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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

You must sell benefits, not products.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Fun can be bought with money, but happiness cannot.

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.

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.

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.

This is a book about winning,

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

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

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 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

Financial Peace Jr.

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

The bridge between failure and success is hope. THOMAS JEFFERSON

Passion is so key in leading and creating excellence that I will hire passion over education and talent every time.

We enjoy earning interest now, rather than paying it.

In

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

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

Having seen several hundred lease agreements entered into by people I have counseled, my financial calculator confirms that the average interest rate is 14 percent. Shouldn’t you lease or rent things that go down in value? Not necessarily, and the math doesn’t work on a car, for sure. Follow me through this example: If you rent (lease) a car with a value of $22,000 for three years, and when you turn it in at the end of that three-year lease the car is worth $10,000, someone has to cover the $12,000 loss. You’re not stupid, so you know that General Motors, Ford, or any of the other auto giants aren’t going to put together a plan to lose money. Your fleece/lease payment is designed to cover the loss in value ($12,000 spread over 36 months is equal to $333 per month), plus provide profit (the interest you pay). Where did you get a deal in that? You didn’t! On top of that, there is the charge of 10 to 17 cents per mile for going over the allotted miles and the penalties everyone turning in a lease has experienced for “excessive wear and tear,” which takes into account every little nick, dent, carpet tear, smudge, or smell. You end up writing a large check just to walk away after renting your car. The whole idea of the back-end penalties is twofold: to get you to fleece/lease another one so you can painlessly roll the gotchas into the new lease, and to make sure the car company makes money.

Purchase Price $250,000 Down Payment $ 25,000 Mortgage Amount $225,000 At 7% Interest Rate 30 Years $1,349 $485,636 15 Years $1,899 $341,762 Difference $550 $143,874 Five hundred fifty dollars more per month, and you will save almost $150,000 and fifteen years of bondage. The really interesting thing I have observed is that fifteen-year mortgages always pay off in fifteen years. Again, part of a Total Money Makeover is putting in place systems that automate smart moves, which is what a fifteen-year mortgage is. Thirty-year mortgages are for people who enjoy slavery so much they want to extend it for fifteen more years and pay thousands of dollars more for the privilege. If you must take out a mortgage, pretend only fifteen-year mortgages exist. If you have a great interest rate, it is not necessary to refinance to pay a mortgage off in fifteen years or earlier. Simply make payments as if you have a fifteen-year mortgage, and your mortgage will pay off in fifteen years. If you want to pay any mortgage off in twelve years or any number you want, visit my website or get a calculator and calculate the proper payment at your interest rate on your balance for a twelve-year mortgage (or the number you want). Once you have that payment amount, add to your monthly mortgage payment the difference between the new principal and interest payment and your current principal and interest payment, and you will pay off your home in twelve years.

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.