The Ramsey Show - App - Getting Out of Debt Doesn't Happen From the Sidelines (Hour 2)

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where dad 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. You jump in. We'll talk about your life, your money. It is a free call. America, 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Merry Christmas to you. We're glad you're with us.

Catherine is with us in Connecticut. Hi, Catherine. How are you? Let's try again. I didn't hit the button hard enough. There it goes. Catherine, how are you? I'm doing great, Dave. How are you? I's try again. I didn't hit the button hard enough. There it goes. Catherine, how are you? I'm doing great, Dave. How are you?

I think I'm getting better. How can I help? I just had a question. I have some family members who live in Virginia right now. They're thinking about moving back to Connecticut to be nearer to family, and they think they're going to rent when they get here. I was wondering if you could tell me whether it's a terrible idea or not to rent to them if I owned a house and rented it out to them.

No, it's not a terrible idea at all. Doing business with family can be perfectly fine. What you have to do, though, is you have to have very uncomfortably clear conversations ahead of time setting the table. Okay, and it sounds like this. When you move into the house and I'm dealing with you there, I am not your cousin, I'm your landlord. Right. And you have the right as the tenant to expect your landlord to do the repairs,

to pay the taxes and keep the insurance on the tenant, to expect your landlord to do the repairs, to pay the taxes and keep the insurance on the property, and do the things that a normal landlord does. Mm-hmm. And that's all. And I have the right as the landlord to expect you to pay your rent early or on time. And if you don't, you know what the landlord does? They evict you okay and so when we're together talking about the property you're wearing a hat on top of your head that says tenant i'm wearing

one that says landlord when we're together at grandma's house for thanksgiving we're wearing hats that say cousins right but you don't get to play the cousin card as a way to not pay your rent okay and you don't worry about um like them asking for like something unreasonable to be done and me saying no and that affecting the relationship kind of the same way that you kind of advise people not to lend money to family right Right. Well, lending money to family I would never do because it does change the relationship. But you can have a, I've got my grown children, which always thinks an oxymoron when I say that, but my grown, the Ramsey, my children, they're my children, but they're grown, work here.

And when they're here at work, they don't get to give unreasonable, ask for unreasonable things any more than anybody else that works here can. And I don't get to be unreasonable with them as their CEO. I treat them with the same dignity I would any other team member. And no more, no less. And so as long as we have that clear that this is a landlord-tenant relationship and you do not get to play the family card in order to be unreasonable or to not pay your rent or to be a jerk or, you know, I'm going to treat you fine. I'm going to treat you wonderfully. But by the way, I do all my tenants, right? Right. And so, you know, you just say it it out loud and then if they come in and ask for something unreasonable you say no wait a minute we talked about this you're a tenant

in the property tenants don't get to ask for stuff like you're asking for right okay well i just thought because you were my cousin no you didn't listen when you moved in when you moved in here's what we said and you go back to that but if you don't have that conversation ahead of time you can expect them to have a sense of entitlement about something by being family somewhere in the process if you don't set the table ahead of time all right great thank you thank you if you define the roles, you can do business with family. But you have to clearly define the roles. I'll give you another example. My cousin, Marshall Ramsey, is a world-class illustrator.

Pulitzer Prize nominated twice. He is an editorial cartoonist out of Jackson, Mississippi, and does incredible work. He is unbelievably talented. And the first round of the Junior Series books, he did the illustrations in them. Family. You know what he got paid for doing those illustrations? Royalties, like we would have paid any other illustrator. And you know when we paid the royalties checks? Perfectly on time, like we would have any other

illustrator and we sold a bunch of those books and he got some pretty decent royalties out of it when we redid the books we changed the illustrator because we wanted a different look and so he's not in that loop anymore just like i would have changed any other illustrator because i wanted a different look wasn't because he did a bad job. It wasn't because I was mad at him because he's family. Matter of fact, we're not mad at each other at all. We like each other a lot. We have a lot of respect for each other.

