How Do I Get Started Investing?

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Campbell, Ramsey personality, host of the Fine Print on the Ramsey Networks, is my co-host today. as we talk about your mental wellness, your relationships, your jobs, your careers, and your money. It's your life right here on the Ramsey Show. The phone number is 888-825-5225..

Hello Dave, nice to talk to you.

You too. How can we help?

My question is, I'm 22 years old and I'm wanting to start investing, and I'm wanting to know which platform I should use.

Wise man. All right. So you're out of college, you're working?

I did not go to college. I'm working. I actually own a construction and exiting business of my own.

Way to go, man. That's incredible. Okay. So what's your income for the year? Household income?

My income is around $45,000 a year.

Cool.

And I do own my house. It's completely paid off.

Wow.

What's that worth?

My home appraised around $220,000..

Way to go, man. Well, you're doing great already.

Right off the bat. You're killing it.

Do you have any debt?

No, I have no credit card debt or student loans, nothing.

And you have an emergency fund? You have savings? Three to six months expenses?

Yes. Yes. My emergency fund is around $25,000..

Would you run for Congress?

I wish, but I got a lot of my information from you, Dave, obviously, plus my family and my parents. They blessed me with a lot of knowledge and stuff, but no handouts, but a lot of knowledge, and I'm very grateful for that.

Yeah, they raised a great kid, man. Well, let's talk about the investing side now. Have you invested at all in anything so far, or is this all new?

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

All right.

Well, here's what I would do. If I were you in your shoes, I would be investing 15% of my income into retirement accounts. So, things like a 401k, if you have access to that. I know you've got your own business, but you don't. So, it may be a solo 401k or a SEP IRA for you, but IRAs and those kinds of retirement accounts is where I'd be putting that 15%.

Yeah, you can put $6,000 into just a simple Roth IRA. That's a very easy transaction. And that would be pretty close to your 15% at this stage of the game. So, what you do, just click on, at RamseySolutions.com, just click on SmartVestor Pro. Sit down with one of the people that we endorse for investing.

I like that.

I like that.

You can automate smartness. I don't know. Smartness is not a word. I'm not there yet. I'll get there.

Smartness, smart, whatever it is. That's what I do. Whatever it is. It follows that wisdom. We're going to just put it on autopilot, where we automatically are smart.

And you learn to live on whatever's left, and then you're really winning.

Exactly. Well done, Austin. Sharon's in San Antonio. Hi, Sharon. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, guys. Dave, pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I'm in a position where I'm able to pay off my ex-husband's house for him.

Why?

And I was wondering if you thought that would be a good idea.

Well, it sounds weird. Who pays off their ex-husband's house?

He's a really, really, really good man, and he deserves a break. He needs kind of a hand up, and I just wanted to help him.

So is George. Just send him the money.

I will take it. A lot of good people out there you could give to. That's some strange generosity.

Yeah, that's different.

Is that weird? I don't know.

No, it's okay. I mean, if you want to do it, I'm not mad at you. You have to admit it's highly unusual. Yeah. I don't think in 30 years I've ever gotten this call.

Okay, yeah, I'm not trying to buy his affection. I don't want to get back together with him. He's just a good man.

He was a great husband. So how much does he owe on his house?

$135,000..

And you have, like, extra $135,000 laying around.

Yeah, I have $4.5 million in assets plus a trust fund. that's $2 million.

Okay.

Oh, by the way, I'm working with one of your endorsed local providers here in San Antonio. Can I say his name? Sure. Jeff Whaling and the Whaling Wealth Team.

Great.

Fabulous.

That's awesome. How long have you been divorced?

We got divorced in 2016.. We were married for 18 years. No children.

Where did you get all this money? Where'd all this money come from?

My parents, and then they passed away, and my brother was sitting on it, and then he passed away in 2020, and then he did not have a will. So I had a heck of a mess on my hands. Yeah.

So you're, like, what? You're 50-something years old?

I'm 53 years old, yes, sir.

And what do you do for a living?

