The Ramsey Show - App - How Do I Stay Motivated? With Guest: Bart Millard of MercyMe (Hour 1)

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, 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. Open phones this hour as we talk about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. As I said, the call is free, and some say the advice is worth what you pay for it. So jump in, and we'll talk. And this is all about you, your life, and what's happening with you.

Adam is going to start us off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hi, Adam. What's up? Hi, Dave. How you doing? Better than I deserve, man. How can I help? So right now I just turned 19 years old, and I did what every 18-year-old does, you know. You start a, you know, you're eligible to get credit cards, everything like that. And so I got a car loan, and then I also got credit cards totaling about 13K. And I just started, I canceled all my subscriptions last night, you know,

and I'm starting Baby Steps. But I'm just wondering how to stay motivated during Baby Steps. Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that motivate you. Fear is one of them. Obviously, being wealthy would be one of them and um this 13 000 is is smacking you around in the back of your head you got that that nasty taste on the back of your tongue called regret right yeah you know i'm not going to do that again yeah but so what do you make what's your income uh so right now i'm making about 32k i

was making about 42k last year but i got laid off due to covid so you're working 40 hours and i yeah i'm working full-time right now um i would like to get in a higher paid career as well but i just don't have motivation for school i mean i did terrible in high school um you know i'm very, but I just don't have the motivation. That's what I lack, you know. Okay. Well, I mean, you don't have motivation to do higher ed. That's not a problem.

But you're going to have to have motivation to do something, right? Yeah. Otherwise, we would question your comment about intelligence. Yeah, I agree with you there. Okay. I mean, there's got to be something to get you fired up yeah you know i mean i'll get like a hobby and i'll keep it for a bit you know but then i just lose track of it and i feel you know that's how i classify school schooling as well okay well i mean the thing is this the bible says where there is no vision, the people perish. They die.

And so you need a vision for something that's big, bold, and noble that you're going to work your butt off towards. And that way you have what we call purpose. You're useful at that point. You're adding value at that point. As far as this $13,000 goes, what I would do is pretty simple. I'd pick up like three extra jobs delivering pizzas uber eats and mowing grass whatever you're only working 40 hours that's not much and you're broke so uh time to fix that the way you fix broke is you go get some money and here's the trick you can make an extra three thousand dollars a month and be done with this whole thing in about three

or four months but you're gonna have to get geared up about it you can wander into debt honey but you can't wander out you got to get wired up and fired up and that's the only way you're gonna do it so if i were in your shoes i would be a little bit scared a little bit mad at myself for having dug this hole and uh a little bit excited about my future and this crap standing between me and awesomeness in my future, so we're going to knock it out. Knock it in the head. Smack it. And so, but, you know, get with it. Let's get some extra income coming in.

Plus, where are you spending the $32,000? You're 19. Where could it possibly go except going out to eat, dates, and bar hopping or whatever? So stop it. Sit at home. Well, you don't need to sit at home you ain't got time to go spend any money because you're working all time now uh you ain't got

any time to spend money all you are is at work and go do that for about four months and all of a sudden you'll have a little bit of pile of money and you'll have no debt at all and it's magical how that'll work for you uh but if you lay that down on paper and you can see how what i'm talking about works i mean 13 000 divided by 3 000 how fast we're going to be out that's four months dude i mean there you go boom boom and and so you lay that out and you go okay there's my there's my september that's where that's what my october looks like i'll be here by christmas and um when you lay those things out laying out a detailed goal like that

that is reachable where the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train maybe that'll get you moving i don't know how to motivate someone you motivate yourself uh you discipline yourself but that all has to do with you having a vision kathleen is with us in Grand Rapids. Hey, Kathleen, how are you? Hey, I'm doing okay. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's up?

So I have five rental properties. I'm trying to figure out which ones to sell in order to further my progress with the baby steps and set myself up in a better position. I am very high risk. I've leveraged and have mortgages on these properties and I was just introduced to you so I'm trying to get everything sorted out. Cool. So you want to end up with a few of these debt free by selling off a few others? Yes and do I also look at trying to pay off the house that I'm living in by selling off more, or would I leave that separate out of the equation? You could go either way.

