The Ramsey Show - App - Our Emergency Fund Won't Cover Our Emergency (Hour 1)

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality. My daughter is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. So 10 days ago, Rachel launched her new book, Know Yourself, Know Your Money. Discover why you handle money the way you do and what to do about it.

Then last Tuesday night, a couple days ago, Rachel and Chrisris hogan and craig groeschel and i did an event a free live stream stream event from craig's church at in oklahoma city at life church and uh we had about a quarter of a million people 240 000 sign up for the live stream and now well over a million folks have viewed that it was completely free oh wow it was that many and we just got the word in on rachel's book uh the bestseller list come out a few days later than after the first week, per week, and that kind of a thing. And Know Yourself, Know Your Money was number two in the nation. Congratulations. Yes.

Another bestseller. Thank you. Thank you so much. Very exciting. Yeah. Really, really exciting. It was a lot of fun. I mean, you guys did a great job.

The marketing team did a great job. And we sold about 30% more books than the number one best-selling book two weeks before. But another book came out, and a different book that came out hot and jumped ahead. So it was a different number one. It was a habit book, The Atomic Habit or something. The Atomic Habit. Which makes sense. You're starting the new year.

You want good habits. I'm like, yeah, that was a habit book. Okay, that was good. You got beat by the habit book. Which I'm i'm like the competitiveness oh man he's so competitive he's like i don't we got we got we did all the work to win the super bowl i don't want to not win it i know and i'm like we anyways tens of thousands of people will be helped with this message and that's what really matters i mean what really matters is you read the book and you know more about yourself and 10 years from now nobody will give a rip whether it was

number one or number two except probably me rachel cruz is good i'm good rachel cruz has another best-selling book this is your fourth bestseller you've had two number ones and this is a number two yeah know yourself number know your money discover why you handle money the way you do and what to do about it and the talk you you did on it at Reset that we talked about on Tuesday night was lights out. It was absolutely amazing. Very well done. So what's the most feedback you're getting? Because now that your baby is out in the world, people will tell you if it's ugly, right?

I know, yes. I mean, what's the parts of it that they like? I don't know. I don't care about the hate mail. I'm not listening to Twitter. I'm just saying, what's the parts of it that they like? I don't know. I don't care about the hate mail. I'm not listening to Twitter. I'm just saying, what's the thing that people are going, this worked? The tendencies people are grabbing onto, because I think it's the first money book to give you verbiage around your tendencies around money. Seven of them?

Yep. So that's big. And then I think how you grew up. I think going back and diving into how your parents handled money. You called it the money classroom. Yes, there's four of them.

The anxious, unaware, unstable, insecure. And so depending on how you grew up, whether money was talked about, whether it wasn't stressful, not stressful, I mean, all of that comes into play to see why you handle money the way you do today

comes a lot from that. So that's an interesting one. And then the fear one, I mean, the fear section has hit home too, because coming out of 2020, there is so much fear around our money, right? I mean, I feel like we're just a society right now that's so on edge. And still that fear and anxiety is still kind of that undercurrent for a lot of people when it comes to their money. And so being able just to speak to that and to show you how do you walk through those money fears, how do you look at it as a gift to say, okay, what am I learning? What is my life telling me because I have this fear? And what can I do to mitigate that and to put things in place to help that fear subside?

So that's been one, too. So kind of the four sections, the money classroom, the fears, and the tendencies. Yeah. The three sections. Yes.'s been one, too. So kind of the four sections, the money, classroom, the fears, and the tendencies. Yeah. The three sections. Yes. And the dreaming as well. I mean, I talk about giving, saving, and spending at the end of the book and why we do all those, but the savings I attach to dreams because if you're not saving, you're probably not

dreaming because you have nothing that you're saving for. If you're dreaming and you're not saving, you are really just a dreamer. Yeah, that's right. Right, right. Instead of it going into goals and all of that that's right yeah so um yeah it's been yeah it's been really fun it's been a fun money book and that's been a crazy week yes i mean you you were on good morning america and then the next day the uh hours hours later yeah i mean you got you barely got that in because you would have got you you wouldn't have made it they would have nixed your interview if it had happened before good morning america would have canned you and gone with the

