He’s Still Living With His Ex’s Parents and Needs a Way Out

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Normal is broke, and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life.

From the Ramsey Network and the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, host of the Rachel Cruz Show, and my daughter is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.
John's in Orlando.

Hey, John, how are you?

Hey, Mr. Ramies.
It's nice to meet you.

So I've actually struggled to keep steady employment over the past decade. I've been fired several times due to personality and behavioral challenges.

You know, I've got over 70 grand in federal student loans, considering joining the Navy as an officer, but to pay off debt and to build a career.

At the same time, I'm considering joining starting a podcast with my friend,

Ben, but I'm unsure what to do.

I wouldn't be alive today without God and my parents funding me, but at 40 years old, I'd like to be independent.

At this point in time, no employer will hire me, even low-paying jobs that you have suggested other people do to build a work record. I'm not sure what to do.

What kind of advice can you give me to help me out? How many jobs in 10 years

it's actually 11 years but 14 14 jobs in 11 years you're 40 so what'd you do before 29

well i was actually i spent eight years uh in you know in college because i i made a mistake early on in my life i didn't have a plan i didn't really know what i wanted to do I had a brief window of time where I had good grades, but that was only when, you know,

go back to the other then. Thank you.
I go back to the other then. You had 14 jobs in 11 years, so it's not even a year each.

And you said behavior and personality challenges cause you to lose your jobs. Is that what you said?

Yeah, so I have a disability. I have a personality disability.

And it took me many years to figure that out through different neurological assessments.

What is the diagnosis?

NPD

is what I've been told I have.

But I was my mom believes I mean when I was I was vaccinated when I was a kid and my body rejected the vaccine and it caused me to have epilepsy when I was younger and ADD and a few.

So how does this manifest itself in the workplace? Like you're just a butt?

So what it's caused me to do is challenge authority to be a difficult employee to work with. What you're describing would be normally, I would think, belligerents.

Yeah, I guess you could put that in that category. And is it episodes, John, when it happens? Like when it occurred,

are you aware of it? Like when it's happening, or how does that work?

Because I'm just trying to figure out the tools to put in place for your life going forward to be able to function in society, right? I mean, to be able to hold a job.

Well, hold a relationship with anything. And I haven't been able to function in society.
Yeah, that's the point. And the Navy doesn't do well with people who have trouble with authority.

Yeah, I realize that.

That's going to be a nasty conflict.

I mean, the whole military thing is authority. You know that.
So

it's command structure, and you will respect that even if your commander is an idiot. So,

wow. Okay.

So are you getting help with this in some way?

I wish Dr. Deloney was here today because Rachel and I are going, oh no.
But

yeah, but mean,

is there a treatment for this where you can become functional?

Honestly, no.

There's no cure for it.

I've proposed an idea to, because according to research, the reason why people have NPD is because of low gray matter in the brain.

I think that it can be cured with nanobots, that you can inject nanobots in the body and then have them programmed to heal the frontal cortex of the brain.

We just left my page.

You just left me behind at the airport, dude.

But no,

there's no support, really.

So,

just from a common sense, your older brother talking to you, listening to you, who loves you, just from that, what I'm reaching for is to try to find some way that, because there's not a career, self-employed especially,

that pays people for misbehaving.

Okay.

And so I'm trying to find some way that you create a sustainable

life

for

that allows you to be employed, that allows you to be engaged in other relationships, that allows you to do those things. And

I think

the problem is not the career issue, it's the symptom. Right.
So that's what I'm asking you, John. Are there other tools, whether it's through therapy or whatnot, that when things happen, right?

And even like you could take anxiety as an example, like neural, like something is happening chemically in your body when that happens, but there are tools to get you back grounded when it comes to that.

Is there anything when you feel that rising up in you?

Has anyone given you any set of tools of awareness? I do this, I do that, to at least be able to,

with saying like just a nine to five, right? To be able to have any level of function. Has anyone given you any tools at all? Or are you just kind of.
Cursor, any kind of pharmacology?

Yeah, I mean, I have been given tools, tools, but one of the things that happens when I go into these jobs is I bring bitterness from previous jobs into it and kind of self-sabotage at the early stage.

And they already have this,

I don't know how to say this, but they already know because they can see my resume that I haven't kept jobs. So they're kind of

in my mind with a lot of people. It becomes a bit more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That's logical. That makes sense.
Yeah. All right.

So, dude, the answer is that this is above Rachel and my pay grade.

I don't know how to answer your question because the answer to your question is to find some healing

so that you can hold a job, so that you can hold a quality relationship.

There's not a career path, and self-employed people oftentimes become self-employed because they can't do anything else, but it doesn't keep you from having to struggle with that because your customers are going to to experience what your bosses were experiencing.

And you're not going to have any customers. I mean, if you're my mechanic and you're a but

when I'm the customer, then you're not my mechanic anymore and you go out of business. So, I mean, you fix my heat and air, but you're a butt.
Well, you're not my heat and air guy anymore. Okay.

And so,

you know, if that's how it's meant, if belligerence is how this is manifesting, which I'm not an expert in your area, so I don't know what I'm talking about.

But I'm just listening to you as a friend and saying, I'm going to be in the therapy realm. I'm going to be be talking to Dr.
John Deloney, which I will put you on hold.

We'll try to make you a caller on his show. Maybe he can actually add something intelligent to this conversation because I can't.
I don't know what to say other than you've got to get

your ability to cope. Yeah.
Well, and we have found people that

are successful when they have very obvious limitations, whether it's a mental illness, a physical illness, a disability.

You know, we talked to people on the show and they are, you know, legally blind, but yet they're making $150,000 a year because they figured out something that got them a job and they figured it out.

So there is a level

that I don't want, John. The thing I would not want for you is playing into any level of victimhood.
No. That this is a horrible thing, but people do have serious setbacks, but they overcome them.

And we talk to them on the show all the time. And so I don't know what that looks like for you.
Create a predictable environment. 100%.
So that's what I'm saying, though, is don't fall victim to this

and make excuses so that that's where the work of the healing and the proactive, you know, know, being proactive in that way is going to be your next step. It has to be.
Man.

But I think it is possible. I think there's something that you can do, honestly, John, to find healing and to be a productive member of society.
I do too.

I think there's something other than nanobots. Hold on, Christian will pick up.
We'll get you hooked up with Deloney.

I've been doing this show for over 30 years, and some of the saddest calls I have taken are from situations that are completely preventable.

Yeah, and what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible, are people that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly and they don't have life insurance.

We actually took a question of a lady and she had three kids, pregnant, and husband didn't have life insurance.

I'm like, I can't even imagine. Or even if it was opposite, right? If a mom passed away, there's a dad with kids and trying to figure out how am I going to afford childcare?

How do I outsource some stuff that maybe she was doing?

And it just takes the grief and the sadness of something like a sudden death to a whole new level. Like when you have to think through how am I going to pay my bills

next week. Yeah, in the middle of all that grief.
Like it's just, it is, it's terrible.

And so life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive.

Xander is the place that Winston and I actually get all of our life insurance. And we keep re-upping it because I'm like, I just want it there.

Like there's something about that safety of knowing that you have money if something suddenly happens. And it doesn't cost much because Xander shops among a gazillion different companies.

It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here.

You got to say it out loud and you got to say, I'm going to say I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza.

There really is. So that is one thing to do to say I love you to your family.

So we've used Xander for all of our family's needs for insurance for many years, including, of course, term life insurance. To get a free quote, go to 800-356-4282.

That's 800-356-4282 or go to xander.com.

Jacob is in Atlanta. Hi, Jacob.
How are you?

Good. How are you? Better than I deserve.
What's up?

So I'm kind of in a predicament.

I'm having to

move out.

I'm only 21.

I make $35 an hour

at my 40-hour job. And then I get to do my own side work on Fridays and Saturdays.
And

I've got

$2,900 on my truck, and I have $1,000 in credit card debt.

And I've never been on my own, so I guess I'm just kind of

nervous about it. Being out on your own, what caused you having to move out?

So funny story. I actually live with my ex and her parents at the moment.
Your

within

my ex-girlfriend.

Okay, so you...

When did y'all break up? I'm sorry.

We broke up in

February of this year. And you've been living with your ex-girlfriend's parents for this long?

Yes. Oh my gosh, Jacob, blink twice.
Are you okay? Awkward.

Yes, I'm okay.

It's no.

But you got to get out. I would assume that her parents are like.

Wow. These are some unusual humans.

They are nice, they sound very nice, good humans. They're weird, just good, yeah.

Number one, that you were in there in the first place living with their daughter under their roof. That's weird.
Number one, super weird. Y'all break up and then they don't throw your butt out.

Yeah, that's super weird. Okay, we uh, we didn't,

we built like a tiny house at their house for years. Oh, okay.

Well, on their property, excuse me. Maybe the roof didn't extend over that.
Maybe makes it a little bit better. Yeah, that that's it.
Okay, so you're out on your own for the first time, and you're 21.

So are you out now or you're moving out?

You've been there for February. You knew this was coming since February.
How much money have you saved, honey?

Well,

I've only got

$4,000 saved. Okay, so go get an apartment.

Well, I found a house that's rent off.

You don't need rental straight from the owner. You need non-homelessness.

That's all you need. Don't be homeless.
That's it. Go get a cheap one-bedroom apartment and get your butt out of weird

as soon as you can.

And then plug yourself into a good church. And we'll get you onto every dollar and get your money stuff working for you.
And let's start making every dollar that you have behave.

You should have more than $4,000 because you have no overhead. And I don't know where your money's been going since February.
But you make enough money. you should have a stack of cash right now.

I haven't always had this job since February. Oh, good.
Okay, that makes more sense then.

I've had this job for about two months.

Okay, would you agree with me that if you make 35 an hour for 40 hours plus side hustle, you should be able to stack some cash if you keep your rent cheap and go ahead and knock these two debts out pretty quick?

Yes,

I've been saving about $1,000 a week. Yeah, there you go.
That's my man. Okay, good.

And the house that I'm looking at renting is $1,000 a month. It's pretty cheap around here.

Yeah, that'd be real cheap around Atlanta.

And making sure, too, that when you're doing that, that you're not signing yourself into this idea that you have to buy this house either. I don't want you locked into anything weird.

So making sure, contract-wise, you can get out.

I mean,

yes, I can get out, but I also feel like the house would be a bit of an investment. No, you don't need an investment.
Not right now. $21, you have $4,000 and for $3,000 worth of debt.

You don't need an investment right now. You need a place to live and not be homeless and not be in the middle of weird.
So let's get your life like sustainable and

on a rhythm that's normal before we start talking about investing.

Okay, so no, I actually would not do this house deal.

I smell a rat. Okay, I want you to get an apartment that's $1,000 or less for a one-bedroom and get out and have no human beings bothering you, no weird crap swimming around in your head.

It's just you, some bread, some milk, some electricity, and go to work, get the truck paid off, get the credit card paid off, start stacking some cash, build Jacob a life to where you can stand with your shoulders square, with a pocket full of money and no debt, and then we can talk about really becoming a millionaire, building some wealth, and you're going to be able to do all of that, but we've got to get you so far away from where you are to even get you to zero.

