The Ramsey Show - App - This Is a Terrible Way To Invest... and It’s Immoral

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Ken Coleman discuss: NBA Star Bismack Biyombo's outrageous generosity, The logic and morality of taking out student loans to invest the money, Buying an RV for a new job, Building a house vs. buying one, Quitting a job to start a business. Support Our Sponsor: DreamCloud: https://www.dreamcloudsleep.com/delony  NetSuite: https://bit.ly/2WBLh5c  Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where dad 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. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. As we talk about your jobs, we talk about your career, we talk about your money, we talk about your relationships, your mental wellness, your life is discussed every day here on The Ramsey Show. The phone number is 888-825-5225.

One of the things we have taught you since we began around here was a takeoff of the scripture in Hebrews. It says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. Now, the way we've been saying that around here is if you live like no one else, later you can live and give like no one else. You have to pay a price to win. No discipline is pleasant at the time. You have to pay a price to win no discipline is pleasant at the time you have to pay a price to win but then when you go win and you're outrageously generous now you're really really really winning and that's how it works however ken are you aware that in our culture

today that rich people are greedy horrible people rich people. Rich people are awful. If you build wealth, you are a horrible human being. Yes. Even if you're generous with it, you prove that you're a hypocrite. Yes. You are awful. The only way to build wealth is to screw people over. Yes, on the backs of the less fortunate. And always poor people.

You need to screw poor people because they have more money for you to get. Wait a minute. I'm now confused. But, yeah, you have to make all your money on the backs of poor people and your greedy rich people. Greedy rich people. They don't pay enough in taxes. They got to pay their fair share.

It's unfair. The greedy rich people are everywhere. So James, our producer, came up with the idea that we need to do a greedy rich people segment and periodically expose these greedy, horrible rich people segment. Today, we're going to pick on a superstar yes in the nba yeah uh bismack biombo yeah and i'm not an nba guy obviously because i hesitated pronouncing that don't tell me dave ramsey doesn't prepare let's you should just know that you should just know that i spent yeah right. So, Bismack apparently is one of these gritty rich people because according to this article on CNN,

he donated his entire salary from the NBA to build a hospital in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa and honor his late father, the Phoenix Suns star, The 29-year-old returned to the NBA in January, signing a contract for the duration of the season, and he donated the entire amount, $1.3 million, to build a hospital in his home country, and he donned the 18 jersey for the Suns in honor of his father's June 18th birthday. His father passed away, and he's donating the entire amount to be named after Francis. It would consolidate his legacy whilst helping those in need back home.

I told my agent my salary for this year will be going to the construction of a hospital back home to give hope to the hopeless at home and those individuals that cannot take their family members out, Biambo said. Greedy rich guy. Yeah. Oh, by the way, Dave, that $1.3 million donation of a salad for the hospital is in addition to the almost $1 million worth of medical equipment that his foundation sent over to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the earliest of 2020.

That's what greedy rich people do. They usually double dip like that. So, yeah. If you're going to be greedy and rich, you should do it twice. Well, they have a pattern of their greed. Yes. This is clearly a pattern. This is out of control generosity by these greedy rich people.

It needs to stop. Yeah. You're giving bad name to the greedy rich people when you're generous like this. You need to stop it. Now, here's what I'll also say about all these. How can that fit with the narrative that's out there? Well, because here's what I found. I mean, well, it can't.

He's messing it up. It can't. He's messing up the narrative. But this is the rare situation, Dave. You know this. I'm not very wealthy at all, but I do know a lot of wealthy people, and here's what I know. They don't normally talk about their charity and their donation.

This is a story because he's in the nba but most rich people you don't even know how much they're giving you don't even know where their fingerprints are because turns out these awful greedy rich people don't need credit either oh they weren't doing they weren't taking a poll it wasn't optics yeah no they just do it oh kind of like covid yeah yeah yeah wasn't about optics it wasn't about the way it looked it's the way it actually is yeah oh that i can't tell you how many rich people that i've heard of and known that that uh paid for supplies and private planes in different countries all around the world you never even see it on cnn but it's happening you won't you you won't because you won't find out about it and it that's right he reported i'm glad he reported this because it exposed the greedy rich people for what they really are yes and i'm glad we have a news story

i'm glad cnn did their investigative journalism and discovered that this guy is yet another of those horrible successful people who are the best at their craft in the world and chose to give the money away and build a hospital. I think it's just horrible. It's just awful. I can't believe people really do stuff like that. Yeah, this new generation. And worse than that, yeah, he even talked about it and inspired other people to be greedy rich people. It's just horrible. I can't believe it. What a horrible, awful. You know, Charles Barkley did the same thing. We featured him on the Greedy Rich People. We featured Dolly Parton on the Greedy Rich People.

