The Ramsey Show - App - Hope Is More Contagious Than Fear: Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, Rachel Cruze

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, Rachel Cruze It’s scary out there, but hope is greater than fear. In times of crisis, facts are your friends. So get the facts and other common sense guidance on life and money from thought leaders Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, Rachel Cruze, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, Anthony ONeal and John Delony. daveramsey.com/hope

Hey guys, my name is Dave Ramsey. Welcome to A Message of Hope. I do a talk radio show called The Dave Ramsey Show for those of you that are new to us. I've been doing it for almost 30 years, taking calls from people, asking me questions about their money and their life. That has evolved into a whole company called Ramsey Solutions where we talk about all areas of people's lives, and certainly there's a lot going on in our culture right now. With me for this conversation tonight is Rachel Cruz,

number one best-selling author a couple of times over and a big star on YouTube, is a team member of ours, Ramsey Solutions, Ramsey Personality. She's also my daughter. And Ken Coleman is with us, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author of the book Proximity Principle, and he does the Ken Coleman Show on careers and jobs and has been doing that for quite a while on radio stations all over America and a very popular podcast.

So they're going to join in with this conversation in this time of weirdness, this time of crisis, this time of fear in America today. People are really scared. Some are terrified. Some are hysterical. Some are just concerned. And I don't know which category you fall into tonight. And most of us kind of vacillate among those categories, depending on what we're talking about, whether we're talking about the medical issue with the coronavirus or we're talking about the corona shutdown and the number of jobs lost and where we are there. It's just a hard time in our culture right now, certainly in the United States and for that matter around the world.

So the first thing we want to tell you is this. I'm old. You can tell. I've been there. And we're to tell you is this. I'm old. You can tell. I've been there. And we're going to get through this. You're okay. It's going to work out. I was there when Y2K was going to end the world, and it didn't.

And businesses went crazy, and jobs were amiss, and the economy was crazy. And I was there after 9-1-1. Some of you weren't born yet. I understand. But there was a time there that we really worried in America and we grabbed hands and we were unified. But the stock market took us on a ride and the economy took us on a ride. I've been through a couple of flu breakouts of different names, and people were scared. Nothing like this particular virus has scared everyone. But I've watched a lot of people be sick, and it's a sad time in America in that regard. Went through 2007, 2008, and I did 178 media hits in about seven days in those days because it was crazy and I was trying to tell

people to calm down, to not cash in everything and not abandon hope. Because if you haven't noticed, there is one thing more contagious than this virus and it's fear. It's airborne. And people, you don't need, social distancing won't even help. It's coming through your television screen. It's coming through your news feeds on your computer. It's coming from friends and relatives who normally were pretty level-headed people but are panicked right now. Or at least scared or at a minimum concerned. So just hear me loud and clear. You're okay.

We're going to get through this. Twelve months from today. You can going to get through this. Twelve months from today, you can write it down right now, and you can send me hate mail if you want if I'm wrong, but twelve months from today, we're going to look back on this and go, wow, that was rough. We got through it.

The same thing we said about those other calamities and crises that I just outlined. A couple of principles that we're going to get into tonight. Number one is, my friend Art Laffer says, no one makes good decisions when they're panicked or when they're drunk. Now, some of you are both. Some of you have chosen one over the other. Some of you are just panicked or just in a moment in time, just in a five-minute period of time, you can become panicked and do something that takes years to get your

family past the mistake that you make while you're out of control. Your critical thinking skills just dissipate when you're panicked. You've got to calm down. You've got to calm down. Our friend, another Ramsey personality, Dr. John Deloney, he's a crisis counselor and he says, when you're in a crisis, facts are your friends. Facts are your friends. And you have to control your input. What is coming into your brain? Is it a continual news feed of fear? Are you watching the news channels 24-7?

I've got to tell you, there's very few people who have a strong enough spiritual constitution to do that and not cave to the fear. I don't do that. I'm a part of that media. I'm on all those shows, on all those stations. A lot of those people are my friends, but I am not going to sit and feed my brain that all day long. My friend Zig Ziglar used to say when he was alive, he said, every morning I read the Bible and I read the newspaper. That way I can tell what both sides are doing. So this is real, you guys. You have to control your inputs, and you have to have self-control over your emotions. When you're panicked, some of you are just melting down, and you lose your ability to make good decisions.

Other times you're getting mean, and you're being nasty to each other, or you're shaming people on your Facebook page because they didn't do exactly what you thought they ought to do. One way or the other. But people that are normally nice people, when they get in this funk emotionally, are being very unkind. Some of you have been unkind to your own family and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Some of you have been unkind to someone in the drugstore because they walked across a dadgum blue line and lost your mind. Calm down. We need a lot of generosity right now.

The Bible says, I'm a person of faith if you don't know. The Bible says in Jeremiah, God says, I've got a plan for you. And it's not to bring you harm. It's to bring you hope.

Hope is greater than fear, but it's a choice. And no one can take your hope and no one can bring you hope. Hope is greater than fear, but it's a choice. And no one can take your hope and no one can steal your hope. You have to surrender it. That's what has to happen. Otherwise, you're not there. And Rachel, we were talking about this idea of just having a little bit of grace in our lives. Yeah.

