The Ramsey Show - Don’t Rationalize Stupid Money Decisions!

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & George Kamel answer your questions and discuss: "Is now the right time to treat myself with a car?" "Why you shouldn't rationalize your stupid money decisions," "How should we use our savings?" "My abusive husband took all our money and left," Why leasing a car is the most expensive way to own a vehicle, We hear from millionaires to find out how they built their wealth. Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp NetSuite Zander Insurance 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! 🍎 Enter the Teacher Appreciation Giveaway 💼 Find The Work You're Wired To Do 📈 For help with investing, get connected with a SmartVestor Pro.  🚢 The Live Like No One Else Cruise is back!  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. Number one best-selling author of the book Breaking Free from Broke, Ramsey Personality, and host of the very popular George Camel Show on YouTube. George Camel is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America.

The phone number is 888-825-5225. So, George, sometimes when people think of Dave Ramsey, they think cheap. I don't like that. They think, when people think of Dave Ramsey, they think cheap. I don't like that. They think if I'm doing Dave Ramsey, I can't ever have a life the rest of my life. And that was happened early on in my career. I got associated with, you know, beans and rice, rice and beans, junk cars, drive the hoopty, drive the hoopty, never have a life, can't have any fun. And that's all about Dave Ramsey.

And the truth is that that's the exact opposite of me. And so we had to try to communicate that to our team. And we started saying, okay, here's the deal. Yes, you're going to pay a price to win. But the point is, win. That's the point. So live like no one else so that you can live and give like no one else. Drive a car like no one else so that later you can drive a car like no one else.

Yeah, it wasn't the end goal. And so the goal is not to stay, be worth $80 million and live in a cave, collect lint, and only come out on triple coupon Thursday. That's not the goal. be worth $80 million and live in a cave, collect lint, and only come out on triple coupon Thursday. That's not the goal, okay? The goal is to be outrageously generous, enjoy the money, to live like no one else. But you've got to get your crap cleaned up to do that, right? You've got to get out of debt. You've got to get your emergency fund in place. And then you hit baby step four, five, and six, where you're investing and building your emergency fund. And now you're starting the process of living like no one else.

You can let your foot off the gas a little and start to upgrade some of the stuff, go on vacations again, all that good stuff. So a couple of years ago, we launched a Live Like No One Else cruise. And the cruise date was approximately the same date that we shut the entire nation down for the Fauci pandemic. And so guess what? We didn't cruise, which was a problem because, I mean, people were getting on those boats. It was, y'all remember, it was a mess.

And so it was so painful for all of us here because we had the thing sold out. It was going to be such fun. I had my bags packed. It was ready i mean i was we were so ready to go and like weeks you know days before it was it was march 23rd 2020 was the sale date that's when we were gonna go and leave the dock right no no no not enough masks or flattening of the curve or vaccines on the planet to cause that puppy to sail it was done but guess what today we are relaunching the live like no one else cruise we are going baby

it just took a little while we're going next year at this time and it went on sale today to the public and as soon as it went out on the public and went out to our you know we sent out the email newsletter from the people on our database and so forth we shut the cruise website down we broke the internet oh boy so many people want to live like no one else with us so it's jor it's all the ramsey personalities george camel i mean you got seven days of george camel trapped on a boat with you and rachel and jade warshaw and dr john deloney and ken coleman and me i'm gonna be there the whole week that's right and we're bringing some friends with us y'all it's gonna be so fun it's holland america so it's an upscale cruise it's not like walmart on the seas

or something this is a good one okay and some of those other ones y'all know what they are not a great value cruise yeah this is not a value cruise. This is a fun, it's an upskill. Because now you're living like no one else. You don't need to come on this cruise, though, unless you're in Baby Step 4 or beyond. Because that would, A, make us hypocrites, and B, you wouldn't be following our system. Because we tell you not to go on vacation until you're out of debt and have your emergency fund in place. Baby Steps 1, 2, and 3.

And we're going to stay with that. We stayed with it last time. The cruise sold out in about, I think it was about four and a half, five weeks it sold out last time we did it. And based on the response this morning, it's not even going to last that long this time. Well, think about it. Over the last five years, people are in much better shape financially

if they've been following these steps. Yeah. They've gotten out of debt since that last cruise. That's exactly right. And a lot, you know, the first people we offered it to, and and we sold a whole bunch of them were the ones that didn't get to go last time so they're so they had they had up until yesterday to sign up and you people didn't know about it so we're going to turks and caycos oh have you ever been to turks sweet that water's so clear makes uh gomer say shazam i'm just'm just saying. St. Thomas. Oh, the U.S. Virgin Islands.

San Juan. The Bahamas. These are the stops. And again, it's Holland America. It's a first-class ship. And we're going to have the whole ship. It's all just us. It's going to be Ramsey people.

That's it. Live like no one else, Cruz. And I said we're bringing some friends. Stephen Curtis Chapman. How many Grammys has Stephen got? He has five Grammys, a set five Grammys, 59 Dove Awards, an American Music Award, 50 number one singles, 17 million albums. Those numbers hurt my brain.

And a little known secret is he's also just an incredibly nice guy. Amazing. We've been friends for about 20 years, and he is a world class talent and a great guy. He's going to be with us on the cruise. Manit Chauhan from the Food Channel, world class chef, winner of Iron Chef and a great guy he's going to be with us on the cruise manit shohan from the food channel world-class chef uh winner of iron chef and a whole bunch of other things and she's become a friend in the last few years we've done several events with her uh she was at an event i did that we did just the other day at one of our one of our vip oh yeah yeah the man the food when she

she's going to cooking demonstrations all kinds of fun stuff with manit shohan uh dina carter uh country music star extraordinaire. I don't know how many Grammys or whatever she's got, but she's a big deal. Been around Nashville forever. We're bringing some of the country music songwriters. We're going to do songwriters nights. And these two of the guys, Wynn and Phil, they've written some of the biggest hits out there. Like Wynn wrote Waiting on a Woman.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, little song that Brad Paisley did. And so these guys are going to be on there with us. hits out there like win wrote uh waiting on a woman oh yeah yeah little little little little little song that brad paisley did and uh so these guys are going to be on there with us it's got it's incredible lineup we're going to be talking and doing events and doing uh uh sessions all week and we're going to play together and we're going to uh splash in that blue water that's on top of all the normal world-class cruise entertainment and And we're bringing stuff on top of that. Yeah, well, it's our cruise. I mean, they're going to have their little dancing people and all that.

But I mean, they'll have their normal thing, right? But we're going to do our dog and pony show, baby. This is it. Ken Coleman and I are going to do a little routine out there. Yeah, we're working on a little banjo. It's kind of an Irish jig. Oh, please don't. We'll save that.

I'm going to veto that. But we do have a world-class magician and comedian, Nate Bargetti's dad, Stephen Bargetti, is going to be joining us. He's a hoot. He's amazing. That's how Nate got funny. You've seen him open for Nate. Yeah, he gets it from him.

And then Carolyn Xavier, a hilarious comedian who even Dave loves. Oh, man. Well, I was the one who recommended her for this. Recovering Californian. Yeah. Recovering Californian. She makes fun of the south and tells californians like this is a stick of butter they use the whole thing when they cook

it's stuff like that right so she's funny as card i love it it's gonna be great y'all it's gonna be march 22nd through the 29th so about a year away a little less than a year away 11 months away and if you're in baby steps 4 and beyond and you want to go with us it's the live like no one else cruise it opened to the public today. We already broke the internet once. Let's see if we can do it again. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash cruise and get your cabins and tickets and all that stuff while you can. Last time we did this, the whole thing was gone in just a couple of weeks, a few weeks. So we're going to remind you about this thing. But as you can tell, we're a bit jazzed about it. And even though it brings back

very dark and deep and horrible memories. But aside from that, we're very jazzed about it. So it's very cool. This is going to be fun. I can't wait. Go get your tickets. RamseySolutions.com slash cruise. We'll see you there. 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 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 Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash Deloney. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you're here. Alex is in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Alex. How are you? Hello. How's it going, Dave? Better Carolina. Hi, Alex. How are you? Hello. How's it going, Dave? Better than I deserve, sir. What's up?

Nothing much, man. You know, I've been following you for a couple years, man. You know, been making great strides, and I'm at a point where I'm questioning whether or not I should finally treat myself and just get a new car that I've wanted for a little bit. Okay. All right. Yep. So you've been following us. What's the guidelines that we use?

Obviously not taking on new debt. Okay. That's one. That's good. What else? You know, that's, you know, paying off your mortgage, you know, all that, all that good stuff. You know, I've been working on all that.

I've been really chugging along the last couple of years made, you know, what I feel is amazing strides. And I'm just like, you know what? I feel like I need to reward myself, man. Okay, are you out of debt completely? Not completely, but in a position where given my income, the debt that I have is very minimal. What debt do you have left? So I have a house worth about $210,000, $220,000. I owe $85,000 on it. I got a rental worth about $120,000 that I owe $60,000 on. And that's it. I have a credit card that I owe

$2,000. That's my business credit card by a rental company, but that's it. That's good for you. And what do you make a year, household income? So household is around $250,000. I'm the bulk of that. I make $220,000. My wife, she makes around $30,000. Okay. All right. And what is your net worth?

Well, I got probably, to include my houses and my 401 and everything, well over $200,000. Probably between $225,000 and $250,000. That's it. All right. include my houses and my 401 and everything well over 200 probably between 225 and 250 when you say a new car you're talking about a new to you car or a brand new car brand new 2024 ford maverick you know as much as i'd love to get a 70 000 sierra that's just dumb so you know i want to be modest get a truck that checks all my boxes that isn't too crazy and is very affordable so yeah the truck's only 27k so you know like it's a new truck for the price of used trucks nowadays alex you're you're are um a grown person and you're certainly allowed to do whatever you want to do it's what you're asking is not illegal so you you get to do whatever you want to do to be very clear though.

Uh, if you'd spent, uh, uh, uh, more time than, than I thought you had, uh, listening, we teach folks that new cars go down in value so rapidly that you shouldn't buy a brand new car until you have over a million dollar net worth. And we've taught people that for 30 years. So I would buy a one-year-old truck or a two-year-old truck if you can pay cash for it um in the guidelines that you're talking about would be just fine yeah so like i could it's basically like should i save up my resources over the next like few months instead of dumping them into my mortgage yes and pay cash for it or just keep dumping it to my mortgage no and just stride on for another year.

