The Ramsey Show - App - Stop Living In $1 Trillion Of Plastic Denial! (Hour 3)

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods, moving, and storage studios, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, and co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour podcast on the Ramsey Network. Be sure and check it out. She's my co-host today.

Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Fox News reporting Americans are increasingly turning to their credit cards to cover everyday expenses card debt surged to $1.03 trillion, an increase of $45 billion, or 4.6% from the previous quarter. It marks the highest level ever on record in the Fed dating back all the way to 2003. The rise in credit card usage and debt is particularly concerning because interest rates are astronomically high right now. Oh, horse crap. Credit card interest rates have always been astronomical high. I've been doing this show for 35 years. They've been 18 to 28% the whole time I've been on the air. No one thinks any of that's low. That's dumber than a rock. All right. The average credit card annual percentage rate or APR hit a record of 20.33%. Now, according to Bankrate, and that goes back

to 1985, the previous record was 19% in July of 91. See, there's my rest of my point. I came on the air in 1994 or 1992. I'm sorry. And so, yeah, the interest rates have always been at the screw you level on credit cards. Okay's just be straight if people are carrying debt to compensate for steeper prices they could end up paying more items in the long run for instance if you owe no kidding if you owe five thousand dollars and you pay 28 on it's going to be a lot of money we don't need an article to figure that one out one trillion dollars in credit card debt is staggering well yeah that's true guys i gotta y'all, this is the dumbest thing I've seen, and I don't know when. How long does it take people to figure out that these pieces of plastic called credit cards are not there for you?

How long does it take to figure out that, oh, here's Bank of America. Let's do an on-air plastic surgery right now. We're just going to start chopping up cards. Bank of America. That's two good things to get rid of, credit card and Bank of America. Let's do an on-air plastic surgery right now. We're just going to start chopping up cards. Bank of America. That's two good things to get rid of. Credit card and Bank of America. Both stupid. Here's another.

Platinum Bank of America. We'll get rid of that one, too. Chase. Chase this, okay? Here's Home Depot. They take cash, by the way. You don't need this. Countrywide.

They're broke. Okay. Oh, my God. There's another Bank of America. We must collect Bank of America old cards around here. these people are just time to stop it is time for a plasectomy america a trillion dollars in credit card debt i'm getting airline miles no you're not you're in debt you're in debt a trillion dollars. When you do it with the student loans, we call it an epic pandemic crisis. When we do it with credit cards, it's on the third page of Fox's website.

It's a trillion dollars of you buying crap you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you don't even really like maybe you should stop that i don't know we've been doing this for 30 years i feel like we're not getting anywhere the progress it's not really showing up dave not really we're not really moving the needle on america because what i think has happened is i think it's two things i think the the credit card the game is a very real thing and people say well if i'm going to buy gas might as well put it on my credit card so i can get cash back if i'm going to be buying this anyways might as well put it on the credit card to get the airline miles but it's kind of a dr phil thing so how's that working for

you it's living in that cycle and then there's a there's a real truth that people are using those to pay for food and to pay for stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes. They have the money for food. They're using these because they don't want to cut off Netflix. They're using these because they want to go on vacation and they're broke. That's why they're using them. It's the same reason they've always been using them.

A hundred percent. Yes. That's why they're using them. It's the same reason they've always been using them. A hundred percent, yes. You cannot make an economic case that people actually have to have a credit card for survival today. That's just not true. In their brains, they keep saying this. That's what I was going to say, though. But the mathematical facts don't back it up. When you look at their budget and you look at what's going on and what they make and everything in it, what's hard is the math. the math it is tight it is hard but what happens is is the

standard of living that we're all yep expected to live yep causes these things to have to be a necessity in order to live that standard of living and so to cut to cut that well that means the average american's living as stupid as their own Congress is living. They just keep spending and spending and spending like there's no tomorrow, like there's no reckoning for this level of debt. You keep running up. You've got a trillion dollars. You've got $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.

You've got to now have a trillion in credit card debt, and then you can't figure out why the average American can't seem to get ahead. Well, I think I figured it out. They're giving it all to stinking banks. That's why they got no money. You work your butt off your whole life and you give all your money to a stupid bank. And that's why you got no money. It's not a real hard formula.

