The Ramsey Show - Are You Going To Be a Victim or Take Control of Your Life?

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "My new husband is almost $1 million in debt I didn't know about," "We owe our in-laws $40k; what should we do?" Dave wants you to stop whining about the housing market, Baby Steps Millionaire Theme Hour. Support Our Sponsors: Angel Studios Zander Insurance BetterHelp Christian Healthcare Ministries Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! 🏦 Take Your 3-Minute Money Assessment - Get a personalized money plan! 🏘️ Buy, sell, and invest the right way using Dave’s proven plan. 📈 For help with investing, get connected with a SmartVestor Pro.  ☂️ Protect yourself with the right coverage—take our coverage quiz! Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Thank you for joining us, America. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Jade Walsh, bestselling author. Ramsey Personality is my co-host today, so we're going to take your calls. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Leona starts off this hour in Fairbanks, Alaska. Hi, Leona, how are you? Hey, Dave. I'm great. How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so I'm calling because I am pretty newly married. Not my first rodeo, but one of the things I did, I made a mistake of, is not doing my financial background check on my new spouse. And so October, we got married in May. In October, we realized that we are close to a million dollars in debt. Wait a minute. Slow down a minute. Wait a minute. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

I got lost in this already. I want to make sure I'm with you. So you're how old? I am 45. Okay. And you've been married before. I have. You said not first rodeo.

Okay. So you met a guy and you married him and you said it was a mistake to not do a background check. No, a financial check. You didn't have conversations about money is what you're saying? I didn't check to see what kind of debt ratio. Did you ask him? No. Oh, okay.

So you just kind of walked in blindly. He thought you didn't care. Turns out you cared. Okay. Yeah. All right, I got it. And so you've been married for how long? For about nine cared. Okay. Yeah. All right, I got it. And so you've been married for how long? For about nine months.

Okay. And then you woke up one morning and decided to ask, or he decided to tell you? What happened? I wanted to quit my job. And so in that, I asked him if that was possible. We went back and forth. I said, I really need to see the budget, assuming he kept one. And I found out there that he didn't keep a budget.

But when I started pulling things together, finding about 17 credit cards, I realized there's no way. And he was heavily reliant on my income as well. How was he making it before you were married? As a bachelor he just he was just a heavy spender and so how was he if he couldn't make it without your salary now how was he making it without your salary before you were married right we he bought a um a five hundred thousand dollar house since you were married uh see my name is not on the title since you got married when did he buy the five hundred thousand dollar house

august it closed so we were married when so you're married you bought a house okay you were aware you were buying a house i was so five hundred thousand dollars is owed on the house and you said there's a million dollars. What's the other $500,000? There's another house that he had. It's a $300,000 home. We have it as a rental right now. What's owed on it? $330,000.

Did you not know about the rental? No, I did. You just didn't think about it. All right, so $830,000. Yeah, it was just 830 000 and now what other what's the other 200 000 in debt um he has a heloc loan um and some medical debt and then about a hundred and almost two hundred,000 in credit card. Okay, and so what's your question? I mean, how do I not murder him, A? It's not his fault.

It's yours. You didn't ask. I know. I know. Well, he doesn't get murdered. You might, but he doesn't. Right. I mean, you walked around acting like nothing's happening,

and he just assumed it was all okay. He's living his life like a, you know, just happy as he can be, happy as a little old clam, and then you came along and wanted to quit your job, and he couldn't do it. So you're the one that didn't do anything. I mean, he's got a mess. There's no question about that. We don't need to murder him.

Does he want to clean this up? So far, he's been doing everything. We have a Financial peace university coach right now who's helping us untangle a lot of things and great so both houses are for sale no well they need to be okay y'all are broke people yeah because i'm guessing there's a little bit of equity in these houses you can use to clean up this stupid butt credit card mess. This guy spends like he's in Congress. Hey, by the way, what do you guys earn? What's the income between the two of you?

$200,000. Okay. You can dig through it pretty quick then. You might even get to keep the house you're living in, but the rental needs to go immediately. Yeah. And that's where the HELOC's laying too, right? I think the HELOC is on the new house, but both my, our coach and I are both confused about that. It's just, it's just messy. Okay. And so number one, the two of you,

next time you meet with a coach, you have to raise your right hand and swear before the judge. I promise to never do anything with money ever again without my spouse knowing it both of you yeah both of you you do not have the right to act surprised after this point up to this point because you walked into it begging for a surprise and but but now after from today on he doesn't make any moves anymore because he's really not good with money. We really can't trust his judgment. He really sucks at this. And honestly, you're lucky that he agreed to go through financial peace and has the wherewithal to want to change it.

Yeah. You got lucky there. Yeah, I think you guys get on a beans and rice budget. You sell the rental, follow what the coach is telling you. You may have to sell the big house. You may not. How much do you owe on your stupid cars? So that's messy.

His wife passed, and there are two vehicles. There's one vehicle in her name and a motor home in her name. Was the debt in her name? Yes. Okay. But he kept the rest of the estate too, right? Yeah. So it's not messy.

Both of those need to get sold yesterday. Did he not probate a will or probate the estate? No, he didn't. He just actually told the bank like two weeks ago that she passed away two years ago. He just what? He just now told the bank that she passed away. Yeah, so the bank is pretty upset right now. So he's had the stuff in possession for two years.

Okay, so this level of denial and deception that he has lived his whole life in has to change or your marriage is not going to work. And this level of not bothering to ask and walking around with your head stuck in the clouds the way you do it, that has to change or your marriage is not going to work. So the two of you have to commit to a clean, clear way of living where we're not deceiving each other or anyone else. All right. And you can get these two cars sold. And do you have any debt on the two cars you guys are driving well the heloc somehow has his truck wrapped into it no

it doesn't it just used the heloc to buy the truck that's all okay but it is so how expensive is his truck i think it was uh like 18 000 that he paid he told me he paid off but that's not too bad i'm not sure i believe it though all right so yeah you guys just got to dig in clean all the you know get all the tangles out of the hair get everything straight and then decide what you're going to cut how much of a hair how much hair you're going to have left after you finish this haircut and then you got to be clean with each other and everybody else. Quit hiding stuff, both of you. Wow, what a mess, girl.

This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is our co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Evan in New York asks, what advice would you give to a future millionaire? How do you mentally prepare for that day, and how do you avoid becoming a different person? That's a great question. That's great. I feel like you're the one to answer that, Dave. Well, I mean, both of us can, because you hang around with a bunch of people around here that are millionaires, and they hadn't changed a lick well I mean both of us can because you hang around with a bunch of people

around here that are millionaires and they hadn't changed a lick I mean George might have gotten a little snarkier I know I think that's just the way he was made and Rachel Rachel may have engaged a little bit more into conspiracy theories but that's the way she's made so um you know what usually happens evan is that um the pro the average millionaire in our studies it takes an average of 17 and a half years from the time you decide i'm going to get out of debt i'm going to pay off my house i'm going to invest in my 401k and i'm going to build wealth and on average it takes 17 and a half years. Some people do it in 10 years. But my point being, either way, it's a gradual process, and it's not unusual at all for someone on the millionaire theme hour or the first time I meet them and they realize they're a Baby Steps millionaire,

they haven't even added it up. They didn't even realize it. It's like, oh, look, our 401K went up in value. The stock market jumped, and that put us over the line. So now we're millionaires because it's not a feeling. It's a math thing. And so you don't know it like in your bones. It's not like a cold wind blows through or something to let you know.

Right. So, you know, if it takes you 10 years to do something, you're becoming a different person during the 10 years anyway. And it's not a snot or a snob or a rich jerk or something like that. You're just becoming a hardworking person who's diligent and investing and saving. And so you've evolved from an immature child, which we all start out as, into a very mature, forward-thinking person. And so if you do change to a different person, it's very gradual, and it's not a bad person, it's a better person. Not because millionaires are better, but the things you do to become a millionaire, the habits are all positive character habits. They're integrity, steadiness, dependability,

diligence, thrift, generosity. these are the things you do steadily to become a millionaire and that makes you a great person right well yeah and i think it's very um opposite of the stigma i think in our culture you think millionaire and it's like you know a guy with a cigar and he's greedy and he's taking money from you know the poor and giving it it's like that's that's not what this is at all. The truth is that's only in books or movies. In the real world, I don't run into those people. That's right.

But I think that that picture has made earning money. Like Simon Legree or something. It's made it something to fear. Oh, if you make money, you could, you know. What I do know, Evan, is this. Whether you get money fast or you make money you know that you could you know yeah that's that's what i do know evan is this um whether you get money faster you get money slow money magnifies who you are and the more money you get the more magnified it is and so a generous person becomes magnified and we call them a philanthropist they support great causes all over the world and certainly in their own community as an example but a person who has anger problems and is very self-centered you get money you turn

them into a narcissistic puke right they're not you don't even want to be in the same room with them the rage level that they would have is unbelievable i run into very few of those um but and if there's crazy in your extended family, they get crazier when you get money. So, I mean, in effect, it magnifies the good and the bad in your personal self and in your life. But again, generally, that happens so gradually that no one realizes it. And your most of your path is positive. And so it's not really something to be afraid of

and here's an interesting thing like a guy one of my bible teachers used to tell me this all the time he said if you ask a question like this it's not going to be you it's not going to be you it's the person that would never ask this question that's in danger it's a good point but if you ask this question you're a good man evan you You're fine. Hey, guys, I am really excited. While I was out, one of the things we launched here on the show is a brand-new partnership with a company called Health Trust Financial to help with health insurance. Now, health insurance in the past 15 years has evolved and deteriorated, and the whole space is just a mess it's hard and basically obamacare

has put about 70 percent of the health insurance companies and agents out of business and so the health insurance business is completely different now and to get proper care you really need a pro in your corner and the health trust guys we've been they've been one of our health insurance elps back in the old days and they're the best people ever and they really know what they're doing they are now a ramsey trusted partner they're who we send you to for health insurance and they've been serving Ramsey fans as ELPs for more than 20 years and they're the only health insurance company we recommend they will help you get covered and getting health insurance you know under today's world it's almost mandatory but regardless you should get it because the number one financial cause of bankruptcy is not credit cards,

it's medical bills. And if you've got no health insurance and you run up, you have a little stay over in the NICU with a baby, or you spend a little time in ICU, you've got a half a million dollars laying on your plate, and you're gone for most people. And so health insurance is absolutely, it's part of your budget from day one. Life insurance is part of your budget from day one life insurance is part of your budget

from day one i would recommend zander for that right so health trust financial.com these guys i personally know them i've worked with them as we said for 20 years they built a business in this new health insurance environment which is very difficult but they do a very very good job and it can be the only thing that stands between your wallet and a mess so you don't want to go near you know if you drive by a hospital somebody called diagnostics sends you a 79 bill i mean it's the medical world is wild and so you do not want to enter a medical situation without good coverage. And healthtrustfinancial.com, our new partner, can help you do that. I'm really excited about these guys.