I have a part-time job. I do customer service over the phone for a company here in San Antonio.

Okay. All right.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I'd wonder his situation financially. Is he good at money management? Is this going to make him feel like he just got a free ticket if he hasn't been handling his money well? You don't want to be enabling in that situation.

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

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is Deloney, and I'm always railing against social media, especially in the summer, because everyone uploads the highlight reels of their perfect bodies and perfect vacations and perfect kids. And I know they're not real. And I also know that I'm blessed beyond my wildest dreams. But I still find myself wishing my life was like other people's.

George Camel, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Ramsey Show. Tom is with us. Tom's in Salt Lake City.

I'm doing great. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

So, my wife and I are at the end of the baby steps. We're debt-free, thankfully, in large part to a union program, and just some crazy life experiences that enabled us to get there. We've worked real hard, and that's where we're at now. So, we are both now looking into our retirement, but both of us started this whole journey in our 30s. And so, our retirement investments were rather kind of pretty delayed.

So, what's your household income now?

Right now we're close to $400,000.. Wow.

Look at you. How old are you again?

I'm 39..

Oh, wow.

Amazing.

You're ancient. I can't believe you're getting around.

I know.

Yeah. And how much do you have in retirement?

After this year, we'll have about $100,000..

Good for you. Good. Okay. And how much debt do you have?

We are debt-free. It's taken us eight years.

House and everything?

Everything's gone. Everything's gone.

House and everything?

Yep.

Wow. Way to go, dude. Way to go. What's the house worth?

I personally think it's worth probably about $400,000 or so. Good for you. The market said that it's about $650,000..

Well, I mean, the market gets to decide. You don't get to decide. So I'm calling it $650,000. then. Good for you, man.

That's what we're really excited about. And we're looking at, potentially retiring in the next 10 years.

Yeah, for sure.

So what's your question? today? Sounds like you're doing great.

My question today? Yeah, well, my question really is as far as the 15% of your income into retirement.

That doesn't apply to you. You're baby step seven. That's only when you're on baby step four.

You can ramp that up once you get the house paid for.

That's what I needed to hear.

Yeah, baby step seven is save as much as you can. Give as much as you can. Live as much as you can.

And then your plan. Oh, that sounds so great to hear you say that. If we dump in $100,000 to $150,000 a year into this investment firm that we found through your smart investor pros, they're helping us out because I am very investment unsavvy. So they're guiding us through that. If we just dump in $150,000 a year, their forecast says that within 10 years we could retire as multimillionaires and live off interest.

Oh, yeah, you probably have a couple million in that alone, and the house will be worth a couple million then. So, yeah, I mean, you're going to be $4 million net worth at 50 years old. is what it sounds like to me.

It's good to hear you say that.

I mean, if you keep making this kind of bank and you drop $150,000 in there, $150,000 for 10 years is $1.5 million. Plus. the growth during that time is easily another half million, probably another million, actually.

That's exactly what we're looking at.

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

Should have doubled over about seven years or so.

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

Put it all in doge.

People, you get a little bit of hubris, and suddenly your brain just fries out. So just don't do that. Just mutual funds and paid-for real estate. Just keep it simple and stack cash, and you're going to be in really good shape, man. You've done a great job.

It's a big shovel. That helps. Yeah.

Very nice. Proud of you. John's in Houston, Texas. Hey, John, how are you?

Good, guys. How are you?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

All right. Here's what I got going on. So we have recently sold some farmland that we had down in Florida.

That includes the farmland proceeds?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

So I have some employee stock purchase stock, about $45,000 worth.

Perfect.

That's an individual stock. I work in Houston, so it's oil and gas. So it's pretty volatile.

You just saved me some wind. That's exactly what I was going to say. I'd cash it out, pay off the house, and that leftover becomes your emergency fund. Anything beyond that, you guys can do what you want with. Go, take a vacation, celebrate.

I mean, John, you pulled it off here. You got the trifecta. You paid off the house, you got your emergency fund, and you saved George Wind. All in one answer. It was well done, sir.

