The Ramsey Show - App - Slow and Steady Wins the Race Every Time (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Home Buying, Debt, Education, Investing, Retirement As heard on this episode: Sign Up for a FREE trial of Ramsey+ TODAY: https://bit.ly/3rZTUAx Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: https://bit.ly/2Q64HME Insurance Coverage Checkup: https://bit.ly/3sXwUn5 Complete Guide to Budgeting: https://bit.ly/3utmVXi Check out more Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3fHhbVE

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, Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, bestselling author of the book, Redefining Anxiety, is my co-host today. We're here to talk to you about your money, your relationships, your personal mental health, your work, whatever it is with your life, the Ramsey Show is here to help you. You jump in and we will talk

about you right in front of you the phone number is 888-825-5225 philadelphia starts off this hour with gregory hi gregory how are you hey dave i'm doing good how are you better than i deserve what's up so my question is um if me and my girlfriend should be getting our first home together within the next year, let me give you a little backstory. I have $150,000 in student loans. It's not the only debt I have. I've been paying that for about a few years now. I have a steady job, and my girlfriend, she is just beginning her career in the military as a second lieutenant, and she has no student loans. And we've come to the realization that it is cheaper for us to pay a mortgage, as long as we get it for the right price and everything, you know, all that stuff, than it is to pay rent.

So that's why we've started this kind of conversation of should we be getting a home. Yeah. How old are you guys? I'm 25. She's 22. Okay. You understand they're going to move her in two to three years? Hopefully not.

She's in the Space Force. She's in the what? In the Space Force, the new branch, the United States Space Force. I knew it, Dave. Star Wars is real. I knew it. Okay. All right. So she may stay put. All right. So listen, you've thought this through, trying to use the best logic you can with advice from broke people that are your friends. And so I'm going to give you an answer that is completely perpendicular to what you think is the truth

so it may be very very hard for you to actually uh hear the answer so i'll try to give you my supporting evidence as well okay okay uh never buy a house never Buy a house with someone you're not married to. You want to know why? Because you might end up splitting. Breaking up is hard to do. It's hard enough to do when you have the legal document called divorce that assists you in pushing through the process. But basically what you have here under the law is what's called a general partnership.

And let me tell you, like, in 30 years of doing what I'm doing, I've seen all these go wrong. I'm like a cancer doctor. I know what causes cancer because I see it all the time, okay? So here's a horrible example, and this will never happen with you. Guy and his shacked-up girlfriend going by a house together. Uh, four weeks later, she gets killed in a car wreck. Guess who he owns a house with now? Her mama and him are now partners in a house.

There was no will, of course. Yeah, that's dangerous, isn't it? Yeah. She just decides to leave, and you've got the payments. Or you want to leave, but both of you have got the payments, and you can't get rid of each other because you've got the payments. And the market corrects. And then you're stuck in a stupid house,

and you're stuck in a bad corner of a bad relationship of something that went sour please please please whether you're married to buy a house it's going to be better for your relationship it's going to be better for your wealth building it's going to be better for your 10 year from now life um so number one if you want to buy a house you need to get married first i don't care if you go to the courthouse today that's fine with me but you need to be married because the legality is going to put your butt in a crack, son. You're going to have a problem. That's what's coming, okay? And it's weird.

It's just weird. Now, the second thing is don't buy a house while you've still got debt. So you've got to clean up these student loans. What do you make? Right now I make about $55,000. Eventually I'll be promoted to where I'll be making around $100,000 in about a couple years. Good.

What do you do? I'm an airline pilot. So you have an aviation degree? Yeah, you figured it out. Okay. All right, because that's an expensive degree. So you've got a $150,000 aviation degree, and you're making $55,000 a year on your way to making $100,000 as you get your hours in, right?

