The Ramsey Show - App - You Can Still Have Financial Peace During This Crisis (Hour 1)

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, 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. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality. Dr. D joins us today on the air, answering your questions about your life.

For those of you that have not been introduced to Dr. D yet, he has been in the seat of crisis counselor over the years, crisis coach over the years. And so since we're square in the middle of a crisis, we thought it would be a good idea to have him on here for you guys. Maybe you've just got questions about relationships or maybe something's gotten toxic in the middle of all of this. Maybe the fear's gotten toxic or the way you're being treated

by an employer or a family member, some boundaries type issues. Hey, he's here to help you guys navigate through relationships. And of course, we'll answer your financial questions. Again, 888-825-5225. It kind of feels like, and I guess everybody's got a different lens that they're seeing this through um i i just have a general sense that there's people are calming down i got the sense when this week started that this wasn't fun anymore right you had that first couple

of weeks when there was all the emails and the Pinterest and I'm going to change my life and learn Latin. And then week two, we were all homeschooling and trying to work from home and figure all that out. And it was hard. And then week three was, you know, week four, that first couple of days was as hard. And then the last couple of days,

it's just seen a shift almost nationally with the folks that I'm hearing from. We got this and this is our new normal for right now. And we're going to keep plugging along, and we're going to work hard and do the best we can. Yeah, and there's, I think, the screeching kind of fear, the fear that's resulting in someone just melting down and being mean to other people. I'm seeing less of that or feeling less of that.

I don't know why. Uh, I don't know if you can gauge it on social media because social media is not reality, but, um, but, but, uh, but it's just like the, the tone or the looks, if you walk through the grocery store or are stopping to get gas for your car or something, the sense of that. And also there's this kind of sense of, okay, I'm ready for this to be over. Oh, man, I think everybody's ready to see what tomorrow's going to look like and start getting back to some semblance of normalcy and start being a part of what the new normal's going to look like. We're talking with leaders where there is no vision, the people perish.

Where you don't know where you're going with your household, if the leadership in the organization you work for, the leadership in your community, the leadership in your state, the leadership in the White House, Congress does not say, this is where we're going and this is where we're going, and this is how we're going to get there, where there is no vision, the people perish. And, you know, it does mean metaphorically, but in reality, death as well. But there's this angst that goes with not knowing. And if you me bad news that's okay just give me the news we all had that coach in high school that would say you have to run a hundred wind sprints and

then we also had that other coach that would say you're gonna run till i get tired watching you and nobody wanted to run more than 10 but if we had a number of 100 we could get through that it was that one that we didn't know right and you just kept having to run and run and that just wears you out psychologically. It wears you out spiritually. You just get exhausted. No, that's it. Not knowing.

Ambivalence. It's uncertainty. Ambivalence is more stressful and anxiety-driving than actual bad news. You give us a target, even if it's an ugly target, we'll figure it out. Yeah. We don't know. We'll try to get in two weeks. We'll try to get in two weeks, We'll try it again in two weeks.

And that's when people start getting upset. And you've got one guy saying the first of the year. You've got another guy saying the first of the month. That's been the hardest thing for me to wrestle with personally is smart people from all different sectors and thoughts and ideas all give a different information. It's just made it very confusing. Well, I'll just let you know that most of it is a swag. know it's just a guess right it's just a guess and uh and obviously um anybody with half a brain that knows math at all has recognized that they guessed wrong on almost everything you know i mean they've just guessed wrong all the way around. And the version of that is, well, the variables that you put into the model will change the model.

Well, no crap. Congratulations. No kidding, Sherlock. Where'd you come up with that? No kidding. We are homeschooling math with my 10-year-old. He knows that. If you put bad variables into the model, the model's not going to be predictive.