Like I said, I've known them personally for a long time. We've been working on how we were going to evolve our program that we recommend. And so this is now taking the place of the old elp program for health insurance great there's one health insurance elp endorsed local provider nationwide called health trust financial.com and they will get you some help in your area or over the phone or over the web whatever you need health trust financial.com they know their stuff and you got to protect your wallet people these things these health issues medical issues are just man it's just devastating when you're not ready to go ben is in peoria hey ben welcome to the ramsey show hey dave and rachel how are you guys doing doing great how can we help

all right well i gotta say it is a pleasure to be speaking with you. I've been a longtime listener, huge fan of you guys. Cool. How can we help? So I'm calling about, I've heard you guys talk about the high-yield savings accounts, and I'm just curious. I currently, my wife and I have our savings in just our small-town credit union. What's it paying? About 0.65%. That, that would be like, that would be sucking. Yeah.

Yes. And I've heard you guys talk about up to about 5% on the high yield savings accounts. I'm just curious, would you recommend specific savings accounts for that specific places? I mean, there's, Dave just did a whole thing on trusted services that we have, and we don't have a trusted high-yield savings account. Any ones that we mention are just ones that we personally use, and they've been fine for us. So I know that George Campbell uses Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and I use Ally Bank. They've got 5% interest. So honestly, just a lot of them are those online banks. So it's low overhead, and they can offer these higher rates.

So just do your research and pick one that's good for you. That's what I would say. There's no endorsed provider that we have here at Ramsey. None of that was a paid endorsement. That's right. We've not checked those people out other than Jade and George put money in there. And here's the thing. You have to be prepared because those companies, they're banks. So they're going to try to sell you dead and they're going to try to do all those things. You just kind of have to You have to be prepared because those companies, they're banks. So they're going to try

to sell you dead and they're going to try to do all those things. You just kind of have to go me, me, me, me, me. Also, ask your credit union if they don't have something. See, I'm getting ready

to pull all this money out of here if you guys don't have a good high-yield product and put it over in one of these click banks. And they may go, oh, we'll match it.

They probably have something. They just didn't bother to tell you. Maybe. I mean, most banks have banking products like this these days. It's the old money market. We've just renamed it and started a whole new marketing move around high-yield savings. That's right.

Right. It's not really high, but it's better yield savings. This is The Ramsey Show. I've been doing this show for over 30 years, and some of the saddest calls I have taken are from situations that are completely preventable. Yeah, and what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible, are people that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly, and they don't have life insurance. When you have to think through how am I going to pay my bills in the middle of all that grief, like it's just, it is, it's terrible.

And so life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive. Zander is the place that Winston and I actually get all of our life insurance. And it doesn't cost much because Zander shops among a gazillion different companies. It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here. You got to say it out loud and you got to say, I'm going to say I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza. To get a free quote, call 800-356-4282. That's 800-356-4282 or go to zander.com. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Darlie is with us in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Hey, Darlie, how are you? Is it Dar- Dar- Leah? Hi. Dar- Leah. I said it. I can't- I'll get it right eventually. It is Dar- Leah, correct?

Yes. Yes, correct. How can we help I'll get it right eventually. It is Darleah, correct? Yes. Yes, correct. How can we help? Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. So my in-laws loaned us $40,000 last year at 4.5% interest rate for five years. Oh, my gosh.

So we could buy a house on a loan assumption. Oh, Lord. So we could buy a house on a loan assumption. And that loan assumption came at a rate of 3.125%. So we couldn't let that pass by. So instead of going to the bank to get $40,000, we loaned it from that. Well, they offered to loan it to us. And we took them up on that offer. So I had a baby in December. And so now I'm staying at home.

But before I had the baby and am staying home now, we got that loan down to $22,401. Because we're kind of following the baby steps while we're trying to. So now I'm not working. My husband is a little iffy about going under $10,000 because currently we have $25,000 in savings. And I'm kind of suggesting, oh, should we just wipe out the loan with them? What does he make? He makes $76,000 a year.

Are you living on a written budget with the EveryDollar app? Spreadsheet and all. Cool. So very much in control of EveryDollar. Very much. We know where every single penny goes. Okay. So you said you're trying to follow the baby steps, right? So. Yeah. Well, wait a minute. I'm telling my husband, I mean, he wants, he's just nervous about going under $10,000. Yeah, but the baby. If any emergency

comes. Yeah, it's his parents. He's nervous about it. He probably feels comfortable yeah it's his parents nervous about it he probably feels comfortable because it's his parents it doesn't matter it doesn't matter people it doesn't matter you're feeling it and you're feeling it for good reason for two reasons a it's debt and your body's going to feel debt and then two it's debt that you owe to in-laws like let's not make this thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you eat with your master and the borrower is slave to the lender that's right. Let's not make a complex situation more complex by adding debt to it, right? So, yeah, if you guys have agreed this is the financial plan that we're following, then I'd hold them to that.

And I'd say, listen, if we say we're following in the baby steps, we need to pay off this debt and then rebuild our savings. That's what the steps say. That's what the plan is. We said we are following that. And i don't feel comfortable with this debt as your wife i don't feel comfortable owing your parents and if for no other reason this should matter because of that right i've told him that and he and he definitely understands um they're amazing people um we're not questioning their character yeah you don't need to tell me three times they're amazing people this was a stupid butt idea and y'all need to clean it up it was dumb you shouldn't have done

it but you did it and now you have the opportunity to clean it up don't do it again you call so many people dumb that now i'm appreciating that i've gotten to that level. You're part of the club. I didn't say, I did not say you are dumb. I said the idea and what you did was dumb. There's a difference. Yeah. I am not dumb, and I have done some dumb butt things in my life. Quote, dumb butt decision. That's what it is.

I love it. I have done it. I have done it. So you guys clean this up. Get it out of your life. You can feel it, and you can, this is not an indictment of saying your parents are bad. Our parent laws are bad people. They're wonderful people.

They were trying to be helpful. They were helpful in a bad way, but they were helpful. They're trying to be sweet. They're trying to get you what you want in life. And they're not being mean. They're not calling you every week and looking at your budget and judging you. They're not control freaks. You didn't bring up any relationship issues. These are bad people that is not what the point is the point is

you have twenty two thousand dollars in debt and you have twenty eight thousand dollars or twenty six thousand or whatever it is in your account write a check today and pay it off that's the point yeah yeah if it was on a credit card it'd be the exact same thing that we'd say that was a stupid butt decision you shouldn't have done that now clean it up it's you got the money there write a check it's just it it just complicate it makes the more drama to the conversation because it's the in-laws and think about it like this you know your life has changed since you took that loan now you're staying home with a child that's an income that's gone you have to ask yourself okay if we keep this debt around what happens if there's another major life change whether what if your husband loses his job what

if he's laid off so there's a lot of variables here that a lot of times we don't let our brain think about because it's not pleasant but when you carry debt you are holding risk i don't care who it's to because dave talked about thanksgiving dinner tasting different it would taste a lot worse and by the way we're not going to be at the two or three thousand dollar level in this but for about 10 minutes right this account because you're going to immediately start adding money to it correct oh yeah right yeah so how much would you add to it a month how much would you add to it a month without having these payments 700 yeah about 700 a month okay um and he's expecting a bonus soon and hopefully a promotion soon.

Yeah, and a lot of that will go too. So you're going to be, like by September, you're going to be right back up where you need to be, right? Well, we're going to be down to like $3,000 after we pay it. And you got a bonus and you got 700 bucks a month and 700 bucks a month if you don't have this payment or currently 700 bucks a month um if we don't have the payment seven hundred dollars a month all right yeah um and it does freak them out because because we were doing we were following the baby steps when i was working and i went when i found out i pregnant, we were essentially just dumping money to

this loan to them and it freaked them out. They were like, what are you doing? I'm not concerned about them freaking out. That's their problem. If they didn't want you to repay it, they should have made it a gift. They shouldn't freak out. They ask you to pay them back you're paying them back stop with the drama just write them a check pay them back be done with it and please don't do this again terrible it's just i'm telling you guys there's the i've in the 30 something years i've been doing this some of the saddest stories are the ruined

relationships because somebody did something like loan their kid 25 or 30 or 50 000 to buy a house and then something goes sideways something gets out of hand and all of a sudden everybody's torqued up and twisted up and formerly nice sweet people aren't for some reason and I just it's bad y'all you're asking it's like if borrowing money on a credit card to do this is stupid just make it stupid times two to do it with your in-laws all right because you're just and again I'm not calling you stupid I'm saying what you did was stupid. Because I don't call people stupid except people in the financial world that tell you to do stupid things. But you people that were trying to help, I'm not going to.

Our job to help you heal is to tell you the truth. You don't want the doctor to go, you know, I think this little bit of cancer is going to be okay. Why don't we just leave it there? Right. You want them to say, no. Get it out. Get stupid, try sunscreen, boy. You know, I mean, seriously, right? And golly. So you want people to tell you the truth if they're going to be healers and we're not going to hold back. We're going to tell you exactly what it is because we got a lot of people to help and

we love you and we want you to win. And that includes Darleah in Fredericksburg, Virginia. But Dave there's so many people who they are sitting on savings while they've got debt sitting over there in the corner and the the thought is I don't like the risk of not having savings but they don't entertain the other side of the equation which is you must not care that much about risk because you've got debt because you've already offset it you know your balance sheet still represents a broke person. That's right. The math has to math. You know, I don't want to be down less than $10,000.

Well, try going into debt and using up all your money then. Right. You know, that's a good way to solve that. And by the way, you can pass up any housing deal. It's too good to pass up. No, it's not. Not if you can't afford it. No, it's not.

You can pass up a deal on that Bentley too because you can't afford it. No, it's not. You can pass up a deal on that Bentley, too, because you can't afford it. Help you with that. That Louis Vuitton, that $83,000 purse. You can pass that one up. You can pass it up if you can't afford it. It's too good a deal. No, you can pass it up. It's possible.