Once I upgrade to captain, to the left seat, yes. Yeah. Cool. And that's going to be based on hours, really, and a few certs, maybe. Maybe getting certified on a certain aircraft or something. Okay. Cool. Well, you've got a wonderful career ahead of you, and it's a lot of fun what you're doing um and you'll never be able to keep up with her because she's in the space thing you're just playing in the air but um but but yeah yes yes i would buy a house after you paid off this 150 000 in debt and after you get married now i don't know if i talked you out of it gregory but if i didn't you'll call me back in a few years

with the dadgum mess you made, and I'll have to help you with that. And I'll still help you then because I've made messes in my life too, and I'm not going to pick on you, but please don't be the mess. There's something about the poverty mindset, which is I got to get through today,

and then maybe I can get through tomorrow, and that's as far as I can see. And that is the conversation somebody who didn't have any money who's saying will it be cheaper today if we buy a house because our payment on this thing is going to be cheaper it's not and you're not it's not homeownership's more expensive than yes absolutely period but you're just missing a long-term view man and that's why i forgot the part when the dadgum roof leaks oh or you got to replace the roof or the heat air goes out the stupid water heater goes out you forget all that stuff when you're doing all your little calculations about payments versus

rent payments and you just got but everybody tells you too because stupid people are all around you going buy a house buy a house buy a house buy a house oh god if you don't buy a house you're going to hell renters all go to hell you need to buy a house it's like a salvation issue or something oh my god you know so it's just nuts so that that's the problem is everybody you're wasting your money you're throwing your money down a rat hole people who never saw a rat or a rat hole talking about throwing your money down a rat hole and uh unbelievable so you're not throwing your money down a rat hole yeah it's patience you're going to get a house when you're debt-free and married and i'd love for you to be both this year

but it's probably not going to happen on the debt-free part married. And I'd love for you to be both this year, but it's probably not going to happen on the debt-free part this year. But if you got married and worked on that goal together, you'd get there faster. So that's what I would do, young man. But again, you're going to do what you're going to do. But if you call here, we're obligated to tell you what we think the truth is. The difference in my suggestion is all of the outcomes long-term are good. The difference in your suggestion is most of the outcomes in your suggestion are bad. There's only one possible outcome that this works in, only one.

And even then, it slows down your wealth building. So, yeah, it's just please, please don't buy a house with people you're not married to. Oh, God, please. Don't buy a house with $150,000 in student loan debt. Only ship it on sales of partnership, and you're getting ready to have a general partnership with no partnership documents. Just ask your attorney friend if that's a good idea. Oh, what a nightmare.

This is the Ramsey Shop. Most people know me as the guy who did stupid with a lot of zeros on the end. I made my first million dollars in my 20s the wrong way, and then went bankrupt. That's when I set out to learn God's ways of handling money, and I developed the Ramsey Baby Steps. By following these steps, I became a millionaire again, and this time the right way. After three decades of guiding millions of others through the plan, the evidence is undeniable. If you follow the baby steps, you will become a millionaire and get to live and give like no one else. And now I'm excited to share with you that I've written a new book called Baby Steps Millionaires, and it's available for pre-order right now. You'll learn how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth and how you can too. I'll walk

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Free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code, the magic word, Ramsey, to get the best possible deal. Today's question comes from Carrie in Texas. Carrie writes, My fiance proposed to me before we moved across the country for new jobs. We both make over a hundred grand a year, but he has a lot of debt. I don't know how much debt he has because he hasn't completely shared that with me yet. I'm debt-free with a net worth of $880,000. Should we wait until he's debt-free to get

married? If not, should I ask for a prenuptial agreement due to the difference in our financial situations? Dave, I'll let you handle the prenup, but I'm going to tell Kerry, don't get married. Y'all have too many unspoken conversations y'all need to have. There's some bigger issues going on here, man. That's

my thought. If he won't tell you how much debt he has how you get married ever i mean you don't get married until you got the air cleared on this how are you gonna make a human i hear this all the time dave people will tell you everything they'll tell you this and that they'll make babies how much debt does he have i don't know he didn't want to talk about i got three kids with him but i don't know yeah i've made a human with him but i don't know how much money he owes MasterCard. That's ridiculous.

Yeah, you don't do that. That's true. So here's the thing. John's right. The number one cause of divorce in North America today is money fights and money problems. And so you've got to get on the same page about money before you get married, whoever you are, whatever the situation is. As a matter of fact, I'll carry it a little bit further. All the data tells us also on the marriage stats that the other three things that break up marriages are kids, how many to have and how to raise them.

