Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life

**Dave Ramsey** (0:30)
I'm Dave Ramsey, the phone number is 888-825-5225.
My co-host today, number one best-selling author, Ramsey personality, Rachel Cruze, also my daughter. Jump in and talk, folks, it's what we do here. We're here to help you. Neo is with us in Jacksonville, Florida. Hi Neo, how are you?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
Hello, I am so honored to be on the show, thank you so much.

**Dave Ramsey** (0:52)
Honored to have you, how can we help?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:55)
All right, so I have recently had a conversation with my parents about what they are planning to do for retirement, and I was a little concerned. They don't have any money invested at all right now.
And so I was like, I didn't take apart, you know, what they have in savings or debt or whatnot, but how can I convince or how can I have a conversation of investing even at their age? So my mom is 55 and my dad is 62

**Dave Ramsey** (1:22)
Oh, I'm surprised they're still alive.

**Rachel Cruze** (1:26)
They're as old as me.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:28)
They're as old as me.

**Dave Ramsey** (1:28)
I can't believe it.

**Rachel Cruze** (1:30)
Oh.

**Dave Ramsey** (1:33)
Well, the thing that has always helped me sell hope, which when you say I'm too old to invest, that means I've lost hope.
And so if I want to sell hope in the world that I'm in, I often use the actual math, okay? And so I would jump on and play with some numbers and then take the numbers to them and show them on your laptop, okay? And just go to ramseysolutions.com and look at our retirement calculator, okay? And say, Mom and Dad, if you put in, I don't know what their income is or whatever, but you could guess at it and say, if you put in $500 a month, you know, when you're 72, here's what it'll be.
But here's what it'll be if you put it in at 3% in a high-yield savings account because you're too old to invest, all right? And the market has done unbelievably well in the last five years, and it's not going to stay at that level forever. It doesn't average as high as it has lately. But in the last four years, in 23, I mean, the numbers are in 23, it was 26%. In 24, it was 25%. In 25, it was 18%. We're already at 13% up this year. So the stock market, basically, if you put money in 23, a lump sum, it would have doubled by now. So if you put 100,000 in and didn't touch it, it would have already be 200,000 just four years later, five years later. So-

**SPEAKER_2** (3:01)
So is there anything I need to do on my end to help them? Like, okay, if the next step is investing and I've convinced them that this is a good idea, what would be the next step?

**Dave Ramsey** (3:10)
Well, the other thing that holds people back from investing, other than belief that it's not gonna work, is knowledge. And so anything that we don't understand is scary. That's human nature.

**Rachel Cruze** (3:22)
Yeah, but to answer your question though, you would reach out to a SmartVestor Pro and sit down with an investment professional with them. If you're kind of guiding this journey with them and they want your help and you in the room and your opinions.

**Dave Ramsey** (3:35)
Yeah, hey dad, I got in touch with a SmartVestor Pro on the Ramsey site and I talked to them for a minute and they said they'd love to sit down and talk to you. And these people are not there to put their glasses down on the end of their nose and talk down to you. They are teachers and if you learn, your fear goes down and if you believe the numbers are going to work, your hope goes up.

**Rachel Cruze** (3:54)
And what you put your money in. And then you invest. Yeah, and what you put your money in, you trust the system, right? Ultimately, which is the market. Like you are putting your money in and saying, I trust that this is, it's not going to go to zero. I'm going to trust that if anything, it's going to make me more money. And so when you sit down with an investment professional, they can run those numbers, run the history. You can just see and get kind of a confidence of, okay, it's not as dramatic as what everyone thinks, right? When you live in that fear bucket of the market, people, they dream up all the scenarios in their head that aren't true, you know? And so, so that is helpful.