The Ramsey Show - App - We Make $125,000 but Can't Save Our $1000 Emergency Fund (Hour 3)

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from their dollar car rental studio, this is the Dave Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I am Dr. John Deloney, joined here by my good friend Anthony O'Neill, Ramsey personality and best-selling author, YouTube sensation. And we are taking your calls about your life and your money. Anything and everything that's going on in your heart and mind, give us a shout at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Let's go to Joe in Farmington, Minnesota. Joe, how's it going?

I'm doing good. How are you? Outstanding. Good man. How can we help? So my wife and I are, we just looked over all our financials, and we're just wondering how do we even get started with our emergency fund and moving into Baby Step 2?

Oh, man, that's a good question. I love these kind of questions, Joe. So talk to me. Why is it difficult for you to get into Baby Step 1, which is a $1,000 emergency fund? For me, at least, it just seems like I'm living paycheck to paycheck for sure. I mean, I'm a trucker and my wife is a police officer. So, I mean, we make okay money. What's okay money, Joe?

How much money do you all make? Together? Yes. About $120, $130. And you're telling me you can't come up with $1,000, Joe? And the part I'm running into is that I have about $10,000 in credit card debt. Together, we're about $17,000 in credit card debt. Then we just got new cars. And I'm not making excuses.

I've made stupid money decisions this past year for sure and beyond that as well. Okay. It just seems like my debt payments are so big, I don't even know where to start saving up that $1,000. Okay. Well, that's a good question. When's the last time you did a budget? Okay.

Yeah. When's the last time you did one? Have you done one? Well, we just downloaded the every dollar app last night. I haven't looked through it yet, but we just downloaded it. All right. So here's the,

let me give you, let me give you some practical things and some, some practical facts, Joe. All right. The average couple, um, the average household income is right around $58,000 a year.

Okay. I want you to really understand that $58,000 is the average household income in America. You're making double of that. Double plus. That's one. Number two, what's the very first thing you have to do when it comes to how do we start getting better

with our finances? Take debt off of the table. This means stop swiping your credit card, stop financing things, stop adding things to the debt pile. Take it completely off the table. Here's number three.

Okay. Here's number three. And this has nothing to do with money because when I get to the practical money stuff, it's simple. It's easy. It's what we teach, the seven baby steps. But what I'm hearing from you is

I haven't heard the gut conviction from you. And here's something that I want you and your wife to do tonight. Okay? Are you going to go home tonight with your wife? Are you out there trucking right now? I am going to be home with my wife tonight, yes. Cool, great.

Do y'all have any kids? We do not. Okay, cool, great. You love your wife? Very much. Okay, you took time on that. Okay, she loves you. I'm sure of it. I want you to order some pizza tonight. I want you to cut off your cell phone, cut off YouTube. And I want you to look your wife in her face and say, babe, why do we want to get out of debt? And before you ask your wife that that i want you to be thinking about that from the time you hang up from us to the time you ask your wife that i want you to be so convicted ask yourself

why five times when my good friends pastor brian bullock says the the five why's like when you answer the question the first time go deeper or if you say well i want to get out of um i want to get out of debt well why do you want to get out of debt well i want to get out of debt so i can purchase a home well why do you want to purchase a home what i want to purchase a home so i can have a you know a nice home for my kids why do you want to have a nice home for your kids like go deep because here's the thing your why in life to change your finances need to make you quiet if your why doesn't make you cry, then a price of commitment will make you cry. So I need you and your wife to have a gut why, a why that gets you too emotional. When you think about why you want to go on this journey, it makes you to get very emotional. When you get that gut why, I promise you finding a thousand dollars for baby set number one will be easy.

You'll have it within the next two weeks. But right now, there's no real reason why you want to get out of debt. There's no real reason why you want the $1,000. So it's easy for you to be like, I don't know how to do it. A little paycheck to paycheck. No, let me tell you my why, Joe. And it makes me cry. And I ain't gonna cry on the Dave Ramsey show because it's the Dave Ramsey show.

