How Far Are You Willing To Go To Win?

Brought to you by the Every Dollar App, start budgeting for free today. Normal is broken, common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, number one best selling author, Ramsey Personality, co-host of Smart Money, Happy Hour. My daughter is my co-host today. Open phones at AAA 825-5225, Ashley is in Boston. Hey, Ashley, what's up in your world? Hi, Ashley. Hi, I'm sorry. Hi, Dave. Not much. How are you doing? This is crazy to be on the phone with you. I'm honored. Glad you got through. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Better than I deserve. How can we help today? I'm just looking for some advice when it comes to finances, money, and dating. I'm 30 years old. I work full-time. I've always saved, saving, I mean, ever since I was very young, I've worked really hard to save and be responsible with money. But as I'm dating and hoping to get married soon, I'm realizing that not every guy shares that sentiment. I think financial attitudes toward finances is really important. Like right up there with politics and religion, I think similar spending and saving habits are really important. But I'm just hitting a law with these guys. I've been really, really blessed throughout my life. I've also worked really hard to save money. I think I've accumulated a pretty solid net worth for my age. What is your net worth? About $1.4 million. And you're 30? Yeah. Way to go, kiddo. Thank you. Great job, honestly. Yeah. Really smart to not find some loser to bring you down. Good for you. I can't take credit for all of it. Part of it was half was inheritance, the other half just saving, I mean, my entire life. I worked a second job for quite a while. Rachel, how is the younger version of you? Because I haven't had a date with one woman in 45 years. So I don't have the idea how to date other than my wife. So I have no, I know, I know, I know, but I mean, the younger version of the, how are the young people doing it these days? No, no, I don't know. I think I would say, you know, when I started dating Winston, he had a credit card. He paid for most of our dates on that, right? And coming as from a Ramsey family, like that's like up there with a sin raised like, right? Then one of his friends pulled him aside and said, do you know who you're dating? Yeah. And he said, no, I don't. My dad's buddy Cruz. I don't know who Dave, he didn't know who Dave Ramsey was, which is actually a gift. So that was great. Anyways, all that to say, it, there is something about not just cutting someone off immediately, because number one, people can change, okay? So just know in general, is the way they think about money, the way they interact with money. Do they have the humility to, to listen to you, hear what's working for you and have the humility to maybe, in essence, change and adapt, you know, like that's on the grace side of the scale, right? Now if there's a guy and he's like, so leveraged, doesn't care, it's all ego, all what he presents, and that's all he cares about, you're probably not going to change that guy. It's, I would not be like super, super legalistic in today's world about it. I think it's more about the value system, right? So he's, so he may be a spender, and you're going to be the saver. I'm the spender in our relationship with my husband, he's actually the saver. And so you're going to have different money tendencies, but I think the value system of the way you see money is really important. Like, I would say that money isn't the, it isn't everything. It's not an idol in my life. It's not something that we worship, right? And there's got men and women out there, and it's the only thing they focus on. And if that's the only thing they focus on in life, 24/7 is to get more and more and more, that's a different value system. If they are okay living on the edge and being super risky with investments and leveraging debt and, and that that's where they drive energy from, probably not a value system you would align with. Does that make sense? Like, when you get into the nitty gritty of things, I would have more grace. Right. The difference in having $10 million in Bitcoin versus having a car payment. Mm-hmm. Well, $10 million, I mean, I mean, that's living on the edge. $10 million on anything. No, that's living on the edge. That's in the stupid zone, and that checks the box. I'm done. Yeah, so I don't know. It's guys nuts. And so I don't want to marry a crypto bro. Well, if he's got $10,000 in crypto, and it's the only thing he talks about, he's obsessed with it, then that's the crypto bro to me. But like, do you know what I'm saying, Ashley, there's a level of humanity in this when you're dating someone, because they're going to be different than you, but it's the value system that I think I would really harp on of where their heart is when it comes to the subject. And you've obviously done well. And when you can find a partner that actually sees your strengths as strengths and they're not threatened by it, like, that's a pro. And like, that's a, that's a check mark for me in the positive side, the positive category. I think I have a tough time seeing, like, what's values, what's not, because if someone's just telling me, I mean, the student loan debt in their late 30s, like, just some of the things they say, the $30 on lunch every day, like, I just assume that that's, we have different values. But I guess maybe I, it sounds like I should keep more of an open mind. No, the student loan debt still being there and the $30 lunch is not a value. It's a symptom of what they've learned to this point. And it could be the symptom of a value. And if the value is a loss of hope, I don't believe I can win, I'm stuck. I need the president or some socialist to come save me. If that's the value, this is not, this is not a keeper. But if the value is, if the value is, hey, I'm stuck and I don't know how to get out and you start going, well, you could do this and they go, oh, that'd be cool. Well, that's what Rachel's talking about. That's the humility that goes with the mess. Just because someone's in a mess, I don't rule them out. But I do rule them out if why they're in the mess and whether they intend to stay there or whether they actually brag about the mess and go, look at me, how cool I am. I've got a big car payment and it doesn't matter. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. And so, you know, I think so, in that sense, the value system, the way the Ramsey family would go about it is where people of faith, we would say, okay, you know, what's God telling you about this? You know, and if you can't submit yourselves to God's Word, you can't submit yourself to the directions of the Lord, then that's a lack of humility. That's an arrogance that's going to get your head taken off and I really don't want to be connected to you when your head gets taken off. And so, and that's what you're saying. So if the guy doesn't have a work ethic, if he refuses to work, that's a killer. That's a killer. And there's a whole bunch of those out there for various reasons. Yeah, and money is an interesting topic because I'm like, it can expose so much about somebody and there's a shallowness at which, especially I would think as you're dating and talking to guys about money, you know what I'm saying, I can't even imagine. You know what I mean? There's just like, there's a gross shallowness to it all. And if you're feeling that, like that would be a value system of mine. I'm like, you just, you, you feel gross, like you, like with money, like it's just like, it's all about appearances, it's all what you can get, it's all about, this is my only thing in life that I want, like that category, it's like, no, I don't want you as a partner in life. I don't want you to be the father of my kids, but who he is as a person is going to override so much of that. And if he's a person of character, he respects you, he listens to you. Like all of that, a lot of these issues really do start to take hold because actually a lot of calls on this show, we get a spouse calls in and they're having a massive issue, they're about financial fidelity or something else. And it's rarely a money issue, it's so much a breakdown of their marriage. So finding a quality man would be my number one. Now, if he budgets and he's out of debt, that's a problem. That's nice. He's icing on top. It's a slam dunk, then. One of the biggest mistakes home buyers make is talking to a realtor and shopping for houses before understanding their real budget. And that's how you end up falling in love with a house you can't afford and trapping yourself in a bigger payment than you can handle. That's why you should talk to Churchill Mortgage first. Churchill shows you what you can actually afford, not just what a bank will approve. And with their certified home buyer program, your financing is completely secured before you shop. So you won't miss out on your dream home while you're waiting for pre-approval. I've recommended Churchill for 30 years because they help you buy a home the Ramsey way. So here's your plan, contact Churchill, know your numbers, and then when you find the perfect house, you're ready. Ramsey offer or click the link in the description. Tyler's in Nashville. Hi, Tyler. How are you? Pretty good, David. You're good yourself better than I deserve. What's up? So me and my wife, I'm 30. She's 29. We have a paid four house with 15 acres. But the caveat there is it is a double wide trailer that was manufactured in 97. And this 15 acres as far as I'm grandfather's farm that I bought back in 2017. And here in the last couple months, the house that that he built in 82 has come back over sale. That's attached to this farm that was a part of it at one time. More thinking about buying it and moving into it. I just need no if you think it's a good decision or not. And how much is it? He's asking 185. And I think we could fix it up for like 50,000. Re that fixed it up and live in it, move in it. So probably 220 ish all in is what you're thinking to 25. Yeah, and how much money do you have? We have about 15% now. Okay. And what do you guys make of your about 130 to 140,000? Okay. Well, it sounds like you're a bit familiar with what we do. I can't tell for sure, but I think you are. When we tell people when they're buying a home, don't take out more than a 15 year mortgage. Well, the payment is more than a fourth of your take home pay. And in your case, you're doing that from a paid four property, which, you know, it's kind of hard to do because I'm sitting here with no payments. And all of a sudden, I'm getting ready to saddle myself with payments. Yeah. And that's, that's emotionally hard to do. You've got a particular reason to do it. It's adjacent to property you already have paid off. That's cool. It's family property. That's cool. It's a rehab. That's not cool because those things are always cost twice as much and take twice as long as you think they're going to. But the, but the whole thing, I mean, it's within our guidelines of what we teach, never take out that. I don't tell people to borrow money. And the only thing I don't yell at them for is a mortgage where it's no more than a 15 year with no more than a fourth of your take home pay. But I don't want to do this flippantly. And if I were in your shoes, I would get that rehab done ASAP. And then I would begin to pay that mortgage off because I don't want to be back to no payments. It's got to feel good to have no payments. Yeah. Meam a lot to sit down and talk about it. We think we can pay it off in seven to 10 years. We hung it down like we played off the last one. I think you can't be back that free. Yeah. I think you can do what you're talking about. And so yeah, I, if that's within our guidelines, I have to tell you, I mean, and it's, there's a lot of reasons to do it. Yeah. And I just ran the numbers real quick, Tyler. You guys bring home what? Probably 8400 a month. Yeah, give or take a little bit depending on the month, yeah. And your mortgage will be about $1,200, right? If you put 15% down on the plus tax insurance, yeah, yeah, probably around all that. Yes. So that's what the, then we would, then we would take the double Y there and rent it out as well. That's, that was the plan. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it does. It fits within that 25% of your take home pay. I wouldn't do the deal. I wouldn't do the deal if it was dependent upon the double Y, but the double Y cash flow that comes in just helps you do the rehab faster. Yeah. And actually the numbers I plugged in was the 225 with the rehab. It wasn't the 185. So yeah, so you guys from a financial perspective. Yeah, the numbers play out totally fine. Yeah. I just, I just know that you said not to take out money on real properties. Well, there's not a real property you're moving into. But I would have the double Y as a real property. And I would have. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, if the, if it was detached and it was somewhere else, I would tell you to sell it and put all the money on this house. But we're, what we're doing here is we're gathering back up old family land that's contiguous to each other. So I would do what you're doing here. But for reason of the land being attached, not because of the double Y rental. Yeah. And the good thing is higher to that it's not dependent upon the renter, just your income itself. You can do it on that. Yeah. So if the renting becomes a hassle and it feels like it is a second job that you hate, you know, you can always be done with that. Well, there's a number of years from now that that double Y is not going to be inhabitable. Yeah. And so you're going to tow it off somewhere and mow over where you used to be and you're not going to have a rental anymore. Yep. That's just that's out there in the future somewhere and you got to decide what that is. But yeah. Oh, and here's the thing. All of you listening. The whole thing we want you to do is just not normalize keeping debt your whole life. Mortgage doesn't mean slavery forever. And it shouldn't have a plan. He's got a plan seven years. It'll be done again, like he was last time and that kind of thing. But we just normalize your all like neighborhood. I grew up in people say you're always going to have a car payment. Just the way it is. You know, you're always going to have a house payment. Might as well get inside. If you normalize it and you give up and you surrender to these banks, they will own your butt for the rest of your life. And so you have to villainize them and say, this is a war for my freedom. And I'm going to fight for my freedom. And in Tyler's case, he's surrendering some of that temporarily only with a plan to get it back as soon as possible versus, well, it's okay. It's no big deal. Rems, you just send them in there. You know, no, that there's a reason we do this because not having any payments is the shortest method to becoming very, very wealthy. It's the shortest path. And the more payments you have, the more held back you are. Especially a 30 year mortgage. If you run the numbers, if you just, if you had it for 30 years, how much you pay and just interest, you know, if you go go on a mortgage calculator and just look it up. I mean, that just makes you sick where you're like, oh my gosh. So part of it, too, is getting that money back. Yeah. In your pocket, like what you're saying, when you, when you have nothing, you're not paying out all of this. Like it's, it's wild. Mathematically, your most powerful wealth building tool is your income. If you invest $100 a month from age 25 to age 65, you'll have $1,176,000. So if you have a $500 car payment from age 25 to age 65 because car payments are normalized, that's a $5 million car you're driving. Hope you like the car. If you keep a mortgage, your whole stink in life because every time you get one paid off, you can't wait to go get another one. The number of people in America that are they pay off their car, get out of debt or and the way they celebrate getting a raise at the office is going and taking out a new car payment. And that's just stupid people. You're playing the car companies games. You're playing the banks games. You're playing the FICO score game. You're playing the Samuel Jackson. What's in your wallet game? And what's in my wallet is none of Samuel's dad gum credit cards. Instead, there's some pictures of Uncle Ben, Jumman Franklin. That's him. So that's how that worked. I mean, you just got to think this through guys. That's how that works. And so that's what we want. And so when that's the way we think and how we're going to measure your question against that idea when it comes in. And whether you go in debt or whether you go broke, it doesn't really affect us. We're just going home. I don't turn off the microphone a few hours on going home. And Rachel's kids will never know what happened to you. And she'll be okay. It's okay. So this is all for you. We're doing, we're helping you because we love you and we want you to win. And we've done that for almost 40 years now. And consequently, there's tens of thousands of baby step millionaires out there that have followed these ideas because they freaking work. And these ideas come from the Bible and from your grandmother who got them from the Bible. It's live on less than you make. Get out of debt. Always be generous. Always be saving. Always have a written plan with your money. These are common sense things and I can back everyone up scripturally if you want me to. I mean, this is how this works. And people that, you know, that on tick talk that wants you to do something else. Come on, guys, really think about your sources. Garbage into your brain. You know what your brain turns into garbage. So, you know, you just, at least you didn't say tick tack. I need to clean that up. I'm sorry, tick tack. You've come a long way. It's a dad joke. No, I know. But it, well, and I think the, and I think the hardest thing for people is when you feel stuck, you want the fastest way out and the fastest way out, the, the quote unquote, get rich quick. You get quick results. Yeah, you can always borrow your way into anything. Right. It does not end up on the other side. And so actually the more methodical, slow paced, consistent plan that is backed by common sense. That's the one that works. It's not as shiny and flashy and exciting, but it is what it is. [Music] (upbeat music) Hey, George Campbell here. Listen, if you're behind on debt payments and drowning in debt, I already know what you're thinking. I can't afford a lawyer to help. And honestly, that's exactly what creditors are counting on. But here's what most people don't know. Guardian litigation group doesn't work like a traditional law firm. There's no massive retainer. There's no hourly billing that costs more than the debt itself. 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How can we help? - So I owed 27K on my car and it was given us a lot of trouble. I've been working the plan since the beginning of the year and because it was in my husband's name, he went to trade it in or what was supposed to be a cheaper vehicle. And instead, he came back with one that was 50K negative equity, $90 a week in gas, just to get me to work in back. So I went back to the dealership to see about trading it into something less or giving it back. I was disgusted and they told me, "Well, you can give us 20,000 and we'll take it back." Or you can trade it in for something that is more fuel efficient. And I just want to get out of this situation that my husband put me in. - What's your husband saying about this? What was his reaction when you probably flipped out? - Well, when I went back to the dealership and they told me exactly how much it was, his response was, "I didn't know." They had just told him what the monthly note was going to be. - So I'm not sure if we need to trade the husband or the car. - Both of the night. I'm just like, I'm so tired. - I'm not late. How long have y'all been married? - Oh, a very long time, almost 20 years. - Yeah. - Okay. - So usually I'm the one that takes care of all of the finances, but you know, it's been a long time and we've grown, we've supposedly matured and I trusted him to go in with, okay, I have work, take it in, trade it in, get something cheaper that we can pay off. - And he comes back. Well, I will say, not that this is an excuse for him by any means. He's a grown man and he should have known what he was paying for at the end, but car dealers are notorious for figuring out that monthly payment and then they add on this and this and this and you really don't know when you walk out, but when he signed the papers, he should have seen and known and asked for it. So it's not an excuse. I just know if you're not, if you don't care, it's almost like if you're not engaged at all in the purchase, that can just happen, right? But that's what frustrates me about it is I'm like, you weren't engaged in the process at all. Like you did completely the opposite of everything we talked about. So that's the issue that I see, any real negative equity into it. So how much have you sold this car? I said, they said she's 20,000 upside down. The idiots sold it to me. - I know, but I wonder if you Kelly Blue booked it for a cell of an individual, a cell what it would come up as. - So let me tell you that your finances or not your finances are not going to get better if you keep handling them the way you are. Where this guy is loose out there running around, doing whatever because you sent him over to the car dealer and you thought he could handle it. The two of you need to sit down, look at numbers, and when the item is over $1,000, you need to wait overnight, talk about it, and the two of you pray about it and look at the numbers. Slow your butt down and both of you be involved. And the two of you need to be looking at your monthly budget and the two of you need to be leaning into getting this cleaned up. All of your verbiage has been, I'm the only adult in this conversation and I'm dragging this little boy along with me. That's your verbiage. - That's what it feels like. - Yeah, and that's got to stop because you're not going to win financially doing that. All of our data points of all the millionaires we've studied, all the people that are successful in their marriage, all the people that are successful with their money, are teams, they work together, they respect each other, and they make deals with each other and they keep their word. And they don't cop out with incompetence or direct conflict against the goals that we have agreed to. But you guys are not on the same page. And so, the boy child is going to have to man up and you're going to have to get used to other people speaking into this other than just you. The two of you together got to look at this and go, this is a freaking mess and together, we're going to clean this freaking mess up. And then if you take that set of principles and apply them to this mess, then it's going to sound like, well, let's look at 14 different ways we can get rid of this stupid butt car because we got screwed. You let it happen, both of you, you by sending him over there, him by being asleep at the wheel in a coma and a car dealer's finance office, which is a good place to get screwed. And both of you together watch this happen. And then the car dealer just, you ask an alligator if it's hungry, it's going to say, yeah. And so, guess what, that's what they're going to do. So that's, now you got to figure out how to guess. How am I going to get out of this? The two of you got to sit down and go, okay, we're going to go to 14 dealers, we're going to analyze this car, we're going to get this car sold, and we're going to get a freaking hoopty $2,000 car. And we're going to roll up our sleeves, everybody's taking extra jobs. We're not going to see the inside of a restaurant unless we're working there. We're not going on vacation. All that money you piled over there by your fishing boat's going to go to clean this dead gum mess up, whatever it is. You got to scrape all this money to the middle of the table, clean out the knickles out of the corner of the couch and get the mess cleaned up as a team. But until you team up, you're not going to win. You're not. This is going to happen over and over 'cause it sabotages the progress that you make. That's why one person, people ask us all the time, how can I do this without my spouse's approval or involvement? You can't. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah, that's where it is. And so I'm sorry, I'm sorry you guys are in the middle of this mess. But that's your answer on how to fix it. And this relational dysfunction. Yes. And that'll fix the overall thing. 'Cause resentment's going to start to build if it hasn't already. Maria, so honestly like that's for him to come to the table and have a seat at the table and actually have an opinion. And you listening to it. And responsibility. And responsibility, all of it. His involvement and vice versa with you. I'm like that's part of it, but I'd be pissed too, so I think. Don't blame me. That part of it's true. I'll go with you on that. Dave is in Fort Lauderdale. Hey Dave, what's up? Hey, how you doing? I've got an issue with the bank. I went to apply for a cash out mortgage because I had my surgery. And I wanted to pay that off. And-- Did you not have insurance? Fire of Medicare. OK, so how much is your out of pocket with Medicare on the surgery? It's my out of pocket with about 70,000 dollars. OK. And you don't have any money. So it's not that I don't have any money, but I didn't want to have to use my monthly expense because if you think that I own, I pay for every month. I don't have a car payment. I have a car, but I have a car payment. How much money do you have? Well, I was going to ask if I had my assets of about 160,000. OK. Just pay off your medical debt. You don't have that in cash, though, Dave. Do you? No. OK. What are you having cash? What's it even-- What's it even-- Assets, I think house and car and stuff. Dave, how much? How much money do you have in the bank? Cash available to you. The bank will now have about two weeks. Some monthly expense, the total of $10,000. Get your annual monthly about $15,000. $1,500. Do you have any money that you can get your hands on that's an investment? Or anything you can sell? No, not right now. No. OK, what's the $165,000 in? It's the price of the house. - The home that you own and your paid for car. - Yep. - Okay, see, you have $1,500, how old are you? - Um, in my 70s. - Okay, what, how old are you exactly? - 77. - Thank you. And how is your health now that you've had the surgery? - It's great. - Good, I'm glad. Okay, um, and what is your monthly income? - It's about to pay, 26,000 else. - Okay, all right. The first thing I'm gonna do is go revisit that inventory and see if there's anything other than the house and the car that I can sell to pay this debt down. The second thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call the medical people and say, "I don't have any money." This is a Medicare deal. All right, I don't have any cash. What kind of a deal can you offer me on this, and see if you can get a discount. And if you can, I'd scrape together the money at barely out of your monthly, which your monthly's really tight. I agree with that, but I do my best not to borrow on the cash out. I don't want you to go back in debt at 77. You finally got out. (upbeat music) - Let me tell you what I get asked all the time. When should I get term life insurance? How much do I need? Is it affordable? Those are the right questions to be asking. So let's take a quick review. The fact is, term life isn't a baby step. So if anyone is dependent on your income, you need to have 10 to 12 times your income in life insurance. Now, and most people are surprised by how affordable term life really is. Even if you're not in perfect health. Look, I understand the hesitation since most insurance companies make it more of a hassle than it needs to be. Not as standard insurance. They're not an insurance company. They're a broker that works for you. That means they'll shop and compare the top term life companies to find the most competitive options on the coverage for your family. For almost 30 years, I've recommended Zander for straight answers, competitive rates, and coverage that actually protects your family. Call 800-356-4282 or go to zander.com for a quick and easy quote. That's zander.com. (upbeat music) Sarah is with us in Fort Collins, Colorado. Hi, Sarah. How are you? I'm good, Dave. How are you? What's up? So I wanted to ask, how do I get comfortable investing for the future when the future itself just feels so uncertain? What do you mean? You know, this is a bad comparison. For example, there's just so much negativity on social media, and I see so many things that socialism is making such a push. And climate change is risking our future. It sometimes feels pointless to have this big chunk of money in the future when it just feels like I'm just really anxious about it