The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Sell My Land in Order to Be Debt-Free? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Chris Hogan. Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today as we talk about your life and your money. Open phones at 888-825-5225. The call is free, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Elizabeth is with us in Denver.

Hi, Elizabeth. What's up in your world? Hi. I'm really nervous. Sorry. You'll be okay. We've never lost a patient okay thanks uh my husband works for the state of colorado and he's worked there five years and he had signed up for just the traditional pension plan and i guess he can't change it to a defined contribution plan which is more like a 401k,

where you have control of the investment. And I was wondering if that would be a good idea. Anytime you can gain control over your money, it is a good idea. Okay, that's what I was thinking, but you can only change it once, and then you can't change it back. All their literature sounds like they don't want you to change it. Yeah. So it's kind of scary when it says it's a terrible thing.

Well, a defined benefit plan is you pay into a program, and they use the money that you're paying in to pay the people that have already retired. Yeah. So they don't want you out of there. They need you paying into it. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. From a statistics, from an actuarial standpoint, they need you in it. They don't want you paying into it. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. From a statistics, from an actuarial standpoint, they need you in it. They don't want you out of it.

It's a lot like the Social Security situation. But not quite as bad. But it's, yeah, it's the same kind of, it's a pyramid scheme in a sense. So, not really. But, I mean, it's mathematically, it's different than what you put into your 401k is there. Period. Nobody's messing with it. It's your money, your deal period nobody's messing with it it's your money your deal that's the deal

and so that's you know that that's what you're facing so go ahead and read up on what happens if you this how if you do this and make sure in your situation that you know every detail about it but in as a general philosophy anytime you can get control over your money, you almost always end up better off than someone else controlling it, especially a governmental entity. And don't do it alone, Elizabeth. So that's why we have the SmartVestor Pros out there. Grab that literature, look it up, make your list of questions, but go sit down with the SmartVestor Pro so you're navigating and you know without a shadow of a doubt the path you're on, but also the expected arrival date. Yeah, it might be just a phone call even with a pro because a pro's not able to really actually sell you anything to do any good for you.

You've got to make a choice at your company or at his employer between the two, but they'll help you navigate it because they're the people that we endorse, and that's one of the things they agree to do when they get the Ramsey name on them. Tyler is in Louisville, Kentucky. Hey, Tyler, what's up? Hey, guys, how's it going? Thanks for taking my call. Sure, man. How can we help?

Well, I'm 24, and my wife is 22. We accumulated some land back in 2017. It's 11 acres, and I've got the opportunity on the market right now to sell it and have enough profit to be out of debt, including my house. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Why would you not do that? Well, I understand that land is the best thing to have at the moment, so I wouldn't feel stupid for selling something that I wish I'd had in 15 years from now. A house that I sold a guy for when I was 18 years old, I got my real estate license three weeks after I turned 18. I sold it to him for $42,500. It sold the other day for $240,000. But that was like 90,000 years ago. The dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Okay? But the reason I tell you that story is 100% of the real estate stories you will tell in your life, it went up. It went up. I mean, it just don't go down, man. And so the point is that they're not making any more land. Well, that's a God's truth, but they're also not making any more debt, except every 20 seconds on your butt. And so if I'm you, I'm out of Dodge dodge because i think this land was just kind of bought maybe with a future dream in mind and you didn't when i asked you why you wouldn't sell it you didn't say

because it would break my heart because it's my favorite piece of dirt on the planet you made some philosophical statement about real estate tyler how much debt how much is the land valued at um i could sell it for 110 000 okay Okay. And what do you owe on the house? I owe $72,000 and I owe $34,000 on the land. So it would profit me about roughly $3,000 in the end, in the bank. And how much is your mortgage payment right now? A month, it's $594,000. And how much is the payment on the now? A month, it's $594. And how much is the payment on the land?

$364. Pay that stuff off, my friend, and start taking that $800, $900 and putting it toward a fully funded emergency fund and move forward in your life. You won't regret it. You won't regret it. Here's the thing. You've got plenty of opportunities to buy land, and you're going to buy some later because you like land. I like dirt, too. I bought a farm just because I think you need to hold – I need to own something to help hold the world together.

