The Ramsey Show - App - Passive Income Is TikTok Mythology (Hour 2)

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods moving and storage studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author and co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour podcast on the Ramsey Network. Be sure and check it out as my co-host today.

Also, my daughter. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jason is in Boise. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. in Boise. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Dave. How are you?

Better than we deserve, sir. How can we help? Good. I was wondering if you could settle kind of a disagreement. My wife and I have been gazelle intense for about five years now, but I have a mortgage still in a home equity line of credit we need to pay off. And I want to attack the home equity line of credit because it's freaking me out because of the interest. Like, it's not a fixed interest rate.

And my mortgage is a fixed interest rate at, like, 2.75. And we've got that paid down to about $30,000 right now. What do you owe on the home equity line? $180,000. Good Lord. I know. Yeah, we bought a home about... What's your household income?

About $90,000. You need to refinance and get your new first mortgage. Okay, that was my next question. This is what I want to pay off the home mortgage refinance and then get it locked in. Yeah. I hate to lose the 2%, but it's only on 30 K of 210.

So mathematically it doesn't come out to be much. So, and you get rid of the massive mess on the other side, put it on a 15 year fixed, and then that becomes a baby step six and you can chill and start working your baby steps four five six because i assume you have your emergency fund done we do and we also my that's i was wondering if you we own a business a small business and i was wondering if we should sell it and then be totally debt free

if we sold it that's not your primary source of income? Yes, it is. It is. How much did you sell it for? We were asking $330 for it. So it's already up for sale? What's that? It's already up for sale.

It's not yet, no. So you're not asking anything yet, okay. Not asking, but doing the math to be debt-free, and after paying a capital gains tax and then a broker, I was wondering on that kind of scale. I would not sell it just to pay off the house. I mean, are you done with this business and ready to move on to another chapter of your life?

That's a whole different discussion than the mortgage discussion. And, well, we have been talking about it. We've been running this business for almost five years now, and just thought well if we we've been for five years or done built up the brand and then we sold it then we can be why not run it for 50 years and make money on it yeah that's what my wife said you were going to say well i mean no i'm just asking if you don't if you hate it and you want to sell it because you hate going down there every day, that's a career question. Okay. But there's not a thing that says you have to sell a business when it's built up.

We're not selling this one. It's going to the kids. Okay. Yeah, because we have put a lot of hard work into it. Do you enjoy it, Jason? Do you guys? We absolutely do it's just sometimes it is a little tough with the inflation stuff everybody's going through it and i know that but and we have been dealing with

since we're a small business we're dealing with kids not wanting to work and so we're working it most of the time but we do enjoy beating that was part of opening the business was to be together all the time and not be apart from each other. Okay. Yeah, I think you need to assess that separately from the debt issue. Okay. Do we want to be running this business, or do we need to make some changes so that we want to keep running the business, or do we want to sell the business?

Any of those are fine. There's no wrong answer there. I would not tell you, you need to sell that to get rid of the stupid home equity loan. No, that's not a statement you're going to get here. I'm sorry your wife won the argument, but you need to get a new mortgage and pay off the home equity loan, okay? Okay. Call Churchill Mortgage.

They'll help you get that refinanced. And the 2% is horrible to get rid of, but, again, it's a very small amount of your loan. And the big amount of your loan is an angry monster loan, and it's going to eat you. Don't let it do that. And he could feel it, couldn't he? Oh, yeah. He didn't want it. This thing's bad.

His wife can feel it for sure. I wouldn't, yeah. Yeah. Make it consistent. Know what you're getting. Predictable. And you guys just put in baby step six. Yeah.

That's great. There is a good part of money that you should attempt to approach boring. You want to have a boring, automatic kind of thing going on with your money. And so if your money is super exciting all the time uh that probably means you're taking a lot of risk and there's a lot of chaos going on and so generally speaking the people and and i don't mind the excitement i'm an entrepreneurial type but from a just from a process standpoint you should you should be pretty calm the data tells us that the calm steady people are the ones that have more money yeah

they're the ones that end up millionaires it's the consistency and probably that level of the tortoise not the hare yeah it's yeah and so if there's any time you approach chaos or versus order order is better you know and it's just like you know this because the other is just flailing and it's desperation and there's this anxiety around it and all this. And you don't want to get there. You don't want to get there. Travis is in Phoenix. Hi, Travis.

