The Ramsey Show - App - "Greedy Rich People": Dolly Parton Pays For College Tuition (Hour 3)

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

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I'm Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the 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. Thank you for joining us, America. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. George Camel, Ramsey personality, host of The Fine Print, and also host of the Entree Leadership Podcast. Two of our Ramsey Network podcasts that are very popular is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your

relationships your money your careers your life thanks for joining us again 888-825-5225 charlie's in phoenix hey charlie how are you i'm doing good thanks for asking i appreciate that sure how can we help um so i have a. I retired like three years ago at 60 and, um, I'm, I probably have like about $1.8 million in investments and I only have, the only property I have is a house which paid off. I've been debt free probably for 10 years probably. Um, well my question is, is like that anxiety,

cause I've been a saver all my life and I still have a hard time. I mean, I have a, uh, like a side gig that I make about, I don't know, 13 to $14,000 a year at over a few months out of the year. And, um, I just want to know what your thoughts are, how to get over that hump that I can spend the money that I have sitting in 401ks, mutual funds, and an investment account. Are you single, Charlie? Are you married? I am married. My wife and I have been married 39 years. Awesome.

We have three kids and 16 grandkids. Wow. That's great. There's one place to spend all that money on those grandkids. That's incredible. Yeah, well, I do that. I try to anyway. Are you pulling an income off of your mutual funds yet?

I'm not taking any money out of my mutual funds or my 401Ks or anything. I have about $300,000 in a money market account and emergency fund type of thing. What do you live on? What do I live on? Yeah, what do you pay your monthly expenses with? It's not $13,000 a year. I, yeah, I pay about, I use my money market account and the money that I get from my side gig. That I, like I said, make about $13,000 to $14,000 a year doing that.

And what do you spend, how much of your money market a year are you using a year? I don't know. Not very much. I'm still in that saving mode, I guess. I'm like, I don't know if I want to spend it yet. What does your wife think about this? Does your wife work outside the home?

No, we're both retired. In fact, she retired before I did. Okay, so stop it. You're being confusing as crud. All right? You're not living on $13,000 a year. So where is the rest of the money coming from that you're living on? Are you draining the money market slowly?

You're not living on $20,000 a year. I get it that you're a saver, but you're not living on that. Yeah, we live on about $25,000. No, you don't. What's your property taxes on your house? $700. A year? Yeah.

Wow. What's the house worth? In Phoenix, Arizona? What do you live in? Well, no. No, I live... Our house is worth about $300,000. And I live in a small community about 35 miles outside of Phoenix. I live in a place called Santan Valley.

Okay. And your property taxes on a $350,000 house are $700,000. Yeah, it's $700,000 to $800,000, something like that. Okay. Yeah, something like that. Okay. Yeah, something like that. And it's 1,800 square feet. We downsized from a two-story house, and now we have about $1,700. All right.

The difference, and Larry Burkett used to say that the difference between saving and hoarding is attitude. It's attitude. It's attitude. It's not an amount. Okay? And the fact that you are unable to enjoy any of this wealth that you have built and you are living on below the poverty level with your income while you have a million eight in the bank, that's whacked. You do need to work on this.

Okay? Okay. Yeah. So I want you to get with your investment advisor and i want you to start drawing 60 000 bucks a year 80 000 bucks a year and i want you to take your wife on a nice trip and i want you to buy her a purse that makes your hair curl and i want you to buy a nice car you have two million dollars young man i mean my goodness gracious you are amazing you to buy a nice car. You have $2 million, young man. I mean, my goodness gracious, you are amazing. You have done a great job. But your muscles, you only developed one of the three muscles needed to handle money,

the saving and investing muscle. You did not develop the generosity muscle, and you did not develop the enjoyment muscle. And I don't want you to spin to the point you go broke and i'm not suggesting that you become a spin thrift i'm freaking dave ramsey i'm known for being a tightwad okay but i'm but but but you you've got to uh you know psychologically spiritually emotionally relationally get to the point you enjoy this you don't want your grandkids memory of you to be a guy that piled up all

the money in the corner and no one ever saw it you stood in front of it and protected the money you want your grandkids to remember a grandpa that was kind and generous and wise and thoughtful and thought about the future and also enjoyed the present. Yeah, I will tell you that when I first retired in our money market account, we probably had about $350,000 in it. You spent $50,000. $50,000 in three years. You're out of control.