And that piece of dirt holds the world together. So you just need to have some, but that's okay if you don't right now. You're 24, and if you are 100% debt-free, that is going to put you on a trajectory towards the kind of wealth that allows you to buy whatever land you want to buy later. Absolutely. So are you telling me that Dave Ramsey's a farmer? No, I didn't say he's a farmer. I said I had land. Well, you said you bought a farm.

I said I bought a land. It's a farm. It's a piece of land. Are you growing stuff on it? A piece of land. Hey. Okay. I'm not growing it.

You're a farmer, Ramsey. There's somebody cutting it off of there. Ramsey's a farmer. But I'm just out there riding around and it's, Ramsey. There's somebody cutting it off of there. Ramsey's a farmer. I'm just out there riding around, and it's an excuse to get something dirty like a Raptor. But that's the kind of stuff you can do later. Yeah. The escape pod, so to speak, the place you go to escape a little bit after you've built some wealth.

But right now, man, you're 24 and you're 100% debt free. I love that plan. That's amazing. I just love that plan for you. Yeah. I'm so proud of you. You've done such a good job. And Tyler, I tell you this, my friend, as you move forward and get ready to buy more land, you're going to do it with cash, right?

That's the only option. You're not doing it with loans or anything else. You own your home outright. Just wait about six weeks. You're going to get that deed and you just start to save up for land and pay cash for it and you're on a whole different trajectory you're going to be an everyday millionaire if you stay on this path yeah very well done sir very well done 24 and 22 years old and he bought the property when he was 21 and it's against ten thousand dollars an acre that's unbelievable no it's $10,000 an acre. That's not bad. No, it's not bad at all.

Louisville, Kentucky market. Not bad at all. Very cool. So you'll get to do this again and you'll get to do it again. And I don't know of a piece of real estate that I have sold and I have sold well over a thousand pieces of real estate

that I formerly owned because I used to buy them and sell them all the time. I don't now. I pretty much buy it and keep it these days. But I don't know of a single piece of real estate that I've sold that's gone down in value. Then I'll look back and go, I remember when I sold that house for nothing, and now it's this, and, you know, that kind of thing. So it just always goes up over time, over time.

It's a great investment. Real estate's a wonderful thing to have, but it's also a wonderful thing to get yourself in a position that you're 100% dead for. You know, I get lots of questions about ID theft since it's a huge problem. Most people just worry about financial fraud, which is a big mistake. Tax refund fraud, for example, is out of control. Last year, the IRS paid out over $10 billion in fraudulent refunds. Thieves are stealing your refunds. They're also hacking into accounting and tax preparer firms to steal your personal information

and use it for all kinds of fraudulent activities that aren't detected by pricey credit monitoring and prevention plans. That's why Zander's ID theft plan is the only one I've ever recommended or used. They cover all types of ID theft, including tax refund fraud. Plus, they take over the work if you become a victim, your money if you get hacked they even protect your kids for free on their family plan go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 it's just the smartest most affordable way to go My co-host today here on The Ramsey Show is Chris Hogan, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Daniel's in Knoxville. Hey, Daniel, how can we help? Thanks for taking my call, Dave and Chris. Sure. First, talking to you. We are debt-free, paid off our house at the end of last year, but we're looking at having to build sometime. We've got four kids and a 1,000-square-foot house,

so that's not going to work long-term. And we think we can save, based on my calculations, about $50,000 a year, so I don't know when to pull the trigger and get out the hammer and nails and start building a house. Listen, Daniel, shove those kids all in one room. You just paid this thing off. That's what they're doing right now. Okay, all right.

You got it paid off. What's it worth? So the house on the land is probably worth about $180,000, as it says. And you're going to build on the same land? Yes, sir. Oh, okay. We got about 20 acres. Okay, so will you tear down this property, or what will you do with this property?

