Dave Ramsey Quotes

We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.

If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.

Pray like it all depends on God, but work like it all depends on you.

Act your wage.

A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.

You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.

For your own good, for the good of your family and your future, grow a backbone. When something is wrong, stand up and say it is wrong, and don't back down.

Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.

Fear is the enemy of hope.

It is human nature to want it and want it now; it is also a sign of immaturity. Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity.

Without a mission statement, you may get to the top of the ladder and then realize it was leaning against the wrong building!

Aristotle once said, “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.

You must walk to the beat of a different drummer. The same beat that the wealthy hear. If the beat sounds normal, evacuate the dance floor immediately! The goal is to not be normal, because as my radio listeners know, normal is broke.

The enemy of “the best” is not “the worst.” The enemy of “the best” is “just fine.

Stupid is not illegal.

typical millionaire lives in a middle-class home, drives a two-year-old or older paid-for car, and buys blue jeans at Wal-Mart.

A budget is people telling their money where to go instead of wondering where it went.

That stupid saying "What you don't know can't hurt you" is ridiculous. What you don't know can kill you. If you don't know that tractor trailer trucks hurt when hitting you, then you can play in the middle of the interstate with no fear - but that doesn't mean you won't get killed.

Seth Godin says, “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge. What to do isn’t the problem; doing it is. Most of us know what to do, but we just don’t do it. If I can control the guy in the mirror, I can be skinny and rich.

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. —George S. Patton

Children are sponges—they are going to absorb whatever is around them, so we need to be intentional about what surrounds them.

Someone who never has fun with money misses the point. Someone who never invests money will never have any. Someone who never gives is a monkey with his hand in a bottle.

Parents who let teens run around with unearned adult freedoms are naive and stupid.

There's a whole generation growing up thinking...the government exists to care for them.

Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this.

Savings without a mission is garbage. Your money needs to work for you, not lie around you.

Henry Ford said, “Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do.

I tell everyone never to take more than a fifteen-year fixed-rate loan, and never have a payment of over 25 percent of your take-home pay. That is the most you should ever borrow.

Live like no else today, so you can live like no else tomorrow.

Opposites attract. If two people just alike get married, one of you is unnecessary. LARRY BURKETT

You must sell benefits, not products.

Years ago, in a motivational seminar by the master, Zig Ziglar, I heard a story about how mediocrity will sneak up on you. The story goes that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he will sense the pain and immediately jump out. However, if you put a frog in room-temperature water, he will swim around happily, and as you gradually turn the water up to boiling, the frog will not sense the change. The frog is lured to his death by gradual change. We can lose our health, our fitness, and our wealth gradually, one day at a time. It might be a cliché, but that’s because it is true: The enemy of “the best” is not “the worst.” The enemy of “the best” is “just fine.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. HELEN KELLER

You have to reach the point that what people think is not your primary motivator. Reaching the goal is the motivator.

Measure your wealth not by the things you have, but by the things for which you would not take money.

Having children doesn’t make you a good parent, it means you had sex. That’s all.

Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.

Debt is normal! So why be normal?

You must plan your work and then work your plan.

If you as a leader allow people to halfway do their jobs and don’t demand excellence as a prerequisite to keeping their job, you will create a culture of mediocrity.

The German root word for “debt” is the same as for “guilt.

So content people may not have the best of everything, but they make the best of everything. That is who you want your children to be.

because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” HEBREWS 13:5 NIV

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. JAPANESE PROVERB

A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” (Prov. 13:22 NKJV). I

If you keep doing the same things, you will keep getting the same results. You are where you are now financially as a sum total of the decisions you've made to this point.

one reason people make bad decisions is they don’t have a good decision as one of their options.

No one wins the Super Bowl accidentally. Be intentional, Be Passionate, Don't mail it in! You got this!

Hope is steel covered in velvet. It can seem soft and cuddly, but hope is at the core of what makes people become what God designed them to be. Hope and its sister, faith, always create action.

Albert Einstein said, “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.

Requiring nothing of a child gives them no opportunity for failure or success.

I finally realized that results are generated by activities. If I manage my activities then the results I want occur.

Debt is not a tool; it is a method to make banks wealthy, not you. The borrower truly is slave to the lender.

Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans cannot even envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan, and credit without a card. We

John Maxwell says a budget (for your money) is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Managing time is the same; you will either tell your day what to do or you will wonder where it went.