No. And I think the perspective has to be and the mindset shift has to be that if you are someone listening and you're like, yeah, I know, but we're paycheck to paycheck. We're not doing extravagant stuff. We're just living life. And so the no debt philosophy, even with credit cards, even with credit cards, is to say, okay, have a pretend scenario, pretend budget where you said we cannot borrow anything. We have to use the money that hits our account. what like have a pretend scenario pretend budget where you said we cannot borrow anything we have to use the money that hits our account yeah then you that's how you build your life you're right

but what happens is is we build our life around and then you refuse to change it to adjust for the variables and that's what's hard with the student loan payments coming back in october you're about to get hammered you're it's there's gonna be another huge expense in the budget act like we're surprised. Student loans came back. Hey, Christmas is always in December. They don't move it. And the student loans are coming in October.

We've been telling you this. So I'm just saying there's going to be a level of pain that a lot of people are going to start to feel even more in the next few months. You know what these are? These are plastic denial. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in denial that I have to deal with my crap. Yes.

And so I'm going to put it on a credit card and act like nothing changed. Well, stuff changed, Bubba. Yep. And these people, this is not sophisticated. This is straight up stupid. These companies are screwing you and you're signing up for the trip. You're asking for it and you're getting hammered at 18 to 28 percent and you wonder why you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and have no money because you signed up for

a stupid trip on the stupid cruise and it's called the plastic cruise it's out of control you guys they have lulled you to sleep they've made you believe you have to have one of these stupid things to exist don't leave home without it, guess what? Daniel Boone left home without it. He made it okay. All right. You can make it without these stupid things. Get you a debit card, pay cash for it, get control of your life, get some autonomy from these banks. They own your butt and you gave them the deed. Don't give them the deed to your butt. They own you. This is the Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. We appreciate you being here. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. Rachel Cruz is my co-host today. Hey, if you want to help us out we

would appreciate it you are our marketing budget yep you uh if you'll follow the show click follow click subscribe whether you're youtubing or you're podcasting or if you're listening on talk radio tell people where you listen spread the word your local talk radio station there's 680 stations carrying the show out there right now if you're watching on tbn tell people that wherever you're catching us just let share about it i'll leave a five-star review click a follow click a subscribe every time you do that it helps us a bunch and we know you're doing it and we know there's a bunch of new people because you're doing that thank you the other day we hit number 12 in the

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The book is $20 on how to get rid of your anxiety, really, is what it amounts to. How do you build a life that doesn't eliminate anxiety but lowers it greatly? And, well, you kind of get your arms around it, literally. So it's $20. The book comes out October the 3rd. We're in pre-sale right now. So you can get the book for $20. The book comes out October the 3rd. We're in pre-sale right now. So you can get the book for $20. And because it's in pre-sale, if you buy it now, we will give you an extra $75 in bonus items,

including the e-book and the audio book, including one of his talks that he did recently that is very good. So be sure you check this out. Get it all at RamseySolutions.com slash store. Dr. John Deloney's new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life. Alex is next. Alex is in Boston. Hey, Alex, what's up? Hi, Dave and Rachel. Thanks for taking my call. Our pleasure. How can we help? Great. Well, Dave, I've heard you. Well, let me start. I'm 38. My fiance is 32. We're getting married in two months from now. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

And I've heard you give kind of a rundown with some callers on their assessing their finances and their ability to afford a home, which we'd like to do hopefully in the next, say, 12 to 18 months or so. Great. Good plan. Great. So I guess I have been unknowingly, uh, kind of working your steps for a while now. Uh, I've lived kind of like a grad student for the last 10 years since taking my first job and, uh, just kind of slowly getting my fiance on board with living below means and less online ordering and kind of getting a handle on our finances. And so, yeah, I'd like to kind of just get your thoughts on our readiness within that timeframe. Okay. So, I mean, really it's going to depend on where you guys are, you know, debt-wise, savings-wise, and what houses are in the area that you guys can afford.

So when you guys get married and everything is combined, how much debt will you guys have? So we have no debt, no student loan debt. We would have some potential debt if if my wife was to not work at her job, then her car payment would become her own. But that's her only debt. No, that's not how that works. Do they furnish her a car or do they give her a car allowance? They give her a car allowance. Okay, she has car debt.

Because if you lose the job, you're in car debt. The car is in her name. The debt is in her name. She's got car debt. You get the car allowance whether you have a car payment or not. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's a straight-up liability, dude.

That's got to be cleared. How much does she owe on her car? $34,000. Holy moly. Okay. What do you guys make? We're both making pretty equal money, right just below $150,000 each. Okay, good.

