The Ramsey Show - App - The Debt Snowball WORKS! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. We're glad you're with us. Dr. John is a number one best-selling author and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, where they talk about relationships and all kinds of mental health issues. Yeah, a lot of fun.

Very entertaining. It's on the Ramsey Networks, and you can watch it on YouTube, as well as pick it up where any podcast is sold. Open phones at 888-825-5225 and you people know the podcasts are not sold. All right, let's go to Heather in Indianapolis. Hi, Heather. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave and John. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My husband and I are debt-free except our house and I'm wondering how much we should have in our emergency fund. I'm a stay-at-home mom and my husband gets paid about half of his annual income in one bonus check.

So we save a large chunk of that to be put towards the next year's big expenses like the property taxes, home and auto insurance, and medical because his monthly take-home doesn't leave a lot of room for those. So would you still recommend having an additional six months of expenses saved up on top of that? Yes. Okay. Yeah, the emergency fund is a vague fund for unexpected events. What you're doing is you're just planning your cash flow. I've got to pay property taxes. They should not be an emergency. You know it's coming. Christmas should not be an emergency. It's always in December. They don't move it, you know, and so you plan for those things. Emergencies are not things you plan for. They're called emergencies, and they're unexpected events. The tires going

out on your car is not an unexpected event. We can predict the tires are going to go out on your car. You need a fund to be able to put tires on your car. You need a fund to pay your taxes. In your case, you're having to manage that to put tires on your car you need to fund to pay your taxes in your case you're having to manage that very carefully and have been very wise to do that because of the wild cash flow that you guys face it's almost like you're farmers or something you know you get two crops a year and you got to live on those crops the other time right but i mean that's how a farmer does it exactly they two or three times a year they get a big check, and they've got to pay bills for the rest of the year with those checks.

And so you've got to budget it all the way out. That's all you're doing. You're budgeting that out. That's different than emergency funds. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. You're doing a good job, by the way. Is there a recommended place to put that?

So far we do the cash envelope system. So I just take everything out, put it this is safe and um i mean it's a take out about 15 000 each year from that check so is there a better place i could put that um yeah if you if you use the every dollar app you can use that we have a system in there we call sinking funds which are basically little mini savings accounts for different subjects so you'd have a sinking fund for taxes, a sinking fund for this, a sinking fund for that. Then you could set it over and it's just a separate savings account. And you would have, but the reason you're doing that is you're breaking it out when

you get it. You're allocating a little envelope for taxes, but the taxes aren't due for nine months or whatever, right? And you got a little envelope for Christmas, but it's going to be, you know, another six months before Christmas or whatever the number is, right? And so you're doing the envelopes just to keep it categorized. Am I correct? Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, you could do that in every dollar really easy and then just put the $15,000 in a savings account. Now, I would keep it separate from your checking because I don't want to accidentally spend it. That's why. It's what you're doing. And the other thing is I would keep it separate from your emergency fund because this is not really your emergency fund. This is just we're setting aside the money to do something we need to do in September.

That's all it is. Yeah, because his monthly take-home is only about $4,000, so that doesn't leave a lot of room for a family of five. So we have to save it ahead of time and make sure we've got those bills covered. Very wise, very wise. You're doing a great job of thinking this through. You've done a, you know, you've been, the whole process, it's not severely broken, but you called and asked for some help, and so all I'm doing is tuning you up a little bit.

But you're really playing the right song. Okay. That make sense? Yes, it does. Thank you so much for your help. Way to go. Good stuff, John. They tell you that one of the keys to having a good life is marrying well.

And one of the keys to having a very challenging, hard life is not marrying well and then not putting the effort in and whoever that guy that guy married well is what i'll say yeah yeah he did she's she's a star she's gold star so yeah that you're exactly right and you know you and i've been talking about this off air a little bit there's because we've got the marriage and money event coming up that you and rachel do and the tickets are on sale now just to segue into that but but that has caused the whole subject of marriage to come up more and more and more and all of the the data that we've seen in the financial world for years has validated uh that that two spouses on the same page have a higher probability of building wealth than a single.

