The Ramsey Show - App - How to Get Focused and Organize Your Money (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 22, 2018

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show, America. Thank you for joining us. Open phones this hour at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Ann starts off this hour in St. Louis. Hi, Ann. How are you? I'm doing okay, sir. Glad to talk with you.

You too. What's up? Well, I have three kids. One's disabled, and my oldest one, she gave us the one-finger salute at 17, walked out the door, doesn't want to have much to do with us. And the other one, she wants to have it her way, so she's living in Texas with her boyfriend. My question is, I want to leave them something. The other two don't want to have anything to do with our house. Fine, I like my house. It's great.

But should I leave them a Roth IRA and basically just put a little bit in every month or so. And when we pass away, you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit. The disabled one, I know pretty much what I'm going to do. And when we're gone, the house will be liquidated, and the rest of it will probably go into a trust fund for her so she can have something to live on with her disability as well. Yeah, I think that's your main goal is make sure that that child is taken care of.

The other two have obviously chosen to take care of themselves. Other than that, we've been debt-free since 2000. Good for you. Yeah. So I think the thing is this. You can decide what you want to do with your money upon your death. That's what a will is for. And you're not required morally to leave someone money, period.

No someone. There's not a someone that you're required. So just because they happen to be your kids doesn't mean they get a dime and so um and it's not that it's not necessarily that you're trying to hit back or something or you're trying to make a statement one way or the other with your will regarding the relationship you're just deciding okay this is money God gave me to manage. And when I pass, I'm going to pass the management of that money to someone else. And who should I ask to manage God's money when I'm gone that he formerly had me managing? And with our kids, the discussion around our house is, you know,

one of our primary family mottos, as for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord, because we're Christians. And so if you are an adult child in our family and you're not doing that, you're not walking with God, then you're disqualified to manage God's money. Now, that's our house. And so right now, I don't have that problem, thank God. Knock on wood, knock on my little bald head. But all three of our kids are, you know, functional,

and we've got good relationships with them, and, you know, and are hard workers, are good people, and they walk with God. And so but if that ever doesn't, something ever decides not to occur with that, then there we go. I would have a hard time leaving the management, the stewardship responsibility of anything to someone who doesn't have anything to do with me. You know, and so I don't, you know, I don't have people in my will that don't speak to me. I mean, duh, I don't have any responsibility due to blood to do otherwise and so um you know and so your kid gives you the one finger salute and takes off

then you know that's a really heartbreaking thing and the will is a minor part of that but on top of that you've got a disabled child that really needs the money a lot more. The other are able-bodied and, you know, are able to go create incomes. So, hey, let them do it. I might leave it all to the disabled one in a trust, as you said, to take care of them. And the other two, you know, but I don't hold money over people's head to create relationships. That's not a real relationship then. It's like, but a byproduct of not being in a relationship with me is that why would I leave the money that God's given me to manage to somebody that's not in a relationship with me? That's weird.

And I just want to release you from having any sense of mother guilt that you are somehow obligated to give money to somebody who flips you off, you know, just because they happen to be born of you, you know, you're not obligated. And by the way, those of you that say you're entitled to your parents' stuff, you're not entitled to your parents' stuff. You have absolutely no moral, spiritual right, legal right to your parents' stuff. None whatsoever. My mother and daddy are spending all this money, and they're not going to leave anything to me. Well, it's not your money, stupid.

You know, that's their money. They're allowed to do with it what they want. They're spending my inheritance. It's not your inheritance. You know, you are not owed something because you hit the DNA lottery. Just take that entitlement sense off of this discussion, and it changes the way you view your will. And again, in our case, for some of you out there, we talk about this in the book The Legacy Journey, where we talk about wealth versus talking about money. When we first opened up the books and showed the kids as grown-ups what the Ramsey portfolio looked like,

they didn't have a whoo-hoo, we hit the lotto moment because of the way they were raised. They actually kind of felt the weight of the future responsibility to manage something that large. They felt the weight of it because they know sitting on the back of a yacht not working is not in their future because they'd be removed from the family trust for doing that. We require work around this place. It's an indication of your character, the ability to do work, and the desire to do work.

