The Ramsey Show - App - You Can't Force Someone to Change! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studio, this is the Dave Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life, your money, your relationship, your mental health, and when Dr. D and I are on, even your dating questions. My name is Anthony O'Neill. Joining me on this hour, co-hosting this show together, Dr. John Deloney. And we are excited to really just talk to you about any area of your life. So give us a call. Kelly is standing by.

888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. The phone lines are ringing off the chain right now. But Kelly will get to you as soon as she possibly can. And let's go on out to Provo. Am I saying it right? Yes. Provo, Utah.

Provo, Utah. Have a conversation with Mary. Good afternoon, Mary. How can Dr. D and I help? Hey, Anthony and Dr. D. First of all, thank you for taking my call today. I have a senior in high school right now, and this coming week is, they call it FAFSA week. It's also college week, and so I guess some colleges come to their school.

And as part of that, they're asking the children, or seniors, seniors, not so much children anymore. Um, and she's my oldest. So I'm going to have to do this with all the other ones. So I'm a little nervous. Um, but they're asking them to fill out a FAFSA form and it has a lot of sensitive information on it. And when I tried to look it up, it sounded like it was for loans and that had me worried. And I was wondering if you could explain what FAFSA is and if this is something I need to be worried about or what's going on. Yeah, the FAFSA forms are forms that colleges use. They're basically your financial aid form. Most colleges have switched over the last few years.

In fact, I don't know that any college doesn't do this. They also use these forms for scholarship information. And so if you back up years ago, scholarships used to be a reward for what happened in high school and an investment in a student coming to our campus. He's going to bring your academic credentials to our campus, your abilities, you're going to bring your athletic abilities, any number of your robotics abilities, any number of things. Over the last, I'd say, 10 years or so, maybe 15 years, scholarships have switched to being a reward and a incentive.

And now they are a marketing tool. And so a college will use your FAFSA to find out how much you could pay. So think about it if you went to a car dealership and before you started negotiating, they knew how much you could actually pay. They knew how much you made, how much was in your wallet, how much land you owned, all that stuff. And then they take that and they don't want to leave any money on the table. So they're going to try to give you just enough scholarship money that you'll go there, but not $1 more than you might be able to contribute. And so the unfortunate thing is the FAFSA is used by most schools to determine

not only your financial aid eligibility, but also scholarship information. So you're going to have to fill that stuff out. It's going to be up to you to fill out those loans at the end of the day. I do have, I know a number of financial aid folks across the country. I've never met somebody that's not in good character, so I wouldn't worry about them selling your, I mean, doing nefarious things with your information, leaving them in the parking lot, things like that.

It's going to be up to you to decide to not take a loan or not. They will give you financial aid packages that include all sorts of somersaults and cartwheels worth of loans. And it's going to be up to you all to not take those. The scholarship numbers, which you all are going to have to look at. But, yes, you're going to have to. That's just a part of the process nowadays. Unless you are planning on writing a check outright, you're not worried about scholarships or anything like that. And then you don't have to fill out a FAFSA. Yeah. Mary, have you read my book, Debt-Free Degree?

We have not. I was asking what she should be asking them as they're coming to her school. Yeah, that's a good question. This is what I'm going to do. When we hang up the phone, I want you to hang, when we get off, I want you to hang on. Kelly will get on the phone with you and get your information. I'm going to send you a copy of my book, Debt Free Degree, because in this book, I literally have a whole chapter on FASFA. And just so you know, FASFA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And so I recommend to everyone you fill it out. and when you fill it out that you will get letters you will get um confirmation saying you've been approved for a loan you're going to you're going to decline those and one of the key reasons why I say fill it out is because not only does it go

towards your scholarships but goes towards grants and even work study programs as well and so the work study programs is where how your child can get into the school and also work on to the campus, because if he qualifies or she qualifies for that, that's how they know from FAFSA. So FAFSA has ups and it has downs and the downs are the loans. But the ups, it really helps you set it up. So I want you to get my book and I want you to read, and I want you to have your kids read it as well. It's called Debt-Free Degree. And when they come to the school, is it male or female? Is your son or daughter that's going to school right now?

