The Annual Giving Show: A Celebration of Radical Generosity

brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today normal is broken common sense is weird so we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey network in the Fairwinds credit union studio this is the Ramsey show George Camel Ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host today the Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver generosity is possibly one of the most important financial principles that you can bring into your life when you give steadily regularly as a rhythm of your life it changes you it changes the attitude of your heart the positioning of your heart and you move along the spectrum from self ish to self less someone that has been giving for a long time and giving a lot for a long time is some of the most selfless generous people we call them and and they're the ones that hold the door for you at the grocery store they're the ones that help you pick up the cans of soup that are rolling around in the parking lot because the cheap plastic bag broke generous people are generous people they're more attractive we all want to hang out with those kinds of people they do and you know and they tend to prosper for that reason because they're more attractive I mean if you think about it what who would you rather do business with let's say your person that fixes your car someone that has a heart of generosity and the car in the bay next to you is a 32 year old lady who's lost her husband in the military and he's donating the repair on her car and she's sitting in the lobby with you telling you that this guy's taking care of her would you rather to have your car fixed there or the guy who is going to squeeze every dime out of everybody and we know the difference when you don't even have to know the difference to know the difference how many of you have met with someone or you just had a conversation with someone and you finish the conversation you go I think I need a shower feel gross after this is a taker this is not a giver this is a parasite this is not someone that adds value and gosh don't we all want to be that and we're inspired by it and we teach people to live like no one else so that later they can live and give like no one else and so this is our annual favorite show for George and me to get to do we do it as one of our last broadcast of the year every year we're heading up into Christmas where we celebrate God giving his only begotten son for our sins and those of us that are Christians that's what we believe and that's what we know to be true and he gave his only begotten son God is a giver and we're made in his image and so in our very spiritual DNA we are designed to be givers and when you're not giving you're not functioning in your design when you start giving you're more passionate you're more creative opportunities come your way because you're more attractive your marriage is better you're more empathetic you're a better dad and a better mom when you give rather than take all the time I mean the term that everybody throws around that's the opposite of giver is narcissist and every you know it's way overused that everybody that is accused anything you don't like anybody I don't anytime you don't like somebody now you have to call them a narcissist that's like a rule now on social media but they're not you're just you just got your little feelings hurt but the but still that that is to you know that's the opposite and it's very real so very very self-centered self-oriented so today we're going to take calls and emails and stories throughout the entire show all about giving so if you have given something and you have a story that will inspire the rest of us to be better givers bigger givers more often givers because we're all in agreement right now the giving is the best thing you can do with money it's the most fun you'll ever have with money most fun I've ever had with money is when we did a gift in person and you make someone cry because it blows their freaking mind that's the that's the most fun you'll ever have and so yeah I'm known for making people cry but not for that so but you're gonna kind of good way today that's a good Dave is here and if you make Dave cry I guess we'll give you a book here so I cried an Applebee's commercial we talk about man I cry all time but the so no the we need to hear from you we want to hear your giving stories or your receiving stories inspire us to generosity today the phone number is triple eight eight two five five two two five try to get it I'm gonna do it all right Parados with us hey Parado what's up Merry Christmas Dave what an honor it's an honor to be with you tell us your giving story sure so a few years back I was actually the recipient of outrageous general generosity and it's really changed my life so I was a single mom without two nickels to rub together and a lot of times by the end of the month we were really struggling to get food on the table a friend told me about a food plant pantry that was out of a local church so I went to get some food in line I had to fill out a form with income information to confirm eligibility when a church volunteer reviewed the details with me he revealed that my income was actually above the threshold to where they could offer me an assistant so I was literally making too much to be that broke the really beautiful thing is he took the time to actually like talk about it with me he asked me why I was coming for assistance when my income was so high and I explained him that my mortgage payment was about half of my income he did say that I could wait around to see if there's any extra food at the end or what they could scrounge up for me kind of around the church that I refused and with tears in my eyes I told him that I didn't want to take food away from the people who need it more than I do that I was fine because I had a bag of oranges in the car a half a bag of oranges that I was going to take back to the grocery store to get us through the rest of the month he paused and he said that he'd like to help me out and asked me to drive around and meet him in the parking lot so I did as he was getting something out of his car when I parked he came over to my window and shoved for Chris $50 bills in my hand and I just lost it we cried and prayed together with his gesture he actually doubled my grocery budget for the entire month and you know Dave it was really the catalyst that I needed for my life I re-evaluated my finances and my living situation and over the next two years I got out of debt and doubled my income and to this day I just remember Mike with his name and just his outrageous generosity and the Holy Spirit flowing through him as he offered me help without any hesitation or judgment. Wow that's powerful and you can't help but look for opportunities to do that now that you're on your feet right? No absolutely I'm glad he said that because every year I like to pay for his generosity and I'll go into some hard working wages $200 on Christmas all in fifties you know there's something about a $50 bill. Amen and there's something more about four of them. Yes absolutely. That's powerful thank you for sharing that that's good that's exactly what we need today. I already got the grin on my face God's gonna stick there for a while. I'm gonna be stuck there God's Spirit moving through Mike and said well they can't go by the rules I'm not gonna violate the rules but I am gonna go make sure that this single mom gets something more than a bag of oranges. Do for one what you wish you could do for many. Scalably unscalable. Yeah I love it very well done. Well played Mike wherever you are. The holidays are supposed to be joyful but they can also be expensive between gifts travel and about a thousand limited time offers your budget can start feeling anything but Mary and that's why I love this. Boost Mobile helps you treat yourself and your wallet right now you'll pay just ten bucks a month for your first two months then only twenty five bucks a month for unlimited talk text and data forever no price hikes no contracts no nonsense just reliable service that keeps your phone bill low and your holiday spirits high so stop stressing over your budget and start saving instead go to boost mobile.com slash Ramsey and unwrap the savings today that's boost mobile.com slash Ramsey restrictions apply see boost mobile.com slash Ramsey for details our annual giving show you know no one stops and talks about it very much but on a given year for instance the year twenty twenty five Americans are by far no one's even close per capita and in total the most generous nation on the planet. Now it's kind of in vogue to be hating on America if you're in Europe and you think you're cool or whatever bull crap that is but the truth is we're way more generous than you that's the truth that's the actual data last year Americans gave over six hundred billion dollars to charities and ministries all over the world from hungry kids to st. Jude hospitals to anything you can think of where someone's hurting and someone needs some help American dollars from Americans pockets not government programs individuals privately giving give more annually than the entire gross domestic product of a lot of countries. That's what we produce here that's interesting if you think about it because we are based on a Judeo-Christian ethic whether you all like it or not and that's the truth and you know part of the Judeo-Christian ethic the Jewish religion and the Christian religion is built into both of those is a steady flow of generosity a steady flow of caring for widows and orphans a steady flow of having a heart for the broken and it's pretty amazing what we do and no one really talks about it but it's still there even in spite of we might not even agree on why it's there but it's still there and the generosity still flowing wow and is that is it was that one year that's one year wow that's pretty impressive yeah that even per person according to the experts at Google but yeah we trust him yeah sorta the intelligence is artificial so be careful but you know but it is and here's the other thing there's a lot that's what's recorded and so if it's 600 billion recorded then we know it's a trillion if you gave me $10,000 right now and they have no way to track it I think you can test that theory doesn't show up yeah it's only through the if you have a 501c3 you you file what's called a 990 with the IRS you file a tax return saying what you have received from others and that would be one of the places you gather this information but an individual helping another individual or people doing things in cash no one ever knows that that only comes under the lens of God's spirit he sees it but no one else does no one else knows it happen it's our annual giving show John is in Canada John tell us your giving story you bet thanks for having me I was on the receiving end so brief summary I did something very dumb and invested in in something which turned out to be a very elaborate very well done investment scam and I always thought people who fell for these things were kind of silly but I was the silly one in this case so ultimately all told we lost a million dollars yeah and that's Canadian so it's like 40 grand American anyway but it was a big problem so we had to sell our home which was was a big big issue we had about $700,000 of equity in our home but we still owed about $300,000 so we had to move to a rental and I thought I would die in that home and be buried in the backyard that's what I had hoped for and that was not to be one day my aunt comes over and she's she's a single lady godly woman I never knew how what her financial state was because she's not advertising it and whatever but I think she's saved her money through her life anyway super conservative and she she shows her love by like acts of service so she was like I want to come over bring a meal for you guys because we have young twin boys that we had adopted through this process or at the beginning of the process and at dinner one day she just says hey how bad are things like financially I know I know something's happened that's why you sold your home but like how bad and I told her and I said like I don't know how I'm going to get through Thursday and it's Tuesday because we I borrowed and there was these massive business loans that were $15,000 a month was the payment on them and that was going to happen for about six more months so she said well I want to help and I said really like I was not expecting this at all never received anything and she said yeah how many months do you think you need and I'm like I don't know maybe three would be amazing right and and she said okay I'm going to write you a check for $5,000 for three months every month five grants and she ended up changing that to four months so she ended up giving us a total of $20,000 this was at the absolute lowest point where I was very very seriously considering bankruptcy and from her generosity and the grace of God we were able to just scrape and claw our way day by day through this mess and yeah anyway now we're in a much better place and we will be debt-free sometime in the next six or seven months and she was huge she was unbelievable just the silent generous kind-hearted lady never judged what was you know you had enough shame without anybody shaming you right correct that's where I was I remember that I looked in the mirror and I saw stupid tattooed on my forehead yeah you don't need you don't need anybody pile on to that right and she just wrote you a check and smiled and brought a casserole yeah I mean my gosh yeah and she's done that like many times like keeps bringing over food keeps doing things and and she she's showing up for every one of my daughter's volleyball games and like she's just she's just there she's just a presence and and her name is Louise and she would hate me saying that because she's very much like keep it quiet but anyway whatever everybody