The Ramsey Show - App - Simple Steps to Save Money and Build Wealth (Hour 1)

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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, America. We're glad you are here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Hannah in Birmingham starts off this hour. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Hannah. Hi, how are you?

Better than I deserve. How are you? I'm doing well. So I just have a question about my student loans. So I've been on my debt journey for a few months. I had an old boss give me the total money makeover. And so I have step one complete, and I have my debts listed out. My question was, when I looked, all of my student loans are in deferment until 2020. Mm-hmm. And, but a couple of my, like I have a car payment, and it's about number nine on the list. Mm-hmm. So my question was, should I go ahead and pay off my car payment before I start the debt snowball?

Okay. How much, what is your income? It's $29,000. Okay. And how much debt do you have, not counting your income? It's $29,000. Okay. And how much debt do you have, not counting your home? I have about $34,000 in student loans and about $5,000 left on the car. Okay. All right.

And most of the student loans are in deferment or all of them? All of them are in deferment until 2020. All right. Well, you're going to get to them before 2020 because you're going to pay off a five thousand dollar car long before then oh yes okay and so i'm going to list your debt i mean i don't mind you paying minimum payments on everything but the little one and i tack the little one do you have any student loans that are smaller than five thousand dollars uh yes or most they're most of them. Oh, okay.

All right. Well, if you want to knock the car out first, there's no bad thing in that, but let's get with it, okay? Get her done. Right. You don't want to fool around because you need to have that sense of progress because if you get the idea that you knock the car out and then you can let your foot off the gas and coast, that would be a bad idea.

Right, absolutely. Yeah, so even if they're in deferment, we're going to attack them aggressively. Because the interest is not in deferment, just the payments. Yes, sir. They're accruing interest. Yes, sir, they are. Yeah, so it's getting bigger and bigger every day because you're not paying on it. But if you don't pay on it and very, very quickly knock out the car,

I mean, how fast do you plan on knocking out this car? Like by Christmas, right? Oh, yes, sir. I hope to have it done by September. There you go. That's good. Okay. And then we'll go ahead and start on the student loans, even though they're in deferment.

But if you want to flip that around, because that frees up some more cash by getting rid of the car payment, and then you can more aggressively attack those student loans, sure. Do that. The whole point is that you do something that causes you to stay very intense and very focused. I'm gazelle intense right now. I love it. All right. Congratulations. Well, you go get them.

If you need some help, you call me back. Tim is with us in Philadelphia. Hey, Tim. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, my wife and I are recently married. Congratulations. Thank you so much. And she's actually staying right next to me right now. And we are currently in baby step number two. And we're actually just about to finish this year on our rent, and we're looking to either rent again or looking to start looking at a house. But the thing is, like, my question is, is it wise if our mortgage payment is less than what we would be paying for our apartment,

should we even consider that? No. My wife is just about to start nursing school as well. No, you should not buy a house. Okay. You need to get buy a house. Okay. You need to get out of debt. And then you also need to be married a year, because it takes a year of marriage to know how close to your mother-in-law to buy.

Okay. That's good. Yeah, clean up, clean up, clean up the debt. And here's the thing. Renting is cheaper because you don't have repairs, and you don't have everything else. You don't have any increase in taxes or increase in insurance. When you own a home, many, many years, it's more expensive in a given year, cash-wise, than renting.

It's not unusual at all. But over the scope of your life, because they go up in value, and because rents go up, and you've locked in your payment on the house, five years from now, your payment will be a your payment on the house five years from now you know your payment will be a lot less on a house than rent would have been because rent will have gone up and you will have locked in the payment so over the scope of ownership ownership is by far the best way to go but on the short term just simply comparing their payments it doesn't work because even if your payment is cheaper on a house it's not cheaper to live in a house because as soon as you buy a house, I know what happens.

