The Ramsey Show - App - Pay Cash for Your Education (Hour 2)

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

Home Buying, Debt   Tools to get you started: Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Inter...view Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE   Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. And the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. When we did the study of 10,000 millionaires, we found that the typical millionaire pays off their home in 10.2 years.
Starting point is 00:01:07 They get out of debt. So this is why we tell you not to take out a mortgage of more than 15-year fixed, where the payment is more than a fourth of your take-home pay. This is why we tell you this. Now, I know it's summertime, and I know some of you are going to open houses, and you get house fever. Let me tell you what house fever is it's when your brain quits freaking working and you get these little you know your adrenaline starts going the you know your your endorphins are released your eyes are dilated you go crazy that's what happens and then you go buy something that indicates that you're crazy a house you can't afford because it's summertime and you've got a house fever.
Starting point is 00:01:47 If you've got house fever, take a cold shower or six of them. Do whatever you've got to do to get rid of house fever. House fever will kill you. And let me just tell you, there are people out there who will spread the disease of house fever, too. You know who spreads the disease of house fever? Brokers who want to sell you a house because they want to commission they don't care anything about you now that's not all brokers but there's types of brokers out there that are that way mortgage lenders who want you to get a loan and they'll
Starting point is 00:02:18 tell you anything and they use fear tactics too houses going up fast. If you don't get a house, you're not going to get a house. Oh, God, you're not going to get a house. Oh, no. And people get this thing like a beagle chasing a rabbit, man. That means you've got house fever is what that means. It's dumb. You're getting ready to do something dumb. You're going to pay too much for the house.
Starting point is 00:02:40 You're going to put nothing down, get you an adjustable rate mortgage, be in debt the rest of your life, and then wonder why why you're broke all because you were a beagle chasing a rabbit with house fever stop it stop it calm your butt down you need to get a house the house doesn't need to get you i don't mind you getting a house and i don't yell at people for mortgages it's one of the few things i don't yell at them for, but I want you to get the stupid thing paid off because that's an indicator you're going to be one of our everyday millionaires. And how are you going to get it paid off?
Starting point is 00:03:12 A bigger down payment and a shorter payment term, and you focus on getting it paid off, and you get to your baby step six, and you kick this thing in the butt. That's what's going on. So if you get one of those real estate agents that's trying to get you to buy a house that you can't afford, or you get one of those mortgage brokers that's getting you to buy a house you can't afford at a time you can't afford it because you've still got Sally Mae hanging around and you've got to buy an extra bedroom for her,
Starting point is 00:03:34 you need to get out of debt, have your emergency fund in place, and have your down payment. Now, first-time homebuyers, we don't tell you you have to do anything on that. You have to do 15-year fixed, and you have to do house payment no more than a fourth-year take-home pay. We got all that. But first-time homebuyers, we know most of you are not going to put down 20%. If you do, it's great. And why do we tell you to put down 20%? 20% down is because it saves you on PMI.
Starting point is 00:04:00 PMI stands for private mortgage insurance. If you don't put down 20%, they make you buy insurance that gives them money in the event they have to foreclose on you and you didn't have enough down payment to cover them. It's foreclosure insurance that pays the lender and you buy it. And it's $75 per $100,000 per month. So if you borrow $200,000, $150 a month on your payment if you don't put down 20%. Just to buy insurance, foreclosure insurance, that pays the mortgage company in the event they have to foreclose on you.
Starting point is 00:04:36 That's private mortgage insurance. That's what it is. And you never do an FHA loan, too expensive. You never do a VA loan, even more expensive. Bad loans, you're going to do a Fannie Mae conventional loan. Now, then you save up and you save up and you save up. But how do you save up? Well, you're out of debt.
Starting point is 00:04:53 You don't have any payments because you're a baby step 3B. If you don't have any payments, you don't have any debt payments at all, and you're on a tight budget and your thing is save up for house payment, you'd be amazed how fast you can save up. Calm your butt down slow down i don't want you to be a renter renting i'm wasting money i'm wasting money i'm burnt i just feel like i'm burning money you have house fever when you talk like that. I don't want you to be a renter for 50 years, but I do want you to be a renter for the next year while you get your freaking act together so that this house is a blessing and not a curse.
