The Ramsey Show - App - Why $26 Caused a Huge Fight Early in Dave's Marriage (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 8, 2019

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show. Where debt 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. This is your show. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Andy starts off this hour in St. Paul.

If I can hit the right button. Where'd you go, Andy? There you are. Hey, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Andy. How are you? Hey, Mr. Ramsey. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm very excited to ask, how are you today? Better Mr. Ramsey. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm very excited

to ask, how are you today? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help? Awesome, awesome. Well, hey, I am taking Financial Peace University here in a couple weeks, and I cannot be more excited. I actually got a little bit of a head start. I haven't used my credit card in two to three weeks, which is kind of weird to say, but I guess that's the point. And today's my day off, so I decided to take advantage. I am leaving Wells Fargo and jumping over to a credit union, Wings Financial. And so when I went in to sign up, I had mentioned I have a student loan. I have a couple of federal loans, but then one private through Wells that I was looking to get refinanced.

And they mentioned that they have a credit card that you can put that debt on. It would be a 0% APR for the next year or so. Now, I told them I'd been working with your stuff and all that, so I was a little turned off by that, but they said, oh, no, Dave would totally support that. It's a 0% interest, blah, blah, blah. Why not? So I figured I'd give a call to Uncle Dave and dave and see what he says gotcha what's the balance on the private student loan uh it's about 13.8 and what is your way what's your income

uh you're gonna love it i'm a car salesman so i'm salaried though i make about 36 and a half before taxes and then there's some bonuses along the way okay cool so what do you think you'll make in the coming 12 months gross well i'm actually looking to get into a new job but i'd like to be you know 40 45 would be the dream okay i got you and how much other debt other than the 13 do you have uh the rest in student federal student loans is sitting at a little over 25 000 okay and that's it you don't have car,000. Okay, and that's it? You don't have car debt or credit cards debt? That's it.

My car is paid off. I have no credit card debt. I pay that off every month, and now I don't even use it anymore. But, yeah, I started out coming out of college with about $48,000, and I just broke the $40,000 threshold. Yeah, so really we need $38,000. You make $45,000 to be debt-free, right? Sounds about right, yeah. Okay.

And one of the smaller debts is this $13,000. And so it'll be one of the first ones to go away. And let's say that we did $38,000 in two years. Then that would be $19,000 a year out of $45,000. That's going to be really tough, which probably means you're working extra somewhere, or you do something else to get your income up. But if you did it in two years, then maybe the $13,000 is gone in the first year. Should be.

Okay. Right? Because it's your smallest debt, isn't it? Actually, that would be my largest one. Oh, your largest one. Okay. Then what we need to do is find out what the rate goes to after one year. Okay.

They were saying it was somewhere about 8 to 12. Right now it's sitting at a 7.74 interest rate, so it would only go up from there. Okay. So if it would be zero the first year and if it were today it would be just under eight yep after the year so you're fine yeah there's nothing no downside to that you would not want to move government over onto that because if you die government student loans are forgiven or if you become permanently disabled they're forgiven credit card debt is not okay it would count against your estate

assuming you had an estate but um so you don't move government out of there but private loan it's just one private loan for another private loan and the new private loan is zero for the first year and eight or nine in the second year right sounds about right and you're going to stay on a detailed in-depth plan and program that gets you completely out of debt by the end of the second year. And so let's pretend it was 8%, then that averages 4% over two years. Okay. That's not a bad deal. Yeah, I think I would do that deal.

But don't let this deal be the thing that causes you to get bit by a credit card that you keep for the next 20 years. You get this thing closed in two years. No, absolutely. Yeah, you've got to follow through on it, because that's kind of what they count on when they do zero percent, is they're trying to hook you. You know, they're fishing. They're fishing for bass, and you just don't want to be a bass.

That's the whole thing. And these banks, that's all they do. They put shiny stuff in the water, and we're just a bunch of bass. We run around and bite on the hooks. But this one's not bad if you use it the way we're talking about using it. Yeah, I definitely would do that. But follow through then. Follow through.

