How Do I Get Started Investing?
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From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Campbell, Ramsey personality, host of The Fine Print on the Ramsey Networks.

is my co-host today. We talk about your mental wellness, your relationships, your jobs, your careers, and your money. It's your life right here on The Ramsey Show. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Austin is in Springfield, Missouri to start off this particular hour. Hey, Austin, what's up? Hello, Dave. Nice to talk to you. You too. How can we help?

My question is, I'm 22 years old and I'm wanting to start investing and I'm wanting to know which platform I should use. Wise man. All right. So you're out of college, you're working?

I did not go to college. I'm working. I actually own a construction and excavating business of my own. Way to go, man. That's incredible. Okay, so what's your income for the year? Household income. My income is around $45,000 a year. Cool. And I do own my house. It's completely paid off. Wow. What's that worth?

My home appraised around $220,000. Way to go, man. Well, you're doing great already, right off the bat. You're killing it. Do you have any debt? No, I have no credit card debt or student loans, nothing. And you have an emergency fund? You have savings, three to six months expenses? Yes. Yes, my emergency fund is around $25,000. Would you run for Congress?

22 years old, you have your crap together more than any of them at the Island of Misfit Toys. I wish, but I got a lot of my information from you, Dave, obviously, plus my family and my parents. They blessed me with a lot of knowledge and stuff, but no handouts, but a lot of knowledge, and I'm very grateful for that. Yeah, they raised a great kid, man. Well, let's talk about the investing side now. Have you invested at all in anything so far, or is this all new?

No, sir. I have not started investing at all in any type of cryptocurrency or anything.

All right. Well, here's what I would do if I were you in your shoes. I would be investing 15% of my income into retirement accounts. So things like a 401k, if you have access to that. I know you've got your own business, but you don't. So it may be a solo 401k or a SEP IRA for you. But IRAs and those kinds of retirement accounts is where I'd be putting that 15%. And you can put a lot of money in there if you're self-employed. Yeah, you can put $6,000 into just a simple Roth IRA. Now,

That's a very easy transaction, and that would be pretty close to your 15% at this stage of the game. So what you do, just click on at RamseySolutions.com. Just click on SmartVestor Pro. Sit down with one of the people that we endorse for investing. We call them SmartVestor Pros. You're the SmartVestor. They're the pro that helps you do it.

You're a smart investor, and you are. You are. You qualify, dude. Well done. But they can set that up, and you can have it come directly out of your checking account monthly. If you want to break it down monthly, it would be $500 a month. If you want to do it one time in a lump sum, you can do that. I'd recommend just setting up a monthly draft because I like getting smart things on autopilot so I never have to think about them again. So I'm automatically smart.

I like that. I like that. If you can automate smartness, that's a, I don't know, smartness is not a word. I'm not there yet. I'll get there. Smartness, smart, whatever it is. That's what I do. Whatever it is, it falls, that wisdom, we're going to just put it on autopilot where we automatically are smart. And I just, I've always tried to do that, trick myself into doing smart things. And you learn to live on whatever's left and then you're really winning. Exactly. Well done, Austin. Sharon's in San Antonio. Hi, Sharon. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, guys. Dave, pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I'm in a position where I'm able to pay off my ex-husband's house for him. Why? And I was wondering if you thought that would be a good idea. Well, it sounds weird.

Who pays off their ex-husband's house. He's a really, really, really good man, and he deserves a break. He needs kind of a hand up, and I just wanted to help him. So is George. Just send him the money.

I will take it. A lot of good people out there you could give to. That's some strange generosity. Yeah, that's different. Is that weird? I don't know. No, it's okay. It's just, I mean, if you want to do it, I'm not mad at you. It's just, you have to admit it's highly unusual. Yeah. Like, I don't think in 30 years I've ever gotten this call. Okay, yeah, I'm not trying to buy his affection. I don't want to get back together with him. He's just a good man. So how much does he owe on his house?

$135,000. And you have like extra $135,000 laying around? Yeah. I have $4.5 million in assets plus a trust fund that's $2 million. Okay. By the way, I'm working with one of your endorsed local providers here in San Antonio. Can I say his name? Sure. Jeff Whaling and the Whaling Wealth Team. Great. Fabulous. That's awesome. How long have you been divorced? Yeah.

We got divorced in 2016. We were married for 18 years. No children. Where did you get all this money? Where'd all this money come from?

My parents, and then they passed away, and my brother was sitting on it, and then he passed away in 2020, and then he did not have a will. So I had a heck of a mess on my hands. So I had, excuse me, everything went to me. And so that was before it happened. So you're like what, 50, you're 50-something years old? I'm 53 years old, yes, sir. And what do you do for a living?

I have a part-time job. I do customer service over the phone for a company here in San Antonio. Okay. All right. Well, there's nothing legally wrong with this. There's nothing morally wrong with this. There's nothing mathematically wrong with this. You have the money. You won't even notice out of $4 million, $5 million losing, giving up $135,000. Okay.

I think it's just, suffice it to say, it's just strange enough that from a relational standpoint or an emotional standpoint, you know, you might want to talk this through with, like, your pastor. I'm not saying don't do it, but you have to admit that it's weird. And, you know, it's just, it is. And so if you want to go do it, that's fine. Yeah.

So, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd wonder his situation financially. Is he good at money management? Is this going to make him feel like he just got a free ticket? If he hasn't been handling his money well, you don't want to be enabling in that situation. But, I mean, it sounds like he's got a normal mortgage like a normal person and she just wants to rid him of it. But I'm still taking a nice long pause before I cash the check.

I just think of a whole lot of things I'd put in line in front of it if it was me doing it. But, you know, you have a sweetheart, honey. There's no question about that. And it's your money, and you're not doing anything wrong. And even if it's unusual, it's okay to do it. This is The Ramsey Show.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey good folks, the back-to-school madness is upon us. It's hitting us right now. We got travel and work and all these forms to fill out now and sports to travel to and on and on. My family's schedule is so packed and we haven't even begun talking about things like exercise and date nights and counseling and church and home projects. And those are the things that make our life even worth living.

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Call my friends at BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Delaunay today for 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Delaunay. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Ramsey Show. Tom is with us. Tom's in Salt Lake City. How are you, Tom? I'm doing great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So my wife and I are at the end of the baby steps. We're debt-free, thankfully, in large part to you and your program and just some crazy life experiences that enabled us to get there. We've worked real hard, and that's where we're at now. So we are both now looking into our retirement plans.

But both of us started this whole journey in our 30s. And so our retirement investments were rather kind of pretty delayed. We didn't start investing until, like I said, our late 30s.

And so what we have now is we started with a very modest income. Now my wife works and I own my own business, and we have a much larger income than we had before. So what's your household income now? Right now we're close to $400. Wow. Look at you. How old are you again? I'm 39. Oh, wow. Amazing. You're ancient. I can't believe you're getting around. I know. Yeah. And how much do you have in retirement?

uh after we so after this year we'll have about uh about 100 good for you good okay and uh how much debt do you have we are debt free it's taken us eight years house and everything everything's gone everything's gone house and everything yep way to go dude way to go what's the house worth

I personally think it's worth probably about $400 or so, but the market says that it's about $650. Well, I mean, the market gets to decide. You don't get to decide. So I'm calling it $650 then. Good for you, man. Well done. Well done. And you're making bank. What a great business you've got. This is awesome. So now all you've got to do, you're at what we call Baby Step 7. So now all you've got to do is stack up cash now, dude. And with a $400,000 shovel, you ought to be able to stack it up pretty fast.

That's what we're really excited about, and we're looking at potentially retiring in the next 10 years. Yeah, for sure. So what's your question today? Sounds like you're doing great. My question today? Yeah, well, my question really is,

As far as the 15% of your income into retirement. That doesn't apply to you. You're a baby step seven. That's only when you're on baby step four. You can ramp that up once you get the house paid for. That's what I needed to hear. Yeah, baby step seven is save as much as you can. Give as much as you can. Live as much as you can. Our 10-year plan. Oh, that sounds so great to hear you say that.

If we dump in $100,000 to $150,000 a year into this investment firm that we found through your Smart Investor Pros, they're helping us out because I am very investment unsavvy. So they're guiding us through that. Yeah.

If we just dump in $150,000 a year, then their forecast says that within 10 years we could retire as multimillionaires and live off interest. Oh, yeah, you probably have a couple million in that alone, and the house will be worth a couple million then. So, yeah, I mean, you're going to be $4 million net worth at 50 years old is what it sounds like to me.

It's good to hear you say that. I mean, if you keep making this kind of bank and you drop $150 in there, $150 for 10 years is a million and a half, plus the growth during that time is easily another half million, probably another million, actually. Ten times $150 is $1.5 million, dude, okay? $39 to $49. Exactly.

So that's what we're looking at. Yeah. You don't have to have like a calculator or anything to do that. You can do that one in your head. So then, then you just add some, you know, the growth that you're going to make on top of that during that time is astronomical. And so maybe, maybe, maybe, yeah, there's another million easy on there in growth and growth. Yeah.

Should have doubled over about seven years or so. Yeah, you're going to be in great shape. Just work with your smart investor pro. Keep laying out a plan. Shovel the cash over there. And here's the trick is to avoid getting arrogant in the middle of this and blowing it up before you get there.

That's the trick. Because what happens is you look over there and you've got a million dollars paid for house and you've got a couple million dollars, million dollars laying in mutual funds in your retirement. And then you go, I can afford to go do this stupid thing now. And people can, you can blow the whole thing up by derailing. Just dance with the girl that brought you. Stick with the program.

Dance with the one that brought you to the ball. Just stick with the program. Don't get over here and go, oh, now I'm going to, and Bitcoin is now my answer. I'm going to put it all in doge. You get a little bit of hubris, and suddenly your brain just fries out. So just don't do that. Just mutual funds and paid for real estate. Just keep it simple and stack cash, and you're going to be in really good shape, man. You've done a great job. And largely because, A, you're paying attention, and, B, you're making a lot of money. It's a big shovel. That helps. Yeah. Yeah.

Very nice. Proud of you. John's in Houston, Texas. Hey, John, how are you? Good, guys. How are you? Better than we deserve. What's up? All right, here's what I got going on. So we have recently sold some farmland that we had down in Florida, made some cash. We currently owe, the only thing we owe on is the house. We owe $287,000 on the house. Cash on hand right now, including everything in our checking and everything else, is $282,000.