Now, my show, I'll cry. Okay. But my why is I watched my mom and dad struggle we never went to Disney World I had to put socks on the bottom of my shoes because we couldn't afford to buy new shoes we never went family vacations I don't have family pictures of me and my family I refuse to be that man for my family. I refuse to tell my kids, hey, put tape on the bottom of your shoes because I can't afford to buy you new stuff.

No, I refuse to be the guy to tell my wife we can't go on a family vacation because we're living above our means. And when I think about that, that gets me emotional. That's why I'm so passionate about this message. What is that why it's gonna get you passionate of getting $1,000, getting out of debt? When you do that, the seven baby steps that we teach will become easy.

I promise you. And Joe, from this point forward, there is no more hers and mine. There is ours. She doesn't have a credit card and you don't have a credit card and she doesn't have a car payment and you don't have a car payment. Y''t have a credit card, and you don't have a credit card, and she doesn't have a car payment, and you don't have a car payment. Y'all have a car payment. Y'all are in this for the long haul. You're in this together. You're going to rise and fall together.

And so I want you to, after you have this exercise with Anthony, it's a beautiful moment. It should be hard. It should be uncomfortable. You should probably have conversations that y'all should have had a long time ago that you have never had before. I want you to start thinking about what the budget's going to look like. Once you go to DaveRamsey.com, you can download the budget worksheet and you can begin to start to put some meat and flesh around

the bones of why are we doing this? Who are we going to be? What are we going to be? If you haven't taken Financial Peace University yet, I want you to go to DaveRam dot com and I want you to take Ramsey sign up for Ramsey plus. I did look. It's a 14 day free trial right now. So that's Dave Ramsey dot com forward slash reset. And after you have the talk tonight, I want you to spend the next nine days watching those videos with your wife okay and together you all are going to change you're going to reset as a matter of fact you need to watch the event with dave with hogan with rachel and with craig rochelle you need to spend these next seven days resetting your thought process coming up with your why getting emotional and you should be crying with your wife tonight, telling her, baby, we're going to change today. You make $120,000, $130,000.

Imagine. You don't owe anybody anything at the end of every month. You're trying to figure out who to give to, who you can bless. Your kid's going to walk into a debt-free life. But only you can turn that around, brother. Yeah. Whoo! This is The Dave Ramsey Show. If current times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and we have to deal with it.

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Grab the book. Get ready to rock and roll. It's 2021. Start with a new book, a new event. Get your head right. Get your family right. Let's get this thing going. You know what?

Rachel asked a good question in a book that convicted me very well. Okay. And her and I talked about that on my show. What's that? She said, do you make a purchase she said if no one saw the purchase would you still want it do you buy something out of status or out of safety and when she asked me that question i was convicted because I answered the question, honestly saying there are 50% of my purchases that if no one ever saw them, I would have never bought it.

Really? Honestly. Wow. And so one and two half, half. I'm just being real. I'm just being transparent. People can say, how can Anthony, what, what? No, I'm being real.

Absolutely. You know. And so I want to encourage you to get Rachel's book because she's going to set you up. And she's very raw and authentic in this book, too. I think this is Rachel's best book. I'm just gonna be real. I love all of her other books. I've read all of them. But I think this one right here, she gets to the gut of why we make decisions with our purchases and when she when i read that in her book i told her y'all i need you on my show because you you hit my gut and i love how she breaks it down saying hey if you're buying out of status that's okay but at least you know it and make sure you have the budget for it but if you're purchasing things and not purchasing purchasing

things because of safety well hey that's okay too but wait a minute there's some flaws in this side too that's right and so I love how Rachel just really breaks down this book and this book is for someone all the way down to 15 all the way up to 99 like she's really

really really teaching some very solid substance stuff in this so I just want to say that because – Well, and I want to follow up. Yeah. After talking with couples and couples and couples and family members, she does a great job of drilling down, how come I get so fired up and my heart starts racing and I get ragey when my wife asks about money?

