The Ramsey Show - Fortune Favors Those Who Get Up and Go to Work!

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Rachel Cruze answer your questions and discuss: "Our neighbor's septic is leaking into our yard..." "How do we get on the same page financially?" "How do I build a multi-family homestead?" "How much should I budget for a car?" How real millionaires built their wealth. Support Our Sponsors: Churchill Mortgage BetterHelp Health Trust Financial Zander Insurance Next Steps 🏠 Find a Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agent 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! ❤️ Get away with your spouse to Nashville at Money & Marriage Getaway.  👕The NEW Ramsey Merch is here! Shop Yetis, sweatshirts, hats and more! These 6 new arrivals are exclusively available only at the Ramsey Store. 💰 Enter the $3,000 Ramsey Cash Giveaway today! Enter daily to increase your chances of winning weekly $500 prizes or the $3,000 grand prize.  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. Open phones this hour. I am Dave Ramsey, your host, Rachel Cruz, number one bestselling author, host of The Rachel Cruz Show, co-host of The Smart Money Happy Hour, and my daughter is your co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Andrew in Atlanta starts this hour. Hi, Andrew. How are you? Hey, Dave and Rachel. I'm doing very well. Good. What's up? So I've got a very complicated situation.

My wife and I are very big fans of yours. We've bought a house with, you know, 20% down, 15-year fixed-rate mortgage, no credit score, following the Ramsey plan, everything. And about four weeks ago, we had a septic leak in our yard. And so it's not a big deal. We're in four, five, or six. We've got the emergency fund, called a company out to come check it out. And as it turns out, it's coming from our neighbor's yard. And long story short,

our neighbor is as broke as can possibly be. And essentially her, both of her parents passed away in the last year. And she doesn't even have the money to get probate through to get the house into her name, much less fix the septic leak. And so originally, if it was just a small thing, our church was going to try to help with it, but it's turned into $8,000 to $10,000 because they have to pump all of the septic uphill

to a new drain field and everything. So it's going to be a whole big thing, and we're just trying to figure out what to do. And after discussing it with other people, I, I feel like our plan is to just suggest to her, Hey, we'll help you pay to get the will through probate. And then you need to sell the house. Um, but the house is, you can't sell it. Can't get a health letter. Would she be able to, I mean, the house is falling apart. Everything. I mean, she'd probably have to sell it for cash to an investor or something. Yeah, okay.

I mean, because they're falling apart. The buyer can't get a mortgage on this if the septic tank's busted. Because they're going to require a health department letter in any city I'm aware of to do that. She wouldn't be able to get a mortgage even if the septic was fixed. No, I'm not talking about her getting a mortgage. I'm talking about the buyer. Yeah, the buyer would not be able to get a mortgage on this house even with the septic.

Because it's in such bad shape. It's in very bad shape, yeah. Wow. Wow. Do you have any idea what the price to take it through probate is um i don't i would expect it to be i believe that she has a a lawyer she said was going to do it as a favor but it's it's been six months now and he basically said because it's a favor it's got to be back like lowest priority so i'll do it when i get around to it are they living in it yes they're living in it where are they going to go well

if they sell the house they can take that money and rent something if not then there's also uh two years of unpaid property taxes and the uh okay you're right it is in her best interest aside from your problem it's in her best interest to get the house sold because the house needs repairs to be habitable eight thousand dollars to be habitable just in the sewer system a septic system alone and uh obviously you know she's too broke to pay attention, bless her heart, and putting a little money in her pocket and restarting her life in a more whole is best for her. I agree with you. I think that's a good conclusion. Is she up for all of that? It sounds like you've had good discussions with her. Yeah, no, we're very close. I was able to be with her father when

he passed away. And we had a very close relationship with them. She is very emotionally attached to the home and does not want to sell it. But at the same time, she has not worked in 10 years, and she's unwilling to get a job. Well, you can't make her sell it. No, no, we can't. But the county will.

No, they really won't. Put a lien on it if she's back in property taxes. Well, they may sell it. They may sell it for property taxes. There may be a tax sale on it. She may be forced to sell it is what Andrew's saying, yeah. Or codes could condemn it and make her move. That kind of thing happens too. So, well, I mean, if you pay for it to go through probate and then

she does nothing nothing has happened you just wasted the money right yes so i'm not going to pay for it to go through probate unless i have her agreement in writing that she's going to sell the house right yes because otherwise you're just throwing good money after bad, and it's not going to solve the problem. And that's the way we saw paying for the septic stuff. Even if it was a smaller issue, it's just a lot harder. It just enables her to continue to stay in a situation that's not good for her. Yes. Okay.

So with the sale of the home, would they be forced then to fix the septic? The buyer of the home would probably be an investor that's going to renovate the home, including the septic, in order to put it back on the market and do a flip on it. But that's going to take, I mean, that could take, I mean, six months. Oh, it's going to take a while. So do you just have septic running into Andrew's yard? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's my problem, yeah.

Regardless of the route if she does not sell the house immediately to someone then either we're paying for it or it's just going to keep coming into our yard yeah or you're going to create some kind of a bear a landscaping barrier that redirects it back into her yard yeah um is it is it a lot like is it it's not a lot it was very bad at first i think they're just using less water honestly but it's coming up from underneath the ground so it's not like flowing into our yard it's like bubbling up in a puddle yeah okay that's pretty gross it's terrible yes sir it is terrible that's the crappiest call i've gotten today

oh man bless your heart i don't know i mean i'm gonna start investigating some things i can do to just uh from a landscaping or grading perspective on your land to just redirect it back over onto hers and um um because it doesn't sound like this lady's going to follow through she's um uh she's going to wait until this all comes down or she's not going to act she's going to wait till the whole thing comes down around her head uh that's what you're describing to me not lose her entire house yeah but that's not that's not we can't control that if we can't make it unless you have her committed unless you have a you know have her declared mentally ill and the court takes over

her life that's the only way you can do that and so and obviously she's not there she's just not you know she's just in denial so i i think you you know i'm going to as her friend i'm going to continue to recommend that she do that and you know if you're willing to put the house on the market because honey i think that's what's good for you i'll help you by paying for it to go through probate. But I'm not going to do that if you're just going to sit over there and let the thing rot around your head. Yeah.

Because I love you too much to participate in your delusion. And I really, I don't want that. I want what's good for you. And you can act in her best interest and at the same time end up solving your problem. Yes. But I don't think, I think i think you know you can offer to do that and even if she puts it in writing i still think you're gonna have trouble because i think this is an emotional person not a logical she's not making logical decisions or it'd already be on the market and so um yeah and so you going to have to figure out a way to landscape your yard, reset some stuff to create a puddle on her side of the line. You know, I'm sorry.

Wow, what a gross mess. I don't have a good answer for you, but you're pursuing this properly and with the right spirit. You're a kind person. Thank you for that. This is the Ramsey Show. Mortgage rates have dropped, so if you're thinking about buying a home in the next year, contact your local Churchill Mortgage team right now. If you wait, more people will be in the market competing for the same homes

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Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Well, graduation season is here. Graduating from high school, graduating from college, starting our lives. It's a fun, fun season. So we're going to run a couple of specials to help you out for the graduates.

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So you can check that out. The ultimate millennial and Gen Z guide to all things Ramsey is George Campbell's Breaking Free from Broke, full of snark and full of great research. This thing is an amazing book, also a bestseller, number one bestseller, and a great millennial gift, a great Gen Z gift, because written by one for one and all that kind of stuff. And, of course, we've just launched the 20th anniversary version of the Total Money Makeover. Over 10 million of these sold now.

And so any one of those three or all of those three will make a great graduation package angela is in greenville south carolina hi angela welcome to the ramsey show hey dave hey rachel thank you for taking my call sure sure what's up um so i'm having a bit of some marital disagreement i'm hoping you can give me some clarity or at least how to approach it with my husband. We've been married for eight years. I've been a stay-at-home mom for two and he makes about $250,000 a year and refuses to give me access to the finances pretty much. I'm not on his account. He does give me X amount of money each month to pay

the bills. It doesn't even really cover the bill amount, to be honest with you. And I'm always left with zero dollars to my name. So I just wanted to talk to you about this and get some feedback from you. Dang, Angela, why won't he put you on the account? What does he say? To be honest with you, I think it's maybe fear of giving that control up. When we got married, he was very established. He's 12 years older than I am. He's always been on his own. So I think he's having a really hard time relinquishing that. Eight years later? I know. I know.

Yeah, because that's where the difficulty comes in. Yeah, I mean, it would be. I mean, to a degree, Angela, I'm like, I mean, it's a level of this, the splitting of finances to the point that you don't have access. I mean, that borders line financial abuse, that you don't have the ability to access money that is coming into your household, regardless of who makes it or not. The idea that he's withholding that, that's a big red flag to me. Are there other areas of your marriage that you feel this control or is it mostly to the money? Honestly, it's just the money. Everything else, you know, feels great.

And, of course, I can ask him for $20 or $50, but he won't. You're not his daughter. Exactly. Exactly. This is bothering you because it's wrong. Yes. And so let me just confirm for you this is wrong. Okay. and so let me just confirm for you this is wrong and it's what you're describing to me is um it sounds to me like it's a whole lot more toxic and bad than you actually think it is

you've kind of you've kind of normalized this and you're trying to just kind of well it's not but it's just like i can't get him no i mean this is like weird okay this is strange it's it's at that level and so and it's wrong uh relationally it's a it's a disaster um so i i don't know i can't judge not talking to him. I can, but I might be wrong. What is the root of this for him? But I really honestly don't care either. If you were my little sister or my daughter and you told

me this was going on, this is not a financial problem. You have a very serious marriage problem. Okay. You have an older guy that is you married a man older than you that thinks he's your dad. Or he thinks he does not have any, he does not have to involve you. So, I mean, you're just to do what you're told. Okay. And I just, boy boy it just sounds really icky so i i think you guys i think you guys need to sit down with a marriage counselor desperately

okay um i have i have tried that route and he wouldn't go i still no kidding a little bit of course he wouldn't go you need to go yeah and the marriage counselor needs to explain to you how icky this is and how you can start having conversations that he either comes to the table or you're leaving because this is not healthy honey this is ugly and i'm not telling you to leave but i am telling you to get some people in your life to walk alongside you so you don't continue to tolerate this eight years is too long okay perfect yeah you you've you put up with it so long it starts to kind of feel normal to you and Rachel and I both like we we about flipped out when you told us this right so we're trying to we're trying to temper and be nice yeah because

I mean you know there's degrees of all of us, Angela. We get this call a lot of how do I get my spouse on board? And there's everything from how do I get him on board with the intensity of which we're doing baby step two, but we're doing baby step two, but I want to do more than he does. Or how do I get it where we. Oh, this is control. That's what I'm saying is that the checking account, like we have separate checking accounts. I don't know if we want to do one, you know, whatever, whatever.