and so uncertain. How old are you? About what the future is, 36. Okay, cool. All right. Sarah has a fellow conspiracy theorist fan. I would tell you though. I'd get off social media. I'm not kidding you. For six months. You need to go all of a fast. Don't engage it, and it is amazing. The new sites too. Anything. I mean, I'm telling you, and that's not putting your head in the sand, right? If you need to know something, you need to know something, but to sit there and worry about something you cannot control, it does know good. It really doesn't. And we were not even, I don't think, created to hold everything that we see on social media, right? Whether it's different murder trials going on to things happening across the globe. Like I'm like, it's just, it's a lot. And so-- Dr. Deloni talks about John. He said your body was designed to learn about danger within your circumference. Not someone that got murdered in Japan, but if someone got murdered in Japan, we all heard about it 20 minutes ago. It's a major because of the inputs. And it's fast, and it's frequent, and it's everything. So every possible negative thing, or a potential negative thing, or hyped up drama negative thing, is going to be pushed out. And of course, those of us in that business and around those people all the time, we know that if it bleeds, it leads. We know that these people, basically, a lot of these sites are basically fear porn. Well, it's clickbait, they have to get their clicks. And so it is going to be-- They're driving through. And it's going to be extreme on both sides of the-- Even if you look politically on both sides of the spectrum, it's extreme. And when you honestly, I mean, really say, when you talk to everyday people, most people are in the middle on all different types of-- it is more hopeful, genuinely. Regardless of where you stand on climate change, we can all agree that in 2006, the inconvenient truth that Al Gore put out was absolutely bogus, because he claimed that Miami would be under water by now. And obviously, it's not. Right. So I mean-- So in both extremes too, yeah. And regardless of what you believe about climate change, you just have to observe actual facts. So anyway, yeah, the reason I ask how old you are is, because about the time I was your age or so, a guy came out with a book called "88 Reasons Jesus Is Coming Back in 1988." Oh, man. People were obsessed with the rapture. I feel like at the end of the world, everyone-- It's the Christian conspiracy theory market, OK? It's the '90s. And so the Bible's real clear that we're not going to know the date of the time, but this guy did, OK? And he was sitting on his house by waiting on the exact date that Jesus was supposed to return. I guess he's still sitting there, I don't know, because it's still didn't happen. And so-- But your point is you can't know more than this. I have hardly used to say 80% of what we worry about never occurs. And the other 20% we don't have any control over. And so I'm going to go ahead with my life. I know there's some things out there that are actual facts. I know there's a whole bunch of it that's a drama-fied and upsold. And Miami's not going to be underwater. I'm pretty sure-- pretty sure in my lifetime, we can still go down there and swim off the beach. And so that kind of stuff, right? So I'm pretty sure we're going to be OK. I'm pretty sure socialists aren't going to take over. Because as soon as people figure out what that is, they don't want it. It sucks. And there's no track record on it. So I'm really not worried about it. People got good common sense. And again, I mean, we're-- And even if it did, probably not in your lifetime. Well, let me tell you this, Sarah. We're watching Tom Hanks as a War 2 documentary. It's like, oh my god, we're in the middle of it. When Sarah was watching, like a few episodes tonight, it's so good. Good. Could you imagine telling the greatest generation that we're-- like, think about living then. That's more like into the world. Like, you watch that. Yeah, you're looking after a back window for Japanese airplanes. That feels into the world to me. And so you can go into different parts of history and you would think what this specific generation's going through. They taught us to hide under desks in the '60s in case there was an atomic bomb. As if a desk would protect you from an atomic bomb. I've always thought that was the dumbest. But that's as dumb as wearing a master in COVID. OK, OK. I mean, it's just as dumb. And so, you know, it caught 'em out of here. There's no chance. So anyway, the thing's fine. So anyway, Sarah, the answer is it's human hope versus human anxiety. Yes. And so what are you placing your hope in? What do you really believe? And I really believe that God has not got that as our plan. I suspect before this thing comes to an end that I'll be on my house boat waiting on Jesus to come back, so I mean. Yeah, it's-- well, just-- yeah. This is a flippant answer, but it's also the only one I've got. But the real thing is-- I'm not going to plan my life around all the negative things bringing the world to an end. Yes. And the sources at which we're getting this information have a reason on why they are having certain headlines. They're in the business. They're in a certain way. They know their audience and they feed their audience what they want to hear. I mean, it's just-- it's a game. The media-- it is. I'm like, it's just this massive game, and so-- It's called provocatour. Just shoes not to-- yeah, shoes not to engage. I mean, for real, do a six-month social media past ages. I don't have a supply of water. I don't have a supply of food. I do have a supply of bullets for the zombie. OK, oh my god. But other than that, she's just the most-- The zombie apocalypse. I'm ready. But this whole segment out. I just don't know what the zombies are going to look like yet. Well, I did think about stash and some-- I don't know. Why 2K? Well, why 2K? You had water for why 2K? I had-- we had bottled water. Yes, you did. I was joking with one of my buddies. He said, I've got more water than you. And I said, do you have a gun? And he said, no, I said, good. I got your water. Why do we have to keep going back? Why do we have to keep going back to that? Because it's how it works. I'm not worried about it. It's fun. Enjoy the ride. Sarah, there's not a perfect answer. It's human there's always going to be things that are awesome and always going to be things that are troubling and The good news is if you think about it overall. Here's the actual truth Today If you are alive in the United States of America You are alive at the best possible time in the history of the world You're standard of living your medical care Your quality of life your hours worked the way your children are treated Is better than at any point in human history in any physical location These are the good times We live in the middle of them The stock market is setting records People are becoming millionaires faster than some of them learn to spell millionaire These are the good times if you want to start a business right now You can just start a business when I started this business almost 40 years ago. The internet wasn't even there Much less apps much less I a I much less anything else I can just I can just have an idea and deliver it to you folks by morning And I'm a boomer for God's sakes. What could you millennials do? This is the best time to be alive, but you know what'll kill you Hope deferred stolen put off that's deferred Hope deferred makes the heart sick But when desire comes it is the tree of life and So when we have this sense of hope It drives our belief system and it causes us to do things that cause our dreams to come true When we've lost our hope and we're frozen and our hope is stolen by these fear porn sites or by bad bad inputs from tick-tack or whatever Then we act on that lack of hope which guarantees that our nightmares come true and We miss the wave Of existing in the greatest time in the greatest location the United States of America in the history of the world Wow When you're trying to hire you don't have time to dig through stacks of resumes Hoping someone halfway decent floats to the top. That's the world's least fun game of where's Waldo? What you do need are qualified candidates who won't waste your time because you can be sure they actually want your job Which is why I love the way Zippercruder is helping small business owners right now Zippercruder has a new feature that finds the kind of people who will go the extra mile for you candidates can now tell you why they're interested may passionate about your role in Zippercruder smart matching technology Automatically puts the most qualified most interested candidates at the top of your list So instead of sorting through a pile of just okay. You're seeing the right people faster In fact four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day That's not a coincidence It's because Zippercruder goes the extra mile for you just like the candidates you want to hire try Zippercruder for free today as Zippercruder dot com slash Ramsey that's Zippercruder dot com slash Ramsey meet your match on Zippercruder Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the fair wins credit union studio. I'm Dave Ramsey your host Rachel Cruz Ramsey Personality is my co-host this hour. We're going to devote to one of my favorite topics and Most people's one of their favorites to talk about around the water fountain over the kitchen table with one of our favorite people with the one of our favorite People is real estate Brian Bafini America's real estate coach. He coaches. He and his team coach more real estate agents than any other company in America at Bafini and company Brian's been a friend for many years. He speaks at our entree leadership conferences I've spoken in his conferences and he was on here a few months ago and about all we were sure of was we were going to do that again Welcome back Brian glad to be back love being here with you guys. It's good to have you sir so I want to talk real estate this hour together and Towards the end of the hour guys. We're going to open up the phones and clear off the phone lines and take some questions from some of you Brian's one of the leading experts on real estate. So this whole thing of you and I and this doing a segment on real estate kind of happened when we were having a discussion over the golf course one day and you said well There's inventory shortage isn't I went well? Yeah, there's been inventory shortages for 20 or 25 years and anytime There's a shortage of something the price goes up no doubt and you said well, there's some things the president could do and I went Oh, don't tell me that I don't want the I don't want to depend on Washington to do anything Well, we went one thing we could do you said is it we could keep the Keep the large institutions from buying tens of thousands of homes and taking them off the market and turning them into rental houses That's one problem one thing we could do is a lot of the boomers would like to sell a move down But they've got over a half a million dollars in equity anything over a half million dollars in equity And that's a 30 year-old y'all. That's how all that number is should should have been updated and hasn't been indexed for inflation or anything else We could remove the capital gains tax on Home personal residences and a bunch of people put their house up for sale because they could get that money out tax-free move down and that that would help add to the inventory and That was a couple things we talked about I talked about them on the air right after that and lo and behold the president put out a I don't I'm not saying it came from us, but he did call us right after that now I want us to talk about it to get the bill through and that did actually happen the road to housing act And then when it did come through he didn't want to sign it because they filled it full of pork as they always do And so that's what happens when you're in DC, but so that the road to housing act. I want to start with that I'm going to take part of the credit with Brian Bafini for having at least a sparked an idea in Washington because What it was supposed to do the primary thing was to keep these institutional buyers from buying the houses get them off the market Yep, and it did some of that for sure It was definitely watered down right it wasn't a nothing burger, but it wasn't a bill. We were hoping for They have eased some they've eased the restraints for local communities to be able to help build more homes That's a big deal. That is a big deal California didn't listen Thanks, but you know, you know, it's 72 degrees there today I got bad taxes and I can't build a house, but it's 72 that's what I'm hanging on to. You know, but I'll just say now I will say that they didn't get the cap gains thing done No, they did get a restriction on the big companies and what's happening these companies who bought for two years They bought 25% of all homes in America They are now trying to divest themselves. So what they're doing is leasing out these homes and now they've come out with incentive programs Okay, we'll leave you the house and we'll give you a credit towards buying it if you buy it Because they're trying to get out of it. So for someone trying to create a down payment the market rate because rents have come down So technically typically when they do a lease option There's a premium on the lease they charge more for the lease on the home and then they you get a credit for a down payment Well, you kind of paid extra for that now what's happened is because the rents have come down across the board They're being forced to rent these new homes, but they're given credits to people who say if you sign a one-year lease or an 18-month-year lease will give you $10,000 towards the down payment and you buy it from us So that's but the economics are forcing that not this bill. No. No, that's a bill didn't cause them to divest no It's cut it just stopped them from buying buying more for the houses on your street So now because they're these big black stones and whatever else they're like I can't buy more Well, I'm gonna get rid of what I have so they're gonna slowly get rid of what they have the second thing is that's an unintended consequence I didn't see that coming no, it's good and the next thing that's happening is the midterms are coming All real estate is local and all politics are too. So now they're actually talking about actually doing an executive order in the next