Quit Trying to Outearn Your Stupidity!

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RamseySolutions it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author many times over, host of The Rachel Cruz Show and co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour on the Ramsey Networks, and my daughter.
She's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.
You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money.
Tim is with us. Tim is in Minneapolis.
Hi, Tim. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Hey, how's it going, Dave? Thanks for having me, guys. Sure.
What's up? Yeah, so, you know, long-time listener. I hear you guys talk a lot about how housing prices aren't coming down, you know, due to supply and demand.
But with boomers owning, you know, almost 40% of houses in America, is that something we should expect, you know, in the next 10 to 15 years, just based on life expectancy? Well, I'm a boomer. I'm 64.
My life expectancy, having made it to 64, is 90. Is it really? Yeah, statistically.
You'll be around for a while, Dave. Yeah, the average, I mean mean if you make it to 60 you know so the average male death in america right now is 76 average female death is 78 but that includes infant mortality teenage death and so on so when you have a healthy boomer make it in so the gradient is not 10 to 15 years the gradient is 20 to 30 years.
Got it. To which point the answer is the absorption rate will not even notice it.
You won't even know it happened because the inventory shortage is far superior to that gradient. Okay.
That makes sense? Yeah. No, that makes sense.
Literally, literally i'm 64 and so over the next 30 years the boomers will die off roughly yeah not over the next 10 years if they were all to die in the next five years then your question would say okay there's going to be a rush of supply into the market yes and he could cause prices to adjust. Right, right.
That's what his question really had under it. Right.
And if there was an effect or something happened and they all went within 12 months, you know what I mean? Like it's enough of a spread that it's going to be so gradual. If we get the boomer virus.
I don't know. That's what I'm like, I don't know.
It could happen. It could happen.
Something that takes out all the old people. So, yeah, I mean.
We would miss y'all. Yeah, it's kind of like you're thinking we will miss you all.
We would miss you. That sounded not sincere.
I don't know. It is.
Oh, I love it. Michelle's in Dallas.
Hey, Michelle, what's up? Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call.
Sure, how can we help? Yes, so I have an employer that offers a student loan forgiveness and I am debating whether or not when I go back to nursing school to pay it cash to not add on to the debt that I already have or should I go ahead and take out the loans, be better financially stable during nursing school, and then apply for the loan forgiveness after I graduate? Never take out debt. Okay.
Period. Because you're assuming one possible track in this scenario, that everything works exactly like your little plan you just laid out

