Make Hard Decisions Now So Future You Can Win

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start budgeting for free today. [MUSIC] >> Normal is broken, common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fair Wends Credit Union Studio,

this is the Ramsey Chef. I'm Dave Ramsey, Dr. John Delone. I'm the PhD in Counseling, Ramsey Personality, Number 1, bestselling author. Host of the Dr. John Delone show and regular driver of cars,

is my co-host today. Is there anything you don't do? I'm just saying, after that I do that. >> Yes, my wife, there's a lot I don't do. [LAUGH]

Phone number here, triple eight, eight, two, five, two, five.

Thanks for hanging out with us America. We're glad you're here. Candace is in Spoken, Washington. Hi, Candace, how are you? >> Good, how are you?

>> Better than I deserve, what's up? >> Hey, so we have roughly $75,000 to $100,000 a day. About 25 to 30, it's credit card debt.

“And I believe the rest is in a car loan.”

And then we outright own our home. And it is, we could sell on the market today. For about 850 to 900,000, it was an inherited home. So I was just curious if that is a direction we should take. >> No.

>> My husband may, no, okay.

>> No, you sell the car. >> Okay. >> Are both of them. >> Okay. >> You both stupid cars, you can't afford you didn't buy a stupid house.

>> Yeah, so the car, I could sell the car. >> Good. >> You believe the value on the car is about 30,000 privately sold. And then it's probably about 22, if you were to sell it, just as going to the dealer. And they would tell you.

>> What are you all about? >> What are you all about? >> We owe, I'm sorry, you could sell it for 30, we owe 44. >> Okay, so you're 14 and the whole on the car. Oh, God, that is stupid.

>> Right. >> Okay. What kind of car is this? >> This is a Volkswagen, it's a 2025 Alistair. >> You just gave Dave in the hands of him.

>> Okay. >> I know, I know, it's ridiculous, I'm not, definitely not opposed to selling the car. My only thing, the only thing is my husband, he makes a certain amount yearly. And so we just have to be able to budget for that for all of what, we, the payments we have.

It is monthly income. >> I don't understand what you just said, you should be easier to do what you just said if you didn't have a car payment. >> Yes, it would be, but we still have monthly payments coming out outside of the car payments. >> I know.

>> That, at up monthly, and that would take, go ahead. >> It doesn't, it would, it would be easier to do that if you didn't have the car payment.

“>> Do you think your life is easier if you didn't have a car payment?”

>> Okay. >> So, is that not right? I mean, mathematically. >> Yes, that's correct, but if you take the car payment out, and you still are living beyond your means.

>> What's your household in OK? >> So, it's about 4,000 a month that he brings home, and that is, and then we have our kids are in a school that we pay for, and it's a private person school. I think that costs roughly between the two of them. That's over a thousand, so I think that's about 1200 a month.

And then we have like groceries, we have, my big concern for you guys is you're sitting on this big house with this evaluation that the internet gave you. >> Right. And, but you've got symptoms, you've got illnesses underneath this. And we've seen this time and time again, you're going to sell this house, and you're going

to get a bunch of equity, you're going to pay off these cars, you're going to pay this off, and then your family is going to end up in another place, and you still haven't practiced living beneath your means. >> Right. >> And so, the issue will still be there, but you'll argue that this is the math problem

in front of you. The thing, the thing I hear you saying, and you're on the radio, so it's not fair to you

“because you're nervous and I don't want to pick on you, okay?”

But the way you're forming your sentences and talking about this, it says if you guys buy things and make decisions about school tuition and these other things that as if the decision

You can't, let's pretend the school tuition was $8,000 a month, you couldn't do it. >> Right. >> You just have to say no, the kids are going to a public school. >> Right.

>> Okay, and so you, but that never intergerals minds.

You just said, I want to do this and I did it, and I want to buy a Volkswagen, and I did it, and I want to do this and I put it on a credit card and I did it. And without any measuring back against the actual income to say, oh, wait a minute, we can't afford this. >> Okay.

“>> And you've got to learn that skill, what John, that's what John's saying.”

Otherwise, this debt will grow back and you will have lost a million dollar house. >> Great. >> And so, what I would rather you do, if I were in your shoes, what would I do, having been broke myself when I was 28, because I was stupid, and I got a PhD in DUMB, so I know what this is, okay?

And I know how scared it feels, and I know how to control and chaotic it feels. And so what I would rather the two of you do is to sit down and look at this and say, we have to make some hard choices. The hard choices sound like we might need to sell both cars, we might need to put the kids in public schools, and we might need to work some extra jobs, or some combination

of those things to make this work and get ourselves out of debt and keep this fabulous property. Now, after you've done that, and you've learned the skill, if you look up and say,

this is a million dollar house, and I really don't like it.

I might want to live in a different house that's 700,000 that I like. And sell it in pay cash, I wouldn't mind that transaction, okay? But I want you to deal with what got you here before you use the house to, as you're get out of debt free card. >> Right.

>> Is that fair? Because that helps you win 10 years from now. >> Yeah, for sure. And it sounds like there's conversations in your marriage that you all haven't had. Because you've got this giant savings account called a really nice house that's paid for.

And is that covering over everything, kind of? Is that glossing over everything? >> No, yeah, that, I mean, I've been in a lot of prayer about it, and so I was just kind

of speaking in council, and I think the answer is, I think the two of you sitting down together

and growing as a couple in your relationship, and putting some limits on your life that matches your income and using and making some tough decisions is we're going to be really good for the future version of you. >> Yeah.

“>> That's what I want for you, because we love you and we want you to win, okay?”

And that's where we want you to go. And then kind of when I got all that going, if I still want to sell the house anyway, then what beat up you sell the house, okay, it's just a stupid house, you can get into the house or everywhere, especially if you've got a million dollars in your hand, it's helpful. Yeah, Dave, probably the most concerning part of the conversation that I feel like we're having

more and more on the Ramsey Show, we're seeing it more, play out on political conversations, is that if anybody has to make a choice based on reality, on this is how many dollars I make, that somehow that choice is unjust, that choice is unfair, it's not fair. And everybody is faced with making true real choices and that's where freedom is found. >> And we told our kids when they were growing up fairs where the tilt of world on the

cotton candy is, I ain't no fair, baby. >> I'm all about practical ways to save time and mental energy, especially during the summer when life gets busy. Between vacations, camps, deliveries, travel plans, online shopping and trying to keep everyone organized, my mental load can get pretty full.

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Don't do that. Do that." Showing you the next right step. Start with every dollar for free by downloading it in the app store or Google Play. Michelle is in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Michelle, how are you? I'm doing good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So, I started reading the Dave Ramsey books and listening to the podcast a few years ago.

I called and the other advice I heard changed my life. I did pay off all my consumer debt and all my credit cards, which actually I am getting a little emotional about because I'm really proud of myself, but I'm pretty fee-feet. How much did you pay off?

“I would say probably around 10,000, but including all the interest, honestly, more than”

12. Yeah. And what's your income? So, that was the advice - What was your income? My income now is 110.

When you were paying off the 12,000, what was your income? Oh, 110. Oh, okay. Okay, cool. And how long did it take you to do that?

Well, it's been the last nine months. Good for you. Yeah. Yep. So, yep.

And so, my question is now, it's just my student loans.

I don't know if that's considered a consumer debt. It is. Okay. Well, in that case, I apologize. That's okay.

That's okay. No apology. No apology. How much do you owe in your student loans? 23,000.

Cool. And I'm so proud of myself for getting all of the other stupid debt that I racked up that I am having an adverse reaction where it's like, I want to pay it off so bad, but now my question is, can I say money at the same time? No.

Do I need to go through this hell? One more time? One more time. You're just not all the way through yet. You just got a fan.

No. Yeah, that's all. You're still in the game. You just didn't know it. So, just keep riding.

If you're going through hell. Keep riding.

“Our all $23,000 is at one big giant loan or is it several smaller loans?”

It's four separate loans. That's 5.05%. Great. Just take each one of them. Take the smallest one and knock it out as though it's a credit card.

Okay. And then take that money and knock out. That's like four credit cards. That's right. It's four.

Yes. Smalls still are just. So then what can I do for myself to reduce the anxiety and lack of sleep? Because I think just handling a small little bit of $12,000 for the last nine months.

I didn't realize how much of an effect it was making on my heart and my relationship with my family. I actually, it's kind of shocking how numbing it is. And you have credit card debts. And then you're working your way through it.

It should not be having an adverse effect on your relationship. It's the opposite. It's the giving you a sense of power. The path through anxiety is through it. I'm actually having more anxiety because I did actually tell my family that I'm tackling

this and I even had a phone call two days ago. Family and they're like you really can't afford $400 for a Christmas light. You really can have a Christmas light. Okay. So the anxiety is not about you paying off debt.

Your anxiety, what money is doing and we say this all the time on the show. Money is just a symptom of a bigger issue. The bigger issue is you're making 110 grand. You must be good at what you do. You're competent in your job.

You're busting your butt to set yourself free financially. And yet somebody else is still telling you when and where you're going to be on this particular day for this particular holiday to make their life better. Yes. That's exactly what happens.

That's the anxiety. The anxiety doesn't come from money. I remember nothing to do with money. It comes from your mother being a twerp. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Well, maybe thank you for this phone call. That's a good idea. If I wrote down some notes, I probably could have probably logically broken it down. No, no, no. You did great.

You did great. I'm proud of you.

“I think you're doing better than you feel like you're doing.”

But I'm going to suggest in John is suggesting that we assign the cause of the anxiety where it belongs, which is family pressures that are inappropriate and violating boundaries

I see what you mean.

“Because 35 years of doing this most of the time, the debt snowball is tough because”

it requires sacrifice not going out to eat, saying no to people that are pushing all those kinds of things. But it gives you the sense of power over money, which is how to power over you, your whole life.

And for the first time, you're telling your money what to do.

And that is not anxiety inducing. It's quite the opposite. And the nerve. I feel when I'm on my own. Yes, when I'm on my own, I'm like, wow.