couple of weeks On the capital gains thing that didn't get put through the first time really so you do an executive order Ah, you know, so the way you do it as you put it into the reconciliation bill You don't make it a permanent change to the tax laws You follow? Oh, it's always it's not a permanent thing. So what it could do now the downside it could create a shock of people going I'm gonna get my money. So yeah, we're quick 250 per person 500,000 for a couple put in today Yeah, that's today that started in 1997 They're talking about moving it to a million. Okay, if it was indexed for inflation to be 620,000 each But if it's a million it what what how motivated do you think them boomers would beat you down size here's the thing So now you're going I have a rental property. I have a vacation home I'm in a big house that I don't know what not just personal residents everything everything and so now it's like I'm gonna Here's what I'm doing. I'm gonna put it down. I was only gonna get a $500,000 drop now I'm gonna get a million dollar drop and here's the gift and here's the hope for the folks out there No, if you got if it's a rental house, it's a million dollars. There's nothing. Yeah, yeah And so now what you're looking at is a potential of getting that discount again, it'll go year-by-year Mm-hmm. So it's a reconciliation bill. I think it'll soften prices because I'm like, hey, I'll take 50 grand off my price If I can be assured of the 950 you get access on that. Yep, you know, so that's a they're looking at doing that in the next reconciliation bill I just got a call on that today. Okay, if that actually happens that'll turn if even if it's temporary if you put a million dollars on My on the houses that I own that are rentals, and I've got a million dollars worth of gain I'll sell them. Yeah, well there that's what they're trying to do. Yeah, they know they got a big problem on their hands And young people can't buy homes. They're feeling disconsolate, you know, I should. - You were on, what was it, June? Of this year with us, we were on, okay, so it's been a few months. What has anything big shifted in the last 90 days? - Scott Wors. - Has it? (all laughing) - It's for you. - You're a lot of sunshine. - Yeah. - There you go. - Yep, because I feel a lot of sunshine is here. Hey, I'm from a land whose number one export is alcohol. Okay, it's amazing. (all laughing) Okay, what are a couple of those points? And we'll probably dig into more in the segments, but I'm just curious. - So what we're seeing is this increase in under 30s, living at home, it's going back. - Yeah, coming back. - 39% up to 49% of people under 30, you know. - Okay. - I mean, 90 days? - No, no, so that's in the last six years, but that's going up three points this summer. So kids that coming out of college who normally would graduate and get a job and stay at the college town, they all moved home. - Yep. - So this year we've seen a higher percentage of these college kids that got graduated, came back home and didn't go. - Well, and this is not speaking for all Gen Z by any means, but there was a clip going around by all of this girl. She's probably 24 and she is just having a cow in her car about how she is not getting a $150,000 offer for these jobs and on and on and on and on and on. People are reacting like you're basically two years out of college, no, you're not going to be making that. So all but to say, they have this belief of still, some of them, of what they should be making, slash what my life should look like, and then reality hits. And it's like, no, you're making 65, 50. - A buddy of mine sent his son over for an interview at the company. Now I don't interview people, but comes along, the kid goes, I won in my contract and I offer for an executive position within two years. And that's what his professor told him. And I said, I got room in the mail room. (laughing) - I was like, kid, I don't know where she's back in. - Do you know what a mop looks like? - Wow. - It's hard, yep. - Wow. - Not making the income say thank, and then I try to get in the housing market that they can. - It's tough. - Rentals are up, yep. - Brian Bafini is with us, we're talking real estate. I think it's gonna be a sociology lesson when we're done. This is The Ramsey Show. (upbeat music) As a dad of young kids, I'm starting to think a lot more about the world they're growing up in and how I'll help them make sense of it as they get older. And that's why I like World Watch, a video new service for pre-teens and teens. Because one thing I know for sure, if you don't teach your kids how to understand the world, somebody else will. And these days that could be TikTok, YouTube, Instagram influencers, or whoever happens to show up in their social media feed. World Watch's 10-minute videos help young people understand what's happening in the world through a Christian worldview without all the outrage, negativity, and noise that is everywhere these days. The reporting is factual, engaging, and designed specifically for pre-teens and teens. And World Watch creates opportunities for something every family needs more of, meaningful conversations. Instead of just reacting to headlines, kids learn how to think about what's happening in the world and parents get a chance to keep those conversations going at home. Because when my kids are old enough, I want them informed, not overwhelmed. And right now, you can get a 30-day free trial. Just go to worldwatch.news/ramzie or use promo code Ramzie to get started. That's worldwatch.news/ramzie. (upbeat music) Like so many things in life, there's a lot of things you can't control. And the world of real estate is one of them. So how do you function in this environment? Well, we're talking about Brian Bafini today, one of the nation's leading experts and leading coaches on real estate issues. I will tell you this, you control the controllables. Anytime you're facing something that feels out of control, first thing is facts are your friends, not feelings. So this sense that you've been boxed out or it's unfair or all these little childish things that we all feel when we feel disenfranchised. Yeah, well, that's feelings. Okay, so you have to back up from that and go okay, but what are the facts and what are the things I can actually control? Well, the facts are that the typical entry home, if you take out California in New York, is about $199,000 right now. That's the typical starter home in America. And this typical starter home in America is not fancy and has never been fancy. Even when my first home was purchased, when my parents purchased their first home, they weren't fancy. And so one of the controllables is you adjust your expectations for your first home. Because you're not going to buy a 4,000 square foot with a jacuzzi in a skylight, your glow. It's kind of like, okay, yes. But for real though, so Brian, what are you seeing? The typical, I have not seen that $200,000. That's a Zillow number, which I don't trust Zillow that much, but it's a Zillow number. What would you say for the average start feeling? Because I mean, I have a look up home. So the average home in America is about 428. I think it's good to take out the two coasts, right? I mean, I live in San Diego. It changes the map. It changes a big time. I agree, I agree. So I think you're looking at the latest numbers. And Zillow, again, they're not friends of Brian Muffini. So they position numbers because they have certain programs going, right? So you're probably looking at your typical starter home is about $290, so it might be about a hundred grand more. The dynamic that we're seeing is this. There's more inventory than that we've seen in the last seven years, okay? There's more houses for sale, which means prices are starting to soften. Prices are starting to flatten. This is the time, and you guys were talking earlier on, but the lady listened to social media. If you're a buyer and you're listening to social media, there is no hope. Give up, everybody's given up, that's the thing to do. Rant is your friend, the math's not mathing, and that's not true. Now is the time to be making sure you're doing a Ramsey program, you're saving the money, you're eating spaghetti. Okay, you're doing it, 'cause if you really want a house, you got a sacrifice. Get out of debt, have your own car. Don't buy a car. Don't buy a car payment. Just say, you know, every first time buyer, buy a car. It's a car. They buy a car before they buy out. Why can't I get a house of a $1,200 car payment? Right, and that is the typical thing. So you got to keep grindin'. The second thing there is dynamics out there, I was talking to you guys offline. 23% of all mortgages in the United States are sumable. Now they're specifically, they're FHA and VA, and you were on radio a few months ago, a ton about this. No, I screwed that up about two weeks ago. I just said they're not a sumable, and I got hammered for it, 'cause I was wrong. Well, you were right and you were wrong. No, you were right when it comes to conventional. Conventional loans are not a sumable. None of them are, they used to none of them be a sumable with rates, but you can take an FHA or VA, and they'll keep the rate. So here's the thing, if you're a military person, you go to the listing and say, if find me as someone who's in the military, selling their home, and you can take over the average loan on an FHA VA is 3.2%. FHA, which is the number one first-time buyer home. So let's say someone's a first-time buyer, they bought a home, they fixed it up, it's worth more, it's gone up in value. They're going on to buy a conventional house. They're gonna get a conventional. The FHA loan that's on their house is a sumable. You gotta qualify, so you have good credit, you got the down payment, you're clean, you're good, you got no stupid car payment. You can go get an assumable loan on a VA or an FHA loan. And you're not paying the current 5.6% on a 15-year fixed. You're getting a 3%. - Right, and 90% of them are getting a 6.8, Dave. You know, most of them are getting 30 years. I mean, your plan is better, it's right. It's the only way to save money, but the typical buyer. - Right, it's out there doing that, yeah. - It's 6.8, so. - And I mean, for the first-time home buyers, we were just running numbers in the break. You know, if you make a hundred grand, which is a little bit up, then what the average, or what the median household income is, your starter home is gonna be around that 270, 300, which is, you know, that's around what you're saying, even that's correct, right? That should be your first. But it's going to take longer to save, and if that 270, $300,000 house is not in the neighborhood, you want good school district, right? If you have kids, all of it, it's going to take you longer. And I feel like that's one of the most frustrating folks about this. - It might take you longer to drive to work, because you might move three counties out, or two counties out. My first home was on Texas Street in San Diego, and we were three weeks married, moved into the new home, and Beverly goes, "One of those fireworks I hear in the distance." (laughing) It learned fireworks. It's just, yeah, they're celebrating here in inner city San Diego. But you know what, we fixed it up. We made it worth more. We sold that house, and I got it to another neighborhood that didn't have fireworks, right? - And you keep moving out of the truck, yes, yes. - So, you know, you got to start somewhere, you got to fight-- - That's the perfect answer. - You got to scratch and claw. You got to fight, I'll just say this. There is the average homeowner has 46 times the net worth of the average renter. Young people are deciding to stay renters. That's the way to stay broke. Fight, bite, scratch and claw. Here's the, I was showing you guys, people like, here's this little graph, for those of you who can see it. Look at this thing. The green is the amount of years, and last 75 years, it real estate went up, okay? And here's the red. And the red, four of 'em, five of 'em were the great recession. So, it's gone down six years in '75. That's a pretty good investment. So, it's not going anywhere. Now, the beautiful thing for people, it's only gonna go gradually the next few years, and the incomes are going up at a higher rate. - Even more, which is great, yes. - But fight, bite, scratch and claw. - So, currently, the current inflation rate, real estate nationwide is around 1%. - Yep. - Yep. - And the current wage growth is around three and a half. - Three and a half, okay. - Give it four years. - Yep. - So, if you say wages, don't match real estate prices that that's going in the right direction. Yes, which is great. That's going to help, that's going to help the issues, but it's not going to change. If you have unrealistic expectations to get an executive position in the first two years in your contract and get an executive house, if you want a 5,000 square foot home in a premium neighbor home. Yeah, and I don't think people are. You can't afford that if you make $80,000 a year. Right, right. I think that that's the hard part is when it, when the rubber meets the road and you're looking at your income, you're working hard, right? You're paying for daycare. I mean, like we get these callers in and they are, they are, they are trying so hard to do well. And it's, and when the facts come out, yes, your feelings are going to follow. It's going to be frustrating. You're like, man, I, this is, this is less than what we were expecting, right? And so there's that reality that you have to live in for a bit. And then once you kind of get over that hump, right? That's what you're saying, you fight hard, get in the markets, and then you could look up in four years and be in a totally different place with your income, your job, your house, everything. I told, I was a house painter, right? My dad was a house painter. And my first house, I told my wife, it was five star accommodations because you could see five stars through the hole in the roof. Yeah. And so we fixed it up. We made it better. Right. Right. And then we sold it and we made the next one better. And we made the next one better. And the next thing, you know, you wake up one day and you've got millions of dollars in equity in real estate. And that's the American dream. That's it. But to get there, what you're saying is the plan, like if you still have student loan payments, you still have two car payments, a credit card debt, it is going to feel almost impossible to try to be a homeowner today. You don't. And