The Ramsey Show - App - It’s Never Too Early To Make a Plan for Your Money (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Dave Ramsey & John Delony discuss: Is a house re-fi the right option, What kinds of insurance you need, When spouses don't agree on paying for the kid's college.   Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. We help people build wealth through do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. My co-host today, Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality number one, best-selling author. We will be answering your questions about your life and your money. Thank you for jumping in, America. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Jeff is going to start us off this hour in Cincinnati.

Hi, Jeff. How are you? Hey, Jeff. I'm doing good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I'm kind of a new follower.

I just found you earlier this year. We had some questions about potentially refinancing our house we originally bought it back in january of 2021 um this was obviously before we knew you and we we got a 30-year loan um at two and a half percent um and now kind of considering do we move to a 15-year, but my biggest concern with that is that we're giving up that 2.5% rate to go somewhere around 5% or so. You're right to be concerned. I would not do that.

You're right. Okay. No, you keep the existing mortgage you have. If you calculate a 30-year mortgage and you calculate a 15-year mortgage at the same interest rate, in your case, two and a half, and you pay the difference, like you took out a 30 and you pay the extra amount and the difference between a 15 payment and a 30 payment, it will pay off in exactly 15 years. Okay. You do not have to refinance to pay a loan in exactly 15 years. Okay. You do not have to refinance to pay a loan off in 15 years.

You just have to pay it like it's a 15-year payment, and it'll pay right out. Or more, of course, and then it would pay out even sooner. So never refinance just to move from a 30 to a 15, because you take on the closing costs at a minimum. And in this case, you'd go up an interest rate. So you never do that. Just pay extra on it, and you'll get there. Okay.

That was easy, wasn't it? As far as how much, like how much I can afford, we were well within the 25% calculating it off of the 2.5% rate that we have. Great. But with rates now, I know we're not refinancing, but that would obviously put us probably closer to the 30% mark. Do we have? Well, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. You're fine. The reality is your house payment is a fourth of your take-home pay at a 15-year on two and a half. And so you're fine. The reason we put that in place is not to keep people from buying homes. And, John, people are really mad right now about house prices. Because you hate homeownership. Apparently I hate homeownership and I'm an unrealistic old boomer or whatever other terms of derision you can throw at my bald head.

But I don't care if you get a house you can't afford. It doesn't affect me. It affects you if you buy a house you can't afford. Jeff's in good shape. He's not got any issues. But here's the thing. And I've been answering this question the same way for 30 years. Like, we have people call us from California.

Well, Dave, you can't buy a house in California for that're you know you can't buy a house in california for that uh that means you can't you can't buy a house in california for that that's what that means and you also may not be able to buy a bentley uh you also may not be you know when i grew up that this county that we live in is the 11th wealthiest county in the nation the wealthiest county in tennessee williamson county tennessee where you and i are sitting right now where both of us live now when i was growing, that's where the rich people lived. And we said stuff like, you can't afford to live there. And you know what? Not everybody can afford to live there.

Not everybody can afford to live on Rodeo Drive or in downtown Manhattan or downtown Tokyo or downtown London. It's freaking expensive. And so sometimes you just have to say, can't afford it number one but number two the reason for this is we know from the data of doing this for 30 years that your most likely way to become wealthy is to get your home paid off as soon as possible and all other debts too because it frees up your most powerful wealth building tool and so if you keep a mortgage around like it's a pet for your whole life because you're thinking well i'm always going to have a mortgage and the only way i can afford a mortgage the only way i'm ever going to get a house because i'll never get a house i'll never get a house i'm

so stuck and it's just not fair and life's not fair and i'm a four-year-old on the cereal aisle throwing a fit and i want captain crunch dead blame it you know and it's just like and you just everybody's acting like that right now. And so I'm sorry. I'm sorry that when I was a kid, I couldn't live in Williamson County. I couldn't afford it. My family didn't make that kind of money. I'm sorry. I had a traumatized childhood.