So I have both girls and boys, but my senior is a girl. And then I have a 10th grader who's a son, and then my other two are girls. How is her grades right now? They're really good. Her last term of last year, she got all As and A-minuses. Okay, so she's right around a 3.5, 4.0. Okay, so she's right around a high 3.0 average. Okay, good.

So right now, what I'll be asking her is, here's what I'm going to say. The question is not what are you all asking the schools. The question is what are you asking your daughter? And what are you telling your daughter? There you go. She's listening right now? Yeah, on YouTube live in another room. Oh, there you go, Darcy.

Look at me. Let me look at this camera right here. What I want you to do is go home. Not go home. When we get off of this, get off of YouTube, go down there, talk to your mom. And what I want you to do is ask your mom, mom, what can you and my dad do to help me get into school? And then you're going to take that information. Then you're going to come back the next day and you're going to tell your mom and dad, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a part-time job or i'm going to apply to this this many schools but y'all need to have the conversation of what's the budget what can we afford and then from there mary when you

go to the schools you already know hey we can afford this this is inside of our budget this is inside of what we need to be doing um so stay on the line. Kelly will pick up. She will get you a copy of my book, Debt-Free Degree. I got to say, I love talking about it. It was the number one national bestseller. And so it will answer all the questions. It will give you every single thing that you need to know to get your young person in school. Dr. D, you are from the school industry. You've worked in it for years and years and years. Is it possible for young people to go to school debt-free? Yes. You got to be intentional and you got to plan. Yeah. Got to be intentional and you got to plan. You really do. And that's one thing I love about the

book Debt-Free Degree. When I sat down with Dave and our team and said, hey, I don't want to write a fluff book. I don't want to write a book that's about a bunch of encouragement. I needed a plan. I needed a step-by-step process on how I should have went to school debt free. And this is exactly what this book is. So those of you all listening right now, go to AnthonyNeneal.com, and you will see the book on there. Purchase a copy right now. Bless somebody.

Or go to Amazon. Go to a bookstore. Because it's not about supporting me. It's about supporting you and your future one going to school debt-free. 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. I want to thank our DJ and producer for this beautiful hour. I love what our producers do, man. I love the music. Let's keep it going. 888-825-5225. We would love to take your questions and give you our honest opinion. We come from our heart. We're not experts. People say we're experts. We're just normal people heart uh we're we're not experts people say we're

experts we're just normal people who love people and we want to help people um you all call us experts i call myself just a young guy learning something and i just want to pass the knowledge on you know you're a doctor i'm a genius i'm just kidding i love it so give us a call we would love to talk to you not at at all, my friend. And it will be a great day. Going out to San Antonio, Texas, we're going to have a conversation with Patrick. Patrick, good afternoon. How can Dr. D and I help?

Well, I'm calling in because I do believe you all are experts and geniuses. I agree, Patrick. I agree. You can continue. Go ahead. Okay, thanks for taking the call. My wife and I are blessed. We're very, very thankful to almost be debt-free completely.

But I got one question surrounding that. We're both retired now. We have a $12,000 a month pension combined. We have about $100,000 in savings. We got about $750,000 in investments. We've paid off our home and our cars. We have no personal debt other than we have two rent houses that are worth probably a total of about $400,000. And the rent on them, we're not looking to make money.

We don't charge much for them. So the rent covers the mortgage and just a little bit more. My question is, they have a collective $100,000 mortgage between the two of them at 3.5. And the question is, do we just continue to let the mortgages exist or do we pay them off now that we have that $100,000 and we have the ability to do it or some combination in between there or wherever you all want to take us. So, Patrick, let me ask you this question. What's your long-term goal? So you have two rental properties. Are you actually – and you probably said it, probably missed it,

so let me apologize up front. But are you currently in a home with a mortgage on it as well? No, he's paid off his mortgage. Paid off your mortgage. You guys are everyday millionaires, Patrick. But not yet. Because we've got to get him out of these two rental properties. So if you

take your $100,000 and you pay off the two rental properties, how much money will you have in your savings account? We'll start with zero, but we have the ability to do between $2,000 and $5,000 a month back into that savings every month, God willing. And how much money do you need to have at least three to six months in your emergency account?

