The Ramsey Show - App - You Have to Submit to the Plan (Hour 1)

Episode Date: March 10, 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. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Jennifer starts off this hour in Minnesota. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. My husband and I are on Baby Step 3B, and we've been saving for one and a half years. And single-family homes in the suburbs of Minneapolis, without becoming a neighborhood issue, averages around $275,000 to $300,000, where townhomes average around $230,000.

We make about $100,000 a year year would it be worth buying a townhouse first or keep saving for a single family home as long as the townhome is marketable uh and you can use it as a step up there's nothing wrong with it of course that has everything to do with the quality of the townhome the design of it with the location of it um to where someone else sees it as appealing when you get ready to sell it right right uh but as long as long as there's a market for it you'll make a little money on it you'll be in an ownership position and you can save continue to save after you buy it and make your move up as a stair step but don't buy something that you get stuck in because you're so desperate to own something.

Right, and I'm just worried about the home association fees in the suburbs. It's about $500 a month average for maintenance fees, and I was just thinking about, are we going to get a... Well, not 100% of the homes are in an HOA. Well, it's a townhome. Well, even a townhome. It depends in an HOA. So if you're... Or it's a townhome. Yeah. Well, even a townhome. A lot of times...

It depends on how the townhome's set up. But if it's set up in something like that, you've got to watch and understand what the HOA is you're getting into. Because if it's a negative HOA situation, it will affect the value of the property. Meaning if they're mismanaging it or the fees are too high or something like that or there's constant drama and conflict in that HOA, word gets out on that neighborhood and nobody wants to be in there. So if my husband and I were to purchase a townhome first,

and if there's a market for it, would we need to maybe stay in there for a couple years just to get some return of investment? Yeah, you're typically going to want to own a piece of real estate at least two years. Okay. In most cases for it to go up enough in value to justify the costs off the back end. Otherwise, you'll end up losing money on the transaction net of fees. Okay. So, yeah, you want to plan to be there a little while if you want to make that move.

Or you can sit where you are and rent for 18 more months and make the other buy. Either one's fine. There's not a – it all has to do with just don't get into something you can't get out of where you buy something that's a great deal and you're so desperate to own that you get into a thing that nobody wants it. You've got a white elephant on your hands. All right, up next is going to be Tasha in California. Hey, Tasha, how are you?

I'm good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So basically, I'm calling because I live in the Silicon Valley, which you know is incredibly expensive, and I'm also going through a divorce. So because the rent here is really high, I'm renting a room from one of my uncles, and my two youngest daughters are living in Seattle with their father while I pay off debt and try to save up money to

buy a home outside of the Bay Area within the next two years. A lot of people that I've spoken with feel like this is too great a sacrifice and that I should be doing everything I can to have my daughters with me but if I rent something in the Bay Area I'm looking at paying 50 percent of my monthly income for an apartment and living paycheck to paycheck whereas I feel like if I just make the sacrifice for two or three years then we're set up to be stable so do you think the sacrifice is too great well Well, I guess that's your choice. I mean, being with your kids or not, right? Do you work in Silicon Valley? I do, yeah.

What's your income? Right now it's $60,000. You can't afford to live there. Yeah, I'm currently applying for a job that would pay $80,000 to $90,000. I'm qualified for those jobs. I'm not sure you can live there making that, can you? Yeah. I mean, it's hard, but this is my home, so I didn't just move here like,

oh, I want to move to California. Well, it's your home, but you can't afford to live there. Yeah. Well, my concern is if I move elsewhere, then I'm looking at, you know, the money that I was saving rent, I would easily pay it in child care. So that's the only thing that I'm really concerned about because my kids are three and one. But your kids aren't with you right now. Right. Yeah. So staying with my uncle, I'm only paying $500 a month in rent. So I'm able to pay about $2,000 a month right now towards my debt.

And then I can use that $2,000 to save up to buy something two hours away where it's affordable. And you're going to commute two hours? No, no. At that time, I would plan to get something, get a job out there. Then you would have childcare? Well, by then they'll be in elementary school, so the situation would be a little different. Now, it's completely up to you what you want to do, but do not sit and have a discussion with yourself that says, I can afford to live in Silicon Valley making 60 grand. You can't. There's no math that's going to make that work. So I'm not sure what it is

you're sacrificing for. I'm not sure how you're winning here. So I think you can make as much or more money somewhere else and have half the cost of living, and that would enable your children to be with you. But it's completely up to you, the life you want to live. But the thing I don't want you to do is just be in denial about something and just go, well, this is my home. Well, that doesn't matter. It's your home. If you make $20,000, you can't buy one square inch of dirt there. I mean, it's just some of the most expensive cost of living in the entire nation is in that valley.