How are you? Good. How are you doing this afternoon? Better than I deserve. What's up? Looking to get some advice on how to pay off two new vehicle notes that my wife and I just did in March. Good Lord. Why did you do that?

Because we make good money and we like to spend money. You don't make good enough money to pay cash for those cars. I should have, but I did not. You have the cash? We do have about $350 in the bank right now. Well, write a check and pay off your cars. That was my question. We have a CD coming due in two weeks that could pay those off,

and I wasn't sure if we should just cash out the CD. I've never met anybody that got rich borrowing on their cars and investing in CDs. Okay, definitely makes sense. So that was my question. Instead of putting money into savings every month, we bank about $5,000 to $6,000 a month. I was wondering if we should save a couple months, pay off one, save a couple months,

pay off the other, or just lump it with the CD in two weeks. You shouldn't have done this unless you wrote a check to buy them. Quit buying things unless you pay for them. That's what rich people do. They pay for things. You make a lot of money, but it's new to you. This big piles of cash is fairly new to you within the last eight or nine years yeah yeah this is not like something you've done for 25 years

and so you're still trying to get used to these number of zeros that are in your life emotionally and some so sometimes it feels like oh maybe i need to do that and i wonder what's sophisticated and don't be sophisticated just pay for crap and if I need to do that. And I wonder what's sophisticated. And don't be sophisticated. Just pay for crap. And if you do that, you'll always have your most powerful wealth building tool at your disposal, which is your income. Thank God, Travis. I mean, you guys are doing an incredible job. Got a lot of money.

So it's like, just use it. Yeah. I'm glad you didn't call me and say I just borrowed to buy two new cars and I'm broke. That would even been worse. But at least you got the money in the bank and you can just borrowed to buy two new cars and I'm broke. That would have even been worse. But at least you got the money in the bank and you can just write a check and you're free. And you can go, oh, that was dumb. I shouldn't have done that. Now I got rid of the dumb.

Now I just got the cars. Okay. It's going to feel good, Travis. A little less dumb. There you go. This is The Ramsey Show. Well, there's some cool stuff going on around Ramsey right now. Tomorrow, for most of you, that will be August the 9th.

On Wednesday, Jade Washa will be doing a free webinar on budgeting. If you want to sign up for Jade teaching you how to use the EveryDollar app and a whole budgeting seminar. It's completely free. Just go to everydollar.com slash budgeting, budgeting. That'll get you signed up. Rachel is going to be doing one of those, teaching about how to do an irregular income or how to do budgeting of any kind and go through the whole process of walking the baby steps

with the new financial roadmap that's part of the EveryDollar app. And that is at, if you want to sign up for hers, that's going to be the 15th of August. Yeah, these are really great too because there's a lot of Q&A. It's a lot of interactive. And if you feel like you're alone in the stress of budgeting or even the idea of, oh my gosh, how do I even start this? I feel overwhelmed with my money. That's how majority

of people feel. So you are normal, and this is a place and a space that we're creating for you guys just to come in and ask your questions and talk through, hey, how do you take this emotional thing that is really difficult and actually put something into practice that you can have and honestly even with the app like every dollar use every day to help you in control of your money first time you drove a car it was awkward first time you do a budget's awkward i don't care if you got a phd in finance learning to do a budget is awkward it feels weird it's a new skill and it takes a little bit so rachel's webinar on the 15th will be at everydollar.com slash webinar if you want to sign up for that.