$140,000..

Yeah. And so now you get your baby step seven, and, just like the last caller, all we got to do now is save more than 15% into retirement. Load your retirement. You can load your 401k up. You can load Roth IRAs up and good mutual funds.

39..

Same age as our last caller.

Yeah, you're going to be a millionaire by the time you're 45, mathematically.

I'm loving this trend.

You are truly a baby steps millionaire. You know, George, there may not be another radio, show or podcast in America where you can call in and be succeeding and prospering and find people happy about it.

We're happy about it. We're celebrating with you.

We are happy that you are winning. We are capitalist pigs. We are glad you are winning.

Most shows are mad.

They're angry. We are not angry at success. These guys are crooks. We think success is amazing. We don't think you're a crook.

You're only fueling, Dave, guys.

That's just a bonus. It's just a bonus, man. I just love it. A guy making $400,000, and he's 39 years old. That's just awesome.

That's a trend I can get behind. Forget Bitcoin.

That's a trend I'm hopping on. Let me just tell you. You know what that means? It means he's helping a lot of people. People, don't give you money if you're screwing them.

You've got to provide value.

They give you money when you're helping them. That's how this works. You're providing value. You're adding value to their life in some way. So when you're doing that, you are enhancing humanity.

Hi. Doing great. How about you?

Better than I deserve. Welcome, you guys. It's so good to have you. Where do you live?

We are in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, right outside our capital.

Very good. Up in the Harrisburg area. Yep. Very good. Good to have you guys.

So we got rid of $229,000, cash flowing $109,000 in 16 months.

Whoa! What was your range of income during that time?

We started out at $81,000 and increased to $132,000, and then any stimulus or child tax credit went right to our debt.

Right. Cool. Did you sell something big, too? You had to.

That is part of our story.

Okay. All right. Well, tell us your story. What happened?

So in 2014,, I got out of physical therapy school. I graduated with my doctorate in physical therapy. And so we had over $200,000 in student loans. And at that point, I went on Pinterest and started looking up ideas of how to get out of debt, and I found the Baby Steps. And in the same week, my little sister mentioned Dave Ramsey.

Oh, my gosh.

And we attended FPU.

Game on.

Yes. We got gazelle intense at that time. But then we decided to start a family, and Shane became a stay-at-home dad. at that point, and when the pandemic hit in 2020, the hospital I worked for was offering a ton of overtime. So I worked from 3 a.m.

Whoa.

So we worked around the clock.

Wow. But you were making bank.

Yes.

So that was not $132.. You made a lot more than $132 that year. Yeah.

That was our taxes for last year.

Oh, it was? With all that work?

Yep. All that work. But we lived on nothing, basically. Nothing. I mean, when we went gazelle intense, we relied on Christmas for people to give us underwear and socks.

Okay. But you said you paid off $229 in 16 months. Yes. Making $132.. That doesn't work.

Nope. So the other part of our story is the debt was our SUV. Our student loans at that point were in the $100,000 range. And then we owned two houses right next to each other. Oh.

Okay. Now my numbers are working. Good. Okay. Well, good for you.

It definitely was. I mean, you know, it was just a struggle. I would say, like when we first got married, because it was just like, you know, we were throwing money away. And just money would go here, vacations. And now it's just, you know, we have that money now.

Okay.

So where did this come from? I mean, it sounds like just overnight. It was like a 180..

Yeah. Well, like I said, we knew about you. And we were gazelle intense before children. And then we kind of went Davis. And then 2020, with the pandemic, we didn't have anything else to do.

So I'm wondering if, because of all the opportunity for extra work, you mathematically could see that we can do this. And that got you back to intensity. Yeah. The hope made you go again. Yeah.

I would say hard work, dedication. I mean, you really have to put in the time. Like if you want something, you got to go for it. And that was something that we wanted to change our family tree and for our kids to have a better life. And I'm glad that we did it and we followed the steps.