Yeah. I'm proud of me. Look at me. Yeah. And you should be proud of you.

Yeah. So in that case, I need to maybe pray or take some notes like how to have those conversations with family because that's exactly what's happening. They are like, you make 110. Why are you worried about 20K?

You can literally do that in a few months. I really don't run my plans past people that have negative things to say. About me. Or who don't share my value. They don't get a vote.

Okay. Oh, I understand what you're talking about boundaries. There we go. Okay, I can do this. Okay.

“So I will set some boundaries and say I need to let me tell you how to do this.”

Let me tell you how to do this. Let's talk about some verbiage because this is a really good question. It's a great question. So it's. We're taking this call in August.

Okay. The very beginning of August. I want you to sit down with yourself and imagine Christmas. And I want you to ask this question. How do you Michelle won't Christmas to feel?

You want to feel peaceful, joyful, fun, whatever. And then I want you to go backwards to Thanksgiving. And I want you to go backwards to the doldrums and the beauty of fall up there in Madison. Where it's kind of cold, but also the leaves are changing all that. I want you to reverse engineer that.

And then I want you to send an email to your family and say,

Here's what my holiday plans are going to be this year.

I hope you're like them. I hope you're like them. I hope you're like them. And then here's the here's the challenge with this. They may call you.

They may write you back something ugly. That is them coming up against the boundaries that you're setting given this season of your life. And it's a season when you're trying to set yourself free. They're going to bang their head up against your boundaries and challenge you. They're going to probably say things about you.

They're going to make judgments about you. And what they're doing, I want you to imagine them trying to yell at you from the other side of the fence. Thanks for the water fence. Do you know what I'm saying? It's not going to be pain free.

In fact, it will be painful. But also there's also going to be very empowering. And you're going to see your anxiety drop. Yes. Okay.

An anxiety come from meeting someone's expectations you care about. I don't care about your expectations sets me free from anxiety. And someone who says a line like, what do you make a hundred and ten thousand dollars? You should be able to.

That's a line of maturity. Would you agree John? Yeah. That's an immature emotionally immature person.

“Well, it's saying I'm going to come up with reasons why I, you have to do it.”

I want you to do. Yeah. I mean, I was hosting a Christmas party the last three years. And I told him I said this year. You can't do it.

I'm not going to do it. Yeah. So let me tell you what happened. I'll give you another. Here's another real world example.

We did this. When I were broke, we were bankrupt. We lost everything. We could barely keep the lights on as a matter of fact. One week we didn't.

Okay. And so she has this big beautiful family. And they're all very generous and loving. They're sweet people. And she's got five brothers and sisters.

And there's 13 grandkids of which my three or three of the 13. And these people all gave each other a gift every Christmas. It's 92 gifts. I mean, it's crazy. Right?

And so we sat down at Thanksgiving when we said, hey, guys. Really sorry. We're broke. We're not buying everybody a gift this year. We would like to do name drawing.

Or we'll just opt out. And y'all just will just dodge Christmas for one year. Because we're broke. We can't do it. And three of the other siblings said, thank God.

Somebody finally said it.

We need to do name drawing. This is crazy. And you know, because we raised our hands and we didn't ask them. We told them. We're not doing this this year.

We can't. And it changed everything. And they were not madder mean or weird. And some of those people are madder mean or weird. But we just said the time they're not.

But that was the year in 1988 when the reedy family Christmas changed. And it has been these same since we changed it. And it may change again someday because somebody else comes in with a vote. Right? But for now, that's the vote.

Her dad's 97. And this is still how we do Christmas. Awesome. It just takes one family to have the hard conversation.

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With Helix, better sleep starts right now. Ron is in Cincinnati. Hey, Ron, how are you? They've kept me in day pretty good. Better than I deserve.

How can we help sure? Well, my initial question was I sent in a few weeks ago. I actually took a minute to remember what it was. And she went on contact with me. I'm 64 and I get a Zillion.

Family calls a day about insurance and Medicare, you know. So it is, I contact with me about paying up my mortgage sooner. And we have 19 years left on our 30 year loan. And he ran over some numbers.

“Honestly, I don't remember all the numbers about how you could pay it off in six years.”

And part of that plan, which is a nice, I sent the question to you.

Your crew was my trusting somebody else to take all my money. Because that's what they do. They want to say, "Everybody in my income." And then they give you back enough money for what you think you owe and bills. And they take the leftover.

And he ran numbers and he said, "Yeah, we can pay your house home six years." Well, I couldn't say yes to them. And I said, "Well, I need to think about that." And I thought maybe I'm pretty sure you, you and your crew probably heard this happen or the few companies.

Yeah, it's been going on for about 10, 15 years. It's a new version of an old scam. Um, is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

Here's the deal. Okay. You owe what on your home. $80,000. $80,000.

$80,000. Okay. Let me tell you when your house will be paid off. When you give them $85,000. Yeah.

Okay. There's no hack. And so if you give them $8,000 a month, it'll be done in 10 months. Right? If you give them $800 a month extra, it's not going to be done that fast.

And so all they do with this is, if they did it the way they claim they're going to do it, is they're going to make you live on substantially less than you make, so that over six years, $85,000 is sent to your mortgage company. So if you would simply live on $85,000 less than you make over the next six years as soon to the mortgage company, you could do exactly the same thing they're doing.

Mine is whatever fee they're going to charge you. See what I'm saying? See thing too. Yeah. So it's $10,000, $15,000 a year to do $85,000 in six years.

Right? Yeah. And so you're going to put $1250 a month extra on your mortgage average over the next six years and it will be gone. That's the only way it goes away.

There is no trick, no smoking mirrors, no man behind the curtain that magically makes some kind of of a trick thing happen to the mortgage and makes it go away. It simply does not. When they receive $85,000 in addition to the interest that is owed to date, your mortgage will be paid off and not until.

Okay. And that there's nobody that can change that. There's no technique.

“There's no secret bull crap with some guy on the phone.”

And so, a portion of these people, that's all they're doing. The other portion of these people is they steal all your money. They're complete scams. And I don't know which portion this bucket, this guy falls in. But in neither case, do I want you to do it?

Because Ron, you are smart enough to do the math and say, how fast I want to pay my mortgage off and divide that number of years into 85,000 and you will have your answer. And you have to cut your lifestyle to make me that number.

And if you don't meet that number, you're still going to have a mortgage.

It's that simple. That's what I wondered. If I could do the same thing myself, he tried to make it sound like I could. You can. They had some type of mystery, interest that he earned and he locked or something stupid.

No, that's what they're doing. They're running it back. And don't put all your money in. They're borrowing your own money back and all that. That's the he locks thing.

And it does not work. Because the he locked doesn't make the same interest rate as the mortgage. And so, the whole thing is stupid. It's just a shell game. We're still still a P under one of the shells somewhere.

Yeah. That's all it is. So what I would do with people like that is I would run away from them. Because A, there might be a scam completely. B, best cases.

They're doing something weird that I could have done myself. But it's not really magical. What's magical is when you send 85,000 dollars, the mortgage company, you won't have a mortgage anymore.

“And if that conversation inspires you to say, how do I take 19 years to pay this off?”

Good. What if we figured out and didn't six or even seven? Awesome. Well, if we do it in eight years, it's $10,500 here. Yeah, build it simple.

Build that world up. Good knock it out. Okay. So if we do it in four years instead of eight years, it will be $20,000, $21,000. We can all do it right here.

Right. And so, and then divide that by 12 and start to put that in your monthly budget and smoke it. Yeah, that's it, man. That's what you do. And so that you send it to a heat lock and then pulling it out of the heat lock and doing some kind of dance and

twirl around twice and pray for rain and, oh crap.

Always somebody looking, you know, but we all look for a shorter shorter thing and there's just not one.

It's like, you know, how do you build wealth? I'm sorry, guys. I've been in the 35 years. You live on less than you make. How do you lose weight?

He died exercise. How are you? Dreamer water and raise your heart rate. It's called aerobic exercise. Yeah.

Sorry, Oprah. No, no hack. I don't care how many books you sell. No hack. This is it.

Less caloric intake. Increase the burn. It's a simple physiological thing. It's a nightmare to do it. But it's easy.

And it sees you don't understand. It's hard to do. Yeah. And building wealth is the same thing.

“The best way to get rich quick is don't get rich quick.”

That's a good way to get rich. I mean, and she does not call for that line. Oh, I've been using it for 20 years. Okay. I should have told it.

I should have said in front of you before. Yeah. Man. The best way to get rich quick is don't. I like that line.

And he is in Detroit. Hey, Annie. What's up? Hey, how are you? Better than I deserve.

How can I help? I'm good.

I'm calling because my husband and I are expecting our second baby coming up here.

And right now, I have an 18-month-old son and I drive a cheap wringler. So I'm listening to it. And Detroit. Yeah. This is fun.

Is it a hard top? It is. It's a manual. Woo. I think it's cold coming out of here.

She's life has come to a halt. Right now. Not a little duck. So your dash anymore. Wow.

Oh, my gosh. We have little, we have real little ducks now. So we're going to get rid of those. Yeah, I don't blame you.

“So what are you going to buy when you sell the cheap?”

So I want to get a mini van just because that is within our price range. My thought is that I will follow the cheap wringler. To then get a mini van. Did you just fully paid off? It's been paid off there about a year or two now.

And it's about worth 30,000. It's got 45,000 miles on it. Cool. So I don't put a lot of miles on it because I just have a pretty short commute to work. Yeah.

So I'm wondering if I should continue to drive it along as possible? No, it's solid for you to buy a van. Well, I mean, a $30,000 van is pretty good van. Yeah, that was my thought of just the value on my Jeep would go down. That was my thought.

Oh, yeah, that's going to go down. All cars go down in value, especially jeeps. They're special that way. All cars go down in value. Anything with wheels and or a motor or a battery goes down in value.

