The Ramsey Show - App - This Is an Atomic Bomb on Your Finances (Hour 2)

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Open phones at 888-825-5225 rachel cruz ramsey personality number one best-selling author multiple times and co-host of the smart money happy hour on the ramsey networks podcast with george camel she's my co-host today and my daughter open phones at 888-825-5225 he Heather starts this hour in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Heather.
Starting point is 00:01:06 How are you? Well, I'm better than I deserve. Good for you. I love it. How can we help? Yes. So I'm just trying to come up with a good investment plan. Both my husband and I, we've been married now 20 years this month. And I'm always just trying to look for better opportunities to try to keep, you know, investment up.
Starting point is 00:01:32 And while we still kind of work, you know, job to job, we kind of work paycheck to paycheck. And so I have Apple stock that I invested in many years ago. And I have good wealth since we've been in Apple stock. We have tripled since we started. And we also have two Roth IRAs, each just only $6,000 for him, $8,000 for me. And we got about $20,000 in savings. And so I was trying to figure out. I also do have just a house that we just bought. And so we're paying on that.
Starting point is 00:02:12 And two cars is what we have. No other debts, just those things. And so I was trying to figure out in my mind what I could do with my savings instead of making it so unproductive, just sitting in that account. You know, I have only $20,000 in savings, but would it be best to pay off a car? Would it be best to cash out the Apple stock? Because, you know, of concerns, they always say around election time, specifically with the crash crash they always talk about that happening so i'm just trying to get a better idea because i spoke with my financial advisor and he suggested maybe money
Starting point is 00:02:52 market funds and i'm not very wise as far as financially okay um money market funds for the 20 000 yeah he wasn't saying the full 20,000. He was like, you could start out putting 10,000 in money market funds, which, like I said, I'm not very familiar with it. Yeah, well, money market fund is a fancy savings account. It doesn't pay much. It pays more than a bad savings account at a bank. It's basically a high-yield savings account is what it is.
Starting point is 00:03:23 So they're still not paying big money. Now, here's the thing. What we teach, Heather, is that your most powerful wealth building tool is your income. Okay? Your income right now is going to two car payments. If you had those car payments going into investments every month, you would be building wealth pretty rapidly. So our first goal is going to be to clear those car payments.
Starting point is 00:03:50 What do you owe on your cars? So it's about $16,000 and $18,000. Wow. Okay. And you've only got $20,000. What's your household income? Right. My household income's about a little
Starting point is 00:04:06 over a hundred thousand good okay a year all right so if i woke up in your shoes we teach a process to get you to wealth by getting you out of debt called the baby steps baby step one is a thousand dollars in the bank now how much do you have in Apple stock? What is it valued at today if you cash it in? $21,000. Excellent. Okay. All right. This is going to jar your system.
Starting point is 00:04:33 Can you hold on to your chair for a second? Because I'm getting ready to knock you out of the chair. Okay. Here we go. You ready for the ride? Ready, set, go. Here we go. You ready?
Starting point is 00:04:41 Oh, my. Just be kind. I'm going to be kind, but it's going to scare the crap out of you. Are you ready? I'm cashing in the Apple stock and the $20,000 and paying off my cars today. Wow. Can you breathe? Well, of course.
Starting point is 00:04:59 Now, that would be stupid if you don't do the next thing. And the next thing is, the first thing you've got to do now is rebuild your emergency fund, which is what that $20,000 is. It's not supposed to make any money. It's supposed to sit there and keep life off of your head, because life's going to come and land on your head, and you won't need a helmet, and that's what the $20,000 is. It's the umbrella in the rain, because some days it rains.
Starting point is 00:05:23 So you need a rainy day fund that's your 20 000 it's not supposed to be making you a bunch of money but right now we're paying off a car with it so it doesn't matter so the cars are gone any money that we don't have in a retirement account and you'll have 7 000 left after that yeah so you'll start your emergency emergency fund which is great i do want to set that over in a money market or a high yield and i want you to get about 20 000 back in there that's your three to six months of expenses that's baby step three now you don't have any payments and you've got that so now we've got to start investing which is 15 of your income that'd be 15 000 a year1,100 a month going in your company 401ks with a match in good mutual funds,
Starting point is 00:06:08 or sit down with your broker or get a new one and sit down and get your Roth IRAs going into good mutual funds. Which will be easy, Heather, because there's no car payment, to your point earlier, that you freed up so much income. Do you know any month-to-month, Heather? And so those Roth IRAs that have six in one and eight in the other, you're going to start seeing lots of traction in that. And it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, you start adding $1,000, $1,500 a month to your retirement plan. That's $15,000, $18,000 a year making $100,000.