I'm sorry. But it's the way life is. And so, you know, the answer is no. The reason you tell yourself no is so you can tell yourself yes later. So if you go buy a house you can't afford and you go take car payments out that you can't afford and you go take, which nobody can, you go take out a student loan and you go take out MasterCard and Visa and American Distress, you're going to be normal. And normal is you work your whole life and give all of the money you earn to someone else

in the form of payments and retire broke and hope social insecurity will take care of you who the crap wants to be normal right and so you've got to break this cycle and not be angry at me or at the world or at instagram or twitter or whatever it is you're angry at this week um because house prices went up i'm really sorry. I don't want you to be upset, and I don't want you to not have a house, but I also don't want you to do something stupid that's going to keep you broke your whole life. I'll throw a third one on there, Dave. I have found in my life, when I've had a 30-year mortgage, and I've had a couple of those in the 15-year,

I can have all the best intentions with a 30-year mortgage, but when it comes down to it, every single month, somebody invites me out to a thing, or hey, we're all going out to this thing, and whether I've got the best intentions or I've got all the willpower in the world, it's really hard for me to double that payment

or to make that gap payment between the 30-year note is requiring me to pay and what i could be paying for that 15 year with the 15 year i'm locked into it i gotta do it one of the things i figured out when i very first started doing this stuff with financial peace when i started studying rich people is they put smart things on autopilot yes i don't want to think about it a hundred percent of the 15-year mortgages pay off in 15 years or less a hundred percent or they get foreclosed on i mean a hundred percent of them do okay people that take out a 30 promising to pay a 15 the studies say 92 percent do not stick with the schedule i was so if you if you put a system in place that you have to be in the top 8% is the only way you win.

You lose. That's dumb. I just was listening to some obesity researchers today, and they were talking about step one, create an environment where you can at least attempt to be successful. Get the junk out of your house. Yeah. Right? You can't have it all there and say, I'm going to make good choices because you're not going to make good choices.

Well, James Clear talks about that in Atomic Habits. He talks about the exact same thing. What is it? You're trying to create a habit, then don't put stuff that's contrary to the habit right in front of you. The opposite of paying the mortgage off early in another autopilot is the 401Ks. That's why they're so successful. You never see the money. It just comes out of your check automatically.

Or an auto draft on your checking account for your Roth IRAs or your kids 529. You are an automatic investor. And David Bach had a bestselling book, The Automatic Millionaire or whatever it was called. And he said, just put everything on automatic. And you know what? There's something to that. And so quit thinking you're like have superpowers just to get to buy crap you can't afford. It's a bad idea.

Hey guys, George Camel here, and I'm so excited to tell you about the newest product from Ramsey. It's called Gazelle, and it's a digital banking experience that will help you spend and save the Ramsey way with banking services provided by Pathword NA. You'll get a single spending account with no monthly fees and it's FDIC insured through Pathword NA. We're offering early access to our beta customers so you can help us make it the best experience it can be. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash gazelleselling author, my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. One of the things we are doing today and this week is we're talking about the importance of insurance. The subject no one likes to talk about.

Everybody say it with me. Insurance sucks until you need it, right? And then it doesn't. And then when you got it and you need it, it's like the right kind and you did the right thing. But it's confusing. Too many people buy the wrong stuff. They spend the wrong money on the wrong things. But insurance is a huge blessing because people that build wealth not only play offense they also play defense and insurance is the defense

side and so in honor of uh this insurance week here we're talking about the confidence in your coverage program that george camel put out uh with our ramsey trusted people and all the stuff details on your insurance it's really good stuff donna is on the line donna's in pensacola florida so donna talk about insurance and the importance of it in your life donna donna i'm here can you hear me yes ma'am hey how are you i'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you today? Good. Talk about insurance and the importance of it in your situation. So I wanted to speak specifically to insurance and life insurance with second marriages. There's a lot of people out there with second marriages marriages and it adds in some factors that