And we were talking about what we're going to say tonight. Yeah. I mean, our theme through tonight really is about controlling the controllables and how key that is in this process, and that includes your emotions and your grace for people. Chrissy Wright, who's another one of our Ramsey personalities, we were friends and we were talking on the phone just last week when all this stuff was happening, and she made a great point.

And she just said, man, we just need to extend massive amounts of grace to people because you never know what someone else is dealing with, right? Because I'm like, there's the two extremes of how people are dealing with it. It's either like, this is all crazy, I'm going to do whatever I want, or it's the ones that are all, you know, they're freaked out to do anything. And each side looks at each other and they just, they spew shame and hate and everything. And I'm like, man, you know, no matter which side you're on,

look at the other side because both need grace. And I think that's really important to remember that with your friends, your family. It is a time just to say, you know what, they're handling things differently than I would, but I'm going to just take a deep breath myself and extend that. Ken, when we're talking about, you and I are teaching leadership sometimes and we're in these different settings. When people are under pressure, sometimes it's just financial pressure we're talking about. Sometimes it's other things. But when they're under pressure, the bad parts of their character are revealed sometimes.

That's right. And sometimes the best parts of their character are revealed. And you need to be real careful to control that. That's something you can control. Yeah, I think you're speaking to influence here, not just for leaders but for all of us. And I love the point, Rachel, that you made about grace. You know, this is a time where in isolation, when you are around just your friends and family, that they're looking to you to see what your cues are. How are you handling all this uncertainty? How are you handling the bad news?

You know, Matthew 5.14, Dave and Rachel says, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. And I think that's a strong challenge to all of us to realize that in that verse, we realize that we have the opportunity in uncertainty. You could say dark times. We have the opportunity to be light as individuals, as leaders, and we are all exposed in this. This is not a state crisis. This isn't a United States crisis.

This is a global crisis, and it is affecting everyone. And each of us has a responsibility, David and Rachel, to realize that we are a city set on a hill in that we are doing life with some people closer than maybe we've been doing life with them in a long time due to this isolation. And so it's really important as we get to this theme tonight, what can you control? And we're going to talk through that tonight, but really controlling, Dave, our response. And there's going to be times where we all get squeezed and it reveals the ugly side of us. And we all have the ugly side, but we can choose in this moment to say, Ooh, I don't like that. I've got to change that because I am a light and I want to shine in uncertainty. So I think that's a wonderful challenge for all of us right now.

There's so many things going on. I mean, we've got a, obviously we have a medical crisis going on and none of us are medical people. So we're not even in a position to address that. But there's a, there's a jobs crisis. Millions and millions and millions of people have lost their jobs. And with that comes a money crisis. So those two things are two things that you can respond to your situation and control the controllables. St. Augustine is quoted as saying, Pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on you. There's a portion of this up to God, and there's a portion of this up to you. So this is a time when you have the opportunity to plant,

or a time when you have the opportunity to harvest, or a time in your particular situation where you do whichever of those is fine, but you have to control the part you can control. And there are some things you can control, and if you do those, the hope will come and replace the fear. I've noticed a microcosm of that over the years of counseling folks that are hurting with money, and when I was going broke, I can sit down with someone who's got astronomical overwhelming debt and even sit down and take their call on the radio.

And when I walk them through and they see with their budget that they can control today and that that gives them a shot at having a better tomorrow. Now, their debt didn't change. The numbers didn't change. The numbers didn't change. The idea, though, that they controlled what they could control, they suddenly, their countenance shifts, and you see hope come. I think that's a really important piece, because right now, I feel like on a national level, we're getting things done from Washington.

State-level governors are doing press conferences all the time. There are things that you just, we can't control any of that, right? But when you say, like for your money specifically, you have a plan in place and you can say, okay, I can do this. And what it does, it brings power back to you and not in someone else's hands. And I think that that's key.

And I think when we're fearful, we lose all of that. And it's almost like we let go of things and think, okay, I don't even know what to do now. But when you say, no, no, no, here's the step-by-step is what we're going to walk through tonight. But to really say, yeah, these are the things that you are able to do and completely change your destiny. And this is a message that we speak at Ramsey Solutions, other than the coronavirus or not, that it's your decision. If you want to change your life

and do something different, it's up to you. And this is a perfect, great time to dive into that. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. And it's entirely possible. Now, again, we're not being positive thinking gurus and saying you just ignore everything around you. There's real stuff happening all around you. Most of that you can't control. You can control what you can control. And my friend Art Williams used to say, all you can do is all you can't control. You can control what you can control.

And my friend Art Williams used to say, all you can do is all you can do. And all you can do is enough. And that's all you can do. You just got to do what you can do. Pretty sure there's about three categories based on the millions, it feels like, of questions we're getting hammered with in the last two weeks that we wanted to respond to.

They're kind of wrapped up in, there's people in about three different situations. And I want to give you some practical, we want to give you some practical things to do in those three situations. First situation that you might find yourself in is maybe you were in a service industry, maybe you're in the hospitality world working for a restaurant or a hotel or an airline or a cruise line or a bar, and you're just out of business. The person that owns the business that you were working for just shut down. They didn't have the money to keep paying everybody. You lost your job, and you're scared.

