Steady Habits Build Lasting Wealth

23:48Dave Ramsey:Okay. All right. All right. Well, I mean, so when we mean take-home pay, we mean$2 ,500 more, so we mean$14 ,000 and some change. Okay? Yes. That would be your take-home pay. So that would put you at about 40%, not 50%. But still, it's very tough. And so the principle is when your house payment is too big a percentage of your take-home pay, you become mathematically what we call house poor. You don't have any wiggle room to do anything else. How much debt have you paid off and how long did it take you in this recent debt run you did? Yeah, we paid off around$120 ,000 in the last eight months. While fighting this big mortgage?

24:33Dave Ramsey:Yes, sir. Dang, did y 'all sell anything? Yeah, one of Dave's probably, I had a Shelby GT500 that I had to loan on, but I did have a decent amount of equity in that car, so that helped pay off some other debt. Okay. Yeah, it's just a lot. How much of the$120 ,000 was that? We sold for$94 ,000. Yeah, I was thinking. I did all$65 ,000 on it. So$94 ,000 of the$120 ,000 was one stroke. Okay. Yep. Because you threw the rest of it at another debt. Yeah, so your equity. Well, 94 is what I sold the car for. I'm sorry. I know. I know. But you paid off the car and you took the other 34 and put it on debt, right?

25:20Dave Ramsey:Yeah, correct. So of the 120, 94 was just simply moving the Mustang. Yeah. Wow. That made you cry a little, but it was also a brilliant move. Okay. Other than that then, so that leaves you with$30 ,000 reduced during the same eight months while having this big mortgage. What else did you sell? That was the only thing we sold. We did have savings. Like I said, we were very new to this. How much was in savings? We had$175 ,000 in savings. So you pulled that out and paid off the rest of this? Correct. So you did not cash flow any of this debt reduction then? No. Okay. So we're back to the mortgage being a problem.

26:07So what's left in savings?

26:11Dave Ramsey:Between the emergency fund and just a high-yield savings, around$125 ,000. What's your balance on your mortgage? $700 ,000. What's your interest rate? 7%. You might consider dropping another$100 ,000 on that and refinancing it. You can get a lot. You probably get a five and a half this week on a 15-year fix. That was one of our thoughts. Get a better interest rate and recast the mortgage because you're throwing 100 or 150 at the thing, getting it down to 550. I think we got a workable deal. Do you like the house?

26:50That's another part my wife and I were talking about. So recently we were both saved last year, and it's a nice house, but we really like to simplify our life, and we want to be able to kind of give more right now. So we're kind of –

27:05Dave Ramsey:Well, I mean, if you want to sell it anyway, that's okay. I was fighting to keep it for a minute, thinking you wanted to keep it. But if you want to sell it anyway, it makes the whole equation, right? But as far as do you have to sell it because of this percentage of your real take-home pay, not counting 401k and health insurance? Probably not. But if you want to sell it and downsize to get a simplified life, use the equity from the house, get a lower interest rate, use the$100 and some change, maybe$150 out of savings, dump it on there. I mean, you're going to have a lot more wiggle room if you do that, obviously.

27:44Yeah. So we have had the house listed for the last month and we've had 10 or 12 showings. And it's looking like after talking with our realtor, we probably, since the house is so new, it hasn't quite built up equity. We bought this before we knew anything about you and didn't put any money down. We'll probably have to pay somewhere around 50 ,000 to get out of it. that's the part we're struggling with. Is that smart or do we stick it out and wait for equity to build or do we just pay the stupid tax?

28:20Dave Ramsey:You don't have to sell it to get ahead. You're going to prosper because you've been willing to make sacrificial moves. You're being very intentional about everything. You know your numbers. I think you're going to be okay if you keep it. I would consider refinancing it and putting 100 or 150 down on the balance and putting it at a five and a half on a 15 year. I would consider doing that. How old are you guys, David? Get in touch with Churchill Mortgage and see if they can help you with that. How old are you guys? I am 30 and my wife is 28. Okay. Yeah. I probably would do that and then sit there for two years.

28:58Dave Ramsey:And then if I'm still feeling a pinch and I want to still feel in this push to simplify, then sell it and you'll probably make some money. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I was going to say, I mean, if you guys, your voice is deep, David. I was like, I don't know. He could be 55. He could be 25. I don't know how old this guy is. Because if you're closer to even retirement age, right, and you didn't have a lot saved or something like that, right, and there may be a big financial move you guys do to stockpile some money if you're close to that. You got time. But you're fine. You're 30. So yeah, that would be another element of why I could see someone wanting to simplify to get more cash flow to start investing more.

29:35but you guys are great.

29:37Dave Ramsey:Yeah you're doing a good the good news about every single thing we ask you you knew the answer you're you're on it you're dialed in and that that that is a that's that's half the battle. Emily's in Montreal. Hi Emily how are you? Hi Dave good thanks how are you? Better than I deserve what's up? So I just exited baby step two on Thursday of last week and Yesterday, my car was stolen. That was my only debt. I'm expecting about$45 ,000 to$50 ,000 payout from insurance because it was stolen. I'm at a crossroads with what to do with that. Either do I get the exact same car that was stolen, which I love so much.

30:17Do I take this opportunity to maybe downsize my car and use the money for something else, like starting a business or anything else? Or do I potentially just stay in my current job and get something a bit more efficient? What's your household income? I make$60 ,000 a year.

30:32Dave Ramsey:You don't need a$45 ,000 car if you make$60 ,000, even if it's paid for. I know. I know I don't. I'm driving like 1 ,000 kilometers a week to go to work. You don't want to destroy a$45 ,000 car driving that much if you're that broke. No. So, yes, I would move down in car. We don't tell people to buy more than half their annual income in cars. and so that means you take 30 of the 45 at a max and buy a two-year-old version of what you just had stolen. Wow, what a story. I just got out of debt and they stole my car. I stole my car. Yeah, use the rest as an emergency fundamentally. Then you're on the baby step four.

31:09Dave Ramsey:There you go.

31:39Hey, you guys, did you know that there are thousands of data brokers whose entire business is collecting and selling personal information? Things like your home address, your phone number, and even your relatives' names. You guys, that is just crazy, but that is why I use Delete Me because those companies that pull information from public records, social media, and all kinds of other places, then suddenly all that information shows up on random websites. And removing it yourself means going site by site, filling out forms, and hoping they actually take it down. It takes hours, and then it can even pop up somewhere else again.

32:17But Delete Me's team of privacy experts removes your personal information from hundreds of those data broker sites. And within a week, you'll get a report showing what they have found and what they have removed. And they keep scanning and cleaning up your data year round. So take back control of your privacy. Go to joindeliteme.com slash Ramsey and get 20 % off your annual plan. That's joindeliteme.com slash Ramsey.

32:57Dave Ramsey:Michael is in Billings, Montana. Hey, Michael, what's up? Hey, Dave, how are you doing? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Hi, so I'm 26, and I'm looking to get engaged here soon. But my girlfriend and I, we have very different networks, and I was curious what or how you would look at setting up a prenup. What does very different net worth mean? Okay. So I was very blessed. My grandparents did very well. I have a$550 ,000 paid-for house, about$50 ,000 in a truck. I also have about$135 ,000 between my 401k and my various accounts. I also have$350 ,000 left over in a college fund. She is currently in PA school, and she will be coming out of school with about$120 ,000 to$150 ,000 in debt.

33:59Dave Ramsey:What do you make? I make about$120 ,000 to$150 ,000 a year. Okay. Okay. If I were in your shoes, I would get so comfortable with this lady in order to marry her that I don't need a prenup. You don't have enough net worth to fool with it. Okay. If you can't get$600 ,000 worth of comfortable with somebody, you don't need to marry them. Okay. If you had$60 million from your grandparents, we'll talk about a prenup. Okay. And 600K, no. I wouldn't. Would you, Rachel? No. I mean, the only thing I could think of, if I'm in her shoes and the script was flipped and I'm marrying a guy, he's coming out, and I had built a life for me and I had bought my own home and I had done some big things.

34:54I could see, like, the home, for instance, maybe, if something were to ever happen. yeah that because the thing with the thing that's hard with prenups is like that the the laws in every state with divorce are different okay and so there's going to be something that is going to happen if that happens so are you proactive about that on the front end up to you people nowadays are getting more and more comfortable with it because people are getting married later with some established financial life versus two 21 year olds who have nothing and they're you know getting married. So more and more we get this call.

35:27And I think my, my, I had a pretty black and white take on it for years of like, nope, nope, nope, nope. And now there's just a part of me that I'm like, maybe, maybe one part of this that you're like, yeah, if something were to happen, I have built a life, right? I mean, I know people that have their own businesses and that kind of thing. I don't know.

35:47Dave Ramsey:If you've got a substantial net worth, I, and I'm not, your grandparents blessed you. There's no question about that. But this is about 600 grand. And, you know, it's okay. It's okay if you get one. It's more like a million. He has a$550 ,000 home, 135, 350, and like everything together. It's probably more like a million. Okay. If you want to do it, it's okay. I just want you to be really, really sure that the problem is everybody throws this subject against the wall as if it solves something. Yeah, yeah. And I don't want you to think it solves anything. Yeah. All it solves for is if you divorce, it doesn't mean that you've actually sat down and got to know each other.

36:31Dave Ramsey:It doesn't mean that you sat down and agreed, okay, here's how we're going to spend the parent, my grandparents' money that they gave me is going to pay off your student loans when we come home from the honeymoon. You got to solve for that emotionally. And that's a blessing. By the way, I would do that. Yeah, 100%. You got$350 ,000 in a college account. You can use it for your spouse, and I'd pay off that debt in about 20 seconds. And that kind of stuff. And you've got to emotionally, is this relation? Because the only chance you have in a culture that hates marriage for your marriage to last is you've got to be willing to die for them.