$30,000 to $60,000. Okay, so you need about $30,000 minimum, max $60,000. You have $100,000. And you can put $5,000 in there a month. Cool. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm cool with you honestly taking out $60,000, paying

off, putting that towards the mortgage, and then taking that extra $5,000 that you can aggressively do to pay off those two rental properties. So that way it is now cash and you have it. And now that's actually generating you and your family income. Because I am kind of a little skeptical with the fact that you're saying that

the rental payments right now are actually just paying a mortgage and a little bit more. I would love for that to see income coming in to where you're honestly able to set some money aside. So that way you can have money to fix it down the road. It's not coming out of your personal pocket. and then it's generating you and your family income because you're in it now now generally what we recommend is you don't do you don't you don't finance rental properties you pay cash for them after you've secured your um your home mortgage

but since you're in this situation you have two options you could sell them or you can just go ahead and aggressively pay them off and then just rightfully outright on them. And then from there, just like Dr. D said earlier, you are now becoming everyday millionaires. So that's what I recommend. I'll say, go ahead and take the 60 grand out. I'll put that towards that. You keep three 30 grand. That's your fully funded emergency fund. Keep investing. Don't stop your investing to get more money going towards that. And then I'll just aggressively attack those rental properties. Okay. So that's basically splitting it down the middle, right, Patrick? Yes. You're going to pay one of those off today and then you'll pay the other one off in about six months, probably. Yeah. Yeah. That would be

my wife's first. Oh, man. She's standing right here agreeing with me. Is she? Well, tell your wife I said hello. Is she right there with you? Hi there. There you go. I was going to say put you on the phone.

Well, hey, he's going to take good care of you, ma'am, and enjoy this new season. I mean, you're all going to be everyday millionaires. Have you all read the book Everyday Millionaires? No, we have not. Oh, well, you know what? Me and Dr. D, we love giving away things. Especially other people's books. Yes, other people's book that doesn't hurt our pocket.

So we're going to bless you with a copy of Chris Hogan's Everyday Millionaire book because this is the next step. Once you all pay off these two rental properties, you guys are there. So stay on the line. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick, I don't know your last name, your name, wife, but Kelly will get you a copy of that book. And I promise you, you all will love it. And I mean, their future is bright, man. Man. And before you write that check to pay off that first rental home, Patrick, you're taking her to eat wherever she wants to go there in San Antonio, Texas. Yeah, and then once you pay off the last one, y'all just need to go take a nice little trip like what everyday millionaires do.

Enjoy it. You know, enjoy it. You know, Dr. D, I think a lot of people, like for an example, I think a lot of people get this hunger for like baby steps one through three. They get gazelle intense. I'm going to pay off this debt. I'm going to do this debt i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that oh yeah oh yeah then when they get to four and seven they keep that exact same gazelle intense and probably go a little higher and i think sometimes baby steps four through seven is yeah you have to be intentional you have to keep the energy there but you can relax a little bit and kind of enjoy it you know uh there's nothing wrong with, like you said, going to a real nice restaurant.

There's nothing wrong with working hard to get out of debt, to have an emergency fund where now you're investing. Now you're investing in your future, into your kids' future, and paying off your house and building wealth and you're giving and you're being a blessing. Enjoy it for yourself a little bit. As long as it's within your budget, go on a nice vacation. Stop eating beans and rice, rice and beans, and go step up. Go get you a nice piece of steak.

Go do something. Gazelle Intense is running for your life because you're about to die a gruesome, uncomfortable death. Once that gazelle is in the clear, he's got to stop. She's got to rest. She's got to eat. She's got to find some other people to hang out with. You're not running for your life anymore.

