The Ramsey Show - App - If You've Got the Money You Can Travel the World (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

The show about you

🎵 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. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Steve is in Atlanta. Hi, Steve. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How's it going? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Oh, I kind of got a loaded question. So, preview of that, I'm 31.

I'm debt-free. I went through your baby steps. And so, I've been out of investing for retirement for three years now. But I just recently sold a condo. So, I have a little over $100,000 in liquid cash so my next question is kind of what to do with it but the wild card is that i kind of want to quit my kind of dead job i've had for years now and i kind of just want to go travel for a few months and then kind of resume back to working so i'm just like do I start back investing or just keep stacking up more money? Or, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. Sounds fun. So you're single and 31? I am. I am. So what do you make a year now? What did you say?

What do you make a year now? About $78,000, $80,000. Good. What do you do? I do like a project78,000, $80,000. Good. What do you do? I do like a project management role right now. Why is that a dead-end job? Oh, no, it's not a dead-end job. I'm just kind of burnt out on it.

And so I haven't always been a project manager. I work for a larger corporation, so I get shuffled around to different jobs every year and a half. And business just changes so much. And I don't really like the industry itself. It's the telecommunications industry. And so I just kind of want to shift out of that industry. Okay.

So let's just stay on that path for a second. If you shift gears, you go on a trip, and you come home, and you go get a job, and your new job is doing project management but in an industry you love? No, I kind of want to shift maybe into investment advising. So I've been on financial coaching on the side, so I kind of like that. I kind of just got addicted to personal finance and helping people with their finances. So I naturally just coach them, but I kind of think I want to get into the selling the investment side of the business. I want to do a whole career shift.

Okay. All right. So what would you spend on your trip? Well, I think I want to travel for maybe like three months straight. So I'm thinking $10,000 to $15,000. As long as $10,000 to $15,000 can allow me to travel, rather. So if I can travel for longer, great. If it's right at about three months, that's fine as well. Okay.

All right. And so you're not talking about spending $90,000? No. No, definitely not. And you have $100,000 in the bank? Right, a little over it. Okay. All right.

I think if you keep the budget under $20,000, I would do it. Okay. It's what you want to do, and you've got the money. You're not going into debt. You've got a career idea lined up when you come back. You've got the money to make the transition if it takes you a month or two until you get back. And you can do some other work while you're making the transition if you need to.

I would not sit at home after you get home and burn through the rest of that $100. You need to get your button gear when you get home. Right, definitely not. So I guess part B of the question is, should I stop investing because I was building my emergency fund up and then I sold the home, so that boosted me up way past my emergency fund. Yeah, it's a three months decision on investing. That's not the end of the

world. Right. So stop. Just put everything on hold. Plan your trip out. Make sure the budget does not exceed $20,000 under any circumstances. You just haul your little butt home if you get up next to that $20 do not spend money no more than 20 okay that's it you just got to give yourself that kind of a a concrete barrier you know because the problem with the question you're asking is if you don't put a solid boundary on it it's the kind of story that ends up

being one you regret later where you wandered through $75,000 because you were just having so dead gum much fun. You know, that's just not okay. That starts to be irresponsible at that point. But, you know, I think you've got the money. You know, you're not damaging your life by doing this. And you come home and you get back in the saddle and you

ride hard and make some serious money start plowing some money into investments and you know and we allocate part of this money aside for an emergency fund and we start thinking about buying another property at some point because obviously that piece of real estate was great for you and so on and i but but yeah i would just put everything on screeching hold put a concrete barrier up on the budget and say the budget is x i'm making up a number but 20 of your money is not going to kill you um you get much over that i start getting nervous in this discussion and if you just kind of wander past that barrier i get real nervous in the discussion so it needs to be a concrete emotional spiritual psychological barrier that I'm not spending any more of this on that.

