The Ramsey Show - App - My Niece Is Being a Princess About Picking a College (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

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🎵 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, Dr. John Deloney of the Dr. Vaughn John Deloney Show, and best-selling author of the book, Redefining Anxiety, is my co-host today as we talk about your relationships, your work, your money, and your life right here on the Ramsey Show like we do every day. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Dawn is with us. Dawn's in Cincinnati.

Hi, Dawn. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. We love your show. Thanks for what you do. Well, thank you. How can we help today?

Yeah. So I have a niece. She'll be the first one to go to college in her family. And she wants to be a teacher. And we listen to your show enough to know the college should coincide with the career path you choose when it comes to what you're willing to pay. she has received an $18,000 scholarship, but she would like to go to Xavier university, which is about 52 a year. Um, and she wants to graduate with her teaching degree.

And my brother has tried over and over to tell her that that is not a good choice. She's even gotten a full ride to a quote unquote, in her mind, lesser schools. He's even tried to bribe her saying, go to that school and I'll pay for your final year at Xavier. And then you can graduate from there. She's just not listening to any of us. And we don't want her to get, you know, having 80 to a hundred,000 in debt being a teacher. So do you have any resources or what have you done in the past to maybe help these kids to realize this probably isn't the best decision?

Duct tape. Yes. And bailing wire. You can go to Tractor Supply, your local Tractor Supply, get all of your... Get a chair. Duct tape into a chair. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'm tempted, but oh my gosh. So she's a stubborn brat teenager. Definitely. Yeah. And usually those are forms by stubborn brat parents. And she's already an education snob. Yes. So John has a Ph.D. in higher ed and has been the uh dean of students at expensive schools

and um other various important positions at expensive schools so what do you how do you fix this john well you got you got a couple of problems here one is is usually this attitude is formed somewhere in the home right so often parents will try to wait to the last minute and correct behavior that they may have been a part of. And so if there's any sort of elitism or they're dumb, I can't believe they're driving that car, that's where a parent sits down with a teenager and says, hey, my attitude has been wrong for the last 15 years, and I'm sorry.

That's not going to cure this problem overnight, but you've got to start with that level of humility. Normally, not always, but this kind of attitude that I see in 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds, come on, man. That usually comes somewhere from inside the house. The second thing is some places you can, some you can't, some it's hard. I would sit down and say, I will not co-sign for anything i will not at some point you got to draw some really hard boundaries um i'm not going to support this you're not going to take my car with you you're not going to take my phone plan with

you some of these things sound draconian and mean but you're trying to keep a kid from making a hundred thousand dollars mistake right with a not with an unformed brain right their brain is not fully formed at 17 you're holding a a a uh a full ride to a state school right it's it it just doesn't work mathematically it doesn't work professionally and here's another thing i would do i would get a teacher that this person that that she trusts oh that's good it's got student loan debt and you say I will pay for the dinner or I'll the parents will pay for coffee and go say go sit down and ask them if it's worth it because I had this happen my friend Randall I had coached basketball at the high school level and then I was working at a university

and his son was five or six and he said this is so obnoxious Will you go outside and tell my son to dribble a basketball like this? I said, why don't you go tell him? And he goes, because he's going to listen to you right now. And so there's something about somebody else saying it sometimes. And so send her out with a teacher that she respects and looks up to, and that teacher will hopefully set her right. That's good. Thank you for that.

Appreciate it. But at the end of the day, parents really – I, I've heard this once, I've heard a thousand times, well, I'm not going to, like, take away their car or their phone. I'm still going to put $500 in their account every month. I just think they're making a bad decision. No, you're financing their bad decision. That's right. I'm going to look at the parent and say, how far are you willing to support your kid making bad choices?