maybe you hadn't thought about before. So what happened in my situation was my husband passed away two years ago and when I contacted the department at his work for life insurance, it turns out they never got his change of beneficiary form. So when we both got married, we both filled out the change of beneficiary form and we sent them in. And apparently they got mine and didn't get his. So all of his life insurance went to his ex-wife who, you know, hated him and didn't want to have anything to do with him. And so we had no idea. We were married for three years. We had no idea that they never received that document. And

we could have known, we could have known because they send you back a copy that they received it. We never followed up to check on it. Um, another thing that happened was you get, when you retire or die, you get paid for your unused vacation time and unused sick leave. They're considered separate leave, and one of them has a beneficiary form and the other one doesn't. Well, he'd worked there for 30 years. you know back when he was 18 he had signed a beneficiary form for whichever one has one and totally forgot that that even existed because it's not like a huge amount of money like life insurances so turns out he didn't change that beneficiary form so it went to somebody else and then i got the other one like his parents or something or No, he was married for a short time back when he was 18, so it probably went back to that wife. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. Yeah. This sucks. All the ex-wives got money. Well, I got the TSP, but the life insurance, I think, was higher at that point in time. And another thing that I came across, and I don't know which this is from, I don't know if it's from his military time or from a life insurance policy or what it was from,

but there was somebody who before they would distribute funds, I had to come up with the marriage dates and divorce dates of the previous spouses. So he'd been married a short time when he was very young, when he was in the military and then he'd been married for a long time for a second marriage and i was the third so i looked through all his forms and i found all that and had it but i i called up you know people that i knew that were on a second marriage i'm like i guess because they were trying to prove that he wasn't married to more than one person. Yes, they wanted to make sure that he really was divorced from previous marriages.

Wow. Yeah, so those are all things that I'm recommending that people look into. Don't just assume you've got all your details in order. So when you went through the confidence in your coverage series, is that the kind of thing that jumped out to you or did you pick up something else uh the thing that jumped out to me in that because i had been uh i had been listening intently and for a few years and so i had you know background on almost everything but one thing that jumped out to me in the little questionnaire that you take yourself was about long-term care insurance and I'm 57 so I'm not 60 yet but it caused me to check into it because I have a diagnosis that I thought might make me ineligible and it did so it just it's it's a kidney disease it doesn't affect life. I'm totally healthy. I just have to get my blood

checked every year to make sure it isn't progressing. So I don't think about it a lot, but it's enough to make me ineligible for long-term care insurance. I wouldn't be able to get life insurance now, things like that, that if you get a diagnosis and I've had the diagnosis for 20 years. So if you get it when you're younger and you find out you're ineligible later for these things, you need to go ahead and build up your nest egg and be prepared for those kinds of expenses. For real. For real. So it sounds like what you're mentioning here is, it goes back to one word that I just keep hearing over and over as you're talking, and that's this idea of being highly intentional about the hard conversations. There is a chance, no matter how small,

that something may happen to one of you. And we need to make sure all of our ducks in a row, and we need to make that extra phone call at work, sit down with our insurance agent, and make sure we're covered. Make sure these things are in order so that if the unthinkable happens, which in your case it did, we're covered. Everybody's on the same page. Right. He was 49 when he drowned in the Gulf of Mexico. So if you think, oh, I'll check into it when I'm older, don't check into it when you're older.

When it comes to second marriages, there's so many other things to think about. Another thing to think about is the relationship your spouse has with your own kids. Because you need to think, when you get married a second time, you need to think, okay, yes, our life insurance policies are mirrored. They say the same thing, everything will go to our kids. But that's only if you die at the same time. If one of you dies first, and the person who survives doesn't have a relationship with your kids, and everything is going to your spouse that you love and you chose and then and then later on they die everything goes to their kids and

your kids get nothing you might want some stuff to go to your kids when you die because your spouse may live longer and your spouse may marry somebody else and then their kids some part you don't even know gets everything and then your your kids and your spouse's kids don't get any of it. It gets super complicated to do a will and to do the beneficiaries and everything. And thinking through not necessarily the first movement, the first rhythm, if something happens, but the second one is the one that's hard to anticipate. Yeah, because all the beneficiary forms I've seen say, if you fill this out, then boom, that person gets it, whatever you want happens.