I mean, you could sell off more and pay off your house. I pay off your house first. What do you owe on your home? I owe $150. Okay, what do you make a year? I make $40,000 a year. Okay, so your income's not going to knock out that $150,000 anytime soon. How much equity is in these five properties? I have about $500,000 equity, $500,000, $600,000, I think, if I sold them all.

Okay. Which is the best property? Tell me about the best one. Well, how do you determine that location? Well, the one you want to own five years from now. Well, I really like the lake house. And it's a rental? Which is the one I know that's the one I live in.

Okay. No no i'm not talking about that that's your personal right okay i'm talking about your five rental your five rental properties let's decide which one to keep or which two to keep which are the best ones they're easy to rent they get good renters they they're in an area that's going up in value they don't have a bunch of repairs okay well that's i guess where i'm hung up on um um i like the one that cash flows the most uh i bought it dirt cheap and it a cash cow um they're all gonna be a cash cow when you pay them off right okay good point good point which is going to be easier to manage from a maintenance Right. Okay. Good point. Good point. Which is going to be easier to manage from a maintenance and a tenant perspective and going to go up in value the most?

That's where your ROI is all going to be. Okay. Pick that one. Because if you sell off everything, you sold off more than you needed to because you only need $150 to pay off your house. So let's sell off enough to pay off your house, and then let's sell off another one or two and keep another one or two and clear those. I mean, what if you were sitting here six months from now with one or two rental properties and your home, and they're all 100% paid for, and they're all properties you're excited about keeping into your future five-year decade from now version of you that's a pretty cool place to be uh and i love real estate but that's where i would aim if i woke up in your shoes less property and all of it paid for yeah because that paid for stuff man it cash flows it's fun i you know it i'll sit down

look at our pnls i just grin just grin. It's fun. This is the Ramsey Show. Our famous $10 sale is back. This time last year, a lot of folks got behind with their money. But this spring, there's hope. Our famous $10 sale can help you get control of your money and feel good about your future. Save big on over 40 best-selling books and budgeting tools that will help you stay in control of your money. Save up to 60% on our proven life-changing books such as The Total Money Makeover and Everyday Millionaires.

These books will help you make a plan today to hit your money goals faster so shop our ten dollar sale at our online store at ramsey solutions.com that's not all we got a gift for you too you can enter to win our ramsey cash giveaway we're giving away five hundred dollars cash every week and a grand prize of $5,000 cash. Enter daily for extra chances to win. No purchase necessary. Must be 18 or older to win. To enter our giveaway, go to ramseysolutions.com slash giveaway. The Christian band Mercy Me was recently honored as Billboard's top Christian artist of the 2010 decade. They've sold more than 9 million records and garnered more than 47 number one multi-format radio singles. A major motion picture based on the life of frontman Bart Millard,

who wrote the mega hit song, I Can Only Imagine, after the loss of his father, opened at a remarkable number three at the box office. Bart and I became friends many, many years ago, and lives down the street down here, and gave us a holler and said they got a new album coming out, and so I asked him to swing by and talk about it little bit how are you my friend man i'm doing great thanks for having me this is awesome very cool time so talk about this new single this new album the album is inhale exhale and uh the new single is say i won't uh what's the story behind it

because you don't do anything without a story behind it no man the whole album The whole album, it was supposed to come out beginning of 2020, pandemic hit. And so we had just bought a place not far from here and made it in a studio. And we slowed everything down just to have something to do. And practically rewrote the whole album. And as far as Say I Won't be in the first single, it's kind of inspired by a friend of ours, a guy named Gary Miracles, our first merch guy 25 years ago. And he got really, really sick at the end of 2019. And went septic, and they thought they were going to lose him. And when they realized they were going to be able to save him,

they knew they were going to have to take his arms and his legs. Wow. And so we had to watch from a distance because of the pandemic. But just his attitude and his outlook was unbelievable. And so the song, it started out kind of talking about our identity in Christ and who we are. And by the time it was finished, watching his story, it became more of an overcomer kind of rocky moment. Kind of saying, keep telling me I won't and I'll show you that I can. I mean, he's just been breaking barriers the whole way.

