This is the Ramsey Call of the Day, part of the Ramsey Network. Joining me today is Ramsey Personality, Dr. Chondaloney. Our nail is with us to start off this hour in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Hey, Arnold, what's up? Hi, Dave. Hi, Dr. Don.
How are you, brother? Better than we deserve, brother. What's up? Thank you for taking my call.
I wanted to get some advice on how we can stay motivated. We have followed Baby Steps for a couple of years now. We had completed Baby Step 2, Baby Step 3, and we basically fell off the bandwagon over a period of time and now we're back in Baby Step 2 from a series of choices that we made, and so I just wanted to see how we could stay motivated to stick with it so that we don't end up paying off the debt just to go all right back into it again. Why were you getting out of the first time?
Main one, it sounded like a good idea to you. Mainly the financial freedom, knowing that our money is for us to use for things for the future instead of paying for things in the past. Why are you getting out of debt this time? It's sort of the same thing, but also just kind of practically just to free up some money in our monthly budget.
Yeah, you're not going to make it. Nope. Not going to make it. You're going to fall off again.
But I can help you. It's not all bad news. Your issue is your why. Why you're doing it isn't big enough.
Why you're doing it right now is, eh, it'd be okay. And we might be better off and we might get us some more stuff if we had more money. Instead of like, I want to change my family tree. I want to look in the eyes of my grandchildren someday and tell them I was old man Vanderbilt.
I was old man Rockefeller, this star, this dad gum thing. No one's going to take over this branch of the family tree and take their house ever freaking again. Say the difference. Your why is kind of casual instead of Israel.
So you guys need, there has to be a nobility to this. I want to change my family tree. I want to be outrageously generous. It has to be other centered rather than self centered or you won't stick with it.
The people that quit drinking their alcoholics never do it for themselves. They always do it for someone else or something bigger. Same thing. You guys have to come up with a new identity.
As our friend James Clear said, like you've got to say not. I'm going to do this thing. We are a family that doesn't borrow money. Doesn't borrow money.
And the reason we don't borrow money is we don't like being broke. And the reason we don't like being broke is we can't be generous. And I don't want to retire and my kids have to take care of me because we know social insecurity is not going to do it. There you go.
I want to be able to, when gas prices go to $5 a gallon, I want to be annoyed, not crippled. I want to be, I want to be like, oh man, I don't want to wonder, oh no, how are we going to pay our bills? I want to be able to sleep. I want to be able to breathe.
I want to be able to laugh. I want to make much bigger understanding why you're doing this. Yeah. And if you get a bigger why, you have a better chance of sticking it out.
Here's where I've seen this happen. It's mildly inconvenient. You will keep smoking. Oh yeah.
It's just annoying. You just stink a little bit. My wife does it like my breath. That's not enough.
She's not kissing anyway. Here's the thing. Y'all go out and paint a picture of what this could look like and work backwards. Yeah.
A big, beautiful picture. In great detail. High definition picture. Not vague, you know, pastels.
Where is the house? I want to see the beads of sweat on the forehead when we're at the beach. Where are the kids going to school? How much money are you giving away on a Wednesday night just to be super generous?
What does it look like? I want to feel to walk over and buy a single mama car for $2,000 and not notice. How would it feel to pay for the adoption of a kid coming out of foster care so that that adoptive family could afford to do it and that kid's life is changing. That family is changing.
You get to stand back and cause that to happen. Right. Outrageous generosity. You got to have stuff like that in your head, man.
Because it's just like. Oh, it'd be good not to have payments. It just won't do it. It's a true statement.
It would be good not to have payments. But you need a sign of the cynics to start with why. Salesmen know that trick. Like I probably shouldn't buy it.
They know that trick. It's really hard to hit your head up against. No, this is not who I am. Yeah.
But you can't sell over that. Ramses don't borrow money. Yeah. Ramses are all generous.
Ramses are, you know, you fill in the blank. This is who we are. And, you know, I told my daughters growing up when they were little, I said, Ramsey girls are smart and pretty. Yeah.
And when they're grown women at their rehearsal dinner, their dad looks across and I said, what's her Ramsey girl? And she's still a smart and pretty. You can ask her today and she's 35 years old. You can ask her what her Ramsey girl is.
And neither one of them are Ramsey girls anymore. That's right. They're now cruising with more. Right.
So I took out the door and I tell my daughter who's six, good morning, baby. And I kissed her on the head and she lost it. All you ever tell me is I'm brilliant and beautiful and strong. I can't take it anymore.
I don't want to hear anymore. And I was like, all right, Mr. PhD, you know what that is? She's wanting you to say it more.
I told Sheila, I said, I didn't have this class in grad school. I don't know what to say to this. What, me and seven-year-olds? She said the other day she goes, you don't have to keep saying it, dad.
Yes, you do. And I said, I'm going to say it every day. I want you to just be so sick of me. You're going to have to be married to that guy for 20 years.
What will happen is when some 16-year-old or 17-year-old little predator comes up to her life, she's going to remember that she's precious child of God and she's special and she's going to be looking at him going, you've got to be kidding me. Yes. It won't even occur to her that she's a victim of some guy like that. You've got to be kidding.
Well, she's going to run up against the math test and think I can't do this. She's going to go, no, I'm smart. And I'm brilliant. I can do this.
Someone's going to say, you have a beautiful face. And she's going to say, no, I'm beautiful. I am. You apparently have to.
I trouble. Because my dad said that I was smart and pretty. There is no such thing. No such thing as a 15-year-old mustache.
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