But we just did a business transaction and kept it all up at that level where he didn't get a worse deal. I didn't get a worse deal. We didn't get any extra special treatment, except he probably got his foot in the door to start with to do that, you know, because he's my cousin, and I happen to know him. You know, if I'd known one of my buddies from college, he would have got his foot in the door to do that too. Same thing, right?

But still, you've got to perform in the transaction on both sides of the transaction with an ethical, excellent way. And, you know, thank goodness, Marshall did and I did. And we were able to do that transaction. He was able to make a little money. We were able to get some wonderful illustrations. And when it ended, we were still friends and still cousins. And it's all good.

But we had this clear expectation that we weren't going to mistreat one another because we were family or expect something different because we were family. We both had to bring the water. And when you do that, when you do that, anytime you work on the family, you can have a wonderful experience. And lots of people can do that. But these experiences are only as functional as your family is. To the point that your family is crazy, then you're going to have trouble with that. And every family has got something crazy in it. And if you think there's not crazy in your family, it's you.

All right, Ellis is with us in Atlanta, Georgia. Hi, Ellis. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I have a question.

At what point in babysitting number two should I move out my parents' house? It's not going's not anything to do with the baby steps uh what how old are you i'm 24 okay and uh are you out of school yes i'm a music teacher my income is 36 600 and i have 28 000 personal loans and 37 000 parent plus loan wow you got a lot of debt personal loans and $37,000 parent plus loans. Wow. You have a lot of debt. Don't you? Yes.

And I also have a retail sales job. In addition to that. So what's your total income between the teaching and the sales job? Between the teaching and the sales job, my take-home pay per month is around $2,000. It's because I'm working on my teacher certification. Oh, so you're not a teacher yet. Not an official teacher, but through a teacher certification program, it allows me to work as a full-time teacher.

When will the certification come through? The program lasts for two years. So to teach in Georgia, you don't graduate and get a certificate? Well, no. I went to school to get a degree in music composition and was not able to find a job. Oh, so you had to go back and do the teaching thing. Okay. Yes.

All right. Well, I think you've got to get your income squared away. As quickly as you get your income squared away, ratio to that debt, I am going to move out. I wouldn't plan on living there five years or something like that. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs. Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry.

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They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you mismeasure or you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your blinds for free. Site-wide savings is happening right now. Plus, take an additional 5% off at blinds.com. Today's question comes from Justin in Arkansas. I'm 26 years old. I make $96,200. Wow.

The only debt I have is my house, which is on a 15-year payment. And I have two roommates that live with me and make my payment. Can I buy a $55,000 truck? Well, yeah, I guess you probably can if you want to, but I wouldn't. I do have the cash to pay for it that's not in retirement good i would not buy a car listen if you take the things that have wheels and motors in your life and you add them all up together and they equal more than half your annual income you have too much tied up in things that are going down in value. And if you were to ask 20 58-year-old millionaires or multimillionaires if you should buy this truck, 20 of them would tell you no. 26 years old making 96 grand and you're getting ready to pay 55 grand for a truck.

No. No. No. No. No. Brian is with us in St. Joe, Missouri. Hey, Brian, how are you? Great. How are you, sir? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Well, I am just like lost. I am a disabled veteran. I make $1,700 a month. I owe 70 grand in house and back child support and legal fees from the divorce, which is about 40,000. Actually it's about 45,000 and I don't know how to dig my way out of it. And I need some help. How much do you owe on your home?

$9,000. Okay. And what's it worth? $10,000. Okay. I bought a shack, a shanty to live in. Gotcha. Okay.

What is the nature of your disability, sir? I have PTSD. I have a displaced vertebra in my back, so I can no longer do my maintenance job that I used to. And my leg was cut off and put back together because of injuries. Yeah. Sounded like you took a serious hit, dude. I'm sorry.