I'm being sarcastic. Yeah, I know. Are you hearing what I'm saying, dude? Yeah, I know. I need to change my attitude. You've got to enjoy this money. And here's the thing. Let me tell you how you built a million. You used a system, didn't you?

You're a systems guy. Yeah. Okay, so you need to say, I'm going to allocate this number of dollars to this category to spend, and then work the system. Go spend it. You've got to build the enjoyment muscle. I don't want you to be out of control. I'm not asking you to be irresponsible.

I'm not asking you to be unwise. But you called because you know you're out of balance. You know that this muscle of enjoyment and the generosity muscle are both weak. And so I want you to go give every grandkid 500 bucks. All the YouTube comments right now are saying, hey, I know one place you can send it, Charlie. Here's my Venmo. But you need to sit down with your wife, go to a really nice dinner,

get the nicest steak you can, and write. Here's my Venmo. But you need to sit down with your wife, go to a really nice dinner, get the nicest steak you can, and write down all the goals, allocate percentages towards giving and spending, and then go do it. And force yourself to do it. I'd like for you to go on a, when cruises open back up, go on a cruise around the world

and spend more than you spent all of last year. And take the whole family. 20,000 bucks out of a million eight. You're going to be okay, man. You're going to be okay. You. You're going to be okay. You live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else. You've got to play that last part out, Charlie. That's what it was for.

It's not for piling it up and looking at the pile of money. This is the Ramsey Show. for a lot of you last year was another year of just trying to survive, but you don't have to live like that. You can have confidence in your money and your future. So if you're tired of being stressed out all the time, you can decide to make a change. You can follow a plan that works. For almost 30 years, Financial Peace University has helped millions of people take control of their money. You'll learn our proven plan to save money, pay off debt, build wealth, and give generously. Watch FPU on demand or get plugged into a class for encouragement and support from other people. You don't have to face another year of stress and worry. You can have confidence in your money.

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That's RamseySolutions.com slash agent. So, George, have you ever heard that rich people are evil? I hear it all the time. That the only way to get rich is to be evil and steal and be a crook? Well, if you made money, you did it off the, you know, you made it dirty. You had to because everyone knows capitalists are all evil. You guys are getting the sarcasm, I hope, out there. I've been on Twitter.

I know what happens over there. Yeah. Why does anybody go on Twitter anymore? It's ridiculous. But anyway, the truth, however, as we dig into it, millionaires, deca-millionaires, 10 million or more, and billionaires have about the same ratio of jerks among them as poor people. The percentage of people who are crooks is pretty much just the same percentage of people who are crooks. And so what we find is the vast majority of wealthy people became wealthy by being good people, not by being bad people.

So we decided we're going to have a greedy rich people segment every so often. Oh, I like that. We want to feature some greedy rich people. Today we're going to feature greedy Dolly Parton. Everyone knows how greedy Dolly is. She's a horrible person. At Dolly's theme park, Dollywood, she's announced that they will begin paying college tuition for all of their employees. They'll want to go to school, of course.

They'll be covering 100% of college costs if you work there, which includes fees and textbooks. This amazing benefit will be available to all employees on their very first day of work. It's available for seasonal, part-time, and full-time employees at Dollywood Parks and Resort. Dolly, you're just evil. I can't believe how evil you are. Dave, careful. Someone's going to clip just that sentence out, and they're going to say Dave Ramsey hates Dolly.

