The Ramsey Show - App - Our 21-Year-Old Daughter Needs Guidance (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

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Live Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, 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, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, and host of the ever-popular Dr. John Deloney podcast. He is my co-host today as we talk about your life and your money.

It's a free call, and some say the advice is worth what you pay for it. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Mike is with us in Columbia, Missouri, to start this hour. Hey, Mike, what's up? Hey, Dave. First off, I want to say I've listened to your show for a while, and it's changed my life, so thank you for that.

Thank you. I'm honored. Yeah, kind of facing a decision now. I'm kind of looking to make a change in my career and I'm looking at two jobs. Both of them are paying a little better than I'm making now. But the one kind of on the lower side, it has a better location it has just a lot of intangibles that are great about the job as far as a good boss big part owner in the company but on the other hand I have another high paying job

that the location is kind of up in the air it's a bigger company and there's probably more room for advancement I was just wanting to see kind of what you thought about that as far as... What does each one pay? The lower-paying job pays about $80,000, and the higher-paying job, I could probably, within two or three years, probably make double that. Okay.

Doing what in each case? They're sort of in the sales industry. So you're a sales guy? Yeah, sales and consulting. Yeah, okay. So the intangibles must be pretty stinking high for you to be willing to take half pay. Yeah. Like I said, it's kind of my dream location. The boss a really successful guy and i think yeah but you're not gonna be

i don't really care about his success i'm worried about yours yeah unless you're 23 and you're going to put in two years and learn from an extraordinary mentor is going to carry along the way and you're going to have somewhere to go yeah how old are you yeah i'm 24 okay all right so is that your idea you're thinking you can kind of write you can learn from this guy because he's a he's a butt kicker um i think that's part of it and then yeah the location is i want to live there. It's more exciting. There's something else here. What's the thing you're not saying?

Are you looking for permission to not take this job that you don't really want because it's going to pay a lot? I don't know, I guess. What's the location of the underpaid one that's so appealing? So I would be in training kind of around the Columbia area, and then it's up in the air where I would go. It's been thrown out Georgia. That's the 80,000?

No, that's the higher paying job. Okay, what about the one that's got the great location? Where's the great location, Columbia? No, it's the higher paying job. Okay, what about the one that's got the great location? Where's the great location? Columbia? No, it's in the Pacific Northwest. Like where? Like Seattle area. Okay, so you want to move to Seattle.

That's appealing to you. In that area. That's appealing to you. Yes. Why? Like the outdoors and you know it's nice to be able to kind of go in your backyard and it's all there you can go fishing after work and different things which i know you can do in georgia that's just not the same it sounds like you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself to

make a forever decision you're 24 years old man and if you were telling me that hey i've got the opportunity to work for dave ramsey for two years learn the ins and outs of this thing and he's going to take me along on the ride and then i'm going to have skill set uh i'm going to get a ringside seat to a world-class leader and then i'm going to have him on my um as a reference the rest of my life yeah dude i'll i'm gonna be real rude for a second make the money i'm gonna be rude for a second okay if you're coming to work for me and you want to move to franklin tennessee and the reason you want to come to work for me is because you can go fishing i don't think I want you. Well, I also like, I mean, it's in my industry, and it would be like more responsibility,

and it would be more, I would just have the freedom to do a lot more in the company and, you know, help the company make money. You grew up in Columbia, didn't you? Yeah, I've moved all over the country doing different things. I worked for a large contractor. Oh, so you've already started. Okay.

All right. Okay, here's the only way I know to help you answer the question because I'm just confused about this call. Yeah, me too. A good way to do this is to john was on to something there it's not forever but do ask yourself the question what do you want to be doing when you're 34 10 years from today and where do you want to be doing it and what kind of money do you want to be making and what kind of a career field do you want to be in and all those kinds of things and once you identify that ask yourself the question which

of these takes you there and the love of the great outdoors i'm sorry that's way down the freaking list of the discussion on this because if you make 160 versus 180 you can buy an airline ticket well especially for if you're a salesman for the amount of time you're going to be able to get out and go fishing what i'm telling you if you're my friend if you're my son i'm telling you at 24 years of age you are starting to grind brother go make your money go to a place you're gonna have a lot of influence we're gonna learn a lot and georgia's a beautiful wonderful place to live and as said, man, go spend a few weeks in the great Northwest. But, man, get that stuff under your belt, and then you have a lot more options when you're 34 and 44 and 54.