They told him he couldn't walk for a year and he started walking with his prosthetics in like three months. Wow. Yeah, he's a rock star, man, and it's been really cool to kind of take this journey with him. Yeah. What a horrible thing to go through, but what an inspiring story and where he goes to. So the I Imagine song has obviously branded you guys, labeled you. And when someone brings up Mercy Me, that's automatic. Or brings up Bart Miller, that's automatically what comes up.

What is it like to try to follow that with another album or another album or another album or even a film? It was hard at first because you felt like you were going to, instead of trying to be creative, you got worried to not derail this whole machine. You had to follow it up. And, and then, uh, and it just got really,

really stressful. Like it almost became my identity is like the highs and lows of mercy me. And, and to where it even like start affecting my marriage and all this stuff years ago. And we started going to counseling and we got to a point to where we, we say we got in a healthy place to where we stopped caring. And just it's like i guess i'm glad it's our song so i have to follow somebody else up but we realized like if mercy me ends today that you know who we are and

what we do we wouldn't lose sleep over it and once we got to that point we started falling in love with music again and just was like we've already got imagine so let's try to write something else yeah yeah you got and you had 47 other number ones, so that's not a bad gig, not a bad thing at all. And the fun thing about this album, you got some good friends on there, some other voices you added to it. Talk about that. Yeah, we got a song, Little Love, with Gary LaVox from Rascal Flatts, and just a good friend, and it was awesome to get him on.

We did a disco song at the last minute. Somebody said, man, wouldn't it be awesome if Gloria Gaynor sang on it? And so we reached out to her. I helped her with her record and sure enough, she said yes. And it's amazing. It's like, I feel like we have street cred.

You do. Now we have a disco deal. Gloria Gaynor, that's pretty strong. Yeah. I mean, Gary's great. Yes. But Gloria Gaynor, come on. Yeah.

My favorites on our way is my oldest son, Sam's 19. He co-wrote the song with me and I was sick with laryngitis, couldn't finish the vocals, so he was doing a demo, and it was so good. The label was like, let's keep him on there. And so, you know, we've been a band for 27 years, so we were around to see him born, and now he's a grown man singing on our album. Yeah, and half writing rights, yeah. Very cool. Yeah, that's a great thing to get to do, to get to work with the kids grown man singing on our album yeah and writing how and how to write and write yeah very cool

yeah that's a that's a great thing to get to do to get to work with the kids and do it in a way that that um that is productive and good so um we're going to play a clip in a minute from say i won't uh to end the segment but before we get to that what's it like doing this album in the middle of covid i mean you and i were talking about it offline over the summer and different things because we all had our own covid stories and pandemic garbage and all that but i mean that was that's different yeah that's why it all changed i mean even the album title everything changed we we changed it in hell excel because we kept saying the whole time we want if people can just take a breath set aside what's weighing them down and remember what matters then it's worth it and um but it's say i mean it's i say it saved our

life it's just having something to go do and go to work on every day it helped a ton because you know i'm sure there's a lot of especially husbands or whatever out there that that like you know when they're not going to work they struggle with like man when i get home from tour it's like i feel like i'm visiting i'm like i'm breaking the routine when i get home it takes the re-entries a couple of days but so to have something to do and to work on this was awesome and it was and it was just like it's for us it's kind of like a time stamp of you know we'll remember this season hopefully we'll never see it again but it's the covet album totally yeah but it also enabled you to do some stuff you probably wouldn't have done yeah we've never had that much time to lean into it.

100%. Yeah. Bart Millard with Mercy Me, one of the top Christian bands of all times. And, of course, the fabulous song, the sales on it are unbelievable. I can only imagine. The new album is called Inhale, Exhale. And the first single off of it will be called it is called say i won't where's the inhale exhale come from it was just breathe breathe yeah calm down yeah

we were getting hit with so many emotional performances on youtube during the pandemic and we were like man we just want to make something that makes people dance and smile for a second there's emotional moments but for the part, we want you to get caught at the red light dance when nobody's looking. So just remember what matters. There you go. That's fun. You getting back on the road? Yeah, man.