You're at your subterranean right now.

You're at a negative 32 degrees. I got to get you up to zero before we can get you warm.

Okay?

And so there's so much crap in your life that you've got to clean out. And so

if you were my

nephew or my son, I would put my arm around you.

I'd walk you into a great church there in Atlanta, Georgia, that's got some good men in it that can walk along beside you and say, hey, here's how you be a man. Here's how you walk with God.

Here's how you handle your money. Let's get you out of debt.
Let's get you in a sustainable, boring situation. And then that's where you build exciting from.
You don't build exciting from desperation.

You build it from boring.

Let's get up to boring first.

And so go get you a simple one-bedroom. Don't try to buy a house.
Don't do the rent-town thing. I'd pass on it.
And, dude, this freaking week, get out of there right now.

Right now.

We're cheering for you, Jacob. Wow.
You can do it. You can do it, man.
Here's to Jacob. This is, wow.

I cannot imagine the percentage of human beings that allow this person that broke up from their girlfriend to stay on their property for nine months. I don't understand.

I don't understand being there in the first place, but

I said that already. But

the likelihood, no, no, no, no.

Well, less about the parent. It'd be more for me.

If I'm him, I don't want to be there. Yeah.
Going into the kitchen, you know what I mean? You're like, hi,

Sally. Sorry, me and

Ashley broke up. You know, like, I mean, that's just weird.
All right, here we go. Jacob, we're for you.
Yeah, we want you to win. We want you to win.

But yeah, you got, you're also processing all the emotions of this. And a separate, clean location that doesn't have a complication to it of any kind, like rent to own or in-law, former in-law sortas,

all that stuff is going to clean your mind out. And that's what I mean by boring.
That's what I want to lead you towards. Melissa's in Hartford, Connecticut.
Hey, Melissa, what's up?

Hi, Dave and Rachel. Thanks so much for taking my call.
Sure. How can we help?

So I work for a home health agency. They put me on a bonus structure where I'm now making 5% on the incremental above my quota.
As long as I hit my quota, I get 5% of the gross profit above my quota.

And they pull it pretty much to the end of the year. They cap my bonus at $2,500 a quarter, and then they're going to pull and whatever is left over, I'll get a lump sum at the end of the year.

I'm wondering if I should take that lump sum and invest it back into the company for equity, or if I should focus on paying off my mortgage, which is my last remaining debt.

Regardless of whether you have a mortgage or not, you do not invest into a small business where you're a minority shareholder.

Okay. Because you have absolutely zero control.

You could wake up six months later, the owner starts doing cocaine, runs the thing into debt, runs the whole thing into zero, and all your money's worth zero, and you have absolutely no governmental say.

The governance documents when you're a minority shareholder. In other words, if you don't own 51%,

your vote don't count.

Okay. And they can vote for stupid, and you have to stand there and watch it.

So it's like a single, it's like almost investing in a single stock. It's worse.

It's worse. Okay.
Because you can't get out of it.

And I have a follow-up question for you, Dave.

We have a pretty significant mortgage. We have like $650,000 left on the house.
We have about $410,000 in a brokerage account, 200 in our 401ks,

and a small emergency fund.

And it does put a lot of stress on us, the amount we pay in the mortgage and the taxes.

Would you recommend anything on how to make

it? I mean, you sound like you've been listening a while, and you know we're going to tell you to take the 410 and put it on the mortgage. You knew that, right? Okay.

I think so, but it's scary to do.

It's also scary to have $650,000 breathing down your dadgum neck.

Right. Yeah, I put the $4.10 on it, refinance, and get you

current rates are down.

Let's get the thing refinanced, get you in your mortgage. Bonus at the end of this year, too, Melissa.

That's going to be some some extra cash to throw at it too so yeah it's great yeah invest in something you can control the outcome and or get out of minority shareholder positions aren't one of them

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You ever feel like you're doing everything right with your money, but you're still like a rat in a wheel, you're not getting anywhere? Well, you're not alone.

Our own Jade Washaw Ramsey personality has a a brand new book out called What No One Tells You About Money, The Real Key to Getting Unstuck from Someone Who's Been That, Done That, Got the T-shirt, right?

Yeah, got the T-shirt, wore it out, gave it to Goodwill.

I'm telling you, there we go. Good looking cover on that, too.
Good looking cover. I like it.
So, you just got back from LA. You've been out doing book tour stuff.
That's right, promoting it.

You were out there doing a podcast, I guess. That's right.
What were y'all talking about on that?

Yeah, Ellen Fisher, great podcast if you haven't seen it. Yeah, we're just talking about how the emotions of money are really what hold people back, right?

We give them a plan, we give them a baby, the baby steps. It's very logical, it's very practical, it's very number-heavy, but it's not usually the numbers that are the problem.

You know, when you start working that plan, you do come against different emotions because we're asking you to change your behavior. Yeah.

And whenever we're talking about changing your behavior, you know, the child inside comes out, right? And there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of frustration.

Some of us are dealing with a lot of guilt and frustration, guilt and shame, pity, so many things. And if we don't recognize it for what it is, we can't solve it.
And therefore, a lot of us get stuck.

Yeah, I love that you wrote about this, though, because I'm like, it just brings the humanity to the system, right?

And we talk so much about emotions on the show in the sense that we know we're dealing with people, right?

And I do think a lot of people in the financial space, they do like, they talk numbers all day long.

And I do feel like that is something that is so true and it resonates with people because they are waking up and

what they are feeling, what they are thinking that day is going to drive their choices and decisions. And so, you kind of like hitting that straight on is so smart.
I mean, absolutely.

Think about the advice that we give here every day. We're telling people, hey, you're not going to see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working at one.

A lot of times, we're giving people tough news, like, hey, you might need to sell your home.

This is not something that in one second you're okay with.

This is something that you take home, you tell your spouse, you're mulling it over, you're feeling a type of way about it. All the logistics, all the logistics.

that's right um in the book i talk about when sam and i were walking the baby steps we had been in it for a while and for those of you who don't know two uh four hundred sixty thousand dollars of debt we were paying off long time frame seven and a half years and at one point i had just gotten so frustrated because uh the bill collectors were calling me and it was just like two steps forward one step back and i realized in that moment with all my trying to do good I was leaving out pieces of the plan and I wasn't doing it exactly as it stated.

And a lot of us come up against that. We're like, well, I feel like I'm doing everything right.
Why am I not going forward?

And you kind of hit that wall and you want to give up. But then if you step back and you kind of do a little bit of an audit, you go, wait a minute, I am missing something here.

And for us, it was instead of paying minimum payments on all the debt and then putting, you know, everything else on the smallest debt, we were just taking all the money and putting it on the smallest debt.

Well, yeah, you're going to have a problem. Right.
So sometimes we're so excited about moving forward. We're leaving things out.
We're doing things wrong, and that can cause frustration.

I talk about that in the book. Yeah,

because you don't get traction. That's right.
Anytime you have set a goal to move from a place to another place, the thing that starts you is hope. Yes.
And the thing that keeps you going is hope.

But you lose hope if you're not making progress. That's right.
And so, you know, if you go to the gym and you work out and you diet and you gain three pounds after 30 days,

nobody's going to keep doing that. That's just weird.
Yeah, I call that toil with no traction in the book.

It's when your results aren't matching your efforts, and that's frustrating. And then there's the fear part, right?

Where we're asking people to change and do things in their life to have an outcome that many of us have never actually seen in real life.

I remember when Dave, I used to listen to Dave on the radio when I was going through our debt-free journey, and he was talking about buying cars in cash.

And one day you'd be able to pay off your house, and one day you'd be a millionaire. I never saw that.

So there was this part of of what he's saying makes a lot of sense to me, but this guy better be right because I'm about to embark on serious life change.

And if it doesn't pan out, so there's this what if, what if I do all of this and it still doesn't work? Is it going to be worth it? What if I make all these changes?

You know, I'm working extra instead of going to my kids' recital. I'm working extra instead, right? Yes, it better be worth it on the other end.

And so, there's a lot of fear of the unknown, a lot of fear of change. I talk about that in the book and how much of that is.
So, there's three chapters in the book called It's a Pain in the Butt.

It's a pain in the butt to change. It's hard.
Change requires change. Yes, yes.
Well, and that's scary. I'm like, when you're doing something that is so different and so new,

we all feel that, right? Or you're like, you're entering into a whole new world. You're ride a bicycle the first time, it's anxiety.
Yeah, and you're about to fall.

I'm good at this, and I don't want to not be good, right? And so, you feel like you're kind of going backwards in that sense because you're like, no, I'm good at this, even if what I'm doing is

at least I know

how it feels. Exactly.
And changing that is hard. So, what no one tells you about money is the new book from Jade Washaw.
And this is from someone who's actually done it.

So

if you don't like theory, you'll like this book. I like practical application.

I want to find somebody who did it and won. This is what it looks like to win.
Ask

her and Sam. They pull this off.

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So I know when Rachel and I have written books, and this is a fabulous book.

I remember going through the manuscript a few months back when we were building the thing, you were building it, and I get to look at it because I'm a CEO.

I was thinking,

this is a book about hope, but not

fake hope. Yeah.
Where real hope comes from. Well, that's the thing here.
Um, I really wanted to shoot people straight and and not dilly-dally around the reality of what you're going to face.

And so, when you read this book, you're gonna go

on an emotional ride because I'm telling stories in it that I've never told anybody about some of the things you can encounter, some of those real emotions that pop up when you're working with a spouse, when you're dealing with guilt and shame over past mistakes.

How many times do we take calls on the Ramsey show when one spouse has brought in an

an inordinate amount of debt and the other spouse has to say, okay, I'm on board, right?

How often do we deal with situations? That was me, that was Sam and I. How often do we deal with situations where

a spouse has gambled or they've made bad choices with money, a bad business plan, right?

Those are real things that really affect, or you know, you're ready to start a family, but you've got this debt. That was one of the stories in the book from our side.

You know, we would never tell anybody that you can't have a family with, you know, if you have debt. But for Sam and I, we decided we're going to wait.

And there was a lot of emotion that went along with that. So it's not just.

telling you what you're going to face. It's also showing you exactly how to work through it.
Because one thing at Ramsey is we're going to give you a plan.

We're going to tell you exactly what to do next. And that's what I do in this book.

I'm helping you see the problem for what it is because it's like the old adage, you can't solve a problem without admitting there is one. Right.
And then so once you see, oh man, that might be me.

I think she's describing what I'm going through. Now I'm showing you, and here's exactly what you do next.
We talk about things like daily habits. We talk about ways to set daily rewards.

We talk about all the different things to keep you motivated, to pull you out of those stuck places. So anybody who's ever been stuck, this book is for you.
It's so good. Oh, y'all, go get this book.

Seriously, go order it today because, and I'm such a reader. I do, I love to read.
And I love to read books where there is a subject matter. And this one obviously is money.

And to put myself in a position of that that author and the fact that you're so honest in this and you bring such a story element to it of what you guys walk through, I'm like, regardless of where you are financially, you're going to relate in this book.