There's a, you know, we should change it to the famous. Was it Shaq? Was it Shaq? It was Shaq. It wasn't Barkley. I'm sure Barkley's a greedy rich guy, too. Yeah. Yeah.

He's pretty much known for his, you know, his donut. I mean, people. Don't get me started on Dolly Parton, who's clearly one of the most evil people to walk the face of the earth. Oh, she's awful she's awful i mean she just gives and gives and gives and gives and gives and gives all over tennessee but particularly east tennessee her homeland yeah i mean the level of generosity the things she does for the workers at dollywood the things she did with people in gallenburg

during the during the fires the money that was spent all kids in tennessee get free books to read by the way and it's all dolly's fault because she's a gritty rich lady and so they just it's unbelievable what these people do it's horrible it's awful they're giving a bad name to rich people yeah it's messing up the messing up the lefting narrative there it is see that narrative exists folks because it's all about politics and the tax rate so we can make the rich people look evil then we can tax them more for government programs there's the rest of the story if you want to simplify how it works pretty simple government good rich people bad well yes the government knows what to do with the money works why trust and they're more efficient yeah they're more efficient at losing the money yeah then the

actual people who by the way created an unbelievable product or made millions and, by the way, hired thousands and paid them tens of millions of dollars. But the government can do better than the actual successful rich people. This is the moral of the story. So if you were really generous, you would pay a higher tax bill. And let Uncle Sam figure out how to distribute it. Because he's wiser. Uncle Sam is wise and efficient. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Is the sarcasm font on? I hope we made it obvious that we're being sarcastic. For new listeners, don't... If the subtitles are not in the sarcasm font, we're in trouble now. We just lost all of our entire tribe. But this is really turning into something far more serious, Dave, and it's class warfare.

And it's a dangerous thing. You know, because you forget who makes the job. It's worse than class warfare. It's a war on success. Yeah. Because the upper class in the United States did not become that way by aristocracy or by inheritance. That's correct. They earned it.

That's right and they earned it through successful living and saving and serving and this guy earned it well no basketball player well then don't go to an nba game and pay them if you don't believe that but if you're going to go over there and pay the ticket price then shut up about what they get paid because you paid it. This is The Ramsey Show. You know, we did a survey recently looking for ways that we could serve you better. One of the top things we learned is that people need help when it comes to life insurance. Most people know it's a top priority and oftentimes money's not even the issue since term life is really just cheap. Some feel guilty for not taking action. Some need encouragement to follow through while others are confused about the options. This is why I hammer away every day

talking about Term Life and Zander Insurance. You've got to get this taken care of, and Zander is the only company I recommend. They built their business to serve. Whether you just want information or you need that extra attention to get things done, in the end, they will help you make smart, confident decisions for your family wherever you are in the process whether getting a quote or getting your policy approved please take the next step go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 and let them help Well, we know time's important. It's even more precious than money or shiny toys or winning certificates at work. And like spending money from an account when you don't know how much is in it,

we never know how much time we really have. So if you could do one thing that would make the time you have even more worthwhile you'd do it wouldn't you of course you would we get that and we want you to have everything you need to be well and that's why we're partnering with better help to give you a month of free one-on-one weekly therapy when you pre-order a copy of dr john deloney's new book own your past change your future who does that well i better help and ramsey that's who you're never too old or too young to improve your health and make your relationship stronger your free month of one-on-one therapy that is weekly will give you the tools you need to change your future

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The book will change your life. It's incredible. I'm so excited about it. The pre-sales are off the chain. This guy is white hot. His show is exploding, and he's doing an absolutely amazing job. We're so, so proud of him. And with two PhDs, that means he's got two more than you and me put together.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I can't even spell PhD. We're still working on that. I got a PhD in DUMB. All right. There we go.

Hey, James is in Philadelphia. Hey, James, what's up? Hey, Dave. How's everything going? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Hey, Dave. How's everything going? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Good, good.

So, Dave, I'm a current third-year podiatric medical student. My wife and I, we're currently debt-free, and we have enough money to save for, or we have enough money saved that we can pay for the rest of my tuition. But now with the current politics and the environment that's going on with student loans and what's going on with the federal government, we're now considering taking out a loan for almost 50K student loan and then using that money to invest, especially since there's zero interest on federal student loans. We would do that with the option to pay that right away off once the interest starts to accrue. And then once student debt forgiveness is officially off the table. Do you think this is a smart decision in your eyes?