Thank you. That's okay. You know what? I'm proud of my service. Well, you ought to be. We're proud of you. Thank you, sir, for your unbelievable sacrifice. Well, what I would always tell anyone that is facing disability,

regardless of the source of the disability, is to try to think through not what I can't do, which is pretty obvious in this case, but what I can do. Correct. Because your problem is income. I'm going to school to change my careers. Yeah, your problem is income. And so that's why I'm thinking about that. And, you know, just in talking to you, you know, you and I are having a fine conversation.

So there's no reason you can't use your mind and your voice and not your back, right, in order to create some kind of an income stream. Lots of online opportunities and so forth. i was reading a story that a while back i actually put it in one of my books and this is not the answer but just to kind of tell you how wild it is out here in the world today this guy was going going to garage sales and buying old golf clubs and shining them up and putting them on ebay and he was making a hundred thousand dollars of your profit. I mean, isn't that just, that almost sounds silly, doesn't it? You know, and there's something like that. You know, there's something like that that you probably could do that, you know,

I've got a buddy that's an ex-military guy who's just an absolute, has become an absolute fabulous gunsmith he loves tinkering with you know guns and putting them back together or building them out for people and that kind of a thing and um you know and it's just something because of his military background he loved that thing and i'm a gun guy too so that's where i got that but i don't know what it is for you but you've got something in your background something in your history something even out your windshield that you've just thought about and uh i think most of your problems would if you could just make a thousand dollars a month more it'd change everything for you i'm going to school for it oh good because

i can no longer do what i used to do. I've got two more years. What I don't know is, okay, once I get my degree, I'm sure that I'll make a whole lot more money than I was making before. But I don't know where to start. When did you start your tech classes? About a year ago. Okay. I've already got a bachelor's.

This is a different bachelor's. Okay. So you've got some knowledge in technology now. Yes, sir. So while you're in school, you can start a side hustle just helping people with some of their technology needs. There you go. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking about. So you're way ahead of me on this. So really, I think where you are today is you're going to tread water until you finish some of your game plan here to get your income up.

And whether it's landing a job or whether it's just landing a side hustle and you just run around self-employed helping small businesses with their computers or whatever. I don't know. And but. If you solve people's technology problems, most people, there's two types of people, people that love technology and know about it and the rest of us that are intimidated by it and can't fix it for beans. And so we need guys like you and the guys like me. And so that's what I'm saying. I think you got real opportunity there. So I think you start a side hustle now because a thousand000 a month starts to really beat on some of this stuff.

And, you know, you could change your living situation pretty dramatically if you wanted to then. You certainly could begin to make arrangements on the legal fees and that kind of stuff that you've got hovering over you. But, I mean, a couple thousand dollars, $1,000 a month to start with, a couple thousand dollars over time added to your income. Wow. It would be absolutely incredible. Hey, thanks for the call. And, again, thank you for your service. If I can help you further while you're going through all this, you call me anytime, okay?

Ruben is with us in New York. Hi, Ruben. How are you? Hi, Mr. Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I just started listening to your show, actually, on Sunday.

I just started listening to your show, actually, on Sunday. I just asked. And, I mean, I brought it to my wife's attention, the whole idea. But she's reluctant. I bet. And I was just wondering. She said that basically she would watch me and see how it goes. So my question is, how do I get her on board and possibly be able to take your financial peace and diversity together?

Yeah, well, I think that's going to be necessary. She can't watch you from the sidelines. The two of you have to do it together, whatever you're going to do, because people just don't win with money when they're dragging a reluctant spouse along. So a couple things you can do. Number one, you need to think back to two weeks ago before you ever heard any of this material and then start to think about, okay, first time you heard that, what was it that you felt? And why was it that you got excited about doing this? It wasn't a what.

You weren't excited about, oh, I get to do a budget. Yay. Oh, I might have to sell some stuff. Yay. I might have to work extra. Yay. None of that is exciting. But what became exciting to you was that you could, A, get control, B, get the stress down, C, start to win with money, D, start to build some wealth.