That's good. So you can clear this off real fast. Yeah. And will that be it, Alex? No credit card debt, personal loans, anything? No, that's our only debt. Okay, awesome. And then how much will you guys have in savings, just in liquid cash? I don't keep a lot of cash on hand. I have about

$25,000 in cash. Okay. Where's the rest of it? In savings. In ETFs and retirement accounts. How much in non-retirement do you have? $355,000. Well done, sir. Good job. Well done. So when you get married, when you come home from the honeymoon, ride check, pay off her car if she doesn't already have the money to do it before then. Okay.

That's step one. Step two is allocate an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses out of something. Just say, ear that that fund right there that can be our 25 000 that can be whatever your emergency fund is and then everything else i would throw at your down payment so you've got a healthy down payment non-retirement all goes at the down payment really yeah okay and you're you're almost gonna have a house paid off i mean what price range home would you buy well we live in a very high cost of living area yes you do really the only neighborhoods that you would want to buy in here and kind of the entry level homes there are

750 and above yeah that's probably right I don't disagree with that. Yeah. So you're going to have, what, $300,000 to put down, give or take? Well, she has money, too. Oh, how much has she got? So probably I'd say a net worth with retirement and brokerage of around $625,000. Yeah. And she has combined worth of around $350,000. Okay.

But we're using only non-retirement. What's non-retirement for her? How much non-retirement cash can she get a hold of? She has $80,000. Okay. And you've got $300,000 and some change. And we've got to clear up a car loan, and we've got to have an emergency fund. And so you're going to put down $400,000, give or take, on a $700,000 a $700,000 house you make 300 you're going to pay off your house really fast that's cool I guess I from I'm from

the midwest where you know houses cost $200,000 and the idea yeah but you don't live there having the idea of just crawling to a bank and you know in the bank's 500 grand or something is just kind of a lot to undertake well i mean if you buy 700 and you put down 400 you only have a 350 and you make 300 so you're gonna knock that out in what three years or four years and you'll have it free and clear and you're young rich people then with paid for everything's oh my gosh your net worth will be over a million dollars. Easy. What's causing you to be hesitant, Alex?

You don't want to go all in on a house? Yeah. Yeah, I've been saving slowly, investing every check. Are you renting now? Yes. Okay. Well, if you want to rent, you can rent. It's a bad long-term play because the 100

of the time rents go up yeah and so it's a bad long term yeah but i mean short term if you guys want to rest a little bit and pile up a big old pile of cash and pay cash for the house and you want to take two or three years and do that i'm okay if you want to go that way you'll be okay just don't be don't be a renter for 10 years i mean it's not yeah y'all y'all y'all are in a better situation than that so go ahead and get the equity and yeah start looking at home ownership because you guys are in that position fair enough i don't borrow money um and and so if i were in your shoes we'd be just continuing we would knock the the car out. We build the emergency fund. We take the $300 and the $80 and put them together.

And we'd say, all right, we're going to chunk everything on here, a couple hundred a year. We're going to live on $100, make $300. And pretty quick, I'm going to pay cash for a house because I don't borrow money for anything ever. And that's how Sharon and I would have to do it because that's the only way we do it. If you want to be that guy, that's completely freakish and wonderful. I love it. That's going to get you richer even faster, actually. But it's hard to talk people into doing that.

So I didn't think I was, I didn't go there. Yeah, but, you know, you called Alex to ask about, you know, are we in a position to buy a house? And the answer is yes. I mean, you guys are in an incredible position. You've done the hard work. So now the back half of owning the home is going to be like, oh, yeah, we'll just pay it off in a really short period of time. And then you guys have your income and it's just yours at that point.

I mean, it's pretty incredible. Boston's single family residence in a good neighborhood is a better investment than a UTF. OK, you're gonna make more money on it. So it's not a bad investment. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. If you're in the Nashville area, come and visit us. We're just south in Franklin, Tennessee. Our lobby is open, and we do this show live on the glass from 1 to 4 Central Time every day, Monday through Friday, three hours of broadcast.

And usually there's 50 to 200 folks hanging out and watching the show. It's completely free, as is the wonderful coffee and the homemade chocolate chip cookies. The other thing that happens here in the lobby is we have this little stage called the debt free stage and on that stage right now is maggie and patrick hey guys how are you good how are you welcome welcome good to have you where do you guys live annapolis maryland all right and you're all the way to nashville to do a debt-free scream how much have you paid off 91 000 320 now can you say that 91 322 i love it all right and how long did this take 13 months wow and your range of income during that time um we started right around 135 and then um 145 cool what What do you all do for a living? I'm a math coach in elementary school.