That includes the farmland proceeds? Yes, sir. Okay. So I have some employee stock purchase stock, about 45 grand worth. Perfect. That's an individual stock. I work in Houston, so it's oil and gas, so it's pretty volatile. What are your thoughts on selling that 45 grand worth, getting out of the individual stocks,

Paying off the $287,000, being completely debt-free, house is current valued at about $650,000, $680,000. $40,000 or so as the emergency fund, and then we can stack some cash from there.

You just saved me some wind. That's exactly what I was going to say. I'd cash it out, pay off the house, and that leftover becomes your emergency fund. Anything beyond that, you guys can do what you want with. Go take a vacation. Celebrate. I mean, John, you pulled it off here. You got the trifecta. You paid off the house. You got your emergency fund, and you saved George Wendt. All in one answer. It was well done, sir. Well done. Yeah, definitely do all that, brother. It's an awesome plan. You're right on track. What do you make a year?

140. Yeah. And so now you get your baby step seven. And just like the last caller, all we got to do now is save more than 15% into retirement. Load your retirement. You can load your 401k up. You load Roth IRAs up in good mutual funds. And how old are you? 39. Same age. Yeah. You're going to be a millionaire by the time you're 45. Mathematically.

Because as the value of the house increases and you save $25,000 or $30,000 a year for the next six years and the growth on all of those things, you're going to be over a million-dollar net worth by the time you're 45. Well done. I'm loving this trend. You are truly a Baby Steps millionaire. You know, George, there may not be another radio show or podcast in America where you can call in and...

and be succeeding and prospering and find people happy about it. We'll celebrate with you. We are happy that you are winning. We are capitalist pigs. We are glad you are winning. Most shows are mad. We are not angry at success. We think success is amazing. We don't think you're a crook. We think you're awesome. We think you left the cave, killed something, and drug it home. You're demonstrating success.

Work ethic. You are demonstrating character and perseverance, and you are causing these variables to move. You are not waiting on Washington to fix your life. We love people like you people. When you call in here, you will get celebrated here, and if it starts pissing off the left-wing nuts, that is just a bonus. You're only fueling Dave, guys. That's just a bonus.

It's just a bonus, man. I just love it. I'm so, a guy making 400K and he's 39 years old. That's just awesome. That's a trend I can get behind. Forget Bitcoin. That's a trend I'm popping off. Let me just tell you. You know what that means? It means he's helping a lot of people. People don't give you money if you're screwing them. You got to provide value. They give you money when you're helping them. That's how this works. You're providing value. You're adding value to their life in some way.

So when you're doing that, you are enhancing humanity. Well done. Well done. This is the Ramsey Show. Are you working the baby steps? One of the smartest and most impactful changes you can make is to ditch your cash value life insurance plan, if you have one, and replace it with a term life policy. Listen, the only thing a cash value policy is good for is overcharging you

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George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Shane and Kelly are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, doing great. How about you? Better than I deserve. Welcome, you guys. It's so good to have you. Where do you live? We are in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, right outside our capital. Very good. Up in the Harrisburg area. Yep. Very good. Good to have you guys. And all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. How much have you paid off?

So we got rid of $229,000, cash flowing $109,000 in 16 months. Whoa! What was your range of income during that time? We started out at $81,000 and increased to $132,000, and then any stimulus or child tax credit went right to our debt. Right, cool. Did you sell something big too? You had to.

That is part of our story. Okay. All right. Well, tell us your story. What happened? So in 2014, I got out of physical therapy school. I graduated with my doctorate in physical therapy. And so we had over $200,000 in student loans. And at that point, I went on Pinterest and started looking up ideas of how to get out of debt. And I found the Baby Step.

And in the same week, my little sister mentioned Dave Ramsey. So I read the Complete Guide to Money in two days, Total Money Makeover in two days. Oh, my gosh. And we attended FPU. Game on. Yes. We got gazelle intense at that time. But then we decided to start a family. And Shane became a stay-at-home dad at that point. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, the hospital I worked for was offering a ton of overtime. So...

I worked from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. and then went to my full-time job until 4. And then Shane went to work from 4.30 p.m. to 1 a.m. Whoa. So we worked around the clock. Wow. But you were making bank. Yes. So that was not 132. You made a lot more than 132 that year. Yeah.

That was our taxes for last year. Oh, it was? With all that work? Yep, all that work. But we lived on nothing, basically. Nothing. I mean, when we went gazelle intense, we relied on...

for people to give us like underwear and socks. That's how like we wanted to get it done. Okay. But you said you paid off $229,000 in 16 months. Yes. Making $132,000. That doesn't work. Nope. So the other part of our story is the debt was our SUV. Our student loans at that point then were about $100,000 in the $100,000 range. And then we owned two houses right next to each other. Oh.

And our long-term plan was to combine the two houses, but getting enough debt was more important to us. So we decided to sell the smaller of the two houses. That got rid of the $89,000 mortgage, and then we put the $29,000 profit to our student loans. Okay, now my numbers are working. Good, okay. Well, good for you. Was it worth it? It definitely was. I mean, you know, it was just a struggle.

I would say like when we first got married because it was just like, you know, we were throwing money away and just money would go here, vacations. And now it's just, you know, we have that money now. At the time, it was a struggle. Yeah. I mean, we were probably only making like, I would say $8,000 a year maybe. When we first started. We got married like 12 years ago, but we found you in about 2014 and then went gazelle intense in 2020. Okay. So where did this come from? I mean, it sounds like just overnight. It was like a 180. Yeah.

Yeah, well, like I said, we knew about you and we were gazelle and tens before children. And then we kind of went Davis and, and then 2020 with the pandemic, we didn't have anything else to do. And like I said, my hospital offered so much overtime. So I was able to pick that up.

Pick that up. Yeah, and there were other side jobs that we had, just like babysitting dogs. I mean, we sold everything that we owned. Yeah. Everything. I mean, the kids really did think that they were going to be next. So I'm wondering if, because of all the opportunity for extra work, you mathematically could see that we can do this, and that got you back to intensity. Yeah. The hope made you go again. Yeah. Yeah. So you went from Gazelle to Dave-ish or Ramsey-ish. Mm-hmm.

But then when you saw, hey, we can pick up this work and finish this, and you got the game on again. Yeah. Game on. All right. I'm starting to understand what happened. Good. Very good. Way to go, you guys. All right. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? I would say hard work.

dedication. I mean, you really have to put in the time, like if you want something, you got to go for it. And that was something that we wanted to change our, you know, our family tree and for our kids to have a better life. So, and I'm glad that we did it and we followed the steps. I'd say work as well. Work, work, work, work around the clock. Um, and also having a strong why, um, I appreciate that Anthony O'Neill says, if your why doesn't make you cry, the price of commitment will. So having our strong why our boys, um,

And then also staying connected to the podcast and the Baby Steps Facebook group. I think we're really beneficial. Staying motivated on the plan. And it sounds like the kids were a big driver for why this life change was happening. You wanted them to live in a debt-free home, live a debt-free life, and have opportunities you didn't have. Yes. Yes. Wow.

So you paid off the student loans. You sold the house next door. Did that include your mortgage you paid off? No. Not yet. So you're debt-free but the mortgage. Yep. We're on baby steps four, five, and six. Perfect. Good for you. Well done. Well done. I'm so proud of you guys. Thank you. Who were your biggest cheerleaders? Our good friends, Christina and Klaus. They attended FPU with us and cheered us along the way and our families. Yeah, of course. Of course. Well done. And each other. Yeah.

Yep, me too. For sure. Well, I'm telling you, you guys put in the hours. I mean, these 80, 90-hour weeks you're talking about here were real. And that's crazy. You can do that for a short period of time. If you work like no one else later, you get to work like no one else too. You can work whenever you want if you don't have any stinking payments. Yeah, that's actually part of our story too. Since we paid off the debt, I was able to go part-time as a physical therapist, and now I'm home with the boys during the day, and then Shane works full-time during the day, so we get to spend so much more time together.

Ah, very good. Nice. You got your life back. Yes. We definitely did. You stole it back from Sally Mae. She stole it and you stole it back. Wow. Yes. So what do you tell that person who's got $200,000 in student loans and they're going, well, I'll wait for someone to forgive it?

Yeah, just do it. Get it done. Work, work, work, work as hard as you can because it's so freeing to be debt-free, and you can do what you want. Yeah, and we didn't rely on anybody else. It was just us doing it. We weren't going to sit around and wait for somebody just to give us a check and pay it off, but I'm so glad that we did it and we put in the hours, and we're here. Amen. Amen. Good job. Thank you. Well done. All right, we've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you because for sure that is the next chapter in your story. Thank you.

And an extra copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give away to someone and completely cause a ruckus. Love your t-shirts. Cash is king. Live like no one else. Thank you. And you brought the kiddos with you. Let's bring them in. What are their names and ages? We have Roman. He's four. And Hudson is two. And the t-shirts say, I am a why.

Oh, that's so great. I am why. I'm sorry. I said it wrong. Oh, well done, you guys. That's beautiful. Very fun. Cute kids. Very, very fun. All right. Shane and Kelly, Roman and Hudson from Pennsylvania. $229,000 paid off in 16 months, making $81,000 to $132,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Here's to baby number three. We're debt-free.

Hooray! I think we snuck an announcement into that. Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Wow. Wow. That's how to do it. Make your baby announcement to millions of listeners while you're at it. I think Grandma and Grandpa are sitting on the sidelines. This may have been the first time they just heard that. I'm not sure, but looking at the reactions, it's a possible thing. They're excited. Is that the first time you did it? You just told it for the first time? All right. Oh, I love it. That's great.

They're verifying through the glass now. Awesomeness. Very cool. That's a lot of fun. That's inspiring. Yeah. Very inspiring. So, I mean, that's a lot of debt. I couldn't make those numbers work for a minute. But you know what happens when people start working like that? And they start going, whatever it takes, whatever it takes. We'll sell the house. We'll sell that house next door. Whatever it takes. We've got to work 80 hours. Whatever it takes. Once you start saying whatever it takes and you mean it,

You can make that go away. There's nothing you're not willing to do. But as long as you start going, now, wait a minute. Tell me about the, what little thing and is there a little angle? And as long as you're trying to figure out some way to scheme and scam, it's not going to work. No shortcuts here. Just hard work. Yeah, it's whatever it takes. That's what you just heard. Whatever it takes. People change their lives when they finally say, I've had it. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's when you'll change. And not until.