Are the inmates going to run the asylum or are we going to raise Stepford children? You know, we're overly strict or we just have craziness in the house all the time, whichever it is. Or do the, you know, religion is number three. Are you in agreement on religion? Christians call that unequally yoked, but are you in agreement on religion? That breaks up marriages like crazy. And the fourth one that breaks up marriages like crazy is in-laws. How are we going to handle the crazy people on the extended part of the family?

Because there is always some crazy people in the extended part of the family. How are we going to handle that? And if you can have those four discussions in depth, preferably in the setting of a pre-marriage counselor, money, religion, kids, and in-laws, you get on setting of a pre-marriage counselor, money, religion, kids, and in-laws. You get on the same page on all of that in-depth discussions. You have set yourself up for a statistically very good chance of a successful marriage. And can I go one step below that?

Talking about those four issues is really important creating a language or an environment to where not if but when my my faith journey looks different now than it did 20 years ago 25 years ago when i met sheila what i thought i was gonna how i was gonna raise kids looks different than it does actually having two of them and one of them's really mean to me dave um it changes right so how are we going to have these conversations together as we roll too but i mean what are the what are the what are the principles the guiding values right yes what is the values of this are and so it's just i mean one of you is way over here that's right and the other one's way over there on something you're gonna struggle you really are it's it's gonna be an issue. So back to your question, though. So number one, you guys have got to sit down and get on the

same page. You have to know everything about his money. He has to know everything about your money, including your fears of having a good net worth while he doesn't. And that's a good part of the money discussion. I do not recommend prenups unless the difference in the wealth is extreme. Yours is borderline. If you've got a million dollars and he has a negative half million dollars of net worth because he's got a half million dollars of student loan debt and no money, that's pretty extreme. It's a million and a half swing.

So you may want to consider it at that point. But the problem, people run to prenups as if that is going to protect cause their relationship to work after they didn't talk about crap they should have talked about and so you're hiding think how bonkers that is for hiding behind the prenup is what most people are doing but now i will tell you you know like for instance if i die my wife is going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars she is now and she would still be and i would suggest to her that she get a prenup yeah because she's probably not going to find her equal if she were to remarry in uh in wealth and it's dangerous and it's really not

even dangerous for the person you're marrying it's all the people that are attached that are weird like your crazy uncle comes out of the uh your his crazy uncle comes out of closet once he figures out that the the financial closet once he figures out that uh his nephew married a rich girl that's exactly right and he's gonna show up over there with all these new ideas about a pizza parlor he wants to open you know and that's kind of crap he's gonna slip and hurt his knee on your back patio prenup helps with some of that because you just look at uncle crazy pizza and go no i ain't got anything she's heard we got a prenup and can't touch it so it helps with running off the crazies and managing them because they do come out of the woodwork the more difference that there is two broke people get together none of the

crazies care that's right so uh but one of them's rich somebody one of the crazies is all interested now you know so um and that's what i've you know i see this with like we work with pro athletes or we work with um music people around nashville and and this kind of stuff and we see that occasionally so there's an occasion for that when i first started i would just say no prenups no matter what but i've seen enough crazy that i now am okay with that in an extreme situation so yeah you may want to end up with a prenup, but it's the last part of this entire discussion. I want you to close the discussion with that, not open the discussion with that, which means that you've got all the other work done. Then the prenup's going to be in a good setting.

And it's mainly to keep the other people out, not him. But don't start a marriage moving across the country together when you won't even talk about how much money you have don't even move across the country together we can't even talk about money you won't talk about how scared you are of his situation there's so much unspoken don't start a marriage with secrets Thank you. Merry Christmas, America! We're so glad you're with us. Thanks for hanging out. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. It's a free call at 888-825-5225.

Dave is with us in Pensacola, Florida. Hi, Dave, how are you? I'm great. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, I'm currently doing my MBA. I started it because COVID gave us a bunch of free time. But I am about three weeks away from being done. Or if I get a specialty, it can cost an extra 16 weeks. And because TA covers a good amount of it, it's only going to cost about $1,200.

But I'm trying to get, like, from your perspective, does that actually add any credibility? Because what I'm trying to do in my next career field, I guess you'd call it, is trying to help people with their personal finances. What's the specialty? Personal finance? No, D, finance. Finance. Okay.