You're going to find something in this book, not only that you feel like, okay, that is me, but also it's going to show you where to go. It's aspirational of like, you're at the end, right?

We're at the quote unquote baby step. Like it's like, yeah, yeah, like you've done it.
You've walked through all of this. And so whether you are starting this journey, you're at the end.

Seriously, this book is for you. What no one tells you about About Money by Jade Warshaw.
Love you, Jade. Thank you so much.
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Well, a couple years ago, George Camill brought in a couple of YouTube videos and said, you got to watch this guy. He is redefining generosity.

And I got to meet Jimmy Darts on the small screen the first time. And then Jimmy was in town, I don't know, Jimmy, what, a couple years ago? First time? Yeah, sometime last year, somewhere.

I know the years blend together, but. Yeah, it starts running together with the miles you're putting on the airplane, man.
Yeah.

So this Jimmy is a star in the world of social media, particularly YouTube, and a champion of kindness and generosity.

As a social media influencer, he's known for his heartwarming random acts of kindness. You've seen him on CNN, Fox News, Today Show, and The Ramsey Show.

Here, this is the second time he's been with us.

He does an incredible job of walking up to someone, asking for their help, someone who obviously needs help. And excuse me, ma'am, can you give me $5 or something like that, right?

And then when they do, he ends up giving them,

in some cases, a lot. of money.
Yeah, yeah. Usually, you know, $500 to $1,000.
That's kind of the seed form. The video goes up, and then it's really up to the public how much they want to bless them.

And so, yeah, it can be anywhere from $50,000 last week. I think a couple weeks ago, we raised over $400,000 for a guy.

What was his situation? Yeah, he was homeless, living in his car with his wife. They was traveling, pastor, doing ministry with their one-year-old.
And he actually passed the honesty test.

So I went up to him, asked him for help, and he went, I've seen your videos. I know who you are.
I'm not going to fake like I don't. So I was like, shoot, I'm going to have to leave.

I can't help this guy. And I was like, wait, actually, he just passed the honesty test.
So sure enough, we blessed him. But it's an honor getting to travel around.

And just see that there really is good people in this country. Yeah, for sure.
Well, and it's so encouraging how well your stuff does because I feel like it shows that people want to see that content.

You know what I mean? Like the amount of views and stuff that you get and what you've built just shows people are craving generosity. They're craving to see good in the world, I think.

And that's what you represent for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.

There's, I've been blown away from laundry mats to Walmart aisles to anywhere and everywhere you can think of just the kindness of people.

And it's, it's just so cool to see because in that moment when they're kind and I say, actually, I don't need your help. I want to bless you.

it's like a mirror is is shown to their face and they realize wait they actually realize they're a good person you know like we're all obviously you know we need a savior we're born into sin but to understand that man we're also made in the image of God and that even though I'm going through a struggle they realize that they were generous and so that's why I think the blessing hits so hard and it's really the opposite of of the lottery you know the lottery usually lands on a foundation of greed because they're trying to get rich or these blessings land on the foundation of generosity because these people are giving when they get the blessing 10 days ago, his first new book hit the streets and it's already a bestseller, Undercover Kindness, saying yes to love, no to fear, and embracing the life-changing power of ordinary generosity.

And absolutely incredible. So what caused you to, I know the answer to this, but I'll give you the underhand pitch.
What caused you to start this whole thing with radical generosity? Yeah, man.

Really, my parents, when I was a kid, I was 10 years old, and they said, hey, Jimmy, for Christmas, instead of just doing gifts, we're going to give you $200 in cash so I was jumping up and down doing backflips off the coach and my dad goes settle down you got to give half of it away to a stranger and I'm like what a tithe is 10% what do you mean half of it and so sure enough we're driving through the city and I see this guy freezing out in the cold and I get out of the car hand him a hundred dollars and just The look on his face knowing he could get a meal that night, he could get a jacket.

I got back in the car and you know, I'm sitting here today. I'm 29 years old.
That was 19 years ago.

And the crazy thing is I have no idea what I bought with the other $100, but I know the face and the look on that man's face. And so I think my parents instilled it into me.

And then also just the gospel, when you really understand that Jesus gave, you know, God gave his one and only begotten son. So of course I can give five bucks out of my pocket.

You know, if I really believe that God did that for me, it can't help but explode your heart for other people. Yeah.
And the joy. that comes through it.

You know, generosity, it's a big message for us.

Like we talk about even at Ramsey, like when you're doing your budget, it's the first first line item in the budget for every dollar because we believe in that principle so much to the point that, you know, we know that

people, when you're handling your money, you are a person inside, like the soul inside of you, the character inside of you is the person actually handling it.

And when your character changes and you become a selfless person through the act of generosity and giving, you know, there is such, there is such joy and such meaning and purpose in that.

And it really does create, I think, a level of depth in your life when you get to ongoingly experience that generosity. It's a really beautiful thing.
Yeah, absolutely.

When people are generous, like you said, their character begins to change. And what do they see?

They notice, oh, when they're doing their job at serving tables or driving Uber, when they're a kinder person, that people want to tip them more.

When you're a more happy person, people want to say, hey, you want to come in on this business deal with me? So generosity and just, yeah, your character really just attracts more blessing.

Yeah, it's beautiful. So

talk about the difference in generosity and how stewardship is woven into that. Because when you're walking up to someone who's on the skids and you give them 50 or 100 grand,

how are you doing that, quote unquote, responsibly? Because you don't necessarily need to say yes. You can just go, I'm just doing it.
Shut up. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, so 99% of the time when we raise money for someone, it's usually for a specific reason.

So when we were here back in Nashville, there was a lady who her son needed, you know, like a heart transplant. It was something with her baby's health.
And so she had to leave her job.

She was staying at the hospital. Her husband lived like an hour away.
And so, you know, she's stuck here draining their savings account.

And so we were able to get her, capture her story, raise like 50 grand for her. And we just saw her video come in a couple of weeks ago.
It was like a year later.

She sent me a video carrying the baby out of the hospital. Everyone was clapping in the hospital.

And it just took so much stress off them you know so usually when we raise money it's for a specific cause or situation but uh really you know the key is God calls us to give and I think so many times people are always caught up and well what if I give this guy five dollars of that what's he gonna do with it well the truth is we're just called to give we're not responsible for Every single thing they do for it.

It's like God loves the crap out of us and he forgives us and loves us and loves us. And if he was to pull back his love on us because we made a mistake, that'd be crazy, you know?

And so I think really people, we just need to focus on, man, go out there, love somebody, be generous. Obviously, be smart and wise with how you do it, but just go and do it.

And it'll actually change your heart probably more than the person you're blessing. Yeah, for sure.
That's so good.

You know, and what's weird is the amount is not what matters as much when you are the giver. It's just the act.

Because you are, you're flexing a muscle that a lot of people don't even use, the generosity muscle. Absolutely.
Yeah.

A lot of people are like, man, when I have this much money or this or that, I'm going to give. I'm going to be generous.
And the truth is, you actually probably won't.

You know, like, you can start today. Let's say you got 10 bucks to your name.
Well, find a quarter. Buy someone a gumball.
You know, like you start doing that now.

The Lord's like, says, be faithful a little.

And you'll be given much. And he knows if you can't be faithful a little, you're not going to be faithful with much.
Now, when you started this channel, it was on YouTube to start with.

And you're on everything now.

What's your primary channel now where people are going to be able to do that? Probably Instagram is probably the main place now. Yeah.
Yeah. At Jimmy Darts, D-A-R-T-S.

The new book is undercover kindness uh saying yes to love and no to fear and yes to generosity big time but i remember the story you were telling me before the um we got just a minute but quickly how you got started with nothing

you pop up a camera and here we go yeah absolutely i just uh i was talking to my dad on the porch and he goes what do you want to do with your life and at the time i was working at his restaurant so i wrote well i guess it must not be working for you and uh he goes uh what do you want to do i go man if i could be santa claus year-round just go around, share the gospel, love on people, give away cars and houses, I'd love to do it, but there's nowhere on Craigslist to apply for that.

And he just looks at me and he goes, start tomorrow. And I was like, what do you mean, start tomorrow? And I actually was like, man, the world has amazing drive, but sometimes lacks purpose.

And the church has great purpose, but a lot of times lacks drive. If I can put drive and purpose together, I think I can make something happen.
So I got in my car, started going around the country.

And yeah, just spending time with people, whether that was having a conversation with a guy, asking someone for a hug, and it started with $10, $20, and just kept climbing and climbing.

And so you really can start tomorrow and go after it, get after it, and do it with the Lord, and you'll be amazed at what he can do.

It's one of the biggest shows on the social media platform, and it's all about generosity, all about loving people well. The new book is Undercover Kindness from my good friend Jimmy Darts.

Proud to say I know you, brother. Yeah, thanks so much.
I couldn't do it without you. If I was in a snowball of debt, I wouldn't even be able to think straight.
So my dad put me on you a while ago.

Oh, Jimmy, congrats on the book. Thank you, Absolutely.
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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studios. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Rachel Cruz.
Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today and my daughter.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Brittany's in Los Angeles.
Hi, Brittany. How are you?

Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel.
Thank you for taking my call.

I am in a bit of a pickle right now. I bought a house a year ago, and I am in

a bit of a financial rut. So I'm wondering if I should sell my house or if I should put it up for rental.

Is this your primary home, Brittany?

Yes and no. It's kind of complex.
I did buy it as a primary. However, I did have the utter to also well, the intent was to live in it, but also I was going to Airbnb it because I do work in LA,

but I don't live there. My house is in the mountains.
It's a cabin in the mountains. So

when I decided to buy a home, I asked my mother, you know,

to help me. And she has a cabin up here.
I should preference this by saying I also do have another cabin, but I own that one with my dad.

and he pays 100% for that one. I haven't had to put a dime into it

upon getting it and you know post it's been about two years. So I was able to qualify for one on my own because of that.

I had the intent of getting the house as an Airbnb whenever I'm not here. My mom's Airbnb was doing phenomenal, but I came in at the absolute worst time.
I

when the market started dropping was earlier this year. It was pretty much right after election, and I had gotten my permit in about February.
So I think I heard you say in the last few minutes,

I wish I hadn't done this.

Did I hear you say that? Yes. Did I hear you say that?

Okay, so what's the cabin worth, huh? What's the cabin worth? So, so the cabin is worth $360. It's what I bought it for.
Good. And what do you owe against it?

I owe about $350.

I think it's $350. Okay.
So you put almost nothing down?

Um, I did put money down, but the interest was so bad that

when I put it down, it was like three

fifty-three

um at the time. Yeah, but you you you didn't put much down.

No, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So you don't have a lot of equity.
So I'm not even sure you can if you sell it, you might not even break even, agreed

that's agreed, yeah. Yeah.
Um, yeah. I have you thought about putting it up for sale

I have I have a um a realtor actually gonna come over tomorrow morning because I put a lot of work into the home so when it got appraised one of the things that was noted was the fact that it hadn't been touched the house was built in like 1978 most of the cabins up here are very old so if you've done all this work to it why has it not gone up in value

um well i i i'm gonna get the comps tomorrow oh so you don't know what it's worth right now okay i i don't know i'm just going based off of what zillow is saying like the market

don't don't use zillow as truth okay that's gross hopefully hopefully it'll be more hopefully let's pretend it's 400 i'm hoping yeah let's pretend it's 400 and you can and you can sell it and you sell it and your problems go away

is there something wrong with this plan

Nothing's wrong with this plan. The only thing is, so that's why I'm debating.
I just don't know because I'm seeing, I follow houses on here on Zillow, like religiously. Yeah, you need to

see what

it probably isn't.

I like to see what houses are actually selling for versus what they're being, you know, you know, you can list it for whatever you want to list it for, but right now it's like not a buyer's market.

So I'm very, I'm kind of stressed about that. I'm like, well, could I actually really follow that? But you're kind of stressed about keeping it, too.

That's true.

So listen, I think you need to really carefully define that what you did with this purchase, the way you did this purchase, the purpose you did this purchase for, as a group, those set of ideas were bad.

They did not bring you a good result.

Because you're stressed. You're behind on your bills.
Life's not good. Nothing turned out like it did in your little dream when you were surfing surfing Zillow.

Right?

And so,

now you need to reset and go: if I'm going to do real estate, it has to be different than the way I did this. This sucks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sell it. Yeah.

Okay. Sell it.
I want you to have your life back. I like you.

Thank you. I want my life back too.

I do a lot in my life and have a lot of of hobbies. And obviously, everything has not to be

put on hold because I'm barely keeping up. Yeah, it's caused stress, Brittany.

Yes. Dr.
John Deloni always says, solve for peace. What creates peace in my life? This is not bringing you peace.

This is bringing you stress and harm and lack of sleep because you're stressed about all of it, right? So just why would you, I'm just curious from you.

There's a little bit of the hesitation.

Why are you hesitant? She hasn't given up on the Airbnb Zillow surfing dream. No, actually,

actually, I don't care for Airbnb.

And I did say that after I got into it, I was like, it's something about, and it's because most people, when they do Airbnb, obviously, that home is a secondary home.

For me, I am here whenever it's not booked because, like I said, I own a cabin with my dad four minutes away. So I don't have personables here.
I was kind of all over the place.

My personables is at my mom's house. I have a bag here of things that I need.
And that doesn't answer right now. You got a lot going on.
What's your hesitation? Yeah. Self-class

is that I

bought the house and I felt very proud of myself. I was a young girl.
Buying a house in California is really hard. And so I'm just shocked because I'm like, am I getting able to do this again?

I went through like leaps and bounds to get it the first time.

And it was really

hard.

Yeah, you took a lot of jumps and did a lot of dances and ran around the barn three times and clicked your heels and finally got the house and it ended up not being anything like you thought it was going to be, you forced a situation.

I am proud of you for getting something done, but I was your age when I went broke because I did it wrong. You don't have to go completely broke, thank God.

You can just dump this thing and learn your lesson and go, the way I did this, the set of assumptions I used to make this decision were wrong.

And Brittany, everybody makes mistakes. And yes, buying a home is a great thing and we want that.
I think that's a smart decision in life. But that's not who you are, right?

I feel like you're tying your identity to this decision that you've made. And for some reason, if you go back on that, it's like you're a failure or something.
Like

who you are, your net worth is not your self-worth.

It doesn't equal who Brittany is. And so separating those things out and saying, this is who I am with a house or not, with a nice car or not, with a second home or not.
Like you are who you are.

And then all of these other things are additions in your life. We want to make sure the things that are additional in your life are blessing you and are good for you and not taking away.

So, this is this may feel like a step back for you, but it's not. I think it's a learning idea, and you will buy a house again.

I really do believe that, Brittany, you will, but you just have to be smart about it and just to be able to have the humility to say, Yeah, this was not a smart decision right now, but it's not who you are, you're not a failure, right?

And so, you got to separate those two things, they feel very intertwined to me as you're speaking.

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Andrew is in Washington, D.C. Hi, Andrew.
How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm good.
How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? And thanks for taking my call.
I wanted to get your advice.

Last year in July, I had to take a trip to the emergency room. I had to get two CT scans at the time.
Everything turned out to be fine, no issues.

But unfortunately,

because of my insurance situation at the time, the bill was not covered in any aspect.

And I am currently sitting on a $24,000 ER bill that has now gone to debt collection.

The debt collector initially offered 75% of that payment, so like 18K,

which I was not going to accept because I think it's just ridiculous.

So I'm now on probably my third back and forth with the debt collector, and I just wanted to see what kind of advice you may have for trying to improve the situation.

What's your household income? I make around $11.5 every month.

And you have money then to write the check. I do.
I could write it outright. It's really just a principal thing for me.
Okay. And the principle is what?

Well, number one, I'm actually trying to save up as much as humanly possible for a marketing. Oh, the principle of why you don't want to pay them $24,000 that they say you owe is what?

Sure, because they charged $9,000 for one CT scan, $8,000 for another. The remainder is the rest of the six-hour ER visit, which

at least in some of my research seems to be well above the average payment for CT scans, et cetera. So what did your research say?

Probably around $5,000, $4,000 to $5,000 at most for a CT scan. Okay.

And I am in the D.C. area, which means it's more expensive.

Okay.

Were you incapacitated at the time? No.

Okay.

And you knew you didn't have insurance when you went in there.

Well, technically, I didn't. So I was in between jobs at the time, and I had purchased insurance, but I didn't realize I was outside of my 30-day window from the purchase state when I went in.

It's the problem. I didn't read the fine print.

If you ever visit a collections operation that collects medical bills, you will find people sitting in small cubicles with lots of fluorescent lights with headsets on,

calling all day long.

And these are people that couldn't get a job at a 7-Eleven.

Now, this is who you're dealing with. That's correct, yeah.

And their average time on the job is about 30 days. Because as soon as they can find something better and almost anything's better, they take it.
Sure.

This is who you're trying to get to negotiate with on a basis of logic and market value of a CT scan. This guy hadn't got two brain cells to rub together to do this deal with.

So your only shot is to continue to just beat on that organization because you're probably seldom even going to talk to the same person.

And how much of your calories are you going to burn to do this?

The other only option I can think of is to call and actually try to get a meeting with someone in the administration of the hospital and sit down and say, I don't have insurance to cover this.

I thought I did when I was in there. I guess I wouldn't have cared that you were screwing my insurance company, but I do care that you're screwing me.

And so I think you ought to charge me market rate, which is half of what you're trying to charge me, for a CT scan.

This is ridiculous.

And try to negotiate it, right? Or try to negotiate it and just say, you know, I had no idea what I had gotten into. Please, your mercy operation, have some mercy on me.

But you've got the money, so we really can't play the mercy card.

But I think you just try to get someone that is actually in a position to make a decision, and this bill collector is not.

No, but the bill collector could be negotiated with. Yeah, a ways, but you're not, I don't think you're going to get them down to where you're going to end up happy with this.

So again, I don't know how much time and effort you want to put into five grand.

You make $11,000 a month.

I'd be happy slicing it down, you know, at least to get $10,000 off of it is sort of my mindset. I don't think it's only consumed so much.

You might get that from a bill collector, but I don't think they're going to have the power to do that.

Unless the bill gets very, very old and all that time. Every day this sits its ding in your credit, by the way.
It's an unpaid bill. It's out for collections.

So your credit goes down every day. Well, if you're worried about that, I don't worry about that personally, but,

you know, but we've had some luck sitting down in person and asking for mercy on the behalf of broke people or asking for reasonableness on the market value of something if I pay cash for a medical procedure.

Yeah. That's why I always wonder the moral card.
I mean, I get he's frustrated because he's like, you know, there is market value elsewhere.

And you could probably have a whole discussion about do things really cost all this. But there is a point that, you know, you got the service.

Yeah, you got the service and you didn't, the time to have negotiated it would have been while you're sitting there. Right.
Like, right. What are you charging me for the CT scan? Right, right.

You know, but I guess if you're sitting there in the emergency room, I don't know. I mean, that's a they kind of got you cornered in a sense.
Yeah, over a barrel, so to speak. Yeah.
So I,

yeah, I'm

the only moral thing you've got is that they're basically charging charging you double market because they can and because it's the ER and because it's after the fact, which is really an immoral practice.

Yeah. You know, really it is.

Yeah.

So is the good fight worth the extra fight? Because they said, he said they would take 17

to bill collector. You know what I mean? So if you're trying to get half, to your point, it's five grand.
How much is your time?

You push on a little bit, but you need to push on a little bit with the bill collector or go all in and try to circumvent the bill collector and go to the administration of the hospital.

And again, I find very reasonable people at the administration of the hospital. I mean, we've had people going with $200,000 bills that had $2.

They were broke and had no insurance. And you got to talk to a human and end up with an

ICU bill.

And the hospital looks at them and goes, we're not going to collect this. So if you'll pay us $5,000,

you know, we're going to write it off as charity.

And that's what it is. It's a gift.
And we've had hospitals do that. They're generally, the hospital themselves are generally.
Yeah, but it is usually with people financially that are in need.

Yeah, that's if they're in need. That's if they're in need.

The only time I've had luck with this negotiation is on the front end, not on the back end.

Meaning, for instance, an MRI. Oh, my gosh.
We've actually advertised for private cash upfront MRIs on several local radio stations over the years.

And it's like a fourth of what they charge your insurance company. And you can walk in there for, I don't know, whatever it is, call it $100 instead of $400 or $200 instead of $800 or whatever.

But it's nothing if you just walk in and pay cash for it. But if you walk in there with your insurance card, it's 4X.

And then you wonder why your insurance is expensive.

But

that's that world.

Wow. Strange.
Harsh. It's tough.

Yeah, and the moral of the story, of course, is make sure we have our insurance in place between jobs and

be very, very diligent about all that kind of stuff.

Cobra, whatever else you got to do while you're making a step from one career to another. Yeah, Christian Healthcare Ministries is a great

place that if you are in between jobs, even they're a healthcare provider. They're like a substitute of insurance.

Well, and they're actually sponsoring, they're one of the sponsors for this weekend's Marriage of Money, right? Yes, Money and Marriage. Money and Marriage.
I forgot about that.

Yep, the weekend with a lot of people here already that are going to be joining us. So it's so fun.

A couple of hundred of them in the lobby watching the show today because it starts tonight and goes through the whole weekend with Rachel and Rachel Cruz and Dr. John Deloney.

Again, another sellout. This is a huge event.
Yeah, it's been fun. This is our, gosh, I don't even know what number we've done, but it's been, yep, very exciting, always fun.
We try to do new content.

Is the one in February for the

Valentine's Day one, is it sold out? No. Not quite.
No, not quite yet. If you want to come to that, it's on campus here.
And, you know, the show, by the way, is on the class.

We do the show from one to four every day on the class.

And so you can sit in the lobby, get homemade chocolate chip cookies on us, get coffee that's incredible on us, and sit and, you know, watch the show.