This is the Ramsey Show. Fake it till you make it. It's popular career advice, but it doesn't work for very long. If you don't love what you do, you can't fake the enthusiasm and energy you need to win at work. You also can't fake your physical health and energy. Everybody knows we should eat more fruits and veggies, but fruit chews and veggie chips don't count. If you aren't winning physically, I promise you're limiting your opportunities to win professionally.

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George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Adam is with us in Toronto. Hey, Adam. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, how you doing, Dave? Good, man. What's up?

Oh, nothing. Well, I shouldn't say nothing quite a bit, but just a little bit of a recap. Back in 2016, my wife and I did, as you say, stupid with zeros on the end of it. Spent a lot, and in 2017, paid off about $65,000 of debt in 11 months. And I never did end up getting down for a debt-free scream, but anyway...

Fast forward now in the last, I guess, couple of years, COVID has kind of destroyed my industry. I'm a pilot in Canada here. It really took a bad hit. It's just kind of recovering now. And so with the stress that that kind of brought about, which brought some marriage issues along with it. And life is in a really bad spot right now. I guess we both kind of are.

And is not sure if she wants to work on the marriage or what she wants to do. And we're kind of in this stalemate. But in the resulting aftermath is that she's decided that she's going to spend however she wants to spend and kind of go back to, you know, she's saying we make too much money. There's no way I should have to have any restraint. And so kind of spending about, oh, I'd say about $2,000 a month over what we make.

And as a result of kind of depleted our emergency fund almost down to nothing, she signed up for an elective surgery to the tune of about $10,000. And when kind of questioned on the timing of it, she said, well, I'm either we fund it somehow through us or I'm just going to look at my own credit card and do it myself.

And so, but every time I bring up finances to her to talk about it, she says, you're obsessed with money. You've got to stop being so obsessed. I'm trying to just bring her to the reality that we're spending more than we make and we're kind of gradually bankrupting the family. We've got four young children.

and trying to put money aside for them as well. And retirement now that we're kind of both kind of getting back on our feet. We do make good money, but the reality is we're just spending way too much, and she has no desire to even talk about it. She'll stonewall me every time I try to bring it up. And I'm worried that I'm going to tip her over the edge in the marriage if I talk too much about finances. Your marriage is already gone.

Well, it's the thing. I feel like I'm kind of giving the drunk a drink. No, you didn't hear me. You didn't hear me. Your marriage is already gone. Yeah, well, I mean, she does give indications that she does want to make it work. No, she doesn't. No, she doesn't. She's not ready to do it right now. No, she doesn't. People that do the things and say the things that she's doing have no desire for this marriage to continue. Yeah. When you say things like, if you don't pay for this $10,000, I'm just going to put it on a credit card. Screw you. You don't have a vote.

This is not a marriage. This is not someone that has a marriage anymore that wants to work at all. And so what I would do if I were in your shoes is the two of you would say, I'm going to go see a marriage counselor. And it's either going to be with you on how we learn to get back on the same page. And we have a future together that's going to include us both being grownups. And if you want to go with that, that's fine. If not, the marriage counselor is going to instruct me on how to bring this marriage to an end.

Yeah, we have done some counseling. It didn't work. And she has come a couple times. Trying to get her to come back to it is the hard part, and she's very reluctant. Yeah, you're begging this woman to do stuff, and she has no desire. She's obstinate. She's angry. And she's done. She's done. The marriage is over. I mean, it's tough to say that because she does say that she still does want to make it work. She's lying. What she says is not what she's doing, and so that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah.

And again, people that want their marriage to work do not behave the way that she is behaving. Yes, I would agree. Okay. So she's lying. Yes. Elective surgery for $10,000 when you're broke and the family's in financial stress. That's so selfish and asinine. I can't even put words to it. Yeah, I know. That's kind of my thought, too. No, no, it just is. It's a fact. It's not an opinion. That is her screaming in your face that she's done.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I don't really like to think of it that way, obviously, because it's not a nice outcome for anybody at this best. I'm not sure you did it. I think you're just the one that's going to admit it.

Yeah. Now, I would agree with you going back a couple months that she was done. However, she's had some influential people in her life in the last month or two that have helped bring her around. Her attitude has changed. Well, then that would involve you guys getting with a good marriage counselor immediately. Yes. But that attitude needs to turn into action.

Yes, and she has admitted that that is an option. I did confront her about it a couple weeks ago, and she has. I said, this is what I want to do. I had some referrals from Focus on the Family, and she said, yes, that is an option. And so I'm just kind of trying to not push her because she doesn't want to. No, I am going to push her. It's not an option. You don't understand. It's time to push her. It's time to push you. The house is on fire. It's burning down around you. Get out of the house.

Push somebody. Yeah, I am. I definitely am. I bring stuff up fairly early, but I'm kind of teetering on the edge of not wanting to push her over one side to get her emotional side to engage. Honey, what you think is being nice is not nice.

You think you can beg and be sweet and cause this to happen, and I'm not asking you to be mean to her, but you're acting like you can beg her into wanting to do this. She has to stand up, square her shoulders, and say, I'm going to reengage in this marriage and reengage as two adults on how to run our household, and she has to do that under the heading of a therapist, and the two of you learn to work together again. You cannot beg her to behave. Yeah.

Yes, I agree with that totally. I can't change her. She has to decide to do it. It's a matter of we're trying to get obviously lots of prayer and other friends of influence who have to get around her. Absolutely. Who have to change her heart. Absolutely. What Dave's saying is this is an emergency. I'm just saying you guys need to be sitting with a counselor, and she needs to be going. And if she's not going, then we need to know what that – we need to admit what that says.

Yeah. Okay. But all this, there is not a financial technique that's a problem here. The financial problems and the financial spending are all about her obstinance and you trying to talk your way around it to where it's all somehow okay. It's not okay. It's not okay.

It doesn't work that way. And so if Whitney decided to start just start telling George what she was going to do, George would have a thing, have a thing where, you know, here's what we're going to do. I don't tell Sharon what to do. She didn't tell me what to do. We sit down, we talk about it to adults. We devise a plan on how we're going to do the calendar, how we're going to do the budget, how we're going to live our life. We work together towards common goals. This is called a quality relationship in your marriage.

But when people start throwing it around, they're just like, I'm going to do whatever I want to do. And they get all head bobbing thing going. And you shouldn't have got married. Then it's, you know, you've got a mess on your hands and you've got to go back and try to try to learn how to be married. And that takes both people. And you can't beg someone to behave. You cannot control someone else's behavior. Your behavior is the only thing you can control. And you put it in a situation to go. If you do this, then you're choosing to opt out.

If you do this, you're choosing to opt in. But I can't make you choose. That's the only thing you can do is present options to her. But this idea of I'm going to let her be go ruin our family and bankrupt us so that by being nice and letting her do stupid butt stuff that's going to ruin our family, then that causes her to go to counseling. That's a false narrative. That doesn't work.

If the auspices for her going to counseling is because she got bribed by you putting up with a bunch of crap, then no, that is not how you start rebuilding this thing. So, no, you guys need to desperately, both of you need to sit in the counselor's room immediately or you're not going to make it. And the spending stuff, I'm not going along with it.

And if you don't like it, it's part of what we can talk to the counselor about, or it's part of what we can talk to the divorce judge about. One of the two. It's one of the two. But I'm not going along with this because it's not right. And I'm not suggesting you leave today. I'm suggesting that the two of you get into the counselor's office four years ago, but right now for sure.

That's the only best option. Best time to plant an oak tree 10 years ago. Next best time is today. Oh, yeah. That's a great quote. She sees him as basically a doormat at this point because she knows, well, I'm just going to do what I want. He's not going to tell me off. Yeah. He's not going to have the conflict. You have to stop being scared that you're going to cause the marriage to end by pushing the marriage to succeed. That is not going to work. It's not going to work. You're going to end up nowhere but bankruptcy court and divorce court at the same time. Mm-hmm.

Oh, man. Sorry you're going through that. What a horrible thing you're going through. I sure hope she comes around. I hope the two of you get in counseling, and I hope it saves your marriage. But, you know, you participating in crazy is not going to make crazy go away. This is The Ramsey Show.

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, host of the Ramsey podcast, The Fine Print on Ramsey Networks, is my co-host today. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create wealth.

actual amazing relationships. We're glad you're with us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for being part of the program. Melissa is in Jersey City, New Jersey. Hi, Melissa. How are you?

Hi, Dave. Hi, George. Thank you so much for taking my call. It's an honor to speak with you today. You too. Thank you. My question is, my dad passed away a few months ago. He was your typical, I know, he was your typical everyday millionaire, had a net worth of about 1.3. Wow. I know. After I split that with my siblings, obviously my share will be a third of that. One of the things he left...

is an annuity, and I'm just not sure what to do with my share of the annuity. I don't know if I'm supposed to cash it out or roll it over or just like, I don't even know what to do with an annuity. That's my question. You are one of the beneficiaries on the annuity, I assume. Yes, sir. Okay. I would just take my money.

Okay. And then do with it wherever you are in the baby steps. You don't need an annuity. You don't want money in an annuity at your age unless you're in a very unusual situation. How much money is this? That's about $42,000. The annuity is only about $42,000 out of the $1.3 million. Yeah. Where are you in the baby steps?

Well, let's see. I guess I'm four, five, and six. I'm contributing 15% into fully funding my retirement. With this inheritance from my dad, I'll put away a big chunk for my kids for their college, and then the rest, I guess, put towards my house. So you're going to use this $42,000 on five or six?

And the same with the rest of it. Is the 42 before the split with the three of you? That is before the split. Okay. Oh, so you're only getting $15,000, $20,000. Okay. Of the annuity, yes. Yeah. Okay. Definitely. Definitely take the money. Just use that probably towards the kid's college or wherever. It doesn't matter. It's free money. You don't have any income tax on it. You don't have any penalties on it. You don't have anything on it.

And I'm so sorry for the loss of your dad. So sorry. What a horrible thing to go through. Brian's with us in Chicago. Hey, Brian, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello. How are you? Great, man. What's up? Well, I'm divorced. I've been divorced for about five years. And I'm currently paying, and for these five years, I've been paying my ex-wife spousal support payments of about $2,100 a month. Okay.

And that was based on my income at the time of 110,000. But now my income is only 60,000 due to a lot of COVID damage to my business and so forth and not able to make as much money. So I wanted to seek a adjustment to the spousal support payments and

And it's kind of up in the air how much it could be adjusted because it's up to the judge. And, you know, if we were getting divorced today based on my income, I would only owe her about $600 a month. But...

