The Ramsey Show - App - Ride the Wave of Change When Your Life Is Disrupted (Hour 1)

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

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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. Joining me today on the Dave Ramsey Show, Ken Coleman is with us. Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book, The Proximity Principle. Just fresh off the Ken Coleman Show for the last couple of hours, answering your questions about jobs. Well, there's a dadgum subject. And answering your questions about careers, as well as I will take your financial questions, as always on the dave ramsey show

open phones at 888-825-5225 so can easter probably the largest church attendance non-attendance in history yeah this weekend without a doubt because several of us went to several churches. That's right. Because we couldn't go to more than one. We couldn't go to more than one if we went in person. That's right. And we got to hop around all over the world and go to church a bunch of times on Sunday.

Sharon and I were making Easter lunch, which means there are lashes on the back, marks on my back from me doing honey do's. But meanwhile, one of my honey do's was to keep the easter services turning yeah so uh church is digital you know life is digital our career is digital increasingly jobs digital increasingly you're going to see the last 14 days no question about it i think you're going to see a major shift i think i think you're going to see a real change in education higher education it's going to be very interesting to see. I think anybody who makes a bunch of predictions right now, I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in it because so much is changing.

But I do think you're going to see some companies who were not open to remote working, they'll say, you know what, we're okay with it in certain instances. You're going to see some of that. You're going to see, again, education change forever. I think public school systems, a lot of them are caught, you know, they got caught. And it's like, what do we do here? And we're seeing higher education, that's going to change the type of things that people are doing. I saw an article today that, again, I think is worth considering, so I won't cite it. I don't think it's the truth, but I think it's something to consider, is that you're going to see a lot of kids, Dave, right now that are juniors and seniors in high school.

And because of this change in the economy, some of them are going to go, you know what? I've watched what's happened to mom and dad over the last three or four months. I might go right and do a trade. Because the trades are an industry that are going to explode. They're essential. And some are doing quite well right now. They're essential. They're all working.

They're very essential. And, again, I think the article is well written. There's an interesting piece of critical thought there. There is. The bottom line is that market disruption does one of two things. You either ride the wave of it, or you create the wave. One of three things. You create the wave, you ride the wave, or you're destroyed by the wave.

And I always think of the story of Frederick Tudor in 1820, took the first load of ice in the hull of a ship from Newfoundland to Martinique because people needed ice in their drinks, he decided. Got there with very little of the ice because he didn't even have insulation. And then he invented insulation. But the point was made. And point was made. And point was made. And fast forward from 1820, 100 years later, the ice business was still pretty much operating that way.

There were blocks of ice with big tongs being delivered by wagons or ice trucks to your front door. Your great-grandparents or great-grandparents had an ice box, which was little more than a glorified cooler. That's right. And they put a chunk, a big square chunk of ice in the bottom of it until the market was disrupted by this thing called Freon, invented by an offshoot of General Motors, a subsidiary of General Motors, a company called Frigidaire, invented Freon, and commercial refrigeration without ice was born.

And you would think the ice business was gone. But there was an ice company down in Texas that saw that coming. They delivered ice, but they also had at the ice house because it was cold. They kept meat and eggs and milk and people would come by on off hours, odd hours. The grocery stores weren't open and pick up the meat and the eggs and the milk. It was a convenience item. And so as the ice business went away because of refrigeration, the convenience business didn't go away.

And that ice company down in Texas had these weird hours. It was open from 7 to 11. Convenience store. 7 to 11. I did not know that. And that's where 7-Eleven came from. A guy named Jimmy Graham started that. You made my day.

So Jimmy Graham just completely flipped with the disruption. And guess what? A whole bunch of ice houses just went out of business. But instead of that, instead he said, well, this is what we were doing. And by the way, we sold a billion dollars in ice last year for picnics. So the ice business didn't go away. It just changed. And your business didn't go away.

It just changed your career. Your dream didn't go away. It just changed. You either caused the wave of disruption, which in this case, no one caused it. At least we don't think a person caused this. Obviously in this case no one caused it. At least we don't think a person caused this, obviously. We hope no one caused it. No one caused it. So you either cause disruption, you ride the wave of disruption,

or you're crushed by the wave of disruption. And sometimes that's just your posture. It really is. And I think you make a great point here. What are we going to do? We, being all of us, we've been disrupted. There's no one that's immune from this disruption. And I think you make a very good word.