needs to be more like Louise that's some more of the story John good quite good good story thank you for sharing that love that it's a good reminder that a lot of times that generosity is invisible and it's from the people who are the quietest they're nice not the loud to showy people they generally have nothing that's why they're loud and showy but yeah Zoe's in Omaha Nebraska Merry Christmas Zoe tell us your giving story Merry Christmas huge fan been listening to you since I was 16 Wow thank you um now 17 preten you I'm 27 now I know my story I was 19 and I had a job way out of my league but I tried it and I got it and part of my job was to interact with the elderly people and for Christmas I picked people who didn't have family around in my company bought but hats mittens puzzles for those people who didn't have family around to celebrate Christmas with moral of the story I was dropping off one of my gifts to one of my people and it was actually a younger person probably 60s they had kids at home I walked into their home I could see the lights through their house and the pair of gloves and hat and other gifts that I gave them I knew wasn't enough so I felt and they were so grateful just for that but I felt called to go and get them more so I went and spent my own money around $500 on snow pants and snow boots and warm stuff and some Christmas toys for the kids and toothbrushes and stuff like that while I was at the store I ran into two people who I told what I was doing they also gave me $100 each so that was like $700 I got stuff for them I brought it back to them we all had tears in our eyes and you were 19 years old I was 19 and $500 was a lot of money it's a lot of money yeah but I just felt like it was right and the feeling that I felt giving it to them I think felt better than how they felt but it felt so amazing and it's like something I will cherish forever amen well done Zoe proud of you wow that the impact that has on the giver just as powerful if not more than on their she changes you changes you permanently hey guys you know those too good to pass up holiday promos well they can be great but with every spin of the digital wheel the newsletter sign up the coupon code you're giving away your data you think that info just stays with the store I doubt it it goes into the corners of cyberspace where data brokers grab it repackage it and sell it to spammer scammers and generally bad people the FTC just reported consumers lost over $12.5 billion to fraud last year and that's not just a number that's your money your time and your privacy and that's why I recommend delete me your digital cleanup crew the delete me privacy pros dig through hundreds of these data broker sites they scrub your info and they keep it gone which means fewer weird robo calls fewer spam texts and it's the gift that keeps on giving because it's an annual subscription and Ramsey listeners can get 20% off those annual plans at join delete me dot com slash Ramsey with code Ramsey at checkout do it today that's joined delete me dot com slash Ramsey code Ramsey if you're working the baby steps the best and fastest way to do it is by using every dollar it's more than just our budgeting app now the plan is built right in you track your progress you get personalized recommendations coaching for your situation help you free up more money work the plan even faster it's like having one of us walking with you every day showing you the next right step and holding you accountable start every dollar for free by downloading it in the app store or at Google play it's our annual giving show crystals in Arizona keep a stash of $20 bills in my wallet just for restaurant birthday emergencies the second I hear the happy birthday song I'm already across the room handing the bewildered birthday person a $20 bill announcing it's a family tradition they don't know if I'm generous unhinged or both but the act has created an incredible amount of surprising joy I love that you know why not be both why not unhinged generosity is a fun character this stranger just had to be at 20 just because somebody song happy birthday and then you find out they were singing happy birthday just to get the free cake and we're really their birthday but anyway and free $5 bill along with a bad deal love it Angela is in Wichita Kansas hey Angela Merry Christmas Merry Christmas Dave what's up not too much I'm blessed and want to share a story with you something crazy I did okay do it so when I was a kid in the 90s my mom saw Mazda Miata's and she loved the Mazda Miata it's a little two-seater convertible yeah I remember she never would buy anything like that because it wasn't practical and they didn't have money for things like that but when I was like seven I promised her that I would buy her one someday and so fast forward 20 years and a few years ago I saw one for sale and it had we had just finished harvesting and so we had a little bit of extra money and I bought it for her with my husband and we left the for sale tag in the window but we changed the phone number and so a few days later we met up with my mom and we parked it in the parking lot down a few stalls from us and when she pulled up she saw that it was for sale and she said I might be able to buy that my Miata and when she called we told her it's yours mom and so she was super excited because she had just heard the song how do miracles just happen like that on the radio and then she got her dream car so it was like the way you gave the gift as much as the gift that's pretty creative very creative it's out of a movie I mean you had to know her well enough to know she would act on that right instead of just seeing the sign going well I'll never and never call and and then you'd be screwed you have to figure out some other way to but you knew she'd call that number that's great oh yeah that's so cool how old was she when she got it boy and she's 74 now well she'll be 74 so 72 probably she's still driving it she is she loves that car I won't say how fast she goes in it but that's kind of scary but she loves to drive that around she still calls it GG for God's gift and she remembers the day she got it and everything she'll remember that anniversary every year probably for the rest of her life great car nickname to yeah that's great well done Angela well played that's how you do it you know the creative methodology so we did a video and I'm trying to think if it's posted on YouTube on our massive YouTube channel that has eight bazillion videos on it but a friend of mine we probably did this video that our team did the video with him friend of mine found his when he was a kid his dad sold a antique car that he had had to a friend who collected cars because he needed money his dad was a pastor and they had the money to keep the car so he got rid of the car speed the kids and 25 years later that guy that was the collector still had the car and my friend went and bought it from him and gave it to his dad and you talk about eyes leaking everywhere it was pretty cool and the guy gave him a good deal because he figured out what he was doing he didn't he didn't you know so he liked the fact that it was a generosity surprise made up made a better deal on it and and you know but he still I remember the trying to remember the model the car but it's like a 1930s 1940s vehicle and it had been restored and everything and it was kind of a cool street rod type thing and they anyway this collector still had the car he was in the same town that they all grew up in and he found him and found out he still had it and bought it and gave it back to his dad it was pretty cool video that fits almost with the gg story right there with Angela well done Angela that's well played Savannah's in Florida a Savannah Merry Christmas what you're giving story Merry Christmas Dave and George thank you for having me sure my husband and I have been on baby steps four through six for several years and we listen to your show every day we've been inspired by your encouragement to be more generous and we've heard your suggestions to provide necessities like groceries and gas and tires for the single mom and we were completely sold on the idea but we just weren't sure where to find these neighbors in need so fast forward to summer of 2022 and we learn about a website called care portal dot org and this is a national care sharing technology that connects a family in crisis with a local church to the professional support of an agency worker agency worker vets the needs of the family and then enters the request on care portal for someone like me or any of your listeners to respond to and the site allows you to filter by state and county so that you can keep your support local to your own community yeah cool and the the goal is to keep the biological family together and prevent the kids from entering foster care because there's a clear correlation between those kids and an increased risk for incarceration and homelessness and coming a trafficking victim as an adult so the personal story I wanted to share is that the very first request we responded to was for a 16 year old girl whose mother had just died unexpectedly and her mom was her only parent and now on the worst day of her life she has to move from Indiana down to Florida to live with her aunt so she has no community around her in her time of immense grief and her aunt did not have the ability to provide a bed for her so she's sleeping on a rented air mattress with a hole in it and as God would have it our son had just been born several months before and our guest room turned nursery had a full set of furniture with nowhere to go until now so volunteer from a local church picked up the bed from my house and delivered it and assembled it for her and this story really spoke to me because I lost my dad at that same age of 16. Oh wow. And I can just instantly take myself back to that first morning. Well that's how you know this is a God assignment. This is not random. No not at all. This is straight up. Yeah that's cool. Yeah so I remember you know the comfort that my bed provided me in those sad times and I just pray that our gift did the same for this young lady and after that we were hooked so three and a half years later we've responded to dozens of requests for all kinds of things diapers and wipes sheets and pillows car seats groceries and even washers and dryers. It sounds like you're having fun. We are. You are very right. It's the most fun we've ever had with money. Yeah that's cool. That is very cool. I'm proud of you and it starts with a God assignment that lines up with your personal story. That's so neat. That was fun. Let's do that again. Yeah. And then it becomes a rhythm in your life and in your budget to go hey we're going to set money aside just to cover needs like this. Yeah it does not get old either. It does not get old. Savannah way to go. Well done. Well done. Thank you so much. So how long ago was the bed deal? Three three and a half years? Three and a half years. Yes. Okay and so then you've just dozens and dozens of times since then you see the individual request come through. What was the name of that? Correct. What was the name of that portal again? I don't know anything about it but we'll put it out there again. Careportal.org. Okay cool. Absolutely. Can't argue with that. That's good stuff. It looks like a real dialed in kind of go fund me because sometimes you're like I don't know if this is real. I don't know the people behind this and this seems like they've done all the vetting for you to provide hey there's an exact need here that we know is legit. Do you want to help? That's cool. I'm not really mad about it but I don't put any money in go fund me. Not mad about it. Unless it's someone I know you know and they post it. If I know I'm just going to give them the money. Yeah. They're going to go fund me. That helps too. Avoid all the fees. If I know what's going on then I really know what's going on. I don't need go fund me. Somebody out. Anyway. That's a cool service. Way to go Savannah. Yeah. Way to go. I love it. I like that it becomes almost addictive. You go where's the next time I'm going to do it. I'll tell you who uses go fund me well is Jimmy Darts. Oh yeah. He does a great job using go fund me. He does a great job. You want to see some generosity stuff. Look that guy up. Really cool. That'll make your eyes light. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's The Ramsey Show, question of the day, is brought to you by Y-Refy. If you've been turned down by other lenders because your private student loans are in default, Y-Refy is for you. They help borrowers restart with dignity, a clear direction to help get you out. Check out YRefy.