And there's about 6 million people have lost their jobs so far in the corona shutdown. So far, as of this broadcast tonight. So, jobs report came out. That's just this month. And so, what we're tracking, that's the numbers that we're seeing in the real world where we live. Out here, where people are shut down and they're losing their jobs. If that's you, then when someone's in a crisis and you're in the middle of a crisis, what we want you to do is stop doing anything with money except what we call the four walls.

You protect the four walls of your home. The first thing you do before you do anything else is you buy food for your family. The second thing you do is you keep the lights and water on. Third thing you do is pay the rent and the mortgage and keep shelter. And you get the car current and keep the car current and keep gas in the car. Food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and utilities. If you're old like me, we used to have a thing called civics class in the seventh grade and they taught us the basics of life and the necessities of life, the food, shelter, transportation, and utilities, the necessities. Take care of those. All the other stuff is a monopoly game.

You get behind on your student loan. You get behind on your credit card. You get behind on something else for a month or two even until you get turned and get back reemployed or something else is happening. You can survive, but you take care of your household. Well, my credit might get damaged. It might. Well, I might have this happen.

It might. But you take care of your house. Take care of your own household first or you're worse than an unbeliever. Take care of the basics if you're in the middle of a crisis. And there's a lot of peace with that. There is. Because you're not doing other things with money. And there's a lot of peace with that. There is. Because you're not doing other things with money, thinking, okay, I'm trying to fund my 401k,

I'm trying to do X, Y, or, you know, you're trying to do all these things, and we're giving you permission to stop that. And once you see, okay, we can get the rent and mortgage paid, we have the food budget, we have this X, Y, and Z, okay, we can survive this, right? I mean, it does. It gives you this level of peace, because it is. it's a thing you can control. And when the money

comes in, that's what you do. But if you've lost your job, Ken, I know you've, you talk about this all the time, but finding work right now, that's another big priority for these people. Well, it's absolutely a priority because if we look at what Dave's talking about, the fundamentals, what do you have to do? And we've shifted from what do you want to do to what do you have to do? And that's a reality for folks. And once you have that confidence, Dave, you talked about it was beautiful as you recounted times you sat with people and counseled them. And when you've been able to give them, this is what you do today. That's what you said. And I love that. And folks, I hope you heard that because what we're going to talk about over the next few minutes is all about

what you can do, controlling the controls. But Dave, when you did that for folks, and it's what you do on the air, it's what we at Ramsey Solutions do every day, is give people a clear path. And when they know what they can do today and when you know what you can do today to take care of what matters most, here's what happens. Clarity washes over you. I'm very clear on what I can do today and more importantly what I need to do today and then confidence begins to take over and that is huge and that's why what we teach and the clarity of this moment is so powerful. Yeah, don't go into debt. If you're in that situation and you've lost, you know, you lost a job, don't go into debt. You don't need to do that. You need to go get work.

And Ken's going to talk about that. You know, there's a lot of stuff you can do. He's going to walk you through some of those things. But you may have to tap into savings, but you may not have to. If you just batten down the hatches and say the hurricane's coming, but hurricanes don't last forever. And when it goes by, the sun's going to come out, and we're going to sing that song, you know, and all that stuff, right? And so you're going to be there.

You're going to be there. But just take care of your family. There's something emotional happens, but people get crazy even when we're just coaching them without a coronavirus, when they're just in a crisis. And they stay current on their stupid MasterCard, and their lights get cut off. And it's so illogical, but when we're scared to death, we're not logical. We're panicked. We're not making good decisions. So we're telling you, take care of your four walls if that's your situation.

Do those basic things. Pile up cash. And if you get a huge pile of cash and you want to go back to paying some of the other bills before everything goes by, that's okay. That's okay. You can do that. The second group of people, other than the ones that are in the middle of a crisis, is the people that are kind of in the middle. You're doing okay. It's not a problem today, but you're kind of looking over your shoulder like something's getting ready to hit you, you know, like something's coming. I don't know what's coming. And there's really almost within that category, there's almost two kinds of people. There's the person who's, you know, they're working what we call our baby steps. They're working a financial plan, and they're in the middle of baby step two or three,

meaning they're getting out of debt or they're saving money or whatever, and they're going along, and they go, well, what should I stop that and pile up cash because a storm's coming? Should I stop that? And, Rachel, there's kind of two different situations on that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I would always encourage people, if your income is still coming in, continue, continue to stay current on your debt, pay the minimum payments, and keep going down and tacking the smallest to largest.

But if your income completely stops, then that kind of puts you back into category one where you say, okay, pay minimum payments and everything and just stockpile cash. But those are really the two main things that I'm seeing and that I'm hearing from people. Yeah, and so, in other words, if maybe he's a FedEx driver and she's a teacher, that

income's stable. So the only thing you're worrying about is what's happening out here somewhere. It's not really happening in your house. You just keep doing your thing. But if one of you is a real estate agent and one of you has got a hair salon, both of you are in trouble. Not yet, but if we don't get back to work soon, you're going to have real problems. You probably ought to stop and just pile up cash and get ready. So how stable and predictable is your current income streams? If they're stable and predictable, just keep plugging along. But if they're next to fall or you're afraid they're going to fall, not just vague worry, but facts. Facts are your friends in a crisis, Dr. Deloney says. And you just go back to the facts.