You've still got to be alert because there's lions everywhere. But now y'all can begin to migrate together and get where you're going. Man, listen. I really do. And for those of you who are in Baby Steps 1 through 3, oh, yeah, don't relax. You're running for your life. But when you're in Baby Steps 4 through 7, you're walking.

You're still moving forward. You're still improving and growing. But enjoy it. Oftentimes we get the call, I got the Dave Ramsey car. Well, what's the Dave Ramsey car? Oh, it's a little small beater. That's not a Dave Ramsey car. That's a car that you need in baby steps one through three. But Hey, he tells you all the time, step up. You know, once you have an emergency fund, step up to something nice. We want you to have nice things. We want you to have

goals and dreams and visions. We want you to accomplish those things. But we just want you to do it to where you're doing it the right way, you know, the right way. So do you ever get to the end of the month and have no idea where all your money went? It feels like as soon as the money comes in, it goes right back out. And I have been there. So here's the thing. If you want to take control of your money, you have to be the one to tell it where to go that means getting on a budget the b word and give every dollar a specific job every single month and the best way to do this is with our brand new ramsey plus membership it gives you all the best money products including the premium version of our budgeting app, EveryDollar. That's where you'll make your budget, track your spending, and clearly, let me say this again,

clearly see where all of your money is going. You can try all this with a free trial of Ramsey Plus today. And never again wonder where your money is going. To start this free trial, I want you to text 33789 text the word begin b-e-g-i-n to 33789 and today you will take over your money and you will start building wealth because you took control of your money today this is the day for him to show a day. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Going out to Syracuse, New York, we're going to have a conversation with Anthony. Anthony, good afternoon. How can Dr. D and I help?

Hey, thanks for taking my call. It was actually just about what you were talking about the last segment. So I'm on step 456. I went really intense to get there. About 14 months I paid off all my debt besides my mortgage. Now that I'm debt free, I'm struggling to spend money or to do things, and I can kind of see, like, a rift where my wife doesn't want to suggest to go places because I'm just going to be cheap and I make comments that I don't want to spend the money, but we have the money.

We can spend the money. I just can't. Where does that come from, Anthony? Where does that come from? The cheapness? Not the cheapness. That's a symptom. Where does this control challenge come from?

Did you come from a house that ran out of money? Or did you come from a house full of accountants? Did you come from? No, I came from a house. I lost both my parents at a young age. There you go. My grandmother raised me. We never had really any money.

And it's always my, I think my grandmother filed bankruptcy three times in her life. Credit cards. And I was the same way. So listen, your heart and your mind is trying to take care of you and trying to keep you safe. Because unlike most of us, your heart and mind knows what happens when you fall off the edge. It's trying to take care of you and trying to love you. And so when your wife wants to go out to dinner, your wife wants to go on a trip, your wife wants to go to the movies, and your first impulse is, I don't want to spend that money. I want you to do this.

I want you to exhale and I want you to say, thanks brain. Thanks heart for trying to keep me safe, but I'm good now. And then I want you to look at your wife and say, well, you want to go eat. And it's going to be something that you practice like a muscle. You're going to practice teaching your heart and your mind to be safe that you're safe because you've done it right and you married well you followed a plan and you're a good man but i want you to honor your body it's just trying to take care of you it's trying to keep you safe it's been down this road before it's just recognizing that impulse right before you do it how much money do you make a year? What's your household income, Anthony?