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey, not in all states. And today we're switching it up with a giving story from Van in Nebraska. I said I'd drive for DoorDash as a side hustle and some deliveries require us to collect the cash in person. Recently I had a pizza order I delivered to a subsidized apartment complex to a single mom. When she opened the door to the apartment, she had six young kids running around. Her apartment had no furniture, just a mattress in the middle of the room. When she gave me the $40 in cash for her order, I gave the $40 back to her and gave her $60 in cash out of my pocket and told her Merry Christmas. Earlier that day, I had just watched an interview with Jimmy Darts on the Ramsey show, which inspired me to give that lady her money back along with a little extra. Now that's cool. That's fun. So he refunded her to the amount of $60 plus the full- So she got a hundred bucks in her pocket and a pizza. Wow. Yeah. Very cool. Jimmy will like that. Oh yeah. We'll send him this clip. He'll be inspired by that. If you want to learn about generosity and just be following Jimmy on his YouTube show and he's got a new book out as well about it. It's a good recommendation. He's a friend of ours and proud of that young man and how he's inspired generosity. It's his full-time gig. It's all he does and he's really, really good at it. So check him out. Hey, where'd it go? That's paying it forward and stuff happening because Jimmy's out there moving around. He doesn't even know what happened. Had nothing to do with him directly. Just him on here talking about it. Yeah. So way to go. You can inspire with your own generosity. Very cool. Tim is in Syracuse, New York. Hey Tim, Merry Christmas. What's your giving story? Merry Christmas to both of you. You too. I, yes. I was picking my son up at his school about a year ago, late October, and I parked in a spot next to the faculty lot and I noticed a minivan and it parked there virtually every day that I picked him up for weeks. And this one particular time I just looked over the car. I was bored and I noticed the tires were virtually bold. I looked inside just to examine it. I didn't know which teacher it was or faculty member and I saw two baby seats as well. So I go home, talk to my wife because I was thinking of buying four brand new tires for this individual and it would have been about 500 bucks, which is about a hundred over our giving budget and every dollar. So my wife immediately agreed. We called up the principal, arranged for a exchange, so I give him the cash and told him to please give it to the individual that owned the light blue silver minivan. Did so two weeks later I come back and there were four brand new tires on the vehicle, thankfully. I wanted that to be anonymous and it was certainly anonymous. To add an addendum, I do know that I received, my wife reminded me I received a bonus January of the following year. So three months later I received a $750 bonus from work. Minus tax is approximately $500. So it was blessed to give that young teacher with two young children four new snow tires. And by the way, we got blasted with snow last year. It was a record snowfall, so she certainly needed it. Wow. Well, I like that God goes ahead and gives you a Holy Spirit wink with giving you the money right back. I like that. And he goes, let's do that again. He's like, okay, I gotta go. Let's try this again. See how this works. Yeah, I like it. I'm going again for that. Yeah. Very cool. Good for you. That's very cool. And this, you do know who the teacher is though, right? Yes. I found out later on and it wasn't my son's teacher, but a young single teacher nonetheless and definitely in need of that gift. Yeah. Way to go, man. That's awesome. All you gotta do is keep your antennas up and stuff will step right in front of you and wave at you and go, hello. And you go, oh, well that must be my assignment. Oh, that's how that works. It's not accidental and it's not coincidental. There's no such thing. Way to go, Tim. Proud of you. Good work. Dennis is in Columbus, Ohio. Dennis, tell us your giving story. Merry Christmas. Hey, Merry Christmas to you guys. Hey, so we've been on a Baby Step 7 since 2017 and initially we had somebody going through some issues at one of the children's hospitals here in town and for Christmas we decided to donate $1,000 worth of gifts to kind of springboard our Baby Step 7 journey. And ever since we got that bug, every holiday we would find a local family to ultimately adopt and then one month by my wife found a church that was helping with foster kids. So we've done that for the last three years and every year we've up did, we started off with five kids three years ago. We did 10 kids last year and this year we've done 15 kids. Wow. Ultimately through the foster program, probably spending upwards of $2,000 to $3,000 on behalf of these kids. The last part about it is it's no more fun going through a toy store shopping for these kids and we probably spend four to five times more on these kids than we do our own nieces and nephews which is kind of ironic but it's a blast to be able to do it for them. Well, as it should be. That's a lot. That's awesome, man. Well done. Yeah. I mean, these kids want for nothing in our family and we're happy to provide obviously wonderful Christmas for them but these other kids, we make sure to get everything on their list and it is awesome to go to the register with multiple buggies full of stuff and be able to drop this stuff at the wonderful church here in Columbus. Man, that's well done. Good for you guys. Proud of you. Good work. Good work. Good work. Yeah, our Ramsey Family Foundation works with our team. Our team gets, after they've been with us a year, they get an extra week off of time off to do ministry work and they can take it by the day or by the week, however they want to take it. And so our foundation, our family foundation, arranges things where they can go help some ministry somewhere if they want to use their time that way. And just the other day, we had a whole bunch of our team members in the parking lot doing shopping for kids' toys and cars lined up with trunks up and the people would come back, had bought the ones and they put them in the trunks and the other people would go deliver them. And so people using their ministry time and we were funding the kids' toys and all that and they were in and out of here, in and out of here. They looked like a little flea market thing going down down there in the parking lot, but it was pretty cool. I love watching them load it into the giant trailer. It was all the gifts from all the team members getting loaded up to go give to the kids. That's special to see. Yeah. This year it was going into individual cars, but one year there was a flood in the area and we were going to that county and dropping off and we had a big trailer. That was fun. Yeah, the trailer just kept getting stacked and stacked and stacked and stacked and stacked and then we're afraid we're not going to be able to get it all in that trailer because people just keep bringing stuff. It's contagious. It's contagious. And you almost want to like up your, up what happened last year. You're like, let's see if we can do 15 this year. Let's do 20 next year. I want to get, Amy's in Dallas, Texas. Hey, Amy, how are you? I'm better than I deserve, Mr. Ramsey. I hear you. Tell us your giving story. All right. So, you know, we've always tried to teach our children the true spirit of Christmas, remembering that we are undeserving of our many blessings and that everything we have is truly not ours, but rather a responsibility entrusted to us by God to manage wisely. So, this beautiful mission began with my daughter back in October. We were just driving somewhere on us. We don't even remember where and she just said, mommy, aren't we supposed to always try to be like Jesus and do the things he would do? Of course we are. We are. We are implied. And so then she just said, I have a good idea for Christmas this year. Naturally, I'm like, oh, yeah, what is it? And she shared something that honestly nearly brought me to tears and I might start right now, but well, Jesus teaches us to give first, then save, then spend. Maybe partially you too, Mr. Ramsey, but in that order. Maybe that's where I got it. Yeah. And Christmas is the perfect time to do that. So, we can help Santa by delivering gifts to families who don't get that as much at Christmas time. You and Daddy can wear Santa hats and me and her younger brother can be elves. And I just, of course, tears are this is down just to see the pure heart and her spirit of in a nine year old. Right. And I how much did you do? How much money dollars you put out? We gave about $6,000 worth of gift. Whoa. Yeah. And of course, I'm like, absolutely we can. Yes, let's do it. And I actually live in the Dallas area, but my hometown is Middleville, Michigan, which is a small city about 30 minutes south of Grand Rapids, Michigan. And so, fortunately, we have four close friends there who connected me with some contacts, helped us identify and adopt four families to bless this Christmas. That's so perfect. Those elves are working hard. Well done. Sometimes kids are the best example of pure generosity. I mean, they don't have that school. Well done. 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But CHM lets you join anytime. So go to chministries.org slash budget to check them out. That's chministries.org slash budget. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. This is our annual giving show where we take calls from you and you tell a giving or a receiving story to inspire us to be better and bigger givers, because the most fun you'll ever have with money is to learn to give it. You will enjoy yourself a lot more in this life if you learn to do that. George Camel, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Catherine in Texas says after listening to your show, become more acutely aware of the people who need to take short-term jobs to make ends meet. You often suggest door that dash or delivering pizzas or when I'm out and about and I see someone working by picking up or making a delivery, I quietly slide whatever bills I may have in my wallet into their hand and say, just in case one of the deliveries forgets to tip you. Oh, I love that. By the way, we haven't covered this in a while, but we probably make it as perfect time to do it is if you are having someone deliver food or something to your house, you know, door dash or whatever, you know, certainly pizza, that kind of thing. I want you to ask the person how they're doing. And if they say better than I deserve, that means they're working that job to get out of debt and you have to double their tip. That's the rule. We didn't make it up. It's a federal law. It's constitutional. It's a federal law. It's a constitutional amendment occurred. And so just double their tip if they say better than I deserve because you're trying to help them get out of debt. They're out there bringing you your poor, little hungry, malnourished person. They brought you some food and I don't know, you probably wouldn't have made it if they didn't come by. You're down to your last calorie and then they come in and they bless you and you say, how are you doing better than I deserve is code for I'm working this job to get out of debt and it's a signal for you to double their tip. It's a cry for help. Give me more tips so I can get out of that faster, please. Now here's what's going to happen. Okay. Word is going to spread among delivery drivers that have no idea about Ramsey. You say this, you get a bigger tip. You just have to use this hack, this code. So always say this phrase and they're like, what? Say it, trust me, say it. And then, you know, it'll get around. It'll get around. That's okay. That's fine. Still, they're out there earning some extra money and still I'm fine with it. They're still hustling. If the Ramsey hack for tipping drivers gets out there, worse things could have happened. We could have inspired worse movements, George. It could have happened. So tell us your giving story, triple eight, eight, two, five, five, two, two, five. Sue is in New York City. Hi, Sue. Merry Christmas. Tell us your giving story. Merry Christmas. So a few years ago, I had gotten the opportunity to donate a kidney to a stranger. Wow. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is not an opportunity that I've run into. So how do you run into this opportunity? So, I mean, I have to go back. My parents have modeled amazing generosity and love to people. So that kind of went into my portfolio. And then they also gifted me with amazing DNA. So when my sister-in-law's sister had needed a kidney, I had started to test for her, you know, quietly, but I didn't match her. And her hospital said, thanks for trying, but she has matches. And so it kind of, you know, ended. And I was a little disappointed because in my mind, I had already kind of done it. And so when I kept my eyes open, kept praying, and when another story came across my Facebook feed of a retired police officer from my hometown, I thought, hmm, this is a great story. This is interesting. So I called his hospital and I said, listen, I know I don't blood match him, but is there a way I can help this guy? And they said, actually, we participate in a voucher program where you can donate to a stranger and then he gets a voucher for the next living kidney that matches him. So I said, hey, let's go for it. So I started testing. I didn't tell anybody because I wanted to make sure I was going to pass. And so started testing and passed, obviously. And then once I passed all the tests, they said, can we tell him? And I thought, you know, I was uncomfortable. I didn't want him to feel like beholden to me for anything. But I said, sure. And he has been nothing but gracious. But the amazing part of all of it was I didn't know he was attending my church. Like it's just so crazy. His daughter worked at my husband's school. Like the way our lives kind of intertwined, it was just very, very strange. I didn't know him before this. But I get to watch his journey. He did get his kidney six months after I donated mine to someone. I don't know who got that. But and I get to see him, you know, living his best life. It's amazing. Wow. That's incredible. That's, that's pretty generous. Okay. So what's the recovery time? So it was, so it was two days in the hospital, about 10 days. And I'm just going to say it was discomfort. Like I've always, you know, worked out hard and stuff. So it just felt like I had probably did too hard at the gym. So I was used to that kind of discomfort. So I don't feel like it was pain. So maybe 10 days of that. And then by day 10, we were down at the boardwalk walking at the beach by six weeks. I was back on, I'm a cyclist. So I was back on my bike. And then actually five months after that, my friend and I decided to do a hundred mile bike ride. And so like it really hasn't changed my life at all. I just want to inspire people. I mean, you can do crazy things. It's amazing. That's, that's very cool. Very cool. Yeah, that's legit. Very inspiring. So that's something else. That's, well, that's like you said, it's DNA. It's the generosity your parents planted in you. So there's layers of sacrificial generosity. That's up there. An organ. That's a different one. Yeah. With that kind of recovery time, all to be generous. Wow. While still living. I didn't know about this pay it forward kidney voucher program. I never heard of that before. Pretty cool. Yeah. Wow. Lynn's in Sacramento. Hey, Lynn, tell us your giving story. We can hear you. Because all I heard was you're dropping the phone. Are you there? Three, two, one, your own hold till we get you straightened out. Get out. Stephanie's in Chicago. Tell us your giving story, Stephanie. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Dave. Well, first of all, this is a real gift to me because I get to talk about my son. So my giving story begins with God as all the best stories do. My husband and I are blessed with three beautiful daughters. And in 2024, we prayed on whether or not we should have a fourth child and felt like God answered our prayer and we became pregnant with the son. He was diagnosed with tricomy 18 early in my pregnancy. And that was a very difficult walk. And I'll tell you God was paving the way for us because we found a really amazing church before all this happened. And those people just surrounded us with prayer through everything. We received a miracle when my son was born alive at full term and he lived one week before he died. I mean, I don't need to say this is the most difficult thing a parent can experience. Absolutely. The generosity that flooded in around us just took my breath away. My husband's boss and coworkers showed up with cash and door dash gift cards and the small groups we belong to at church sent money and gift cards just so we wouldn't have to think about meals because it wasn't the money we needed. It was just the peace, the comfort and his work also submitted a claim for life insurance that we didn't even remember we would have. So we were able to donate a percentage of that to the NICU that took care of him at Lori Children's Hospital to try and support other families that are going through the worst days of their lives. Wow. That's a tough one. But people step up when they see their friends hurting. They step up and they're generous. Nobody talks about this enough. You're out there boys and girls. I know you're out there. We talk about you and to you all the time. This is my co-host today. We're taking calls from people who gave or received something to inspire more generosity. Outrageous generosity. If you live like no one else later, you can live and give like no one else. It's not unusual for someone to do their debt-free scream on the debt-free stage. We asked them why? What was your why? What was it that drove you to do this? And they said we wanted to be in a position to give more. Giving has always been fun for us and we want to do more of it. We hear that all the time on the debt-free stage. Kevin's in Springfield, Missouri. Hey Kevin, Merry Christmas. Tell us your giving story. Hey, Merry Christmas guys. So real long story short, we're watching a young boy overnight, a girl that we're watching him for, works overnight and has nowhere to take him. My company I work for called Keep Supply. The director of sales heard about the story and my company decided to give her a whole entire Christmas and her son and gave her a bunch of cash and it's unbelievable. That's cool. That's cool. Does she know this yet? Yeah, so so far we've furnished her whole entire house with donations from people I work with because she had nothing. And so yeah, so she knows that part. She doesn't know about Christmas for her and her son yet, but I'm sure she will after today. It's the gift that keeps on giving. She shows up from work every time and there's more stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. How did you get everyone involved at work? Was it kind of like once word spread, everyone was like, I want in? Yeah, so my wife works for Life Church and so she just gave her life to Christ a few weeks ago and I told the story to our director of sales and we're also a smart dollar company by the way, Dave, but thank you told her. Yeah, so I told told the story to our director of sales and he said, I have an idea and he came back and next thing I know we have a team called people and culture and they decided to do everything. So wash her and dryer, brand new washer and dryer, $500 gift card, $100 gift card from Aldi like just crazy stuff. Man, that's off the chain. Wow. Very cool. Kevin. Well done. You're going to be right at the epicenter of the whole thing, right? Absolutely. Yeah, it's so fun. Yeah, very cool. And we'll see some big smiles and that lady, there's no telling where she'll be in 20 years because somebody gave her a boost, right? Absolutely. Yep, sir. Yeah, she's a warrior princess fighting, working nights just to keep her head above water, right? Yes, sir. Yeah. Man, you're a good man, Kevin. Your company's good people. Well done. That's how it's done. When we the people take care of we the people, it's an amazingly efficient process as opposed to extracting taxes from someone and 2% of it actually ends up going to help someone. And 82% is lost somewhere down a toilet in Washington. So I mean, what would happen if we the people took care of we the people completely and you made Washington irrelevant? That'd be pretty cool. That would be like awesome. And those people could get like a different job. That's true. Think about how many St. Jude's you could build. You know, it's pretty wild. It's crazy what you could do. Vanessa's in Toronto. Hi, Vanessa. Merry Christmas. Tell us your giving story. Hi, Dave. Merry Christmas. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I have a story, a story about receiving money for school and then paying it forward, giving money for school as well. So yeah, so when I was young, my grandparents' birthday Christmas money would give to my parents for school. They saved it over the years and invested it for me. And then when I was 15, my grandma passed away in 2001. So she didn't quite see me go to school. But two years later, I did go to university. So the money they had given me along with $1,000 that I received from a family friend were both a huge blessing. They helped me to pay for my first year of tuition, which was amazing. Very cool. Yeah. So then after university, got married, bought a house, started a family, fast forward to 2017. And we found the Ramsey plan. We read the total money makeover and started paying off debt. We had just a couple of car loans to pay off. But we were working on that. At the end of that year, my mom passed away unexpectedly. Oh, my. Yeah. So it was a hard time, but we had some generous family who instead of donations, gave us money to put into my kids' education funds because my mom was big on education for her grandkids. So we received some generous money there to put in my kids' education funds. And it will grow because they were five and under at the time. So it will grow over the years and be quite a bit for them when they go to school. Yeah. So in 2018, we had our debt free, except the mortgage milestone. And then so because we were debt free, we were able to be more generous. So I really wanted to pay it forward to other family to help them go to school. So I decided to just do kind of an informal scholarship for family members. My grandma's name was Rose. My mom's middle name was Rose. My middle name is Rose. And my daughter's middle name is Rose. Got a feeling this is the Rose Scholarship. The Rose Scholarship. Yes. In honor of the four generations. So in 2021, when my niece on my husband's side went to college, we were able to give her the first Rose Scholarship of $1,000. Oh, very nice. Yeah. So when we presented it to her, we wrote a little letter with the meaning behind it. Her mom read it out loud at her graduation party. And as she was reading it, a butterfly appeared and was flying around while she was reading it out loud. And so it was a really beautiful moment that kind of signaled our loved ones were with us during that time. So it was really beautiful. And then yeah, we plan on doing it in the future with more nieces and nephews and then maybe down the road outside the family too, just to keep paying that forward for education. Amen. Well done. Very well played. I like it. I like it. It's often how we learn to, or we often give in a place where someone has helped us in the past. And so to flip it over and Larry Krabbs is a wounded healer. Sometimes the very wound that you got is a place you can bring healing to someone else. The very time that you received something is the very time, the very way you turn in able to give something in that same area. Sometimes that's just an assignment, just a God assignment. And sometimes it's just a place in your heart and probably the same thing. So that's a cool thing to think about is where are those wounds for you where you can help someone else heal in your life? That's where it's going to be the most impactful. Yeah. When did somebody do something from you that made a big difference and so forth? I mean, it's amazing to me that if you look around like on Craig's list or at a garage sale or something that you can, the kind of car you can find for three to $5,000. And if you give a car to someone, say a single mom that doesn't have a car and enable her to get a job and able her to get her dignity and able to get moving again, it changes her life. And if that $5,000 car does that for one, that means it's only $50,000 to do it for 10. That's all it is. The ripple effect of that is mind blowing. It's incredible. Lots of churches now have started. Larry Burkett started this many, many years ago and he would be, he's passed on, he's in heaven, but I'm sure he's pleased from his perspective the number of churches that followed through on what he talked them into doing and they have a car ministry and people donate their cars. By the way, if you donate a car, you can take a tax deduction for the market value of the car. And so if you've got a car that needs a little bit of work and the church has a ministry, they'll fix it up for somebody and give it to somebody, but you can donate it at full price. It's pretty cool. And so if you've got a, maybe you bought a car this year and if your church has a car program or you know if a church has a car program, that's a good way to do it. When you are donating something of any kind, a piece of real estate, a stock, a car, anything like that, what you paid for it does not matter in terms of the write-off. If you're donating it to a qualified 501C3 where you can take a write-off, a ministry, a charity, whatever, then you get to write off full market value. So I was talking to a guy the other day that, you know, he had some ex on stock that he had paid nothing for, but you know, he probably had his basis in it was probably less than $50,000 and it was worth a million dollars. But if he sold it, he's got gains on every bit of that. But by donating it, he gets to write off a million dollars. And so he donated it. And be generous in the process. That's a win-win. Yeah, you get market value write-off on whatever it is you donate. It's pretty cool. There's no better time to start protecting your home than right now. This month only, my listeners can take 50% off any new Simply Safe home security system during their last chance Black Friday sale. Do not miss this deal. I've recommended Simply Safe for over 10 years and it's simply the best security system you can get for your home. 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And we hear a rumor that you have a great giving story. Yeah. Yeah. So actually two years right before I started, we were on the stage and we did our debt-free scream. And then a couple months, you know, being on the team, one of our staff meetings, I heard a story of a coworker giving away a car. And I had said to Perry, I'd be like, that would be really cool to do that one day. So fast forward, we found out I was pregnant. And you know, we know the story just because you're having a baby doesn't mean you need to get a new car. But we found out we were pregnant with twins. So we had one already and we tried a bunch of different variations of like car seats. How could we fit three car seats in the back row of our car? And we just couldn't figure out a way to make that work. So we're like, okay, we got to upgrade cars. We need a car that can fit all the kids. And so we started looking for cars. We had our beta car. And so we were like, we could sell it. It had like 200,000 miles on it. We could sell it for a thousand, $2,000. And then I heard one of our coworkers, his daughter was looking for a car. And she was her first car and she had a small budget. And I heard the stories of some of the cars that they were like coming across. And so I said to Perry, I was like, why don't we give our car to his daughter? And so we were like, it was an easy decision. I don't think there was much discussion. It was just timing of when we want to get the new car and all that jazz. So once we decided we wanted to do it and when we could do it, Perry came up with a great idea of how we wanted to gift it to her. Yeah, so basically what we did was we had him have a kind of dad, daughter meeting, talking outside about budget and college and everything like that. And we parked around the corner. I had bought a key chain with her name on it. The plan was we were going to be walking with our kids around the corner. And then essentially I acted like I found a pair of keys in front of their house. And so I just said, oh, excuse me, did you guys drop some keys? And she looked at her dad and she came out. No, and I go, are you sure there's a name? I don't know whose name this is. And then she looked and kind of looked at her dad and was like, what's happening right now? And so then we got to break it to her that that was her car and we were giving it to her. That's so fun. That's