and a hundred percent of the time things don't work like you plan something different will happen and here's the other thing if they will give you student loan forgiveness and they won't give you education funding equivalent to that i'm going to find a hospital that will because there's a shortage of nurses and someone will write you that check if that group won't somebody else will like tuition reimbursement yeah exactly got you got you because they're already coming out of pocket for student debt what's the difference in that and tuition reimbursement none that makes sense and if they won't do that talk to somebody across the street that's a different hospital or a different medical group and they will because i gotta tell you i'm i'm thrilled for you you are picking out probably assuming you love it and you're engaged which i guess you are one of what i think is one of the best careers in America is nursing. Thank you.
Because I've been doing this 35 years, and the entire 35 years I've sat in this chair, there's been a nursing shortage. So you could always pick and choose, get whatever you want.
You could work as many hours as you want. You could work 72 straight.
You could do travel nursing. You can pick up er on the weekends at triple time i mean you can make bank and control your life how much you work in this field like no other i know of it's in it's it's almost the equivalent of being self-employed except self-employed is harder you know yeah i just i'm thrilled for you if you love nursing you're in the right place and don't don't shortchange yourself as to what somebody will pay to get you out there you are a commodity baby you you can you can demand a price got you okay that's um that's cool very fun stuff i love that i mean some of the best stories we've had, you know, back during COVID, the travel nursing stuff, the people that were still working and they were paying people like, we had one lady, I think she got half a million dollars in a year.
It's crazy. And she paid off like $300,000 in student loan, I remember.
Yeah. And in that same vein, you know, that there's a lot of different tracks and a lot of different career paths, companies, associations, all different things that are going, that take this route of, we will pay your student loans if you come work for us, or we'll pay your tuition if you come work for us, right? And so, that guaranteed time, though, still a good idea to have someone else pay your tuition, even if you are, you know, stuck in a sector or stuck in a in a specific company how long you're stuck in it what would be your your how long you're stuck in it and what's the price that you're stuck in it at i mean yeah you know so if if you're being underpaid versus the market substantially you would have been better off to pay your own tuition and not be stuck there right more than like than like a year or something.
Yeah. You know, or if there's no advancement because of the thing, because you're stuck, you know, in that sense, you're getting a good rate today, but it's not going to be a good rate three years from now because, you know, entry level on that's got a curve to it, right? Right.
Right. And you're going to be stuck then.
Or it's a five-year deal. But if it's a two-year deal and your competitive salary position or competitive income position, then you ought to do it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Because there's some great tracks out there.
And then we've also heard on the flip side. Be careful.
There's a hook in there. I don't know.
Yeah. Just to make sure that it's a clear, obvious way and that it's for a shorter amount of time, not a longer.
You know, it's gotten a little bit quieter and we need to probably ask ken coleman about this because i've not checked the research and he probably has but uh if you remember during the great resignation a whole bunch of people quit their jobs like 24 months after covid because they realized someday they're going to die and they wanted to live life right um and so this existential crisis hits amer. And we have the largest resignation in a 24-month period of time nationwide that we've ever seen, people voluntarily quitting.
And during that time, to attract people, people like Target at $20 an hour were paying tuition. And I wonder if that's still going on.
I haven't kept up with that yeah we need to ask coleman about that and get that back on the air because i mean fedex and target and walmart ups at 20 an hour to go in there and stock shelves and they pay your tuition uh that's crazy that that was a great deal then if it's still there it's still a great deal and that falls in that of discussion. Because we're seeing a lot of that, that kind of creativity from employers to attract people.
So good stuff. This is the Ramsey Show.
All right, Dave, you have some strong opinions. Possibly.
Yeah, I think so. Okay.
Because you really prefer credit unions over big banks. So why is that? Well, credit unions, for one thing, are non-profit, which means that the members, the customers, own the credit union.
So any profits that the credit union makes goes back into customer pricing. So you get better interest rate on savings, cheaper checking, and so on, that kind of thing.
But what's more important than that, though, is the fact that the customer is the owner changes the spirit on the credit union. So I find very few credit unions that aren't very customer-centric.
Yes. Well, and I think we have found one that is incredible, and that's Fairwinds.
They are an incredible credit union that is really out with the heart to help the customer. You know, that's why we're partnering with them because they've got a scope to be able to handle the Ramsey audience and they're the right kind of people with the right kind of values.
And they've done a really, really good job with customer service and the deals that they're offering. The Ramsey tribe is incredible.
Yeah, absolutely. And you're right.
Their customer service is unbelievable. Winston and I just signed up and we got an account.
And I'm not kidding. It took less than five minutes.
It was so user-friendly. The step-by-step approach was unbelievable.
And then the next day my phone rings and it says fair wins on my phone. So I answered it and talked to someone there and they said, yeah, they give calls to every new customer.
And so again, they just really care about your experience. And I so, so appreciate that.
So again, you guys, I know it can be a pain to switch banks or to open up new accounts, but Fairwinds, again, they make it so easy. Plus anything that you can do at a traditional branch, you can do with them at fairwinds.org or on their app and you'll have free access to over 33,000 ATMs.
Hey, you guys know how much I hate banks in general and so for me to do this is a big deal. Talk to our friends at Fairwinds and check out the combined checking and savings bundle that they created just for the Ramsey tribe.
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So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more. That's F-A-I-R-W-I-N-D-S dot org slash Ramsey.
Nancy's in Las Vegas. Hi, Nancy.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave, and thank you for taking my call, and it's such a pleasure to speak with you.
Well, you too. How can we help? Well, I recently won at $200,000, a little over, on a game show.
Wow. And I'm 70 years old.
That's more money than you ever had. Can you tell us which game show are you allowed to? The game show was called Snake Oil with David Spade.
It was just on for one season. Oh my gosh.
Very fun. So have you gotten hit with the game show tax yet? Yes I have and that was approximately $55,000.
It. It was California taxes, and it was pretty expensive.
Okay, so your $200,000 is left over after that, or you have $145,000 left? I have $145,000 left of that. Okay, all right.
Way to go, Nancy! I know! That's awesome! So what are you going to do with your $150,000? So Dave, that's what I want to know. I'm not sure what to do.
I'm 70 years old and basically retired. We're retired, my husband and I, and I work very part-time and so does my husband because we're still able to and we feel up to it.

And right now I have the money.