And so, you know, that kind of thing. So they felt a responsibility versus an entitlement, a responsibility to manage God's stuff, God's ways, versus a, you know, that somehow they had hit the lottery. And that's good. That means that we had the right kinds of conversations before opening up the books and showing them that stuff. I was several years ago, but that was a weird night. I'll tell you that it was weird.

Yeah. Legacy journey is the book where we discuss all that kind of stuff. It's kind of interesting and it's something you need to think about. I think ends onto something. A lot of people need to, uh, haven't got their will set up and you need to get them set up. It's how you say I love you. The lady that's working here had a cousin call her this week, and the cousin's best friend's husband died, or dad.

Dad died that morning. And they found a Legacy Journey kit in the house and called and said, hey, what does that mean? And she said, that means somewhere in that house is called and said hey what does that mean and then she said that means somewhere in that house is probably a full stack of papers that's got everything you need to know like a will and everything else and sure enough he had followed the legacy journey instructions to the t and they found it in his sock drawer a big you know a big manila folder full of the will and every piece of instruction that you needed because they put together a full,

you know, a full estate plan and it's right there. And all it is is just copies of everything. So somebody knows what's going on. You're not in the backyard with a metal detector trying to find daddy's gold coins he buried back there, some kind of stupid stuff like that. So have a plan, people. It's called a will. This is the Daveave ramsey show for years i refused to endorse any company that claimed to get people out of timeshares i told my listeners it's a horrible product and that unfortunately they didn't have a lot of timeshares. I told my listeners it's a horrible product and that unfortunately they

didn't have a lot of options. Then a few years ago, I sat down with Brandon Reed, the owner of Timeshare Exit Team. Brandon walked me through the timeshare industry and I learned that you can't sell them and you can't even give them away. And then we talked about Timeshare Exit Team's process. Every ownership situation is different, which is why they have more solutions than any other company. And that's when they earned my respect. Don't call any of the imposters out there, and there's a lot. The only timeshare exit company I stand behind is Timeshare Exit Team.

They have exited thousands from their timeshare burden this year alone. Yes, you will write them a check, but they stand behind their guarantee. They will get you out, or they'll give you a full refund. Call 844-999-EXIT online at timeshareexitteam.com. Kim is with us in Detroit, Michigan. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Kim. Hi, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world?

Well, we were kind of, well, we were really dumb. And we went and got not just one payday loan, not just two. We have four out. Oh, my goodness. You were desperate, weren't you? Yes, we were very desperate, but now we're even in bigger desperation mode as we are watching the payoff. We've got one that we've paid.

We owed $1,400, and we've already paid $1,500 on it, and we've only made $100 into the balance. Okay. And so what are the three loans today? What's the balance today? One is $1,300. We've got two out that we just keep flipping around in. They're each at $600.

They cost us $675 every time. Like, it's $75 every time you flip it. Every payday. And then there's another one out there for $1,500. Okay. And what's your household income? I make about $25,000 a year. I picked up a second job working about 60 hours a week on top of that

when we realized we were in trouble. So I'm working anywhere from 80 to 100 hours a week right now. And that's paying me $9, well, almost $10 an hour now, and then $15 an hour in overtime. And then my husband makes $40,000 a year, and he's looking at getting another Dave job. We started watching. He wasn't totally on board. He's like, no, he's like, a budget isn't going to help us. And I'm like, I'm telling you, it will. If we just try and figure this out, we have to work our way out of this.

There's got to be a way. How much other debt do you have? We have our mortgage. Our house payment is $1,300 a month. It's at an extremely high interest rate. We're still trying to budget that in. We've got two cars that are almost paid off. How much do you owe on them?

We owe $2,000 on one, and we owe $3,000 on the other. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. And we have our gas and our lights, but then we fall behind on other jobs. That's not that. So basically, you're telling me you make $25,000 plus your job, and he makes $40,000 plus the job.