I see people do it all the time. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. If you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. And while you're thinking about it, I want you to be honest. A lot of us hide ourselves. We hide our true selves behind costumes and masks all the time. We do this at work. We do this around our friends. We do this around our families.

We even do this when we look at ourselves in the mirror. I know because I've been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding behind masks and costumes all the time, if you find yourself hiding from your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can be honest, where you can talk to somebody else and reflect and learn, and you can accept all the parts of yourself over time and start living an authentic life. Masks and costumes should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves.

And if you're considering therapy, try calling my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for you and your schedule. Just fill out a short online survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost.

Take off the costumes and take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash DELONoney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. A lot of you got questions about taxes because it's tax time which means people are confused and pissed off i'm not confused i'm just pissed off all through tax time

it just makes me angry i feel bad dave what's the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit oh that's a great question a tax tax credit of $1,000 reduces your tax bill by $1,000. Tax credit is superior to a tax deduction by 3x. So a tax deduction, if you have a $1,000 tax deduction, $1,000 less of your income is taxable. And so if you were in the 30 tax bracket as an example and you have a one thousand dollar tax deduction it lowers your income by one thousand dollars one thousand dollars less is being taxed at 30 so the savings is three hundred dollars

but a tax credit the savings is one thousand dollars it's a one for one and there aren't many tax credits they're usually associated with something like a a solar program or something like that there were a few back in the day a thousand years ago on some real estate stuff we used to do uh if you did like a lower income housing development you could get tax credits for that, stuff like that. But most things are, if there's something associated with this, will be called a tax deduction. And basically, you don't want to pay to create a tax deduction that you didn't need. Because basically, you're going to spend $1 dollars to save 300 so it's trading a dollar for a quarter i feel that so tax credits are better than tax deductions by about

3x roughly so there you go go to ramsey solutions.com if you need more information on taxes we can hook you up with one of our tax pros if you have a complicated return and these uh ramsey trusted tax pros are excellent and there's hundreds. And these Ramsey Trusted Tax Pros are excellent, and there's hundreds of them all over the nation. Ramseysolutions.com slash tax. If you've got a simple return, just use our simple Ramsey Smart Tax software, and it's a lot less expensive than the other guys, and we're not going to try to sell you a bunch of crap like they do.

They're trying to get you in credit card debt and everything else, get you to borrow money on your refund, all this other stupid stuff. We're just going to help you do your taxes and it's less expensive and no hidden fees on the smart tax. So check both of them out and we'll help you out. It's what we do. All right. AJ is next in Dallas, Texas. Hi, AJ. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, Dave. How you doing today? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Yeah, so I've lived here in Texas for most of my adult life now, and everything is going well. I'm completely debt-free, paid for a house, own a business. And I've also been single for most of my adult life, but happened to meet a lovely woman who lives in California and she has her heart set on staying in California and would like for me to move there. And I know the cost of living discrepancy and I have a bit of sticker

shock about the prospect of moving out there versus trying to convince her to move here or at least have a hybrid situation where she would live here part-time and I would live there part-time. What kind of work does she do? Does her job keep her in California? Yes, it does. She's in the medical field, so she has to stay out there. No, no.

What does she do in the medical field? She's a therapist. Okay. They have therapists in the medical field uh she's a therapist okay they have therapists in texas correct there's a bunch of um yeah luckily i'm in a position where i can work remote i have an e-commerce business and i can okay how can we help you aj yeah so you know just wondering how to best approach this, whether it's getting a second residence in California while maintaining a residence here. It's not that.

Listen, you need to decide if you're going to have your cake or you're going to eat your cake. You can't have your cake and eat it too, okay? We're either all in and we're married in california or we're all in and we're married in texas or this is a mistake because our values don't match up and we're not going to be a good couple even though she's sweet and pretty and all that but it doesn't match up in words, if she wants to live in California more than she wants AJ, that may be a reason to tap out. How is she doing financially in California?

Does she earn enough that her quality of living is fine and she has no debt? Well, and that's the thing. She doesn't have any debt, but she doesn't save any money either, whereas I've accumulated a whole bunch of money over the years and i am financially set i you know my house here would be probably three or four times as much if i were to biden in southern california so that's so what is it that's so appealing to her because california has lost more people in the past 36 months than any other state in the union really it's a matter of her family being close by and she doesn't want to move away from them is your family in texas no my family

is on the east coast and so i i don't really have any ties here other than i've lived here for pretty long time now yeah aj i i think the only advice that I can give you that is accurate is to not try to create some kind of weird thing that makes you think this works. This really is going to come down to you deciding, I want to be in California with her more than I want all of the things I have built in Texas, the life I've built in Texas or vice versa or vice versa. It's a matter of, uh, you know, heart versus, you know, the financial part of it. And they're both playing together in a lot of ways. Yeah. It's, um, you know, it's, it's a little bit, um, well, I guess, I guess it works both ways. I was was going to say it's a little bit off-putting

that the only way you get me is you live in california but um but it's also but if you go the other way too the only way you get me is if you live in texas so uh that's just as off-putting i guess but what you're saying when you say that is is you like being near family you like living in california more than you like aj and if you say that to her you're saying I like Texas and I like my situation here and the cost of living and the fact I can save money more than than I like you if you're not willing to come over here I'm staying but here's the thing I think both of you can approach this with the mind that none of it has to be permanent right maybe there's a situation where you go okay let's try it let's

try California let's try it for five years and we reconvene after this you know is it too expensive is it getting crazy there after being married 17 years it's like so much changes like over the course of a year over the course of three years forget five ten years or a decade you know so I don't think it all has to be set in stone but to Dave's point I do think it is worth exploring yeah what's most important to you I think you're early in this relationship and neither one of you are willing to give up your current life for the other one and that that is a that's a that's a red flag for me on both on both of you that's a red flag yeah um you you know it's hard to teach old dog new tricks you guys are pretty set in your ways both of you and uh so yeah because i and i kind of i understand

that i mean we had the opportunity several years ago when we built this complex this campus for ramsey we had a lot of uh other cities in other states wooing us to bring this 1100 jobs somewhere else and um you know we were able to work a deal with this county and this state and stay here. And also the other thing that happened over the years is they told me back in the day when we were doing talk radio that you can't make it in talk radio.

You're never gonna be a big deal if you're in Nashville. You gotta go to LA or you gotta go to New York. To which I said, I'm not gonna be a big deal. I'll be in Nashville because I'm not gonna live in in LA or New York so I'm the same way in other words I'm just as stubborn as she is or you are well I want to I want to cast my vote on this only because I think our votes will be different okay I would cast my vote for California simply because if he had said oh she's accumulated all this debt I'd say wow she can't afford to live there but she's debt-free and her family's there and he doesn't have family in Texas and he's doing very well financially his job is remote for that reason my vote would be California not that this

matters at all by the way it's just me saying my piece my vote would be get a different girlfriend for that reason alone we're out tap out there you go yeah i'm just thinking nah this this was a miss good swing but miss you know uh what do i know though i'm old i haven't dated anybody other than my wife in 43 years so i don't know i don't know nothing i don't know nothing. I don't know nothing. I'm an out-of-touch boomer. If you don't believe me, just read the comments. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show,

where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walsh, our best-selling author. Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Muhammad is in Asheville, North Carolina. Hey, Muhammad, what's up?

Hello, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve, sir. How can we help? So me and my wife, we make a pretty good income. Combined, we make about $500,000 a year. Wow. Way to go. Thank you.

Mostly her. So a few years back, I invested basically everything that I have into this business. It's a franchise business that I bought into. And, you know, I've been struggling for quite some time. But I wanted to know how I could separate myself from the business and all those sort of things. Because right now, I'm really, you know, taking, feeding from my bank account into the business and all those sort of things because right now i'm really you know taking feeding from my bank account into the business bank account so the women your business is losing money correct it's not profitable how much money correct um for how long so yes i think all in from origination i'm probably 800 800,000 in the hole.

So what is the belief that this is going to turn? So, I mean, we had hurdles, mainly because we had, like, you know, a manager that was not showing up, like employees not doing the jobs. And it was really difficult because I no longer live in the area of where the business is. Uh, so I couldn't just hop in and what I've done is I've revamped operations, uh,

specifically, you know, working with the entire team, having weekly calls, all these sort of things to establish that, uh, you know, cadence.

What kind of, what kind of business is this? Uh, it's a franchise. It's a fitness industry. Okay. And did you lose money last month? Yes. Okay. Why do you keep doing this? That's a great question. So, you know, initially when I went and tried to buy into this. No, I'm talking about from today forward, what is your hope? What is your belief that causes you to keep doing this? I understand there's things in the past that are not replicated,

but you either need someone to shake you out of your denial and say sell the stupid thing, or you need to tell me that there's a real reason you can see a light at the end of the tunnel that is not an oncoming train other than i just think it's going to get better because i have a feeling gotcha um so i have considered selling it i'm actually you know i have listed hey muhammad um answer my question why do you think this is going to get better uh well because i've seen the numbers go up um in the past month or two okay so the there is a trend line in losses and the lines are getting right across and you're actually going to be even or profitable soon is that a true statement

that is a true state i think i'm about three to three months away from being hidden break even okay that's a that's a valid logical reason to keep going okay that's what i was trying to get at because i just i've lost 800 000 i had some hurdles the thing is in another location i can't i'm having to tighten up tighten up tighten up now when it starts making more questions though because you're eight thousand eight hundred thousand dollars gone in the red so you just breaking even on my side of the table i'm still like okay but that's not profitable that's just you not losing money it's not breaking even because you haven't gotten back the eight hundred thousand well it is breaking even monthly monthly it's not it's not burning more cash that's the problem we don't have a burn rate anymore sure but how long until we're starting to actually be profitable not just month over month but in the big picture that's a lot all

right let me ask it this way what is your plan 12 months from now with this thing uh i'm hoping to sell it by the end of this year okay um and if all right so we're going to try to get it up where it's not in the red and then get it sold because in another city, it's not been a fun experience and we're just going to write off the experiences. Ouch. Right. Okay. Because you're probably not going to get $800,000 for it, right?