Starting point is 00:06:43 And if you've got a match at work and these mutual funds go up this year it would have made a little over 10 percent this year year to date if you put it in January 1 to right now you would have made 10 percent on good mutual funds and whoever's talking to you about a stock market crash quit listening to those fools okay stock market's not going to crash it goes up and it goes down it goes up and it goes down in election time it is always crazy there's always been stupid people in washington of both brands and they're still stupid people in washington of both brands some right now some of them are more stupid than normal but they're stupid people in washington okay so that's never that's not a new
Starting point is 00:07:22 that's not new information no but to her point election time people do like things do kind of stall out people hold they watch I know but the stock market doesn't crash on election year no it doesn't crash but you're going to see a little bit of that volatility and that's normal you can go back to basically every election year every four years and you see the same thing so it doesn't mean it's going to crash but yeah it goes up it goes down and you're in the right you're in the right of it all so you just right right you just dumping 1100 bucks 1200 bucks a month 1400 bucks a month every single month and automatically out of your check into your 401k with a match or into roth iras and heather and i think heather you're you're
Starting point is 00:08:01 a prime example that so many people experience with their money. Honestly, you're trying to do like five different things. You got a single stock here. You're trying to do some retirement. You got car payments. You have a little bit of money here, savings. And it's like you feel so scattered versus clearing it all out and saying boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then you can now tomorrow or after the emergency fund is fully funded after that 7,000, you can fully focus on retirement. You have one thing to do at a time, and that's what gives you power and less of this bizarre feeling that you probably feel with your money. Yeah. If you pay off the cars and have $7,000 left over today, by the end of the year, you'll have your $20,000. And in January, you'll start
Starting point is 00:08:39 saving 15% from this point forward of your income going into retirement. You'll retire wealthy if you'll do those things. But you've got to be on a budget to do it. You've got to be in agreement with your husband. And no more borrowing on stupid cars. Stop it. This is the Ramsey Show. Well, a lot of happening things around the Ramsey organization these days. The Ramsey Cash Christmas Cash Giveaway has started.
Starting point is 00:09:08 You can win one of our $500 weekly prizes between now and Christmas every single week. And or the grand prize of $5,000 given away the week of Christmas. All you got to do is enter. And you can enter up to once a day, every day at ramsaysolutions.com slash giveaway. You can also check out the great gift ideas at the Ramsey store at ramsaysolutions.com. We've got a $12 sale is going, and that's all the number one best-selling books
Starting point is 00:09:42 that we have had out over the past years, like the Total Money Makeover, Own Your Past, Change Your Future, Baby Steps Millionaires, Know Yourself, Know Your Money. Rachel's number one, last number one anyway. And the book we did that was a number one together, Smart Kids, Smart Money, Smart Kids. That was her first number one. And man, those books, all of those books every book i've done is in there twelve dollars the questions for humans cards with dr john deloney the christmas edition is back those are ten dollars all kinds of fun gifts and lots of new things there on the
Starting point is 00:10:19 website dr john deloney's uh brand new number one bestseller, Building a Non-Anxious Life, is on there. You can get George's new book, Pre-Sale, Breaking Free from Broke, and launching next Tuesday, Rachel's brand-new children's book, I'm Glad for What I Have, Great Christmas Gift, especially for the five-year-old, what is it, six years old and down probably? Yeah, and honestly, the message is great for parents, for adults too. gift especially for the uh the five-year-old what is six years old and down probably yeah and honestly the message is great for parent for the adults too so adults get this and read it over and over to yourself and get some contentment i i need the message so i wrote it i was like it's all good for us to remember i'm glad for what i have the brand new children's book by
Starting point is 00:11:01 rachel cruz comes out tuesday so it's in the store for Christmas as well. It's all there and free money. You just can't beat it. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash giveaway to register for the free money. Our question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services, with
Starting point is 00:11:19 19 service brands nationwide. And today's question. Neighborly's, I'm sorry, Neighborly's network of local providers has trusted service professionals to handle multiple different services in and around your home. Visit neighborly.com slash Ramsey to find and schedule a service today. And today's question comes from Warren in Washington, D.C. I have a large amount of debt.