This is like this is on the extreme scale of it, that you don't have access to your money to run your household. And your husband is holding the keys. And so there's probably a level to Angela that, and I think Dave's right. I think going to, if he won't go to marriage counseling with you, then you need to find a counselor or a therapist and start walking through, because there's a level of strength, Angela,

that you may have been giving up over the last eight years due to codependency, due to really being kind of warped into what is normal. And this is just your normalcy. And so to have this level of, and it's scary because you're going to start to learn some new tools and new realizations of what's really going on. And it's going to give you the strength though to speak up and I pray pray that with that and through that he comes to the table and starts to do work and understands all of that right and you guys can move I hope he loves you more than he loves control but I'm not sure right now okay yeah it feels that way do you guys have kids Angela you've been home for two years three you have three okay okay wow uh what did you do when you met, when you,

you said I've been home for two years, what were you doing before that when you were working and making an income, where was that money going? Um, well, I worked for a municipality and, um, you know, we, I tried to get him to combine finances then when I was bringing in money, but he wasn't interested. So, you know, I just kept it, kept it to myself, you know, in my account. But since we've been married, I have tried to get him to combine finances. We did go to FPU together. That was one of my things I wanted us to do up front. I think it helped for about a year, but he never wanted to actually make that step and combine our account down to our account.

Well, and more than that, he's still doling out money to you, and I have to ask him for $20. It sounds like you're 16 years old and you're asking your dad for money. Yes. That's the way that sentence structure came out and that's what that's um you know how i gotta tell you man somebody that a guy that can go through financial peace university and see that whole scope of information viewing it from an emotional spiritual mathematical process and then go back to doing what he's doing, there's something going on here.

There's something going on. Okay. I'm so sorry, Angela. Yeah, this is harsh. I know. This is bad. I'm sorry, darling. Yeah, I don't want to be some doomsayer and I don't want to add drama, but I want to add enough drama that you do something about it.

Don't stay in this situation. Do something to cause the situation to change, like see a therapist and let them walk you through some structures of what you can do to get some help in this relationship. Oh my gosh. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. If you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. And while you're thinking about it,

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

BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere, so it's convenient for you and your schedule. Just fill out a short online survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash DELONI. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, and my daughter is my co-host. Today's question comes from Lindsay in Illinois. She says, my husband and I are in our late 30s

and we have two teenage daughters. He wants to quit his job and open a restaurant, which has been his lifelong dream. He has done no research and has not created a business plan. His ideas for us to sell are fully paid for home, oh no, of about half a million dollars and live in an apartment, oh no, so he can purchase a restaurant, oh no, oh geez, I don't even know

if I can get through this. In the meantime, he wants me to keep my job, so we'll have one steady income of $85,000 a year. I could see putting all of our money into this venture and end up losing everything. How do I convince him it's a bad idea? Oh, no, Lindsay.

Yeah. Well, kind of like our last caller, to a degree, you have a vote, too. This is your life as well. And you're on the deed of that house so don't sign it good point there you go period yep yeah and again it's not because you're okay so here's the it's a his process his process is completely ignorant it's absolutely ludicrous to open a business this way. She's exactly right.

Number one, you need a business plan. Number two, you would need some experience in the freaking restaurant business. Which is hard. Before you do that. People that are in the restaurant business. Number three, you need to understand that you're taking on the category of small business that has the highest rate of failure of all small businesses. The number one way to go broke is open a restaurant.

It's like freaking guaranteed. Okay ask greg lobster they just filed bankruptcy okay i mean too many shrimp and so that's a big chain though but yeah no but i'm just saying it was a different it's a different thing but the restaurant business is just it's hard yes it hard. It's a tough business. The average employee turnover ratio in a restaurant is 300% a year. You lose all your people three times a year. That's a lot of hiring. That's a lot of drama. That's a lot of stuff to put up with. And no, no, no, and no.

Now, is there a way for him to live his dream without it destroying his own family and himself in the process? Yeah, sure there is. Sure there is. You do a business plan. You go to work in a restaurant. You learn the restaurant business. You work in leadership in a restaurant, management in a restaurant.

You understand purchasing in a restaurant. Then you redo your business plan because now you're going to be smarter. And then you start a catering business on the side and you grow your catering business so big that you buy a food truck. And then when the food truck makes you so stinking much money from catering and food trucking, that you pay cash for all this without selling your home and without quitting your job, you did it all on the side. And you just work your tail end off. And three, four years from now, you'll have the money to open your first bricks and mortar little restaurant with cash. And then you'll actually know what you're doing.

But I got to tell you, man, we coach small businesses. I got 10,000 small businesses that we coach through Entree Leadership. I do a podcast called EntreeLeadership.com, or called Entree Leadership Podcast, rather. It's at EntreeLeadership.com. It's one of the top-rated podcasts on leadership and business. And if he called me up on the air and asked me about this, I wouldn't be as nice to him as you have been, Lindsay, for his own sake.

Well, you would say what you just said. This is just ignorant. There's a way to get there. If it's your dream job, but just to do everything, like right now, I mean, I was thinking, even our cafe downstairs here at Ramsey Solutions, where our team members eat, right, there's all these stations, and

it's a mini restaurant. I mean, there's all of it. It's a major restaurant. Yes, but I'm just saying like... Feeds a thousand people a day. Yes, so even that type of thing, I'm like, I know the amount of work and the amount of research and the amount of companies you hire and the food i mean like it was a whole feat just for that one portion of just this and it's not even like this is what's maintaining our life you know what i mean your livelihood i got a better i got a better idea lindsey sell your

house and pile five hundred thousand dollars in the middle of the interstate and burn it because that's about what you're getting ready to do. It's the same net result. At least then you'll have some entertainment watching the traffic swerve around the fire. And not as much work. You know? Yeah, and it'll save you a lot of heart. No, you're right, Lindsay.

Now, how do you convince him? I don't know. Well, you take it slow, and it's what you're saying. There is a way to do this that is wise, and his his net goal is not unwise his process is completely ludicrous his way to get there is completely ludicrous so rachel one of the things that the reason i get so passionate about this kind of stuff is i actually did this to your mother. Opened a restaurant?

No, before you were born. So I started buying and selling real estate when we first got married. I was 22 years old, and I was a freaking genius, and nobody could tell me anything. And my wife said, oh, I don't know if this is going to work or not. It doesn't matter. I got it figured out. I got the finance degree. You got a home ec degree.

Shut up. I'm doing this. And I just went and did it, and I started buying. we have owned a lot of real estate. My wife has never even seen. And you know what happened? I went broke. I lost everything. We were out to dinner the other night going in downtown Nashville. And I thought, Hey, I'm going to turn gonna turn up the street see that house right there i did the renovation on that house she goes we owned that house and i said yeah i guess i guess i guess i owned it but you didn't because since you didn't know about it but yeah i mean i wasn't hiding anything from her i was just too freaking arrogant to take her input and um because i was the smartest and you put all the cards on the

table smartest call all the poker chips on one hand i bet everything on one horse yeah and uh and i was too i was the guy that was so freaking smart and i had all this figured out and don't you question me and uh and then she pulled it she just like whatever you want to do honey um which is southern for you're an idiot and so um and you're not listening to me yeah you're not listening to me anyway so whatever you want to do honey so when i went broke i learned not only did i get go broke i got broken and uh i got to trade out some of my arrogance for some humility and i started reading biblical principles what the bible says on how to build wealth and how to handle money and I got to proverbs 31 because there's 31 proverbs and if you read one

a day you'll get really wise and then you can read them all the next month again and eventually you'll start to understand them but I got to proverbs 31. Who can find, and this is for our last caller too, who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her. Now here comes the punchline. And he will have no lack of gain. Hmm. So husbands, assuming you're not married to a spoiled brat princess,

assuming your spouse is not confused and thinks she's the Holy Spirit, assuming your wife is virtuous, if you listen to her and consider her input in your dealings, you will have no lack of gain. You know why I'm sitting in a building worth $600 million that I paid cash for? Because i drove up on this land in my four-wheel drive pickup when it was out here and it was a bunch of cows running around on it and my wife said this is where we need to have a campus for ramsey and i went ding ding ding ding ding i agree it's why i brought you down here and she's like yes yes we need to do this and guess what we did it so and guess what some of the best things you know in the past some of the stupidest business deals I've ever done

I didn't do because my wife had a bad feeling and I walk away from them if she has a bad feeling because I don't want a lack of gain. I don't ever want to go back to being the idiot that I was in my 20s. And not everybody in their 20s is an idiot, but I was an idiot. I completely ran roughshod over this principle. Who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her. And when I started trusting her, boys and girls, I've had no lack of gain.

Now, sometimes she's wrong, but I still trust her. And I've had no lack of gain. And you guys out there who are not listening to a virtuous wife, you're having a lack of gain because you're being stupid. Stop it. This is the Ramsey Show. Amen, Brother Dave Stop it. This is the Ramsey Show. Amen, Brother Dave. Amen.