You know, these kinds of whys. And so I would sit down with her and say, gosh, I've been kind of dreaming, and I want you to think with me. How would it feel if we didn't have any payments? How would it feel if we had substantial money and investments? And I really want us to work together towards that, and I want us to try this and get the why going rather than sit down and go, well, Dave Ramsey says we can't go out to eat anymore. Dave Ramsey says sell your car.

You're just going to turn my name into a cuss word in your house, and don't do that. That doesn't work at all. But you've got to talk to folks about why they would want to do something. Ask them why they'd want to do it. And if your spouse understands a why, if you can get on the same page of the why, why, why, why, then the what we're going to do changes completely.

But, you know, you turn off the television, you put the kids in bed, you look deeply into her eyes and say, baby, this is very, very important to me. I really, really need your help. I really want us to work together on this. And if you have any kind of a marriage at all, when you say something like that, you're going to get a positive response. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Let me tell you a story about two families that are very much alike in a lot of ways. Both families have two working parents and a couple of young kids. Each has debt and a struggle to make ends meet.

But they're starting to make headway with their budgets and smarter decisions with money. They have dreams and plans, and the only real difference is that one family has the right amount of term life insurance and the other doesn't. Big difference. If one of the parents die, and that does happen, their well-being would be destroyed. Paying for the mortgage, utilities, food, and other bills would be impossible, let alone saving for education or retirement. That's why every day I talk relentlessly about getting term life insurance. Just go to ZanderInsurance.com or call 800-356-4282 and see how inexpensive it really is.

Be the family that takes those deliberate steps to be different and responsible. It really does make you the hero of your story, and it puts you on course for better things ahead. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Jared and Beth are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, Dan. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Oh, fun. Welcome to Nashville. And all the way here to do your debt-, Oklahoma. Oh, fun. Welcome to Nashville. And all the way here to do your debt-free scream. Yes, sir. Very cool. And how much have you paid off? $142,000. Love it. And how long did that take?

44 months. 44 months. Good. And your range of income during that time? Between $70,000 and $90,000. $70,000 to $90,000. What do you guys do for a living? I'm active duty Navy stationed in Oklahoma City. And I was a dental hygienist. Now I'll stay at home mom. All right. Well, thank you for serving. Thank you, sir. We appreciate it. What kind of

debt was this $142,000? It was our house. You paid off your house. I'm looking at weird people. Pretty much. Way to go, you guys. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Very cool. What made you decide to do this 44 months ago? Well, we've taught your class nine times now. Wow! And before we taught your class, she would say, I think we can pay our house off. I don't know. I don't know. But after one of the classes that we taught, and it was the housing lesson that you teach,

she sat down, and as you say, having a wise wife is always important to have. She said, I think we can do it, and let me show you how. Three and a half years later, here we are, and we paid the house off. Just like that. Boom. Wow. Very, very cool. Are you teaching the class at your church or on base?

We actually took our church through Momentum not too long ago, and then he teaches on base for his sales. My father-in-law has put his business through it, too, and we taught them. Oh, my gosh. All the way around. Yeah. We're life church members there in Oklahoma City. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Well, we love Craig and the whole team there. Absolutely. Wonderful folks. Been friends with them a long time. Well, way to go, guys. Congratulations. Okay. You're big-time time teachers you did it you

paid off your house what's the secret to getting out of debt the budget is is huge very very important but having drive and having purpose to what you're doing is is really really important anytime that her and i would get in the car we'd always constantly be dreaming having our little dream meetings what do we want to do when we get out of debt? What do we want to do when we pay off the house? What's next? What is your next big thing? Now that the house is paid off, what's your big celebration purchase?

Rental real estate. We're going to Disney in February. Good. We're going to Disney. I'm doing fine. Rental real estate and Mickey. Okay. Good.

All right. Good. That's better. I like rental real estate, but you need to celebrate a little bit. Absolutely. Very cool. Good. Rental real estate and Mickey. Okay. Good. All right. Good. That's better. I like rental real estate, but you need to celebrate a little bit. Absolutely. Very cool. Good. Yeah.