But enjoying money is one of the things we're supposed to do with it. We don't get to talk about that a lot on this show because most people have enjoyed it too much and they're going to have to not enjoy it for a while. They're going to live like no one else so that later they can live like no one else. But you put yourself in a quality position here to do this. Sharon is in Oklahoma. Hi, Sharon. How are you?

Hi, I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Awesome. My husband and I are currently in Baby Step 2. We, including our mortgage, owe $220,000 personally. My dad is the senior pastor of our church and has been the last 15 years,

and he has deemed my husband and I to be a successor. In that process, the church has notes, which he's the guarantor, and he's wanting us to take over the notes and become the guarantors. No. Okay. That's what I was wondering.

No. I would not do that. You did not make this mess. He did. How much are the notes? About $400. Okay. What's the size of the congregation?

$300 every week. What's your annual budget? I'm not sure. I know our income is around $8 a month. That's $100 a year. Okay. $8,000 a month? Uh-huh. $8,000 a month. That's $100,000 a year. Okay. $8,000 a month? Uh-huh, $8,000 a month.

Okay. So you have $100,000 a year and you have a $500,000 note. Dadgum, that's a mess. That's what I'm nervous about. Yeah. So what brand? What kind of church? Non-denominational.

We're a first generation. all right good so he planted it and grew it right from his living room to 300 and a congregation but you know i'm like should we just start fresh no i want to pay him honor i want to pay him honor but i think the way the transition of the succession plan goes is that this congregation comes alongside the succession plan and pays this note off. Okay. And we put a fundraiser in place, and let's get it paid off. And let's get these folks where they're being great stewards of their money in their personal households, but also where we just clear this debt. Let's just have a note-burning party as a part of the succession plan. And that gets him off the hook.

But, no, I don't want you guys continuing the – I love the idea of continuing the ministry. I don't want you continuing the legacy of debt. And this is debt that's pretty heavy here for a congregation this size. I mean, you guys aren't going to be making much money as the pastor of a church that brings in $100,000 a year, total income. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options?

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You can't beat that. Free samples, free shipping with the new promos every month. You save even more. Use the promo code Ramsey to get the best deal. Today's question comes from Burton in Ohio. Dave, we use our debit card most of the time, but when making a purchase online, we use our credit card. I've always heard that if a criminal attacks your card,

it's better if it's a credit card than a debit card do you agree absolutely do not agree as a matter of fact neither does visa or mastercard if you were to go to visa's website you can find very quickly and easily under the security section that they have a zero liability policy for fraud or online theft or identity theft for credit cards and debit cards. Simple. Now, if a credit card gets misused online, you don't pay the bill. If a debit card gets misused online, they might take money out of your checking account. That could happen, but the bank is required to put it back within a matter of just a few business days from the time that you reported as online theft.

Required by Visa. It is a part of Visa's transaction. The debit card has the exact same fraud protection as the credit card. The exact same. I buy stuff online all the time. Sometimes I buy large things online with my debit card, and I don't blink. Now, here's the thing. The only downside is you might be out of the cash for a few days.

That's the difference. With a credit card, you haven't ever paid the bill yet, and so you've got the debt on there until they clear the transaction off for being a fraudulent transaction. In the case of the debit card, 50 bucks might come out of your account. It might be several days before you get that 50 bucks back. But it's not long it's not it's not two years it's not six months it's not even a month it's a matter of a few

business days they're required to put it back i'm racking my brain trying to remember if it's five or seven or three it's one of those three numbers but i can't remember but anyway that's not as part of the liability policy that's just a banking um requirement so visa gives the you can look it up it's right there on their site so everybody running around it's amazing these consumer guys are running around the debit card is not as safe as a credit card well yes it is it's the same stinking coverage exactly it's a zero liability policy now again you might be out the cash for a little bit with a debit card but when you use your debit card, sometimes you're out to cash for other things. Like you check into a hotel, they may put a hold on your account for a little while.