This is the Ramsey Show. You've worked, saved, sacrificed, and been gazelle intense with your financial game plan. But do you have the right defense in place, like the right health insurance? Look, you can't walk past a doctor's office these days without getting a massive bill. And if you don't have health insurance, a major medical situation can undo all of your hard work. That's where my friends at Health Trust Financial can help. They work for you, not the insurance company. So they find you the right health insurance and they save you money. Ramsey has recommended Health Trust Financial for two decades because they're the experts. And whether you're

19 years old or 90, you can trust them to do two very important things. Listen to you, then find you health insurance coverage with everything you need and nothing you don't. Health Trust Financial is your one-stop shop for unbiased advice about affordable health insurance options. They could save you hundreds of dollars a month, so make sure you're not overpaying. Go to healthtrustfinancial.com today. healthtrustfinancial.com Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Elizabeth is in San Diego. Hi, Elizabeth.

How are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. It's an honor to speak with you two. You too. What's up? My family of four and my in-laws are in the beginning planning phase of moving out of state to buy land and put a few homes on it for us. I'm looking for

information on the legal structure of a multi-generational property homestead. How many families will be living on it? You guys, them? My in-laws. And then, yeah, and then us. We are four. My kids are also special needs, and I don't know what their independence is going to look like as their adult so we might put a few homes on them on there for them too okay but the homes that will be built will just be yours and the in-laws for right now yeah okay okay um very difficult okay it's very difficult to uh because the problem is that this only works if it works when something doesn't work here it becomes you you fall prey to the same thing a

business a small business general partnership falls prey to and we tell folks not to go into small business partnerships because the only ship that won't sales a partnership so and here's why it only works if it works and it never works exactly the way you think it's going to that's the way life is right so and in business i'll just kind of outline there and it doesn't apply here to you guys completely but here's what i i go to there and because you have to kind to you guys completely but here's what I go to there and because you have to kind of anticipate you have to do the same exercise I'm getting ready to show you I teach business people okay like two guys wanting to open up a small business together this is what I teach them number one I tell them don't do it because it's very difficult number two if

you're going to do it you have to have a detailed general partnership agreement now you wouldn't necessarily do that but the general partnership agreement would address the things you've got to address all the possible negative things that show up in life okay and a lot we call them the d's because a lot of them are d's death disability disinterest i don't look living in the boonies anymore i'm going back to the city right drugs drugs drug use yeah that was the two that's probably not you right but um i'm guessing there's no cocaine problem in this situation but but i'm amazed at the people that do manage to uh snort their life away so um the uh it always is shocking to me who it is because i was like you're kidding you and um divorce um disinterest. I don't do my part. So I had dinner, uh, 20 years ago. The first time I

ever experienced this, it was a, uh, a, uh, a family at dinner and they sat at dinner. It was really embarrassing. We were in Cancun at a leadership thing I was doing. And, um, they yelled at each other, other these grown people and it was three brothers and sisters and their spouses and they called each other names and they didn't like each other and they were the third generation of a homestead of thousands of thousands of acres in New Mexico and um they the reason they didn't like each other is they thought the other one had screwed the other one and the other one didn't do their part and the other one didn't pay the bills so the other so the other two had to pay the bills because the first one didn't pay the bills and otherwise they'd lose the land and um it just was it was nasty and it was the unintended

consequence of a of a homesteader a real home I mean a an original homesteader, a real home. I mean, an original homesteader. I got these are real homesteader. But I'm talking about the original homesteaders that went and got thousands and tens of thousands of acres put together. And so it was it was a bizarre thing. So that's what you've got to try to ward off. The only way you can keep that kind of thing from happening is to anticipate that it might and set in place structures and processes to keep it from happening. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm getting this information now because I wanted to have a meeting with them. So incredible amounts of communication. But also, what is our strategy if someone dies? Look around the table. Any one of us dies. Okay. And so like this is your husband's family?

Yes, sir. Okay. So your husband dies. Now you're the daughter-in-law. Right. Where does this leave you? And you meet somebody later on in life do they want to move next to the in-laws of the first you know what i mean like yeah it's like you so so i think

this is how i mean it happens right is there a clean way to do it if let's say the in-laws purchased the lands they sparse off i actually would just buy the piece of land and then i would subdivide it yeah i was gonna say subdivide it you guys build if you want to buy 100 acres and get 50 on each side and run a lot line down the middle of it and have two parcels you own one parcel they own the other parcel we're connected we're right there we're having the same life experience we're trying to have but in the event of a problem you can sell yours that was actually an option that i was thinking about so i'm glad you brought that up yeah I really would try to get you to go that direction it's not as uh sweet and communal as the whole idea of oh we're going to have a family compound but it's just very difficult to pull this off

and it's going to require an amazing amount of y'all are going to burn a lot of calories heading off problems and i would say this if it works and you guys do have a great relationship and you want to do this and it's a really great you know what i mean and you're all on good terms you want to live that close to them i mean all of it it could be a really cool thing right like if it works but have a plan when the season when the season ends when the when it's done yeah have a plan for how we're going to do this and everybody's not pissed yep yeah because that's the problem because it will change life will change and and nothing works out exactly like you think it's going to ever sometimes it's better than you think it's going to sometimes it's worse but it never is exactly

like you think it's going to well and being tied down what always kind of gives me a little bit of claustrophobic ness emotionally is when you feel like you don't have options in life and you're tied down and especially to your home and you have a family right she has special needs children i'm like there's a lot on your plate there's a lot going on and when you feel obligated if there's a sense of obligation five years down the road that we don't have the option to move because that's our in-laws right here and they'd be pissed if someone else lived in this house because we had this whole deal so now we're stuck like that stuck feeling is what you don't want you want lots of freedom and choices if or when something changes honestly we got 250 acres just over the hill over here

that's beautiful and we easily could do this but there's not a chance the Ramseys will do it I was like I don't know if I'm gonna live in a bar so next time I'm just telling you there's not a chance the Ramseys will do it. I was like, I don't know if I'm going to live in a parcel next to Mom and Dad. I'm just telling you, there's no chance. We love y'all. I know, but you need your distance. We're good. It's just good. We sit two feet from each other once a week for three hours in a glass booth. If you want to tear up the backyard and put in a pool,

I'm going to judge you at a larger distance. I know, they're not pool people. They're like, you're putting in a pool? I was like, okay, okay majority of people this is a goal for them pools are great yeah it's great it's wonderful have fun and so yeah but it's you know that that's the thing so it's what i would hear some fun just a pool regular pool he's like this is how we live at our place so it's not gonna it's not gonna work if we're all in one pile it's just not gonna work so um but you guys you guys are sweet people y'all probably might be able to yeah they might elizabeth's

family might be able to do this yeah i mean yeah the rams the rams we would be there was a family and i can't remember their names but they lived off of sorry this is probably just family chat right now down um was it like wilson there was a road in nashville that would go out to the lake and they lived and you would like turn right and they had like a big sign and i think like the grandfather lived there um the older son do you remember i'm talking about i have no idea and we went they i think they were old church people friends and we went and there was well i mean literally this i think there were three homes the grandfather lived in one home and you kind of kept driving and there was the son it's not an evil thing it just has no you know everyone enters this with rose-colored glasses and i always just want to crunch the glasses under

there is a beauty and let you know what you're walking into and if you walk into it with your eyes open you got a chance of it working yeah that's the whole thing and it can you can come out and everybody still be happy and yeah because the intergenerational you think about farming you think about you know how people live life years ago. That's what it was. Yeah, but they also were obligated and they were stuck. Yeah, that's fair. They felt obligated to tradition. I can't

get rid of this land. It's been in the family for generations. I don't really have any options. I actually want to go live in the city and be an engineer, but I guess I'm a farmer. So, you know, it's stuck. Yeah, yeah. That's what it is, you know. That's fair. And if you want to be a farmer, that's okay.

But if you're stuck, it's not okay. 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. Thank you for joining us, America. The phone number is 888-825-5225.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author multiple times over, and my co-host, my daughter is my co-host. Gina is with us to start this hour in phoenix hi gina how are you i'm good how are you better than i deserve what's up so i am in a situation where both my husband and i have our own businesses um and that has changed from him having a salaried position just over the last month or so. And I'm wondering how we can make it work with our two businesses without us having to supplement our income. So to kind of hit the ground running and not fall backwards financially.

Okay, so he did not have enough income coming from his business to justify quitting and that's and but he quit anyway so no he got laid off um and so we still have some you know layoff um money coming in that's going to help yeah um so what is this what is this small business um so his is a freight brokerage. Okay. And how much money has he made doing freight brokerage? Well, he was in the industry several years ago. No, no, no.

I'm talking about the business. Right now, how much money is he making? He's only making about two grand a month. Okay. What was he making at his job he got laid off from? About six a month. Okay. How fast is he at his job he got laid off from? About six a month. Okay, how fast is he going to get the freight from two to six? Hopefully within the next three to four months. Realistically or hopefully? Well, that's definitely hopeful. Realistically, within the year, I think it's realistic. Okay. And what are you making on your small business?

Oh, very little. I haven't had to be in a position where I had to make much, so only about $500 a month. Okay. All right. What do you do? What's your business, Gina? I'm a health and nutrition coach, and it's virtual. Okay, cool.

Okay. Can you gear that up? I can. I'm not quite sure how okay all right you have the you have the bandwidth to do it but you don't know if you can actually get enough clients to pay you exactly gotcha okay all right cool what's your what you got for your budget every month what's it take to operate your house? It takes about five grand bare bones. Okay. All right.

And so if he makes two and you make 500, you're 2,500 short. Right. Right. So we really need to kick it into high gear. Amen. Okay. All right. Now I'm caught up with your concern and it's a valid concern.

Yeah. And you didn't do something stupid like quit your job before you should have or something. That's good. It's, this is good. It just happened. And now here we are, how much severance is left? Um, I think we have about two or three months left. 15,000. Um, well, so he's getting, uh, he's getting a payout monthly and then at the end he's getting like his pto and everything and i don't have the exact numbers on that but i think we figured it would get us about four months after he was he was making six thousand women he's getting and he's getting he's continuing to get six thousand dollars a month yes for how much longer just uh that is about two months and then he gets the full severance once that's done how much is that um yeah that's what you don't know yet yeah i don't know okay

okay so what i'm gonna do is so if i've got six and you got 500 and he's got 2000 that's 8500 it takes five to operate you can bank 3500 right okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna live on beans and rice emergency do nothing spend nothing pile up cash to ensure that the curve on his income coming up on the freight business doesn't last longer than your pile of cash. Right, which we do have a pretty decent pile of cash that would take us potentially through a whole 12 months if we absolutely needed it, but obviously we don't want to do that. But that's like an emergency fund. That's not your retirement accounts or something. Right, correct. Yeah, it's all liquid cash. That's very fund. That's not your retirement accounts or something. Right, correct.