That's never happened to me, George. People took something out of context. Just the latest wholesale, wholesome improvement Dolly Copart has made for the lives of those around her. The iconic country music star has shown time and time again that she's dedicated to her community. She gave millions of dollars and raised millions of dollars for the fires when the Gatlinburg fires happened.

She has run a free book program for children in the state of Tennessee for decades. That evil, rich person, Dolly Parton, we salute you. We love to hear it. That's incredible. I don't know that I've seen something at this level. Of evil. At this level of evil.

This is a lot of evil. We should not be sending people to school debt-free like this. We should not be good to our employees. Wow. Because corporations are never good to their employees. Corporations are buying in automatically evil just because you said corporation. That does have its connotation to it. I have a relative that goes, it's the corporations.

It's the corporations. Like it's some kind of thing. I don't know what that means. I'm a corporation. I don't know what this means. It's the corporations. It's the corporations. You've got to have someone to blame for your problems, Dave.

And rich people are a great problem. Great one to blame. Yeah. Well, it's easy to blame things until you actually know people. You know, one way you do away with sexism, racism, and what do you call this? Wealthism. Ooh, I like that. Is you actually get to know those people that fall in those categories, and then voila.

It's very difficult to hate them. That's true. It's very difficult to think they are lesser. It's hard to hate generous lesser than human if you if you really want to if you really get to know someone of a certain whatever category demographic very difficult to hate people of that demographic after that if you really get to know them because they have dreams they have goals. They have good intentions. And the narrative that someone else wrote about them is usually not true. Ta-da. Well, you know, you see what you want to see, and that's what happens.

But Dolly's had a great PR. Her personal brand, everyone loves Dolly. No one doesn't love Dolly. But she's greedy rich people. That's right. But look what money can do i mean it's incredible it's awful it's horrible that she's paying tuition for all of those team members that's the most unbelievable thing what what what a waste i might go uh just work there part-time

and on day one just get some tuition go back to school that's pretty incredible i haven't seen anything of this scale this is pretty cool we Or a seasonal worker on their first day of work. All joking and sarcasm aside, but, I mean, it's just funny. And, of course, Dolly is a national treasure. She's a treasure for the state of Tennessee. We all love Dolly. Everybody loves Dolly. And not everybody, because not everybody loves anybody in this world today.

I'm sure some idiot is finding a way to hate on even Dolly. But, oh, my gosh. Do you think this will be a trend? What? More and more companies? The greedy rich people segment? It's definitely going way to hate on even Dolly. But oh my gosh. Do you think this will be a trend? What, the greedy rich people segment? It's definitely going to be a trend. We're definitely going to do this over and over. More of these greedy corporations trying to send people to school debt-free. You think that there might be a trend of us exposing the fact that corporations are not all greedy?

Ding, ding, ding. Because corporations are made up of people people and not all people are greedy and not all people are evil not all people are crooks just because they have money you doofuses you're offending a lot of people right now i hope so it's my goal if you believe that stuff you're a doofus oh it's unbelievable man that's well and here's the problem the thing that we need the reason we need to have the gritty Rich People segment and expose the greed of all these rich people and the horrible things that they do in our society, like Dolly's doing this horrible thing here,

we need to expose these things because what Rabbi Lappin says in his book, Thou Shalt Prosper, my buddy, Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, Daniel Lappin, is absolutely amazing. He's so cool. We need to get Rabbi back on the show. It's been a while. But anyway, he says one of the ten reasons that the Jewish people, regardless of the time in history or the location in geography,

regardless of where they show up, they have an inordinate probability of building wealth greater than the people around them. And he lists ten reasons that that happens for Jewish people inside the book Thou Shalt Prosper, which is a great book, by the way. I highly recommend that book. One of my faves of all times. One of the reasons is that they believe that the making of money represents service. And so they believe that the making of money is a holy endeavor work ship is very much like worship in that culture and so the idea that

i believe making money is a holy endeavor and i believe it to be highly moral to make money if I'm in that culture. Now, here's the thing. In psychology, Dr. John Deloney could expand on this, but in psychology we talk about the idea that cognitive dissonance, when you have something in your brain that does not align, a belief that does not align with an action, you cannot live in that state very long.