So slash budgeting for Jade's on the 9th slash webinar for Rachel on the 15th, and we'll be having one with George sometime after that. We'll let you know, of course. So the three Ramsey personalities that deal with money other than me are going to be doing these uh every dollar budgeting webinars for a couple of weeks here to try to get you guys started going into the fall kids are going back to school it's time to get your crap together now people time to get lined up and we'll show you how to do it good can I say that as a mom with the kids going back to school like like one time we're working out we're eating better now kids are on a schedule life is like you

just get back in a routine after the summer fog and so like this is the time to do it like things are shaping up in your life and you know the schedules it's a real thing so make money part of that too in this in this part of the year because it's a great it's the second new year we call it all the time absolutely all right paul is in springfield hey paul welcome to the ramsey show hey how you guys doing today better than we deserve what's up um so i've honestly listened to a lot of your podcasts about building wealth and um this is something i've been working on for i'd say almost 10 10 years now. I'm 31. Good for you. Thank you. Um, I started investing heavily into real estate cause that's what my father

did. And I saw the value in that of passive income for retirement. Um, I started a new job a couple of years ago and started making life changing money, just a lot more money. So I started getting, um, a financial advisor to make sure I don't spend the money stupidly or just start investing in spreading my investments a little bit more broadly. And, you know, obviously I want to keep investing in things and keep growing this wealth, um, smartly, but I was just kind of looking for what your advice would be, what you think maybe the next best steps would be.

Well, I think you're going to be fine if you'll behave in a couple of areas. The reason I think you're going to be fine is the reason most people don't succeed with money is they just don't bother to pay attention. And you've been paying close attention for a decade, which is very important. And so I'm guessing that you probably made some really good strides. So this wonderful money you're making, how much do you make? Well, last year I made $540,000. This year I'm already, I'm a 100% commission-based job. So right now I'm at, I think, $300,000.

So I'm guessing I'm going to make close to $5,000 again this year. I'm sorry, I thought you said $140,000, and then you said $500,000. Which is it? No. So I'm going to make about another $150,000, I think, this year. So I think I'll be at $500,000 again for the year. I think I'll be making $500,000 again this year. So last year you made $500,000.

This year you're going to make $500,000. Probably, yes, give or take. Okay, good. That's fine. That's fine. I'm just trying to get a general idea. I misunderstood what you said earlier. Okay, good.

Wonderful. Congratulations. That's just a fab. You're right. That's sick money. It's fine. That's fine. I'm just trying to get a general idea. I misunderstood what you said earlier. Okay, good. Wonderful. Congratulations. That's just a fab. You're right. That's sick money. It's wonderful. I love it. Proud for you.

You're obviously doing some good. So here's a couple of rules I've discovered in 30 years of working with wealthy people. Okay? Number one, almost no one statistically becomes a millionaire from an inheritance. So that's all just mythology and bull crap. Okay. And we've done the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America, 10,167 of them, 89% of them did not become millionaires because of inherited money. So you're not that unusual as you become a millionaire. Number two, millionaires do not do super fancy, weird, extremely risky things and keep their money. They usually lose

everything if they do. So the millionaires that we have studied are fairly boring. They put money in things they understand and like. For me, I buy growth stock type mutual funds, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, international, that kind of thing. And I buy real estate that I pay cash for. Like you, I grew up in a real estate family. Mom and dad were in the business. And so I've loved real estate. I got my real estate license when I turned 18 years old. I love real estate. I've got bukus of real estate, several hundred million dollars worth, but I pay cash for it and I don't have any debt and it all cash flows like a bandit. And I don't have any of it that causes me super stress because of that. So, um, you know, but that's, that's how I live

and my life is great because of that. So I would tell you to invest in things you understand and you're comfortable with. Obviously real estate is that people who like real estate people who like real estate often take on a whole lot more debt than i think they should right so yeah like i i haven't been buying for cash for saying if i do buy for cash it's because it's a it's a foreclosure you know i'm going to renovate it and the goal is obviously to buy it at the right price point and then not overinvest and then refinance it, putting 20% down and using the passive income of the rents to pay myself back, or I have enough equity in the area.