Well, no kidding, Sherlock. How did you come up with that? And so it's gotten to where it's like a Saturday Night Live skit on some of it. It's just if it wasn't life and death, and if it wasn't life or death on the economy and on people's jobs and their dreams are going down the tubes and turning into nightmares, it would be more humorous. But it is just ridiculous it's reset uncertainty so i i used to you know think uncertainty had to do with you know what are we having for dinner or what are we going to do this weekend and like you said

the stakes of this uncertainty are so big and i think everyone can understand you can't miss you can't miss on this one because we just don't have a playbook for let's pause earth for 60 days we don't have a playbook for that we don't have a playbook for these these horrid forecasts of of death and destruction we just we don't have a model for that uncertainty is big yeah and people are now throwing around the one i'm hearing now all over the place is um well it's never going to be the same well no kidding you know no kidding it's never going to be the same. Well, no kidding. You know, no kidding. It's never going to be the same. Airport travel was never the same after two planes were flown into the towers. I mean, you basically undress to get on an airplane now.

And you stand in line for the privilege. But you do get to drop your family off at the curb now and drive on. You don't have to go park and go in and wait at the gate. Well, I mean, you used to stand and i mean when my dad flew and i was seven years old we would drive and stand in everybody went out and stood on the tarmac and watched them get on you know we just walked out there you know i mean that was the 60s right there's a whole different world and um you know the the and people smoked on airplanes which made no sense at all to me. Oh, when I was young, they had the smoking and non-smoking section,

as though it couldn't get to the back. Which absolutely does not work at all. Yeah, I mean, it's like it's not going to travel down a tube, an aluminum tube in the air. But yeah, travel changed after 9-1-1. The way we enter and exit any country in the world after 9-1-1 changed. The way you go in and out of Israel, for instance, is just, it's, and the way countries respect the other one's security measures or not when you're coming in. Oh, you came through that country?

Well, you have to start over on the security stuff because they don't really do security. And we just accepted that where we used to couldn't. I mean, we would have to go through a metal detector? And that's this idea that if we can positively orient what's going to come next, and then we understand that we get to play a role in how that looks and our attitudes that we bring to what that's going to look like and our solutions and our excitements and our new ideas, we get to play a role in how that looks and our attitudes that we bring to what that's going to look like and our solutions and our excitements and our new ideas. We get to play a role in what that looks like. We don't just have to be a passive recipient of what that new

novel is going to look like. You're not a victim. There you go. You're a player in the play. So good stuff. All right. Taking your questions for Dr. John Deloney and I'll answer your financial questions as well. Open phones at 888-825-5225. If you do this one simple thing that we all do, you are literally at risk of being hacked and someone stealing what you've worked so hard for. Do you ever use public Wi-Fi? I'm talking about getting online at a coffee shop, a store, the airport, or even at home.

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that's cyber ghost vpn downloaded today from your app store and be secure in seconds thanks for joining us america this is the davesey Show. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Suzanne is in Florida. Hi, Suzanne. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.

Your question for Dr. D and me. Well, I didn't have much of a question this afternoon, but more of a comment. We just wanted to call in and say thank you to you for all the education you provided us through Financial Peace and your podcast and your books. My husband and I are, I'm a nurse and my husband's a police officer. And a couple of years ago, went through Financial Peace University. And now we are in a position where currently I'm not working too much in the hospital because the elective procedures are very much at a minimum. I work in the surgery department, and my husband is, you know, working his regular hours, not much

extra going on for him, too, and I'm not scared because we're prepared and uh that's because of you and so we just wanted to say thank you for that thank you i appreciate that we appreciate you calling in and uh the truth is is that you prepared i didn't i just showed you how and you went and did it i showed a bunch of other people how and they didn't do it so but congratulations hero you're in charge man i love it it is it is hard to get your hands around your arms around emotionally uh in how um not condescending but just towards others that didn't do it but just what the the two words financial peace really do go together, and it's like there's a highlighter on them in this situation. It's like you had financial peace, you know, this time last year,

but today you really appreciate it more. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. I know what you're saying, and i know that once things get back to normal there'll be plenty of work and overtime and everything for us but i you know i don't have to worry about getting through these next few weeks couple months whatever it is and um and there's just like i i never realized what peace meant until, like you said, until now. Yeah, it's a different thing, and it's a good call.