You don't think it goes down in value. Talk to those poor Tesla people that don't have five year old one. Oh, my God, did they get killed. And so yeah, but anyway, it's all up and go down in value. You even sweet little jeeps and Detroit.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So no, you need, I would sell that thing and I buy me. Hey, it's that you've come into a new season of your life and your car should reflect that. God's another good line, Dave. I'm full of them today.

He's like dropping bars.

Yeah, you got a new world now, any?

“I'm serious. The little duck, the little ducks are now in the back seat instead of on the day.”

And if you're, if that Jeep is if you're a real Jeep person, it's part of your identity, I get it. It's the worst. No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. Okay. My, my, my, my son bought a Wrangler 2000 something when he was 16.

And I bought it back from him when he went to college. And then I gave it back to him when he graduated from college. Yeah. And so that old old old Jeep is still in his garage. He loves that.

Yeah, he loved when once you're hooked on a Jeep person, you're a Jeep person. That's it. Hey, get you a van, kiddo, it's, and you can get you another Jeep later after the kids all leave. This shows sponsored by Better Help.

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Hey Blake, what's up? Blake? Blake. Put your own hope. Now I'm going to try to go to Rebecca in Nashville.

Hi, Rebecca, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Alright, so I'm going to give you a little pitch. You tell me if you approve this approved or give me advice. Yes, I love this. So I'm 20 years old. I made $25,000 last year in paid off $13,000 in medical debt that I occurred in that year.

So I am very happy with where I'm at financially. However, God has opened some doors for me. And I am planning on attending flight school to become a pilot in the next several months. With that, I have also been offered a different position which works perfectly with my flight school schedule. And everything else that I will be making $70,000 a year.

So flight school the way that I'm going to do it is going to cost about $75,000. It is go at my own pace so I can do it when I can when I can afford to. So I'm on baby steps four.

“So I have no debt. I, my question is, what should I prioritize?”

Should I prioritize going through school debt free? Should I prioritize investing for retirement? Should I, you know, so I'll be making approximately $4800 a month. How old are you? So I'm 20.

You're amazing. Well done.

I mean, you're your skills, your skills of laying all of this out and thinking all this through or superior. Well done. I very much appreciate that. I've been looking for, I think you're going to be a safe pilot. I might fly with you. Yeah, I would like to fly, I would like you to fly all of my planes. Yeah, I mean, because I want to, I want to pilot things just clearly.

So what we have found is the shortest distance between where you are and wealth is debt freedom. Okay. The most powerful wealth building tool is your income. The best investment to create a higher income is usable, marketable, education. Okay. So in other words, your return on investment, a poor money into flight school is better than your return on investment in mutual funds.

Yeah.

And that's what my thoughts were on it.

I have only talked like one other person and they're advised things a little bit crazy to me. So if they're in flight school, they probably are a little crazy. No, actually, they work in finance for a church and what they told me to do was put everything that I can into a higher savings and take out a student loan. Because if they weren't going to church, they should try reading the Bible. Oh, shots fired.

Where the borrower is slave to the lender. Yeah, that no, it makes sense and that was my thoughts on it. I just recognize that I've only lived 20 years of life and I can learn from my elders. So I want to make sure that you've got a couple of elders here and no question about that.

“But the here's the thing, you're going to have to pay the paper.”

So at some point paying the paper requires a sacrifice. And what we're trying to suggest that you do at 20, are you married? No. Okay, so you're brilliant, you're a hard worker, you're unattached. You're going to have to make a sacrifice.

They're literally will not be another more perfect time in your life to make a sacrifice and right now. Yeah. I would rather you with time with not going out to eat. Whatever sacrifices you have to make to get this degree and to pay cash for it along the way, string it out until you can just keep funding it.

Or here's the other option, you take out a student loan, you go to school, you what's five school 75,000 bucks plus interest. You're going to meet somebody because you're going to be number one on the market. Then you're going to want to go do this. You're going to go to at some point you have to make the sacrifice.

Yeah, and I don't want you having two kids at 30 paying off this loan. Yeah, because you're not flying anymore right then. Yeah, and that's kind of my plan on it. And then one more question about that is I also. So as far as long term, I would love to get married.

I would love to have kids all of those things.

“However, I'm not going to plan my life reading around some person of the else to kind of show up.”

Good. Within four to five years, I wanted to be able to buy a house.

So obviously first house at 24 is not going to be a billion dollar house.

As all of the, you know, all the fancy things that nobody actually needs. So if I were to shoot for the $200,000 range in four years, 48 months, if I say $833, $833, that would give me a 20% down, yeah, 20% down payment, a $40,000. No. No.

No. No. No. I want you to go to flight school and pay for it. Okay.

As fast as you can instead of doing this. Yeah. Put all the money on flight school. You're trying to do a couple of few longest things all at the same time. And what you'll end up doing is nothing.

Some of them part way or nothing. Okay.

Pay cash for a flight school as fast as you can.

Become a pilot, increase your income.

“Use that increased income to pile cash for your house.”

Okay. So just give it everything I got. Yep. Just have like financially. Kind of speeding cash flow.

How long is flight school? As long as it takes. Yeah. As long as it takes. So realistically, I could be done with it in like 18 months.

And then, um, because I'm doing everything that I can online right now. And like learning theory before flying. Okay. So let's, let's say this, let's say at 22, you double your income. You get your pilot's license and you make $150.

And you don't have any day. And you have no debt. By the time you're 24 when you went to buy this house, you don't have any debt. So way more than $200,000 saved up.

Yeah. That's true. All right. And not one person will ever get to tell you what to do, because you'll be in control of whatever you do next.

Yeah. That makes sense. I think, I don't know. I'm just so scared of making a mistake that I'm going to pay for later. That I just want that.

Let me free you. Let me free you. When you pay cash, you don't pay for it later. That's right. And 100% chance you're going to make mistakes.

Let that let that one go. Just don't let one of them be that they aircraft is under fuel. Yes. Keep gas in and don't bar any money. Those are two big ones.

Yeah. You're going to make mistakes. That's part of life. The fact that you at 20 are already asking for wisdom from multiple sources. Tell us when you have more wisdom than most of the sources.

Yes. You're so far ahead. Yeah. You're kind of, I was 20. My brain didn't work like that.

Looking for that next. That was a big party. That's all. Yeah.

You're going to do great. So I want you to have a realistic expectation of what this flight career is going to look like. And what it's going to entail before you invest all the way into that. We haven't talked about that. And I'm assuming you did that because you've done everything else pretty well on this conversation.

But what does being a pilot mean to your life? How many hours a week are you working? And what is your actual income? You're one, two, three, four, five? Because you're not going to get hired to fly 747.

As soon as you get this degree. As soon as you get through flights.

So you've been making 150 first year out.

She might not. She might not. She might be making less than she could have doing a whole lot of other things. Okay. Yeah.

“And so, that's why when you get on the commuter jets, the little tiny ones going American Airlines”

or something. And you see the person on there. And you think, how can a 12 year old fly that? That's who that is. That's who that is.

Because that's the cheapest possible pilot right there. So sweet little people. And I'm sure they're competent or American Airlines would not put ourselves at risk with them. However, for old people when I look and I go, I have socks older than my pilot.

Yeah, this scares me. I did that with the physician the other day. I walked. Doctor. What was that?

Duky Houser. Yeah. It's like, is this like a high school internship? A couple of old men muppets. I'm so old.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The old men muppets. I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah. But yeah. So work all that out. So you know exactly what you're getting into.

“But I think you're going to just find and pay cash for your school.”

And as long as whatever you're studying has actual usable utility and the marketplace and causes your income to actually go up. It is a good investment. And it is a better investment than a mutual fund. You, if you're smart and you look in the mirror and you pay cash for it.

And you buy education that's usable are more valuable than a mutual fund. Hey, guys. It's Rachel Cruz.

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Go to CHMministries.org/budget and use promo code Ramsey. That's CHMministries.org/budget and promo code Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio. Dr. John Deloni, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Michael's in San Diego. Hey, Michael, what's up?

Hey, how are you doing, Dave John? I have a question on my wife and I are in debt about $95,000. $22,000 of that is $41K for $25,000 is for a car loan, a four-runner we are paying. And $33 or $48,000 of that is credit card debt. And my question is should we treat when it comes to like a plan of attack to get going on the snowball and to pay all this off?

Should we treat the 401(k) as normal debt items and being that those are some of the lower balances and start paying those off first

or hit the credit cards that are kind of clobbering us with interest every month? We are going to list our debts individually, not by category, individually, smallest to largest. Out of all of these debts, what is your smallest debt? I have two 401(k) loans and one of them is $8,000, that's the smallest. So your credit cards are larger than $8,000 each?

Yeah, credit card is one that $33,000, the other one is $14,000. So $8,000 is your smallest debt. Correct. Wow. And it's a 401(k) loan.

Gotcha. Okay.

And what's your household income?

I'm the only one that works my wife to stay at home on gross income is $148,000 a year. Is what I bring home? You made a mess. That's my gross and my take home $7,700. And the $25,000 car, what's it worth?

Probably, I would say, I would say around 25, if not, I mean, worst case, probably just under $22,000. So I'm going to look at that. And the big thing I want you to do here is to, for you, Andrew Wife, to sit down with the Every dollar budget app tonight and go through and say, we have to reduce our life to beans and rice. No eating out, no vacations, no nothing.

We have made a mess. We make a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year and we're freaking broke. We have to change. And the two of you have this together realization and lean into. We're going to have to sacrifice to clean up the mess that we have made so that we can get our lives back.

We have given away our life a little bit at a time. One bad decision at a time.

Yeah, and this is August is actually our first month using the every dollar every dollar app.

Are you both looking at it?

“I am primarily my wife is, that's what I'm going to get here to wrap her head around it.”

That's what I was afraid of. I want you to wrap her head around it because we're getting herself her car. Yeah, that one's my car. We own her highlander, highlander. What's her highlander worth? I would assume anywhere from like 18 to 20 maybe.