Maybe a little more, $50,000 plus your job, and he makes $40,000 plus the job. Maybe a little more, $50,000 if he gets overtime. So that's $65,000 between the two of you at your main jobs. And then on top of that, so you guys are probably approaching $100,000 a year with all the overtime both of you are picking up. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're trying to get back on track. Our problem is that... Okay, so stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Just listen, okay? $100,000, and you hear me that $5,000 pays off both your cars. Another $5,000 pays off these student loans. So less than $10,000 pays off, and you're debt-free but your house, and you're making $100,000 a year. Right. So you are disorganized oh we are you desperately need a budget i we started on every dollar yeah you did he didn't

right he didn't get on board until i showed him your show credit shark credit sharks and suits and then he's like that kind of makes sense to me. Like, we don't need to have a bicycle. Here's what should make sense to you. $100,000 versus $10,000. That says to me you should not have this pain. Right. It's that simple.

Those two numbers right there on a piece of paper written down, it's kind of stupid that it's that simple. Those two numbers right there on a piece of paper written down, it's kind of stupid that it's so simple. And so you guys have got to, got to get organized. The two of you have to sit down and put all of your income in one pile and buy the food, buy the lights and water, pay the house payment, clear these $600 payday lenders clear the fifteen thirteen hundred then clear the fifteen hundred then clear the two thousand dollar car then clear the three thousand dollar car you should be debt free by fall okay i mean think about it we and we have the problem that we ran that we've seen is like his check came in and we still lose like his take home was on this last payday say 1400 we lost two of those payday loans because they come directly out of our checking account we have since had them shut down we went to the bank and

said do not let them take any more out of our checks. And by the time he did everything, we lost close to $650 of that just in those. None of that's the point. The point is you make $100,000 a year and you only need 10. Okay. 10 cleans up not just the payday loans. It cleans up everything. If I wrote you a check for $10,000, your life would change completely for about 10 minutes if you don't get organized and get yourself on a detailed plan where every dollar of income has an assignment before the month begins. Every dollar has an assignment before the month begins.

You guys can do this. This is very doable for you. And if you don't clean it up, I mean, if you call me up and you're making $25,000, when you said that, I thought maybe that was your only income for a minute. But by the time we end up working through your whole income, now you've got control. You stop those guys from cleaning out your check. That's a good thing. You stop this from happening and that from happening.

That's a good thing. But let's get this budget going and stop your 401ks i don't know what's being withheld over at work being taken out of your checks at work stop all of that you guys desperately need to get this organized and get focused because twenty five hundred dollars a month out of eight thousand dollars a month should be going towards these debts, and in four months, you would be debt-free completely, give or take the payday loans. So we'll say five months, but by Christmas, easy, easy, you are debt-free completely, and that's what you've got to do, kiddo.

Tammy's with us in Florida, Tampa, Florida. Hi, Tammy. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than, Tammy. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Good.

Well, we just completed the SPU class at our church, and we've gotten super focused. Good. And even though we thought we were, like, in trouble, we were able to clean up a lot of our debt and stuff within the class time. Good for you. How much did you pay off? It's not so much about what we paid off it was like what we thought we owed and we like closed down credit cards and just stopped paying minimums and paid off things that we should have been paying off just getting organized you did it all kind of like i was just telling that lady yeah yeah so we

got down to about um our last 9 000 and, and we got to the class about the insurance policies. And you were talking about the universal policies and how they're basically just a glorified savings plan. And it occurred to us that we had opened a couple small ones 15 years ago. So I went looking, and I found that we had about nine thousand dollars in these accounts look at that i love it so um so i went ahead and i told my husband to call and find out what we needed to do to you know take the money out of those but when the checks came um i'm just a little confused by the wording in the letter they keep referencing it as a loan the loan proceeds no it shouldn't have been alone i didn't want a loan i wanted

you did you close the policy well i was thinking we didn't close it until we replaced them so i was thinking they didn't they can't send you the money the only thing you did take out alone okay yeah you did this wrong you should have made sure your term is in term insurance is in place first and then just cancel the policy now Now, you can still do that. Okay. Well, that's what they were telling me. I went on the phone. I called them back, and I was, like, confused about the loan thing.