If you don't fill it out, then the system has to go through the process of figuring out who really gets it. And if it's your first marriage, it's going to be the spouse. If you're in a second marriage, holy cow, you have no idea what's going to happen. Yeah, yeah. Wow. That's good insight, Donna cow, you have no idea what's going to happen. Yeah, yeah. Wow. That's good insight, Donna. Thank you for sharing all that.

Wow. Pretty important. Crazy, crazy stuff. Well, you can go to RamseySolutions.com and check out the Confidence in Your Coverage series. There is a five-part series there. They're all very short. They're all very fun and funny because it is George Campbell, after all. And ramseysolutions.com slash confidence.

It is a free five-day video guide to walk you through the different kinds of insurance. And Donna's insights are really, really valuable there. And, you know, the thing is, John, these aren't things, right, doing a will, making sure your beneficiaries are right, making sure the name on your mutual fund account is changed. All those kinds of things are, none of this is like sit down and have fun. No. This is not like I get to do the most fun thing this weekend. I'm working on this crap. Right. But when you've got all that in order, that is one way you are saying to your wife, your husband, your kids, I love you.

I love you. Even when I'm not here, I love you. Yeah. It's that level of diligence. And by the way, it is the difference in poor people and rich people often. Wealthy people do this kind of stuff. People who, well, how many money, it doesn't matter. Well, it's kind of a correlation there.

You know, do the intentional, diligent thing. Take care of the little things, and the big things tend to take care of themselves. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Dr. John Deloney, number one best-selling author and Ramsey personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. A whole bunch of folks visiting us today. Thank you for visiting us, guys. By the way, if you're ever in the Franklin, Tennessee, south of Nashville area and want to stop by,

it is a free visit to the Ramsey Complex, including the Visitor Center here in the lobby. And you can watch the show. We tape the show every day from 1 to 4. Or we do the show live. It is also simultaneously taped from 1 to 4 Central every day. And in the middle of that lobby is the debt free stage on that stage is jonathan and amy hey guys how are you good how are you good welcome where do you guys live i'm walkins glenn new york all right cool welcome to nashville how much debt have you paid off 102 000 all right

how long did this take four years good for you and your range of income during that time? 60 to 75,000. Cool. What do y'all do for a living? I'm a teaching assistant. I was a vehicle purchaser for a scrapyard and I currently am a teaching assistant now. Oh, okay. Both of you. Good. Good for you. Cool. So what kind of debt was the 102,000? A lot of things. it was credit card debt personal loans family loans uh we owed some library money like we own or we owed everything the library that's like one of those dreams you have in the middle of the night that you forgot from 30 years ago when you're in hawk to the library that's knowing you're not you're not doing well it's pretty bad it's actually really bad when you don't have money to buy a coffee and then you you're like, let's just transfer money over.

And, yeah, it's cool. It's all good. So you're normal. Pretty normal. Normal's no fun, and you decide to change four years ago. What caused you to do this Ramsey stuff? Tell us the story. Well, so our church was doing a Ramsey.

Yeah. Financial Peace University. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm really nervous no trouble but um so i mean really they were the catalyst higher hope um in big flats new york was like the huge catalyst to it i thought we were fine honest to god i just thought credit cards were just normal and they are we pay them when we can when we want to exactly um so my husband was super nerdy and really wanted to get into this and i was very reluctant and i said let's just try it like let's look at everything kind of try it was a little ramsey-ish through the course i was kicking and screaming oh okay um

but then i really got on board especially when we started seeing the little wins. It was so big for us. He was a great big support. I mean, he kind of just, I don't know, the whole time you were just not harsh, but kind of real. But it was really good. I don't know, we just,