And there's always a crowd here of anywhere from two to 200. Sometimes there's two people, but sometimes there's 200.

Like today, there's probably 300 out there. But yeah,

and it's going to be a great weekend. There's a lot of incredible speakers lined up.

A mystery speakers. I wonder who they might be.
It's gonna be fun, I know.

Y'all are in for a treat, it's gonna be great, trick or treat.

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Today's question comes from Drew in Pennsylvania. My wife and I are 35 years old with no children yet.

We are on Baby Step 7 and have $750,000 in retirement and a half a million dollar home with a balance owed of $250,000. Okay, so you're not on babysip seven quite yet.

I hear you talk about having enough life insurance to replace our income, but my current income is $375,000 and my wife's is $100,000.

With no debt, is it really necessary to have insurance in place before we have children?

Well, again, life insurance is there to replace your income and you guys are living, I don't know, lifestyle-wise. I mean, you're close to half a million making that per year.

And so I would consider you self-insured once the home is, if the home is paid off, that feels self-insured to me.

But if something were to happen to you and your wife was making a hundred grand, could, would she be okay with the mortgage? Could she pay all of that and be self-sufficient?

So I know, yeah, so I like the idea of still having 10 to 12 times your annual income for a buffer.

And if you guys are both healthy at 35, I mean, Winston and I just redid our life insurance probably two years ago, and we did term life with Xander, and it's just so inexpensive that a part of me is like, just do it now.

And then once the house is paid off, then you guys can have that discussion. But it's so inexpensive.

Yeah, I would definitely still keep it because, again, if something happened to you, your wife makes 100 grand,

you know, what's that stress going to be for her of having to still make that mortgage payment every month? Yeah, there's less of a burden on you guys than if you had

children and your wife did not have a wonderful career that she has, okay? But if something happens to you, she's in a pinch right now.

That's a lot of house for 100K.

And so, yeah, you need to be carrying some on you.

Now, if you want to do a different formula than the typical, the typical formula I recommend, and Rachel just quoted it, is 10 to 12 times your income and insurance.

Now, the reason for that, let's just back up. Let's pretend someone else called in.
They said, okay, I make $80,000 a year.

So 10 to 12 times would be $800,000 to a million dollars, which on a 35-year-old is the cost of a pizza. If you don't smoke and you're not fat, okay? It's simple.
Obesity and smoking kill your rates.

All right. And so if you're in good, decent shape and you don't smoke, and those are both things you can control, by the way, hello.
And so,

you know, now you get good rates, and it's very inexpensive to have a million dollars.

Now, if you got a million dollars and you die, just for general, this is why we have this formula, in other words,

your wife is left with two little kids and they count on your $80,000 to eat with,

and

she gets a million dollar check when you die, you put that in good mutual funds. And let's say just for easy numbers, it makes 10%.

10% of a million dollars is $100,000 minus taxes. Looks a lot like what you used to make.

$800,000 invested 10%, that'd be $80,000, which is what you used to make. And so it creates that perpetually.

Every year, it will send your widow or widower with the little kids what your check used to be. That's where we get the formula.

Now, so if you want to use that idea in this situation and say, well, we don't need $4 million worth of insurance on this guy because she doesn't have to have $400,000, his $375,000 income to eat.

She's going to be okay. But let's say she that you guys looked at and said, well, we want to make sure she does have $100,000

to help her to go with her $100,000. That's a $200,000 income to pay this house.

Or,

you know, I want to leave her enough to get some and enough to pay off the house. So you could say $1 million instead of $4 million right now.
Because, yeah, she'd pay the house.

And then she'd pay off the house, put $750,000 in the bank in a good mutual fund with a good Smart Vestor Pro, not the bank. And

now you're making $75,000 a year with no house payment.

And that's really, really inexpensive again.

And so, yeah, I would do something, in other words. And here's the other thing.

We're 35 years old with no children yet.

I'll just kind of tell you from 35 years of doing this, as soon as you get the life insurance going, the kid's going to come. So you're going to have to re-up the double the life insurance anyway.

It's come. So

go ahead and get the million with plans to get three more million because it's coming. Yeah.
You know, yet. Yet.
All right. Jack is in Wyoming.
Hey, Jack, how are you?

I'm doing well, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve.
What's up? So I have a dad who has always helped me out with pretty much everything in my life, and I'm extremely grateful, and I love him.

I love him to death. And

he's mentioned that my fiancé and I, once we get married and we sort of decide to buy our first house, that he'd be more than willing to kind of buy it for us and then have him.

have him just kind of active in the bank.

He's mentioned no interest on that and

all the good things that come along with that. But I was just wondering, how do we make sure that it doesn't affect our amazing father-son relationship? And

how do I do it?

Dave's looking at me, Jack, for me to be the bearer of bad news for you.

It will change your relationship. So, I mean, there's no way around it.
It does. And so when scripture says the borrower is slave to the lender, your dad is now your bank.
He's your master.

And so now it changes the relationship, whether you like it or not. As healthy and wonderful as the relationship is, this almost always ends up putting a strain.
And so I wouldn't do it.

I would not sacrifice the most amazing relationship you have with him, which is such a gift to be a grown son and have that much respect and love and honor for your father. Keep it pure.

Keep it simple. Keep it clean.
And you and your fiancé, you guys, just go, go and go have your life. Yes, go have your life.
Do not

hard Thanksgiving dinner with your master.

Now, let me tell you, and it will affect your wife more than it will affect you.

She'll feel the strain in the air more than you will because you and your dad have a quality relationship. So you won't feel it as much.
All right.

But it's there, and it's an unnecessary strain for a few interest points. Now, let me give you one other question, and then I'll tell you one more thing.

It's a great question, by the way, and I'm so happy you've got such a good relationship with your dad. It's such a wonderful gift, especially in our culture today when it's more and more rare.

What's your dad's net worth? You have any idea?

I don't, but it's, I mean, he does very well for himself.

I mean, is that a million or 20 million?

It's probably somewhere around 10, 10 to 12. Okay, and the house price would be about what?

That

would have been part two of my question had we gotten to that point.

But I mean, what are y'all thinking? I mean, if you just threw out a number, like a $500,000. You're brand new getting married in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Half a million dollars will buy a great house, right?

Exactly. Yep.
So if I were your dad, I might give you a house

instead of being the bank.

A gift has not got the strings tied to it. I might ask you to make sure that you invest the equivalent of a house payment so that my grandkids never have debt.

He could break the cycle forever. Now, I feel weird for him asking his dad that.
I know. I said, I might ask your dad.
I'm not sure you would, but you might play this for him.

David naturally asked him. I might have just asked him.
He might hear this.

So the other thing is this. The other thing is this.
Okay, when we went broke 35 years ago, Sharon and I lost everything.

Her dad loaned us a little bit of money to get the water turned back on and to catch the car up so it didn't get repoed and some stuff like that. Okay.

And it was not a huge amount, but it was an amount of money. Okay.

And he is an absolute saint. He is one of the nicest men I have ever met on the planet.
And my wife and him have a great relationship.

The fact that I owed him money drove me

bonkers until I got it paid off.

And so that's your wife. That's the in-law.
That's where she's sitting. I wouldn't do it.
Yeah, just keep it clean, Jack.

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Riley is in North Carolina. Hi, Riley.
How are you?

I'm doing great. How are you and Rachel? Better than we deserve.
What's up?

Hey, yeah, I own a service business in the HVAC industry, Thermostat Masters. And we've been running that business now for a few years.
And

during running this business, we've started to develop a product. I'm about 80,000 in on this product for R and D.

And we are now at a point where we've got the minimal viable product. We're ready to

essentially take this to investors as the direction that I want to go because we've bootstrapped it this entire time.

And really, the advice that I'm looking for is

how do I acquire funding for a product? Especially, I've just opened a new LLC for the product in order to protect my service company from any debt or

any kind of suing that may occur during this process.

So, this new LC doesn't have any history.

How do I acquire funding for this?

And also, how do I structure the conversation with investors? I have some in mind, but then there's going to be locating the ones that don't know me as well.

How do I structure that conversation?

It's very difficult because you don't have any track record. All you've got is a modified dream at this point.

You've got a wish. And so if you were shark tanking this, they'd throw you off because

you've no history of cash flow. You didn't come in and say, I've sold 80,000 units and I want to take it to 8 million units and I need an investor.

You came in and said, I have a dream and I turned it into a prototype and I've made no money so far. So

what do you think it's going to cost you to produce this thing per unit?

So per unit, we're looking at about $98 per unit. On what kind of volume?

On what kind of volume?

I'm not sure on what kind of volume that is, but that's the projected.

So how did you project it? I mean, did you get a bid from somebody to produce it?

Actually, yeah, I've got

a lot of people that have been working on it.

I don't have the answer to that question. I'm sorry.

So they gave you a bid to make one for 98 or a million for 98?

We don't know. No, right.

No, if I had to say, it'd probably be 20,000 units if I had to say, but it wasn't going to be a gigantic number, no. Nothing like a million.

All right.

Well, it's very difficult to attract an investor to this. I mean,

you've got a cost of goods sold at 50%, is what you're telling me.

You think you can sell it for the

$220 range. Where is it going to sit? In a Home Depot or is it going to be wholesaled out to

other HVAC guys and they sell it to their customers? Or how are you going to distribute it, do you think?

The idea, that actually goes into business model, model and it's something that I wouldn't be able to really discuss on the business model of how that's going to go for legal reasons.

Well, yeah, you can.

Nobody can steal the fact you're going to put it in Home Depot because

they don't even know what we're talking about. But anyway, all right.
So you're going to have a real hard time getting an investor for this, a very hard time.

And I would, I would honestly, I would counsel you against getting an investor, but you're dead set on it.

I have a friend that says when you bring in venture capitalists, it's it's like picking up a hitchhiker and then they hijack your car.

Well, I'm not dead set on, I'm not, I'm not dead set on anything right now. I'm actually just calling for advice.
Yeah,

and we

what I would do, let me give you an example. I'll make up a thing that's not your thing, but I'll just make up a thing.

Let's say that you wanted this thing to sit on the shelf in Home Depot, Lowe's, and Ace Hardware and tractor supply. Okay.

Then I would go pocket and put out,

I'd go make a thousand of them.

You've already got 80 grand in it, put another 100 grand in it of your money, make 80,000, make 1,000 of them, and let's put them on some shelves and let's see if we can get them to come off the shelves, if that's your model.

If you're going to go on the internet and just create a web page and try to get an Instagram buy

or keywords on Google or whatever, then

you can post it there and try to sell it just online and actually sell some units. That's going to give give you two things to attract capital.

One is a track record and the other is anyone that's going to put capital in this knows that your prototype is not ever going to make it to market.

You put out the first thousand units, you're going to get customer feedback that makes you change the design 100% of the time. Oh, yeah.
A hundred percent of the time.

We don't know what we don't know until we put it out in the wild. And that's business.
And the three rules of business apply. It takes twice as long as you think it's going to.

It costs twice as much as you think it's going to, and you're not the exception. Those are the three rules of business.
And so just plan on that.