And they said, well, once you close it out, it's no longer a loan. But I'm so confused right now. But there's also they're going to give you more money because they won't loan you the entire cash value. Okay. So you still have a balance in your savings account, your cash value account. You didn't borrow it all out. Now, the loan will cancel out some of it because you've already been given it. But get your term insurance in place and then cancel these policies as soon as possible, quickly. Very quickly.

And then once it's canceled, then they're going to send you another check. It's probably, I mean, if you had a $9,000 cash value balance, they probably sent you, what, about six? Well, they sent me one check for $5,000 and one for $2,500. Oh, $7,500. Yeah. So they're holding approximately $1,500 then still. So less than I thought they would have held. All right, good.

So you've still got another $1,500 coming. So the $7,500 at the debt, get the cash back, get the term in place, and then cancel the whole life and get the rest of your money out. That's how you do it. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. You know, people often struggle when they're starting their financial plan. It's not easy breaking bad habits, and I always recommend that you keep it simple and take care of your family. That's why term life insurance is one of the most important steps to take when you're getting started. If you have a family, then it is crucial that you have the right amount

and the right kind of life insurance. Stay away from cash value and stay away from return of premium plans. That's why I send you to Zander Insurance, and I have for over 20 years. Zander only offers the term plans I recommend, and they shop among the top companies to find you the lowest rates anywhere. Zander keeps it simple and inexpensive, and that's why I use them. Get a quick, easy quote online at Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. For the cost of a couple of pizzas each month,

you can easily knock out one of the most important steps to protecting your family. That's Zander.com or call them at 800-356-4282. Our question of the day brought to you by Blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which means even if you screw up, if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they will remake your window blinds for free. With Blinds.com you get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you get

even more. Use the promo code Ramsey. Blinds.com. Nathaniel's in Georgia. Says I'm 26 years old and I'll be leaving the U.S. Air Force soon. Thank you for your service, sir. I plan to use my GI Bill to go to school full-time. Good.

My wife and I are debt-free. Good. We have our emergency fund. Good. Should we start investing or pile up more money in case we have unknown expenses associated with school? Pile up more money in case you have more expenses. Your best investment is Nathaniel. Investing into the, piling up cash to have an insurance policy that if there's any kind

of a hiccup in the educational process, you don't have any debt at all, and ensuring that you graduate and that you graduate debt-free with a degree and knowledge in something that is actually usable in the marketplace is a better rate of return mathematically than a mutual fund is. You'll make more. Now, assuming you're getting a degree in something other than left-handed puppetry, so you don't want to get a Ph get a PhD in German polka history. We really want to think this through. But assuming you're getting a marketable degree,

you're studying a field that is going to result in you making money as a result of this education, the utilitarian return on education, in other words, then, yeah, I'm going to make sure you get out of school. There's plenty of time to invest later, and you will be about the business of investing because you're the guy who asked this question. So, cool stuff.

Stephanie's with us in Canada. Hi, Stephanie. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I just found out about you last month, actually, through YouTube, and I got my husband. And we're both doing couples therapy last month, actually, through YouTube. And I got my husband. We're both doing couples therapy because I've always had issues with him and finance.

So I'm just wondering, how do we start to go through Baby Step 2 when my husband, he doesn't make consistent income? We almost had Baby Step 1 completed, but then we had a toilet leak, so we had to fix that. So now we're basically backpedaling, and I'm not feeling confident that he's really in this with me. Well, there's several things going on. Obviously, you guys getting marriage counseling and working through that to where you can be on the same page on life. Yeah.