Yeah, but which of these decisions takes you to where you want to be 10 years from now? And that will get you off the short term of, ooh, I don't want to live here, ooh, ooh, ooh, and this guy's a nice guy oh oh none of that takes you where you want to be 10 years from now and so the the the decision making variables in this are disturbing and i can't put my finger on exactly why i'm gonna guess if we were to sit down and have some coffee with this person there's a romantic interest at one of these places that has a or a mom and dad interest at one of these places well that's why i ask if he grew up in columbia it's not like he's trying to get out of there ah gotcha get out of the south yeah i gotta get away

yeah you know i'm getting away from crazy family or something i don't know i don't know what's going on i can't put my finger up but good luck with it dude look out 10 years and ask yourself which of these is going to take you there and hopefully that'll help you answer the question better than these two goofballs did. And she'll go with you, trust me. Yeah, she'll come find you if she's worth it, or you'll go back and buy an airline ticket or whatever, however that works. I think we overthink stuff, Dave.

You're 24 years old. It's getting right to you in the mouth, man. Listen, yeah, you don't, you know, where are you going to college? So-and-so, why? My girlfriend's going there. Bad plan. Warning. Warning.

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Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is our co-host today. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com, the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSY to get the best possible deal. All right, today's question comes from Jennifer in Alabama. Jennifer writes, our daughter has been struggling with college for a couple of years.

She's seeing a therapist for anxiety and depression. She recently decided to drop out of school and work full time. She refuses to move back home and wants to keep the car we provided her for school. We told her to come home, figure out her next steps, and give the car back, or she can finish school and keep the car. She sees this as a punishment and thinks we are unsupportive villains. Any advice on how to keep a 21 year old who seems to have already already made up their mind dave you're a dad who's had a couple of three or four 21 year olds i've got some

man this one gets under my skin a little bit so you go first. I don't think, Jennifer, that you're involved enough in her situation emotionally to meet out this boundary. It sounds like you don't believe that she has anxiety and depression and she's just screwing around. And so you're going to punish her for screwing around. That's the way this sounds to me. So if you're acting on that, then that's okay. If she really has anxiety and depression and you really believe she does, then you're completely out of line. Give her the car. Help her.

She's trying to find her way through a real tough mental situation and you know but i i think you guys are pretty detached from her emotionally is what it feels like yeah the note i wrote is this is a relationship issue right now um and you're trying to flex on a 21 year old who's struggling and sometimes for a college student with obviously with high expectations and high family support to say i'm gonna take a break that's a hard brave move it's not always the best and sometimes people are into drugs and crazy but sometimes it's a hard brave move and this looks like oh well then you can just fill in the blank and you know what as a parent you can do that that's your car you can do that and i've seen your question was how to help her that's right the question was

not what should i should i take her car away the question was how do i help her that's right and if this is my kid i'm going to get on the next bus or get in my car and we're going to go have a meal together and say i'm something here tells me this is a long time coming and um there's a there's a deeply fractured relationship it's just hard to hit somebody in the back of the head unless you've got your arm around their shoulder. You know? And it feels like that you're trying to punch from over here and not from your arm around the shoulder.

Yeah. And when somebody's struggling and they say, hey, I need to take a step back, and your first response is, then you need to do what I say, that's hard. That's hard. And at the same time i want to be clear this is your car come get it but it may cost you your daughter yeah

your question was not what your rights are your question was how can i um help guide a 21 year old who's already made up their mind right um i, you know, I'm going to do a – I'm reading a lot between the lines. It's hard to know in this situation. But I'm reading a lot between the lines that your emotional connectivity and relationship with her is not deep enough to make – she's not listening to you. And that tells me you don't have enough connectivity for her.