Probably not. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you're going to take a loss and move on. And I didn't mean to beat you up. I'm just trying to get in there with you because I do all this entree leadership stuff with these small business people and i love small business people but this sounded like a nightmare and it has been hadn't it yeah it's been a nightmare from the get

go um you know we had a lot of hurdles due to so what is it you're wanting to separate to protect it sounds like you're afraid somebody's going to come after you personally over something that's going on with the business. Is there a loan on it? Yeah, there's a loan on it. Okay. How much of a loan do you have on it? About 520. Yikes. How much do you think you're going to get for it? Uh, I'm hoping to get 600 just to kind of get rid of that. I mean, $500 would be fine too. Okay, and I assume this is like an SBA loan or something like that that you signed personally. Yes, sir. Ouch. Okay.

You can't protect yourself from that. You signed it personally. That makes you personally liable. All of your personal assets and future income is exposed until you clear this. So it is absolutely vital that you get this thing sold and get this monkey off your back, okay? Yep. There's not a risk management tool that will handle this.

It's after the fact. You can't buy fire insurance after the fire. So you've signed personally. You took out a $520,000 credit card, and you can't get away from it until you pay it off. And so you didn't take out a credit card. I understand that. But I'm saying that's exactly the same thing. It's a personal liability on this loan and your income and anything you own or anything that has your name on it is exposed until you get this paid off. And so, yes, I would

try to get that thing as profitable as I could, as quick as I could, and get it sold as fast as I can. I want this thing out of your life for a whole bunch of reasons. 520 of them, 1,000 of them to be exact. Dave, talk about sunk cost fallacy. Because I feel like that's at play in many ways when you've just put so much money into a deal. That's what I was fishing around. I was trying to figure out if that's what he was doing. So sunk cost is, I don't want to, he's not doing that because he's got a $520,000 loan he's trying to clear.

But sunk, let's say he had put $800,000 cash in this, which he might have in addition to that. I was going to ask if that's in addition to what we didn't. But anyway, whatever, put $400,000 in it, whatever it is. have in addition i was going to ask if that's in addition to what we didn't but anyway whatever she put four hundred thousand right whatever it is and um you have to sunk cost is you're trying to recoup something from the past and you're not giving an accurate view on the future and the way you avoid sunk cost analysis you can do this with your personal items as well is if i had that same amount of money today in my pocket so let's say you could sell that let's say you owned a business completely

separate from this discussion or uh anything you had an own investment let's call it that that you uh that you have two hundred thousand dollars invested in but you can sell it for a hundred thousand a day if you had a hundred thousand dollars sitting in the middle of the table would you buy it today lord no it's awful well then sell it today but i got 200 in it you're not gonna get the 200 back because it's awful so that's sunk cost analysis you're worried about the 200 you put into it while ignoring what you project the future to be right you do your decisions based on what you project the future to be not what the past, not what you've got in it. It's what you think it's going to do from here. That's your decision-making paradigm.

Hey, when you go against what society thinks is, quote, normal, like avoiding debt, for example, it might seem weird at first, and that is totally okay. We want you to be weird if that means doing things intentionally, including how you spend your healthcare dollars. And one way to be intentional is with Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM isn't health insurance. They're a health cost-sharing ministry that's helped hundreds of thousands of families like yours take care of healthcare costs

without sacrificing their freedom. Find out more and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. She's a best selling author and been covering the microphone in my absence for the last little while. A little bit, Dave. You know, I try to do my best here. No one can fill your shoes though. Let's just be clear. Well, sure they could. Actually, the ratings went up while I was gone. So we had a record month on YouTube, a record month on the podcast while I was gone. We did, but there were also YouTube, a record month on the podcast while I was gone.

We did, but there were also a lot of people. I wasn't on the air. There's a correlation here. I'm just saying. That's true, but there was a lot of people wondering where you were. And I read some of the comments, Dave. Where's Waldo?

Yeah. I read some of the comments and they said, Dave needs to come back from his backpacking trip in Antarctica. I don't like backpacking and I don't like cold. Okay, well, what about this one? Dave needs to come back

from his hiking trip to the top of Mount Everest. You just hike up there, do you? These are real comments from the YouTube show. Dave needs to come back from his feeding

baby elephants in Nairobi already. Baby elephants, Dave. Baby elephants, Nairobi. I didn't really peg you for that guy. How about this one? I actually did that,

but yeah there you go dave needs to come back from the rainforest the rainforest yeah or this one uh moto mom 1311 says dave needs to come back from his wine tasting trip across south africa i didn't do that but not on this trip all right not this one well this maybe it's this one this is my favorite 12 days ago uh at nagriff says dave needs to get back from his middle east peace talks asap yeah because i'm known for my peaceful demeanor i when i saw these comments i was like this is too funny not to talk about well they got they

got kind of started on a thing there d Dave needs to come back was like the theme. That's funny. Be careful what you wish for, Mary. Yeah, for real. For real. No, we were in Cabo for six weeks, and I've never taken six weeks off in my entire life. So it's the first time I've ever done it. I am 63, so that's about as close to retiring as I'll ever get.

I don't retire. I'm not going to retire. I'm going to keep talking on this microphone until I don't make sense or until the ratings are so bad when I'm on that you all won't let me come on anymore. But anyway, I'll still be hanging out. I love doing this, and I love doing the events that we get to do. We're doing a big Total Money Makeover event. We're in a planning session for that this morning.

It's going to be done in May, and virtual investing essentials event in May. I'm planning both the content pieces on that with the content team this morning. And I love working on this stuff. It's a lot of fun. Well, listen, Dave, you were gone and I was here and I may have pissed a few people off. Good. Well, that's why the ratings went up. You took over for me. Thank you. You know, I, you know because rachel's just too nice she is nice i've seen her get a little snippy though i've seen her yeah a little but not much she needs to get yeah well i was so you you did it on what you do well i i may have said you might have said i might have said that people need to understand that the glory days of inexpensive living are over for now.

Like prices have gone up and inflation is up and buying a home is very difficult. And I've been hearing a lot of, you know, back in 2018 and in 2020 and in 2021. And I said, you know, as long as we're not looking at today and we're looking in the past you can't go forward and I think it's keeping a lot of people in a state of discontent and they it's hard for them to be happy it's fine hard for them to find gratitude because we're all we keep comparing today to yesterday see I don't um yeah you're right but there's not a glory day well it's just it's just more than it used to be so my parents bought their first home in 1963 for 12 230 dollars okay that house today would be what 400k right and um they don't live in that house anymore but i mean that house today that's what

it would sell for i know right where it is it's just over the hill over here and i still live in the same area and um that was 1963 you know what my grandparents said how can any young people buy a house for 12 000 on a 30 year you're gonna pay on it till you die it's awful and you know what the interest rate was it was four and a half percent oh god that's what my grandparents said dave this was supposed to be my rant but i mean that's all that's all that's happening right now right that's right i mean and so i'm i'm looking at these prices and i'm like my grandparents right i'm like god this is ridiculous how can any of these young people buy a house bless your heart and the young people are looking at it and of course social media gives you an inordinate ability to bitch and whine and so you people some of you people whine and wallow in the victim stuff

from now yeah you boomers bought your house with two buckets of strawberries. Y'all don't know what's going on. And it's like, oh, God, your whining is unbelievable. It's a lot. It is a lot. But I understand because it's scary. I do understand. And you've never experienced that up until this point. But my point is it's always been that way. Exactly.

It's always been that way. And it just depends on when it hits you. No, wages to house prices are worse than they've been since 1980. Yep, that's true. But every generation has their version of that. So here I was I was doing an interview with an NPR lady yesterday doing a thing on real estate it's going to come out later I guess whenever the NPR does her thing and she said so what do people do what do they do because wages it's systemically broken what do they I said, well, there's always been a time and there's always been a place where someone lived in a neighborhood they could not afford. When I started doing the show 35 years ago, you could not live in Los Angeles or Manhattan downtown unless you made X number of dollars. That's right.

You can't afford it. Well, it's not fair. I don't care. It's not fair. I don't care. It's not fair. The fair is where the Tilt-A-Whirl and the cotton candy is. There's not a fair, okay? It's a math thing. And so you can't afford to live in Los Angeles today or San Diego today

or certainly in San Jose or San Francisco today if you make $50,000 a year. Some people feel like they can't live in whatever the suburb is of their normal-sized city, like in just a normal... Well, that might be true, but they might be outside the suburb then. Because every city, unless it's contiguous to another city or contiguous to a mountain or water, has what we call in urban growth ring theory. You drop a pebble in the center of the city and every ring that goes out gets cheaper. Unless it bumps into a view of water or a view on a mountain

or something else that drives the price artificially. Sure. Okay. But generally speaking, you drop a pebble in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, you know, you go 30 miles out, you got one price point. You go 100 miles out, you got a completely different price point. And that's true around America. Okay.

It's true in Columbus, Ohio. It's true in Austin, Texas. It's true in Dallas, Texas, except you run over there into Fort Worth because they're beside each other. But other than that, you're going to get a ring going out of that area. You know, years ago, 25 years ago, I started going to Dallas years ago 25 years ago i started going to dallas 30 years ago i started going to dallas mckinney was an exit and now it's a it's a building now it's a metroplex right north north dallas right uh north you know north dallas and so uh but same

thing here with spring hill exactly spring hill was a wide spot in the road and now it's a it's a legitimate bedroom community and you should have bought there 20 years ago no you should about there 40 years ago no you should about there 20 months ago because it's always gone up everywhere now here's the truth the truth is it is very hard to buy a house right now and it shook some people up and i i am sympathetic to that i'm not sympathetic to victimhood. Right. And you're whining about it, but I'm sympathetic to the fear.

I agree with that. And the sense of being stuck. And that was the intent of my post. The intent was to say, listen, you're right. It's not the same. And like John Delaney would say, you have to grieve that, grieve what was and grieve what won't be anytime soon and then take action. Decide how you're going to live.

Yeah. Decide how you're going to live. Because you don't get to yell and scream and how you're going to live yeah decide how you're going to live because you don't get to yell and scream and they change prices because of your whining never once has a real estate price been changed because of people's whining and that's what people are saying well what do you want us to do jay just sit back and accept it and i'm like no what i know what i want you to do is quit yelling at the wind and adjust your sails that's good don't yelling at the wind and adjust your sales. That's good. Yelling at the wind doesn't do anything. Adjust your sales.

And so you need to decide, maybe I used to think I could live in this city making this much money. So I've got to adjust my income with my career choices. And by the way, that may be very uncomfortable. Or I've got to leave this area. Another uncomfortable thing. I can't afford to live in San Francisco. I can't afford to live in San Francisco. I can't afford to live in whatever. Yeah.