You'll adjust either the belief or the action eventually. And so, in other words, if you believe that making money and being wealthy is evil, it is very difficult for you to make money and become wealthy. If you believe it's inherently moral, it's in line then. There is no cognitive dissonance. And so you have this tendency, this magnetic pull, so to speak, in your psychology and your spirit to go make money because you believe it to be a moral act.

If you believe that smiling is silly, you won't smile. But other people believe that if you're happy you ought to notify your face you know and that kind of stuff right so it's this consistency this lack of cognitive dissonance but and so all you people running around out there telling people rich is evil you're spreading a disease through our culture that keeps people from wanting and believing that becoming financially successful is good therefore they can't do it. It's really a dangerous hope stealer thing. Money's a tool.

It can do a lot of good. It can do a lot of bad. You get to choose. Hope stealers are everywhere. All over. And so we're here with the Gritty Rich People segment to expose the gritty rich people. We'll be right back. George Camel, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your relationships, your mental health,

your money, your work and careers. It's the Ramsey Show. Thanks for being with us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. With us in Dallas, Texas, Christopher and Molly are here to do a debt-free scream. What's up, guys? Hello. We're so glad to be here.

We're honored to have you. How much debt have you paid off? $148,446.32. Love it. How long did that take? And then we reached around and paid $6,000 on our son's car, because we realized I was cosigned on that, too. Why not? Knock it out. I Love it. How long did that take? We reached around and paid $6,000 on our son's car because we realized I was cosigned on that too. Why not? Knock it out. I like it. All right. And how long did all this take? A total of 29 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that

time? We started at $84,000 and we finished at $162,000. Okay. Let's just go ahead and double our income in two and a half years. How'd you do that? Molly got a job. She was actually unemployed for a brief period of time, which is kind of what got this ball rolling. Okay, cool. What do you do, Molly? I'm a nurse, wound care.

Oh, there it is. Okay. And what about you, Christopher? What's your position? I am a retired naval officer, and I just completed your financial coach master training. So I'm going to move into that. All right. Very cool.

Very good. Good for you. Thank you for your service. So what started this journey two and a half years ago? Well, Molly was working in a position that basically disappeared. The doctor she was working for decided he didn't want to be at that hospital anymore, so when he left, her job went with him. And we kind of panicked a little bit,

and her mother gave her an early birthday present of FPU. Oh, way to go, Mom. Okay. So anxiety, and here's how you solve the anxiety. You develop a plan and beat it yes sir i like it good very good good for you guys what kind of debt was the 148 000 about 32 000 was credit card 30 000 well 36 000 was cars we had a signature loan for 6 000 and uh air conditioner loan for 8600 and then the rest of $72,000 was student loans.

Oh, wow. So you were normal. You had a little bit of everything. A little bit of everything, yep. Yeah, normal sucks. Okay. Good for you guys. That's amazing.

You had some debt potpourri going on there. So you jump into Financial Peace University, and what happened? Well, we figured out that we were doing things incorrectly, obviously. We weren't doing the roles properly. She was the one running the finances, and I was the actual nerd. So when we figured that out and I took over doing the budgeting and we started doing our regular budget meetings, that's when things really started to happen.

So you took over not doing the budgeting, but developing the budget, and then the two of you did the budgeting together. Correct. Okay, making sure we're saying that right. Yeah. Is that what happened, or am I putting words in your mouth? No, that's the way we did it, and we followed the rules. As the free spirit, she was required to change something, and still is to this day. I love that. Okay, you did learn the rules. All right, I like it. Very good. You guys are powerful, man. How does it feel?