Staying motivated on the plan. And it sounds like the kids were a big driver for why this life change was happening. You wanted them to live in a debt-free home, live a debt-free life, and have opportunities you didn't have. Yes.

Wow.

So you paid off the student loans. You sold the house next door. Did that include your mortgage? you paid off? Yes.

Yep. We're in Baby Steps 4,, 5, and 6..

Perfect. Good for you. Well done. Well done. I'm so proud of you guys.

Our good friends, Christina and Klaus. They attended FPU with us and cheered us along the way. And our families.

Of course. Of course. And each other.

Yep. Each other. For sure.

Well, I'm telling you, you guys put in the hours. I mean, these 80, 90 hour weeks you're talking about here were real. And that's crazy. You can do that for a short period of time. If you work like no one else, later you get to work like no one else, too.

Yeah, that's actually part of our story, too. Since we paid off the debt, I was able to go part-time as a physical therapist. And now I'm home with the boys during the day and then Shane works full-time during the day. So we get to spend so much more time together.

Ah, very good. Nice. You got your life back. Yes.

We definitely did.

You stole it back from Sally Mae. Yeah. She stole it and you stole it back.

Wow. Yes.

So what do you tell that person who's got $200,000 in student loans and they're going, well, I'll wait for someone to forgive it?

Yeah, just do it. Get it done. Work, work, work, work as hard as you can, because it's so freeing to be debt-free. And you can do what you want. Yeah, and we didn't rely on anybody else.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Good job. Well done.

We have Roman. He's four and Hudson is two.

And the T-shirts say, I am a Y.

Oh, that's so great.

I am Y. I'm sorry. I said it wrong. Oh, well done, you guys. That's beautiful.

Here's to baby number three.

We're debt-free.

Hooray.

I think we snuck an announcement into that.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

That's how to do it. Make your baby announcement to millions of listeners while you're at it.

I think Grandma and Grandpa are sitting on the sidelines. This may have been the first time they just heard that. I'm not sure, but looking at the reactions, it's a possible thing. They're excited. Is that the first time you did it?

There's nothing you're not willing to do.

But as long as you start going, now, wait a minute. Tell me about the one little thing. Is there a little angle? And as long as you're trying to figure out some way to scheme and scam, it's not going to work.

No shortcuts here. Just hard work.

Yeah, it's whatever it takes.

That's what you just heard.

Whatever it takes. People change their lives when they finally say, I've had it. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's when you'll change. And not until.

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

George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225.. Adam is with us in Toronto. Hi, Adam.

Hey, how are you doing, Dave?

Good, man. What's up?

Oh, nothing. Well, I shouldn't say nothing. Quite a bit. But just a little bit of a recap. Back in 2016,, my wife and I did, as you say, stupid with zeros on the end of it.

Your marriage is already gone.

Well, that's the thing. I feel like. I'm kind of giving the drunk a drink.

No, you didn't hear me. You didn't hear me. Your marriage is already gone.

Yeah, well, I mean, she does give indications that she doesn't want to make it worse.

No, she doesn't. She's not ready to do it right now. No, she doesn't. People that do the things and say the things that she's doing have no desire for this marriage to continue. Yeah.

Yeah, we have done some counseling. It didn't work. A couple times. trying to get her to come back to it is the hard part, and she's very reluctant.

Yeah, you're begging her to do stuff, and she has no desire. She's obstinate. She's angry. And she's done. She's done.

I mean, it's tough to say that, because she does say that she still does want to make it work.

She's lying.

What she says is not what she's doing, and so that's the problem.

Yeah.

People that want their marriage to work do not behave the way that she is behaving.

Yes, I would agree.

Okay. So she's lying.

Yes, lying.

Elective surgery for $10,000 when you're broke and the family's in financial stress? That's so selfish and asinine I can't even put words to it.

Yeah, I know. That's kind of my thought, too. It just is.

It's a fact. It's not an opinion. That is her screaming in your face, that she's done.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I don't really like to think of it that way, obviously, because it's not a nice outcome for anybody in this business.