Follow through. We're going to go into the financial peace class for the nine weeks. Stay in the membership. You get a free one-year membership. Stay in that for the next year. Repeating, going through the online, taking some of the other courses in the online, be in the community in the online, be using the EveryDollarPlus in the online. There's about $500 or $600 worth of stuff that we give you for free

and all that online activity in the first year. Use all that, too. Make sure you put all these tools in your belt to go win with. That's the thing. So good question. Thanks for joining us. All right, Alan is with us in Austin, Texas. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Alan, how are you? I'm doing well, Dave. Thank you. Good. How can I help? Well, I've got a question regarding 529. My daughter is 13, and 529 is funded. And she came to me the other day.

We were just talking, and she asked, what if I go to the military, Dad, and wouldn't they pay for my college? I said, well, they might, depending on what you do. She wants to be a nurse. So if she goes into the military and the Navy, and they pay for her while she's in, and they pay for her to become a nurse, what happens on the 529 at that point? Is that like a scholarship, or am I going to get penalized if I draw it and don't use it on her? If it was a scholarship, you can withdraw it up to the amount of the scholarship. I don't know if the military paying for it qualifies under the law like it does for a

scholarship. You would have to get some tax advice from a tax professional to find that out, somebody to dig in the regulations and find out that detail. I don't know the answer, but if it's treated like you said if it's treated like a scholarship if your kid goes to college and they have a scholarship for ten thousand dollars you can pull ten thousand dollars out of your 529 with no taxes and no penalty which is pretty cool you know and so um but i don't know when the military pays for it if that's called scholarship or, for purposes of the law under that issue. And so you'd have to really dig into the regulations a little deeper than I know.

And so you do what I would do in that case, and that's get your tax professional on the line. If you don't have one, click ELP at DaveRamsey.com on the front page for tax preparing. And those of you getting your taxes done right now, you know, it's first of the year, it's time to start doing your taxes, then you click on the ELP, get your taxes done by a pro,

you pay less in taxes because they know what they're doing. Average person saves about 800 bucks using a pro versus using software or trying to do it yourself. DIYing your taxes is just not a good idea these days, especially with all the tax law changes last year. 2018, there's a big bunch of changes. Big changes.

Big changes. Lots of them. That's how this works. Hey, thank you for joining us. We appreciate you listening. I wish I had the perfect answer for you, but I don't. Just keep digging, dude. You'll get it.

You're chasing the right squirrel up the right tree here. Keep chasing. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. With more frequency than you know, I get calls and emails from people dealing with the recent loss of a spouse or a parent. You can hear the struggle and the heartache that they've been experiencing. And at a time they should be grieving, what breaks my heart the most is the strain and tension that they're going through because of money, especially when it's a situation that could have been avoided. If you have a family, it is your responsibility to have term life insurance. It's one of the things you do to say I love you.

And yes, this is an ad for Zander Insurance. But since this is one of the most effective ways I have to get my point across, so be it. For over 20 years, I've been telling you about the importance of term life insurance and protecting your family. Listen, you need to check out Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. I can't say it enough. Protect your family. It's what you're supposed to do. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Thank you for joining us, America.

We're glad you're here. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window covering. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos that they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSEY to get the best possible deal. Today's question is from Hunter in Virginia. Dave, I don't have any debts, just regular bills. I'm able to meet all my needs, including paying my mortgage, plus save $1,000 a month.

I've been paying $1,000 extra on my mortgage to pay it off early, but now after watching your videos, I'm thinking, why not save $1,000 to buy an investment property, rent it out? Is that wise, or should I pay off my house first and then buy another one? Pay off your house first and then buy another one with cash. That's the answer to your question. However, you are not following the baby steps exactly. We want to make sure you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses set aside. You didn't mention that. And that you're putting 15% of your income away into retirement.