I appreciate you calling, and I appreciate your kind words towards us, but we're just really proud of you. You're heroes. You just really took care of your life. Very, very well done. Open phones at 888-825-5225. John, there is something. It's spiritual, for sure.

Peace that passes understanding. There is also something, I guess, from a mental health perspective, your world, that when you have built the brick house versus the house of straw, and the big bad wolf comes and he huffs and he puffs uh you do have a different i don't know a mindset perspective what's the word goes back to that word we're talking about uncertainty and i know that if this this storm comes my house is solid it's it's safe and it's good. The more that house is leveraged and the more it's leaning out over the hill, right, and with all different kinds of ropes and hooks and chains, you just walk around feeling that way.

It reminds me of a moment when my son was born and my buddy had a 2-year-old. And when he had his baby, he stopped hanging out with us. And I remember thinking, man, his wife must really have locked him down. And then I had my own kid. And you kind of surface three or four months later. And I realized, oh, he didn't want to hang out with us anymore because he wanted to sit home and hug this baby. And I had pegged his wife as the bad guy here. And I asked him, I said, why didn't you tell me what this kind of love felt like?

And he said, I never could have explained it to you. I never could have. You couldn't understand this until you're holding it. And so it's that kind of peace that you don't know what financial peace is until you look around and see the fields on fire and you realize my house is safe. And it surpasses understanding. There's no way to put that into words other than trust us, the plan works. Go through the plan. Yeah, there you go.

Certainty. Nicole is in Oregon. Hey, Nicole, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi there. I've got an 18-month-old in the background letting you know. Warning, warning. You're going to have to get in line with all the rest of America. We nurse practitioner. Warning, warning. You're going to have to get in line with all the rest of America. We're good. Right, right. Well, I'm always home with her. So

I'm a nurse practitioner and I work, previously I was working about 14 hours a week at a clinic and then I had my own part-time practice that's very part-time after the baby. And I'm trying to pay off a $75,000 student loan. And now I'm trying to get people interested in telemedicine, kind of pivoting to that. And I'm just wondering if you guys have any tips for that for folks with insurance or better cash pay. So telemedicine means what? So telemedicine, it's basically doing primary care. So like just your regular family doctor visit, but doing it virtually through the computer. And a lot of things can be done that way.

Where I would start is, and there's only group that I know of that I know the leaders personally, and they're extraordinary guys with a group called TimelyMD. But I do know there's a number of telemedicine services. I'd actually start with them, folks who have a telemedicine company who are connecting patients and practitioners and providers. But I know that they, like with the Timely ND guys, I know they honor their and train their telemedicine clinicians, and then they connect them. And then over time, you can create enough drive for yourself that you could create your own practice there. But that's where I would start.

Yeah, you could get your foot in the... Well, so I already have that going. Okay. Oh, you do? I already have, yeah, I already have it going already, and I've been doing it from home um because of my toddler so when she's napping or you know which is kind of predictable or in the morning i would do appointments and so now it's kind of getting people interested in it and how do you how do you talk about it to where people

um are interested or want to do it well the first thing we do anytime we're looking at a market i don't know anything about that market from a business perspective but when we're teaching entree leadership and we're saying all right if you're going to start a business one of the things i like to do is i like to try to lay down what my target market looks at looks like who who is the potential customer thereby who is not who would have no interest at all for whatever reason. And then we actually paint a picture and we make up a human that is that target market. We call it a persona. And so this is Jill.