Starting point is 00:11:43 Wouldn't it be better to file for bankruptcy to have a fresh start and then build wealth instead of taking years to pay off debt and then start to build wealth? When is bankruptcy a good option? We would say in the very, very, very rare case is bankruptcy an option because most of the time it is a you problem and bankruptcy doesn't solve a you problem. It may wipe debts away, not your student loans. And then it's on your record for a while. But the problem is usually when it comes to money, it's us. It's the person handling it.
Starting point is 00:12:14 And so while in one sense it could sound like an easy exchange, I'll take bankruptcy for the no debts. It doesn't change the pattern of what caused you to get in there in the first place. And most of the time we find people can get out of debt. I mean, it's only been a handful of times on this show that you've ever even entertained the idea of giving someone advice for bankruptcy. Yeah. I don't tell people to file bankruptcy and I don't tell people to file divorce with the exception of a situation where the wife is a punching bag because her husband's scum. In that case, file a divorce.
Starting point is 00:12:50 Get out of there. He's scum. But other than that, I don't tell people to do the stuff like this. I don't make decisions like that for you on this show. I will tell you that you should file bankruptcy about as often as you should file for a divorce, which is almost never. If you have a big fight with your wife, you don't go file for divorce. We've been through a rough patch this summer.
Starting point is 00:13:09 You don't go file for a divorce. You work it out. You sit down with a marriage counselor. You sit down with your pastor. You read a marriage book or six, and you work on it, and you learn how to do it, and you fix it. And the same thing is true with your money. Now, that's from a guy that did file bankruptcy,
Starting point is 00:13:24 but we fought two and a half years to keep from filing bankruptcy. They were down to, we've been sued 78 times before we filed bankruptcy. They were coming to take the furniture out of our house, and Rachel was two months old. And I decided they're not taking the baby bed. I fought this for two and a half years. I've sold everything we owned. I've done everything we could do. I took it all the way to the bottom,
Starting point is 00:13:47 and then we filed for bankruptcy in September of 1988. And that's what started this whole Ramsey movement, by the way. It was my stupidity. And I fought it all the way to the bottom. I now know things that I didn't know then that I could have done further. There's some techniques I could have used, some dance steps, dance moves I could have used to delay it even further. And I might have made it through if I'm knowing what I know now. But I didn't know.
Starting point is 00:14:20 I was out of gas. And yours was all real estate. It was not beat out. It was all real estate. It wasn't consumer either. But I didn't have any I was out of gas. And yours was all real estate. It was not beat out. It was all real estate oriented. It wasn't consumer either. But I didn't have any consumer debt, hardly at all. I borrowed on the cars to buy houses. So I didn't have car payments, but I had car payments.
Starting point is 00:14:33 But anyway, all that aside, Warren, you're not bankrupt. Bankruptcy is not a technique for building wealth it's like life insurance is not a technique for building an estate you don't buy life insurance to leave your children something because that doesn't work it leaves the insurance company stuff is what it does so no you're you're not bankrupt you need to take the years to pay off the debt. As a matter of fact, you need to take months instead of years because you get six jobs. And the person that you become, Warren, while you fight your way through this is much more important than any mathematical equation that you're looking at. The toughness and the perseverance that will be required of you to work your way through this is going to make you into the man that will be able to build and manage wealth in the next chapter of your life.
Starting point is 00:15:32 But this is not a I'm just going to dust this off. Get out of jail card. It's not, you know, that's childish. And no, you don't use bankruptcy that way. And by the way, the way the bankruptcy laws are written right now, if you've got a big income and this debt's just an inconvenience to you and you go in, you think you're going to file bankruptcy and wipe out the stuff that the bankruptcy laws are written now where they're going to take you out of that chapter seven and put you in a chapter 13 and make you pay payments.
Starting point is 00:16:00 A chapter 13 is a payment bankruptcy that lasts five years, 60 months. There are formulas that the law has in place, the regulations have in place, that force you to do that. There's mathematical tests, and it forces you into paying payments. And so if you have the ability to pay payments and just don't want to, the law doesn't allow you to do that anymore. It's going to smack you upside the head and make you pay payments anyway in bankruptcy. So then you got double-dump.