Work with teachers. Find fun ways to teach math all day long. It's a good time. That's awesome. That's a good gig. Yeah. I'm home with the kids and then I also own a photography business and that was kind of a big part of the story as well

as to how we got our income shovel up and used my business to really get started. Good. What kind of debt was the $91,000? Mostly student loans. Mostly student loans. That I'm not using. We had small credit card debts. We had to purchase a new water softener system for our house.

When that went out, we had to get a brand new HVAC system. So we had lots of small little things and they do, they just pile up on you and we just wanted to do something about it and get rid of them. How long have you guys been married? It'll be 10 years in September. So you're kind of going along pretty normal

and then something happened. What changed the story? So I remember having, so we had our second child and just feeling like, you know, why do we have like no extra money to like enjoy life, go out to dinner? Or it just felt like we were always just so like tight with money. And I heard about you, I think at the time I thought we only had like $50,000 in debt because all I was thinking about was my student loans. Um, and so I was talking to some friends and they're like, have you heard of Dave Ramsey? This was probably like seven years ago. Um, and I looked you up on Google and I

immediately was like, Oh my gosh, we have to do this. And I kind of like shoved it down his throat and he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, like slow down. So needless to say, we didn't really get started right away. I think we kind of like sat on it for a while. And like then in 2020, we really decided to start start doing it covid was a wake-up um yeah i think so um i think it was just yeah i think we had more time to like actually talk about like what do we want for our future and um you know like a lot of people say you're not going out to eat anyway so it was kind of a you know the right time to get started um so we started in 2020 and then so dave i actually called uh about a year ago i called into the show um we were

contemplating on whether or not we should sell our car to really like get some momentum um and i explained to you uh that you know we had been chipping away but um we even though we got started in 2020 um at the end of that year we had our third child and he was just he had a lot of health issues when he was a baby um so that following year 2021 i mean we completely like fell off the wagon we were like you know dave who we were just like back to like normal life not budgeting just really just surviving um because like I said it was just a really tough year yeah um and when I called and asked you about it you were just very um encouraging you know you were so kind and compassionate and you said you know you've been through the ringer but now it's time for you guys to like get back on and you've got this and that was just really like what I what we needed to hear um in order to to

get this done so so step back into the saddle and finish yep yep and it feels surreal to be there yeah because 13 years ago I mean yeah for for a solid year you guys were doing it so what was the hardest part of the past year because you guys were in and out of the plan a little bit but doing it consistently for, for a solid year. Yep. What was the thing that was like, Oh my gosh, this is, this is difficult. Just the, the small little achievements that we were making. Um, I think she called, I think you actually said we had 80 something thousand dollars of debt at that point. I think you said there's no need to sell your car. We only owed 10 grand on it. It'll eventually go away. We did sell the car, then we were down to 70. And then I had student

loans and we were just paying off just the small amounts at a time. I think we were done with Home Depot and we were done with the, you know, the airline tickets, like the previous caller said about an hour ago. So, so we were, we were down to like two big chunks of money and we just kind of, you know, we went back and forth, um, with, uh, with the housing market at where it's at, where it is right now. We need a bigger house and we want to switch the kids into a different school district. So did so we bit the bullet and we sold our house and we paid off maggie's student loans we paid off my student loans it was a really hard decision we really did think about it like so many we went back and forth so much like do we just stay here

and take another year to finish paying all this off or do we just sell and um the annapolis market is still really hot. We listed on Friday, and then we were under contract on Sunday for $50,000 over asking. Wow. So we're like, okay, this was obviously the right decision. I mean, it is hard, and moving is painful. It's just stressful. But we're in the school district that we want to be in now,

and we just signed for a two-year lease to pay, to save up more. Good for you guys. Yeah, and then you can use that time to get ready to purchase again. Yeah. In the right district, and in the meantime, you're clear. Yeah. Well done. Thank you.