And I would cash flow it and walk it out organically and see if you can't make the thing cash flow itself and keep the ownership.

I would rather you sell $1,000 and then $10,000 and then $20,000 and then $100,000 and 10 years from now sell $800,000 and you own 100%

than you give up 90% or 80% of your equity and they bastardize your whole idea, which is what's going to happen.

You're going to end up pissed when you're through dealing with these people because they're going to take your company over.

That's what's going to happen. They're going to take your little baby and they ain't going to rock it the way you want it rocked because they know more than you do and it's their money.

And that's what's going to happen. That's how these deals work, dude.
And I'm not mad about it. If you're a venture capitalist, I'm not mad at you.
That's what you do.

You know more than this guy, and so you take it over and you go do it for him.

And he gets a little something and he would have gotten nothing if he had done it himself maybe but I'm going to tell you to do what we did and that's we've cash flowed everything from the ground up and it is it's a slower process it's to do that yep but you're not going to be on the cover of fast company magazine you're going to be on the cover slow company magazine

and you but you're going to be open but you're and you're going to own it pay cash for your go pay cash for your experiments because you can call them failures if you want but they're experiments this first prototype's an experiment get it out there in the wild let people kick it around let them tell you your baby's ugly and then then you put some lipstick on that sucker, put it back out there, right?

And that's what we do, man.

Those of us that are entrepreneurs, we live in a state. I mean, entrepreneurism is like golf.
It's a series of failures. It's a series of experiments.

Even professional golfers, it's a series of failures. They still don't ever hit exactly what they want to hit.

Never. Otherwise, every time they swing the club, it'd be a hole in one, right? I mean, it's impossible.
So, and business is exactly the same way.

We don't ever have a book do what we think it's going to. It does about what we think it's going to because we've done a bunch of books, but

still, it's a thing. So it's a cool discussion, though, Riley.
I'm really glad you're doing this. Guys like you are the ones that

you could end up worth $10 or $20 million off this one idea if you don't

let it break you. And if you'll just be comfortable being the tortoise and not the hare.

But there's no one,

I kept thinking when we first started, man, that someone was going to come along and discover Dave Ramsey and get me on all these radio stations. We're on 680 radio stations today.

We're the second largest talk radio show in America, three radio hall of fames 35 years later. We got every one of those stations one at a time.

No one has still discovered me. There are people that still don't think I'm in radio.
And so, but, you know, it's me and Sean Hannity. We own the place, you know.
I mean, it's like, and so, but it's,

and now we've got, you you know, I just got a hundred million streams on freaking Spotify. We did the Ramsey show.
What? I get, you know what? I was, I was here part of the time, that's right.

And then I took a bit of a picture. I took the little trophy thing

to take a picture with it and broke it. You have, I know.
I broke the trophy thing from Spotify. But what you've done,

the trophy was cheap. I broke it.
But to your point, though, what you've done, and I feel like we've even. We did it incrementally.
Yes. And yeah, you and the team.
I mean, it's amazing.

and even knowing people that we've interacted with in life that started with an idea kind of a small thing they grew it and then you know we had friends over they did a thing for 10 years and then sold it yeah and now they are they sold it for a good amount of money a lot of money even riley that could be

liquidity a moment yeah of like hey what if you have an idea you have a thing and you run it to ground for 10 years and then it's done well then you sell it to some cap you know venture capitalist and you get to ride off into the sunset like you're gonna make a a lot more that way.

Yep.

The sweat is not over, Riley, my friend. More sweat, more calluses are in your future before more money.
You have not gotten there yet. Okay, before YouTube hates me, you did.
You built this.

Well done, Dave. No, no, it's okay.
You did.

I mean, like,

I got it to a certain level, and you guys have taken it to the moon.

It's okay. I'm a good platform to jump off of.
I'll take it.

Hey, you guys, Rachel Cruz here. Look, I know you want to do better with money, but let's be honest, life seems to be getting more and more expensive.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studios. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Open Phones at Triple 8, 825-5225.

Rachel Cruz, number one best-selling author, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour, and this weekend's sold-out marriage and money, or money-in-marriage event with Dr. John Deloney.

Rachel Cruz, my daughter. She's my co-host today.
Open phones at 888-825-5225. Greg is in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hey, Greg, how are you? Hey, good afternoon. Afternoon.
What's up?

I am interested. I'm looking to see when it's okay to spend some of our wealth that we've accumulated on some fractional ownership airplanes.

Okay.

Well, we've created quite a bit of wealth. We are looking at taking advantage of the bonus appreciation for our business, and we're really interested in some private travel.

Okay.

And so

how much wealth have you accumulated?

Without the value of our business, our assets are $50 million, and assets $45 million in net worth. And if we had to add value to the business, it would be $150 million.

Okay. Way to go, dude.
Congratulations. Thank you.
Very well done. Lots of of hard work.
Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, and you're probably like me. You get a little angry when people say you're so lucky.

You're right. A lot of luck.
Yeah, because I got a few calluses and I've been wearing overalls a long time. But yeah.

All right. So congratulations.
I'm so proud of you. Well, obviously, there's a couple of things here.
So private air travel falls in the category of ultra-luxury, obviously.

But you're in a category of ultra-wealth. You're in the top 1% of wealth holders in the United States, without a doubt.
And so you qualify financially to be able to do that. It makes sense.

And the way I look at that kind of thing is

Sharon and I, when we're looking at something that feels emotionally uncomfortable because it's so weird from the neighborhood we grew up in,

do what?

It's exactly how we feel. Yeah.
Like I bought the 700 horsepower Raptor R,

okay,

which is a pickup truck, but it's a race car, okay? Yeah. And it was ridiculously expensive.
It's like cost more than I used to make a year, kind of thing. It like freaked me out for about 30 seconds.

With those purchases. Yeah, for about 30 seconds.
And this kind of falls in that category. So we ask ourselves when we're making, doing something like that, is number one, is our generosity healthy?

Are we healthy with our giving?

Number two, if we take the amount amount of money we're getting ready to blow on this toy

and burned it in the middle of the floor, would our life change at all?

And the answer in your situation is no, it would not.

Correct. Because it's not that much money.
I mean, you're talking about what, a couple million bucks?

It's $5 million over three years with a guaranteed buyback over three years as well. So it's

$3 million spent on, and that's without using any of the tax benefits. Yeah.

and we don't do deals for tax benefits you brought up tax benefits twice that always makes me nervous don't use that to justify it do it do it and do it because it makes sense and then take the tax benefits and it makes sense for you in your world to never see another TSA agent

that is what my wife says yeah I think it makes sense I mean because you know you're making serious bank and a million dollars a year for three years it ain't spit man

it's

It's like other people buying a biscuit. I do.
I feel guilty the way I grew up with

the money in a sense, and it's hard. But again,

you check yourself,

is this all about me? And am I out of control trying to be like some

reality show person or something?

or some influencer or some kind of crap, right? Or am I doing this for other people? Yeah, the same motivation is. Am I doing this for me and my family?

And my generosity is probably far superior to this small purchase. Ratio-wise, this is a small purchase.
Then you are not spiritually or ethically or morally out of line.

You're supposed to enjoy some of your money.

I have a friend that makes

about $60 million a year and

his net worth is

probably $2 billion, and he just bought a $52 million Challenger. 100%.
No fractional.

Yeah. And that's a sweet aircraft, by the way.
Oh,

God. That is a big deal.
Nice play.

Yeah, but anyway. Yeah.
But anyway, that's the deal. So

I would go do it. I would go do it.
That's the answer to your question. And enjoy it and don't feel guilty.
And expect other people to not understand.

There are no statues. erected to critics.

Except, actually, I said that, and a guy sent me one. Oh, no.
know that? Did you know? Remember the movie, Critic Roger Ebert? Yeah. There's a statue to Roger Ebert.
And he's a critic.

So there's actually one statue somewhere in the world erected to a critic. But critics don't get a vote, okay?

Because they haven't done what you've done. It's not their money, it's your money.
God didn't trust them with it, he trusted you with it. And it's a small percentage of your world.

And again, check yourself with, can I burn that much money in the floor? And is my generosity very healthy? And is my motivation good to be aware of it?

And is my motivation for other people or for me? Yep, that's right. That's right.
If no one knows you did this ever, is it still a good purchase? And that's what, you know,

I, you know, I probably shouldn't say that after I just said this, but I didn't buy the Raptor because I thought it was, somebody else thought it was cool. I bought it because I thought it was cool.

You thought it was cool. I parked my Tesla right by it today in the parking lot.
Well, you parked in, and I bet I

bet it did you feel

a bit of shame. No, I bet it would beat your Raptor.

It probably would. Probably would.

I think I could beat your Tesla in a 100-foot run, though. I think on foot I can beat it for the first 100 feet.

No.

Yeah.

Nothing comes out of the house. Don't ever take that bet.
Nothing comes out of the hole that fast. Not even a Tesla.
Wait, what? I'm just telling you. I'll talk to you about it later.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. From zero to 60 feet.
From zero to the first hundred feet, a person can outrun a car. No.
No, 100% of the time. That is not true.
Check it out. Go try it.

Y'all go down the parking lot. We're going to do it after the show.

All of us. Meet me down there, and then we'll all go up on the hill and go to the Tesla.

Dave pulls a hammy.

Oh, man. You never know.
The Tesla will outrun the Raptor, though, to your point. Yes, it will.
Thank you. Thank you.
It will.

No, but that is a question we get, I feel like more and more probably because of the data. But I do have the details.
I don't have the shame of driving a rolling battery. Oh, my God.

I do have that. We don't ever have to to go to a gas station.
We can keep going. We can keep going.
We can keep going.

Welcome to Thanksgiving dinner at the Ramsey's.

But the question of spending, because we do get that more and more, and especially people on baby coffee. Because people are winning with money.
That's a wonderful question. Yes, yes.

But the emotions, to your point, it's hard to catch up. Don't catch up always mathematically to where people are when they start winning.
And, you know, we have 1,100 employees. We buy coffee.

Our coffee bill, when I see it, is emotional. I mean, it's like, I don't make what in the world.
Unbelievable.

I remember years, you know, I used to tell those old dad jokes, you know, when I walked uphill both ways in the snow. You know, it's like, golly, man.
But it's a coffee bill.

Everything with scale is just wack. But I will say, money,

it can be a dangerous thing, too. So the fact that he's kind of pumping the brakes and asking, I think, is a very, that's a healthy mindset.
So I think that's really, really wise.

The ones that are in trouble are the ones that don't ask about it. Yes.
You're right. Amen.

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Tara is in Hartford, Connecticut. Hi, Tara.
How are you?

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

So my question for you is, how do I continue with the baby steps if I don't have a home for any children?

Well, you obviously wouldn't need to save for kids' college, so baby step for that does not apply.

What's your housing situation?

Right now, I live at home, and

so that, you know, I basically, my parents go away, and I take care of the house, and I stay at home. And that's kind of where I'm at right now with that.
I've been looking to purchase a house,

but things are incredibly expensive. So until that happens, I'm just saving money and living at home.
What do you make?