I think we make between like $100,000 and $125,000. Okay, cool. We own our businesses, so I don't really know exactly how much I make. Cool, great. How much do you have in savings right now? Probably have about $60,000. $60 60 grand in savings okay and what would you say when your wife says i want to go here where is one place she wants to go and you're like you have to go get massages like go out on a spa day so your wife is saying i want to go get my back massage i want to feel like a woman i want to feel like a queen i want to just enjoy life because we spent months just hammering after this

debt and you're saying no i don't want to spend a hundred dollars even though we got 60 000 in the savings account and we have another 10 000 coming in this month you're saying no because you want to save that money like what are you what are you working towards that's what i've been trying to figure out and try to think because i don't know what i'm working towards anymore when i had the plan and i was doing it i had like a hundred i think it was 147 000 like i would just watch videos every night and then i knew exactly what i wanted to do and like i like, I even talked to my pastor. He was like, I can't stop thinking about it. Right. I'm so focused on doing the one thing, and now that that's done,

I don't know why I run my own business. You know what I mean? I'm trying to create a plan, a goal, and have a mission. It's just I don't know what I'm doing. I just make the money, and, okay, it just goes into account. You're going to have to do some healing work, Anthony. And what you were able to do, how long have you been married? Three years.

Any little ones? We just had a daughter a year ago, and she is the reason why I started paying everything off. Congratulations, man. Thank you. So you are, think about it this way. Your brain's on fire, and you've got an alarm system that's been ringing. You found a plan that helped, and what you were able to do for a season is to trade that fear, trade that identity that mom and dad aren't coming home,

that we don't know if the water's going to get shut off. You were able to trade that identity for a plan, a concrete, proven thing. You did it, and you got to the end of it. You accomplished it, and then you realized that your identity didn't change. You were able just to numb it. You were able to pause it for a minute. And now you're a husband. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I listened to your show, which is great, by the way, with ADHD. And I have ADHD. And I was talking to my wife, and I bought the book, and I've been reading it. And it kind of makes what you're just saying is like I hyper-focused on things. And once I have that thing set in my mind, that's what I want to do. And my wife knows that's what I want to do because I hyper-focus.

That's right. Like crazy. And if you haven't got to the end of that book, you're going to know that there's healing. And the challenge for a scattered mind, the challenge for somebody who grew up in chaos, the challenge for somebody who grew up with trauma like you did, is the only healing, the true healing that can be done

is in relationship with other people. And those are the very things that caused the wounds in the first place. And you can pause that with this incredible plan. This is what's such a gift is that husbands and wives work together and suddenly they find themselves healed, right? They find their marriages healed. They find old wounds healed because not because of the baby step plan, but because they got to work in concert in partnership with another person towards a common goal. And that's a hard thing to learn how to do, especially honoring your past, man. You've had a hard life, Anthony. And you've accomplished incredible things.

And I can hear in your heart that now that you've paid off the money part of it, now you're going to do the hard, hard work, which is healing. And your wife deserves that. Your baby girl deserves to grow up in a non-chaotic, in a totally connected home. But you know who else deserves this at the bottom of everybody? You do, brother. You do. So here's some practical things I would recommend for you, Anthony, during this season of healing. It's Friday. you anthony during this season of healing it's friday take your wife out somewhere nice where

you know tell her put on something nice ladies love to get dressed up take it to a very nice restaurant and when you're at that restaurant one of the key things i heard you saying earlier is i make the money i don't have i don't know where i'm going i i i and i didn't hear we i don't know where we going we make the money we own the business so i want you and your wife because i hear you i like the fact that you have the hyper focus now we just got a chain channel that hyper focus somewhere else and the hyper focus needs to be going towards a combined vision like from what dr d said of you and your wife babe where are we going okay we're debt free we got 60k in account we make great money we have kids and i know i've been scared i've been controlling that i'm healing i heard dr d but where do we want to go do we want to you know pay off a home do we want to build wealth do we

want to build a legacy like what is our legacy what are we doing for our kids come up with the vision together and then that becomes a thing that you're focused on now you're going to feel that that need that you need to feel because it's like before all right i gotta follow the baby steps i gotta do the debt snowball okay i'm gonna get three months here now it's okay me and my wife are going to do something that we can leave our kids with something. And so I want to say the first step practical thing that you can do right now on this, on this Friday night is take your wife out, you know, take your wife out, take your kids to, you know, somewhere and, and, and ask them to watch them. And then you and your wife just spend some quality time dreaming together, crying together tears come out just get a solid vision and then come home write that vision down

on paper put it up around the house and y'all focus on that vision and by this end of this year you need to plan a very nice vacation to take your entire family there next year. It's about this notion, Anthony, of being vulnerable and getting a co-partner, getting a co-pilot in this adventure and getting her permission to say when she feels you're starting to grab control, that she's got a word she can give you that you will go, oh yeah.

