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This episode is brought to you by SmartVestor. Connect with an investing pro near you at RamseySolutions.com SmartVestor all right, let's look at 101.

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Let's lay this foundation that we talk about, making the most of retirement. Now, before we get into the nuts and bolts, let's remember what we have to do. Some basic wealth building principles. And these are principles again that the wealthy align with. And I see these all the time when I'm meeting with people that have been successful in actually building wealth. Again, these are not theories. This is observable principles within people who have really done it, not somebody with an opinion. See, one of our rules around Ramsey is don't take financial advice from broke people and people that aren't living the way you want to live your life, that their values are not aligned with you. So wealth building principle number one. Wealth is a blessing. It is not evil. Rich people are not evil. Wealth is not bad. It is not good. Wealth does not make you bad. It does not make you good. It does not ruin your children. It does not ruin your marriage. It does not ruin your relationships. It does not ruin your character. It is none of those things. It doesn't have that power. What it will do is reveal your character. If your kids are a hot mess and you have a whole bunch of money and you dump it on them, you're going to make a really large hot mess. Well, no kidding. Wealth magnifies the good and the bad within the individuals that it touches. And so you're not evil for building wealth. Wealth is not bad. Now, this is an important principle that you adopt and you believe that wealth is not evil and that wealthy people are not all automatically evil because they have or built wealth. Because here's a problem. It is very difficult to be very good at something that you believe to be morally wrong. Our friend Dr. John Deloney would call that cognitive dissonance. When you are trying to act in a way that is perpendicular with your beliefs, it's very difficult to be good at it. So if you down inside have the tapes playing from some kind of toxic childhood message at some kind of toxic church or toxic family meeting where they said wealth is bad and wealthy people are horrible and you believe that, you feel guilty if you actually win in the wealth building area, you're gonna struggle with it. So the Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil. The worship of money is the root of all evil. We believe those of us that are people of faith who have a proper biblical view of wealth is that we are blessed to be a blessing. We're not just blessed to be consumers and hedonistic. We're blessed to be of good to our family, to be of good to our culture, and to even treat ourselves well. And you know, to help where there's problems out there in the marketplace. Wealth is good for that. I've never seen poor people feeding starving children. But I have seen a lot of rich people do it. I've seen a lot of rich people do some amazing things. Helping the downtrodden, helping the disenfranchised. And they used money to do it. And they weren't. There was no evil involved. As a matter of fact, they were fighting evil. So being generous is a big deal. It's a part of understanding. I don't own it. I'm managing it for the good of my family, the community and inheritance. The world, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, the poor, the widow and the orphan. That's the job of the wealthy. And it's okay to do all of those things with wealth. And again, it's a reflection of who you are when you get the money. So sometimes I hear my friends that are Christians who are over saved or they're confused about what the Bible actually says that they believe that wealth is evil. The Bible does not say wealth is evil. Nowhere in there it says it's powerful. And be careful of things that are powerful cause they can destroy you, but be careful. As a matter of fact, God says in the Bible in Deuteronomy, remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth. So principle number one, wealth is not evil. And you're not evil if you get some. And quit letting people leftist communists tell you that you've done something wrong because you've been successful being of use in the marketplace. It's ridiculous. Now, wealth building principle number two, how you think about this, your mindset matters. We did the largest study of millionaires in North America ever done at Ramsey airtight research. Even had an outside research firm looking over our shoulders at our research techniques to make sure that we didn't have any kind of confirmation bias going on. Because we knew we would be criticized when we discovered what we thought we would discover, which is that it's still possible to build wealth in America today. Found out a lot of very interesting things about millionaires and we disclose all of that in the book Baby Steps Millionaires, which became a number One bestseller. When we put it out. White paper is in the back on the whole detail. But one of the things we asked was we asked millionaires this. 97% of the millionaires agreed with this statement. Here's how much your mindset I control my own destiny and I'm responsible for my future. Wow. When we surveyed the public, 69% believe this statement was true. Your mindset matters. You believe you control the variables. If you plant corn, you can expect corn to grow. If you don't plant corn, don't be standing around and saying, I'm a victim. But you didn't plant any corn, so you've