No, no, we're going to homeschool the kids so i was planning on kind of using it as a homeschool house and a guest house for when parents come to visit okay cool very nice now what's your income daniel uh right under 100 we're right at 100 so what will uh what will you spend on the new build probably about 200 is what i'm guesstimating based on my calculations i work construction paying my way through college and all good for you i'm pretty confident on that how long will it take you to build it uh i plan to be the general contractor so probably about a year okay all right and so you need 200 you could start it at the point you have about 150 if you're

cash flowing it am i wrong yes yes that is correct okay so i guess i get my plans drawn and get everything moving in the right direction and um if you need to do some site work and stuff maybe you can cash flow some of that while we're working on this. But it sounds like it's going to take two or three years to get the $150,000 together, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So would it be best to cash flow it rather than to do a construction loan for a small amount? Either one's fine as long as you put it on a 15-year fixed and you pay it off sooner than that.

But you're going to pay it off in two or three years. Okay. If you want to speed the process up, you can break ground whenever you're willing to go $150,000 in debt. Okay. Because during the year that you're building, 50 out-of-pocket you can do, right? Yes, sir. Okay, so you need 150 if you break ground tomorrow. But you're not going to break ground tomorrow because you've got some site work and you've got to draw a plan, I assume, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you need a plan. And you sound like you didn't act on it. You need a plan. You need a blueprint, dude, even if you're building it. Yeah, we've got a house picked out. I just have to start lining up an excavator and bring crews and block layers and stuff like that. And so just decide how far are you willing to go into debt?

Okay. How far are you willing to go into debt? Yeah, I'd rather avoid debt. I'm asking how far. You said if you take out a construction loan and pay it off, how far are you willing to do that? Yeah. We were thinking about waiting two years if we can keep our sanity, having $100,000 in the bank.

Yeah, that'd be a $50,000 loan, and you'd pay it off one year after you move in. Okay. And I'm going to tell you, you guys can do this psychologically because you know there's an incoming, right? And so there's no more speculation on, hey, we're stuck in this 1,000 square feet with 14 kids. You're like, no, we're going to be building this is what we're doing this is the game plan and so psychologically you can start to breathe and think totally differently because there's an end date coming yes sir yeah well done yeah good job you're thinking it through beautifully real quick dave wrote on this because you've built more real estate than anybody else I know. As you go in and you're preparing to build, what is the percentage you should anticipate overrunning on the build?

I've always heard 10 to 20 percent. Is that accurate? No, not if you manage your pre-process well. The commercial buildings we build here, we use a 5 percent contingency. And that basically means in tennessee basically assume when you start digging you're either going to hit rock or you're not right that's right and you're going to hit rock so you just don't know whether how much of that that that that that you're going to get to pay for over there and so uh which is 1500 bucks an hour or something

on a commercial project but the uh the the that's your biggest contingency. The only other things that will move are construction prices on materials and labor can move during the time you're building. And you can preset some of those by getting bids that are through the time of building. And so, like, for instance, right now lumber has gone bananas. Huge, huge with pandemic. It's just a huge shortage. And prices have gone through the roof and but if you lock your lumber package in today even if it continues to go up as long as you buy the package within a reasonable period of time you've bought the lumber i mean you have a you have a fixed price on that so you can take some of your big chunks and do away with the risk

of the contingency being there so if you got the the five largest items of labor and materials tied up and already paid for or already contracted for the price is fixed then you've done away with the variable the very the biggest variable the only other variable is uh controlling yourself and your decorator that's exactly right but that's that's a self variable picking out faucets and you know yeah i mean i remember we were building a house and they came in twenty thousand dollars over on the uh carpet in the basement on the bed on the bed oh you were calm we didn't put that in i was not calm i almost um i mean so me and the decorator had an understanding after that yeah he came the cheaper It's in the freaking basement.

Doesn't need to be the Taj Mahal down there. So it's, we don't even go down there that much. So, yeah, you need to put in the nice carpet that was in budget, darling. That's right. And don't bring me stupid stuff. Right. And same thing with the light fixtures, same thing. Oh, yeah.

The whole process i mean you can you know you the buyers the people the the customer screws up more deals than the builders do okay the builders know how to build houses if you can get the stinking stuff picked out and stay within the allowance on the pick out i mean on your selections then you're going to be okay but uh assuming your allowance was reasonable. Now, you can choose to go over, but you shouldn't, you know, you should have already had a good thing in mind. We're not 20% off on a $200,000 house. You just shouldn't be. You should know this is the level of crown molding we're doing.