What are the facts? And the facts are that you're okay if you've got two stable incomes. Keep plugging along. The facts are, yeah, there's a problem. We need to stop and pile up cash. And then the third group that we're running into are the people that have done very well. They, for many years, have worked their way out of debt. They've invested in their 401k. They have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Their incomes are stable and predictable. They're still worried or concerned. Some of them

are panicked, even in that situation, because the emotions got the best of you in that situation. And for those, you're in a very unique opportunity here if you can keep perspective on how good you've got it in this situation. You are in the driver's seat. Now, we're telling everyone, like we have always told everyone, never cash your mutual funds out of your 401k unless it's to avoid a bankruptcy or a foreclosure. So if you're back in that group one before you get foreclosed on, if you have to use your retirement, fine. But because I'm scared, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, right now, there's a sale going on on Wall Street. These stocks are on sale. They're artificially low.

These companies have not lost as much value as they indicate with their stock prices. So to cash out right now would be absolutely ludicrous. You can remember this. No one gets hurt on a roller coaster ride except those that jump off in the middle of the ride. Ride it, baby. I rode it all the way down in 2008 and all the way back out. In 2008, before the crash, 2007, the Dow had topped out at 13,000. It went down to 6,300.

It went in half. So when someone tells you, I lost all my money in the stock market in 2008, no you didn't. You might have lost half of it. But you didn't lose it all. It's mathematically impossible to have lost it all unless you were invested poorly in one single stock and that company went broke. You did not lose all your money. You emotionally felt like you did, but it went from 13 to 6,300. Now, for those of you at home that don't follow the stock market stuff, from 6,300, you know where it was in January before it started the coronavirus creep, right? It was at 30,000.

Five times as much money as what you would have had. So if you had a million dollars when it was at the bottom, when everyone was freaking out like they are right now, you would have gone fivefold. Yeah, if you had a million dollars, it would have gone to five million dollars by now. If the market just returns, if you put $1,000 in today, and if it just goes back to where it was 12 months from now, you will have made 40% on your money. Now, I don't know when it's going to go up. I just think it's going to go up because I don't think America's over.

I don't think that all the great companies that you drive by as you're driving down the highway that are traded on the stock exchange are all suddenly going to become worth zero because of the coronavirus shutdown. The coronavirus itself is not causing economic problems. The shutdown associated with containing it is causing tremendous economic problems. So we need to keep that in mind. So far as of this broadcast, what we're facing is this. For every case of corona confirmed in the United States,

approximately 100 people have already lost their jobs due to the shutdown. That's the ratios. And so we need to keep these things in mind and watch how this is going and be very, very wise about how long we're shut down versus containment. And those two things are pulling at each other statistically, and both of them, both of those curves work on a geometric progression. Neither one of them are 1 plus 1 equals 2. So just be watching and be thinking and be wise and calm down.

Ride this out. Do not cash out your stuff. Now, if you're also in that last category, you're in good shape. I actually took a call on the radio this week from a lady who was fearful, and they had $2.5 million in their Roth IRA and mutual funds. And she said, you know what, we've lost $600,000. I said, did you cash your money out? And she said, no. And I said, well, you haven We've lost $600,000. I said, did you cash your money out? And she said, no. And I said, well, you haven't lost anything then. It just went down. If you

cash it out, you've lost it. You've locked in your losses, we call it in the investment business. You haven't lost anything. Write it out. Write it out. Don't trap your losses at the bottom. And I think that's a great point of our theme tonight of controlling the controllables. We can't control the shutdown. We can't control some of the things that are going on right now. But you can control cashing out your investments. So remember, stay in it. Stay in it. That is one thing you can control.

Those of you that are in this group, three, focus on that. Yeah. And the other thing is some of you need to refinance your mortgages. There's never been better mortgage interest rates than in the last several weeks. These are incredible times. And so if you're sitting with a bad mortgage and you're in good shape financially, other than that, you probably like to look at refinancing it right now, right in the middle of all this. There's some opportunities to buy some things right now. If you're sitting on some money, there's going to be some opportunities

to buy some things at deep discounts. And believe me, the people selling the things would love to have you buy them. They need to get rid of that stuff. And so there's some bargains going to be had by people who are in a position, and you're blessing someone when you buy their stuff. Real estate went way down in 2008. I bought a bunch of real estate, and it has been one of the best investments of my entire life. I wish I could buy real estate like that again, except that the only way I could do it is if the whole freaking economy went down again like that. And I wouldn't wish that on us just for me to get a deal. But

you're looking, you know, you're in a position to do that. The other thing you're in a position to do is to be generous. If you're sitting on two and a half million dollars instead of fretting about losing $300,000 on your 401k and you're 62 years old. And by the way, her household income was $200,000. And Anthony and I were just laughing at her. She was so sweet because she was terrified. But all of that was just fear had overcome her that everything they'd worked for their whole life was going to be dissipated. But I love that point of being generous.

I think that just counteracts completely the fear, right? When you just step out and you just say, you know what? I'm going to help this neighbor, this neighbor, and this family member here, here, and here. I mean, like, that, it just changes your spirit. And on social media, I know you love social media, Dave. Oh, I'm a big social media guy. Yeah. But looking even like, even on Instagram, all these videos are popping up of showing people and all the creative ways that they are giving and serving in their community.