You didn't mention that. If you have $1,000 above all of that, then I would throw that at your house, assuming you don't have kids' college. So that's the baby steps. Baby step one's $1,000. Two is debt-free, except the house using the debt snowball. Three is the emergency fund. This is the order.

The emergency fund, fully funded, raised the $1,000 up to three to six months of expenses. Four is 15% of your income going into retirement. I did not hear those two. I did not hear three and four in your question. And then five is kids' college. I'm guessing you don't have kids the way this is worded. And then once you get past that, then paying off the house is number six. Seven is become very wealthy, become an everyday millionaire,

and be incredibly outrageously generous. So we would pay extra on the house only after we've got the emergency fund in place and then are putting 15% of our income away into retirement. Then you'd attack the house. Once your house is paid off, then I would save up and buy rental properties, which is, by the way, what I did. It was the first step in my personal wealth building. I got the home paid off.

Emergency funds underway. Kids' college is underway. It's done. I had enough saved. And retirement is 15% going in. And then I started just really saving like a crazy person to pay cash for rental property. And every time I saved up and got another rental property, it made me that much more money. And every time I made more money, I just chunk, it made me that much more money. And every time I made more money,

I just chunked it all in that buy more rental property account. And so I actually have a lot more real estate than I do mutual fund investments. Now, because of that. But I'm a real estate guy. I love real estate. If you don't like real estate, you wouldn't want to do that. You'd be heavier in mutual funds.

Got a lot of both, but more in real estate. Allie is with us in Houston, Texas. Hi, Allie. How are you? Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call, sir. I'm doing great. How are you?

Better than I deserve. How can I help today? Awesome. Okay. So my wife and I, we own a business. We're completely debt-free. I paid the business off three years into purchasing it. I've got quite a bit of liquid cash. Don't know what to do with it. You know, the market kind of makes me nervous. I

don't know if I should be invested in the market or if I should go towards real estate. How old are you? 32 years old. What kind of business? I own a drugstore, a pharmacy. Cool. And how much extra cash? We've managed to have some good years.

We ended up saving about $6.5 to about $7 million in cash. It's all just sitting in cash? All sitting in cash. Woo! Wow. Good for you. good for you good for you but yeah you got to get this invested because you're making one percent on it um versus if you made ten percent on it and ten percent on that's like this is like a six hundred thousand dollar a year swing yeah so sitting there in cash is it's mathematically lazy right that money's not working very hard.

It's not lifting as much as it should be lifting. And so I'm definitely getting that invested somewhere else. So let me ask you this, though, before I do that. You're obviously very, very good at running your business. Congratulations. Thank you. Why don't you buy some more drugstores? You know what?

When we got in, we had some good years. We're not doing nearly as well as we used to due to insurance changes and so on and so forth. Okay, so you don't think if you took a million dollars of this $6 million and opened another store that you'd get a good rate of return on it? I don't think so. I mean, we'd probably be looking at about 10% of about gross sales, which we'd probably be ended up making $150,000 extra per year. Okay.

And what would it cost to open that store? If we were to open one up, you know, we'd probably be looking at about between $600,000 and $700,000. Okay. Well, let's take $150,000 rate of return,, ROI, return on investment, on $600,000. That's a 25% rate of return. That's why I asked the question. Small businesses are a higher hassle factor, but they generally give a much better rate of return than real estate or the stock market.

And you're obviously very good at it. It's not as sweet as it used to be, but maybe you can find, and you're going to pay cash for it anyway, whatever you do. So I'm thinking I'm going to put the whole $6 million on that, and you may not want the hassle. You may not want the stress of running more stores. Right. But if I were in your shoes just from a product mix standpoint and investment mix standpoint,