I'm not sure you did it. I think you're just the one that's going to admit it.

Yeah. Now, I would agree with you, going back a couple months, that she was done. However, she's had some influential people in her life in the last month or two that have helped bring her around. Her attitude has changed.

Well, then that would involve you guys getting with a good marriage counselor immediately.

Yes.

But that attitude needs to turn into action.

Yes, and she has admitted that. That is an option. I did confront her about it a couple weeks ago. I said, this is what I want to do. I had some referrals from a focus on the family.

No, I am going to push her. It's not an option. It's time to push her. It's time to push you. The house is on fire.

Yeah, I am. I definitely am. I bring stuff up fairly regularly, but I'm kind of teetering on the edge of not wanting to push her over one side to get her emotional side to engage.

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

Yes, I agree with that totally. I can't change her. She has to decide to do it. It's a matter of, you know, we're trying to get, obviously, lots of prayer and other friends of influence to get around her.

Absolutely.

To change her heart. Absolutely.

What Dave's saying is this is an emergency.

I'm just saying you guys need to be sitting with a counselor, and she needs to be going. And if she's not going, then we need to admit what that says. Yeah. There is not a financial technique. that's a problem here.

You shouldn't have got married.

Then it's, you know, you've got a mess on your hands, and you've got to go back and try to learn how to be married. And that takes both people. And you can't beg someone to behave. You cannot control someone else's behavior. Your behavior is the only thing you can control.

Oh, yeah. That's a great quote. She sees him as basically a doormat at this point, because she knows, well, I'm just going to do what I want. He's not going to tell me off.

Yeah.

He's not going to have the conflict.

You have to stop being scared that you're going to cause the marriage to end by pushing the marriage to succeed. That is not going to work. It's not going to work. You're going to end up nowhere but bankruptcy court and divorce court at the same time. Oh, man.

Hi, Dave. Hi, George. Thank you so much for taking my call. It's an honor to speak with you today.

You, too.

Thank you. My question is, my dad passed away a few months ago. I know. He was your typical everyday millionaire, had a net worth of about 1.3.. Wow.

You are one of the beneficiaries on the annuity, I assume.

Yes, sir.

Okay. I would just take my money and then do with it wherever you are in the baby steps. You don't need an annuity. You don't want money in an annuity at your age, unless you're in a very unusual situation. How much money is this?

That's about $42,000.. The annuity is only about $42,000 out of the 1.3..

Where are you in the baby steps?

Well, let's see. I guess I'm $4,000, $5,000, and $6,000.. Yes, I'm contributing 15% into fully funding my retirement. With this inheritance from my dad, I'll put away a big chunk for my kids for their college, and then the rest, I guess, put towards my house.

You're going to use this $42,000 on five or six, and the same with the rest of it.

Is the $42,000 before the split with the three of you?

That is before the split.

Okay.

Oh, so you're only getting $15,000, $20,000.. Okay.

Of the annuity, yes.

Okay. Yes, definitely. Definitely. take the money. Just use that, probably towards the kids' college or wherever.

Hello. How are you?

Great, man. What's up?

Well, I'm divorced. I've been divorced for about five years, and I'm currently paying, and for these five years I've been paying my ex-wife spousal support payments of about $2,100 a month. And that was based on my income at the time of $110,000, but now my income's only $60,000.. Due to a lot of COVID damage to my business and so forth and not able to make as much money. So I wanted to seek an adjustment to the spousal support payments, and it's kind of up in the air how much it could be adjusted, because it's up to the judge.

Gotcha. How can we help today?

Well, in the discussions of trying to get this modified, my wife has floated the idea of she'd be willing to take a one-time buyout. So, like, I'm scheduled to pay her for life or until she gets remarried, or, you know, maybe when I retire it could be adjusted, but she's willing to take a buyout of about $50,000 and I'd be pretty much a one-and-done payment and would not owe her anymore. But due to my financial situation, I don't have that money. The only way I could get it is to take it out of my IRA, but I'm age 60 and I've only got about $70,000 in an IRA.

