The Ramsey Show - App - How to Deal With Exchange Rates in Foreign Countries (Hour 1)
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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios,
it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage
has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.
I am Dave Ramsey, your host.
Thank you for joining us.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
That's 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.
Richard joins us from Scottsdale, Arizona, to start this hour off.
Hey, Richard, how are you?
I'm better than you deserve, Dave.
How can I help?
Okay, so my mother passed away a few months ago, and there was some funds left that
were distributed between my debt. Good.
One credit card left, 2710.39.
I just received today my stock disbursement.
Can I say the name of the company?
Sure. Disney. You got disney stock okay
i got disney stock and uh 164 shares and it's trading at 100 bucks a share you know 99 105
somewhere in there so my intention is to transfer that money from the Disney to my brokerage account.
Okay.
I also have a Roth IRA, and those funds are not very good.
You know, I put some money in there a few years ago, and it's all in one stock, which
has taken a nosedive, so I'm in a negative there.
I'm not too worried about it.
Considering I'd have to sell off like 30 shares and get myself completely out of debt,
and that's going to take me like, I don't know, a week or so to do that,
and I can call you up and scream.
So the question is, what should I do with the remainder of that asset?
Okay.
Which would be like, what, 130 shares, 130-something shares.
You're right.
I would become debt-free, and I'd probably cash out enough more to make sure I had my emergency fund in place.
You probably heard me talk about the baby steps. And so that gets you through baby
step three. If you've got a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, do you
have any money in savings that's not in brokerage? No. Okay. Then once I've done that, then we're up
to baby step four, which is investing. And it sounds like you've got some work to do there.
You've got an underperforming IRA that's invested in something that's not doing well.
And you've got some single stock left over at this point from Disney and whatever's in that brokerage account.
I do not personally invest in single stocks.
I know a lot about it.
And I own a lot of stock through mutual funds, millions of dollars worth, but I don't own a single, single stock because I don't like the risk associated with it.
It's very, very difficult to make money playing single stocks on your own account, like virtually impossible.
I'll give you an example.
So I'm taking it that you would invest.
I would get out of the single stock.
Put it in a mutual fund.
Yeah, I would cash it out, and I'd put it in mutual funds.
And there would be no taxes on it because your basis in it is what it's worth when you inherited it,
which was this week, so you're fine.
And I would cash out.
By the way, I would roll that single stock that's underperforming in an IRA.
How in the world did you get a single stock in an IRA anyway?
But if you did that and it's underperforming, then get out of that,
get that inside that IRA into some good mutual funds.
And steadily, constantly, consistently investing in good growth stock mutual funds
in and outside of your retirement accounts that are available.
There's a high correlation to that in people that make it to millionaire status.
And so it's just real simple.
It's real boring.
And, again, I don't play single stocks.
And that's no knock on Disney.
It doesn't matter who you said.
If it was Apple, which is probably one of the best performers out there,
I suppose it's done extremely well, I would still tell you to get out of it.
Because it's what I would do if I woke up in your shoes.
And I know I would do that because I don't buy single stocks.
And were I to inherit some, I would immediately cash them and roll them into mutual funds.
Probably within a few days of having gotten them.
And it's that simple.
So here's the thing.
People play single stocks with their fishing buddies and their golfing buddies,
and they've all got a fishing story and a golfing story and a stock story,
and they're all lies.
They tell the story of the one time that they hit a good shot right down the fairway.
They tell the story of the one time they caught a big fish,
and they tell the story of the one time they picked a winner on single stocks.
Most people never pick winners on single stocks.
And even if you use a broker.
If your broker was so dadgum smart that he picked single stock winners,
he'd be running a $5 billion mutual fund instead of being your broker.
Think that through.
I mean, what is a mutual fund manager except a very large broker
they have a whole research team that picks single stocks they're going to pick
better stocks than your fishing buddy and your golfing buddy and this is how people buy single
stocks it's like the biggest lie on the planet wall street journal has done several pieces of
research and published several pieces of research.
The average person buying and selling single stocks averages about a 7% rate of return on their brokerage account using their broker and their best idea from their golfing buddy and something they read somewhere.
And they watched the HBO movie Billions and thought they were that guy or series or whatever that thing is called.
And you're just not.
That's all fiction.
On average, they make 7% rate of return.
By the way, the S&P 500, if you had just dumped it into that,
would have paid you between 11 and 12 in the last 60 to 70 years.
Wall Street Journal did a funny one several years ago,
many, many, many years ago.