So it really is. It's kind of become a united thing within our communities. And I think it's beautiful because I think it just completely counteracts the fear. Yeah. I think if you're going through a drive-thru right now, some of you are quarantined and you're in-house in some of your areas and you're going out just to the restaurant and doing a drive-thru, there's probably a 17-year-old standing there that if you gave them $100, you would blow their mind. Triple, quadruple your tips wherever you go right now. If you're sitting in a good position, be generous.

Something about generosity takes your eyes off of you and the fear just leaves and you start not being there. And so you start not having this idea that there's something about fear that is selfish. And when you're selfless, it adds hope and you start taking your eyes off of your situation. And it might not be that you have a bunch of money, but you may be able to just do something for someone. You may be able to be the person that delivers the groceries that someone else bought to someone who's an at-risk person who's locked in right now. And just do things for other people. We're seeing that everywhere.

You're already doing that. There's lots of wonderful stories, what Rachel was talking about. But just whoever's in the service business out there still, the ones that are still there, for goodness sakes, they're scared to death. Go in there and tip the crud out of them. And by the way, you probably ought to do that the rest of your life. Those people work hard. They work really hard.

So here's the thing. If you're doing really well, or if you're not, don't cash out your investments. Ride it out. It's going to be okay. Breathe. Do you really think that Apple and McDonald's and Coca-Cola and Microsoft and Home Depot, do I name companies like that for two days? The wonderful great American companies, do you really think they're all going to be worth zero at the end of this? Come on.

Now, that's just illogical. It's just not going to happen. And if they're all worth zero, we've got bigger problems than a virus. Our way of life is gone. And that's just not going to happen. That didn't even happen in the stock market crash of 29. Some companies went out, but the entire economy did not become worth zero. So the way we project these fears and we extrapolate them and they grow into this huge, massive thing that's just not even real. It's impossible for it to be real.

And I would say the last thing, kind of wrapping up the whole money section though, is one thing that you can control, obviously, is the money that is coming in and budgeting. That's one of our huge banners. I feel like at Ramsey Solutions is helping you budget. And that's just being intentional with what every single dollar is going. We have a great budgeting app, every dollar love it, but like it finding ways for you to be super, super intentional with every single dollar. And that's going to be really important during this time. Like even my husband, Winston and I, we were just talking about the budget this month and we were looking and I realized I just got off maternity leave, just had a little boy five months ago.

And we were a little bit loose with the budget. We still were on it and doing it. But we realized, okay, no, this motivated us to get even more stricter and figure out where are ways that we can even start to save and look. And so that is one thing you can control and be intentional with your money and do a budget. Knowing that you've got enough because you wrote it down gives you power. It's controlling the controllables. And so, you know, that's how it works. Now, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.

Yeah. I mean, this Corona shutdown has affected people. People are afraid it's going to affect them. And the other people are just afraid it's going to affect the overall economy. You're in that sector. That's what you do every day is help people with their jobs and even with their dreams and with their careers. Well, there's really two pandemics that we're facing right now. We've touched on this. Obviously, we have the medical pandemic, but we also have the pandemic of panic. And folks, when panic takes over, you lose all perspective. Dave touched on this earlier as he quoted our friend, world-renowned economist Art Laffer,

that none of us can think clearly when we are overcome by fear and panic. Because you can't have perspective. The only thing you're seeing is that worst fear or multiple fears if we look at today's world right now. We're talking about multiple fears are coming at people all day long. And when that's what you're focused on, you can't have perspective. You know, I get to talk to men and women every day on the Ken Coleman Show, helping them figure out what they were created to do in their work, and then coming up with a plan to make that a reality. And I want to talk about perspective for just a moment, and then we'll get into the short-term steps right now for those of you who have lost your job or you feel like

that is coming. First, let's look at the big picture. Let's talk about perspective. Yes, this is an unprecedented time in history. There's no playbook for this. It just came on us very quickly, and it is affecting everyone. But here's what you can be certain of in an unprecedented time of uncertainty, that your purpose, your dreams haven't evaporated with this crisis. They just aren't all of a sudden gone, and you can't catch them. You can't pursue them. That is a lie, and fear will tell you that. You know, I open up every show by telling our listeners that you were created to fill a unique role. That means you are needed and it

means you must do it. And so I know there are a lot of people that are watching tonight that this crisis has either stalled or it makes it feel like your dream has been threatened. Maybe it feels like it's been taken away. Maybe it's that business you just launched, or the business you were preparing to launch. Maybe it was the career switch. Maybe it was the entry point into the very thing that you've been studying for. If you're a young student, you're about ready to graduate.

I can tell you with absolute certainty tonight, and I want you to hear this and I want you to believe it, that no matter what you have to do in the short term, I can tell you, you will get back on track. Davis said it so well tonight, you're going to be okay. We are going to be okay. And I want you to have the mindset right now that no matter what delays have come your way and all the uncertainty of when can I get back on track, how can I get back on track, I can tell you, you will get back on track. So I want you to know that there's a pause sometimes that life throws at us and it's just a pause. You know, I remember when DVR first came out, I'm a sports fan, and it changed the game because I could be watching a game. And if I wanted to go get some chips, refill the chips or a soda or whatever, I could press pause

and I didn't miss anything. And I want you to have that sense. I want you to have that peace, that confidence, that clarity that life is throwing a pause at you, but you're going to get to get back on track. Let's talk about more perspective. This economic situation right now is an absolute aberration. This is not an economic pattern. I want to remind you with the facts. Dave has quoted our good friend John Deloney multiple times tonight, and John's absolutely right. When we are faced with fear, we've got to focus on the facts. What are the facts? End of February, we had a record jobs report. For a year and a half leading up to February, just weeks ago, folks, we were in a historic job market in the United States.