I'm probably taking a million two and opening two more stores if you can handle the hassle factor of it and the stress of it. If you can put in 600 and make 150 out of your net profit after all the smoke clears, that's a good rate of return. And that's someone else. How are you a good manager? Put them in there. You know, that kind of stuff. Let somebody else take some of that off of you. You don't have to do everything hands-on like you used to do but uh i might expand that part of my portfolio because that again i i answer questions here like what would i do and i can tell you the best rate

of return i get is ramsey solutions putting money into a new product here makes me more money than putting more money into a piece of real estate does. And I love real estate. So that's why I answered the question that way. You don't have to do that. It's just an idea. So what I would do if I were in your shoes, other than that, if you don't want to do that or even if you do want to do that, I'm going to put the larger portion of the $6 million into some real estate

that makes an income that I pay cash for. Would you recommend, like, an apartment building or, like, just individual residential homes? Well, I mean, we're talking about probably $4 million here. Yeah. And so individual homes are probably going to be a high hassle factor because that's going to be a bunch of them. Yeah. Homes are probably going to be a high hassle factor because that's going to be a bunch of them. And so I probably would look more towards a commercial piece of property with $4 million, a well-placed, good neighborhood, small office building, a well-placed, good neighborhood, small strip center, something along those lines.

I've got two or three of each of those that do very, very well, and there's just one or two tenants involved for $4 million instead of 22 tenants. Sweet. And so that's kind of a way to look at it. And then I'd probably take about, you know, if I took the $6 million, I'd probably say I'm going to put $1.5 million in some more drugstores. I'm going to put about $4 million into some real estate. I'm going to put $1.5 million into the stock market. And then you're thinking in the stock market, now what's it going to do tomorrow? Because I don't know what it's going to put about $4 million into some real estate. I'm going to put $1.5 million into the stock market.

And then you're thinking in the stock market, now, what's it going to do tomorrow? Because I don't know what it's going to do tomorrow. 2018 sucked. 2019, however, was a 19% rate of return, which means you would have made $1 million on your $600,000. That's what you missed out in 19, or in 17, I'm sorry, in 2017. It was a 19% rate of return. That's, you know, 20% on $6 million. A million two, right?

Gee, that's a killer when you look at that. That's what I'm being afraid of the stock market cost you. Now, last year, it didn't make a dime. So, you know, about broke even, basically. So I don't know what 19 is going to bring. But you don't buy the stock market and you don't buy real estate for short-term investments. You buy them for 5, 10, 20, 30 years out, and you ride them all the way out. And that's what you watch.

So that's how I would break it down if I were in your shoes. And I think that will turn your $6 million into $20 million in about four and a half or five years. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major healthcare costs.

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chministries.org. Thank you for being with us. We're glad you're here, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Have you noticed when we do the debt-free screens that a large number of the people, and we don't require this, it's just a thing that is common, it's a data point that's common. A large number of people doing the debt-free scream talk about that at some point in their get-out-of-debt journey in Baby Step 2, they joined and went through the nine-week class

Financial Peace University. You ever notice that? And if you listen carefully, and we listen carefully around here, a large number of them joined in January. Well, that's kind of obvious if you think about it. A lot of people start new things like getting out of debt, handing my money well, losing weight, quit smoking, whatever it is. I'm going to save money this year. Whatever it is, I'm going to start a new page in my life in january that's a new year's resolution that's not that unusual and but the point being that a lot of people are getting in financial university right now a lot of you are so

what we want to remind you is the nine-week class has had over five million people now go through it since we started it. We just changed a few of the lessons and redid them. And the brand-new classes that are coming out right now have brand-new lessons, a few of them. And it's the same material that's proven, but we restructured it and reshot it with Chris Hogan, Rachel Cruz, and me. And it is, to say that it's fabulous is an understatement, not because I'm in it, but it's just really, really well done. Our guys just really know what they're doing.