Sorry? What do you make? How much money do you make? I make about $60,000 a year.

It can be kind of flexible because I'm a 1099.

Okay.

And when you say your parents go away, are they traveling and you like house sip, you take care of the house while they're gone?

Yeah. And do you do that as a favor or do they pay you as like a house manager when they're gone?

No, I do that. Just

part of it.

But kind of in exchange. Okay, instead of paying rents, for instance, you're

helping take care of. Okay, perfect.
Okay. Yeah, so I would say you're on baby step three B tier at that point.

I mean, I would be investing money into retirement, but I would be saving for a down payment for a house. That'd be my next financial goal.
Yeah.

Yep. That's what I'm, that's what I'm doing.
So for now, would you say that I'm just kind of like just ride on that and keep saving? Yeah, build up a nice, huge down payment for a house.

Because long term, you said it, but also it's proper, it's good financial planning. Long term, you want to be the owner of a home.

Correct. Yeah.
And it doesn't have to be today. It doesn't have to be tomorrow.
You've got a good situation right now.

But, you know, if you've got a big old pile pile of cash, then the options start opening up. And also long-term, your income could go up.
You could increase the quality of your,

you know, your contacts in your 1099 business. And, you know, instead of making 60, be making 120.
And you look up and you got $100,000 saved. And

then something changes with the housing with mom and dad and you're ready to go buy. And that's perfect.

Okay.

And would you say, so when I'm investing, I am maxing out my Roth IRA.

And the rest of my money I have in like high-yield savings and in CDs.

Would you say that my money is best spent anywhere else?

No, I would either be putting it in high-yield savings for a down payment for a house, or I would be investing beyond the Roth IRA. And as a 1099, there's a couple of other things you can do.

You can do a SEP IRA, or you can do a simple IRA, either one.

And they're very easy to set up with your Smart Vestor Pro. If you wanted to put more than just your Roth IRA in, you can do both of those as Roths.
It's very easy to do.

So just if you want to do more investing and less towards the down payment, just get in touch with one of the Smart Vestor Pros at ramseysolutions.com, one of the people we recommend for setting up a good mutual fund account.

And they'll help you with your IRA investing. They can help you with high yield savings for that matter.
But

yeah, you're just chunking money for one of two things, either retirement. or house down payment.
And you can just get as

at this position in the the baby steps you can go as heavy on one or the other as you want to yeah I would I would probably try to hit that 15% and then anything above that put in your high yield for specifically for a down payment given that you have no rent yeah yeah yeah so I'm probably gonna add another retirement program to your thing like I'm talking about a SEP IRA or a simple IRA one of the two either one will work

and they're they're very easy you might be well honestly making 60 you're probably right at that 15% into the 8,000 of the Roth IRA yeah you're getting close so that's true. Great, Tara.
Good job.

Get yourself to 15% and then go on towards the house. That's what I would do.
Open phones at 888-825-5225. Alan is in Kansas City.
Hi, Alan. What's up?

Hey, thank you so much, Dave, for taking my call. I really appreciate it.
Sure. How can we help?

Yeah, here's my question. So I was a pastor for many years.

And

after I got married, we had some health issues that were kind of long-term that insurance wasn't going to be covering.

And eventually, I had to leave pastorate as an occupation and take up another job.

And I've been working in now IT and CRM. I'm the head of those two departments here in Mulberry, Missouri.
And anyway,

I'm working for a previous church member, and I'm just really wondering, should I stay or should I go?

I I don't know if I'm getting the best pay and

vacation is what, you know, I'm thinking of my family. Am I really doing the best for them?

Because, you know, we don't have a lifetime of savings. We've done the best that we can,

but I'm playing a lot of catch-up just because of where we came from. Okay.
So there's a lot of... A lot of background information to all of that.
I'm more than happy to share, but

fire away with any questions you have. Have you done any investigation on comp?

You know, what your

compensation is worth? I mean, have you looked at what I can get a job for doing the same thing,

you know, somewhere else?

I've done a little bit of looking on that, and it seems that in the area that I'm in, if you only look at the IT work, head of IT, that seems to be around 100.

What I'm having a hard time finding is what if you're doing IT, but you're also involved in sales and you run the whole CRM and you're writing code for the CRM.

I don't know if that boosts it a lot or if it doesn't.

It probably should boost it some.

How much are you getting paid now?

I'm right at 100 gross before anything's taken out. Okay.

And you're saying for just one part of your job, it's 100, but then

you're doing additional work, which you feel like you should be compensated for above what you're seeing.

Yeah, I'm wondering if I could be. I've been pretty heavily involved in the sales department.
I made the sales process, and we didn't have a salesperson. How many people work at the company?

About 50. Okay.
Do you have any idea what the top-line gross revenue is?

Gross revenue is $9 million right now.

With 50 people?

Wow.

I got a lot of payroll. Okay.

Yeah,

the staff, the employees that we have has grown a lot over the past eight years that I've been here.

The amount of money the company makes has not grown so much, but a part of the direction is sort of planning for the future.

There's been a lot of investment in product, and the owners believe that the company is going to explode over the next five years. Maybe not explode, but there'll be a good steady growth.
Yeah, okay.

I would hope. I would hope this, in other words, all this investment in payroll pays off.

You're right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I'm not sure they're in a position to afford a lot more

right now.

But as they start making more, I would expect to see some pretty good kicks in my income based on the fact that you're basically doing one and a half jobs at a minimum.

And so the other thing you can do is this. Okay, so here's the thing.
You're not a belligerent person. You're not a prideful person.

But you're just asking an honest question of value. And so an employer wants to know

what they can make as a result of the work you do. In other words, if they pay you 100, they need to be making more than 100 off the work you do.
I suspect they are.

And then the second thing they want to know is

if you leave, what does it cost to replace you? In other words, what's the market value of that position?

And so if i were you you're a detailed person i would do a detailed comp study with linkedin and a few of the other sites and try to figure out as close as you can what you think this is worth and have a series of facts one page of facts not a 26 page study okay and sit down with your owner with one page and go i'm asking myself an honest question i want to ask you an honest question um this looks like tell me what i messed up but this looks like my position is worth $150 in the marketplace or $125 in the marketplace.

This is what this looks like. What do you think?

And I want to be honest and I want to be humble. And what's my growth? And if not, what's my growth trajectory look like? How can I? What can I do to become worth that?

Since it seems that this position is worth that.

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All right, Jeremy and Deborah are with us on the debt-free stage. What's up? Woo!

Hey, Dave. Hey, Rachel.
Welcome, welcome. How are you guys?

Where do y'all live? Charlotte, North Carolina. Just over the hill.

Welcome, man. Welcome.
Good to have y'all. And if you're on the debt-free stage, it can only mean one thing.
You're debt-free. And how much have you paid off? $85,614.

Very cool. Nice.
And how long did this take? 62 months. Good for you.
Wonderful. And your range of income during that five years? $72,000 to $82,000.
Cool. What do y'all do for a living?

We own a small business in Charlotte doing custom window treatments. Oh, very cool.
Good for you. Awesome.
What kind of debt was this? $86,000?

It was our house day.

All the way. Who has an $86,000 mortgage right

yeah we had what was left on our mortgage we had a little bit of a backstory with our with ours we actually got out of debt consumer debt about 10 years ago following your principles

and then we went through a stage of infertility and ended up getting pregnant with our first daughter yay that we we unfortunately we unfortunately lost her 24 weeks

but we knew that we needed to stack money for her she we knew she was gonna have needs um so we put the house, you know, we paid the payments, but we put some extra on the side. Yeah.

And in 2020, we were able to bring our first daughter home.

Oh my gosh. And then in 21, we were able to bring our son home.

Absolutely. Yes.
Oh, it's much better than paying off a mortgage. Yes, it was.
And over that time, we

knew that we wanted to put them in a really great school, take care of them like we were going to take care of their sister.

And we kind of had that money sitting to the side, and we had that that left on our mortgage. And we thought, you know what?

Let's just do it. Let's be weird people.

Just pay it all. Yeah, hate it all.
And we'll use the fact that we don't have a mortgage to take care of the kiddos. There you go.
Exactly.

Yes, and it has blessed us. They're able to go to a private Christian school and, you know, little things like that that we wouldn't have been able to do if we've not done this.
Wow.

Huge blessing in our life. Thank blessings.
What's the house worth? About $350,000. Way to go.
Very nice. Good job, you guys.
Thank you. You've been stacking cash for this.

Have you been investing as well? We have. And how much in your retirement nest egg? Probably about $200,000.
All right. So over a half million dollar net worth already.

Way to go, y'all. And no stinking payments in the world.
None is done. How's that feel? I don't know yet.
It's amazing.

Just happened to be a little bit more. It feels amazing to me.

Got to stink in. Made the last payment and had some major house problems, so we had to deal with that.
And we're able to write a check for it. And so it's not really fully sink in yet, but

the next few months. Yeah.
It's been a blessing to be be able to do that and not go back into debt, you know, to be able to take care of the house needs, yes, for sure.

Yeah, you know, because a lot of people are call our show with that situation, they have the 85 in investments or something, non-retirement, and they're like, Oh, but I'm making a good spread on, you know, yeah, we're making good money.

Would you say it's a hundred percent worth it to just know that there is no mortgage? One at least a hundred percent, at least if not more, yes, if not more.

Yeah, we spoke with you and John last year at the money marriage and had some um

some advice for us for the situation where we were in. And

it helped us guide us to where we needed to do. And one day we were just like, no more.
Write the check. Just build that account back up and boom.
Love it.

Boom. So great, you guys.
Well done. Thank you.
Thank you. It's good to see y'all again.
I'm glad you're back. We're so excited to be back.
So fun. Welcome back on the Ramsey campus.
Yeah.

Good to have y'all. So now with all this you've been through, you pay off the consumer debt, you stack cash, you fight the whole infertility battle, which is an emotional roller coaster.
It was, yes.

And

the, and then you turn around, look up, and go, stack of cash, mortgage, gone. Yep.
And so, like three different major parts to this story almost, timeline-wise.

What's your advice to people? And what's this, you know, when you, when we always ask people, you know, what do you tell people

about what you do to get out of debt? What was the key thing that enabled you to go through all three of those phases?

I would say,

yeah,

you have to have a team. You have to be a team.
You have to be on the same page

because it could have easily tore us apart. You know, what we walked through infertility wise and then losing our daughter, that was very rough.

But it almost fueled a piece of me that it didn't fuel in him. And I was able to say, you know what, let's double down.
Let's do this.

for our future, for our future children. And we're able to do that now.

the feeling of knowing that we've changed our trajectory for our kids and their lives, you can't put money on that. Yeah, you change your family tree.
Exactly.

We say it all the time, but it really does does mean something. Yes.
It doesn't.

Just from where you guys came from, how you grew up. Do you look and think like that was that where you're standing today? Did that feel impossible? 1,000% for me.
Yeah. 100%.

I had great role models as a kid.

My dad was probably a Ramsey fan, but he didn't know it

until I met you. And then

he was all on board because that's how he lived his life. And I tried, but then get married, make stupid decisions and pay lots of stupid tax on a lot of stuff.