When you seek a modification, they don't necessarily apply that same principle. They leave it up to the judge on how much he feels it should be adjusted based on the change of circumstances. Gotcha. How can we help today? Well, in the discussions of trying to get this modified,

my wife has floated the idea of she'd be willing to take a one time buyout. So like I'm scheduled to pay her for life or until she gets remarried or you know, maybe when I retire it could be adjusted, but she's willing to take a buyout, um, of about $50,000 and,

I'd be pretty much a one and done payment and would not owe her anymore. But due to my financial situation, I don't have that money. The only way I could get it is to take it out of my IRA. But I'm age 60 and I've only got about $70,000 in an IRA. How old is she? She's 54. No, you can't afford to do it.

Well, like I said, unless I take it out of the IRA. You can't afford to do it. If you take it out of your IRA, you're going to get charged a penalty of 10% plus your tax rate. You're borrowing money at 35% or 40% interest to buy her out. That's not a good deal. Well, I don't think there's a penalty because at 59 and a half you can. Oh, that's true. You're 60. Okay. So you're just going to pay your tax rate. Yeah. But no, I'm not going to clean out your. Right. I don't know. Okay. Number, you don't have a financial advisor, do you?

Well, I do, and I talked to him, and he wasn't totally against the idea because when you compare... That wasn't what I was asking. What I need him to do is I need him to do a net present value calculation for you on $2,100 a month for 20 years. Yeah. And what is that going to come out? That's $24,000, $25,000 a year for 20 years. Yeah, $50,000 is probably not a bad offer.

Right. I mean, it would really, you know, help me out because there's no signs that she's going to get remarried or anything right now. And I could be paying her indefinitely for many, many years. And that's a tremendous strain on my finances to pay her. Yeah. What are you doing to get your business back?

Well, you know, I've done all sorts of marketing and advertising. I've done some networking and, you know, online stuff, and it's just very difficult. It hasn't been working, so I'm really struggling. Okay. I want your financial advisor to do a net present value calculation on this and tell you what your rate of return is because there's a thing called a discounted value, or in other words, a stream of payments is not worth the total.

$25,000 for 10 years is not worth $250,000. But it might be worth $50,000. Okay. And it probably is. It probably is. That's probably a very low discount rate or high discount rate. And so...

And you can have your financial advisor explain that to you and run the calculation, Dave said, on net present value. And I think it's going to be north of $50,000, so I think that's going to make this a good deal. Now, what you've got to do then is you have to take the $2,100 a month that you don't have anymore as a bill, and you have to get down and dirty about rebuilding this nest egg ASAP.

Yeah. George? Yeah. I mean, what I'm seeing here is you can see what the adjustment is, but I don't want you to limit your income because you now have this new payment where you go, well, I don't want to make any more because they're going to adjust it again. And so I'd rather you get this income up and do what Dave's saying and see if we can fix this thing once and for all instead of paying this for life. I like being rid of the bill and her. She's the ex. Both of these are good things, and I like every bit of that. And so it's not a...

bad thing. I just want to make sure the calculation's right and I can't do it in my head right now. But I'm thinking what I am doing in my head is leading me to north of 50. So, God, that's a big alimony payment. Yeah. This is The Ramsey Show.

George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host today here on The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, on the Dead Free Stage, Austin and Laura are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Fantastic, Dave. Welcome. Where do you guys live? About an hour south of Kansas City, Missouri. Okay. What town? Butler. All right. Welcome. Good to have you guys.

And all the way down here to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. How much have you paid off? Paid off $146,885. Way to go. And how long did that take? Four years and nine months. Love it.

And your range of income during that time? We started off around $92,000, got up to about $101,000, and then ended around $95,000. Okay, cool. What do you all do for a living? I'm a district operations specialist with Syngenta. I work in sales and marketing, and I'm also a Ramsey Solutions financial coach. Oh, wow. Very cool. Thanks. What kind of debt was the $147,000? Our mortgage. Woo! Look at it, weird people!

Way to go, you guys. That's pretty incredible. How old are you? I'm 31. I'm 32. In a paid-for house. Wow. What's this house worth? Between $250 and $300. It's a house, shop, and a little bit of land. Man, look at you guys. It's all yours. It's all ours. No payments in the world. Not a one.

And you're 32 years old. Oh, my gosh! We're seeing a trend here, Dave, and it's a good trend. It is a good trend. Young people paying off their homes. You, them, yeah, young people paying off their homes. This is incredible. So four years, nine months. You guys really went for this thing. What caused this journey to start four years and nine months ago for you? Yeah, so it actually started a little bit before that. I actually got on Dave's plan about eight or nine years ago, kind of had a wake-up moment,

Got on this plan and was able to pay off my existing debt, save up $12,000 and pay for an engagement ring before I ever got married. And so I had a really good start going into the marriage. Yeah, and I wasn't really familiar with Dave or the financial piece or anything until Austin came into my life, but was fortunate to get a good job. Didn't have a whole lot of expenses, had a company vehicle and things.

So it was a little bit shocking to me at first whenever three months before we got married, he made me start keeping track of all expenses and teaching me budgeting and whatnot. He just sprung it on you, huh? Yeah. That's strong words. He didn't tell you ahead of time that was part of the deal. He waits until we're about to get married and he goes, this is the deal. Well, and I joke that there's actually five gospels for Austin. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Dave. Yeah.

My theme for life is if Dave says it, I do it. Plain and simple. Oh, wow. Wow, that's dangerous right there. I'm telling people to jump off a cliff. That's power I don't know if I can handle. Man.

But we actually then did take Financial Peace University right after getting married, and we've led a couple courses. Thank you. I learned the process pretty quickly after we got married. He brought me along. Now you're teaching it, for real. Right, exactly. Well, I feel like we're kind of the poster child for the house buying process because it went through FPU after we got married.

We bought the house a year later. We had a really nice down payment. We went on the 15-year mortgage. We planned to pay it off early. We set everything up to do exactly like you recommend. So we were very excited in that making that plan take place.

And it went even better than we hoped. It went even better than we anticipated by following your exact plan and process. And that was kind of our guiding shift through the whole time as we made that purchase happen and got ready to pay it off early. Yeah, and I mean, along the way, every single extra dollar that we got went towards paying the house off. We were focused in on that's our goal. We're going to get it done. We're going to get it done early, just as quick as we possibly can. And now you make $100,000 a year and you don't have any payments. Yeah.

Exactly. Now you can do anything you want to do. And I mean, we had things that could have set us back. Our basement flooded within the first year of living there. But we had the emergency fund. We were able to take care of everything and then get right back on track on paying off the house. We had transmissions go out. We actually bought vehicles with cash while we were doing this. We cash flowed two kids' birds. So we were doing a lot all at the same time when this all happened. And whenever I kind of factored everything in, whenever we bought the house, we were

I've been self-employed for vast majority of the time so I had variable income I was dealing with so I said okay we're going to make the payment based on your income what we know we can do everything I can make we're going to throw out an extra and so there was months where we didn't have the thousand dollars a month actually we really wanted to put on and there was months that we had some nice bonus or some nice checks we could put another two thousand dollars on it and just the ebb and flow really made us just focus

And say no to a lot of things, but know that this is where we want to end up being, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get there. Wow.

Wow. There's a lot of intentionality rolling around in here. How much money do you guys put down on the down payment? We have about 40% down. Wow. Just like the last debt-free screen. I'm just seeing a trend here, Dave, and you said they planned. A big down payment with a 15-year fixed, and they're sitting here, you know, 28 or 30 years old. It's not an accident. Their case, 32, right? And this is the last two in a row. So you guys listening, I mean, what this means is you can do this.

And you guys are just, like you said, poster children. And the thing is this. If you find a system that is proven, work the system. And that's, you know, we can joke and call it the gospel day. That's a little bit blasphemous. That's pretty blasphemous right there. We may all get struck by lightning. But we can joke and say Dave's rules. We can joke and call it George's rules. We can call it whatever we want to call it. None of that really matters. All that matters is it's a proven. You've got to have a system, and you've got to work the system, and it's a proven system.

So you don't need to fix a system that's not broken. So you guys are incredible. I'm so proud of you. She's kind of got a funny story. So whenever it came time where we were actually going to pay off our house, Austin came into the house and he says, I got something really crazy that I want to just run by you.

And so this last year, we had a lot of things happen in our life that kind of threw us off course and honestly questioned if we're going to be able to get it paid off in time or not based upon where we were going. And I was driving down the road one day from our farm, and God just kind of put it on my mind. He goes, you need to think about this debt payoff. We were on track to get it paid off in about seven, eight years. And all of a sudden, I realized how much our loan balance was.

And we had extra money sitting in savings. We had money we had actually started investing for some land in the future. And we had some money that we had just been budgeting to pay off on the mortgage from our normal jobs. And I factored all those numbers together and it came to within $100 of the exact amount of our loan balance. So I came home, I said, honey, you want to pay off the mortgage tomorrow?

And I think my eyebrows raised and I was like, you're crazy. There's no way. We don't have the money to do this. And then just sitting down and doing the math is like, actually, it is there. We can do this. We can live without this. We just have to change the name on the account from the land account to the mortgage reduction account. Exactly. Yep. Wow. Wow.

You guys are amazing. Woo! That's it. And now you're free, and now you can just pile up cash like crazy and go do the land and go do whatever you want to do. Exactly. That's our plan. Yeah. So good. Good job, guys. Well done. Well done. Well, we've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. You probably already have a copy, but we'll get you another one because it's definitely the next chapter in your story for sure. You're on the way to do that. Very young, very sharp.

Very well done. Extremely well done. Copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give away. I'm sure you'll run into somebody to do that, and you guys are incredible. Thank you so much for everything you're doing, and you're just an incredible example. And you brought the kiddos. What are their names and ages? Yes. We have Haley, who is three, and Reagan is one. All right. This is the family tree that was changed by Mom and Dad's courage.

to decide to address the issue that nobody likes to talk about in America, money, debt. And now here they stand completely debt-free, house and everything. You're incredible. Austin and Laura, Haley and Reagan, $147,000 paid off, house and everything, four years and nine months, making $92,000 to $101,000 to $95,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free.

Yeah! Look at that. Those kiddos, man. That's awesome. Beautiful family. Absolutely awesome. So fun. I love this. It never gets old.