Jill is 34 years old. She's married with two kids, and she listens to theave ramsey show in the carpool line when she's dropping off the kids and um she's you know her friend told her to read total money makeover and she hasn't yet and that's a persona and then we've got to figure out okay how can we serve jill why have we not gotten jill to go through financial peace university yet have we not gotten her to build up her emergency fund yet but you know that's a that's a persona that's a potential customer a mythological metaphorical customer that uh that looks like our average customer might look and by the way that's pretty close um in that example but

you know who who is your telemedicine what's probably someone's too busy to do um to sit in doctors waiting right now well yeah it's everybody right now but i mean it's normally someone's too busy to sit in a waiting room for two hours because doctors can't manage their time while i can which aggravates the p wadden out of me by the way just as an aside but um yeah my time's worth more than yours you twerp and there i sit and sit and sit and sit so um you know and so you know somebody like that number one so you start to lay out what are the attributes of the customer and then that will maybe start to tell you where you can find them what what else do they do where what else do they read or what media do they consume or are they a Facebook user? Can I get to them through Facebook or is it a Google thing to have an SEO problem?

And you start to figure out where that customer is hanging out once you identify clearly who the customer is. And that's the way we go at it here. I honestly have no idea how to tell you to do that in that world except that that's the general concepts. Hey, thanks for calling in dr john deloney joining me today on the dave ramsey show Business leaders hiring right now may be the furthest thing from your mind, but the fact of the matter is we will recover. One of the smartest things you can do for your business is to be prepared. I want you to know my friends at LinkedIn are ready to help you find the right people for your business when you're ready to hire them. LinkedIn Jobs matches your role with

qualified candidates so that you can find the right person quickly. LinkedIn Jobs looks at things like collaboration, creativity, adaptability, and puts your job post in front of qualified candidates every day. So your job is seen by people looking for jobs like yours. That's why we use LinkedIn Jobs when we hire here at Ramsey. When the time comes to hire for your business, you can get $50 off your first job post at linkedin.com slash Ramsey. That's linkedin.com slash Ramsey that's linkedin.com slash ramsey terms and conditions apply Dr. John Deloney joining me on the air today.

If you've got a question for him regarding fear, anxiety, boundaries, relationship issues, all kinds of things that are going on out there right now with the coronavirus, things have settled down in a lot of people's emotions, but some of you are still facing some people who are misbehaving around you, and you don't know what to do with that. He's here to help. The phone number is 888-825-5225, and of course, we'll answer your financial questions, and wherever you are, we want to serve you right where you are open phones 888-825-5225 connor is in texas hey connor welcome to the dave ramsey show hey how are y'all doing hey connor better than we deserve what's up um so i'm in babysit two and paying back my student loans. And I have three separate student loans. One's about $15,000, another is $14,000, and the smallest one is about $11,000.

And I'm just wondering with this forbearance going on right now, would it make sense to not pay the minimum payments on the higher two and just put everything into that smallest one to get that one knocked out first? Won't hurt anything. It'll make you feel like you've made more traction because you have but at the end the math will be exactly the same on when you get out of debt okay is if you do or if you don't the only advantage is you just knock that one off and have that that moment where you feel like you did something which is a good moment by the way that's why we tell people to pay off smallest to largest but yeah you know you don't have have interest and you don't have payments uh on the two big ones attack the little one during that time uh but you know you will have if you paid a hundred dollars more on each of the others

they're just that much smaller when you do get to them later, and so you're going to end up in exactly the same place in terms of number of days that you are in debt in total. So it won't matter. But we love the idea of just if you don't have to pay right now and you're going to still get around to knocking them out really, really fast, then just push them out there and then use all of that extra cash to attack the tiny one or the smaller one of the bunch and get done. Rich is with us. Rich is in Tennessee.

Hi, Rich. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. How are you guys doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, the heart of my question is an ethics question. Three members of my family were in a terrible accident last year, and two of them were put into the hospital and had multiple broken bones

and had to have surgery, and the third one did not make it. Oh, my God. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, thank you. And basically, we've had, outside of the income that I lost from having to just take a couple months off of work and nurse the two survivors back to health. And I'm just not getting very detailed here because this is dealing with a lawsuit. So I'm not wanting to get into too much detail.