Yeah. Right? I mean, I'm not going to take away their car. They're only doing cocaine. I mean, it's not a problem. Like problem like you know that's the kind of thing so yeah it's uh and going to a private school does not mean you're doing cocaine but you know what we're saying here right you're financing the the the lack of wisdom there so what we used to tell our teens uh about various things because was that um i would look at one of them that was losing their mind and they're 16

years old and I would say listen there's two people that live inside your body right now there's a four-year-old and a 34-year-old if I can talk to the 34-year-old we'll have a discussion about persuasion if I'm talking to the four-year-old I'm going to freaking tell you what to do and I'm going to make you do it physically now like I would a four-year-old you're going to freaking tell you what to do, and I'm going to make you do it physically. Now, like I would a four-year-old. You're going to behave in my house. Now, we can discuss this, and I can tell you why that's important and why you're building character, and we can have a persuasive discussion, or I can just make you.

Now, what do we want to do here? And I'm going to do that here. I'm going to just sit down and say this is a dumb butt asinine decision and i feel like i'm negotiating with you like you hold any cards in your hand you don't hold any cards i have all the freaking money i own your life you are not an adult i still get to tell you what to do and so now we can have a discussion like two logical adults about this and Xavier is not evil but the number of schools that she applies to go to you apply to go to school to honey that actually care where you got your teaching degree is precisely zero unless you

want to work at Xavier and then they will care that you went to Xavier but short of that you know you're signing up for Cincinnati City Public Schools, zero chance you get the job because you went to Xavier versus went to the school. Absolutely, precisely zero. There is no data on the planet to justify this aristocracy crap in higher ed, that these famous schools that are triple, quadruple, 5x expensive are worth a penny more than the others they're not now might you learn a little bit more maybe but the idea that you're going to do better as a teacher the idea you're going to your career is going to be on a fast track because you paid 5x is zero it's a it's asinine i want i want to know why why why does she want to go to Xavier? Why is she so set on it?

Well, she said that it is one of the best programs in the state for teaching. So here's what I want to do. I hear that from teenagers all the time. Prove it. Show me. Sit down and show me what the rankings mean. I want you to prove that it's a $100,000 difference. Why is this car worth $100,000 more than this other car?

Show me. Prove it. 17-year-old, prove it. Both of them will get you to the market. That's right. You've got a lot on your plate, a job, your home, your marriage, and your growing family. While you're enjoying the present, you can't help but think about your future and your finances. As you explore your options, consider Christian Healthcare Ministries, or CHM, for your health care. Their generous maternity program and budget-friendly monthly programs have been a blessing to members welcoming children into their families. Visit chministries.org slash budget to see if it's right for you. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a Ramsey

trusted provider. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Many of you have been filing your taxes with the same software for years, but you're sick and tired of having add-on fees and them trying to sell you everything else under the sun, loans and credit cards and everything else. You've probably seen all the tax software ads saying it's free with the big companies, but the reality is for most people it's not free. And by the time you realize you don't meet the, quote, free criteria, you've put in too much time to start over somewhere else, so you pay up.

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and if you have a beefed-up thing, you'll pay a little more, but the federal part's free with the promo code. So be sure, if you prefer to have a priority support extended audit protection, you can go with the premium version for just $20. That's a deal. So if you're ready to ditch these other guys surprising you with fees and all kinds of other garbage, save on your taxes, go to ramseysolutions.com slash smart tax. Get started right now. ramseysolutions.com slash smart tax. Jason is with us in Louisville, Kentucky. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, guys. Thank you both so much for taking my call. I appreciate it. Sure. What's up? Well, Dave, I'm really thankful to be, because of you, living a really enjoyable, debt-free life. Good for you. And I appreciate all that you've done to help me get there. I'm 47 years old, and I work part-time as a pastor in a church, and my payment from the church is actually a house to live in. It includes all the utilities, and I have virtually zero housing expenses. And that is my payment, but I'm bivocational, and that is my payment. But I'm bivocational, so I work elsewhere.

And I make about $40,000, $42,000 a year. And so, again, I'm fully through Baby Step 3. This is my year to start Baby Step 4 to be able to start stocking away money for the future. Good. Are you single? I'm a little kiding away money for the future. Good. Are you single? I'm a little kid. I am single. Okay.