great. So what kind of car is this? It was a Hyundai Santa Fe. Oh, that's a great teenager car. Yeah, it's still it's still working. It's still driving. She's had some good road trips in it. So we're happy. Yeah, good. That is so cool. Well played, y'all. It was it felt just so great to be able to be in a place that we were able to just give it and not have like, yeah, does that money with that money be great? Sure. We have twins. There's a lot of expenses, but it was so much more worth it to be able to give that and be in a place in our life now. Thanks to getting out of debt that it's like it's it was an easy decision. So that's great. Amen. Well, it's fun that in this environment at Ramsey, that kind of stuff happens all the time. And so you've kind of got that in front of you to prompt you and go, oh, we could do that instead of like where it's never going on. You know, there's stuff like that happens around here every day. And it's just this place is very weird. But weird as normal around here. We're in a good way. But yeah, it's it's yeah, that's fun. Way to go, y'all. And what did you guys get? Yeah, what kind of kids you buy for the twins? Well, she wanted a minivan and I fought it really, really hard. So I did everything I can to kind of you guys. You guys are kids, dude. You're in the minivan zone. So I somehow won and we got a really good deal on a Volkswagen Atlas. Oh, yeah, beautiful car. So it has the three, the two rows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've explained to him it would be so much easier if we had a minivan to get to that back row, but he'll give it eventually. Yeah, eventually we also come to the minivan. So fun. It's just a phase. You don't have to live there forever. It's just a phase of minivan phase. And then you can move on to other stuff. Very good. Congratulations, y'all. Well done. And hey, thanks for thanks for telling us that story. That's absolutely very, very well done. It's close to home in these walls. Good stuff. Good stuff. The number of times the first time we ever gave a car. It was a disaster. We did it at the Christmas party. The lady has now passed away. Her name is Joy. And she'd gone through a nasty mess of life, a nasty divorce and she was broke. And I'm like, we're going to give her this car. And so I bought this, you know, car and it wasn't super like eight or ten thousand dollars. And at the Ramsey Christmas party, we always do some bizarre giving and stuff. And so we bring the thing inside the building where we were doing the Christmas party. And they said, you can do that, but you have to unhook the battery because they're afraid it's going to blow up or something in the building. Right. So we unhook the battery. When we hooked the battery back up, gave it to her and it wouldn't start. Oh, boy. So all the guys end up pushing this car outside. And we get the jumper cables out of my truck and jump off. It kind of took the edge off the gift, you know? Yeah. Just like this is a, you know, it's like, OK, this is such a piece of crap. It won't start and we just gave it to you. Good luck with that. Right. And is like, are all the team members now watching this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like, we're getting the car. Turn it on. Joy, you got a car. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Won't start. It's just like it was so anticlimactic. It was so awful. We always was a lot better. Yeah. There's was a lot better. Walk around the corner and give them the keys. That's just perfect. You should have just said, batter is not included. You got to get your own. Yeah. No, it was just I was just mortified. Oh, God. You know, I have all these plans. All this, the way you see this in your head, it's going to be glorious. And they say, won't start. Oh, my God. It's awful. Horrible. Lynn is in Sacramento. Merry Christmas, Lynn. Tell us your giving story. Well, first of all, thank you very much for reinforcing the generosity piece. I really have taken it to heart. And I really believe in being generous with words of gratitude and praise with people. So with past Thanksgiving, when I was doing my Thanksgiving cards, I decided to think of someone that I know who has a hard job and is really dedicated to it. And not only that, this person smiles and waves and is cheerful. And I don't really know this person personally. I'm just slightly acquainted with him and he is our trash collector. And because we live in a wooded area, there are times when the bears get into our neighbor's trash and he gets out of his truck. Warzone duty for being a trash collector. Yeah. And some of these neighbors have not when I got into the program about how to alleviate this issue. But anyway, he doesn't he doesn't complain. He smiles and I've asked to help and he kindly dismisses me. And he just goes about the task without complaint. And so one morning before Thanksgiving, he arrived at the bottom of our driveway and I greeted him and through the wind of his truck, I handed him a Thanksgiving card. And anyhow, he I told him, yeah, go ahead, open it. And he opened it. He read it and he saw like the ten dollars or twenty dollars I put in. And then surprise, he got down out of his truck and he's in his fifties. He gave me a big hug and with tears in his eyes, he told me that no one had ever thanked him like that in his 20 plus years of service. Wow. And I just thought, well, you know, it really goes to show how a thank you and a small gesture for someone who does a seemingly minor job day in and day out. Not minor for it doesn't get done. Exactly. Exactly. And I just think of all these folks who do a lot of the dirty work and they need to be remembered and recognized and thanked at any time of the year. And anyway, and then in my email head also added that. There's a message that I play in my head from time to time. And it's from Abraham Lincoln. And he said, whatever you are, be a good one. Yeah. And that certainly applied to our beloved truck trash collector. So very cool. Well done, Lynn. Score. Yeah. I got to say, my wife, she never misses the postman this time of year and never misses the trash collector. She's watching. Yeah. She takes good care of them. They know they're they know they're liked and Lynn's the same way. Way to go, Lynn. It's a good reminder, folks. Good reminder. Yeah, that's good. Very good. Our annual giving show here on the Ramsey show. Yeah. The last thing you need this holiday season is more stuff, collecting dust or tech that keeps you glued to screens and up too late. You need better sleep. And that's what you'll get with Casper. Their mattresses are made for deep uninterrupted rest that keep you cool and comfortable so you wake up feeling ready, not wrecked. Because rest is not a luxury. It's an investment. And the ROI is your well being. So go to Casper dot com slash Ramsey and use promo code Ramsey for 25% off mattresses and 10% off everything else. You get free shipping, too. That's Casper dot com slash Ramsey promo code Ramsey. Exclusions apply. If you feel like you're starting from scratch with your money, well, trust me, you're not and you're not alone. It's because you're not, it's not because you're not managing your money. Well, it's emotional survival mode and you need a path through the emotions of changing the way you look at and handle money. Jade Walshaw gives you that path in her new book, What No One Tells You About Money. It's on sale now. It comes out in January. The pre-sales are going on. And what we do at Ramsey on our books when we're pre-selling them is we bribe you into buying it early because it helps us with the marketing. And it pushes the book on the best seller list and so forth. And thank you for the number of you that have responded. But if you want this book and you do want this book, what No One Tells You About Money, it's only $24.99 right now. And we're going to throw in $100 for the bonus items, including the enhanced audio book. Now, this is not your mother's audio book. This is great production. You'll love it. Early access to the e-book as well. You'll get instant access to an exclusive video, your financial checkup with Jade and exclusive three week online book club and live Q&A with Jade. All of that if you pre-order right now at ramseysolutions.com slash store. What No One Tells You About Money. Abby is in Atlanta. Abby, tell us your giving story. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Dave. So my giving story really started almost 11 years ago, believe it or not. I had a little girl. Me and my husband have been very blessed with two children, but unfortunately we had some major complications. When our little girl was born, she was born at 25 weeks gestation and she weighed one pound and 11 ounces. We were in the NICU for over 110 odd days, but she thrived and did amazing. I really had no complications except she was born early and she had to hang out in the NICU for some time. So whenever we consulted with our doctors about four years later to try to add to our family, they thought, you know, yes, that was a fluke. That won't happen again. Four years after that, our little boy came along, but he was born even earlier at 23 weeks gestation, weighing one pound and eight ounces. But this time he was born with a grade four brain bleed, which leads us to some really, really, um, which typically leads to some major complications as far as the inability to walk or talk. Um, and while we were going through that, um, just during his, his time in the hospital, um, one month, we just had more months than we had money. Um, and we could have asked a family member to help us, um, but instead we just decided to pray. Um, and we just said, God, you know, please provide for us for this month. We were able to cover all of our bills, but we had just one bill that was left. Um, and so we had prayed about it. Um, a few days go by and our father-in-law actually visit a local auto park store here in our hometown. Um, and the man doesn't know us directly, um, but he knows our story. So he asked how we're go, how we're doing. And he pulls out $200 to give to our father-in-law. Um, and our father-in-law of course gives us that money and then, um, shares with us, you know, he wanted to just, to bless us in our story. Um, but, you know, I think the key here is that we were blessed through a man who was obedient to God. Um, and that's really kind of what I want to focus on as far as the story, um, that, you know, our bills were covered because someone decided to, to show some gratitude and be giving. Um, and while that is kind of the highlight and the peak of the story, um, kind of to, to wrap the story up, even though our little boy had a grade four, grade four brain bleed, um, he's a walking and talking miracle today. We have both of our children have no signs of, uh, prematurity or a nikkis day and they are both thriving and living perfectly normal loss. Then, um, enjoy listening to the Rainsey show. Praise God. That's awesome. What a miracle. That's amazing. Good. Good. Good. Wow. Yeah. Right when you're at the, uh, at, at the peak of stress and someone steps in and says, well, we'll cover, you know, we'll cover a little bit of it for you. They don't understand that it's like everything. Absolutely. It's, it's life changing. And you know, we were just able to again see that God will provide for you. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Another, another faith builder, if you will. Yeah. Absolutely. Good story. Well shared. I'll be well done. Well done. I'm so glad the kids are great. That's a great, great part of the story as well. Robbins with us in Vermont. Merry Christmas, Robin. Oh, Merry Christmas to you. So tell us your giving story. Sure. Sure. So, um, we've been on the able to be generous side and also been recipients of generosity. So, uh, we've been able to give away two cars. Um, so in both cases, we were at a situation where we had two cars, but we didn't need the second car. So in the first one, we were seminary students. And, um, there was a family from Kazakhstan that had come to the seminary, um, in the state and then they only had a bicycle to run all their errands. And, um, and so we were like, that, that can't happen. So we were able to give them one of our cars. And then a few years later, we were in another situation where we had two cars and we didn't need two cars. So there was another family. Um, they had just had their third child and needed a larger vehicle. So we were able to give them our van, um, so that they could get, um, started off great on that. But what I'd really like to focus on is where we were recipients. Um, when we moved to, we were, um, moving to the mission field, um, in Vermont and, um, realized how much more expensive it is to live here than it is, um, in Alabama, where we're from. And, um, we couldn't do Christmas for our family that year and a Sunday school class in a church in Birmingham, Alabama adopted us, um, as their project. And they just overwhelmed us with their generosity, um, with these amazing Christmas gifts that year. And we are just so thankful. And to this day, still remember it. And that was almost 20 years ago. Amen. Amen. That's cool. It's very cool. And, uh, something weird back on the car thing, there's something weird about giving away cars. I've done it several times. And, you know, you have to wait three or $4,000 is one thing. You've waited three or $4,000 car. It just seems like a big thing because it's a big thing. You know, the thing is big. And so physically, and so you're just like, it's a different feeling. It's a different, uh, feeling for the recipient, for the giver, for everyone involved. And, uh, pretty cool stuff. Yeah. So that's neat that you were able to do that. And then turn around and the Sunday school class takes care of you. And you ended up after the, are you still on, are you still missionaries? Yeah. Um, not technically anymore. We're still up here in Vermont. Yeah. That's what I mean. We ended up taking