That one's paid off. Yeah, I don't care now. Okay. Everything's on the block right now because everything that we've done up to this point is caused a mess. And we've got to think about undoing a lot of it.

Yeah. And so if you had two five thousand dollar cars right now, I wouldn't be mad. Gotcha. Because you'd have no car payments and a bunch of money thrown at this debt. You've cut up your credit cards and you're in a tack mode.

Now, I don't think you're going to do that tonight. But you're not going to do that dragging her and whipping her over the head with an every dollar bap. She needs to join you in this adventure emotionally.

“Yeah, and honestly, Dave's she, her and I have both felt the weight of it.”

And we're good. We actually just got that together. So we're putting every, you know, you're putting it all man. I like it. I'm proud of you.

But I just want to make sure you do this the right way, so you're able to finish it. Because you have a really hard two and a half years ahead of you. You're really hard. How old are your kids? Five and seven.

Yeah. Okay. Let me tell you this. The greatest gift you can give those kids right now is to let them walk with you in your wife. Through this next two and a half years.

Saying no. Looking at prices on things. Doing things for free outside. You live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. You're going to do a lot of stuff outside that you don't have to pay for.

Yeah. But it's going to change your life. But your kids are going to get a ring side seat to feeling their house feeling. You're going to end up selling one or both cars at some point in this journey. I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now back to your original question. You got one little final thing.

401k loans do not allow partial repayment. Correct. Yeah. They only give you the other certain amount. Okay.

And so what's your monthly payment on the $8,000 401k? That one is 181 times two. It deducted out of my paycheck before I get it. Okay. So 360 bucks.

362 dollars. Okay. So if you were going to put an extra 500 on that per month. You can't.

“You have to put it on savings account until you get to 8,000 and pay it off in one fell swoop.”

Which is not very, not very psychologically satisfying. Right.

It's a matter of fact, it's a little bit dangerous that you're very first debt.

We're not actually going to pay it off. We're going to save up and pay it off. And that really bothers, it scares me for you. You guys are going to have to be super disciplined to actually pull that off. I mean, you're going to have $6,000 in cash in an account and something's going to happen to the air conditioner.

You're going to see. No, no. No, that's 401k money. It's already gone.

You have to pretend like it's not there. It's not for Christmas and it's not to fix the broken tire. It's not there. It's gone. As if you had to own a debt.

And you've got to set it aside like that emotionally. And that's man. It's hard to do. You might be easier to do it if you've already done 10 other debts. And you're used to this.

But this is your very first one.

It's 8,000 dollars. But you're going to get it pretty quick.

“I mean, you should get it in two or three months.”

It shouldn't take that long. Because you're going to have to get after this to the tune of about $3,000 a month. That's what you're going to have to do. And so let's put it $4,000 in that means you're done with this in two months. That's not too bad.

But that selling stuff that may be your wife has to pick up as a part-time job. You pick up a part-time job. Whatever it takes. But the faster the deeper you sacrifice and the faster you coin this up, Michael, the faster you guys are going to have an awesome life.

And that's what we want for you. And this stuff is stolen. It's stolen the life blood out of the arithmetic. Because when you pay all these thinking payments, you've got no money. And you make $150,000 a year, man.

I mean, that's incredible.

And you're broke. I so weird when you say that out loud like that. But I don't want to be there anymore if I'm you. And I don't think you're making the steps to get there. And I want to make sure you take your wife with you.

And you follow the stuff exactly. And hey, if you get in the middle of this thing, and you don't know what to do. Call us back. We'll help you.

We're here. We're not going anywhere. [ Music ] Let me tell you what I get asked all the time.

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That's the letter yref-y.com/ramsy. Might not be in all states. John? Oh, sorry, I spaced on your brother. I was making a note here.

Alright, today's question comes from Peggy in California. My husband and I just paid our house off in San Diego, California. You don't get that? Line very often now. So we're completely dead free.

That's a lot of money. After we paid off the house, both our credit scores drastically dropped. For years, both my husband and I have been just a few points shy of a perfect score.

“So why after paying off the house to the score is dropped so drastically?”

This dropped doesn't bother me so much, but my husband is almost obsessively bothered by the lowered score. I've explained that our scores don't matter since we don't intend on taking on any other loans. Is this logical or should I be more concerned about getting my score back up? Great question, Peggy. Hmm.

Okay. Well, the thing that has to be addressed here is that you and your husband were sold, like most Americans, a lie by the banking community.

That is a lie.

“And here's the reason that that is a lie.”

Your credit score is a score that is composed of an algorithm. The algorithm that creates the score has five pieces of input. The thing that creates your credit score is five different things. One is how much debt you have. Two is the type of debt that you have.

Three is whether or not you have paid your debt on time exactly or early, the whole time. Four is if you have any problems with debt. 100% of the math that creates a FICO score is how you interact with debt only.

So I could hand you a million dollars and your credit score does not change a point.

And yet we would all agree that you were a million dollars better off. That's dumb that we're using a FICO score as a measure of whether we're doing well financially or not.

“The only way your credit score changes ever is if you interact with debt differently up or down.”

And so if you had a near-perfect credit score, what that means is you've been borrowing a lot of money paying it on time for a long time. That credit score being near-perfect's probably cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest. It's the only possible way to get an 800. Mathematically, it's a math thing, it's not a philosophical question, it's a math thing. But the philosophical question is that these crooks at the banks have convinced everyone in America that if I have a high credit score that I'm somehow a smart person.

No, it means you're actually a dumb person.

It means you have given those crooks at the banks all of your freaking money to get a score that indicates nothing except I played kissy face with the bank.

That's all it does. A hundred percent. And so my FICO score, thank you Jesus, has been zero for a very long time. Why? Because I don't borrow money at all ever anywhere of any kind, any time. The interest rate on my mortgage is zero because I don't have one. The interest rate on my credit cards is zero because I don't have one.

So I have zero FICO score. So here's how dumb the culture is. I'm a multimillionaire. I go down to the local apartment complex. The 26 year old that works for a person five cities over. Who's her corporate boss, Goober, has told her that she cannot rent someone an apartment at the apartment complex unless they have a good FICO score. I have a zero FICO score. They won't rent me an apartment.

I can ride a check and buy the whole freaking complex.

“But I can't rent an apartment there. That's how dumb but an assonine the system is.”

So the measure that your husband should be concerned with is called net worth. Net worth is what you own minus what you owe. You own a really expensive house in San Diego and you own nothing on it.

You have an incredible net worth.

You should be dancing like Snoopy, nose up, feet moving, ears flopping. Yes, I am debt free, a freaking San Diego house. Baby, baby, baby, hello. And I don't give a crap what the bank thinks. They're unhappy because you don't give them any more money. So your FICO score went down. That's how that works.

So you got what I'm putting my point is you got to readjust what you're concerned about. I'm no longer concerned about my FICO score. I make fun of people with a big FICO score. I just did. That's one of my favorite moments I've ever had on this entire show.

What's that? I could feel it on you. It was awesome. I'm that pissed about it. No, I have the same anger in my spirit but I could not have said it as clear as you just said. It was perfect. The thing as a mental health guy that I can't stand is that I see so many people struggling

to navigate this wild world we've created for ourselves. And in some ways being imposed on us. And the thing they are trying to hang onto is not freedom. The thing they are trying to hang onto is not peace. The thing they're trying to hang onto is not good relationships.

It is this score. And I've seen friend after friend after family member taking call after call.

but a net catastrophe for their life. For this one wild life that we have to live. All in service to propping up this score. And it's so hard to unhook from it.

“So the thing I would challenge you guys on is you have to come up with a new identity.”

Because your identity has been FICO score. Forget how much money we make. Forget how that we live in those beautiful places in the world. Forget that we're a crushing in pound of this house.

Your identity has never been in peace.

It's never been a freedom. It's been in this arbitrary number. That the bank gave you. Yes, somebody imposed on you. You've got a tattoo at Bank of America.

Yeah, congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah, it's a bad idea. So I echo Dave sentiment. Dance in the streets.

You are free. You all get to decide what you do next. Not a bank. Not a car dealership. You all do.

You're free.

You have a paid off house and one of the most desirable places to live on the planet.

You won. Celebrate that. Don't lament it. Don't mourn it. And don't go take out a car alone to get your FICO score up.

Yeah, I mean, just think of madness that is.

“I mean, this is like, why do you get a FICO score up?”

Why do you take, you know, why do you tell an 18 year old to get a credit card? Oh, so they can get their FICO score up. Why? So they can get a car alone. Why?

So they can get their FICO score up. Why? So they can get a mortgage. Why? So they can get another mortgage.

Why? It's like a dog chasing its tail. I think we should have a, like, a little thing in the every dollar app that says, This is how much you paid this month for that score. Whoo.

Because if you, like, I had never considered that to you just said that.

That a high, a high, a FICO score. A high credit rating cost you lots and lots and lots of money. It does. An interest. There's no possible other way.

“So we have to impossible to create a FICO score without paying it.”

We have this self input. This is even more rich, Dave. This is worse than a car lease where they have a depreciating asset that they rent to me for a year. And they charge me for every mile I go over and then I give it back to him. Perfect condition.

And then they sell it. So they just offload of the depreciation. Me. This is a better move where they, somebody created a score. Yeah.

And then they create a fee. Yeah. Pay me so I can give you the score and that fee is all these interest payments you're going to make to me over the next. And me and my friends over the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 35, 45 years.

The name of the organization is fair. Isaac. Incredible. It's rich. [ Music ]

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[ Music ] One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking they can skip having a will because they're young or healthy or they don't own anything or whatever. Hey, a will, everybody dies. A will helps protect your family.

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It's not expensive and it doesn't take up your whole life to put it together. And it does not increase your chances of dying. I don't want to do a will, I might die. You're going to die. We just don't know when.