I know. I can't help myself. But, you know, it's a situation where you have to decide, am I going to rise again if I've gotten completely knocked off the horse? Am I going to get back up? And again, Dave, you mentioned this last week when I was on with you. Here's what we know. 70% of Americans, 80% worldwide were unhappy in their jobs prior to this.

And yet we were at historic unemployment numbers, low unemployment numbers in the United States. So in some ways, this is the opportunity to begin again. And I think that that's what's exciting about this, to see what industries will develop. I posted something on social media on my Instagram page about all the different companies that came out of the last recession. So you think of the big recession, what year was that, Dave? 2007, 2008? Yeah. Just to give you an idea, Uber didn't exist, Airbnb didn't exist, Slack, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Square, Venmo, Groupon, and the list could go on and on and on.

But these are examples of things that are now one name you say it around the world, we know what it means. In fact, it's like, remember when Kleenex became a thing and it was just a brand name? It was, hand me a Kleenex. Well, that was the brand name. Now people say, I'm going to Uber over to you. So when there is a disruption, there is an opportunity

for invention and reinventing ourselves as leaders. A lot of those things were not necessarily born because of the recession. They were born in spite of the recession at the recession of 2008. That's right. So, I mean, I don't hear one of those that says, oh, the recession gave them a leg up.

No, no, no. I mean, Square is a payment system. Right. You know, you plug it. It's just the technology came of age. That's right. And the payment processes came of age. That's right.

And probably about the same thing happened with Uber, honestly. Yeah. And so, you know, some of these things come of age. So, what's coming of age yeah about the time everything got turned on its head here i gotta tell you if i'm i'm in the brick and mortar retail business i better figure out what's my version of amazon that's one thing or my version of something better get your online distribution figured out i can tell you remsey we've been we've been figuring out a way to get you guys delivered stuff right now. That's right. And it has changed the shape of this company because we've been trying to serve you right now.

And we probably are going to keep some of that the rest of our lives. We're reshaped automatically. It's both terrifying and exciting. That's right. Ken Coleman joins us. Let's take your calls at 888-825-5225. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. For most of us, health care costs seem to increase every year,

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To be a part of Christian Healthcare Ministries, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. CHM is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Thanks for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, career, and jobs expert joins me this hour. We're starting with Ryan in Pennsylvania. Hey, Ryan, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

Hey, how's it going, Dave? Great. How can Ken and I help? Sure. I have a little bit of a career question for you guys. So during this coronavirus thing, I've had a lot of time to think about what I want to do, and I've really noticed that I really enjoyed reading and learning about law-related things and reading up on legislation as well as explaining that to people. And the career path that I've kind of found myself at is a compliance analyst area, something in compliance. And I just wanted to know how I use my current skills, which are I have a resume of accounting and data analyst.

That's what I do currently. And I was just kind of wondering how I use those skills to, you know, venture into this new career field. Sure. Well, I can tell you right now that the fact that you're a good and successful accountant at looking at numbers and patterns and then data analyst, that's going to be, I think, pretty relevant as a compliance officer or some type of compliance professional. But I think the first thing you need to do is now that you know what you want to do, or at least you have a pretty good idea, let's dive deeper into that. Let's look into all the

different positions in that compliance field, if you will, and see what it actually takes to get a ticket to the dance. What is actually required? There's two things you're looking for. Experience and education. Is it required that you have to have an additional degree? Or if it's not a degree, is it more of a certification or some type of program like that? And then what kind of experience is needed? Because we're always looking at those two E's, experience and education. What do I need to do to be qualified? And then you're going to look at how much is that going to cost me? And then based on your financial reality, how long is that going to take you?