37:14Dave Ramsey:You've got to be willing to take a bullet for them. It's all in. ride or die as Deloney says this is we're in and so the problem with the prenup is it's kind of got one foot in a boat one on the dock you know and it's like eh you know and I want you to go all in and then if you've emotionally relationally with some good marriage coaching counseling solve for all the all in part and you're ready to write a check and pay off for student loans when you get back from the honeymoon and then and if on top of that you want to do a prenup Okay. I'm not going to yell at you for that, for a million dollars.

37:53Dave Ramsey:But I really want you to think that through. Yeah, because I think what, and again, I'm like saying this out loud as I'm like processing it, because I think to the downside of people that do prenups, so that's probably a generalization, but is that you're starting out emotionally saying, financially, this is mine, and this is you over here. And that can tend to then go into the marriage. where that's financially where we say, no, you're all in. So if you had a, if you did do a prenup and you're like, if the worst of the worst of the worst happens and, and, you know, we, we do the divorce, you know, court or whatever, and this is how assets are divided.

38:32But inside the marriage from that point on, we are commingling finances. Mine is what's mine is yours. Yes. And net worth that everything then is together. Um, and I don't know how that plays. I don't know, but so that's my caution with it too. I don't like that. I don't like that emotional hurdle, but yet again, I mean, I'm like, I can't help myself. But when we sit on this side of the desk, we have so many calls of, of people who have walked through divorce and all, you know what I mean? And someone that brings in something or had a business. I mean, I've had, you know, people in my own life and

39:05Dave Ramsey:that's happened to, and you're just like, man, what I always want to do is force people to, to set that aside and act like it's not there and get okay with that. and that level of commitment. And then if you want to do it, fine. But what it does, it keeps people from going deep. Right, right. It keeps them from going in all the way to the ground floor. And you've got to do that for your marriage to have a chance in a culture where marriage is at war against marriage. I mean, it's like crazy. Well, it's just not a priority for some people. You know what I mean? Exactly. You know, the other one that's interesting, Rachel, on that side of the thing.

39:44Dave Ramsey:Of course, when I started a long time ago, I just said never do a prenup. Yeah. On the basis of what we've just been saying. Yes. But then I ran into weirdness where somebody's got two or three million dollars and the other one's broke. And it's not the person, usually. It's like I find out that there's a weird brother-in-law or cousin in the mix. You know, and it's like, it just cleans up the external family. Because what, the brother-in-law? The prenup, you're like, I can't touch it, it's not mine. You know, so her crazy brother, you know, starts coming at the new husband. And it's like, fund this.

40:14I want to do this. It's handled.

40:15Dave Ramsey:It's already handled. You can't get to it. So you got, because there's crazy in every family. And if you think there's not, it's you. You know, so, and so that's what you're looking for. And then Deloney and I were having this discussion. He's doing all this marriage research right now. And he had a guy come at him and we had this great discussion the other day when we're traveling together and that a guy made the point that a prenup is like a will. Because if you don't do a will, the state has a set of laws on how your assets will be divided. Yeah, that's right. If you don't do a prenup, the state has a set of laws and divorce of how you're going to be divided.

40:53Dave Ramsey:And they said, but we tell everybody to do a will to pre-plan so the state is not in charge. But you are 100 % going to. And so if you want to be anti-government, Dave, Dave is about as anti-government as anybody you'll ever meet. Classic hillbilly, right? Like, you know, don't like them revenuers. Yeah. And so, you know, that kind of stuff. And so if you want to be real anti-government, Dave, you would do everybody a prenup so the government's not deciding. Yeah, you're the one deciding. And that's an interesting philosophical discussion. It didn't sway me, but it's worth talking about. But also, you're 100 % going to die.

41:25So you're 100 % going to use your will. That's what I said, too. You may not.

41:28Dave Ramsey:That was part of my answer, too. You half may use the prenup, half may not. That's a good point. But that's my thing, too. And, again, honestly, the reality we live in today, people are getting married later. And they're coming in established with something. But that adds to the danger because you've got this independence. Yes. And in order to have a quality relationship, that has to go away. Yeah. Yeah. You have to become interdependent to have a quality relationship. Yes. Submit yourselves one to another, Ephesians says, right? There's a submission to each other, not a I'm over here and I'm established.

42:08Dave Ramsey:You know, and that's a spirit that's got to be broken. And again, I don't know the laws of this. We're going in circles here. No, I like it. But like, could the prenup be, right? If you started a business, right? And it's killing it and you're the owner of it, but you get married. Could the prenup say in the middle of divorce, you don't get to touch the business, it's mine. But in the marriage, what I bring home, it's everyone. So that makes sense. You could do that. You could do that. The dividing line. I don't know how to say unified in the marriage, but also a reality. But I would also add that from today forward, The marriage grows partially because of the marriage.

42:41Oh, the value of the business.

42:41Dave Ramsey:The business grows partially because of the value of marriage adding into the business. I think that's fair.

42:51Dave Ramsey:Running a business is hard work. You're the CEO, the accountant, and the sales team. You don't have time to moonlight as your own benefits department. That's where Health Trust Financial helps. In fact, health insurance is one of the biggest and most confusing line items in your budget. And most of you are overpaying because you're stuck figuring it out alone. You don't have time to figure out all the fine print about networks and deductibles. My friends at Health Trust Financial have been helping Ramsey listeners for over 20 years. Their focus is simplifying health insurance and serving people with empathy.

43:30Dave Ramsey:No pressure, no games. They give you clear, unbiased advice that fits your life and your budget. Most of their clients save hundreds of dollars every month. That's real money you can put back in your business or into the baby steps. So stop wasting your time, your energy, and your money. You run the business. Let Health Trust Financial handle finding the right health insurance. Go to healthtrustfinancial.com today. That's HealthTrustFinancial.com.

44:14Dave Ramsey:Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. Rachel Cruz is my co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey. Brandon is in Chicago. Hi, Brandon. How are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. What's up? I'm doing pretty good. My fiance and I are getting married in about four weeks' time now. Congratulations. Thank you. We are looking to buy a house. I've done your financial piece twice. She's done it once. We've done all the baby steps. We're investing, got emergency funds, got a decent stack of cash piled up. And we just don't want to make the wrong decision on buying a house. and everything seems out of reach.

45:02Dave Ramsey:What's your combined income is going to be? It will be about$120 ,000. I don't want to base it off that because we would like to start having children soon, sooner rather than later. So I'd like to base it off mine, which is currently$70 ,000. So, yeah. And how much cash do you have saved? About$70 ,000. Good for you. Good for you. Okay, my screen says you're in Chicago. Chicago proper? Northwest Indiana. Okay, but the Chicago greater metro area? Yes. Okay. Probably not going to buy a house on$70 ,000 in the greater metro area of Chicago. And honestly, not always because of house prices, but the property tax.

45:46People that we know move from Chicago, it's not even the price of the home, it's keeping up. The taxes. The taxes itself are what's impossible.

45:54Dave Ramsey:Now, if you're in Indiana and you get across the line out of Illinois, is that where you are? Yes, I'm in northwest Indiana. That helps with the tax issue then. But still, you're in a major metro market that's a very expensive city. It's one of the largest cities in the world. And so that's expensive real estate. You're probably also not going to buy in San Francisco, San Diego, or Manhattan on$70 ,000 a year. Or Miami on$70 ,000 a year. Or Nashville, Tennessee. No, you can buy in Nashville, Tennessee. Outskirts. But I mean, the point is that that's what you're facing. So what you want is some things that aren't compatible.

46:37Dave Ramsey:You want her to be able to stay at home and live in an area that your income won't afford you to buy a home. And so you're going to make a choice here somewhere. And, you know, if you want to stay at home, you're going to move further out. You're going to move out to the country. Or you guys, you know, save like crazy for two, three years. You know what I mean? Keep stacking cash and seeing what happens there. I don't mind the country at all. So we're looking even further south and further east. What are the average prices of the homes you're looking at then? I mean, for a basic fixer-upper, you're at least$250.

47:25Dave Ramsey:Oh, definitely. Yeah. You're not in the Chicago land for that. Okay. All right. Good. And you can do that. You can probably pull that off. but uh well even at even at 250 i feel like that puts our mortgage above you know the recommended 25 percent of the income yeah it will it will it won't for now but it would when she quits and then that also the 250 000 house is going to require us to put money up front to fix and you know fix whatever's broken in the house be careful yeah just be careful they're not nice houses. Yeah, be careful. I mean, it can be done. But and as you figured out the and with the numbers you're giving me, you're being very wise.

48:10Dave Ramsey:Okay. But I thought you were talking about I can't afford a$700 ,000,$800 ,000 house. And I'm saying, yeah, you can't. No, no, no. But, you know, that's where I was. But the there's in the real estate field, urban growth, there's a thing we call the ring theory and uh with exceptions but as a general rule if you drop a pebble in the central business district the main downtown area every ring that that pebble go the water goes out gets cheaper with the exception of mountains for views and lakes and golf courses but if you stay away from those three things it gets cheaper as you go out until you touch another area that's another another metro area but you know to live in in the close proximity to downtown Chicago is much more expensive than it is to live 50 miles outside over in Indiana.

49:07Dave Ramsey:You know, as you have found, you already have realized that whether you realized it or not. Yeah. But that's what you're seeing. So just be careful and be thoughtful. And you're already are doing that. I think you're going to be okay. And no, Brandon, too, you know, your income will continue to go up too. So that 25 % doesn't stay stagnant at a house payment, right? Because, I mean, if you guys bring home, you know, five grand a month, for instance, you know, off yours, you're looking at a 2 ,000 payment. Yeah. So, but think that you're 70, hopefully will be 75 soon. And then eight, you know what I mean?

49:45You will continue to go up.

49:47Dave Ramsey:Exactly. It's not, the thing you got to remember about personal finance, it's a film strip. It's not a snapshot. It's a moving target. Everything's moving over time and you're not stuck there. But just continue to be thoughtful about it and don't just throw up your hands. What we want to coach people about on this affordability in air quotes discussion is to say, well, you know, I don't have math doesn't count because I want a house. And that's what we want to stop you from doing and say, well, in my area and math doesn't, He's not saying any of that. He's saying he's being very wise and thoughtful about how he's approaching it.