We were in a season, a prolonged season, where we had more jobs available than people who were unemployed. We had a job market where people were being recruited and enticed to take the very same job they had with one company, move over to a different company doing the same job and make substantially more money. We had a job situation where college students were coming out of school and because they were new and they could come right into the market, they were making more money sometimes than folks that were more qualified or had been in the sector for longer. What am I telling you? That doesn't just completely evaporate and disappear. But the reality is, is that when

people are forced to go home for the medical practices, then they are contracting their spending habits and it affects companies far and wide. And they've listed several of them that are the most hardest hit. And so you're seeing crazy unemployment numbers. Don't let that cause you to panic even more. That is to be expected when essentially a consumer-driven economy comes to a halt. Now, you need to understand this because here's what's going to happen. Our medical professionals are the best and the brightest in the world. They're going to

lead us and guide us, and we will see this virus flatten and eventually get under control. And when that happens, we will begin to see a very quick return to normalcy. And when that happens, we will begin to see a very quick return to normalcy. And when that happens, your opportunities are going to be there. Maybe even better and brighter than before. I'm not going to make you reveal this to your friends and family if you're gathered around watching this together, but here's what we know. Dave, Rachel, you've heard me say this 100,000 times. 70% of Americans were unhappy in their work prior to this. It's not fun to get kicked out of the nest, but I can think through multiple times in my life where I got kicked out of the nest and it was the best thing that happened to me.

And so I want you to have that perspective as well. And then third, let's talk about the short term. We've been talking about the long term. But the short term is what matters most. We opened up tonight, we've said multiple times through this conversation that our theme is to help you see

that you can control certain things. And so we want you to control the controllables. You heard Dave lay out the four walls. You heard Rachel talk about the budget to be able to take care of the four walls. These are things that you can control. You will control them because you will step up when you need to step up.

That's what I believe about the human spirit. When we are squeezed, when we are challenged, that's when the brightest moments come. When we choose to not be defeated, but we choose to get determined. And so let's look at the short term as it relates to your job. Here's what we know. A lot of industries, tourism, hotels, cruise ships, airlines, hotels, bars, let's call them non-essential priorities. Think of Dave's four walls. You think of small businesses right now that aren't in a high-priority product or service. People are pulling back their money.

And so it's going to be painful for a little bit. But here's the deal. You can get work. Certain industries are exploding. We're seeing the delivery system, manufacturing, warehousing. Don't get me started on toilet paper and paper towel companies. They're making it as fast as they can make it. We've seen major big brands like CVS and Walgreens, obviously in the

medical field. They're hiring like crazy. Amazon. So we have put this information out at Ramsey Solutions. We're going to continue to bring it to you. But all you've got to do is say, wait a second. I will deliver pizzas if I got to deliver pizzas. I'll do whatever got to do is say, wait a second, I will deliver pizzas. If I got to deliver pizzas, I'll do whatever it takes in my area, in my zip code to bring in some money to take care of these four walls. I'm going to change my budget. I'm going to, I'm going to do something that maybe I've never done before, which is truly cut to the bone of those most important things. And I want to bring you in for a second before I wrap on this, because I, you started talking about budgeting. I mean, people can really get way down to the nitty gritty

and they can begin to see, wait a second, what I've got to cover isn't as much as maybe I thought it was the true essentials. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, once you get on a budget, everyone says, I feel like I got a raise, right? Cause you're just being that intentional. So yeah, the budget is going to be your friend in this whole process if you've lost your job. But I also think about, you know, if you are the person that lost your job and you are the main source of income into your family and you go home and you have a spouse and kids there, like that's a scary thing to say, hey, OK, I'm stuck. Like I lost my job. And there's a real stress on that. I mean, even just the kids being out of school can.

We have young kids. Oh, yes. We're not homeschool teachers. Let's just say it out loud people. I can't even spell common core. Carry the one, carry the one. But really I'm like, you know, there's a, there's a level of stress within the family that's going to be caused by this, but what you can control is what he just talked about and going and getting a new job. And I think, you know, it may take a little bit of time for in a short term, but doing that I think is going to is huge even from the family landscape as well. Yeah. And so this comes down to what I think will be a really big enemy for

some of you right now. And that's pride. We all suffer from pride. Nobody's immune to it. And what I mean by this is, you know, I had a good corporate job or I had whatever your job was, and all of a sudden you've got to stock shelves at Walmart or your grocery store, and it feels like you've gone so far backwards. I'm speaking to you men mostly here because we take such huge identity as a provider. But right now this isn't a you problem. There's no shame in your game, as one of my friends says. You've got to do what it takes to provide those four walls. Don't have any shame. Swallow your pride. You do what you have to do.

And I love that you brought up going home, because that's tough. But I think our kids will learn more from watching their parents step up in a big moment of uncertainty and do what needs to be done than they would ever learn in any classroom. They're watching you. Don't be ashamed. You own it. You show them what we're doing as a family. We're going to sacrifice.