Okay, very little of an MBA that I've ever seen curriculum has personal finance in it, though. It's true. I started the MBA just kind of because of the free time and the TA was going to cover most of it anyways. So I was like, all right, well, I'm not sure what I want to do next. I might go get it for $1,200 just because I want it. Okay. But I don't think it'll ROI. If you make $1,200 in your entire life because you got specialization in finance versus just MBA, I'd be shocked.

You might if you got into a real nuanced job of some kind that was totally corporate finance driven. But the number of people that will, you know, if you're going into personal finance is what you mentioned, right? It is. Okay. If you're going into that, the number of people that care whether your MBA is in finance, a specialization in finance, or whether you even have an MBA is close to zero.

I love MBAs. I've got a bunch. I'm working on my team. I don't have one. I've got a PhD in DUMB, but it's not cost me. It's not held me back $1 in terms of because the number of people that I've been able to help has not had anything to do with the credibility that a degree gave me. Now, knowledge has given me the ability to help a lot of people.

Knowledge is a good thing, but the credibility that a degree gave me, I wouldn't fool with it. But I think you like studying and you like the academic process. I kind of hear that in the way you're asking the question. So I think you might ought to do it for you. I'm just wondering, is there something you're about to graduate, and is there something you feel like you don't know that you need 16 more weeks in school to learn?

Because let me say this, $1,200 for a certificate in an MBA program, that's not a lot of money. That's a deal. I would take that all day. But it's the 16 weeks or months of your life you're going to have to devote back to this thing. So what are you missing here?

Not really anything. You're right. I like doing the studying thing, but I think it'd be done for a little bit. I started it basically because I finished flight school and kind of missed the academic portion of it. And so the only thing I was kind of thinking of is if I was going into finance and I was this close to getting something that said finance on the degree anyways because my bachelor's in accounting, but if no one's going to care,

then it might not be worth the squeeze. Nobody cares. 99% of the jobs don't care, and 99.99% of the people don't care. All they care about is do you care and can you help them. Are you a good coach and you know what you're talking about? That's what they care about. Do you care and can you help them? Are you a good coach and you know what you're talking about? That's what they care about. Do you care and can you help them? And so the number of times someone has said, Dave, you have a bachelor's in finance, which is mine's in finance with specialization in real estate, my BA.

But, you know, you have a bachelor's, you have an undergrad is all. And so you're not qualified to get me out of debt in 30 years. I've never heard that one time. Now I've heard a lot of people call me stupid, but I've never, never one time, uh, heard somebody go, Oh, you're not, you don't have enough degrees to help me get out of debt. You know, you don't have enough degrees to help me put my budget together or run the calculation on my mutual fund. You're not qualified. I've never heard that. It just doesn't come up.

But they do care that I, you know, have some life experience that's valuable and that I actually know the answer to the question regardless of where I got the answer. So that's what matters. Especially in this field. When it comes down to that coaching, man, know what you're talking about and then be able to communicate it. A big part of leadership and coaching is being able to be heard, right? Can you speak and be heard? Yeah, you know, truthfully, what would be more useful,

but it's probably not available in this situation, is if you can pick up, if you want to go back and study six or eight weeks, I'd go pick up some grad-level psych classes. Pick up a counseling class. I had to listen. Yeah. Yeah. I'd go.

If you want to spend $1,200, go spend it in the psych section, the psychology section in a counseling class. I took a class 1,000 years ago when I was in college. While I was getting my undergrad, I took a bunch of graduate years ago when i was in college while i was in getting my undergrad i took a bunch of graduate level stuff just because i was interested not because i actually used them as credits in my undergrad but they were just they were graduate level stuff like i took one called motivation and emotion that was you know in-depth detail uh psychology nerd stuff and i loved it i had a blast but i just lurk i like wondering how people tick yeah what makes them do

what they do and so um you know that's uh that but i think that's probably more valuable if you're going to be working in personal finances to know the personal part and this brings up a good question day we often talk about the cost of higher ed the cost of some of these programs being the what you put out for tuition. And in this case, like we said, $1,200 for a certificate in MBA programs, nothing. Nothing. But we forget if you go to school for four years and you pay $100,000 or $150,000, you also have four years of not working.