You're not persuading anymore. You're just hitting with a bat. You're not even a safe enough place to come home when she's falling apart, right? She's got to go find somewhere else. We talk a lot about boomerang kids who can't wait to run back to mom and dad, and there's a whole industry about teaching mom and dad how to draw boundaries, but kids think that mom and dad are safe in that situation. Your kid's struggling, and you are not a place that she can even be around

now she wants to keep your car fair enough you're not a place that she can go and that's where the car the car doesn't matter no that's what i think um the advice on how to help guide her is spend more time with her right and this looks like help guide sounds listen. And listen more and talk less. How do I flex more? Yeah. How do I listen more and talk less and gain the emotional proximity, earn the right to persuade and guide? And that's creating a safe place. And you've lost this right. That's what we're both seeing. She's lost the right to persuade. Yeah.

That's what amounts to. For something, we don't know what. And my guess is this is a long time coming. It could be the kid. Yeah, it could be. It could be the kid. But somehow you lost the right to persuade. So keep the car, don't keep the car.

I don't give a rip about the car. But get your car and go sit down and meet your daughter. If it's not an expensive car, just give it to her. I wouldn't give her any more money until we've got these things repaired. She's a 21-year-old making a 21-year-old grown-up decision. So she can go make her 21-year-old life. I'll go along with that. And I'm not going to support things that I can't speak into.

So if you're going to wall me out for whatever reason, my fault or your fault, then I'm not going to throw money over the wall. That's enabling on steroids. But if you throw the car into the mix and then use that as a leverage to just start to rebuild a higher quality relationship to persuade, that's your only help. I think as a dad of kids, having grown kids is the most difficult version of raising kids. Because you no longer get to tell them what to do. You have to persuade them. And so I have to sit with my son who's getting ready to turn 30 and talk him into stuff like i have to talk you into stuff you know i can't just make you do well i can't as your

boss but then it's the same thing it's a temporary thing so i have to persuade adults in my life to do things that are even for their own good whether they're my kids as adults or other people's kids as adults and so you just cannot you and it was just easier when i said you have to do that because i said so i read a line the other day dave that i'm still processing and when i hear a line like this i'll sit on it for a while but here was the line i want to be the kind of father that when something happens to my child he doesn't think oh crap we can't tell dad we can't let dad find out. I want to be the kind of dad that when something happens to my kid,

he says, oh crap, we better find dad. We better call dad. And not that that means that we're not going to hold people accountable, but I want to be, the sentiment behind this is I want to be a safe enough place that my kid trusts me

that when things get sideways, I'm going to walk alongside him. And I haven't wrapped my head around that yet. Dad may kill me, but he'll help me first. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's the dad I want to be.

I do want the threat of death over them. He'll do it quick and painless, right? This one's going to be slow and miserable, right? Yeah. Yeah. But there's something about building that safety as a parent that I'm going to hold you accountable, but you're never, ever going to doubt that I love you. Yeah. And that's a hard balance right yeah that's exactly right it's a

and i think it's even harder the older they get yeah when they're three you know you just make them do stuff is it okay so let me ask you this dave is it hard because you have a desired future for them or is it hard because because i like people doing what i tell them to do yeah you're letting the control go right that seems to be the hard part yeah i mean we all do oh it's like i told you you know listen if you turn left there you're gonna you're not gonna get the where you're going you need to turn right yeah it's and then i have to then when they go around the block six times i told you you know it's like you keep driving a car like that you're gonna wreck it you know you keep driving your life like that, you're going to wreck it. You know, you keep driving your life like that, you're going to wreck it. And sure enough, they do, you know. But you can't.

And the only way we learn stuff is by wrecking the car. It's so frustrating. Yeah, no, it's not the only way. You can watch other people wreck the car. I know. You can listen to your old man who wrecked a bunch of cars and knows better. You know, you don't have to go broke to learn to not do what I did to go broke. You can do better.

And thank goodness. Oh, my goodness. Parenting. A little too much authenticity here on this segment of the show. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Anna's in New York City. Hi, Anna.

How are you? Hi, I'm doing well. Thank you, Dave. Good. So my question is that I'm a public school teacher in New York City, and we're offered something called a TDA, a tax-deferred annuity. Should I contribute to this teacher retirement fund even though it generates only a six seven percent simple interest yeah no okay simple interest is

fine that's standard compounding interest but uh so you can do better than seven percent and you can do better than a teacher's annuity if you have have the option, it's not mandatory, right? No, no, it's not mandatory. Yeah, you need to step outside of that and do Roth IRAs. Are you married? Yes. Okay, do a Roth IRA for you, Roth IRA for your husband. Is your husband working and does he have a 401k available? Yes, he does. Okay, let's get our baby step four. We call it 15% of your income going into retirement. Between those three things, his 401k and two Roths, because you can get it into good growth stock mutual funds and make at least 50% more on it than you would make there.