Yep. Yep. I'm divorced, unfortunately, but it's where I'm at in my life. Sure. I have two adult kids. Neither of them chose college. They have both joined the workforce, and they're doing fine in their industries. And so I'm a little confused on a couple of things, kind of what maybe the next baby step actually is for me,

because I'm uncertain if, you know, where exactly my ministry career will take me. It could be that I end up moving elsewhere and, you know, living in a parsonage kind of long term. I just don't know if, you know, if I should really be kind of setting aside money for a house or if it's okay to just sort of be in a rental situation indefinitely. So where exactly I land in terms of baby steps, you know, five and six, I'm not really sure. Good for you. You've done really well. Congratulations.

Done a great job. Well, the thing is this. Free rent is free rent. We're not going to argue with free. But what we've got to think about is what you're going to be doing when you're 65, what you're going to be doing when you're 70, what you're going to be doing when you're 75. And we have to think ahead on that. And a lot of pastors that have a long-term parson uh parsonage situation uh get in a mess when they

retire because they don't have a place to live and uh you you know so let's say you retired at 65 and you live to 85 you have 20 years of rent increasing during that time plus rent has increased during the time you did this so what you've got to do is you have to start saving for a house you don't have to buy one, but you need to start saving for one. And then depending on what your parsonage offerings are with this situation or other situations in the future, then that will activate whether you actually purchase or not. If you actually got an awesome pastoral opportunity great income great uh situation

strong governance in the church and you wanted to be there and you can move into that ministerial that pastoral situation there's no parsonage and you got a hundred thousand dollars in a mutual fund for a house then you would go buy a house and you wouldn't have to think about it oh i don't know if i can take this great job because it doesn't have a bar snitch right right right and so you make sense yeah i want you to be able to make the transfer or be able to retire but at some point in the equation before you die you're going to own a house because it stabilizes your older years. Now, and that all makes perfect sense. Now, with the income that I have in the low 40s, if I'm stocking away 15%, that's about, you know, about $6,000 a year or so

for retirement. Is there a good recommended percentage that I should look at by the end of the year to say this is my house fund? No. No. It's whatever you want to. Obviously, the bigger the house fund, the better the situation. But obviously, the bigger the house fund, the less is left over for you to eat out of $40,000. Right, right. So it's a straight tradeoff.

Yeah. out of 40k right right so it's a straight it's a straight trade-off yeah if you if you match if you match the retirement you put 6 000 away for house and you'd have 60 000 plus all the growth you probably have 200 000 in 10 years if you matched it um in good mutual funds and so but i don't know if you can do that or not and still have a reasonable life that's 12 000 out of your 40 and you've got taxes coming out but you don't have any housing expense, and you don't have any utility expense. So, you know, that gives you, that's pretty much like having a $60,000 job. So, you know, I think you could probably do that, but I'd want to be trying to do that if you can make your budget work at that. But obviously, it's kind of the equation is the more you put in the more you're going to have yeah and i think there's it's good to differentiate

between long-term renting and long-term free house right those are two different things i would never tell you long-term rent right i tell you short-term rent sure till you don't have to right uh but until you're not broke because broke people don't need to buy houses but but free house we'll sit there in the free house that's right i mean you sit there for 30 years and free house and pile up money and so then when it's over and you retire you go buy a house that's right but i have i've counseled with way too many pastors and ministers i've got nothing who got trapped in two things and the two things knocked them out was they have unbelievably wonderful hearts, and their generosity to people who come across their path is bonkers good. And the second thing is they've been sitting in the parsonage in some cases,

and they've done nothing about housing. So between their generosity and nothing about housing, then they lose the parsonage upon retirement. They're really up a creek. That's exactly right. And it leaves them, like, basically they got some retirement savings but they're also broke right and that's nowhere to live yeah yeah and it's a problem it's just a real problem so just be careful hey i want to take a second congratulations man your book crushed got it man your book the team did a great trifecta yeah but you wrote a