No, if you want to keep paying down the mortgage, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with doing that, too, and not buying the truck. But if you're going to buy the truck, you've got to pay cash for it, so you're going to have to save up, right? Yeah, so pretty much put pauses on the mortgage. The extra payments on the mortgage, you're going to slow down. Because that's what we teach you to do at Baby Step 3. Because this kind of is a want for you.

It's not really a need. But let's pretend that it was an actual need, that you were driving a $2,000 car, making $250,000, and it was really time for you to move up, and you're on Baby Steps 4, 5, 6, right? Then we would tell you to just slow down how much you're putting on the house so that you could upgrade the car to something reasonable, because a $2,000 car in your situation will be unreasonable. Right, George? Yeah. And the other piece here is, are you currently investing 15% into retirement? Yes. Okay. Good. So beyond that, how much cash do you have? Well, I got about six, seven grand in my emergency

fund savings. I think it's like 6,500 to be exact. And then in my checking, I only have, honestly, I think like 1,500 because I budget very strictly. And anything extra pretty much at the end of the month just goes straight into the mortgage. That's how you got those low balances. You're killing it. You're doing great.

Yeah, like I bought this house two years ago. The loan was $180,000, and I've already got it down to $84,000. I love that. I love that. What are you driving now? You're going to laugh at me when I say this. I work from home, so I got a 1994 Chevy F10. Okay.

Because I just work for a car thing, and then when I got the, you know, the rental property, you know, just for, like, getting stuff for that, because, you know, me and my friend are, you know, fixing it up and so forth. You know, we got a really good deal on it. That's why I got it early, because it was, like, you know, too good of a deal to pass out. Yeah. So, Alex, so what our recommendation always is, and I'm not laughing at you. I think you've done a great job. You paid down very aggressively on these mortgages. That's excellent. So if you want to slow down the payment on the mortgage a little bit or just make regular

payments on the mortgages for a few months and pay cash for a one or a two year old truck, I think that's just fine. I would not recommend you buy a brand-new truck because when you drive a brand-new car off the lot and you hear that sound as you leave the lot and pull onto the street, when you go across the curb, it goes, blump, blump. That sound is $10,000. That's how much you lost right then. And by the time you get home, it's almost another 10.

So the new cars just lose so much of their value so fast that we don't recommend you take that hit unless you've got a net worth of over a million dollars. You can stomach it at that point. And there are some prerequisites here, Alex. You need to pay off that credit card debt before you do anything. You have the money sitting there. You've got 7K in the bank. Pay that off. Now that leaves you with 5K.

I think you need to beef up that emergency fund. I missed it. I missed it. He said it's for the business and all this but if you're playing you know i wouldn't be playing that game i'll get rid of that get you a debit card cut up that credit card and time for plastic surgery too alex and i think the emergency fund needs to be beefed up because he's only got 5k at that point we need to get him closer to probably 15 20 25 especially if i can turn 50 000 you need to be at 20 then we can start saving up cash for the car so we need to get the credit

card done get a debit card build the emergency fund up to that, then save up for a car and pay cash. That's the order of events. And all of that, well, you can slow down your mortgage a little bit. Making $250,000 will be there. You've done a great job overall. All we're doing is fine-tuning just a little bit, a little bit of polish right here. But the ingredients are there.

That's all we're doing. You've got all the right things, and the good news is you're paying attention, and you're really thinking about it. Ana Lee is with us in Sacramento. Hi, Ana Lee. How are you? Hi, I'm good. Good.

How can we help? So I have a question about my mortgage, and I didn't know at the time of buying our home that you guys don't recommend manufactured homes but we currently have a mortgage on it and I am debating on whether we should throw our savings at that mortgage or keep it in cash for when we decide to sell trying to pay down the mortgage quicker on the principal okay well overall the concept is that every day you keep it you you're losing money because it's going down in value. So when we decide to sell would be like three weeks from now. And it's not looking great for equity.

I'm sorry, say again? Just based on the pricing. Start again. I was talking over you. Based on the pricing right now, we're not looking great for selling right now. It's kind of a lull in the area we're at but um that's why i'm debating on if we should be paying down the loan with the money i'm saying that regardless of a lull in the area in real estate every day you own a manufactured house it's going down in value. Trailers go down in value.

Yeah. And so the longer you hold it, the more you're going to lose. Okay. So I'm going to be thinking about putting this on the market very quickly. Right now, there's nothing rental-wise that we could even really afford for the same amount. Well, you're going to have to find some more expenses. You're losing money every day that you sleep in a trailer don't talk to me about there's no rental property in sacramento california

okay you're losing money every day that you own a trailer a trailer is a car you sleep in these are two back-to-back calls on depreciating assets. So you keep it as long as you want, and you rationalize it as long as you want, but every day you keep this, your finances are going the wrong way. So don't rationalize that stupidity. Don't do it. You need to be thinking about how quickly we can get out of this thing. Even if you don't have equity, it's going to be a stupid tax you pay to get out of the situation. The equity is going down. It's getting negative and negative and more negative every day. It's what it does.

It's just, yeah. Sorry, I've got friends that are in the manufactured housing business. They're like, Dave, quit trashing us. I'm like, I'm not trashing you. You sell something that goes down in value. I'm just stating a fact. That's it. This is The Ramsey Show.

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And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. This is a fun day on The Ramsey Show. Some days we just sit here and do what we're supposed to do, and other days we get to have a lot of fun. Today I get to remind you guys it's National Financial Literacy Month, and that's a big deal because financial literacy is a big deal. Ever since I started talking about this stuff, everybody says, why don't they teach this in high school? Why don't they teach this in high school?

Well, we do. We sell high school curriculum called Foundations in Personal Finance. Forty-eight percent of the high schools in America have now taught it at one time or another. We've had almost eight million students go through it. It's pretty cool. So we're actively working all the time. Texas is in adoption right now, so is South Carolina. And they're putting in, you know, we're one of the approved curriculum.

And so the teachers and the administrators and the people who are purchasing the curriculum for the different schools is now required subject to get out of high school in those two states. And it is in several states. Thank goodness. It's good. You ought to learn how to balance a checkbook. We'd have better congressmen if they learned how to do that for that. You know, so it's good.

And we're biased, but we have the best curriculum. Oh, definitely. It's because the other stuff's dry boring and not even right ours is fun funny and is correct and actually teaches you how to win with money and avoid debt instead of accumulate it here's how you build your credit score don't okay that's good that that'll work you know it's easy so there's that all right so hey one of the cool things that happens is we have companies and and institutions and groups come alongside us and sponsor the curriculum to go into schools that can't otherwise afford to pay for it and so we've got local businesses that do

that we've had other groups uh one of the groups that came alongside us is the air force now that's pretty stinking cool and the air force is one of our big sponsors on it. And so we've got Lieutenant Colonel Brian Ewing from the U.S. Air Force on the line. And I want to talk about this a little bit. Brian and I have gotten to spend time together a couple of times. How are you? How are you, Colonel Ewing? Hey, I woke up today and I'm getting paid. So life is good. There we go, man. Well, we're honored to have men and women like you on the payroll. Thank you for your service. So you guys with the Air Force have been sponsoring this for quite a while. How did you hear about the idea that you could sponsor the Ramsey curriculum

and the Air Force decide to do that? So I've been following you for quite a long time. Back in 2008 and 2009, my wife and I, we got debt-free, and thanks to your curriculum, and we just kept looking at that. And then, you know, seeing where we could help, we taught or I should say facilitated FPU all over the world, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, states all over the country. But then when I got into Air Force recruiting, I said, man, how can we do something better and do it for the youth and get upstream of, you know,

before people get into those troubles? And so, yeah, I was talking with your folks there, the education team, Ryan Davis, Jeff Martinez and team, and they told me about this Foundation of Personal Finance and said, hey, we have this, and if you guys want to come alongside us, you can. And so a couple years ago, we said, well, let's dip our toes in the water. And we sponsored three schools there in the Tennessee area. It went amazing. And we had such great results.

We said, well, let's expand it over to Oklahoma and a couple other states. We went to 10 schools. And then this past year, we just went crazy with it and said, hey, we want to go after about 100 schools, and we were able to sponsor 92 schools thanks to your partnership. Wow. Well, thanks to your partnership. We appreciate you, Colonel Ewing.

Appreciate the Air Force coming alongside. That's 92 schools, and that's 1,000 students probably or more that are going to go through this curriculum because of you all. And in the process, they're going to hear about the Air Force and find out that if you want to go to college debt-free, the Air Force can cause that to happen, right? And so they learn. It's a good partnership in a lot of ways, right? Yes, sir. I think it's a phenomenal partnership. You know, I've been in schools and homes, and you name it, all over, you know, everything, all over the country. And what I hear from these young people is they're hungry, right? They're hungry for information.

They're hungry for opportunities. And I call it the, you know, it's kind of like a dog with a cone on his head after a surgery or something. We have this cone of knowledge that we just don't know about. We know what mom does and dad does. If you're lucky enough to have both of those, it may be a teacher. But what we want to do is open them up to take that cone off and tell them about different opportunities, both on the educational, the job opportunity side, and whether they come in the Air Force or not. Let's set them up for success. And the

teachers and the counselors are saying, hey, Air Force, come talk to my students. And so everybody wins in this, from the student to the parent to you guys to us. I mean, our communities are better because of this partnership. I love that. And the ripple effect, Colonel, to us. I mean, our communities are better because of this partnership. I love that. And the ripple effect, Colonel, is amazing. I just met someone yesterday. I was at the line of the coffee shop and she said, hey, are you the guy from that Ramsey curriculum? I went, yeah. She said, I love your stuff. I was able to pay cash for a car because of you guys. I learned so much. I'm budgeting. And so the ripple effect, we'll never know as these people start families and affect their communities. So thank you for what you guys do and the big part you play in that yeah thank you and yes sir all of the businesses out there across america that sponsor air force is one of our larger sponsors

with 92 schools but all of you businesses that sponsor out there and cause maybe the high school you graduated from you make sure those kids get the curriculum you know that kind of thing a lot of you jump in you can get in touch with with us and jump in if you're out there listening and want to join this crusade of teaching the youngsters. I kind of have this idea if we could teach them all to be financial literate, it could possibly change the nation. It would be one of the things that did anyway. So very cool.