50:25Dave Ramsey:But we run into these people that when I want something and I can't afford it, I don't know about you, but I kind of have this little drama queen fit. Like a little child having a hissy fit down inside of me. I want that. I want that. I want that. And I can't afford it. I want that. And I can't afford it. And I deserve it because I work so hard. Yeah. Oh, brother. Well, so I just did quick math here. So if his payment was, yeah,$2 ,000. Yeah. In today's market, it would be a$275 ,000 to$340 ,000 home. But he's making, they're currently making$120 ,000. That's right. They're not even married. And they're already having kids in their head.

51:01Dave Ramsey:That's true. They're engaged. That's right. That's right. I know. So he's way projecting out into the future on this. That's the thing, too, is like if you guys waited two to three years to buy a home, you're okay. Or buy the house now on$120 ,000. Yeah. And two or three years before she comes home. Yes. Yes. By then you're making 80 and you've got everything stabilized. Yes, it's all going to be fine. That's right. You're going to be okay. Yes, yes. But just don't, you know. You hate the complaining. You do, Dave. I do. And I get it. No, I hate the drama queen because it's inside of me too. I know, I know.

51:32It's inside of me.

51:33Dave Ramsey:All of us have to, it's called growing up. It is. But also, I think we can all say out loud, it is, you hate when I say this, but it is true. It is harder today. I know. Because of the income and the, like, so we acknowledge it. It is hard and it sucks. As a general rule. But that's not, that doesn't mean you get a pass on math. You don't get a pass. And you get to go destroy your life because I went something. No, you don't. I know. I know. But it just, it's like a, it's like a man, this is not what it was. And now we have to move forward. That is why I hate when people just complain on Instagram or TikTok about it.

52:05And there's no solution. And we try to give solutions to say, hey, you are, you're going to have to move out further.

52:10Dave Ramsey:The solution is exactly the same one in college. Where you buy. Yes. Yes. changes everything. Yeah. You can't call me up and say, I want to live in Silicon Valley. Be James and just live in a... Where's James living? It's not a tiny home. It's a log cabin. Log cabin. James has a log cabin. So there you go. We love it. He's a homesteader. He is. I didn't know. James? Mm-hmm.

52:58Dave, we got a lot of calls on this show where life happens.

53:02Dave Ramsey:One day someone's healthy, they're working, providing for their family, and then a curveball hits. You know, we hear it all the time. A car accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly everything changes. Yeah, and that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Xander is essential, because it protects your family if the worst happens. Yeah, that's right. You need 10 to 12 times your income in coverage. No gimmicks, no whole life junk, just straightforward term life protection. But there's another piece that people often overlook, and that's long-term disability insurance.

53:37Yeah, it's important to understand the difference between them. Life insurance steps in when you die. Disability insurance steps in while you're alive but can't work. So it replaces a large part of your income so the bills still get paid while you get back on your feet.

53:51Dave Ramsey:Now, if your employer gives you free disability insurance, great, take it. If it's discounted there at a better price, take it. But if not, Xander can help you find the right plan. Whether you're single or married, it's not optional. If you're going to be out of work for a while, then you need to make sure the money's still showing up. And that's why Zander is our go-to. They make it super simple to get the right coverage at the best price, no pressure, no upselling. I've trusted Jeff Zander and Zander Insurance for over 25 years, and so has my family. So don't wait. It's fast, it's easy, and it could make all the difference.

54:25Dave Ramsey:Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Protect yourself, protect your income, protect your family.

54:49Dave Ramsey:Well, we wish we could get to every call and every question here on the show. Sorry, a little backed up, a little hard to get in here. But if you've got a money question and you want an answer for your situation, head on over to the website and use Ask Ramsey. Ask Ramsey is our free AI tool that's built and trained only on proven Ramsey principles. So like we loaded three years or four years worth of this show in there as the data set, and we loaded all the books we've written and the articles we've written and all that stuff as the data set. So there's no garbage in there from TikTok or from trash, you know, from some get rich quick thing built into it.

55:28Dave Ramsey:So the data set is all stuff we have said. And that's all AI is. it just regurgitates what the data set is. So it's going to answer the question exactly like one of us would. Hello. That's exactly how it works. You get an answer the same way we'd answer it right there on the show. It's completely free. Ask Ramsey at RamseySolutions.com. Go check it out. It's pretty cool. Thousands of people are using it every day. It's crazy, y 'all. I mean, they're blowing up. All right. Rachel is in West Virginia. Hi, Rachel. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? okay so i'm having a hard time making the best financial decision for my future so right now i'm currently a waitress making around 100k a year i've probably made a little over 40 some this year so far good for you you're working hard good for you but i've been considering going to nursing school, and that would be$25 ,000 for just the LPN program, but it would also be making less money than I make now.

56:41No, not much.

56:44Dave Ramsey:You're working a lot of hours to make 100K on tables. How many hours are you working a week? So I'm only working like 38 to 40 hours. You've got a good restaurant. Yeah. It's a high-ticket item. All right. Nice place. What's the nursing position you're looking at? What's market value for that job per year? $80 to$100. Rachel? So the LPN program is$25 ,000, and it says the average salary for that is$50 ,000. But then if you would go back and get your R in, which sometimes you can get a job that would pay for that part of the schooling, then it's usually around$100 ,000. Okay. Have you called around different places of employment that you would probably be interested in and talk to anyone about what they're – because are you just finding these stats online?

57:45So I was already accepted into the LPN program, and that is the one that is$25 ,000. And then they told me after I would graduate the LPN program, if I would accept a job, most jobs would pay to go back to get your RN.

58:02Dave Ramsey:Agreed. But most jobs pay more than 50 on LPN, too. Yeah. And the other thing is you can get all the work you want. Nursing is possibly one of the most stable. I mean, I've been doing this 30 years, and I've never heard of a single year when there was an overage of nurses. There's always a shortage. So you can always learn the job. There's a lot of different kinds of jobs you can do as a nurse. And you can work at a doctor's office Monday through Friday and work ER and clean up on the weekends if you want to stack some cash for a short time as a part time gig once you've got your degree. So I love nursing.

58:40Yeah. And the 50 a year, Rachel, is only, well, let's say it is for, it's only for a, for a second, because you're going to be there. They're going to pay for you to go to school and then you'll jump in salary. You know what I mean? Like it's a stepping stone. If it is, it's not going to be your forever salary. Yeah. So that's how I would look at it. If that is the case in West Virginia, where you are, uh, versus waitressing. I mean, the fact you made a hundred grand is amazing, but that's probably capped, right? Like that, like that's probably, you can only work, you know, so much doing that.

59:10And so I do wonder.

59:11Dave Ramsey:I don't think you've got a chance to go to 150 there, do you? Yeah, no. And it really could end anytime. That's just that restaurant. If that would close, then I'd be true. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but I would call around too, Rachel, because them just throwing numbers out at the school, I probably would do my own research too, just to be curious about what people are paying. And it also depends on whether you're, you know, how rural an area of West Virginia you're in. Okay. If you're in small town, West Virginia in the mountains, yeah, 50 might be right. But if you're, if you're in a metro area, it's more like 60 or 80.

59:50Okay.

59:51Dave Ramsey:All right. And cause we're, we work with nurses all the time. I mean, it's, it's, and I'm, I'm just a, from a wealth building perspective, a stable perspective, you always have work perspective. You can choose the environment you want to be in perspective. It's a great career. Okay. And then my other question is, would you get, so with it being$25 ,000, would you get a loan? No. You had money during school? Never going to tell you get a loan. We never tell anybody to get a loan. Okay. No, we always want you to be debt free. You got some money stacked, don't you? Yeah. I mean, I paid off all of my credit cards and my car.

1:00:38Okay, good. But you're making$100.

1:00:41Dave Ramsey:You can stack up$25 by the time you need it. Yeah. Yeah. If you just, you're real careful. I'm so proud of you. Way to go. I mean, but the difference is not the snapshot of today. The difference is what's the best decision 10 years from today? Nursing or tables. Nursing. Yep. Slam dunk. How old are you, Rachel? I'm 26. Okay. Perfect. Good for you. I think that's great. Yeah, I see you being a very successful, wealthy 55-year-old nurse. I don't see you being a successful, wealthy 55-year-old waitress. Yeah, that's kind of how I see it, too. Yeah. I think it's a great step, girl. Do it. Have at it, kiddo.

1:01:26Dave Ramsey:Be careful and be thoughtful and milk it for everything it's worth, meaning get the best, highest paying job possible that pays you all they will pay you. And get some knowledge. Again, I would call around to hospitals and clinics and stuff and just say, hey, starting out, I'm just curious, what average salary are you paying for this? And just collect some data, too, because I think that's going to maybe, I think it's going to be more, you're going to see a better picture, not a worse picture than that 50. I think it'll be more. And I would frame this differently in my head. Okay. like I want to go back to school and pay$25 ,000 to make half of what I used to make, that's not the story here.

1:02:04Dave Ramsey:We would not tell you to do that. But I want to go back to, I want to pay$25 ,000 and go to school for a career that has a much better future and a higher upside financial. And I might have to take a little bit of a step back temporarily. That's a different story. And you need to frame the decision making on that story, not on a, I just want to do what I love and I'm going to make half. That's not your story. You're not one of those. That's a fruit loop. You don't want to do that. Okay. I just want to follow my passion and be broke. You get so annoyed with those people too. I know. That's just dumb.

