problem was that they weren't working, and so they didn't even come check the drop box. And when they did, whoever checked it didn't have two brain cells to rub together. That's right. They didn't catalog the keys. Because I believe you that you dropped them.

Yeah. And the other thing is if you canceled your utilities, you may be able to use that for proof you moved out. That is true. And the new principal address that you established as your primary. Yeah, that's true. But the big thing is the cancellation email taking advantage of the lease cancellation clause for $1,700, that should be the beginning and the end of this, regardless of the keys. And you were out of the property.

How the heck do they know if you're out of the property? They were closed. They weren't even open. Yeah, they weren't doing anything. So eight months? Yeah. You need a lawyer. You do.

Because you're not going to pay. Otherwise, you're going to pay $10,000. So you're going to pay a lawyer $500 to $1,000 to work this out, or you're going to end up paying this $10,000 that you legitimately don't owe, it sounds like, with what you've explained here. Gather up all your stuff, Mariana, all the emails, all the copies of any kind of an agreement and keep records of it it comes back to bite you in the butt yeah uh you can't just drive up with a car and drop it off at the dealership no you can't just move out and go well i won't pay anymore

you can't um and send an email i mean you've got to get a you know you've got to get contact with human beings get written proof that a conversation has occurred and the that there is a release yes uh but instead you guys just kind of skipped town uh trying to do it properly but you half butt did it right and so it came back and bit you uh but you know okay i settled this with a collector. You know, some of you out here have heard this story a thousand times, and they promised me so-and-so, but you didn't get it in writing. If it ain't in writing, it's not real. It didn't happen.

I'm just going to tell you. And so be an advocate for yourself, meaning call, as Dave says, take notes, date times of who you spoke with, what was agreed upon. That way you've got a clear kind of communication log. And get it in writing. Yeah. Very much so. You were not out of this lease from a practical standpoint until you got a response from them saying you're out of the lease. You've activated the cancellation clause.

You're paying the one-month fee to do that. And, therefore, your fees are this and until you get that back from somebody you know you're going to have trouble in the future that's exactly right indeed i'm ghosting you is an indication you're gonna have trouble i coached the client that took a car back to the car lot left the keys in it and just left it uh two weeks later the dealership it really was and they expected that to be the end of it it wasn't no right just the beginning so whatever you do you've got to get closure on these things because it comes back to bite you folks something as simple as cutting off your cable something as

simple as changing cell phone providers something is um you know simple as settling an old medical bill get the piece of paper and writing and keep a hard copy file on it email is great but usually a hard copy you know hit print throw it in the throw it in the file and keep it for a while because these people have screwed up memories they really do they get what i call dave selective amnesia yeah in this case you know they did because they weren't working. Nope. And so nobody's running this apartment complex. They all just went home.

And then when they came back, there was piles of crap in that drop box, and now they've got to try to clean up when they weren't working. That's right. And it's just, you know, incompetence abounds. That's what it amounts to. They weren't working from home. They were just home. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

On the debt-free stage right here in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. Rich and Kim are with us. Hi, guys. How are you? Great, Dave. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Where do you guys live? Shermansdale, Pennsylvania. Oh, wow. North of Harrisburg. Well, welcome to Nashville. Thank you. Good to have you. And all the way down here to do a debt-free scream. Yep. Cool. So how much have you paid off? $73,300. Love it. And how long did this take? 29 months. And your range of income during that time?

$95,000 to $98,000. Good. Cool. What do you guys do for a living? I work for a Pennsylvania state agency. I'm the print and mail services manager for a local library system. Awesome. Very cool.

What kind of debt was this $73,000? Oh, I had to write it down. Awesome. Very cool. What kind of debt was this? $73,000. Oh, I had to write it down. There was so much. We had $500 in a visa, $3,500 in a car lease, $3,500 in care credit vet bills, $6,200 in a MasterCard, $18,300 in a Ford Escape, and $41,000 in a home equity loan. Whoa. Okay. So you cleaned off everything but the mortgage.

Oh, mortgage was done. Mortgage is gone. Oh, that was done years ago. House is gone. Oh, that was done years ago. Get a free house and everything. Look at it, weird people. Love it.

Way to go, you guys. Very cool. Thank you. So what caused this? What happened? That's where you said, enough's enough. We're fixing this stuff. Yep.

January of 2018, we were watching our local news, and a piece came on with John Mattarese, Don't Waste Your Money. Mm-hmm. And he was talking about how there was 64% of Americans don't have their $1,000 emergency fund. We're like, well, that's us. That's us. But yeah.