This is the flooring we're doing. You know, you should have all that mapped out and have a good, solid budget before you break ground. And a blueprint and a schedule. Those are the three things you manage to when you're building. And blueprints are not cheap, so just get psychologically prepared for that expense. You know, they're cheaper than not doing them. Oh, yeah. Oh, I agree.

Because you don't know what you're, you know, so you just throw a paper bag up on the hood of the truck and start drawing with a pencil, you'll build a pretzel, man. So you're going to get yourself into a problem, and the heat and air guy ends up charging you triple because this wasn't engineered right. Right. And, you know, you get into all kinds of crap, and you're going to save money on your subs. You're going to save money on the length of time it takes you to build having a good, solid set of drawings. You just don't build a house without that.

And I grew up in the building business. I grew up in the real estate business. People pulling stuff out of their ear doing this is uh uh it's a bad idea yeah and so a good detailed spreadsheet that's a schedule where before you break ground you know on march 19th that you know next year the trim carpenter is going to be in there or the painter or whatever and you already got them scheduled right and the same thing with your materials delivery. Everything is all lined up, and there's a budget on everything, and you stay ahead of schedule on your selections,

and you stay ahead of schedule on your budget, and that keeps you out of the builder's way because you're going to screw up more stuff than your builder is. People get mad at the builder, but they took them two months to pick out light fixtures longer than they should have and then the project's two months off right oh and then all the subs that were lined up go do something else and you can't get them back to finish the job and so the whole thing gets screwed up when you don't stay on schedule so get your selections done ahead of schedule right on budget Everything drawn. This is a project.

You're managing a project. And so too many people build their dream home, it turns into a freaking nightmare. Good question, Chris. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll see right back. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Prince and Kara are with us. Hey, guys, congratulations on being debt-free. Thank you. Thank you. How much have you paid off?

We paid off $102,074.55. All right. How long did this take? Four years exactly. All right. And long did this take? Four years exactly. All right. And your range of income during this time? We started with $50,000. $52,000.

$52,000. And then ended with $79,000. Including the side hustles. Good. Good. What do you guys do for a living? I work at Collins Aerospace as a buyer. And I'm a teacher.

Cool. What were the best side hustles? The ones that made the most money? So I was able to teach online. I taught kids in China how to speak English in the morning. So like from 5 to 8 in the morning, I would teach every day. So that was a really good side hustle for us. Hey, man.

Great. Great use of your degree and your knowledge, too. It was fun, too. Yeah. So tell us what this debt. What did you pay off? Almost all of it was student loans. Really? Uh oh.

Who's student loans? That's me. Okay, there we go. You gotta own that now. You gotta just own it Prince. Was this for undergrad, grad? Undergrad, yep. I guess I didn't have anybody to guide me when I came to this country so I'm from Ghana. And so when I came here I got a scholarship to college to play football.

But it was a small percentage of scholarship, so I didn't really know how much the scholarship was. But so I came out of college with a lot of student loans. She came with like, well, $18,000. But then. When you came out of school, when did you become aware of the student loans? When I got a job and I started doing my budget and I realized that, hey, I couldn't pay off, you know, for what? Ten years or so. Right. Yeah. So my senior year, he was just out of college in my senior year. That was when my parents encouraged us to take financial peace university so they gifted that

to us and that's kind of when he started learning a lot and figuring out okay this is this is something we're going to attack really hard and i kind of was the one to convince him to go to fpu but then he was the one to convince me to stick to the plan you guys working as a team yep i love it that is good prince what'd you learn about your wife throughout this journey? I don't know. She motivated me a lot. I feel like it's a teamwork. It's not just by me alone.