And so you've just got to be realistic about your assumptions on these things. That's all I'm asking you to do. So, hey, thank you for the call. We appreciate you joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Kelsey is on Instagram.

I would like to know what you think about buying a car with a rebuilt title. Is that a good idea? Depends on why it was rebuilt and what was going on with it. You're probably going to sell it at a discount, and you're probably buying it at a discount. Because when someone sees a salvaged title, meaning that there's something gone wrong with the car, it's been flooded, something's happened with it, they're not going to pay the same as they would for a non-salvage title. So you get a good buy on the purchase, but then when you get ready to sell it, it's harder to sell

and you're probably going to discount it in order to attract a buyer at that time. And so depends on what you're using it for. You know, if you're buying a truck to be on the farm and you're just going to drive it until it just completely falls apart and you have no intention of ever selling it, salvage title's fine as long as the work that was done to it was done properly and you're going to get good use of the thing. Number one, you got to check on the repair portion of it. But once you've done that, it's just a matter of what the consumer is going to look like, what your buyer is going to look at when they see that title.

So, hey, interesting question. Thanks for joining us. Open phones. 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 health care costs. Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry.

A Better Business Bureau-accredited organization, CHM members share to pay each other's medical bills. It's not insurance. It's Christians financially and spiritually supporting each other. It's what Christian Healthcare Ministries has done for over 35 years. And our members have shared over $2.5 billion in medical bills. To learn more, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Thank you for joining us, America. Cara is with us. Cara is in New Mexico. Hi, Cara. How are you? Hi, Dave. Great. How are you? Better us, America. Kara is with us. Kara is in New Mexico.

Hi, Kara. How are you? Hi, Dave. Great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? My husband and I are just starting babysat four, five, and six.

He's in the Air Force and has six and a half years left in before he'll retire out at 20 years. And we're planning on using his GI bill to cover some of the kids college costs so i was wondering if we should take the money that we'll be saving for our kids college and the money that we're saving for a down payment for a house and put it into mutual funds since the earliest we'll need any of this money is six and a half years from now and we're not 100 sure which state we want to retire in yet i would okay. Okay. Now, what I probably do in those situations is I would sit down with one of the SmartVestor pros and make a selection of a fund. I always, when I'm doing something on the short term like that, I always go with a more conservative type

mutual fund. For instance, a growth and income mutual fund will be less volatile than the overall stock market. If you wanted to mirror the stock market exactly, another place you could do it with little to no risk and actually no fees, a no-load fund, would be an index fund, an S&P 500 fund. That's generally where I throw money that I'm parking for the short term is just in an S&P because I just almost's generally where I throw money that I'm parking for the short term is just in an S&P because I just almost use it like a savings account, jumping in and out of the market, depending on, you know, whether I'm usually saving up some money to buy some real estate in my case. So, but, you know, either one of those is going to be fine.

And I don't think, I just wouldn't get into something like an aggressive or an international or one of the more volatile types of funds. In other words, I wouldn't spread it across the four types we talk about because you've got a short window. Does that make sense? Yes, that does. Thank you. Hey, thank you for calling in.

We appreciate you joining us. Alexis is next. She's in California. Hi, Alexis. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? So my husband has been laid off from his job after 19 years. Wow. Unfortunately, I think I know. Unfortunately, I think the coronavirus is the final straw for them because he's a manufacturing and everything was trapped in China for too long. Ah, okay. So here's her question.

So the whole time he has been... So he was working for a company that was financially weak. Yes. Okay. You got it. All right. So unfortunately, though, we were part of a profit sharing in a 401k, and that whole entire time he was investing.

It's up to six figures. We do know clearly it's probably lost money over the past couple days so we don't know whether or not to leave it in and let it rebound or to go ahead and pull it right away and roll it over to a traditional ira well if you roll it to a traditional ira today you're going to sell your 401k at a low time but you're also going to buy at a low time so you've got no no there's no downside to that that's like if you said oh it's high i'm going to wait till it goes down well that doesn't make sense either because you're going to sell high and buy high if the market was up right and so it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you can go ahead and roll it as long as

you don't let it sit out of the market you, you don't sell it low and then wait five weeks before you, you know, make the transaction to make the rollover. So just do a direct transfer rollover, and it's only out of the market a matter of hours or days at that point, and it's not going to be a problem because you're going to sell at about the same rate you buy at. That makes perfect sense, and that's why we called you, because obviously other people have already given us different advice. Yeah, well, people are freaking out. They don't care. So what was he making?