Washington DC coverage and you've gotten nixed on a bunch of them later on a couple of them yeah but um yeah we used to call used to call that getting oj'd oj was on trial during my first book book tour that's how long ago I did a book tour the first time and uh anytime he'd go the bathroom they would stop all network everything and follow him to the bathroom I remember full I mean because I was little during all of them aging myself or showing my youth but full house would get paused on like TGIF and stuff

remember TGIF back in the day and then Candace Cameron couldn't do anything and full house all that yeah they paused all my shows and I was like dang it OJ but the book's been fun so thanks for thanks for supporting it and pushing it out because it's fun to help people and think through why you handle money the way you do, not just the how-to. Yeah, so proud of you guys. It's been a great run.

And it's been a good week with the Reset event. And you can still probably get that, I think, at DaveRamsey.com. Go over there and look. And the Reset 2021 event, for sure there's a bundle running on Ramsey Plus. And you crashed the servers. Yeah, we did. We broke the internet. And then we came home and fixed it because I don't like breaking the internet. That's not good. So not good at all. But anyway, it's Ramsey Plus. You can go there and get a free trial right

now. And there's a new thing they put in there that's really important because it has to do with managing behaviors. And your book, of course, is all about behaviors. It is this idea that during the first 90 days, there's a day-by-day, week-by-week, step-by-step thing to do. Now, I'm not talking about the baby steps. They're in there, too. We've got a baby steps tracker in there and all that.

But if you're in Ramsey Plus, they're going to hold your hand and say, go do this, then do this, then do this. That's the thing. Get it done. Get it out there. And that's what you do. Which is really important because if you are new to the show or you're just kind of starting the process of thinking, okay, I want to control my money. It can be very overwhelming because you're thinking about insurance and taxes and mortgages and real estate and refinancing and emergency fund and debt. I mean, like there's. Where do you start?

It's just this like huge bubble. So the baby steps for sure give you those big seven steps to do. But to have someone walk you through on a day to day basis. So it really is helpful. It's helpful to have your hand held through, especially beginning stages so you can kind of get your foundation laid. Absolutely. So you can pick up Know Yourself, Know Your Money at RachelCruz.com or DaveRamsey.com or anywhere great books are sold, Amazon, all that. And it's here.

It's official. It's $20. And it is officially a national bestseller. And very, very, very proud of that. Very proud of you. Very well done. Thank you. You guys uh you and

the team have worked very hard on this we put in unbelievable number of hours to get to where we are today and um to pull this off and especially i mean doing a book tour during a covid pandemic is just weird i mean we had to do all kinds of wacky virtual this and we had all that and huh so we had fun with it though you. You did have fun with it. We did a virtual book signing. And it was really fun. We all had champagne, streamers. We had music going.

I don't know who we is. You were in the room by yourself drinking champagne with a camera. The Zoom, all 300 people every night. We all just hung out. It was great. I love it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. If current times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and we have to deal with it. That's why everyone who has a family counting on them needs term life insurance. For over 20 years, the only company I've recommended is Zander Insurance.

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Great rates and a simple process mean there's no excuse to not get this done, people. Casey is in Seattle. Hey, Casey, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. How can Rachel and I help? Hi, Dave and Rachel. It's awesome to get to talk to you guys. You too. I'm an 18-year-old in my first year of college studying mechanical engineering at an instant university. I was offered many scholarships, and the university ended up paying me to attend their school. Love it.

Yay. I don't know if I should start investing myself or just keep my own money saved and what the plan is with that. It's awesome. Awesome, Casey. Way to go. What an incredible job. Yeah, if I were you, Casey,

I would just hold on to that $25,000 and get through college because you never know what can happen, bumps in the road. You want to make sure that you are staying debt-free through this process. And once you graduate college, then what can happen, bumps in the road. You want to make sure that you are staying debt-free through this process. And once you graduate college, then you can say, okay, what do I want to do with this money?