We're going to get through this. And as Dave said, I believe six, seven months from now, we're all going to be going, wow, what a weird time that was. And those kids are going to see that. And they're going to remember that. That's legacy type stuff.

I'll close my thoughts, Dave and Rachel, on one of the best analogies. It's not even an analogy. It's actually true of nature. And how two different animals, basically from the same species handle the storms. So cows, bless the cows, when a storm is coming across the plains or coming across the pasture, they see the storm coming and they act like most humans do.

It may be how some of you, some of us act when life throws a storm at us. They start to try to outrun the storm. But the storm overtakes them, Dave. And then because the storm is moving faster than they are, they spend more time in the storm because they're trying to run away from the storm. But I don't know if it's their cousin or what, but the buffalo, these crazy animals, they're out on the plains. They see the storm. They run

into the storm. And as a result, the storm's coming see the storm. They run into the storm. And as a result, the storm's coming to the buffalo, and they run into it, and as a result, they get through it quicker. I think you are facing a storm. We are facing a storm. Your business is facing a storm. Our nation is facing a storm. Our world is facing a storm. Our world is facing a storm. I think what we're going to share with you tonight will help you take control of what you can control.

And I know that you can choose to run into the storm. Be like the buffalo. Run into that storm and you're going to get through it quicker. Don't run away from it. There's no reason to be afraid of this. We will overcome this together, and Ramsey Solutions is going to be there for you and with you the entire time.

So, what our takeaways for you guys are tonight is there's at least three things that you can control. We've talked about controlling the controllables. That gives you a sense of power, a sense of hope, to push fear to the side, panic to the side, hysteria to the side. First thing is you can control your attitude. Yes, you really can. You're not a victim. We didn't allow Ramsey kids when they were growing up,

Rachel or her brother or sister, to say, he made me mad. Nope. You chose to be mad. Now, maybe he was a jerk, and maybe it was an injustice, and maybe most people would be mad when that happened, but no one makes you afraid. No one makes you mad. No one makes you happy. It's a decision. You do control your attitude. And it's a matter of self-control, self-discipline, and the people that control their attitudes do control a lot of the things that happen in your life. No one makes you unkind.

The coronavirus has made me be mean to all my neighbors on my Facebook page in my neighborhood. No, you were just being mean. No one made you mean. And you need to stop it. You need to be kind, calm, and generous. Just choose. Facts are your friends. No one controls your attitude.

Absolutely. Yeah, number two is to control your friends. No one controls your attitude. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Number two is to control your money. I mean, that's a big part of what we do here at Ramsey solutions is help you with your money. And, um, man, no matter what category you're in, we've kind of walked through the three different situations, but no matter where you are, uh, you can control that part. Um, you know, whether it's the income coming in, the spending that's going out. And so really, really being intentional with that. And so things like doing the budget, it's the income coming in, the spending that's going out, and so really, really being intentional with that. And so things like doing the budget, it's the banner I wave all the time,

but it's true, controlling that. Don't cash out your investments, deciding not to go into debt in these situations. I'm going to call the student loan people and tell them I need a hardship deferral. Both of us have lost our jobs. And honestly, I'm happy that there's going to be a government stimulus, but truthfully, it's not enough to fix your life. If $1,000 fixes your life, you probably didn't have much of a life. And so it's a nice thing, and I'm glad for the politics, and I'm glad for whatever, if it makes everybody feel good up there. But really,

what happens at your house is more important than what happens in the White House, and it always has been. It always has been. You get to choose how to control the money that is in your sphere, and whether you're in a crisis, in the medium, or whether you're doing well. You get to choose generosity. You get to choose to not take out your investments at exactly the wrong time. You get to choose to not go into

debt because you panicked and freaked out because you've been unemployed for 32 seconds before you went and ran up a credit card. The number of times I have coached people on their finances and they say, oh, I lost my job last year and so I'm $45,000 in credit card debt. And when I talk them through it, I figure out that they lost their job for two months and they were making $5,000 a month. So that means they needed $10,000 to completely offset their loss of income. And yet they went $45,000 in debt and used the job loss as an emotional rationalization to do stupid stuff. And stupid, when we've been doing stupid stuff and it goes into stress, when stupid is stress tested, it comes up, it shows you as being stupid. Some people have been doing some stupid stuff with money. And right now it's being revealed. Warren Buffett used to

say that, you know, when the tide goes out, you can tell who was skinny dipping. If the principles you were operating your life on were false principles, and the only reason you were getting away with it was a white hot economy, now you know that they were false. And now you know the idea of being out of debt, being on a budget, having some savings is a really smart idea. And I'm not saying I told you so. I've done dumber than any of you looking. I went completely broke in my 20s and lost everything because I did stupid stuff in a huge tower of it. And an economy shift knocked the tower down, and I thought I was a victim. I was a victim of basing my life on wrong principles. I was the little pig with the straw house, and I changed my life.

Some of you, this is going to be the opportunity. You change your life. My Grandpa Ramsey was one of my favorite people on the planet when he was living. I'll never forget, in the 70s, I was in the backyard with him. We were pulling nails out of boards on a deck we were taking apart. And every nail we pulled out, we had to straighten it out and put it in a coffee can.