We're heading out next week, first time in almost a year. And we're going to test the waters, and then there'll be a full fall tour. We're supposed to be back to normal. Fingers crossed. I got to tell you, man, our gang gang we're all heading out to uh dallas over the weekend and got a big event uh the entree leadership summit oh yeah with about 3 000 folks down in dallas this coming this coming week and um this place is buzzing we're ready to get back to work no no and not everybody in the building works on live events hardly anybody does

percentage wise there's a thousand of us here but the uh but those of us that go on the road, I mean, there's something. You miss it. Right. Yeah. You miss it. You miss the camaraderie of it. You miss the interaction with the audience and live audiences and all that. And, man, I'm ready.

Yeah, I am too, man. I'm so ready. So hopefully it'll go well. I hope it goes well for you guys too. Yeah. We did some live events back during all the garbage, but there was so much stress related around it that it took all the joy out of them. This one's going to be fun.

Yeah. We're excited about it. All right, Bart Millard with Mercy Me. The song is Say I Won't. We're going to play a small clip of it and going into this break. James, fire that up for me. Today, it all begins I'm seeing my life for the very first time Through a different lens

Yesterday, I didn't understand I'm going to live. My life's been waiting on me. I'm gonna run. No, I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna know what it means to live. And I'll just be alive. The world's gonna hear. Cause I'm gonna shout And I will be dancing when circumstances drown the music out Say I won't

Not enough It's what I've been told But it must be a lie Cause the spirit inside Says I'm so much more So let them say what they want Oh, I dare them to try I'm gonna run We'll see you next time. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, host of the Ken Coleman Show, is my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225.

Candice is with us in Indianapolis. Hi, Candice. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Hey, what's up? How are you? Better than I deserve. Me too. I'm calling today because I currently rent a condo and my landlord who owns

the unit reached out to me and would like to sell the condo um i am in a lease and so it was a two year lease and i have one year left and he would like to sell it um but would like me to move out. And so I'm trying to figure out what's an appropriate amount to ask for. It's almost like a cash for keys agreement, then in which case he would pay me to vacate early because he is requesting that I terminate the lease. And so I'm just a little not sure on what I should ask for, or if I should just say no and just stay in the condo for another year until my lease expires. Well, if I were in your shoes or if the roles were reversed and you were in his shoes, you would want to work something out.

I got a feeling it could get really awkward if you just hang out there for a year. Yes, I thought it would be awkward yeah so i mean let's do something i don't know why he's asking you to terminate the lease he's the one asking i mean you would have to agree to the lease termination obviously and but i don't know why he he is trying to posture to where you terminate the lease he can terminate the lease but he can only do it with compensation that you've agreed to so i mean either way we're we're adjusting we haven't we have a written agreement we're going to adjust that written agreement to you leaving okay now does he want you out and he's going to renovate before he sells or could you stay until it's sold so he offered well he initially offered me two,000 to stay until it sold, but I wouldn't receive those funds until the condo transaction closed.

He doesn't want to renovate it. He actually offered it to me, but I just can't. It needs a lot of work, and it has very high situates. Okay, so how much is your rent? How much is your rent? $900 a month. Okay. All right.

That doesn't sound unfair. Did it feel unfair to you? It felt unfair to us that I would have to obviously agree to showing, and basically I would be living in limbo, not knowing when the condo might sell, and then he would give me 14 days he said to relocate and so um okay well let's just negotiate let's negotiate a little bit okay you said it's 900 rent okay i'll stay at 600 rent and two thousand dollars when i leave the difference in the 300 is me keeping the place clean and ready to sell

and i can't be gone in 14 days. I'll need 30 days' notice. Okay. Yeah, that sounds fair. Because I want to be fair. He has been a good landlord. Well, there's not anything wrong with any number here that makes the number fair or unfair. Unless it just got grotesque.