Yeah, so, yeah. Or than a shacked up, or than a whatever. I mean, you just call it. But this committed marriage relationship, the data is in. It's not a moral construct. It is a moral construct. It is a moral construct. But in addition to that, the data is in, and there's a socioeconomic proof set in the research that is showing very, very clearly. And we found it, again, in the millionaire research. We didn't find hardly any millionaires that did it in spite of their crazy spouse. They did it with a supportive

spouse two horses pulling the plow together is what it amounted to which which i've heard you teach that lesson accelerates the the the pull force right yeah exactly i mean because or amplifies the pull force the synergy it's uh it's very very real yeah and uh you really and and we see it all the time and you know some years ago when i first started the show 30 years ago they uh the uh the the sociologists would call it the marriage advantage and there was a whole book of research that was old back then but we've seen another round of this same type of research starting to come in because there seems to be this discussion that marriage is no longer needed well i think that the the bill of goods that we've been sold is more important than having a good marriage is you need

to make a bunch of money and the best way to do that is do it by yourself and you don't even need to be married to give a child the best situation right and i think the sociologist i think everybody the anthropologist everybody's circling back around going oh maybe this having a rooted structure here that everybody can anchor into and say come hell or high water we're going to work hard we're going to fight we're going to call we're going to make this thing magic we're going to make this thing work has all sorts of benefits from financial to kids to health. Yeah. It just occurred to me.

I watched a preview of a movie that's coming out called Unsung. I haven't seen the preview. It's the Irwin brothers did it. They did the Jesus Revolution. Ah, okay. And they live here in the community and they're friends. And so Andy sent me a link and Sharon and I watched Unsung. And it's about the Smallbone family, is rebecca st james yeah and um it's exactly this

the mom is the unsung hero in the movie and that's the story arc is really powerful on this and the family has gone i mean king and country is the boys i mean the family's going to be unbelievably successful. But it came out of this really hard time. And then the mom and dad locking together and the mom doing these things. And it's powerful on this exact point. So you guys, if you want to see an illustration of that, when that movie comes out, go see it. It's called Unsung. I'll give it a big plug.

It's really good. Made me cry. But I cry at Applebee's commercials, too. So there you go. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer,

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Michelle's in Long Island, New York. Hi, Michelle. How are you? Hi, I'm good. Thank you. Sure. What's up? So my question is, I have three large outstanding debts, and I'm trying to figure out which

one to tackle first. Okay. large outstanding debts and i'm trying to figure out which one to tackle first okay i have my car payment that's 16 000 a student loan that's 30 000 and another one that's 45 000 okay we address them smallest to largest okay so everything you've got no life life, no eating out, no vacations, work all the time, and throw it all at the car until the car's gone, and then the $30,000 until it's gone, and then the $40,000 until it's gone. Okay. What do you make a year?

My thought was I make $120,000, and my husband makes $140,000. Oh, God. So you're going to do this fast. I'm trying. You know, I started your plan in January, but we paid off $30,000 of credit cards so far. In two months. So we're getting there. In two months, we used our bonuses to pay it off.

Very good. So you're in attack mode. Way to go, kiddo. You're doing it. You're doing it. Don't slow down. Don't slow down. Get it. Get it. Get it. You're doing it. Don't slow down. Don't slow down.

Get it. Get it. Get it. We're there. We're on the way. You make enough money, and that tells me that y'all are real smart, and in about two months, y'all are going to start trying to overthink this. Don't.

Just keep going. No, she already did. That's why you called. You knew better. You already knew the answer to the question you asked. Just go. I do, but he wants to pay the student debt first because he figures the car and the car He's the broke guy that makes a lot of money. So his opinion is really not relative.

He is a rich, broke guy. He makes a lot of money, has no money. Yeah. Yeah, let's change that by doing something that's proven. It really doesn't matter as long as we end up out of debt but the difference is is that people will actually do the stuff that we teach where his theory people bail out yeah but the bottom line is yeah the bottom line is you need about 80,000 bucks and you're done right well i need 80,000 actually and then another 100,000 for his duty debt okay well we're married so we have

180,000 and your household income total is two is about a quarter million right yeah about 250 right uh-huh okay and so you need 180 and you make 250 so not counting taxes if you lived on 71 year you'd be dead free in a year so you're not going to quite do it in a year but you ought to do it in 18 months to two years 18 months to two years okay so that's like it's like 15 000 a month which is actually the track you're on mm-hmm yep because our goal is to move once we paid off all of our student debt so once you're debt free once we're debt free then we want debt. Once you're debt-free? Once we're debt-free, then we want to move to another area. That counts the car, too, not just the student loans.

Yes. Okay. You're doing it. Hey, and by the way, Michelle, it's going to be awful. Terrible. It's hard. It's going to be embarrassing. Your husband's going to be like, I make too much money to...