Starting point is 00:05:40 That's what we're doing. So if you want to work with an agent to buy a house in a hot market that understands what I just did in the last 10 minutes, you just go to DaveRamsey.com slash agents or just the front page of DaveRamsey.com. Look on our ELPs, endorsed local providers for real estate agents, these are high-octane, high-protein agents that have agreed as part of the vetting process to not only have the heart of a teacher, but to also not tell you to buy a house when you're broke. They follow the principles that we're teaching here. They actually have your best interest, not their wallet's best interest in mind. They know that if they take care of you and you buy a home in such a way
Starting point is 00:06:31 that the home is a blessing, you'll probably be a customer for life. And that's how they've built their huge businesses, these wonderful high-octane real estate agents that actually know what the flip they're doing. But your Aunt Sally over at the church, old George over at the church, the friend of your mama's,
Starting point is 00:06:54 all she wants is a commission. That's why she got in the business. She multiplied that commission rate times those sale prices, and her eyes got big. She went past her real estate test, and now she's an agent agent and that's all the flip she knows about it too he knows about it too so you need to get somebody knows what they're doing has your best interest at heart and has built a large book of business by doing the right thing for the customer helping you making sure you're on baby step 3b you're putting a good down payment
Starting point is 00:07:27 down i'd like for it to be 20 i just explained to you why it doesn't affect me i'm not getting any of the money i don't care what you do i don't own a pmi company i don't own an anti-pmi company i'm a teacher i'm teaching you that this crap is expensive so it's better to put down a good strong down payment of 20 or more but sometimes on your first home you're 27 years old you're just getting going you know you may buy a home with 10 down you may have pmi for a few years till you get that thing paid down and get it dropped get the pmi dropped that's okay i'm not gonna be mad at you about that. But don't take out more than a 15-year.
Starting point is 00:08:08 That means you've got house fever. Don't take out anything other than a fixed rate. That means you've got house fever. And don't work with some real estate agent that doesn't know what the flip they're doing because you don't have enough backbone to look at your mother's bridge partner and say no. No. Instead, once you get somebody who actually knows what the flip they're doing and has your best interest at heart, we vet them.
Starting point is 00:08:28 They're called endorsed local providers. Check them out at DaveRamsey.com. This is big news, guys. You need to stop and listen. The Fed decided not to raise interest rates. That means you've got a small window of time before rates rise again. Here's the deal. Most people are paying too much interest on their largest expense, their home. So you're freaking crazy if you don't take 10 minutes to call Churchill Mortgage right now
Starting point is 00:09:18 and see if they can save you money before rates rise again. A mortgage through Churchill could save you thousands, or better yet, reduce the time until you're debt-free. Can you imagine how it would feel to no longer have that payment looming over your head every month? Just go to ChurchillMortgage.com or call 888-LOAN-200. Their team of experts will give you more clarity about your options and more peace knowing you're saving significant money in the long run.
Starting point is 00:09:46 Call 888-LOAN-200. That's 888-562-6200 or churchillmortgage.com. Thanks for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Alex is on the line in California. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Alex. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking the call. Certainly. How can I help? So I've been pretty lucky. I make a pretty good wage as an engineer, and I got some inheritance within the last few years. It's been coming in from different estate sales and I've been getting serious with my girlfriend, but my girlfriend is in a lot of debt. So she's got about $ a hundred thousand in student loan debt from private university
Starting point is 00:11:07 in a field that doesn't really pay well. Which, what's her field? And, uh, arts. Okay. So she spent a hundred grand to get a degree in art from a private university. Yeah. Okay. And what else?