Or how come every time my husband rolls his eyes at a budget i just get real quiet or i go off the handle and she walks you all the way back to where some of these seeds were planted about money in your childhood and then you get married you start dating whatever and you play these scripts over and over and over again and she helps you go oh man i'm just playing a record that got a cd that got you know plugged into me when I was a child. I don't have to keep living like this, but I got to acknowledge that I'm on a track, right? Yes. And she does a great job of helping people unwind why they do what they do when it comes to money.

Like you and I talked about in a call earlier, I have more of a scarcity mindset. You've got more of a planning mindset, right? More future-oriented. That comes from my childhood. Yours comes from your childhood. And they literally come from there, right? and there's nothing wrong with either side but you got to acknowledge it acknowledge it and you got to know the flaws that's right you know you have to know uh the flaws on whatever whatever you're part of because i'm trying to say this in the

correct way um whatever side you're on there's nothing wrong with it. Just acknowledge the flaws of whatever you decide to be on. I care almost nothing what people think. And that's a problem sometimes when I have to get my headlights. I've been missing a headlight for a year. And it looks ridiculous. Right? So there's another side to

every one of these things. Absolutely. But all this to say, get Rachel's book. Yeah, it's excellent. We don But all this to say, get Rachel's book. Yeah, it's excellent. We don't make any money off of pushing Rachel's book. That's all on Rachel. But I believe in really promoting

life-changing products. And this book is, she doesn't even know we're talking about it, but I just really want to be like, yo, hey, I read it. I brought it onto my show. And I don't bring personalities on my show because of personalities.

You got to bring something to my show that's of substance. The same thing with chores. That's right. And I was like, yo, Rachel, we need to talk about this because this is life changing. And so get Rachel's book. DaveRamsey.com slash today. I'm sorry. DaveRamsey.com.

Go there today and get that book. All right. Let's see here. Let's go out to Christine in Orlando, Florida. Christine, what is going on? Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking my call. I'm a little nervous, but happy to be here.

I was wondering if you guys can help me out. I'm in a situation, and I'm needing some advice. I'm mostly familiar with Dave Ramsey's plan, but do agree with the fact that we should stay away from credit cards. And I do stay away from credit cards, but I'm actually in a situation where I used my debit card to purchase a trip in full. This was last year. And it got canceled because of COVID, understandably. But my bank is telling me that I'm unable to get my money back because I used a debit card as opposed to a credit card.

So I'm not really sure what to do. Do you guys have any advice or something? I've never heard of that at all. Yeah. Walk me through the process. Okay. The trip got canceled. Where were you going?

I was going to Europe. Okay. And I did pay in full through a company, a travel company. Okay. You paid in full, a travel company. Okay. You paid in full through a travel company. Okay. So the travel company purchased a all-inclusive trip to a particular destination, correct? Correct.

Correct. So that's absolutely true. You can't get your money back, not because it's on a debit card, but because travel agencies, just like airlines, do not issue a full refund past 24 hours of their original booking. And so you should have a credit from that travel agency and whatever particular airline they put you on and from whatever particular hotel they put you at because of COVID. Now, you cannot get your finances. Prime example, I was supposed to go to Orlando this week. I had already booked a plane ticket, but because of COVID, I am not going.

So I have a credit with that particular travel company that purchases my flights for me. I can use that for down the road, but I cannot get my money back. And that was on a debit card. And so if you filed a dispute because a company will not give you back the money, your bank is absolutely correct. But what I would do is I would reach out to the travel company and say, okay, hey, listen, you got $1,000, $2,000 of my money and I get it. You can't issue a refund because of COVID, but it's also not my fault. Do I at least have a credit? And when COVID is over, will I be able to use that credit? So my guess, I think, Christine, my guess is that they would have, with a credit card company,

you may have an opportunity to dispute it and they're just going to write you off, whereas you paid cash and your bank is saying, forget you. But it sounds like the problem is with the travel company. Yeah. But even if you the problem is with the travel company. Yeah, but even if you did have a credit card, which, I mean, it's not going to happen there too. Here's why. Because the company has to issue back the money. Okay?