And you can remember to tell your grandma, grandma, you came through and I'm okay. I love it. I love it. Love it. Hey, this is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. going out to the beautiful city new york city new york we're gonna have a conversation there with chris chris good afternoon how can dr d and i help hey good afternoon uh great to be on the show i'm a huge fan oh man thank you so much for calling in how can we help man yeah so i'm in a bit of a dilemma here um you know i've got a lot of momentum going on the baby steps i've been

following uh dave program for about a year now uh the only debt i have left is a car um i have like 10 000 left in it which is going to be paid. I'm on track to pay it off by January. My girlfriend doesn't really see eye to eye with me on the Dave Ramsey plan. Now that I've almost got the car paid off, she wants me to trade in the car that's almost paid off and buy a brand new car. How long have y'all been dating, Chris? I don't care how long they've been dating. Six months. Six months.

Yeah, brother, she doesn't get a vote, man. All right. So, you know, here's the thing. Like, I love her and everything else in the relationship's great. And, you know, like, I just don't know how to get her on the program. She's not, like, a Dave Ramsey fan. I think she's tired of hearing, like, Dave Ramsey's show when I play it. Yeah.

And I guess, is there any advice you have to, like, try to get her on the same page? Number one, she doesn't get a vote. Y'all have separate accounts. You have separate money. You've got separate money plans right now. So you keep plugging along, doing your thing. Nobody can make you get a second car. Number two, as Anthony alluded to with a different caller,

if somebody is unwilling to connect with you in a values proposition, right? If you're, if you're wondering, that's the purpose of dating is to get to know somebody and you're starting to realize that the closer you get to, uh, the longer you're together, the more you realize your values are separate. Your values are a part and bigger than whether she likes Dave or doesn't like Dave. It's a matter of trust. It's a matter of, do we share the same future

visions and future goals? And right now it doesn't sound like that. Number three, dude, you're never going to be able to get your partner to do anything like that. How do I make them do something? That's not how relationships work. That's how power structures work. And those don't work in relationships. Relationships are together. And so if you want to convince her, which is an unhealthy way to go about it, you're going to have to model it and you're going to have to show how you live peacefully, how you don't worry about bills at the end of every month, and you're going to have to sit down and do some vision casting together. You're going to have to create a future together.

You're going to have to say, where do we want to be if we were to get married in a year? Where would we want to end up? Where would we want to live? Those things, future building together. Um, not just, Hey, I've got some better data for you. That's going to override what you want to do. Right. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, thanks for calling in Chris. I guess i have low tolerance man i could feel it on you i can feel it anthony i mean i really do because i'm like we get these calls all the time well i love her and oh man i want to force her in and i'm like and i i get it i get it i get it and here's the thing i'll say this on a day ramsay show a woman is or anybody a man or a

woman is not below me because they do not agree in the things that I agree with. If you don't like my path, that's fine. I don't have to go down a path with you. Right. And I think sometimes we try to force things to happen and I could change her. I could change him.

How can I, you can't change someone who doesn't want to be changed. So save yourself some stress. I guess I'm on like the savage side. I'm like, all right, deuces. You want me to go into debt? Bye. Like you go do you.

I'm going to go do me. Good people. No hard feelings. But I know where I want to go with my life. And since you don't want to go down that route, that's fine. But AO is going down this route and my wife, we,

you should want to go down this road even without me. That's where I believe in being equally yoked. You don't have to convince each other to do something. And I think that's just something that I think should be talked about more, especially with this younger generation because I ain't knocking someone falling in love within six months but I'm like never mind I was about to say something else

I think it's wise when you enter into value conversations that data comes second and vision come first and what I mean by that is let's take we had the election, the first debate the other night.