I have actually a little over $200,000 in a money market, which is about a pretty good interest rate, 5.5. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So, and then we recently downsized, and I owe about $85,000 still on our house. Mm-hmm.
And I'm not sure if we should pay the house up. I, you know, I love keeping...
Is $200,000 your entire NISTIG? Yes, besides the equity in our house. Right, but you don't have any other 401k retirement no no you have pensions you have pensions coming in um we just have social security and between two of us that's about um 4,500 what's it take you to live a month? Gosh, I don't actually know.

That's terrible.

I don't know exactly. Are you living on the Social Security or Social Security plus your income? Yes, well, we both work part-time, too.
I make very little money working a part-time job. If I'm lucky, I make $600 a month.
It's just kind of a fun thing I do. And then my husband makes a couple thousand extra working part-time besides our Social Security.
And, of course, we're not going to be able to do that for, you know, ever. Seems as though we're in our 70s.
How much is your mortgage a month, Nancy? It's about $7.56 a month. Okay.
It is $7.56 a month. Yep, it's about 756 a month okay it is it is 756 a month yep yep so um the the answer the answer to your question is i'm not sure what you should do but we can talk it through together okay if you had 600 000 i would tell you instantaneously write a check and pay off your house today if you $100,000, I would tell you not to pay off your house because you would be starved.
Right. And you're kind of in the middle.
I know. It scares me that we're getting ready to use half of your money to pay off your house, but it also scares me that you go into your 80s with a mortgage.
That's right. So those two things are competing here because we've only got $200,000 to work with.
So I guess I would say if you do some other things, and I'll give you those things, I would pay off the house. The other things are I would set up an automatic draft into a mutual fund, possibly a Roth retirement account with a SmartVestor Pro to the tune.
If you pay off the house, you don't have a $756 payment anymore. So I'm going to make it at least $1,000, maybe $1,500 every month going into retirement.
Okay. And we can rebuild the the 85,000 in just a couple of years doing that.
Okay. Because that's 1,500 is 18,000 a year plus growth.
So two years would be 36, four years would be 72. So it's going to take you about three years to get your 85,000 back if you do 1,500 a month.
month so if you all are willing to get on a detailed budget and sit down with a smart investor pro and open a good mutual fund and move some of that other hundred and something that's left into that mutual fund too so that it's growing i want it growing more than%. Now, I do want you to keep about $30,000

as your emergency fund in the high-yield savings or the money market. But the other $70,000 or so after you pay off the house, $80,000 or so, you should move that as well into a mutual fund.
Now, let's talk that through for a second, and I'll show you why I'm doing that, okay? Okay. Okay.
If the stock market since it began has averaged meaning some years not some years more right has averaged 11.8 if it didn't do that well and it only made 10 the money that lump sum that you've got that you're going to put in there will double every seven years. And so let's not counting what we're adding to it monthly, but just taking that 75,000 or so.
I'm going to call it 75 for math. At 77, it'll be 150, not counting what you add to it.
At 84, it'll be 300, not counting what you add to it. 84 it'll be 300 not counting what you add to it okay and that's if you continue to have your lifestyle be at social security plus part-time jobs or less or you're not tapping into this money okay okay so you'd have 300 000 in a paid for house plus what you're adding to it probably a close to a half million dollars when you're at in your mid 80s wow well that's that sounds pretty good in a paid for house that all sounds good but you got to follow your mid 80s too i mean that's i mean that i mean mid 80s i know i know i mean i'm a really young 70 but um yeah yeah 80s that's a ways away well I can.
You just want a game show with David Spade. That's not an old 70, okay? That's not an old 70 right there.
So you're awesome. I love you.
So, yeah, I would pay it off, but only if you guys agree to, number one, get on a tight budget and detail out where every dollar is going so that, number two, I can put $1,500 a month away.

Okay.

Okay.

And sit down with a SmartVestor Pro.

Go to RamseySolutions.com.

And if that's too much, $1,500, if they can't swing it.

I still would.

They can swing it.

She's got $6,000, $7,000 a month coming in, and she doesn't know where it's all going

other than it's getting spent.