And she did the side hustles and stuff like that. She was in on it. That's good. Kara, what did you learn about Prince? Oh, my goodness. He didn't know it yet until we started the journey but he's like a budgeting king like he is really good at sticking to the budget and helping the rest of us stick to the budget and um making it work when things got off track with the budget he was able to okay we can pinch here we can we can you know do something different sell something whatever to to make the

budget work this month so that we wouldn't just give up and get discouraged. So, Kara, are you the self-pronounced spender in this relationship? I guess so. That's awesome. I guess so, yeah. The free spirit and the nerd. Right, yeah. Good for y'all. Thank you.

Well done. How does it feel to be free? It feels awesome. It feels awesome. I'm able to help my family in Ghana before I couldn't. So it feels great. It feels free. Yeah'm able to help my family in Ghana before I couldn't. So it feels great. It feels free. Yeah.

Yeah. Best feeling. What do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is? I guess I'll say have a budget and motivate each other. I think it's really important. Stick to it. How long have y'all been married? Four years.

Four years. Okay. So you got married and game on. Yeah, exactly. Very cool. Very cool. Well, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, thank you got married and game on. Yeah, exactly. Very cool. Very cool. Well, congratulations. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Who were your biggest cheerleaders? Our family. Yeah. My parents are here to cheer us on today. All right. Yeah. Yeah.

It was just an excuse to hang out with the grandkids, truthfully. Okay. Yeah. They don't mind that either. Yeah, for real. Yeah. Well, you got two kids. Yeah.

What does it feel like knowing that their future is going to look totally different now i just feel really blessed yeah our goal was baby step two before baby number two so um we just had him and and we're debt free now so yeah right on schedule yeah you know those are planners uh without a doubt doubt. You're on your way to becoming everyday millionaires. It's just going to require that same amount of teamwork you guys are displaying and getting out of debt to stick into the plan. And talking to each other and communicating and talking about your dreams. I'm excited for what you guys are going to achieve. Thank you. I really am.

Thank you so much. I've got a copy of Chris's book for you, Everyday Millionaires, because that's the next chapter in your story for sure. All right. Do we want the babies in the shot? You want to bring them in? Yeah, maybe Big Brother at least. Big Brother's name is?

Mitchell. And how old is Mitch? Two and a half. All right. Very good. Very fun. All right. All right.

$150,000 paid off in four years, making 52 to 79 79 Prince, Kara, Mitch, and Asher somewhere in the distance. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We are debt-free! Yeah! I love it. Sally Mae just got evicted.

Yes, she did. She's gone. Old woman got her eviction notice. Put her on the street, baby. Get out. Get out. I love it. Sally Mae just got evicted. Yes, she did. She's gone. Old woman got her eviction notice. Put her on the street, baby. Get out. Get out. I love it. That's how it's done right there.

It really is. And you know, Prince brings up something. We've got too many young people wandering into financial aid offices, signing papers for payments they can't afford on documents they don't understand. And this has got to stop. It really does. And for young people out there, parents, cousins, nieces, nephews, have the communication with the young people. Help them to understand.

Higher education is attainable, but it also needs to be done in an affordable way, not through student loans. Yeah. And it's so normalized now to go deeply in student loan debt that walking into the financial aid office, the financial aid officer, to their defense, they don't think anything about it. If they'd have thought about, you've got a young man here from Ghana, you're going to put him $100,000 in debt, they would have screamed. If you'd have stopped and thought about that in good conscience, you would have screamed,

don't do it! But instead they're like, you're signing right here, press hard, there's three copies. You know, it's just like, golly. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's why the student loan system needs to be stopped. It really does. Hats off to Kara's parents. Yeah.

For extending them Financial Peace University. And hats off to both of you all for hearing it but then committing to it and sticking it through. Those little people right there you're holding, they're going to have a different legacy now. Mom and Dad got serious. Well done. Well done. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings.