Do I want to use it to help with moving expenses? Because maybe you moved to a new city. Is it for a down payment on a home? Are you going to invest it? Because you're going to rent for a little bit. You can kind of decide what to do with it there. But I would keep it liquid, meaning you can get to it quickly if you need it through college

just to ensure that you're going to get through debt-free. But the fact that they're paying you for college, Casey, I was jealous of those people. I had one friend and she went and got a check every semester

and I was like, oh my gosh, it's so great. It's awesome. Yeah, it's just amazing. Well done. So here's the thing. Obviously, you're going to take

the free money first. We're going to use your dad's 529 second. The last money we're going to use is your money because the 529 has to be used for higher education or gets taxed. Yeah. Your money doesn't. Your money is just sitting there. So I hope that you clear college with all of your money and maybe even some of the 529 money and the rest of

it they pay you and you get scholarships and everything all the way through. You've been very, very bright. Well done. But the 529 can be passed. It can be passed to a sibling. Not generationally. Yeah, your dad can use it for your brother or sister or he can use it for his college or his wife's college.

But her kids, can it go down three generations, two it can i think it can now so casey you might be able which i know you're not thinking about children right now but if you held on to that 529 plan there's a chance that when you have kids you can use that money for them yeah if you don't end up spending any of it yours or the 529 and you get the scholarship paid gig all the way through, you are amazing, number one. But number two, yeah, we'll figure out something. You can figure out something to do with that 529, either siblings or kids or somebody, without having to just cash it out and get hammered on the taxes.

But it is not a bad thing. The investment we're making right now is in Casey. You're a better investment than a mutual fund is. Studying mechanical engineering, I mean, you're going to be amazing. So you're just, wow, what a great story. You get that, and I just want to, like, I want to bottle that in, like, a little mister. And so when someone walks up and says, you have to have a student name that got out of college, I just want to spray it on. Just spray a little Casey on.

Oh, my gosh. Right in her little face. Just right in her little face. Well, and props to her, though. But she did it all because up here. Well, maybe. She's smart and she's getting those scholarships. Even though.

She was wise, but I don't know. We don't know that she's necessarily a savant. I mean, she just was wise and hardworking. No, that's not taking anything away from her but those of you that are not getting full rides to college for academics you can still yes pick a school that you can afford you can still work you can still apply for other scholarships and all that which she did all of yes like the school she could afford in-state tuition just amazing very well done it's almost like she read anthony o'neill's book that free degree joe is in Topeka, Kansas.

Hi, Joe. How are you? Hey, Dave and Rachel. How are you guys? Great. How can we help? Hey, so we ran into an issue as of yesterday. We're on baby steps four, five, and six.

We currently just refinanced our house to a 15-year fixed. Turns out we thought a little leak in our basement, we got inspected. Turns out that the whole basement is actually kind of falling apart on us. It's bowing, it has cracks, and then there's black mold on the other side of the wall. The project's a lot bigger than our emergency fund, and we're kind of in that emotional stage where you're like, I don't want to make an extreme decision. So I thought this would be my first time calling you, and it's a good one, I think.

Yeah, that is a good one. Okay, so what's your household income? We make about $80,000 a year. How much is in the emergency fund? We have $10,000. And what is the bid on the wall? Well, I've got two so far. One's $18,000 and one's $19,000, and I have one more coming this coming week. Okay, cool. All right. Well, the bad news is you've got a messed up situation, and it's real. That mold has to go away, and you don't want this wall to fall in because it's bowing.

It's got hydrostatic pressure. It's got water on the other side of it. I've been in that situation many times with properties that we were rehabbing or owned or bought at foreclosure and then you walk in and go oh crap the basement's about to fall in so um and the bids you gave me don't sound ridiculously uh out of line or anything and they're close to each other which tells you that nobody's in there trying to gig you right so we've got pretty good pretty good contractors on the scene it sounds like. You've got half the money now, and so how fast can you get $9,000 together?

It's not going to fall in tomorrow. Yes, sir. It would probably take a few months, just standard expenses and everything. If you stop your 401K temporarily and you say, the house is on fire, we have a major mess on the hands, and we need to save $4,000 a month for two months. You could do it. Yes, sir. And really, that's what you do.

And so what you do is you schedule your contractor that way. Okay? If this is a two-month job, he can start now. Yes, sir. I have a quick question. We have about $34,000 in equity in our house. Would it be worth using that? Nope.