You rent a car, they may put a hold on your account for a little while. That's part of it. So part of using a debit card is you actually have to have money. That's the thing. And the point is, is that if you quit using stupid credit cards, you will have money. By getting in control and quit spending money you don't have to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't really like. So it's rationalization and justification that people use all the time,

just like stupid travel points. And it just has caused an entire industry to suck the blood out of the middle class. And the industry is the credit card industry. So same exact fraud protections. out of the middle class. And the industry is the credit card industry. So, same exact fraud protections. Hope I wasn't unclear. Al is in New York. Hey, Al, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Great. So, I'm living in New York City. I'm 24, making around a $60K job.

And I have $15K to $18K in savings. Good. And so I assume that's my emergency fund. But I don't really know what to do next. I haven't invested in my company's Roth, just given that they weren't matching, but now they are matching, and I'm just looking for some general investment advice on my next steps. Great. Good for you. Yeah, you need to take a portion of or all of that money that you have saved

and label it emergency fund, which once you label that money that, you can't touch it anymore except for emergencies. So I might take, if you've got 18, I might take 15 and label it emergency fund. I might take three and just label it miscellaneous savings because that's the money you've been dipping in and out of occasionally. But you need to set a block around, a concrete barrier around some of it emotionally so you don't touch it. Now, as far as your investing goes, I personally invest,

and I have suggested for almost 30 years that folks invest across four types of growth stock mutual funds evenly, 25% in each. Growth funds, growth and income funds, aggressive growth funds, and international. And you're looking for funds that have the longest possible track record inside your company's 401K. As far as where to pick those and where to put the money and so forth, the first thing you do if there's a match is you invest there up to the match minimum.

And then, and say, like at's your company they just start doing a match and they have a roth 401k right yep so you select the roth 401k you look for the four types of mutual funds and you go up through the match how much do they match um i i'm not entirely sure okay well let's use an example uh usually we tell we tell people in Baby Step 4, which is where you are, to put 15% of their income into retirement. And let's say your company matches 5%. Well, we're immediately going to take that free 5%, right? Boom, just like that. Yep.

Right off the top, before we do anything else. Then you look at those mutual funds funds and you can sit down with a smart investor pro uh just click on daveramsey.com click smart investor pro and put in your information it'll drop down a list of the pros in your area that we recommend and you can pick from among those which ones you want and then we will um and then once you sit down with them, you look at good mutual funds and you look at the mutual funds in your company. If your companies are good, you may just want to put it all in there, the whole 15% in there.

It's easy, it's simple, you're getting the match, whatever. If your company funds are medium to poor, which is not that unusual, you may want to step out of there and just do a Roth IRA, which you can do up to $6,000 a year this year in that. And that would be 10% of your income in your case. 5% would be going into the match, and you would be done. You'd have 5% over the company and 10% in your Roth, which is $6,000, 10% of $60,000 of your income. There you go.

That's how we do it. And you'd be right there. So you could do either one, but you're looking for good mutual funds that have long track records in order to pull that off, and that's exactly how you get at it. So, hey, thanks for the call. Folks, if you want to be part of our mission of giving hope to millions of people, come check out the opportunities that we have open.

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Pretty simple. That's how that works. So if you're interested in joining our team and being part of it, we would love to have you. Just check us out there. Bob is on YouTube and says, Dave, I owe $22,000 on a truck that KBB says is worth $22,000. it we would love to have you just check us out there bob is on youtube and says dave oh twenty two thousand dollars on a truck that kbb uh says is worth twenty two thousand dollars should i get

a loan for a few thousand to just get rid of it for under value i've had no contacts after a month of it being posted online well if you post something online and you have no contacts for a month your price is wrong and so that means that kbb's numbers off in your case there's something about this truck that's not as appealing as the average kbb shot at you there kelly blue book and so um you know market value is what somebody's willing to get a willing buyer is willing to give a willing seller and you got no contacts which means you're above market value if it takes you after a month you have zero people calling you so you're above market value. If it takes you after a month, you've got zero people calling you. So you need to cut your price.