Depending on who you ask, it depends on who won, who lost. We all lost. We all, right? But we start talking about, yeah, but this data and this data and this data. Man, that's not where you start with those conversations. Was that a debate? I'm sorry. That's a whole other conversation, right? That's probably a bad analogy. I shouldn't have used that. That was a start with those conversations. Was that a debate? I'm sorry. Yeah. That's all right.

That's probably a bad analogy. I shouldn't have used that. That was a bad analogy, but at the end of the day, you're not going to convince somebody right by data. Yeah. Unless you're a group of scientists that are on the common mission to convince each other with data. Outside of that,

you've got wives trying to convince their husbands of here's the math problem and you're missing the hurting guy in the house or vice versa. These Anthony and Chris and his girlfriend need to go decide what their future is going to look like, where they want to go. And they reverse engineer that. I guess that's probably like a lot of people always ask me, Anthony, why are you single? Well, because, I mean, I've dated. And I tell people up front in a date, like you said, this is my vision. And this is where I would like to go with whoever God has given me. Sometimes when I say that, that lady automatically just disappears.

Because it's like my vision is, hey, I'm not doing any debt debt so this means that to buy something real nice like your dream car it's going to take us a little while to get there because i'm gonna pay cash for it that's my vision some people don't have patience so they're like all right nah this guy crazy he he don't do any debt no credit cards that are that's i'm a bounce so i like what you said you're go ahead and put the vision out there, and then you collect data after that. Or the other side is this, Anthony. I walked into dating as an adult with a, this just sounds so ridiculous and immature in retrospect,

with a list of 10 things. Here's the 10 things my future spouse is going to have. You know how many my wife has? Two of the 10. Oh, your wife is dope. I thought she had like eight of them. That's the 10 things my future spouse is going to have. You know how many my wife has? Two of the 10. Oh, your wife is dope. I thought she had like eight of them. That's the thing. I was wrong.

I thought I knew in my 18, 19, 21-year-old brain what 40-year-old Deloney was going to want with life, and I didn't know. And so we cast vision together, and that vision changes. That vision grows together like a relationship does and so it's about it's not always about i've got these 10 things etched in concrete you're either in or you're out for me it's here's what i think i want to invite you in to what i think and i want to hear what you think and we're going to grow together right brother that's good that's good man i was wrong to the tune of 80 i got a 20 on that exam

right i got a 20 on that exam so to the young people listening right now should they have a list i think it's always wise to have a guide okay it's always wide to have a wise to have a guide and you shouldn't make that list in a vacuum you should make that list with people that have been down the road you should make that list with people that have been down the road. You should make that list with people who share similar values than you. You should make that list with people you totally disagree with. And then you should be open, hold that list loosely. If your value is I'm always right, you're going to have a painful life.

If your value is I'm always going to seek wisdom and always look for opportunities to grow, your life's going to be much more peaceful and you're going to be a different person at the end of that trajectory. That's the gift, right? That's the joy. That's the beauty of life. Man, listen here, bro. You're walking together. And that is something that I think is important. I wish there was a way that couples, before they even got into a relationship, there was like pre-relationship counseling.

Because I think it could help individuals make better decisions should we even enter into this. And it would be a healthier relationship, which would lead to a healthier marriage, which will lead to a healthier life. So here's, I think this is one of the curses of our time, Anthony, is that we have tried to ROI every exchange. Yep. Yep. Yep. And so when somebody meets somebody and the idea is, will this work versus, hey, my name is John.

Who are you? You are asking a human interaction to have an ROI, a benefit. And that's not what relationships are about. Man, listen. Only on The Dave Ramsey Show do you hear money conversations, relationship conversations, dating questions, mental health questions. Boy, another great hour. Hey, thank you all so much, America, for listening. This is The Dave Ramsey Show.

This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Once again, you made The Dave Ramsey Show one of the top four most popular podcasts last year. To get your daily dose of motivation and inspiration from the Ramsey Network, subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.