It does not get old. What I love is there was a decision before the decision. They pre-decided that we're not going to do things this way. We're going to save up a giant down payment. We're going to pay it off early. They decided all of that before they ever went about paying off the home. Yeah, it wasn't like they woke up in trouble and then had to go get themselves out of trouble and then got out of debt. Every step was intentional. Every bit of it from day one. Amazing. Wow. The power of this.

The power of this stuff, especially when you start early and especially when you pre-make the decision. That's a good way of saying that, George. Very well done. This is The Ramsey Show.

I've been doing this show for over 30 years, and some of the saddest calls I have taken are from situations that are completely preventable. Yeah, and what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible, are people that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly, and they don't have life insurance. When you have to think through how am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to pay my bills?

I'm going to eat next week. Yeah, 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 like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive. Zander is the place that Winston and I actually get all of our life insurance. And it doesn't cost much because Zander shops among a gazillion different companies. It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here.

You got to say it out loud and you got to say, I'm going to say I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza. To get a free quote, call 800-356-4282. That's 800-356-4282 or go to zander.com.

George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones here on The Ramsey Show. It's a free call. Some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, on the debt-free stage, Kyle and Jessica are with us. Hey, guys. How are you? Great. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Austin, Texas. Austin. Very cool. How much debt have you paid off? $175,000.

How long did this take? It took us three years and one month. Three years and one month. And your range of income during that time? We started at $72,000 and...

Right now I'm making about $160,000. That's a nice jump. Yes. Like what happened to the income? I got to ask. Just different job opportunities and saying yes. Like somebody wasn't working, now somebody is? No. No, both of you just went way up. I'm a stay-at-home mom for our two kids, about to be three, and he just got some great job opportunities. What do you do for a living? I'm a software engineer. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. All right.

Way to go! And a good one, definitely. That's amazing. What's the kind of debt? Was this $175,000? $25,000 was car loans, and the rest was student loans.

$150,000 in student loans. What's your degree in? Computer science. At least this one's paying off, huh? Yes. Yeah, you're making some good bank with it and pretty quick. How old are you guys? 26. How long have you been married? We are coming up on five years in a couple weeks. Okay. Wow. So a couple years into marriage, you're making $70,000. You got a $175,000 monkey on your back.

Ouch. This doesn't sound fun. You're 24 years old at that point, right? Oh my gosh. This doesn't sound, this sounds like it was awful. Yes, it was a lot. We, um, whenever he graduated from school, it was all student loans on his end. And so we sat down and looked at the numbers and we were really intimidated. Um, but we'd heard about your program before and we sat down and looked at it and we just, it made the most sense. And so we, um,

I love it. Wow.

Well, one thing about a software engineer, when they see a system, they work it. Yes, sir. That's it, man. It's like you're a process guy. You saw the process. Ding, ding, right? That was it. Yeah. Wow. So what were your payments? Do you remember all the debt added up? What were those payments every month? Oh, my gosh. She still feels it. I can tell her. Yes. I'm trying to think. Minimums were about $2,000 a month, but we always paid extra for the most part on those. So at least $2,000, but we usually paid quite a bit.

Quite a bit more. You're $2,000 a month richer.

Yeah. Oh, it's amazing. It's like unbelievable. I mean, we feel it every single day. I don't think we've forgotten about it since we paid it off. I mean, you can feel the weight off of your shoulders. You physically can feel that. Oh, yes. Every day. Oh, my gosh. And you guys are 26. I mean, you must have a lot of friends, probably other software engineers who are sitting there with another 150 in loans going, well, I'm just going to pay this off until I die. That's the only way. Yeah. Yeah. We figured we...

We're already pretty broke college students. And so it wasn't really a big jump going to, because we, even though we were making more once we graduated, we just pretended like we were still those broke college students. So all that extra money that we were making, we just put towards loans and kind of forgot like we had. So we just lived as frugally as we could in the meantime.

Wow. Okay, so people find out you paid off $175,000. That's impressive. Y'all are studs. That's amazing. You guys are a power couple, man. This is so cool. So proud of you. Thank you. When they find out you did this, they say, how'd you do that? What do you tell them?

Well, one thing that was helpful for me was just having that vision of what you want life to be like in the future and just every sacrifice and everything you have to do to make that happen. If you hold that vision, it helps it be more real. And I think just being a team, because we are always on the same page from the beginning and that made it go so much quicker.

And just realizing that we could still have a great life in the meantime. We could still have fun together. We just found a lot of free activities. Like we would go hiking with our kids all the time and things that didn't cost extra money. And we just learned to live and enjoy life in the moment. So we learned to make it fun even when it was really hard. Yeah, it was three years is a long time, but in the scope of your life, it ain't spit. Exactly. You know, you live like no one else. You got the rest of your life going.

to live and give like no one else. And, man, you got a great career choice. You'll be able to make good money. And you control a lot of your own destiny here. You guys are really, this is impressive. Thank you. This is impressive. If you guys accomplish this in three years, I'm like, what are you going to accomplish in the next 30? I'm scared. You guys are going to do so unbelievably well. We can't wait. We're excited as well. We've been dreaming big. What's the next big thing?

Buying a house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Take some trips and buy a save with that down payment up and get a house now. Very good. Very good. How many kids you got? We have two daughters and then we're pregnant with our boy right now. That's the Ramsey. That's the Ramsey lineup. Two daughters followed by a boy. Yeah, that's good. Very good. We ought to be. It's great. Good times. Good times. Well,

Well, congratulations, you guys. We're proud of you here. Thank you. You're the kind of people that we love helping, and you're very impressive. Thank you. Very impressive. You're heroes. You took control of your life, and just beautifully, beautifully done. Gives me hope for this generation, Dave. You know, it turns out they're not all bad. Oh, we knew that. We knew that here. We see it all the time. That's impressive. Very cool. Very cool. All right, we've got a copy of the Baby Steps Millionaire book that comes out next week, an advanced copy.

And because that's the next chapter in your story, you'll be there before you know it at this rate. Bing, ding, man, you're just zooming right on. Zooming right along. Very well done. And a copy of Total Money Makeover as well, so you can give that to somebody, disturb their life, help them get on the same track, teach them the system you used, because they're going to ask.

They're going to ask because you start to walk different and smile different when you don't have almost $200,000 worth of monkey on your back. Pretty stinking incredible. You guys are amazing. Very, very well done. Kyle and Jessica, Austin, Texas, $175,000 paid off three years in one month, making $72,000 all the way to $160,000 during that three years. Nice jump. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

All right, three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah!

That is how it's done, boys and girls. Oh, my goodness. The future's looking bright for that couple. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. We see continuously in all of the millionaire data from Baby Steps Millionaire and from the Ramsey Research on Millionaires, all the data that we've got that people who are in industries are

that are process-oriented have a chance. They have the best chances. So the number one most likely career field to become a millionaire in all the millionaires we've studied is engineer.

software engineer here right okay the engineers are process driven one plus one equals two we don't have to have an existential argument about it by god one plus one equals two accountants number two teachers number three and if you know anything about putting together a lesson plan or running a classroom full of animals that's called teaching then you know they are process driven people

Number three, managers and entrepreneurs. Number four, lawyers. If you've ever dealt with lawyers, they're process-driven human beings. The five top career fields of people who end up being millionaires are all process-driven. Now, that's not to say that if you're an artist, you don't have a shot. You have a shot.

But you need to understand that there's a correlation between being following a freaking process and becoming wealthy. That's why we wrote The Baby Steps Millionaire. It's a process to become wealthy, and you have to submit yourself to a process, not try to be wealthy.

Yeah.

I'm a process guy, but I've also got a creativity binge, meaning that I always question everything, right? I have to go, well, I don't care about your baby steps. I want to make my own. You know, I'm the same moron out there that some of you are that are listening right now. Don't go make your own. It's painful. You know, follow the plan. You know what that guy did? He didn't even question it. He just did it. He just did it. This is the Ramsey Show.

George Campbell Ramsey Personalities, my co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Max is in Corpus Christi. Hi, Max. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Howdy, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, man. What's up? So I'm a midshipman, second year midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. And I'm just kind of trying to figure out how I want to set up my outlook going forward. So I'm going to graduate here in two and a half years with no debt.

um or i have the option of doing that or i can take what's called the career starter loan no from usa or well it's a 0.75 interest loan okay because the idea was to cover your car you're not covering your car you're borrowing money for a car fair enough that's what my brother-in-law said you'd say that was easy hold on so you said the other option was graduate debt-free

Yeah. Yeah, or you can go 50 grand in debt, right? 32. Yeah. What's wrong with the first option? Somebody ought to smack those people for doing that to you guys. You guys are serving your country. Thank you so much for who you are, young man. Thank you. Please don't go falling into a ditch. Okay. Because all the financial investors are like, well, most people that do it beat the interest within a year in the stock market. Hey, let me tell you what they are. They're full of crap.

Okay, let me tell you why I know that. I'm not just making this up. We studied, Max, 10,000 millionaires. The largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. Do you know how many of them told us that they borrowed money at 1% interest and invested it in the market and that caused them to be millionaires?

precisely zero. Zero. Zero! None of them! Very well. And they weren't trying to get a commission off of a young midshipman to get him to borrow money at the freaking credit union to put it into his mutual fund. You need to run from those financial people because they haven't got your best interest at heart. You are a sharp young guy. You're getting ready to go. I assume you're going to be an officer, correct?

Yes, sir. You're in the Navy of the Marine Corps. I'm hoping to fly for the Marine Corps. Yeah. Oh, you're going to fly. Oh, even better. Wow. Good for you, man. That's amazing. And so your, your future in an aircraft, a military or non-military later is bright. Your income is bright. Everything is there. Don't saddle yourself with these kinds of problems all in an effort to accelerate your wealth building process because there's no data points to back it up.

That makes sense. Okay. Man, I appreciate who you are, and I really don't want you to do this. I hope you're hearing me loud and clear. I'm not just being a smart aleck with you. I am being a smart aleck with the morons around you, though. Oh, my gosh. What a great young guy. Yeah, anyone who's selling him on the benefit of $32,000 in debt is not looking out for him. So let me just kind of walk this through, George, for a second. It's important.

Because it sounds like we don't know how to do math to people like those people that are advising him. So for you morons out there that are teaching you some young guy stuff like this, here's where you're wrong. Okay. At $32,000 and he can borrow the money at 1% or so. If he invested in mutual funds and he made 10 or 12%, does he not make the spread?