I know. But y'all dug a big hole. You've got to get out of the hole. Yeah, you have a dadgum mess and if you do not address it with a level of intensity you will never address it so the start that you've got is the right start you came out of the gate hot now just put the pedal the metal and push it through and finish it and um don't don't screw around with this other stuff but you get that car gone you'll never a car payment again the rest of your life this is the last time you're done you pay it off sent then you knock out

and you got a 30 and a 40 and 100 and then we get after them just in that order boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and we just keep firing away and that 100 is going to be the hardest one not because it's the biggest but because it's the biggest hey this occurred to me a few months ago dave i was preparing for a talk and it was just like a light bulb went off for me. My dad was a policeman, and then about halfway through my childhood became a minister, and finances were a big stress for us. I've talked about that. But my response to that was to go make a bunch of money, go get some degrees and go get some fancy jobs.

And without a plan, what that allowed me to do was to dig a hole deeper than my dad could have ever dug, because the banks wouldn't have given him that much money. And so without a plan, you can end up making a quarter million dollars, and you find yourself so bad off. And that's after paying off 30. They were 210 in debt. Right.

Whereas if you made 85, it wouldn't even occur to you to take out that much money. Right? But since we make – know not i know on this show we get people calling i mean student loans are you know can wipe you out but but man it's if you don't have a plan doesn't matter how much money you make you can just get more and more and more out of control and dig yourself such a massive hole yeah that's exactly right and you add to that the student the student loans are loaned to an 18 year old right you know and so you loan an 18 year old 100 000 bucks with no collateral and no business plan yeah the business plan is what i'm gonna play beer pong that's my business plan and so yeah that that this is a genius system and we

wonder why it didn't work i saw my still one of my top five of all time favorite memes was, or maybe it was a comedian said, I was really, really pissed off when I was 17, and the guy at the tattoo parlor wouldn't let me get my Limp Bizkit tattoo on my leg. And four months later, they gave me $150,000 to go to college. And I was like, come on. What are we doing? Yeah, this is your Congress on on. What are we doing? Yeah, this is your Congress on drugs.

What are we doing? Lois is in Orlando. Hi, Lois. How are you? Well, not too bad for an old lady. Here's my question. My husband and I are in our 80s. We have three rental properties, and we're debating,

would we be better just to sell them while we're alive or leave them to our two children to inherit? Mathematically, it would be better to leave them to inherit because let's take one of the rental properties. What's it worth today? Just give me an example, one of them. Oh, like $175,000. And you paid what for that?

$43,000. Yeah, and you've depreciated it down, so your basis is probably close to zero. So if you sell it today you're going to pay capital gains tax on 175 000 understand right if they inherit it they have their basis is the value at the time of your death so if they inherit it their basis is 175 000 if it happened today okay and they could sell it for $175,000 and have zero tax on it so if you sell it you get taxed on the whole stinking thing if they sell it after your death they get zero tax okay that sounds like a good plan now that's the math answer. Then the other answer is, are they competent to pull this off?

Yes. Okay. They are. They're two responsible adults. Good. Very good. Well, you did good then, didn't you? Way to go, Lois.

Oh, what they want to. That's the thing. Yeah. Well, what I would tell them is say, listen, I'm going to leave it to you. You can keep it or you can sell it. But if you sell it within six months of my death, you will have no taxes on the money. Okay. So that's six months.

Yeah. The IRS assumes that the value at time of death is the same inside of six months of death. But if they sell it six years later, they'll have to go back and figure out what the value was at the time of death, and they will pay gains on the difference in that value and six years of growth. Okay. And Lois, one thing that Dave said is really important. If you don't care, tell your kids, we don't care if you keep these houses or if you sell them. Because one of your kids may feel this innate sense of obligation these are mom and dad's houses somehow mom and dad spirit is in these houses we got to keep them and if you say i don't care what you do with those

houses then let them know that up front that'd be such a gift to them okay okay that's that's real good advice very cool good and make sure you have a will of course that's real good advice. Very cool. Good. And make sure you have a will, of course, that's up to date and accurate for the state of Florida, which is where you live. The great news is there's no probate tax either in Florida. So there's no taxes in the state of Florida on an estate, which is why a lot of people move there in their retirement years. And there's no income tax in Florida, which is why the economy is booming. Note to you policymakers in these other states who thought you were going to tax the rich, and they left and went to Florida. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host.