I used to use it in the old Financial Peace University lessons.
They put all the stocks on the stock market, the New York Stock Exchange on the wall, and
they blindfolded a monkey and gave him darts.
And he picked out and he threw darts and hit the stocks on the wall.
And then they got brokers to come in and told the brokers that they could pick any stock
anywhere on the wall
and see if they could beat the blindfolded monkey.
Eight out of ten times the blindfolded monkey beat the brokers.
Now the little piece of funny research is rigged actually
because when you are limited to picking only one stock
and you can get no diversification at all, you're fried.
The chances are less than 50-50 that you're going to make money on that
in a given period of time.
So it was really a rigged deal to illustrate the point that single stocks
are not a good play for the typical small investor.
But it does make the point just the same.
You can't beat a blindfolded monkey.
Come on.
Really. Come on. Really.
Pretty bad.
So I can't, by the way, beat a blindfolded monkey.
And I know a lot about this.
All the licenses, all the letters after my name, all the degrees, all that crap, right?
And I'm not going to take on the blindfolded monkey because the game is rigged in the regard of when you pick one stock, it's difficult to beat a diversified
portfolio.
Nigh statistically impossible to beat a diversified portfolio.
So it's a simple thing.
What makes you the most money with the least risk?
Simple equation.
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That's 888-562-6200 or churchillmortgage.com. Joy is with us in Mexico.
Hi, Joy.
Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, how are you? It's such an honor to talk to you. You too, Matt. How can I help?
My dad started a tree nursery several years ago,
and so about six years ago we started borrowing
money to grow it bigger, and so now we have an income of around
$250,000. $30,000 of that would be profit,
and we're in debt $130,000, $30,000 of that would be profit, and we're in debt $130,000.
Wow.
Yeah.
And my dad got diagnosed with cancer about one and a half years ago,
and he didn't have medical insurance.
And so last year we spent around $150,000 in medicals,
and so we owe about $25,000 of that debt.
Okay. Wow. Okay.
And so I'm just wondering, what can we do to get out of this?
We're going to need some future medicals for him,
but then, of course, I'm hoping we can turn the business into more income
and less expenses to somehow pay off the debt.
There you go.
That's exactly where I would have headed.
I would have trimmed expenses because you're only running about a 12% margin on this, which is not great.
Yeah.
In something like that, your margin ought to be steeper as far as I'm concerned.
And, you know, obviously, instead of making on $250,000, instead of making $30,000,
if you made $60,000, suddenly we've got some money to throw towards the debt.
Now, out of the expenses, how much of that is salary to family?
It would be around $20,000 maybe.
So $250,000 in revenue, and you only spent $20,000 in family salaries.
Yes.
We import lots of the trees from the states, and so the tree expenses are very high.
And then, of course, because we grew it bigger, we have lots of the worker expenses.
That's very high, too.
And then about two, three years ago, my dad wanted to start a side business with plastic,
making plastic pots and selling those.
But it didn't make much profit so far.
We spent around $40,000 maybe trying to get that, but it didn't obviously not work.
So we do have one option.
We could buy another $5,000 machine, and then we could sell.
We have a pile of plastic laying there.
We could sell that for around $50,000.
We're wondering if we should do that maybe.
Why don't you have someone else just make the pots and save the $5,000?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
We've been looking into that too.
This machine that we need, it needs to come from the States,
so it would be expensive.
But, yeah, we are looking into that.
I'll try to find someone in Mexico that has the machine
that you can sub the manufacturing out to
and go ahead and
get rid of the plastic and get out of that business.
Okay, it's even more bothersome now that I have the numbers on the nursery.
How long has this nursery been in the family?
About 15 years.
Okay.
15 years that my dad started it.
How many family members are working there for free?
It's me and my one brother.
Okay.
And so what could you earn if you weren't working there?
About the same.
Well, maybe a little more.
What are you being paid?
We're being paid like, well, I'm being paid like $5,000 per year,
and my brother about $15,000.
Okay, so that's the $20,000, and your dad's taking nothing out.
Yeah, well, that's the thing, we didn't know how to separate it.
You couldn't find a job making more than $5,000 right now?
Not very. The pay here for workers in Mexico, or right in this area where we're at is very low okay all right okay so um so you're being paid a fair wage and he's being paid a fair wage
yeah and then there's my parents just take out of whatever they can the thirty thousand dollar
profit yeah yeah okay the thirty thousand of course the 150 000 medicals that screwed it all
up yeah no what screwed it all up.
Yeah.
No, what screwed it all up is when he borrowed the money to start with.