Starting point is 00:11:22 And, uh, and she's got some other debts, and right now she's unemployed. I think she's been paralyzed by the debt, and I've just been listening to stories from different callers, and I just hear the echo from that, you know. Okay. So you feel like her hope is gone gone and like there's no sense in walking because i can't climb everest right yeah you don't think she's lazy i mean i i hope not i she has worked since i've been dating her i've been dating for like four
Starting point is 00:12:01 years and you know i'm 28 now we're kind of getting to that point where things are either going to get more serious or, you know, less serious, I guess. So, I don't know. I just kind of look at advice in that range. Okay. All right. Well, I think I would just have, you know, a loving conversation with her. It sounds like we're all pretty serious.
Starting point is 00:12:24 Yeah. And just go, hey hey i'm worried about you yeah you know your appointment listen you're bright you um you know you've got all this potential and you seem to have been paralyzed by this debt and doing nothing about it and um it's not going to fix itself um if your career is not what you thought it was going to be, then, you know, I'll walk with you. We'll coach you. I'll be your biggest cheerleader on getting a different career. But doing nothing is probably not a plan.
Starting point is 00:12:55 Yeah. Can you not have that conversation? Yeah. I have. I have. And, you know, it is a hard conversation. And it's you know, it is a hard conversation and she's she's very upset about it. And I think that's to me is what shows that she does care. And it's such like a hard topic to talk about because it's so emotional.
Starting point is 00:13:17 Yeah. Well, the thing is, you just got to do something about it. I mean, she has to do something about it. I mean, she has to do something about it. And so, you know, there's more anxiety, more stress in feeling stuck and sitting than there is in being overwhelmed while you're running. And so we find people that their anxiety goes down uh that it helps people that are struggling with depression um when they go to work um even even if it's just an you know if it's not something emotionally you feel like doing but just as an act of will as an act of personal strength intestinal fortitude i get up and i drag my butt out to the car i start the car and i go to work and there's something about that that is helpful to the human psyche even if it's not making a big dent today you're at least in action you're in motion and you're heading in the right
Starting point is 00:14:23 direction uh sitting you know it's like you're paralyzed a deer in the headlights sitting in the road waiting to be run over by an 18-wheeler is not a good plan and so i'm gonna you know if i'm in your shoes my son is actually about your age okay okay if he and i were sitting on the back porch having this exact conversation my advice to him father to son would be you lovingly have to help her solve this because not solving it is a deal breaker yeah for the relationship you told me that earlier you just didn't use those exact words didn't't you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just making you say that out loud to yourself.
Starting point is 00:15:08 And you don't have to threaten her. That's not the spirit. I want you to have a spirit of help. And you want to help her and be kind. But it's a kind act to help her get off the couch. Yeah. And, baby doll, you've got to go do something you know you're not gonna make it sitting here brooding and fearful and sucking your thumb it's it's it's a human nature thing
Starting point is 00:15:33 to do we all have been terrified most of us have at some point in our lives to where you feel that way i remember that feeling where i was just completely like oh crap no matter what i do it's wrong my life looks like a country song you what i do it's wrong my life looks like a country song you know i mean it's just like awful and so you you just it just takes the wind out of your sails and proverb says hope deferred makes the heart sick that's what we're talking about okay hope deferred she doesn't have hope. Yeah. She feels stuck. It feels overwhelmed.
Starting point is 00:16:07 It can't. It's a hopeless situation. But here's the rest of that proverb. When desire comes, it is the tree of life. And that's what I was talking about earlier. When you can go, okay, in spite of this, I'm going to manifest with intestinal fortitude down in my guts the desire to get up and go do something just to keep from getting run over because I'm sitting in the middle of the interstate.
Starting point is 00:16:33 Something's got to change. Even if I just crawl over to the edge and lay there a minute, but at least there's some motion, right? And so you don't expect her to go get a new career making $200,000 an hour in the next 20 minutes. That is not what I expect, nor should you. But I do expect to see her deal with this. Otherwise, what you're going to have five years from now is you're going to be married to a 35-year-old depressed lady.