A year of intense exercise and watching what you eat will likely change the trajectory of your life physically. You will melt away fat, tone up muscle, feel better, and change your habits, likely for life. But only ten days of that exercise program won’t move the needle on the scale. To create big-time success you have to stay focused and stay intense over an extended period of time.

If you will do the things others won't do then some day you will have the life others won't have.

Humpty Dumpty is hard to put back together, and so is trust.

We are scaling down” is a painful statement to make to friends or family.

Only if you mix knowledge with attitude, character, perseverance, vision, diligence, and extreme levels of work will your college degree produce for you.

The weird thing is that the more efficient, on task, on goal you are with your time, the more energy you have. Working with no traction, or for that matter simply wasting a day, does not relax you, it drains you.// Strange as it may seem, when you work a daily plan in pursuit of your written goals that flow from your mission statement born of your vision for living your dreams, you are energized after a tough long day.

The lottery is a tax on poor people and on people who can’t do math. Rich people and smart people would be in the line if the lottery were a real wealth-building tool, but the truth is that the lottery is a rip-off instituted by our government. This is not a moral position; it is a mathematical, statistical fact. Studies show that the zip codes that spend four times what anyone else does on lottery tickets are those in lower-income parts of town. The lottery, or gambling of any kind, offers false hope, not a ticket out.

I believe that through knowledge and discipline, financial peace is possible for all of us.

La deuda no es un instrumento; es un método para hacer ricos a los bancos, no a usted.

Fun can be bought with money, but happiness cannot.

The bridge between failure and success is hope. THOMAS JEFFERSON

If you are going to open a retail store you would want to consider Christmas. Most retailers make the majority of their entire year’s income between

Nothing was left to chance; every smell, every piece of furniture, and certainly the design of the floor plans made these model homes world-class.

If you wouldn’t want your mother to buy the item or the service then don’t sell it.

If you don’t own the goal and it doesn’t come from your dream, then you won’t have the toughness to persevere when the going gets tough. And I will promise you that the going will get tough. There is never an exception—everyone who wins must push through obstacles, lots of them. You simply will not get up at dawn for your three-mile run because your wife wants you thinner. Big goals require big backbone—wimps need not apply.

The Bible says in Habakkuk 2:2, “Write the vision and make it plain.” The written goal is the breakfast of champions. You just can’t do big things without making your goals specific, measurable, yours, with a time limit, and in writing.

If you keep a $495 car payment throughout your life, which is “normal,” you miss the opportunity to save that money. If you invested $495 per month from age twenty-five to age sixty-five, a normal working lifetime, in the average mutual fund averaging 12 percent (the eighty-year stock market average), you would have $5,881,799.14 at age sixty-five. Hope you like the car!

It is hard to work your day job and spend a ton of hours on your business, but it is harder to make a mistake and lose your home in foreclosure because you jumped before the boat was close enough to the dock.

Proverbs 22:7: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender

Henry Ford, who definitely had more than enough, said, “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

Those who work hard will make a profit, but those who only talk will be poor. PROVERBS 14:23

A little bit of controlled pain when you’re six will change your life when you’re thirty-six.

Los adolescentes estadounidenses se ven a sí mismos como adultos si poseen una tarjeta de rédito, un teléfono celular y una licencia de manejar.

1. Career 2. Financial 3. Spiritual 4. Physical 5. Intellectual 6. Family 7. Social

A man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion.

15 percent of success could be attributed to training and education, while 85 percent was attributed to attitude, perseverance, diligence, and vision.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. ROMANS 5:3–5 NKJV

The problem with your company is not the economy, it is not the lack of opportunity, it is not your team. The problem is you. That is the bad news. The good news is, if you're the problem, you're also the solution. You're the one person you can change the easiest. You can decide to grow. Grow your abilities, your character, your education, and your capacity. You can decide who you want to be and get about the business of becoming that person.

IF YOU WILL LIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE, LATER YOU CAN LIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE. This is the motto of your Total Money Makeover. It’s my way of reminding you that if you will make the sacrifices now that most people aren’t willing to make, later on you will be able to live as those folks will never be able to live.