Oh, absolutely. And it's just got a lot more flexibility the uh the problem with most teacher retirement packages are that it's uh government affiliated obviously and what happened was the insurance people got very involved in the early days in the 403b systems 403bs you see them in non-profits and hospitals and in uh with teachers and government right and so uh and when the insurance people got involved they put in annuities which don't which like you found don't don't have a good rate of return and or are stacked high in fees and so it's a substandard uh product compared to what your husband has, over as a 401k at his work. I did not know that.

So that means if the insurance is involved and it's only getting a 6% rate. Not necessarily. But I mean, the insurance company, an annuity is an insurance product. Right. Okay. It's a savings account with an insurance company, and it's just stacked high in fees. She's in a fixed annuity which is a horrible product and uh then you can also get into a variable annuity which has a series of growth stock

mutual funds in it so it starts to look pretty similar then if you can select however you're just going to run into much higher fees and so you can just i mean 99 times out of 100 95 times out of 100 if i'm finding if I'm working with a teacher, they're better off doing it somewhere than at the school system. There's just very few of them are high-quality retirement plans, like you'll find in corporate America, or like you can get on your own with a Roth IRA with a SmartVestor Pro, that kind of thing.

Suzanne's in Syracuse, New York. Hey, Suzanne, how are you? I'm very good, thank you. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's up? I recently, well, I recently,? I'm very good, thank you. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's up? I recently, well, I recently, I've been, I got remarried about a year and a half ago, and so we sold my house, and I live in, we live in his house. I cleared $132,000 on the house, and I wanted to know what I should actually do with that money. Okay. Remarried, so you went through a divorce?

Oh, yeah, like 30 years ago. Oh, a long time ago. Okay, good. Oh, it's been like 22 years I was divorced, yeah. Okay, all right. And are you all combining your finances? No, we keep our finances separate. Okay. My husband does not have good credit.

Okay, all right. No, we keep our finances separate. Okay. My husband does not have good credit. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. And how old are you two? I'm 58 and he's 65. Okay. All right. I think it's fine for you to do, you don't have any debt, I take it?

Just the house. Okay. His house. His house, yes. Yeah. So if you're not going to combine your finances, then this money is invested in your name for you in mutual funds. I'm going to challenge that over time. It's a brand-new marriage.

I don't have to challenge it today. You've lived your lives as single individuals for a long time, so emotionally the collision of your emotions to combine your finances just opens up a lot of stuff inside your brain, I'm sure. But I do want to tell you that very few people succeed financially when they don't combine their finances. But you don't have to do it today, but I want you to, over time, soften on this and be willing to reach over and pay off his house, our house,

because it needs to become our house because it needs to stay in the will. You keep it if he dies, not his kids. Yes, and I already contribute. I pay part of the mortgage every month. Well, that's just like having a roommate, see? And so there's a spiritual advantage, a financial advantage, a relational advantage to long-term beginning to, you know, for this not to be his house, it's our house because you're in the will, and there's a spiritual advantage for you guys to be operating together. What's the hesitancy?

He has very big credit. People would take the the money creditors will come and take the money was he he got he's got judgments against him um yes how many i don't know and he has terrible credit so we would never credit those people don't take money because of bad credit they take money because of lawsuits on defaulted debts. Well, then he has defaulted debts. How many? And you need to know. Yeah, how much?

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, you need to figure that number out because it's this. It's like he has cancer, but I don't know how bad it is. Yeah, it's this looming shadow of your relationship. And so what's going to happen or what is happening is y'all are coming up with alternative ways to go out to eat, to use Dave's cancer analogy. But you don't even know what the problem is or how bad it is. Right. And so what happens is you start taking a little bit of a step here

and a little bit of a step to the left and to the left, and all of a sudden you wake up and you're a mile apart from each other. And you didn't mean to. You didn't do it on purpose. You love each other, but you are not on separate same roads, and you don't even know what the cancer is. I'd pull a credit report. So there's two things.