1:02:39Dave has not been in the studio for a while. All of his grievances are coming out on this show. Whenever he comes back, he's always like, oh, those people annoyed me. I'm going to talk about those people. I have not had a single

1:02:50Dave Ramsey:person annoy me. No one has annoyed me. People that complain about houses being high, you don't You don't like the people that are like, I'm going to follow my passion and make lives. It was that way when I left, and it was that way when I came back. It had nothing to do with while I was gone. But anyway, the people I've been with were very sweet. Thank you very much. No. No. No, they weren't annoying. I'm saying people in America that annoy you. I know. I have not had any interaction with those people. At least he's not spreading libel about my housing situation. Yeah, Rachel, I didn't throw James' house under the bus.

1:03:22Dave Ramsey:You took his log cabin and turned it into a tiny house. James I'm sorry that's a wrong set of information I think James he lives in a log cabin palace as far as I'm concerned I think he does on acreage on acreage thank you very much very nice very nice you gotta love it

1:03:59Thank you.

1:04:39Buying a home is one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make, but too many people base the decision on opinions or what the market is doing that week.

1:04:48Dave Ramsey:Churchill Mortgage has been our trusted partner for over 30 years because they do things the Ramsey way. A lot of people think buying a home starts with going to a bunch of open houses, but if you're buying a home the right way, you start with a budget and a trusted guide like Churchill before you even think about house shopping. Churchill will show you the real numbers, not what a bank will approve. Buying before being ready is how people end up house poor and stressed out. Churchill will tell you the truth, and they won't push you into more house than you need. And once you understand what you can actually afford, you can move forward with clarity and confidence.

1:05:27Dave Ramsey:So if you're ready to buy a home, choose the right guide and stick to a plan. Go to churchillmortgage.com and get started. That's churchillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender.

1:05:49Dave Ramsey:In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Aaron and Megan are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. How are you? Great. I am so pumped to be here. I don't know if you can tell, but man. Hey, we're honored to have you. Where do you guys live? Richmond, Virginia. All right, fun. Well, welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. And how much debt have you two paid off? $660 ,000. Goodness gracious. How long did this take? Four years. Whoa. All right. There's a story here. And your range of income during this 48 months? Started around$240 ,000, ended up around$300 ,000. Wow. What do you all do for a living?

1:06:30I'm a physician. and I have a small business. We do screen print, embroidery, contract stuff, pallets and pallets of T-shirts.

1:06:38Dave Ramsey:And$660 ,000. I was going to guess mortgage, but then you said MD. So student loans or mortgage or both? Both. Oh, good. That's free house and everything. Oh, yeah. Woo! Amazing weirdos. Oh, look. Oh, there's the doctor's house. Okay, I'll see it now. All right. We repainted. I like it. I like it. I like the blue shutters. I liked it. That's fun. Oh, y 'all, that's great. Congratulations. How old are you two? I'm almost 35. 38. And you have a paid-for house and a paid-for MD degree. Mm-hmm. Wow. How much of this was student loans? How much was the house? The house was 317. The rest were student loans.

1:07:15Dave Ramsey:Whoa. Dang it. Half and half, basically. About half, yeah. Wow. So you come out of med school, and he's printing T-shirts like a crazy man, like hand over fist, and you're going to work like all the time, and you're going to clean this mess up. And you went on and just plowed right on through the house and everything. Yeah. Well, we only met like five years ago. So he kind of buried into the debt. Yeah. Oh, okay. He says, yeah. It was scary. What caused, yeah, what happened? Okay. So all that was four years ago. So what happened four years ago? Well, we got, we got married and we start looking at this and it's like, babe, you can reform, you know, you can reform.

1:07:52We've got all this stuff. We've got to get rid of it. Yeah. It was real scary. It's just the daily compounding. I looked at those interest payments and I was like, we got to get rid of this. I still had credit cards. Yeah. No debt, but credit cards. And so, and I had some savings, um, but I wasn't making any loan payments cause they were in deferment. And so we just got every dollar we started and it just, how'd you find us? So I have been listening to you guys probably since, uh, 2012. Um, yeah. So he's a disciple. Yeah, I'm a little bit of a disciple. I've always run my business that way, you know, debt-free.

1:08:26Yeah. And always try to keep my expenses low.

1:08:30Dave Ramsey:Okay, so you knew the antidote and you were a wee bit excited to attack this. I was so ready. I bet you were over the top, though. Yeah. Was he over the top? He was him. He was him. We're going to just say 10 % over the top. Not crazy. Not over crazy. It's a good over the top. That's the way I like him. It's a good over the top. I mean, you came at her with like a fire hose, though, right? I mean, like, yeah, she was, she was drinking from it though. I had her drinking from it. She was going for it. Yeah. Okay. So you'd had enough too. You wanted out. Oh yeah. Okay. So it wasn't a big argument or anything.

1:09:01Dave Ramsey:It was just a, it was just a big mountain. No, that's one of our big strengths I think is, um, you know, we've always kind of been on the same page on money and we, you know, it's awesome. Okay. So did you guys work extra? What, what was the, what was one of the big things you did that you were like, this helped so much was the income. I mean, you guys, you did great on the income side. He was a maniac. I mean, the first couple years we were together, 100 hours a week, I mean, always at the shop, leaving the house at 3 a.m., getting home at 9 p.m. Sunday to Saturday. I was doing telehealth. I was taking like 25 nights a month of hospice call.

1:09:35Whoa. I'm also in the reserve, so I drill one weekend a month. So we just were working nonstop. Oh, my gosh. Four jobs.

1:09:41Dave Ramsey:Wow. Oh, my gosh. Did the reserves pick up any of this? A little bit. Okay. Yeah. Like a 10 grand hit or something? Yeah, a couple loan repayments. Yeah, I thought they had a hit on that. So what happens now? Now that you've paid everything off, what does life look like? Because, I mean, that's intense, which you guys just explained. Buy furniture? We still have one unfurnished room in our house. We took us two years to buy furniture after we bought it. But we have two boys who we absolutely love, maybe one a third, and just get them set up for success. That's amazing. And not working 90 hours, 100 hours a week.

1:10:16Yeah, we want our time back. It's amazing, you guys.

1:10:20Dave Ramsey:You get your life back. But now you earned it back, and you're done. I mean, four years of hell, and you're 100 % free for the rest of your life. So what's the home worth, probably? It's in the fives. Yeah. Okay. And how much you got built up in the nest eggs?

1:10:37One-fifth. What's in your 401? Oh, yeah, like 180. 180 plus. Yeah, it's all through work. A little over two.

1:10:45Dave Ramsey:Okay. All right, so you're right at millionaire status then. Yeah, close. Baby steps millionaires, making a couple of hundred. You can do whatever you want to do the rest of your life. But you hit it hard there for a period of time. A lot of mac and cheese. Was it worth it? I'm not eating any more mac and cheese. Was it worth it? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's the best thing we've ever done financially, but also for a marriage. It's helped us a lot. It brought us closer together. Communication and just sticking to a plan and doing something together. Every month, we're doing the budget. We're reconciling, going through all the steps.

1:11:21Walking through it all together. How old are the boys? They're both under two, so 22 months and eight months. Okay, so they were all through this whole process. Toward the end of the journey, you were having babies too, which is a whole other feat, right? Yeah. Of doing all of that. So, gosh, you guys. You've lived a lot of life in four years. Congratulations. Marriage and babies and debt-free. Thank you.

1:11:39Dave Ramsey:What do you tell people if they say, can you do this? You tell them they can do it? Yeah. Absolutely. It's temporary. you know just work your butt off and it's worth it yeah absolutely you can do it dedication you have to believe in yourself and go for it and don't stop and keep keep working through the baby steps yep and that's all about messaging so we just called ourselves broke like no we can't have that we're broke yeah yeah well i've told i've told mds that before when they call in it's good for them to hear that sometimes you are a broke doctor yeah yeah but you're not and here's what's interesting too we're talking about this affordability thing a while ago their home was is you know when they bought it wasn't a half million it's probably 300 and it's a half million dollar house today and she's a doctor hello okay i mean this is not yeah yeah yeah you chose where you were living and what neighborhood you bought in wisdom yeah you didn't go buy a house five times that size, which your contemporaries probably did.

1:12:42Dave Ramsey:People came out of med school with you. They're still sitting with$300, and then they put a million-dollar mortgage to go with it to prove I'm a stupid doctor, because doctors are notoriously bad with money. And so the people that graduate with you, instead, you went the other way, and they're acting like somehow you're, you know, like, but now you're free. That's right. And worth a million dollars and going to be worth$2 million in a heartbeat the way you're going. So congratulations. I'm very proud of y 'all. Thank you. It's worth pointing out that y 'all make great choices along the way here.

1:13:12Dave Ramsey:And that's also what got you there. Yeah, you could make this. We have people calling that make$300 and they have nothing. You know what I mean? They're stressed out and they're living paycheck to paycheck. So you guys, you killed it. Absolutely. Did y 'all have people cheering you on during this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Family. Yeah, we have a lot of people in our corner. Yep, that's great. Oh, you guys are amazing. A few people rolling their eyes. Yeah, there's those. And a few people who have followed by example, just hearing our story. And now they're paying off their debt. Hey, I like it.

1:13:38Dave Ramsey:That's good. That's good. Well, if we can infect the medical community with this, it would be awesome. What a weird word to say about the medical community. I chose it carefully. No pun intended. We want it to be contagious. No pun intended. We want this to be contagious in the medical community. Well, way to go, you guys. Very, very proud of you. Thanks for coming on and sharing your story. How does it feel right now, standing here? Surreal. Absolutely surreal, what you said. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. I never thought that I would, yeah, be up here. It's cool. It's kind of like you were driving 160 miles an hour, and then you stopped.

1:14:18Yeah, yeah.

1:14:18Dave Ramsey:And you went, whoa, those white lines aren't a solid line. Who knew? Yeah, that's amazing. Well, way to go, you guys. Congratulations. Thank you. Very proud of you. Aaron and Megan, Richmond, Virginia. $660 ,000 paid off. house and everything, including medical school debt, all done in 48 months, making$240 to$300. The secret sauce is working together, and all they did was work all the time until they cleaned it up. But they're 35 years old, and they're free, and they're Baby Steps millionaires. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Woo! Woo!