Yep. Yeah, you go buy furniture. I know what happens. You know, and all this other stuff. So, guys, just concentrate on cleaning up, on enjoying your first year of marriage, on hitting some basic goals like cleaning up the debt, building your emergency fund. Because if you move in a house with a good down payment and no debt, and your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses is in place, it's a completely different experience

than moving in a house with debt hanging around your neck and no money. That's true. The house will be a blessing instead of a curse. And I wouldn't want to put that financial strain on a young marriage. I wouldn't want to put that strain on anybody. But marriage. I wouldn't want to put that strain on anybody. But don't mess up your first year of marriage. Enjoy it. Just concentrate on each other and clean up your debt.

And by a year from now, her nursing school career starts unfolding. You'll see what you're doing there. You're going to have a whole lot better grasp and picture of knowing each other. You'll make a wiser purchase together a year later. All of those things. So it'll take you a year to do all that anyway, maybe two. And that's okay. There's no rush.

But over the scope of your life, you do want to be a homeowner, but not this summer. Hey, man, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ron is on Twitter. Dave, is it wise to refinance a mortgage after five years of a 30-year term? Sure. Sometimes folks think that because you're a large portion of your payment,

the largest portion of your payment in the early years goes to interest, that you are prepaying interest. You're not. Mortgage interest is calculated like simple interest. Now, let me walk you through that. Let's just do a simple calculation. Let's say your interest rate was 6%. 6 divided by 12 is.5, half.

So you're paying a half a percent a month. And so if you take a $100,000 balance and you multiply it times.5,.0005, which is a half of a percent, that tells you how much of your payment is interest that month. The rest of the payment goes towards principal. Well, if the rest of the payment was $100, then next month, 0.0005 is not multiplied times 100,000. It's multiplied times $99,900 because it's been reduced by $100. And so your interest portion of your payment is less the next month and less the next month because it's calculated on the outstanding balance. That's how an amortization schedule works on calculating a mortgage.

So you are not prepaying interest. Your interest is just higher because your balance is higher at the beginning of the mortgage. That's all it is. The amount of your payment that goes to interest is higher. So you refinance a mortgage, especially in these increasing rates right now, if you have an adjustable rate mortgage, a balloon, or an interest rate that's high enough that you can save enough while you own the house to justify the refinance.

So get in touch with Churchill Mortgage today and get your refinance done, yes. But no, it's not based on how long you've owned the home, because you're not prepaying interest on a mortgage. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. There are few things in this world that irritate me more than when people pay too much for their mortgage. So many of you are paying way too much, and you don't even know it. I've got my good friend Mike Hardwick with Churchill Mortgage here. Mike, how do you help these folks? It's unbelievable, Dave, how much

people can save if they just make a simple call. We've helped thousands of your listeners save hundreds each month or take years off their loan, helping them to save thousands of dollars in interest over time. Folks, do yourself a favor.

Make a quick call to Churchill Mortgage today. I'm telling you, if you're paying a mortgage, you're potentially throwing money away that could be piling up in your savings account. It's true, Dave. With the rates the way they are right now, if you're making any mortgage payment these days, you're probably paying too much. Call Churchill Mortgage, guys. It's well worth a few minutes of your time.

This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. Equal Housing Lender 761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Ramsey Solutions is going to stink. It's like 89 million degrees outside, and we've had a field day with all these blow-up things, like the whole parking lot is full of six-story slides, an obstacle course that will about kill you that's as long as a football field, jousting 15 feet in the air. I mean, it's nuts out there. It's crazy out there.

Of course, there's 700 people all over the thing and it's just uh it's the team's having a blast but i tell you they're all pretty uh well it went way past perspiring they're just sweaty they're just sweaty it's just straight up i'm telling you and so i don't know that stuff probably getting pretty gross by now. You know? All that plastic. Ooh. But everybody's had a good time, I'll tell you that. We have had an absolute blast. It's one of our team's favorite things to do.