So we were watching the piece, and then a couple weeks later, that's in February of 2018, I texted Rich at work. And I said, do you remember that piece we saw on the news? What was that guy's name again? He's like, Dave something. Okay. So I got on Amazon and I looked around, redeemed the gift card, and I bought the Total Money Makeover. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And she read it in like two days. A couple days. I read it. And I didn't. I told him what I was couple days i read it and i didn't i told him what i was reading you know but i didn't want to push it um so after i read it i kind of did some numbers and i said if we did this we could have this paid off by this date and little by little yeah we i sucked him into it. And yeah, we... Because honestly, I never thought we were that bad of shape.

I really didn't. Yeah, the bills got paid. We were never behind. Bills got paid. I made it work. Yeah. And it's just... I made it work.

What really happened was she came to me and said, watch what you put on your credit card. And I'm like, yeah, but it's groceries and gas. It's not lavish stuff for myself or the family. It's just gas and groceries. Because there was no money left myself or the family it's just gas and groceries because there was no money left at the end of the month for gas and groceries so that's that's kind of what hit it for me yeah yeah this has got something's got to change and at that time um well we had my uh before escape he had a leased vehicle and in my mind because i hear people saying oh we're a one-car family so in the back of my mind i'm thinking hmm i didn't i was afraid i didn't know how he would react and then one day we were

in the car and he says well you know this is up the end of it was december of 2018 he said um what if we just went down to one car i'm like oh my goodness this was like i mean we just yes yes the clouds started the sun came out it was like oh my goodness, yes, yes. The clouds started. The sun came out. It was like, oh, my goodness. I said I was thinking the same thing. I was just so afraid to say something. But, yeah, we turned the vehicle in. That was December of 18.

We've had one car since. And you made it work. We did. Rich, what was the hardest part throughout this journey for you? I think giving up my wheels. I always had a car we each had a car you know but i thought we both work in the same city 10 minute walk from each other you know it's got to work we can make this work somehow as a temporary measure anyway

yeah and now you don't have any payments no no you can save not even a house payment right you save like a maniac and buy whatever you want right Right. And I've been working from home since March, so it really has worked out. Yeah. So now you've got your own wheels. Yeah. You did it.

You ditched her, left her at home. Right. Yeah. That's amazing. So, yeah. Very cool. We saw Chris at

Gaithersburg, Maryland in February. Mm-hmm. And he walks out on stage with his briefcase. He's like, he like plops it on the stool. He says, you know,

I go car shopping to take my friends with me. You know? Someday I'll take my friends with me and we'll go car shopping. You'll be ready to go then. That's for sure. So what do you guys tell people the key is to getting out of debt? Well, that was something we didn't really advertise that we were doing this. I watch you, Dave, every day.

When I was at work in the office, I have two computer screens. I had you on one and I worked on the other. So people that walked by my area knew, but not too many. A couple of coworkers, you know, how you doing?

How you doing? But we really didn't, they didn't ask questions. But if someone found out today, they said, you paid off everything, your house and everything? Budget. How do you do that?

Oh, the budget and the envelopes. Yes. With Rich being in the printing industry, he printed up little envelopes, cash envelopes for me. Absolutely. So, yeah. Custom-made envelopes. Yes. Yep.

Yep. Very cool. Very cool. I'm proud of you guys. Did you think you would ever get to this point? No, because we were just plugging along you know like i said everything was getting paid right but we didn't have that extra um we were just like i said yeah we were just plugging along yep being normal status quo yeah now you're weird yeah paid

it all off yes that set in on you it's gone um yes and no i mean we we finished up in august yeah so what was your first big thing that you're going to save up and do with money now that you don't have any debt a roof and windows for the house and we have a next october is our 30th wedding anniversary we have already paid off a cruise for our anniversary who knows if we'll get to go on it but it's paid so next november october a year from now yeah oh my goodness we booked it last december 30 years of marriage that is fantastic you guys congratulations thank you thank you have you ever been debt free in 30 years? No. No. No, because we built our house when we were planning our wedding all those years ago.

So, no. So, all these years. And then we would always take out a home equity loan to cover the credit card and whatever debt. So, we always had that. There's always something there. Way to go, guys. You're heroes. I'm so proud of you.

Thank you. Very, very well done. Very well done. Got a copy of Chris's book for you, Everyday Millionaires. That's the next chapter in your story for sure. No question. That's the way you're headed. Very, very well done. What's this house worth, by the way?

