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.

Fear is the enemy of hope.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Stupid is not illegal.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 must sell benefits, not products.

Debt is normal! So why be normal?

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

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

You must plan your work and then work your plan.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Financial Peace Jr.

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

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!

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

We want it all, and we can borrow to get it all, before we can afford it all.

The bridge between failure and success is hope. THOMAS JEFFERSON

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

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

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

In

If you want to be skinny, study skinny people, and if you want to be rich, do what lots of rich people do, not what some mythsayer says to do.

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

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

There is tremendous satisfaction in working your tail off to hit a goal, then winning. It is worth the work.

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.

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.

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

We enjoy earning interest now, rather than paying it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Money is finite. There is not an infinite supply. That’s something a lot of people have trouble remembering these days. In a time when crazy mortgages, car loans, student loans, and credit cards make you believe anyone can purchase anything at any time with no consequences, it’s easy to forget that money has limits.

70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Seven out of ten people you walk past going down the sidewalk are broke. You can model your life after them, and you will be one of them. Or you can mode your life after the weird people. Because wealth is unusual. It’s not normal. So you have to engage in unusual behaviors and habits to create unusual results

The reality is that Murphy doesn’t visit as much, but when he does, we hardly notice his presence. When Sharon and I were broke, our heating-and-air system quit, and the repair cost $580. It was a huge, hairy deal. Recently I had a new $570 water heater installed because the old one started leaking, and I hardly noticed. I wonder if the stress relief that your Total Money Makeover provides will allow you to live longer?

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.

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

The earlier you start making small changes, the more powerfully the Compound Effect works in your favor. Suppose your friend listened to Dave Ramsey’s advice and began putting $250 a month into an IRA when she got her first job after graduating from college at age twenty-three. You, on the other hand, don’t start saving until you’re forty. (Or maybe you started saving a little earlier but cleaned out your retirement account because you didn’t notice any great gains.) By the time your friend is forty, she never has to invest another dollar and will have more than a $1 million by the age of sixty-seven, growing at 8 percent interest compounded monthly. You continue to invest $250 every month until you reach sixty-seven, the normal retirement age for Social Security for those born after 1960. (That means you’re saving for twenty-seven years in contrast to her seventeen years.) When you’re ready to retire, you’ll have less than $300,000 and will have invested $27,000 more than your friend. Even though you saved for many more years and invested much more cash, you still ended up with less than a third of the money you could have had. That’s what happens when we procrastinate and neglect necessary behaviors, habits, and disciplines. Don’t wait another day to start the small disciplines that will lead you in the direction of your goals!

My kids, you, and I can have good things happen as a result of our Total Money Makeover only if we have the spiritual character to recognize that wealth is not the answer to life’s questions. We further must recognize that while wealth is very fun, it comes with great responsibility. Another paradox is that wealth will make you more of what you are. Let that one soak in for a minute. If you are a jerk and you become wealthy, you will be king of the jerks. If you are generous and you become wealthy, you will be most generous. If you are kind, wealth will allow you to show kindness in immeasurable ways. If you feel guilty, wealth will ensure that you feel guilty for the rest of your life.

Here’s the deal. When you get married, you become a team. The pastor at your wedding wasn’t joking when he said, “And now you are one.” It’s called unity. The old marriage vows say, “Unto thee I pledge all my worldly goods.” In other words, “I’m all in,” so combine the checking accounts. It’s hard to have unity when you separate your bank accounts. When his money is over here, and her money is over there, it’s easy to live in your own little financial world instead of working as a team. When you do your spending together, it’s about “our” money. We have an income and we have expenses and we have goals. So when you’re both in agreement on where the money is going, then you’ve taken a major step to being on the same page in your marriage, and you will create awesome levels of communication. This all boils down to trust. Do you trust your spouse or not? I’ve heard from people who keep separate bank accounts just in case their spouse leaves them. Well, why on earth would you marry someone you can’t trust? And if that’s really the case, then you need marriage counseling, not separate bank accounts! Your spouse isn’t your roommate, and this isn’t a joint business venture. It’s a marriage! You don’t run your household and your life separately. Your job is to love each other well, and that includes having shared financial goals—which is hard to do when you have separate accounts.

The ARM, Adjustable Rate Mortgage, was invented in the early 1980s. Prior to that, those of us in the real estate business sold fixed-rate 7 or 8 percent mortgages. What happened? I was there in the middle of that disaster of an economy when fixed-rate mortgages went as high as 17 percent and the real estate world froze. Lenders paid out 12 percent on CDs but had money loaned out at 7 percent on hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages. They were losing money, and lenders don’t like to lose money. So the Adjustable Rate Mortgage was born, in which your interest rate goes up when the prevailing market interest rates go up. The ARM was born to transfer the risk of higher interest rates to you, the consumer. In the last several years, home mortgage rates have been at a thirty-year low. It is not wise to get something that adjusts when you are at the bottom of rates! The mythsayers always seem to want to add risk to your home, the one place you should want to make sure has stability. Balloon mortgages are even worse. Balloons pop, and it is always strange to me that the popping sound is so startling. Why don’t we expect it? It is in the very nature of balloons to pop. Wise financial people always move away from risk, and the balloon mortgage creates risk nightmares.

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.