It's the video team and our production team are just stellar. It's the best version of Financial Peace University that's ever been out there. So what happens is, if you don't know, Financial Peace University is the nine-week class. We also, when you buy that class, $129, give you the one-year membership to Financial Peace. Now, Financial Peace is your online experience. And all of the video lessons for the nine-week class are online all the audio is online the community is online where people jump in and there's a great great community there a lot of support online coaching online tools the king of which is included in your free financial peace membership,

is one year to every dollar plus. You can go through the legacy journey, which is the follow-up class. Legacy journey is $200 to go through. You can go through the smart money, smart kids class, teaching your kids how to handle money. That's another $89. That's included. Every dollar plus is $120 for a year.

And that's the connectivity to your bank and everything else. And it's all free in your Financial Peace membership. And the Financial Peace membership is free when you go through the class right now. And so you buy the class, and you get the first year of the membership free. Now, what's happening is, is at the end of the year, you're going to want to renew the membership because you're going to get access to some of our streamed events. You're going to get access to all this continued content that's growing in the community, and you're going to want to renew because you're going to keep using EveryDollarPlus the rest of your life.

And it's going to still be a good deal at the end of the year, but it's a great deal right now because it's free for the Financial Peace Online Experience membership. And then the class itself is $129, and you go nine weeks at your local church there. And I think there's about 14,000 or 15,000 classes right this second running all over America, something like that. So you can check all this out. You don't have to worry about money anymore. You can learn how to handle it. You know, most people spend their life with money telling them what to do and we teach

you to tell it what to do one of the coolest things that happen is the emotional switch that flips when you have power over money instead of money having power over you i remember it i mean it feels like it's yesterday but but I was in my 20s. And Sharon was telling this story at dinner the other night to our kids over vacation. My youngest was asking about, like, when we were first married, he was trying to get some of the timelines straight on when different things happened because he wasn't even born yet, you know. And she was talking about at one of her first jobs, a lady taught her to cross-stitch. She was working at a bank, and they sat and did nothing all day.

It was a bank that nobody walked into. It was an old-fashioned savings and loan. And so she learned to cross-stitch. And so she's 22 years old, right? She learns to cross-stitch. We have no money. We're broke. I'm sitting at home doing the checkbook, 22 years old, and I was freaking out.

My heart is beating. The sweat is on my upper lip. You get a little sweat in the palm of your hands. I mean, you know what fear feels like, right? You know what stress feels like. It has a physical reaction in your body, right? Because this stinking checkbook, I finally worked it around, and I got it. We had $1.40 left in the account without bouncing a check.

And my new bride of a few months walks in from her new job with a bag in her hand. She had been to the cross-stitch store and had spent $26 at the cross stitch store that we didn't have. That was putting this account into overdraft. I just spent an hour and a half balancing it. I lost it. It was a huge fight over $26 because we were going to bounce, you know, $400 worth of checks because there's $26 probably. Maybe the rent check was

going to bounce i don't know but she just wandered down there and just bought cross stitch without talking about we had no plan we were like we were stupid we were normal i was scared money had power over me later i made a lot of money later in that story and lost it all. And I was scared and powered powerless again. Money had power over me. See, this whole thing of you are going to tell your money what to do or you are going to wonder where it went is a big deal. My friend Zig Ziglar says, you're going to aim at something. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. That's what Zig used to say. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. And most people aim at nothing with their lives.

They're not intentional with raising their children. They're not intentional. I'm just going to be sweet to little Johnny, and little Johnny's a hellion. You know, you need to be intentional with raising your children. What are the conversations we're having? What are the implications of our tone? You have to be intentional with your marriage. You have to be intentional with your spiritual walk. You have to be intentional with your physical, taking care of your physical body.

You don't accidentally win, people. Winning is never an accident. It's never an accident it's never an accident and so you've got to put some tools in your belt to say i'm going to make money behave i'm going to have power over money instead of money having power over me that's what i'm going to do. And that's what we discovered 25 years ago when I first started teaching the material in Financial Peace University. That's it. That's what I found.

And you know what? You can do this stuff. It is getting out of debt. It is working the baby steps. It is building out of debt. It is working the baby steps. It is building your emergency fund. It is taking the steps to lay the foundation to become an everyday millionaire. Not so that you're some kind of rich snot. I'm not teaching people to be rich snots.