You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSY to get the best possible deal. All right. Today's question comes from Isaac in Chicago. His question is, I hear you mentioned that you need to invest in the four types of different mutual funds for retirement. My question is, do these mutual funds need to be specifically inside of a retirement account, a Roth IRA or IRA, or could I just have mutual funds that are non-retirement accounts but still invest 15%? Well, looking at this, obviously the four types, growth, growth and income,

aggressive growth, and international, these are mutual funds you want to use inside of your 401k or 403b. That's the best opportunity you have, especially if you have a match. So you have that availability. Now, you can also invest in mutual funds outside of retirement as well. But your 15%, you want that inside of that retirement account. Yeah. Because the vast majority of the money that is going to be in your account when you get to retirement is not going to be the money you put in. It's going to be the growth. Yeah. And the fact that it is sheltered inside of a Roth IRA, all of that growth is tax-free

if it's in a Roth. And so if you start saving now and investing and you have $2 million in your 401k, somewhere around 90% of that money, roughly $1.8 million of it, is either going to be taxable or not taxable, depending on how you handle it. It'll be taxable if it's a traditional. It'll be tax-free if it's a Roth. And it won't be there if it wasn't in there otherwise, because it would have been taxed all along. And if you're going in, even with a traditional, if you're going in with a pre-tax investment you're at least using

the money you take a thousand bucks you bring a thousand bucks home by the time you get home with it it looks suspiciously like 700 if instead you put it into a traditional even not not a Roth but even a traditional the whole thousand goes in there. So really 300 of that thousand is the government's money. Right. And you're going to use that for 30 years to grow money with. And then pay them. And then pay them.

That's right. That's a better deal than not. That's a good point. And so everything inside of retirement is the best way. You can do it either way, but you shouldn't. This is the Ramsey Show. Chris, we had 11 new team members start this morning, and they'll be working on things like helping that young couple do their debt-free screen. Yes.

Helping them in Ramsey Plus, helping them with Ramsey Trusted, helping them on the Ramsey Network, all these different places. Here at Ramsey Solutions, we want to transform so many lives that disruption spreads like wildfire across our country. Imagine a world where it's weird to have a student loan. Imagine a world where the majority of people pay cash for their cars, where their marriage is working, where they work in a job that they love because they got in touch with Ken Coleman's stuff, where they became an everyday millionaire because Chris Hogan led the way. Imagine being part of causing that level of disruption with actual work you do yeah this is work that matters uh we've got thousands of people that are we got

thousands of people not yet we got about a thousand folks here at the company it's 980 something today um working together we're creating digital. And if you want to join on this crusade, we're on the hunt right now for software engineers, Ruby on Rails, Java, C Sharp, front-end technologies. If you're a UX designer, an SEO, content marketing specialist, we'd love to talk to you. And there's a bunch of other positions. I was in a leadership meeting this morning, and we've got about 360 positions approved to hire in this calendar year so um you should check it at dave's hiring on the front page of the website at davramsey.com right over on the right hand side there's a little tab says dave's hiring click there

particularly if you want to be in cutting edge digital group uh this group is um you know this is one of those cases where i am really not smart enough to own this but i do so uh i go into these meetings and i don't even know what some of these folks are saying i have to go okay you have to explain to me what you just said but uh i'm learning it is and here's the reality that going to bed on sunday night and waking up excited to come in to get to do what you do is a whole nother feeling. And trust me, long, many years ago, I used to go to sleep on Sunday night and wake up with that pit in my stomach on Monday morning, despising what I had to go do.

And so this is a different culture. This is a different situation where you're excited to come in, working with other intelligent people that are focused and are hardworking. So go over, check out the tab, get asked all the time, what are we hiring for? There are too many positions for me to list. Get over there and apply today. Come join the team. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Matt's in Orlando. Hey, Matt, how are you? Hey. Hey, Matt. How are you? Hey, I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help?

Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. I've been listening and watching you for about six months or so, and my wife actually introduced me to the Dead Snow Ball a few years ago, but she didn't tell me the rest of the plan. And now that I'm all invested, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to get it done, pay off our debt, and create a better future. She's pulling back. She doesn't want to do it. And I may have come on too strong. I may have said, you know, we're getting rid of the car.

We're selling all this. So, Chris, if he thinks he might have, what do you think the probability is that he was? Probably about 100.27999%. You scared her, Matt. You done scared her off, buddy. You scared her, buddy. You're selling cars, purses, bracelets. Hold on a minute.