Starting point is 00:16:28 You got payments and you got bankruptcy. So you got absolutely no traction. You got none of your little idea worked. So no, you're not bankrupt. Yes, you need to roll up your sleeves and fight through this. Yes, you need to sell so much stuff the kids think they're next. Yes, you need to work all the time. Yes, you need to get the scissors out the kids think they're next. Yes, you need to work all the time. Yes, you need to get the scissors out and place them across the credit cards and press hard repeatedly.
Starting point is 00:16:50 It's called plastic surgery. You need to get out of the debt business. You've got to learn what caused you to get here and then fight your way through. It's what happened to us afterwards. Afterwards, we had to start over and we had to learn what happened so that I'm never back there again. And I'm just going to start fresh. It's not going to work, dude. The law is not going to let you.
Starting point is 00:17:11 And you're going to miss out on who Warren would have become. Well, yeah, because you don't change. And that's why we even are cautious when people get a lump sum of money, whether from like an insurance settlement or um you know um from uh what is it when someone passes an estate no and insurance life insurance insurance inheritance that's what i was thinking of inheritance but when people call and they have a sum of money and they're like i can go and pay off my debt we're like okay that's great because yes we want you debt free and you can use it but also you have to just be careful in that when there's a sweep of something that happens that comes through again you're not changing who you are and you're the one that got yourself in
Starting point is 00:17:53 this position and so the beauty of the sacrifice through all of that is you change with it so on the other end you feel the pain that you've walked through versus having one big sweep that just kind of takes care of everything so that's always even the word of caution with yeah if you're getting an insurance settlement or an inheritance or something like that just to be cautious that it's still you handling that money and if you haven't changed your money situation might not change either yeah i'll go a step further if you can pay your bills and you just refuse to that's stealing that's stealing it's unethical this is the ramsey show rachel cruz ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host today in the
Starting point is 00:18:39 lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt Free Stage. Nicholas is with us. Hi, Nicholas. How are you? Great. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. Welcome. Where do you live?
Starting point is 00:18:50 York, Pennsylvania, which is a small town outside of the capital of Harrisburg. Absolutely. Welcome to Nashville. It's a bit of a haul down here. Just a little bit. Good to have you. So how much debt have you paid? $56,610.32. Way to go. How long did that take?
Starting point is 00:19:07 25 months. All right. And your range of income during that two years? Started at $56,000 and end this year at about $80,000. Wow. Good for you. What do you do for a living? I'm in retail management and I have a small business that I run as well. Cool. What's your business? We sell seat inserts for race car drivers. It helps reduce the risk of spinal injury when there's a crash. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Good for you. What kind of debt was the $57,000? $44,000 student loans and then $12,000 business loan. Okay. All right. Good for you. How old are you? 24. And no payments in the world. That's amazing. Good for you. Absolutely amazing. amazing so tell us the story how did all this happen and how'd you get connected to Ramsey and decide to be a weird 24 year old with no debt so I was in college and I was a huge personal finance nerd so
Starting point is 00:19:58 I was watching a lot of content and I know Dave you have a very thick skin I'm sure after 30 years but it's like these people are bashing this Dave Ramsey guy. Maybe I should check it out. So I think it's important to listen to other perspectives, and I really appreciated how you guys spread the message of helping others who are struggling and devise a plan for those who are in need and especially in debt. So flash forward shortly after graduation, not making the smartest decisions. I had $50 in my bank account and I was at the casino and last $400 I had. And that was my oh crap moment, you know, time to get serious and time to really buckle down and follow the plan. So that's where it all started so it turns out the casino
Starting point is 00:20:45 is not a wealth building method it is not you know the fun thing about some of those haters in our space um is i've met many of them over the years and they don't really hate me i'm just really good clickbait yes you know so if you put dave ramsey in the title of your thing it just shows up everywhere it's just really good for your thing so the reason they hate on me is it helps them you know that's why that's why a lot of them do it they don't even really disagree they just it's just easier to disagree and then it is because they don't get any lift if they agree so it doesn't help their social media presence so anyway all right cool so 57,000 has paid off you got connected to us because we were the weird ones in the space now you're the
Starting point is 00:21:24 weird one in the space because you're debt free most 24 year olds are walking around going i don't know what i'm gonna do and you actually had a clue man congratulations thank you yeah i mean and you look at your income and what you paid off i'm like you you did a lot you did a lot of just sacrifice so what would you say to 24 year olds out there that are like, oh, we just want to enjoy life and just move at the speed of whatever we want? Like, because you were, I mean, you were on a plan. Yeah. Yes. So I think it comes down to three things, sacrifice, work ethic, and vision. So I went to a state school, just happened to be one of the more expensive ones in Pennsylvania. And so from there, got a good degree, got a good job, but you know, that's not always enough. And I wish I would have found you guys
Starting point is 00:22:10 earlier in my college years. But so that's kind of where the work ethic comes in and really just long hours, long days, sometimes 12, 14 straight days. I was up so early sometimes in my hometown, the lights weren't even working. It was the blinking yellow, not even the red light, yellow, green. But I think work ethic and then vision. Dave, we had this conversation in my head like 56 times already. So that was the vision that helped me get here today. So good. How does it feel?