How old is she?

So she's 54.. Yeah.

No, you can't afford to do it.

Well, like I said, unless I take it out of the IRA,

you can't afford to do it. If you take it out of your IRA, you're going to get charged a penalty of 10% plus your tax rate. You're borrowing money at 35% or 40% interest to buy her out. That's not a good deal.

Well, I don't think there's a penalty, because at 59 and a half you can.

Oh, that's true, you're 60.. Okay, so you're just going to pay your tax rate. But no, I'm not going to clean out your account. I don't know. Okay, you don't have a financial advisor, do you?

Well, I do, and I talked to him and he wasn't totally against the idea, because when you compare.

That wasn't what I was asking. What I need him to do is I need him to do a net present value calculation for you on 2100 a month for 20 years.

Yeah.

And what is that going to come out? That's $24,000, $25,000 a year for 20 years. Yeah, 50 grand is probably not a bad offer.

Right. I mean, it would really help me out, because there's no signs that she's going to get remarried or anything right now, and I could be paying her indefinitely for many, many years. And that's a tremendous strain on my finances to pay her.

Yeah, what are you doing to get your business back?

Well, I've done all sorts of marketing and advertising. I've done some networking and online stuff, and it's just very difficult. It hasn't been working, so I'm really struggling.

Okay. I want your financial advisor to do a net present value calculation on this and tell you what your rate of return is, because there's a thing called a discounted value. In other words, a stream of payments is not worth the total. $25,000 for 10 years is not worth $250,000.. But it might be worth $50,000..

Yeah.

George?

Yeah. I mean, what I'm saying here is you can see what the adjustment is, but I don't want you to limit your income because you now have this new payment where you go, well, I don't want to make any more, because they're going to adjust it again. And so I'd rather you get this income up and do what Dave's saying and see if we can fix this thing once and for all, instead of paying this for life.

I like being rid of the bill and her. She's the ex. Both of these are good things, and I like every bit of that. And so it's not a bad thing. I just want to make sure the calculation's right, and I can't do it in my head right now.

Fantastic, Dave.

Welcome. Where do you guys live?

About an hour south of Kansas City, Missouri.

Okay. What town?

Butler. All right.

Welcome. Good to have you guys. And all the way down here to Nashville to do a demo. How much have you paid off?

Paid off $146,885..

Way to go. And how long did that take?

Four years and nine months.

Love it. And your range of income during that time?

We started off around $92,000, got up to about $101,000, and it ended around $95,000..

Okay, cool. What do you all do for a living?

I'm a district operations specialist with Syngenta. I work in sales and marketing, and I'm also a Ramsey Solutions financial coach. Oh, wow.

Very cool. Thanks. What kind of debt was the $147,000?? Our mortgage. Our house.

I'm 31.. I'm 32..

And a paid-for house. Wow. What's this house worth?

Between $250,000 and $300,000.. It's a house, shop, and a little bit of land.

Man, look at you, guys. It's all yours.

It's all ours.

Yes. No payments in the world.

Not a one.

And you're 32 years old. Oh, my gosh!

We're seeing a trend here, Dave, and it's a good trend. It is a good trend. Young people paying off their homes. You.

Them. Yeah. Young people paying off their homes.

This is incredible. So, four years, nine months. You guys really went for this thing. What caused this journey to start four years and nine months ago for you?

Yeah, so it actually started a little bit before that. I actually got on Dave's plan about eight or nine years ago, kind of had a wake-up moment, got on his plan, and was able to pay off my existing debt, save up $12,000 and pay for an engagement ring before I ever got married. And so I had a really good start going into the marriage. Yeah, and I wasn't really familiar with Dave or the financial piece or anything until Austin came into my life, but was fortunate to get a good job, didn't have a whole lot of expenses, had a company vehicle and things, so was a little bit shocking to me at first whenever, three months before we got married, he made me start keeping track of all expenses and teaching me budgeting and whatnot.

He just sprung it on you, huh? Yeah. Made me.