So you dream. You have to have a why. You do. And that's how you get the spouse on board. And the other way you get the spouse on board, you show them the math, huh? Yes. Math works. It works.

We can do this. Look at this. I can show you. We can do this. 44 months later, the house, what's the house worth? probably 160 wow good for you guys being in being in the military sometimes you don't think that you're gonna we were fortunate enough to be able to stay at one place for a long enough time and uh in the military we don't we don't have that beacon of hope sometimes so it's really important for us to come on your show and and let the military members and military families know

that this is important. This is possible no matter what. Absolutely. You don't have to be, make tons and tons of money. You just be in the military and get it done. Yeah, 70 to 90 a year and you got a paid four house. At what age? How old are y'all?

I'm 33. I'm 32. And you have a paid four house. I love it. How much is the house worth again? 160. About 160. Wow, that's so cool.

How's it feel? The grass feels a lot better on your feet that's for sure it's not an exaggeration it is not at all it's just good to be a good example for the kids and know that they'll never be in any debt yeah yeah you've changed your family tree for sure yeah funding the college college savings plans and I gave my son my GI Bill, and so their colleges are already taken care of. Absolutely. When I talk to people, that's why I try to tell them this. I try to get them on board, but I also try to pull at their heartstrings with the kids and say, hey, your kids can go to school for free, and let me show you how.

Yeah. Wow. Very, very cool. Way to go, guys. Way to go. So other than the two of you, who was your biggest cheerleader outside? Both of our parents were huge in the help. And we were kind of laughing on the way up.

Her mom would give us money for an anniversary or for our birthdays, and she would say, do not put this on your house. Go out and have a dinner. Go out and enjoy yourself. Because sometimes you can get so focused on your goal that you kind of forget that, hey, we can have a little bit of fun, too. Yeah. Yeah. I want to buy you a present I don't want to pay on your house.

Right. I don't blame her. That's good. That's good. Good for her. Well, fun, you guys. I bet they're all proud now. Absolutely.

Definitely. Yeah. Way to go. Good, good, good. Amazing. Well, we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Retire Inspired, and that's certainly the next chapter in your story to be everyday millionaires. You're on your way.

You'll be there in no time and outrageously generous as you go along. Sure. So the kids' names and ages are what? Everett and Evelyn, and they're both five. All right. Twins? Twins. All right.

Very cool. Good stuff. All right, twins? Twins. All right, very cool. Good stuff. All right, Jared and Beth and Everett and Evelyn from Oklahoma City, $142,000 paid off in 44 months in their early 30s. Their house is paid for. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Ready?

Three, two, one. We're debt-free scream. Ready? Three, two, one. We're debt-free! I love it! Wow! Absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible. Wow.

Very, very cool. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Do you ever overextend your bank account with stuff like Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales? Well, that means you didn't have a plan, or if you had a plan, you didn't stick to the plan, right? And see, all a budget is is a map.

It's just a map. You ever pop open your phone and put in an address, and it tells you how to get there, right, on Google Maps or whatever it is, right? A little map icon on your Apple phone or whatever you're doing, right? Well, you got to have a map. You got to have a way to get where you're going. No one accidentally arrives in wealth. I guess you could. I guess you could inherit wealth, but it's very unusual. The primary way people build wealth, the primary way people get control of their money is on purpose. So downloading our budget app that is the world's best budgeting app called EveryDollar that's free is easy to use.

It takes just a few minutes to set up your first budget. And oh, did I mention it's free? And did I mention being good with money isn't an accident? And did I mention that it's free? And did I mention 5 million people use EveryDollar. You can put it on your phone for free, and you can put it on your desktop for free, and you can track everything, EveryDollar.

You need to check this thing out. It's pretty stinking amazing. EveryDollar.com. EveryDollar.com. Everydollar.com. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ken is on Twitter. Dave, my fiance was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She currently has no assets.