Does it feel as good as you were imagining? It feels fantastic. I know that she started this, and just along the way, every time, you know, she got out her little app, and she swiped up, and we said, okay, that's gone, that's gone, that's gone. And then we did her huge, sorry, her huge student loan payment that was like $48,000, but that was gone. And we still have, you know, a big chunk of money to put down on our future house, but we do, we really want the bigger house and we just need a little bit more to save up and we know we can do it. And we want to do it the right way. I mean, in a lot of ways, it's kind of like

we're starting over, you know, um, we made a huge mess, we cleaned it up and you know, we are, we're starting this new journey, um, with so much more knowledge and, um, and now we have like goals, you know, and we just never used to talk about it. We never could really envision, you know, what, what the future was going to look like like and now it's like all we do we can actually like dream and we can set goals and achieve them and um it's called hope yeah yeah so good okay tell me about your photography business because you said that was a big part of getting some of this debt paid off yeah so i was pretty much just like staying at home with the kids and i worked like a little like part-time two-day-a-week job and it just wasn't bringing in any money. And I had always done photography like as a hobby. And so I'm like,

well, you know, maybe I'll start like a Facebook page or I'll make like a little website and see where it goes. Um, and it completely exploded. It turns out I'm not bad at it. Um, so I do weddings. Um, I have a studio where I, um, do like newborns and everything um so yeah it's been it's been so amazing and just way more successful than i ever could have imagined that's so fun yeah that's so great and then added to the to the journey of of having helping pay off the debt yeah yeah yeah congratulations you guys thank you thank you so much now that you're completely free was it worth it oh my gosh my gosh. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And people, I think, you know, when we talk about it with our friends, I think people just can't really understand, like, wow, you would sell your house to get out of debt. And it's like, when you want something that bad, you know, you'll make it happen. The inner peace is just, it's priceless. Oh, by the way, you're making a move you need to make anyway. Exactly. There's nothing unintelligent about this at all. It's very wise. Very wise all the way around.

Way to go, you guys. So great, you guys. Congratulations. Hey, we got the Live and Give box for you, the Baby Steps Millionaires book, Total Money Makeover book, and the Financial Peace membership. You guys are impressive.

Way to go, heroes. Thank you. We're proud of you. 91,000 paid off in 13 months, including the sale of the car and the house. 135 to 145 income. Maggie and Patrick from Annapolis, Maryland. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! I told you you could do it. This is The Ramsey Show. Our Scripture of the Day, Philippians 4.13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Mary Kay Ash said, Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway rachel cruz ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 brad is in lexington hey brad welcome to the ramsey show hey how's it going better than we deserve brother how. How can we help? So I am a 32-year-old pharmacist, and I have $50,000 in a checking account, $21,000 in a money market account,

and $27,000 in a Roth, IRA, and Vanguard total market mutual fund. So I had a large amount of cash saved up and about a year ago i found some land in a prime location to put a pharmacy so i bought it cash um and i was ready to go i was approved for the construction loan and then about seven months ago i got diagnosed with cancer and sorry that's okay and how you doing it now i'm i'm intermission now good but it wiped out a lot of my savings so what i said earlier is all i've got um i've got 187 thousand dollars in student loans for my doctorate degree and i'm approved for a 500 000 construction loan for the pharmacy and i have a 300 000 line of credit to fund it until it's profitable i was just wanting to get an honest opinion of my financial situation see what you guys think i should do

and brad well you've you've been through you've been through a lot and how much um you said you bought the land before the diagnosis. How much is the land? I paid $50,000 for it. Okay. And then I did about $70,000 of work to the land. Okay. Well, I don't borrow money, and I don't teach people to borrow money. And every time you borrow money, you increase risk have 187 000 in debt and you're talking about going another 300 000 in

debt you're going to end up a million dollars in the hole running a pharmacy that does not sound like a probability of success to me that sounds like an accident looking for a place to happen it sounds like a dream that could end up being more of a nightmare. And I'm not a dream killer, but I love killing nightmares. Yes. I want you

to live this dream in some way, but I would beg you to do it in a way that involves a lot less risk than what you've got today what you're describing how much are you how much are you making now brad 170 000 170 okay i would i would uh sell the land and i would pay off the debt the student loan debt and then i would begin to save and uh think about how i'm going to open a pharmacy for the least amount that doesn't involve a building.

In other words, what you described to me is about 70% real estate and about 30% business. You could go find a closed Walgreens and rent it from that landlord and with no real estate cost, move in it and start a pharmacy for a bazillion dollars less than you're talking about. But you're doing more of a real estate deal here than you are a pharmacy deal. Yeah, well, the issue was the place that I found is a dream location. I have two theaters in the middle of the country. Yeah, and it's also a nightmare location. Yeah. dream location i have yeah it's also a nightmare location yeah um because the risk you're i mean

the cash flow bind you're putting yourself in from day one means you have to move a lot of pharmaceuticals man that's a lot of little pills uh to pay that bill. I mean, wow. From a business perspective, I think you're asking for trouble. But again, I love helping people live their dreams. If I were in your shoes, I would want to own my own thing, too. I've always run and owned my own business just about my whole life. And so I'm right there with you on that. But it's not the what, it's the how that's bothering me. So no, I would not do the deal the way you've outlined it.