Yeah, it's all liquid cash. That's very good. That's very good. Yeah, and I would consider this, I mean, to a degree an emergency. You lose a job, a job loss is that. So if he's not seeing anything start to really progress in his job, I would say by summer, into summer, come August, if nothing has happened, then that's where I'm like, okay, the payout is ending payout is ending all of this we haven't touched the emergency fund yet

we've been able to bank some money are we seeing any indication because you guys have some good cushion yeah you need financially in order for him to stay on the freight small business path he needs to go from two to three to four to five to six right by the month and if it's not happening or happening faster than that then you have a valid concern that you're going to burn your cash right and that the math you're you're doing the math right you're thinking about this correctly and so and what you've got to do with anybody who wants to start a small business particularly somebody got burned by corporate america and laid off and then wants to start a small business and stick it to the man which i love that by the way go do that okay go the best the best the best revenge is success

okay so go do that but the uh but but don't live in denial right and i'm talking to him right now actually yeah because you're not you got your feet solid on the ground but if he's all entrepreneurial and uh you know hurt over the way he was treated i'll never go back into that i don't blame him for those feelings but that can't mask out the reality of his business didn't get going so he's got to get this business going he's ready to go okay he's got to get it going i need it to ready to go. Okay, he's got to get it going. I need it to go from two. Next month I need it to be three. Next month I need it to be four.

If you do that with the math you gave me, you'll never even touch the emergency fund. That's the hope. The severance. Well, no, it's not the hope. It's what needs to happen. The severance will have funded the startup. Right. That's what it amounts to. if you go from two this month

to three next month he ain't got nothing else to do go get some money boy go get some business that's your thing man leave the cave kill something drag it on what else he gonna be doing watching netflix i mean go get it get it man this is what we do a little desperation is good for a smart for a startup and i don't want this this cash pile over here to make it okay to slumber along i'm not accusing him of that but you can tell i've coached a whole lot of small business guys and i love guys that are like your husband i love right where he is. He really has all the DNA and ingredients, the chemistry of what you're describing to me. He could be running a $50 million business someday, and it could have been born out of being pissed off with the way he was treated over there.

And it took off, and then he went and learned something, and he killed it and drug it home. I think he's in a really cool place, but he can't stay here. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Two, three, four, or reconsider. Five, six, seven, or reconsider. You follow me? Okay.

That math works with what you gave me. You got plenty of cash to do that. And you're not going to have to go to work and freak out. You can go build your business too. It won't hurt. Might as well. It's a good reason for you to go build it. You've been wanting to have to go to work and freak out. You can go build your business too. It won't hurt. Might as well. It's a good reason for you to go build it.

You've been wanting to do it. You've been wanting to help people with this nutrition issue. Go help them. And they'll give you certificates of appreciation with president's faces on them. 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. 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 next week, in the middle of all that grief, like it's just it is it's terrible. So life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm going to eat next week. Yeah, 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. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. One thing the Ramseys all enjoy, and certainly Rachel's husband Winston and I enjoy, is real estate, and we love the real estate market. I like building things and buying things as part of my almost, if I had a side gig, I guess that's what it would be. I've had something under construction for about six or seven years now. Next week I will finish a project, and it'll be the first time I haven't had a construction project going in seven years. In a long time. Yeah. You like it. I'm overdue. I need to find something to stick in the dirt somewhere. But the real estate is fun, and it's pretty confusing out there right now when you're thinking about buying a home it's hard there's a lot there's a lot of emotion around it it's hard yeah price i mean interest rates not only are up but houses

themselves like what you're buying you know the price of a house versus what it was 10 years ago five years ago you're just like three years ago three years two years ago so it's just it can it can feel like one of the most defeating subjects, I think, financially right now for people where they think, oh, my gosh, I don't know if I'll ever own a home, right? Like this kind of negative mindset because of how hard the numbers are. It's real. When you adjust and you adjust your income

and you adjust where you choose to live in order that you can get your income in a place in ratio to the house price in the area you're choosing now to live in order to buy a house then you put yourself in a position to do that and it can still be done and we still have people on here in their 20s that have bought homes and paid them off we have people on 26 years old did a debt-free scream house and everything the other day so it still is being done but uh but it's it's it's a very um i think it's as much it is mathematically tough right now it is economically tough but i think more than those two it's just psychologically tough right now because there's just this perception, this dark cloud over the subject of buying a house right now. And houses are selling and houses have not gone down in value.

There's still a shortage of housing. They've not gone down. They've gone up in value. Well, I mean, there was a time, what, 18 months ago? Everybody thought that. There's a bubble. They said they were going to crash. Yes.

I'm just going to wait until house prices come down. They're not going to come down. We told and they haven't come down yes they've gone up we told you this we've told you and told you and told you and told you so here's some good rules of thumb if you're buying a house don't buy a house and we've said this for 30 years this hasn't changed and it'll help you get the house by the way until you get out of debt don't buy a house where you have to buy an extra bedroom for sally may because you had a student loan so long you think it's a pet you know you're sitting there with stinking car payments around your neck a bass boat payment

and paying for last week last year's disney vacation on your credit card and you're still and you can't figure out why you can't afford a house well I just told you why you can't afford a house you don't have to go after Disney you're stinking over spending well I can go after Ford but I can't go after Disney beach what's wrong it's um okay go anywhere you want to go but you're spending money you don't have to do crap you don't need to be doing and you go in debt to do it and then you're broke and you can't figure out why you can't buy a house so first thing you get is clean up the debt you get out of debt and you build an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses no time in 35 years that i have said that formula did anybody like it

a hundred percent of the decades that i've been doing this show people went well that's not very realistic no but it's smart because if you move in a house without an emergency fund your hot water heater will go out that week and the next week the roof will leak you're going to learn about home ownership baby murphy if it can't go wrong it will come visit you and if you want to if you want to do it really right, I'd love to see you put down 20%. Now, first-time homebuyers, that's very difficult. A lot of first-time homebuyers listen to Ramsey. We don't yell at you for putting down five or 10%, but here's the reason we say put down 20 because you avoid PMI, private mortgage insurances, insurance that pays the bank in the event they have to foreclose on you and they lose money.

It's foreclosure insurance is what it is. And it's not for you. It's for them. But you have to pay for it. And it's about $75 per $100,000 per month. So we're talking like, you know, $ month for a 300 000 loan just for the pmi because you don't put down 20 so that that's a big deal uh now so that that's why we tell you do that now we understand some of you are going to pay pmi but i'm just telling you you can't

just automatically sign up for something that expensive and not know what you're doing because it benefits you zero. It's for the bank. You are paying for the bank's insurance policy to cover them in the event you get foreclosed on. Then figure out 25% of your take-home pay and never have a payment more than a fourth of your take-home pay on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage. Not adjustable rate, not a balloon. Have y'all noticed rates are going up? Why would you sign up for a rate that goes up? That's what your adjustment's going to be. That's just dumb. Don't do that. Well, they might go

down. Yeah, they might go down. Then you can refinance. So you date the rate and marry the house, get the right house. And if the rate goes down, refinance, there's your adjustment, but don't let the bank pass on the risk of higher interest rates to you with an adjustable rate mortgage. So you can get a cheaper rate. So you can get screwed later. You're kicking the can down the road and you're going to get your face kicked in. Don't do it. Don't do it. This is straight, guys. I'm just telling you. I want the house to be a blessing, not a curse. And I meet too many people that their home is a curse all because they said in the name of it's always smart to buy real estate. No, it's not. When you are broke in debt debt, don't have an emergency fund, and sign up for a mortgage payment you can't afford, that is not smart real estate.

That's going to slow down your wealth building, bring anxiety to your home, stress to your relationships. It just takes all the bad stuff out. I mean, it brings all the bad stuff in. Yeah, and I think that this part of the formula is where people feel like, oh my gosh, as they run out their income of $70,000 or whatever it may be their you know their household income um but the truth is even though incomes you know because wages have not kept up necessarily right they haven't kept up

so that means getting into the market it's going to look different than it did three years ago to our point earlier earlier and so there is a part of that that sucks and I think you know we have felt that feeling with inflation like there's things that happen that we can't we don't have control over but this but doing this it allows you for your especially this 25 but here's the here's an accurate appraisal of that okay wages have not gone up as fast as prices and interest rates which means you can probably no longer afford the home that you can. That we live in right now. That's how I mean, like, you can probably no longer afford the home that. Well, that's just interest rate only there.

Yeah. Yeah. That's not price. But the but you can probably no longer afford the home you thought you were going to get. Yes, I think that's it. So you're probably not moving in that neighborhood. You're probably moving in a different neighborhood or you're moving a little bit further out of town. Yeah.

Or you're going to compromise somewhere else in order to become a homeowner. Later, it's not like this is forever. Yeah, right. You can move again later when your income comes up and you make some equity on the purchase of the home. Yeah. And because boys and girls, you never have a forever home. later when your income comes up and you make some equity on the purchase of the home yeah and and because boys and girls you never have a forever home the only forever is the only forever home is heaven that's it that's your only forever home because as soon as you build your forever home as

soon as you build your dream home your dreams will change you build your forever home your kids are going to grow up and leave if you're a good parent they're going to leave and so then you've got this big old house and there you go so okay at all you need to you need to make sure you're on top of your closing costs you need to factor in other home insurance ownership costs people act like you don't have you have extra costs when you own that you don't have when you rent maintenance utilitiesance, utilities, all this. And we always tell you to do a Fannie Mae, a conventional mortgage. FHA and VA are more expensive mortgages in fees and in interest rates

than a Fannie Mae, the conventional mortgage. So do a conventional mortgage. And if you're going to get into this real estate market, now is a really good time, actually, to get in. Yeah, if you're in this position to do it, do it. Do it. Yeah, and use one of our Ramsey Trusted Pros real estate agents to help you with that. So we'll put some link in the show notes for you guys to check that out.