And by the way, this is just an ad for us when I left Texas. And I moved to Tennessee. There was a gap because I had to get a new will. The people I called as modern bear wills. Just to make sure I had a will, my wife had a will so that in this transition time

before we had to go sit down in the state plan and drill that nonsense.

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Like that's who this is who I called in my house. So they're good folks, man. And it's easy. Yeah, it was so simply not. It's not, it's not, you know, it's like signing all these papers.

Just troubles him. If it's on talk, you sign it takes about 45 seconds. Yeah, we click, click, click, click, click.

“Now if you want to read it all and go to sleep three times, it takes some time.”

But I mean, and you need to read your will over. I don't mean that. But I'm talking about is this is not, it's not a cumbersome process. It's very set up. Mama bear legal dot com.

Megan is in Hartford, Connecticut. Hi, Megan. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, my husband and I are longtime listeners and do research.

So we're excited to talk to you guys.

Well, thank you. How can we help? So we wanted to know how do we capitalize on our budget. When our income comes in, like little by little daily versus like a regular weekly or bi, weekly like lump sum. Should we take money from our emergency fund to kind of build up our account that way.

It doesn't continuously get low. No, we don't do that one. So what is your income on an annual basis? On an annual, it's about 80,000. Okay, so we don't have a shortage of income.

It's just wacky. Exactly. It's coming in for 14 places and 14 directions and it's just hard to keep up with. It feels like that. We on an LLC and my husband is a cannabis and private music instructor.

And so he has about 35 students. So it kind of comes in the student this day. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. That is not your budget. That's the businesses budget. That's the problem. Okay, so let's stop.

Yeah. So what he needs to do is the LLC needs to sound checking account. We do have that. And a hundred, a hundred percent of the fees that he receives go into that checking account. Nothing comes out of that checking account.

That's not a business expense other than paying him. Okay. So if he buys supplies for the business, it comes out of that checking account. You don't buy groceries out of the LLC account. So that account should have some buildup.

Okay. If every time I sold a book, I tried to put it in my budget. I would lose my mind. Instead, it goes into the business account here at Ramsey. And then once a month, you don't want to do that that often.

You want to do it twice a month in your situation, maybe. But once a month, we run a profit law statement on this business. And I know how much I made. Right? Okay.

“So you need to collect all these little sources of income.”

All these little students and throw them into one account. Other than his piano business, do you have an income? Uh, yes. So the 80,000 is the piano business. But he also has a W2 in a 1099 as well.

What's the 1099? That's about 10,000 annually. What is it? Oh, sorry. He's a music director at our church.

Okay. So that's self-employed income as well. Honestly, what I would do is just throw that into the LLC when it comes in. Okay. Now, when we look at the LLC, and you look at it every two weeks.

And you say, there's, I don't know, I'll make up a number. There's $1,000 in the account. How much do I need to leave in the account to keep the LLC operating? $1,000 in bucks. So we can pull 4,000 out.

When we pull money out of the LLC to bring it home, maybe once every two weeks. You pull out a fourth of that amount and set it aside for taxes, because you're supposed to be doing quarterly estimates on this LLC with the IRS. So if I'm pulling out $4,000, I'm going to write a check to me for 3,000 and put it in my personal account.

I'm going to take a $1,000 and I'm going to put it in a separate savings account named taxes. And then once a quarter, I'm going to have the money to pay my quarterly estimate taxes. And I won't get behind with the IRS. Okay. So three or four different pieces moving here.

Number one, we're going to put all the money in the LLC. Once every two weeks, we're going to pull money out of the LLC, whatever, and leave a small amount in there just enough to operate. Because it doesn't cost him a lot to operate this. Oh, no, not at all. Yeah.

And so we just pull, leave, you know, leave 500 bucks in there or whatever. Pull everything else out and bring it home. A fourth of which goes away for withholding on yourself as if you were a W2. Okay. So that you got the money to your quarterly interest, then that amount goes into your taxes.

And that's going to be a fairly steady flow of income for your every dollar budget because he usually has approximately the same students every month. Yeah, yeah. So it's going to be a fairly predictable on a monthly basis, then or a by weekly basis.

“And that's how you use your every dollar budget.”

So the problem is you're running your business out of your hip pocket.

And that will drive you crazy. And it's hard to run the business that way well, it's hard to keep your taxes paid well. And you get into all kinds of other stuff. So just open a separate checking account for the LLC. Run the business as if it was someone else's business.

And you're that true to the income and the expenses. And then when you get ready to bring home the profit, you calculate how much you need to leave in there. Would you run? And I guess this is just for W2 folks, but I'm thinking back to when I was a professor. So when I was at work in high red, I'd have my W2 because I've had my home base university.

But I would teach classes at other places and I would get 1099 from some of those places. Would you run the W2 straight into the family checking account? Yes. Yes. Because that taxes have already been pulled out of that ones.

That's a completely different subject. But the 1099, it's easier. You got to pull taxes out of it? No, I think you're right. I like that.

So the way to pull taxes out of it in her case is to form an LLC. But if you're doing three little side hustles in their 1099, they're not a lot of money. I would screw with all this. I just said some money is out in your in a sinking fund for taxes and you're every dollar budget. But I mean, if you're, you know, you're doing.

You do four other side hustle gigs or something. Sure freelance things. That's not a big thing. But where you've got a, she's got like 25 or 30 students. Yeah.

I mean, this drive you nuts. Yeah, and because that's 25 or 30, then those are checks. All dumping in there every other week or every other couple days. Plus the, the 10, so yeah, keep it in one place.

That seems to be pretty simple because you would always have one place to look for all the numbers.

And the side benefit of all this, too. Not only is your taxes paid, but the other benefit is there's now you actually have some numbers to look at to see how the businesses do it. There you go. You can actually look at what's called a profit law statement that and go, oh, this business is making this much profit. And but when you mix it in with the groceries, you can't tell.

“Do you find businesses when they do this and they've either been drawing a salary or not?”

What's most common? They realize, oh, the business is not doing as well as we thought or it's doing way better than we thought. I find both. Okay. Find both. Usually, though, there'll be a hint when they call here.

Like, I can't figure out how to do this. We keep running out of money. The business isn't doing what I do. It's great. But in her case, you heard the abundance in the way she asked the question.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, they got plenty of money. What's your income? Oh, 80,000. Okay, there's the answer. Business is already doing okay. That's $80,000 worth of piano lessons.

Yeah. That's pretty dead. I'm good.

“And so, you know, that's what can happen there.”

What I find more often than either one of those questions is they're not paying their taxes and they get in trouble. Yep. You look up. You got a $20,000 tax bill from the IRS and you got no money set aside. And you didn't pay your quarterly estimates, which will get you an extra penalty.

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[Music] Antonio or Antonio is with us if I've got that right in Baton Rouge. Is it Antonio? Antonio. Okay.

I got close. All right.

Well, my date side hustle has over the last eight years grown into a business that turns over about a million dollars.

Wow. It seems great, but it seems because it's much to run it as it does make. And I don't worry that I'm not doing anything right and we are deviving, not thriving. Hmm. Okay.

And you do help. Okay. And how many team members do you have? 21 part time. Hmm.

Two of us have full time.

“But I'm all the time, but you know what I'm saying?”

Yeah, you're all the time. And who's the other one? Your husband? No. He has a real job lesson.

He, it's a marketing and scheduler. Okay. And why are all the people part time? Because the kind of we have a specialised employing women who want to work well. They've got children at home.

So we offer 30 hours a week, nine to three 30s. They can put their kids on the school buses and be home or nay. Why? Why does that serve your business? Understand it serves their problem.

But how does that help you? Three kinds of we do cleaning. So we do residential cleaning. Oh. Oh.

Oh. So families have their children coming off the school buses. So they kind of want to go on as well. Okay. Do you have a good accounting system?

Please, clipbook. Yeah. Do you have a good accounting system? Do you know what's going on with the money?

“Like, can you tell me, if you made a me, if you brought in a million dollars gross revenue?”

What was your net taxable income last year? Well, I know what we made after it was 67. So that was off the taxes and everything else. That's what we said. 67,000 dollars.

Yeah. I know. Okay. So do you have, so one of two problems is all there could be. One is your underpriced.

There's just what your labor cost is. Or you're administrative something on the side that has nothing to do with the cleaning is gotten out of control. Like you're spending a whole bunch of money on ads or something's gotten out of control. I think we just not paying attention because I'm still busy working on the business.

Yeah. And I, you know, we need something. We go get it. Mm-hmm. I mean, trust me, when you clean toilets for living.

I don't think you're not. I know you're working hard. I wasn't questioning that. But there's now something. Here's the thing.

There's a cup. I'm going to send you a copy of my latest book called Building a Business You Love. It's the five stages of business.

The first stage of business is the treadmill stage where you run, run, run, run, run, run.

And that's you. Yeah. Your stuck. It's chaotic. It's out of control.

It's rewarding because there's a lot of energy going out. A lot of energy going in. A lot of stuff is happening. But when you get home at night, you flop back on the couch. Your spouse says, "What'd you do today?"

And you say, "I have no idea." Right? Have you in my house? Yeah. It's what I did when I started.

“That's what everyone does when they start.”

But you've got to get off the treadmill stage. So here's the couple things you have to do off the treadmill stage. The thing one is your time management of you. You have to get above this business and look down on it rather than being overwhelmed by it.

Right. The waves are crashing in on you. And I want you to climb up in the lifeguard tower and look down on the waves. And that requires some time management and setting aside some time for you to be running the business instead of the business running you.

Right. There's a book called E-Meth by Michael Gerber that I read 25 or 35 years ago.

And it's an incredible book.

Michael became a friend later. And the thesis of the E-Meth is to learn to work on your business not just in your business.

And that's what you're not doing. You're just working at. The business is running you. You're not running it. But you. And the reason only reason is this because you become successful.

Right. But the way to level up and take it to the next stage is start to hire some full time people who help you run and organize the business and iron the wrinkles out. Get the chaos calm down. And let's get this pricing structure right where we're charging enough to justify the

monthly or the hourly rate of these moms that you're employing. Right. And by the way, I think it's very cool that you're able to put those people that need a job to work. That's very neat. And you're going to get a good supply of good human beings with what you're doing there.