an established church after planting two, two churches. So, um, so now, now we're just, uh, in the regular. Okay. All right. So you're pat, your husband's a pastor. He is. Yes. Oh, okay. Very cool. Very cool. Well, it's easy to spread the word then with that and let people know about generosity and do the good job sharing it today. Congratulations. Very well done. Very well done. I love that. There's, I feel like there's two parts to these stories. One is you have to have the ability to see the opportunity to look up and out. And you need to do that from a place of strength. Cause when you're stressed out about your own money problems, you're, you're sort of forced to look inward. So you got to see the opportunity and then have the means to do something about it. Yeah. That's part two. When you, when you're worried about your own food, it's hard to worry about somebody else's. And technically you really shouldn't. Yeah. By the way, you should take care of your own household first. That's a biblical standard. So feed your kids and don't let your kids be hungry while you're feeding somebody else's kids. That's, that's weird. That's backwards. It's not, it's not what the Bible calls for. And so, but, but, you know, work, live, give like no one else, right? And put yourself in a position, as we say, when you get to baby step seven, where you're a hundred percent debt free house and everything, then you can be just outrageously generous. And what by then what feels like a little bit of money to you will be a lot of money to somebody else or a little bit of help to someone else, be a lot of help to someone else. It feels different because the ratios are different in your life. Yeah. And I love that these stories, I mean, it ranges from $40 to $4,000 and it was never the amount. And so that's, I want to encourage people. It's an awareness. Yeah. I want to encourage people if you think, well, I don't have $4,000 to give. I only have 40. Hey, give a little until you can give a lot. And you don't know how it's going to affect the other person. Yeah. If you're walking through, you know, a store, you're standing pumping gas, you're doing whatever and a thought comes to you that that person over there needs help. That was not a thought. That was God's voice saying, go help them. So be aware, be looking up, be, keep your, you know, keep, keep a little extra cash in your pocket, be thinking about this stuff. Generosity is everywhere. Opportunities are everywhere. So be ready when it comes. You already know the power of generosity and the best gifts make an impact now and eternally. That's what preborn does. And you can trust them to do it well. They don't just offer free ultrasounds. They support pregnancy clinics across the country with ultrasound machines, training grants and evangelism tools. They're faithful with each dollar. So moms in crisis can see the life in their wombs. And here's the truth that brings eternal life because here's the thing. When a mom sees her baby on that ultrasound screen, she chooses life 80% of the time. And your gift of just $28 covers the cost of one ultrasound. Or if you're able, you can purchase an ultrasound machine through preborn and have it placed in one of their clinics so women will choose life for years. Your donation brings hope and truth when mothers feel alone and fear is loud. So I'm asking you to give to preborn today. Even just $28 to provide one ultrasound. Go to preborn.com slash Ramsey or call 855-601-2229 because every baby saved is more than a life preserved. It's a life changed. That's preborn.com slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio. It's our annual giving show. George Camel Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Well, we're taking calls from you where you tell us your giving stories to inspire generosity. We would love to hear from you. So many years ago, we started doing this show. I mean, I've been on the air for 35 years. So we started doing a giving show at the Christmas time and Blake Thompson in those days was our producer. Blake's been working at Ramsey for 30 years. And so he was the producer in those days and he was from Kansas City originally, grew up in Kansas City. So he brought up, he goes, you need to know about this guy named Secret Santa. And there was a guy between the years 1979 and 2006 that would dress up and nobody could figure out who he was. He dressed up as Santa Claus and he would go to an area where there had been a tragedy New Orleans after Katrina or something like that, right? Where maybe he went to Columbine after there was a shoot, after the school shooting there and the infamous school shooting and so forth. And he went around a Santa Claus and handed out $1,000 to somebody and then to somebody else. And he'd give out $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 walking around, you know, $500 or $1,000 at a time. He just walked into a store, look at somebody and go, this person needs some help and Jesus loves you and gives them some money. Well, he got to be where people kind of knew what he was doing. So they had to get his buddies from Kansas City to come as they were on the police force and escort him so that he, you know, you know, No one tackled them and try to get money. Get $30,000 out of the guy, you know, or whatever. But he ended up giving away over $2 million as Secret Santa over the years 79 through 06. So the Kansas City Star kept trying to figure it out. And finally, he came out and told us who he was because he was dying of cancer. And he passed away in 08. But before that, we got to meet Larry Stewart and Blake got in touch with him. We had Larry come on the air and tell the whole story on Secret Santa and he kind of, there's a Secret Santa, I think, dot com or whatever. He kind of wanted to franchise it. He wanted movement. He wanted everybody to go get a Santa costume and give away $10,000 all over America. He wanted to, you know, give away 20 million where he only gave away 2 million. And it all started. He was a beautiful man, just a neat guy. But it all started. He was in Alabama and he was broke and he was homeless and he was hungry. And he went into a diner and old fashioned diner and went up to the bar. You know, the diner with the round stools kind of thing, right? He sat at the diner, ordered food, ate the food and then acted like he forgot his wallet. And he was just basically, he wasn't dining in dashing, but he was just telling the guy, you know, that ran the thing. He said, I'm so sorry. I forgot my wallet. And the guy running the diner to save Larry's dignity reached down under the stool and said, hey, I think you dropped this and handed him 20 bucks. And he let him keep his dignity and he gave him the meal, in other words. And Larry never forgot that. And he said, if I ever make any money, I'm going to do stuff like that my whole life. And so we had him on there and he was telling all these stories. It was fabulous. And so he was in the cable TV business and became very wealthy, obviously. And he always remembered that time that guy reached under the stool and magically found a $20 bill that wasn't there a few minutes ago, right? And to take care of him. And so he's dressed up as Secret Santa and gave away over $2 million, $1,500 at a time. That is wild. What a cool story. This is before the advent of social media. Yeah. And he kept it. He's like the original Jimmy Ducks. Nobody knew where he was. And I mean, Ken C. Star tried to follow him around. They tried to figure out where he was going. He went to New York City after the Twin Towers came down with the terrorists and all that, right? So he's walking around the New York City and giving away money and people are like, who is this guy? Nobody had ever. You stand out in a crowd. People want to know who is this guy? Yeah. I mean, well, you're Santa and you're giving away $1,000 pops. People want to know. And they never could figure it out until he decided he was going to come out and tell who it was. And then they did this blast. Everybody started doing stories on him then and we got in touch with him. He came on. He came on here. I think he came on here two or three times before he passed away. He lived a while with his cancer, but it was pretty incredible. Looking up Larry Stewart in Kansas City, Secret Santa. By the way, y'all could go do that. Yeah. Some of y'all, lady called in a while ago. The kid wanted to be the elf and her miss, Mrs. Claus, right? And they dress up. They did it. Kind of did it. They weren't too secretive. We're a real secretive. They weren't completely dressed up with the full. It's up to you if you want to be in full costume or not. No, Dave prefers to be in costume. Most of the time. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. I'm big on costumes, George. But the what in the world? Yeah, but the. But the thing is you could do this. You could just you could be on a little side. I'll be your elf. That's all I'm saying. If you want to be Santa, I'll volunteer to be the elf. It's your call. Or we can just be in plain clothing and give money away. That's for sure. George, you're just messing up this whole thing. Well, it reminds me last year we went to Waffle House and I got to give $10,000 away at two different Waffle Houses. And that was about the most fun I had. So thank you for the gift of that. We got with the Ramsey team and they said, let's do this. We got video and got the crew out and snuck in and and you gave away. How many people different people got the 10,000? Well, we eventually we gave it to a certain employee at Waffle House. We knew that there was a story there and it was 10,000 for one person. Well, we gave her I think 2000 just to her. We covered everybody's meal inside of the Waffle House, which was like $47. It's amazing. Waffle House is like a time capsule. And and then we just gave it to a few different employees and it was a really special time. Now, we got that. That's probably sitting on YouTube, isn't it? Oh, yeah. That's on our Ramsey Show highlight YouTube channel to search Waffle House on there and it's in your neck of the woods in Antioch. Where you grew up. OK. That's a good Waffle House. Solid. No, there's no bad. I was tempted to eat, but we were on the clock. So I thought, all right, we'll get out of here. There's no bad ones. There's no bad ones. Yeah. The and another fun one we did around here was we figured out because we weren't getting people out of debt that the people that when a debt goes bad and it's in collections, they will sell that debt for somewhere around three to five cents on the dollar. So 50 bucks will buy a thousand dollar debt. In other words, and debt buyers buy that and then they go try to collect it and make that 95 cent, 90, 90, 70, 70 swing right on the ones they can collect and the reasons I can't collect, they can't collect. And so we got in touch with one of the brokers of the debt buying stuff three or four years ago, I guess. I remember what you twenty two, twenty three somewhere in there. And I told him that we wanted to buy it to forgive it. We were going to just forgive the debt. And he got all excited and helped us. And we were able to buy ten million dollars worth of debt for two hundred and fifty nine thousand two and a half cents on the dollar. So for two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, we got ten million dollars worth of eight thousand accounts. And we have a thousand people. So we gave each of our thousand people ten people to call and tell that their debt had been forgiven in Jesus' name. And that was our team's Christmas present. I made a few of those calls. And they were people didn't they didn't believe you. They're like, what is some kind of scam? Send me an email. I want to see the best part proof. Well, we had to make a website to send them to to say, no, this is legitimate. Go to this website. We will prove it. People. I mean, when you get down, you've been kicked and you've had those collectors calling you. It's hard to. It's hard to. It's been seven years. Yeah. But it's like your medical debt, your car repo debt, your credit card debt that you haven't paid in six years or whatever. It's forgiven zero. You don't know a thing in Jesus' name. And man, the stories were great. People, the people working here love making their eight phone calls each. That's for sure. There's a lot of fun. So you can do all kinds of fun stuff once you get this thing moving. Generosity is a big deal, boys and girls. I'm buying and selling a home is a big deal. And you want an expert in your corner fighting for you to get the right deal at the right price. That's why we only recommend Ramsey trusted real estate agents. They're handpicked pros who know their stuff, listen to your needs and have your back from the first call all the way to closing day to find a Ramsey trusted agent near you. Visit RamseySolutions.com slash agent RamseySolutions.com slash agent. Our annual giving show. Thanks for hanging out with us and telling your giving stories. Rose is in Colorado Springs. Merry Christmas, Rose. Tell us your giving story. Thank you for taking my call and let me tell my story, Dave. Last year, two days after my husband and I decided to divorce, I fell at work and I tore my ACL and a bunch of other ligaments in my knee. I needed, yeah, I needed a massive surgery and this was one week before Thanksgiving. I was set to have my surgery the day after Christmas and four days before Christmas, my ex-husband emptied my house of furniture, basically took everything except for the dining room table of the bed and the Christmas tree. One of my friends decided to take me away for a night and while we were gone, another friend of mine refurnished my entire house for me. Wow. So I came home and I had couches and chairs and a recliner for my knee surgery, rugs, the throw blankets, everything. She completely redid my whole house so that when I came home from surgery, I came home to furniture. Well, you pick better friends than husbands. Well done. Absolutely. Oh, wow. That was a happy ending to a sad story. Wow. How are you doing today? I got my first night away and then I got a new house. So it was awesome. I'm doing really good. My knee's healed up and life's going on. Good for you. As it always does. Good for you. This will be a merry Christmas, hopefully. So you'll have the opportunity to do that for someone someday, won't you? I will. And I'm looking forward to it. Amen. Amen. Great story. I like it. That's cool. Hey, friends, got your back when you're down. Yeah. I mean, you got your knee busted and the husband takes off. I mean, this is like a country song. Yeah. But your friends got your back and apparently a key to the house. That's the other thing they needed. They got in there somehow. It's impressive. For real. Very cool. Lydia is in Pittsburgh. Merry Christmas, Lydia. Tell us your giving story, please. Merry Christmas. So this all started about two months ago for us. My one year old daughter was having respiratory issues. So we took her to her pediatrician. From there, we went to the ER and then from there she got a helicopter ride because they saw a tumor in her chest. So once they did further scans, they saw the tumor was basically taking up half of her chest. It was almost completely compressing her one lung and pushing her heart to the wrong side of her body. And by the end of the day, we had met with every doctor and there was a plan for surgery to remove the tumor the next day. Wow. So yeah. So the next day she did the surgery. Well, so she had surgery the day before her birthday, her first birthday. Oh my goodness. There's a baby. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Tiny little thing. She weighed, yeah, 16 pounds. That was all. So the next day she had surgery and thank God everything went as well as it possibly could have. The tumor ended up weighing a pound of those 16 pounds. And we were told it had about a coke can of fluid in it. But they were able to remove it all with no issues. And about a week later, we found out the tumor was completely benign, which was the biggest blessing. Amen. So the next day we celebrate her first birthday in the hospital and now she's doing better than ever, except for a little bit of fear around doctors. But during that time, there were hundreds to thousands of people praying for her nurses, made her birthday very special. And it was really inspiring to see the community that came around us. So while we were in the hospital, our old pastor actually came to visit with his wife to pray for her. And after talking to them for a bit, we actually learned they had a hectic year themselves. They had been in the hospital with one of their kids almost every month. Their house needed numerous repairs and not the cheap ones. And they weren't sure how their bills were going to be paid that month. So we set aside money for giving each month. We had some saved up and my husband felt we should give them $1,500. So we did. And this stressed me out a little bit, just with the unknown of our own medical bills. And we're also having our second child in about three weeks. So we got that coming up. But we had no doubt it was the right thing to do. Felt like one of those God nudges and just trust me in this. So we did it anyway. Yeah. So God is really faithful and he didn't even let a week go by before we were blessed with that money in return. Of course. We had many people bless our family. And most of them we didn't even know personally or had many of their own struggles. So I've always loved giving, but I've never been in a situation where the blessing came back to us so quickly, especially in our time of need. But God's grace and provision has amazed us. And that's never been more clear than the past two months of our life. Amen. Amen. Y'all have had your boat full. That's for sure. Yeah. Just a little bit. And what special people you are. You're in the middle of a huge crisis with a little baby. And you can lift your eyes up and look over and see someone else's need. That's pretty good. Well, you put that on my husband. He's the one who caught on to it. I was a little preoccupied, but. Yeah. Amen. You're both people of high character and integrity and generosity. That's a beautiful trait. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well done, Lydia. Well done. Good story and good, obviously, powerful gift. So very, very well done. Kelsey and Georgia says recently our daughter came home and said she noticed a boy in her class couldn't eat lunch because his lunch account wasn't paid. Each day my daughter or one of her friends would get extra, get an extra tray to give him. After hearing this, we decided to contact the school and paid off his lunch debt and even added some extra funds to his account so he could eat lunch at school. There we go. That's good. That's a good reminder. You can cover. I mean, lunch debt is a crazy thing that even exists in schools, but if you can just contact the school and say, hey, I want to cover everyone's lunch debt, how much is on the tab? I'll cover it. That's a cool thing to do. It wouldn't be, you know, it's not going to be $100,000. No. I mean, so that's not a bad one. But it's a stressor for that person's life going, oh my gosh, I owe the school money so my kid can eat. That's just wild. Yeah. And I've watched people many times find a young couple that were struggling. They're behind on their utilities and things and just go pay their electricity a year in advance. Just, you know, again, four or five, six thousand bucks in most cases, right? And you pay the whole year out and just go, this is the whole year and put enough on file with that with the utility that a year or plus or minus, but somewhere and people's, hey, that changes. It's a big deal. It moves the needle with people. There's all kinds of stuff you can do, guys. All kinds of giving that's out there that's that's possible and probable. So we jumped on our Ramsey Facebook page. If you didn't know, there's a Baby Steps Facebook page and the Baby Steps Community Facebook page group and we polled them, said, which type of giving feels the most meaningful to you? Financial was 13 percent, helping someone directly, whether it's with money or time, 72 percent. Just volunteering time was 11 percent. So that's good response. Have you ever re-gifted a Christmas gift you didn't like 100 percent? I would. Yeah, 87 percent said they had no is 13 percent. They were just too nice. Yeah. So I left a bottle of wine at my friend's house about a month and a half ago. On purpose? Yeah. I mean, we took we took wine over there to have dinner and I left an extra bottle. It was a nice bottle. And so he came to my house this week for dinner and brought brought me my bottle. The same bottle? Yes. Wow. He knew it was a re-gift. He knows a re-gift, gift, gift, re-gift. It's just going to keep making its rounds. It's pretty fun though. Yeah. What motivates you most to give? I desire to help someone in need. 37 percent my faith or my personal values. 48 percent seeing the impact. 7 percent. It makes me feel good. 8 percent. Do you tip at kiosk screens and non-sit down restaurants or coffee shops? 64 percent never. 31 percent no. Or me sometimes. George 100 percent no. Those just here's the thing. Here's the tip off that bothers me. They start being nice to me as soon as they flip the screen around. Until then they were attitude changes. Until then they weren't nice. Until then they were just a transaction to them. But all of a sudden it's I like those glasses. Hey, how's your day going? And I go, this is clearly a ruse to get you to give you a tip. Yeah, I'm going to spin the old iPad around here. Yeah. Because you want generosity. It's a matter of the heart. You want to be inspired to give, not forced like an obligation. And so that's a good example there. But I love this one. My faith or personal value. So half of people were motivated because it was a value in their life. And guess what? You get to choose the values you have. That's pretty cool. Yeah, and if you don't like them you can choose another one. I would choose generosity. So try that out. Make it a value. Generosity. And then make it practical. Put it in the budget and say we're going to give this month. If you're a person of faith, this should be a part of the rhythm of your life already. Absolutely. So that's a good example. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. And then you can choose the values you have. When you're tired of feeling stuck with money, there's just one solution. To get different results, you have to do something different. No one accidentally wins with money. You have to have a game plan. And that begins with our get started assessment. Go to RamseySolutions.com, slash start, answer some questions, and we'll show you what steps to take next. Don't stay stuck. Take control of your money starting today. Go with RamseySolutions.com, slash start. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt free stage, Will and Madison are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Hey, great to see you guys. You too, Merry Christmas. Where do y'all live? Merry Christmas. We're cruising with y'all in March, so we're so glad to see y'all again. I love that. Very fun. Where do you live? Salemburg, North Carolina. It's about 30 minutes outside of Fort Bragg. Oh yeah, fun. Very cool. All right. And how much debt have you guys paid off? Right at $336,000. I love it. And how long did this take? Right at nine and a half years. There you go. I like it. And your range of income during that time? So at the start, we were just under $100,000 at 98,000. And then at the end, we were right at 185K. Okay, cool. What do y'all do for a living? So I'm an Army veteran, and I actually just recently took a promotion to a training manager at the world's largest dialysis provider. Oh, very cool. Thanks for your service. So I was in IT for 20 years. I was a web developer and then a production systems engineer. And recently, I just started my own sports cards business. I like it. Cool. All right. And so I'm guessing nine and a half years, 330,000 in North Carolina, you paid off your mortgage. It's the house. Yeah. Yeah. Looking at weird people. Super weird people. Way to go, you guys. Way to go. All right. So tell us the story. How did you get connected to Ramsey and decide to pay off your home? So the connection to Ramsey started about 20 years ago, actually. My brother, Elliot, he works here at Ramsey. Oh, okay. I wondered why half the crew was out here. That's right. So when Elliot was in the Marine Corps, he introduced our entire family to the total money makeover and it transformed all of our lives. And while I was in the army, I actually paid off my student loans, $60,000. And I wanted to come and do my debt-free scream with y'all then. But army life is a little hard to get time away sometimes. So this is a huge bucket list thing for me to get to be here with my husband doing this together. When we met and we're dating, of course, we had the typical money conversations because I needed to feel that out. And when he started talking to me about how he budgets and how he lived on the dollar menu at McDonald's when that existed, and he only had this much to get through the week, I said, oh my gosh, do you do the Dave Ramsey plan? And he said, I have no idea who that is, but I do the Bible's plan. And I said, that is totally the same thing. We can continue dating. That's amazing. No offense, big fan now. I think you're Jesus Trump. I got Jesus Trump. That's what happened. I saw that. Trump card. That's great. What a flex. Yeah, that's definitely flex. And then nine and a half years ago, what happened? So nine and a half years ago, I found my dream home and my dream man here gives me pretty much anything I want. So as soon as I laid eyes on it with a porch that Scarlett O'Hara would die for. That's beautiful. If you're watching on YouTube and Spotify, you would. It's an American four square built in 1917. It is gorgeous. It needed a few things when we moved in. So it's the mortgage, a ton of renovations that it needed and also a mini van to fit those three little ones in. I lost that battle. I know the guy earlier, he won his. I lost mine. Yeah, that's okay. It's okay. You won overall. Yes. That's good. Wow. So you got the house and then nine and but you got a plan and you guys together immediately say, all right, how fast? So 10 years you pay off your house. Yeah. The goal was to get it all done by the time we were 40 years old. How old are you? We're both 39. Yeah, you did it. He is two weeks older than me. I always said I wanted to marry an older man. There you go. He's two weeks older than me and we made that final payment on our mortgage on my 39th birthday. I like it. You made it. Well, congratulations. Thank you so much. Very, very well done. All right. So what's the house worth today? It's right at like 450 grand. We live in a very small town. So it's hard to get comps. But yeah, but that's probably close. It's a beautiful home. And your nest egg and your retirement accounts, how much have you got in there? So with everything, it's like 250k. Okay. All right. So you're about 800. Plus now. So you're bumping up towards a million dollar net worth already and you're not even 40. Way to go, y'all. Proud of you. Good work, you guys. Very good work. How does it feel to be completely debt free? I was telling her earlier on the way up here that it just feels like a weight off our chest. You know, we still grind, like I said, a open, you know, start my own new business, but just able to be more present with the kids and just there at every, you know, every ball game and there for everything just really, like I said, just a weight off our chest. Yeah. Way to go. We got the kids here too, right? We do. They're right here. I'm curious where they are. Bring them up and introduce them. Let's know, learn their names and ages. So we have three kids. So that means I stopped