got to plant something if you want something to grow. There's a cause and effect thing that happens in wealth building. I control my own destiny. I'm responsible for my future. Number three principle true wealth building is almost never fast. It's slow and steady. And frankly, it's often just dog boring. It's nothing exciting. It's really hard to brag to your friends when you're the tortoise and not the hare. One of the things I did after I went broke was I said, I'm going to have lunch with as many millionaires as I can to find out how they think. And so now I've met thousands and thousands of millionaires. We've done the largest study a millionaire's ever done. Da da da da. I've been a millionaire second time, many times over, for decades now. So then I started saying, okay, I want to meet with billionaires. It's very interesting. There's a difference in the way they think than millionaires. But I found this guy who was 72 years old over in the Carolinas, and he agreed to have lunch with me. And I went to his favorite barbecue place. And it was just a very simple little barbecue place, and we're eating out of, you know, paper plates there. It was really good barbecue. But we were going through that. I said, okay, so I'm, you know, I'm decades younger than you. You know a little bit about me. He knew who I was from the radio and stuff. And I said, so tell me, what would you do if you're me? And he gave me a couple things. And he said, I want to see you keep being generous. I see you give stuff away on the radio. I suspect you're doing it behind the scenes. Keep your generosity muscle. Keep it building. Keep doing that. And, you know, he gave me a. He said, and then there's this book you need to read now I'm a Book junkie. I'm a self improvement junkie. I read like a maniac. And so I'm always trying to find something, some other little piece of life that I don't know about, that I don't understand, that I can get out of a book. And so when he says, when a billionaire that's a thousand million says, you need to read this book, I'm like, I need to read this book. What is this book? And he goes, it's so good. I read it to my kids when they were growing up. It's so good. I read it to my grandkids. And now, Dave, I am actually reading it to my great grandkids. This book is amazing. And I'm like, okay, this is amazing. I got my pencil out. What's the name of this book? And he goes, the Tortoise and the Hare. I was a little disappointed. I'm like, I'm meeting with a billionaire here. I'm having good barbecue with a billionaire. And he gives me an Aesop's fable, the Tortoise and the Hare. And I guess he saw the disappointment on my face. He said, no, Dave, this is a very important principle. He said, most people that don't build wealth that think they're going to, they're the hare. We live in a whole culture full of hares. We live in a whole culture where everyone has the attention span of a gnat. And he goes, you've got to be slow and steady. Slow and steady. Like the tortoise. He goes, you know the end of the book. And I'm going, yeah. He goes, you know the whole story? I said, yeah, I know the story. You know, hare's running around all over the place. Tortoise is steady. Hare can't catch up. Too late. He sees that the tortoise is about to cross the finish line. He sprints and tries to catch up, but he's been distracted and distracted and lack of focus. And the tortoise was focused and steady. And the tortoise wins. And he goes, now, here's what's important. I said, what's important? He goes, every time I read the book, the tortoise wins. I'm like, okay. But I mean, I woke up about three days later and I went, every time, the tortoise wins. I get it now. Slow and steady wins. And that is what I've observed with people that build wealth. That's what we found with the millionaire study. It's what we found a whole bunch of other places as well. Anecdotally, with the People that I hang with and I'm talking about, and I'm referencing right now. Slow and steady wins the race. Every time I read the book, the tortoise wins. Number four principle for wealth building. Never invest in something you don't understand. If you can't explain it to someone else, don't do it. Don't do it because I said do it. Don't do it because George said do it. Don't do it because anyone else said do it. Do it because you understand it. If you follow somebody who says they've got it all figured out and you're going to go do what they say to do and they've got it all under control, you're about to lose your money. Your job is to manage that money that God gave you to manage, and you better be able to explain what you put it in. Do not put money in something you don't understand. Well, Dave, I think there's things that I don't understand that are perfectly good. That's probably true. Which means you need to learn about those things enough that you get comfortable with how they operate and what they are. We're going to cover a bunch of different investment types tonight, and you know that's going to open up some things. But you keep learning, keep doing stuff. Like watching this event for these two nights, you're going to learn some things about investing you didn't know everyone will in these two nights. And then that's going to set you up to go to maybe a place you hadn't been before. But don't put money in something you don't understand because some goober in a slick suit says you need to do it. Or you've got this friend who seems really smart, he's successful, so I'm going to do whatever he does. You're about to lose your butt. Don't put money in stuff you don't understand.