great book man it was uh it's congratulations yeah i'm i'm proud of it i'm proud of our team the marketing i thank you if you didn't know baby steps millionaires was number one on all the lists all last week everything so there were some juggernauts out there too man like you came in on top that's there's some big there's some real authors. We beat some real authors. No, I'm just saying there's some big guys that if I had been planning it, I would have said, let's not do it on that weekend. Man, you came in. Yeah, honestly, Glenn Beck's a friend of mine,

and I would not have launched a book the same week he did. Yeah. And we did, accidentally. And if he and I had both known it, we would have scheduled a round. But we just didn't compare notes on that. Because neither one of us wanted to bump heads with the other one. I think every human on the planet now has bought a copy of Atomic Habits and that book.

You came across all of them, man. It's just really, really wonderful. And James is a friend. I love James. This is incredible. Atomic Habits is a great book. The top three right now, one, two, three, I don't know if James knows Glenn or not, but I bet he does. I don't know. I would be shocked if he doesn't.

Congratulations, man. That's big time. Good guys. Good guys. And Donald Miller had a book come out last week. Yeah, Donald's a great author, too. So a lot of great stuff happening. And I didn't know his was coming out. And I know him good. Whatever.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is The Ramsey Show. here. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, James and Kathleen are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Doing great, thanks. Welcome. Where do you guys live?

We're from Houston, Texas. H-Town. Welcome, welcome. H-Town, yes. Good to have you. Welcome. And how much debt, yes. Good to have you. Welcome. And how much debt have you guys paid off? We have paid off $133,000 in 44 months.

In 44 months? Yes, sir. Very good. Where in Houston? South Ellington area. Good. Cool. And your range of income during that 44 months?

It went from $127,000 to $153,000. Cool. What do you all do for a living? I'm in the hotel industry. I'm a marketing manager with an insurance firm. Great. Very good. Cool.

So what kind of debt was your $133,000? It was a mix of credit cards, car loans, personal loans, lawyer fees, and then the bulk of it was my school loans. So you were like normal. Yes. Just normal people. Pretty good mix, yeah. Just walking along here, making $127,000, broke. Yep.

Yep. Okay. So what happened 44 months ago? What was the wake-up call? How'd you get connected to Ramsey? So we were married in 2015. Around that time, you happened to come in with the rest of your uh financial team your daughter and a few others that's a grace church yeah yeah i remember so we attended that

it was just kind of a really big push for us and then harvey hit in 2017 yep and when we realized hey insurance is gonna not gonna cover it, savings is not going to cover it, it was a really big wake-up call for us to say we need to wipe the slate clean and make a new future for our family. Wow. Okay, cool. So you kind of knew about the stuff, but the hurricane and the aftermath of that was the wake-up call where you said, okay, we've got to get serious. Yeah, we had to hit ground zero, of course.

Okay, all right. But yeah, once we realized we had to take a personal loan out just to help cover what insurance cut in and the depleting of the savings, I don't think we ever wanted to feel that way again. Right, right. It took you right down to the edge. Yes, sir. Yeah, and so what got torn up that insurance didn't cover? Just in general, it was some electrical.

It's also the package. You know, I think you have certain insurance packages in terms of flood insurance that you go in with. Oh, no flood insurance. You got flooded. We had flood insurance. Just, again, I think some of the expenses were a little bit higher than we had expected. Right. So that's what was different.

That's a horrible thing to go through. And to add financial problems on top of it makes it double bad and then finding out we're pregnant six weeks later of course you did yeah why not yeah wow very so so y'all make a great salary and when you're digging out of a hole like this over several years your friends look at you like you're crazy yeah how how is that y'all are too young good looking folks y'all are hitting it in houston having fun and you got to say no to ball games you got to say no to concerts man walk us through that how is that it's tough uh it really is you know you get a lot of the family even aside from the friends they just they don't get it they

say well you you know you've got the extra cash you have to have the extra cash and you know or just put it on a card and you know we we really had to put our foot down and say no tear up the cards cut them up just keep paying on them paying on them you know we'll we'll do the movie night at home you know yeah it's hard when family reaches out and says, hey, can you help? We know you're doing well. Can you help us out with some money?