And, yeah, if you've got to borrow a couple grand to get out of it, that's what we're going to do here. Because it's a lot better to owe $2,000 than $22,000. And that will be a plan I would definitely step up to. Hey, Bob, thanks for watching us on YouTube. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. What will your family do if you die? Did I get your attention? Good. If you're a father, mother, husband, or wife, it's your responsibility to have life insurance.

No matter where you are in the baby steps, you have to deal with this right now. How will your family pay for the mortgage, put food on the table, or pay for education? How will they deal with retirement and stay the course for getting out of debt and accomplishing something with their lives? This is what life insurance is all about. I knew when I started this show it was something my listeners had to have, so I went out and found a company I could trust to offer the plans I believe in. That's why I've been talking about Zander Insurance for over 20 years. If you haven't dealt with this, please go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 and let them help. This is a priority.

It's not expensive, it's not complicated, and you need to do it today. That's zander.com or call 800-356-4282. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Jonathan and Whitley are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? All good. Very good. Awesome. I love your shirts.

Where are you guys from? Dubuque, Iowa. Cool. Now talk about your shirts. What's on them? I have Live Like No One Else on mine. There we go. And I have No Ish Hashtag Baby Step 2.

Ah, No Dave ish, no financial piece ish, no baby step ish. We're doing it. I like you guys. So you're here to do your debt-free scream. Yep. Very cool. How much you paid off? Paid off $87,341.37. And how long did this take? 23 months. Whoa! And your range of income during that time? We started around $60,000 and ended just right around $100,000. Okay, you hardly made $87,000 in the 20s. You must have sold stuff. What did you sell big?

Well, actually, we really didn't sell very much that was big, but the income jump was a little earlier in our debt-free journey. Oh, so $100,000 was the majority of it. Okay. Yep. Okay, very good. What,000 was the majority of it. Okay. Yep. Okay, very good. What do you all do for a living? I'm an industrial maintenance technician and also in the Iowa National Guard.

Okay. And I'm an executive assistant. Very good. And what kind of debt was the $87,000? We had student loans, credit cards, personal loan, and actually we also paid off our mortgage. Whoa, your house and everything! Yep. I'm looking at weird people.

Wow, look at you guys. Well done. Very cool. How old are you two? 28. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. And you have a paid-for house. Yes.

In Iowa. And how much is this house worth? Last appraised, it was at $190. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Amazing. You guys are on fire wow you're gonna be so rich well done what in the world how long have y'all been married this will be five years okay and so two years of the five has been game on yes Yep. Yes. Tell me what happened that caused this. This is amazing. Well, she's actually been pushing for me to read the Total Money Makeover

and get my finances in order since we met. And I told her I'm not going to read the book, so she actually called into the show, and you explained to her how she needs a man, not just a boy. And thanks to you, I got the audio version, so I listened to that. I was kind of on board with it. So did that piss you off when you heard I said that? No, it just made me upset.

It had to. It made myself upset with myself, obviously. I needed to fix something. All right. And then, so then I was kind of on board, but we, I went on another training exercise and I used to balance my budget off of how much was in my account. Yeah. And I saw I had money in there, so I spent like $200. And at the same time, my wife had to buy food and diapers back at home.

Oh. Oh. So. Wasn't good. So I come back home and she says, we're doing this. Like she's like on fire. And she ends up making a little chain for me. Kind of like to show progress on what we're doing. And I couldn't even get her to finish it.

Because at the end of it it i'm asking her how much each link is worth and i started out a dollar said 10 50 no it was a hundred dollars so every time i heard a staple click making this chain it was and it's up there right now i just could finally i'm a very visual person so i could actually feel the debt that i was carrying, and that's what got me on board. Wow. Very cool. Very cool. Look at you guys. I'm so proud of y'all. Well done.

I mean, you did the whole thing. Amazing. So, all right, Whitney. Whitney, you called in here, and I told you to sit down with him and tell him he needed to man up and walk with you. How did that conversation sound when it actually happened? This is great. I didn't actually say that because I wanted to be allowed in the house afterwards. So I just told him, listen, do you say it to him?