Yes, he does make the spread. However, what you need to understand is that your formula that you have used is A, naive and incomplete, B, short-sighted. Let me explain. Naive and incomplete means you have not factored in risk. Let me show you how I know you've not factored in risk. It didn't bother anyone that this young guy is going to borrow $32,000 at 1%. So let's just put some X's on it.

If $32,000 at 1% makes him profit, if he could do $3.2 million at 1%, should he? What's the difference? It's a bigger number. The bigger number makes your heart measure the risk. You feel it. Some of you just got tight in the chest or your stomach raised up just a little bit, even when I suggested that the young man be $3.2 million in debt.

But if the math works at 32,000, why wouldn't the math work at 3.2? Because at 3.2, you finally physically felt in your chest the risk. But you didn't feel it before, so you thought you were some kind of B.A. with your math. You left out risk. You left out risk. Risk is math. And you have to insert risk in the process. And otherwise, you get your freaking head taken off. And so...

Just because the risk feels small doesn't mean it's not there. It doesn't mean that your formula, 1% versus 10% or 12% spread is incomplete because you left out risk. Number two, it's naive because you didn't take into consideration the fact that you have a young man getting into the cockpit of a fighter jet, some of the most sophisticated equipment on the planet,

where you can kill someone over the horizon and never see them or be killed by someone over the horizon and never see them. It is a bizarre set of technology, the world's best in humankind history. And you have a young guy in his early 20s getting ready to climb into that cockpit. Oh, and let's go ahead and put in the back of his mind that he has $32,000 worth of debt and act like that doesn't matter. Of course it matters.

The number three cause of dishonorable discharge in the military is financial irresponsibility. They lose their security clearance and they lose their battle readiness because they're preoccupied with crap in the back of their mind because some moron financial advisor suggested there was a spread between one and ten.

There's more to this stuff, folks, than meets the eye. That's my point. Yeah. And you also have to wonder how much payments beget payments, where he goes, all right, well, I've already got this 32,000. Why not go get a car loan? And why not go get payments over here and payments over here and run up a credit card? And it just becomes. Normalizes it. Normalizes it. Exactly. And I got to tell you, man, these guys preying on the military people. It pisses me off. You leave a military base.

And, you know, if you go to a military town, you leave the gates of the base, as soon as you leave the gates of the base, there is stupid on each side of the road for about two miles.

Every dumb human trick you can do is on one side of the road or the other for about two miles. They are set up like a bunch of freaking piranha to feed on these guys from payday lenders to whoever else out there. And this is an innocuous kind of a loan he's talking about. There's nothing to this loan. But, I mean, the horrible financial products, horrible deals on cars, horrible business.

behaviors they can engage in none of which are good for them none of which are good for their battle readiness none of which are good for their military career and it's just it's it's it's sad that that that these people are preying on the very people who are young people are not making a lot of money in most cases and they're here to serve us yeah what what do you think makes them more vulnerable

to these kinds of decisions well it's the same you know it's the same age as a college student who went and got you know got a degree in beer pong you know you got stupid outside the college as soon as you walk off the college campus for two miles you got stupid on each side of the road too it's the same thing they're preying on the young that are inexperienced at life and think that i want to try all these new things that look like fun and will bring death

Death to your finances, death to your relationships, death to your future relationships. I mean, it's a problem, man. It's a problem. And so I'm not suggesting legislation to protect it, but I am suggesting that, you know, the military really ought to do some orientation. It's like a college should do an orientation. It's not just about what's happening on the campus. It's about what's happening just off the campus that will kill your butt.

and mess you up and set you on a trajectory that takes you 10 years to recover from. And, you know, you're turning a guy, 18 gal, 18 years old loose with their first paycheck unsupervised. And the first thing you do is drop them in a pool of piranha. And it's just, oh, my God, man. It pisses me off. Can you tell? I can tell.

I mean, we just love the military, and we've worked with them for so many years with Financial Peace University. And the vast majority of them are young, very young, and are susceptible to this kind of thing. And it's harsh. It's really harsh.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Campbell. Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. As we answer your questions about your life and your money, we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jennifer is with us in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi Dave. Hi George. Pleasure to speak with both of you. You too. What's up? Hi. So I have an IRA that was from a past job I rolled over into its own account. So my question is, should I move that money into my 401k where I'm currently investing and putting my 15% or leave it in that separate IRA account? I would just leave it in that IRA account.

Okay. Okay. Even though no money is going into it? Correct. But it is sitting there in good mutual funds, correct? Yes, it is. Okay. If it's in good mutual funds, I would just leave it alone. You've got more control of it there. We never recommend you move...

old IRA money into new, or old 401k money into new 401ks. Instead, put it out in an individual retirement account. You can pick the same mutual funds if you want, or better ones, and you've got better access and better control, and it will grow at exactly the same rate or a better rate than it would if you moved it inside the 401k. George is exactly right. Joel is with us in Cleveland, Ohio. Hey, Joel, what's up?

Hey, what's going on, Dave? So I'm kind of a new listener. So I wanted to give you a call. So I'm getting married in three weeks. Congratulations. Thank you very, very much. My fiance and I have been living together for the last year.

We've tried different budgets. We've tried different ways, different websites. Nothing seems to quite work. We kind of end up just a race to zero. We've got a combined income of about $100,000. I've got about $5,000 in credit card debt. She's got about $3,000 in credit card debt.

We've got $4,000 in savings, and I've got about $20,000 in mutual funds. Okay. Car debt? Any car debt? No. No car debt. Student loans? So she's got about $20,000 in student loans. Okay. All right. Cool. But I do not. Well, typically there's two things that cause people to not be able to stick to a budget.

One is that they're using a wrong technique, which we can help you with. Two is they're not really committed to the idea. In other words, if you write it down on paper and have no intention of actually doing what you wrote down, then guess what? You're not going to do what you wrote down. Yeah, since combining like a bank, I just feel like we've had less control, and I guess it's harder to...

pay for two than pay for one. And it just seems like a lot quicker to zero than it used to be.

This is extra confusing. I mean, if you've got multiple incomes coming in, you should only have more there versus less. But we recommend a zero-based budget, and I don't know if you've checked out EveryDollar. It doesn't sound like you have. That's our budgeting tool, and I will gift that to you guys as a wedding present, including Ramsey Plus. You'll have access to all the videos inside of Financial Peace. But once you start your EveryDollar budget, it's super easy. We want to list out all of your income, and then we're going to list out all of your expenses. For that particular month?

When you subtract the expenses from the income, it should equal zero, meaning you have assigned every single dollar a job. We don't want any of your dollars unemployed. And once you do that, and then, by the way, you have to stick to it and actually track it and go, how much money do we have for food when we go grocery shopping? Then we're going to stick to that budget, and that's how you're going to get that control. But I can write down a workout plan every week, Dave, and if I never work out, I'll never get in shape.

So you assign every dollar a mission, every dollar a name. That's why we call the app EveryDollar. Both of you look at that before the month begins. It's unique to each month because every month is different. Okay?

Okay. And then once you've assigned every dollar, both of you look at it, both of you make changes until every dollar has a name, no extra slush money laying around. Every dollar is assigned. All the income you have coming in, net that month to work with, is assigned to something. Then it's assigned to something. Both of you agree with the assignments. You agree with the mission. And then you pinky swear and spit shake. This becomes a freaking contract.

It says if we're not going to spend more than X number of dollars on restaurants, then by God, stay home. Don't go to the restaurant. You're contracting with each other. We're not going to spend more than this on clothes this month. I don't care if the purse is on sale. We agreed that this is what we were going to spend. Don't lie to me.

That's what you're saying to each other. You're contracting. You have to make it a very serious relational commitment. That's why both of you need a vote in the formation of the thing, because otherwise you're bossing her around or she's bossing you around. It becomes a weapon. But instead, you're as a couple saying our goals are X and the best way to achieve our goals is this list of expenditures this month and we're not going to do something or

Other than that, unless something really nasty bad happens and then we have to come back together and together decide on how we're going to change our budget before we do it. You don't come home from Target. You don't come home from the grocery store. You don't come home from happy hour and go, well, honey, look what I did. That's not cute. That's childish.

And that's the thing where I'm talking about you committing to sticking to the plan. But laying out the technique, the technique is every dollar has an assignment. As George said, that's called a zero-based budget. The two of you coming together...

And agreeing that this is what we're going to do. That's the technique. Now, typically, we always say, Joel, you said you're new to this stuff. We always tell folks, typically a married couple, one of you is more of a nerd that's into the details, and one of you is more of a free spirit that's less into the details and isn't going to think this is fun. And the nerd thinks doing a budget is like great fun. Correct. Okay. And the nerd is more free spirited. Now, that would be normal that the nerd calls and asks this question.

Okay, how do we do a budget? Free spirits don't ask this question. She's at Target right now. Yeah. So there we go. We figured it out. Yeah, she's getting her nails done right now. But, you know, in my house, I'm the nerd. My wife's the free spirit. And so the same is at your house, Joel. So what we had to do is this. Nerds need free spirits in their life so they have a life. Free spirits need nerds in their life so they don't retire and have to eat Alpo.

Correct.

This is a coming together of a value system. It's not you bossing her around, her bossing you around. You're not the boss of me. And this might take two to three months to get dialed in. So don't give up. If the first one you go, oh, we couldn't do it. Let's give up. We can't do a budget. Stick to it. And Kelly will pick up. We'll gift you guys a year of Ramsey Plus, which includes every dollar, our premium budgeting tool. Let us know how it goes. And go all the way through the financial peace class. It's included in that. We just gave you a great expensive wedding gift.

Well, I love tax season, said nobody ever. Questions about taxes, though, they're coming in, and we'll help you with those. Here's a question from one of our listeners. Dave, we normally have someone do our taxes, but our accountant retired. I think we have a simple return. Should we try to file ourselves with Ramsey Smart Tax?

Well, you can use the Ramsey Smart Tax software. It's very easy to use. The more complicated your return, the more likely you would want to use a professional. I personally use a professional, but mine's the size of a freaking phone book when I get it done. So, you know, that's different, obviously. We recommend working with a tax pro if you had a major life change, like you retired, got an inheritance, adopted a child. If you own a business and file long form on that, probably a pro.