About $175,000. All right. Somewhere around there, yeah. Good stuff. All right. Rich and Kim from Pennsylvania, $73,000 paid off in 29 months, making 95 to 98. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! That's how it's done. Yes. Very cool. Very cool. I mean, working together as a team, you know, getting on the same page.

Picked up the book, The Total Mini Makeover. Not only do you get the principles and the plan, but you start to hear stories of other people that have done it. And you start believing I can do it, too. Absolutely. And I'll tell you, this is a good time of year. I know right after Halloween we already start Christmas, but that is the way it is right and we are doing the ramsey christmas giveaway which you can enter every day and once a week we're giving away five hundred dollars in cash and sometime between now and christmas we're going to give someone $5,000.

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They're on sale for only $10. The Everyday Millionaires book that Chris wrote, this is the number one bestseller on our study of millionaires. The world's or the nation's largest, America's largest study of millionaires ever done. And we were just giving them a copy for their debt-free stream celebration. Only $10. All of these are number ones. We've got tons of number one bestsellers in our bookstore.

All of them are $10. So enter to win some cash. Save some money on these $10 gifts. Man, it's a good way to do stocking stuffers. All at DaveRamsey.com slash giveaway. Thank you. Chris Hogan Ramsey personality is my co-host today here on the air. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Christina is in Phoenix, Arizona. Hi, Christina. How can we help?

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I have multiple young nieces and nephews that I want to give money to for the holidays and birthdays, but I want to put it into accounts where it's going to grow interest so that they can use it when they're older. What are my best options for someone like this? Oh, Christine, that's a good question. I've got to ask you something personal. Do you trust their parents?

Yes. Yeah, they're awesome. That's good to know. And so this is for use for education or is this just for life for them later? I mean, I'd be open to both. I traveled when I was a young adult myself, and so I do value that. So I'd love for them to do something like that if they want to

or if they want to put into education, just something that will make it older. That money is there for them to, you know, use wisely. How much money are we talking about? I mean, like for different things, for different, you know, holidays, you know, maybe like $50 a year, $10 a year. Not huge amounts at one time, but just something that will grow, you know, as after years go on. Okay.

In order to open a mutual fund in anyone's name, the minimum funds are $500 or $25 a month. And there's very few of those. Most of them are $1,000 thousand to twenty five hundred dollar minimum or you know a hundred bucks a month that kind of thing because they're used for people starting college funds and those kinds of things it doesn't sound like you're committing at that level so uh you know i don't unless now if they have funds open already for their kids like their 529 funds or something like that you can add to those easy enough okay but uh there's not any large interest bearing accounts accounts that grow and you obviously a basic savings account but it doesn't pay anything you can you can put

two dollars in some of those or ten dollars or a hundred dollars or whatever to get it started but it's not going to earn anything as far as interest goes. To get it into a mutual fund is where you're going to get some growth, but it's going to take a little more money than you're talking about. Yeah, and I can tell you one of my grandparents, for me, they gave me a savings pass book when I was seven. And each year for Christmas they would give me a small gift, but they would make a dollar amount deposit into that.

So as you can imagine, by the time I hit 16 years old, I had a great start to a car fund. So you've got some options. You can do that. But again, that's not going to earn 1% interest, right? The principle is that there's a savings account open in your name that Aunt Christina opened and adds to periodically. It's very symbolic, and it works very well to have made the gesture. Right. But if you're wanting this to grow substantially, you know, I can't tell you 1% interest on a savings account is going to do that. But it's kind of cool to have that.

And these days, I doubt they would. We had those old passbooks that they would enter. I'm old enough that I remember the tellers entering it by hand onto those passbooks. You are old. I'm old. I'm real old. Shut up, Hogan. But now a kid would pull up their screen, right, and look at it.

They sure would. Here's what Aunt Christina did with my savings account. It gives them maybe a little notice or something. Dave, do you remember the Christmas clubs? Oh, yeah. Back in the day? Yeah yeah what happened to those you know um christmas no longer uh christmas became an emergency instead of a plan oh yeah that's what happened are you old enough to remember uh snh green stamps no your parents collect green stamps at the grocery store and put

them in a book okay and then you would go redeem them at the snh green stamp collect green stamps at the grocery store and put them in a book. Okay. And then you would go redeem them at the S&H Green Stamp Store. Green stamps. No, I don't know those. Yeah. Wow. It's gone. It's gone. It's not really sad that it's gone.