And money is reflective of whether you're on the same page on life. That's what it amounts to. And, you know, irregular income is not as big a problem as a low income is. So what is his income? Well, it varies because he has an online business, referral business. Yeah, but what does he make a year? That I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out because he has some back taxes that he needs to deal with with the accountant.

So I'm trying to, we worked on a budget. We finally, I could probably. When he filed the tax return, what did the tax return say he made in a year? I don't know. I really don't know what he says. I don't have an exact number. He said, if I remember correctly, he mentioned under 25. Yeah, so that's

what i was guessing the biggest problem is it's a low income yeah not that it's an irregular income because if it was irregular but it's 250 000 you probably figure it out you know what i'm saying so a lot of times that that's what's facing but what you do need to do obviously we need to work on his income yeah well he did show interest in applying for a actual job that's a good start and so add that to his in to his irregular income then we're starting to get a reasonable household income to work with here but in the meantime to answer your question is the way you budget with an irregular income is you simply make a list of everything you need or want to

do with money and you list then you rewrite that list in order of priority with the two of you doing it together and it's a good actual marriage counseling tool for you to prioritize every dollar what is the most important thing we buy in this house i'll help you with that it's food that's number one before you buy anything you you buy food. I'm not talking about eating out at a nice restaurant. I'm talking about food to feed your family. Basic food. What's the next most important thing you do? I'll help you with that. It's lights and water. You keep the utilities on. And I'm not talking about an expensive cable package. I'm talking about lights and water. Basics. Utilities. Now, if you've eaten and you're water, basics, utilities.

Now, if you've eaten and you're warm, cool, and the light comes on when you flip the switch on, and the water comes on when you turn the faucet on, what's the next most important thing? Shelter. You pay your rent. So if you have a place to live, you see what I'm doing? I'm going right down what is most. And now once you get past food, shelter, clothing, shelter clothing transportation and utilities which are your necessities of life everything else is a goal everything else is a want it's not a need and so then what do we do

well we make a list and we just keep going and then anytime money comes in you go down the list the first thing you buy is food the second thing you do is you pay your lights the third thing you do is this thing the fourth thing you do is that and you keep working down that list. The first thing you buy is food. The second thing you do is you pay your lights. The third thing you do is this. The fourth thing you do is that. And you keep working down that list. If you guys will work that list of prioritization together, it's going to do a bunch of things. It's going to increase communication. But here's what's fun. It becomes a goal list for somebody that's self-employed. Once Sharon and I started doing that, I had a real reason to make more money because I wanted to go further down that list.

And so I'm always working the next deal. I was doing real estate in those days, and I got to go find a deal. I got to go find something to flip. I got to find something to do, something to sell, some kind of a way to turn some money because I want to make these goals. I want to hit these goals. But when there are no goals because we do not have a prioritized list of spending, then sometimes it causes you to kick your feet back. But if you've got goals, you may want to go get the full-time job and then work the online business as a part-time job.

And that gives you a reason to run down that list as well. But prioritized spending list and then go down the list and order a priority when the money comes in and rewrite the list when the money comes in and rewrite the list never so often you got to put food back on there because it's time to go buy groceries again so we put that back on there again lewis is with us in baltimore hi lewis how are you doing good dave thank you for taking my call how are you today better than i deserve what's up dave i'm calling. I'm currently on baby step two right now. I've been working your plan since January and I've really, really done pretty well. I've paid off about $13,000 so far this year already. Good. And I'm currently in B2B sales in the home

improvement industry and my long-term goal is to own my own business in the same industry on a retail level. September last year, my girlfriend and I registered an LLC partnership as a retail business, and since it represents a conflict of interest for me, everything that I've done so far has been under the table, off the record, cash-only sales, friends and family type of thing. My girlfriend is telling me that there's an annual $300 fee to keep the business in good standings that's due to the state of Maryland. So I'm just trying to find out if you think I should pay that fee and keep the business in good standings with the states for when I am ready to kind of launch it, or if I should just dissolve the business and royally upset the girlfriend.