And so, Colonel Ewing, thank you so much. Thanks for the sponsorship. Thanks for your personal friendship. Thanks for your heart and for your service for this nation and we we really really appreciate you guys come alongside us and thanks for taking a little time with us and thank y'all so much you know like i said i hope this is as i've said to your team before i hope we keep this relationship going and if we can grow it in any way and if like you said if people want their schools out there that want it hey we we've got a little bit of money left in the coffer, believe it or not,

and we'd love to sponsor more schools. So AirForce.com or however they want to reach out to us, to your team or to us, we'll be happy to grab some more schools so that we can keep this going. Well, if we haven't spent all your money, we'll find a way to do it, brother. We're about to break the Air Force website. Yeah, so here we go, man. That's awesome. Yeah, go to Ramseyaysolutions.com slash sponsor.

That's where you would go. If you're a teacher and you need the curriculum, the Air Force just offered to sponsor it for you maybe. You got a handful more because apparently we need to get over 100. We only got 92, so there we go. Dave likes round numbers. Yeah, well, apparently Colonel Ewing does. I'm just saying, and we don't argue with him.

We salute when the lieutenant colonel comes in the room. You salute, buddy. That's how you do it. And we don't argue with it. We salute when the lieutenant colonel comes in the room. You salute, buddy. That's how you do it. And we appreciate you in all seriousness. And if you want to sponsor or help these kids out, RamseySolutions.com slash sponsor will do that. By the way, in honor of this month, we're giving away for our teacher appreciation giveaway, Ramsey Education is.

One teacher is going to win a $5,000 vacation. You don't have to be teaching the curriculum. You just have to be a teacher in the classroom, not a homeschool teacher, a teacher in the classroom. You homeschoolers are real teachers too, but I'm talking about classroom teachers, okay? So $5,000 vacation for one. Two more teachers are going to win a $3,000 vacation. No purchase is necessary. To register for that, go to ramseysolutions.com slash teacher. And we all know a teacher. So send them a link to ramseysolutions.com slash teacher and say, I hope you win.

That's cool. So someone in line, a youngster. She was working the register. She had just, she was a high schooler. Oh, she is currently in high school. Yeah. She said, hey, last year I took the curriculum. And so I run into these people all the time.

One guy, I was in a Target once and he just yelled at me, Dave Ramsey. And I went, sure. George Camel. But I knew exactly what he was saying. And again, I went, how do you know? He said, I went through the curriculum. And they're actually enjoying it. They're engaging with it. I did a Zoom call with a class this week. You know, 60 students out there asking questions. And the teacher has been doing this for 15 years now. He's been teaching this stuff, and it's just amazing the impact we can have on this next generation to be the preventative medicine. Instead of the emergency surgery you've done on the show for 30 years, telling people to amputate the Tahoe. So I walked in. Sharon and I were dropped by Best Buy.

She was looking at a washer and dryer. And so we go in there Sunday afternoon. There's nobody in there. It's right before closing time. And we walk in. There's a young guy, like 16, 17 at the front. They've got greeters or whatever. How can we help you or whatever?

And I'm like, Washington, right? He points that way. Your day, Ramsey. I'm like, gosh, you're 16. How do you know that? He goes, curriculum. Same thing. I'm going through your high school curriculum.

And he goes, and your YouTube stuff, man. It's great. And so we get ready to leave we walk out there's a girl standing beside him also 16 17 she goes i'm so into your youtube and i'm like i walked out my wife said you're just a youtuber now that's all you are that's it the bono of personal finance used to be cats chasing lasers now it's bald guys there we go youtube has moved along whatever keeps you relevant relevant. There you go. 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, it's terrible. So life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm 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. Thanks for being with us, America. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is our co-host. George, there is a way that the listener, the viewer, can help us, and we need their help. We do.

What is that way? Well, it would be subscribing to the show what else following following the show liking commenting engaging sharing clicking the buttons that's it the buttons all of them the podcast the youtube buttons what is it what is it um deloney calls it the internets oh gosh the interwebs i think he likes to call them interwebs the youtubes he thinks it makes him seem like there's more than one tube the youtubes there's many yeah and so um leaving reviews that's important purpose do you think he does it on purpose i think i think he does it to anger the youth of america just to rile them up make them feel something he wants to sound like an uncool boomer yes and he's not he's actually cool is the problem that's the problem

yeah gosh so subscribe follow leave a five-star review those one-star reviews are not helpful you're just a little troll we know who you are i don't like this my little troll and so um don't be a little troll and so yeah be a be a five-star be a hero star be a hero be a hero five gold stars remember when your first grade five gold stars they probably didn you were in first grade? Five gold stars. They probably didn't do that, but they did it when I was a little star. That's where this whole thing came from, by the way. We were little kids.

They used to give us stars. So now I'm still a little kid asking for stars. There you go. And follow. And hey, by the way, share. That's a big one. Let people know about the show. Thank you for that.

Wendy is in Phoenix. Hi, Wendy. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thank you for that. Wendy is in Phoenix. Hi, Wendy. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm slightly terrified to talk to you, but I'm happy. It's just me, Wendy. Don't worry.

We'll let George be nice to you. I know. I hear you telling people what a mess they've made of their lives now. They're stupid, and I know you're going to say that's neat. No, we're going to be nice to you, Wendy. What's up? What'd you do? Okay, so my husband and I have $320,000 worth of student loans. What? And we've been paying them for almost a decade, and it's just growing.

Wow. More and more. Who's the doctor? He's a foot and ankle surgeon. Oh, that's good news. And so he does make, I know he has a good shovel. Good. But he doesn't feel like that because everything goes towards his bed,

but he's growing more and more. What's he make? He makes $180,000. He just get out? No. It feels low for a surgeon. Yeah, really. And he's in podiatry.

He's a clinical surgeon. I know. But they don't charge less. I mean, that's about where. Okay, so let's pretend that he's making $200,000 because that sounds low. Okay, good, $180,000. Do you work outside the home? I work part-time with special needs. Okay, and thank you.

That's wonderful. And you've got $320,000 in student loan debt from getting his MD. And what else do you have in debt? Well, we do have two cars that we are planning on paying off. Yeah, how much do you owe on the two cars? It's $20,000 total. $20,000 between the two of them. Okay, what else do you have? That's it, and our mortgage.

And how much do you owe on your mortgage? $480,000. Okay, all right. Okay. Well, you haven't done too bad. A lot of people, when they graduate from med school, get what I call doc-itis, because they've been holding their breath for 16 or 17 years doing nothing but going to school and they graduate and go i'm a doctor i'm

gonna go buy a bunch of crap i can't afford and that's what they usually do that's doc itis and so they buy a house they can't afford two bmws and and a mercedes as a spare and start going on vacations and still have $300,000 in student loan debt. You didn't do that. You only got $20,000 in car debt. That's good. So you all have been fairly conservative. But you're making $200,000 a year,

so how much can you throw at the debt if you get on beans and rice? Well, that's the thing. I feel like we are on beans and rice and i'm emotional i'm sorry we have a lot of things that that we're paying for for like our kids um that aren't covered with insurance what's what what you have special needs children yourself well i do yes but then three of my kids all struggle with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, and so a lot of our disposable money goes straight to therapists because that's not always covered by... Anyway, I'm getting off topic.

No, that's part of the topic. I mean, you've got your hands full. So how old are you guys? I do. I'm 43, both of us are. And you have three children, and he has, I mean, are they yours from a previous marriage? We have four children. One has special needs, and then the other three struggle with mental illness. They're all from my husband and i like um we um first marriage um anyway

so finally i got my husband on board he read your book um because he was content to just make the minimum payment and income-based routine and and and live like that i got the picture now how can we best serve you today, ma'am? Okay, okay. So I would like to sell our home. It's increasing so much value, we could list it for 1.1. We have a few comps,

a few realtors telling us that we won't be able to sell it unless we put in a backyard. And my gut is telling me not to listen to them and just sell it as is because we will make enough to wipe out our student loans, have the three to six months of financial reserves. We could rent for a while and just start building wealth and save for when we can do a home with a 15 year um i would do that as a last resort really not as a first resort because moving

is very expensive and you do you have to replace it with another place to live and you got a lot of kids you need room for six so i would not do that until the two of you had sat down and done your every dollar budget together and gotten some peace about where the money's going because in talking to you it feels very chaotic there's not peace on the subject and it's going everywhere. It feels out of control. And so the selling of the home feels like a desperate slash, a leap, a lunge, rather than a carefully thought out wise decision because we've done everything else we can do and we're stuck.

Am I missing something? No. Okay. All right. That's where all the emotions coming from is the chaos and the sense of hopelessness. There's no, no, I can't see a light at the end of the tunnel unless it's a train coming at me. So I want the two of you to sit down together before you give up your home and lay out and say, okay, we're going to budget for the therapist. We're going to budget for the special need.

We're going to budget for food, need. We're going to budget for food, shelter, water, clothing, transportation. We're going to lay all that at the two of you together. And then we're going to see how much of this debt we can knock off. And oh, by the way, you're probably going to pick up some hospital shifts and things, honey, on the weekends and get your income from 180 to 280. And so we can knock this out quick and keep our home because I think that that's probably really what needs to happen. But until you've worked a plan that the two of you are working together and you're making all the progress you can make, you've squeezed every sacrifice out of that budget that you can, and you've worked that plan

for four or five months and you still aren't making progress until you've done that, I wouldn't sell. Yeah. And part of that, we're going to gift you every dollar premium, and it's going to be real simple. It's going to take you about a half hour for the first one, get the bank statement, you and your husband together, list out all the expenses that could happen in the next month, list out all the income that's coming in. It's probably going to be more income than you realized and more expenses than you realized, but that'll at least give you a picture of reality and help you take the next step. Stop investing for retirement. Stop going out to eat. Stop going on vacation. Write it all down. Honey, you're just stuck. And no, we're not going to yell at you. We're going to help you. Okay. And y'all can do this, Wendy.