and we saw our girls kind of prospering. I had never seen Money Talk. He hadn't either. But girls i mean they play your show every saturday on alexa they say alexa play the ramsey show and we listen to it so it's i mean that's our why that's our huge why very cool it's awesome so and they love knowing that they can plan for the future i mean and they're seven and ten so i love So it's awesome. It's very good. So you kicked and screamed all the way through the course up until the last one or all the way through

and really he won you over simply by causing the money to start winning. Okay. So I would say it was about two weeks and we started making friends. We'd went through a live course. So it was really nice to see other people kind of going through the same struggles and the same kind of, I don't know, tantrum moments that I had.

It takes some of the shame away from the process. It does. Y'all going through the same thing. Yeah. And then we actually, like, I don't know, I got to about three in. I kind of, it all clicked and we were starting to pay off more and it was doing really good. And we had our emergency fund and it was really, and then we taught it at our church. Oh, wow.

You went all the way. We did. It was full circle. But I kind of hoped I like let the shame, like my hair straightener broke one time and I was like, guys, I'm not buying it. It's not my budget. So this is what you have to look at this week. I'm really sorry.

Hold on. This is important. And to look at this week. I'm really sorry. Hold on. This is important. And you survived? I did. Hey, more importantly, did the rods and cones in there, did they survive too? Yeah, everything was great. Everything was great. Wow.

Yeah. It felt like weird to be weird, but it feels even better now to be weird. So Jonathan, what was it like dragging a hurricane through this process? It wasn't that bad. We were together, but she just had struggles. It was good. It was a wise, wise answer. You're a good man, Jonathan.

Well done, you guys. Thank you. So what do you tell people now that you're coordinators, now that you paid off 102 000 your actual professionals now what do you tell them the key to getting out of debt is i doing the budget just got to start somewhere and that's huge it's huge it is your guideline it's your everything i mean it's neither one or the other telling each other you can't do it it's literally there on paper. I mean, Amy's talking like a real free spirit, but a real free spirit who had a vote. I did.

You had control in this. Jonathan wasn't telling you what to do. Both of you are voting, and you're agreeing, and like two grown-ups, this is where we're going, and this is the price we're going to pay to get there. If you live like no one else later, you can live and give like no one else. Absolutely. And you said something powerful. You shift the blame to this piece of paper. so i don't hate jonathan for saying no

we can grin our teeth at this budget right but yeah the budget said the budget said yes it was the budget what was your what was your favorite uh altercation what was the thing is fight the biggest fight you had okay so he remembers his but you go ahead and answer. I'm just kidding. Okay. So, you have your fun money, and I decided to grow my fun money by selling thrifted items and stuff.

And my husband said, well, you can't do that. Your fun money, it can't grow because you've got to pay off your debt and our debt together and she wanted to take her money and like invest it and then keep her extra money oh i know yeah i've got the program here yeah it was a kicking and screaming moment in the very beginning you have to give some grace i love it so yeah that was that was big jon Jonathan, you guys, you're perfect for each other. I mean, y'all, you make his life fun. This is great. I mean, we try.

And he makes sure there's water coming out of the faucet every month. Yeah, it's true. You guys got us down. You guys are all right. This is great. This is a perfect, y'all are a perfect couple. This is great. So well done.

I'm so proud of y'all. Thank you. How's it feel to be free? Feels awesome. Our marriage is way better than anything I could have imagined. That's why I take the different job, too, as a job switch, because I've been in the same job for 12 years, and then we got that free. I'm like, we can make some choices.

He's going back to school to be a teacher. Ah, good. So, you know, he's living out his dream, too. And that's really cool. That's very cool. That's incredible. And that wasn't going to happen as long as you just kept swimming in credit card debt. No way.

Yeah. Wow. There's no way. You guys are powerful. Well done. Thank you for going to be a teacher, man. Yeah. Amen.