No? Not going to tell you to borrow money. Awesome. Never have. Not going to start with this, basically. Yeah, no. I didn't know if that counted as our income or not as a savings or anything no it's not savings because you're borrowing money

you're talking about borrowing money on your equity right yeah yes i suppose so yes well it is i mean it's a debt try not paying it they'll foreclose on you so you're going into debt so you're taking a home equity loan or whatever some kind of second mortgage there to do this and absolutely not so if're taking a home equity loan or whatever some kind of second mortgage there to do this and absolutely not so if it's a two-month project which it probably is close to that you can go ahead and start you've got the you've got more than half of the money and you'll have the other half while the project is underway and but the contractor doesn't get all of his money up front and he shouldn't anyway. That's bad business.

Yes, sir. Okay, so whenever you feel like you can stage your cash with the completion, you'll have all the money with the completion of the job, if you need to wait a month to start it, it's probably okay. I mean, it's not, your family wasn't dying of mold yesterday, or the day before yesterday, then yesterday you found all of it so i'm not suggesting you live in mold infested houses for the rest of your life i'm the day ramsay's crazy he's lost his ever loving mind no it's not what i'm saying but i'm saying that you know a roof that is leaking uh you can stop the leak temporarily until you get the money for the

fix and you know there's this stuff is most of these things they're like you said joe said it well it's emotional yeah it's a whole crap i was just getting things rolling in the stupid basement fell in you know and it's emotional it's disgusting well that's the part of money that can be frustrating as you're working a plan and you're going down and checking off these baby steps having to go back to baby step three now pausing and saving back up the emergency fund it takes a toll on you i mean it's not fun it's not fun to go backwards but that's life and that's why it's here yep so you'd rather have 10 grand sitting there in cash that you have to use versus having no money yep so it is but it can be discouraging to go back but it's worth it it's

worth continuing on and saying okay we're back a little bit, but we're going to continue to check forward. I mean, the good news is it wasn't $48,000 and you make $40,000 and you're broke. Yeah, right. But if it's to a point that it's... This is reachable. This is doable. Yes. So for cars, there's kind of that whole thing, okay, I'm driving a beater. When do I upgrade?

When are the repairs too much to go into the car, right? Like that whole discussion. But for a house, that's hard. No, a house, you've got to fix it. You can't sell it. Right, right. Because the buyer can't get a permanent mortgage on it if the basement's falling. Exactly.

So you're fixing this house. Or you're going to give it away. You know, you're going to sell it for 70 cents on the dollar or something because you're going to sell it at a $40,000 discount for an $18,000 repair or something like that. Right, right. That'll happen too. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us, America.

I'm Dave Ramsey. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality. Four-time national bestseller. Boom Boom is my co-host also my daughter a little bit proud today know yourself know your money came in at number two in the national bestseller list this week on its first week out very well done thank you america for your support on this and uh we know you're enjoying the book we see all the posts on instagram and everywhere else and we're glad know yourself know your money is a blessing matt is with us matt's in ames iowa hi matt how are you hi dave i'm good how are you better than i deserve what's up

awesome uh thanks for taking my call i've i've been a listener since i was about big enough to ride with my dad in the combine so i was probably one of your earliest am radio listeners i love it i'm calling today i'm calling today. I'm calling today. I've got a question. I'm a student who's going to be graduating in May. Got a job lined up in the Omaha area, and I'm looking for places to rent. I've got a girlfriend, soon-to-be fiancée. Hopefully she doesn't hear this recording, that she'll also be graduating,

but she won't be graduating until a little bit later in August. And so I know you recommend spending about 25% of your take-home on housing, and so I'm curious whether or not I should take her future income into consideration when I'm looking, even though she won't be moving in probably for four to six months after I start living there. You can make it that long. Yeah, I don't care. I mean, in other words, if it's a larger percentage of your income without her income joining the household, you can make it. The point of the 25%, Matt, is just to not be house poor for the next five years.

You're struggling long because all your money is going to housing, and you don't have any money for a car. You don't have any money for anything else, emergencies or anything else. But for four months in a transitionary period between you moving in and getting engaged and getting married, that's okay for four months. Do you think, Rach? Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say, yeah, after you guys get married, decide to move in,

and then that's when I would factor it in. Like if it's coming up, but yeah, like he's saying, I wouldn't do two years of that necessarily, but a few months here or there during transitions, totally fine. So if you know her income and your income, you could take on 25% of that and it might be 40% of yours

for just a few months, you're kind of holding your breath. As long as it doesn't keep you from paying for the wedding or something like that, cause you to go into debt, that's fine. And for a short period of time.