keeping track of all of this after the first one or two. So 11, Sergeant is 11, Pemberley is nine and Royal is eight. Very cool. And he cash flowed the three of them along with this journey. Oh, yes. Paying off the house and the van. We absolutely did. And I see Sergeant's got the straight out of Baby Step 2 shirt on, which is fantastic. Debt free and a thousand dollars. He helps dad with the sports card business. They do that together. That's awesome. Way to go, you guys. What do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is being 40 years old, 100% debt free. I think a huge part of it is that age old principle, stop buying things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't even like. Amen. Amen. Well, you guys have managed to work together very well too. Yes. Thank you. We're doing our giving show today. Do you have any comments on generosity while you've been going through this process? We actually would love to share a story with y'all. I'll intro it and I'll let him finish it. My husband has been for a long time a huge basketball fan and a basketball coach. And he coaches at a place called Falcon Christian Academy where the players are all from Falcon Children's home. And they all come from really rough backgrounds. They don't have parents or their parents aren't fit to raise them or their parents are in prison. And that is his ministry and that is where he gives back and I'll let him take it from here kind of what we've done and what we're going to do going forward. Yes. So just we, I run a church basketball league and we raise, we have a charity game where we raise between 1500 to 2500 every year. And I just say, you know, hey, here's the money that the children's home can do with it, whatever they may. We, the kind of the thing that started a fire in my heart about it was I live on paydays, you know, on the road. The candy bar. The candy bar, sorry, the payday candy bar. And I just was eating one day on the drive in the van to an away game and the rustling of the candy bar. Just all the kids were like, what you got there? And I was like, oh, they're like, are you going to eat that? I was like, oh, no, apparently not. Yeah, not anymore. And just one, one of them took one payday bar and they like, it was like almost like breaking bread and they shared it with, with each other. And I just, I went home, told her that story and tried not to get choked up. No, that'll get it going. They take care, you know, good care of all their needs and everything, but there's just, you know, they're, they don't have any luxuries. They have wants. And so actually on the way up here, we were organizing to get a shoe drive to get all the kids. They didn't have proper, not all of them have proper basketball shoes. So and, you know, one kid in particular is wearing, having to wear size nine and he's actually an 11 because I gave him a pair of my shoes and he fit them perfectly. I used to work at a shoe store a long time ago. I was like, oh, that works. And but just that we just do different things with the Falcon Christian Academy. And now you don't have a house payment. So you can do whatever you want. Yes. Yes. Amen. All right. Congratulations, you guys. Very proud of y'all. Well done. Well done. Will and Madison, Sergeant Pemberley and Royal right outside of Fort Bragg. $36,000 paid off in nine and a half years, making 100 to 185 house and everything. They're weird. They're debt free. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream. Got it. In three, two, one. We're debt free. Yeah. I love it. It's like some kids are getting some new shoes. This Christmas along with some payday bars in Jesus name. I love it. Well done. It's one of the best times of the year, but it's also the time of year when people let their money get totally out of control. Everywhere you look, it's just buy, buy, buy. So you start swiping the credit card and suddenly it's January and you got a mess on your hands. Don't let that happen. Know your money where to go instead of wondering where it went with our budgeting app every dollar. Every dollar not only helps you stay on budget and in control of your spending this holiday season. It also helps you find extra margin in your budget, thousands of dollars of it and every day will coach you to build better money habits and attack your goals faster than ever. So while most people will be starting in January with the taste of regret in their mouth, you'll already be winning. Start every dollar for free by downloading the app today. Our scripture of the day, Luke 2 7 through 9 and she gave birth to her firstborn son and she wrapped him in clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end. And there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch by night and an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them. Billy Graham said, the very purpose of Christ coming into the world was that he might offer up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas. They just handed me our debt free screams for the year. This year we had 84 people do a debt free scream in the lobby here on the debt free stage totaling $20,363 and $762. Wow. $363,762. So 20 million three, 20.3 million. And that's a lot. That's just right here on the stage. That's just the ones we actually had come stand on the stage. There's many more out there who became debt free this year following the principles and I'm inspired. Every dollar we had $3.5 billion in dollars saved and dollars paid. Money saved and debt paid. Just the people using every dollar. $3.5 billion change in position this year. That is wild. Hard to rac-o-plain. We actually failed. We were trying to get four billion and we didn't make it. But we'll make it next year. So that's okay. I hate it when we fail like that. Well if everyone used every dollar and used it accurately, reported the numbers, we'd be there. So easy. Enter your numbers in every dollar so we can track it. It's really fun. Yeah, come on people. We want to celebrate you. It's our annual giving show, Britney's in Wisconsin. Hi, Britney. Merry Christmas. Tell us your giving story. Hi Dave, George. Thanks for taking my call. I'm excited to tell you this story. Sure. Earlier this year we had some changes in our financial situation. You're breaking up. You had some changes in your financial situation and then what? Yep. And then all of our side hustling was just to kind of break even. So we were in the red for expenses to income ratio. And so at that time cash flowing vehicle just wasn't possible. So one of our friends who is now premowed to go serve our country, he gifted us his truck. And technically it was just for whatever we were able to sell our broken down beater for. So it was a very, very, very generous trade. It's a very nice truck. We're driving it down to Chicago this weekend and we have no worries in the world. It's very reliable. It's got heated seats. It's awesome. Wow. We're very, very thankful for that. And then shortly after that my car completely totaled itself. It broke down. And so my father-in-law, my husband's father, he retired and so he had his daily driver left over and he gifted us that as well. So now we are a two vehicle family and just a couple of nights ago here in Wisconsin it was negative 15 in the morning and I started it up. That car ripped on the first try. So we're very thankful to have two working vehicles. Amen. Amen. Yeah, that's a big deal. And I'm thankful that people are in your life that looked up and saw it and said, hey, we can help. Yep. Yeah, that's a big deal. That's awesome. Amen. Brittany, thanks for sharing that. That's a big, that's awesome. Very, very cool. It's amazing how a car can change your life. Get you from A to B reliably. What a cool game. It's come up a lot today. Yeah. Sometimes we have more car stories than others, but today there's a lot of cars. Forget how life changing that can be. Mary is in Delaware. Hi, Carrie. Merry Christmas. Tell us your giving story. Merry Christmas, Dave and George. Thank you so much for having me. My husband and I, we have followed your plan since 2012 and we are debt free. And over the years we've tried to model generosity for our daughters. We have three girls. A couple of weeks ago, our youngest daughter who is 16, who's a junior in high school, started telling us about how one of the band members in her marching band, her sister, who's 20, was just recently diagnosed with cancer. And that the, there was an upcoming band trip to what they have every year and the students and the leadership of the marching band were kind of putting together, scraping money together to help with the next installment of the band payment that was due. And so I was really impressed. My husband and I are listening and like, I look at my husband and like, I asked how much the next payment was and she said $300 and I said, what if we just paid it and made it like a secret Santa and you guys, you could just pick it in. And my daughter was like happy, but not shocked. She was like, that would be so amazing. And I was like, yeah. So a couple of days and by my husband came home from work. He had stopped at a local hardware store and while he was at the register, the cashier was putting a collection bucket out for the sister who was sick and it kind of like reminded my husband and he came home and he told my daughter and myself and he was like telling and my daughter said, um, yeah, actually the girl's parent had just lost their job. And it was like one of those things. Oh, we, like when I went to the storm hits, right? And I, I thought back to all the times that I've listened to you, um, when somebody calls in and they're stressed about like your debt and then somebody's sick and you always say to them, like, focus on, you know, getting better, the debt, don't worry about that. And it, oh, we, it rang in my head, my rang my head. And so I looked at my husband and I was like, you think we should just like take care of the balance of the trip. And like it was only $600 and I was like, absolutely. So my daughter was excited. She'd actually use some of her own money and paid for, uh, maybe a donation to the GoFundMe for the sister that's sick. So long story short, I emailed you guys, told you about the story. I was really impressed by all these kids and like my daughter, just the spirit of, you know, giving. And then Monday, Monday after I emailed the show, my daughter called me from school. She had gone in to go pay the balance and the band teacher was so impressed. And then he said, actually it's been taken care of with all the generosity of the kids coming up with their money. And my daughter was like, she said to me, it's already been taken care of. Can we just donate for groceries for a month? And I said, absolutely. So they're going to do a little Christmas party tomorrow night for the, her friend and the marching man. And they're going, she's going to give her like a fellow secret Santa thing, but this way groceries will be taken care of. So the girl can go on the trip. She has spending money and the family will be able to not have to worry about, um, you know, the trip costs of the trip, but also groceries for a month. So, um, and I said, this is the whole, this is the whole point of like doing this. Is that like, cause after the first time my daughter said it to us, my husband's like, this is why we're following this. So that when we're not here someday, our kids can continue to be generous, you know, and it doesn't have to be always like a monetary thing. You talk about holding the door for people and just smiling and being kind. And that's why, you know, that's, that's our goal as parents is that when we're not here anymore, our parents, our kids will like continue the legacy and just be good people. So, yeah, absolutely. They'll pay it forward. Way to go, Carrie. Well played. Kurt is in Venice, Italy. Wow. Merry Christmas. Tell us your giving story. Hi guys. Hi guys. Dave George. I'll be real quick. Another grocery story. I'm over in Italy. My wife's always wanted to be here. So here we are. We're at the grocery store. We go to check out. There's a gentleman in front of us. You could tell he had just come from work. You know, he was all decked out, went to pay for his groceries. Didn't have any lock. His debit card didn't work. He pulled out another one. Didn't work. Got real nervous. Asked if he could run outside real quick to find his wife. So we did and we're kind of all watching him and everybody's kind of accumulating at the checkout and everybody's getting nervous. So my wife and I are like, we'll just pay for his groceries. Let's just take care of that. So we did. Then we took care of ours and we ran his groceries out to him. All right. Obviously the guy was very appreciative. Everybody in line was appreciative. Here's where it gets really good. A couple of days later, we get a call from my daughter. She's in Park City, Utah. Just came out of a Walmart. She had a new use phone that she got from her father-in-law and she went to pay for her groceries. Two little kiddos in tow. Her Apple Pay hadn't been entered in her phone yet. This is like two days later, Dave and George. Didn't work. She didn't have her debit card on her. She didn't have enough cash. The guy in back of her insisted on paying for her groceries. We paid 22 euros for the gentleman's groceries. This gentleman behind my daughter, two days later, $160. My daughter was absolutely in tears. But can you believe we do it here? Didn't tell a soul. Two days later, my daughter has the exact same experience and the guy behind her steps up and purchases her groceries. What a great story. I absolutely can believe that. So cool. I absolutely can believe that. Wow. Way to go. There's a little God nod there. Amen. That's really neat. Well guys, remember the greatest gift of all was Christmas when God sent his only begotten son. Yeah, he came to die for our sins. Remember that. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you. May God bless you.