You're not confident. You're confident, though. Or you want to save time and stress. These are reasons that you'd want to do this. But if you get into it and it's just like, God, I hate this. Okay, there you go. That tells you right there. So I hate it anyway. I hate just signing the thing, much less preparing it. So that's the whole thing. I see it like buying back your time and mental sanity when you work with a pro. Now, people have simple situations. They've got a W-2. If you've got a 10-40 easy...

You know, do a Ramsey SmartTax. You can do that as fast as you can do a 1040 Easy. Don't pay somebody $300 to do that. I mean, it's just...

When you can pay $20 on your own. But I haven't had one of those in my life, so I've always been self-employed. Nothing about Dave's life is easy, to tell you that much. Well, I don't have an easy button anyway. But yeah, no, I mean, I've always been self-employed or had some kind of weird income or something going on where I didn't trust my own level of tax knowledge to do it. So either way, if you want a pro or you want to use the Ramsey Smart Tax Software, just go to ramseysolutions.com slash taxman.

Our question today comes from our brand-new sponsor, Neighborly. We are so thrilled these guys are on board with us. It's brought to you by them. They're your hub for home services, stuff like Mr. Rooter, Mr. Electric. You'll see those at Neighborly. So if you need to make repairs or schedule routine maintenance or find local help for home improvement projects, Neighborly is your source for reliable home service providers in your area. Go to Neighborly.com and start your search.

Today's question comes from Claudia in Mississippi.

She's asking, under what scenario do you have to pay capital gains tax on real estate? Here's my situation. My grandfather quick claim deeded his house to me. The house is completely paid off. He paid $24,000 for it in 2013, and it's now evaluated at $190,000. I'm wanting to sell in hopes to buy a new property. I've lived with them since 2020, and I took ownership in 2021. Under this scenario, would I be liable for capital gains? No.

Because it's been your name for more than two years. It's been your personal residence for more than two years. A single person can make a profit of up to a capital gain of up to $250,000. So that'd be $274,000 in your case because his basis was $24,000. A profit of $250,000 with zero income tax on your personal residence. However, this was stupid.

You almost stepped in it. You accidentally are okay. Not because you had a plan. If the numbers were different, the house value was much higher. This could have been a different scenario. So never deed property to someone prior to your death like grandpa did. Here's why.

Let's pretend that she didn't accidentally fall under this personal residence exemption for $250,000, which saved her bacon. Okay. So let's say that she didn't live in the property. That would do away with the personal residence bit. Get it? Okay. So now it's grandpa lives there, but grandpa wants to make sure

granddaughter gets it and he doesn't want to deal with the wheels and stuff because he, he knows how those lawyers are. Right. And so he, uh, you know, this is a kind of crap people do. Okay. So then he deeds the property to her with a quit claim deed, which is a, usually a one page thing and costs six to $10 to register at the courthouse. It's very easy to do this stupid move. Now, here's what happens when you give someone property or property,

A capital asset, stock. If I give George money, if I give him a share of Home Depot stock, if I give him a piece of real estate, his basis when he gets ready to resell it is based on what I paid for it. And so in this case, Grandpa paid $24,000 for it, so her basis is $24,000. If she had not lived in the house for two years, it would be called investment property. 100% of everything over $24,000 would be taxable.

major mistake. $150,000 worth of taxable income created here. Instead, had he deeded it to her in his will, at his death it went to her. You get what's called a stepped-up basis. Her basis becomes the value at the time of his death. Apparently he's still alive. But at the time of his death, let's say he passed in this situation, her basis would not be $24,000, it would be $190,000. She turns around and sells it for $190,000. Zero capital gains.

So the fact that Duber deeds this thing before his death, grandpa, dad, gum, yeah, sweet, but dumb. Okay. Could have cost her taxes on $150,000 or more here. It didn't because she happened to live in the property for two years. But so don't give people stuff.

So let market value at the time of their death be their new basis. It's a lot higher than what you paid for it. And control the ownership vehicle, not by an early deed, but with either a trust or a will or both. When does it make sense to use a quick claim deed? What scenarios? Divorces, even then, though, you can get into trouble because most divorce attorneys make a huge legal error. Ooh, I'm calling you boys and girls out.

Because here's the thing. Husband and wife get divorced. There's a $260,000 mortgage. Husband doesn't get to keep the house. Wife's going to get the house because the kids are living in the house. And divorce attorneys say, well, just part of the settlement is you're going to quit claim your half of ownership to her. And so he fills out a one-page quit claim as part of the divorce decree. Boom. There we go. But guess what?

husband still has a $260,000 mortgage. That's messy. In his name. On a house he's not a part of. Five years later, he gets remarried and wants to have a life and buy a house. Can't do it. Still got a $260,000 mortgage in his ex-wife's name. Doesn't own the property, but still got the mortgage. Dumb. You're getting a divorce and doing a quit claim deed. Force a refinance or force the sale of the house. One of the two.

either the wife the ex soon to be ex or whoever's going to get the house refinances and gets the other person's name off the mortgage or we sell the house and get the name off the mortgage because you're going to get stuck and divorce attorneys do this all the time because it's easy it's easy but it's wrong okay same thing here this is for a different reason though this is uh when would you use a quit claim deed uh

I just moved property from one LLC to another the other day. I used a quit claim deed to do that. To switch the ownership. Yeah. It's just I already, and I own both LLCs. So it's not, it's a non-issue, right? When else would you use a quit claim deed? See, a quit claim deed means you, here's real estate theory for you.

You do not, a warranty deed is what usually transfers in most states a house, a piece of property. And that means if I'm transferring property to you, George, I am giving you a warranty on the title, that I have the title.

I am the owner of the title and I am willing to warranty that and transfer that to you. Then if I didn't have, if I didn't own the property and I did that, then you would have recourse back on me. Okay. But I could give you a quit claim deed to someone else's property because all it says is I quit claiming whatever ownership I have. And if I have no ownership, I quit claiming it. Wow. And I gave it, gave you nothing when I quit claiming it. So I could give, I could give you a quit claim deemed to James's house.

I'm in. And it wouldn't do you any good. James looks so scared in the booth. I'm going to quit claiming all of my ownership, which is nothing. Wow. So if you don't have pure ownership and you quit claim deed something, it's of no value. And you can really get into all kinds of crap there. So sometimes you'll use it to do some title cleanup if there's something more nuanced than all of that. I've only heard it mostly in the context of divorces. Divorce and estates. Grandpa doing a dumb thing like this.

or estate planning attorneys doing a dumb thing without forcing a refinance. I mean, divorce attorneys not forcing a refinance. And then you get stung and you're stuck with a mortgage on a house you don't own anymore with a woman you aren't married to anymore. There's something about this that's miserable to me. This is The Ramsey Show.

George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Tony and Brandi are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey.

Doing well. Good. How you doing? Better than I deserve. Welcome. So good to have you guys. Thank you. So how much debt have you two paid off? $34,000. All right. How long did this take? About five months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? $150,000. Wow. Good. What do y'all do for a living? I'm a UPS driver. And I'm a nurse. I work in outpatient surgery. Cool. What kind of debt was your $34,000? My student loans. Yay! How long? I'm sorry. Let's see here.

So where do you guys live? We're from Wilmington, North Carolina. Oh, yeah. Fun. Okay, cool. So what starts this journey five months ago? What happened?

Well, it really started like three years ago. My organization offered Smart Dollar and I was like, I'm the free spirit. So I was like, well, I'll look at it. I don't know anything about financial stuff anyways. And then I was like, I'll tell Tony about it. And I got into the first video where it was saying like sell all your stuff and gazelle intensity. And I was like, that's not going to work for me, but I'll tell Tony anyways and we'll just see.

So I was like, have you ever heard about this guy? And he was like, oh, yeah, I know Dave Ramsey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, well, I mean, he has a lot of point, but it sounds like it's more for like the destitute, which we are not. But we went ahead and listed all of our debts out and we paid off a right good bit. So I think altogether we've paid about seventy one thousand dollars off in the last three years. But then five months ago, he he's the one that really got intense about it. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, I just felt like we were making that type of money and just kind of never getting ahead. You'd have money and then something would come up and it was gone. And I think the biggest thing is we hadn't combined our finances. And once we combined our finances, it was just a complete game changer. You know, we were on the same page and we started making moves together and instead of

saving up four grand and then spending three. We just went through this whole process and $34,000 in five months. It was incredible. Boom. Just like that. How long have you been married? Nine years. Okay.

Okay. And in nine years, you just combined finances when you started this journey five months ago? Mm-hmm. Yes. Wow. We had two separate checking accounts, two separate savings accounts, and one joint checking account that we put all of our bills in. And then based on our income, Tony put in a bigger percentage than me because he makes more than me. And then we all just kind of – well, I just like spent all my money because I don't ever save anything hardly until now. And he saved it all. So if something came up and he would have to pay for it,

He would be resentful because he's like, I've saved up all this money. And then I would be like, you also make more money. So it was always a fight back and forth. And since we combined everything. And now we have an account. Yeah. And now we have an income. Yeah. And now we have savings and we do spending. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So I certainly have a theory about this, but I'm curious, why do you think the combining accounts caused such an increase in efficiency and lowered the resentment you're saying?

Well, I mean, I think that it just puts you on the same page. So instead of working in different directions, you're working in one solid direction. I think just everything just seems to fit that way. When you're doing things separately, you're, you know, I'm buying something, she's buying something, and you never know what one side's doing and the other side's doing. So you're just never on the same page that way. But also, I mean...

I think it just helps your marriage and helps you become a stronger grouping instead of just two individuals running through life. So, Brandy, you would have been the one most resistant to that because you just kind of had it made. I mean, you spent it your whole check, right? So, I mean, why give that up, right? I mean, so what would you say the benefits are now that you guys combined them?

from your perspective well I think it was it was now both of ours both of our money so I wasn't feeling like I was getting like nickel I used to joke and I would say man you've been nickel and diamond me since we were dating like we always split it was 50 50 100 50 50 the whole time out of my account in his account and so then it wasn't like we weren't like oh I paid for this you know you owe me this it was just like okay well we got to pay for this and this is what we're doing and

Since I'm a nurse and I really love to chart, so every dollar app, it was like real fun to like chart everything. It was really, I didn't realize how much money like,

We actually had leftover after we budgeted. And you get to do spending because you got to vote, right? Yeah. I mean, you're not like you're living on beans and rice or something. You didn't have to do that. No. Just knock this out. I mean, you make a lot of money, so you just popped it in the head, right? Just reach over. Now, I like that charting thing with the every dollar. Of course, a nurse would mention it. It's like charting. I like that. I've never heard that analogy, but it's perfect.