I think you're asking for trouble. I think you're going to get in a bind and you're going to be stressed out. And it's going to take you a decade to get your way through this. And I don't want that for you. I think you can sell this land and real quickly pay 100% debt free, making 170. Then you can start piling up cash. And I would find a building that is not a dream location that I can rent and let someone else bear the real estate costs, and I'd start my business in a rented building for a tenth of what you're talking about spending.

Yeah, and Brad, there's always – my red flag always goes up when people use language, and you kind of use it in this call of like it's the dream location it's the only thing when there starts to be no options and it's like well this is the only thing i can do it pins you in a corner to make you feel like this is the only thing i can do whether the math makes sense or not it's the only option and it's not it's not true and so you have to expand your options because options are going to be able, you're going to be able to lower the emotion of the dream location to see, okay, what actually is making sense here.

And so don't pin yourself in such a small, narrow path of this one thing, even though I get it, right? I mean, like there's dream locations everywhere. Like we all know that. And here's the thing. Let's do this. Let's take it a step further, okay? Because here's what we did at Ramsey, all right? We start small and then we move up with cash and we move up with cash and

we you know we're in a 500,000 square foot office building right here i mean that's paid for we certainly didn't start there we started in a rented basement 800 square feet month-to-month rental we started on a card table in my living room. Okay, so what you could do is this. You could go my way. You could say, all right, we're going to be debt-free, and I'm going to save up $50,000 to $100,000, and I'm going to open in an existing location of some kind where I can rent the building,

and all I need is the pharmacy setup. I need the shelving. I need the stock, the inventory. I need the licensing. I need is the pharmacy setup. I need the shelving. I need the stock, the inventory. I need the licensing. I need to do that stuff. It may not be as good a location, but we're going to get started. So we're going to risk $50,000 to $100,000 of cash, not of borrowed money. Get that thing working and making serious money again and get back up to your income

and then save up and pay cash for the deal that you're trying to do here, or a deal like you're trying to do here. And if you want to do the dream $400,000 worth of real estate and $100,000 worth of setup, half a million dollars going in, you do that all in cash after you got already got one up and running. Because you will learn so much in your first one that you pay cash for that will inform doing the second one wiser and I don't know if we can stop you or not but if we can stop you with one phone call we would stop you for your own good it doesn't affect us but I'm begging you don't do that deal it is so full of holes so full of risk that you don't see and um i want you to have a wonderful life i want you to own your own business but i do not want it to own you

and you are getting ready to be shackled hands and feet when you sign up for all this stuff and it doesn't feel like it's a risk for you because all you can see is the upside because all of us that want to own our own business are optimists we're all glass half full people and that's how our brains work so i'm happy for your cancer uh remission yes happy that you're getting the other side of that i'm thrilled for you thrilled that you've got a wonderful career making really good money now clean up your student loan mess build a basis of life on a foundation where everything's more grown up and it's less fantasy. Yeah. And I think it's a good rule of thumb too for people starting anything. Start small. You start small because your mistakes are going to be smaller. Your learnings are going

to, like you're going to be able to, it's not these big fatal mistakes. If you are starting something at the pinnacle, which is a little bit, Brad, it's kind these big fatal mistakes if you are starting something at the pinnacle which is a little bit brad it's kind of what you're saying it's like i'm taking out three hundred thousand dollars i'm going to do a construction and build my own i mean you're doing the big thing and for some reason if it doesn't start work you know if it's not working or there's mistakes to be made those are magnified because of the scale at which you're choosing to do it so starting small on anything is so wise. I'll just tell you, I have built from the ground up

hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, hundreds of millions in homes, in commercial buildings, in the buildings that we're in on this campus. One hundred percent of the buildings we built, if we were doing them over, we'd do them different. Yeah, and they end up being expensive. I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like, there's just so much in that process. 100% of the buildings we built, if we were doing them over, we'd do them different. Yeah. And they would end up being expensive. I mean, you know what I mean?

There's just so much in that process. 100% you have unseen expenses that catch you off guard. 100% of business does not work the way you think it's going to. Yeah. 100 out of 100 times. You just count on it. And that's what goes with this territory. Hey, man, thanks for the call.

Hope it goes well for you. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started

on the Ramsey baby steps, go to ramsaysolutions.com and click the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's ramsaysolutions.com and click Get Started.