He kept used nails because he was a young man just freshly married with babies when the Great Depression hit. And it changed him forever. He was frugal and careful with money forever. This might be yours. Someday your grandson may be telling the story about the time that there was a work stoppage

and people lost their jobs, and you permanently for the rest of your life changed the way you handled money and started basing it on God's and Grandma's common sense instead of going crazy out here in extreme spending like most people do. This is an opportunity to change that. And so I'm not shaming you if you messed up. I'm here to help you if you messed up. I'm the king if I haven't messed up. But this might be your wake-up call.

This could be the best thing that ever happened to some of you. And the third controllable is this. You control your opportunity. That's right. You know, the way that you think controls the way that you act. And when we've talked about perspective tonight, folks, you've got to understand that right now, as Dave just said, you have, some of you, some very urgent needs, and so you are going to have to go get an opportunity. When we talk about proximity in the book, The Proximity Principle, it's very simple.

When you're around the right people and in the right places, opportunities present themselves. You've got to be okay to say, hey, I need help. I need some work. I'll do whatever it takes. I've got some beautiful kids at home, and I'm willing to do whatever. I'll work the midnight shift. I'll drive. I'll do whatever.

Your opportunity is right in front of you, but you're going to have to go get it and you're going to have to be intentional. And again, understanding the way that you think is how you change the way that you act. If you think, hey, I can do this. I need to do this. I must do this. Your whole mindset's different. And I would also be in a situation where you are putting yourself in places for future opportunity. Remember, just because we've got all this craziness and uncertainty going on doesn't mean, Dave and Rachel, that you can't

put yourself not just in the financial, but in your job and your career. Put yourself in a position that when this thing slingshots back, you're ready for opportunity. John Wooden, maybe the greatest coach of all time, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. I am a fan. He said this once, and I think it's beautiful. He said, when opportunity comes, it's too late to prepare. And those are wise words, and I think a challenge to us tonight. Dave's right. You can control your opportunities, but you have to have the mindset that I can make opportunities happen. And Dave, you're absolutely right. Not just in our jobs,

but also as leaders that are leading companies. If you're a pastor right now, you're leading a church. A bunch of you watching are friends of mine that are doing that. You're leading a small business. At Ramsey, we've got about 1,000 team members, 940-some-odd team members, just under 1,000. If you're a leader of an organization like that and people are depending on you for the payroll to come to them, for them to feed their families, you're feeling the weight of this as a leader.

Times like this, leadership sucks. Some of you are having to make some really hard calls, some really tough decisions. We're having to be really careful and make some decisions around here. Just a couple days ago, we started pivoting a whole bunch of stuff around here. Some of you, there's going to be some things you pivot that are going to go, wow, that actually worked. We might have should have been doing that anyway. Some of you are going to try some things just to hold on and create some revenue in your business to be able to feed the families and make the payroll that you're doing. And that's okay.

It's okay. Do whatever you need to do. That's the right thing there. Pivot. Ask for things you've never asked for before. Do things you've never done before. We sat in a group with our leadership team on Monday morning and started saying, what can we help people with that are at home, stuck right now,

because obviously they're not going to come to one of our events, right? How can we help them? How can we serve them? And we started thinking about all the things we have that are digital that we can do. We started putting them up on a web page and going, okay, cut that stuff to where there's no profit. Let's just get it into these households and help these people. And we did something we've never done before. A lot of you were on like a

14-day lockdown. So we said, hey, we're going to take our nine-week class, Financial Peace University, which if you don't know, almost 10 million people have been through it now. We're going to take that nine-week class. It's all digital. And you can watch all the videos of Rachel and me and Anthony O'Neill and Chris Hogan on there and teaching you how to handle money properly while you're at home. And you can binge watch it because we're going to make it available for you for a 14-day free trial. We've never done that. And so you take your business, you change your business around,

you organically think through it, right? You go, what can we do different? What can we do? Well, you take some of these audio books and make them almost free. What can we do? So that 14-day trial, try it. Just go to DaveRamsey.com slash hope and sign up for the 14-day trial for a financial piece. That way you can learn how to handle money,

and it's an expansion on a lot of the stuff we've been talking about tonight. It's free. Free trial. That's what it's called. And it's got the budgeting stuff in it. The world's best budgeting software is in there. The Every Dollar Budgeting app that we build, and so on. And so jump in there and get that free thing and a bunch of other free things.

We've got stuff you can do at home with your kids. We've got other things. Rachel and I wrote a book together called Smart Money, Smart Kids, and then she taught a class on that that's in that same free trial that you can watch, how to teach your kids how to handle money. There's all kinds of stuff you can do in there. But businesses, you can pivot and do things just like that and just find a way that you can be generous to your customers while they're hurting like that

or find a way that you can serve them in a different way and create revenue. I don't care. I'm not afraid of you creating revenue. I'm just thinking for a snapshot in time, try something different. Let this be the shock that changes the status quo. So the thing the three of us want you to take away tonight is this. You can control only the controllables. It will work like it all depends on you.

Control the controllables like it all depends on you. The things that are out of your control aren't your job. They're God's. And he's good at those. He's good at those. And he'll take care of it. It's going to be okay. Be kind. Please quit shaming each other.

Quit being angry with each other. Please. Fear is contagious. But hope is more contagious. Thanks for joining us tonight.