What kind of money did he make? I think at the end of last year it was like $65. Did he love his job? He did until like the past couple of years. He was kind of burned out. i think he's ready for a change so it's kind of a blessing to do something else it is honestly a blessing and they have any severance or they just put them on the street no they did they were very nice to him and they did give him a severance how much that brings us to um about three months worth oh Oh, good. So if he gets a job immediately, it's like a signing bonus.

Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. This could be the best thing that happened to him in a long time. I think so. But when he does start a new job, would you recommend him just investing in the IRA or opening up a mutual fund with a new company if they don't match? Well, match beats roth beats traditional

and so if they take if they give a match if you're at baby step four you're always putting in 15 of your income into retirement and you do the up to the match if you don't have a match or get up to the match then you move to roth if they don't offer a Roth 401k with good options, then you would do Roth IRAs with good mutual funds until that's full. If that's full and you don't still are not to 15% of your income, then you would go on and do some traditional, the traditional non-matching 401k at his new place. But as far as the old 401k goes you always take it with you you always roll it to a traditional traditional to traditional and with a direct transfer rollover see one of our smart investor pros and they can show you exactly how to do that you'll understand it before you do

it because you never do something with money unless you understand it so hey thank you for the call tony is with us. He's up next in Arkansas. Hi, Tony. How are you? Hi, Mr. Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, I appreciate you taking my call. I wanted to run something by you real quick. My wife and I are currently in baby step two, and we have a gross income of 83 a a year with remaining debt of $18 to pay off. And so I'm curious about refinancing my mortgage. I've got a current rate of $475, and I can get locked in at $2875 from a $30 to a $15, which puts my payment up about $73 a month. Are you going to stay in the house? That's my plan at this point, yes, sir.

Okay, if you plan to stay in the house, that's going to be a deal. Okay, and even being in baby step two, that's a long-term answer, right? Well, you put all your closing costs into the loan. Right. Shouldn't be anything out of pocket. Okay, and correct, right, okay. Right. Shouldn't be anything out of pocket. Okay. Correct. Right.

Okay. Okay. And then with the increase in payment, though, during Baby Step 2 and not putting – I mean, that's a little less towards Baby Step. $73 isn't going to change your deal, but I would still do it. Grab that interest rate while it's down, and let's lock it in. Okay. Okay. I wanted to run that by you. I could go either way, and so I wanted your advice.

Yeah, do a 15-year fixed only, of course. Roll your closing costs in. But I think if you determine what your closing costs are and take 2% savings on your balance annually, you're probably going to recoup those closing costs in 18 to 24 months. Right. Yes, sir. And so after that, you'll have just gravy on the biscuit.

In other words, you're going to be saving that 2% of your balance from then on. It's going to make a ton of sense to do this. It's a great refi. Folks, this is a good time to refi, by the way. Your rates are down again. I mean, interest rates are down again, really. This is one of the best times in a long time. It's hard to believe we've been sitting here in this 3% range for so long.

But, I mean, my quote sheet came in this morning, and it's like 3% again. So that's a dadgum great deal. He got a 275 quote, he said, but that's probably with a couple points. But just the same, churchill mortgage if you have not refied and you're sitting with a you know one of these four percent mortgages hard to believe a four percent something and above mortgage is a high mortgage but it is if you're sitting there with a stupid adjustable rate or a balloon this is the time to get rid of those things where do you think it's going to adjust from here, baby? Up.

That's where it's going to adjust from here. So let's get this refinance done. Jump on Churchill Mortgage's website. Give them a call. It's not an ad, but it's just a fact. I mean, you need to do this. You need to get this locked down as soon as possible because I just don't know how you're going to get any better rates than this.

So I'm getting a lot of refi calls in the last two weeks and that's the reason I'm getting them again. It's because these rates have ticked down just a little bit and it's making them really attractive now. Hey, thanks for joining us. This is the Dave Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Skyler and Marcy are with us.

Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, Dave. Good, how are you? Welcome. Where do you guys live? St. George, Utah. Wow, and all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. Yep. Look at you. How much have you paid off?

$62,000. $62,000. $62,000. How long did this take? 27 months. All right. And your range of income during that time? We started at $80,000 and ended just in at $128,000. Very good.

Good for you guys. What do you all do for a living? I work construction. And I work for Costco Wholesale in their hearing aid department. Oh, cool. Yes. Very cool. Good.