You know, and then nobody's going to do it. But anything you two agree to is fair because you two agreed to it. Both of you did. Okay, and would you recommend that I receive the money after the combo closed? That's probably the only way you're going to get it because that's probably the only place he's got any money. Okay. Yeah, but I mean, the rent reduction.

I've done this as a landlord myself where I offer a rent reduction, and you keep it clean and show ready and very accessible. You're not hard to get along with for the realtor coming in, and basically you're being compensated for all that $300 a month in your case and with my example, and then you have to give 30 days notice, and upon closing I get two thousand dollars and you put all of that of course in writing okay that sounds like a good plan yeah and then you're out you're out of his way he gets everything he wants you get everything you want and if it takes a little while to sell you got a good deal okay That's awesome.

Yeah, Candice, listen, that's a really good plan Dave just gave you, and I would lead with an in-person. I know you need to get it in writing, but I would. Dave, I just believe in a phone call, you know, where people can hear your emotions and your humility and say, hey, thank you for the offer. I need to spend some time on it. I really want this to work out.

I want to help you do this. I'm going to send you a couple things, a couple thoughts. That just little extra touch takes away the defensiveness. The thing I worry about with emails these days, people try to do things electronically. They read in a motion sometimes that aren't there. So I think Dave's plan is brilliant. I would just add that little personal touch, and I think it will go well. You can't read anything and it's uh and the problem is this uh yeah yes call him and and talk about it and then follow up with an email yes absolutely really

good suggestion and uh people and i guess it includes even me i was gonna i was gonna make it generational but it's not uh texting and uh emails are so common that everybody does that and like a friend of mine was talking to his son who's in his 30s who just turned down a – had two great job offers on the table. And he turned down one of them and he said, you need to call them and tell them thank you. Yes. For the offer. Because you may end up working for them in 10 years and you need to make a connection there because very you know very high end job you know several hundred thousand dollars a year type thing and you need to maintain that

relationship you don't text them and go i'm going with the other guy that's you know which you know because but that somehow we've lost that uh training yes my grandmother would say we lost the training when we quit writing handwriting letters for snail mail and putting a stamp on them. True story. I was just getting ready to say back in the day, you know, we would write letters and we'd send them to people. And if we got one in the mail, we would open it up. And what would we do?

We'd open it up. We'd read it. We'd read all the things. We'd go, great. And we'd probably go get ourselves a tea. Or maybe we'd return the letter two or three days later. Nobody returned it right away. But the tyranny of the urgent, our culture, this is a cultural issue. This is a worldwide thing.

Text, email, fast, fast, fast, go, go, go, go, go. What do you mean it's been three minutes and you haven't answered me? Right. By the way, I just read some data. I just read some data for people that are working from home. Dave, you're going to love this because we're all about working in a building. And here's some more stuff to put in your bank here. You ready for this? 50% of people that are working from home, that have been working from home during the pandemic, would rather clean their toilets than answer more emails and chats that are all work-related. Because here's the deal.

They're overcompensating. People are overcompensating because they're not in the office. Or they can walk to somebody's desk and go, hey, got an idea. What do you think about this? What may take five minutes turns into 10, 15 emails in maybe 45 minutes of your day.

People would rather clean their toilets than answer more email. That's new data. I'm just telling you. So what's wrong with the human touch? We've gotten away from talking to people. We're zoomed out, baby. Just because everybody else is doing it, to your example of the young man turning down a high-end job,

just because everybody else will send an email or text, you shouldn't. We're not trained in it anymore. No. I wasn't trained in letter writing. I actually did learn cursive writing, which was still a thing back then. I did, too. It was horrible, but I did it. It was horrendous.

It made my grandmother cringe because she taught second grade and taught cursive writing. I'll bet her penmanship was beautiful. It was absolutely fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. That was a craft back then.

It was, you know, it's a lost art and it's a shame in a very real thing. People don't send love letters anymore. Yeah. It's gone. The romance of it's gone. It's just a thing. So, yeah, all of that goes with it.