Starting point is 00:16:59 Yeah. And you're going to deal with that for the next 20 years. Because that's where this is heading is clinical depression if she doesn't deal with it for her sake. Because it's a human nature thing. I mean, I feel sorry for her. I'm so sorry she's there. But the bad news is she's got $100,000 in debt. The great news is she's young and smart and pretty, and she can go do a whole lot of things,
Starting point is 00:17:18 and she doesn't have to do anything with art. Or she could do something with art. I don't care. I don't care what she does. But doing nothing, I do care about. And that's what you're saying. And so give yourself a couple of more tough conversations and see if you see any movement at all. Because it's not things are either getting better or they're getting worse.
Starting point is 00:17:40 Nothing does status quo. Nothing stays the same. Relationships get better. They get worse. Jobs get better. better they get worse your money gets better it gets worse your physical body's getting better getting worse everything no one nothing stays exactly where it was there's an it's impossibility and so it sounds like while you've been dating her that this has gone downhill, and you've got to help her turn it for her sake and for the sake of the relationship going forward. That's a dad talking, okay? And you can do this. And if I can help some way, I will.
Starting point is 00:18:15 I mean, if you want to go through Financial Peace University or something, I mean, take her to that. Anything, but it's going to involve her getting over this paralysis and engaging again. And it's just hard to do when you're hurting and scared and hopeless. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Hey, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's a tough one. I remember when we were at the very bottom in 1988. It was August
Starting point is 00:18:47 and I was sitting early one morning. The kids were tiny. Rachel was about four months old. Denise was a toddler. I was so scared I couldn't breathe. And I opened my Bible and it hit Romans. And it said, Romans 5, it said, rejoice in your suffering. And I went, sure, thanks. That's a big help because suffering produces perseverance. And perseverance produces character, which produces hope.
Starting point is 00:19:22 And hope is a gift of God. Perseverance precedes the hope. And hope is a gift of God. Perseverance precedes the hope. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Bianca is with us in Nevada. Hi, Bianca. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi. Hi, Dave. How's it going? Better than I deserve. How can I help? I'm wondering when should I just give up on my truck? I know you say that when the unrepaired car plus the repair equals the price of the car, you should probably replace it.
Starting point is 00:20:32 Yes. But I do my own wrenching, so it never really gets to that point. Well, there reaches a point, though, that all you're doing is wrenching. I mean, the thing is just at the end of its life. So how many miles on the truck 400 000 okay and um so do you have any money saved at all no i just spent the rest of my um emergency fund to fix the radiator and the heater cord All right. So what's your income? $90,000. $90,000. Why do you have no money saved at $90,000?
Starting point is 00:21:10 I'm on Baby Step 2, and I just spend my emergency fund to a credit truck. I got you. Okay. So you have your $1,000 emergency fund at Baby Step 1, and then you're working your Baby Step 2. How much debt have you got? About $20,000. Okay. okay all right so when will you be done with the debt uh last time i called you in about two years why would it take two years to pay off
Starting point is 00:21:36 20 000 if you make 90 um i'm also in the middle of building my house so you told me to just add that and then spread it to two years instead of one. Gotcha. Okay. I think I do remember your call now. All right. I think I remember us working through that together. All right.
Starting point is 00:21:54 Well, I mean, your truck is probably worth less than $1,000. Agreed? Repaired, Kelly Blue Book says $4,500. Really? Okay. Could you not get a better Book says $4,500. Really? Okay. Could you not get a better car for $5,000 than that car? Well, I am off-grid, and I need a truck to haul water. Well, I mean, a truck.