On the practical level, I would get a full list of everything, and you all start working a plan. You don't have to put your money towards it today, but you need to start working a plan and know what the flip's going on in his life. He's your husband, and it goes with the territory. He's not your roommate. And you cannot, you can't, it's not, this is not a healthy relationship the way you're going into it.

It's what John's saying. Now, the second part of this is when you say he's got bad credit, three times you've said that, I also think I heard you saying, I think he's irresponsible. That's right. He's never been very good with money, so he's never saved money. He has no retirement. Do you think he's irresponsible?

He pays his bills when he can. Do you think he's irresponsible? I think he was in the past, yes. Okay. If he's responsible now, he's a guy that has a mess left over from the time when he was irresponsible, and it's a good thing he's got you in his life and the two of you can work together to clean up his mess from his former irresponsibility. But if you can't trust him going forward because he's irresponsible, we've got a whole other barrel of fishhooks here. Right.

Because it sounds like he's not quite being honest about what he owes or a situation. He's got a lot of shame about it. And it sounds like you're not being honest about how much you kind of have to hedge your bets against him because he's not trustworthy. And that is a recipe for this thing to end up in ash that's why i asked you how long you've been divorced and because if it had been five years and the guy before was uh horrible with money and irresponsible it's easy to transfer the former uh the former husband ex-husband's crap onto the new husband and uh whether it be

right or not and so uh yeah i think you guys need to work on you having a belief that he's going to be a good responsible wise man going forward and then based on that we're going to work through cleaning up his mess together and uh even down to the end of the story being that yeah you're 132 000 eventually rolls up into this and pays off that house but you're the house is in your name. I mean, you're in the will, and the house has your name on it as well if you're going to pay it off. You're going to combine your lives and your finances, and we're going to work together in a way that is responsible and wise.

Y'all have got secrets in your home, and you can't build a new marriage on secrets. You can't sustain an old marriage on secrets. Y'all got to sit down and have a truth-telling session with each other relatively soon. Thank you. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. John is with us in Pennsylvania. Hi, John. How are you? I'm doing well, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. Sure. What's up?

So I think I'm in baby step three, but I'm not sure. I paid off all our debt and recently finished paying off the car. We're debt-free, except my oldest son, I've co-signed some of his college loans. So I'm not sure. Should I put them into my debt snowball and start paying them off or just step in if he starts having trouble paying them? Is he paying them? Well, he just graduated in May, and he's still looking for a job.

Okay, so he's got six months before he has to start paying. Yeah. How much is owed on these loans? Altogether, it's right about $30,000. How much debt have you paid off so far um well i really haven't paid off anything there's a couple different loans oh i thought you were on then you say you paid off some debt oh my my debt yes sir sorry um uh gosh uh Oh, gosh, probably close to $96,000. Wow.

Yeah, $96,000. What do you make? Household income? Household income is about $79,000. Okay. Well, you've done very, very well. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is what accountants call a contingent liability,

meaning that you are liable if he doesn't pay. That's what cosigning sets you up for. So you are technically debt-free. You're technically on Baby Step 3, okay? I would want your Baby Step 3 to be pretty beefy, your emergency fund. So don't do 3 to 6. Go, like, 6 to 8 or so. Yeah, I'm going to probably cheat a little bit up in the eight side

just to kind of offset the fact that you have a kid that has not gotten a job and he's got thirty thousand dollars he's supposed to start paying on and if he doesn't you're about to and if you have to if you have to start paying the payments because he doesn't then i'm just going to treat it like my debt i'm going to stop everything and knock it out yeah he's got a computer science degree, and he did very well in school, so we're pretty confident he's going to get a decent paying job. Me too. But I'm just, you know, at the moment.

For today, I would just set aside extra, but at the six-month mark, if he doesn't start paying this on time and they start bothering you, just roll up your sleeves and knock it out. Okay. And, John, if you haven't already, already take him to lunch because he is going to get a good job and make sure he knows to not go buy a car in a fancy apartment put him into financial peace university knock this thing yeah well so we found out about you about two years ago um before you know uh he went off to the college he went to. And so it's a little bit of a moral issue for me because my youngest son,

he's sort of getting a free ride because I work at a college. Yeah. So we're getting like a tremendous discount for him. Why didn't the other one go there? They didn't have the degree he wanted at my school so okay well i mean i don't i don't see it as a moral issue listen i fair is something that happens at the county yeah that's a great line dave good one dave you know so i mean it's just it is what it is if you've got a child that has, that is in a, you know, a different situation, then it's a different situation.