1:15:02Dave Ramsey:Woo! Woo! I love it! Way to go!

1:15:44Dave Ramsey:If you run a business, you already know this. Bad information leads to bad decisions. And right now, AI is everywhere. But AI is only as good as the data behind it. The best AI is built on the best data. That's why I recommend NetSuite. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP and more than 43 ,000 businesses run on it, including us here at Ramsey Solutions. Their AI isn't bolted on, it's built in. And it connects everything that runs your business. Accounting, inventory, customer data, all in one place. Because when your numbers are connected, AI actually works like it's supposed to. NetSuite's AI helps flag cash flow problems, spot inventory issues, close your books faster, and cut down on manual reporting.

1:16:40Dave Ramsey:If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to netsuite.com slash Ramsey for a free product tour. That's netsuite.com slash Ramsey.

1:16:58Dave Ramsey:Our question of the day is sponsored by Why Refi? When you fall behind on paying back your private student loans, it can feel like your life is being held hostage. But Why Refi helps borrowers explore a fresh start with low fixed rate refinancing and a payment plan designed around their ability to pay. Visit yrefi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. Today's question is from Shauna in Arizona. My husband and I are in the process of selling a home that we purchased 10 years ago. We'll be moving to another state in a few years and we'll rent until we're ready to make the move.

1:17:38As we consider setting aside a proceeds from this sale for a few years, what is the best type of account to park it in? Should we put it in high yield savings, CDs, individual stocks, or is there some other option that we should consider? So honestly, the two places when you think about putting money aside is either savings is one category and then investment is another category. So anytime you put money into the market would be considered an investment. So whether we never would recommend individual stocks, but anything, whether it's mutual funds, index funds, and kind of our rule of thumb is if you're not going to use the money for four to five years, then yeah, you could probably invest it and ride the market out because there'll be lows and highs.

1:18:21And so you want to make sure that just like a home, right? You wouldn't buy a home and when there's no equity, turn around and sell it. So if you're going to, if you are going to use the money in around four years or less, then a high yield savings account is where I would park it. And our friends at Fairwinds have a great smart bundle where you can get a no fee checking account. I think it's up to 10 high yield savings accounts you can have within your name. And then the Ramsey Beaver debit card with that too. But a high yield savings is where I would park it. If you're going to use that money, you said a few years, so I'm assuming that's two to three.

1:18:53So I would just throw in a high yield savings account.

1:18:55Dave Ramsey:Yeah, that's the safe thing. If you're willing to take the risk, the longer you leave it alone, the more I would lean towards something like just an S &P 500. Okay, 97 % of the five-year periods in the stock market's history have made money. So you wouldn't lose money 97 times out of 100 if you left it alone five years or more. That's why Rachel said that's investing. Now, if you do it four years, what's the number? I don't remember the probability on that one. Or three years, what's the number? I don't know. But, I mean, the last three years have been, you know, 25, 24, and 18. Crazy. But that's not normal.

1:19:38Dave Ramsey:But if you'd left the loan for three years and you've been in the market, you'd have had that versus high-yield savings. Obviously, looking back, would have been smart. But you don't know that. It could be down for three years, too. But the number of down periods in a long period of time is very, very low. So to the extent you can afford to lose a little bit of it and be comfortable, then you can go with an S &P 500 index fund. So you just kind of got to work that through and figure it out. But if you're just even the tiny little bit scared, high yield savings. Yeah, you're not with that kind of stuff.

1:20:15If you had three years, would you throw it in the S &P?

1:20:18Dave Ramsey:I might go 50-50. Okay. Let's say they got 500 ,000 out of this house or something like that. Yeah. I might put 250 in the S &P and 250 in the high yield. Yeah. Kind of hedge my bets a little bit. But if you're going to be turning around and buying a house in the next couple of months, obviously it would just be high yield, but over a little bit more period. So, yeah, I think you're – that's true. Three years or more, I start to think about some portion of it being in there. Five years or more, I'm putting all of it in there. What is – do you have the stats off the top of your head on election years?

1:20:47Is it usually down election years? No, it's usually up. It is up. Okay. I was just wondering, not that you can time the market, but – I wouldn't.

1:20:53Dave Ramsey:I wouldn't. And now midterms, I don't know. I haven't looked at that. I just wonder if – We've got midterms in the fall. In the political cycle. You know, I don't usually use that as a measure anyway. But I just didn't know if you were like heading into a year, if you're like, eh, let me hold off for a few months and see the landscape of the world. I don't know. Every time I try to do that, it doesn't work. Every time I try to do that, I lose money. It doesn't work. So I guess wrong, you know, whichever way it is. So I just quit doing that. I just quit saying, I started saying, okay, if I put$250 ,000 in and it goes down 10%, I lost$25 ,000 out of my$500 ,000.

1:21:28Yeah.

1:21:29Dave Ramsey:I'm okay. Didn't kill me. Right. Okay. Hurts. Hurts. And that would be highly unusual. Yes. Okay. Very unusual three-year period of time. Yes. Like almost never happens. No, it's funny. So, but if you thought about it that way, but so that's kind of how I gauge it is if I lost something that was an unusually bad loss. Yeah. It's still not that much. That's right. You know what? That's how that literally just happened to me in Winston. We opened up a, like an S &P 500 thing to throw some money in because we were looking at diversification, a couple of things. And we usually, we had never really done that.

1:22:03We had had other investments, like 401ks were off, and then another account that we just would put. So we're like, well, let's maybe, we'll have another one, brokerage account, because Winston may buy, you know, something out of it with his real estate stuff. And I'm not lying, you guys. We bought my Winston money, and we moved it from a high-yield savings into this.

1:22:18Dave Ramsey:It went down. I ran. I ran, happened, like, five days later. And Winston was like, oh, just don't look at anything right now. But it didn't drop that much. No, and then it came back, and it's fine. Yeah, it dropped, like, 3%. But I literally had to tell myself, Rachel, you do this for a living. It's okay. You just don't look. You ride the market. Don't jump off the roller coaster. But I thought out of all times in the last three years. You picked the worst one. I picked the, like, four days before. Who knew? And I just let dad gum it. Trump bombs Iran. Oh, my gosh. Just as you decide to be an investor.

1:22:49Dave Ramsey:But again, you can go back and look at those charts. That's an interesting thing to do since the first of the year. But it hurts. Go back and look, and you go, okay, we put$100 ,000 in, and I lost$6 ,000. you're okay. Yeah. And now it's back over what it was. It just pisses you off. Yes. You know, and it hurts your feelings. But it's not, the actual math is not devastating. No, it's just, it's your hard-earned money. Yeah. And when you're like seeing. It should be going the other way. Yeah. And I don't want it to go that way. And it hasn't now. It's back up. That's right. That's right. No, everything's fine.

1:23:19But I had that moment, about a few days of thinking, dad, come in.

1:23:22Dave Ramsey:You know, I did that. Come to think of it, I dropped a chunk in about the time Trump decided to do tariffs. Oh, yeah. And there was about a month period where it like choked, you know, and then it came right back up and through the roof. But it like for just a moment there, the market just decided to go. And that's really why I'm like, I don't. People ask, do you check the market? Do you look? And I'm like, I really don't. I look at our accounts once a year. Yep. And this was like literally the only time in our 16 years of marriage of doing this together. If you're checking the account every day, you're a day trader.

1:23:55Yes. And they all lose money. Yes. Yes. And you can't do that. So you park it for long term, long term. It's going to go up and down.

1:24:03Dave Ramsey:That's the plan. Charles is in Boston. Hey, Charles, what's up? How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? So I guess essentially my question is I grew up very privileged. I have about$9 million in investments all through trust from my parents, my grandparents. I'm a few years out of college. How old are you? I do well. I make, I'm 28. Cool. Good for you. Yeah. And I make around 80 to 90 K a year. Um, but I'm at this, I'm at this stop roads where I'm studying for my GMAT and I'm hearing people talk less and less about the effectiveness of going to graduate school, um, at least for business, um, and whether or not I should just start my own company, start a business.

1:24:57Where do your thoughts lie, given I have such ample resources at my disposal and a safety net that can cushion any fall?

1:25:08Dave Ramsey:I wouldn't use that to make my decision. I would pretend like that money's not there and then go be a wise, heart-filled 28-year-old that kicks butt and takes names. and let that money be gravy that's in the background. You know if you stumble and fall, you have a huge safety net, but that doesn't say, oh, you need to go in business, and people who don't have$9 million don't need to go in business. No, you need to go in business if you're supposed to go into business. Business is hard. Business is thrilling. Business is fun. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I thoroughly encourage you to do it.

1:25:49Dave Ramsey:It's tiring. But you're going to have the, your boss is a butt. He'll drive you crazy when you own your own business. He'll work you to do that. What kind of business do you want to open? Unsure about that at the moment, but I know my knowledge and passion lies within the automotive industry. Okay. Whether it's maybe selling classic cars like my brother, starting a boutique. That'd be fine. You can do that. You can do that easy. And that's something you can test and get back out of. You don't have to say, I'll never go to graduate school. Instead, I'm going to sell classic cars. You can say, I'm going to try this.

1:26:31Dave Ramsey:I'm going to experiment. If I don't like it, I can't make money at it. I'm not good at it. I'll try something else and I'll experiment. That's what entrepreneurs do. Very seldom does what you set out to do end up being the thing you're doing 20 years later. Because business and the environment changes too much. I think you ought to try it, but not based on the fact you got$9 million.

1:27:01Dave Ramsey:Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. Rachel Cruz is my co-host today. Samantha is in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Samantha. How are you? I'm better than I deserve, but beautifully broken as well. I understand. How can we help today? so my husband um so i've been a stay-at-home mom for 27 years the last 20 i've been raising our disabled daughter who passed away in september i'm sorry um dang um she passed away in september my husband has a really long history of financial infidelity well stop just a second stop just a second breathe okay i'm sorry it's okay get your breath back so we can hear you so your your Your daughter passed in September?