And so, I mean, he's making a little money. She's making a little money they got 4500 social security yeah so they can swing that i don't know how long they can swing it but they could do it for three years they get the money back for the 85 yep yep that's that gives me comfort that gives me comfort because those three years yeah otherwise we leave them sitting there with almost no money or too too small a nest egg and and a paid house.
Because what we have run into over the years, folks, is somebody gets to retirement and they have a paid for house and no money. They end up digging up the bushes and trying to eat them because there's no money to eat with, right? I mean, you got to use some problem here.
So you got to have some cash in addition to the paid for house. We want you debt free, but you got to have some cash, Not investments, not just cash, but some investments that are outside of your home.
But having a paid for home going into retirement is, it adds, it creates a sustainability way beyond somebody has debt going into retirement. Yes.
Well, and considering the mortgage is usually the highest line item for people of what they're paying every single month and that's money i mean 800 bucks is pretty good you know what i mean like yeah there's a lot of mortgages a lot more than that oh definitely definitely um being able to pocket that every single month and being able to use that to live off of versus having to pay the mortgage i mean that's where the math that's, that's where it gets crazy. Yeah, and you know what?

The other thing gave me comfort,

and I didn't realize it

until you were saying that.

They've already downsized.

She downsized to get to that.

That's right, that's right, yes.

And so these people are already

noticing where they are.

They're not struggling with reality.

Yes, yes.

And so that gives me comfort too

because they're reality-based people.

And their decision-making is wise. It's clear, yeah, it's real clear.
And long before they got to this phone call. So that gives me...
Snake oil with David Spade. Snake oil.
$200,000. Man, I thought she was going to say price is right or something.
I got $200,000 from snake oil. I didn't.
She did. This is The Ramsey Show.
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Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author. My daughter is my co-host on the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions.
Steve and Nina are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Great.
How about you? Better than I deserve. Where do you guys live? Danbury, Connecticut.
Danbury, Connecticut. Bit of a haul to Tennessee.
Worth the trip. Yes.

And a minor culture shock, too.

We like it.

Very cool.

Very cool.

Welcome.

We're glad to have you.

So how much debt did you pay off?

$141,908.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

How long did this take?

37 months.

Good for you.

Dang.

And your range of income during that time?

$115 to approximately $180.

Whoa. It's a jump.
And what kind of debt was that time? $115 to approximately $180. Whoa.

It's a jump.

And what kind of debt was the $142?

Our house.

Our house.

Oh!

Congratulations.

You leaned in on this house.

These numbers.

You've been on rice and beans doing the house.

Yes.

Baby step two in it.

You didn't let off the gas.

You just went on through.

Yes. The only thing is our daughter loves beans too much now so we can't good nutrients you know for the little one oh my gosh we'll eat we'll eat tacos and tuna fish the rest of our life yeah were y'all both on agreement for being intense because we usually are like y'all both are you're both like we're gonna just who want who wanted it the most though like who's the one up i think yeah okay i was like okay i like it yeah good to know but towards the end we slowed down a little bit enjoyed life a little bit more so but hey i mean golly not with this math you didn't no i mean you you this is pretty serious i mean you're making okay so you know forty thousand dollars a year yep yep that you're paying off out of a 180 or 115 that's leaning in i mean you're serious what in addition to normal living in addition regular payments yep yeah well done you guys how old are you two 30 wow oh my gosh so what is a house like this in danbury connecticut sell for about 450 and you're 30 years old pretty i love it and how much in your how much in your retirement nest egg already around 220 000 in uh 401k and then you know around maybe 35 000 in cars and you know a few 10 you know ten thousand dollars in various other assets yeah you getting there.
He's reaching for it. He's reaching for it.
You're going to be there easy by the slam dunk by 35, though. You'll be millionaires.
Looking forward to it. Wow, I'm so proud of y'all.
Thank you. Well done.
So what in the world, you weirdos? What made you do this? Well, it basically all started, I was always into reselling on eBay and various things, and my friend. And my friend gave me a giant box of books and I was looking through them and the Total Money Makeover happened to be in there, your book, and looked interesting.
So I decided to give it a read and the rest was history. You know, we had a little bit of debt at the time, you know, we were new couple, you know, just trying to start life.
And, you know, it was just a great, you know, just way to just, you know, be free and, you know, have financial peace through all of life's challenges. Yeah.
So, so basically we started out Ramsey-ish about five years ago. We started paying off our consumer debt, but then we kept a credit card and we, uh, still, we weren't budgeting at the time.
Um, but that all changed about three, three years ago, um, when I quit my job. So I was in a really toxic work environment.
I had a really rough boss and it was really impacting my health. Um, so I was trying to look for other jobs, but it just wasn't happening quick enough.
And I had a panic attack and I said, you know what? We have an emergency fund. That's it.
I'm going to create an emergency. Exactly.
But a few weeks later, I got another job and it was about a $30,000 pay cut. So at that point, we knew we needed to get dialed in.
We needed to start budgeting. I cut up the credit card and we were just intentional throughout that time.
And then we got pregnant with our Cecilia, which we'll meet shortly. And she was in the NICU for a few weeks.
She was five weeks. Yeah, she was five weeks early.
But thanks to God and our family and friends and the fact that we had financial stability, we were able to get through it. And yeah.
And then ever since then uh we on our parental leaves we actually both got better jobs and better paying jobs um and that's why you see that that big jump and I actually ended up going back to the company that I originally left uh because that that manager was gone so it's great yeah it's what a full what a full circle moment right of like the kind of person you were when you left. Absolutely.
Or health, financial, all of it.