Starting point is 00:22:46 Oh, it's incredible. The good news about going on the road less traveled is there's no traffic and that includes six o'clock in the morning five o'clock in the morning yeah with the blinking yellow light that's there's nobody there because nobody's willing to pay that price that's why there's nobody out there so you know if i get out where there's a whole bunch of people i'm worried because that means i'm in the wrong place because they're all in the wrong place i know they are so good for you man congratulations thank you what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is i think it's um i think it's sacrifice uh work ethic and vision those three things that combination and um you know making sacrifices you know not buying the first car and things like that,
Starting point is 00:23:26 that go a long way, you know, you know, everyone's on their own journey, but, you know, it's freeing to know that there's no more payments or. Oh, yeah. What do people in your life say as you were in this journey? Were you pretty vocal about it or did you kind of just buckle down yourself? Did you get your own haters? You know, you need your own haters, man. People were very supportive.
Starting point is 00:23:46 I have a very good crew here today, and I'm very appreciative and grateful that we were able to make the trip down. So, you know, I think there's always haters. I'm sure you guys know that. But a lot of support. Good, good. So is this family and friends or just friends? Yes.
Starting point is 00:24:02 So my parents, my grandmother, my cousin and his wife and two friends. All right. Very good. That's perfect. That's good. That's a good support group because it is tough to do this by yourself. You can do it, but it's tough because you've got to stand up because people think you're weird. Because you are weird.
Starting point is 00:24:19 Normal's broke. Normal's lazy. Normal's out of control. Normal's chaotic. All that. What are you going to do now you're 24 no payments you'll get your emergency fund in place i'm assuming so beyond that what's your what do you want to do baby step 3b right now saving for the down payment and then looking to do some travel so obviously we're going to enjoy our nashville weekend here and uh some international destinations in in the new year
Starting point is 00:24:45 which i'm looking forward to where are you going do you know uh europe for a week with my buddy tom that's fun yeah we're going to barcelona and london oh both good stops yes you spent some time in barcelona didn't you no i was outside of madrid outside of madrid in college yeah she did a little uh study abroad thing back in the day Which means I'm on vacation and we're paying tuition. That's what that means. But yeah. Sort of. It was great.
Starting point is 00:25:11 It was great. Yeah. Way to go, man. Congratulations. That's huge. Well done. Hey, we've got the live and give box for you. It's got the Baby Steps Millionaires book because that's definitely where you're going, my man.
Starting point is 00:25:21 24 years old and already rocking it. Well done. Amazing. And the Total Money Makeover book to give away to one of those friends who wasn't sure you were crazy. You'll prove it now. And, of course, the Financial Peace University membership. If you haven't been through it, go through it. If you have or don't want to, give it to somebody.
Starting point is 00:25:38 It's live and give. That's what the box is for. People buy it all the time to do that. They take some of it and use it. They give away part of it. And so we're going to give it to you to say thanks for being here. So proud of you, hero. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:25:49 Well done, man. Well done. It's got to feel studly. Yes. Thank you very much. Good stuff, man. Very cool. A lot of hard work.