So that's a really good suggestion for Candace. And, you know, the other thing is if you're going to have a difficult conversation, those of you out there talking about money stuff and you've got a landlord dispute or you've got a, you know, a business, a dispute with a business, firing off stuff on Twitter is, you know, pick up the phone and call them. Yeah. Yeah. Send blazing hate mail, email, anonymous bull crap as if that's going to fix anything.

Yeah. But this is the lack of training in how to get people to move to your side of an equation, and it requires an actual conversation with a human. That's right. Technology is wonderful. Technology is not evil in and of itself, but when it replaces the human connection, I mean connection,

sitting across from somebody and seeing, oh, they look a little tense. What can I do to drop that down? Or they react to me, and I go, oh, maybe I'm coming on a little strong. I see how they're reacting. Folks, this is God-given instinct to be able to connect and communicate. We are relational human beings.

Put the phone down. Get away from the keyboard. Make a connection for crying out loud. Calluses on our thumbs. Yes. This is the Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. If you've been paying attention to the real estate market this

year you've noticed the competition out there to buy a home is a little high in part because the inventory has been hitting all-time lows when inventory is low it simply means there are more buyers than there are sellers selling which turns the pressure up buyers want to snag the right house sellers want to accept the right offer. This is not amateur hour. Inventory is low. To win in this market, you need a pro by your side, and that's why we find, vet, and endorse top real estate agents across the country. We call them endorsed local providers to help you with buying or selling,

and you need some help in the middle of this mess. Our agents have years of industry experience. See, a monkey can sell a house right now, but that doesn't mean you sold it for the right price, and it doesn't mean you didn't get messed over in the process. So you need to get somebody that knows what the flip they're doing that sells a lot of houses to be able to navigate this mess. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash agent, and you can find a Ramsey-trusted ELP agent near you. That's RamseySolutions.com slash agent. Brian's in Charlotte.

Hey, Brian, welcome to the Ramsey Show. How can Ken and I help? Thank you very much. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve, sir. Good. Because of an accident that I was involved in or whatever, I'm getting a settlement.

So I'm going to be able to pay off $110,000 in debt today. Whoa. So I'll be able to have about $45,000 left over in cash in hand. I'm making about $60,000 now. Next year, I'll be making about $80,000 plus. My work puts about $360 a week into an annuity fund. So there's about $65,000 in that. I got about $3,401K. Just started that. It was at 10%. I'm going to bump it up to 15. And I got about 90,000 in a Roth IRA. Now, my question is, since I'm not a real big real estate type of person, is there anything else out there to do to increase net worth and value and security for down the road other than putting it into real estate

and doing the 15% into my accounts. Should I add one for my wife because she doesn't have one, and should I do that weekly or at the beginning of the year, should I just put in the max amount? A lot going on. So you recovered medically from the accident? Yes, sir. I did. You don't need any money for further medical procedures or anything?

No, sir. Okay. Well, that's good news. I'm glad. Yes, it is. Thank you. So, yeah, you write a check, and you're debt-free. Then you set aside three to six months of expenses as your emergency fund, and then you take 15% of your household income, which would include your wife's income, and be putting that away into retirement plans. The best retirement plans are with a match.

The next best is a Roth, and the next best is a traditional. And so, you know, you want to fully fund a couple of Roth IRAs. You want to make sure if she has a 401k or you do at work that has a match, that you take advantage of that. But up to 15% of your household income. So just take her income, your income together times 0.15, and that's how much we need to do. Generally, you're going to do that monthly

because it's going to come out of your check into your 401k. Or you can get with a SmartVestor Pro and have it automatically drafted from your checking account there's no requirement that you do real estate at all i don't put money in things that scare me risk wise and i don't put money in things i don't understand and so i only invest in two things mutual funds with long track records and real estate that I pay cash for. Both are very conservative investments. There's no wildness to them, no volatility to them.

They're just steady, and they just make it happen. You just got to keep it simple. Yeah. You said something we were recently on together. I want people to hear that are thinking about real estate, assuming you're in the financial ability to buy cash and then begin to kind of build. You said you're looking at 70% of value plus cost, if I remember this right. So you're going to offer something. Minus cost.