Yeah, budgeting is like charting. Yeah. I like that. I love this story, though, because we get this all the time. People go, well, Dave, I'm not going to combine finances. This guy got, you know, a thousand reasons, trust issues, fear, selfishness, financial infidelity. But when you guys combined this, there was an accountability there. There was a connection that could not be broken. And it obviously caused you guys to win financially. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Man.

Yeah, we actually had planned for us to pay that $34,000 off by this April, but we paid it off in November. So now we're four, five, and six. So we already got our emergency fund, and now we're...

to four, five, and six now. So we finished it like seven months early. Look at the spender all up in the knowledge here. I know. I'm very impressed. She knows exactly where she is. I love this. She's charting the budget. She's got her spending under control. And shout out to your employer for having Smart Dollar as a benefit. Very cool. For those that don't know, that is our financial wellness program that we offer to businesses, organizations to help their employees get control of their money. So,

Very cool. Employee benefit program that teaches our class is what it amounts to. And so very cool. Yeah. And the husband or the spouse could actually get involved and then it turns, oh my gosh, then it goes, wow. We encourage that. Yeah. That's awesome. Be careful. Be careful if you get Tony involved because it'll get implemented.

Well done, you guys. You're fun. It was good to talk to you. You got a real healthy outlook on this whole thing. You're comfortable in your own skin to talk about it. And that's a positive for everybody listening. And so it sounds like you were doing fine. You could just do better. And now you did better. And now you're free. How does it feel to have zero debt? Did you notice a change? Yeah, no. It's like the tension in your shoulders just drops. You know, you're like...

you don't know anybody now it's time to go tackle the house and and start moving in that direction and you know in our mid 40s we could we could have no debt period house everything so and brandy you said that was student loans from you yes so how does that feel for that all to be gone did you notice something when it left or you're just kind of a course of business okay check well i mean i was happy i don't i'm not i don't get like super really like

worked up about stuff I guess that's a nurse in me too stay calm yeah but I was like man we paid it off that's great you know it was actually from my undergrad my when I got my bachelor's it I paid my job pay for it and now I'm getting my doctorate and we're actually cash flowing that too so we were paying for my doctorate and paying all this all of the debt off and doing all the other stuff so good for you awesome good for you

Good for you. Well done, you guys. You're a power couple. That's awesome stuff. Now, you bring the kiddo with you to do a debt-free scream? How old is he and what's his name? He's five. This is Reed. Reed. Has Reed been involved in all this? You know what's going on? Oh, yes. Yeah, he listens to the Ramsey show quite a lot with us. Oh, I'm sorry, Reed. We should get you some good music to listen to. That's a scarred childhood right there. Well,

Well, we got a copy of the Baby Steps Millionaires book for you. That's definitely the next chapter in your story as well as a total money makeover book for you to give away to someone and stir up a holy ruckus with that thing somewhere. Tell them what you did. I'm proud of you guys. Well done. Very well done. You're a great couple. Tony and Brandy and Reed from North Carolina, $34,000 paid off due mainly to combining their accounts and their goals and their values.

Did it in five months, making $150. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Look at Reed. He stepped up. He was in it, man. Yeah, go Reed! He understood the assignment. Way to go, buddy. That's awesome. Oh, man. Woo!

It's amazing how people can share a bed, share DNA, share a child, but they won't share a bank account, Dave. That's just too personal. Wow. I love a story like that. Oh, man. That's awesome. Way to go, Smart Dollar Team. Good work. Yes. This is the Ramsey Show.

Psalm 7714, you are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples. Our scripture of the day. John Rockefeller said, good management, consistent showing average people how to do the work of superior people. Whoa! That's probably true. We probably are all our average people that we learn to do superior work. A little snobbish there, Mr. Rockefeller, but it's okay. I'm going with it. I like it.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. George Camel, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Boise, Idaho is up next. Justin's on the line. Hey, Justin, how are you? Hey, Dave, it's Jesse. Oh, I'm sorry, Jesse. What's up? So I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I kind of back and forth all week on what to do, and I'm like, dude, I need some help.

I worked for a company for, I moved my family over here for two years. I've been here for two years. I moved my family over here to take a job. Been doing this for 16 years, the same work, the same job. Eight of those 16, I've been running my own crews and stuff. So when I got here,

The promises were made and then, uh, Kevin find out they were lacking that anyway. So that's, you just drove by that. I have no idea what you just said. Promises were made and what? So there was some promises made. If you come to work for us, um, you know, um, then we'll give you this and this, um, after a certain amount of time. Well, uh,

That was just to lure me in because they were so short on guys, it seems like, anyway. So you no longer trust the integrity of the people you work for? Exactly. I don't know if I trust them. Well, no, you just said you didn't. I know. Right, exactly. Okay, okay. So I don't. I don't trust them. Okay.

So this winter, sometimes we get laid off due to weather and stuff like that. So we were laid off for a month or so. And they ended up working a couple guys that were, you know, new guys that the way it works is that you start from the top and you work your way down to the bottom.

Guys lower on the totem pole, right? No, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, okay, so like... What are you working down to? Most people work up the totem pole, not down. Right, no, I'm saying in the wintertime... Oh, in terms of who you're firing. Well, laying off due to weather. You lay off the expensive guys first. Okay, I got that.

Well, guys with lack of experience is usually where they start, the newer guys. Anyway, so I went and... Jesse, what's your question? I want to get down to it. Okay. I put in the resume. I got an offer from another company. The other company is willing to pay me, for the same work, $52 an hour. Well, I make $30 an hour right now.

They offer all the same thing. Well, 401K is where I get to. I get the 401K. Dude, you don't need a 401K when you double your income. Okay. You go get a Roth IRA. Screw it. You're going to double your income. You go from 30 to 52. That's almost double. I'm not staying anywhere for a 401K for doubling your income. Is the other place a good place to work? Yes. I went up, checked them out, drove around with them.

They treat you right. You know, none of this promises that can't be kept. They told me this is what's going to happen. This is what you're going to get. What do you do for a living? I guess to sum it up, if I was a build, design, engineer, roads, whatever.

You know, all the stuff that you would, you know, build roads basically. Okay. Road subdivisions, parking lots, all the underground stuff that goes into it. Are you a heavy equipment guy? I just, yes. Okay. All right. Cool. And I have, like I said, I have eight years running, running crews. Yeah. So when I came over here, they were like, well, yeah, you can run a crew here. We'll put you on, you know, but, oh, hey, wait a sec.

we don't have enough guys so can would you mind working with these guys for a little bit longer well it seemed like it was just to lure me here because they were so short on guys they were desperate they needed guys the the second company or the first company who's lowering you so just leave the first company you got a great offer what's stopping you at this point i would just want because i mean the

The first company there, I mean, they do like great 401k matches. Forget the 401k. You hate it and you don't trust them. And you're going to get paid almost double. Okay. So leave. So what do I do? So if I'm putting in, like right now I'm putting 10% in my 401k and they're matching it at 6%, I go to this new company, how much do I put into that? You roll your old 401k with a SmartVestor Pro to a traditional and you open two Roth IRAs, one for you and one for your wife.

And if you're married, but dude, regardless, you can just save money mutual funds if you have to, if you don't have, once you've maxed out your Roth IRAs, but retirement plan is not what the problem here is. Retirement plan is a two on a scale of one to 10. No integrity is a 10 on the scale of one to 10. Doubling your income is a 10 on a scale of one to 10. This is what's known as a no brainer. Take the new job, quit the old job, leave.

No-brainer. You'll work out the investment stuff later, okay? But you don't stay at a company making half the money that you don't trust because they have a 401k. No. Not even close. So that's the deal right there. I think I lost brain calories on that one, Dave. That was a lot for me. That was hard for you. I was trying to track, man. Well, it was circular. We got there. But we got there. Jareek is with us in Texas. Hi, Jareek. How are you?

I'm good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I'm a college student, freshman by year, sophomore by hour here at West Texas A&M University in Canyon. And I actually took your finance course my senior year for Money Matters. And I had some questions about saving. You know, I have some money saved up just from work, graduation presents, scholarship refunds, that kind of thing.

And, you know, I just don't want to put that kind of thing in the brick-and-mortar bank, you know. It doesn't make nothing. So I've been looking maybe like a high-yield savings kind of thing, something with high liquidity so I can take it out if I have to pay for something. No, you notice what high yield was, right? You notice what high yield was, right? You look at the percentage on the high yield? Yes, sir. It's only 0.5. Yeah, I know. It's not exactly high yield. It's kind of an oxymoron. Well, compared to the other, sorry. It's a 0.25 versus a 0.5.

I mean, the whole thing's irrelevant. It's just a parking spot for your money that you're not going to lose it. You're not going to invest it because you need it for college. You don't need it right now, but you're going to need it later. So you're just going to park it somewhere. If you want to park it in a high yield that's not really high, then that's okay. If you want to put it in a money market, that's okay. None of it's going to earn over one right now. How much money are we talking? $10.

Some $4,000 to $6,000. Yeah, just park it. You're going to get pennies on it either way. Just park it. I mean, you can put it in a shoebox. It's not much different. But, I mean, just park it because you're going to need it later. Keep your hands off of it. When you have a semester where there's a little bit of a gap in there and you've got to do some fill-in, you're going to need that $4,000 to $6,000, and it will help you graduate college completely debt-free as you push your way on through. But you just need a parking lot, a parking spot.

for your money and you're not having to pay for it they're going to pay you a tiny bit to park your car there that's all it is just park it in the parking spot and get back to it later and you've done a really good job setting your life up here very very very well done very good job you've got your whole life to invest so don't worry about that right now we want you to get through college debt-free get your emergency one in place get a great job and then we have 20 30 years to invest you're going to be just fine yeah you don't need to worry about investing right now you're the investment get through school debt-free

Well done. George, good hour. Fun times. Thank you. Good job to the booth people. Well done, booth people, booth folk. It's all good in there. And all of you. There were 17 people in there earlier. So many. I'm not naming them all. I can't even call the roll. They're all employed. I don't even know my children's names. Let's put that hour in the books 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, it's Rachel Cruz, co-host on The Ramsey Show. If you want to do your debt-free scream live on the show, visit ramsaysolutions.com slash debt-free scream. We'd love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story. That's ramsaysolutions.com slash debt-free scream.

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