you get that stuff cleaned up. That's right. And that's what we said. You shouldn't buy a home if you're in that mess. You should clean the mess up first because the home's not going to be a blessing. It's going to be a curse. So you get out of debt. You build your full of emergency fund. You save for a good down payment. You adjust your expectations and have location. And generally that means you're going to go a little bit further out. And the further out you go, the more house you can buy in most markets. One out of every 10 homes in America is sold through my clients. We tell every member we have in a real estate business to get every first time buyer, buy them a copy of Total Money Makeover. I was walking my son through the building today and I go, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of copies of that book I sold. And why am I here today, apart from our friendship, is it's the best stuff out there to get people on a path. And in the motto, oh, Dave is old school and chew your credit cards up. Let me tell you that old school works today, tomorrow, 50 years from now. Get out of debt. Get the student loans gone. Don't drive the old car by something to park it in front of. Yep. Now, when you do that, okay, so if you're sitting there and you clear your debt and then you get ready to buy a house and you go look at what you can afford and you don't like it. Now, you've got two choices. Remain a renter or buy that home that's not fancy that I don't like and get started. Ten years from now, which will be the best route for your wealth building and your family. Buy the house that you don't like. For sure. I used to send out a postcard to neighborhoods and says, your landlord says hi and thanks again for paying his mortgage. This is the Ramji Show. If you or someone you love is dealing with a complex health issue, navigating the health care system can feel like a full-time job that you never signed up for. Several months ago, my family experienced multiple emergency health care situations and little did we realize what kind of nightmare we were in for beyond the medical issues. Dealing with different schedules and signatures from different providers, scheduling appointments, decoding all of the medical jargon, figuring out medical billing and the mountains of paperwork. 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It takes about 2 minutes, that's S-O-L-A-C-E solacehealth.com/ramz must be 18 or older. Advocates do not provide medical or legal advice. And Baphini is our guest, America's number one real estate coach to real estate agents, but also a real estate expert, good friend of ours, and we're talking real estate this hour. Now we're going to take some of your questions in the next segment. If you want to call in, triple eight, eight, two, five, two, two, five, and ask Brian a question. So here's some of the ones that have already come in, Brian. Should I wait for rates to come down before I buy? I heard in the previous section, you were talking about the guy who knew Jesus was coming back and he was sitting on his boat. That's like the buyer waiting for rates to come down, okay? So, you know, if you know when rates are coming down, you give me a call. You let me know. I don't think anything's going to change for a long time because of the amount of debt the country has. The rates are built off the Treasury bills. The Treasury bills are who the government is borrowing money from countries, institutions, I have T-bills, and they've guaranteed to pay me a certain amount. The 10-year Treasury is what sets the market. So you take the 10-year Treasury, you add 2%, and you'll get a 30-year mortgage. Like right now, it's 4.6, and so you're going to go and get a mortgage. A 30-year mortgage would be 6.8, and a 15 is, you know, 5.7. If you wait, I'll say this. I have never had anybody in my real estate career say this ever. I'm glad I waited. What the typical thing is, man, I could have bought that house down in Kool Springs for 300 grand and a packet of peanuts, and now it's worth a million, you know, and I didn't. And that's all you ever hear. You hear stories of regret never have I heard anybody happy they waited. Is renting forever a viable option and can I still build wealth without buying a home? I'll jump in on this with you. Okay. So, of course it is. You know, living in your car is an option too, so you can rent. It's just when the number says the number one source of wealth in the United States is a private residence, and that the average homeowner has 46 times the net worth of a renter. The numbers are in your favor. Can you go do it on the market? Can you invest in stocks? For sure you can. You can do all that stuff. It's just a lot harder and not a stable. When we did the largest study of millionaires in America ever done, 89% of them did it on their own without inheritance, 9 out of 10. We found over and over and over again two things. One is they loaded up their 401k, and it had built up to a substantial amount. And the second one is they bought a home, paid it off. Yep. And so we're talking to a guy with a guy with a million and a half dollar net worth. They got a $600,000 paid for house, and they got $7,800,900,000 in their 401k, and that's the typical millionaire in America today. The first place you get your first 1 to 5 million is investing in your 401k steadily and getting a home and getting it paid off, and 100% of the time those houses have gone up, and 100% of the time the next door neighbor renting his rent went up. They're so the math works against you when you're a renter. You have no control. Yeah. Now that doesn't mean you don't need to rent until you get yourself out of debt, and get your emergency funding, get rid of your student loan, and all that. You do all of that for rent, but renting for 30 years is a dumb idea, really mathematically dumb. And rent less than you can afford. What should I actually prioritize when buying my first home, a yard versus square footage, as older versus newer home, Excel versus the neighborhood? Yeah. Well, again, it's boring. I wish I had something sexy, a location, location, location. I always bought the worst home on the best street. So I buy as much location as I can afford, and then I go put in the sweat equity to make it better. And so to do the upgrades and everything, yep. Fight it. You know, I understand the home builders. They do a great job, and it's sexy, and they got muffins in the oven, and you come through, and you drink juice, and they got this, and they got the designers, and whatever else, you want to buy the ugly duckling in the best neighborhood you can afford, and fight fighting scratching claw to get it improved. Because that is, I mean, that's the common sense, I feel like, I don't know, a ton about all this, but that is the, you never want to buy top of the neighborhood. You always want to buy in the low. I mean, that is the common sense role, so do not, do not forget that. You are looking. I used to have people say, well, I want to have, you know, I want to have a house. on the ocean and I got a budget for the mountain, you know what I mean? And I said, "Well, here's my advice. I want, I have to have 5,000 square feet." Well, I would say, "Just keep driving south till you can afford something." Because it's Mexico down there, okay? So, you just keep driving south. You'll be able to afford something soon. -From California. -No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's great. Should I buy or sell by honor to save on commission fees? Oh, we love this. Just toss that one up to the real estate coast. Both of us get chew on this one, all right? I'll know on the leg. Yeah. I'll start with this. The average number of first of home for sale by owners for 30 years was 12% and 50% of those were interfamily transfers. Last year with all the technology and all the zelo and all the demand, the average for sale by honor was 4% of all sales and 80% of those were interfamily transfers. Was it an interfamily transfer? You call a lawyer, not a realtor? And the second dynamic is the average real estate agent gets 14% higher sales price than for sale by honor. So, yeah. And they cost. And they cost six. The average real estate commission in America is six. And they get an average of 14% more for the house. So, you didn't save the commission. No. Here's the thing. I can change the oil on my Mercedes too. It would cost me more in spilling on the driveway and getting on my clothes that it would be getting it done to jiffy lose. So, yeah, it's better. Let's add to that question too, because I had this call the other day. I'll tell you about. But how should someone analyze, if they've got three different realtors or four different realtors that they're interviewing real estate agents, how should they analyze which one to pick? Well, I always start with a referral, right? That's my basis. Like someone who's a trusted source, right? You have Ramsey trusted is the name of your system. You got to find a referral, someone who's trusted. The next thing is what's their experience? Okay. How many homes just out last year? Here's a distal stagger, yeah? This is mind well. Okay. 64% of all real estate agents have not sold a home this year. Now, you know, that is not who you want to be working with. And, you know, this used to be an 80-20 business. It's become a 85-15. It's head into a 90-10 business. We had 1.6 million members of the National Association of Realtors two years ago. And by January of next year, by January of 28, it'll be 1 million. So 600,000 people are out. And that's because people got in. Oh, real estate. I love houses. I love people. This looks great. It's so easy. I'm a frustrated decorator. Okay. Good luck with that. Real estate is hard. It's a hell of a lot of work. If it's an up and down, it does exceed. You have to fight everything. Yeah, evenings and weekends. And you sell 50 to 300 houses a year. And then you're qualified. What does a top agent, like if you are interviewing what's a number that they would say, this is how many houses I sold this year that you're like, oh, that's a, okay, that feels like a good. It depends on the average sales price. So if I'm in California, if someone's selling 20 homes a year, their average sales price is 2.5 million. Right. But I'd say, you know, for me, I think they got to be above the 25 transactions threshold across the board. You guys haven't even hired thresholds. Yeah, we do. For Ramsey Trusted, which is fantastic. Bottom line is they got to be a pro. They got to come with references and they got to tell you, here's who I work with and here's what I've done. And you get a real pro. Like it just, when you get a real pro, you get to sit in the back of the car and they drive you to the airport. And it's done for you. And there's no legal after bite. There's no disclosure problems. You when you sell the house, the house is actually sold. You sell the house by yourself. It's not permanently sold. They can come back after you. If you don't cross the T's and dot the eyes, it's a big day. All the title and everything. Yep. That's good. I love it. I love it. How about this question? How often should I check my homeowners insurance, the coverage amount? How often would you recheck that? Well, I mean, Dave, Dave will go berserk on this because he's right. I mean, it's just all the time. You know, right now, California, for example, yesterday, they have what's called a California fair plan, which is like a subsidized government fricking insurance policy. And they just went up 29% one day. Oh my gosh. Okay. So you got to be shopping all the time. You never look again. Same thing. You got to look. I would say every 90 days now. So if you live on the coast, the idea of the California socialized homeowners insurance program just went up 29%. Right. Because that's what it is. Yes, sir. Yeah. Those of us who grew up in Europe and have experienced socialism, don't understand why y'all Americans are playing footsie with that stuff. Wow. Ron Bafini is with us. Number one, real estate coach and real estate expert. We're going to take your calls and a few more of our questions in this last segment of this hour coming up. A lot of banks are happy to hold your money. But Fairwinds Credit Union helps you make progress. Most people spend years focusing on their financial goals and never stop to ask whether their bank is helping them get there or just holding on to their money. The real goal is building an emergency fund paying cash for your next car, saving for a home, looking at your finances and actually feeling some peace. That's why I love Fairwinds. Their smart bundle gives you up to 10 free high-yield savings accounts to help you stay organized as you say for different goals. Plus, early direct deposit and no monthly fees. And you get support from real people who want to help you win with money. You can even get the Ramsey debt is normal B-weird debit card, which is linked to your free Fairwinds spend smart checking account. To tell the world, you think differently about money. So look, if you're working the baby steps, your bank should be helping you move toward financial freedom, not just park your cash. Go to Fairwinds.org/RAMsey to open your smart bundle and start making progress today. That's Fairwinds.org/RAMsey, ensured by the NCUA. Ryan Biffini is with us as well this hour as we're talking real estate. Before we jump to the phones, I'm going to throw in one other thing right quick. We've noticed and we've talked about on the air here several times in the past two years. We've begun noticing and we didn't make the tie, we didn't make the connection initially. The percentage of folks that are living together, not married versus married. If you didn't know, more people live together in America, not married than live together married. That number has been that way for almost 10 years now. That number crossed a few, about a decade ago. What we're seeing is that that's hampering the data is in now from that because it's been going on long enough. That's hampering people's ability to build wealth. We're also seeing in Brian's numbers that it's affecting or I can't tell if it's cause or effect really in these numbers, but it's also showing up in these housing numbers. The percentage of people buying a home that are married is down dramatically, but the percentage of people that are married is down. The people that have a double income to buy a home together is down because two singles buying a home together doesn't count like a married couple for the mortgage company. Right. It's different issues and different underwriting issues. It's more problematic because they're getting themselves into a mess. The mortgage company knows that their data on it is bad. I mean, look at it. In 1960, people under the age of 30 married couples, homeownership rate was 52%. And now again, less people married all that kind of stuff, but 2025, the number's 12%. So we gone from 52% to 12%. And so that's both. But in 1960, like 90% of the people living together were married. Yep. Yep. Or more. Yeah, for sure. And so it was a 70s that that shift did think. And what's funny is women homeowners are up. So women are like, listen, I'm going to I'm doing, I'm buying crypto and sports betting. No. Yeah. Even for the future. I'm not marrying a crypto bro. I'm buying a house. Yeah. I mean, so they're they're getting in the market at two and a half times the rate of a single man, two and a half times the rate. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder from 1960, you know, from even women, like women couldn't probably support themselves the way they, like couldn't even have a checking account. So right. So no, you could have a checking account, but it wasn't. No, if you had to be signed, right? It was 1973 when that, that's just the ERA. But my mother had a checking account. Okay. In the 60s. I remember that. But it didn't have to be assigned by a man. No, no, absolutely. Chat GBT. I really, everything on the internet is not true. Abraham Lincoln said that. All right. Josh is in Washington, DC. Hey, Josh, how are you? Hey, team. How's it going? Great, man. What's your real estate question for Brian? So I'll start off by saying my wife and I have a pretty good situation, but we want to tackle this the right way and consider all factors. Make sure we are missing anything. Good for you. We are currently in a rent to purchase option agreement dated back in 2024. We got an appraisal. on 2024 in the house, that's the set price on the house. We're set to buy it in December, 2027. We'll have about 25 to 30% down, ideally, with a good amount of cash leftover emergency fund, and then just left over decent amount of cash leftover. - You're awesome, you're way to go. - Free canoe car, excellent. But with this house, the thing is, is if we do buy it, we're gonna wanna put some money into it. Now, we don't really know if we're gonna be there that long. It's a really nice home, but with good bones, but we haven't really been able to make it our own home because we don't know yet. - Yeah, that's wise. - So, given that we won't be there forever, we're worried, well, quote unquote, worried that if we put some money into it, we pay the mortgage that, you know, when we go to sell it, we might either not make our money back given the fact that, you know, most of the payments up front are gonna be intersparing. - Yeah, so that's fine. So, the question is, what renovation will carry its own weight? - Yes. - That's what you're looking for. You spend money that multiplies itself. So, if you could spend $100 and it raises the value of 1,000, we got the right thing. If we spend $10,000 on a pool, nobody else has a pool. The pool is now a liability. You devalued the house rather than increase the value of the house 'cause no one else on the street has one agreed. - Yeah. - Yeah, look. - Is the pool a devaluor? - Well, it's a devaluor. - It's a devaluor. - It could in that situation. So, I would say the pool is the lowest resale upgrade you can make to a house. Average cost for pool in the United States last year is 72,000. Average resale value is seven. So, so here's the data. If you're gonna put money into a house, here's how it works, right? Paint, now not just 'cause I'm a painter, son, but paint is 20 bucks in a can, two grand on the walls, right? So, paint is good. Kitchens and bathrooms, women buy houses. Men are just tagging along. My father, the day I got married, said to me, son, I gotta tell you some marriage advice. He goes, "When your mother and I got married, I made, we made an agreement. I would make all the important decisions and she would make all the non-important decisions." And I want you to know, in 47 years, I haven't had an important decision to make. So, women buy houses, dude. So, you buy kitchen and bathrooms. You paint. How long would you say you have to, we would have to live in the house to see some value back, given our structure? Typically, you'll get your money back in two years. Typically, you get your money back in two years, and the upgrades also add to the speed of the sale, and the speed of the sale. What people don't understand about real estate, the faster you sell a home, the higher the price you get. So, kitchens, bathrooms, you should go ahead and buy the home, or should you-- Oh, my gosh, yeah. Yes, buy it. Do we purchase a house that's a little bigger? No, you buy that house. You buy that house and get your foot in the door, dude. Absolutely. But the renovations, to quote unquote, make it your own, don't make it your own. Fix it up to sell it, as if you were an investor. Now, what would an investor do? They're not going to do renovations that don't add more value than the renovation costs. So, you ask yourself, when we're getting ready to change something, is that something we like, or is that something that's going to add more value than the cost? And you can actually talk to a good real estate agent and they can come by and tell you. Another example, typically, is-- because so much is digital now, and is dependent upon pictures, and looks as your curb appeal. And so-- In your photographer, I know that sounds silly, but a good photographer landscaping is a big deal. Yes. I mean, if you've got nasty butt landscaping and from this thing, please expect that to show up in the picture, right? And that's a few dollars and a lot of sweat. Yep. And you can get that, right? Engine's made to your own. Paint the outside, landscaping, and the garage door. Those that all return higher than 100%. Yeah, I've heard this about the garage door. Average garage door, but it's four times the resell value of it. So-- How funny is that? Why do women wear makeup? OK. You know what I'm saying? Because some barns need paint. OK. So come on. No. The Lord had mercy on my soul. No. So, right? I mean, does it make-- more appealing? For sure. It's a minster problem. Yeah. I have more makeup. I put it on my head. So it doesn't shine anymore. I hope that helps. Josh. I don't know if we help. I think that helps. I think that helps. That's exactly what you do. So think about the things like that. But, you know, you want a unique audio system through a home that where no one else in the neighborhood has a unique audio system. You're doing that for you and you're going to lose money on that. You're not going to get the money back out that you spend. I mean, if you're in a $200,000 home and you want to put in a 60-inch $14,000 sub-zero refrigerator, you're not going to get your money back on that. Because most of the people in that neighborhood haven't seen a sub-zero. Yeah. And so, you know, that's what you're thinking about there. And so what we're trying to say is don't overbuild the neighborhood. Don't do something that's so unique that it doesn't play. Brian Buffetti, thank you, brother. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. We're talking to your folks. It's so fun. Getting a lot of people. We give a lot of hope. I love being part of the best dad daughter comedy show in America. So, it's my favorite. Well, it's like eating dinner with all of us because we always pull out Google. And I will say, 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, what signs and women on their own to get a check out. Come on. But guess what? But guess what? That wasn't necessary for them to do it. It just required for them to do it. And for them to remember. And so my mother's dad had a checking account. Because you're dad. Because you're dad. No, he didn't have to. He didn't have to. I told you. That's how I want to be here. You're missing. You're missing. You're missing. You're missing. You're missing. You're missing. You're missing. You're missing. Automating, routine work, like forecasting demand and following up on overdue accounts. With NetSuite Next, AI is built into everything you do. So you can ask it questions just like when you're talking to a member of your team. And right now, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to NetSuite.AI/Ramsie. That's NetSuite.AI/Ramsie. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back to The Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Andrew is with us in Tyler Texas. Hey, Andrew, how are you? Hello, sir. I'm new and well. How are you? How can I help? Hey, I'm just wondering, I have like a money anxiety problem. So I'm wondering how I can change my mindset with money. So I can like not be so stressed and anxious about every purchase I make big or small. What are you afraid of? I don't know. I think it's just like every purchase I make and like, it could be like going out to lunch with friends or bigger purchases of like furniture. So you're buying a $3,000 piece of furniture and you have anxiety about that. And again, I want you to think about this because you probably do know the answer. What is it that you're afraid of when you're buying this? I think I know, but I'll wait for you to figure it out. And I think it's just like the big number. I think it's the purchase. And it's like, am I going to be able to make that money back? Which I know is a silly thing to think. No, it's not silly at all. No, it's a classic scarcity mentality. It's a scarcity mentality. Yeah. And that means that you're a saver. It also probably tells me that you're probably a very analytical person. Am I right? Yes, sir. You might tend to over-analyze versus under-analyze all of these things. Yes, sir. Yeah. That's pretty typical. Okay. And so what all that is is you get emotional satisfaction and joy from saving and stacking cash more than you do from spending it. Yeah, but I do. I mean, I could spend money on things that I could spend money on. No, you just told me you were having anxiety about it. Well, when I. I mean, I enjoy like. - Giving gifts to people that I care about. - I don't say you weren't generous. I said you'd get more peace from stacking cash than from purchases. - Yeah, that's true. - And that's okay. All right, now that we know that, we now know that the fear is caused because we're depleting the stack of cash to buy the couch. And I wonder if I'm ever gonna get my cash back. Okay? So when you're facing something like that, I mean, I wish Dr. John Deloney was here to coach you through anxiety and we'll send you a copy of his book, Redefining Anxiety, which is a wonderful read and you'll enjoy it. But he says that anxiety is not a negative thing. It's like the smoke alarm in the house. And the smoke alarm in the house goes off. Well, we don't ignore it and stand there in the flames and burn to the ground, right? But we also look around and go, oh, wait a minute, the battery is low. So when the alarm goes off, we have to decide then, okay, we're in A, we're not gonna ignore it. So the anxiety is a good warning sign. It's your body telling you that you're worried about something. That's not a bad thing. Then you say, all right, what's going on? Facts are our friends, so what are the facts? The facts are I have $3,000 to my name and I just spent that all on a gas grill. So I am by definition stupid. If that's the facts, then you should have anxiety, right? If you have $85,000 in your account and you spend $3,000 on a gas grill, the facts are your life didn't change, except now you can cook a steak, calm down. Those are the facts. And so if you stop a minute and think about what's the source of this smoke alarm going off and say, okay, then what are the facts and am I okay? - And it's attached to something. Either what was wired into your brain as a kid, of how you grew up, something that happened, I don't know, maybe you had your first job and you really were broke and you're like, I never wanna go back there again and your body remembers that, right? Or whatever it is, if you can kind of pinpoint that I think is powerful. - If you can go back and find that in the past and see where it is. And so, you know, for instance, I bought and sold and flipped real estate, nothing down real estate in my 20s and went broke and lost everything. And so if I have a new plan, a bright idea, it scares the P. Waden out of my wife. And it should, except that for the last 35 years, all my bright ideas have exceeded my dumb ideas. But prior to that, I had one big dumb idea that took us down and we lost everything. So her reaction should be, even today, 35 years later. - Yeah, that's right. - Her body remembers that, terror of our lights and water being cut off, of us being broke, not having the money hardly to feed our own kids. Rachel was a baby, all of that. Her body remembers that. And I, as her spouse, have to understand that. And go, okay, if this is going too fast, we need to slow down and she needs to get more information. So she understands what we're dealing with or we don't need to go forward. Because, and we just slow down a little bit. So slow down a little bit, gather your facts. Ask where the anxiety is coming from. Is it from a real thing? Or is it from a thing that happened earlier? And it's just reactivating. - Yeah. And this is always interesting on the scale of money controlling you. And once, on one end of the spectrum, money does become an idol of God to people and they use it to feel better about themselves. Right, whether from an income perspective or what they drive, or the house, or the part of it becomes this. But they're spending on one end of the spectrum and it becomes this idol, it has them. It has their identity, everything. And then Andrew's a perfect example is on the other end. It has you just as much, like you have no freedom. You have no ability to have peace because there's a level of control. - And by the lunch, I have anxiety. - Yeah, to have a level of control, it has you as much as it does the other people, right? And that's where the extremes on the spender and saver and where you put money on the spectrum of the importance in your life is so important to have that balance in both of those spectrums. Because on either side, it's unhealthy. It becomes a thing that you literally think about 24/7. And it shouldn't be. You shouldn't have a grip on you like that. - No, either way. - Either side, that's right. - That's right. - It's almost as if it's not two ends of a spectrum. It's two points on a triangle. And the other point is peace and health. - Right, yeah, that's fair. - There's one you could go to that other place and go to peace and health and proper view of it. And those kinds of things. - Yeah, so I don't want money to have that grip on you, Andrew, right? So for the good of you, it's almost as spiritual exercise too. - On the shallow end, you've got a great saying. I've seen you use, especially on Instagram, that works really well, is if I buy something, if I'm shallow and I'm worried about myself trying to be something with what I own or whatever, if you buy something and no one ever sees it. - Yes. - Would you buy it anyway? And the answer is yes, then you're buying it for the right reasons. If you're buying it to show off, then you're just being shallow. - And flat and flat and yes. - Yeah, you're just being shallow. And I've done that. I bought stuff to do that. I don't hardly ever do it anymore, but I remember doing that distinctly in my past. And by the way, that's a symptom also that leads to being broke. It leads to get rich quick and it leads to being broke with that end of the spectrum, not Andrew's the other side. - Yep. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now, you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) If you're working the baby steps, the best and fastest way to do it is using every dollar. And that's the best and fastest way to become wealthy using the baby steps. It's more than just a budgeting app. It's our Ramsey plan built right in. You track your progress. You get personalized recommendations and coaching for your situation that will help you free up more money and work the plan even faster. It's like having one of us walk with you every day showing you the next right step and holding you accountable. Start every dollar for free by downloading it in the app store or Google Play. Jamie is in Orlando. Hi Jamie, how are you? - Hi everyone, I'm kind of nervous. - It's okay, how can we help? - Hello. - Hello, how can we help? - Oh no, Jamie, are you there? Jamie. - Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. All right, we'll come. - Okay, you guys hear me. - Oh, there she is. - Are you there? - Can you hear us? - Yes, I lost you guys for a second. - Perfect. - I'm so nervous. - That's okay. - We are good. What's up? - I just want to know if we're rushing into buying a new construction home by selling the condo we regret buying, even if we barely make anything from that sale. - Okay, so you regret, you're in a condo now, you regret buying it. So you want to move to something and that when you're looking at as a new construction build. And you've already signed up for it. - We haven't, we're just. - You're in a condo. - You're in a condo. - Yeah, how long have you been in this condo? - Three years and a half. - Two and a half years, is that what you said? - Yes. - Yes, okay. - So what's the rush? - So we have a huge HOA fee. The condo needed more repairs than what we expected. And then we thought we would be able to make a good rental out of it, but because of the HOA and the mortgage, we wouldn't be able to get anything from it. And then my husband and I are thinking of having a kid within the next year, so we might need more space for it. - Okay. - You don't buy a house for a kid, you don't have. Okay. But if you want to move, that's a different subject. - How much, how much, if you sold the condo, do you have any equity in it? - Or should they're gonna break even? - Would you even lose money after commissions and fees and everything after selling? - So we're trying to get at least is like 2K after paying commission fees and everything else. - Okay, do you have any other money saved that would go to the down payment of the new home? - Yes, so we have 57K and savings. - Okay. And then we are currently investing in like 401k and everything else sure, so what what's your household income? How tall income is 12,300 per month. Yes, is that what hits your account or is that before taxes? What hits our account monthly, okay, okay, so you might get about a hundred and eighty thousand a year and What price range is this new construction? 480. Okay, and why new construction? Because we were kind of done with all the repairs that this condo needed, so we were like, oh, maybe a new construction is going to have or require less repairs. Well, so what a two-year-old or a five-year-old home as well require less repairs. So the problem with new construction is you're paying a premium usually. That's retail. And you probably can get more bang for your buck in used housing. In most cases, not in every case, but I want you to look into that. So yeah, new construction just feels shiny after you've dealt with a ratty condo and I don't understand how you get there, but I'm not sure that's your best route. So, but if you want to sell a condo and break even on it and get out and you got 60 grand to go buy something with and you're making a hundred and eighty, sure, sure, go make the move. Don't keep the condo though. The condo is not a rental. You have properly assessed that. And don't yeah, and don't be under the assumption that a new build is going to have nothing wrong, depending on the builder grade and everything. It's you never know. So just go in not naive to that. The builder may cover the things that are wrong, but there's always something wrong. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you build a home, there's always a punch list. And then there's a punch list 30 days later. And then there's another one 30 days later. And that's just part of, you know, building a new home. Expect that. Do not expect this to every single thing on there. Every button to work exactly right. It doesn't. Just go ahead and have your expectations proper. And then you'll be easier to work with. Alex is in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Alex. How are you? Hey, how's it going, sir? What's up? So looking to make a career change, Ben, I'm not sure if it is the right move at this point, or if I should stick it out in my current job. And I'm kind of basing it off of my current income and current savings. Okay. What is your, how long have you been in your current job? I just hit two years a few months ago. What's wrong with it? Kind of getting sick of it. It's sales. I am trying to get out of sales, start a different career. And kind of spread my wings. I still live at home. So I'm looking to. What do you mean? For Angel, elsewhere. This past year or two year to day, I'm at about 100,000. I should end at home. Why do you live at home? Save money. I'm expensive. Okay. How old are you, Alex? I'm 24 years old. You need to go, you need to go get your own place and be a man. I got you. I got you. Yesterday. Yesterday. You make $100,000 a year. Your mommy doesn't need to fold your underwear. That's time. Do all my own laundry, clean and clean. It's just, it's just being a, you know, being in Columbus. I don't see the point in. I do. I do. It's called personal development. And by the way, you're not eligible for dating when you live in your mother's basement either. So, yeah, go get you a place. Now, why do you hate sales? I'm just, I did what I need to do. I made my way. What do you want to do? A career job. Are Alex. What do I want to do? I'm looking at analyst rules. I'm looking to go into something that has a little bit more of a career development and growth. And that's kind of the value of the more the main point of it. I'm saying that kind of figure it out. But what do you, what do you sell? I just, I am and logistics sales. Okay. All right. Have you found some opportunities as an analyst anywhere that would hire you? Like, have you looked? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm currently looking. I haven't really found or landed on anything. What's your degree in international business and in Spanish? You've probably been trained to do some analyst and good. Okay. If you can get a job making what you're making now and move in a different direction that looks like it fits your personality style better, that's okay with me. I don't mind that a bit. But making more, not less. We got you. Okay. We don't take a pay for that happiness. Okay. Don't take a pay card. What you're saying? Yeah. Exactly. It's not happiness. No, it's not. It's not the definition of happiness. Happiness. It could be if you're trying. No, it's not. It's not. You need to look for something that you can go apply yourself to and make a living serving others. And that is worth. So here's the thing. I do want you to pause on the sales thing just a second though. Okay. Because the narrative that you're using there, I want you to go get the analyst job because I think that's going to be good for you and I think you've come to that conclusion. However, I will tell you that more CEOs come out of sales than any other position. Yep. You're correct. Very few of them come out of analyst. Yep. And so just, you know, so as far as you know, as far as you know, as far as well, I mean, as far as career development, it's a good deal to have. I feel like I've capped out. No, you haven't. Yeah. It's a good. If you know how to sell, you can work through any organization and be the best there is in there because you learn people skills and you learn, you learn level up and sales is a great career field. But if it's not for you, that's okay. I'm not mad about that. But I don't want to use the, I don't want you to use the narrative that I was topped out at sales because you weren't, you weren't or you're not good at sales. Unless there's some weird pay structure in the company. Or you might be topped out in that pay structure. But if you can sell, the doors will open in organizations all the way through for you. Yes. And so, but I think you're going to probably listening to you talking to you. I think you're going to get, you know, good stuff from being an analyst. And I think you ought to go do that. I agree with your analysis by the analyst. Hey guys, Rachel Cruz here. And I love summer. There is more fun on the calendar, more time with your people and way more chances to make memories. But you know what else there's more of spending. Oh, between the extra groceries and gas and camp fees and family tramps, it all starts to add up so fast. And before you know it, money stress starts to steal the fun out of everything. And that is why I love the every dollar budget app because it helps you plan your money, track your spending, and find more margin in your budget so that you can put extra cash towards the goals that matter most. Enjoy your summer without the money stress. Download the every dollar app in the app store or Google Play and start for free today. Ramsey show question of the day is sponsored by why refi if you fall in behind on your private student loan payments. Every month can feel like you're standing still because you are. Why refi helps borrowers explore refinancing options that can help you start making progress again. Go to why refi.com/ramsey. That's the letter. Why are EFY.com/ramsey may not be available in all states. Today's question comes from Brent in Utah. He said, I have a $300,000 in savings and no debt. I want to invest the money in mutual funds, but I'm not sure if I should dump it in all at once or a little by little each month. What's the best play in this scenario? It's a good question. Well, I would say if there's nothing, the reason I wouldn't is that there's something you're needing to buy and use part of that $300,000 for if you need some of that money. Maybe hold some of that for that purchase. If it makes you more comfortable because you're scared or something, we talk to some people and it's like, maybe you do 60/40, but for me, you really do have $300,000 just sitting in savings and you want to invest it. I would do it tomorrow. There's no big advantage of little by little if anything get in the market as it's doing well, but also don't look at the market either because I've it when you put it in, something's going to happen and it's going to go down. You've got to just forget about it because it's long-term investing at that point. If you can feel comfortable that this is a long-term investment and if it goes down tomorrow, you're not going to cry because it's a long-term investment. We're riding the roller coaster down. We're going to ride it back up. Mathematically, the answer is put it all in today. There's no mathematical advantage. advantage. The S&P 500, the stock market, is up 16% as of this moment since the beginning of the year. However, somewhere back in March, the president decided to bomb Iran. If you put the stock market in the day before, you'd put 300,000 dollars in the day before you decide to do that, you might have woke up the next morning and your 300s worth 270, and you'd have had a minor cowl. However, if you didn't pull it out, and now you're sitting there, and you had put it in at the first of the year, it would be up 16% of 300,000 dollars, which would be about 50 grand you would have made since the first of the year. But if you had freaked out, because the president bombed Iran in the market dropped, after you put the money in in January, and he did that in March, then you would have freaked out, and you would have lost money on the stock market, I'll never invest again, because you have the worst possible timing on the planet, because you bought while it was high, and when you freaked out when it was low and got out. And of course, you lost money then. So the answer is, but if you leave it in, keep your stinking hands off of it, you're much better off to put it in there and forget it. Set it in forget it, and you make serious money. All right, Steven is an anchorage, Alaska. Hey, Steven, how are you? Good, how are you doing, Dave? What's up? Yeah, so I had a question about long-term investments. What do you think about buying vacant land versus buying stocks or rentals? I'm not sure if I'm going to be a landlord. vacant land can fall in a whole bunch of different categories, okay? You could buy farmland, you could buy a hunting preserve, you could buy the corner of a busy intersection where they're looking to put a McDonald's someday, a commercial piece of property, right? You could buy land where warehouses could be developed, you could buy land where apartments could be developed. There's a million kinds of different vacant land, so the answer is I don't know because I don't know what kind of vacant land you're