We need some help or, you know, cousins, so and so. That's hard, right? Yeah. Very. Yeah. I will tell you, we love to travel. And we traveled on somebody else's, you know, credit card every time.

And that was the hardest part for us is four years without, or that 44 months without the traveling. So this is our first, you know, trip since before we took the chance. So Nashville is an awesome place. Welcome to Nashville. I love it. Thank you. So for folks listening who can't put their head,

like I can't tell my friends no, what does it feel like to get those checks deposited and you have no other bills? And they're just sitting there looking at you. It's beautiful. It's got to be bananas, right? It is surreal because you're so used to paying on something. And now we're on baby step three and just putting that in the bank account.

It feels very freeing. There's a little bit of liberation in our marriage where we just don't have to worry about anything. If there's an emergency that comes up, we just pay it. And it's not even a conversation anymore. You get to keep your own money. That's so cool. What an amazing idea. Yes.

We even had a vehicle mishap a couple of weeks ago, and it was one of those situations where we look at each other and go, well, the emergency fund is there and you know we'd like to see you pay it and and you move on you just keep keep trucking turns a crisis into an inconvenience yeah you guys are fun way to go guys thank you awesome who were your biggest uh who were your biggest cheerleaders outside the two of you you know it was really a couple's we had to be each other's, I'd say cheerleaders and accountability partners

because it was very difficult for our family and friends to understand. They were amazing cheerleaders. It was like cheering on for a team you didn't know what they were doing. But I think in terms of understanding, we were an FPU at Grace Church and our church

members really understood okay yes please keep going keep going um but uh it was each other that really kind of put each other through the ringer in terms of you know who's the spender who's the saver how do we control that and um how do we push and and complete this goal and so that really helped out did both of you grow up in homes that were not debt-free? Yes. Oh, yeah. We did not understand the concept of money in my home. So I see those two beautiful little ones over here.

What's it like knowing if they're going to grow up in a home that didn't go through what y'all went through? I mean, y'all put it in the work for a couple of years and their whole life's going to be different because of that. Yeah. I want to say that. It's great. Yeah. Isaiah, after a while, was like, Mom, we don't have to go out to eat.

We can eat at home. Or he really understood very quickly what it is to keep money in the bank, not be debt-free. And we're constantly talking about money at the dinner table, which we think is healthy. I mean, we need to talk about money more regularly and understand what what um what it means yeah um but i'm so proud of y'all man way to go you guys way to go touchdown well done well

done how's it feel now that you're free well it feels great i mean like she said this is honestly our first family vacation in four years yeah you know aside from maybe an overnight stay was it worth a couple hours away oh yeah yes yeah very much worth it because it's you know it's it's out of pocket it's cash and you know we go back to work get another paycheck and just keep trucking you know we don't have to worry about you know when the bill shows up, oh, that was that Nashville trip or anything else like that. Christmases are kind of a little bit more fun.

Best vacation that there is. One doesn't follow you home. Right. Right. I mean, that's just awesome. Way to go, you guys. We've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. As we were just discussing, number one bestseller, and that's the next chapter in your story,

to go on and become millionaires. Yes, sir. Something else maybe your bunch hadn't done before. Not manyes have i'll just tell you that it's a special thing you guys are incredible and copy a total money makeover for you to give to someone disturb their life it'd be a good thing for them to be a little bit disturbed so good stuff very very cool congratulations all right let's bring the kiddos in what are their names and ages right quick uh isaiah he's 12, and Veronica Jane is 3. All right.

There we go. Veronica Jane. Has she got this figured out? Yes, sir. I love it. She's practicing. I love it. All right.