Should we go ahead and get married now? Goodness gracious, Ken. I have no idea. I don't think that's a financial question. I think that's a spiritual question, an emotional question. And if you do stuff like this, this is, I mean, the money is irrelevant other than you're smart somehow about potential cancer bills or whatever but you're going to be there for her dude i mean that's my suspicion um but i i don't tell people to not marry somebody that has they got cancer i would

never do that um but i'm also not going to tell you you have to. You have to make that decision. This is a spiritual decision, emotional decision. And it's pretty serious. I've never faced anything like that, Ken. I have no idea what you should do. I would spend a lot of time in prayer. I'd spend a lot of time gathering counsel from people who are in your life, wise counsel,

in the multitude of counsel. There's safety. Talk with your pastor. Talk with a good marriage counselor, the two of you together, pre-marriage counseling. Learn in detail what your legal rights are

or legal obligations are for medical bills in this situation so you know what you're getting into. And then with all that information in front of you, you'll make the right decision.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Jacqueline is with us in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Hi, Jacqueline. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I have three kids, seven, five, and one. And as the holidays approach, they tend to get money from family members. You need to speak directly into your phone. We're having trouble hearing you.

Okay. Is this better? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Okay. Perfect. I have three kids, five, seven, and one. And they get gifts from family members. And I just feel like I'm losing so many opportunities because I don't know how to teach them about how to use that money properly. I just kind of hand it to them, and then they waste it. And then I realize that, you know, that was a good opportunity that I just blew.

So where do I even start with that age? Well, there's three things, really four things you want to teach kids about money. Obviously, gifts narrows it down to three. But the first thing we want to teach kids about money is that money comes from work. And so they do chores, they get paid. They don't do chores, they don't get paid. Our kids were on commission. They weren't on allowance.

Now, that doesn't apply to your question, but that's thing one. Then once they get money, and we'll apply that to your question, there's three things you do with money. You can give it, you can save it, and you can spend it. Now, at our house, we did not require our children give money away that was given to them for christmas or for a birthday and we did not require that they uh save all of it or something like that but the truth is that a three-year-old and a one-year-old have absolutely no cognitive ability to grasp what's going on anyway and so you just make the decision what i did there was if they needed a toy or something then we didn't have the money i would have bought them a toy out of that money

but otherwise i just put it in their savings account i just dump it in there because someday they're going to want a car and i'm going to start their little car fund with some of their christmas money because they don't need anything else you know uh but but if you want to get them something out of that that's fine and spend it on them, that's fine. Now, the 7-year-old, you can start to help them make some decisions and say, honey, some of this money you need to save from your gift, and some of this money you need to buy yourself something with. And then you get the opportunity when they're buying something at 7 years old,

even 5 years old sometimes, on up to 25, you get the opportunity to teach them how to buy things properly, you know, buy things of quality that are going to last, buy things, you know, on sale, you know, save up and have enough money to buy a good one instead of a cheap one that's going to break, you know and you just talk through you know the value of a dollar so to speak and help them learn how to do wise purchases and it's um you know so you create a few teachable moments it's not quite as powerful when it's a gift but if they feel like emotionally that they worked to get the money, oh, now that money being given, being saved, or being spent wisely, that really reaches down into their little hearts and touches them and changes them. So we have a box of teaching aids called Financial Peace Junior. And it's got the three envelopes in it a give envelope a save envelope and a spend

envelope it's got a chore board for the refrigerator that's a little dry erase board that's your commission worksheet right if you do your do your chores you get paid commission and i'm going to give you one of those for christmas okay thank you so much now get that out and look at it and enjoy it and use that to teach the kids. And it further goes into what I'm talking about here as well. So, hey, thanks for the call. Michael is in Odessa, Texas. Hey, Michael, how are you?