Right. 16 weeks. Yeah. That's how long. Opportunity cost on the time. Right. Four more months, you're not going to be working full time or you could be making other money doing some other stuff and so that that 16 weeks has a cost to it as well and i don't know what that is in your life if you're single and you're just working a full-time

job and do this at night maybe nothing um or maybe you're punting a full-time job down the road a little bit that's an interesting discussion all right kelly's in seattle Hi, Kelly. How are you? I'm wonderful. Thank you so much. Sure. What's up? So my husband and I have worked the baby steps, read all your books, and we paid off our mortgage. Yay! There we go. So I had talked with you a while ago. We sold a rental house, and that kind of got us to be able to pay off the mortgage. So we did about $75,000 just on our own, and then we sold that. Yeah, and it's amazing. So we have another house that was our starter home that we still rent out, and our mortgage on that is $122,000. And we have $120,000 left leftover from the cell of the other rental house. That's in addition to your emergency

fund? In addition to our, yep, we have our emergency fund is done. Great. Wow. Yeah, and my husband, we had the blessing of all of this, this trifecta, his work started offering a Roth 401k with a match so we're putting 23 percent we sat down and we maxed that out so we're doing that now um so part of the the drive for paying off our debt is our house needs some some. And we're kind of on the fence if we take the $120,000 and pay off the other rental and own it outright, or if we split it and use about $60,000 to get some stuff done on our current home that we live in and own now. What's your household income? $110,000.

I can tell you what David and Sharon Ramsey would do, and we would never look back. I'd pay off that rental instantly when you get off the phone. And then I would back my retirement down to 15%, not 23%. And I'd start saving aggressively to do the remodel in phases. Three $20,000 phases. And I'd start the other phase, the first phase immediately. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Merry Christmas, America. We're so glad you're here.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Robin is with us in Montana. Hi, Robin. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for taking my call. This is really great to talk with you.

You too. What's up? So my husband and I follow your baby steps steps and my husband recently retired as a wildland firefighter and forest service and he brought back all of his military time with the army. Wow. And he kept money in his TSP using the same allocations that you recommend the 80% C, 20% S and 20% I. And now he can no longer contribute to his TSP, and we won't be touching that money for about seven years. And his TSP has been dropping a bit, and he's kind of freaking out a little bit about it,

about what to do with his TSP since that money is dropping. And so he's wondering, should he keep that same allocation, or this is where we kind of disagree, or move it to the G fund until the market recovers since he can't buy any of the stock while it's kind of on sale when it's down? And so he feels like he might be taking a loss with little to gain from it, and he'll listen to and follow whatever you say but he's just worried about losing it all and not being able to buy it back later i never never recommend timing the market when you move when you move money out of the market when it's down you lock in guarantee your losses in the name of safety and it's a false indicator of

safety it's not real safety um and so i would never tell him to move it to the g what i would do is say why don't we roll the whole stinking thing into a traditional IRA, which you can do, and put it in mutual funds that you like with long track records that will outperform the mix in the TSP with a good SmartVestor Pro. That's what I would do. I always recommend, with very, very rare exceptions, 99% of the time, that when you leave a company, you take your retirement with you and roll it to a traditional IRA. There's no taxes when you do that.

You have much better options in the open market than your limited options in your old retirement plan, and you can spread it across and pick mutual funds that are performing. If you're 80% C and it's down, it means the market's down. Okay? And C is a common stock index. It works like the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is the 500 most represented stocks on the stock market.

And so it is the stock market. The S&P 500 index is the stock market the s&p 500 index is the stock market and if the c is 80 of your portfolio and your portfolio is going down that means the stock market's going down and meaning there's no place to hide you're going to ride the wave you're going to ride the roller coaster up and down and you got plenty of time there's nothing to panic about he's just feeling weird because he's not adding to it to offset any losses. But, you know, I've got plenty of money in my own that is up and down whatever the market's doing because it's in my retirement and it's in good mutual funds and it just rides the wave.

So what I would do is meet with a smart investor pro, learn some historical data about the market, and go, okay, here's what the market's been doing. Here's why your C was driving this down or what was driving the TSP down. And here's some mutual funds, and here's what they will do when this market is going down, which likely they will go down too, by the way. If the market's going down, the market's just going down. That's part of it. And you ride the market down, you ride up it's the roller coaster ride nobody gets hurt on a roller coaster except those that jump off in the middle so uh ride it baby ride it what is a tsp thrift

savings plan federal government and military okay if you're a federal government employee uh and you have options in the thrift savings plan, the C plan, each of those represent a different segment of our type of investing. The G is a guarantee. Okay. So it's a very low return, like putting your money in the money market or something. Okay. Okay, or putting it in bonds or something. It's a low rate of return but low risk.