Starting point is 00:22:17 Could you not get a better truck, though? And I have a baby, so it needs to have a back seat. Could you not get a better truck than that one for $5,000? I haven't been able to find it. I've been looking for like a month and a half on the page list. Okay. Well, I mean, you have the option to continue to wrench it, but you're just telling me that the thing is eating money and it's got 400,000 miles on it. So if you can continue to have it be reliable and it's got 400 000 miles on it so um if you can continue to have it be reliable and it's
Starting point is 00:22:47 not eating your lunch then it's okay to move on through it and continue to mess with it if you want to all right matthew is on the line matthew's in colorado hi matthew welcome to the dave ramsey show hey dave how are you doing today better than i deserve how can i I help? Yeah. So, um, my, my wife and I are just starting out. I'm only 22 years old. Um, and, uh, we just, uh, paid off all of our debts, uh, credit cards, things like that. It wasn't too out of control. I sold a lot of, sold a lot of stuff to pay it off. But now what we're, what we're looking at right now is, um, she'd like to start a cosmetology school and we're eligible for the Pell grant, but that would still leave about $10,000 in student loans that we potentially need to take out if she pursued that.
Starting point is 00:23:29 And my only concern is that, um, I currently have, the only other debt I have is a, is a loan. It's going to be about five to $600 a month. Uh, it's going to be coming out here in the next month or two. Uh, I think you're familiar with the military Academy loans. So my concern is that we're on some minimal income at the moment. And as a way to increase our income. You already took the military loan?
Starting point is 00:23:56 Yeah, which is why, like I said, I've sold and downgraded. So how much do you owe on that? So when I took the loan, I used it to buy a new car like a knucklehead, and then I put the rest in a Roth IRA. So it's $32,000. It doesn't start coming out until the 10th of this next month will be the first payment. And what's your household income?
Starting point is 00:24:21 So at the moment, we're both just kind of starting to get on our feet here so at the moment i'm making about seventeen hundred dollars a month uh with a pay increase in the next month or two is what it's looking like and she's pulling in about a thousand dollars a month okay all right well i i would like for her to go to cosmetology cosmetology school when you all can afford to pay cash for it i would never in a thousand years tell somebody take a student loan out yeah ever yeah yeah i mean i guess my only you know my only concern is you know it's just she doesn't uh she doesn't have a college degree and because i didn't survive uh the academy um i i'm in a position where i don't have to go to school for about a semester but
Starting point is 00:25:06 so it's a college degree is not causing you all to fail or not fail throughout the scope of your life if you choose as a part of your career path to get some additional education as you go along i think that's fine but you pay cash for it. You do not rationalize your butt off and get yourself. Listen, you've just been working to get out of debt. You feel trapped right now by this stupid academy loan, and then you call up and say, I want to do more of that because it's so much fun. No. Yeah, it's not fun.
Starting point is 00:25:39 No. I'm being sarcastic, okay? No, we don't do that. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, you know, so no. I mean, you can't just decide to go do something and pay for it with a loan every time you do that. You're going to be broke your whole life. And so what you do is you lay down and say, okay, what has to be true?
Starting point is 00:25:57 We've got to work extra. We've got to be tight on the budget. We've got to take care of this stupid academy loan, and we've got to come up with an additional $10,000, which if we save $800 a month for a year that's ten thousand dollars yeah as opposed to paying someone else 800 bucks yeah yeah okay as opposed to borrowing the money which puts you right back in a mess and um other thing you want to do with cosmetology school like any other school any other academic any other trade school thing, is you shop. You look at the different schools that are available and the different costs that are available. And, you know, when you're through, you're going to be cutting hair if you're going to cosmetology.
Starting point is 00:26:41 And no one is going to come up to the booth to get their haircut and go oh i can't i can't use you because that's i don't like that i don't like where you went to school you know it's been a long time since dave had a haircut okay i don't want to hear but uh i i mean back when i got haircuts i never asked a single person where they got their haircutting license from. So you go to the place that's the least expensive and that gets you the basic education to be able to function in that world. And you don't overpay for it, in other words. That's part of the equation. Might be that you find something that you don't need an extra ten for.
Starting point is 00:27:24 You just need an extra 4 for or something. I don't know. But I'm always shopping. Education is a funny thing. People don't shop it. Somehow they feel like the one place that they found is the big deal. And it's just not. So hope that helps you, man.