Let me stop you for a second. There is no passive income from rents. If you've been dealing with renters, you've figured out it ain't passive. Well, yeah, it depends on how good you are it's not passive no it's not passive i've been doing it for 40 years dealing with renters commercial or residential is not passive that's tiktok mythology okay the term no the real world is it's active. You're active. You have to. Real estate has the highest hassle factor of just about any investment you do, but it has one of the higher returns. So anyway, you called to ask what I think you should do. I think you should use this fabulous income to clear off all this stupid debt

you've got on this real estate, and you're going to have a much higher trajectory in your wealth growth long term. Short term, it's going to slow you down. But long term, when you have no debt on this portfolio and the peace that goes with that and this cash flow that's going to go with it, you're going to buy a lot more real estate and pay cash for it. That's how I've got several hundred million dollars worth. I don't have any rents that go to anything except buying more stuff. I don't have any, no payments.

Yeah, but you hit on this earlier, and I think it's true. When you get into the real estate game, majority of people, they have to go to the bank, right? Like when they're playing this game. And the majority of them aren't in the business 10 years later. Yeah. Because they think it's passive.

It's not. Yeah. And they think there's no risk in the debt, and there's a lot of risk in that debt yes and so it's worth going slow the you know the the phrase you coined of moving at the speed of cash yep and everything you do including real estate but that is a slower pace then again what you're going to see on your tiktok or instagram reels of people doing real estate so when i when i was in my 20s i started buying real estate and i was people doing real estate. When I was in my 20s, I started buying real estate and I was in a real estate investors club that followed all the crap like we do on TikTok now. All this

nothing down real estate or staying leveraged crap. Okay. And the guys that were in that club, there were several people that had millions of dollars of net worth in that club. A hundred percent of them now, 30 years later are broke and and out of the business, or they paid off their debts, and they have paid for real estate. There's three of them that I know of are still standing, and they all paid it off and became debt-free. The rest of them that tried to continue to play the leverage game, they got hammered in one of the downturns or another, and they're gone. They're out of business. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.

Well, Rachel, all these years of hard work have paid off. Yeah. I finally made it. What happened? I'm on the Babylon Bee podcast. You're doing it? It's dropped today. It did? I taped it when the guys were here the other day and we taped it.

Oh, that's funny. And so I have arrived. Well, they love you on all the memes. Well, they love me because I get them clicks is what they love me for. We had a great lunch together. They're smart guys. They are funny as crud. They're funny.

And we've been following the bees since it started back in the day. Yeah. And they've used me for. Is it a satire podcast? No, it's just a regular. No, you don't need me doing humor. It would be weird. But yeah.

No, I mean, not that. Yeah. We had fun, though. They're really good guys. They're really smart guys. And so it's official. I have arrived. Well done.

Yeah. I'll be getting emails from all my old friends that are huge Babylon B podcast fans. Fans that they love it. Hey, Dave, you really did it, man. You broke through. So there you go. I wonder what my podcast would be that I'd be like, I've made it. I have a list.

There was a little bit of sarcasm in that, but not much. I was hinting a little bit. I know. But that plays into their brands. The first time I was on the Today Show, I got off and went to the green room. This was 1,000 years ago. And this lady was in the green room crying

because she had just done her appearance. And for 21 years, it was her goal to be on the Today Show. And I just kind of walked in and did it. And I didn't know it was supposed to be a goal for 21 years and so i'm like that's weird this is your 21 year goal for a three minute hit on the today show some people work hard towards things i get it i get it but it was just like this is your pinnacle really but yeah okay i mean i thought you'd say that about my pinnacle i gotta think of mine yeah what was yours i'll come i'll come back to it mine could have been sally jesse rafael you remember her with the red glasses yeah that could have been a breakthrough or the time i argued

with the time i argued with oprah that might have been when i peaked you know that was back when i peaked yeah hey dr john deloney has a brand new book coming out he has not peaked he is a sky rocket shooting to the moon baby baby. I'm just saying. And this book is selling like crazy. Man, what a success. Thank you, guys. We appreciate your response to this. It is a fabulous book.

It's called Building a Non-Anxious Life. The six daily choices that you make to get anxiety lowered because anxiety is telling you something else is wrong. So you fix the six things that are wrong. The anxiety goes down just like that. And so very tough to do, but really good book. It actually pubs October 3rd, but it's in presale right now. And a whole bunch of you have taken advantage of the deal where we're selling the book for $20 and throwing in $75 worth of goodies.