I think you've got numbers that'll do it. I don't know what you're spending on all these various issues with the children, but other than that, your budget sounds very doable. So I want you to dig in and really put numbers to all of these issues and then see where that leaves your family. If after doing that for five or six months, and you're from, from a point of peace, you make the decision to sell the house, I would. 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. Number one bestselling author of the book Breaking Free from Broke and the hottest YouTube show out there, George Camel with a K, Ramsey Personality. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Kristen starts this hour off in, well, I'm going to have to push the right button. There it is. Kristen's in Syracuse, New York. Hi, Kristen. How are you?

Hi, good. Thank you so much. Good. How can we help you? So I'm wondering if I should go back to nursing school to get my nurse practitioner degree this fall. I keep going back and forth because I had my second baby a few months ago and I went back to work part-time. I've been back for about a month and I was full-time before

and I feel like I'm in a sweet spot. I feel happier at work. I feel like more patient and kinder with my patients. I feel like life is more manageable than when I was full-time after I had my first baby. So I'm nervous to take on, like, another endeavor. Why would you? At this time. Why would I? Oh, well, I mean, I don't want to do bedside nursing forever. I would like to become a nurse practitioner.

And, I mean, it would be less. But to justify the expense, you'd be full-time. Oh. Oh, well, my dad offered to pay for it. So I feel like I'm so grateful. Still, you're going to have to go do the work. He's going to pay for it. And to justify the expense of doing this, you would want to be full time.

Oh, yeah. After I get the degree, yeah. And you're telling us that you're happier part time. So there's some conflicting views here. So what do you actually want to do? I mean, that's what I'm trying to figure out, yeah. I mean, I'm going to, I don't know how it will be. Like, I want to set my family up for success in the future so that, like.

Well, is this a financial thing? Do you guys need more money? Like, I mean, I don't, I would like to have more money, like, for, to be able to... What does your husband make, Kristen? Well, he probably makes, the past few years, like, 25 to 30, and then I've brought in, like, 60, and I'm very fortunate because I have a lot of support from my parents, so I'm debt-free. But, like, my mom... how old are you let's i'm 33 okay why is he only making 25 um he could make a lot more i kind of what does he do he he's a

builder full-time no no uh we've been trading off on um child care but he definitely could work a lot more i've been encouraging him to work a lot more um i feel like he was kind of um raised like by the mindset of like just making enough to get by just making enough to get by once you're 33 it's not your parents fault it's your fault right i don't care how he was raised he ain't working much and maybe that maybe the way he got to not working much is his parents weren't motivated people the family were people that sat around did as little as they could do but it's time to grow up now you got kiddos and he needs to get his butt in gear yeah a lot more you need to go back to school are there other jobs

you can do here's the net result okay your husband sits on his thumbs you're working part-time and you're freaking grown-ups who live off your parents yeah that's the net result your mom and dad ought to cut y'all off so you could grow up y'all need to step up no you don't need to go back to school in this setting because you're bailing this whole situation out because nobody's doing anything but you and no i think we need to address his work career aspirations and he needs to go be somebody and then you can pick up more hours as a nurse and if everything's rocking and rolling and you're quit taking money from your parents and you're running your own lives and you're doing pretty good and you decide, hey, I really, I want to throw my shoulders back.

I want to be a nurse practitioner. I really want to go do this for me, not just because my husband doesn't work much and not because I'm my dad's willing to pay for it. Good Lord. No. How about you want to go be somebody? That's when you should go do it. Yeah, I think we need a bigger reason here than just like, well, I want to set up my family for success. That's code for my husband doesn't make any

money and my mom and dad give us money. That's what that's code for so y'all need some independent success yeah yeah and you guys ought to get you know lined up get yourself going you have the ability with a nursing degree to work as much as you want to work or as little as you want to work and until you're running that through and he's got his career off and going and his work ethic issues addressed and you guys get off the dole from your mom and dad um and that's not a blessing it's enabling uh at this point so yeah y'all need to it'd be good for y'all be good for your mom and dad be good for your husband for to to have the dignity of running the lane by yourself putting the ball in the hoop and go we just scored that's important for people this sense of i'm in control of my destiny i know it and i care about it um that kind of mojo is what will carry you to actual success

yeah and then when you got that stuff going and you call in and you go hey i want to i want to step up one more level i want to level up and be a nurse practitioner yeah we can talk about that and um and then if you at that point if you wanted to accept a gift and your dad wanted to pay for that that's fine but this is all just masking over the fact that y'all aren't dealing with it and that's that's what i want y'all to do for your sake doesn't affect us but that's what i found as we take calls a lot of people want to go back to school because they're sort of at in this conrum life crisis, and they just think going to school will hopefully solve everything. Yeah.

And it's rarely the right next step. It just seems to be the thing I can keep myself busy with. It's where I can run to to escape because we've told people that you automatically make more money if you increase your education, and that's not true. Now, it would be true in her case because nurse practitioners do make more. Okay. Now, it would be true in her case because nurse practitioners do make more. Okay, but, you know, this general vague thing of, okay, so the answer to everything is go back to school. No, really not, not unless you're already successful.

And then you want to just add some tools to your already successful belt. Or you're going to take a complete left turn and go into something that requires some certifications that you don't have. Then you can do that. But, you know, all college is not good. The right college, the right study in the university is excellent. But when you get a degree in left-handed pump at puppetry or German poker history, and that's not her, she's not trying to do that. And and you know you're going to end up a

deeply in debt barista that's what you end up and so all college is not good that's not you know that's a misnomer and we've told people a lie about that and then we financed it and we give a 17 year old a hundred thousand dollar debt who's never done anything then sally may and the colleges go we can make a lot of money off these people. Yeah. Let's go raise tuition. It's your government screwing their constituency. And now we got a trillion and a half in student loan debt. A trillion. Can you even spell that? This is The Ramsey Show. Thanks for hanging out with us, America.

We're so glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. George, I'm so pumped about this total money makeover weekend that we are doing. It's coming up in just a few weeks, May the 10th. And, man, it's absolutely going to be all the Ramsey personalities, May 10th and 11th, all day Friday, or Friday afternoon, all day Saturday. And we're going to walk you through everything from the very beginning all the way through wealth and generosity.

And by the time you leave, you're going to be so jacked that you're going to know you can do this. Yeah, whether you're crushing it with money or it's crushing you, this event is going to give you some inspiration, motivation, some knowledge. And again, we're covering, of course, the core Ramsey principles, but we also have Ken Coleman talking about how to make more money and Deloney talking about how to ease anxiety, Rachel talking about comparisons,

and I'll be talking about home ownership, how to pay off the house early, how to get a house. Dave's going to be hitting the baby steps, generosity, investing, the debt snowball, all of that good stuff. Jay Warshaw will be speaking as well. Everybody's going to be there. We're going to do a lot of Q&A with you guys. It's here on campus at Ramsey at the Ramsey Live Event Center, and we want you to be with us.

The tickets are not sold out yet, but they're very close. It's May 10th and 11th. The Platinum Plus is gone. The Platinum, there's just a couple of them. The VIP, but they're very close. It's May 10th and 11th. The Platinum Plus is gone. The Platinum, there's just a couple of. And the VIP, there's a few of. And then General Admission is available as well. So we would love to have you with us. Be there.

Don't miss this. We're going to walk you through every dollar. We're going to walk you through everything you need. And bring your reluctant spouse and spend the weekend. You're going to leave all knit together ready to go and you can even bring your friend who thinks you're crazy because you're doing this ramsey stuff and by the time they leave they're going to be crazy and maybe you maybe you pay for their ticket that'll be fun yeah they should a little jen ross yeah there you go so it's going to be

a good time we got smart money happy hour live with us with the audience on friday night and if you want to come even earlier come watch the Ramsey show. Right here on the glass. I'll be hosting that day. So that may be a selling point. It may not be. I think it's a big one. Check it out, folks. RamseySolutions.com slash events.

Parker's in Bozeman, Montana. Hi, Parker. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, so I was wondering.

I'm self-employed. I'm 23 years old. I've got $2,200 a month mortgage payment. That's just me. I don't rent out any bedrooms or nothing. And then I have about $160,000 in consumer debt. It's a couple trucks, a bunch of trailers, a bunch of equipment. It's all for my business. It all makes me money. I've cut the excess off. I've got a few loans that I'm starting to get to the point where I could pay them off here sometime in the next six months. I'm starting to buckle down and I'm

not buying anything new. I'm trying to pay stuff off. I'm working 80 hours on a light week. What are you making? What's your profit going to be in this calendar year? Uh, this year I'm, it's looking like I'm going to take home around $250,000. Okay. All right.

And your question's what? So I'm to the point where I could use an employee. I have more work than I can get done on myself. I'm falling behind. With that said, if I were to hire a guy, I need to buy another pickup. No, you don't. You've got enough junk. Well, we, you know, primarily I drive in and out of job sites.

And right now I can't, I actually, I have enough for myself, but I've been having one of my brothers help me. But I'm, you know, sitting at home trying to take care of stuff. If I were to full-time him, I would need something. I would be buying it with cash. You got $160,000 in debt on a bunch of other equipment. Correct. Yeah. And you keep figuring out ways to not pay that off.

No. What's wrong with just hiring a guy that has a truck and tell him to go get the work done? I guess it's just a liability aspect of it. That's not a liability. Just if something were to happen to it, I don't want to, I guess, have him. It's also really hard to find a good employee. I had one actually, a guy in the same position as you were that's a different subject than he has a truck or not yeah fair yeah how much money do you have

right right now i only have about fifteen thousand dollars fifteen like liquid yeah fifteen one five because it i'm getting eaten up on these payments so that's why I've been trying to help them. Are you 28? 23. Okay. All right. Because you sound like you're trying to out-earn your stupidity. Yeah. I did that a lot.

I did that all through my 20s. It didn't work for me. You got to quit out-earning you, you're not afraid of hard work and you know how to make money. You just hadn't had to figure it out how to keep any of it yet. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. You're a hard working dude and you're a great entrepreneur cause you got about six ideas every minute and a half. I think you're going to be amazing. I think you're going to really make a lot of money in your life, but you've got to tame that monster of thinking you can out earn your stupidity.