Well, if we're in fear of our girlfriend, we have other issues. I'm not in fear of her. I'm just in fear of the reaction. She's really put a lot of work into the business on the administrative end of things. So she's kind of done. Well, are you going to stop doing the business? No, I would definitely not stop doing the business. Do you need an LLC to do the business?

Yes. Why? On a retail level, we would need an LLC. Well, it's in the home improvement industry, so there's several, you know, license and insurances that are involved in the... But you don't have to have an LLC to get licenses or insurance. You can do sole proprietorship. Okay. So she's also in the process of trying to convert the business to an S corporation as well. Why? To remove me from the business so that it would not represent a conflict of interest.

It represents a conflict of interest morally, and you've got to solve that problem as a separate issue. I mean, I don't care if the business is making money and you're going to keep running it and you want to keep it as an LLC. $300 is not the deal, but you guys need to think through some of these other parts of the equation. Number one, we're not going to be managed by whether she's upset. And number two, we've got to solve this moral conflict of interest. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

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And it takes about less than 10 minutes to set your budget up. You'll find money you didn't even realize you had. We've got almost 3 million people using EveryDollar now, and it's pretty incredible. Stephanie used EveryDollar. She paid off her credit card debt and her car. See, if you take a lesson from her and our other EveryDollar budgeters who are winning with money, you create the free budget at EveryDollar.com. Changes everything. Did I mention it's free?

EveryDollar. Get your budget going, people, and it changes the whole process for you. Changes everything. Did I mention it's free? Every dollar. Get your budget going, people. And it changes the whole process for you. Changes everything. Did I mention it's free? John's with us in Rochester, New York. Hey, John, how are you? I'm well, Dave.

How are you? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'd like some clarification on your opinion on whole life insurance. I know you're not a fan, and I'm hoping you can clarify that in terms of why. Okay. Well, I consider it to be probably one of the worst financial products ever put out,

and here's why. You can buy term insurance for about a nickel on the dollar for the same amount of coverage, which means that mathematically speaking, 95 cents out of every dollar should be going into the cash value buildup because it's the only other thing you could spend it on, right? Right. And so if that's the case, then we can pretty quickly run some math out and find that the typical whole life policy averages between 1% and 2% rate of return after fees net to the consumer, which you actually end up with in your pocket, not all their projections, not the printouts, not any of that.

But what really ends up in your pocket is what all the studies tell us. And we've actually pulled surveys on the top ten stock whole life companies as well to prove that, and it comes out about that. The second problem is not only the rate of return. The second problem is if you want your money out of your savings account that you have there, you either have to borrow it out, meaning you pay them interest to get your own money, or you have to cancel the policy, which kind of defeats the purpose. The third reason is the biggest problem I have with it, and that is if you have a $100,000

whole life policy and you paid an extra 95 cents over a nickel an extra you know 95 percent upgrade in price right uh in order to build up the savings account you finally get it up past the horrible rate of return and basically the first three years there's no build-up at all because it all goes to fees your cash values are zeros on the first three years front Front-loaded, in other words, heavily, 100% front-loaded. But once you get past all that, there's finally $22,000 in that account in your $100,000 whole life policy, and you die. You know what they give your spouse or whoever your beneficiary is? $100,000.

You paid extra all this time and went through all this crap and got a horrible rate of return to build up a savings that when you die, they keep your money. And when they die, that's just as absurd. So I've been quoted a whole life policy where the death benefit increases. Okay. And it's a guaranteed increase. Now, there are also non-guaranteed increases that are, of course, more, and that's based on dividends and all that.

But there are guaranteed cash value. And if you price that policy against a regular policy that does not have that feature, you will find that basically what you're doing is paying extra for more insurance. So they're not really adding it on. You've actually paid extra to get this feature, which makes it essentially you're buying more insurance. And, you know, if you want to pay 20% more for one term policy than another, you can probably get more insurance. So that makes sense.