We're bribing you to buy it early because it helps us with the marketing because all the sales up until pub day count the first week towards the bestseller list. So thank you. It helps us. And we appreciate that. We appreciate you guys stepping up and getting this. Instant access to his newest talk, Smoke, Fire, and Freedom. You also get the e-book, the audio book, all of this, and the book itself for $75.

We'll ship it all to you except the talk, which comes now. They're not for $75. Hmm? Do what? Not for $75. No, I'm sorry. It's $75 worth of stuff for $20.

Yes, $20. That's the deal. Serious deal, really. I mean, you can't even, the paper cost has gone up 40% this year, people. Hello. So anyway, and we still got the book at $20. So RamseySolutions.com.

You can preorder the new book. Man, anxiety. You've got to get rid of it. Building a non-anxious life. So good. Tyler. Tyler's with us. Tyler's in Tampa, Florida.

Hi, Tyler. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. It's an honor to speak with you. You too. What's up? So I have a question. My wife and I have been paying off debt for about the last year and a half now. We've been able to pay off about $60,000 out of $100,000. And I actually didn't

know about the baby steps until about six months ago. So at the beginning, we were kind of Davish, I guess you could say, and now we're trying to get a little more gazelle intense with it. We've been doing pretty well with following a budget, and I just am struggling with certain expenses related to like family events. I don't get together with my family very often. We have a wedding coming up that we're going to. Uh, and then I just found out from my sister that, um, for her 40th birthday, she wants us to fly out to California and, um, spend a weekend with her at a resort. And, uh, it's going to, it's going to cost us a little over a thousand dollars for me to go do that.

I'm having a hard time deciding whether or not that's a good way to go. I have just my student loans left to pay off, about $40,000. And I was really hoping to knock that out. We've been able to increase our income. So I've been hoping to be able to do that in the next few months. And I'm just not sure whether or not that's a good idea. And I thought I'd get your advice. Yeah, I mean, Tyler, I mean, the reality is we always say the deeper you sacrifice,

the more money that's spent on the debt, obviously the faster it's going to be paid off. But life is going to be intertwined throughout that. And that's when you and your wife have to kind of make the call yourselves and to say, OK, what are things going on that we feel like we want to be a part of with our family? What are things that we feel like, gosh, we do, but then we also are like we could do something else at a later date because we want this mess cleaned up. So again, it goes back to because when we get the we get this type of call the time of like yeah we have a you know my brother's getting

married across the country what do we do um so i mean again it's one of those things that you guys have to decide is this going to this is going to slow us down in our debt payoff, but is it worth it for what we're doing with our family? So, I mean. The problem, Tyler, is this. Every time you let one of these things in, you not only lose the money momentum because your lack of commitment to the process your lack of intensity to the idea of getting out of debt is chipped away at and finally it just doesn't matter and you stay in debt and you're a freaking normal broke american that goes to his sister's 40th birthday on a freaking airplane

and that's what happens yeah and uh you know all of a sudden you just look up and you just got fat financially and and it's one hamburger at a time you know and so it's not the thousand dollars it's the lack of you guys being dialed in and going game on i got one plan for a short period of time i am going to take no prisoners nothing's going on this complete emotional sellout and focus to winning the super bowl is the only way you win the super bowl no one half butts their way into the super bowl and that's what you got to get that's what what you got to decide it's the emotional problem the math really isn't the problem it's just but it's just and then well and then i'm yeah yeah and then when then we'll go out i'm kind of tired i think

i'll go out to eat well wham call the whambulance get your butt in gear and get out of debt you know and that that's the kind of thing that's the internal self-talk that has to change you got to get this commitment up and that's the problem and it's not i'm not mad at your sister and but you you know broke people that are forty thousand dollars in debt on stupid butt student loans shouldn't be getting on an airplane to go to somebody's birthday party think about it man that's just a dumb statement really i'm sorry you're broke okay no you're broke he is i know but i feel tyler and like i get it but i'm telling you this is this is what yes i'm not i'm saying tyler this is how you talk to yourself this is how you talk to yourself you got to go i'm too stinking broke to go up there

because i'm in student loan debt and I can't do this right now. But that's the truth. Right. But it's not me yelling at Tyler. I'm just saying this is the way you have to shift your brain into this gear where you're just going enough. I'm not living this way anymore.