Oh, okay, good. So I played that section of the podcast and then gave him the audio book. And luckily he had a 45-minute drive to work, so he listened to it in like three days. And he was still kind of a little-ish, but then my parents had gifted us a trip to the Wisconsin Dells for Christmas. So we took a ride up there, and for the three hours in the car, I had him listening to Debt Free Screams and the podcast. So that also then helped, and he finally came back, and he goes, okay, all right. So then he was actually willing to sit and do a budget. But the thing about Jonathan is when he does something, he doesn't do it halfway no he's wide open he does he's never done ish anything and so doing this ish was not an option right no no yeah

once you were on you were getting you were man on a mission yeah and you paid off your freaking house at 28 years old how awesome are y'all? I'm so proud of you. Woo-hoo! This is so cool. And you guys watching on YouTube are seeing their brick house, man. It's a good-looking house, man. This is so cool. So how does it feel? Oh, it's fantastic.

And I actually asked him about making T-shirts and stuff like that as a side hustle. So I finally got him to agree. I said, I'll keep track of everything I'm spending and not quit until I at least make our money back. And I opened Midwest Mother's Designs on Etsy and started making t-shirts. And then I asked him, I said, well, can we do Financial Peace University? And he goes, well, okay, but the money has to come out of your side hustle money. And I'm like, okay, yep, that's fine.

Well, then the next day I'm sitting at my desk at work, and I hear bing, bing, bing on my phone, and we got $10,000 worth of orders in three days. So I told him, I said, well, we have the money for FPU now. I think so. Yeah. Wow. Just like that. Amazing.

Very cool. Very cool. Very cool. So how does it feel, Jonathan? You don't have any payments. I mean, you're a man on a mission. It feels very – the whole freedom, I can feel the weight lifted off of me. And it feels great. Very good.

You guys are – you're an incredible couple. This is very fun. All right. So what do you guys tell people the key to getting out of debt is? You're 28 years old. You're housing everything, $87,000 paid in 23 months. You're just rock stars. What's the key? I'd say consistency and discipline.

I would say, well, a couple of things. You have to be on the same page because otherwise it's like treading water. You just can't make any progress. And then not making an excuse for yourself because we could have had any excuse that we wanted. We both had kids when we were younger. We have four of them at home right now. We're millennials. Whatever excuse we wanted to pick up, and as soon as you decide, nope, I'm done with excuses, I don't want any more, that's when you'll actually make progress. Wow.

Look at you guys. Absolutely rock star millennials. Very well done. Very, very well done. Well, who was your biggest cheerleader outside of the house? I think her parents were probably the biggest supporter because they actually held us accountable also. Oh, okay.

Wow. That's good i had a group of ladies at work too that every time i'd go up and you know on valentine's day when everybody else is getting flowers and i'm like and we paid off a student loan and then they're going oh that's romantic i guess so you know a few of them that understood and either that or they were very much humoring me so either way, there's still good support. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah.

If you miss a set of flowers at Valentine's Day, but you're 28 and you have a paid for house, that'll work for me. I can work for that. I can handle that because your future is so bright. It's unbelievable. Number one, you've learned that the two of you working together can do almost anything. There's nothing that is out of your reach. I mean, you make 100 a year between you and together can do almost anything. There's nothing that is out of your reach. I mean, you make $100 a year between you, and you're 28. Wow.

I love this. And then number two, of course, the math on the ability to build wealth now is absolutely incredible. Yeah, you'll be everyday millionaires before we blink, sitting on a $300,000 paid-for house. Way to go. Well, we got a copy of Chris's book for you, Everyday Millionaires, because you will be that very soon. You've done all the right stuff and then some. Wow.

Very impressive. All right. Jonathan and Whitley from Iowa, $87,000 paid off in 23 months, including their house at 28 years old. I love it. Touchdown, baby. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two,

one. We're debt-free! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! I love it! I love it! Man, oh man, oh man. Absolutely fabulous.