There's the plan. And so you need to do more of that research. I think you're really close, but I think once you do that research, you get the answers you need, and now you can adjust and put a plan together. How much of that research do you have? Currently, I think I have enough research in terms of what field I want to go into. I think I really want to go the financial services route, like mutual, uh, like mutual fund companies had funds, things like that. Uh, they, they all have a, you know, a pretty strong need for, uh, compliance analysts and things of that nature. But I have one more question. When should, when should I really,

you know, try to start pursuing this and maybe putting my, my name out there? Because right now these aren't certain times. And I am one of the lucky few who, you know, can work from home whose income isn't currently affected and I am still working through the baby steps. Let's start right now because of those questions that I just walked you through. So let's say that you say, all right, I know what I have to do to get qualified and so now I've looked at how much that costs me and how long that's going to take and so it starts right now. You've got a day job. That day job is your stability. It's essentially funding your future. If you need to go get a secondary job to bring in more income to start that training process, if that's what's next, that's what you do. But you're in a great situation to actually start now. Dave, I think a lot of

people think that they have to go full time into something to get there. And many times that's just not even possible. And so there's no need to wait. There's something that he can do right now, even if it's, okay, I can take one or two classes, or I can begin a second job, which will save up the money to be able to start that education or that qualification process. We work with so many compliance people at broker-dealers and on the financial services side through our SmartV smart investor program.

And we work with compliance people with the smart dollar program when they're putting our teachings in as an HR benefit. They want to make sure that we're not violating some corporate initiative of some kind. And so there's compliance in both of those areas that match up with what he's talking about. So I should know this, but I don't. I don't know if there is a certification uh that is necessary for you to be in that position i don't think there is but i don't know

and so that's the first thing i'm going to find out is what are the is there a an industry cert that you need to go get because you have the right personality and right makeup to be in this field it's a highly detailed uh you know rule follower uh and you know you come out of the accounting world you're highly detailed rule follower you have to follow accounting rules and it's not me it doesn't rule follower in a bad way it's real follower in a good way uh you know that you are the right makeup i wouldn't make a good compliance officer because my goal in life is to break the rules and so uh right but the uh but you know he'll make a great one right and so i would get in touch with some of the mutual fund companies some of the broker dealers uh even talk to some compliance officers that are working there and say okay what's it take to get on and then

what's it take to get ahead in the field and then follow ken's map that he just gave you but i don't see any reason to hold up talking to someone if they're hiring the position and you can interview for it. And it doesn't cost you your other job. That's right. And, Zach, let's get him a copy of my best-selling book, The Proximity Principle. I wrote the map, exactly how to identify the right people in the right places. Dave just touched on it.

I wanted to make sure you have that because that right there will walk you through the process of talking to people who are actually in that profession. And we get the answers pretty quickly. It might be helpful to get a degree or some you might find three out of five go. Don't need it at all. I got the connections. I'll tell you what you need to do. I agree.

It might just be a search. I don't think it is. I think it's more certification. And here's the point. Industry recognition. That's right. And it's more about relationship. It's about the relationships that get you in.

Because somebody goes, let me tell you about Ryan. Sharp, sharp guy. He's done his homework. He's gotten qualified. Let's get him. Exactly. Frank is in Pennsylvania. Hey, Frank, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I can take a call. I have about around $115,000 in student loan debt, and about half of it is federal and the other half is private right now at this moment. For the past year and a half, I've been putting minimum payments on the federal

and then putting everything on my private loans. That's due to the fact that I have a cosigner on my private loans, so I was just trying to get rid of that as quick as possible. How much do you owe? You said it's half and half? Yeah, so right now the private's about $67,000, and the federal's about $59,000. Are they broken up into individual loans?

They're all consolidated, so they're just one. So there's two big loans. Yeah. And they're identical, almost in size. Almost, yeah. I'm with you then. I would knock out private before I knocked out federal. Yeah.

Yeah, but the thing is, there's a new CARES Act. They waived the interest on payment for the federal. Doesn't change anything. I'll just make 100%. Yeah, you don't have to make a payment. You don't have to make interest and use all that to reduce your private loans. No, for the federal loan,

the government, they're waiting for it, so I'd be putting everything on the principal. I didn't know. No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can put everything. I mean, you need to make the minimum payment that is required on the federal,

but it's no interest, and so make your normal minimum payment on your federal and everything else on the private loans. Okay. Just what you were doing anyway. The only thing the CARES Act does is it helps you pay off the federal loans a little bit faster because it saves you a few months of interest is all. But it's really not going to change your life. It's probably a couple of grand or something,

which out of $115,000 problem really doesn't change anything. You've still got $115,000 problem, and you've still got to solve that by dropping huge bombs of principal on first the private loans and then follow up with the federally insured student loans. Now, the reason I would pay off the federally insured second, by the way, for those of you listening, has nothing to do with the CARES Act, has nothing to do with the interest rate. It has to do with federally insured student loans, if you become disabled or if you die, are forgiven.