So you're doing this in the hope that you don't have to repay it? Not necessarily. More or less, we would invest it while there is 0% interest accruing. But if the off chance that student debt does get forgiven, we would basically just, I mean, save our back then because we would be a little bit disappointed if student loans were forgiven when we paid out of pocket all this time. Okay. Well, a couple of breakdowns in that where you and I are not aligned, and I'll walk through those with you, because you called and asked us, okay?

So the first thing is I'm not aligned that we take out student loans with the hope that they are forgiven because, to me, that's like taking money you weren't supposed to take because you didn't need it, and it's kind of like, I don't know, that feels like stealing to me, okay? I'll just say it out loud. And the second thing is borrowing money to invest at a greater interest rate than the money is costing you has not proven to be something we found in the data that causes people to become wealthy. So borrowing money to invest is not the normative way. It's statistically unusual

as a way to build wealth. What I mean is, when we studied 10,167 millionaires, the number of millionaires that borrowed money to invest, called arbitrage or playing margin, anytime you're borrowing money to invest, you could borrow money to buy real estate. You're borrowing money to invest, hoping that the investment is going to create a greater rate of return than the money costs you when you borrow it. The number of people that built wealth doing that was way less than 5%, meaning that 96%, 97% of the millionaires we interviewed

did not use this process to become millionaires. Now, if I told you as a procedure in medical school that you had a 97% failure rate, you would avoid that procedure. Oh, yeah, definitely. Because the data tells you that. The facts tell you that this methodology is not successful but 3% or 4% of the time. And so you would avoid that methodology. And so I'm going to tell you not to borrow money.

And so what I'm saying is what sounds smart on the surface has not proven out to be the typical way people build wealth because what you're leaving out of the equation is the risk situation. And you're adding stress. You're adding risk. Anytime you borrow money, you add risk. The more money you borrow, the more risk you have. And that enters into the factor. It enters into relationships.

It enters into mental wellness. It enters into the stress across the back of your neck. It enters into the stress around your heart. It enters into the job you take because you're in debt or not in debt. I understand you have the money in the bank to pay it off, so your level of risk is relatively low compared to someone that's playing, you know, borrowing the money and going to Vegas and has a problem, right? I understand you're not doing that.

I get that. And so I see the logic in how you got there, but I'm just telling you the procedure that you're using is not used normatively by people who get the result that you're looking for i would also say that the logic is based on a hope and a wish and i think it's just simply that when i was growing up dave you'll remember i'm 47 so all the 40 somethings will remember this crazy giant chicken named foghorn leghorn he used to terrorize the bulldog in in that cartoon he would put a steak on the end of a fishing pole and he'd hold it out in front of that bulldog and make that

bulldog just chase that steak chase that state didn't know huh you didn't know that he's been canceled oh he has yeah the bulldog union oh is that right i didn't know this i thought you were serious for a second i was like did i did I really miss that? Because anything's possible. You just killed my metaphor. Here's the deal. Biden and the Democrats are dangling this policy out there. Yeah. And I'm just going to tell you, this isn't a political statement.

Some of you will call it that. You can get over it later. But I'm telling you that they are dangling that as a possibility to garner votes. They have been in power before. They're in power right now. They were in power right now. What have they done? And they've never done it.

They got Congress. They got the Senate. They got the presidency. They're not going to do it. Here's why. Until October, they got all three. If you want to pass a law, right now is the time to pass it. But they never have, and they never will.

Here's why. You go do the research yourself, folks. It's big money. Sally Mae, Freddie, it is big money for the federal government. It has been since they started the student loan program way back in the late 50s, early 60s, and replaced the Pell Grant. This is a big money play for the government. They're not going to forgive student loans, ever. And I just think that if that wasn't a potential, you know, kind of a stake out there dangling in front of people, then they wouldn't be thinking about this.

And I just got to tell you, I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news. They're not going to do it. They've had chances before. This is not a new idea. This is not a new concept. This is recycled political jargon. And I wouldn't trust it for a second. Well, even if they do.