And so if the company doesn't issue back the money. Oh, there you go. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the credit card or your debit card is not going to give you back the money. Yep. Yeah, thanks, guys. I understand all that. The tricky

part is I actually booked a trip with my friend, and we were in the same exact situation. She disputed with her bank, and she paid with a credit card. She disputed with her bank, and she got her money back in full. Cool, great. So it sounds like she got a provisional credit, not an actual

reimbursement, and an actual reimbursement. And banks do do that. So what they'll do is when you put an issue in, when you put a ticket in, they will give you a temporarily credit while they do the investigation. That's exactly, I'm telling you right now, it happens all the time. You did not get your money back because you have a debit card. Because what covers a debit card and a credit card is that Visa or MasterCard logo. So at some point, they're going to

go back and say, hey, that travel company still got a credit for you. We're going to take that provisional credit back away from you. Right. So the travel company is going to say, hey, you know what? They denied this thing. You are not due the money back. Then they're going to take that money back off of her friend's credit card. I think I just learned something, too, here, good folks.

Yeah. All right, my good friend Anthony O'Neill, this has been The Dave Ramsey Show. Blinds.com's 100% satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or pick the wrong color, they'll remake your blinds for free you get free samples free shipping and with the new promos they run every month you'll save even more use promo code ramsey to get the best deal rules and restrictions apply today's question comes from lori in virginia my brother and his wife moved into our family home when our mother was moved into assisted living. Upon her passing, the name was deeded to him and me. They've been living there for four years and it has been a safety net for them due to some financial struggles.

I don't know how to lovingly get out of this financial relationship with my brother. I would rather invest my half of the home's value into our baby steps instead of being a co-owner of this home. I know we should either sell and split the proceeds or he should buy me out of my half. How do I proceed without kicking them while they're down? What do you think, Anthony? There's two sides to this thing, I think. And you're the counselor here. But I think that if you know they're down right now and this house is helping them out and it's not hurting you by helping them out, it feels kind of selfish to me.

Okay. That's just my original, my, my opinion. It's like, okay, this is not hurting you by letting them stay there, but you see this as an opportunity to get money to go benefit you personally.

And then you're going to say, Hey, listen, let's sell the house or you buy me out that it's, it's about I, when the house was given to both of you so what I would say is one just make sure to check your heart that you're you're you're wanting to do this for the right reason then two there's nothing wrong with just having a conversation with with them saying hey

this is what I would like to do with with my portion of the house uh where are you all at in life how can we you know do y'all need another year two years it can make a game plan like just really having a good conversation a healthy conversation because i do believe the breeding ground for understanding any ending is communication in the beginning that's right and so just have clear communication now but then before you have that communication just make sure that your heart is in the right place and i i think the most loving thing you can do is to have a direct, honest, empathetic, vulnerable conversation. Because if you're not having a conversation, then every family gathering for the last four

years, there's a little bit of tension. Every phone call, you roll your eyes. You don't respond to texts quite as fast as you normally do, right? It starts to seep into all of the parts of the relationship. And then suddenly you find yourselves with them and you, with that guy living in my house. And suddenly, man, it's not your brother anymore. It's just some guy that's, quote, unquote, taking money from you. So the most loving thing you can do, Anthony, you're dead on.

Sit down and have a conversation. And I don't know that you ask somebody for what they're going to do right now yes yes i think it's fair to say hey my name's on the deed of a house that i'm not living in i don't feel comfortable with that let's talk big picture i've been living there four years what do you think the plan is going to be i want to get my name off that thing and which you're well and you're right to do. But also, as Anthony said, if you don't need the money and you just want to get your share, man, be honest and integrous with your brother. Yeah. All right.