And the shirt says, No-ish. That's it. Gotta love it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. I love you. So the number of people that walk into here and do their debt-free screen that started doing their budget in January is amazing. They started Financial Peace University in January. It's amazing. They started reading the Total Money Makeover.

Listen to the audio book in January. It's amazing. Because a lot of people want Makeover. Listen to the audio book in January. It's amazing. Because a lot of people want to do stuff to change their life in January. The old New Year's resolution. That works. No question about it. And you know, the way you actually accomplish something, if you want to go

somewhere, in the old days, we would get out a map. Now, some of you don't even know what a map is, but you would get out your phone, right? And you would enter in the address and click Google Maps or whatever, and it's going to give you directions right there on your phone. And you go straight, you know, off the GPS right in there, right? You have a step-by-step process to get where you're going.

And if you get off track, it talks to you and says you're off track right well that's what your budget does and i figured out a long time ago of course years ago we did the budget with the paper and in the back of all the books there are blank forms that you can make copies of if you want to do a paper budget in the back of the total money makeover or most of my other books it's in there as well and so um the budget is a pretty simple idea here's a couple things your budget is you telling your money what to do instead of wondering where it went well i don't want to do a budget it's restricting not unless you make it restricting. It's your budget. All a budget is, is you're doing it on paper, on purpose, before the month begins.

Every dollar has an assignment. Every dollar has a mission. Every dollar has a name before the month begins. And a unique budget each and every month, because every month is a little different. Some things are the same, but some things are different every month. And you agree on it with your spouse. So if you put, take out the dollars that you have coming in this month, your take-home pay, and you put it at the top of the page,

and you and your spouse sit and look at that, and you say, all right, let's spend that on paper before the month begins. We buy food. We buy lights and water. We pay the rent or the mortgage. We pay the car payment if there is one. We pay the insurance. We put clothes on the kids.

Whatever it is, we have to buy this month. And most people don't buy clothes every month, by the way. But, you know, you go right down the list, and every dollar has an assignment. And then you squeeze dollars out of that budget, and you start working those baby steps. Save $1,000, baby step one. Two is you start working your way out of debt, and so on down the line, right? So every dollar has an assignment. That's called a zero-based budget. You make a list of your income.

You total it up before the month begins. has an assignment. That's called a zero-based budget. You make a list of your income, you total it up before the month begins, you make a list of your expenses, and you spend those expenses on paper. And then once that's on paper, you stick to it. Now, the reason the budget is not restricting, the reason it should be just called a spending plan, is because it's a plan for how you're going to spend your money, and you're in charge. I'm not in charge. The budget police aren't going to come in and look over your shoulder. You're in charge. But what it forces you to do is be a grown-up instead of an impulse brat.

It forces you to tell your money what to do instead of wondering where it went. It forces you to live on purpose. It tells you when you're out of bounds, you just made a wrong turn. Turn around. Take a left here. Take a left here. Go back up to the highway. You got off the highway.

You're going to miss your, you turned off too soon. You're not going to make it. Just like your GPS would do. It's the exact same thing, only it's not an audio, me yelling. I ought to do that. I ought to make a, put that in every dollar app. I yell at you if you overspend a category that'd be funny or i could just say in a stern voice turn around don't do that you know that would be no that's just that's just spooky weird but anyway so the budget is the key though you hear people say this

all the time on the debt-free screen. What's the key? Communication. What's the key? Being on a budget. What's the key? The extra work. Those are the types of things you hear on every debt-free screen just about, every one of them. Now, a couple things you need to know about your budget.

I don't know what you're going to budget for food for the first month that you do your budgeting, but you're wrong. People always spend more on food than they think they do. So whatever you think you're going to put in there for the food category, put some more in there because you're wrong. You're going to spend more than you think you're spending. You've been spending way more than that number you have in your head that you think you're spending.