I may have to live 100 miles out of a city instead of 30 miles out of a city. Very true. If I want to own a home. But your income has to go up in order to buy more expensive things. It's a math thing. You don't get to whine about that and fix it. There's not a systemic thing that's broken. It's a broken brain.

Adjust your sails. The wind moved. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today guess what in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt-free stage are some young people who have managed to exist in this economy they have adjusted their sales and have decided to go win and have not whined i know this about them because they're here to do their debt-free scream hey guys this is landon and delaney welcome guys good to have you.

Thanks for having us. Where do you guys live? We're from St. Joseph, Missouri, close to Kansas City. Yeah, know it well. Very cool. Good to have you guys. And how much debt have you two paid off? Paid off $51,000. And how long did that take? Two years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? About $75,000 75 000 very cool do you guys own a home there no we do not so you're getting out of debt now you're getting ready to think about buying a house can you afford to do that now getting there now that you don't have any debt oh yeah for sure he's smiling looking at me yeah like i'm not sure you got a little bit of time to save okay you got time now you're on your way though right right? Yeah, absolutely. Good for you. Okay. So what kind of debt was the 51,000? Um, it was my student loans, all mine. What's your degree in? So my degree is sports management. Good for you. What do you do for

a living? I actually do sales at a TV station in St. Joe cake. You too shout them out, but I do sales there marketing. So good for you. Cool. What do you do Delaney? I am a registered nurse. Awesome. Awesome. Very awesome very good well you guys are doing great what kind of so a you have the student loan debt and two years how long y'all been married two years okay so you get married you come home from the honeymoon you go uh-oh Landon's got student loan debt tell me about this what happened yeah so you know when I was in high school I was going to get free college because my dad worked at a university in near Kansas City. I'm from Kansas City. So my whole, my whole life in high school, I was like, I'm just going to get free college. This is great. And then my senior year, some things kind of happened to my dad didn't work there anymore. And then they kind of went away from things that we didn't agree with. So then I had to make a decision when I was a senior, you know, and I was like't save any money for college so I was like oh I can get a loan everybody else does it it's fine and I didn't know any of the risks of it or what it entailed at all I knew nothing about it you

know my parents just kind of said here's what you do and I did it and there you are sign right here press hard there's three copies and fifty one thousand dollars later here we are okay so you guys get married and decide to attack this how'd you get aligned on this Ramsey stuff? Tell us about all that. Well, I grew up listening to you. Like my mom told me about it. We had the little like junior Dave Ramsey thing. Oh, you're a financial peace baby.

Yes. So I was already aware of it. And throughout college, I worked and lived at home, paid for it throughout college. So I kind of mentioned it whenever we I worked and lived at home paid for it throughout college so I kind of mentioned it whenever we were dating and engaged and thankfully he was kind of willing to listen and we had a financial peace class at our church and my father-in-law my his father-in-law my dad was like you guys should do this before you get married our teachers are here with us today oh really cool what a great pre-marriage class absolutely yeah so that's kind of so uh landon goes in there and goes i don't

know what this girl's gotten me into she's cute but what she what is this class yeah so i mean my father-in-law apparently he has these 10 things i have to do before i marry her which is like i have to live in the woods for a day and kill a deer yeah ask me if i did that i didn't do that so sorry. But he still gave me the blessing. I missed the deer but went to FPU. Missed the deer but went to, but he voluntold me to do FPU. That's awesome.

Okay. And so that was a part of the agreement to marry Delaney. I like him. So, yeah, you probably would like him a lot. Was it bad or did you like it or did you learn? No, I loved it. And the thing that really stuck with me is the gazelle speed. You know, I was like, you you know kind of how you described it there's other things you need to go at but the gazelle

speed is so important to hit that immediately and continue and do not stop and that's kind of the philosophy i took and here we are yeah and you guys knocked it out fast very fast yeah and so he's going hey i did good yeah he's proud i guess right yeah good very good some people will look at this and go two years that's a long time i can't sacrifice for two years i can't cut back for two years i should be able to live my life what would you say that person well i mean i i think that's just false and i think people they look at what they have in front of them like i remember there's a quick story I'll tell, but we thought I paid off my Sally Mae loans. And I don't like mentioning her name, but I can now because we paid it off. See you later.

Sally, bye-bye. Anyway, so I paid off about 15,000 Sally Mae and I thought it was done. But they kept calling my phone and said, you need to pay right now. You know, there's debt, you still need to pay. And I was confuzzled. I i'm like why why are you calling me you know quit calling me and they said well there's two accounts under your name oh and i opened up another account there's 20 000 plus dollars and it was really discouraging oh and so and i can let delaney speak on what she said to me but we kind of just felt this piece and yeah we do a group i mean it was like what do we do? Like you thought you were done.

Yeah. And suddenly the finish line moved. Right, yeah. And these loans had like 12% to 15% interest rates. Yeah. Which is unbelievable. So we just kind of felt this peace from God saying, I'm going to get you through this.

And at first it's really discouraging to look at all these loans in front of you when you've worked so hard. But with your gazelle speed philosophy and the debt snowball, it was like, just like that. We're done. Just like that. And God's like, look what I did. You know? And you trusted me.

And so we give the glory to God. Amen. That's good. Honestly. Well done, you guys. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Well done.

Very cool. You can do anything if you can do this. Good point. You killed the dragon, man. Well, Mizzou plays an sc tournament today so we need that philosophy oh and 18 they can do anything there we go good luck jesus in sports i don't know but there we go how come jesus is always on other people's team yeah so um yeah the uh what do y'all tell people the key to getting out of debt is i would say just like like you say, changing your mindset of it. Because I think a lot of it is how you look at things.

And kind of like to answer your question earlier, just a momentary suffering, I guess, if you want to say it, of looking at it versus a lifetime of just peace. It's totally worth it. And the feeling we have now is incredible. I mean, it's like I almost go to bed some nights thinking we still have debt i can't go to get chick-fil-a but it's like well i still got chick-fil-a when i was in debt so you can still do that congratulations people but i'm just like wow i can go to bed feeling great like we don't have

any debt this is amazing yeah yeah we always say to live like no one else so later you can live and give like no one else. It says in Hebrews, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. Delaney, how old were you when you did Financial Peace Junior? Maybe like 10. Okay. We also went through it in my high school as well, so I did it again. Oh, wow. You couldn't get away from it yeah okay financial peace junior and then you go on the dadgum teachers teaching

it in econ ramsey ramsey curriculum it's in 48 of the high schools so there's a probability that's going to happen and uh wow way to go okay so i'm just bringing that up for all of you that are listening that have kids and your kids are rolling their eyes someday your kid will be a beautiful little 25 year old married to a guy who had some debt and it'll all be cleaned up because you're laying some foundational things that make this feel a little bit more normal because this didn't feel weird to you it felt weird to him because there's new information yep yeah but um but for you it was like this is how you live as i mean it was in high school i was 10 years old on the chart chores were on the refrigerator and here we go you know so yeah that's you're normalizing common sense in your home when you do this stuff folks and rachel always says when she's teaching uh when i'm

talking about teaching kids more is caught than taught and so watching your dad and mom you know sets you up for this whole thing. And so this is a second generational move here that we're seeing. And someday soon we'll see the third generation. So there we go. You know, that's cool. Good for you guys. I'm so proud of you.

Thank you. Very, very, very well done. How old are you? I'm 24. 23. Wow. 24, 23. I called you 25. I'm sorry. That's better than what I'm 24. 23. Wow. 24, 23. I called you 25.

I'm sorry. That's better than what I get normally. Yeah. And I usually get 35 with our haircuts. Yeah, well, it's not going to... I'd like to tell you it's going to get better, but I can't tell you that. That's all right. All right.

Landon and Delaney, Kansas City, St. Joe area, really. Yeah. 51,000 paid off in two years, making $75,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. All right. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Let's go! Yeah! Woo-hoo! That's how it's done, boys and gals. Hey, we're going to give them a one-year subscription to the EveryDollar app that connects to their bank with the EveryDollar Plus. And, of course, we're going to give them two of them, one to give to a friend. So not bad at all.

Way to go, you guys. See, there's the whiners, and then there's those folks. Sale adjusters. There's the doers and the whiners, the victims and the victors. And the victims write in the comments, the victors seldom do. Love that. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thanks for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. We appreciate you guys being with us. Tony is on the line in Knoxville.

Hi, Tony. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. How's it going, guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, my wife and I, we've been busting our butts, and basically all we have left now is the home mortgage. Cool.

And we're down to like $89K in our home loan. We did the 15-year, and we're paying that off early. How old are you? Huh? How old are you? 47. Okay. And what do you guys make?

About $120,000 a year. You're doing great. Way to go, Tony. We're trying. So I guess my question is, do I keep throwing every extra dollar into paying off this home mortgage, or is it okay to do some home renovations? It's okay to do some home renovations. All right.

Now, here's the thing. When you move from baby step three, where you have your emergency fund and your debt-free but the house, and you're in what we call four, five, and six, so you should be putting 15% of your income towards retirement. That's four. You should be putting something aside for kids' college if that applies. That's five.

And six, the house should get everything else. When you're in one through three, you're in gazelle intensity mode. When you move into four, five, and six, you're in intentional mode. And so what we're doing is we're sitting down looking at the budget and we're saying we have a lot of goals that are competing for the same dollars. Okay. I want to get a better car. Mama wants to get a better couch.

We want to renovate the kitchen and we want to pay off the house. The more we do of any one of those means automatically mathematically, the less we do of the house. The more we do of any one of those means automatically, mathematically, the less we do of the other. Does that make sense? 100%. So you're just being intentional. You're looking at it and saying, okay, we have a couple of goals here that I've heard so far, and that one is renovation and two is $89,000 mortgage. Both are good goals. Now, so what I would look at is say, okay, what level of And that one is renovation and two is $89,000 mortgage. Both are good goals.

Now, so what I would look at is say, okay, what level of renovation can I do that scratches the itch that I've got, but it's not hog wild so that I can also get about the business of getting this mortgage paid off? That's the way I would look. That's why Sharon and I did it. Okay. In other words, you don't have to do all one or all the other or you could say for six months we're going to do the home renovation and then after that we're going to turn that off and we're going to you know what or whatever it is so what's the renovation and what's it going to cost uh we haven't gotten quotes yet but it's going to it's our bathrooms which can be expensive but ours aren't too big so

you know i i loosely priced it out with the local construction but i gotta get more what are we gonna get are we gonna guess 20k i was thinking between 10 and 20 yeah okay i'm gonna call it 20 all right so we have 109 000 we need to accomplish both of these goals right Right. When are we going to do what? I mean, do we want to do it, you know, zero extra on the house till we knock out the baths? That wouldn't be bad with your income. You'll be there before Christmas. True. Okay.