But basically, our health insurance is paid for the medicals outside of our deductible and outside of the money that I've lost personally from having to take off work. Everything has been paid for. But none of the other four insurance companies that are involved have stepped up to pay any kind of anything. And basically my concern is this. The two survivors, we expect them to make a full recovery. But what we don't know is what we don't know. And that what may happen 10 years from now when one of them you know may have trouble with things um in their life and and then the other one uh basically may have trouble with their employment because of you know uh just getting to where the injury wears on them from

over time. You know, there's a statute of limitations on how long you can pursue something like this. And basically, the point that I'm getting to is, what is the morality of pursuing that? Because on the one hand, it feels almost like we're not doing the right thing because I'm the kind of person that I don't like to get anything that I haven't earned. I don't even like people to give me gifts at Christmas. But I want to protect my family in the event that 10 years from now, they become unable to do the things they need

to do because of something that's happened that we just haven't found yet if you are going to uh and there's nothing in anything you said that would indicate this if you were going to try to unnecessarily grotesquely profit from this then i might call you on it but uh that this you know there's times that uh companies like insurance companies are supposed to pay the bill when someone's hurt it's a liability and um and that law that law is written uh with a moral component to it that when someone causes you harm they are responsible to make right what they broke and um that's a moral thing and thus we have laws around liability and then people buy insurance because they can't personally take care of that that expense and they transfer that risk to an insurance company.

So, yeah, I would have legal counsel, and I would have the legal counsel explaining to the insurance company that you're going to make this right, and we're going to, you know, and we're going to define make this right, and you're going to do that, or we're going to have a judge assist you in doing that. That's called a lawsuit. But there's nothing immoral about that at all now if you um you know i uh uh one time i hit i hit a guy in the back of the car it was my fault i slid in the rain and uh left a dent about the size of a soft ball in the back of his trunk um he got out and he was fine until he found out two days later it was me, and he made the connection. And then he wanted a million dollars for his backache.

Well, obviously, that's somebody that's misbehaving. And I told the insurance company to give him nothing for his backache because he doesn't have a backache because I barely bumped his car. I mean, that was ridiculous. Now, if I had caused injury to him, I would want the insurance company to actually do that. But if you're going to try to be a con artist, that's a different thing. And you're not trying to be a con artist. So, you know. No, sir. I've got over $100,000 worth of medical bills laying on my desk right now that says otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. And these guys, this is a multi-million dollar, some multi-million dollar insurance claim that you're describing and it should be well when

you have when you have not only the pain and suffering that you've had here but you've also been out of work and you've got future pain and suffering future potential medical issues and future potential uh loss of income due to this wreck that are very real. That's not trumped up. It's not pretend. It's not made up. Those are real things. And all these people's incomes and future potential surgeries add up.

And so, yeah, it would be immoral of you not to pursue this. And it's immoral that they haven't already written the checks. You would think they did would, but they don't always insurance companies don't do that. And so not all of them. I think it's always important to remember in these moments, too. I had the opportunity for several years to work closely with lawyers and being a non-attorney myself that changed my whole spirit. There is some extraordinary men and women in the legal profession that do that because they want to help. But I also think it's important for folks in Richard's situation to understand that justice in this situation won't make him feel better.

It's not going to bring loss back. It's not going to put a period at the end of a sentence. But like you mentioned, if there are medical needs, if there are dollar needs and people are not owning up, absolutely use that tool. Yeah, you've got to. It would be wrong not to. It'd be bad. You know, it's not an opportunity to take advantage. It's just to make whole the purpose, the concept, the moral and legal concept is make whole. And you're right. It doesn't emotionally and it doesn't emotionally, and it doesn't put a period at the end of the loss, but in terms of the financial,

absolutely, make whole. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, I love telling you about well-made, well-thought-out products. Today, I'm talking about Grip6 belts. I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of traditional belts. They never fit right, and they're uncomfortable. Grip6 belts are unique. Owner BJ designed a truly modern, minimalist belt made of high-quality materials with no holes, no flap, and no bulk. And the buckles come in really cool designs and are interchangeable. I personally own these belts in different styles, and talk about affordability, Grip6 belts come with a lifetime guarantee.