And so equal is not fair. Fair is not equal. And that's just part of the way life works out. And, you know, my kids did not get the exact same amount. The younger one ended up with possibly more because we had a better start by the time he came along. But it's all worked out for all of them. They're going to be just fine. And you can do something that blesses one of the other ones a little bit later if you want to or something like that,

the one that didn't cost you anything, you know, that kind of thing. But anyway, yeah, you can help if you want to help, but I would be prepared to pay it off immediately as fast as you can if he fails in paying it. That's the way I would position it. Thank you. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Aubrey is in Salt Lake City. Hey, Aubrey, what's up? Hi.

Thank you for taking my call. Sure. I have a question. So my husband and I got married three years ago, and he is graduating at the end of the year with his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. Wow. What's he going to do, teach? He wants to eventually, he's got an emphasis in aerospace. He's been working on research with new aircraft. Very cool. That's fun. But our question is, he's known about you since he started school, so he has no debt for his school.

And our question, our debate at home is, we really want to pay cash for a house, but I personally don't see that as possible without saving for five plus years depending on his income and so we were just kind of wondering when is it where he's 33 and i'm i'm 30 we're wondering when is it time to do the 15 even though we want to pay 100 for a house generally we tell folks three years years that you don't want to lay off of your retirement longer than that. But if you have a goal of paying for a house and you have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and you're in the aerospace world, I'm projecting a pretty dadgum good income here. And so if you're 33 and you have a paid-for house,

you're probably still going to be multi-gazillionaires by the time you get to retirement if you just 33 and you have a paid for house uh you're probably still going to be multi-gazillionaires by the time you get to retirement if you just invest from that point forward so if it takes you five years it doesn't kill me in this situation you see why hello yeah um i just ran a bunch of numbers and and I'm a little bit, I don't know. We have two kids, and I just, maybe it's just my. If you can pay cash for a house, by what age? By, well, five years would be 38. Okay, at 38 years old, and 30 years is 68, of making $200,000 plus a year

and investing substantial amounts because you have absolutely no house payment if you just invest a house payment for 30 years that's 10 million dollars i don't know where you've been running your numbers but what would have been a house payment that you don't have any more conservative with with it just depends on what he wants to do he doesn't want to work at the big places well if he's not going to go earn an income commensurate with what i'm talking about that may change the formula if he's going to make thirty thousand dollars a year because he's taking some half-buck government job or something when he ought to be making 10x that then no that's a i

do change my answer then so yeah you guess you need to talk that through with him but i'm projecting a big income in this household and with no house payment for all those years you'll have no trouble landing this thing yeah but i mean if you want to go i mean i would think even as a professor teaching yeah he'd be making 150 years yeah with depending on how good he is and i i also don't see a challenge with taking out a 10-year mortgage then and yeah working it backwards if you want to if you want to start saving 15 and take out a short mortgage that's fine but i love the idea of paying cash for the house and having to be free your entire life yeah but you have to commit to all sides of the equation which is the income side uh the investment side after the house is purchased,

and the paying cash side. And we're going to be on an intentional detailed budget to where we hit all of these goals. Well, and it's going to be a weighing. So if we want to say for five years or four years, I'm going to take job X, and as a family, we're going to hit the gas, so that for the back 30 years, then take that job, man. Take that job plus another job.

Take that job plus another job. Take that job and adjunct somewhere else and be a professor there and do what you got to do. So you go in and pay cash for a house, and, man, you're done. Yeah, you'll be in great. I mean, if you have a paid-for house when you're 38 and you're making six figures. You've won. If you invest reasonably out of that, you're going to have $10 million. I mean, you really will.

So you should be fine but um you know if you're investing in good growth stock mutual funds stock market rates of return you'll be there you're going to be just fine but if you don't play through on all of that then yeah you just end up with a paid for house and a bad job right and that's that's certainly not what we're recommending definitely not that puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. James Childs is our producer. Kelly Daniel is our

associate producer and phone screener. John, Dr. John Deloney is my co-host today. This is The Ramsey Show. Did you know The Ramsey Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.