We invite you to stop by our studios anytime here in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, right on the interstate. Very easy to find. The cookies are homemade, and they're free. The coffee is awesome, and it's free. And usually 50 to a couple hundred folks are sitting around watching us on the glass do the show. Right now, there's a handful of folk out here, and that's free. It's worth what you pay for it. But we do the show from 1 to 4 Central Time, Monday through Friday, every week, every single week.

And two of us are sitting here, two of the Ramsey personalities are sitting here. I'm usually here Monday through Thursday, unless I'm doing something else, which would be like when I'm out doing speaking or doing an event somewhere. Also, in that same lobby is where the Debt Free Scream stage is. On that stage, Ryan and Madison are here. Welcome, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Good to have you guys. Where do you live? We live in the middle of nowhere in Utah. In the middle of nowhere in Utah. That's an actual town. All right. And so welcome to Nashville. We're in the Nashville area.

How much debt have you paid? We paid off $160,000. Wow. How long did that take? It took us 39 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? Started off making around $80,000 and ended up making around $140,000.

Excellent. Way to go, you guys. What kind of debt was the $160,000? So $60,000 was consumer debt, $41,000 in auto loans, $15,000 in credit card debt, and about $4,000 in student loans. And then $100,000 was was our mortgage you paid off your house how old are you weird people i just turned 30 and i just turned 26 and you have a paid for house that's so strange what's the house worth it's worth about 225 000 how does that feel you guys

are amazing you You're heroes. It's great. You're so weird. I mean, none of your friends have done it. No. No. Not that we know of. You're just strange.

I mean, it's a wonderful weird, but you're a way to go, y'all. Thank you. Wow. What in the world? What kind of hole did you, 39 months ago? When did you get married? We got married on September 11th in 2020. Okay. So you immediately started this then, basically. married on September 11th in 2020. Okay.

So you immediately started this then, basically. Oh, yeah. Almost. Well, yeah. Not long after. Got a COVID wedding. Yep, my parents' living room. Yep.

Kind of a long story. But we got married about 60 days or so after we met. There were circumstances that kind of sped up the process. She was pregnant and I realized that I love this woman and I was ready to marry her and then I needed to step up right away. And I had already started my debt-free journey. Good for y'all. And I was working three jobs at the time trying to save up and stash cash for my baby. I had paid off about $10,000 of my own debt and then saved an additional $10,000. So I came to the marriage debt-free.

I've seen your face on my bookshelf for the past 15 years of my life. My dad started his debt-free journey when your book first came out. So your financial peace baby. Yep. And then you guys get married or you're getting married you're planning to start this life with this baby on the way the whole thing and you go okay game on we're doing this exactly to the t or is that how it happened i mean what happened yeah kind of um he came to me and said do you know dave ramsey and i was like oh man god there's another one first dad now him said he sounded just like my dad and from then on it was just he had told me that he had

just started his journey and so i said i'll i'll support you and do whatever you need me to do and we kind of just kicked it off from there and about halfway through the journey he said why don't we pay off the house and i was like okay we can do that so we did we started paying it down and finished it faster than we thought right yeah faster than expected you guys almost doubled your income what happened somebody get a job he worked his tail off so yeah i moved into a new position um working for the the company that i do now um as a control room operator of a coal-fired power plant. Okay, wow.

Hey, do you mind if I get a little bit sideways here for a second? Sure. I was just reading before we came on air. I was sitting at my desk reading some nerd stuff. No. I know, right? And the number of men who walk away from the very situation you found yourself in,

it was a staggering number. And that you're not a statistic. You turned around and walked straight in and said, I've got a responsibility. I love this woman. I'm going to take care of this baby. And not only am I going to do that just in name and certificate, but you freaking went to work.

And that's what changing legacy looks like, my brother. So it's an honor to get to talk to you and see your face and shake what changing legacy looks like, my brother. Yeah. So it's an honor to get to talk to you and see your face and shake your hand here in a minute. That's amazing. I just happened to be reading that, and I couldn't believe it. It was such a, it was an embarrassment for men. And you're the opposite of that. Good on you.

Thank you. Good on you, man. Thank you. Well done. Well done. Very well done. So what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? I think our biggest thing was just making sure that we were on the same page and being able to say no.