That's strong words.

He didn't tell you ahead of time. it was part of the deal. He waits until we're about to get married and he goes, this is the deal.

Well, and I joke that there's actually five gospels for Austin. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Dave. My theme for life is, if Dave says it, I do it. Plain and simple. Oh, wow.

Wow, that's dangerous right there.

Tell people to jump off a cliff.

That's power. I don't know if I can handle.

But we actually then did take Financial Peace University right after getting married and we've led a couple courses.

Thank you.

I learned the process pretty quickly after we got married. He brought me along.

Now you're teaching it for real.

Right, exactly. Well, I feel like we're kind of the poster child for the house buying process, because it went through FPR. after we got married. We bought the house a year later. We had a really nice down payment.

And now you make $100,000 a year and you don't have any payments.

Exactly.

So now you can do anything you want to.

Yeah, and I mean we had things that could have set us back. Our basement flooded within the first year of living there, but we had the emergency fund. We were able to take care of everything and then get right back on track on paying off the house. We had transmissions go out. We actually bought vehicles with cash.

There's a lot of intentionality rolling around in here. How much money do you guys put down on the down payment?

We have about 40% down.

Wow. Just like the last debt-free screen. I'm just seeing a trend here, Dave. And you said they planned.

A big down payment with a 15-year fixed. And they're sitting here, you know, 28 or 30 years old. It's not an accident. Their case is 32, right? And this is the last two in a row.

She's kind of got a funny story. So whenever it came time where we were actually going to pay off our house, Austin came into the house and he says, I got something really crazy that I want to just run by you. And so this last year we had a lot of things happen in our life that kind of threw us off course and honestly questioned if we're going to be able to get it paid off in time or not, based upon where we're going. And I was driving down the road one day from our farm, and God just kind of put it on my mind. He goes, you need to think about this debt payoff.

It's like the account from the land account to the mortgage reduction. Exactly.

Yep.

Wow. Wow.

You guys are amazing. Woo!

That's it. And now you're free, and now you can just pile up cash like crazy and go, do the land and go do whatever you want to do. Exactly.

That's our plan.

So good. Good job, guys. Well done. Well done. Well, we've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you.

We have Haley, who is 3, and Reagan is 1..

All right. This is the family tree that was changed by Mom and Dad's courage to decide to address the issue that nobody likes to talk about in America, money, debt. And now here they stand completely debt-free, house and everything. You're incredible. Austin and Laura, Haley and Reagan, $147,000 paid off, house and everything, four years and nine months, making 92 to 101 to 95..

Woo!

Look at that. Those kiddos, man, that's awesome. Beautiful family. That is absolutely awesome. So fun.

It never gets old.

It does not get old.

What I love is there was the decision. before the decision. They pre-decided that we're not going to do things this way. We're going to save up a giant down payment. We're going to pay it off early.

Yeah, it wasn't like they woke up in trouble and then had to go get themselves out of trouble and then got out of debt.

Every step was intentional.

Every bit of it from day one. The power of this. The power of this stuff, especially when you start early and especially when you pre-make the decision. That's a good way of saying that, George. Very well done.

Great.

Welcome. Where do you guys live?

Austin, Texas.

Austin. Very cool. How much debt have you paid off?

$175,000.. Woo-hoo!

How long did this take?

It took us three years and one month.

Three years and one month. And your range of income during that time?

We started at $72,000 and right now I'm making about $160,000..

That's a nice jump.

Yes.

Like, what happened to the income? I've got to ask.

Just different job opportunities and saying yes.

Like somebody wasn't working, now somebody is? No, it's just me. No, both of you just went way up.

I'm a stay-at-home mom for our two kids, about to be three, and he just got some great job opportunities.

What do you do for a living?

I'm a software engineer.

Oh, okay. Way to go!

A good one, definitely. That's amazing.

What's the kind of debt? Was this $175,000??

$25,000 was car loans and the rest was student loans.

Whoa, $150,000 in student loans. What's your degree in?