So $62,000 in debt. What kind of debt did you have? Most of it was medical. We had a lot of medical debt. And then we also had a car, some vacations that followed us home, a bathroom remodel, and a couple of just little credit cards. So you're just kind of normal. Normal. How long have you all been married?

11 years. Okay, very cool. What in the world happened 27 months ago that lit you on fire like this? Well, we heard about your program through Smart Dollar with Costco. But right before that, we were just kind of treading water is what I call it. We're making our monthly payments, not really falling behind, but not really getting ahead. And all of a sudden, 2016 happened to us where everything that could go wrong did. And we had just the worst year ever, and we kind of started sinking.

And then Costco came out with Smart Dollar in 2017. He had actually heard of you first and tried to get me on board, and I wasn't having it. And then when Costco came out with Smart Dollar, I brought home you're fine okay i brought home the um card that they had handed us out and i looked it up and it had all your baby steps laid out and i said hey watch this video it's really cool and he kind of rolled his eyes and he's like yeah i already told you about what i would have done oh he said i've already told you about him yeah he'd heard of you first okay oh wow all right that's fun yeah well cool he'd heard of you first. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. All right. That's fun.

Yeah. Well, cool. So for those of you just joining us that don't know what you're talking about, we have an HR benefit package called Smart Dollar. It's financial wellness. And Costco bought it for all of their employees nationwide. And so thousands and thousands of Costco folks have gone through Smart Dollar, the Smart Dollar program, and they furnished it to you free, right? Mm-hmm.

Wow. That's pretty cool. That's really cool. Very, very neat. It's a very good program. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you.

It's fun for me to walk into Costco sometimes and people go, hey, I was just doing your thing. You know, when I'm checking out, it's pretty cool. So in our neighborhood one over here. So very cool. Well, congratulations, you guys how's it feel phenomenal it's so good only time you've been debt free in 11 years i'm guessing yes yeah so what what were the keys to getting out of debt that you guys figured out from smart dollar budgeting honestly i and i think really submitting to the plan um the first few months we tried to

kind of do it our own way. I was still contributing to my 401k and it was really hard for me to stop that. But once you submit to the plan and you do it, it works. Yeah. So you're kind of doing Ramsey-ish for a while. For a few months. It took me a couple of months to really figure it out. And once you do it, it really does work. Yeah.

Good for you. Very cool. So all in, submit, do the budget. Anything else? Just keep with it. Yeah. So how many of your other team members, did you have other team members doing it, cheering you on at the same time?

Yeah, a lot of my coworkers, a lot of them kind of do ish. But we were all doing it together. I think I beat most of them, though. Ah! She says with that competitive smile. I love it. That's great. Very, very cool. So you had co-workers that were cheerleaders. Anybody else? Who was your biggest cheerleaders? Our families. A lot of them don't get it. They don't understand, but they still cheered us on anyway. That's cool. That's cool. That's a nice act on their part. Well done. Very classy.

Well, good job, you guys. So proud of you. I have to give props to Zander Insurance. Some of the medical stuff that we had been through with Skylar tried to die on me. Skylar. Sorry. Come on. And he was considered uninsurable at 28 years old.

Wow. And Zander was able to get someone to underwrite it and get him life insurance. Wow. That's cool. Very cool. What happened to you? I basically had an autoimmune disease that attacked my lungs in my box. My body wasn't oxygenating.

Ooh. That'll get you. Yeah. So it kind of looks just like pneumonia, but it's not. So when they start treating you for pneumonia, after three or four days, it wasn't working. And they had to go back to square one. So I was in the ICU for nine days until they figured it out. That's less than fun.

Yeah. Wow. And then they gave him chemo on top of that, which knocks your immune system out. And the chemo treatments run about $10,000 each. And he had five of them to save his life. Wow. Wow. Rowdy.

Yep. Well, we're glad you're here. Me too. In so many ways. Yeah. Well done, you guys. We've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires. You're on your way to being one.

And our salute and our thanks to Costco for for uh paying for smart dollar for all their team members here we got the fruit of it right in front of us 62 000 kiddos are with you and what are their names and ages we have raden over here he's 10 claire is seven and presley is four ah okay well i met the girls backstage earlier when i was getting me a cup of coffee as they came was pretty jealous well i'll be i'll meet y' in a minute, so it's all good. Well, congratulations, you guys. We're so proud of you. A bunch of the Smart Dollar team came out to cheer you on.