You've got to feel like you've got big financial muscles. Oh, man, it's like a complete, I mean, it sounds trite, but it's a burden lifted off our shoulders for real. Yeah, yeah. We just refinanced the house to a 15-year fixed, and so that's our plan with Baby Steps 4. We don't need 5 because the kids' college is taken care of with the GI Bill. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Wow. That's good. How many kids you got? We got two boys. Okay. Very good. They're 24 and 21. All right.

Good for you guys. Well, fun, fun, fun. All right. Now, you've been through Financial Peace University. You're getting ready to be a coach. You're successful. You've actually done it. You paid off $148,000. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

Knowing your roles and stick and tool. Good. Yep. And like everybody says, doing the budget. I mean, if, if, if we weren't, if we weren't doing the way we were supposed to be doing it, we were doing it wrong. We would, we would never gotten the ball rolling at all. I mean, a buddy of mine gave me a copy of the total money makeover 10 years earlier. And I came home and I showed him, I said, Hey, you need to do a budget.

And then I went back to work. And so that was not the right way to do things. And here you are now. You went through FCMT, and you're going to coach people, and you have an incredible story to go, hey, I did this stuff. You can too. Yes, indeed. Awesome. We're so proud of you guys. Well done. What do you tell, who were your biggest cheerleaders? Definitely our parents. Molly, sadly, Molly's mother passed away about five months after we got started. And that, we know she's cheering us on from heaven.

Amen. Amen. And she's the one that gave you the financial peace kit. Yes, sir. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Well, this is definitely in her memory then. What was name absolutely her name was diane okay well here's to diane wow wow wow i love it well you guys are only in charge i could get that out without crying no i'm here yeah i hear you i mean i'll blame you it's it's uh this whole thing's her fault. Yeah, exactly. I love it. Well, you guys are rock stars. You took control of your lives. It's very, very powerful to see people do that. Way to go.

Great job. Great job. We've got a copy of The Baby Steps Millionaires for you. That's the next chapter in your story for sure. That's where you're going next. You're on the way to doing that. You're making serious money. You're killing this. Very, very, very well done.

And also a copy of Total Money Makeover. You'll be able to give that away to one of your clients and disrupt their lives. You're going to be in the disruption business for the rest of your life doing this financial coaching stuff, the Financial Coach Master Series training that you've been through. So you're in great shape. Way to go, guys. Congratulations. Thank you.

Christopher and Molly, Dallas, Texas, 148,000 plus 6,000. Did in 29 months, making 84 to 162. Debt-free. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Woo- We're debt-free! Yeah!

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Love it. That is how it's done, boys and girls. Oh, my goodness. That's so powerful. From broke to coach. That's a cool story. You know, George, the interesting data that we actually do have data on uh is all the people

that have been through financial peace university we track and people doing the debt-free screams we don't keep detailed on but anecdotally we hear every every other or every virtually every debt-free scream they say how did you do this they say the budget now what people don't realize is is there's about a whole bunch of ways to do a budget and most of them are wrong yeah there's really only he brought up several times do a budget, and most of them are wrong. Yeah. There's one right way. He brought up several times.

That's why I remember. That's why I thought as we talk about it for a second. He brought up several times you have to do it the right way. Zero-based. And a lot of people just think, well, I'm just going to write down what I'm spending. Well, that's not great just to see what you spent. That's a step in the right direction to look in the mirror. But you've got to do a zero-based budget where your income minus your expenses equals zero. That's how we teach it, and that is the only right way to do a budget.

And if you're married, you've got to do it together, and that's what he was talking about. We teach that in Financial Peace University. Usually one person develops the budget, but the other person has got to contribute. There's got to be a partnership. They have to change something. The free spirit doesn't like doing the budget. The nerd likes doing it typically but uh uh what they do love what every couple loves is learning to work together and if they don't love working together they're not a couple there we go

so and some of them discover that too but um but here's the thing you know you you learn to say okay here's our here's where we're going our big, and here's the price we have to pay to get there. What must be true for us to get there? You know, what must be true? I was talking to one of our guys on the elevator a while ago. He's lost 27 pounds. I said, how'd you do that? He said, well, you know, we cut out refined sugar.