I think that's cool. And we. Go ahead. We try and pay as much in 30 hours as someone could get in a dead end job in 40 hours. So.

Well, they're working or tailings off. And that's very cool.

“But then you need to charge the customer enough that you make money.”

$67,000 on a million sucks.

Yes. Okay, needs to be 250,000 on a million. I feel like Marana's feeding themselves to all three of the clients. And Antonio, let me tell you this. The last university I was at before I came to work here.

I did a performance evaluation before I left the university a few months before as my annual review. I had one needs improvement. Can I tell you what it is? Good for it.

My supervisor, a guy I have high respect for is good man. He said, you have to stop running into every burning building. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, you're the leader of all of these folks. You have people that run into burning buildings.

Now, I need you back here looking at the entire operation while something's happening. Yeah. One of the symptoms of the treadmill is your apartment. That's right. And here's the thing.

My identity was shaped by all run into any burning building. Right. And I had to change my identity to, I'm going to love the people running into those buildings. Well, I make sure they're all right. And that was a switch for me, right?

It's called leadership. Yeah. And so you probably love the activity, the action getting there, even a scrub.

“And a toilet every now and then you like meeting with those women, right?”

You love that? That's not your job anymore. No. Now your job is making sure this whole ship keeps going. Yeah.

So you're at a normal metamorphosis of a business. But you're going to stay there and you're going to kill yourself. And you're going to burn out if you don't level up. Because while you can get to the treadmill stage, you cannot maintain it indefinitely. You cannot run on this treadmill the way you're running five years from now.

It makes 67,000 on a million. You're going to hit a wall. You're going to mess up. Something's going to lose 67,000.

And you're going to wish you'd never done this thing.

So you've got to level up, get above it, put some administrative things in place, some leadership things in place. Iron the wrinkles out, get the P&L going and raise your stink in prices. And let's get this thing going. I'd rather you make 950,000 instead of a million. And go ahead and make about 200,000 profit on that.

That make me a lot happier. I'm not worried about your growth. I'm worried about your net. This is not a hobby. Net is what matters.

And if the kindness of your heart, and that's really what this is, you want to take care of a certain type of employee, which you've selected. I love it. And you have in your head, I'm going to pay them 40 hours wages for 30 hours a week. You're allowed to do that as a boss. But if you go out of business, all of them are unemployed.

And so sometimes saying, I would love to be able to pay them 40 hours for only 30 hours, but I can do 31 hours instead of 30. Because I need to keep this whole thing moving.

Sometimes the longer term lens on this is, I've got to think of all of us keeping this thing going, not what I can do right the second.

Does that make sense?

“It could be that what happens, oftentimes when we're coaching small businesses, we find this and I remember this.”

When you need revenue, you take everybody. Yeah. And so you end up with these high maintenance customers that 2% of your customers burn up 98% of your energy. Because they're idiots. So her getting above the business and looking down might be, I'm going to fire 10 clients.

And the way I'm going to fire them is I'm going to raise my prices. And they're going to boil it. Yeah. So because of the true same work to squeeze for this guy, he's driving me nuts. And those 10% might, but you're so, but when you're first building, you're like, I have to take everybody.

I got it. But all business is good business. And that's not true. Because 2% of the public should be institutionalized. And so, you know, you just have to look and go, there's 2% of your people.

I don't want as customers. Y'all drive me nuts. 2% is pretty generous. Yes. Pretty nice.

Well, it's what we call them. We used to call them 2% or something. There's a great community. And he said, I don't buy the employment rates in this country.

He's like, I travel the country. 96% of this country is not employable. About 15% is. [ Laughter ] [ Music ]

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio. Dr. John Deloni is my co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey. Michelle is in Los Angeles. Hi, Michelle.

How are you? Hi, David John. I'm good. How are you? Better than we deserve.

What's up?

I first just want to say thank you for your ministry.

I really changed my outlook on money. And I appreciate it so much. Thank you. Thank you. My question.

My husband, I have a daughter. She's five. She has autism. She's not exactly severe, but she's still considered nonverbal. At this point.

She's pretty awesome. She's made a lot of progress in the last two years.

“But I was wondering, in addition to following the baby staff, what are some steps we can take to help plan for her financial future?”

I know you mentioned special needs, trust, just in segments I've listened to. But I was wondering if he could elaborate on that. Sure. And what would you, if you woke up in my shoe? Sure.

Well, first and foremost, there's only one. A couple of little moves that you're going to make that are different. Everything else is the best and the highest and best thing you can do is just become wealthy using the baby steps. Because then that wealth can be left to her to take care of her. It's that simple.

Right. Okay. Now, a special needs trust needs to be a part of your will. And the special needs trust will be formed upon the death of both you and your husband. Okay.

So that takes care of the child and the event of the death of the parents. Okay. And this child is the difference is the child is not going to need care to 18. She's maybe we don't know yet, but she might need care her whole life. Right.

That's the tricky part. We just don't really know yet. Yeah. Yeah.

“So I've got a really, really good friend I'd lunch with today who has a 35 year old Downs son who lives with them and will his whole life.”

And he's a wonderful guy. But he's going to be with mom and dad his whole life. And so he has set up a trust like we're talking about. Okay. Now, a special needs trust activates upon the death of both of the parents.

It's not formed until then. And then money needs to be in that trust that the income off of that investment will take care of this child for life. Okay. Okay. So as an example, let's just make up a number.

Okay. We want to make sure that 80,000 dollars is going to go to that. It's going to go to this child a year to take care of them. I just made up a number. That might be too much.

It might not be enough. Okay.

But if we needed that then we need a million dollars to go into investments.

Because that's eight percent on a million dollars. And if the million dollars is invested in mutual funds and it's making 12 and you're pulling off eight, it will run forever. Infinite. Right.

Because you're not pulling off as much. You're not touching the principal. Okay. You're just pulling off eight percent and it's making 12 on average. Okay.

The golden age. Yeah. Exactly. Same thing we talk about with your retirement and other things. But this has to run in perpetuation because it has to run the length of the child's life.

Not just until they're 18. Okay. And not just until the spouse dies. This is not what we're dealing with. So this has to run a lot longer.

So it has to be very secure.

So until you have a million dollars in mutual funds to leave into the trust.

You buy term life insurance. Okay. We did that. That the beneficiary is the special needs trust. Oh.

Okay. And you give the. Okay. Name that you give the child's name. We'll call her Anne.

Okay. So Anne's trust is the special need. And special needs trust is the beneficiary of a million dollar term life policy. Until I have a million dollars to put in there. Okay.

And you'll have a million dollars. I don't have a million dollars. I'm going to go over to set up a special needs trust. I'm sorry. Do I need a lawyer to set up a special needs trust?

You can do it at mama bear legal forms. If you want or you can get a lawyer to do it. But again, you're not actually setting it up. You're setting up for it to be set up if both of you die. Okay.

I see. It only starts when both of you die. Okay. And then the next. Actually I'm glad I called.

“Now the next piece of it then is you have to name a trustee that's going to manage the money.”

And in the trust you can dictate how the money is to be managed.

Okay. Called it just a family trust. Upon our death the family trust was going to be formed. And I named the trustee to manage the money. And in that trust I said it's to be invested in the tour of four types of mutual funds that we talk about on Ramsey.

Okay. And I had term life insurance funding it until I had enough money to fund it and then I cancelled the term life insurance. And because there's that much money in my 401(k) or whatever. All right. Right.

And so if you've got a million dollars in your 401(k) you can name the beneficiary on your 401(k) actually to be the secondary beneficiary.

The primary beneficiary would be your spouse. The secondary beneficiary upon the death of you and your spouse would be unstressed. Okay. So first husband then. Yeah.

Because you know and until both of you die there's no special needs trust. It doesn't exist. It's just authorized. Okay. And that's all.

And so but the trick is funding it with term life until you can fund it with real money out of your retirement or whatever else you want to.

“Because honestly if you have three other children.”

And we're going to call her is going to get all the money until Anne has enough money before the kids get any. The other kids get any. And that's one thing. That's okay. That's okay.

Because they're able to go earn their life, earn a living. And we're going to take care of their sister. Right. That's fine. Yeah.

We don't have to give everybody a third and not have enough.

That's not okay. You know, that's not what we're doing. So anyway, but all of this activates upon both of your deaths. So by term life insurance name the name of her trust as the beneficiary. Pick a trustee in the trust.

Tell the trustee what you want the money. How you want it invested. Otherwise they'll put it in a stupid CD. Yeah. Yeah.

No CD. And then it's going to eat your lunch.

“It's going to eat itself out from the inside.”

Okay. Because it won't have enough money coming in to take care of her. All right.

And so you've got to be invested at a good enough rate that you can pull off the amount that you're planning to pull off.

Okay. So set that up and then the secondary piece is who's going to be her guardian. It doesn't have to be the same person that's watching the money. So matter of fact, it's kind of cool if it's not the same person. Okay.

I haven't thought about that. Okay. If the caretaker also has the purse string, sometimes it gets weird. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. They start justifying and rationalizing and all these things. And so we had an aunt and an uncle. Yeah.

We had an aunt and an uncle that would take care of our minor children.

“And then we had another person that was going to take care of the money.”

And they were directed to send that aunt and uncle effectively child support out of the money. Oh. Okay. Every month. The guardian has a guaranteed income to take care of aunt.

Okay. And they don't have to worry about investing. They just got to take care of aunt. Okay. That makes sense.

Yeah. You're a great mom. Yeah. Oh, thank you. The number of people that even think about how to do this stuff is really close to zero.

Very proud of you. Congratulations. But it does activate a different parenting gear when you have one that needs some extra help. Yeah. Yeah.

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I only think I do want them to get it where it's a little more smart.