And then just being able to turn that corner and know about the future that we want to have and the possibilities and are endless. What's the dumbest thing you ever did with money? Oh, boy.

I'll just pick one, the best one. Probably vehicles.
Yeah. Okay.
Buying vehicles that we had no.

Yeah, I bought a 2016 fully loaded off-the-showroom floor Maxima with 20-inch rims on it. No money.
And I had no money to my name. Yeah.
And now you bought bought that in 2016. Yeah, yes.
In 2016.

Yeah, that wasn't now. You didn't buy that the other day.
No, no, no.

That's it. You know, since this whole journey, we've financed three pregnancies.

Cash flow. Cash flow, not finance flow.
Yeah.

Multiple vehicles in cash. You know, it's just

a whole reverse trend.

Absolutely. Never

go back. Well, I wasn't doing that to make fun of you.
I just want to remind people that

you can do dumb things and not be dumb. Absolutely.
Absolutely. I have done some incredibly stupid things, and I'm not stupid, but I have done some stupid butt stuff in my life.

And so I look back on it, I'm like, you, you, man, it's dumb. But yeah, but then you go, but I don't have to live that way.
I can change. Right.
Just

the peace that you get to

have foundation issues at your house that you, you know, oh, it's just an inconvenience, like you say.

It turns it from an emergency fund. You know, it's just, you know, to be able to pay for our kids' school and it not be a question.

So good.

How old are the kids now five and three five and three okay so great oh were they kind of part of it was the five-year-old like funny enough she's she's she's learning um we have a school store at school so she's learning about the privilege of earning and yeah being able to buy what she wants and we have the the the kids um the financial piece of stuff yeah we have that for her so we're working through that with her i love it sometimes you know at five it goes in one ear and another 100 i was gonna say because some kids you know people that are working the plan now that are listening yes they have kids in the home and they're kind of, you know, part of that journey.

Yours are obviously, yeah, they're younger, but

to think that they'll never know. They'll never know parents with stress around money.
Oh, yeah. And hopefully they'll project them to live the same way.
100% live the same way. 100%.

That's all I've done, you guys. Thank you so much.
So good. So proud of y'all.
Dang it, cheerleaders. Who was cheering you on? We did.
We got family with us.

Friends here. We met at the Money Marriage Retreat last year.
Yes.

Became friends. And

they said they'd drive up to meet us whenever we did it.

And obviously, we've had family,

some here, some not here anymore.

Wonderful.

Well, congratulations. We're very proud of you.
Thank you. Jeremy and Deborah, Charlotte, North Carolina, $86,000 paid off.
House and everything.

Yes, they are official weirdos. They did this in 62 months, making 72 to 82.
Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, two, one.

We're debt-free.

You know,

you watch their body language. You guys, if you're not watching this on video, you watch their body language, Rachel, and the way they're interacting.
The unity is apparent just in their presence.

So strong.

They were knitted together by

the tragedies and by the victories and by the victories. Yes.
And pretty cool. Yep.
Pretty cool stuff.

Our scripture of the day, Matthew 10, 16, Look, I'm sending you out as sheep among wolves, so be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.

Ronald Reagan says the best view of the government is seen on a rear view mirror as one is driving away from it.

Amen and amen.

Oh, Elijah is in Nashville. Hi, Elijah.
How are you? I'm doing great.

Thanks for calling you guys. Certainly.
How can we help?

Well,

my parents are in their mid-50s and don't really have a retirement plan in place, but they do have a car payment and an RV payment. So they're definitely upside down right now.

So for me, my parents can't, it feels like my parents can't see what's so clear to me and my wife. What do you think we can share with them to help them understand?

And ultimately, what do you think they should do in their situation?

Well, you're in a very difficult position.

We call it the powdered butt syndrome. Once someone has powdered your butt, they don't really want your opinion on money or sex.

So they don't really care what you think.

And so trying to give them advice, even though what you're saying is probably perfectly correct,

you're in the least leveraged position to actually have influence. Does that make sense? Totally.
Yeah.

So what I do in those situations is a couple of things. I never

talk to them about what they should do.

Although, by God, it's tempting.

You know? Instead, I talk about what I've been doing.

And so,

you know, I have a friend who trades cars and borrows money every time he trades cars, and we're still friends, but he's dumb. Okay.

And so he's in car debt all the time. It's just dumb.
And he knows I think it's dumb. But I've never said a thing to him about it.

But I have told him some wonderful stories about the peace I have driving cash paid for cars.

Yeah.

So I would just say, you know, my wife, you know, if you're having Thanksgiving dinner or you and your dad are having a cup of coffee or whatever it is y'all do together, you say, hey, you know, we're doing this thing and, you know, we've gotten out of debt and we don't have any car debt and we don't have any this and we built an emergency fund.

And gosh, dad, I got to tell you, I'm so peaceful. That's the thing.
I'm so peaceful. I'm so hopeful.

It's tricky because they're the ones who taught me how to budget and they put me through FPU and so we're already Yeah, I would just bring it back on them then. But don't tell them they have to do it.

Don't shame them. It'll have no benefit.
Just say, thank you for teaching me all those FPU lessons. This budgeting stuff y'all made me do, it's changed everything.

We're going to, my wife and I, because you guys taught us that stuff, we do it all. We don't borrow money.
We're on a budget, and we're going to be really, really wealthy.

We're tracking to be millionaires by this date. Thank you so much.
And wow, thank you, thank you, thank you. And then eventually they're going to go, oh, well, maybe I ought to do it.

But I mean, you really can't, you can, if they say something like, I wish I could do it or something, then you could just go, well, I know you could. You're the one taught me.
I know you could do it.

And I think some of the fear that we have that my wife and I share is that, you know, we, at this point, it doesn't really seem like they have a plan A. So plan B is to live with their kids.

And we love them enough to know that if they were forced to move in with us, our friendship would likely implode. Yeah.
So that's kind of like the only issue.

Therefore, we're not planning to do that. That's not a plan.
Right. They can plan to do that, but that's not an issue today.
They're in their 50s.

Okay. They're okay.
They got an RV payment and a car payment. They could turn this around in three years.
It's not a problem.

Sell the RV, get rid of the car payment, and start saving for they could be millionaires by the time they retire very easily if they turn it around today.

So that I'm not worried about them moving in with you, but I'm just trying to figure out how to influence them. So thing one is I do that.

Thing two is I bring in experts, and I was going to say, give give them a total money makeover book or give them one of Rachel's books or something and go, hey, this book really influenced me.

I thought you might enjoy it. But they got a problem with that.
If you give a fat person a diet book, it's kind of insulting. Yeah.
Okay.

I think you might ought to read this. You know, it's probably, it's kind of harsh, right? So you got to be careful with that.
And they know. Yeah.

But in this case, they've already got the stinking book. They just aren't doing it.
And then the third thing I do is I ask myself who, I do four things.

The third thing I do is I ask myself who could have influence. Is it the old FPU coordinator? Is it the pastor at the church?

Who is it that's a sold-out FPU person that they would listen to where they might not listen to that young whipper snapper? Okay.

Right? And so forth. The fourth thing I do is I pray and I ask God to send someone into their lives that's going to mess with them.

God, make them uncomfortable.

Or that they have a change of heart, yeah. Yeah.
And Elijah, too, I think part of growing up, which is so funny saying this next to my dad,

you are not this at all.

This has nothing to do with you at all.

Major disclaimer.

No, but really, I'm like, it is, when you know, as you become an adult, it is weird when you look at your parents and you're like, oh, wow, I feel like whether emotionally, spiritually, financially, business, like whatever the thing is, when you start to surpass them in wisdom in an area and you with money, with your, with your parents in this way, right?

I mean, honestly, it is a weird thing. It's just like one of those parts of growing up that you have to learn, like you can't control them.

Like, and I think we all have this thing in us and we have people in our lives that are doing something that you're like, oh, yeah,

I wish they were doing something else.

And we have this belief of if I could just have this one conversation or I could phrase it in this one right particular way, they're suddenly going to get it and the light bulb's going to come on.

And I think I've just learned like you can't, you just don't have that control over people. And I think we believe we do to a degree and we really don't.

And so, I don't know, Elijah, there is a a point that you know, you can do all, and I agree exactly with what Dave said: of you know, you guys celebrating where you're at, and you're able to share where you are.

But at the end of the day, it is a little bit of a, I mean, grief sounds like a really strong word, but it's a it's this like kind of like, oh, wow, I'm starting to surpass my parents in one area of life, and that's and the irony is they taught it to me.

I mean, seriously, I mean, yeah, that's very worried. I mean, it's bizarre a little bit what you're saying.
It's one thing if they had no, you know, no idea, but they know it. So, I don't know.

There is just like a lot of these stories have to do with buying campers and rvs don't they yeah they do

they do you're right it's uh

a little bit of a midlife crisis sitting in the driveway out there i'm just saying yeah yeah exactly

i do wonder how do you know that they have no retirement have they have they said that to you guys Yeah, we've, we've had some candid conversations, and they're pretty transparent about their finances.

And, you know, they'll ask, they'll ask for financial advice. You know, they'll say like, well, what should I do? And I'll be like,

it's just, it's just this pain point, I think, for them is the RV. And it really does come down to just like a heart for, you know, we want to raise our grandkids in this RV.

We want to learn these tricks in our retirement. But the thing is, I think they just bought it 20 years too early.

Could be.

Could be. I think you nailed that one, buddy.
I think you nailed it. That they're asking and, you know, all of it.

And yeah, and I think if you come out of it with some curiosity, of like, hey, you know, how are you guys feeling about it? And truth be told, they may be fine with the RV.

in the future and quality retirement to be able to enjoy with the grandkids what do you think you should do

yeah and i'm trying to help them connect the dots between the the financial strain that they feel right now and the you know nine hundred dollars in in you know car payments that they're paying you know

but it's hard for them to connect those dots i think no they're just they're in denial That's all it is. They just don't want to connect the dots.
They know. They know.
I think that's it.

They taught you this stuff. I mean, you turned out, dude.
You got all the answers. You could do this show.
I mean, you called up asking questions, but you already knew the answers.

And, yeah. So I'm going to try to get some people to influence them, some situations to influence them, talk about your successes.

And if they ask a question, I'm going to answer it with a good, strong question that is basically a statement.

What do you think you ought to do about the RV? I mean, seriously, have them answer, have them be answering what they're feeling and thinking thinking and making them say it out loud.

That could be a light bulb moment. I don't know.
A little mirror, actually. But I kind of appreciate that, yeah, that they're so open with you guys.
I think they're going to be okay.

I think they're going to be okay. I think they're probably closer than you think they are to waking up.

And

part of what makes me think that is the way that they raised you. to where you know the answers, which means I know they know the answers and they'll come back around to common sense.

It'll start to haunt them eventually.

But the fear he's having of them living with them is like,

that's my writing.

Just tell him to stay in the RV.

Just keep the RV.

It's a really old RV at that point.

Cousin Eddie's here.

That puts this Hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.