We cut out all kinds of bread. We cut out gluten and dairy. That was his thing, okay? And he said, okay, so what must be true to lose 27 pounds in his case was he had to do that what must be true on a budget is you say okay in order to get out of debt so that we can become wealthy so that we can change our family tree and be outrageously generous live like no one else so that later we can live like no one else what has to be true right now this week in the written budget we have to be in

agreement on we're willing to pay that price to win and uh when you do that and every dollar has a name and you're in agreement every dollar has an assignment that's why our budgeting app the world's best budgeting app is called every dollar because every dollar has an assignment every dollar has a name and you're in agreement with your spouse. And both of you are talking about this every single month, if not every single week while you're doing the plan. That's the right way to do a budget. It gives you power. It's amazing. Our scripture of the day, 1 Peter 4.10, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others

as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. Henry Ford says, coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. Oh, that's good. I haven't heard that one. That's a good one. Robert is with us. Robert's in Cincinnati. Hi, Robert. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. How can George and I help? Oh, well, I've got a question on investing, and if I could, I'll tell you how I got to this question. Okay. I would say in 2008, I started listening on the radio.

About 2011, 12, I was debt free but broke effectively. Currently, I am maxing out my 401k and my HSA. I got a little small pension from a previous company. 54 now. I'm looking at advice on investing. The one side effect of going debt-free is I became reluctant to lose sight of my money, which I've been listening. Now I feel like a greedy, frugal leprechaun guarding my little pot of gold.

How big is this pot of gold? Give us some numbers. My total net worth, including house, is probably just under a million. Okay. House is paid for? Yes. Man, you have really done a turnaround. Congratulations.

Yes. It's just about the decision. At the same time, I decided to lose weight i lost like 150 pounds whoa i lost half of me i know you lost the torch cable plus man that's impressive hey luckily i've only made those two decisions in my life i don't know if the third one would be you know it might turn out bad wow way man. Awesome. So what's your question? How do I invest? It's not investments.

I've been really reluctant to lose sight of my money. I do low-risk investments. Besides my 401k and my HSA, I just got a lump of money in the bank. Okay. Your 401k and your HSA are invested in what? Just it's across the board. It's something they do at work. So it's a medium risk, I guess.

I mean, we get a good return. Okay, we'll call it growth stock mutual funds? Yeah. Okay, and how's that done? Relatively well. Yeah, over a 10-year period of time? Over, let's say, six years. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Does that not give you some faith? A little bit. So, I mean, you could do that same exact mutual fund, not in a 401k, instead of having the money sitting in your checking account yes so how much money is sitting around in cash right now in savings probably in the total part of 300k wow okay well here's the thing the the only way that anyone should invest is they become comfortable with the investment emotionally and intellectually, meaning you understand it. Okay?

So let me give you an example. When you bought that house, were you laying awake at night, stressed and wide-eyed, I doubt it, worried about that house becoming worth zero no okay the the neighborhood that you were buying in were you familiar with the neighborhood when you bought that house no you weren't okay i was not what made you comfortable buying a house in that neighborhood um i had accidentally sold my house uh quicker than i thought i was in a rental house for a year that's not what i'm asking i'm asking when you bought that house in that neighborhood what made you comfortable doing that what made it what made it okay neighborhood it just felt right and when we walked into the house the house felt right okay which made you believe based on just housing in general you're 50 something years old you've been

you got walking around since you've walked through areas you say okay an area that looks like this in my life experience generally goes up right that's kind of what went through your head, I suppose. Yeah. Okay. And so the way I look at any investment is the same way. I look at the neighborhood, the track record of the neighborhood. So if I'm going to buy a growth and income conservative, a growth stock mutual fund that falls in the growth and income category.