Private loans are not. And so I would pay off the ones that, in a worst-case event, would be taken care of last, given that they're equal. Now, if your federally insured student loans were $5,000 and your private loans were $50,000, I'd just go ahead and knock out the federal, but his are almost equal. So in case of a tie push your federals to the back because of the potential forgiveness for death or disability not because of anything

else not because of interest rate or not because of the cares act so good question frank just keep after it baby you're the secret sauce the government did you a tiny little favor but you did you a big favor when you said, I'm going to kill this stuff. I'm getting rid of it. You're the answer. The government is not the answer. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Guys, I've been saying this over and over. This is the time to capitalize on a down market. Because you know what else is down? Interest rates.

If you have student loans and you still haven't talked to Splash Financial, do it now. The Fed just slashed interest rates, so Splash is getting their customer really low rates. Combine that with not having to pay closing costs. This is the time to get your student loans refinanced. Everyone is asking about the interest rate waiver for federal student loans. First off, it applies only to government loans, not private loans. Also, the waiver is only temporary. So what you need to do next is connect with Splash Financial and review all your student loans. Guys, stop dabbling here and get it done.

There is no money out of pocket, and you could save a lot of money. Go online to splash splash financial.com slash ramsey and get started to take advantage of these low rates So this is kind of fun. We put out the new page almost three weeks ago now. I guess when Ramsey went home, started working from home, we came back the following Monday, and our leadership team said, we've got to come up with some stuff to help people at home. Lots of ways you can do things. And for right now, and it probably isn't going to be for much longer, and that's the truth,

we have made the Financial Peace University the whole premium product available on a 14-day free trial. I can just about promise you that within a week that's going to change. That was a temporary thing to serve you guys, and it's not a good business model for us long term. So we were trying to help folks that were in desperation, stuck at home, and different things, and so it's about run its course. But you can still get it, a 14-day free trial right now, the entire premium product at DaveRamsey.com slash hope. The second thing that we did was we put up a page called DaveRamsey.com slash hope that has all kinds of goodies in it in terms of, you know free stuff and almost free stuff and great buys

and uh we changed a bunch of that stuff around over the weekend added quite a few things raised the prices on a few things some of those things again were just for that first 14 days or 18 days or whatever it was there that we had it up uh and so here's the deal we're going to do our famous ten dollar sale but we don't usually do it this time of year obviously and uh we want you to save big on over 40 best-selling books audiobooks ebooks and envelopes select from 40 different items any of of them, $10 each. That's the total money makeover, $10 each, which, by the way, on Amazon, if you go on and look at total money makeover, they can't get it to you until May

because they're delaying nonessential deliveries like books. We can get it to you immediately. The same would be true of the $10 special on the Ken Coleman Proximity Principle book. There we go. Great graduation gift. Yeah. The $10 special on debt-free degrees. Oh, man.

Number one bestseller. There's three number one bestsellers right there, all $10 each. And you can buy as many of them or mix and match them in any way you want. Love it. Audio books, $3.99. I mean, this is an incredible, incredible deal. So the $10 sale, and we usually don't like that free degree was just on the number one, just the other day.

Uh, I think it was our latest number one book coming out of here. And we usually wait like a year before we put the, you know, the fresh number ones on the $10 special. But again, we're violating everything because these, everything because these are weird and wacky times. And so $10 sale on everything. So if you're catching up on your reading and you always wanted that Rachel Cruz, Ken Hogan, Ken Coleman, Anthony O'Neill, Dave Ramsey book, $10 each at DaveRamsey.com, and we are actually shipping immediately.

Now, you don't want to don't order it overnight that their prices are ridiculous on the shipping on that but we can get traditional shipping prices to you very very quickly and so you'll have it in time to get it read and actually know this stuff. Also we're selling a case of Total Money Makeover books for only eight dollars apiece that's 24 of them because lots of people are giving those out as gifts. But they're also giving out the proximity principle and debt-free degree and Destroy Your Student Loans, the new one by Anthony O'Neill, which is $10.

