Dave Ramsey's Principles For Generational Wealth

Brought to you by CHM, a budget-friendly, faith-based alternative to health insurance. chministries.org slash budget. My wife and I are getting married next month, and we're blessed to be in a good financial position. But my question to you is, if you're starting over, what principles would you follow to build a strong family and lasting wealth over the next few decades? Wow. That's an eight-hour seminar. That's a really good question. There's a lot of layers to that. I agree. And are you asking beyond money, Tristan? Yeah, he said strong family. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. It's beyond money. We're blessed to be in the position that we are financially, so money's not really an issue. The way the Ramseys would view this at my house is it would start with a foundation of faith. And so we would start with a spiritual foundation and say, all right, God is in charge, and now let's learn what he would say about these things. And that's where a lot of the things we teach here on the air have come from, is from scripture. I mean, we present them in a non-scripture, non-weird way most of the time, but it comes down to, okay, how are we going to do this? So an example of that would be one of the things I learned when I started over was that I didn't ask my wife's opinion about anything. I just went and did whatever I wanted to do. And she was okay with that because she was raising babies, and I was running a business, and so she didn't really want to go look at every piece of real estate I was buying. I was in the real estate business, and I didn't ask her opinion. And so that's a huge mistake to not be constantly communicating about the items in our life. And so who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her, and he will have no lack of gain. And so once Sharon and I got aligned with, I don't make big financial decisions, she doesn't make big financial decisions, and we're in agreement on a budget without the two of us knowing everything and being aligned on that. And so, you know, I had some 14-year-old seadoos at the lake house, and so I bought new seadoos the other day at the lake house to upgrade for the grandkids and everybody to ride on. But I didn't, you know, just call up the seadoo dealership and go bring me some seadoos. I said, hey, Sharon, one of them's messed up. We're getting some work done on them. We talked through what the situation was. It looks like the stupid things are, you know, time to upgrade. And we got the money. Any issue with that? No, none whatsoever. But she did not walk down on the dock and go, aren't those new? That didn't happen that way. So we're in agreement. We're in alignment. That's a big deal. And that has saved me, like we don't make large generosity plays, philanthropy. We don't write large checks to ministries in support of them without us both talking about it and praying about it. So we make decisions together. That's principle number one. And that's a big deal. That's saved me a lot of angst in my marriage and my relationship. And it's also saved me a lot of money because it kept me from doing some stupid stuff I would have done probably on my own without her speaking into it. And she might have done on her own without me speaking into it. If you're serious about budgeting, you can't ignore healthcare. For most families, it's one of the biggest line items. Y'all, you can cut subscriptions and eating out, but if you're still stuck with a massive premium every month, it's going to be stressful. Now, Christian Healthcare Ministries is different. It's not insurance. It's believers sharing each other's medical bills. And the best part, programs start at just $115 a month. So go to chministries.org budget and use code Ramsey for 50% credit towards your first month. I think that a spiritual foundation and out of that comes things like, I will have no lack of gain if I listen to my virtuous wife. And so out of that comes, you know, a godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. And so I'm going to plan a, an estate that changes my family tree. And that includes the character of the people I'm leaving the money to. If they're a poor character and I leave them money, it ruins their life because you become more of what you are when you get more money. And so, and we started talking about that to Rachel Cruz when she was three years old, to her brother and her sister when they were three years old. So, you know, you, you have to be a worthy steward. Um, you know, and you know, if you're faithful in the little things, you'll be given more to manage. This is a teaching for your children. So I'm going to teach my children to give so that they don't think the whole world's about them. They're not going to be entitled little brats, right? It's not about you, you know, and so I'm going to teach them to be givers. I'm going to teach them to save, which is a sign that they have some discipline and they can delay pleasure, which is a sign of emotional maturity. Uh, I'm, I'm going to teach them to spend and enjoy their lives because our heavenly father, if we being evil know how to give good gifts to our kids, how much more so the blessings come from him. And so all of these things come out of that, that whole mindset. So Rachel, you kind of sat and experienced that, I guess, on the other side, being raised in that environment, imperfect, not perfect, but it was very intentional. Yeah, very much so. And I think, you know, money can easily become an over safety net, if you will. And so you have to be careful, this balance, and that's why the generosity piece I think is really big. I feel like it does, it keeps you in check. When you write a, when you write a literal big check to something, there's something that just happens in the character of who you are. So that generosity piece I think is huge. And that plays into the character of you, you know, generous people are usually pretty humble people. Uh, that definition of humility, I think it came from, uh, Rick Warren, but he said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but it's thinking of yourself less. This way of servanthood and looking at others, right? And what's going on in them. Because money can easily become the center point of your life because you have the ability to go do whatever you want because you have the money, right? And so that it can easily become that your life is about you, that orbit. Uh, we put them back. Tristan, I was going to ask you, is this, uh, do you guys have kids? Is this your first marriage or you got where, where are you first marriage? We are both faith based. How old are you guys? I'm 29. She's 25. Okay. Yeah, that's great. And I'll just say for Winston and I, I feel like one of the things we've learned and we've been married 16 years. So there's a lot of people who have been married much longer than us that probably have more thoughts on the marriage piece, but I have found the healthier we are as individuals, the better our marriages. Like when I find that Winston is like working on, on himself and he's doing work over here. And if I'm doing that learning and growing over here, like there's something about that where I think for a little piece of me getting into this, I thought marriage is the missing link and that's, what's going to like create this better person of who I am. And I think the more we've gotten into it, the more I'm like, wow. And Rachel takes care of herself. She's a better version of her and same with Winston. And it's created a healthier marriage when that's been our perspective. And so there's something, there's something great that, and then the thing that you've told us, you told me early on in marriage, which I loved was just serve each other. I think I was so worried about the roles and who's supposed to do what and what marriage formulas it's supposed to look like. And I remember you said, dad, just serve each other. And there's something beautiful in that each of you has a voice, each of your opinions matter. And so, um, there's not that, that hierarchy really wasn't, I didn't see that as much with you and mom. It was a very equal level playing field. Yeah. By the time you were old enough to see it, that was there because of what I just described before you were born. I think that's big. I think that is for, um, for each of you to feel like you are heard and respected. Um, it's big. Yeah. Submit yourselves one to another, says an Ephesians. Okay. That's serving each other, you know? And so I'm going to put your needs ahead of mine. I'm going to put the needs of the family family unit ahead of my own little selfish desire for a new pair of shoes or purse or a gun or car or a fill in the blank thing. And there's nothing wrong with any of those things. By the way, Ramsey's have all those things Sharon this week, Dave, this week, you know, every one of those things, but it's not, those are not ahead of the good of the family units goals. It's not ahead of, uh, they're not going to interrupt my generosity because I bought too many guns. Right. Right. I'm not going to interrupt my generosity because I bought some seated. Yeah. And another myth that I think we can kind of get into as well is that if I just have enough money, there's a level that. Problems for the most part kind of go away because I can just fix them. Do you know what I mean? Like, no, the more crap you own, the more repairmen you have to know. Well, that, but also like you're still human and people in your community mean, like it's, it's still life is still going to happen. And so it's not, it's not this over safety net, like I was saying earlier. And there's something that I think I, I don't know, we can kind of creep into and then you're like, gosh, but it's not like we're getting our, we see God, you don't say God is my provider. You say my mutual fund. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's a dangerous spiritual ground. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you completely. Christian healthcare ministries can save your family hundreds of dollars on healthcare every month. Learn more at ch ministries.org slash budget.