We take about a half a day and just have a Ramsey Solutions field day. And it was, I mean, full size. I've never seen the thing with the, what do you call the deal with the soccer? What is that called? Foosball. Yeah, human foosball. It's like 20 guys, 20 gals in there and kicking the ball around. It was just crazy.

It was amazing. I mean, we have had our team put together. It looked like a carnival or something back there. It was wild, but a lot of fun. At least it didn't rain. That's a good thing. Lexi is with us. Lexi's in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hi, Lexi. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I am 24, and he is 35, and we have two younger children. We are 100% debt-free, and we have about almost $80,000 cash right now.

And he is looking into starting, like, a Roth IRA. But we were just kind of wondering, like, what you suggested to, because we don't have a retirement fund started yet. Okay. He, your husband? Yeah. Your husband. started yet okay so he your husband uh yeah your husband uh boyfriend but almost okay well no darling there's a legal distinction here okay because it says on my screen boyfriend and that's why i was just checking so it because it matters what you do in that situation so you're living

with a you're 24 you're living with a guy that's 35, and you have two little kids. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, the problem is without marriage, you don't have any rights to anything of his without a really long, inexpensive, and bloody lawsuit. And vice versa. And vice versa and vice versa and so if you were married you could just do his 401k

and you would get half of it if something happened or if he died you'd get all of it right and same thing you could you don't have to worry about balancing it out but you don't have a husband you have a roommate from a legal perspective and so you have to keep your money running to protect a 24 year old single mom of two because that's what you are so you have to you have to do that so um uh i'll just be old ugly uncle dave and tell you what i think because you called my show if i've got a son that's 26 i have two daughters they're slightly older than you if one of because you called my show if i've got a son that's 26 i have two daughters they're slightly older than you if one of them came into my house talking like this i would say get married for god's sakes to protect yourself from a legal perspective we're looking into doing

that later this year we're engaged but it's just not well i mean there is really no point in delaying anything here you're already living together and having babies together. I mean, it's not like we plan a big wedding here. Geez, I mean, you're already shacked up. So I don't know why we have to be engaged. Just go get married, for goodness sakes. You're already acting like you are. So anyway, but that protects you, kiddo. And then you can just go, okay, hey, we got $80,000 because now we have $80,000.

This $80,000, is it in his name in the bank account or your name or both names or what? Both names are on the account. Okay, and so what you have there is what's called a general partnership, and you don't have partnership agreements. And so if he dies, his family will come take half of that money if they want to. That's what I'm talking about, how dangerous this is for you and for these children. So that's why I would just go get married this weekend. I really would.

And that solves a whole bunch of your stuff. I mean, it's not real romantic, but you already decided to do the whole thing backwards. So, you know, let's go ahead and take care of business now and, you know, get her lined up and let's get going. So that's what I would tell you as your dad or your uncle or something like that, just to protect you, protect those kids. And I'm not saying your boyfriend's a bad guy. I'm just, and I'm not making a moral judgment here. That's not the point.

We're way past all that. I'm trying to help you not get in a mess because your money's in pretty good shape if you were a couple a legal couple so in that case yes you've got eighty thousand dollars saved that would be wonderful if you were married you we'd carve off part of that call that your emergency fund your debt free that's wonderful um and we would take the rest of that and start thinking about getting our house um if you've already got a house then we take the rest of that and start talking about paying off the house and or funding these kids' college.

So you would be on baby step four, five, six is where you would be in this situation. And so, Lexi, what I want you to hear me loud and clear is that you're in peril if anything happens between now and the time you have a marriage license. You're in peril if anything happens between now and the time you have a marriage license. You're in peril. You're not going to get what you should be getting to take care of you and those children. And I'm not suggesting something's going to happen, but I've just dealt with in 35 years of doing this all the worst-case scenarios. I'm a cancer doctor. I see what causes cancer every day.