I can look at that category of mutual funds and say, okay, this neighborhood, you know, here's what they've just about all done. There's 68 of them. There's 168 of them. And here's what they've just about all done. There's some bad ones and some good ones, but most of them kind of fall right here, right? And so, and I can look at the stock market in general and say you know the the stock market's average annual rate of return is just under 12 since it started

way back okay or i can look at a mutual fund that i looked at the other day that um is over 80 years old and it only had 15 times in 80 years it lost any money. That's a good neighborhood. You know what I'm saying? Yes. And so the track record on the investment gives you comfort. The history. And so that allows you to lose sight of your money. Because here's the thing.

In every case, when you put the money in checking, when you put the money in CDs, you lost sight of it. It's not in cash under your mattress. You still put it in something out of sight. You just trusted it. Yeah, or easy access, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you got easy access to a mutual fund. I moved some money out of one at 10 o'clock this morning, and it was in my account this afternoon.

Okay. Out of a mutual fund today because I was doing a real estate deal, and I just moved some stuff today. I jumped online. I've got an online access to it, and I just hit the online thing, and it showed up in the checking account. So I got real access to it, just like more than you do with a CD because there's no penalty. So the point being i i would sit down with

smart investor pro and learn yeah i want you to get comfortable with this one of those ways is to be educated and our smart investor pros are financial pros they're going to walk you through this they're not going to make the decision for you they're just going to show you hey this is what this fund has done over the last 10 to 15 years and you go okay cool i do that one. But the thing you're not thinking about is the risk of having this money sitting in cash, not even beating inflation. I'd be more stressed about that than I would having it in a good growth stock mutual fund. That's one of the least risky investments out there compared to all this other stuff that you could be in like single stocks and crypto and who knows what else. And so our advice is very conservative when it comes to investing,

because we want you to get rich slow. Yeah. So, Robert, when I tell people to put their mutual funds in their retirement and otherwise across four types, growth, growth and income and aggressive growth and international, I personally do that. I've done that for 30 years and I have averaged north of 12 percent averaged over that period of time on my money. And you might only make 10. But it's a heck of a lot more than checking. And it's a calm neighborhood. There's not a lot of fireworks. There's not a lot of shooting up and down the street.

You know, it's a predictable neighborhood. And what you've got to do is just get comfortable with the neighborhood. You got comfortable with the neighborhood when you bought a house. You got comfortable when you bought a CD. So reach over here and learn something about that and get comfortable with the neighborhood you got comfortable with the neighborhood when you bought a house you got comfortable when you bought a cd so reach over here and learn something about that and get comfortable with the neighborhood and then start moving some that way and and just watching it a little bit closer i don't think you're doing a bad job i just think as you said you're kind of doing good and you want to move towards great that's what you're looking for without taking a bunch of risk and without being rash or crazy, you're out of control. But mutual funds are not that complicated. There's not that much to

them. Sit down with a SmartVestor Pro, someone with the heart of a teacher. You can click SmartVestorPro at RamseySolutions.com. Find one in the area near you. It's people we've vetted. They will have the heart of a teacher and they will give you advice similar to what you hear here on the show. But you're going to learn about it. You're not going to do it because that guy said to or because Dave Ramsey said to or George Campbell said to. Definitely not me, for sure. But, Robert, I want to send you a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires. That's Dave's number one national bestselling book.

And I think it will give you some comfort to hear the stories of millionaires who have done this stuff, how they did it. It will show you that you're on the right path and that you don't need to be as worried as you might think. So hang on. We're going to get you a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires, and we're cheering you on, man, as you continue your wealth building journey. Absolutely. George, good show today. Fun times. Thank you. Well done. Good show to all you people in the booth. We used to try to call their names. There's too many of them. There's 15 of them in there. There's too many of them. And some of them are on the operating board. That's right. You know,

there you go. That's how that works. Board operator. I mess it up one time and I'll never live it down. You're right. You won't. 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, Christ Jesus. This is James Child, producer of The Ramsey Show. Did you know The Ramsey Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you next time.