Saving for a down payment or cash purchase of a home should occur after becoming debt-free in Step Two and after finishing the emergency fund in Step Three. That makes saving for a down payment Baby Step Three (b). You should save for the home if you have the itch before moving on to the next step. Many people are worried about getting a home, but please let it be a blessing rather than a curse. It will be a curse if you buy something while you are still broke. There are all sorts of folks who are eager to “work with you” so you can make it happen sooner, but the definition of “Creative Financing” is “Too Broke to Buy a House.

you find yourself unable to stop micromanaging, ask yourself if your team has a problem. You may have to reorganize or bring in some more talented people who have the capacity to earn the right to be delegated to. If your team continually drops the ball you are right to micromanage until they don’t drop the ball or you get some new team members.

one reason to have a Total Money Makeover is to build wealth that allows you to have fun. So have some fun! Taking your family, even the extended ones, on a seven-day cruise, buying large diamonds, or even buying a new car are things you can afford to do when you have millions of dollars. You can afford to do these things because when you do them, your money position is hardly even affected. If you like travel, travel. If you like clothes, buy some. I am releasing you to have some fun with your money, because money is to be enjoyed. That guilt-free enjoyment is one of the three reasons to have a Total Money Makeover.

A natural saver is great until he never spends and is tight-fisted with giving. A natural spender is great until she finds herself deeply in debt and unable to give. A natural giver is great until there are no savings when a problem arises and there is no personal enjoyment of money.

The fact is, most people in our nation today believe that debt is NORMAL, and in most cases, NECESSARY. They can’t imagine living a cash-and-carry life or a life in which all things they own are purchased outright with cash at the time of purchase— in other words, with no payment plan or use of credit cards.

I have heard it said that if you tell a lie often enough, loudly enough, and long enough, the myth will become accepted as a fact. Repetition, volume, and longevity will twist and turn a myth, or a lie, into a commonly accepted way of doing things. Entire populations have been lulled into the approval of ghastly deeds and even participation in them by gradually moving from the truth to a lie. Throughout history, twisted logic, rationalization, and incremental changes have allowed normally intelligent people to be party to ridiculous things. Propaganda, in particular, has played a big part in allowing these things to happen.

Being the highly trained investment mogul that I am, I could certainly find places to put that money where it would earn more. Or would it? Remember, personal finance is personal. I have come to realize that Sharon’s peace of mind bought with the oversized emergency fund is a great return on investment. Guys, this can be a wonderful gift to your wife. An Emergency Fund Can

One thing I am sure of in my Total Money Makeover: I had to quit telling myself that I had innate discipline and fabulous natural self-control. That is a lie. I have to put systems and programs in place that make me do smart things. Saying, “Cross my fingers and hope to die, I promise, promise, promise I will pay extra on my mortgage because I am the one human on the planet who has that kind of discipline,” is kidding yourself. A big part of being strong financially is that you know where you are weak and take action to make sure you don’t fall prey to the weakness. And we ALL are weak. Sick

Goals convert vision into energy. When you lay out exactly what you want to do in detail, you immediately start feeling the room move and the earth shake. You are pulled into your new life like some scene from a movie. Goals help make great men. J. C. Penney once said, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal and I will give you a stock clerk.

We have discussed the new-car purchase in its various forms for the last several pages. No, you can’t afford a new car unless you are a millionaire and can, therefore, afford to lose thousands of dollars, all in the name of the neat new-car smell. A good used car that is less than three years old is as reliable or more reliable than a new car. A new $28,000 car will lose about $17,000 of value in the first four years you own it. That is almost $100 per week in lost value. To understand what I’m talking about, open your window on your way to work once a week and throw out a $100 bill.

I can always tell which ones are serious and which aren’t. There’s something in their voices that communicates passion and conviction when they’re really excited about getting out of debt. But if they’re just playing around with the idea, if they’re simply curious about it, then their voices are flat. If I don’t hear any passion behind what they’re saying, I know they aren’t ready to cut up the credit cards and dump their debt for good. That’s because getting out of debt isn’t about solving a math problem; it’s about changing your life—and that requires a change of heart.

I suggest a Money Market account with no penalties and full check-writing privileges for your emergency fund. We have a large emergency fund for our household in a mutual-fund company Money Market account. Wherever you get your mutual funds, look at the website to find Money Market accounts that pay interest equal to one-year CDs. I haven’t found bank Money Market accounts to be competitive. The FDIC does not insure the mutual-fund Money Market accounts, but I keep mine there anyway because I’ve never known one to fail. Keep in mind that the interest earned is not the main thing. The main thing is that the money is available to cover emergencies. Your wealth building is not going to happen in this account; that will come later, in other places. This account is more like insurance against rainy days than it is investing.