So then here's a follow-up question. If we want to save money, so let's say we want to, in 10 years, we want to put an addition on our house, and we don't want to borrow money for that, what is a good way to save that money, save that cash? Okay. I would save it one of two places. If it's under a five-year goal, I would use a simple money market account, which means it's not going to earn much, but it's not going to be susceptible to the market.

It actually will earn almost as much as a whole life policy, but it's not going to be susceptible to the market's fluctuations. If you've got a little bit of wealth and you can handle some fluctuation, I probably would just stick it in something simple like an S&P 500, a no-load fund, just something simple, maybe an ETF or whatever. I don't care. But that's where I park some money when I've got a five-year or a ten-year goal and I need the money back out.

It's not a retirement planning tool, in other words. But I'm just parking it there for a while. So let's say the S&P 500, which is averaged since the stock market began, between 11% and 12%. That's the average annual return. Let's say it has a series of six years that are the 75% off of average. That still puts you over whole life and puts you over your savings account. So I'm kind of willing to take that risk if I'm going to leave it alone five to ten years to save up for a,

and, you know, I'm going to put it in that. Because even if it does very poorly, it's going to do better than a savings account on average. Now, you could have the worst 10 years in the stock market's history. That's possible, but it's improbable. It's improbable. Kind of what we were going back and forth with was the assumed risk. To get it down to whole life or down to savings, you'd have to assume that the stock market was off 90% and stayed there for 10 years. That's a pretty absurd set of assumptions.

Right. Okay. And so, you know, does it go down sometimes? Yeah, sometimes it goes down. But I'm talking about average over a 10-year period of time, a five-year period of time, and that kind of a thing. And so the problem is the whole life guys are so good at the smoke and mirrors in their presentations that it makes – and one of them, a couple of them actually teach intimidation selling.

They actually make you feel foolish if you don't go with their plan. It's almost like they drop their glasses down on the end of their nose and go that way. But the bottom line is that no one, you can't find anyone anywhere in the financial world that says to buy cash value insurance except the people who sell it. No one else, none of the financial planning firms, nobody out there, nobody believes in this except the people who sell it. And that ought to tell you something. And there's two categories of people who sell it. There are the ones that know they're screwing people and the ones that don't.

That's what it amounts to. But the bottom line is the product, it's the payday lender of the middle class. Because, I mean, where else do you save up $20,000 and when you die they keep your money? There's just no place else. It's just a horrible, horrible product. So, you know, the prudential, you know, we're going to paint lines on the wall and help you save money. It's just a bunch of crap. They're not going to help.

You know, they can knock dominoes over or paint lines on a wall or pile up little things or whatever. I don't care what the commercial says. When you sit down and actually crunch the numbers and look at the way the product is built out financially, you just discover what, you know, financial planners, quality financial planners, and people with good financial minds, math minds, have been saying for a long, long time that term insurance is the only way to go and build wealth and get out of debt so that as you get older when the term is more expensive you don't need it and that's what it comes down to it's not any harder than that

this is not it's not really rocket science but boy these guys are good at it man it's slick and and there's you know they're so arrogant the most of them not all of them but but most of them and so can you possibly imagine that i am a favorite topic at some of their conventions? Yeah, the whole life guys, the car leasing guys, the credit card guys, they all love Dave Ramsey. But Dave Ramsey loves the consumer. I love you guys. And I don't really care what Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Chase thinks about Dave Ramsey. I couldn't give a rip less.

We're here for you. And anything that's going to screw you over, we're going to say it out loud. We're going to continue to call payday lenders scum because they're ripping off poor people. See, that's me. That's the guy right there. That's the guy you're listening to. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, guys.

This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. I'm excited to announce that we're now carried on 600 radio stations across the country. To find one near you, head to DaveRamsey.com slash show. Folks, turnover is bad for business and it's expensive. That's why I recommend ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is a place where growing businesses connect qualified candidates. They make it so easy. When you post your job with ZipRecruiter, they send it to over 100 of the web's leading job boards. But they don't stop there.

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