It's not very volatile, but you're going to make nothing and you've moved like let's say you're let's say you had a hundred thousand dollars and it went down so it's worth eighty thousand dollars and you move it into g a hundred percent of time it's not coming back that's exactly right you just locked you locked in your losses you lost that twenty thousand dollars where if you had a hundred and became 80 it's going to go back up to a hundred right if you leave it alone and let it ride the wave right and so that's what historical data and understanding that will cause you to be able to keep your stinking hands off of it and i'll try to time the market right and timing the market is all about greed or fear it's never about data right no data tells us to time the market but

if i'm afraid i'll jump out or if i'm greedy i'll jump in and um that's jumping in and out and there's like i don't know i've probably read 25 studies over my life uh some of them more credible than others but they all come to the same conclusion that market timers do not keep up with people who buy and hold never never never like never i've never never seen a single piece of research that indicates jumping in and out beats but we all have this thing that you want to tell your golfing buddy that you caught you know you hit this you hit this uh within two inches of the pin or i caught a catfish at 73 000 pounds or i killed a 73 point buck or what i mean we've all got these dadgum

moby dick things out there that we're gonna the white whale that we're gonna get and it's just not there and uh but everybody wants to do it they they bought that stock that one time and it went up and then they jumped out at just the right time and the answer to all that is bullcrap it didn't happen that's right it's just like your fishing buddy your golfing buddy it didn't happen i don't believe the very first job i had that had a any type of retirement to it i remember talking to some guys who were actual traders and i was asking some i mentioned something about the wall street journal this is 20 years ago and the guy looked at me and said if it's in the wall street journal and i don't know about it then i'm not doing my job and i remember thinking oh so by the time it gets to me

distilled through the wall street journal down to some local i'm so far behind any decision i'm making yeah and i just remember going you're not hours behind your days days behind oh and especially these days man it's so everything's so fat i can't ride that these guys come and come to work in a car longer than your house, and their only job is to study the auto industry, and yet you picked an auto stock that beat them. Exactly. Or now their job is to manage the AI computers that are trading these. You're not going to win. Just put it in there and let it sit, man.

Yeah, you ride the wave. If you believe in the economy, if you believe in the American business, or even foreign business, if you're in a foreign fund, if you believe in business to make a profit and give you a return on investment and you believe that based on the data that shows you over the past 25 years past 30 years over the past five years here's what this has done then that's what the bet is and it's just like buying a house in a good neighborhood you go okay everybody knows what's a good neighborhood it's good neighborhood stable it's not got cars up on blocks in the front yard. You know, they do know what a weed eater is. And consequently, the homes are well kept, maintained.

And guess what? Good people live there. It's not a bunch of crime. It goes up in value. This is what we call a good neighborhood. It's a predictable environment to invest your housing dollar. All your neighbors thought that until Dave Ramsey moved in a couple months ago there went the neighborhood there went the neighborhood they said oh we researched it and everything well it is on a golf course and now all now

they got broken windows but yeah but i mean it's like but yeah it's uh um man yeah it's it's that's the thing is you you when you buy a piece of real estate, if you know the area, like I grew up in Nashville, so I just know what's happening there just because I'm hanging out. I don't even have to do a bunch of formal research, but I just anecdotally kind of know, here's what's happening in this area, and oh my gosh, did you hear about that? And then you can do a little bit of research and add to the historical data, but you kind of know if I buy in there and I hold it, I'm going to be okay. And that's what you do with mutual funds.

You buy in a good neighborhood. If I buy in there and I hold it, I'm going to be okay. And this is the formula that millionaires use. Day traders, people who buy and sell that think they're Robin Hood, wink, wink, they're doing GameStop and all that bullcrap, 78% of the day traders lose money. This is not a formula for wealth building. When 78% of the people doing anything lose money and you do it, what do you think you are? The exception? This is The Ramsey Show.

Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit theramseyshow.com and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.