But the hard thing is, though, is that life now 40th birthday it's more flippant than like a wedding or a funeral right there are life events that occur well get your listen if you have to be there get your butt in your car and drive up there then don't talk to me about buying an airplane ticket when you're broke really to a resort i know i know a resort i know yeah i know seriously sorry we're going tent camping with the Kmart used tent that we bought at Walmart or at a garage sale. And we're pedaling our bicycle over there. That's your get out of, no. Jeez, man.

No. And Tyler, I'm not yelling at you. I'm yelling for you, okay? I want you to get this in your head and this is how you're talking to yourself. And don't talk to your wife this way either. Talk to yourself this way. We're getting out of debt. We've got to pay a price to win.

Nobody wins without paying a price. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, number one-selling author and co-host of the smart money happy hour with george camel is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 so guys the thing that you're always going to hear from us is um there's very few times on this show that we're actually going to be fussing at you we'll be fussing with you and if we call you stupid or call what you're doing stupid, rather, we won't call you stupid. We might call what you did stupid, but it's because we know what stupid looks like. We've done it. I've done it more than even Rachel. Rachel grew up in a household where I had quit

doing stupid by the time she was born and came along. I had gone broke, but I know what stupid looks like. And we have figured out that personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. And you've got to study and think about this money stuff through the lens of behavior modification. It's not a math problem. So how do I modify my behavior? Well, I have to commit to, and my friend James Clear in this mammoth book that he did called Atomic Habits, I have to to change my identity i am no longer a person who makes stupid but immature impulsive financial decisions and then looks in the mirror and wonders why i'm broke i'm no longer that guy i instead am very careful and very slow and one of the things we'll help you do here occasionally and

you don't even know we're doing it but it we're very intentional about it, is we want you to have a new identity when you get off the call. And that guy doesn't think of himself as a broke person with $40,000 in student loan debt. But when you have no money and $40,000 in student loan debt, you need to identify yourself as a broke person because you are a broke person. Broke people don't do some things that people that aren't broke can do. And you quit doing those things so that you aren't broke people anymore. And so if you are a doctor and you make $250,000 a year and you owe $110,000 on your BMW and $450,000 on your medical school student loan debt, you are a broke butt doctor.

You need to re-identify and go, this is who I am and I want to change that identity. Because then you quit doing rich people stuff while you're broke. Because when you do broke stuff, God. So you just have to stop. You have to stop. And, you know, when I went bankrupt and lost everything because of my stupidity, I had to reset and go, guess what? The stuff you believed about money, borrowing all you can, getting your credit card points,

doing anything you want to do because I make good money. And everybody's got a different definition about what good money is. I had to re-identify and go, no, you're stupid. You need to stop being stupid. And I think what's hard is we've lived in a world in a culture where you know because of the avenue of debt you accumulate not just stuff and but even if you have a good income like you're saying the doctor whoever i'm making good money i have the stuff and it's like the part of the debt of the what i own minus what i owe doesn't come into the equation it's just you stay at that top

you know sphere emotionally instead of looking at the reality of the numbers. So how do you modify behavior? You first identify reality of where I am and I'm going to reset my identity and I don't want to be that person anymore. So I'm going to quit being that, you know, I'm going to do the things, I'm going to take the steps, I'm going to do the things i'm going to take the steps i'm going to make the sacrifices so that i don't do that and i've used the example on the on the air many times here uh and to the point that the people in the booth are sick of it but during covid we were working the leadership team trying to keep this place open and i figured out later that how I deal with high stress scenarios is I eat a lot. I ate every donut in a 50 mile radius.