And there's nothing wrong with that. My father dealt with that with his sisters. I have 18 aunts and uncles. And when my grandmother passed, she left the house to all of them. Oh, boy. and when my grandmother passed she left the house who all loved them oh boy and so you know they all had to have you know a little um uncomfortable conversation uh but one thing what was so good and so fair is they had the conversation that's right and you can't do anything without having the conversation right and lori the most loving thing you can do is not avoid it anymore. So great question.

I love it. And I'd love to know how this conversation pans out. Give us a shout back. All right, let's go to Eric in Sarasota, Florida. Eric, what's going on? How are we doing? Dr. John, Anthony, how are you guys doing? Excellent, excellent.

How can we help? Well, my wife and I are on our journey. We're not having kids yet. We're pretty young in our mid-20s on baby step six, really excited of where we're going. And in the midst of that, we have a strained, slightly strained relationship with my mother-in-law, and we have set up some good emotional boundaries. We've got great people counseling us, and we are walking out the relationship points that we can have. That's been great. However, my mother-in-law just had a sudden hospitalization, which really scared her.

She's already not financially stable. And she is now bringing up a conversation of putting us on her bank accounts in order to, as she's saying, protect against taxes. And we've told her we don't want to have that conversation yet. And we're just trying to prepare in our minds, is there any merit? Should we just move on and say, no, we don't want to have that conversation yet, and we're just trying to prepare in our minds, is there any merit? Should we just move on and say, no, we don't want to do this, or is there something we should really talk to her about? So she's asking you to, she's asking to put you on or your wife on her checking account, or is she asking to combine finances with you

and put her name on your account? The first. Okay. So I've heard this done when, and it's been successful, where somebody finds out that there's medical issues, there may be early-stage dementia or Alzheimer's, and we're going to get to a place where they're going to need help or they may be incapacitated and want someone else to be able to just go to the bank, deposit checks, pick stuff up. So that's not that big of a deal. It's when they want to have access

to your accounts, that's when I would hold the line on that boundary. What do you think, Anthony? No, I agree as well, Eric. When my parents get to an age to where I need to be on their bank account so I can have access to their funds to help make decisions and move things forward. Yes, there should be no issues with that at all. There's nothing. The only thing that could come back, though, is because if you're going to add your name, then your social security number is going to be attached to it, which social security number, when the bank starts going overdrawn or anything like that, that, that could come back to you because your name is on the account. But just make sure that you all just have a clear conversation and may,

and it sounds like your mom is just trying to make sure that you all have access to her funds to help her out. If anything was to happen. And I think that's actually a great move. Okay. Thank you guys. You betcha that's actually a great move. Okay. Thank you, guys. You betcha. Good for you, man.

All right. Let's see here. Let's try to take one more quick call. Let's go to Christian in Dallas, Texas. Christian, what's going on, man? Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. You bet.

We're up against the clock, so give us your quick question. Yeah, definitely. Just a quick background. I'm currently a rising senior at Ritz-Carlton University over in London. So I'm currently pursuing a degree in international sports management. But as of now, I've got $47,000 in student loan debt. And I'm taking a leave of absence this semester as a result of the national lockdown that they've got in the U.K. now.

And I'm going to work as a TA to pay down my current loan balance as it are interest. But since no one really knows when everything will return back to normal, should I take an even longer break from school to pay off my loans even further or just go back to normal in September and allow that to continue to accrue? How much would it cost you to finish it, Christian? As of now, I'm expected to graduate with around $70,000. So how much more cash would you need to pay right now?

Or borrow right now? As of now for the TA we'll probably pay around $14,000 so that'll be around $95,000 for the semester and then I'm interested in taking a part time during the week as well.

Cool. Yeah. Finish. Maybe get that up to $16,000 or $17,000 a semester alone. That's fine. Finish. I want you to go ahead and finish. I don't want you to get to your last semester, have all the student loan debt, and you do not have your bachelor's degree. And so what I'm saying is finish and try to borrow as less as you possibly can. But as soon as you graduate college, you need to get gazelle about paying off your debt. All right.