I got a little more sarcasm. Yeah, I think they've dialed that back a bit. Yeah, but it doesn't just don't feel like me. Oh, it's not just me. You should be able to push a button.

Like who do you want to respond to your answer?

“You know, my brightest technology in invention is I think you should be able to change series voice to your wife's voice.”

Why? So when you're getting directions going on the road, it feels authentic. Oh, I like a gentle British woman saying, encouraging me to turn, not my wife grabbing the side of the car going tired. I like, I, I, they're the same thing. You're nuts.

Brand is in use tonight. Brenda, what's up? Hi, how are y'all doing?

Way better than we deserve.

How can we help? We have four married adult children. And they, um, one of our daughters, uh, wants little to do with this anymore. And she has asked us not to contact her. Why?

Um, I'm not sure. Um, yeah, you're. I'm not sure if she, well, I think she blames this for some stuff. There was some abuse in her marriage, and she's getting divorced. And it's.

Now that now there's blaming us. Hmm, okay. All right. So, um, I don't know if I don't know what I was going on there. Gotcha.

I understand. Um, so anyway, uh, our hope is that she will want to be part of our family again. Uh-huh. And so we are revising our wills and our wishes that she would get her portion of the inheritance for right now.

I don't want to give her anything because she's pretty much less. Uh-huh.

“Um, so my question is, do we put conditions that she would need to make to access her portion of the inheritance?”

Um, I don't want to write her out. Um, but I do want some conditions on it. And I don't want her siblings to have to decide. No, I would not have them deciding anything. No.

That's not fair. It's not fair to them. Correct. They become the bad guy then. And she's good at naming other people as bad guys.

We already know that. So, um, I think I want to reframe the discussion. Okay. This feels like that she lost her birthright. And that is not the case because when you decide what you decide to do with the money that you own,

you are in zero way ethically morally or spiritually obligated to leave it to your children. It's your money. They have zero moral ethical or spiritual rights to your money. All of them. Not just the one that's a stray.

Okay. Let's start with that. Yeah. They don't have any rights. Okay.

So you're not able to punish them. And this feels like you're a feelings or hurt and they should be hurt. I hear the pain in your voice. And they should be pain there. Because an adult kid who's misbehaving at this level, it hurts for their mom and their dad.

And I don't want you to do this out of emotion or punishment. Instead, what I would do and what I have done with our will is that I am not leaving you my money to because you're entitled to it.

“I'm leaving it but to you because I think you're the best possible manager of God's provision.”

And if the way that you treat your siblings or the way you treat your parents is an indicator that you're not a person of character, then you are disqualified as someone who I'm going to leave God's money to to manage. I'm managing it for God. I don't think God wants me to let his money be managed by someone who's out of control.

That's stewardship. Correct. And that's a different emotion.

“It's reacting out of a different set of emotions.”

So it could be that let's say the kid was doing heroin. Okay? Well, you can't leave a heroin addict to million dollars. It'll kill him because they will go buy a whole bunch of heroin and overdose. Correct.

So we're doing them a favor. It's an act of love to not leave someone who's got character issues. A big polymoney because it magnifies their character issues. Okay? And so it's not like, well, you don't call me a Christmas time,

and you never call me on Mother's Day, so I'm cutting you out of the will.

That's a way different discussion. And I really wouldn't frame it that way in your mind for your mental health. I would just say, I'm leaving the money to the people that I can trust are going to manage in a way that I will be proud of. And some day, if you're back in our lives, we'll change the will again. But I wouldn't leave any provision for her to be back in until you put her back in.

While you're alive. That just sounds wrong. Why? Because it sounds wrong to you because you think she's entitled to money. I don't think she's entitled to a freaking dime.

And I'll think your other three kids are entitled to a freaking dime. It's your choice. They're not entitled.

You're operating from a framework that you're morally reprehensible if you don't leave your children money.

That is not true. Now, I actually am leaving my kids almost all of our money. But they're all functioning, high functioning, spiritual character filled people. Okay, so am I hearing you correct? I don't put her in it at all.

I would not put her in it at all until she changes and then I would change the will. Okay. Because otherwise, someone else is going to have to administer your punishment after you're gone. What is it was more like? She had to have a job. She had to be doing the baby steps where it wasn't really a character thing.

Well, it's a character thing when you cut your parents out. Yes. And then you want their money. I agree. I agree.

You know, if you won't talk to me, you lose the right to my money. Hello. It's pretty simple. For me to leave you money and you won't talk to me as a fairly inconsistent construction. I mean, that's just, that's weird.

But you have a broken heart as a mother. I do. And I don't want you to function from that broken heart. I want you to reset the framework on this.

“Yeah. The only thing I would add is, I think it's important for you if you're husband to be reflective.”

When your daughter said, I'm going through this bad divorce. And for whatever reason, let's frame it negatively because we're going to be on your side on this call. She's just kind of spun out and she's trying to blame anybody in everybody for her misfortune and her broken relationship. And she said, I don't want to y'all in my life. This is all your fault.

I'm out.

In that pain in heartbreak, if you're first thought to re-establish your footing was, well, then I'm taking you out of my will.

I'm going to find a way to hurt you back. As a parent, I would challenge both of us on that impulse. You know what I'm saying? Because what that impulse is that the impulse to try to go feel big and strong again, like to regain our footing, it's all that's doing is taking a giant step over the chasm that is grief that my daughter doesn't want to have a relationship with me right now for whatever reason.

Yeah. But Dave's right. Nobody's, if you gave all of your money to a local home and shelter that your kids couldn't say, my parents are terrible people. They could say, oh, we really wanted that money or we're hoping to get it. But you'd be doing what you wanted to do with your money.

And so Dave's right. You're not in debt to your kids, right?

“And if you want to set stipulations for who gets your money, you get to do that.”

Yep. 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.

It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com. [ Music ] So one of the icons on one of the national treasures on the stage of history that developed what we now call

yourself improvement, movement, or whatever, motivational speakers. One of the very first that received Rockstar status was a guy named Ziggler.

“And if you never heard Ziggler, you should look him up immediately and start watching and listening to Ziggler.”

If you're my age, he was, you know, the equivalent literally of the Beatles, but in that world, you know, is absolutely incredible.

And many years ago, my friend, a guy who became my friend, Tom Ziggler picked up the phone and called Nashville, living in Dallas and said, hey, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Ziggler, but he and my mom listened to the Dave Ramsey show every day. And if Dave's ever down here, they'd like to have dinner with him. And I'm like, I'll be there tomorrow.

And because to get to meet, you know, this iconic figure was incredible. So we went down and I think you were with us, I'm pretty sure one of your sisters and your mom was with us. And we go this little Italian joint in a strip center. Yes. And it was a zig-favorite restaurant, it wasn't much of a restaurant.

No, it was mom and dad love that place. Actually, the food was good. The food was good. It was not fancy. You would not know that that was the place to go.

No, no, it was not the place to go.

“And I wouldn't have thought it would have been where I would have met a childhood icon.”

And that began a friendship between Tom and I and Zig and I and your sisters and I. And because I had been following his material since I was young. Mom and dad were in the real estate business growing up. And then I had the pleasure of interviewing Zig about 20 years ago, long form when he turned 80 on one of our stages. And we taped that.

And I haven't, I hadn't watched it in almost 20 years. And I pulled it up and watched it. No, and you guys were coming up here and it still sings. The old hits, they still play. Right.

You know, truth never changes.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible. So Tom and his sisters got in touch with me in 600th birthday. He passed away a few years ago. His 100th birthday is coming up this fall. And they asked if we could use the Ramsey Events Center to have a huge event.

With a lot of speakers, a lot of today's best speakers. Ramaphini and I are among them that are going to be speaking at this event. October the 16th and we're furnishing the venue. And the Zigler organization is doing the event, of course. But it's absolutely going to be incredible.

We're excited about it. Tom, thanks for helping us. Thanks for letting us be the host. I guess. What a blessing.

We've got 13 speakers who have had a huge impact in their own right. And they all have one thing in common. And that is the Zigler, his message is philosophy inspired them. And some way to go into their market and make a difference.

“That's what we're going to be talking about.”

Well, I've stalled so many of his sayings. And I used to credit him. And then I quit at some point. And I thought they were mine. And but then the others.

I actually do remember most of him is his. But I have to go back and I go, I forgot that that was his. And it's just I had listened to his tapes over and over and over and over again. It was just ingrained into my brain to say that phrase.

Absolutely incredible. So if you've ever heard of the power positive thinking or goal setting or salesmanship,

see you at the top was his largest book. It was absolutely incredible. And again, we're honored to have this event here. I did have our team pull a couple of clips from that 20 year old interview. It's only the constant student who is preparing for the future.

By the time you get out of college, the information that you learned is obsolete. Because the world is moving too fast. That's what he said 20 years ago. Boy, how much more does that process that it now? Yeah.

Let's fire that clip. Let's watch it. The educated person of the day is prepared for a world that no longer exists. It's only the constant student who is preparing for the future. It's only the constant student who is preparing for the future.

You've got to keep on learning incidentally that also dramatically increases your creativity. Because if all you know about anything, then you learn something brand new about it. All of a sudden, or creative idea comes out of that.

you are employing you really goes. Constant learning. And he did. He always had a book. And he used to say, one of his funny sayings that I have quoted him on.

And he said, "I get up every morning. I read the Bible, read the newspaper, so I can tell what both sides are doing." Every day.

And he said, "I always take notes.

And one of the most intimidating things was he, I had about 6,000 people in Arena at Endales, and he and Miss Jane came to the event, and he sat in the third row while I'm speaking for several hours and took notes." No, it's these zig-ziggler.

“I mean, that's like you playing guitar in front of Peter Frampton, okay?”

Yeah, and he's taking pictures of it. And he's watching how you do it. Yeah, I can't even breathe up there. I'm like these zig-zigglers. I just want you come up here and do this.

I mean, it was incredible.