You brought donuts to us. I was already overweight. And when I get to COVID, I went into donut mode and I got so freaking fat. It was ridiculous. I looked in the mirror. This round head looked like a basketball. It was crazy. And I'm like, this has got it. you know, you're, you're a donut eating fat boy. You need to stop this. And that's how you stop it. You know, you look at it and you go, this is the reality.

You have to stop doing this or you're going to explode like the kid on Willy Wonka. I mean, it's just awful. You know, you have to stop it. You have to stop it. And so, you know, no more donuts. And the other day, we had the grandkid birthday with the donuts. And Papa Dave made a big deal about he was going to steal one of the kids' donuts. But he didn't touch a donut. Didn't do it. No more donuts for Papa Dave.

You were labeled Donut Dave. I'm completely cold turkey on the freaking donuts. You know, I dropped 40, 42 pounds because I needed to. Hello. No more donuts for Papa Dave. I'm completely cold turkey on the freaking donuts. And I dropped 42 pounds because I needed to. Hello. You know, I mean, and that's the thing. Everybody has something like that. It's a behavior change. It wasn't that I intellectually analyzed caloric intake.

Good Lord, no. I had to stop it. You know? And this is what we all have to do i'm no different than anybody else and that is my point and so guys this is how money works it's not a math problem it's a you problem yep and when you get that man you got the ramsey thing down and then you're going to go in and this is how we've talked and conjoled and motivated and list and praised and lifted more people through their debt journeys into millionaire status than any

other entity on the planet the ramsey solutions group has millions of people have completely changed their lives financially because of us on the radio doing what we're doing right now us on the podcast doing us on a stage us in a book and that's empowering you right now telling you how to go be a hero you're the solution go be the hero it's up to you yes and so to the caller earlier it's up to him like right like if you continue to just be that in and out scenario like you're saying that's what that's the result you're going to get but you decide that you have to make those choices it's up to you and if you choose hey i'm actually going to go scorched earth i'm done because the reality is i am broke i can't go do these fun things that i want to do i don't have the money you're making that choice to later then actually have the money yes to do anything

you want yes you live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else you'll never be in a position again that you have to choose between your groceries and the broke single mom in front of you whose third credit card was denied and you want to buy her groceries but you can't because you can't even barely buy yours and you don't ever want to be like that again. You always want to be the guy, the gal in line behind that goes, hey, I got that and this. Why?

Because I paid a price. I gave up the resort 40th birthday party, and I paid a price to do the thing so that I can do anything then. And that's how this works. There's not a middle ground. Well, I'm sort of kind of, it doesn't work. You're either going to be just sloppy and disorganized. And in this country, you can have a really good life with a fair amount of stress and be deeply in debt and have a, your standard of living is ridiculous.

And you make $120,000 a year, you're broke, but you have an incredible life. You travel, you can buy cars, you can do a lot of stuff that on the surface looks like you got it all going on, and you can live a stinking life of rich people in any other country, for sure, and be broke as broke, and make it all the way through to retirement and go, gosh, I hope the government, which is well known for its ability to handle money, will take care of me. And, and, or you can decide I'm going to be autonomous and I don't really care what you think about what I drive. I don't really care what you think about my vacation. I don't really care what you think about anything. I'm as for me and my house we're gonna get our

crap together you can make that decision and when you do it changes everything it changes everything not just financially though is I'm like the underneath the surface you guys when you live the first example of that I'm like that is full of stress and anxiety and pain and tension there is so much it's like you can't even breathe yeah you got everything but you're barely hanging on by a string one thing that goes wrong the entire house falls versus the latter and saying you know what i'm actually going to build a life yes all based on me and not all the other fact you know the other industry standards. It's Botox financial. It's fake.

You know, it's fake. It's a facade. That's more like filler financial. Botox just... Plastic surgery financial. Whatever, right? It's like going to Universal and they got this beautiful house.

Only when you walk through the back door, there's nothing there. It's just a facade for the camera. And people live their lives that way. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Rachel Cruz, co-host on The Ramsey Show. If you want to do your debt-free scream live on the show, visit ramsaysolutions.com slash debtfreescream.

We'd love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story. That's ramsaysolutions.com slash debt-free screen.