So you can do the calculation based on the joined income as long as you can float it for that four months without debt. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, this is a long-term equation. You can do a lot of stuff on the short term to survive, but the long-term equation is don't be in a house where you can't breathe because then you'll go into debt for every little thing that comes along.

That's what's going to happen. And Matt, I'll just reiterate this. You said she won't be moving in for a few months because of August, but you guys are not engaged yet. So think about the wedding planning. I would not recommend living together until you're married and so if the wedding is in between those times those four months like if you're about to be engaged you guys are going to plan to get married soon after she graduates yeah i kind of heard four months after he moves in in august is what i heard he thinks you're gonna get married like by christmas that's that's what i

read into it but i might be wrong so you're yeah well i was gonna just say it's okay to have that if there's a wedding in between too remember that remember that, because that's an expense, too. Yeah, that's the big deal. Don't let that sneak up on you. Good point. Mason is with us in Tucson, Arizona. Hi, Mason. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hello, sir. Thanks for having me, Ted. Sure, man. What's up? You're cutting out, brother. You're going to have to speak directly into your phone. We lost you. Can you hear me now? Yes, brother. You're going to speak directly into your phone. We lost you. Can you hear me now?

Yes, sir. Good. Okay, so I'm new to the whole Dave Ramsey saving your money. I thought I knew how to budget. Turned out I didn't. So December 26th, I bought your book, Total Money Makeover. A couple days later, I bought Everyday Millionaire by Chris Hogan. Wow.

And January 6th, 10 days after that, I sold my truck to get rid of $12,000 in debt that I had. Wow. And now, so my student loans are $28,552. My net income is $43,886. Monthly expenses are about $1,800 to $1,900. Mm-hmm. So my question is, I have a wedding,000 in savings right now. Do I put some of the money in savings into the student loan debt, or do I hold on to it for future wedding expenses? I would figure out what my wedding expenses and hold that much back and throw the rest of it towards the student loan. Do you have a wedding budget yet um we do like it so we're paying for a good majority

and then our parents are paying for some too uh pretty much everything is done we we just have to get like you know settled with uh the bartender, the photographer, little stuff like that. Good, good. What's your price of your items, though, Mason, photographer and bartender? So, yeah, just figuring out how much you guys have left to spend. So whatever that amount is, yes, then you can take some of that $10,000, use it for that, keep that $1,000, your baby emergency fund, and then everything else you can throw out the student loan so if you were going to guess what is your part left to pay on

the wedding just off the top of your head off the top of my head probably with bartenders photographers probably around five thousand i'd say okay we'll use that as an example what you what i want you to do is I want you to dig into it and make that number solid because I don't want you to come up short. Okay. Okay. So if it's $5,462, set $5,500 aside. Okay? So just go ahead and dial it in. Get it dialed into the penny like you did on the other stuff.

You've done a really good job. You jumped on this, man. You jumped on it hard. And that gives me a lot of hope for you. Guys, listen, there is nothing like a quick start. A quick start will get you moving. And that's what you've done. I'm proud of you.

So get that dialed in. Set that money aside. Don't touch it. That's the wedding. It's already spent. You just haven't given it to them yet. Okay? Okay.

And you don't have to worry about that. It's over. Then you set $1,000 aside in another account as your little starter baby step one emergency fund and then as rachel said you're just going to take the rest of it and throw it at the student loans and now everything out of your budget boom boom boom we're going to smack the crud out of those student loans between now and marriage and you know what you're going to be well on your way on that by the time you get there because if you throw four or five grand at those things now and then you've got a couple grand a month to throw at them between now and then you're

going to be popping them okay okay you're doing good yeah does your does your fiance have a lot of debt mason when you guys get married she has no debt awesome amazing yeah and then you're going to combine your incomes when you guys get married as well so i mean like you'll yeah so how thrilled is she and her dad that you're doing this uh she's excited she's really excited she i mean she made comments about how you know i was spending too much and stuff like that and i i didn't realize it until yeah i sat down and actually looked at everything where everything was going, and it just opened my mind. So, no, she loves that I'm doing it right now. How old are you two? We're both 25.