Hold on. Hey, what got her excited about it to begin with? Why did she tell you about the debt snowball? Well, at the time, I think we were in about $130,000 worth. Sure. And I ended up, as you may be able to tell, I'm kind of an extreme person. So when she started telling me about it, I said, well, I'll just sell my truck. I have a company truck anyway. I don't need it.

So I got rid of it. And that brought us down to $100,000. And then she kind of saw where I was headed with all of it and she said okay never mind she got scared and the the reality is is i would go back and ask her honey when you first mentioned the death snowball to me what was the motivation what was the thing that it got you going on this and what happened is is you got in the bus and started driving and you left her back at the house. You've started the journey and she's back there standing with her book bag waiting. And so what you need to do is back up and go back and reconnect. So you guys can gain alignment together on this thing. It's got to be a wee thing that you're doing, not a you thing.

And so getting her a chance to get back connected to communicate and you're hearing her as much as you're talking to her i think will help you guys get back on this plan together if your intensity becomes as a couple nine out of ten where currently you are 12 out of 10 and she's two out of 10 uh you'll be better off in other words if you'll slow down just a little bit yeah and get her on board you're going to move faster overall right and so yeah you just can't um you've already self-diagnosed before you called you knew what to do right pretty much it's just it's just that you want to go you just want to go wide open you just want to push down

on the pedaling just go completely wide open and uh instead chris is telling you put it in reverse go back and pick her up and then move forward a step at a time get agreement on each thing instead of like hey sold my truck today you know um that just you know she you just scared her to death yeah Yeah, I did. Without a doubt. But I'm going to tell you this. I love your commitment, Matt, and I love how you go head down, but I just want you to join hands with your spouse and you guys go in unison.

Yeah. It's a good idea to kind of talk through this for a second because what he's experiencing is not that unusual. It's pretty typically, I would guess, more than half the time. I'm just going to pick out a number. I'm making that percentage up. More than 50% of the time that someone starts with Ramsey Plus and they get into Financial Peace University or they watch the reset event from January that you and I and Rachel and Craig Groeschel did or they read the Total Money Makeover, wherever it is, they get this new information.

And it's not unusual for one spouse to run off and get all excited and just run on down the road and then go, oh, wait, I left my spouse back there. It's, oh, God, I left the kid back at the gas station. I got to go back. We're in such a big hurry that we lost ground because you don't. And so you're much better off. And really, from having done this for 30 years, and you've been around it for 20,

is people get further moving slower together than they do moving super fast and leave one behind. That's right. Because you end up with all those fits and starts and conflict that ultimately creates friction and slows everything down. It really does. And what I've seen, too, from coaching people and working with couples is the one that has slowed down is typically fearful of what they're going to have to give up. But if they feel like they've got to say, if their voice is being heard, their vote counts at the budget committee meeting.

That's right. If your vote doesn't count at the budget committee meeting, you have a right to dig your heels in and say, wait, I got to vote here. Yeah. I don't think we ought to do that. And, I mean, there's two pretty substantial financial issues sitting on the table at the Ramsey House right now that we're not in agreement on. And what we do is we don't move until we get agreement. And so, you know, either one of us can just completely bring whatever the item is to a screeching halt until we get agreement on that. And it can be a large gift and a charitable donation to a ministry, and one of us doesn't feel comfortable with it. The gift size or the ministry or whatever it is, one of us doesn't feel comfortable with it.

Or it can be a purchase. It could be an investment. It could be anything but i mean you know we just don't move forward because every time we move forward without the other one it the cost is greater than the joy that would have come from that step that we were getting ready to take and so we just have to wait and god it's so freaking frustrating it's just would you just get this right in your head because i can make a decision in about 13 seconds yeah about 10 and um and if that's wrong i'll just

make another one that's exactly right so but uh but you know and sharon needs to process stuff and process stuff she got feelings well i don't have any of those i gave them up you found two there i gave them up. You found two. Yeah, I gave them up for Lent. You found two. You know, I'm laughing, but it's true. It is true. It is true. Well, we're glad you're here because you're huggable. You're just huggable.

That's what you are. Thanks, Gary Chris Hogan. Oh, stop that. There we go. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. This is James Child, producer of The Ramsey Show. Did you know The Ramsey Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.