And I get to meet with people like you after they didn't do things right and have a mess. And so please go fix this as soon as possible. Matthew is in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Matthew. How are you? I'm good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Hey, man, I have a, I I have a what would Dave do situation. Just to give you a quick background, I'm 26. I'm married. I have two kids. We make about $110K before taxes, so about $80K after. I just recently was put on to you about a couple months ago, beginning of the year. And we got into a home prior to knowing about the Dave plan. And we're gazelle intense.

We're in baby step two. We have about 50 grand left of my student loan to pay off. But my question is, is I moved into an area where we really do not like the school district is terrible. Um, the surrounding cities are kind of low income to where we're meshed in with all of that. And my question is,

is should I sell my home? Uh, the home, I bought it for $175. It's worth $185 now, a year later. And I want to move to an area where I feel comfortable, you know, like with the school district. How old are your kids? Ten and five.

Okay, so they're already in the schools. So this is a problem, right? It's a problem, yeah. Big problem. Ten and five. Okay, so they're already in the schools. So this is a problem, right? It's a problem, yeah. Big problem. Yeah. Yeah, I probably would. I'd probably just go ahead and sell it, but I'd just rent at the new area until you get yourself out of debt, get your emergency fund in place,

and save up a good strong down payment. And there's no shame in that. If that takes two years or something, that's okay. At least your kids are in the good school district. Sharon and I actually did that, Matthew, many, many years ago. After we went bankrupt, we were in the house, got to keep the house, and got it out of foreclosure and paid it up. But the schools were bad, and we put our kids in a private school.

And we were driving them all the way across town, and it cost us like $10,000 that we didn't have to put them in school. So we're broke. And now we're going broke again. It's just crazy. And so we sold that house and moved to a county where the school system was good and rented for two years. And I've got to tell you, having been a landlord almost all my life, being a renter was really hard on Dave's pride. See, that's why I'm mad, Dave.

But it was a really good step back in order to take positive steps forward. And so we hated that house. We still drive by that neighborhood. Sharon just holds her nose up in the air. But it was a good thing because it got us out of that mess, and we didn't have that extra drive, and we didn't have all these other problems. And, man, we got our life back, and we rented for a little while, and boom, man, things started happening positive. So, yeah, I would just rent and sell the one you got.

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Open phones at 888-825-5225. Well, it's the last day of May. It's here. And that means two things. Today is the last day to register, no purchase necessary, for the last of the four cars that we are giving away in the month of may we have given away three already twelve thousand five hundred dollar cars courtesy of carvana and ramsey and uh that's fifty thousand dollars for the cars we gave away

so shut up that's pretty cool i'm telling you man i i feel feel like Santa Claus. So there you go. And Carvana's got like that car vending machine thing, right? So you just select the car up to $12,500. They're all used, of course. And they spit it out of the vending machine and deliver it to your house if you're the winner. Now, three of them are already gone, but today you can register. You're only allowed to register once a day, so maybe you just register one time today no purchase necessary DaveRamsey.com slash giveaway or just go DaveRamsey.com you can find it on there and we'll do the drawing and give away the car next week on the air but the

drawing will be done for the people that register up through today the second thing that ends today is the ten dollar sale and the ten dollar sale is a bigger deal than the cars, actually, because most of you aren't going to win the car, but everybody can get the $10 sale, so that's a bigger deal. Now, that means that all of our number one best-selling books, The Total Money Makeover, Smart Money, Smart Kids, Legacy Journey, Chris Hogan's Retire Inspired, Rachel Cruz's Love Your Life, Not Theirs, Rachel Cruz's Smart Money, Smart Kids that she did with me.