Starting point is 00:25:57 Absolutely. Yeah. The blinking yellow light, man. That's a thing. That's when you know you've been getting it. That's good. I like that a lot i've been there a lot most of my life so very very cool good for you all right it's nicholas york
Starting point is 00:26:11 pennsylvania 57 000 paid off in 25 months making 56 to 80 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one i'm debt free yeah i love it so great rachel i've been saying for years that um while people uh in my boomer age group have been trashing the gen z and trashing the millennials, that there are ones worthy of being trashed, but we also run into the good ones. Oh, yeah. We run into them on this debt-free stage quite often these days from 24 to 34 years old,
Starting point is 00:26:58 some of them in 34 paying off their home and that kind of stuff. And for those of you out there, you just got to know we've got two really good generations now the media paints them with a wide brush and as somebody lives in their mother's basement or some kind of crap and that's just not true i mean you got a 24 year old with a blinking yellow light because he's up so stinking early in the morning busting it getting it paying off fifty seven thousand dollars worth of student loans he's not sitting around whining sucking his thumb waiting on joe biden to fix his life he did it that's a gen z right there and there's a bunch of them there's a whole bunch like us out
Starting point is 00:27:37 there it's not all deadbeats they're not all off you know this these are two really good generations i got a bunch of them working here. They're good. Innovated, smart, hardworking. Mission-driven. There we go. Nicholas. That's it, man. Way to go, man.
Starting point is 00:27:51 You're an absolute hero. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, my co-host today. This is The Ramsey Show, where we talk about your life and your money. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jay's in Kansas City. Hi, Jay. How are you?
Starting point is 00:28:15 I am blessed. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, before I start, I want to thank you for your foundations curriculum for high schoolers and homeschoolers, because without that, I wouldn't be debt-free today. Wow. Wow.
Starting point is 00:28:29 Very cool. Were you a student in it or a teacher? I took it as a homeschooled student years and years and years ago. Wow. That's fun. Good for you, Jay. So my question today is, I'm baby step four, five, and six. I have about 120,000 saved for
Starting point is 00:28:46 retirement. That's across my IRA, my Roth IRA, my wife's Roth IRA, and the 401k. How old are you? 30 years old. Good for you. Well done. Thank you. I feel from what I've been running the numbers with that I'm on the teetering edge of coasting financial independence, and I'm trying to best understand my plan with the end in mind. So how I'm going to turn that nest egg when I retire into income. I found on your website a little article that talks about a four to 5% withdrawal rate.
Starting point is 00:29:22 And I was trying to run the numbers around that. And I thought I was close. run the numbers around that and I thought I was close and then about what was it a month ago George Campbell released a video that said that the withdrawal rate for a 30-year time horizon should be closer to three percent so if I can establish financial independence comfortably then I was wondering if I could ease up on baby step four to pay off the house faster okay I'm a little confused because i don't know what the hell george is doing doing a three percent withdrawal rate because that's absolutely wrong i don't i'm gonna have to find out where that video is and get it taken down um because that's just wrong you don't need to have a three percent
Starting point is 00:30:03 withdrawal rate that's ridiculous um or i hope you misunderstood i hope we didn't put out trash like that was it four to five percent like no it shouldn't be four to five percent it ought to be more than that i mean if you're making 12 in good mutual funds and the s&p is average 11.8 and if inflation for the last 80 years is average four percent if you make 12 and you need to leave 4% in there for inflation raises, that leaves you 8%. So I'm perfectly comfortable drawing 8%. But if you want to be a little bit conservative, 7%. But sure not 5% or 3%.
Starting point is 00:30:40 Well, I was trying to back check it because, you know, 3% to 5%, I thought that was a big range. And a lot of the studies I found showed that. Well, there's a lot of studies that are stupid in this space. It's just wrong. Listen, man, the math I just gave you is the math. If you're making 12% and inflation is four and you leave four in there so your nest egg grows by four it's simple eight is what's left over so if you got a million dollars and you leave four percent in there that's 40 000 bucks
Starting point is 00:31:13 okay so you now have million 40 so the next year it'll be you know a million ninety one point one right and because so your nest egg is growing by the rate of inflation giving you a cost of living raise every year so as long as you're doing that you're fine uh and so if you want to be a little bit conservative maybe five percent but there's all these goobers out there have always put this 4% crap in the market, and I'm just irate right now that we have joined the stupidity. Why is it that stupid, though? It's too low.