I'm doing good, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I was just calling to ask you what you thought about investing money through your personal bank, like whoever your personal bank is. I bank with Chase. I just want to know what you thought about that or if there was any other ways that you could suggest that I invest probably about $100 to $400 a month in the long run to make more money for itself.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you would open a good Roth IRA and some growth stock mutual funds that are going to grow over time. And I would never do my investing through a bank, ever. I wouldn't get my muffler fixed at the transmission store either. Okay, gotcha. It's kind of the same thing. So what I would tell you to do instead is just click on SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com.

I'm not in the investment business, so I can't help you. But I have almost 2,000 brokers around America that our team has vetted and has combed through to get ones that have the heart of a teacher that will sit down with you, and all they do is investing help. They don't try to sell you a credit card or make you a car loan. All they do is investing help, and that's the problem with using somebody like Chase. I would never have a brokerage account through somebody like Chase, ever. And so just sit down with someone that their whole business is brokerage and is helping people do investing.

And if you click on SmartVestor, you put your info in, it'll drop down a list of the SmartVestor pros. They're in the middle of the Odessa area, and you can pick which one you want, and so on. Sit down with them, and they'll have the heart of a teacher and you'll understand and learn and go through the whole thing and that that's that's what you're supposed to do chris is with us in houston texas hey chris how are you good day thanks for taking my life on ice call sure um so we have uh i guess we're in a new situation here we're in our late 40s we have, I guess we're in a new situation here. We're in our late 40s. We have no mortgage, no car payment, no debt.

Wow. We have our rainy day fund funded. Way to go. We also have, thank you. Well, I'll have to admit that it wasn't all done through us. It came through Chapter 13 at one point, and then I really, here just recently, we lost my wife's father, and he gifted us an inheritance. And so, you know, we have no retirement to speak of, and we have two kids, and we don't really have anything put aside for their college, and the inheritance is around $250,000, $270,000, and we just really want to respect the gift

and be responsible. We just don't know where to start, what to do with it. I know we need to be a little aggressive, but, you know, we don't want to lose it either. No, I don't think you need to be aggressive. I think you need to be conservative. I invest in good growth stock mutual funds inside my retirement accounts for long-term wealth building. I spread it across four types of mutual funds, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international. That's what I would suggest you do.

I would certainly use some of this and put as much of it into Roth IRAs and so forth as you can do. And I'd open a couple of 529s for the kids with the same exact mix. And, you know, you can dump $10,000 this year, $10,000 next year into a 529 in most states. That's how it's set up. And maybe even more. And how old are your kids? My daughter is 17. She may or may not choose the college route.

My son is 13. He most likely will. Okay. I mean, I guess there's no way to know that. Yeah, if she's 17, there's not any point in putting in a 529, because if she's going to go, it's going to be in a year or so, and it doesn't serve any purpose to put it in there. Because the only thing about the 529 is the growth from now on is tax-free,

so she's not going to have much growth before she goes to school, if she goes to school. So, you know, but sit down with a smart investor pro, like I was just telling the last young man. And here's the thing. Go slow. Take your time. You and your wife do not put money in anything you don't understand. Don't put money in something because I said do it. Don't put money in something because a brokerage advisor said do it.

An investment advisor said do it. Do it because you understand it. Now, you don't have to get a master's degree in finance. The good news is this stuff's not that complicated, and you can learn it. But take your time and have a sense of peace about who you're working with and about what you're doing do not put money in something just because you trusted your guy put money in it because you understood it now what i would do with it is i would invest it in mutual funds it's your in your case and i would earmark some of it for the kids and some of it for retirement and some of it just for wealth.

And a SmartVestor Pro can help you do that. Click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com. Again, it'll drop down a list, and you pick which one you want to sit down and talk to, or you can talk to all of them and interview them. If you get a bad feeling, leave. Don't put money with people when you get a bad feeling. Take your time and understand it. It's your job to manage this money.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, Dave's phone screener. We finished 2017 with a bang as the fourth most downloaded podcast of the year. Thanks to all of you for listening and helping us spread the word.