The average household income in America is right around $50,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. Joe and Suzy Average would invest $7,500 (15 percent) per year or $625 per month. If you make $50,000 per year and have no payments except the house mortgage and live on a budget, can you invest $625 per month? Follow me here. If Joe and Suzy invest $625 per month with no match into Roth IRAs from age thirty to age seventy, they will have $7,588,545 tax-FREE! That is almost $8 million. What if I’m half-wrong? What if you end up with only $4 million? What if I’m six times wrong? Sure beats the 97 out of 100 sixty-five-year-olds who can’t write a check for $600! I would submit to you that Joe and Suzy are well below average. Why? In our example they started at the average household income in America, and in forty years of work never got a raise. They saved 15 percent of income and never increased it by one dollar. There is no excuse to retire without financial dignity in the United States today. Most of you will have well over $2 million pass through your hands in your working lifetime, so do something about catching some of that money. Gayle asked me one day if it was too late for her to start saving. Gayle wasn’t twenty-seven like Joe and Suzy. She was fifty-seven years old, but with her attitude you would have thought this lady was 107. Harold Fisher had a much better outlook at age one hundred than Gayle did at age fifty-seven. Life had dealt her some blows and had knocked most of the hope out of her. A Total Money Makeover is not a magic show. You start where you are, and you do the steps. These steps work if you are twenty-seven or fifty-seven, and they don’t change. Gayle might be starting the retirement investing step at sixty that Joe and Suzy start at thirty years old. Gayle was unwise to enter her sixties without an emergency fund and with credit-card debt and a car payment. She, like all of us, couldn’t save when she has debt and no umbrella for when it rains. Would it have been better for Gayle to start when she was twenty-seven or even forty-seven? Obviously. But once she was done with the pity party, she still needed to start with Baby Step One and follow The Total Money Makeover step-by-step to put herself in the best position possible.

Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of my approach. I select mutual funds that have had a good track record of winning for more than five years, preferably for more than ten years. I don’t look at their one-year or three-year track records because I think long term. I spread my retirement, investing evenly across four types of funds. Growth and Income funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Large Cap or Blue Chip funds.) Growth funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Mid Cap or Equity funds; an S&P Index fund would also qualify.) International funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Foreign or Overseas funds.) Aggressive Growth funds get the last 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Small Cap or Emerging Market funds.) For a full discussion of what mutual funds are and why I use this mix, go to daveramsey.com and visit MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com. The invested 15 percent of your income should take advantage of all the matching and tax advantages available to you. Again, our purpose here is not to teach the detailed differences in every retirement plan out there (see my other materials for that), but let me give you some guidelines on where to invest first. Always start where you have a match. When your company will give you free money, take it. If your 401(k) matches the first 3 percent, the 3 percent you put in will be the first 3 percent of your 15 percent invested. If you don’t have a match, or after you have invested through the match, you should next fund Roth IRAs. The Roth IRA will allow you to invest up to $5,000 per year, per person. There are some limitations as to income and situation, but most people can invest in a Roth IRA. The Roth grows tax-FREE. If you invest $3,000 per year from age thirty-five to age sixty-five, and your mutual funds average 12 percent, you will have $873,000 tax-FREE at age sixty-five. You have invested only $90,000 (30 years x 3,000); the rest is growth, and you pay no taxes. The Roth IRA is a very important tool in virtually anyone’s Total Money Makeover. Start with any match you can get, and then fully fund Roth IRAs. Be sure the total you are putting in is 15 percent of your total household gross income. If not, go back to 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s, or SEPPs (for the self-employed), and invest enough so that the total invested is 15 percent of your gross annual pay. Example: Household Income $81,000 Husband $45,000 Wife $36,000 Husband’s 401(k) matches first 3%. 3% of 45,000 ($1,350) goes into the 401(k). Two Roth IRAs are next, totaling $10,000. The goal is 15% of 81,000, which is $12,150. You have $11,350 going in. So you bump the husband’s 401(k) to 5%, making the total invested $12,250.