thinking about. There's certainly a lot of vacant land in Arkansas, in Alaska, in Arkansas too, but much more in Alaska. As a matter of fact, I was up there fishing last week and I learned that the federal government reserved land in Alaska. You could put six Texases in it. There's that much of it. It's like 166 million acres in Alaska that is owned by the federal government. It's crazy. So I don't know about vacant land in Alaska, but I guess if you're in downtown Anchorage. Have you done some research, Steven? What type of land are we talking about? Yeah, so I'm actually in the Keynesi Peninsula, not quite Anchorage, but just little plots to develop or housing one or two acres or maybe a five-acre lot that had electricity on it or I could put electricity. For residential homes, is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Okay. Then that would depend on how active the new home market is in that immediate area. Okay. In other words, if half a mile away there's a big subdivision going in and you've got some lot-price baseline that you can look at, that's fine. If there's no home building going on in the area, but you think you're just going to walk out there in the middle of a field and somebody's going to build a house because you want them to. No, you can't build it and they'll come. That's called a field of dreams, so no, we don't do that, but I mean, you need to have some trend lines that in the growth pattern of that area that tells you that people are actually going to want to buy this and it's not just your gut feeling. Yeah, you know, in the last, I've been in about three years now and like this year has been, as soon as the plot goes for sale, it's sold. That's good. I like that. Super hot market. There's going to be a big pipeline potentially coming in. That's good. I like that. And this will be with cash, even. Yeah, yeah, correct. And you're out of debt. Yeah, on my own house. I think I have my retirement all done. Yeah. Great job. Yeah, excellent. Excellent. So when I buy a piece of commercial dirt like that, I'm looking at the growth heading that direction or is already on that direction. And that's what I'm asking you to look at. In that case land, you're speculating on land. You're buying it not for a 15 year investment. You're buying it for a two to five year investment. And it could be a great one. In that case, if it's happening. Yeah, you might make a lot of money on it. You might double your money on something like that. But it's going to be, that's the beauty of real estate, but it is going to be based on the higher the success rate of this is going to be based on your analysis, your correct analysis of what's going on in the neighborhood and what's really happening, what direction we're really going there. So Rachel's husband and I have done many, many real estate deals together. He owns a real estate company, runs all of my real estate. And we looked at a piece of ground that could be developed into about seven lots or eight lots. And that was about 10 or 15 years ago. And it had a bunch of trash dumped on it. And we determined by the time we cleaned it up to get it ready to run a road into and paid for the land that we would not be able to recoup at current lot prices anytime soon. Since then, you know, all these years later, the value of that property went up dramatically. And someone else bought it, cleaned it up and sold it and made money on it. But we didn't have the, we had a two to a five-year mindset. That person had more of a 10-year or 15-year mindset. And now there's homes built in there. Some of our best friends, one of those. You know the house. You know the property I'm talking about. 100%. And there's some nice, big, beautiful homes. It turns out to be a good piece of property. But at the time, at the time, it didn't make sense in a short term. The only way it made sense was with a 10-year or 15-year horizon. And we didn't want to tie the money up that long on a project like that. So we backed away. Someone else picked it up had a longer time horizon and made money with it. So that's what you're looking at. You're trying to analyze just exactly like we did there. And it's okay to walk away from a deal that doesn't fit your objectives and let someone else make the money and look back 15 years later and go, "Well, that worked out." You know, because it did work out. The property was fine. It wasn't it wasn't tainted. It was just a mess. And so anyway, that's what you're doing. You're trying to analyze. And the beautiful thing about real estate is such an imperfect world that that's where the money's made. You're judgements better than somebody else and you jump on it. If you pay taxes to the IRS every quarter or run a small business and you're not using a CPA, what are you doing? The more complicated your tax situation gets, the more you need expert help. With a Ramsey Trusted Tax Pro, you can get top-notch service year-round for payroll, bookkeeping, quarterly tax payments, and of course tax filing. Let an expert take the stress off your shoulders. Go to RamseySolutions.com/tax to find a Ramsey Trusted Tax Pro today. That's RamseySolutions.com/tax. Our scripture today, Hebrews 13, 7, "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith." Ronald Reagan said, "Money can't buy you happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories." There you go, Rachel. John is with us and Des Moines. Hi, John. How are you? Doing good. How are you? How can I help? So my question today is, I'm 19 years old, I'm a business owner, first year. I have about $11,000 in debt right now. My question is, how do I get ahead? What is your income in your business? Right now, I'm projected to make about $45,000 this year. Doing what? Long carolins, keeping. Okay, your first year? Yeah, I just started in April. Okay. Oh, so not even a full year? So I assume it's growing rapidly? Not as well as I want to, but yeah, it's growing pretty, it's growing pretty good, pretty decent. What's the $11,000? Okay. I have about $5,000. $10,000 on a car and a little less than 1,000 on credit cards. - Okay, well, the simple answer to your question is what you already knew before you called, and that is there's two ends of the equation, the income side and the out-go side, and the difference is margin, the money you've got to play with to get out of debt. And so as your income goes up and your spending goes down, you have more and more money to become debt-free. Agreed? - Yes, sir. - Anything you can do to cut your spending, I don't think you're probably over-spending, I don't hear of that and anything you're telling me, but I think you've got a new business that's not making much money yet. And so I'm gonna make sure if I'm you that I'm spending a certain percentage of my week every single week getting new customers, not just mowing grass. - Okay. - If you don't budget a certain percentage of your time every week to do the essential parts of the business, the business will dry up. - Okay. - And that means you gotta say okay, every Friday morning, every Thursday morning, every Wednesday morning for four hours, I'm gonna work on getting new customers or whatever it is instead of mowing that day. And I don't care, I don't know what it is, but you know, you've got a budget timeout to figure out where are your customers coming from, talking to your existing customers about referrals, picking up the two houses on either side of the last house you mowed the grass for, or the business on either side of the last business you did the landscaping for. - Yeah, if there's a good neighborhood, most neighborhoods these days have some kind of Facebook group or group me or something, right? And if you can ask a homeowner, if you've been satisfied with you, mind just leaving your recommendation 'cause people are always looking for things. So that's a good way to just get your name out if there's a neighborhood. - Yeah, it turns out the guy that does our landscaping in our home ended up doing the homes on each side of us because he had hours and they asked us who did it. - Right, I understand that. But the one thing is, so my girl and my son moved down to Atlanta and I'm trying to relocate down there. And I don't know if I should just continue growing or should I try to make my daughter have that? - That's a completely different thing than you asked about. Yeah, we didn't know that. - Yeah. - Yeah, so no. - I mean, if you're gonna move if you need to go build your business down there. - Right, I just don't know how to get ahead to be able to do that. I only have about, I only have about 3,500 in cash and about 1,500 of that is the business right now. - Yeah, but I mean, when the season's over, you should have some cash piled up. You can load up the lawnmores and go. - Right. - Yeah, I would stack cash right now, John, in order to make that move to be closer to your son. And then you need to have some aggressive goals to get this debt paid off, the $1,000 credit card debt and be working all winter to have accounts to start the spring with, if you're gonna open up down there. But it's actually possible to do that. But that's a very aggressive thing, but no, I wouldn't go build a business. Some place I'm gonna leave until year. - Okay. - That's a lot of work for nothing. Because your customer list is not worth anything in this business, nobody will buy it because they can just go get your customers. They don't need to ask you. And so, no, that's not, you know, I've built anything that's marketable there. So, no, I was stuck. - Maybe working two jobs for a bit too, just to make it. - I'll stack cash till the end of the season, whatever that is in Des Moines. And then I'd be on my way and get married. And let's start a life, me and the wife and the baby. And I'm gonna work all winter at every job I can possibly stack up while I'm trying to get customers to restart my business. You may start your landscaping business in Atlanta as a side hustle after you get a good job there. And then grow it again there. And, but that's an okay thing. But no, I would not grow a business where you already are before you leave. Hey, one of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking they can skip having a will because they're too young, too healthy or don't own anything. If you're 18, your will helps protect, or older, your will helps protect your family. It gives clear instructions and can keep your loved ones from having to guess what you wanted. And they'll keep them from fighting with each other, too. If you're ready to create one, go to mommabearlegal.com. If you're not sure where to start, whether you're using an attorney or momma bear, either one's fine. Text quiz to 33789 and we'll help you figure out which option fits your situation. Don is in Atlanta. Hey, Don, what's up? What do you got me? Yes, sir. How can we help? Hi, so I just talked with my dad recently and he is a listener of you as well. And he, I was talking to him about a student loan that my wife has a $30,000. And he thought about it for a second and said, hey, what if I just gave you $30,000? And whenever it comes around to the will and my sisters, you'll just have $30,000 last on there and he's going to put that in the will. Do you recommend that because I just get money from failing over, I figured I'd run it by. Is he going to bother you after this? Or is this one and done? Or is this a control mechanism? No, this is one and done. He's always been very helpful. OK, all right. Yes, I would accept that gift. I think that's a wonderful offer and a great idea of his. I think it's a great plan. The downside is that you said you're fiance? Wife. Your wife, OK. I'm dying my life. I'm sorry. I didn't write anything. You did say wife, I goofed. OK. So you and your wife have to get on a budget and never go in debt again or this will grow back in the form of a car or a credit card debt or something else. Because it sounds like your dad is the one dream this up. And this is the first time you've ever heard of Ramsey today. No, he said his dad's a listener. And his dad is not Dawn. Well, he reduced me when I was younger. And actually at the beginning of this year, our employer gave us the app, the every dollar app. OK. I signed up on that. And we started running the land. Actually, we're six months into it now. Yeah, so good. Good. Yeah, Dawn. So I would say, yeah, from-- I mean, when you think about it from a math perspective, just like you're inheritance, if it's invested on his end, is going to be growing. And so I would take it now from that, right? If all the emotional check boxes or boxes are checked, that's OK. And it feels like, oh, yeah, this isn't going to be hanging over our head. Or he's not going to use this against us or be like, he can have a say in our life because he gets this. Then, yeah, I mean, I think that's a very-- I think it's very smart. The trick is for you and your wife then to follow through with the newfound freedom and cause yourself to build wealth. Yes, sir. Yeah, you know, working the baby steps, working your every dollar app. And so you were ahead of me. I misjudged that. I apologize, Dawn, because you're already been on every dollar. Your employer furnished it. And it sounds like a smart dollar people are in their help. And that's good. Yeah, and make it a goal to be like, hey, let's invest-- what it would take us to pay this off. Let's have a goal to have that $30,000 invested of your own money, right? So you're using your paycheck to build your future. Exactly. Which would-- Rather than going, oh, we can go buy something now. That's right. That's right. You know, it's kind of a nod to him. You're like, OK, we'll put $30,000 in the market now. And he's going to be glad he did this. Yes, yes. And we're going to be glad you did it. And everybody's happy, you know. And we got Sally May on the spur of her room. And again, that line can be tricky, because when we talk about giving money to family, we never say to loan it. But the giving, if it messes up a relationship, if it gets odd, you have to have some hard boundaries. But this is one instance, where it's like the whole change your family tree. If you can get your kids out of debt, and they're not entitled, you know, they're hardworking. They have dignity. And then they can start building with themselves faster. That's part of that generational knowledge, which is so big that they can fiscally do. That puts us out of the rams you show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. And 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. (upbeat music)