Yes, absolutely.
Because that drains you down.
So we've got to just systematically start taking the large portions of his profit
and any money you can make off the plastic pots once you get them, you know, subbed out,
the manufacturing subbed out.
But I don't think I'm going to buy a $5, machine for one transaction um because you're not going to stay in that business
it's not worked is what you described to me so um what i'm going to do is just try to continue to
grow uh the the uh revenues on the nursery and shrink the expenses on the nursery increase the
profits take all the profits that we can squeeze out of your dad's portion and throw that at the debt and begin to work your way out.
But $30,000 on $150,000 is a fairly long walk, like a five or six or seven year walk that
we're talking about here.
But if you could double that, then it cuts that in half, obviously,
meaning double your profits by cutting your expenses and increasing your revenues.
So it's all about that.
It's all about working that.
And all of us that are in business work on that all the time,
increasing our revenues, decreasing our expenses,
increasing our revenues, decreasing our expenses.
I mean, it's a constant rhythm of operations in a business.
No matter what the size of the business is, that's the only two parts of the equation.
It's just like your personal budget at home, folks.
Hey, thank you for the call, Joy.
It's an honor to talk to you.
I hope you guys are able to turn this around.
If I can help again, you call me back any time.
Jonathan's with me in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Hi, Jonathan.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
You too. What's up? All right. So we've got quite the uphill battle to climb with our debt.
My wife's a nurse and I'm a pharmacist and we owe like $370,000. We've been on a budget for the past year. We've been able to pay like $30,000. We found out in February that we've got our second baby on the way,
so we're just piling up cash. And the baby's due in October. We're going to get back to
paying things off. And really, the question is...
What do you guys make?
We make about $180,000 a year.
Why have you only paid off $30,000? That's lame.
Well, I mean, I know we need to dig deeper into the budget.
Oh, that would be an understatement.
You have $300,000 in debt and $180,000 income, okay?
I think you should put $110,000 a year for three years on your debt and be done
and have absolutely no freaking life.
Oh, and cry me a river,'re living on 70 grand yeah i think it's just too much extra activities here and there yeah i think
take away from it yeah but uh the main question i don't think i can help you
until you're ready to get out of debt i don't think i can help you you're gonna have to get really angry about this situation because dude you are freaking broke and you're doing almost
nothing about it yeah all right so the question was um how long i should wait until I start to restart my 401k.
That will be approximately three years after you have no life for three years and get out of debt.
Okay.
That would be my prescription.
I'm serious, man.
You're going to have to get with it.
You are playing with this, and it is not moving.
Your attempt is a joke so far.
And you've got babies coming, and she's going to reach a point that this $180,000 income,
which is about half of it's hers, she's going to reach a point she doesn't want to do that anymore,
and you're going to still be sitting there with Sally Mae all loaded up in your spare bedroom.
And you have got to address this monster, this elephant sitting in the middle of your living room.
And it's making a mess, and you've got to get her out of there, man.
It's a big, big, big deal.
I mean, you're a young dad, two babies, a young wife.
I mean, you should be so scared you can't breathe, and you're not yet.
I'm going to try to get you there, and I'll walk with you when you want some help.
But you're going to have to get, like, way more serious and pissed off about this than you are right now.
Hope that helps you, sir.
You should keep listening.
I'll keep messing with you.
It's my job.
I love you.
And I want you to win.
But right now, what you're doing sucks.
This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Tony and Brianna are with us.
Hey, guys, how are you?
Hi, good.
Hey, Dave.
Welcome, welcome.
So where do you guys live?
Eastville, California.
Welcome.
Good to have you guys.
So how much debt have you paid off?
So we paid off a total of $49,626.
Say it again.
$49,600 and some change.
Okay, gotcha.
And how long did this take?
Took us about 10 months, but our story goes back a little further than that.
Okay.
And what was your household income range during that 10 months?
Well, it started while I was on disability, and we were bringing in about $55,000.
And once I got back to work, we were going up to about $80,000.
Oh, wow.
Okay, cool.
All right. And what kind of debt was the $50,000?
Our debt was wedding debt, student loans, credit cards, personal loan, and some business debt.
Okay. So how long have you been married?
We started about four years ago, but I mean, I kind of like to say, you know, it broke it up into two parts.
Because the half that we were married, half the time we were married, we were kind of like living together, but not really acting like we were married.
Yeah, we had our expenses and everything separate.
Okay, all right.
And so you ran two separate accounts, and then you got married, and then you attacked it together.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
So what started you getting out of debt 10 months ago?