$133,000 paid off in 44 months, making $127,000 to $153,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We a debt-free scream. 3, 2, 1. We're debt-free! Hey, Veronica, Janie had that down. Not bad at three. Well done. Dialed in. The family tree has been changed.

I love it. That's what happens, man. That pretty little girl, she has no idea what her mom and dad have done. Oh, man. It's powerful. Isaiah does. He knows. He's old enough. He got to see the ark and feel it, and now his language has changed.

His thoughts have changed. Man. Yeah. So, Rachel was about that age. Yep. You know, when we did that. And it's just, you look now where she is and where her kids are yeah you really did change your family tree it's powerful this is the ramsey show We'll be right back. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, co-hosting today.

He's host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, and you ought to tune into it on Ramsey Network's podcast. It is exploding in popularity, and you get to ask questions about relationships and all kinds of mental health things, and you can today as well. If you want to jump in, the phone number is 888-825-5225. John's in Kansas City. Hey, John, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you taking the call. Sure.

How can I help? My wife and I pastor a small church, and we've been FPU coordinators and have trained other people in that. Thank you. As a matter of fact, I'm not saying this for accolades, but every time we marry someone, we give them a copy of the Total Money Makeover and write a note in there to follow the biblical principles that are in this book. And many of them have gotten debt-free. My issue today is I'm 66. I don't have much money saved for retirement.

We don't make a lot of money. Like I said, we pastor a small church. There's been times we've had to skip taking a paycheck, that kind of thing. My wife does work outside of the home, and we're both receiving Social Security now. So it supplements our income. But I don't have a lot of money saved. I'm just concerned about, you know, we're going to have enough money to live on when it's all said and done. We're debt-free except for our house. we don't know a lot of money on that what do you owe on the house oh 85 000 on

the house it's worth 600 and how much nest egg have you got uh about 30 35 thousand dollars yes okay all right and what's your household income these days? We're about $70,000, including everything. Okay. And are both of you planning to stay in the same work situation for the next few years? Yes. Yeah. I plan to stay here.

You know, it's not a career choice with me. It's actually a calling. I appreciate that. Otherwise, I might have looked for something that had a better pay package, but it's really not about that. It's about ministering to people. Absolutely. This is just where I'm at.

You have a great heart. What I would tell you is I've got two goals for you in five years. Perfect. I'm ready for you get the house paid off and put a hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds okay still not gonna be still not gonna be enough but you'll be 71 and you'd have a hundred and uh 170 approaching two hundred thousand dollars in there with the growth of the $35,000 if it's in mutual funds. And so you'd be approaching $200,000 in a paid-for $600,000 house. If you can't make it, at least we know you can sell the house and move to a $400,000 house. Well, absolutely. Yeah, we've considered that.

I wouldn't do it today, but that's your fallback plan. But if you could get the house paid off and put $200,000 away, I think you could make it. Well, we're fast-tracking the house. We're paying an additional $1,800 a month against the principal, and it looks to pay out in two and a half years. That's perfect. Meanwhile, you've got to do more than that in addition into retirement because I need you to get $105,000. That's $20,000.

That's another $1,500. That's another $1,800 a month. Okay, so I need to be putting another $1,800 away into the income fund. I just made that number up, Pastor. I mean, I just made it up. It's not a trick number. I just was looking at a $70,000 income, and I thought, how much can i can

we squeeze out of this turnip okay okay and i'm thinking there's no magic to i mean if i could have you have do have a million when you retire to do it but i don't see that in the numbers i'm trying to do something where you can eat and still pull this off and get some margin between you and the wolf okay okay and so that's reasonable yeah so that's if you saved 18 if you saved 1800 that'd be 20 000 you did that for five years that'd be 100 000 plus it will grow some during that plus your 35 will grow some during that so that'll bump you pretty close to 200 okay in your mutual funds and then you'd have paid for a six hundred thousand dollar house you're almost a millionaire at that point wow i never thought about it like that yeah awesome well that's a five that's five more years of working like you're working now her too okay perfect well i just need to get a

hold of one of your elps and help me with the raw thing i don't understand all of that so jump on smart vestor smart vestor at RamseySolutions.com, and thank you for your heart and your service. We were just talking about that a minute ago with parsnages, and it was a little different subject. Gentle, big heart, call of God on his life without a doubt. And he's staring down the barrel of retirement. He's got $30,000 in the bank.