Thank you. Amen. We need good people teaching. He's pretty good at being a TA, so he'll be a really good teacher. Amen. Good stuff. All right. You brought the kiddos with you what are their names and ages um eliza is 10 and marlena is seven all right very good we've got a copy of the baby steps millionaires book for you because that's the next chapter in your story for sure i mean uh from

kicking and screaming to coordinating we're going all the way through the whole thing i like it that's that's the best kind right there. And we've also got a copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give to somebody in one of your classes. And we'll give you a one-year subscription to Financial Peace University. You can find somebody that needs to go through the class when you're leading it and help them out doing that. Thank you. Of course, that comes with the Every Dollar Premium. And this is the brand-new lessons that just came out.

Awesome. The brand-new videos just came out. So make sure you're jumping in there and getting all that done when you're coordinating. Good stuff. Thank you guys so much. You're incredible. I'm so proud of you. You're rock stars.

Thank you. Heroes. Took care of your life, man. Jonathan, Amy, Eliza, and Marlena. Watkins Glen, New York. 102,000 paid off in four years, making 60 to 75,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yes, sir! Woo! This is how it's done, ladies and gentlemen. Powerful. Powerful. Powerful. Good stuff.

Good stuff. Grown-ups being grown-ups. It's a good thing in America. Raising grown-ups. Yeah. Raising another batch of grown-ups. It's really good. This is the Ramsey Show. Thank you. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today.

Sierra is with us in Portland, Oregon. Hi, Sierra. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hello. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? We just completed Baby Steps 2 through 4, and we have approached Baby Steps 5, but my husband and I have a disagreement when it comes to saving for your kid's college fund. I'm all for it, and my husband is against it.

Against saving for your kid's college? Yes. He does not think he should pay for his kid's college or anything having to do with it. Correct. How come? So we both went to college, got our bachelor's degree. My husband, about four years ago, ended his career and switched into a trade.

The trade, by far, in two years, he was making what he was making doing his college career job. And he thinks that college is like a waste of money now that he's been in a trade. And he also believes that my son or our son, I should say, sorry, will appreciate money more, which I disagree if he has to pay for it himself. And also, in addition, I don't know how long it will be, but the union has started a program where they pay 100% of the college, but the degree options are limited at this point. So there's that kind of ball in the court, too, as well. Okay. Well, I paid for all three of my children's college education,

and it had nothing to do, that did not cause them to not have an appreciation for the dollar. All three of them understand work ethic. All three of them understand the value of a dollar and so your husband's full of crap on that subject i have proof otherwise um now i understand because i come from the same i'm cut out of the same cloth he's cut out of he believes in hard work he believes in earning your way and he believes it's good for your kid to build those muscles of self-reliance and destiny and, you know, I agree with all that. And I've got a friend who's an NFL football player, ex-NFL football player, who grew up blue-collar dad.

He was a dock worker. And his dad said, you're not paying for nothing. He went to school on a scholarship playing football and then went on into the NFL, and he refused making NFL money to save anything for his kid's college. But the idea that the only way your child learns the value of a dollar is to make sure they have no dollars is bull crap. Okay?

But I do understand his line of thinking so i don't disagree with i understand how he got there he's just wrong okay so you can teach a kid the value of a dollar you can teach them hard work even if they come from a family of means even if they come where they have a college fund um and uh you can actually hold it over their head to make sure that they learn these things you know um uh and the other thing i would just say is the other place i i and i do agree with him that the trades are oftentimes a better option than a stupid butt degree that is nuanced and has absolutely no application in the real world i'm going to get a degree in german polka history and left-handed puppetry and then bitch and moan because society owes me something while i'm a barista that's just

dumb okay and that happens all the time out there and i don't i agree with him that we're not going to salute that stupidity either but to say that all kids don't need a four-year education is ludicrous it's nonsense so let me let me tell you this. My grandmother, my grandma, smoked when she was younger. When she passed away, she did not pass away from lung cancer. That doesn't mean that lung cancer doesn't give you, or smoking doesn't give you cancer. I think we've proven equivocally that smoking increases cancer rates exponentially. Just because your husband got a four-year degree and has found more success in a trade doesn't mean that all people who get four-year degrees are dumber than people who go to trades. That's just not how it works.