It's just gone. Yeah, it's just moved on. I hear you. Darren's with us. Darren's in Kansas City. How are you, Darren? I'm doing great. Thank you so much.

I appreciate you guys taking my call. Sure. What's up? This is one of those calls I guess I don't hear very often, and I listen to you a lot, and that is just, I guess, for lack of a better term, an update and a thank you. I called you about 10 years ago and asked a silly question. Just because I'm in the space I was in at that point,

I needed some direction. I was a father of a three-year-old and a one-year-old and my wife was sick with cancer and she died about four months later. Oh my gosh. And so, yeah, and that's kind of where I was. And my question was, should I pay off my house or save? And you were like, well, of course you're going to save and make sure everything's okay. I knew that. But in getting through that, I sit here now, 10 years later, my wife and I am remarried almost seven years to an absolutely second, wonderful woman. My kids are 14 and 12. We're in baby steps seven.

And I mean, we'll be an everyday millionaire soon. And 10 years ago when I called you, that was not even in sight. And so I needed to call you. I know it's kind of weird that it's been 10 years, but and just say thank you, I guess, for lack of a better term, kind of closer to the whole situation. I so impressed so i'm not sure i understood exactly when you call me before 10 years ago your your wife at that time had just passed away she was sick oh and she it will be 10 years in march oh okay she passed away four months after you called but she was terminally ill when you called exactly okay exactly and i and i said no don't pay off the house just pile up money Oh, okay. She passed away four months after you called, but she was terminally ill when you called. Exactly.

Okay. Exactly. And I said, no, don't pay off the house. Just pile up money. And you've got plenty of time to do that later, but right now live. Okay. And so following your plan and having all of my insurance, all of my investments, all of my financial life in order, I was able to be a father, to be a husband, to be the things that I needed to be. And when that situation obviously happened

four months later, then the money piece was taken care of. And now I could grieve, I could be the father, I could move on and sit where I am here today, I guess, is the main thing that I call it. You say thank you about. Yeah, well, you did it. I'm so impressed with you. The net result is, is that you were able to walk through that horrible dark valley and out the other side of it. We're still strong. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. I'm so impressed with you, man. Very, very cool. So how old was your first wife when she passed? 29. Oh, my goodness. What kind of illness?

She had adrenal. Adrenal cancer is the non-medical term. Yeah. Okay. I mean, the diagnosis from the time she was diagnosed, we had just had our son. And 18 months later, she was gone. Wow. Unbelievable.

Well, what a decade you've been through, brother. But I'm so proud of you. You've done great. And thank you for calling and sharing a decade-later follow-up. You're right. That's unusual. We don't hear those calls here on the air much. Sometimes we get a letter or hear the story, but that's such an encouragement to someone else who's hearing that right now.

It really is. Who's sitting in that situation right now hearing this, knowing that 10 years from now I could be where he is. He could be in a different spot. And I think the big thing in this, people, is to hear me with your insurance. Yeah. Life insurance is truly, it's not optional. It's necessary.

You need to do the math, do 10 to 12 times your annual income in term life insurance and get that done. And hear me, if you're within ear distance of these airwaves and you don't have that done, I want you to get it done by the end of this week. Your family matters that much. For you to take the time to pick up the phone or go online to zander insurance and make sure you have that in place what you have through your job is not enough and it's the wrong type it's not portable it won't follow you if you leave or lose that job so please get term insurance outside of your job 10 to 12 times your income and if you've got a stay-at-home spouse you need at minimum 350 $350,000 to $400,000 on them

and term life insurance as well. Please get that done. So here's the thing. When you get yourself out of debt, you have an emergency fund, you have the right kinds of insurance in place, what Darren was talking about. You've got your will in place. And the big bad wolf comes and he huffs and he puffs. You're the third pig.

You're the pig in the brick house. And, you know, in Darren's case, the horrible news of losing his first wife, but he's in a brick house. He's in a place to rebuild from, in a place that's solid. Firm foundation. And that's where you put yourself,

which makes you the hero in your story. And that's what Darren is. Yes, he is. He's a hero for his kids. Yeah, he is. Proud of him. Very well done. Very well done.

James Childs is our producer. Kelly Daniel is our associate producer and phone screener. My co-host today on the air, Chris Hogan, Ramsey Personality. I am Dave Ramsey Show. You can listen to Dave, Rachel Cruz, Chris Hogan, or the rest of the Ramsey Network anywhere with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. Catch all of our full shows, browse by topic, or send clips to your friends. Head to the App Store and download the Ramsey Network app today.