Starting point is 00:31:54 It's too low because it's not realistic. You do not need to live on 4% of your money for your nest egg to survive. Yeah, even if you did a right a return of 10 or something and what it sets up is this guy now he he doesn't he doesn't think he's got enough money and he's already got 120 000 and he's 30 years old he's on a plan he's on a plan to be very wealthy and he's worried he's gonna have enough money or not yeah you know because because we people stupid people put out low withdrawal rates like you listen if you rather if you if you think you can only pull off four percent off of investments making 12 where the flip is the other eight percent going well four percent of it went to inflation that's where it
Starting point is 00:32:38 went the other four percent is just sitting there so you are growing your investments instead of living off of them i'm not destroying the nest egg i'm not even touching the nest egg i'm growing the nest egg by leaving four percent in there yeah taking eight off of a 12 so go go a 10 rate of return go a little bit more conservative with your rate of return go 10 what would you do with 10 well then four off of that so six six yeah but i why were you why are you going to under invest yeah i mean this year the s&p to date was 10 is 10 and we're not even at the end of the year yet yeah you know and and and everybody's talking about how bad the economy is so you know most
Starting point is 00:33:20 years mine have done much better than 12 and so i'm but wouldn't you but if you can do your standard of living though lower than what you need like if you don't need if you don't need it that's fine yeah like i'm 62 i'm pulling or 63 i'm pulling nothing off of mine right because i don't need it i still work i still have an income right right right i i don't need any of it so it's all just but you could do four percent the problem is is when you go down these stupid nerd rabbit holes in these reddit threads with these morons who live in their mother's basement with a calculator and then you then you put that out into the dadgum community and then people go i don't have enough money it's hopeless i'll never be able to save enough to retire a million dollars should create for you
Starting point is 00:34:05 an eighty thousand dollar income boys and girls so you should perpetually like if forever you should be able to pull eighty thousand forever and never destroy it now that that and so when you tell people that a million dollars creates a $40,000 income, you go, oh, I've got to have $2 million and I can't make that. Then this system doesn't work. So what you're doing with this bogus math is you're stealing people's hope. That's why I'm pissed about it. Because it's hope stealing with super nerds that have never really done anything to start with.
Starting point is 00:34:42 They don't have any investments. They just have theories. I've actually freaking got investments. My money is actually invested exactly the way I teach people to invest it. And I'm easily making 12% of my money. Easily. You know, average throughout a decade. So it's just asinine that we do this stuff. So no, honey, you need to save 15 15 of your income and baby step forward you get your house paid off when your house gets paid off you will increase your investing ratios above that you are not gonna retire poor stay away from four percent withdrawal rate morons who are telling you this is the thing so god it's just aggravating so i did yeah i can see the hope because it makes people
Starting point is 00:35:28 think they need two million dollars when they only need a million dollars yeah or it makes them think they need eight million dollars when they only need four million dollars yeah and here's the way the end of the story is this no one ever actually ends up ever with what you thought you were going to end up with right ever so you're sitting there at 30 or 29 years old and you're doing these projections which is okay to do the projection and you project out there and you go okay i'm going to have 1.7 million dollars at this current rate yeah but you know what you haven't factored in is between now and 35 years from now when you're 65, you're going to run into flying monkeys, wicked witches.
Starting point is 00:36:10 Have you seen The Wizard of Oz? You're going to be on the yellow brick road sometimes. And Glinda and the wonderful witch. Sometimes you're going to have money drop in your hands out of nowhere. You're going to make more money than you ever need. You're going to have ruby red slippers sometimes, and sometimes you're going to have ruby red slippers sometimes and sometimes you're going to fly monkeys stealing them and at the end of the story you're not your little projection is not accurate you're going to make a usually most people end up with about
Starting point is 00:36:34 2x of what they thought they were going to end up with if they stay on their plane right right because they're playing because you never you know like here here's another thing here's what happens between 30 and 65 your income goes up almost every freaking year your income goes up i mean you think about what people made 40 years ago as an average income when i started this show 30 years ago the average household household income in America was 40. You know what it is now? 73. That's average. And so if you're just average, your income's going to double.
Starting point is 00:37:15 And if you're actually doing these nerd calculations, you're already above average. So, oh my God, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And I tell you, the financial industry and their moronic paralysis of the analysis pisses me off to no end. This is The Ramsey Show.

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