Self-control is a huge thing when it comes to getting out of debt. What was the hardest thing you said no to? Probably fast food. That's my love language. Wow. This is a pretty low bar. I was looking at i thought he was gonna say protein powder oh no that was that was part of the budget we got to keep these going what's the biggest disagreement you had as a new a newlywed couple trying to get out of debt

managing pregnancy and a little baby oh man i don't even know that's hard to say first year marriage is rough for everybody right like and i mean not even to mention that we we did the first year of marriage the first baby the honeymoon, all in one shot plus COVID. So I don't know. I can't think. That's not even a fair question. Y'all survived that. So congratulations.

Not really. I'm still speechless. The rest of this is nothing. At 26, I borrowed $300 from my little brother for a down payment to a house and y'all are debt free. Good for you, man. Thank you. Thank you man thank you thank you way to go way to

go they're your absolute heroes well done so proud of you who was cheering you on dad had to be but yeah my dad was definitely like also the voice of reason too of if we called him and had a question of like hey should we do this he's like yeah yeah you should or no no you shouldn't and it was awesome his parents were really cheering us on and we had friends who were like how did you do that and we'd show them and they're like i don't want to read a book he's on tiktok too y'all oh god we had a lot of awesome supporters so that's good that's good way to go you guys hey we've got the subscription the one-year subscriptions to every dollar a couple of them uh one for you guys and one for you to give away so you'll be able to make sure you get your keep your budget going because

you're heading towards millionaire for sure and we want you to hit that baby steps millionaire level pretty quick here you're on your way real real fast and you brought the kiddos now there's two there are two yes all right what are the names and ages so grayson he is three and colton he will be two in a couple of weeks way to go some good looking guys there to go in the mix excellent stuff very well done i'm proud of you guys way to go way to go man so whack not even 30 years old paid for houses paid for everything dave you know me i'm speechless and that's that's a rare thing this is really good really good people this is people are amazing all right it's ryan and and Madison Grayson and Colton from Utah. $160,000 paid off, house and everything, and they're not even 30.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yay! Wow! three two one we're debt free wow absolutely amazing so i was doing an interview with npr this morning and the lady was asking me the question 63 different times different ways how it is possible for young people in our world today, with real estate prices being what they are, to survive.

I think we just explained it. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, where you can hear all about boundaries and relationships and mental health issues like you never have any other way. I can tell you that. It's a blast, and you learn a lot, and I do.

I love listening to it. And people are just plain entertaining, I can tell you that. So check him out. It's all on the Ramsey Networks, anywhere great podcasts are heard, and certainly on the YouTube show as well. So anywhere you are. By the way, if you're listening to this show, we thank you for that, and we can use your help.

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was in there at number two or three we were in there at number two or three and that's because of you guys sharing and telling people about it thank you very much we appreciate you it's really important because we don't have a stadium named after us like somebody or somebody like that. Excuse me, I've got an allergy. But all right, Steve's in Salt Lake City. Hey, Steve, what's up? Hey, guys. I've got a short-term question and a longer-term question for you guys.

The short term is starting taking a family vacation. So I'm a single income earner of our family. We have seven kids. My wife homeschools our kids at home. We've not taken a vacation in probably eight or nine years. And recently we ended up, we just got done doing a big home renovation, spent about 50 grand out of pocket,

you know, cash flowing that. And the last little, probably 15,000 or so we had to take out of our six months, six months fund to finish the project. Because of course it always ends up going more expensive than you thought. So my question is, and first of all, we have a kid about to go off to college in about four months or whatever it's going to be. And we want to take that vacation before he is obviously gone.

I've only saved up about $1,500 for a vacation over the past few months or so. Obviously, that's not going to get it done to take a family of nine on a vacation. We probably need $6,000 or so for that vacation. My question is, do we pause on rebuilding that six-month fund back up to about $60,000 and put it for the vacation, or get that full six months back in the fund and then focus on a vacation? Man, that's so dangerous. That makes sense. That's just so dangerous.

I mean, you completely rationalized spending all of your vacation money and some of your emergency fund on the renovation, and so you chose not to go on vacation when you did that. True. Yeah. So you traded because you had the money to go on vacation. You just didn't do the renovation. I mean, you chose the money to go on vacation. You just didn't do the renovation. You chose the renovation instead of the vacation.