Awesome. Very good. Listen, we're going to give you a wedding gift. I want the two of you to be in Ramsey Plus for a year free as our gift, as our wedding gift. And that includes Financial Peace University. It includes every dollar. The premium version includes the Baby Step app. And right now it's got a quick 90-day start,

which is the game plan you are on, baby. You are a quick start dude. And there is no one regrets getting a quick start ever. Oh, the progress automatically. And it's like, oh, it just feels, it's great. That's powerful. Powerful. Well done.

So hold on. Zach will pick up, Mason, and we'll get you signed up for Ramsey Plus for a year, you and the fiancé. And you guys can start tracking with each other. And that'll take all the stuff you're doing and really, really dial it in. It's the detailed plan to show you exactly what to do and how to do it. And you're really cooking, man. You're doing really good. I'm so proud of you.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is 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.

Today's question comes from Augustus in Kentucky. My wife struggles at keeping our grocery budgets, and I don't know how to help her. Looking at every dollar in our food budget, including out to eat and groceries, is about an eighth of our total budget. Is that enough for two adults with no kids? Is it too much? Do you have any tips on deciding what the right amount should be? How can I help support her so we can stick to our budgets?

Oh, well, Augusta's welcome to every problem most American households have. It's the food budget. It does. I'm like, we struggle with this too. It's, it's just, I'm like one Costco run can throw us over. And I'm like,

Oh my gosh, what? Like it's hard. It really is. Food is tough, but two adults and no kids. Uh, and it's an eighth of our budget.

So we say about 20% can go to food 10 to 20% depending on income and situation. Um, so yeah, I mean, well, yeah i mean well yeah i'm i think you just look at the amount and say okay we can't do more than that or more than this on this amount of income you know and you can use a percentage if you want we have some recommended percentages that are part of every dollar and part of the other that that helps but um most of the let me let me if you've just started this process what i always tell people when i'm

teaching budgeting is whatever you think you're spending on money whatever you think you're spending on food you're wrong you're spending more and so in order to get the rest of the budget to work and everybody happy to work the rest of the budget go ahead and be up a little high on the food budget you're not going to stay high on the food budget for eight years you'll quit eventually if every month you look up and there's a hundred dollars left over in your food budget or two hundred dollars left over in your food budget eventually you'll dial it down and go well our food budget is really like $100 less. I mean, it's really what it is.

Because you'll catch a rhythm and you'll get to know what's going on. But, I mean, a thousand years ago when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, we started to sit down and do our first budget. Sharon and I, you were a baby. And I was all game on, nerd on this budget stuff. I'm going to, we're going to do this. We have envelope with food written on it. And you're not getting any more money than this. And I think we budgeted like $300 for food.

Now, this is 1980-something, right? And so we budget 1990. We budget $300 for food. Well, Sharon, she's like this lady. She's like, you're out of your mind. You can't do it for that. We have a family of four, two kids. You can't do it for that. And I'm like four, two kids. You can't do it for that.

And I'm like, well, yeah, you can. I mean, just don't spend so dadgum much. Just get your butt out of the Kroger, you know? And we got in this big argument. Yes, which you should have. Did you go grocery shopping? That's what I want him to do. He needs to go see.

That's exactly what happened. Maybe I'll learn that from y'all. She said, all right, genius, you go do it. And I said, well, I will then. And I couldn't. And I'll learn that from y'all. She said, all right, genius, you go do it. And I said, well, I will then. And I couldn't. I know, yeah. I went over there and I went, oh, dadgum, she's right. And so we upped the food budget back in that day to $500 a month.

That was 1,000 years ago. It would be $750 in today's dollars. Well, with family of five, it's a lot. But, yeah, that was, I mean, we, but I was, man, I was way off. Yeah. And when I, you know, so, yeah, that's the thing I would tell you. Probably your wife's not the problem. Probably you are like I was.