So here's what I would advise you to do as the owner of a brand called Entree Leadership, or we coach small business people all the time. I would hire someone if that the work that they are doing is going to make me more than they cost me. Okay. So you said I can't get all the work done. So you're going to be able to get the work done now and make that money that you couldn't make. If you, it was just you by yourself, that justifies a hire from a business perspective. And, uh, what will it cost to hire that person what what kind of a what kind of an income would you need to pay them uh gosh i'd be shooting for you know 40 hours a week and you know 25 to 30 an hour depending on uh you know just depending on

experience talking about 50 55 grand somewhere in there in there? Yeah, yeah, right there. So if you hire somebody for $50,000 a year, and you say, I'm going to pay you, I'm going to pay all of your gas, and I'm going to pay, in addition to that, $200 a month for you to use your truck. Got it. Then you don't have to buy a truck. Yeah, that's a better idea. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and, and, um, later on you may want to buy a truck. Now, what is all this other equipment? Uh, so like a lot of them, a lot of them are like dump trailers. Uh, I've got 14 of them and i rent them all out on a monthly

basis uh to contractors throughout the valley so i still owe some on those just because i didn't um when i started this up when i was 20 i didn't really have any savings um you still barely have any savings how much has changed i do now and I don't have much. But, but, uh, so I, I got debt or, you know, I, I got loans to, to get myself started and get my foot in the door. Yeah. And then you went, then you went big. Yeah. And then I keep trying to, like you said, you're really good at justifying every purchase as long as you can tell yourself it's going to make you money. Because here's the thing about it. Here's the wonderful thing about an entrepreneur.

We never think it's going to fail. Yeah. And that's me. I never do anything that's going to fail. Yet 90% of my ideas actually, in hindsight, sucked. I made all of my money and my brand impact on the Dave Ramsey brand over the last 30 years on about 10% of my ideas, I survived the other 90% of my brilliance and which was awful. And so, um, that, you know, it's painful. And when you go in debt, you magnify the size of your mistake. So what I would also prescribe for you then, sir, uh, I'm going to send you a copy of the book on trade leadership,

which was a number one bestseller on how I grew this business from a card table in my living room to what it is today, which is a $300 million business with 1,100 team members. Okay. I'm going to send you that copy of that book free. And you read it. Now, the two things I want you to do is don't buy a truck, hire a guy with a truck, Parker. And then the second thing I want you to do is you are also good at living on nothing because you work all the time. So I want you to take every dollar you can find and start throwing it at list these debts on these or on these. All your debt, equipment, everything smallest to largest and attack at the smallest one. When it's gone, attack the next one.

When it's gone, attack the next one. And I want you to clear all of this debt in one year. Because, you know Because you're 23. Just go do it. You're amazing. You're amazing. Now, don't screw this up. Go do it.

This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thanks for hanging out with us. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Sarah is in Pensacola, Florida. Hi, Sarah.

How are you? Hi. Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I'm calling because I recently, I'm pretty much a single married mother of two. And I just recently had to get a restraining order against my husband in January. Either way, I am left with the responsibility and finances of two incomes now on just one. I've done a budget on the app, on the EveryDollar app,

and I am just consistently on the red. I've done everything to try to bring all my expenses down the best way I could on just me and my two kids. I've done pretty good, but what really is it's my rent, and I can't move until my lease is up because I don't want to break a lease. Wait a minute. Let me stop a second, honey. Okay. So a restraining order. So he was physically abusive. Yeah.

On Christmas, it was the last straw. Yeah. So I got him out. How long have you been married? Five years. Okay. I'm so sorry. Okay. Okay.

Okay. What do you make, hon? Well, my salary is 55, 576. What do you do? 55,000. I work for United States Postal Service. Okay. And how old are your babies again?

Six and four. Okay. Is everybody safe now? Yes. The restraining order has us safe at the home, yes. Okay. Well, they're not magic, but so far it has worked, right? Yes. Why did you hesitate?

Because he's popped up, but, you know, as soon as I tell him to get out of here, I'm going to call the cops, he pretty much runs. He doesn't make it easy for me, but I... How many times has he popped up? Twice so far. Since January? January 10th, yes, sir. Okay. twice so far since january january thank you sir okay um okay so let me help you with a couple things now sadly because we help with people with financial crises i've been in these situations many times in the last 30 years and so i've been forced to learn a little bit about it

more than i wanted to okay because it a filthy, horrible thing that you have endured. And I'm very sorry for you. The next time he shows up, don't threaten to call the cops. Call them. Put him in jail. Okay? Okay, yeah. Okay.

Quit playing games with this guy. He needs to go away. He's bad. Period. playing games with this guy he needs to go away he's bad period that's your uncle dave who loves you telling you that okay no screwing around with this he goes to jail he violated a restraining order he is threatening you and the children if he pops up again he's going to pop in behind bars. I got you pop up, buddy. I'll put you, put you where you can't breathe. Okay. So I'm done with him.

He's scum. Okay. Period. And I've got to tell you that real directly and real loud because he has told you for five years, two things really often. And if you're not careful careful you start to believe them one is that you'll never make it without him and two is that he's really sorry well he is really sorry but i'm not talking about an apology here i'm just talking about a sorry human being okay so he ain't sorry he's abusive

and you are a thousand times better than he's been telling you for five years you're going to make it you're going to be fine and we're going to put a team of people around you to make sure you do okay and you are going to break your lease because you can't afford it how much is the payment 17 15 okay so we're gonna we're gonna have our one of our financial coaches serve you at no cost to you when we get off the phone we're going to hook them up with you and they're going to meet with you and on your behalf they're going to call the landlord and tell the landlord that the husband in the building has been beating his wife and she can't afford the lease now that she threw him out like she should have five years ago. Okay?

And the landlord's going to have some mercy and get the house rented to somebody else and you're going to get something you and the kids can afford. You are not trapped and you can make it without him. You make $55,000 a year. The lady that I'm talking to is articulate and intelligent. Yes, thank you. Aren't you? Aren't you?

Yeah, the best that I can, Mr. Yeah, you are. I mean, everything I've heard was intelligent, didn't you, George? Yes. You are a warrior. If you survive the crap from him, you're going to survive anything. Yeah. Okay. So how much debt do you have other than this lease that's a problem? Well, that's the thing. I don't have a car payment, and I have two secured credit cards

each for $400, but I've paid them up. Good. So you don't have any debt there. No. We'll convert you to a debit card on that. You're not going to spend money you don't have. You've got $55,000 coming in. So your payments are food, lights, water, shelter.

What else? Mainly what it is is that I'm not really taking home that much. See, when he, um, in the beginning of the year, and I got this restraining order, he also took, um, all of our, our savings and money. Yeah. So he cleaned us out. We're also going to hook you up. We're also going to help you contact an attorney and get that back.

Cause it's not his, it's yours. And he left two little kids behind and he's not his it's yours and he left two little kids behind and he's not paying any child support and he's going to get the benefit of doing that too yeah i started him on um i started the child support but it takes a minute you know yeah but yeah um i had to but back to that in the beginning when he did that in order for me to pay the rent i had to take a loan out against my 401K. Okay, well, we're going to get that cleaned up. So I'm not taking home all that. And the other thing is you probably have too much taxes coming out of your check.

Yeah, that's another thing. Was he handling all the money before? No, we were both doing it. Okay. How big a tax tax refund you get last year that's the thing we i owe we owe we owe three thousand dollars so i'm paying that too uh you're not he is well uh well he doesn't have legal options here he gets to pay this stuff and well he's he's relinquished our responsibility he doesn't get to he doesn't get to decide that the judge will help him with that he may have as a husband and a dad but financially speaking he can't judge is going to

go uh innocent spouse syndrome boom all right you can follow a code with the irs that uh this this debt with them is the result of your husband and um it's called innocent spouse there's a whole form that does it we can help you do that too and then he gets to pay the three thousand ding ding that's how that works so what what you need is you need some people in your corner that know how to fight some of this and get you back on balance and we're we're just the ones we're going to help you okay oh yes thank you you're gonna you're gonna be okay you're gonna have to make some moves that aren't comfortable to get stabilized and get a sustainable situation after all this mess because you have less income now to deal with,

but you now have control of your life again and you're safe again. Okay? Yes. If he pops up again, say, Dave, I'm calling the cops. Say it. Dave, I'm calling the cops. There you go. There you go.

We love you, darling. You hold on. We're going to pick up and we're going to take care of you. This is The Ramsey Show. Thanks for helping us, America. We're so glad you're here. Ken Coleman's Get Clear Assessment has helped thousands of people. Literally almost 100,000 people have taken the Get Clear Career Assessment.

And we're excited to announce his new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do, which will show you how to enjoy your results and get specific in your job search and find work you enjoy. So who are you, who you are, why you're wired that way, what you want to do professionally, how to get there, and the Get Clear Assessment comes with the book. A code is built into each book, a unique code. And so if you want to find the work you're wired to do, check this out. Take the Get Clear Assessment. You can get it at ramseysolutions.com slash store. It is happening now, baby, now.

So you don't want to miss that. Today's question comes from Ethan in New Jersey. He says, what is your take on car leases? I view it as a, quote, rental expense, such as renting before you can afford a house. I hope I'm not fooling myself, but I've been driving cars that are within three years old. Keep the payments on auto pay. I drop it at the dealership when anything goes wrong. The dealership takes the depreciation hit and it only costs me $300 a month. I feel like I can't go wrong with this method. Am I right, or do you see this as a big scam? Oh, boy.

Well, the reason dealerships push leases so hard is because it's what they make the most money on. You're taking the depreciation hit, not the dealership. It's built into the $300, Bubba. You think you're going to lease a car that's worth $20,000 or $30,000, and you're going to turn it back in, it's worth $25,000, and you didn't cover the $5,000? or 30,000 bucks and you're going to turn it back in it's worth 25 and you didn't cover the five of course you did it's built into your built into your little payments buddy so yeah yeah no it's not like renting a house not at all nothing like renting a house it's just an alternate way of financing it is the most expensive way to operate a car right yeah i mean i talk about this in in book, breaking down all the ways they screw you with a lease and all of the ins and outs and the bells and whistles, the stuff they don't actually

tell you at the dealership when they just show you the shiniest car on the lot and say, you could drive away at this thing with 300 bucks. It's better than a car loan. Just lease it, man. That's what smart people do. And they're fooling you, Ethan. And I guarantee you're a young guy. You like driving a nice car, but that thing's driving you. And so no, this is different than renting for a lot of reasons.