Well, it goes back about two years ago.
I had a pretty bad bicycle accident.
I was going downhill and lost control of the bike,
and I ended up breaking both my forearms at the same time.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Yeah.
And so, you know, that kind of changed my perspective on things,
and it kind of changed how I look at my life.
You know, the EMTs during the accident, they reminded me that a week before that on the same spot, somebody lost their life.
And, you know, I was two feet away from the spot where the guy hit his head. And so, you know,
it kind of just, it sort of woke me up that, you know, we're really one accident away from total financial problems and,
you know, or just, you know, leaving her behind and with all these bills and debts that we had.
So it was kind of a, you know, a changing point for me where I realized, you know,
we got to make a change and do something to put us in a better position.
That does wake you up, man.
That's amazing.
Wow.
So what did you do to get out of that?
Well, we did just about everything.
So after I went back to work, I started working overtime.
We picked up side jobs.
I was doing Lyft.
We both did some food deliveries.
I started selling on eBay, Amazon, yard sales,
just about anything, you name it, just to attack the debt as hard and as fast as we could.
Wow. Way to go. Good for you. Very cool. So what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt
is? Being on the same page and just making sure that all of your finances together if you're
married. And then if you're not married, then having an accountability partner really helps a lot.
Yeah.
So what was the big debt that the last one that you paid off?
Well, I think the very last debt we paid off was one of the medical bills I had, the ambulance bill, actually.
Oh, yeah. But, yeah, you know, our medical bills, luckily, we have insurance.
So we covered most of that.
Otherwise, we would have been about $250,000 from all the surgeries that I've had.
I've had about four surgeries all through the process.
And so we only had to pay co-pays on that.
And we also had a lot of, you know, I had like 15 credit cards,
and we were just moving money from here to there to just, you know,
I don't know what we were doing, playing some kind of credit card shuffle.
Yeah, we took on a personal loan to try to consolidate everything,
which we realized wasn't really a great decision.
Well, yeah, you moved it around, didn't you?
Yeah.
It's still there, though.
Yeah. The shell's still under the,. It's still there, though. Yeah.
The shell's still under the, the pea's still under the shell.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, good for you guys.
What was the hardest part for you?
Well, I think for me, it's just, you know, trying to stay intense and stay focused for as long as I could.
You know, when most people are out partying, I was working.
When people would be sleeping, I was working.
Just, you know, giving up as much as I could at the time to just stay focused and intense.
You know, I mean, I know it wasn't going to be forever, so I could just push through it.
Yeah.
So was he gone all the time, Brianna?
Yeah, he was actually.
I'd go to bed and he'd go out at night because that's when the surge rates were for Lyft and Uber.
He would do that.
And then me after work, I would go do Postmates and deliver food and anything that we could to pick up just a few extra dollars.
Out of all the extra jobs you did, what paid the best?
Our full-time jobs probably.
No, not extra jobs.
Your extra jobs.
Oh, extra jobs.
I just took up Postmates, which was pretty good.
I would say Amazon.
Selling on Amazon was pretty good.
It was just a lot of work.
But yeah, you could make a big amount of money on that if you really got serious.
Using it like eBay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Way to go, you guys.
Congratulations.
Hustle and grind, baby.
Get her done. Well done. All right. Way to go, you guys. Congratulations. Hustle and grind, baby. Yeah. Get her done.
Well done.
Well done.
Well, we got a copy of Chris Hogan's retire-inspired book for you.
We want that to be the next chapter in your story, that you're millionaires and outrageously
generous along the way.
You're on your way, aren't you?
Yeah, we are, definitely.
Well done.
I'm proud of you.
You're heroes.
Very well done. Tony and Brianna, Los Angeles, $50,000 paid off in 10 months, making $55,000 to $80,000.
Count it down.
Let's hear a debt-free scream.
Three, two, one.
We're debt-free.
Yeah.
Well done.
Well done.
Man, that's amazing.
That's fun. That's fun.
That is fun.
Hey, listen, if you are a business owner or an HR professional,
you're working in human resources for someone,
the month of June is National Employee Well-Being Month.
Yeah, that's a thing, really.
But, hey, for real, National Employee Well-Being Month.
While some people may be thinking about their summer vacations, if you're a business owner or an HR professional, not you.
You're looking ahead at the benefits you're going to offer your employees at this time of the year.
Because you're thinking about what's going to be presented to them in the fall so that next calendar year, yeah, the benefits package
is in place.