It's still not right, to your point. Even if they do. I agree with that. I agree. I'm borrowing money so that the government gives it. It's like saying I'm unemployed when I'm not so that I get unemployment. Or like saying I'm broke so I get my welfare check even though I'm making money on the table. All of those are theft. all of those are morally wrong and um so I wouldn't do it for those reasons

but thank you for the call and appreciate the discussion it's very very good um I'll add one thing to this whole discussion because it sounds like we're somehow kind of uh self-righteous nims or something but again data okay the guy who wrote Millionaire Next Door, Tom Stanley, was a friend of mine before he passed away. He wrote the book in 1992. He wrote a follow-up book later on decamillionaires, people that had $10 million or more. He studied 38 characteristics. He was a statistician. That was his background, a marketing guy.

And he studied 38 characteristics of the people that became decamillionaires. The most correlated of the different variables, married, race, profession, whatever, character qualities, the most correlated of all the 38 in all the decamillionaires, number one indicator you're going to be a decamillionaire, was outlandish, fanatical levels of integrity. You don't get that one very often. This is the Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Cameron's in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hey, Cameron, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, how are you guys doing today? Great, man. What's up? So I have a question. I have a job opportunity that's going to help me make about double what I make right now, but it's a traveling job. What do you make now?

So I have to buy about 55. Okay. So you make 110 if you travel. Yep. It's a traveling job, so I would be looking to buy a RV, and I don't have all the money to buy it. So I'd have to get a loan. Why do you have to have an RV?

To stay in while I'm there. Why don't you just rent a hotel? I wanted to bring my dogs dogs with me my girlfriend okay was that a statement or a question sounded like a statement uh or is there a question in there no a statement yeah i'd like to bring my dogs and my girlfriend with me okay again you just made a statement so that's you it's your life you can do whatever you want but going i was just wondering if it was a good uh a good idea to take the new job and make the extra money it is but it's not a good idea to take an rv on debt yeah exactly okay yes to the fast cars go down in value? RVs are worse.

They're a black hole for money. You want to know how to have a small fortune? Start with a large fortune and buy RVs. Yeah, it's going to end up looking like that thing in Chris's Vacation anyway. Don't be Cousin Eddie, no um the so yeah i i think you probably do this and you pay cash for a nice used rv after you've been on the road six months in uh temporary housing now are you in in one location at a time or are you in different locations every week or yeah it'd be like a six month commitment

to one place and then i'd move on from there oh okay so you could like rent a property that allowed dogs oh yeah i could do that as well i don't think about that the places are super rural so i didn't know if there were going to be any there but i can check pretty pretty likely they'll allow dogs then. Yeah. And there's somebody renting something in the rural areas too. And so you don't even have to necessarily do hotel. You might find a great room over a garage. I mean, there's a lot of ways to do this and bank most of this new money.

What's your girlfriend do for a living? She's a manager at a grocery store. So she's going to do that remote? Uh, no, she'd come with me and then, uh, she'd do school full time. Go to school? Yeah. Oh, okay. All right.

And so she's not going to be making any money? Uh, most likely no. Okay. All right. And so she's not going to be making any money? Most likely not. Okay. All right. I think for the first year to two years of this experiment, I would rent a home in each location and make sure that this is a stick. If you're going to keep doing this for a five- or a ten-year period, the RV might make sense. Otherwise, the loss in value of the RV is going to make you wish you had paid rent.

If you add up how much the RV is going down in value, it will be the equivalent of renting a fairly nice place, depending on how nice an RV you buy, of course. But the nicer RV you would buy, the nicer rv you would buy the more the nicer rental property you would compare it to and so um you know they just they just don't do well on values and so i'm afraid you're gonna get stuck and here's what's happened uh you got this job offer and now you've romanticized the traveling part of it in your head um versus the actual work part of it. And so the math on taking the job and doubling your income, that all works, but then you went off the reservation over here because you're trying to get fun and fritzy and we're going to turn this into an adventure.

And no, you're just going to turn into Cousin Eddie. Don't do it. No, I would rent a house. If I were in your shoes and I woke up, I'd probably go on the adventure, but I'd rent the house, and I would, if I'm going to keep doing this long term, I would buy a used RV with cash that I save up because I make twice as much as I used to make. I got a question for you, Dave, and this is not a suggestion. I don't want anybody to think I'm making this suggestion, but I am curious.

What do you think about the tiny house that you can pull on wheels? I just haven't done any research. I understand the RVs devalue. What do you think about the tiny house on wheels? Same concept. There's no resale value. Right. Yeah.

But it's a whole lot less money. Yeah, but it's no resale value. Again, it's consumption. So I would just go with something. I agree. If you don't have to own something in order to make this happen, let's not own something. I agree. Because it could be a temporary decision that way, and it increases the quality of the adventure.