And then all, you know, once we've done the baths, we're going to pledge to not do any other renovations till we go ahead and knock out the house. And, you know, just talk that through and get alignment with your spouse and that's how we do it what do y'all do that's what we do i mean we're literally right where you are it's paying extra towards the house and doing renovations and right now we've pushed the pedal forward on paying extra on the house but we've decided that when we hit a certain point we're going to switch it in the 80 80 is going to go towards renovations and the extra 20 is going to go towards the house yeah and just a little back and forth so in other words

the answer is not no the answer is just which is first right because neither one are evil now if you told me i want to do three hundred thousand dollars with renovations that would be a different story let's just full stop and let's have a whole nother discussion okay but i didn't think you were talking about that and you weren't okay but uh no i think we got a dingy bathroom and it's like you know yeah it's time yeah i'm good with that i mean that's actually good money spent on a house because you'll get it back that's not that's not wasted money or um but even if you want to do something where you're not going to recoup all of it like say putting in a pool okay seldom do you recoup all the money you put into a pool when you sell the house very seldom does it raise the value of the house equal to the investment in a

pool so you've got to enjoy the fun of it as part consumption of it as part of the equation and so but even that if you're going to say we're going to spend 20K on a pool, which wouldn't be much of a pool. I wish that you could spend 20K on a pool. You can blow them up, but the little, get your little. But yeah, but the, anyway, if you did, I mean, you just say, okay, I want to buy a boat. Okay. There's another one. Okay. That's going to go down in value.

It's not a good investment, but it's a lot of fun. Okay. And I want to spend 20K on a boat. You could have that same discussion. But if you say, I want to spend 300K on a boat, then you go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Because you're going to be all your life screwing with that instead of getting your house paid off. So that's the only check and balance in this.

But typically you can do all in on one or heavy on one or light on one and then switch back off. Yeah. I like what you said just enough to scratch the itch yeah that's all i mean again because here's the problem on renovations it's once you start you keep going it's like a thread you want to keep pulling it that's what i'm saying you can't just do the kitchen and not do the floors and you can't do the floors without doing the floors in the bathroom and if you do the floors in the bathroom well then now you've got to do the bathroom it's just yeah and it it you get scope creep yeah that's what you get yeah it's just uh

it it turns into a thing so yeah it's very interesting it's very interesting and and so you got to set very clear project oriented goals and give those projects time limits and dollar limits set a budget and then stick to it. And especially with construction items. Yeah. Yeah. Because those things all get scope creep if you don't. We're building a house right now.

We're fighting scope creep. Not with each other, but we have the money, but we could jump over that budget. But right now, we're ahead of schedule and slightly over budget. Who's voted most likely to want to up the budget you were sharing? Me. You? Yeah. Yeah. But I don't just as a matter of pride because I just don't want to. I want to hit budget. That's good. Just like the builder is going to be early as a matter of pride. I feel like that's lucky that you have that switch inside of you because usually the spender doesn't have that switch and they need the other person to switch it.

Well, I mean, we do look at stuff and sometimes Sharon wants something and we can afford it. Of course. It's not like we're breaking the budget if we do it. That's not the question. It's the question of at what point are you just being ridiculous? Yeah, sure. You know, it's like, like i mean who needs an oven that large but apparently we do you do um that's okay have you seen that mechanism i thought of

you there's a mechanism called chefy that prepares the food for you you install it in your kitchen it's robotics and you can just say i want this and it makes the food for you dave add that to the budget no no it's too late it's ten thousand dollars the appliances are already scheduled sorry you need to stay away from sharon sharon you are barred you don't need to speak to my wife we have some very interesting appliances in this thing but yeah it's it's it's because there is no end to it you can no matter what you have there's always a bigger one a better one a shinier one there's always a more expensive one and if you don't freaking pay attention and we live in this ridiculous neighborhood and some of these people will dial up something and then fly off to another state and they're

building this house they don't even look at it and then they come back and they they overspend change because they don't manage the project. They just don't stay on top of it. Well, they think I've got money to blow. It's not a big deal. They do have money to blow, and they do blow it. Yeah. I mean, you know, oh, gosh.

We built a house, a large custom home several years ago, a country music artist, a young one, built across the street from us. Our house literally was the was within 400 feet of the same square footage it was half the price and we built it in half the time wow because you're managing it it was the the artist i'm almost i'm gonna be don't say don't say names don't name names that that artist, had change orders stacked like phone books. We had two change orders and built it in 14 months. You build it on paper before you break ground, people.

You manage the project and you manage your own expectations and you put together a project and a budget. It's called being a grown-up. Oh, man, it's bizarre. It's a bizarre world. And you've got to be careful with it. It's dangerous. I'm preaching to myself right now. This is The Ramsey Show.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is a Baby Steps Millionaire's Theme Hour. What that means is that Jade Warshaw, my Ramsey personality and my co-host today, is going to talk to, we're going to talk to real millionaires and ask them how they did it and ask them some things about their lives. Why? Because if you hear enough of those things over and over again, you'll recognize you would want to do them. That is, if you would like to have a million dollars or greater net worth. Now, there's a lot of confusion out there about this stuff because there's a lot of whining and so forth happening in our world

today. So let's clear up a little bit of that as we get going. We're going to talk to real millionaires. There's only one definition of a millionaire. There's not two. There's not six. A millionaire is an accounting term. There's one definition. It is the net worth of $1 million or greater. Your net worth, by definition, is not your cash, it's not your stock, it's everything that you own because you could sell everything that you own. It's someday. It might take a little longer than others, but it's everything you own.

What you own minus what you owe. Your assets minus your liabilities. It's called a balance sheet in accounting. And when you take what you own minus what you owe, if that equals $1 million or greater, you are a millionaire. Now, I know one guy that has a multimillion dollar net worth, $10 million plus, and he has over $1 million in cars. Wow. Because he's got collectibles and he's a car collector. Okay. in cars wow because he's got collectibles and he's in he's a car collector okay that is that

he can sell those cars for that million dollars if he wanted to probably more actually but uh but that isn't that is a valid asset today that's what they're worth so today they're part of the equation of him becoming a millionaire. It is not your income. I heard an actual United States congressman, which is just distressing to me that they're this stupid, say, well, he doesn't he's not a millionaire. He doesn't make a million dollars a year. That is distressing. And we elected this person to the United States congress that's how dumb we are but uh yeah so what a fool so you're not a billionaire because you make a billion dollars a year you're

a billionaire when you have what you own minus what you owe now here's the other thing there's all a lot of mythology out there about where wealth comes from in America today. And we'll talk about that. But the four greatest lies that are told is that you can't become wealthy in America today unless you inherit it. It's all inherited. Lie number one. Lie number two.

Only extremely smart people become millionaires. You have to have a 4.2. You have to be the valedictorian. Lie number two. Lie number three. All rich people are crooks. They stole it all. That's just so stupid.

I don't even know how to address it. But that's a lie that goes around. The lie number three. I can't be a millionaire because I'm not a famous country music star, rock star, professional athlete. Only 1% of America's millionaires are recognizable due to their fame. Almost none. Okay, so we'll go ahead and put that one to bed. But these are lies of people. So I started discovering that there's all this angst out there and this lost hope.

And some people are hope stealers trying to steal people's hope by telling these lies because they have an anarchist mindset well they don't have hope they don't want anybody else to have it either or they have a communist mindset you know we need to burn america to the ground because the little man just can't get ahead and the interesting thing is that what milton friedman um nobel prize winning economist actually said a few years ago is that today and throughout human history. Today in America, the little man in the United States of America, starting from nothing, has the best chance of building wealth of any human being in history on the planet. Wow. It is the system that gives the little man the best chance.

What do you think about, because this is just something I've observed, I think when you're here in the States and you were brought up here and you lived here, it's almost like you get numb to how blessed we are, whereas immigrants will come. Our poor people are better off than most people around the world. Yeah, immigrants will come into this country see the opportunity seize it and change their whole family tree and become deca millionaires and the actual truth the truth is if you are in a a legal we'll clarify that okay make sure i pronounce that correctly legal meaning you did this properly um and so

you're documented so you can do business and all that kind of thing if you're a legal immigrant to this country first generation you are four times more likely that's what i've become a millionaire than one of us good old boys because we get numb to it we get to taking it grant for granted and we hear all these people go well marry the great american dreams just dead you know the little man can't get ahead. And I'm like, yes, he can. I talk to him every day. They become baby steps millionaires. They do everything else.

So we're going to talk to real millionaires today, whether they won the lottery, whether they inherited it, whether their grandmother sent them money. I don't care where or maybe they scratched and clawed and they were a first generation immigrant. I don't care wherever your money came from. I'm going to ask you about it so that we can show all of you viewers and listeners where millionaires really come from. Now we know,

and we're not setting these calls up. Anybody that wants to call that is a millionaire. We're not gonna put anybody on this, not a millionaire. I don't want your broke brother-in-law who doesn't know how to vote's opinion. I don't, I don't care what he thinks because his,

his, his proof text is not there. He does. He's shown. He doesn't know what he thinks because his proof text is not there. He's shown he doesn't know what he's doing. So your friend who is a college professor who hadn't got two sticks to rub together but is a communist, I don't need his opinion. He's broke. And I'll say if you've never shared an episode of the show, this is an episode you need to share because a lot of people will never hear this kind of conversation.