They're proud of you. They're proud of Costco for supporting you guys and putting this in as a financial wellness benefit. So very, very cool. Well done, guys. Woo-hoo! Skyler, Marcy, Rayden, Claire, and Presley, $62,000 paid off in 27 months, making $80,000 to $128,000. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! We're debt-free! And the crowd goes wild i love it how fun is that that's pretty cool that is pretty cool well eight out of ten workers on your team if you're making decisions at your company are living paycheck to paycheck and money problems are a major distraction and cause of reduced productivity at work and where someone's handling something dangerous it's uh it can be

even increase the danger the physical safety depending on what's going on at your place right i mean if you're handling a quick big equipment or something you really need to be like focusing on that not worrying about mastercard calling in your back pocket to give you a hard time because you're buying on your payments. Smart Dollar, as we said, is the financial wellness program that our team created so that you can help your team, you can help your employees. And businesses are buying this program all the way from small mom-and-pop shops are buying it all the way to major Fortune 500 companies like Costco.

We've had tens of millions of employees go through this thing or have it available to them anyway. Not all of them go through it just because it's presented, but it's pretty cool. And there's a lot of bad products out there in this space, this financial wellness space, that are just trash. They say they're financial wellness, but they're really paycheck advances, student loan refinancing, this kind of crap. And you just don't let that stuff in your business. And you're not helping your employees when you do that. You're cursing your employees when you do that. Instead, bring in something like SmartDollar,

where they can learn how to get on a budget, get out of debt, do their debt-free scream. And you don't think she isn't thankful to Costco? Well, I can promise you she's thankful to Costco. That's for sure. She mentioned it three times before I even brought it up. You heard her. And she wasn't coached on that. That was her.

That's just the way. I mean, it's a nice benefit. You ever had your company give you a nice benefit? I have. It's a nice benefit. I give some nice benefits here, I can tell you that, too. So, hey, people can turn their lives around, and it could be all your fault if you own and run the company. If you're the HR director, it could be all your fault that people turn their lives around.

Some of them's marriages get saved because they get on the same page about money. It'd be all your fault. You would have been the cause of it. You want to learn more about it, you're running a business, you're an hr director you're in that space check out this whole smart dollar product line we don't talk about a lot here on the air but it's a big deal go to smartdollar.com and you can find out this is the Dave Ramsey show Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Kevin is with us in Indiana. Hi, Kevin. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I've just got a quick question.

So the employer I work with doesn't have a solid 401k program. Okay. No matching, no nothing. Okay. And I don't work for a large drone contractor, and I don't foresee the company being around in the next 15 years. So I ensure that there's going to be an employment change for myself in that time frame. Okay.

So our make-up for my family is right now we have about $11,500 left on our vehicle to pay off. That vehicle has 0% interest until the life of the loan is up, which is another, I want to say, 14 months. But that's the only debt we have. So I'm looking at what should I do for me as a retirement plan? My wife through the hospital that she works with, she's got a great matching program, 6%, and they match 3% of that. So hers has grown exponentially in the last three years. Great. But for me, I don't know what I need to do.

Okay. You should stop all retirement temporarily until you're out of debt and have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, including hers. Okay. Let's get that car paid off. Okay. And let's get Grandma's rainy day fund put away of three to six months of expenses. Have you got money in savings right now?

Actually, yeah, I do. How much? I have roughly $35,000. Oh, good. Pay the car off today. Okay. We don't borrow money on cars to get rich. It's never happened in the history of the human race.

Doesn't work. You're playing a game there that you're losing. Just pay it off today. Okay, so now you have $24,000 in your emergency fund. Good. Now it's time to start your retirement. Yep. Okay. So now that brings us to baby step four, and we put 15% of your household income into somebody's

retirement plans. It doesn't matter whose, because you have ownership rights to hers and she to yours because you're married. All right? So it doesn't matter where it lands. So now what does she make a year? Right now we got her working part-time because we got a six-month-old, and she's home with her part-time.

So she's making about $35,000, $30,000 to $35,000 a year. What are you making? Depending on the hours that she's – I'm making $75,000. Okay, so you're making $ all right and so that means you need to be saving about 16 000 a year right that'd be 15 percent of 110 give or take okay and so we need to get 16 000 going into something um and so however much her match is we're going to do that first now does her 403b her retirement program have a roth option to it can it be a roth uh you know i don't know i can't answer that okay if it can if it can make it a Roth. Now, the portion that they match in, their matching side cannot be Roth.