And it's okay to separate restaurants and grocery store, which is not a bad idea, because restaurants ought to be like zero while you're getting out of debt. And the grocery store, if you do go to a restaurant, you'll spend your grocery store money in a heartbeat, and then you've got no food at all, and the family's kind of skinny and hungry and all that kind of stuff. We don't want to do that. The second thing about a budget is you must sit down together and do the budget you have if you're married you have to do this together well i can't get my spouse but you have

a marriage problem you don't have a budget problem and i will tell you i have found no data points in 30 years of doing this i've seen almost no examples of people who bust through getting out of debt i've never never have i had a debt-free scream on the air, and I said, okay, what's the secret? And they say, well, you know, he doesn't have any idea what's going on. I did it all by myself. He just came down and stood here. You know?

It never happens because it's almost impossible to drag dead weight through a get-out-of-debt plan and drag them into a budget. You're just not dealing with adults. You have to be a grown man. You have to be a grown man. You have to be a grown woman. You have to make adult-like decisions here. You have to step into this and do it. So once you set your budget, now you got to stick with it.

Now, here's the hard part. The first month you do your budget, you suck at doing a budget. First month I did a budget, I sucked at doing a budget. It was way off. And so you're going to have to sit down and have emergency budget committee meetings with your spouse and adjust the budget because you under-budgeted some categories. Which means since you spent every dollar, that if you're going to raise one category by $150, you've got to lower other categories by $150.

You're not in Congress. You can't spend more than you thought you were. You can't spend more than you had coming in. You know, it's income minus outgo equals zero, not income minus outgo equals a deficit. We don't do deficit spending in our households. That's called debt. And you're going to do what?

Run your budget on a credit card? Now, this is just plain stupid. We're not even going spending in our households. That's called debt. And you're going to do what? Run your budget on a credit card? Now, this is just plain stupid. We're not even going to talk about that. So every dollar has an assignment, and your first month, you're going to have 17 emergency budget committee meetings. The second month, you'll get a little better at it. You'll only have about five or six emergency budget committee meetings. The third month, by the third month of doing this, it'll start to work,

and you'll only have one or two emergency budget committee meetings in a month. The third month, by the third month of doing this, it'll start to work. And you'll only have one or two emergency budget committee meetings in a month. Most months, you'll have one. You have to sit down and do some adjusting mid-month, in other words. Or somewhere along, there'll be something that pops up that was quote-unquote unexpected. It's not really an emergency fund issue. We just need to budget adjust. We need to budget adjust.

We need to budget adjust. We need to budget adjust. We need to budget adjust. A budget adjustment meeting. See, once you agree on this with your spouse, both of you are agreeing to stick to it, and you pinky swear and spit shake, we're not doing anything else. This is it. The good news is, a couple years back, we spent several million dollars in about a year and a half developing and have continued to develop the world's best budgeting tool that is free for you to use. It's called EveryDollar. The EveryDollar app for your phone is so simple, and we've made it even easier by creating a guide to budgeting that will help those of you that need a little extra help.

It goes through everything you need to do to set up your first budget or to make next month's budget even better. And the guide to budgeting is free. You can sign up at every dollar.com or you can text GTB guide to budgeting GTB to 33 789. You want the free guide to budgeting? Covers the stuff I was just talking about. GTB. Text GTB free to 30. GTB. That's all it is.

It is free, but don't say free. GTB. Text that to 33-789. 33-789. Or you can just go over to EveryDollar. The app is free anyway. So you can just sign up for the EveryDollar app, and it helps you do all this. You can build out your budget in about 10 minutes.

It's very easy to do. But the trick then is the both of you have to be involved, and you have to stick to it, and you have to do your mid-month adjustments, which the first two months are going to be a lot of them. It's okay. You're learning something new. You're course correct. You're course correct.

You're course correct. You've got this. You can do this new. You course correct. You course correct. You course correct. You got this. You can do this. It works so good. So text GTB Guide to Budgeting. GTB to 33-7-89. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the Books.

Thanks to James Childs, our producer. Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, and we'll be right back. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com slash show and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.