And at the end of it, you hand back in this car and you just get another payment and get another payment. And you can do that your whole life and not build any wealth. That's the problem. Yeah. And you are covering all of the expenses. You don't think a car company is going to let you drive their car around and they lose money on it. No, you're covering it. And you're one of their most profitable customers. They're making more on you than they are on just about anybody else. So the best deal in the car world is a two-year-old to three-year-old car

that you pay cash for. That's the best deal in the car world. And all of them go down in value like a rock. That's where Chevy got that, like a rock. And so, you know, you just lose your butt on cars. It just goes with the territory. And so there is no scam. There is no P that can be hidden under

a different shell that keeps that from happening. When you're driving a $50,000 car in 20 minutes, it's going to be worth 40. When you're driving an $80,000 car in 20 minutes, it's going to be worth 60. Just that just goes with the territory. Okay. And so so the trick is is to drive the thing that costs you the least money in losses of value and in payments and interest no payments and interest while you build some wealth to where you have enough money that that losing ten thousand dollars doesn't matter anymore because then you can afford to drive something that you're losing your butt on. And that's cars, boats, sea-dos, side-by-sides, snowmobiles,

zero-turn mowers, anything with a wheel or a motor. And don't talk to me about your $7,000 lawn tractor while your kid's college fund isn't funded i'll yell at you for being stupid don't do that okay and that this is the crap that we do in america because we're all concerned about what we drive and it's the largest thing we buy that goes down in value the old boy that called here years ago and he's like dave my truck payment's 700 said how much is your house payment i live in a double wide it's 500. i said roy if your truck payment's larger than your house payment you might be a redneck

seriously oh my gosh that's wild that's america? That's who we are. I did the same stuff, too, when I was back. But you can justify it when you see the shiny car on the lot. Rationalize it. And they're happy to tell you. And the craziest part is FTC doesn't have to define a lease's debt. So they don't have to federally disclose interest on these leases. What George was saying is the Federal Trade Commission, when you borrow money in a car lot, requires they give you one of those disclosure forms that shows you the interest rate

and the total interest is going to be paid. You don't get one of those on a lease because it's not technically debt. But when I take my financial calculator and back into it, the average lease is charging you about 14.2% interest. It's the most expensive way to operate a vehicle. Tom's in Denver. Hi, Tom. How are you?

Hey, thank you, guys. I'm doing well, and thanks for taking my call and for the total money makeover. I know I speak for millions when I say that it's helped change and heal my life in a world desperately in need of healing. So thank you, sir. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.

How can we help? Yeah, I was hoping to get your feedback. I'm on Baby Step 6 and wondering if it's wise for me to sell my home and move to and work in a different city and state in order to push me into Baby Step 7 and beyond. I wanted to get what would Dave say about that. Not unless you need to do it anyway. Like you hate Denver and you desperately want to be somewhere else and the other job sounds much more appealing.

There are other reasons to move other than what you're saying. Is there? I would say so. Cost of living is a big one but where are you going where are you thinking about going so uh amarillo texas and also anderson south carolina and columbus indiana those three have become the top three is it just you at the home i am i'm i'm uh the only person in the home and owning the home, correct. Okay. What do you do?

I recently was a FedEx courier, but recently they started closing down stations and replacing us with contract workers. So I got a job as a kiln technician in Coors Tech. It's a company that works in industrial ceramics. Okay, and so what would you do if you moved to these other cities? And that's the question I was going to ask is, you'd recommend finding a job first before even thinking about moving to another city. So here's the thing. You presented the question as, would I do this to just become debt-free? No. the question as would i do this to just become debt free no would i do this and to become debt free because it's a part of an overall strategy that i want to do to make my life better i'd rather live somewhere else i'd rather do something different and my time here is done it's time to

move to one of these other things you've been researching these other cities for some reason and if it's a as a part of that you move from an expensive denver into an inexpensive amarillo and you can pay cash for a house in the process um and and get a career field that you love and have the quality of life in the future that you love in in your mind and it's all mapped out yeah i would do that yeah but would i move to amarillo and and not have a job and hate my life and hate amarillo also i could say i was debt free no right and tom to be clear are you saying you would pay cash for a home in any of these new cities uh that would be yeah that would be a you know uh by far the only option for me would be to buy,

pay cash for a house and also keep my six-month emergency fund. How did you pick those three cities? It's really been over the past six years. So I visited Anderson and fell in love with it. Okay. And also, frankly, just it's quite a bit cheaper. Well, it is that. Yeah.

And I have a lot of family out in Amarillo and also some friends in Columbus, Indiana that are willing to kind of work with me in terms of a living situation and working situation. You got some homework to do. I'd go look for jobs in those areas, see what the houses actually cost, see if you can actually afford it in cash with the equity and proceeds, and then you can make your move. Yeah, if you can actually afford it in cash with the equity and proceeds, and then you can make your move. Yeah, if you can build a life with every component of your life that's better, and one of those is you become debt-free while doing it, absolutely I would do that. You're single, there's nothing holding you there. Sure. 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 george camel ramsey personality is my co-host today he's the author of the book Breaking Free from Broke, a number one bestseller. He's also the host of the George Camel Show, which is a very popular YouTube show on the Ramsey Networks, and, of course, is the co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour as well. This hour, we're going to be doing a Baby Steps Millionaires Theme Hour. Now, what does that mean?

It means we're going to talk to real millionaires on the air and find out about them to see if you look at them and say, I could be one like that one. Some of them are so unusual in their situation, you can't be like them. Some of them, you have an excellent chance of actually being better than they are. So we're going to talk to real ones, not your broke brother Some of them you have an excellent chance of actually being better than they are. So we're going to talk to real ones, not your broke brother-in-law with an opinion who votes wrong. We don't need his help with this wealth building thing.

So what is a millionaire? It is not, George, someone who makes a million dollars a year. That's true. And it's not an opinion. It's just basically an accounting term when you actually look at what it takes to create net worth. It's what you own minus what you owe, assets minus liabilities. That's your net worth. You don't get to decide what that means. It's not up for interpretation. Yeah. It's a simple math thing. What you own minus what you owe equals your net worth. When that's over a million, you're a millionaire.

Well, I don't feel. It's not a feeling. Well, no one should. It's not a should. Well, a million dollars isn't that much. It doesn't matter. It's not a moral construct. It is an amount of money and a net worth.

Did you do it or not? Simple. Very objective. Not subjective at all. You either is or you isn't. That simple. And you people that have all these political opinions and all this bullcrap that was taught to you by your communist college professor, you're confused about how this stuff works, okay? It is a simple thing. And I heard a congressman the other day, of course some congressmen are dumber than a rock, we know that, to say, he's not a millionaire, he doesn't make a million dollars a year.

And I'm like, God, how are you a congressman and you're this dumb? So it's not an income amount. And you're not a millionaire, you don't have a million dollars cash. It's not a cash amount. It's a net worth. That's all it is if you add up your retirement accounts the equity in your home and your car the cash you have in your bank account that's it you're you're that's that you know any money or things that you could sell and turn into money that that is your net worth that's an asset right and so that's who we're talking to, real millionaires, not broke people with an opinion.

And how did they do it? All right, let's talk to Kathleen in Minneapolis. Your net worth, Kathleen. Well, good afternoon. It's great to be on the show and an honor. My net worth as of this morning is $2.7 million. $2.7. Good for you.7 million. Good for you. Give me a little breakdown on that.

How much retirement, how much house, and so on? Well, I've got $1.9 million that is in mutual funds. That's IRAs, HSA accounts, cash, and savings. That also includes my emergency fund, and yes, I've had one forever. I've got about $720 in real estate, and that includes our primary home as well yes, I've had one forever. I've got about 720 in real estate, and that includes our primary home as well as a rental property that we have. And I've got probably about $90,000 in cars, and you guys will love this. We just traded up, traded in our cars, wrote checks for the balance. Good for you. And my husband and I just bought

three-year-old cars because we never buy new cars and we never will buy new cars. What kind of cars? Just so people know what real millionaires drive. I have a 2021 Toyota Highlander hybrid because I'm sick of paying for gas. And then my husband bought a 2021 Toyota Tacoma. He did buy two F-150s new. We paid him off quickly when we were younger and he drove one for 15 years and he just traded the second one in that was 10 years old for the tacoma amazing wow millionaires drive toyotas honda lexus acura yeah so how old are you kathleen well my husband and i will be 64

this year so we're heading into retirement soon yes same age as you dave yeah all right so how much of the 2.7 million did you inherit you know we were millionaires before we inherited anything and what we did inherit is both our both our parents have have passed away our mothers and fathers my husband just about a year ago inherited about ninety thousand dollars i inherited about five years ago three hundred thousand dollars and that is part of our net worth, but it's all in our retirement account. It's all after you were a millionaire. Okay. So we're being very clear. You're not millionaires because of inheritance. It added to after you were already millionaires. Correct. Okay, cool. And you know, it's interesting. I've read that 80% of people

that inherit money spend it within the first 12 months. Wow. Instead of, you know, doing what you should do, which was put it immediately away to just bolster our retirement account. Yeah, I mean, you've got $400,000 extra here between these two things. So what has been the range of your income through the years? The worst year you had, I guess probably when you started, up to your best year? Well, you know know it's interesting um our first four years of marriage our gross income was only sixteen thousand dollars but we still had 35 percent of our annual income gross income in an emergency fund wow um and that that was huge in my opinion if we look at those first 20 years it

was about 65,000 for both of us. Last 18 years, I actually went and looked at my Social Security account so I'd know how they listed out there in preparation for this. About $195,000 gross. And my husband's semi-retired today from the printing industry, driving a school bus. I stepped up and took a bigger role so that I could make a little bit more money. What were your careers when you were working? My husband worked in the printing industry and local printing, like, you know, printing paper for a university, a local university.

I've been in the benefit space, consulting, account management, and sales, which also includes benefits like smart dollars, so wellness benefits for employees for most of my career of 30, 35 years. Thanks for the plug. Very good. So four-year degrees? My husband went to trade school. I got a four-year degree that I finally finished when I was 50.

And yeah, that's where we're at. My degree was in organizational communications and business. Gotcha. And your GPA? My GPA was 3.4, unless you count the and when it went up, because I was older and taking classes I liked. Older and wiser. Older and wiser and writing a check for it all.