And so if you were telling me this is your first year, I would say, heck no, stop. But the fact that you put almost four complete years in. It's a graduate degree, actually. These are the back end of last semester of a graduate degree. Yes. Go ahead and finish. And then once you finish, pay off all of your debt.

Do not get back into school no more. Bottom line. Love it. Thank you. today's scripture of the day is joshua 1 9 have i not commanded you be strong and courageous do not be frightened do not be dismayed for the lord your god is with you wherever you go maya angelou said i can be changed by what happens to me but i refuse to be reduced by it come on maya i'm gonna say that one more time i can be changed by what happens to me but i refuse to be reduced by it i like that i like that i mean let, let's buy it. What?

You know what? It's almost like in your account. So let me ask you this question. She said, let me read that because I just love this. She said, I could be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it. It's almost like, are we a product of our upbringing? Like, are we always going to be a product of how we were raised? So something I say often is you get to choose your thoughts.

And what's deeper than that is you get to choose who hurts you. And I've said often, Dave can fire me. He can frustrate me. He can annoy me. He can takerate me. He can annoy me. He can take away my livelihood. But I get to choose whether he hurts me. And I decide a very limited number of people in the world who have permission to hurt me. And I actually went back and did a hard exercise.

I learned this in a grad school class. I did a hard exercise. I called him and told him, I want you to know I'm letting you way, way, way in. My wife, this particular friend, this particular mentor, you have access to my pain. And so if you ever call and say, hey, you are not living up to who we agreed, who you said you wanted to be, right? I've given my wife permission to hurt me. And that's true vulnerability. That's true relationship, right?

But I limit that, man, because otherwise I'm going to let people on the Internet hurt my feelings. I'm going to let people on Instagram hurt my feelings. I'm going to let politicians I disagree with, people that I don't know that well. You can frustrate me. You can make me change, right? Yeah. You can take my job away. Yeah.

But I'm not going to give you way down my heart, right? Yeah. And my Angela, man, man, oh right? My Angela, man. Man, oh man, oh man. One after the other after the other. Let's go to Kristen in Chicago, Illinois. Kristen, what's going on? Hi, Sean. Hi, Anthony. Happy Friday.

Happy Friday to you. What's going on? How can we help? I have a question I'm about to ask that I know doesn't necessarily have the right answer, but rather to listen to the Lord and where he has me and act in wise counsel. Give you some background. I'm 29. I'm debt-free and single. I have six months of an emergency fund and will have 20% down for a one-bedroom condo by July.

And so my next step is to invest 15% in retirement as of July when I have my 20% down. Well, my question to you is whether or not I should pull the trigger on the condo if the direction of my life is kind of unknown, being single, not sure where God has me. I mean, you're in a great place financially, Kristen. You know, you're debt free. You're young.

You are single. You know, the Dave Ramsey people are always looking for single people like you. So you may not be single much longer. But, you know, when you said that kind of creepy, Anthony, just don't put that out there. But go ahead. I'm just saying people on YouTube are listening to it. They're going to Google it. Watch.

Now, when you say that you do not know where God has you, I want you to break this down for me a little bit more. Like, are you saying God may you may move somewhere? You may you may get married here soon and you may transition, you know, because I hear some doubt inside of you and I'm trying to understand that doubt a little bit more before I give you my suggestion. Yeah, you hit that on the head with that. But I was previously engaged that broke off two years ago. And so where I thought my life was going and settling down, getting married, having kids, so forth, did not.