Minus cost to fix it up, to get it repaired. That's the ideal way to buy it. But you're not going to buy much real estate in this marketplace. No, not right now. That's not going to happen right now. No. But that's how I have traditionally bought when I was buying foreclosures and when I've just bought deals and so forth over the years. Now, the last several years, I've been more involved in development, meaning that we put these massive concrete buildings over here that we're sitting in and, you know, a couple of hundred million dollars worth of that stuff so

that's taken up all the money and i haven't done any outside deals outside of the ramsey campus although it's a wonderful investment just the same so uh but you know the 2008 whoo that was fun yeah you got some deals man i bought a bunch of stuff and i'm still holding almost all of it how long did it take you to come up with that formula uh yeah i did it back when i went broke the formula was still solid the problem was i borrowed all of it or sometimes i would borrow more than i needed to fix it up and buy it and just put some cash in my pocket before i actually flipped it and uh so i got leveraged out up to my eyeballs in other words and, and that was the problem. The problem was the debt underlying the deals, not the structure of how I did the purchases.

Brad's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, Brad, how are you? Hey, Dave, I'm doing good, man. I hope you are. I am, sir. How can we help? Just got a question, man. So I was, you know, I'm following you with your baby steps.

I know you are a big advocate of doing them in order. Yeah. So you got to, you know, first, then the baby step two and three, pay off the debt, and then three to six months. So my question is, I'm kind of getting started with this and I already have a little bit of savings, like maybe six grand, seven grand. I was wondering if it was a good idea to cash that out down to one thousand towards the debt which would kind of right and then and then that would kind of put me on track to be in order with baby steps there you go that's exactly what you do and if you're doing retirement savings you don't take any out of retirement because of the penalties but you do stop adding temporarily

until you get back up to baby step four which won't be that long you'll be back up to baby step four uh which won't be that long you'll be back up to baby step four putting 15 in in no time um but you the the power of focus when you're knocking the dead out is just absolutely vital that is one of the things that's caused our program to be more so much more successful than anything anybody else has done. It wasn't that I was a genius. It's just that we only let you do one freaking thing at a time. And when Ken's walking through people with their career choices, it's one thing at a time. You don't need to put out a bunch of resumes until you start with, you know,

the first step of finding the dream job, which is get clear. Yeah, that's exactly right. Once you're clear, now we can say, what is it going to take to get qualified? Yeah. You know, some people don't even know what they're looking for. You can't get qualified if you don't know what you're getting qualified for. So you do have to put things in order in a clear path. You do.

And that power of focus when you have a clear path, it sets you apart because most people are wandering generalities. Yes. And they just go along and go, I've got to put a little over here and a little over here and a little over here and a little over here. And you get nothing done. You water down your efforts. And light dispersed simply lights a room. But focus becomes a laser to cut metal with or do surgery with.

The genius of the baby steps, folks, is simply this. Dave, whether you intentionally did it or not, but you figured out, wait a second, discipline, the focus of the one thing at a time, allows for maximum effort and maximum potential. But then there's the psychology of the baby steps. There really is the snowball idea. The reason we call it a snowball,

when I've seen Dave teach us at live events, if you've ever been to one of our live events, watch him teach it, we show the snowball rolling down the hill. That is the momentum. And that's the genius of doing it one step at a time because then as you reach the next step, you've got all this great mojo and juice and you're fired up because you see progress. And we humans are creatures of progress.

So momentum is key. We need hope. We do. We need to see that we're making progress. Hope is so powerful. Yep. And you know how powerful it is when it's not there. Oh.

And, you know, I remember when I was going broke, my mom sent me a note. I put it in Financial Peace. It said, no one can take your hope. You have to surrender it. Wow. It's a decision. So true. Decision.

Ken Coleman, my Ramsey personality co-host today james childs is our producer kelly daniel is our associate producer and phone screener i am dave ramsey your host and we'll be back this is james child producer of the ramsay show did you know the ramsay show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.