Yeah, basically we bought a house that did not have a built-out basement, and we had half the house basically. So that's when you chose. When you bought the wrong house, that's when you chose to not go on vacation. Okay. Because you chose to do a renovation because you chose but say these are all choices it's not like somehow that somebody stole something from you and you you put the money on one thing and now you don't have it to do the other thing that's how

it works right yep correct and and having nine kids and no emergency fund or a limited emergency fund, dude, you're asking for trouble. Okay. That's so scary. I'm scared for you. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. You're the one with the nine kids. I don't have to feed them.

You do, but I'm scared for you. Okay. And I want you to get to do the things you want to do. I'd love for you to go do that. You can do whatever you want to do. Y'all are adults. You can make these choices. You've been making choices.

But I want you to realize that when you're choosing one thing with money, you're choosing not to do several other things. Sure. Okay. And so you're choosing, but if you choose to go on vacation and have a limited emergency fund, not the emergency occurs when it occurs because it's going to occur we we have nine opportunities for an emergency here at all times true and uh so when it occurs then you've chosen to leave your family vulnerable and the trade was for a vacation that

scares me so you guys do what you want to do but i i think i'm going on a 1500 vacation yeah and i think i man dave i'm totally with you and working with parents who were dropping their kids off at college there's always this illusion that we got to get this last thing in we got to do this thing it's not over no it's not over number one but often that last thing we don't really care about the kids we need to do it for us it's almost like this guilt-induced this is it we got to do a thing and we got to everybody's got to come do this thing and it is but we've never had a vacation in how many years right in 17 or 18 years and we chose to do a renovation or buy a house that required a renovation used up all our

money instead that's right so the vacation obviously was not as important wasn't a priority that's right and now it's this, and now there's this sense of, oh, we're about to lose him. He's going to go away. It's the last spring break. We've got to do this thing. And so I would invite the kids into a room and say, we have this much money.

Let's get as creative as possible. We're going to make our own snacks. We're going to go to a KOA. We're going to have a blast. But this is the money we got. And I promise if you do it right, the kids will have a great time. Now, whether you go and feel guilty because it's not in Cabo or something, that's on you, but you chose to spend that Cabo money on a renovation

or on a house. But bring the kids along, man, and let's try to get as creative as possible and let them be a part of the planning and see what we can come up with. Yeah. You seem distressed just to just uh well i just i i i i want him to be able to do this yeah but i can't as an adult say it's a good idea i guess there's i i kind of i kind of get it but but i the other thing i think that you're pointing out something that's very right because we had some of the best vacations with our kids that we ever had while they were in college.

Yeah. It's not over. As a matter of fact, on the front of a cruise ship one night at happy hour before dinner, they decided as adults to start telling us all the stuff they had done as teenagers that we didn't know. I would have paid money to be there for that. And I left that room feeling like a total failure as a parent because i had been deceived by these three brats

repeatedly throughout their teenage years and i had no idea i thought i was so on top of it and i completely had no idea what these skunks had been into well here's what's going to be fun at the at the ramsey cruise um I'm going to get Rachel and Daniel, and there's things that have happened in the last decade that you probably don't know about. Oh, I don't even want to. We're going to go through them all again, man. It was a great cruise, other than that particular evening. But yeah, they were adults.

I think maybe Denise was out of college. Well, no, I guess Denise and Rachel were both married, come to think of it. Here's what y'all did, and we've all heard the statistic about. We do stuff together with them as adults that's better than it would have been when they were 13. I can tell you that. Well, and that's the thing. There's a statistic going around that you get 19 years with your kids. You get 18 with them at home, and the rest of their life all added together is one year.

And I think that we just go yeah that's called gosh but it's unless you're unless you're a twerp as a parent it's one of those cultural they're just gone and i think nope if you're intentional and you build relationships and you're somebody they want to be around yeah then it's kind of like what stage of children did you like the best yeah all of them they're all different and i don't want to do any of them again but i liked all of them that little boy who just reached out to oh he's great he's great as long as i can hand him back that's what grandparents are called yeah my son's i don't have to do the potty training i can just do the hugs okay so that that's great that's the way it's supposed to be so you know if i don't know how great grandkids are going to be i'd have been nicer

to their parents but you know, that's a different thing. But I'm loving this stage. Right. I'm loving the other stage. And I've loved every stage. I don't, yeah, it's, so embrace the toddlerhood, embrace the teenage years, embrace them leaving for college. But every expense is a choice at the end of the day. Yeah.

And you're choosing, the thing you got to remember is called opportunity cost in the finance world. You lose the opportunity to do B when you do A. When you do B, you lose the opportunity to do A. It'll only do one thing. It won't do both. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you.