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Go to DaveRamsey.com or call 888-22-PEACE. 888-22-PEACE. Micah is in Huntsville. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Micah. Hey, thank you. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

I've got a question. But first, let's say my wife and I are in baby step two. And Lord willing, we'll give you a call here next September for our debt-free screen, I've got around $40,000 in debt, primarily student loans, and just found out that my wife has some bonds that were put away by her grandfather. And some of those bonds have matured. Some of them haven't. And I know that they are roughly around eleven thousand dollars in value or or greater i know that because her sisters have inquired about them and one has

cashed them out and that was about her their total my wife's might be more because she's older anyway i say that to say um should we wait for these bonds to mature? No, they're accruing interest at almost zero. You're talking about savings bonds? I believe so. I know very little information. We found out basically yesterday. Anything that is not a retirement account, I cash out and throw it dead in baby step two. Okay, so a question.

That's what I wanted to do, so I'm glad you said that. But should I put that, just snowball it, or should I put that toward just the highest one? No, snowball it. No, snowball it. Just work right now. You've got $40,000. Is the only debt you've got the student loans? The student loans, and we're paying off a van, but we've only got about $7,000 left on the van.

Okay, so what is the smallest debt that you have? The van. Okay, and that's where we go. You pay off the van. Okay, so what is the smallest debt that you have? The van. Okay, and that's where it would go. You pay off the van. You work your debt snowball. List your debts smallest to largest. Pay minimum payments on everything but the little one. Attack the little one with any money you can find from any source, including wife's

savings bonds. Okay. My wife just texted me and said yes, they are savings bonds. Okay. They suck. Okay. Yeah, they suck. Okay. The only good thing about them is that you have them. Okay. They are making about the same interest rate as a savings account.

They're just horrible. Okay. And so I wouldn't put any money in those. And people forget they have them. They lose them. Everything else, they're just a problem. They're a financial instrument from another time. And the land that time forgot.

And so, yeah, just move on and let's work right down the debt snowball. The good news is that your car interest rate is likely higher than your student loans, isn't it? I don't believe it is. Okay. The payment is. The payment is.

Right, the payment is, no, actually the payment's only about $160. Some of these other student loans are around $300 each. Okay. Well, there's all kinds of reasons to not do it, but let's do it anyway. We're going to list them smallest to largest, walk right down that list, be done with the car payment. Then all we've got is student loans, and we're going to just work right down it. So you've got the first $4,000 worth of the next student loan knocked out.

And the next student loan, the next one on the list is how big uh eleven about twelve thousand dollars so you got eight to go on that and what's your household income um after taxes about eighty nine thousand oh god you'll have that done in no time okay and um so these are big chunky student loans they're not little tiny ones they're they're pretty big and pretty chunky yeah so you're gonna you're gonna feel this slow down a little bit in terms of the emotional momentum that you get from it but at least your car will be gone and you'll knock the first student loan out very quick and then you know you're gonna be right down to doing you're gonna do this very very fast Do you have any other debt, I mean any other savings or investments that are not retirement? No, sir.

No money in an emergency fund? We've got about $300 in an emergency fund, so we've had to bail that out for emergency. Okay, you need to get that back up to the $1,000 then. Baby step one, the $1,000. Baby step two is list your debts smallest to largest and work your way through those debts. Get on that detailed budget. Both of you keep talking about it. Obviously

you are talking about it. She's texting you while you're on the Dave Ramsey show. So you're in unity. I can tell. You're unified on this. So that's good news. You're going to get there. Well done. Julie is in Memphis. Hi, Julie. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Thanks for letting me ask this. Okay. I want your advice and opinion on a situation. My father passed away last month, and we basically didn't have a relationship past high school. He never took the role of being a father, pretty much. So as his daughter, of course, I feel responsible for the costs associated with the cremation, which was his wish.

His oldest brother had power of attorney, and he, along with his other brother, they have paid everything to date. So I've mentioned feeling responsible and offering to pay although i have not been asked for any money um i've just been told that it's my decision and i would just like to know um your your take on this as far as um morally i just feel like that's something I should do. I'm trying to put myself in your shoes because that's how I answer questions. And how long has it been since you've had contact with your dad before he passed? How many years of separation?