Or if you're listening, RamseySolutions.com slash agent. But have somebody in your corner in this. Because, again, if you are in this position to do it, get in now. Get in now. Get in now. There it is. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Mark and Angie are on the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions.

Hey, guys. How are you? Doing great, Dave. How about yourselves? Honored to have you guys. Where do you live? We live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Oh, very cool. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. And how much debt have you two paid off? We paid off $192,000 in six years and three months. Good for you. All right. And making what range of income during that six years and three months? It's about $64,000 to $90,000.

Very cool. What do you all do for a living? I'm a missionary, and I work with hockey players. I work at our church. I'm the early childhood coordinator. Very good. Good for you guys. Six years, $192,000. Is that your house?

Dave, you are looking at weird people right there. I love that. Love having weird people around me. Normal is broken. You're not.'re not no way to go you guys so what's this house worth guys uh it's about 475 wow very neat awesome yeah how much have you guys got in your nest egg these days uh we got about 250 all right we're getting there bumping up towards baby step millionaire then yep you got it how old are you two weirdos i am 39 i'm 37 and you have a paid for house worth almost a half a million dollars yeah that's just weird y'all it's all god how does it feel yeah it feels really weird like you always say like the grass feels weirder every time i cut the grass i always just touch it now

it's mine you're mine. So what happened you guys six years ago where you thought we're going to, we're going to take this on? Cause it's, it's the biggest, I mean the mortgage, it's, it's the mountain to climb for sure. Oh yeah. I mean, we, I remember the first payment that we made on our mortgage. Like we weren't doing your plan. We didn't really know about it. And you know, you look at the, see how much money actually went towards the principal and you're like, what on earth? A dollar. Totally shocked. And then, um, it was about like, Angie's always had a heart to say, Hey, we want to pay off the house. And I just didn't know how it, to me, it didn't seem possible, but my brother got me like the old, uh, financial peace kits,

like, you know, just the old school ones. So, wow. So I had the CDs, and one day I was cleaning the grill. Not our grill. I found it on the- For you people out there, that's a small disc that has the audio recording on it. Yeah. Yeah. So I found a grill on the side of the road and wheeled it back to our house, and I'm listening to the CDs as I'm cleaning it.

And I honestly had no answers about anything with investing, insurance, nothing like that. And as I'm listening to these CDs, it just started clicking. And I was like, oh my goodness, we can do this. Clean the grill, put it on Facebook, sold it within two hours. And at that point, I was like, Angie, we're going to side hustle our house. And that's what we did. So like our income, we lived off our income. That was our budget. We paid off our house 100% on side hustles.

Oh, wow. Just complete running and gunning. We did everything. And honestly, you could do an extra show for all the side hustle stuff we did. What was the most lucrative? The most lucrative, I would say it was buying and selling video game systems. We did a lot of flipping.

And we did. We flipped toys. We flipped everything. Legos. Legos. Angie got really good at garage sales, finding stuff, flipping that. You buy it for $1, sell it for $20. Yeah, things people were throwing out, they would say, sure, take it.

We would sell it yep it's amazing yeah yeah six years worth paid off your house six years worth yeah wow it's a lot of legos it was a lot and it was one of those things of like you know you work during the day but at night you have time and i would research at night to say like hey what what can i get into now like what's the next thing i can get you, I'd be listening to the show while cutting grass or, you know, driving. And then I'd be like, Hey, how can I get that next thousand and research and find out, Hey, this product, I can go after this. I can find that. And, uh, that's how we hit it. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh my gosh. Okay. What I'm curious, name off like three others.

Cause a lot of people listening side hustling. It's big i mean it is it's obviously a really great way to pay off debt so like did y'all do like uber did you do any driving grocery delivery any of that or was it more like entrepreneurial with like figuring out yeah we did some child care um so with extra hours that we had we would do for small groups and stuff at church we would be the babysitters for that yes um anything like that Mark did? I did. I did a lot of studies. We're right by a university of Michigan and I did a lot of studies for them.

And again, there's some crazy things that you can get money for. I'll just tell you one, but there was one where I had to sit in the passenger seat of a car and for like 45 minutes, their job was to see how, like how much they could get me car sick. And I had to be on an iPad

and complete all these tasks. And I was dying. But the longer you go, the more money you got. And I was just like completely dead. When that car stopped, I got out, hit the ground for like 30 minutes. I told you that was the worst one I ever did.

How much did you make? It was, I mean, it's only like a hundred, 150 bucks or something like that. For 45 minutes of car sickness, you can do it. You can do it. But they called me back and they said, will you do it again? And I said, yes. That's awesome, you guys. So great. Okay. So you're doing all of that. And then I see three kiddos over to your side. So what at like, what's the family dynamic like? Cause a lot of people listening, they have families and they're, you said extra time at night. I thought I'm asleep. Like I, I I'm so exhausted. So talk to me like kind of about the schedule even, what does that look like?

Yeah. Um, I mean like for, for me, I, I, that's when I did a lot of my research. Um, there was times where I was waking up like during the night in the middle of the night like I would track inventory of stuff figure out hey I got to buy it now go to stores when the doors open so I was grinding during that time for sure the kids joined us for a few things going to garage sales so they would come with me that'd be a fun event for the family to do but you didn't feel like the family is like, yeah, in despair now because of this process.

Yeah. I would say they had to make some sacrifices. I would definitely give them a shout out for being on our team for this because there would be times their school would, you know, do the book fair and I would just tell them circle the books that you want. We'll go to the library and get them or find them at a garage sale. So they just bought into it and made it a lot easier.

Great job, you guys. Six years is a long time. Rachel, you just said this story just pops in my mind. There was one time where we had to go to a store right away to get something. So I was like, guys, get in the car right now. So we all hopped in. We went there and we're standing in line. And I looked down at my son and we got him out of the house so fast we forgot to put pants on him

he was a lot littler yeah running and going they were a huge part of this that's so great y'all that's so great oh that happened sometimes to us and yeah and i wasn't even trying to go to a store at a certain amount of time that's parenting brain sometimes well done you guys and you're 37 years old with a paid four half million dollar house almost millionaires that's that that's that's what that i mean that's what happened i mean you guys there's a result to this and and the result is is that you guys are heroes and you've changed your whole family tree. Way to go. I'm so proud of you. Thank you.

Very, very well done. Excellent job. Who was cheering you on from the outside? Man, I would say our family and our close friends knew that we were really tackling this debt. And so they said go after it. They didn't really hold us accountable, but they were super excited for us to do it. Being in the mission field and at church, we just had a lot of people encourage us and support us with babysitting or with meals and yeah, just really pouring and loving in on our family. So things like that, that went really far with us.

Yeah. And honestly, like the show was ginormous. Like cutting grass driving you hear that show you hear people who make the same amount of money you do yeah have the same amount of debt and then it becomes possible bring the kiddos up and let's hear their names and ages yeah i want to introduce them before we get out of time here hey we've got every dollar uh a couple every dollar one year subscriptions for you to say thanks for coming so what are the names and ages this is anna she's nine this is mckenzie she's seven this is harper and he's 11 and he's got his pants he's got it there way to go harper all right i like it it's good stuff great hey i'm proud of you guys you're heroes thank you look at what you did man look at what god did through you i'm so proud of

you yeah you went out there and planted some corn and some grue. Yep. Well done. Yep. Good job. Mark and Angie Harper, Anna and Mackenzie, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 192,000 paid off in six years and three months, making 64 to 90. They're weird.

House and everything is gone. Love it. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. All right, it's all God, so we're giving glory to God. Ready? Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Yeah! Yeah! They're amazing. Wow. Making 64 to 90. They did that. That's amazing. Shut up. This is the Ramsey Show.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thanks for being with us. If you guys want to help us, we could use your help. You can do several things to help us. It doesn't cost you a thing, and we would really appreciate it. A bunch of you have been doing this.

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And we've seen a huge growth in the last 24 months in the show's viewerships and download and all the different things, the rankings, everything. And we think it's because of you guys. So thank you. We appreciate you. Josh is in St. Louis. Hey, Josh, how are you? Better than I deserve.

Dave, how are you? Just the same, sir. What's up? I'm 22 years old. I'm a business owner, and I'm just looking to figure out what's the best way for me to start setting myself up for the future as far as investing. I'm probably looking to get married here within the next couple of years, and I just want to get a good foot forward. Good for you, Josh. What kind of business do you own? I have a lawn and landscape company.

Good for you. How much are you making in a year, would you say? Last year, I made 96. This year, we're about on track to do 110. Good for you. That's great. Is that take-home pay pay or is that what the business is bringing in uh that was what i took home last year um i really don't take much of a i still live with my parents so i don't really have much overhead i don't take much of a salary but um

that's kind of what we were doing last year way to go you. Okay. Do you have any debt right now? I just started listening to you guys. So I do have a $5,000 left on my truck payment, but other than that, nothing. Awesome. How much money have you got saved? My business account, I have close to $55,000. My personal account. I have $25,000 and then $2,000 in a savings account at a bank that's not doing much of anything. Okay. So you know that we're going to tell you as soon as you get off the phone, pay off the truck, right? Yes, sir. Okay.

As soon as you get off. When you hang up, next thing, pay off the truck. Okay. He needed us to say it, Josh. I know. I figured you guys would say it. I've been listening for a little while. Yeah. It's pretty easy.

Okay, now you're debt-free, and you stay out of debt from this point forward growing your business. You've done a great job, and the secret sauce to your business growth is not debt. It's you. You're the secret sauce. You're the one that brought this to where it is. You're the one that will take it to the next level, and it's not going and borrowing money to buy a bunch of equipment. That's not the secret sauce. And people get confused when you start making a little money that suddenly go, Oh, I could go do this. No, you need to be reliant on

what brought you here. And that is you and your hard work and your ingenuity. You are amazing. You've done a great job to build a business like that at 22 years old. Very, very well done, but keep growing it on your ingenuity, not on borrowed money. And you haven't so far. So don't fall into that trap. That's thing, answer one to how do you set yourself up in the future. And then answer two is to start following what we call the baby steps. It is the shortest right way from where anyone is to where wealth is. And so we're going to set aside some of your money and call it an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses maybe that 25 that you have

exactly yeah maybe step one is a thousand dollars you've done that two is debt free you're going to do that when you get off the phone three is you're going to have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and then four is i want you to start investing 15% of your income into retirement planning. And if you want to do something beyond that, just start throwing it over into a simple mutual fund like an S&P 500 fund or something like that to just pile up some money to buy a house someday. Somewhere in the next 18 months or so, get out on your own as a renter. It won't hurt anything. Establish yourself in the marketplace and, you know, establish yourself as an adult outside your parents' control, outside their walls. You've done, you know, you can run a business, you can run an apartment.