So do you think talking to the younger version of you, you could still do this in America today? I think I could do better if I could talk to the younger me. Okay. Why? Well, I think, you know, my advice, really simple to everyone, including my younger self, would be to save more earlier, floss more, and use more sunscreen. If you do those two things, you'll be happier by the time you're 60.

Good teeth, good skin, good nest egg. I like it. That's right. That's a good life. That's classic. I love it, Kathleen. You're amazing. Thank you so much for calling in and sharing.

That's a real millionaire. That's who we're talking to this hour. The phone number is 888-825-5225. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. This is a Baby Steps Millionaires theme hour where we're talking to real millionaires. The day before yesterday,

we launched Rachel Cruz's latest book, second in her children's book series. I'm glad for where I am at this very moment live. If you are in Phoenix, Arizona, she is at Desert Ridge, Barnes & Noble, from 1 to 2, your time today, which is right now, signing books and reading the books and talking to you guys. Tomorrow she'll be in Los Angeles, thursday april the 18th at the barnes and noble at the grove from 7 to 8 p.m reading the story and signing the books teaching

kids about gratitude the first book was about contentment this one's about gratitude and uh it's fabulously done you'll love it if you've got littles it it's a must. Dallas is in April the 20th, so that'll be Friday. Lincoln Park from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble there. Next week in Atlanta on Friday, April the 27th, the Barnes & Noble at Mansell Crossing there at Alfreda. And that's from 1 to 2 p.m. And she just left New York City doing a bunch of media up there to head to Phoenix and was in Phoenix today doing that first signing.

So Phoenix, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta for book signings on her new children's book. Be sure and check them out. Michael is one of our millionaires on hold here in Springfield, Missouri. Michael, what's your net worth? $2.8 million. Good for you. Give me a little breakdown by category. How much in retirement, what's your net worth? $2.8 million. Good for you. Give me a little breakdown by category. How much in retirement, house, and so on?

$1.5 million in rental investments, real estate. $500,000 personal residence. $350,000 in mutual funds and 401K. And then $500,000 cash between savings accounts and business accounts cool cool how old are you 41 good for you and how much of this 2.8 million did you inherit none yet all my relatives are still alive none yet okay that's a good answer there's still hope all right and your your worst year of making money since you've been working about 20 something years and your best year of making money your best year income worth your income um i mean starting out was just

normal 25 to 30 000 a year and slowly growing up to about 100,000 a year by the time I was around 30. And then with the COVID boom, I'm in car sales and real estate. So I hit 400,000 a couple of years there. Way to go. That's a big help. Yeah. Very nice. So your career is car sales or your career is real estate or both? Both. Okay. About 80-20. Car sales, 80. Real estate, 20. Gotcha.

Okay. You got a four-year degree? No college. No college. See it all. Okay. Cool. So what would you tell the younger version of you that's out there listening?

Can they still become a millionaire in America, and what would they do? I believe they can. I actually think the competition might be less. If they will speak the trades, I think the sky's the limit. Every time I try to get anything worked on, you can't get anyone to call you back or show up. And I think if those younger guys would chase the trades, I think they will be very, very successful.

Yeah. Our friend Mike Rowe would love that, George. A lot of room for opportunity there and a lot of money to be made, a lot of people to be helped. That's good. Exactly. I'm curious, at 41, I mean, you haven't been working that long to accumulate this much. What was the secret sauce here in order to, obviously the rentals is the big part of this,

but even the cash accumulation? Well, I've been working since I was about 12. There you go. You have a 30-year career already. I think I mowed 18 yards when I was 13 years old. I never spent any money. I saved it and saved it. I've never had a credit card. I've never made a car payment. I've had a not applicable credit score my whole life. And I've only had four loans to my first house, my second house, and two rentals.

The rest were all bought in cash day of. And like I said, I've always just worked 60 hours a week and Saturdays and holidays. And I've always just, I had a goal. When I was in school, I had a goal to be a millionaire by age 30. The counselors and teachers, you know, they all kind of teased and laughed at me, but I didn't make it by 30, but I made it by 32. So I was close. Wow.

And by 41, 2.8 million. Yeah. Yeah. Well, COVID has really helped the real estate market. Has went way up with value. Yeah, that's true. It helped the net worth. It sure did.

Uh, all the real estate that we own is gone. Yeah, I'd say I gained over $500,000 in one year just in value, just stuff that I owned versus what it was worth a year later. So that helped a lot. Yeah. Well, way to go, man. Way to go. Congratulations.

So what would you say over these years the worst thing you've ever done with money is? What was the biggest mistake? It wasn't a big mistake, but my first big year, when I hit the six figures, all of my expert buddies convinced me I should buy a new pickup for a tax write-off. And I probably lost $10,000 on that truck, and I saved about $2,000 in taxes. So I figured out real quick that that was not the greatest advice so i quit doing that and your buddies are bad at math yeah this is great well done sir congratulations you're a hero man way to go step out in america and go

win jim's in cedar rapids iowa hi j, Jim. What's your net worth? About $32 million, Dave. $32 million. Okay. You win the award for the day. Give me a little breakdown on that. What's that in? Oh, about $4 million in land, about $10.5 million in real estate, $1.6 million IRAs, $5.5 million in mutual funds, equity investments, about a million and a half cash, and then about between $8 million and $10 million in my business valuation. Got you. What kind of business? Manufacturing.

Okay. And how long have you had that? Me and my wife started it 26 years ago, Dave. Wow. Okay. Do you mind saying what you manufacture? Mostly office furniture. Okay very cool good for you all right and how much of the 32 million did you inherit?

Well two years ago we inherited a million and a half from my wife's mother. So you're already worth over 30 million before you got any money? Yeah yeah they were farmers in missouri they had a great education and they ended up with a probably eight million dollar net worth unbelievable and how old are you 66 66 all right cool and what's your best year of income and your worst year of income well before i started my business they were all they are all worse you know 50 000 and then probably about two mil my best yeah, which is how you funded all of this, then. That makes a lot of sense.

All right, very good. You got a four-year degree, Jim? I do, but I served at Journeyman Tool and Dye Maker Apprenticeship, and then I went back to college and got a degree in industrial technology. So I believe my Journeyman's card opened way more doors than my four-year degree. Yeah, for sure. Especially what you do and your training for what you do. And what was your GPA just for reference? My school 2.2. Okay. Very cool. Okay. So you're, you got, um, 26 year old out there,year-old out there listening,

and there's a bunch of them right this second listening to the show, literally millions. What should they do if they want to be Jim when they grow up and have $32 million at 66? I tell them all the time, look for a niche. Look for whatever industry you're in. Figure out, how can I do something better, faster, and cheaper? What does somebody need in any industry?

There's something out there that's a better way to do it and figure that out and then go after it because too many kids, 19-year-olds, they want to have a business, they want to have money, and they don't have a clue what to, you know, you've got to learn the business first. You've got to learn to trade and then look for a problem to solve. So you probably, in the process, it sounds like, of doing this furniture manufacturing, you've invented some things. Yeah, I've come up with a lot of different designs on processes. Yeah.

And, geez, it's weird because, not to get off track, but the first person who walked in my door that I hired a 70 year old man he walked in wanting to work turns out I was actually living in a camper at the time wow he drove he drove 30 miles each way and I couldn't pay him for three months wow he was on fire for the lord he started telling me about and I went to a legalistic church me and my wife so we had no spirituality. He started telling me about the Lord. About three or four months later, I got saved. Aha, there we go. That's how it's done. I love it. Sorry to cut you off, Jim.

I wish I could hear that whole story. It's fabulous. We always teach you there is a price to be paid to win. You have to live like no one else. If later you want to live like no one else and give like no one else. The millionaires that we talk to most of the time went through a process to become millionaires. This is a baby steps Millionaires theme hour.

Now, one of the things that we announced earlier in the show, if you weren't around, was the Live Like No One Else Ramsey Cruise went on the market today. We are really excited about this. It's a lot of fun. We're going to be going for seven days at sea with Holland America. We've got the entire ship for a Ramsey cruise, a live like no one else cruise. You should not go on this cruise unless you are baby step four, five, six, and beyond. If you're still trying to get out of debt, you need to stay home and get out of debt. We'll do another one, maybe, but probably. And this is going to be a lot of fun. It's a seven-day cruise.

It includes Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, San Juan, the Bahamas. It's incredible. We tried to do this in 2020, but, of course, this little thing called the Fauci pandemic stopped all the cruises. And about the time we were getting ready to sail, it got canceled. So this is the ultimate debt-free celebration. We want you to come. All the Ramsey personalities will be on the boat the whole week, including me, and many other guests as well.

Stephen Curtis Chapman, many Grammys award-winning, 60-something doves, and an all-around good guy and a friend is going to be with us. Manit Chauhan from the Food Channel, Iron Chef, is going to be with us. Manit's here in town in Nashville. We've become friends as well. Hangs out with us one of the great uh country music superstars dina carter uh you remember the strong the wonderful song that she's known for strawberry wine

and so she'll be with us uh some of the nashville songwriters will be there and many others too george camel to my right will be with us if If you want to book your cabin on the cruise, go to ramseysolutions.com slash cruise. I would suggest you do that immediately. When we announced it and put it out this morning on the web and sent out an email to our database, we actually crashed the cruise website. We shut down the Internet. That's how popular this announcement is. And so if you want

to come, we'd suggest you do it. The last time we did this, the one we did not get to take, everybody got refunded because of the Fauci pandemic. But that one sold out in just a matter of weeks. This one will too, especially based on the activity today. It's going to be a lot of fun, George. Oh, yeah. And for those of you who have been following the Ramsey plan and you're in baby step four, five, six, seven, and you call us and you go, man, I don't know what to do now. We work so hard. We can't. You need to go on a vacation.

Some of y'all, you haven't been on a vacation since your honeymoon. And so it's time to take that trip. So start budgeting for it. Make your plans to join us. This is a really fun thing to sort of commemorate the hard work that you've done over the years following these steps. And it's a reminder. It's time to live like no one else. It's going to be a blast.

That's how it works. All right. Open phones here. If you are a millionaire, we want to talk to you. We want to hear how you did it. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Houston, Texas, Carlton and Felicia are with us. Hey, guys, what's your net worth?

Dave, we're at almost $1.2 million. Cool. Give me a little breakdown by category. How much retirement, how much house, and so on. Okay, so combined retirement, we're about $600K. Personal residence and property, we're about $425K. Liquid cash, about $30,000. And then another $130,000 in investments.