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Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, my husband and I use credit cards, and we normally pay the balance off at the end of the month. I'm sorry. But with all of this, did you hear me? Yeah, I said I'm sorry. But with all of this, did you hear me? Yeah, I said I'm sorry. Okay, I know. So with all of this, my husband is in sales and his income has gone down. And I'm wondering if we should pay off the full balance of our credit card or if we should not and just pay the minimum or just a certain amount towards them

and keep as much money as we can. Are you employed outside the home? Yes. What do you make? I make $90,000. What's the balance on the credit card? It's $5,000. You should pay it off and you should cut it up. Yes. And never use it again. For sure. Yes. Okay.

Use debit cards in the future, meaning that you will never have to ask this question again because you will only purchase things that you can afford to buy. Yes. For sure. Yeah. That's what we will do. You've got a good enough income. $5,000 is not going to change your life. Right. Yeah. That's what we will do. You've got a good enough income. $5,000 is not going to change your life.

Right. Yeah. I just worry a lot that his income will be cut, and then we'll have to rely on just what we have in savings. Yeah, but what does he make? He makes $75,000. Okay. So you have $155,000 household income.

If his income is cut in half, you're not going to have to use savings unless you've got debt coming out your ears. No, we actually paid off all of our debt, so we don't have any debt. Great. Okay. Except for the credit cards. Well, if you have $155,000 income with no debt, the only possible way you would have to dip into savings is if you don't cut off stuff like 401Ks.

I mean, if things go down, you cut off all ancillary things and you tighten the budget up, right? And you take care of the most important things first, food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and utilities. And then you work on minimal other stuff. And with $155,000, even with that income coming down to $100,000, and it won't come that far down, I mean, he'd be looking for another job if he went down to $20,000. So you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. The good news is this has kind of got to be your wake-up call.

You went, hey, I was kind of screwing around doing ish with this credit card, and now it's chopped. There we go. Chop, chop, baby. Plastic surgery. Thanks for the call. There is a thing that happens in the human psyche when we transform, spiritually, emotionally, mental health, whatever lens you want to look at it. In order for transformation to occur, there has to be something that happens that says

the current status is worse than the pain of change because change is painful and for us to engage in change the current status has to get bad enough that hey we'll try anything i'll try something new i'll do something different because uh current sucks bad enough that I'd rather have changed than I would what I got now. And a whole bunch of folks are sitting there right now. This is a wonderful opportunity for some of you to utilize the pain that you're feeling, the stress that you're feeling as you're starting to change and transform your life, particularly in the area of money.

And you just say never again. This is your never again moment. There's a beautiful thing about the brain that can be frustrating too that says what's familiar is safe. And so anytime our routines get disrupted, the things that we think we know get disrupted, it just sets off all of our alarms. And so the quicker you can get to a new normal,

the quicker you can get to saying no more, then everything starts to settle down. You've got a new trajectory and you can go get it. But that's why people stay in crummy jobs. That's why they stay in crappy marriages. And they don't challenge abusive spouses because it's safe because it's familiar. That's the way our wiring is. And so once you get out of that and suddenly the world shakes like a snow globe and you find yourself stuck, now you're on a new path.

And the quicker you can get on that new path and say, never again, I'm running, starts to bring it down. So that little ding in his commissions could be the wake-up call that that whole household sits down and gets pushed out of the familiar and says, no, I'm never going to be here again. What a gift. Yeah, it is a gift. It changes everything. What a gift. Kyle is, dad, blame it. Kyle is with us in Missouri.