You know, it's not going to kill you. Or a little house somewhere or something. Yeah, but some good funds to look into, Josh. You know, opening up just a Roth IRA, you know, funding that for his small business, a SEP. Would he do that? Well, you could do a SEP. Do you have full-time employees or part-time or 1099? How are you paying your people? Full-time.

How many? I've got two guys right now. Two, okay. Two guys. All right. If you want to sit down with a smart investor pro, they can teach you about a Roth IRA or if you want to use a SEP, or if you want to use what's called a simple IRA,

which is a 401K for small businesses. One of those two things, a SEP or a simple, will be good for you to add more than just the Roth if you want to start saving more for retirement than just the $7,000 that's allowed this year. Okay. But you can throw seven grand in there real quick. And I would do that and let it start growing tax-free for you in mutual funds. And beyond that, I'm going to start stocking some of this money to grow the business. That's a retained earnings over in the business. I'm going to start stocking some of it to move into a paid for house at some point.

But there's no rush you're 22 if you did all of that by 25 you'd still be a genius you don't have to do it by 22 and a half okay there's no uh you're ambitious dude you're a go-getter it's okay to move slowly on the house purchase because if you buy a house as a single guy and then you get engaged and married you will discover you have bought the wrong house so um it's not it's okay to wait it's okay to especially if you have somebody it may sound like you have some sound like he's getting ready you're talking about that so buy a house after you're married that's fine it's preferable in terms of the order to do this you're doing great you're going to get there you don't have to worry about it.

You are going to get there. Nothing's going to stop you except you. So well done, sir. Very well played. Kaylin is in Sacramento. Hi, Kaylin. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you for having me.

I'm honored to be here. It's an honor to have you. How can we help? I just was calling because I was wanting to get your advice on um buying another car um and i wanted to see like how much you'd recommend what i would spend on it basically um so i know you're not a fan of new cars so how much money do you have um well i did your program and i paid off like $29,000 in student loans and I have an emergency fund saved.

So I have $20,900 in that. And then I have kind of like an everyday fund, I sort of call it, where I do like, you know, my normal transactions. So I have about like $6,800. So what do you think you want to spend on a car in cash um I don't know I so I was looking at some used cars and I think I don't know if it's just like I'm not very good at looking at or it's California but um like cars with like 90,000 miles on them will be like 15,500 ish. Um,

well, that depends on the car. Yeah, it does. Um, but it would just take kind of a large amount of my money and I don't make a lot per year at all. So,

um, um, about like 25,000 a year. You've done all of this making $25,000 a year in Sacramento, California? Yeah. Wow, you live on nothing. I do. That's impressive.

Yeah, but I'm a musician for a couple churches on the weekends, and then I'm a remote photo editor, and I shoot weddings. Okay, so yeah, you have a couple of other streams of income coming in. You're probably making as much doing all that as you are at your day job. Uh, no, that's like the total of everything, but I'm just kind of like a simple person.

So, um, yeah, I was a little scared to call you guys. So the answer to your question, Kaylin is pay cash. Okay. And I wouldn't get more than a $10,000 car.

In your situation, that's the max is a $10,000 car. Rachel's exactly right. About half your annual income is the most you ought to have in a vehicle. And you pay cash for it. So with the numbers you gave us, it sounds like 10K is the right number. And get somebody at one of those churches to go with you and help you pick it out. Help you shop if you don't feel comfortable with what you're doing 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. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality No. 1 best-selling author, is my co-host today, my daughter. Phone number is 888-825-5225. This is a special hour of The Ramsey Show. We are doing a Baby Steps Millionaires theme hour. What does that mean? It means we're going to only talk to real millionaires theme hour what does that mean it means we're going to only talk to real

millionaires interview them and ask them how they did that i started doing this on this show about six years ago and it has become one of the more popular things this and debt-free screams that we do on the air because it defeats the notion that your broke brother-in-law who votes wrong has a wrong opinion about where money comes from and where millionaires come from and so instead we're going to talk to real millionaires not broke people with an opinion and how did they really do it so to do that we need to help some people because some people don't know what a millionaire is. You think you do, but you don't. Some people think a millionaire is someone who

makes a million dollars a year. It's not. There are people that make a million dollars a year that are not millionaires. And there are people that never see a million dollar a year income that become millionaires. A millionaire is a net worth term. It is an accounting term. It is not a feeling. It is not a moral construct. It's not a discussion of how much is enough. It's a simple mathematical measure of net worth. If someone says someone is a net worth millionaire, that sentence is redundant because there's only one kind of millionaire, net worth millionaire. That's the only kind there is. So you can't say as if there is another kind.

No, it's just one. And your net worth is measured by what you own minus what you owe, assets minus liabilities. If you ever take an accounting class, it's called a balance sheet. It's the first thing you learn, and it's one of the second things you learn in accounting class. The first is debits and credits. But balance sheet is you list what you own, your assets, minus what you owe equals net worth. that is when that number is a million dollars

you are a millionaire and it's not cash it's not real estate it's not well they're not a real yes they are a real millionaire if you own more than a million dollars worth of stuff then you owe you are a millionaire and well I don't feel i don't care how you feel it's not a feeling is this like a big debatable thing oh it really is it gets all yeah the dadgum social media people the reddit threads and all this are just confused yeah that's funny and it's just it's stupid so you just have to really have to lay the foundation here i love it so and i hope all of you are excited as a as the guy in lobby. He cheered when he heard that it was this. No, it's a baby steps millionaire.

So we want to find out how people really did it. Where does wealth come from in America today? How do you get it? And as you listen to these people, you're going to hear how you can get it. And that's the point of bringing them on. It's to give you hope and to show you that it's doable. Okay. So we're going to start with Rex in Columbus, Ohio. Rex, what is your net worth? Just a little over 2 million, Dave and Rachel. Good to talk to you.

Thank you very much. How old are you, Rex? I am 61. Okay. And give me a little breakdown on the 2 million by category. How much in retirement, how much in real estate and so on? IRAs are about 1,260,000 paid for house, 645,000 cash, taxable investments, some cars and some stuff is about 90,000. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Good for you. And your best year working income and your worst year working income since you've been working? Worst year right out of college and right after getting married

was about $15,600 for the family, and we hit $250,000 a couple times with some bonuses. Very cool. What's your career? I've been in the asphalt paving industry my entire career from started in the field up into leadership and now I'm consulting. Okay. All right. And you got a degree, a four-year degree? Nope. Two-year associate's degree. Okay. All right. In what? It was civil technology. Okay. Which led you

right into this. Perfect yeah and your gpa when you did that do you remember it i know it was under 2.9 but i never got a letter from the school so okay somewhere in there that's good enough all right cool so when you're talking to someone today you're 61 oh how much of this did you inherit? My mother passed, and I think we got a little under $50,000, and that was after. After you were already a millionaire? Yes. Okay, so it's safe to say that you're not a millionaire because of inherited money.

That is correct. Okay, I'll make sure I get that right. So what would you tell the younger version of you if they wanted to have two million dollars when they got to 60 years old what's the secret uh there's a lot of them there start early had my first mutual our first mutual fund at 20 uh choose a great partner and i've been married for for 41 years and and she's been a partner and a teammate and and she should be on here as well so that starting early and we always had a plan i think you all talk about the why we had a plan i'm sure that the plan we had 30 years ago we'd probably laugh at right now but we always had a direction and you've got to have that you don't accidentally win yeah i agree very good very good okay what's

the most expensive pair of blue jeans you ever bought i had to buy some the other day that were 79 but my work jeans come from the thrift store so okay let's ask how about your wife oh probably less than mine oh okay so low maintenance yeah all right that's fair yeah very low yes okay what kind of car do you drive drive a 2017 subaru good hundred and coming close to 160 000 miles okay all right and uh what kind of car did you drive before you became a millionaire well fortunately i've always had company cars uh but before we were smart we were buying newer cars uh they weren't nothing fancy but we don't buy new cars anymore okay before we were smart that's very cool you think it can still be done today

oh absolutely um Two things. There's so much more opportunity. I see what employees, you know, where they're at now on pay and benefits is, you know, I didn't have a 401k for the first 10 years. The information that you have out there is so much better. You know, 40 years ago, it was an insurance salesman trying to sell you mutual funds, you know, and so I think there's so much more opportunity. And I do want to say one thing with my wife, you know, she only had 12 years where she had a 401k, never made more than $12 an hour. This was back in the 80s and 90s. And her IRA is over $330,000 right now.

There we go. That's how it works. Well done. Way to go, hero. Thanks for calling in and telling your story. 61 years old, $2 million. There you go. Just like that with a two-year associate's degree,

worked in the paving world. Hmm. This is a Baby Stepsaires theme hour rachel cruz ramsey personality is my co-host today this is a baby steps millionaires theme hour where we're talking to people who are real millionaires asking them how they did it to let you know if you have a chance or not it's a good thing it's called hope and if you are a millionaire i don't care if you won the lottery i don't care if you inherited your money i don't care if you woke up this morning and the tooth fairy left you a million under your pillow i don't care if you worked hard for 73 years and lived in a cave and collected lint i don't care

how you got there i want to talk to you so that we can tell people how they get there. The phone number is 888-825-5225. We're talking only this hour to real millionaires. What you own minus what you owe is your net worth. When that's a million dollars, you are a millionaire. Tracy is in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I hit the wrong button. All right, try again. There we go. Tracy's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi I hit the wrong button. All right, try again. There we go.