Nor does it mean the opposite. Nor does it mean the opposite. That if you go to a trade and don't go get a four-year degree, you're dumb. Right. Because some people need to do that, too. We need people on the trades. We need people with – But to not have a money allocated to cause the future success of your child,

whether it's a certification as a diesel mechanic and pay for that, or whether it's a four-year degree in business and pay for that, you're giving your kids options when you do that when you have no money set aside you took away a lot of the options that's right and i will i've got several friends who had assistance with with financial assistance uh my family was in a position to do that and i will tell you we are the same age and we all equally work really hard. And their ability to do some things early on when it came to investing, when it came to home buying that I wasn't able to do has accelerated their wealth building because they had options. And so I'm like Dave. My kids will know how to work hard.

They will know how to grind and hustle and what a dollar means. And Lord willing, if I'm able to help them pay for their college education or their trades, I'm going to make every effort possible to make that happen. Yeah, and so here's the thing. 100% of the humans out there, unless they have a mental disability, need some kind of education post high school to be financially successful it's not a hundred percent necessary but it's 98 necessary you really don't take a single thing after high school you are behind the curve and so you need to go get certifications in microsoft and go into technology at the local community college or tech college that's fine that's going

into a trade you go be a diesel mechanic that's fine or tech college, that's fine. That's going into a trade. You go be a diesel mechanic, that's fine. Be a welder, that's fine. Get your real estate license. Get your real estate license, that's fine. But continuing education throughout your life is the path of successful people. We have people that come in here that are 40 years old and applying for a leadership role in there, and I ask them what book they've read and they can't remember one.

Well, they're disqualified. You know, you don't get to come in here and be a leader. You're not learning anything new. You always are learning. And so you always want to encourage learning is a continual process. We love books. We love reading. We love learning.

And we respect your ability to go into the and and we respect your ability to go into the military we respect your ability to go into a trade we respect and and those are fine career paths and we've and the higher education communities look down their nose at them for too long so i agree with lifting those up mike roe is a good friend of mine we're in agreement about that dirty jobs guy you know and so uh he's got a whole movement on the trades thing. But he's not against college. He's got a degree. And this is Mr. Dirty Jobs, for God's sakes.

And so all of that to say I understand completely and agree with why your husband is saying what he's saying but i think he's taking a wrong track absolutely yeah i think you i think you put the money aside money for future learning will never go to waste exactly it's all it's always the best and build a culture in your house of hard work and future learning that's right you know you're always going to be learning you're always going to be reading you're always going to be learning you're always going to be reading you know i was telling the story our team yesterday we've adopted a school here at ramsey that was my old elementary school and we were able to go in several years ago and rebuild the library and uh in the name of in the honor of

my old principal in out of our family foundation now our company is adopting this and coming around these 83 teachers and trying to help them because these poor teachers man they're just getting it's just ridiculous out there anyway but um well they're showing that video of that library i started crying i had to walk out dave i walked out because i was crying like it came over and it's just like because that library is where i learned to read i came out of the first grade in the second grade not knowing how to read and my second grade not knowing how to read. And my second grade teacher, bless her heart, didn't know how to teach. And she worked one year, and those hillbilly kids drove her out of business.

And so I go into the third grade reading on a first grade level, and Ms. Mary Jane Hurt taught me to read. And by the time I go out of the fourth grade, I'm reading on a sixth grade level. So that little library, and I've had seven number one bestselling books, sold 25 million books that I wrote. Okay, that doesn't happen unless you read a lot. That goes with the territory. So learning is a good thing. Learning is a good thing.

So, you know, I love guys like your husband, though, Sierra. I almost could get on his side on this, except he's wrong. He's wrong. Yeah. Thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. This is The Ramsey Show. Did you know over 18 million people listen to The Ramsey Show every week?

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