Good for you. Well done. And how old are you guys? Well, Dave, I'm 50, and Felicia's still not older than me. Smart man. Nor will she ever be. I like it. Very good.

He's a math guy. Good for you. All right. How much of this did you guys inherit? 60,000. Okay. After you were millionaires, or how long ago? I think it was probably close to that point. I think we're

already on our way pretty much, probably 98% of the way there. So is it fair to say, would it be accurate to say you're not millionaires because you inherited the money? Yes, that'd be fair to say. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure I'm understanding exactly because that's the data that we collect. So what is your best year working and your worst year working as far as income goes? I'd say our worst year was probably my first year in the Army. I mean, Felicia didn't work. I think she stayed at home with our only child. It was probably about $18,000 to $20,000 a year as a private in the Army.

Wow. And our best year so far would probably be this last year around $240,000. Very good. What do you guys do for a living? I'm an RN. And I work in sales. Okay. I'm sorry.

That's okay. Cool. So obviously, Felicia, you got a nursing degree, right? Yes. Okay. And Carlton, you get a four-year degree? I did. Yeah, I got a four-year degree in, of all things, finance.

Finance. Very good. All right. And what was your GPA? If I remember correctly, I was just sub of 3.0. very cool what about you 4.0 4.0 of course it was i like it all right so you guys are nurse and you're in sales and you're 50 years old and you're millionaires and not because of inherited money what would you tell a 24-year-old that says it can't be done in America anymore? I'd first start out by saying that's a lie,

and I would probably tell them to have Googles around, to Google Dave Ramsey as fast as they could. So that they would learn what? I appreciate the ad but what do you what do you what would you what have you guys done that caused you to be here what do you think the secret was um well first of all um i just want to you know give my husband gratitude it was because of him um that we are here today he found you and I would just say working together as a couple you know in the beginning I was a

little hesitant but you know once I got on board and we started working together you know things just went by really smoothly came together and you know here we are today how long ago was ago did that togetherness happen? Well, we started the plan in 2015. I don't know if it's in the notes, but we were actually on the show three years ago to do our Dev Seats screen in studio with you and Ken. All right. We've been working this process for about nine years.

Okay. All right. And so, really, you you did this most of it from your late 30s into 50 uh yeah late yeah my late 40s yeah very impressive so just way to go you guys a decade of focus can change everything yeah yeah it's not too late. Way to go, you guys. Congratulations. Proud of you. Josh is in Knoxville. Josh, what's your net worth? $1.3 million, Dave. Very good.

Give me a little breakdown by category. About $600,000 in the house, about $400,000 in cash, $250,000 in IRAs, and just about $100,000 in just and just other assets cool how old are you 34 way to go all right how much of this did you inherit uh zero zero and what's your best year working and worst year working income uh me and my wife when we first got married, probably right around $90,000 to $100,000, and last year would have been the best year, about $275,000. Cool. What do you do? I actually am a small business owner, and my wife is an occupational therapist,

but now she homeschools three children and takes care of the house. What kind of business have you got? I actually own a commissary business so we we uh provide items to inmates got you very good and you have a four-year degree uh no actually i'm a college dropout dave my wife done all the schooling for us i love it all right it worked out for you man love it way to go hey congratulations man 34 years old you're killing it very proud of you thank you for sharing your numbers with us that's a cool young millionaire story college dropout starts a

small business in oxford tennessee taking food to inmates worth a million three don't tell me you can't do it this is the Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Luke 16, 10. Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. Booker T. Washington says success will always leave footprints. This is a Baby Steps Millionaires theme hour. We're talking to real millionaires.

If you're not aware, we have done the largest study, detailed in-depth research of millionaires ever done in North America. We did in-depth surveying and understanding of 10,167 millionaires. No one's ever done that before. It's airtight research. We had an outside research firm look over our shoulder to make sure we didn't have any kind of confirmation bias or any kind of research methodology that was off. If you know anything about statistical manipulation or research bias,

you have to be real careful of that. And we knew we would be criticized by the left-wing nutjobs. And so we had to be prepared to actually defend this. So the conclusions of this study are airtight. It's data. It's what's known as a fact. It's not an opinion. It's not a feeling.

It's not a political stance. And if you don't agree with the conclusions of the study, you're what's known as wrong because this is data. So here's what we found. 79% of America's millionaires inherited precisely zero. Another 5% got an inheritance, but it was a very small amount, like $5,000 or $40,000 from their grandmother or something, and it was not enough mathematically to make them a millionaire.

Another 5%, and we've heard this in the calls today, got substantial inheritance, $200,000 or $300,000 after they were already millionaires. And so if you take 79 got nothing, 5 didn't get enough to cause it, and 5% got a bunch, but it was after. You put those three together, you got 89% of America's millionaires are not millionaires because of an inheritance. That's 9 out of 10 of them. There's somewhere around 18 million millionaires in America right now.

Nine out of 10 of them are not millionaires because of an inheritance. So when idiots say that on TikTok, they don't know what they're talking about and they're telling people it can't be done in america today and they're stealing people's hope and that's wrong that's evil when you steal people's hope that's evil you shouldn't do that especially when you're ignorant or you're a liar one of the two and you're one of the two when you tell people that America's millionaires all inherited their money because you're just wrong. And they're just cynical. They don't think it's possible for them,

and therefore they don't want it to be possible for anyone. That's part of it. And you hear it, all millionaires inherited their wealth. No, they didn't. All millionaires are crooks. Well, that's absolutely asinine. Who got rich being a crook? you go to jail being a crook if you break the law if you steal from people they tell people about it

if you're if you're crooked people find out about it is there a percentage of the wealthy who are crooked yes is there a percentage of the poor who are crooked? Yes. Is there a percentage of the poor who are crooked? Yes. Are they wealthy because they're crooked? No. Are they poor because they're crooked? No. The crooked is just happens among the population. Well, all you got to be famous to be a millionaire. I hadn't talked to a single rock star today. Hadn't talked to a single NFL player player today and i hadn't talked to one in these studies and as a matter of fact our data tells us that point uh point eight less than one percent eight tenths of one percent of america's millionaires are famous so they're not hollywood

actors country music stars professional athletes they make up less than one percent of america's millionaires so good thing for me i can't dribble a basketball so maybe i have to do it another way and i'm not you know i'm not coordinated enough to uh to stay on skates and play hockey at that speed to become a millionaire that way and for sure you don't want me singing it's it's not about income now the people we've looked at they make good money but we found in the study a third of them never made six figures in their careers 33 never made a hundred thousand dollars a year well you have to have a high gpa you got to be brilliant well brilliant doesn't hurt but the average gpa among millionaires is 3.0. I have a 2.97. Three one-hundredths of a point I missed it, and I'm still pissed.

I think beer was involved. But, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, it's, you know, it's, and I still, and I'm so stupid, I've become a millionaire twice. Made it, lost it all, had to do it again. So, I mean, and I still pulled it off. So it is doable, people in America. There is hope.

If you want to know more about this study and more about the processes that prove this, read the book Baby Steps Millionaire. It's the number one bestseller. It's the last book I did. I didn't actually intend on doing another book. The personalities all do books, and I support them. And that's generally what we do. But I kept running into these hope stealers that were taught by communist professors in college and telling people America is broken and it can't be done. You can't make it in America. The little man can't get ahead.

And somebody had to rise up and tell the truth. And that's us. So so I busted out there, did baby steps, millionaires. And it's so, you know, getting close to a million copies now. And it's number one, number one, number one. So thank you guys for, for supporting that. But if you want to read the details of the study, we put the study white paper in the back of the book. So pick that book up. You can read the study and you can answer the questions for your broke brother-in-law who votes wrong and is confused about this stuff and so it's absolutely ridiculous that people say you can't make it in america today you can make it is it easy lord no are

there isms out there there's always isms because there's always ignorant people racism is ignorant sexism is ignorant there's all kinds of isms there's baldism people don't let people on the shows because they're bald that one feels personal i mean it's yeah it's upsetting to me ism is ignorant there's all kinds of isms there's bald ism people don't let people on the shows because they're bald that one feels personal i mean it's yeah it's upsetting to me i'm so sorry i feel your pain regional ism we think if you have a southern accent that your parents were cousins well that's not true i don't live in a trailer. My house is bigger than yours. That's regionalism. Okay?

You know, there's isms everywhere, right? So, all right, Rachel is in Washington, D.C. Rachel, what's your net worth? About $1.1 million. All right. Very good. Give me a little breakdown by category. Got about $350 in the house the house about 604 in retirement about 100 liquid and about 76

in college cool how old are you 41 good for you how much of this did you inherit not a penny zero best year working and worst year working of income our lowest was probably upper 30s and our best probably this year looking at 190. Excellent. Very, very good. What do you do for a living? What's your career? I'm a stay-at-home homeschool mom and my husband does logistics for the Department of Defense. Logistics. Okay, very good. He's got a college degree in that? No, he has one in chemistry. Ah, okay. What was his GPA? Do you have any idea? A 3.0.

Oh, look at that. Just exactly like we said. Very cool. Congratulations. You're a hero. Way to go, Rachel. That's how it's done. So we talked to 2.7, 2.8, 32, 1.2, and 1.3, and 1.1 net worth.

64 years old, 41, 66, 41 66 50 34 and 41 years old industrial engineer furniture manufacturer college dropout doing commissary chemistry that just became what did he become he was uh logistics for the common law defense. Logistics. We came to logistics from that. And the first lady, he got a degree in communications. 3.4 GPA, 2.2, 3.0, and 3.0. I rest my case, boys and girls. Here's another small sample. And by the way, we'll let you on if you win the lotto. But you are 12 times more likely to be struck by lightning walking one mile to the store

statistically than you are to buy the winning ticket. So try not walking to the store. Instead, go to work. Here's an idea. So the lotto, gee, not happening. Tax on poor people and people that can't do math. That's who plays the lotto. One of the two or both.

That puts this hour 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. We'll see you next time. Hey, folks, Dave Ramsey here. You know, budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind, and that's EveryDollar. The EveryDollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with EveryDollar for free

right now. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash EveryDollar and download the app today. That's ramseysolutions.com slash EveryDollar.