1:27:49Yes.

1:27:50Dave Ramsey:What was her name? Her name was Abby. And what was her disability, honey? She was a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. And she lived 20 years? She did. Wow. She did. Mentally, she was fine. But she couldn't walk. She was in a wheelchair her whole life. She couldn't even turn over in bed. I did everything for her. So not only did I lose her, I lost my identity because I just don't know how to be normal anymore. Like, that's all I did was take care of her and fight for her and do for her. And she's been gone for seven, eight months now, right? But it feels like yesterday. It's just horrible.

1:28:30Anyway.

1:28:31Dave Ramsey:And so you said your husband was financial infidelity. You mean he's been doing all kinds of stuff financially that you didn't know about? Yes, but he's done it our entire marriage. Like our entire marriage, he's always, he'll get on eBay and he'll like hundreds of, like lots of money, like thousands of dollars. Currently right now he has one book in his shopping cart with$6 ,000. In December of 24, he had$30 ,000 in all these loan places like op loans and finance places. And so we sold our oil leases so that we could get out of that debt. We sold our kids' future to clean up his mess. And I told him, if you ever do this again, I'm going to divorce you.

1:29:12Well, of course, he did it again in March. And right after our daughter died, he did it again in March. And I just happened to catch it because it went into his per diem account. He works out of town, and we have two separate accounts. His check has always gone into our joint account. I immediately transfer it to my account, which I pay the bills with. And I've done that after about the 10th time of all of this stuff he does. that's just how we did it. And I didn't care. That's how it's going to be. You're not going to have access to our bill money. But so anyway, this last loan in March, I got online to check his per diem account to make sure that his per diem had went in and there was$12 ,000 in there.

1:29:54And so I called him and I said, what is going on? Oh, I got a loan. I need to buy some books and yada, yada, yada. So I went straight to the bank. I pulled out every penny except$100. And I told him, I said, this is what's going to happen here. We're going to pay this loan back and you're going to sign a petition and exchange agreement and a separate a special warranty deed putting our house and land which is paid for in my name is my sole and separate property or I'm going to take this twelve thousand dollars and I'm going to buy a hire the best attorney in town and I'm going to get it anyways and so he agreed I paid the loan back and he did sign the petition and exchange agreement our house that is paid for is in my name our land that we owe$23 ,000 for is in my name.

1:30:33And I thought all was well. And so then on the 24th of April, we went to a retreat for bereaved parents. And the whole time he was in my ear about buying a truck. I want to buy a truck. And I'm like, listen, we're here for Matt and Abby. I've lost two kids. I've lost two children. And anyway, after the retreat, I got a lot out of the retreat for me after the retreat on the way to the airport. I told him, I said, listen, I want us to fight for our marriage. I told him, I said, I need you to know that I have stayed all of these years for Abby. And after her passing, when you did this crap in March, I stayed to protect her home because we built this house for her.

1:31:20Everything about it is handicapped accessible. And I said, I stayed for her. And I said, I don't have to do either anymore. I don't have to. Like, I need you to fight for our marriage. I love you. The following Monday, last Monday, he went and got another loan, 30 % interest, and he bought a truck in another town, another state for$3 ,500. All of these parts are coming in. All this random stuff is coming in.

1:31:44Dave Ramsey:I'm confused. Okay. So he has a very clear message from you as to what's going to happen. And he does this anyway. So Dr. John Deloney says behavior is a language. So he's just saying goodbye, isn't he? I know. Yes, he is. And so I've spoke with an attorney and it's going to cost me$3 ,500. Yeah. So what? I have it, Dave. I'm trying to figure out. I have just a little bit of debt. Where's the$12 ,000 you're just talking about? He spent it. He opened a separate account where he, because he works out of town. And so he went to the town in South Carolina. No, no, no, no, honey. I'm not talking about that.

1:32:24Dave Ramsey:I'm talking about the other money. You said you had$12 ,000 cash from the other. No, I paid the loan back. I did. Oh, you paid the loan off. Yes. Because I didn't, I was scared at that point that Well, I mean, Samantha, this is a horrible situation. You all have gone through so much tragedy. And in the midst of that, he's not able to function, apparently. Well, he's always been like this. For whatever reason. And so you're calling an end to it. And so, yeah, that's what you're doing. I mean, you're going to go get an attorney, and they're going to advise you on how to do this. If you didn't sign the loan, you are not liable.

1:33:08No, we are both on the loan. So our house is paid for. We bought a separate lot. Our house is on three acres. We bought an additional three acres. I'll sell them both.

1:33:19Dave Ramsey:It doesn't matter. I can't. I can't, Dave. Yes, you can't. We're looking for Abby. No, I cannot. Abby's not there anymore, honey. I don't. Abby's in heaven. I only owe$23 ,000. That's it. I know. That's it. But you don't have to live there. I can't. Yes, you can. No, I'm not. It's not an option. Okay. I just can't do that. The deal is this. The deal is this. As long as you have that property in his name, in any way, shape, or form in Texas, and you're married, you're going to have a problem. So you've got to decide. I think Abby would want you happy, Samantha. Yeah. And a house doesn't define.

1:33:57Dave Ramsey:Abby's memory doesn't live in a house. Abby's memory lives in your mind and in your heart. And you're in an untenable situation, and you can't use Abby as a reason to stay in a situation where you're being abused. And not physically abused, but financially abused. And you're going to draw a line in the sand, and there's going to be some costs that go with that to get you this protection. You may or may not keep the house. I don't know if you can keep it or not. I'm not sure. But I want you to deal with this and quit trying to make him do stuff. But, you know, he has told you loud and clear what he's going to do.

1:34:36Dave Ramsey:If you expect him to change under any circumstances, I mean, if he put all that, if he gave you the deed to everything of the house and you told him if he ever does it again, you're going to take it all. And then he goes and does it three more times after that. This guy's made a real clear statement. This is who I'm going to be. If you don't like it tough. and so now you've got to decide what the rest of your what the next chapter of your life looks like what healing looks like over all of this the marriage and the children purpose for your life you had an incredible purpose samantha yeah of being a caretaker and what the mom you were to your daughter and now there's another purpose for you in the world and to be the healthiest you samantha it is to get out and define that yeah next chapter

1:35:48Dave Ramsey:Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now, you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com.

1:36:38Dave Ramsey:One of my best friends in the world, because I read one of his books 25 years ago, reached out to him and we've ended up speaking on stages all over America for the last 25 years together, been a part of the Ramsey family indirectly for a long, long time. Dr. Henry Cloud, acclaimed author and leadership expert, clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author many times over, 45 books, including the iconic Boundaries that have sold nearly 20 million copies. I sold at least two million of those. He has an extensive executive coaching background and a brand new book out that is one of my favorites that Henry's ever done.

1:37:14Dave Ramsey:It's called Your Desired Future. Welcome, my friend. Good to be here. Hi, Henry. Hey there. Good to see you. Two of my favorite people. Oh, stop that. You say that to all of us. All your podcast hosts. Only when it improves in the next generation. Keep it going. Keep it going. We love you, Henry. Five essential steps that take you where you want to go. So I distinctly remember you coming into Ramsey into a leadership meeting about 20 years ago that we were having. And we were arguing about this particular business unit that had the flu. It wasn't doing good. And then you embarrassed me because you said, well, what do you want it to be in five years?

1:37:55Dave Ramsey:And I said, I want it to be making money and profitable. And you went, well, no kidding. But no, really, what is your desired future for this thing? And that's the first time I think I heard the phrase out of your mouth, desired future. and then what must be true that's not true today for you to get to that desired future. And that not only applies to a business unit that's got the flu, it applies to your health, your marriage, your finances, hello, getting out of debt, all that kind of stuff. So your desired future, this is a framework that you've used to coach people, right? Yeah, companies and individuals.

1:38:30What I did was, you know, there's so much stuff out there that's good stuff and people are going to do this. But I thought, wouldn't it be helpful to have a little model that's a GPS? You wake up every day and know if I'm trying to get there, are these five things present? And ask the question, is there a universal path for that? And study the human body, the most incredible organism beginning from here to there. And Dave was amazing. You know, the brain, the prefrontal cortex starts out with a vision. We're the only ones that can see a future that doesn't exist. A dog doesn't do that. And then it gathers a team.

1:39:09The talent is going to need them to get there, you know, your arms and legs. And then it says, well, how am I going to get there? I'm going to call an Uber. Well, not to go across the room. You're going to get the right strategy with a plan. And then you've got to – your brain, it creates a measurement and accountability system. And you start walking that plan, and you get off, and it fixes you. and that path has components to it that are really really crucial yeah that are so helpful and this can be applied to every part of your life right yeah these five steps it's a mom getting the kids in the van on school in school on time yeah or right seriously i have global companies billions and billions that use this as their operating system and i mean you guys this this When I looked at financial peace years ago, I said, Dave, this works because it's designed in the way that people get from here to there.

1:40:05Dave Ramsey:And all the components are there. And the five components. It starts with vision, which is, I guess, the desired future, right? It is. And here's what's interesting about your brain, the way it's wired. The brain hates ambiguity. It can't stand it because it doesn't know what to do. It loves clarity. Even if it's bad news, it likes bad news that's clear. It's better than no news. That's right. Because once it has clarity about where I am now and I don't want to be there and I got to get somewhere else, it starts to activate these systems that bring everybody to the party to actually get there.

1:40:42But if you don't have clarity, I mean, I've heard you quote stats from the stage. What's the number? People that write down their goals, was it 80 % more likely? Oh, yeah. Because you're giving your brain clarity. That's why the baby steps, I feel like, in our world, are so effective. Because it's like, step one, get$1 ,000. Step two, get out of debt. Step three, it's an obvious pathway of a vision of where you want to go. A clear path. With measurement and accountability that asks the question. Once you've defined the specific activities that are going to move the needle, then you've got to ask yourself on a regular cadence, am I doing what I said I was going to do?