The most common way your employees learn about retirement is from you, their employer.
And by the way, you are the place they have the best chance with a 401k plus or minus
a match to retire millionaires.
We see a lot of the millionaires in our studies show up from employers
who help people get out of debt on a budget and start funding their 401k big time.
And that's why we created SmartDollar.
SmartDollar is the best financial wellness program on the planet.
Fortune 500 companies are using it.
Small companies are using it. Medium Fortune 500 companies are using it. Small companies are using it.
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It's accessible anywhere, on any device, at any time.
It's, of course, our proven step-by-step plan, our world-class content,
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to your company, visit smartdollar.com slash blueprint, and you can learn more.
That's smartdollar.com slash blueprint and you can learn more that's smart dollar dot com slash blueprint you know
what all the research we've done on companies tells us is that when someone is thinking about
their job as a way to build wealth not as a way to survive they work differently when they're at
work worried about mastercard or discover card VisaCard calling them or their car payment calling them because they're behind, they're not thinking about work.
It's a productivity issue.
It changes the way you work.
And those of you that are self-employed and you're just deciding, you know, I'm going to get control of my money.
Well, what ends up happening is it ends up affecting your income. Because when you don't have to focus on all this stuff chasing you from behind,
you have a different outlook on your career choice,
a different outlook on how you earn money and how much money you earn.
So, check us out, smartdollar.com slash blueprint.
This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Jill is with us.
Jill's in Youngstown, Ohio.
Hi, Jill.
How are you?
I'm good, thank you.
How are you?
Better than I deserve.
What's up in your world?
Well, I have a question for you.
I have three children.
My oldest has graduated from school and is a CPA and is buried and is doing fine.
Good. is a CPA and is buried and is doing fine. I have a son who has got a disability and probably will
live with my husband and myself for his future. And then I have a younger daughter who's still
in school and she's been fortunate enough to be accepted into medical school. So this is my
question. We're in the fortunate position to be able to help her with that.
But it appears that a lot of those kids, when they graduate from their medical education,
that they have a compensation package that often includes a student loan repayment of close to $100,000.
So my question is, should we allow her to take that student loan?
No.
You have the ability to pay cash for it, pay cash for it,
and negotiate your comp package when you come out.
If they're willing to pay off $100,000 of my student loans, no thank you.
I don't have any student loans, but I will take that in cash.
Thank you very much.
Oh.
Yeah, I wasn't aware if student loans, but I will take that in cash. Thank you very much. Oh, yeah.
I wasn't aware if that's what they would do if you didn't have student loans.
They will or I'll go to work for somebody else.
It's a competitive market out there.
That's a good point, too.
It's a negotiation.
It's a negotiation.
But, you know, it's like when I go up to the counter and they say,
if you want 10% off, sign up for our credit card.
And I said, no, I don't want to sign up for your credit card, but we'll take the 10%. Thank you.
It's the same principle, right?
But no, pay cash.
You have the ability to pay cash for her to go to med school.
Way to go, Jill.
Way to go.
You have won financially.
That's a lot of money.
I know. That's why I was looking to try to get out That's a lot of money. I know.
I was looking to try to get out of a little bit of it.
Well, if she wants to give you $100,000 after she gets out, that'll be fine.
Then she gets extra in her comp package.
But, yeah, we just need to negotiate the comp package,
and if they have the student loan thing, let's just convert it to cash.
Because if they're going to write a check to pay for a student loan,
it's the same exact amount for them to write a check to me.
Or in this case, your daughter.
It's not me.
I'm not getting out of medical school.
I wouldn't have even gotten in.
So there we go.
Chris is in Pensacola, Florida.
Hi, Chris.
How are you?
Doing good, Dave.
How about you?
Having way too much fun today.
How can I help?
Good.
Well, I have a, I'm a disabled vet and I've been on Social Security and VA disability for quite a few years.
So my income is going to continue to come.
My question is I have a current insurance policy, a term policy that I bought when my kids were younger.
It expires in about two years.
Kids are grown and pretty much self-sufficient.
So I'm trying to decide do I use, if I die, that VA income goes away from my wife. So if the next insurance policy that I buy,
do I need to try to use that insurance policy to cover that income that she would lose if I die,
or do I try to make it through investments in an IRA?
Are you guys not saving anything?
No, we have about $28,000 to $ 28 29 000 in cash okay but are you saving anything for quote unquote
wealth for retirement um my wife does through her work she contributes to her 401k how much
does she have in that um between that one another small, she's probably got a total of just maybe $15,000 or $20,000.