Luckily, he's got a house. He's got a great house. He's got to do something about it. And good news is he can do something about it still um it's not gonna be fancy but he can do something about it so the house may end up being the answer before it's over but hopefully not hopefully we can work it through without selling it if they don't want to sell it but he even held that with an open hand you hear that yeah he's got spiritual maturity he's amazing beautiful man beautiful man Love it. Cynthia is with us.

Cynthia is in Des Moines, Iowa. Hi, Cynthia. How are you? Hi, Dave. Doing great. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I just have a quick question. So I am hoping to get on to Baby Step 4 really soon.

So my question is around Baby Step 4. I'm wanting to contribute about 15% to my 401k. Great. Hoping like this next paycheck or possibly in February. But I'm noticing that the market is well within the toilet. So should I really contribute at this time or should I skip it and move on to like something else? When I was a little kid, my mama would take us to a store called Kmart. Yep. And Kmart would, in the would take us to a store called Kmart. Yep.

And Kmart would, in the middle of the day, run these little sales. They called them Blue Light Special. Blue Light Special. They would turn on a blue light over the top of the whatever area, and you could go over there and get you a coffee pot on sale or whatever. That's what we're having right now, darling. This is called a Blue Light Special. You need to buy while it's on sale.

Buy while it's on sale. Okay. So buy at the dip. Okay. So you know why? How old are you? I'm 40-ish. Okay.

40-ish. Own it. Own it. I'm 61. I'm proud of it. So there you go. So here's the thing. In 20 years, where do you think an average of companies that sound like this,

Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Boeing, Microsoft, Home Depot, on average as a group, now there will be some one or two that fail, but on average as a group, an aggregate of that group, 20 years from now, are they going to be worth more or less? Ideally more. Well, not only ideally, that's what has always happened in history 100% of the time so far in the American stock market's history. Now, obviously, the world can fall apart, and we can just blow this whole thing up called America.

But if anything stays similar to what it is, 20 years from today, it's going to be up, and you will be glad that you bought in the cold winter of 2022 when the market was freezing to death and down because of whatever was going on out there. I haven't even seen. How far down is it? I haven't even looked. I dropped 500 points in one day the other day, but it's back and forth. It's out of 30,000.

500 points used to be a lot. It's not anymore. But, yeah, it's Ukraine and Biden mumbling, and nobody's got any idea that he's going to do anything, and so the market's just unstable. Geopolitical crap always destabilizes the market. It always has. I mean, this little thing happens on the other side of the world,

and boom, all of a sudden. Because people just have this little black cloud following them around on Wall Street. Just waiting for the next bad thing. Waiting on the next bad thing, and then they're psychological as it can be but uh um bitcoins in half oh god who knew who knew that was going to happen and so anybody with investing wisdom of more than eight to ten years yeah yeah that's true but um yeah fairly fairly easy predictor they're fairly you know easy predictor and this is just a you know it is a geopolitical driven. It's not economic driven, and it's not profits.

The profits of the companies involved have not changed. So are they suddenly worth less? Right. No, they're still worth what they were worth. It's just they're scared they might be down in the future because of war with Russia or China or destabilization of the political environment, all that kind of crap. So do I think all that's going to happen? Nope.

I think there's going to be problems, and there's going to be times when there's not problems, and the market's going to go up and the market's going to go down. And the only people who get hurt on a roller coaster are those that jump off in the middle of the ride. Dr. John Deloney, good hour. Good hour to Ben Kelly and James in the booth. I am Dave Ramsey, your host.

We'll be back with you before you know it. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit theramseyshow.com and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.