I'm not teaching you that money makes you happy. But I want you to be an everyday millionaire so you can be outrageously generous, so you can change your family tree, so your kid can go to college and you don't have to think about it, so you can retire with dignity and don't have to buy that cookbook, 72 Ways to Prepare Alpo and Love It. People retire broke because they don't bother to plan. In the richest country the world has ever known, Americans are filthy rich compared to the rest of the world.

If you make $38,000 a year, you're in the top 1% of income earners in the world. We're rich. There's no excuse for being broke except simple laziness, lack of intentionality, lack of knowledge. You can fix this stuff. for being broke except simple laziness, lack of intentionality, lack of knowledge.

You can fix this stuff. Get in one of these classes. We'll show you how to do it. Financial Peace University at DaveRamsey.com Thank you. thanks for being with us america this is the dave ramsey show bradley is in seattle hey bradley how are you i'm blessed beyond measure dave you just the same how can i help hey i'm really excited about this uh everyday millionaire book i got it coming checking them out every day for it. Cool.

But it probably explains it in the book, but I'm trying to add up my net worth, and I have a pension plan, and I'm not sure how to add that into a cash value. If you had some kind of a present value item on it, especially if they allow you to lump some out of it, that would give you the number. But it's not necessary. I mean, it's basically a cash flow issue. You've got this flow of cash, and you can give it a number if you want to give it a number, and you could actually put it into a financial calculator and say, well, at 7% interest, this amount of monthly money throughout my lifetime is worth x you could back out of it

but um technically speaking it is not an asset unless you can cash it out and use it and so i cannot cash it out okay then it's you know it's a stream of income like your job is a stream of income but it's not an asset so you wouldn't show your job on a balance sheet. A balance sheet is assets versus liabilities. Not to fret, though. It's still there, and it's still real money, and we still say, gosh, you know, with my net worth, with this pension, I'm doing pretty good. You know, that's what you're looking for. You want to be able to make that statement. But I wouldn't fret about, you know, not being a millionaire because of that or being a millionaire because of that.

The point of reaching the million-dollar net worth and more is simply to be able to live your dream, the dream of generosity and the dream of retiring with dignity and the dream of taking care of your kids and changing your family tree and all that kind of stuff. And the pension does help with all that kind of stuff. And the pension does help with all that. So obviously, you know, for instance, if you had a, you know, a million dollars in mutual funds and a pension, you wouldn't have to touch the income off the mutual funds. You could live on the pension maybe. And that means your wealth is going to grow that much faster versus someone that doesn't have a pension won't have that.

So you get the benefit of it. It shows up in the math as you go along, but it's technically not an asset if you can't get to it in a situation like that. And so if they gave you a lump sum value or something, or if you're really fretting about it, you can come up with a value, sit with your smart investor pro, they'll calculate one, but I wouldn't worry about it. Hey, thanks for the call. Patrick is on the line in Baltimore, Maryland. Hi, Patrick. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Good afternoon. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I am basically just coming out on the other side of finishing paying off some debt. And I had a long-term question on basically how to plan out my retirement savings once I get my emergency funds stocked up. So basically, the premise of my question is if my income is high enough that

it exceeds the threshold of, say, if it exceeds the threshold of a 401k. No, there's no such thing. Oh, well, I guess what I'm saying is 15% of my income. Oh, I see. If your income is high enough that 15% of your income going into the 401k, which is limited to $19,000 a year, that doesn't get you up there. Is that what you're saying? Right. Okay, I got you.

I got you. And with the Roth IRA, ifa if say the same low cost index funds are available in both the 401k and the roth ira um does it i guess i'm trying to understand um does it still make sense to just match the 401k at first and then um start to work on the roth or um why would it make more sense to just lean in hard to the 401k and match that and then do the roth if i know that um at some point in the year i'm going to be matching them both anyway um if that makes sense i kind of ran through it pretty quickly it doesn't it doesn't really matter because by the end of the year, you're going to have filled up both of them, right? Right.