Starting point is 00:27:40 Thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Nicole is next. nicole welcome to the ramsay show hi there thank you so much for taking my call sure what's up so i have been just having trouble making a decision i would like to leave my current stressful, like super overwhelming job as a claims adjuster and maybe transition to real estate. But just having trouble really making a decision due to some of the other life circumstances and kind of looking just for advice.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Okay. So what's super overwhelming about claims adjusting? Well, it's not so much that. It's that February 1st, and I think you talked to my husband about it once, but February 1st of 2017, we found out our son had passed away at daycare. And I got that phone call sitting in the same cube I sit in today with the same work in front of me, you know, essentially the same thing. I can't imagine. It's just kind of replaced the date a little too much. And as we get closer to August, which is his birthday month, I just started falling apart.
Starting point is 00:29:05 I don't blame you. I would, too. I'd be a basket case. I understand. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry. Well, make a plan that gives you an exit strategy. When are you going to leave, and how are you going to leave that's wise, but you can't
Starting point is 00:29:21 be sitting there this time next year. Our question of the day comes from blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee that means even if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they will remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSEY to get the best deal. Today's question is from Laura in Tennessee. Why do I need a will if I'm still young and haven't acquired a ton of wealth yet? You don't need a complicated will. You need an inexpensive will, and that's why we use MamaBearLegalForms.com.
Starting point is 00:30:37 They're not that expensive to get a basic will in place. The more complicated and larger a state is, the more you will spend on your estate planning and on your will in order to keep the government's hands off of everything. If you are young, single, 25 years old, and you die, and you have a car and a bank account, and that's it, it's going to be very easy to work through your estate, but it's going to take your parents or whoever's left twice as long, maybe five times as much trouble to get those few simple transactions taken care of if you don't have a will. The other thing you'll want to have as a part of your will package always is,
Starting point is 00:31:19 you know, your health care power of attorney. In the event you're disabled disabled who's going to make this if you're unable to make decisions for yourself uh medically who's going to make those decisions and also you know as a part of that process you want to fill out the paperwork on to unplug or to not unplug in the event of coma or something like that and so that takes a lot of the burden off of people that you love when you have a power of attorney in the event you're disabled um you have your your medical stuff filled out everything's laid out and you've got a will that your parents can file or whoever would be doing your estate if you're young and single and don't have a lot of assets if you have
Starting point is 00:32:04 children obviously it becomes very important the state will decide what happens to your children if you don't that's not a good thing you need to decide that um and so um you don't have spent a lot of money or a lot of time but it's also a good exercise in maturity just to have your full plan done on what's going to happen and share it with your family so they know what's going on. Are you an organ donor? You know, all these kinds of things. It's very, very nice to have all of that laid out for the people that are left behind. They're already going to be very sad, grieving, distraught. And in the middle of that, you leave them with difficult decisions to make
Starting point is 00:32:46 if you haven't made them ahead of time. It's just maturity. All right. Up next is Blake in South Carolina. Hey, Blake, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. How are you today?
Starting point is 00:33:01 Better than I deserve. What's up? So I heard you talking about house fever, and I have a very simple question. Did I get house fever, or did I get a Dave-approved deal? And we can go through the details from there. Well, I mean, do you know the guidelines that we lay out? I couldn't rattle them off, sir, no. Okay.
Starting point is 00:33:24 All right. Were you debt- free before you bought the house I'm not debt free okay you bought a house while you still had debt yes sir okay we don't teach people to do that okay all right well I guess that answers it there we go easy enough we want you to be debt free because we don't want Sally Mae to have to have her own bedroom we don't want the stress and add it on top of the house and so we tell folks to be debt-free because we don't want Sally Mae to have to have her own bedroom. We don't want the stress added on top of the house. And so we tell folks to be debt-free, have their emergency fund in place, and have their down payment in place above that.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Andrew is with us on line four. Hi, Andrew, in Massachusetts. How are you? Hey, Dave. I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?