Yep. Not venture. Adventure. Minnesota is on the line, and that's Lee calling. Hi, Lee. How are you? Hi. Thanks for taking my call, guys.

Sure. What's up? We were wondering, my husband and I, your thoughts on potentially buying a house right now. We have started the process about two years ago to build a house, and we have the land, but with the materials costs and everything kind of going a little haywire over the past couple years, we're thinking we might not be building as soon as we would have liked um we have heard about houses coming up for sale in a couple days um i'm wondering your guys's thoughts like is it still worth it to potentially buy a house if we hope to sell it and build in the next like five to six years yes okay okay let's let's think about this for a second let's think about this for a second how old are you guys um 30 okay so can you remember when you're

25 yeah remember what houses have done since you were 25 until you were 30 increased in value would have been a good move wouldn't it yeah yep that's how that's how i did that okay so even though like it's kind of going right now that you don't anticipate it i have no idea i mean there's no no one knows what's going to happen for sure but uh i am investing in real estate as we speak i believe in real estate i i don't it may it may it may have a little bit of a cycle it may turn back down but long term it'll turn up and you'll be fine and it would be a very unusual five to seven year period of time that the house didn't go up in value enough that you make money on it when you resell it even after expenses. It would be very unusual.

It doesn't have to be white hot for this to work. It just has to be a normal market. And if you did it in the last five years, you would have participated in one of the hottest real estate markets in history. So it would have been highly unusual in the last five years that you didn't make money. But you can't count on that as being the future. But if you count on just a normal real estate rhythm, that's a long

enough time horizon that you're going to be just fine and i i'm kind of with you i like the idea of waiting a little while and letting because i do think the building materials and the labor force is going to uh come back down to normal i think it's out of control but that's a supply demand thing where housing prices also supply demand thing but there's a little likelihood it's going to catch up as much as the building materials catch up so we get past the covet dip on the lumber yards not having any lumber and then all of a sudden they had lumber again and it was double and it takes a little while for that to smooth out that wrinkle in the economy to smooth out and that's what's caused some of our inflation

is the results of the factories being shut down during quarantine therefore creating a shortage and anytime there's a shortage you see price increase that's pretty simple and pretty simple it's seventh grade econ okay so good question appreciate you calling in open phones at 888-825-5225 i'll tell you what i did not seek in i had no clue that today two years it's basically two years since the peak of covid right now the quarantine's all started about two years ago right now um and that two years later we'd still be seeing economic effects from this. Yeah. I don't think many people did. I honestly thought it was going to be a very short-lived thing, and the results, the economic impact of the quarantines,

the flattening of the curve, the economic suppression by government, the world that a lot of people are living in that is not a good world right now, is the result of that still two years later. You can't blame all that on Biden. That was on a quarantine that did that. That's right. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your life here on The Ramsey Show. Calvin's with us in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Calvin. How are you?

Hi, Dave. I'm very honored and extremely grateful to be speaking with you today, and your ministry has literally changed my life, so thank you for that. Well, thank you. We're honored. Thank you. My question today is, I need advice on a plan, so I want to, I'm calling it semi-retire, but I'm not passionate about a 30-year career that I am wanting to end. And what my question is, should I make a career change at my age that will probably reduce my income dramatically, and it may even go to zero, while I'm contracting a house. And what I want to do is be a builder owner. Sorry, build my own house. And also, I want to begin a process of becoming a financial coach. So I like to give you a little bit of background. I've been with the same company 30

years. And as I said, I'm not very passionate about it anymore. I feel like all I'm doing is showing up and making a large corporation a lot of money, which, you know, I'm very grateful for the 30 years that they've given to me, but I'm not passionate about doing it anymore. What do you make? And I'd really like to help. I'm sorry. What do you make? As far as salary?

What's your income? $200. Okay. And how old are you? I'm 55. Okay. And what's your net worth? Probably $3.6 million.

Okay. And is a lot of that invested where you can live off of the income that $3.6 million creates? So some of it I probably could. About 1.1 million is in 401ks that I obviously can't live off for my age. But another million is, well, another one, yeah, one million probably to 1.4 million is in either cash or investment accounts. And another factor is my wife will still be working while I do this, and she makes approximately $130. Okay.

And your goal is to build a house for yourself. Correct. Okay. So that's kind of an independent variable. You're going to do that either way. Well, it's either that or stay employed and let a contractor build the house for me. Oh, so you would be the general contractor on the house. Yes, sir.