So the only argument or the only question is what the rate of return is going to be on the money in one over the other. I mean, I probably would go ahead and hit the match first. I'll tell you, in my case, as an example, I know I'm going to max both of them. I own the company, so I'm in control of my own 401k so i've already maxed my 401k and my roth ira and it's the middle of january so um but you know but that's that's my income allows that and the law allows that and so i just put it all in as fast as i can put it in i don't know what stock market is going to do in 2019. I don't give a rip.

I'm thinking long-term always with stock market investing. And I don't use low-fee index funds unless nothing else is available that can beat them. About 30%, 35% of the mutual funds in the growth stock mutual fund category can be found that outperform the S&P. And almost all of your index funds are S&P funds. And so you can beat those. You just have to find something that's got a long track record of outperforming the S&P. If you can't find that in your company, then, yeah, go with the index fund. No problem with that.

But the fees aren't the problem with people's investing. The problem with people's investing is they put it in the wrong category. They don't put it in a growth-type category. And the other problem with their investing is they just don't do it. Right. The actual number one data point that causes people to be wealthy is they actually invest. That's the big data point.

It's not the nuances that you and I are discussing. So you're going to be fine. You're killing it, obviously. You're making a lot of money, and you're maxing all this stuff out. If you do that and you keep thinking the way you're thinking and bothering to be intentional with your investing, asking questions like this and learning and growing and putting money in, you're going to have a lot of money. The people that lose the money are the people put stuff in crazy stuff. You know, they

buy into weird stuff and that kind of thing. They don't get the investments we're talking about here are all ultra low risk compared to, you know, the super high risk stuff that's out there. And you just don't fool with that stuff, and you're okay. Just be the tortoise. Don't try to be in a hurry, and you'll win the race every time. And you are doing just that. You're doing a great job. And obviously, you're making a lot of money.

Congratulations. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jessica's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Jessica. How are you? Hey, good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Jessica. How are you? Hey. Good. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Not much. I'm calling because I stay home. My husband works. And I have a business idea that I want to get out in the world, but it requires a lot of startup costs. We're on Baby step two now, so we're kind of just like,

we don't have extra money to kind of throw at this, but we also don't want to be dumb starting a business if we don't have money. Yeah, that would be dumb. So how much setup costs? Doing my research. So it's a kids' play um that focuses on birthday parties so what we want to create has a lot of large indoor structures and customization of um play structures so it's looking to be around 180 000 to get all of the stuff in there so that's been that's been

done before you know that right it's what that's been done before you know that right it's what that's been done before you know that right this kind of business oh yeah it's all over the place right right but we're like the kind of business i want to do the the um the birthday party rooms is gonna what keeps us high about Every bounce house and pizza place in America has a birthday party room. They do, but they're horrible. Well, I wouldn't argue that. They're just nasty grody in a lot of cases. I don't argue that.

So the only difference, though, in your thing is cleanliness and quality of play? No, it would actually be experience. So what we wanted to do is make, we want to create themed party rooms so that when parents come in, they don't need any kind of decor, anything like that. You're running a room that is like superhero themed. So it's a room designed for that party, that type of party. Well, the only way I would do it, obviously, is pay cash for it. It's an ultra high risk business that you're entering into because your brand differentiation

is not as great as you view it is, in my mind. I'm not saying it can't work, and I'm not saying don't live your dream, but don't let your dream turn into a nightmare, because it's not going to turn out exactly like you think it's going to. It never does in business. So pay cash for it as you go, and you're not in a position to do that today. I wonder if there's a way to do this on a part-time basis and think about a different way to get an angle on it.

Send me a copy of Christy Wright's book, Business Boutique, Equipping Women to Make Money Doing What They Love, and see if that will give you some heads-up ideas. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com slash show and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.