And probably you get your butt in the car, go grocery shopping with her, and start to figure out what this stuff costs. And you might have some positive suggestions. Yeah, and if you guys are, depending on what baby step you're on too i mean if you guys are baby steps one two or three you want to be realistic about what food costs but you also don't have the leisure just to go up and down every aisle and get whatever you want like no no i wasn't suggesting no i'm just saying for him though i'm saying even basics you don't know what they cost right right right but i'm saying to his wife which this is more me where i'm like oh yeah i'm just gonna go see oh that sounds good i'll just throw that in you know i can i can be a little bit more like that now you can do that

on baby steps four and on yeah you can enjoy it but if you're on baby steps one through three then she may say hey i'm gonna pull back on some stuff and i would lose the battle to the tune of a couple hundred dollars here to win the war of getting on the same page yes that's with your spouse and getting on the same page and running everything together yes uh you know and everybody being happy and you can always dial it back down later i mean very few unless unless your wife is just a twerp i mean it but very few mature people would say weekend and week out out, month in and month out, oh, I'm just going to hide this money to the side. We've got more in this category than we need. No, we're going to admit that we're high later and bring it back down.

And we've done that in some categories around our house. The other thing that I remember, the story I remember that is I've heard so many people say that they felt the same way. When we say live like no one else so later we can live and give like no one else. For Sharon, she said someday when you're dreaming, you know, we got the yellow pad out. We're trying to pay off the debts. We're trying to get the IRS off our back. We're working and scratching and clawing and she said one of my big dreams is to have enough money to just go to the grocery store and fill the buggy with anything i want and not worry about it yes

now that's a fairly low budget dream at the end of the day but that was like to not have to feel so constrained worrying about every carton of eggs we're looking at every every stinking price on every generic everything generic cheerios for god's sakes yeah and um you know all this stuff and just to be able to walk in and buy whatever i want which now for many many years she's been able to do and she doesn't have to think about her grocery budget anymore hasn't in a long long time but what what a great um goal to have okay so something else i thought of augustus if you're listening when i was doing research on my book know yourself know your money i was talking about safety versus status and all that and interviewing people with

the safety mindset a lot of women said there's a comfort of having a full fridge or a full pantry yeah there's something emotional about especially if they came from a home where food was a struggle yes so there there could be a safety ness there that she feels the need to have if she doesn't have you know if she's not cutting back and she is buying a little bit more than maybe you guys need necessarily there could be a emotional safety aspect of that and so to kind of dig into that and look to say okay are there other places that we can have that security and maybe save a little bit on the food budget but it's amazing how many women i talked to who said i if i have a full fridge i feel like okay i'm good yeah like it's

yeah yeah there's something about it there's an emotional emergency fund yeah there's an emotional thing to it especially if you have kids and all that well it's aesting thing, you know, just to make sure that your family's fed. Yes, take care of it. I want to know my family's fed. I want to know my family's fed. Yeah. And just very, very important. So your food budget will change a little between baby steps one, two, three,

and then later on you can relax it a little bit in four, five, six. But it's not going to change a ton. One other thing you may find in your food budget that you can do is when we started out uh we had two separate envelopes one for restaurants and one for groceries so that we didn't go to the restaurant and eat our grocery money because you can do that really easily oh yeah and keep those categories separate and if you're in one two and three you shouldn't be in a restaurant anyway you should be getting out of debt you should be eating at home and cooking from home and uh you know saving the money and so but but

yeah i think if you some of you guys i mean i haven't done it in a long long time but truth be told one of the biggest fights we ever had back in the early days of starting the stuff that we teach was over that stinking food envelope and she threw it at me you go do it then genius and so i'm like i will so i go over there unstable money classroom years yeah i go i go over there and i couldn't do it and so then we went back together and i watched really how good a job she was doing yeah to her credit and to my shame because I had tried to shame her into living on absolutely nothing. It wasn't possible, the numbers.

I was trying to make all the numbers work, and that was just one of the categories. It was a problem, you know? But it didn't, man, you're nerds. You've got to be careful with this. Whoever does the shopping, if your husband does the shopping, you know, ladies, you can't, you can't, you've got to go and get a little bit of that in there. That's right. Especially when you're starting.

You don't have to do it forever, but it gets everybody in a rhythm, gets everybody on the same page, and that's just really, really important. Hey, thanks for the question. That's a good one. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books. Thanks to James Childs, our producer, Zach Bennett, filling in today for Kelly Daniel. And I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Rachel Cruz with me. We'll be back before you know it.

This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Once again, you made The Dave Ramsey Show one of the top four most popular podcasts last year. To get your daily dose of motivation and inspiration from the Ramsey Network, subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.