Starting point is 00:34:04 I just want to say thanks for taking my call, first of all. Sure. I appreciate that. Sure. How can we help? I've got a school question. Hello? Hello.
Starting point is 00:34:17 Hi, I've got a school question for you. Okay. So I did a two-year program at a community college, uh, cashflow, cashflow in my first year there. And I got a loan for my second year and, uh, transferred, I graduated in a business and I transferred over to a state school. So I did, I did one semester there. And, um, during this time, my, my dad took over a business that he's been working
Starting point is 00:34:46 at for 30 years uh automobile business and um i'm working there and i got my appraiser's license in the state of massachusetts so i'm working as the damage appraiser and um i'm just wondering i'm i'm thinking about staying with this company and eventually taking it over. I've talked with my dad, and he's probably going to work for another 10 to 12 years and sell it over to me. And I'm just wondering if I should continue going to school or not. Okay. Well, the actual completion of the degree won't matter. But what does matter is the knowledge base.
Starting point is 00:35:27 If you're going to run a business and you've had more classes on accounting, more classes on marketing, more classes on statistical analysis, more classes, standard business classes on finance and so on, the better decisions you're going to make. You have better tools in your belt to do your job running the business later. Today, I would not worry about it. Today, you're not in a panic. I would take the income that you've got. You've got a good career started there. Let's go make some money. Let's get these debts paid off that you do have.
Starting point is 00:35:59 And then if you want to save up and do some work in the evenings and try to complete your degree and in the process put some of those tools in your belt that you maybe don't have today, it'll be helpful to you. But there's plenty of people run very successful businesses with less education than you've currently got. Right. But the other part of this is you want to commit if you're in anything, but particularly in business, and it's true in medicine and law, other things, you want to commit to being a lifelong learner, a reader. You need to read business books, leadership books, and books on entrepreneurship. And you need to constantly be reading and growing.
Starting point is 00:36:38 And college doesn't, you know, when you get out of school, if you stop learning then, in just a few years, you're irrelevant. So you have to keep reading and growing and learning all the time. You have to keep adding to your knowledge base as you go. If you keep doing that, you'll be fine. And then if you wanted to go back and finish up your bachelor's, you're probably not that far out from finishing it. That's a fine thing to do. And some of the classwork that you do to get that
Starting point is 00:37:07 would be valuable to you in running the business. I have a four-year degree is all I have. I've not got a master's. But I'm a lifelong learner in addition to that. And so I've probably got several PhDs in terms of the amount of information I have ingested in the 35, 40 years I've been doing business. And so that's what you're looking at. You're trying to learn, trying to grow, and trying to add to it.
Starting point is 00:37:33 But my basic four-year degree was very helpful, for that matter, still very helpful. A lot of those basic things, basic accounting understanding and gap principles and finance principles are things you know, finance principles or things I use on the air here every day. My job is to not make them sound like gobbledygook. Instead, put the cookies on a shelf where everybody can reach them. But I'm using the concepts and the critical thinking skills that, you know, that we were taught in our academic education.
Starting point is 00:38:01 So education is valuable. Is it mandatory where you slap your fist on the table and say you're not going to be successful unless you go back right now no no i think you're going to make some money and get your you know get a little nest egg put back get yourself out of debt get your emergency fund in place and if you want to save up and pay for class work and do some evening work as you go you're going going to be fine. And learn the business from your dad. Learn the business from other people in the business. Learn best practices. Get involved in stuff like entree leadership. Some of the other things that people have out there where you're growing and learning as a leader and those things, you'll be just fine.
Starting point is 00:38:41 You'll be just fine. Lots of people with high school educations or even less have been very successful in business um there's a lot more to it than simply getting a degree so good question man we appreciate you joining us open phones at 888-825-5225 appreciate you guys hanging out with us thanks for being here this is your show it is a show all about you that puts this particular hour in the books. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer, Kelly Daniels, our associate producer and phone screener. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. We'll be back with you before you know it. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com
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