And it will blow their minds to hear some of these calls and the things we talk about in this hour. Yeah. And one of the things we'll bring up as we're talking to some of the millionaires throughout the hour today is we ended up, because of doing this hour, I kept hearing this stuff over and over. And I was running into people on the street. And you and I go out at the commercial breaks and we, you know, we take pictures and someone, they'll always come up and they say it real quiet. Hey Dave, I'm a baby steps millionaire. They're not loud about it. Just tell you the stuff you do works, man. I did it. Followed the baby steps and I got, you know, and I'm there and, um, well, Dave, a million dollars is not enough. That's not the question that's on the table. Uh, I'm not sure $10 million is enough, but it just depends on what enough is and what

you want to do, right? If you have the money to do God's will in your life, you have enough. That's the definition of enough. So I don't know if you need a million or two million or none. I don't know what you need, but it's not a moral construct. It's a math thing. It's an accounting function. And it's a valuable goal to aim at. It's not the only goal and it won't make you happy, but it'll make you in a better position than when you were broke. So let's talk to real millionaires on a Baby Steps

Millionaire theme hour. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, my co-host today. It's a millionaire, Baby Steps Millionaires theme hour here on the Ramsey Show. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality is my co-host. If you want to know more about this subject, I wrote a book that ended up being a number one bestseller called Baby Steps Millionaires. As a matter of fact, it was my latest number one. Come to think of it. James is in Dallas.

James, what's your net worth? My net worth is about $1.2 million. Cool. Give me a little breakdown on that by category. What is the 1.2 composed of? Yeah, I've got it consolidated. So our house equity is about $565,000. Retirement is $440,000. Cash and money markets, about $56,000. Brokerage investments of about $51,000. And then college for the little ones saved so far in 529

to 56,000 cool well done how old are you 32 wow young millionaire all right how much of the 1.2 how much of the 1.2 did you inherit um i inherited about 10 to 15,000 from my grandfather in a living trust. So not much, but he did leave some for me. Now, how long ago? Uh, over the past couple of years. So you were probably almost a millionaire before you got that. Oh yeah. Mathematically, it's safe to say you're not a millionaire because of an inheritance. Is that fair?

That's a fact. Okay. All right, cool. So your income at your best year since you've been working, your worst year since you've been working, give me the range. Started in 2014 at like $57,000 a year, and now I'm up to like $230,000 a year. Cool. What do you do for a living?

Most of the time I work for the same company. It's been in either sales or business management, but now I work in, uh, international sales for a chemical company. Okay. Very cool. And your degree, do you have a four-year degree? Yep, I do. I have a degree in, uh, sales and marketing. And then I finished my MBA about a year ago. Good for you. What was your GPA and your marketing degree? It was about a three,4 in undergrad and then like a 3.9 for my MBA. Most people do better in grad school. Okay, good, good. So how much of this $1.2 million would you say you have

because you borrowed money to build wealth? Nothing except for our mortgage. We pay cash for our cars, everything. Right, so zero. Okay, cool. All right. So what advice do you have to the 22-year-old version of you that's listening to this? Can it still be done?

Absolutely. I wrote down a few things. So the first is the usual. So start early. Utilize company matches and contribute as much as you can. Put 20% down on your house and then pay cash for everything. Like I said, track your progress. So every month we sit down and add it all up to see where we're progressing. Third is run your personal finance. Like it's your job, push yourself and

make money work for you, not against you. Fourth is set goals. So our goal is to be a minute millennial millennia millionaires by 35 and have a life where my wife could stay home with kids. And then lastly is reverse auction, all your major services, projects, and large purchases like cars. So go out and make suppliers give you a competitive bid, then make those companies bid against each other. So, for example, like when we bought cars, if you save $5,000 and it takes you 10 hours of work to negotiate those bids, it's like you're paying yourself $500 an hour. So you save big money that way. So did you guys, just a question, what about your car situation? Were you people that drove brand new cars or did you drive used cars? I'm sitting in my 15-year-old beat-up pickup

right now. I bet you are. We've paid paid cash for cars i haven't bought a car in nine years now and when we got married that was an eye-opener for my wife but she's come along for the ride and we bought her a used car a couple years no pun intended yeah long for the ride in the used pickup yeah good way to go man i'm proud of you very very well done that's awesome sam is next sam what's your net worth mr ramsey great to talk to you sir you too man i am uh 1.2 million in uh roth 401k and 529 20k in cash and then we have our house paid off, and we have our rental property paid off. So what's your house worth? I think comps in the neighborhood are maybe at $800K. So you've got about a $2 million net worth.

Is that what I'm hearing? I think, and the rental property probably bumps that up even some more. So what would you call your net worth? Let's see, 2.3. Okay. If we include the house and the the rental property that's included in your net worth yeah yeah so thank you how old are you 46 good for you and how much of this did you inherit zero okay and your best year working income and worst year oh worst year uh boy

starting off in the military i think i made $35,000 one of those years. And then since I've been retired from the military and working in sales, I had a real good year at like $200,000. Nice. Okay, so you're in the sales. Okay, so you served in the military. Thank you for your service. Did you get a four-year degree? I did, yes.

In what? In business management. Okay, in in business and what was your gpa oh i got undergrad i think maybe a 3.0 okay cool and sometimes people say the only way you can become wealthy is to borrow your way into it did you borrow your way into this or did you uh just do something else no same as the previous caller the only borrowing i can think of is the mortgages, which I really want to say thank you because you were the first person to put the idea in of paying that off early. And just the worry-free nature once you get your home paid off is excellent.

So you probably are attuned to what's happening and being said in the culture, people say this can't be done now. Do you think it can still be done? Yeah. You know, I was thinking about that and I just kind of wanted to be on the show and maybe talk to anybody who's in the military and the reserves and those young people, they do have some time when all your living needs are taken care of. You know, you have your housing allowance and you might be on a deployment. And that was the key for getting it done for me is that during my deployment, I always just thought this is an opportunity to save and then get the down payment for everything done. And so

well, it bumps your income. And depending on if you're in a zone or not, you get tax-free, right? That's correct, yes. And there are also some other benefits where you can essentially get a bond for the time you're deployed as well. Yeah. Wow. Wow, good advice.

Good stuff. Yeah, thank you. Tell me, I'm always going to ask about the cars because I tell people all the time that, you know, the car payment, that's the gap between middle class and wealthy. You know, we know people are carrying car notes of $700, $800, and even $1,000. So tell me, did you buy new cars? Did you keep car payments around?

Oh, no, I never got the new car, and that is the status punchline on military bases, that the young soldiers get the fanciest cars with the highest interest rates. Ah, and you were like, I'm not going to play that game. No, no. What do you drive right now? Oh, a beat-up Subaru. What would you tell the 22-year-old version of you if they're in the military to take advantage of that stuff? Anything else, any other advice you got for them?

Yeah, you know, I would say that thankfully somebody just kind of came to me and said, you know, there is a way to kind of never pay retail and to pay cash for things. And so just kind of get the things that you need and get it on sale. And that alone, the idea of just kind of putting a little bit more away every month, it just kind of becomes a game. Yeah, you never get a deal if you don't ask, so always ask. Yeah. And very seldom are someone offended because you asked.

Sometimes they just grin, giggle, look at you and go, no, but they are never offended. And I'm amazed. I'm amazed most of the time that you ask, is this getting ready to go on sale next week? Or can we go ahead and do that now? I mean, it's like, because they just work there. It's not like their money.

And so they like making a sale. I mean, my gosh, it's, you know, just ask. I love that. That's very cool. Well done, Sam. Good work. You're a hero, man. So here's the rule.

Here's what we found. We studied 10,167 millionaires. 79% of them, 8 out of 10, received zero inheritance. Another 5% received a small inheritance, not enough to make them a millionaire like the other guy, 10 grand. Another 5% got good money, but it's after they were already millionaires. 5 in 5 in 79 is 89. That's 9 out of 10 of America's millionaires are first-generation rich. If you disagree with that, you're what's known as wrong.

That's airtight research. That's data. It's not an opinion. Nine out of ten millionaires in North America started from nothing and did it without an inheritance. jade washall ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 well all wealthy people become wealthy became wealthy by stealing their money well the problem is that that's another lie that we're doing a millionaire theme hour here that doesn't hold up let's's think about this, okay? Because a lot of these folks, if you're at work, working for someone else, and you're stealing money, what do they do? Give you a raise?

No. Promote you? No. Give you more money to steal? No. They fire your butt. If you steal money when you're at work and you work for someone from the customer or from the office, they fire your butt. So explain to me how you work for someone else and you get rich by stealing. That's just ridiculous. Oh, you run, it's all these business people. Okay. Well, let's try that one. All right. When you're, when you run a business and you steal money

from your customers or you cheat your customers, what do they do? They send all their friends to do business with you. No, they write a crappy review and never come see your business again. They trash you on every form of social media and say, this guy's a crook. I took my car over there to get it fixed. He owns a repair place. He ripped me off and no one goes over there that they know. But if you do a good job and you're an auto repair guy, everybody sends people to you because you're kind of rare. Well, what about this one? Dave, my job, I can't be a millionaire because my job doesn't pay enough. It's only for people who make $100,000 a year or more.

Yeah, 33% of the people in the millionaire study that we did, one third, never made six figures. Here are the five top categories of jobs that we found among the 10,167 millionaires. Number one most likely job, most often occurring. In other words, if you had this job, you were more likely to be a millionaire than any other job. Engineer. Number two, accountant.

Number three, teacher. Number four, business and sales. Already had two sales guys on here so far. Number five, attorney. Number six, didn't even make the top five, was docs, doctors, medical doctors. They're notoriously bad with money. The only people worse than them with money are professional athletes and music stars. they're notoriously bad with money the only people worse than them with money are professional athletes and music stars true that they're notoriously bad because they're arrogant a lot of them and so we work with them all the time i see that i see a lot of broke doctors out there they're everywhere so but they top six in the top 10 but this thing of oh it's all doctors and lawyers no it's it's not teachers, number three. So we couldn't figure it out when we first found this in the research

because we couldn't figure out what the correlating thing between these engineer, accountant, lawyer, business and sales, teacher. What do these have in common? Because it wasn't a high income. I'm going with like they're systematic personalities. They're systems people. They're all process people. There's a way to build a bridge and it doesn't fall.

So that's how you build it that way. It's a system if you're an engineer. There's one way to do accounting. Accounting is not an art form. You follow the system or the accounting is wrong. Generally accepted accounting principles. Gap. There's only one way to do accounting. You flunk the class if you don you do it you follow the system or the accounting is wrong generally accepted accounting principles gap there's only one way to do accounting you flunk the class if you don't do it you go to jail for embezzlement if you don't do it your customer goes to jail if you're doing

their taxes so you know there's one way to do accounting if you're a lawyer there's only one way to litigate that's interesting i mean you you go before the judge there's a series of processes you have to do filings you have to do proper procedures you have to follow teachers follow a lesson plan the number of teachers that were married to policemen that became millionaires was huge again policemen believe it or not follow a very set protocol makes sense an exact it's called the law but they all but they also are trying to keep from getting killed right and they're also trying to keep from getting sued or something else so there's a whole set of safety protocols legal protocols very very precise to be a to be a professional law enforcement person and so we these people that are systems people are there when you are some when you're involved when your brain is involved in something that's more free form

uh you know it's it doesn't occur as often that you become a millionaire because you refuse to follow the process you think the rules don't apply to you well that's good to know especially as a musician yeah any any creative you know now okay i'm gonna have to dial it in well what happens with the creatives the reason they becomeaires, is they just make so stinking much money. They can't help it. If you're a Hollywood A-lister, you just make a pile of money. You're a country music superstar, you make a pile of money. Now, some of them are excellent people.