Tracy's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, Tracy, what's your net worth? $1.1 million, Dave. Good for you. And give me a little breakdown on that by category. My house is worth $296,000, and my retirement fund, $867,000. That includes my stocks, mutual funds, IRA, all that good stuff. Cool, cool. How old are you?

I just turned 58 last week. Love it. And how much of this $1.1 million did you inherit? Absolutely nothing. Z at all. Okay. What was your worst year of income while you've been working and your best year of income while you've been working and your best year of income while you've been working? My worst year was about $18,000, and I did wind up with about $110,000, but that was a couple of years ago. Now I'm down to $38,000. Okay. And what's been your career? I worked in insurance for my 31-year career, and I kind of forced into retirement after that.

Took a couple of years off. I was fortunate to already be. What did you do in insurance? I was many, many things. Last quality assurance specialist, underwriter. Okay. Started out very low on the total. Gotcha. Four-year degree?

Only when I lost my job in one insurance company. And so I didn't get my degree until I was 30 years old. Oh, okay. All right. And what's your degree in? Finance. Okay. That's cool.

And what was your GPA in finance? Well, because I was older when I went back to school, it was 3.75. So I just barely got that magna cum laude. I love it. Good for you. Well done. Okay. Cool.

All right. What do you tell people the reason that you are a millionaire? What's the key to this for you? Well, the key, Dave, I grew up really, really poor, and I became a single parent in 2009, was divorced at age 42, purchased a home, you know, 2009 worst-case scenario, become upside upside down how old were your babies when you got divorced my baby was 10 years old i'm glad you brought that up he's sitting here with me okay and um i swore i wasn't gonna cry i'm not gonna cry well i mean i i got single moms out there

right now that just the divorce was final this week she's 42 with a 10 year old she doesn't think she's gonna make it and you just prove to her she's going to not only did i make it dave but um he came home from school in 2014 i think he was in high school freshman year and i was helping him with his homework and uh so he was talking about this crazy man named dave and these baby steps and i thought well that's just crazy and And fast forward to 2017, and my church was teaching financial peace. And I just had to join up. And then I was hooked. And I became debt free soon after in 2020. The very first day I taught my first financial peace class at church was the very first day that I was debt-free, health and all.

Wow. Did my debt-free scream in front of my class. Of course, we went pandemic after that, so we had to go online. But that was amazing to teach my first class and to announce to the class that I was debt-free, including my home in 2020. Dang. So your 10-year-old, well, it wasn't 10 at the time, but your son is the one that kind of introduced you to a game plan, a path, a pathway, baby steps. And then he got really nosy with my finances and wanted to know what I was doing and why I had $20,000 on my car when I had money in the bank. And I just thought that he was ridiculous.

He was all up in my business. But now he's sitting here, and my ex-husband and i were able to get him through college debt free oh my gosh that's amazing well done tracy he's never been in debt and uh never will be because of you because of me and you well you just uh you just gave hope to a whole bunch of single moms out there that they can do it too i'm so proud of you way to go warrior so good warrior princess i'm proud of you very well done brandon Warrior. So good. You're a warrior princess. I'm proud of you. Very well done. Brandon in Lubbock, Texas.

Brandon, what's your net worth? $1.2 million. Cool. Give me a little breakdown by category on that, Brandon. Most of it is real estate or home with acreage and a shop, and some farmland is right at about a half a million. And then we have savings investments, IRAs, college funds, just regular retirement savings is $345,000.

And then I have farm equipment and truck that I conservatively estimate is worth about $200,000 if you were to sell it all today. Gotcha. And then the rest of it is just cash in the money market at the bank, $170,000. Cool. How old are you? I'm 44. Good for you.

What was your best year income-wise since you've been working and your worst year since you've been working? Well, worst year was being in farming. There were some years that were pretty lean. Had anything down to net operating loss a couple of times. And then the best years in the past couple of years have been around 100,000 or 120,000. Okay, cool. Very good.

So you're a farmer? Yes. What do you farm? We just farm wheat and livestock and forage, sorghum, and summer crops. Okay, good for you. Okay, cool. You have a four-year degree i do not i did not go to college my wife does have a four-year degree all right what's her gpa do you remember i don't know uh she did well she graduated honors so i don't know she's real

smart we'll we'll get brandon we'll give her a 4.0 for fun. They say behind every successful farmer is a wife that works in town. That's great. Yeah, behind every successful man is a powerful woman and a surprised mother-in-law. There you go. There you go. I love it. Hey, good for you, man. Way to go.

Proud of you. So do you think somebody that wants to do what you do, they want to be in farming and they're 24 and 20 years behind you, can they still do this? How much of this did you inherit, by the way? I did not inherit anything. My grandfather did let me use his older equipment when I started, and he basically over time gifted that to me. But it was older and not worth a lot, but it did help immensely getting started. But, yes, yeah, that's the way to do it. Just start slow.

Be real careful with expenses. Be careful with lifestyle creep. It's easy to have a good year, a couple good years. You start increasing your lifestyle, and then you have a drought or failures and so forth, and then it's really hard to overcome that. It's pretty easy in your world to have a combine that costs more than your house. That's absolutely right. Yeah, but I think that's a good point, though. It's the highs and the lows, and you feel that as a farmer probably more than a lot of industries out there, right?

It can be so inconsistent, right? And on things you can't always control. And so I think that's a good point. I think that's a really good point of the lifestyle creep because you kind of, yeah, if you have a few good years in a row, you start to feel like, all right, this is my life. And you can kind of fill in that margin real quick with stuff. And then when you look up and realize, oh my gosh, I have to back down from that, it hurts. But to watch those expenses, that's good. When I mentioned that we had a couple of years that were basically an operating loss, that's how we made it through.

We had to live on savings, and we'd always been kind of thinking ahead a couple years that what if, and always kept a good, strong cash position and was able to get through the lean times. That's exactly how you do it. Well, well done, done brandon proud of you man excellent job 44 years old already worth over a million two excellent excellent job so some of the mythology that we find out there uh floating around in the culture about wealthy people about

millionaires you can't be a millionaire if you're not a famous entertainer, actor, rock star, country music star, professional athlete. They all together add up to less than 1% of America's 26 million millionaires. Most of the millionaires of the 26 million are a lot like Brandon or like the 58 the 58 year old single mom we just got off the phone with they're regular folks you walk by them in walmart you'd have no idea because by the way that's where they buy their jeans this is the baby steps theme hour here on the ramsey show the reason we call it baby steps millionaires is because some of these people literally followed our baby steps some didn't to become millionaires but we've got thousands and thousands of people out there now that have become millionaires following the baby steps and showing you how to get out of debt and build wealth.

And it is the shortest right way to become wealthy. I ended up doing a book called Baby Steps Millionaires. And in it, in the back of the book, we put the white paper of the research and all the detail of the research project where we studied, did the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. I had a friend named Tom Stanley who passed away a few years ago in a car accident. His daughter Sarah has continued on his work down in Atlanta, and he wrote a book in 1992 called The Millionaire Next Door.

It became a very famous book, and it was an excellent, excellent product. And Tom was a marketing professor at Georgia State University, and then he became a millionaire selling a bazillion of those books. But his sample size, when he came to the conclusions of where millionaires come from in the millionaire next door was 750 millionaires. Now, those of us who've had a class or two in statistics know that 750 is a statistically significant, meaning accurate, number to do research on and get an indication of what's really going on. But when you tell left-wing communists trained by college professors that you can become a millionaire in America today in the capitalistic world that we live in, they get really upset and they've got a journalism degree and have never had a um statistics class so they attacked tom stanley at length because saying oh he only studied 750 and

it was it was a rigged study and he his whole life that plagued him they went after him and went after him went after him on that although those of us that actually know numbers knew it was an accurate study so So we thought, okay, we know that we could do a study of a thousand or so millionaires and we would get accurate results on what's really going on. But I said, hey, just for the PR purposes, let's do 10 times what Tom did. Let's do 7,500. Well, we got carried away and we ended up doing 10,167 millionaires that we studied. We brought in an outside research firm to look over our shoulder and make sure that our research methodology was airtight because we knew we would get the same criticisms from

the lefties that he got. And so because we knew what we were going to find, it's not confirmation bias, but we have studied millionaires and walked in this space for so long. We knew we had a pretty good idea what it were going to find. It's not confirmation bias, but we've studied millionaires and walked in this space for so long, we knew we had a pretty good idea what it was going to be. I got to tell you, when the actual data came in, I was a little shocked. It was more conclusive than I realized. I thought it would be like 58%, would did this most of the numbers were like 85 89 90 96 percent on the

different pieces of conclusion on the data that we came to and again it's it's airtight research so if you disagree with the conclusions of this study you are what's known as wrong okay this is like airtight you're just this is data it's like facts okay so that's how this works i'm setting all of that up to tell you one of the mythologies out there is is that millionaires all inherited their money and we found that 79 of america's millionaires that's eight out of ten inherited precisely zero another five percent inherited a small amount like five or ten thousand bucks from granny when she died and they did get an inheritance but it was mathematically impossible for that to have caused them to become a millionaire because five thousand dollars from

your grandmother doesn't make you a millionaire and yet you did inherit something another five percent received a substantial inheritance after they were already millionaires a guy mentioned a while ago he got 50 000 bucks from his grandmother after he was already a millionaire another i often hear they get 200 300 400 000 after they're already millionaires so here's the deal 79 zero five percent not enough, 5% after already being millionaires. 79, 5, and 5 is 89. That's 9 out of 10 of America's millionaires are not millionaires because of inherited money. So you wealthy, quality, socialist, communist people are wrong you're just mathematically wrong

okay nine out of ten of 26 million millionaires in north america today are not millionaires because of inherited money so quit believing that. And don't sit around and listen to somebody spout those lies anymore because you're stealing people's hope that they can do it. And hope stealers are evil people. You should not be stealing people's hope, not artificially. So let's talk to some real millionaires. Jack is in Rochester, New York. Hey, Jack, what's your net worth um right

now it's about 3.4 million good give me a little breakdown on the categories please well i've got like two and a half million invested in annuities and you know things in the stock market um stuff like that and about 300 some thousand, like your rainy day fund. Mm-hmm. He keeps cash and we keep money in some bank accounts. Got it. And then a half a million dollar house is paid for. Mm-hmm.