That's right. Okay. But the business that you want to start up for the remainder of your income is you want to be a financial coach. Yes, and I'm not even sure I want to charge for that. I've listened to your webinar, and I want to probably sign up for your master financial coach curriculum, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to charge people for that or just do that as a know a free thing for people who need assistance what do you do now the position what kind of work that you've been doing for 30 years i manage business

systems for a large corporation okay you've earned the right to do whatever you want 3.6 million you can do whatever you want to do okay Okay? So there's no downside. So what you're trading out for is you're walking away from $200K for potentially zero income. Right. And that's the only disturbing part of it, just because it sounds like a bad use of you, not because you need the money. And I wouldn't tell you to stay in the $200K long term, but I might tell you to stay in it anotherk long term but i might tell you to stay

in it another year and get the business get the coaching business up and running because i think you'll feel better about you if you're at least earning a you know half of what you used to earn and you get moving again and because you're just a guy that moves things around i mean you're not you know no ball screws on you dude you've been moving stuff around for a long, long time, and you just kind of hit the wall emotionally on this one gig. But I think you'll feel better about you if this doesn't go to zero. I think that might create some kind of a backlash inside your emotions. It wouldn't mind if I went to zero.

What are you so, what's the emotional pull to be a financial coach? What's that desired result? In your words. When you coach people, what's that desired result? When you're done coaching somebody financially, what do you want to see people do? To put people in a position where money is not the sole focus so that they can focus their lives on something better than just money. Where you are. Yes. Right, right.

I mean, 20 years ago, I listened to your show, and I'm a nerd, so I put it in a spreadsheet, the debt snowball, and honestly, I didn't even follow the baby steps, but I passed it by a friend of mine, and he said, that's not real life. That will never happen. And in five years, I was out of debt, and from there, I've just kept going. So I want other people to feel the freedom of that. So Calvin, here's why I ask those two quick questions. I agree with what Dave is saying. I don't know that you have to have this narrative in your mind that it's zero,

and it's just ministry, or it's just personal. With the money you all make and the discipline you have, if you want to step away from this job where the soul has been sucked out of you, there's no juice for you. And I think that's kind of creating a little bit of confusion. If you want to go build the house, however long it's going to take to build the house, you've got the cash and all that, maybe that'd be a little bit of a break. But I would really challenge you to look not just at financial coaching, but even like the men and women we call smart investor pros, where you get into true retirement investment advice as well, where you can have tremendous impact there, but also make a really good living. Because at your age, I think there's just so much more impact there.

But I would encourage you to not just see, well, for 30 years, I've given so much to this company. And as it stands right now, I just don't feel like I've got the juice. I get that, but that doesn't mean we swing all the way over here and not make any money at all. Or more importantly, it's not about money for you. I think it's contribution, which is what I talk about all the time on the Ken Coleman Show and what we do here at Ramsey Solutions. It relates to work. Work is a contribution to make the world a better place, and we can hear that in you.

And I just think there's more options here. Amen. Well done, sir. Proud of you. Good work. Sharon's in Auburn, Alabama. Hi, Sharon. What's up?

Hey, how you doing? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I'm a school teacher in an elementary school, and I was planning on retiring in three years, but a little thing happened. My husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore, so I'm trying to make sure that I'm going to be on the right track financially. I don't have any debt. I do have an emergency fund set up,

and I have $60,000 put in an account for putting down a house, which is not enough in Auburn. But my question is, I'm trying to decide, should I be putting more money in my retirement and not, you know, just keep renting, or should all my extra cash go toward down payment for a house? I'd put it as a down payment on the house and put it on as short a term as you can, 15 years, maybe 10 years if you can, because I want to get it paid off as quick as I can and use the $60,000 which probably came from the sale of the marital house, didn't it?

Yes. Yeah, and so I would use that as your down payment on the next house. Buy something conservative and get it paid off as soon as you can while you're funding retirement. And that's what we call baby steps four, five, and six. You're putting 15% of your income away for retirement, and any extra money you can find beyond that, you're paying on the house and get the house paid off. I'd love for you to have a paid-for house and a juicy nest egg when you get to those

retirement years. That sets you up for a lot of stability and a quality, quality retirement. But for sure, you want to be in the real estate business. No question about that. Because rents aren't going anywhere but up. And you don't want to be on that cycle. Long-term. Not a good long-term cycle.

Good question. Thank you for joining us. Ken Coleman, Good Hour. This is The Ramsey Show. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app in your favorite app store today.