I'm sorry. It had been, I'd actually spoke with him prior to his passing because I was being asked some questions that, of course, I could not answer because neither my sister nor myself have actually had a relationship with him, and it was pretty much, you know, his choice. How long ago did he leave your life? Well, I'm 46, so pretty much since I was 18. The only time I've really seen him is... 25 years.

Yeah. Okay. Quite a while. Yeah. And how much is the bill for the cremation? $2,200. Right. And what is your household income?

I'm right at $72,000. I'm single. Do you have debt? I'm on baby step four. All I have is my mortgage. Do you want to pay it? I have mixed emotions about it, but I do feel like it is. Let me help.

Let me give you, I'll give you my opinion. It's not your obligation. Okay. If you want to pay it, pay it. There's nothing wrong with it. But I wouldn't lay awake one minute about not paying it. 25 years. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

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Eric is on Twitter. You can follow me there at Dave Ramsey. There's about 900,000 of you on there. Thanks for hanging out. Dave, do you know if there's any mutual fund made up entirely of companies which are debt-free? I'm pretty sure there's not one.

I think they would have already called me to endorse it. I would be the likely candidate. So, no, I'm pretty sure there's not. There's a lot of companies that would surprise you that are debt-free. Even some publicly traded companies.

For instance, Apple was debt-free for a very, very long time. They took on some debt not long ago for no apparent reason, because they have more cash than Egypt. But that's a literal statement. They really do. But there's a lot of large publicly traded companies.

And I got to tell you, the number of companies like our size, we're about a $200 million company that run completely debt-free. It's not that unusual at all. Small companies, small businesses, ours is no longer that small and it's certainly not a card table in my living room like it once was but um still i mean there's a lot of guys and gals that i know they're operating things like ours for instance i was with dan cathy last week and chick-fil-a is debt-free it was one of his dad's great wishes uh truett's great wishes to make it debt-free before he passed the reins and passed

away and they were able to do that several years before mr truett passed and um it's not unusual at all to find large and that's that's a much larger company i think they're about 12 or 14 billion um but the um anyway there's tons out there uh and people just don't talk about it much because it's it's one of those things that everybody believes one thing's true and the actual statistics aren't. I'll give you a couple of them. All businesses borrow money. It takes money to make money. That's just complete bull.

I mean, I know bazillions of businesses that operate debt-free. Lots of them do. Okay? It's not that unusual at all. It's just some broke finance professor that's teaching you the benefit of bonds or something. They want you to have a bond balance in your publicly traded company. And so it's nuts. The second one is this.

Family businesses don't survive. Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. You ever heard that one? First generation builds it up, second generation rides it, and third generation tears it down. You ever heard that? It's actually statistically not true. Family businesses, there's a whole science around family business. You can actually get a degree in family business from Kennesaw University now.

There are family business. You can actually get a degree in family business from Kennesaw University now. There are family business conferences. There's whole reams of material written on family business. And there's tons of data that show that family business, privately held family businesses, are more resilient and longer lasting than publicly traded companies. They outlast them. There's a bunch of them on the landscape. One of the most famous ones that makes about 700 million Skittles a year, Mars Candy and Pet Food, owned by two sisters.

I think it's a $27 billion company, if I remember correctly. Two sisters own it. I think it's fifth generation or something like that. Nobody talks about it, but everybody's just like, well, you can't hand it off to your kids, because if you hand it off to your kids, it ruins your kids. No, you ruined your kids. Wasn't the business's fault.

Lots of businesses are handed off. Again, I'll point back to Chick-fil-A. They're handing it off and doing a great job. The case study at Harvard on the Cathy family and how good a job they've done on their succession and transition planning and all that kind of stuff. Lots of us have modeled pieces of what we're doing after them. There's a lot of information. That's one of those myths. You can't borrow.

You have to borrow money. You know, here's another myth, all right? All millionaires, all rich people inherited their money. You ever heard that one? Bullcrap. Statistical bullcrap. We just finished studying 10,160 millionaires. In-depth, largest, most comprehensive study, piece of research ever done on millionaires in North America.