That's a quick read, a 64-pager. And all of that, $10, and they all make great, great gifts. So be sure and check all those things out. Our question of the day comes from blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee means even if you goof up, if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they will remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the promo code Ramsey, you get the best possible deal. James is in Wisconsin. My wife is applying for the Economic Injury

Disaster Relief Loan. She claims it does not have to be paid back. Why is it not called a grant? Thank you. Because it is not a grant. It is a loan with promises of forgiveness if you meet the stipulations.

You remember that time that they said if you take out a student loan and you work for an underprivileged, underserved area for 10 years that they would forgive your student loans and then they didn't? You remember that? Well, I remember it. I remember it clearly. And these loans, they don't even, the ink is not even dry on the legislation. The banks don't even have the notes figured out. They don't have the documentation figured out. They're slapping this stuff out there, and it's going to cause you trouble.

Listen, if something sounds too good to be true, let me help you. It is. And when the federal government says says we're here to help, those should be the scariest words you ever hear in your life. So not a chance that we're going to recommend you take out the PPP loan or the EIDR loans either. None of them. If they are forgiven, effectively they're a grant,

but I am predicting a mess on the forgiveness, and I am predicting that some of you are about to walk up into a noose that you thought this was just like a hot knife through butter, free money from the government. Let me just tell you, there's no such thing. So, Ken, one time I was doing rehabs on houses. Really? You were actually with the nail gun and everything? No, no, I had crews. This was doing rehabs on houses. Really? You were actually with the nail gun and everything?

No, no, I had crews. This was back before I went broke. I had like four crews. And I got over into one of the gentrified areas of Nashville, East Nashville, where they were doing historic rehabs. Now, this is before doing historic rehabs over there was cool. Now everybody's over there doing it. But, I mean, I got these 1908 houses and this kind of stuff and they were pieces of junk and but they were very ornate you know beautiful uh woodwork

and mantles and stuff in them and um so i get this one house and uh the hysteric commission i mean the historic commission has grants for five thousand000 if you keep the facade of the front of it looking historic because they want to put the homes back into their natural. And they're cute, beautiful little homes. And so it made sense to do it from an aesthetic viewpoint. And I thought, I'm doing this anyway. I might as well get the $5,000 grant. And so I get all signed up.

I'm counting on this $5,000, which I wasn't spending, but about $30,000 on the property to fix it up. So the $5,000, you know, it's a pretty big chunk back, percentage-wise. Well, CODES comes out and says, your front porch doesn't have a rail around it. And I said, well, no. It didn't have a rail around it in 1908, and the the historic commission wants me to put it back to meet 1908 guidelines. Well, you can't get a use and occupancy permit. Nobody can live in the house if you don't put a rail around the front porch. And I called the historic commission.

They said, well, if you put a rail around the front porch, you'll get the $5,000. Yes. Two government agencies working together to like a hand in a brick. Yeah. To put you in a corner yeah you know that's exactly right you know what i did i put the i put the rail on the front porch i got the uno and i tore the rail off and um then i got the five thousand dollars so i had to beat them at their own game but there's innovation you know that's just you know but good god that's great

civil disobedience the hysteric the hysteric commission income in in contrast with nashville codes look and you know that's exactly what the crap's going to happen here with these things look like this is exactly it sounds like free money gotcha well it's true well listen this isn't a political statement put a rail around it this is a statement of fact they didn't let anybody read the bill okay there are people like you and I that pay attention to the facts, and the facts are that when they passed the stimulus package, there was no review of the bill. There's all kinds of stuff in there that the bankers don't even know.

I've talked to some friends of mine because I wanted the real story. They can't even get the funds. I know. They can't get the funds, and they can't get – well, they're not going to get – They're already run out. They're making the loan. McConnell said it today. They need another stimulus package.

So this thing to your point – They can't get the guidelines. The regulations aren't in place. You're about to get screwed, America. It's a loan. I'm sorry. I know you were stimulated, but you shouldn't have been. I'm just telling you, you shouldn't have been.