1:41:21And if I'm not, I got to correct that problem, which we all have problems. We miss a day. But if you don't correct it quickly, it becomes a pattern. Patterns are mutations in the strategy that become your DNA. And DNA becomes identity. So I'm not a person that missed a payment. I'm a person that misses payments.

1:41:43Dave Ramsey:You got to fix it quickly. Yeah. So what must be true that's not true now? And one of the things, one of the five things is do you have the talent around you or within yourself to, you know, in a business setting, you know, do we have the right people on the team to be able to pull the thing off that we just said we wanted to pull off? That's right. And if you look at them and you go, that bunch isn't going to get us there. That's right. Then you got to get different people on the team. What about when it's an individual and you're looking at yourself in the mirror and going, I don't have that talent?

1:42:16Dave Ramsey:Well, we don't usually. I mean, whatever, even if you wanted to, let's say you want to lose 50 pounds. Well, you've been trying and it's not working. So obviously all the talent isn't present. So what do you do? You go bring the talent around you. Who's that going to be? Well, it could be one you pay for. It could be Weight Watchers. It could be a coach. It could be a trainer. It could be Uncle Sam, who, not that Sam, Uncle Joey. Uncle Sam's probably not going to help you do anything. Uncle Sam helped you lose weight for sure. I'm a wallet. But you're going to – we were not designed to get anywhere by ourself.

1:42:55If there's somewhere you can get by yourself, somebody else helped you to get that ability to begin with. So you got to find out where are the deficits and who do I need to bring to the party that can help me. And that's what people in debt do with you guys. They find the talent that's going to help them get there. Yeah. So good. Okay, so when people are, when they look up there and they have a goal and they think, here's what I want to do. And that could be, again, bettering your marriage. That could be a health goal. That could be a money goal, whatever that looks like, or even within business.

1:43:25What's a mistake people make all the time that you're like, oh, this, if they knew one of these five things or if they were doing this differently, they probably wouldn't make it as much or at all. The biggest mistake, besides the vision, I mean, you got to know where you're going. But the biggest mistake is they're like my dog, Finley. she's got a job, she's got a goal, is to protect the house. Stranger comes to the door, she runs the house and barks, but she never stops and says, I wonder if that was helpful. Is that going to get me closer to where I want to be on Thursday? So the biggest mistake is they don't get above what they're doing and ask the question, is this going to work?

1:44:06Are the ingredients present that are going to get me there? What we do is we just continue to go in our own patterns. The caller earlier that I heard when I was in the green room, he wants to start a business. If he started a business, which you got to start, he would just go do the way he's already wired. And a lot of times until we learn something and we do things the way we're already wired, good luck with that. Yeah.

1:44:32Dave Ramsey:What must be true that's not true today? Do I need more talent around me? Do I need some education that I didn't have? You don't need impulse control. Impulse control. Yeah, I mean, what must be true that's not been true so far? What pattern, what set of movements have to change to get to the desired future? Because if something didn't need to change, you'd already be there. You'd already be there. We wouldn't be – I mean, you know how to find lunch, right? But here's a good example. When, you know, Tom Brady's got, at this time, five or six Super Bowl rings, and Tampa Bay, who hadn't been to the playoffs in 14 years, called him and said, come down here and win a Super Bowl.

1:45:11Well, he knows how to do that. He didn't have a vision for that. But the first thing he did was he looked at that team. What's not true today? He looked at that team. You're not going to win a Super Bowl without talent. There's four positions that are missing. He picked up the phone, recruited the talent in next.

1:45:26Dave Ramsey:And they won the Super Bowl the next year. And got the people around them. And it wasn't just Brady. No, it wasn't just Brady. It's not your own talent. That's right. That's right. That's good. There's something missing. The new book is Your Desired Future. We'll be back with Dr. Henry Cloud to talk a little bit more about it, the five essential steps that take you where you want to go.

1:46:29Dave Ramsey:Hey guys, George Camel here. You ever feel like you make good money and still have nothing to show for it? You run into Target for one thing and somehow walk out$87 later with toothpaste and emotional support candles? Just me? Okay. Well, that's the problem. Most people don't pay attention to how they spend their money, so it does whatever it wants. And that's why we created EveryDollar. It's a budgeting app that helps you create a simple plan for your money. EveryDollar's simple, it's clear, and it helps track where your money's actually going. Plus, you get daily lessons, to-dos, and reminders along the way.

1:46:59It's like having a money coach in your pocket. Your money's been freelancing long enough. it's time to give EveryDollar a full-time job. Go download EveryDollar for free on the App Store or Google Play.

1:47:23Dr.

1:47:23Dave Ramsey:Henry Cloud, the new book is called Your Desired Future, the five essential steps to take you where you want to go. So step one is you got to know what the desired future is. That's called vision. Step two is what? Step two is you got to engage the talent, bring the talent around you that's going to help you get there. Step three. Step three is you got to know how you're going to get there. And that's a strategy with a plan. Okay. So in our world, that would be the baby steps. That'd be the baby steps. And the plan tells you when you're going to implement those, who you're going to meet with. You know, you got to get every detail, Every activity that's going to move the needle, everything else is irrelevant.

1:47:59Dave Ramsey:I'm going to go to the gym three days a week. There you go. Strategy is I'm going to increase my water intake, decrease my sugar intake, so on, right? Yeah, and the debt side, you're going to pay down this amount every month. And then you've got to step forward is measurement accountability of that. Are you doing what you said you were going to do? And if you're not, then you better ask the question, why not, and solve that problem, and then fix it quickly. So I've heard it said, I think it was an old Earl Nightingale quote, that when it comes to goal setting and all this is is a detailed approach to actually implementing and causing the goal to happen, not just setting it.

1:48:40Dave Ramsey:It's not simple setting it. But he used to say that doing what it takes to hit the goal is not usually people's problem. It's what they have to give up. A lot of times, yeah. They don't understand what they're going to have to give up to get there. That's right. The trade-off is what the negative trade-off is the real price to be paid to get to your desired future. That's right. Because usually the things we have to give up, there's an emotional attachment or there's some sort of immediate gratification in it. It feels good to go make that impulse buy. It feels good to eat that hot fudge sundae.

1:49:17It feels good to avoid that difficult conversation. It feels good to not have to make 100 sales calls. And there's that kind of immediate comfort or gratification, or there's an avoidance of something difficult. You know, a lot of times, difference in people that reach goals and the ones that don't, it's not brains and talents and abilities. It's some are willing to do the things the other people don't want to do. And the number one factor that loads on the accomplishment of a goal is not motivation because that will wane. Now, it's important, but your motivation is going to go up and down. Number one factor is the belief that it's possible, the belief that it's possible, and the little incremental steps that bring that about.

1:50:08One of the things that you guys keep talking about, you guys, because you've been doing this well for so long. There are so many people that are drowning in debt. It's impossible. It's possible. And then they turn this on, and they see somebody who was in more debt than them come and do the scream. And what do they do? Their prefrontal cortex kicks in and says, wait, it's possible. Now, check that one off. Now I just got to get the plan. But if your brain doesn't believe that, that's why testimonies are so powerful. and being just getting out of your circle. Some people grow up in poverty or belief systems and you can't make money if you don't have money and all this junk in their head.

1:50:51You got to get out of that circle even to begin to have a vision for what's possible. That's why you got to surround yourself with people that have done it and are doing it. Then it becomes possible. Now I got to get curious about how they do it. Yeah, and creating the new habits around it and what you said about the comfort, you're having to give up what's comfortable. Michael Easter was on the show last week talking about the comfort crisis, his book, and how when you do anything difficult, you're going to feel that stress. You're going to feel that tension. But most of the time, that result ends up being a better situation for your life than where you were.

1:51:32but yet in our world today in 2026, I'm like, it's the comfort's everywhere though, right? We get to set the degrees that we want in the room. We get to listen to the music we want when we want it, watch what we want. I mean, it's just, we can Amazon. I mean, like the amount of comfort we have today.

1:51:47Dave Ramsey:On demand. On demand, personalized to us of what we want, our algorithms, everything like it is wild to, to get out of that. Do you feel like it's harder today than ever before? It's, you know, one of the ones that scares me the most is the parental comfort. It is a lot more comfortable to hand your kid an iPad to shut him up than to step in there and have some limits and some boundaries and go through that temper tantrum or whatever you got to do. And we have a generation of kids that have grown up that have not heard the word no and had to deal with the discomfort of hearing the word no and the structure.

1:52:31Dave Ramsey:And that one scares me. From a generational standpoint. From a generational. Yeah. This is the first two generations that we've ever had a parent call when we're interviewing someone for a job. We're doing a job interview and the parent gets involved. Oh, in your company? Yeah. The parent. The mother of the 24-year-old will call. And say what? Like they applied? They want to influence the process. Oh. They want to help. Yeah, so the light for that, Mom, you should influence that process years ago. Yeah. No, I mean, they want to help Junior get a job. But instead, they did just the opposite by calling because that makes me think, I don't think I want this guy.

1:53:15Dave Ramsey:No, because you got to hire mom too to get to work done. That's right. That's right. That's right. But yeah, but stepping out of the comfort, I think is a big one for people today to achieve the goal that you're talking about and what you're talking about in this book. What gets better that has value? Name one thing of value that gets better without pain first. Some kind of price, yep. There's two paths. There's easy, and then it's going to become harder. Or there's hard now, and then it'll be a lot easier. Those are the only two rows you can go down. Pick your pain. Yep. You can have a little now and a lot more later, or you can have the other side, where you take a little pain now, it hurts to pay down that debt a little bit each week.

1:53:57Dave Ramsey:But look what you're going to have later. That's right. Pay a price to win. Live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. I have watched this boy right here in the last five years. I played golf with him. You talk about pain. That boy and everybody with him was going. I mean, we're looking for balls in swamps and places. Where is he? They don't let people. Where is he? What's he doing? But listen to this. And it was painful. And he would just hit it, and then he'd dissolve it, and then he'd go do it.