And so humble and fun, a man of faith, and bold with his faith. He told me one night we were laughing and cutting up. He said, "Dave, you know if..." He said, "People ask me what I would be if I wasn't a Baptist." And I said, "Well, what was that?"

And he said, "I'd be ashamed." (laughter) It was so awesome. All right, let's play this next one because I think this was even more German about people's skills because it's still 20 years ago he's saying this. And in the middle of AI, listen to this quote.

“In today's high-tech environment, out there in the marketplace, what do you think are the most important skills that people need to be able to win?”

I believe regardless of what your profession is and what you're doing, I believe with all my heart that your people's skills take front and center beyond any doubt at all about it. If you can get along with people and when I'm talking about it, I'm talking about it in the marketplace, but I'm also talking about the home and in the community, because 80% of all the counseling is because of relationship difficulties.

You know, parent, child, teacher, student, husband, wife, and so forth. And in the marketplace and in the community, having of us, having enough friends, having of us really are cognizant of the fact that we need people if we're going to be a complete person ourselves. John, that's right up to you. That's something in your turn.

I mean, I was just reading an article this morning about a business in California that is the managing owner is AI, it's an AI agent. And it has human employees, but it's an AI agent. And when my son who 16 sets down and says dad, like, are there going to be any jobs for me?

What do I study in college? The thing I always come back to is what Zig just said 20 years ago,

if you can connect with people and you can help people exhale when they're in your presence. When you're a net joy to human beings, that's the best shot you got. Absolutely. I asked AI a question I said imagine if 10 years from now robots and AI can do everything better than humans can when it comes to work. What should we start teaching our kids today so they can thrive 10 years from now? And it's this wisdom that Ramsey teaches that Zig Zigler taught and it's really, it's just truth paraphrase from God's word.

In a way, I heard a great thing, you know, great preachers, they tell a timeless message and a timely way. And people need wisdom now.

“They need truth now. There's a lot of knowledge on AI, but there's not wisdom and the truth is hidden.”

Right. And the people skills the ability to connect with humans so that wisdom can be transferred is, it's vital for anything. And, you know, one of the things that the technology generation struggles with is relational issues. And loneliness, because whether they're disconnected and so solving those two things for you. If you're 23, you know, I can teach you a lot of stuff, but if I can teach you to work with people, you'll be okay. Yep. Yep. And you teach your character, you'll be okay. And teach you to have friends, like John talks about all the time. You know, one of this loneliness epidemic we have in our culture today. And, you know, pushing that aside.

And I just believe in my mind when I'm watching that and going, that's 20 year old information. And he was 80 sitting there doing that. That's crazy. Tom honored to call you my friend. And we're looking forward to October the 16th. How do they get tickets right quick? Go to ziggler100.com. And we've got a special. We've got a Ramsey code. So you put in Ramsey 50 when you go to ziggler100.com. And it will save you $50. And if you get the general admission ticket, your spouse comes for free. So we're doing that for all of our Ramsey listeners. So by one get one free check it out.

Number 100.com.

And all the extra gas and grocery runs money can get tight before you know it to really get your money under control and keep it that way.

“You're going to need a plan. And that's what you'll get with the every dollar budget app. It helps you track your spending free up cash to put toward debt and savings.”

And it's the simplest way to make a plan for your money before the month begins. So no more wondering where your money's going. You're telling it where to go download every dollar in the App Store or Google Play and start for free today. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 1611, Adjust Balance and Scales are the lords. All the weights in the bag are his work. Less Brown says wanting something is not enough. You must be hungry for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.

I remember watching his videos back when we watched the eggs two and he said, "You got to be hungry. You got to be hungry." He's a lot of fun. I would have loved to have seen him live. Zig, Zig and... Well, that's his alive. Oh, he is. Is he still due events? Yeah, they're out there somewhere. I mean, he's got to be in his 80s. And he'll catch a less Brown event. He actually did an introduction for me one time when I was in LA.

Yeah, he was married to somebody like some famous artist at some point.

It was amazing. But anyway, he had a great career and less was fine. He was part of that old group that was like that old gang.

“Tony is with us in Detroit, Michigan. Hey, Tony, what's up?”

Hey, Dave, what's going on? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. So I'm on a big step along with no savings. I live at home. My parents have about $47,000 in debt. But a video production company, business, and debt income is not consistent or enough. I would get an overnight. My question is, should I get a second job for steady income or focus on landing better contracts? How old are you?

About 28. Okay. How long have you been working the video business? Well, it's been about 22 years. And what will be your income from the video business net profit taxable for the year?

For this year, for 2026, when we end the year and I look at your books and I say, here's what you spent and here's what you made and there's your net profit. What's it going to say?

That's going to be, it's going to be under, under team today. Last year we did under 10K. Yeah. Are you the 56,000 last year and in this year is just like, this year is pretty much like, it's not that it's not going to be great this year. Okay. What will you definitely need a new job?

Not a second job. This is, and you just, this is at best a side hustle. I mean, it's a $10,000. That's $800 a month. That's starvation. Yeah.

“I mean, you know that, right? I'm not telling you something you didn't understand. That's not light. The light's not coming on. You already knew this, right?”

Yeah, I just thought that. I just figured, you know, I did great last year. What did you make last year? What did you make last year? Well, that was, it was, it was low, but I just knew I could make it. With the thing, you know, I started it. I was like, okay, I can make it, but I didn't profit a ton.

Like I, like I, like, like, you haven't made it. What is this, if you were a business unit at Ramsey, we would close you. Right. What is this dream of being a small business owner of being a videographer? What is this dream costing you in terms of living any sort of semblance of a good life?

You have no income and you live with your parents. You're stressed. You're exhausted. Yeah. You look in the mirror and you don't feel proud of who you see staring back at you.

It's costing you everything, brother. I want you to keep working on this dream. But meantime, I want you to earn a full time 28 year old person's income of $70,000 a year during the day. And I want you to work on this dream at night and on weekends until you get it figured out. Because you don't have it figured out yet how to make money out of this.

I don't know enough about the business to say do these three things. And suddenly you'll be profitable. I don't, I wouldn't be stupid to step into that. But I can tell you that the video world, anything that produces audio or video or written content, has dramatically changed in the last 24 months.

Because as you know, Tony, and I don't know as much about it as you do.

But the technology is moving so fast and getting so cheap, so quick. The stuff that we used to pay $40,000 for a camera to produce you can do with an iPhone now. And we do around here. We've got some $40,000 per camera and we've got some iPhones. And we've got some $2,500 cameras that are better than the $40,000 cameras. Because that stuff is moving that fast.

And so I'm the guy writing the checks. It's on part, on part of the business I understand. But it is moving in this current world. It's a technology based business. And the big discussion among the filmmakers and all our video people all through the building right now is how much of Odyssey was done. And it's the biggest thing out there and how much of it was done high quality film, but on the cheap, it's scary, wild.

And it's bustling out. I mean, all kinds of records at the box office. So I don't know what I'm talking about. Except I do know I'm talking to a 28 year old guy who's been making $10,000 in lives with his mom.

And so you've got to change that for your sake.

“And then can you go back and start again and reset in a different technology viewpoint?”

And what it is you're trying to provide and what is the server share providing is it now antiquated? Because if it's five years old, it's antiquated. Or if what you really want to do is to make movies or to make short films. And you want to stay in this business, you might have to start filming weddings. Or you might have to start filming birthday parties or you might like it.

You're going to have to expand this picture of what you want to do to make an income. Yeah. You don't have the, you know, micro and I talk about this all the time. You can't just follow your passion. No. It's one of the worst pieces of advice. Yeah.

Follow your passion. You'll end up doing it. Exactly where Tony is. You don't want to follow your passion. Okay. You've got to use some stinking common sense about this.

And so because your dream will turn into an nightmare.

“Because you look up and you go, where are that five years of my life go?”

And what could I've done with that time? The lost opportunity of that time and all that stuff. Daniel is with us in Jackson, Mississippi. Hey, Daniel, what's up? Hey, y'all. Thank you for taking my call.

I thought in order to get the call. Can you too allow it? When I went to financial teaching University, I was a loan officer. So that was an entire, uh, but it's going to put me out there. Hey, well, I'm so sorry.

I'm planning to banker. And I don't, I don't think even the loan he could save me from that. No, man, my best friend of the world's a banker. We go round and round. So it's, I'm glad you're here.

How's that we help? So here. So I have one question in three parts. If that makes sense of it for the, my two-year-old daughter through Christmas birthday, baby shower before she was born and accumulated $700 total.

“So my wife and I weren't going to know what, what should we do with this money?”

A, when should we give it to her? Part B, and then part C, how do we teach a child about them? Because we have no idea how to do that with a child. So I kind of want to ask those three, uh, questions as part of the one bigger question. I'm, I'm short on time, so I'm going to machine gun you.

But I'm going to send you a copy of Rachel and I was booked. They're her first number one best seller called smart money smart kids that answers your questions. Okay. But there's four things you got to teach a kid. And there's the same four things adults have to do.

They have to learn to work. Save, give, and enjoy money.

And they should always be doing all four age appropriately.

When you're two, we don't send you to the salt mines. But we will ask you to pick up two toys. We pick up a teen and we call you the best room cleaner on the planet. That's when you're two. But you still associate work and you get a dollar when the room is clean.

You still associate work with money. And I meet 52 year olds who don't associate work with money yet. So work, spend, save, and give. That's the thing. And Rachel always says and she says it in that book, more is caught than taught.

If you suck with handling money, you're out of control. Your money is chaotic. You guys fight about money. Money is going to be a source of pain for this child. But if mom and dad are in control, they live a disciplined life.

They enjoy money. They save money. They give money and the child witnesses all of that. And witnesses cooperation between mom and dad, the child will grow up to do what they saw. And the proof of that is every time you open your mouth towards your child today, your father comes out of your mouth.

That puts us out of the Ramsay Show in the books.

We'll be back with you before you know it.

“In the meantime remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace.”

And that's to walk daily with the prince of peace.

Rice Jesus. [Music]