You can't put the rail around it. Oh, you can put the rail around it. Nope. You can't put the rail around it. Oh, you can put the rail around it. Nope, you can't put the rail around it. Nope, it's not going to be forgiven. It is going to be forgiven. Wait a minute, did you hire those people back? Were they the kind of people we wanted you to hire back? Are you abiding by all our politically correct guidelines?

Did you make a donation to Planned Parenthood? I don't know. What are they going to dream up? I don't know. And I'm not being a conspiracy theorist. I just know the borrower is slave to the lender, and baby, use a slave. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Be more intentional with your time and money.

Sign up for e-meals and let them do the thinking for you. They have a shopping list generator that makes it incredibly easy. You can have your meals organized and planned for the week and have your groceries waiting for you when you get to the store. The average customer saves $2,000 a year and two hours a week. Get a free two-week trial at eMeals.com. mason is with us in missouri hey mason welcome to the dave ramsey show hey mr ramsey um i'm 17 years old and uh i thoroughly enjoy making money obviously as most of us do and um right now i just do lawn mowing and i'm

like trying to expand my social media and all that stuff but i'm basically just curious if you have any tips for me for like self-employment opportunities that i can take advantage of without coming off as like tone deaf because of the current situation oh you mean in the moment so you're still cutting grass yeah i would suspect that some of your competition's out of the business you probably pick up you could probably pick up more customers right now okay so you probably want one option one option right in front of us would be just to expand what you're doing and i don't think most folks will see that as tone deaf right you're going to have to be you're going to be cognizant of how they want to interact with you

i talked with a heating and air guy over the weekend that's a friend of mine and he said some people just walk up to the front door and say come on in you know others are like cracking open the window with their mask on peek peeking through and handing, you know, and mailing the check or emailing the money through the email or whatever, that kind of stuff. But, you know, he said some are real paranoid and some are just don't care. And so you just have to be, you know, wearing a mask and gloves and booties and everything else if you're going to go inside or near the home. But you might not have to do all that with just cutting the grass. I don't know. Ken, any ideas popping in your head, Ken?

Yeah, Mason, you had a question real quick? Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say that most of the people, they already pay me through, like, Venmo, or they, like, take a check to the door. But I mainly just wanted to ask for, like, something new, because, like, yeah, I can keep mowing grass, but it's hard to find clients. Yeah, I got a couple thoughts.

So let me give you an idea, and then let me give you a process for finding the idea. Because I think there's ideas all around you. So what you've got to do is get yourself in a position where you see things. One thing that I'm thinking of is I actually went to a big box home improvement store over the weekend, and people are out doing stuff all the time. And those numbers are up. Their revenue's up. I'm wondering about pressure washing, something along the lines of taking care of something

like a lawn that other people just don't want to do, and it's labor intense. I actually like pressure washing. But the point is something like that, that again is in the same line of what you already do. And somebody goes, you know what? I'll pay this young man to come in and do a good job for me. He'll get it done. like that, that again is in the same line of what you already do, and somebody goes, you know what, I'll pay this young man to come in and do a good job for me. He'll get it done, and I don't have to worry about it. You're looking for things like that that are still somewhat of a margin-type business where people have the margin to pay you to do it because they don't want to do it. And

it's a function of just showing up and saying, hey, I can do this. But here's the process I want you to walk through. I want you to get your antenna up. Dave and I have got a good friend. He's a multi-best-selling author, one of the great thinkers in all the world, Seth Godin. And years ago, Dave, I asked Seth one time, I said, how did you come up with all those little short-form blogs that he's made famous and all these wonderful thoughts? I said, do you just sit down and think of things and then write about it? He said, no, Ken. He said, I always have my antenna up. Every time I'm out, anywhere I am, I'm looking at my surroundings and I am observing. And if I observe something that I have a thought on, then I begin

to write about it. And so he's thinking, Seth isn't just thinking when he's in the car or on the train or whatever, when he's reading something, when he's watching the news. And I think that's what you need to be doing right now is looking around for opportunities that are where people have the margin. It's not a high cost for them. They're paying you to mow their lawn. And so you're looking for something that's not a big financial decision. So there's still some income there, disposable income, if you will, and that you can solve a problem. It's a nagging thing that needs to get done.