Hey, Kyle, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hello, sir. Hi, what's up? Well, I have a quick question. I recently switched jobs. I moved back closer to where I'm originally from. I'm in the business of agriculture sales, and I've kind of lost my way a little bit. I was in college.

I was in the military. I did ROTC, and then that abruptly stopped because I had shoulder surgery, and I was forced out of the military. I always felt like I had a guardian or somebody to look up to, somebody to follow. And then when I got into ag sales straight out of college, I had a mentor as well for my first couple of years. Now my mentor retired. We're still in contact, but now I've switched jobs back to Missouri, and now I've kind of lost that mentor. And especially during this time that everybody's going through, I kind of feel like I've lost my way, and I don't know how to reach out or maybe make contact with a new mentor. So I was going to ask both of you gentlemen, how did you find mentors or who do you pick to follow in life and set goals, so on and so forth? How old are you?

I am 30. Okay. John? I've got an opinion on this. I'd love to hear what you think. You go first. You're good. So, Kyle, the first thing I'm going to recommend is that you find someone who's being successful and not somebody who is a blabbermouth.

I think you can get on the Internet. You can find the folks who are running their mouth about how much sales they're making and how good they're doing and all the great stuff. And then there's the folks that are actually making sales and they're doing well and they've been up and down the roller coaster for year after year and they're taking care of business there in Missouri. And they don't have to go talk about how great they are because they're just well, and they've been up and down the roller coaster for year after year, and they're taking care of business there in Missouri, and they don't have to go talk about how great they are because they're just getting it done. And so I would find those folks, and in a small community like Missouri,

and I know that's a state, but in the small farming communities, I moved up here from West Texas, which is a farming community. It's a big city, but the communities are small. You know who's cutting it and who's not. And then the thing I would recommend is make the phone call. And so you ask me how to make the phone call, you pick up the phone and you call somebody. I'm interested to hear from you, Dave. You're somebody who everyone would love to have as their mentor.

How do you decide? How do you filter that voice? There's many people reaching out, hey, can we have coffee? Can we go out to lunch? Can I pick your brain? How do you filter that? Well, I don don't do it i just don't do it okay um the mentoring i do is here on the air and other ways the way we teach i don't have the bandwidth and i'm not that good at it anyway um the um i mean i've tried i got a couple pastors that i sit

down with occasionally and they're looking at their operation stuff and i'm mentoring them a little bit on business but they're just friends and stuff like that. It's not, uh, I think the thing I, I have rejected the idea that there is a single mentor that has their act together in every aspect of their life that can lead me. I've just never met Jesus on the earth. And, um, I meet guys who are good at business and crummy at marriage or they're good at marriage and they're don't take care of their body. They're crummy at physical fitness, you know. And so what I do is is find, you know, the guy who's good at marriage. I want to talk to him about marriage, but I don't have to ask him about the other stuff. And the guy who's good at business,

I'll talk to him about business, but I don't have to let him. He's not necessarily my spiritual compass then or something like that. I'm just trying to get some business acumen off of him, some things like that. And so I've done this patchwork of mentors to create the quilt when it's done is the mentor, you know, of all these people together and books uh wonderful biographies and uh people who write and are thought leaders in particular genres and so if you want to be mentored on marriage read a bunch of marriage books if you want to be mentored on parenting read a bunch of parenting books and find somebody who's a good parent and talk to them make sure you have a good pastor in your life.

I think that's vital. And then the last thing I'll tell you is Stephen Mansfield talks about have a band of brothers. And that's get eight or ten guys together that are at or slightly above your level and meet for coffee. Get together once a month. Regularly. I've got that group of guys I meet with once a month, as a matter of fact. And I'm missing them right

now. I'm ready to get with them right this second. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. In the middle of these uncertain times, Ramsey Solutions wants to give you some hope. For the very first time ever, we're giving you Financial Peace University free for 14 days. Go to DaveRamsey.com slash hope

so you can watch from home.