It's against the regulations. So the portion they give you is non-Roth, but the portion you put in could be Roth. So we're trying to get $16,000 into these. So the first thing we do is get all the match we can get. The second thing we do is get all the Roth we can get. And you will get there with that alone, I think. So you take the match. You guys, even if they don't have a Roth at her place,

you do her place up to the match. Then you do a Roth each, which is $6,000 each, a regular individual Roth. Just go to clicksmartvestor at DaveRamsey.com. It will drop down a list of the smart investor pros in your area that we endorse. And you pick which one of those you want. You can sit down with them. They'll have the heart of a teacher. You'll hear advice like you hear here on the show.

You'll learn about it. You'll understand what you're doing. And you open mutual funds into two Roth IRAs, one for her, one for you. That'd be $12,000 of our $16,000 plus her match. We're getting pretty close to our $16,000. Now, that means we're probably going to do her match plus some at her work to get all the way to $16,000 because we've got to get $4,000 a year going into hers. You see how I'm doing that?

Yep. So if you put $4,000 into hers you see how i'm doing that so if you put four thousand if you put four thousand into hers regardless of match and you put six thousand each into two roth iras individuals you're at your 16 and you got your baby step four going then the next thing you'll do in your budget is to start saving for your kids college and you can do that with your smart investor pro as well pick out some mutual, open some 529 accounts or some ESA accounts with them to protect the college funds from taxation on the growth of that. And that will get you there. So that's exactly how you lay this out.

Pay the car off tonight, sit down with SmartVestor Pro, get $4,000 going into hers, regardless of how much of it's matched. Pick good mutual funds. We always tell you to pick mutual funds across four types, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, and international that have at least five-year or 10-year track records so that you've got something really safe that you can tie into. And that's what I would do. So very, very, very good question. Thanks for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Casey's in Pennsylvania. Hi, Casey. How are you? Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So my husband and I are about to start Baby Step 3, hopefully by the end

of this week, and I have a, I guess, a cash balance plan pension from a previous job that's just out there. If I take it out right now, it's about payable to me would be like $10,195. So I'm just at a point where I'm not really sure what to do with it. Well, I wouldn't take it out because you're going to be penalized 10% plus your tax rate. Okay. Instead, I would roll it to an IRA, an individual IRA, and you can get it into good mutual funds that way. So, again, click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com. Get in touch with one of our SmartVestor pros.

By the way, it's an excellent time to be doing this because the market's way down right now because people are freaked out over the coronavirus, and Russia's decided to go to war, not literally, but have a gas war with the Middle East, and so oil prices are way down. So both those things are driving the stock market down temporarily. It's a great time to be buying. So I would immediately get in touch with a SmartVestor Pro and get your paperwork started so that gets moved before the stock market recovers from all this

because this is a great time to buy while it's low. And I don't time the market, but, boy, I'm going to take advantage of this for sure i don't believe in market timing it's a gets you in trouble and i don't want to go there but um so but good question thank you for joining us here open phones at 888-825-5225 jordan's in louisiana hi jordan how are you hey d. It's a rainy day here, but I just want to call and get your perspective. I'm a single dad. Income's about $4,000 a month, and my ex just moved out. The house is all in my name, but I'm drowning every month, and I just started listening to your program, so I thought I'd call and get some advice on whether or not I should sell a house. I've only been in it. It'll be two years in July.

I'm sorry. How much is your house payment? With everything, escrow and all, about $1,500. And what do you bring home a month? $4,000. She was helping with bills and stuff like that, but now it's kind of getting out of control, and I'm trying to cut down on what I can but with three kids it's uh interesting well i mean you got your hands full emotionally and that makes it difficult to manage too so i would make sure i'm getting on a budget get jump on every dollar.com and download the app okay and um uh when you get the budget organized, it makes the money work harder. $1,500 is not ideal on a $4,000 take-home pay, but that's doable. How much are your car payments?

I just got my car's $500. Oh, sell it. And then I did a debt consolidation, or a debt settlement, actually. My credit's kind of shot, so I can't jump into anything else. And then I did a debt consolidation or a debt settlement, actually. Yeah. So my credit's kind of shot, so I can't jump into anything else. Yeah, I would get an inexpensive car, like a $2,000 car, and I'd get rid of that $500 car payment. That's the thing that needs to go.

Hey, we're going to be there in Baton Rouge on the 25th doing a Financial Peace Accelerated event, all Financial Peace in all one day. I'm going to give you tickets to that to come, and we'll help you, okay? Hold on. Kelly will pick up. We'll get you tickets. 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.