And probably $150,000 worth of possessions. So it's around $3.4 million, I would guess. Way to go. How old are you? I'm 72. I just had my birthday this past weekend. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

Thank you. How much of this 3.4 did you inherit, sir? Well, actually, I inherited about $70,000, and that was about two years ago. So I really had an awful lot of money by the time I inherited some money from my mom. So you were already a millionaire? Oh, yeah. Quite, yeah. Okay.

So you're not a millionaire because of inherited money, kind of like I was just talking about. Okay, cool. One of the 5%. Exactly. In your working lifetime, what was the most money you ever made in a year and the least money you ever made in a year? I think the least money I ever made in a year was zero because I didn't work, and I think the most money I ever made was about $200,000. Okay. Probably averaged around $80,000 or $85,000 through my whole career.

I've been retired since 2019. It was shocking to me in that study I was just talking about, Jack, that 33%, one-third of millionaires never earned over $100,000. Yeah. That was amazing to me. That one, mathematically, I did not see that one coming.

What was your career? Well, I did a lot of things. I mean, my first job, you get a kick out of this, first job was sweeping up the hair in a barbershop. I was nine years old. I got paid a buck a day if I did a good job. If I didn't do a good job, I got 50 cents. There you go.

Then I washed dishes. I got my first real job. I ran the parts department in a Ford dealership for about 25 years, worked for some wonderful people who taught me some great, great, great business lessons that I still use today. And, you know, I just did a lot of things, a lot of different things, construction, publishing. Anytime I could figure out something where there was some money to be made

and that I was capable of doing it, I did it. Did you get a four-year degree? No, I went to 12th grade. I was never expected to go to college, but I was expected by my parents to know how to read and write and figure out rafters and 716 bolts and all that stuff. I mean, it was no easy ride. It's just that nobody in my family at the time had ever gone to college.

Gotcha. Okay. Cool gone to college. Gotcha. Okay. Cool. Very good. Good. Okay. Do you think that in this world today that someone listening, if they wanted to go into the trades, could become a millionaire? Oh, easily.

Easily. Anybody who doesn't think that's in their own way. I mean, you've got to come up with a plan and a goal and then you got to be steady Eddie. You got to follow it, you know, year after year, you got to do the same thing, maybe adjust your plan a little bit. You got to surround yourself with some good people. I mean, my wife thinks exactly the way I do. We live within our means, you know, it's just, it's pretty simple. It's awesome. Common sense, Jack. You're proof of it. Awesome. Common sense, Jack. You're proof of it.

You're a hero, Jack. I'm proud of you, man. I'm proud of you. Young men and young women, listen to men like Jack. Let me tell you what Jack did. He worked a lot. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Matthew 5, 16, let your light shine before others that they may

see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Helen Keller said, the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. So last year's, it wasn't last year, it was last spring, I guess, we did a money and marriage getaway here at the Ramsey Event Center. And that's Rachel Cruz and Dr. John Deloney doing that. And it's a Friday night, all day Saturday, even into Sunday, right? Yep. Or a Thursday night, Friday, Saturday. A Thursday, Friday, Saturday. There's like two and a half full days.

Yeah. And when we finished at the end of it, we put the next event on sale. And almost everyone that was there bought a ticket to the next one. I was like, oh, crap. We're going to have to do all new content. Yeah. It's like almost it's going to. So the next one is in October and it's sold out. It's gone.

You can't come. So you got FOMO. But the good news is that today we have big news. We're adding another money and marriage event. This one's going to be Valentine's Day of 2025. And so about nine months from now, we'll be at the Ramsey Event Center and be doing the three-day event. Rachel, what in the world? Why is this so popular? I mean,

you and John are funny, you're smart, you're good speakers, you're good teachers, but I mean, when you close up a three-day event and you put it on sale and everybody that's there buys the next one automatically, that says something good happened. What do you think the secret sauce was? You know, I don't know. We kind of all ended it and we're like, God, that was just like a magical time. You know, I think money and marriage both, I think, are pretty like vulnerable topics, like, you know, and they're hard topics for people too, right? Like working on your marriage. Stuff happens in marriage. You're both human and it's painful, right? So there's like a lot of heart in that. There's a lot of heart in money. People feel like, oh my gosh, like I don't know

how to do this. I feel like we're drowning in debt. We're not on the same page. So you put these two subjects that I really do think have a lot of difficulty, but so much upside and so much of people that really want to do well in these areas. So you have a room full of what, 1,200, how many people can be held up there, in a room that are craving change. and then so I think there's a level of that and then the style of the event we kind of shaped this event around how John and I enjoy being with people so there was a lot of just Q&A a lot of downtime a lot of interacting with people lots of teaching for sure but a lot of conversations I feel like it was like a dialogue back and forth with the audience through so much of the weekend. It was so rich. It was great.

And it was fun, too. It's a destination. Fun things at night. Like, I mean, you're with your spouse. People are away from their kids. They feel like they're on vacation, too. So it's just, I don't know. It's really fun, you guys.

So help you communicate better. Help you strengthen your emotional connection. Get on the same page with your spouse on money. The Money in Marriage event,entine's day 2025 goes on sale today tickets start at 699 again the one in the fall here in october has been sold out for a couple of weeks now and uh this one will sell out early as well so early bird pricing is still happening you can save up to 350 dollars right now so you better hurry if you want a vip level ticket they'll sell out first on all of our events so go find us february 13th and through the 15th of 2025 valentine's day money and marriage

event at the ramsey event center here on our campus go to ramsey solutions.com slash events it is a baby steps millionaires theme hour brody is in Grand Rapids. Brody, what's your net worth? Hi, Dave. My net worth is conservatively about 1.3. Okay. Give me a little breakdown by category. Yeah, real estate's about 800 net worth, got a little over 300 in some investments, and then150 or so in cash. Okay, good for you. All right, cool. How old are you?

39. Good. All right, young millionaire. Good. And how much of this did you inherit? You know, the only thing we've inherited was a few shares of Apple stock from a grandma, so almost nothing. I mean, literally a few.

You're not exaggerating. It's like 10. Yeah. Like 10 shares. Okay, all right. So you're not exaggerating it's like 10 yeah like 10 shares okay all right so you're not a millionaire because of inherited money okay good and uh so what is your the your best year of earning and your worst year of earning since you've been working yeah best year is probably upwards of 200 but vast majority of my working life was going to be in that 35 to 50. Gotcha. Okay. All right.

Cool. And what's your career? I own a donut shop. Cool. Very cool. Four-year degree? Yep. In what?

Business sports management. Business sports. Okay, cool. your gpa then who barely got through i didn't i didn't take it too seriously let's just say that okay thank you laudy you graduated thank you laudy yeah all right me too i had a 2.97 there was beer involved yeah so okay i got two extra semesters in my bill yeah i hear you okay cool you think this can still be done you're only 39 you're talking to a 19 or a 29 year old out there can they still be millionaires

in america oh undoubtedly so what how do you what do you see what do you tell them what did you do what was the main thing that got you there i'd say it's a couple things but i uh lived on well below my means and uh justled, especially in those seasons before kids, before marriage, just really take every opportunity, work hard, whatever presents itself, take it, save, invest, and just be wise with your money. There you go. Okay, cool. Cool. What do you drive? What kind of car? Well, all my life I've drove the Hoopties, the Dave cars, you know, but a year or two ago I finally splurged in about a 2020 Ford F-150. Ooh, nice. Good for you. Good for you. Excellent.

Not exactly a Lamborghini, a Ford pickup. Yeah, it does. Okay. What a million, what a 39 millionaires, what a 39 year old millionaires drive that own a donut shop, a Ford pickup. Okay. Just helping you guys out there that have stars in your eyes from watching too many non-reality shows.

So good for you. Well done. Well done, Brody. Great job, Brody. Good job, man. You're a hero. I'm proud of you. Scott's in Detroit.

Scott, what's your net worth? Hi, Dave. Good afternoon. I'm worth 1.3 Scott's in Detroit. Scott, what's your net worth? Hi, Dave. Good afternoon. I'm worth $1.3 million approximately. All right. And give me a little breakdown by category. Yep. $450,000 in 401K, $230,000 in Roth 401K, $150,000 in a Roth IRA, $70,000 in a health savings account,

$70,000 in liquid and CDs, $21,000 in savings bonds, and about 350,000 in house and cars. Good for you. I do owe 33,000 on a mortgage still, but I'm going to pay that off in July when my CDs mature. Wonderful. How old are you? I'm 43. Cool. Very cool. How much of this did you inherit? I inherited zero dollars. I was blessed to have parents who were able to pay for my undergrad at a four-year state school. What's your degree in? Mechanical engineering. Are you an engineer? I lead a technical sales team. We sell engineered products, so sort of an engineer.

Okay, in that field around it okay good what is your uh the the worst year of your income since you've been working in your best year of your income since you've been working i made three thousand dollars working in a fast food restaurant when i was 15 years old and i actually managed to uh peel off a few hundred dollars to open a roth ira off of that and i made a And I made about $170 gross last year. Good for you. You think this can still be done? Yeah.

You know, fortune favors those who get up and go to work and not buy crypto. Thank you, Matt Damon. George will love that line. Oh, man. That is so fabulous. It is true, though. Scott, well done.

That's wise. In other words, don't try to get rich quick, stupid. That's it. That's exactly it right there. Well played. Get to work and don't buy crypto. Hey, man, congratulations, hero hero i'm proud of you well played well played 61 58 44 72 39 and 43 years old 2 million 1.1 1.2 3.4 1.3 1.3 none of them

because of inherited money uh over half of them did not have a four-year degree uh out of all the ones we talked to i think i talked to we talked to one person today with a four-year degree all the rest of them didn't have a four-year that's unusual yeah i will tell you that the top five uh careers engineer in the study that we did engineer accountant um teacher teacher yeah and um business person and attorney that's the top five careers that puts us our the ramsey show in the books we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey, folks, Dave Ramsey here. 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.