Okay.
How old are you guys?
We are both 53.
Okay.
Well, I want to jack that up because we want to build wealth in addition to what the government is paying you.
Because, as you said, when you die, what the government is paying you will go away and uh but uh and the point being that at some day let's
pretend that we saved aggressively i don't know what she makes you make but doesn't matter but
let's say we saved aggressively and there was several hundred thousand dollars in her 401k
and you die well she could live off the income that creates even if we don't have your income
and she would still have your social security at that point or hers, either one,
whichever was the greater of the two she'll pick from.
But that's the plan.
But that's exactly, you know, what I would do.
But, yeah, you need life insurance until you have enough to take care of her in a nest egg somewhere.
But that's, yes, I would get some more term life insurance for a little while.
And that's the point.
To replace the income that's lost were you to pass away before you've built up enough wealth to take care of her.
And she's built up enough wealth to take care of her in the process.
And, by the way, thank you very much for your service.
Brandon is with us in Italy.
Hi, Brandon.
What are you doing in Italy?
Hey, Dave.
I am in the military over here.
Oh, more service people.
Thank you again for your service.
How can I help?
You're welcome.
It sounds like you've got a lot of military folks on the line today.
My question, Dave, I know you do a lot of traveling in Europe and over here,
and you realize how not good the dollar is compared to the euro.
Everything out in town is very expensive.
So my question, I know you're very much against credit cards, using credit cards, and we're trying to pay off our debt.
Good.
What is the best way to just pay for anything over here?
Is it best just to go get cash and suck it up with the euro conversion or, you know, pay off the credit card and just pay off the debt?
Okay, I'm confused. Are we buying something or are we paying off a credit card and just pay off the debt. Okay, I'm confused.
Are we buying something or are we paying off a credit card?
Yes, anytime we go out in town, we go shopping or anything,
if you use your debit card, you get international transaction fees.
So you don't want that.
And we are trying to pay off debt.
We're in baby step number two out of your program.
So we're just trying to figure out the best way to do this.
Okay.
You get international transaction fees with your particular bank or what?
Because I don't remember seeing a bunch of international transaction fees on my statement.
Yes, sir.
Through my credit union, anytime we use our debit card out in town,
we get international transaction fees. And that's charged to you by the credit union, anytime we use our debit card out in town, we get international transaction fees.
And that's charged to you by the credit union?
Right.
Yeah, you may want to look at a different debit card from a different bank.
Oh, wow.
That doesn't have international transaction fees.
That's a possibility, too.
The thing is this.
All we're dealing with in this example is the exchange rate.
So is the exchange rate better on a debit card, a credit card, or in cash?
And the answer is it's the same on a debit card and a credit card,
plus or minus the transaction fees that your particular bank is charging you,
or maybe you switch banks and you don't get charged a transaction fee, international. But the exchange rate can be favorable,
certainly as opposed to going to one of the tourist areas
and just walking up and going cash for cash.
You can get hammered at some of those places on exchange rate.
So really, all you've got to do is just study the euro.
And so what I do when I wake up in another country,
for instance, we're in Italy or France or something, is I just open up the Internet that morning when I'm reading my news and what's the exchange rate?
And I look at it and then I go, well, that's about what it is.
And then, you know, if I'm walking down the street and the cash guy is double that, then I'm not going to exchange with that cash guy, right?
One of these storefront deals.
Or if I, you know, I tap into my account my account i go what's the exchange rate on my debit
card and they'll tell you usually it's favorable to one of those places but i have found banks
um and i also have found just an eight i'll stick the credit card or the debit card rather into the
atm and put and do an exchange that way pull cash out and i'll get the favorable exchange rate but
i can walk away with cash in my hand euros euros, in other words, in this example.
And so you can do that too, but you've just got to study it and go,
which way is the exchange rate cheapest, and how much stuff are you buying off base anyway?
Because anything you can buy on base, your foodstuffs and that kind of thing,
anything you can get at the PX, man, that's usually going to be a whole lot better deal
for you than walking around town again unless there's a discount enough to offset the exchange
rate because you do get hammered on that stuff if you're not careful and you're doing it a lot
when i'm doing on vacation for three weeks it doesn't change my life but you live there so it
can mess it can mess up your budget with what you're talking about so you're very smart to ask
this question and to study the subject and determine exactly which is the least expensive way,
the most favorable exchange rate to make the transaction happen.
This is The Dave Ramsey Show.
Hey, it's Blake Thompson, Senior Executive Producer for the show.
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