And you offer your services for a fair price. And I think you'll find all types of opportunity. But you've just got to get your head up and go, what's similar to cutting a lawn that I can come in and do? It's time and labor intensive that most people don't want to do, and I can offer a fair price for it. He'll find all kinds of opportunities. And it may be that your antennas go up, and it's nothing to do with manual labor.

That's true, too. That's right. It could be that you know how to do code, and you want to write an app to do something. I've known more than one 17-year-old to do that. That's a great point for a restaurant that needs to adapt, do some online orders. Could you come in and do a quick fix of their website or create an app? That's a good point. If you have those skills.

If you don't have them, you can't just invent them out of thin air. But, man, if you were someone who knew how to develop a simple and throw up a simple website, even if you're using templates like WordPress and things, you just get it up and get people moving, get their store, get their cart moving and stuff like that and or an app. You know, it's amazing what that kind of stuff can do. Here's what I don't want you to take a job at minimum wage and call that okay, because you have already experienced making five or six times an hour cutting grass what you would have made at minimum wage, and there's no reason to go back. There's no reason. I mean, you need to find something where you are selling ideas

and the answer to someone's problem, whether you're doing that with a digital setting, whether you're doing that in a completely different thing, or whether you're following the line of thinking that Ken was on. I don't care with either one of those, but, you know, I think you're going to do great. I think you're just going to do great. Will is with us in Nebraska. Will, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. My wife and I have been following your advice for many years. It's really helped us, so appreciate what you and your team do. Thank you. Yeah, so I just bought a house last year, so we have a mortgage. Payoff is about $223,000, but other than that, we have no other debt. So that's the only debt we have.

Good for you. Yeah, so my wife and I are having a bit of a disagreement, though, because we have regarding our Roth IRA accounts. We have about $50,000 that's in cash right now in the Roth IRA, but it's not invested. So we're doing our monthly, maxing out our monthly contributions to a Roth IRA. You have $50,000 in a Roth, but it's in a money market? No, it's in a brokerage account. Why is it not invested?

Well, that's the question. So I want to invest it, and my wife, she wants – by the way, I'm in the military, so I have 24 years, and so I will have a pension when I retire. But I want to take the money out – I mean, I'm sorry. I want to invest it into the funds that we're already invested in in our IRA. But my wife, she would prefer to take that out and pay down our mortgage. So that's where our disagreement is. She was more interested in that guaranteed return, you know,

that you get when you pay the mortgage versus the, you know, not guaranteed return in the market. So let me ask you this. Okay. The question is, how old are you guys? So we're both just about 48. Do you have any other money? So we have about $70,000 invested in our Roth IRAs.

So you have virtually no nest egg at this point, $120,000 in a nest egg at 48 years old. Correct. And a $250,000 mortgage. But your debt, a $223,000 mortgage, but you're debt-free. Okay. That's an easy answer. You would never use this Roth IRA money to pay down the mortgage

unless it was to avoid a foreclosure or avoid a bankruptcy and you're not there. The money should be invested immediately while the market is down and it's on sale. And that's what I think. And so I like that advice. I respect my wife. Well, here's the thing. She's making the decision. The only way her decision that she's making is logical is if she thinks that the market is going to stay where it is or get worse

over the next 20 years before you're 68. Right. There is no possibility that that happens. If it does, we're in serious trouble in America. There's no time in history, any time in the history of the stock market, that it has stayed level or gone down for 20 years.

Right. Okay. Now, so she's making the decision based on current fears and making a future decision with current fears. Now, that's the only way you would take a 3.5% rate of return. Yes, but I think she's just focused on that guaranteed. Well, it is. It's a guaranteed suck.

It sucks. It's a guaranteed 3.5% rate of return, and I wouldn't do it. So, I mean, because it's almost guaranteed based on historical data that the stock market's going to return double that or triple that or quadruple that. And so, especially when it's down right now and you can buy it on sale. i would buy the normal mutual funds that we recommend is what i would do thanks for the call in the middle of these uncertain times ramsey solutions wants to give you some hope for the very first time ever we're giving you financial peace university free for 14 days go to davramseycom slash hope so you can watch from home. Dental insurance is great if somebody else is paying for it, but if you're footing the bill,

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