And so in the last few years, it's just this sudden idea of, could I just move across the country, you know, like experience something new? Like, do I want to purchase where I grew up or, so I don't quite know where like the desires of my heart now or where God, you know, wants to continue my life at this point. Yeah. So I think this is a spiritual question and a practical question. Spiritual question is God, what is my purpose? Where are you taking me? Practical, where am I going to be? And so I'm always suggesting to people, if you are hesitant or doubtful that you're going to be in this place for at

least three to five years, do not purchase. When you can answer this question as in, will you be here for at least three years minimum? And if that answer is yes, then proceed forward in purchasing. If you're still like, I don't know, you know, at the end of the year, I may wake up and decide and find a great opportunity to move to Nashville, Tennessee or to go to Florida or you're not going to California. Don't go to California. You know, you may go somewhere else. And so what I don't want you to do, what I what what I do not want to happen is you're locked in and now you can't move until you sell your place. OK.

And so what I would recommend is spend the next 90 days just really dissecting your life. See exactly. OK, where do I'm gonna go apply for some jobs apply for some different career places and see where god leads you see where you and god land and if it's still there in in chicago then yeah go purchase a home now now i would advise you to to speak to a realtor uh because one bedroom condos are real hard to resell. Okay. And so I'm,

my whole thing is I purchased to resell and right now, bare minimum, I don't consider anything less than two bedrooms because if I have a, if I sell it to a husband and wife who don't have any kids, well, one day they may want kids and so they're going to want that extra bedroom. And so I would maybe even consider getting a two bedroom condo

that may be just a few thousand dollars more rather than just a one bedroom. But that's just my advice. That's not Dave Ramsey's advice. That's not John Deloney's advice. I'm just saying as a young single guy, I'm thinking about, okay, when I go to resell this,

I need to be able to resell this for a family, not for another single. So that's just my two nuggets. But right now, you need to spend the next 90 days just really thinking about where you're going to be. Christian, do you have somebody to speak into your life with you that you can be honest with and open with? Oh, totally. I have a good church community that many women who are in my life to talk to. Yeah. What church do you go to there in Chicago? It's an evangelical free church called The Orchard. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Sounds good. So you have a great community. Just continue to get wisdom and knowledge from there.

So, Anthony, she asked a question that I'm embarrassed to say I've never considered before. I've just been sitting on the show for a year now. I've never felt the need to do the next baby step just because I've got the money to. Right? And so you put your debt smallest to largest. You get $1,000. You pay your debts off. You get an emergency fund. You start investing.

I don't have to buy a house. No, you don't. I don't have to start a 529 plan if I don't have kids, right? Right. And so once you have these options, right, once you've got a fully funded emergency fund, then you get to start dreaming like she was doing, but she was doing it almost apprehensively. Like, I could just move anywhere. Yep.

Yep. Yep. I could go work over here or go live over here, and that's what we call freedom. Yes. Right? Yes. Because you've taken care of this base minimum stuff. And maybe a one-bedroom condo in downtown Chicago is a five-bedroom house in Arizona or Austin, Texas, or wherever that happens to be, right? Maybe so.

And I think the key thing is, man, you just got to step back and just, you know, ask yourself some good questions. You know, as a single man, I'm always asking myself, OK, cool, what's next? And then I'm also asking myself, OK, I don't know when I'm going to meet my wife, but will this decision that I make impact my wife and my future family in a positive way or a negative way? And so when I purchased my home, I built a four bedroom home. When I purchased my townhome downtown, I purchased a four bedroom townhome. That's just me because of where I'm at.

I'm not saying everyone needs to do that, but I'm all I'm all I'm already thinking about what I desire. I'm living below my means, and I'm creating space so when God does send me my wife, I have room for my wife and my future family. And so I think as young people, we just got to start thinking about just ask ourselves some deep questions. And that's what my mentors ask me. That's what my pastor asks me. Makes me think. Well, I want to thank producer James Childs and associate producer Kelly Daniel. Thank everyone for sticking with us and for calling in, asking about your life and your money.

Enjoy your weekend. Find some people, whether electronically, over the computer, or in person. Safely find people to spend time and your heart with. I'm Dr. John Deloney, joined here with my friend Anthony O'Neill. We're signing off. This has been The Dave Ramsey Show. Have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsey advice in their life? Let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast.

It's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes. Check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.