1:54:32But he put a strategy together. He got laid. And I'm playing with him now. It's unbelievable. But he had to go through the pain first. That's right. We shared it, but we loved it. Okay, Henry. I think one of my—Dave said it in the last segment. One of my favorite books for you is Boundaries. And you talk about necessary endings. There's been a couple of these. what caused you to write this book? Because you were in the relational counseling world for so long, too, and moving kind of more to the business side as well with people. But why specifically? What need did you see that you're like, I need to write this book?

1:55:09The need for people wanting to get somewhere, whether in business or personally, but not having just a simple path of how it works. And it applies to everything. You know, if you look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, they both had a vision similar. You look at how the styles were very different, but these five elements were present in both. And if you can just have a simple path, then it's easy to get in the morning and say, okay, are these things in place? It's what it is. It's the clear message. I love it. So good.

1:55:44Dave Ramsey:Very good stuff. The new book is Your Desired Future, the five essential steps that will take you where you want to go. And my big takeaway, Henry and I have worked together on this, and we worked a little bit with Pat Lencioni, too, on a modified model that he and I used as well as we put all this together, as Henry put all this together, but we stole pieces of this. And the whole thing I get to is just, okay, this is where I desire to be. What must be true that's not true today? positively what must I gain but also what must I give up to get to where I need to be to get to that vision and then lay out the clear steps put the talent in place and then hold and measure accountability and then don't let the patterns shift off of the goal Dr.

1:56:29Dave Ramsey:Henry Cloud my friend thank you for hanging out with us good to be with you always check it out the book is Your Desired Future absolutely amazing

1:56:43Thank you.

1:57:13Hey, George Camel here. So you're thinking about buying or selling your home. It's exciting, but there's a lot to think about and all those decisions can feel overwhelming. Well, here's the good news. You don't have to tackle the process alone. Ramsey's Real Estate Homebase is the place to find all of your free tools and resources for help to get prepared to buy or sell your home with confidence. You'll find calculators, start to finish guides, a podcast, and even an in-depth video course hosted by yours truly. What's not to love? So if you're ready to take the next steps toward your home goals, go to ramsaysolutions.com slash real estate.

1:57:46That's ramsaysolutions.com slash real estate.

1:57:58Dave Ramsey:Our scripture of the day, Psalms 3721, the wicked borrows but does not pay back, but the righteous is generous and gives. Bob Hope said, a bank is a place that will lend your money If you can prove you don't need it. Somewhat true. Hey, buying or selling a home is a big deal, and you want an expert in your corner fighting for you to find the best deal for the right price. The Ramsey Trusted program is the only way to find a top agent you can trust who will make your home a blessing and not a burden. It's easy. Just compare agent profiles, interview them, and choose the right one to work with. We don't put anybody on Ramsey Trusted that's not Ramsey Trusted.

1:58:40Dave Ramsey:Yeah, you can find a real estate pro for free at RamseySolutions.com, Slice Agent, and click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. John is in Boston. Hey, John, how are you? I'm doing great. How about you? Better than I deserve. What's up? That's good to hear. Yeah, so I am in a kind of a precipice with my job right now. So I am working in finance. I'm making a good living, but I'm considering quitting it to do my YouTube full-time, which has been pretty successful lately. So the instability of it worries me, and I'm not sure if I should make the jump on it. Gotcha.

1:59:18Dave Ramsey:What do you make at the finance job? So right now I'm pulling in about$90K after bonuses. And what's the YouTube income looking like? So recently it's been about$250 ,000, but this hasn't been like this. I've only been doing this for a few years. It hasn't been like this consistently enough. But you made twice as much. Yeah, I know. I worry that, you know, with the instability of how my income goes up and down each month, I've even had a scare where I almost lost the channel, and YouTube could just go poof overnight. Okay, that's true. They might not go poof, but they might poof you. Yeah, my channel specifically.

2:00:03Dave Ramsey:Yeah, that's going to stay around. That's happened to better people than you. And so good job, though. Yes, you ought to work on the YouTube. I mean, you're able to pull off a quarter of a million dollars. What advantage would you have if you were working full time at it? What could you do? I've considered trying to expand it. I've also kind of plateaued in terms of what I can do on the channel. I've tried everything I could. And so what advantage is there to quitting your finance? I'd be a lot happier. OK, I wouldn't be working all the time. OK, but it doesn't really add revenue. It doesn't add revenue.

2:00:46No, it's mainly because I know with the finance job, I'm in a great career path. Long term, I'm going to be set for life like I will be financially sound. And, you know, I'm at a point in my life where soon enough, I'm probably going to want to settle down, buy a house. I want to have a consistent income and know that when I'm 40, 50, whatever, I'm still going to have income.

2:01:08Dave Ramsey:Your YouTube income is as consistent as you are for the next five years. Okay? Yeah, that's true, yeah. And unless you do something to poison pill yourself, okay? You say something or do something that gets you banned for life, right? That kind of a thing. But as long as you stay, keep your nose clean, so to speak, you're going to be fine. And the thing that the biggest danger there is twofold of, you know, you're a finance guy. So you're not when you have one platform that you're doing everything on, you're not well diversified. So you are completely subject to the whims of the YouTube algorithm.

2:01:47Dave Ramsey:And they do change every day. I mean, yeah, we've had we've had we've had literally billions of downloads on YouTube. So our guys really know what they're doing here at Ramsey with this stuff. And so we make a lot more than 250 on it. But it's also we're not – we made the decision to be platform agnostic and not be exclusively stuck to this one particular thing. So we didn't buy one single stock. We want to be diversified and have a mutual fund. You follow the metaphor? Yeah. So you need other places to be doing whatever this wonderful thing is. It's getting all these eyeballs, like a podcast platform.

2:02:26Dave Ramsey:Spotify also now has video. You need to have other places carrying you and that stabilizes you. And you need to be very aware of everything that's changing. TikTok now is video. Everything is changing every day in all of the platforms and be following the trends. But don't move all the house chips on one platform. Don't bet the farm on one platform. That's your danger right now. Right. If you had a more diversified platform strategy and had worked that out, you'd be a lot safer. And as YouTube becomes a thing of the past, becomes the MySpace of the day, right? And someday it will. Every one of these technologies, Twitter was a big deal and then it wasn't.

2:03:15Dave Ramsey:And now it's trying to be again. But, I mean, these things come and go. As long as you're not dependent on one of them and you know the next one to jump onto, then you're not going to get eaten by the alligators. So if you can do that, whatever it is, whatever piece of content you're doing that's producing that kind of income is going to be valuable on other platforms. So I would diversify my platforms, and then I would quit. Yeah, and I assume, John, the content you're putting out, you love. Would you say? Like you're good at it. It's a passion. It's fun. Oh, yeah. I definitely have a lot of fun doing it, which I don't hate my day job.

2:03:53Dave Ramsey:But if you're making three or four times your day job, you can't call your day job stable compared. Because you've got to screw this up for four freaking years to break even, is your break-even analysis. If you're making$400 because you've got more platforms going and you're making$100 on the other, you've got four years of margin to screw up. That's not unstable. That's like saying I can make$150 as a CPA in the open market. but I want to make 40 working for the state government because it's stable. Well, that's not stable. That's just mathematically stupid. You follow me? Yeah, and they could fire me at any time.

2:04:36Exactly. So I guess in that sense it's also.

2:04:37Dave Ramsey:Exactly. And you're only as secure as your ability to leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home at any time. All of us are. All right. And so can you go get another position and do something else with another platform? And if you've got multiple platforms, then you're not handcuffed, golden handcuffed, to one of the platforms. Are you married, John? No, he said he wanted to sell it out later, right? Oh, not yet. Okay. Yeah, I'm in my mid-20s, so hopefully within the next few years. Yeah. I was just curious. Now, the other thing is this. We haven't discussed the content, and I'm not going to because I don't want to get into that with you, but is the content a fad?

2:05:16Not necessarily. It has ups and downs.

2:05:19Dave Ramsey:Okay, like we had a guy, we got a friend named Jimmy. What's Jimmy's last name, the generosity guy? What? Darts. Darts, Jimmy Darts. Jimmy's making a bazillion dollars, and he's got a generosity thing on YouTube that's massive. He's killing it. It's massive. Generosity is not a fad. He does this wonderful thing, giving, creates giving situations, helps people, all this stuff, and it's fabulous content. But like making slime, that was a fad two years ago. All the kids were doing it, and now not as much. So, yeah, that's a good point. Whatever you're doing, it can't be something that the actual content is not.

2:05:57Dave Ramsey:What we do is people are going to be in debt as long as there are people. So we're not going to run out of material. We're not going to run out of content. And so our stuff is what we call evergreen in the business, in content business. OK, so you want as long as you're evergreen and you got multiple platforms, you don't don't confuse that with stability. You have stability because you have talent at that point. It's good. Good job, man. Very cool. That's exciting. Neat discussion. Well, and I would always think, too, in the back of my mind, if all this, you know, whatever went poof and four years, his knowledge of finance and what he if he had to go back into the workforce and do it, he could.

2:06:38Yeah. You know, I mean, you're in your mid 20s.

2:06:40Dave Ramsey:Finance doesn't change. You can do it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So even what you've been doing in your day job, John, gives you a little bit of that kind of back pocket, get out of free jail card in a way that you're like, okay, if it all does. Five years from now, two plus two is still going to equal four. I can plug back in. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Dead gum. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's like if you had a CPA. Accounting is not going to change. That's right. Yeah. You know, it's the same kind of thing. In your book of business, my opinion always is. You might not be viewed as having a fresh resume or whatever, but you can get moving again on it.

2:07:08Dave Ramsey:and so you got a good fallback and that knowledge of that world should give you some business insight some business acumen into managing your new digital career very cool how fun, good luck with it all amen, I hope you do wonderful things with it that puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the book so we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily to the Prince of Peace Christ Jesus Thank you.