We're going to publish the findings in Chris Hogan's new book that will come out in January. Here's what we found. 79% of America's millionaires did not receive a dime in inheritance. That's 8 out of 10. Another 16% received less than $100,000. a dime in inheritance. That's 8 out of 10. Another 16% received less than $100,000, which mathematically makes it impossible for them to have become a millionaire because of an inheritance.

They became a millionaire because they saved money and got on a debt. No duh. And so let's put those numbers together. That would be 89. That would be 95%. Did I do that right? I did that right, didn't I?

95% did not inherit their money. See, the problem with that one is if you believe that all rich people inherit their money, then that lets you off the hook, and you don't have to get off your butt and go make something of your life. You can blame everyone else and be a victim. Now that just pissed off some politically correct people, didn't it? Good. Because you have every opportunity to get up off your butt and go be somebody. So it doesn't take money to make money.

All family businesses don't fail. And all millionaires didn't inherit their money. Rich people all inherited their money. Bull. You don't know what you're talking about. I've got actual real research, the largest, most comprehensive piece of research ever done on this subject. Can't touch this, baby. Maybe so that, you know, that you just can't believe a myth. You can't believe things that are not true and have it and have no impact on your life. If you believed that your business was going to ruin your children's life, why would you leave?

Why would you build a business and leave it to your children? If you believe that it always the only way to start a business or run a business is borrow money, then you're going to go borrow money, which, by the way, is the number one cause of business failure, cash flow problems. Taxes and debt take down 80% of small businesses in the first five years. Taxes and debt, they call it cash flow problems. And you can't ignore truth you can't ignore reality and adopt mythology as your baseline your plumb line for your life and and get out of that set

of get out of that equation unharmed you know it's like i believe that running with scissors won't hurt me so i run with scissors you Remember your mother telling you not to run with scissors. Why? Because you'll kill your butt. Don't do that. You know, I believe. I don't care what you believe. Well, I feel. I don't care what you feel.

What I want to know is what's real, what the truth is. You can't feel your way into the truth. Your feelings don't matter. You need to find out what the truth is on some of these subjects and align yourself with that and then go there and so you know this idea that all all companies have debt all people have a credit card every student has a student loan every and all these generalities that they're all victim stuff they're. Instead of you being a victor, you get the opportunity to be a victim. And Condi Rice said it beautifully last week when we were at Entree Leadership Summit.

She said, as soon as you assume the position of victim, you give your power to someone else. Whoa! Mic drop! As soon as I'm a victim, i just gave my power to someone else and she was talking about racism and sexism being an african-american lady and she has suffered from both but she said i'm not a victim because as soon as i'm a victim of racism i'm a victim of sexism then i just gave my power to the bully jerk that was trying to pull that off i'm not giving my power to them i'm going to triumph over them a victor not a victim oh man that lady is something she's got an intellect that'll curl your hair if i had some but man impressive but

you know what i'm talking about don't other she dropped. Man, she had some Twitter lines, tweetable lines. Doesn't matter what she said. She grew up in Birmingham in a segregated neighborhood. And she said, all my parents told me my whole life was not you're from the hood, not from you're from this. She said, all they told me is it doesn't matter where you're coming from. All that matters is where you're going to. Woo-hoo, that'll preach.

Doesn't matter where you're coming from. All that matters is where you're going to. That'll preach. Doesn't matter where you're coming from. All that matters is where you're going to. A buddy of mine come from a rough neighborhood. He said, Dave, getting out of the hood is easier than getting the hood out of you. See, that's the difference in a victim and a victor. You got to decide, don't you? The neat thing is you have the power. You just get to decide. You have the power of choice. You decide which one you're going to be.

Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Believe the truth and act on it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, Dave's phone screener. We finished 2017 with a bang as the fourth most downloaded podcast of the year.

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