I know a bunch of them, and some of them are excellent with money. They're great business people, and some of them are dumber than a rock. But they just out-earned it, right? And that's true with a lot of people, but this systems thing is a big deal. So the point of all of this is to give anyone out there listening hope that you, too, can do this. Danielle is with us in Connecticut. Danielle, what's your net worth? Hi, Dave.

Hi, Jade. It's 1.1. Cool. Nice. Give me a little breakdown on that by category how much in retirement um it's pretty simple it's about a third in each bucket with retirement um house and savings good how old are you 28 wow young millionaire i want to know more yeah how much of this did you inherit uh ten thousand ten thousand so you're not a millionaire because of the inheritance what's been your range of income since you worst and best

um depends when you want to start that well i mean when you were an adult yeah um so out of college it was 67 okay and what do you what's your in your best year um and then our household income i'm married uh currently is 316 nice cool what do y'all do for a living what's your careers uh we fit that stereotypical list that you just ran through we're're both engineers. You're both engineers. I love it. So you've obviously got engineering degrees. What was your GPA? Mine was 3.6 and my husband's was 2.9. Wow. Good. Okay. And how much of this 1.1 at 28 years old is there because you borrowed your way into wealth? we did have a mortgage of 100k at one point depending on how you look at that that's so cute that's just cute that's precious i love it way to go you're amazing

i mean do you not sit back and pinch yourself and go i'm a 28 year old millionaire yeah it feels normal, though. Honestly, like you were saying on your show earlier. Because it happens gradually. Yeah, I feel like a very normal person. I think it's just because when you're not spending your money. And you're investing it. Yeah, then you live a very normal life yeah so it's

just it's just cause and effect if you build a bridge this way it doesn't fall and if you put money in savings there's money there wow i just love people like you that so common sense just give the finger to all the things that we talked about earlier which is no one can get ahead the way these prices are and you're 28 like you are in the prime time of when complaints can complain you know what i'm saying like you're right in the middle of that and you were like not me that's crazy i gotta know how often are you in a room where you just have to sit and smile because all the other people are bitching that's a real question i thought so i thought so some of my friends she's got pictures in her face right now she's thinking of marge right now man that is so so crazy wow that is awesome

way to go danielle i'm proud of you're a hero. Michael, what's your net worth? Michael. Michael. Hello. What's your net worth? That's okay. What's your net worth? About 4.5.

Cool. Give me a little breakdown by category. Sure. So I have my house for about just under a million dollars. I have investment property, a little over a million dollars. And then between stocks and CDs, well, CDs, 1.2. All right, I want to keep talking to you after this commercial break, but I'm being run off the air here. So you hang on.

I'll be right back with you. This is a Baby Steps Millionaires theme hour Our scripture of the day, 1 Thessalonians 5.18 Give thanks in all circumstances For this is God's will For you in Christ Jesus William Arthur Ward said Feeling gratitude and not expressing it Is like wrapping a present and not giving it

Thank you. Yeah, that's why I'm better than I deserve. No question about it. This is a Baby Steps Millionaires theme hour. We were talking with Michael before we went into the commercial break, $4.5 million net worth, $1 million in house, $1 million in investment, real estate, $2.5 million in mutual funds and stocks. How old are you, Michael?

I'm 48. 48. Very cool. And how much of this four and a half million did you inherit? I never, no, no inheritance. No inheritance. Okay. And your range of income, your best year working and your worst year working. My best year, uh, I would say probably 1.3 million, which was a rarity. Yeah, that was a way off year. That wasn't like a regular. Amazing year. I wish I could have made that every year.

But I had like two years of that because of COVID mainly, because I was in real estate valuations. So I did real estate valuations specializing in mainly bankruptcy estate settlement. And I testified about real estate values basically as a real estate expert. Wow. Interesting. So in values so yep. Yeah and what's been your lowest year since you've been working? Probably in the maybe in the maybe 40-ish and that was probably around maybe. So your job is you're an appraiser i wasn't appraised i retired about a year and a half ago that's awesome okay but in your appraisal field you

you kind of took it up a notch did some uh court cases and did some other things more than just appraising the local house right yeah i found a specialty niche yeah that's what it sounded like okay basically litigation yeah and then the covet thing really just poured gas on it no pun intended yeah okay cool yeah very cool yeah so do you have a four-year degree yes in what management and what business business okay all right and your gpa on that oh probably three1 or something like that. Okay. And how much of this 4.5 in net worth do you think is there because you borrowed your way into wealth? None. I never take out any loans. I don't do any kind of, I don't owe anything. I don't owe anybody. That's why I was able to retire

because I don't owe anyone in real estate and any kind in any cars or anything like that did you buy your rental in cash too no actually originally i put that on like a really small loan like a couple hundred thousand dollars over a million but um then you just turn around paid it off as fast as you could so you've seen debt as a way to slow you down not to speed you up is what you're saying yeah yeah it's never good especially being in business because i can't control my business i can't control my income i could you know anything could happen i can go down anything it's not really a business business it was more of a self-employment you know like any small business if you go down you go down

hey let me ask you a question when you look back on all of this, this 4.5 million, honestly, what role did a credit score play in this? Do you look at that and go, you know what? The reason I was able to make this million is because I had an awesome credit score. It keeps your cost down insurance-wise. It keeps your cost down on different things like that. I was able to rent out my office at one point. So they ran my personal credit because I'm a small company. So I wasn't like IBM.

So it was all on me. So if I had bad credit, they wouldn't have rented my office to me at that time. Okay. If you had no credit, they would have if you'd have put down a deposit, though. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I probably would have jumped in on yourself. Yeah.

I think you're okay. I think you did okay. I guess, Jay, the point is I don't think you have $4.5 million because of FICO. No, no, no. No. I think because the FICO score is touted as being the answer to everything, and it's really not. That's her point.

No. I think the biggest thing is cutting expenses. Just like for myself um i keep my expenses really low you know it's just really just paying my utilities my insurance my taxes uh that's really it living on the lesson you make i'm at you know michael i'm so proud of you you did great man you're a hero congratulations very very very well done excellent excellent all right eric and amy were against clock. What's your net worth? 1.9, Dave.

Very good. Give me a breakdown by category. Sure. And our savings and investments is 1.3. We have about $37,000, $38,000 in cash. Our vehicles are $50,000, and our house is $550,000. Okay. Cool.

So it's investments and home is the bulk of it. Okay. Very good. How old are you guys? I'm 58. And I'm 57. Very good. And how much of this did you inherit?

How much did you inherit? Oh, nothing. Inherited nothing. Okay. And what's been the range of your income in your working life, your best year working and your worst year working? Our worst year is when we first started. The combined income was $41,000.

And our best year is probably right now we're at about $255,000. I have a pension. Very good. Okay. What's your career? I retired as a state trooper after 25 years. Awesome. Okay.

And what was your career, Amy? I'm in marketing and media as a social media strategist. Okay. All right. Very good. So marketing, perfect. And you guys have four-year degrees? I have actually a master's degree.

Okay, and what? Business administration. An MBA, okay. And what about you, Eric? I have a bachelor's in police science. Okay, all right, perfect. And you both used them. Okay, what was your GPA, Eric? 3.0. Good for you. And what. Okay, what was your GPA, Eric? 3.0. Good for you. And what about you, Amy?

I strived for the 3.0, but I only made it to 2.9. Ah, me too. I had a 2.97. That three one-hundredths of a point is still pissing me off. Yeah, I love it. Hey, you guys are amazing. Congratulations. Very well done.

There it is, a policeman and a marketing specialist. Again, I told you, these people show up all the time. So here's the tally for the day, folks. Zero are, we had one, two, three, four, five different people we talked to. 1.2, 2.3, 1.1, 4.5, and 1.9. None because of inherited money. 32 years old, 46 years old, 28, 48, and 58. No 87-year-olds. That and 1.9 none because of inherited money 32 years old 30 46 years old 28 48 and 58 no 87 year old that's right okay and uh nobody it was a rocket science major with a 4.4 gpa they were

all in the threes by the way the average millionaire gpa is 3.1. For those of you that don't know, I'm a little below that. And we don't find many of them with a 1.6 because it does require some gray matter to get this done. Okay. But we don't find any of them that are like perfect students and valedictorians either. Okay. So you don't have to be brilliant. You don't have to be famous. You don't have to be a crook and you don't have to inherit it.

It's statistical data that is indicating that you in America have to be famous you don't have to be a crook and you don't have to inherit it it's statistical data that is indicating that you in america have a chance that's that's good news jade it's great news and i'm looking at the mix of their investments it's their home their retirement account and cash on hand for most for the most part two of them had rentals yep yeah and nobody borrowed their way into real well you know i'm gonna i to be a TikTok star, and I'm going to put nothing down and buy 73 houses, and it's going to make you bankrupt, you idiot. That's what it's going to do. None of these people do this. There are none of them doing this stuff you see on TikTok.

None of them. And it's not just because they're calling this show. You can't find them out in the wild that do this stuff they're not there it's mythology so it's the tortoise beats the hair every time i read the book to my grandkids slow and steady beats is flash and sexy and I'm cool. Look at me. Nobody cares what you look like. Be an ugly tortoise. Steady.

Step. Step. Step. Step. Shut up. Step. That's how you do it, boys and girls. That's how it happens.

Even the 28-year-old did it that way. And she was an engineer and just kind of bored with it all yeah yeah yeah she had to sit silently in the room of complainers so great her peers she was awesome yeah she was great these they were all great they weren't driving new cars hey we don't tell these people what to say we just interview real millionaires not whiners and complainers from social media. These are real people. So guys, our purpose of doing this is not to say we're right,

although it does say that. Our purpose in doing this is to show you you can do it. There is hope. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey folks, Dave Ramsey here.

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