Yes.

And then when you walk back in, you're like, I am just a different person.

That's amazing.

Yes.

So great.

Well, thanks to you guys.

This has been incredible.

Really.

Well, you guys did it.

I mean, absolutely amazing.

Okay, so what was the hardest part?

Because I always find it fascinating when families, they have babies in the middle of

doing the baby steps, right?

Because it's a lot.

It's a lot of life that you live in that time. But what was was the hardest did you say i think patience yeah being patient and you know finding community and like-minded people yeah hard to come by where we're from a little bit a little bit um and so you got called crazy a lot yeah a lot we embraced it yeah yeah if your broke friends are making fun of your financial plan you're right on track Yes.
Yes. And that's always hard, too, because you're like, this is amazing.
You want everyone to do it. But, you know, they have to figure it out themselves.
So hopefully this will help. They need to get a free book that was given to them and a box of books that you're getting ready to resale.
Yeah. Golly.
You got a bargain. That's awesome.
I think the ROI on that's infinite. Yes.
Absolutely. That's pretty incredible.
Wow, dude. This is so awesome.
I'm so proud of y'all. You're going to be so freaking wealthy.
Thank you. And that's good because Steve's kind of money motivated.
Yeah. He's kind of had his eye on that.
He's got the nerd money maker thing going. Yeah.
Yeah. The rain maker thing.
Yeah. Very good, you guys.
Very cool. Man, y y'all are something so now that you don't have single debt in the world it's crazy and you're making almost 200,000 a year and you're 30 years old what are you going to do what's how you going to celebrate we need a new roof yep we need a new car i said how are you going to celebrate we need a new roof okay so So that's we're that's how we're gonna get up on the roof yeah all right party on the roof baby all right and you need a new car yes what are you driving what are you driving well right now nina has a small subaru impreza so we're hoping to get a bigger family 2016 he has a 2017 uh silverado okay she's driving 10 year old cars and um and so it's time to upgrade mom with a little better car with the baby and uh you can do that in like two months i mean it's not it's not a big deal right i mean you got no freaking payments yeah um when you start to feel the muscle that you now have that you've never had before in your life it's going to blow your mind how quick you can do stuff.
It's crazy. Way to go, y'all.

Way to go y'all way to go how's it feel feels good feels really good weightless yeah i mean it's nice to have options um and just you know be able to take control of your life right and and do what you you need to do what you want to do um so yeah and i mean we have only had a couple months and we had a big tax bill due yeah taxes yeah we're like all right so we haven't felt it 100 yet but it's coming it's coming for sure for sure wow good for you guys what do you tell people the secret is to getting out of debt definitely budgeting yeah being consistent um in consistent in every dollar every day, having budgeting meetings, and just don't make excuses, you know. Yeah.
You can definitely do it, and you just gotta, you know, plan and talk to your spouse and communicate, and that's kind of the key. And that's really impacted our marriage, too, for sure.
No more money fights. We're both on the same page.
And also, I think just because it a no right now doesn't mean it's a never i think that's been really and even with job stuff with life i think that really carries through yeah yes which is a long-term mindset which is so hard for people because they don't want the present pain right yeah exactly looking forward okay so how old is cecilia now she's almost two is she okay oh did you bring her with you yeah she's here is she gonna gonna help you do the scream yeah she's been practicing bring her up here let's introduce her I want to see this beautiful child wow that's wonderful very cool you guys this child has no idea how big a hero her mom and dad are they've completely changed their family tree everybody look in the camera if you've got YouTube going, you can see what heroes look like.

This is pretty stinking cool.

I'm so proud of you guys.

Well done, well done.

Steve and Nina and little Cecilia.

Danbury, Connecticut.

Wow, 142 paid off in 37 months, making 115 to 180.

House and everything!

Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. hear a debt-free scream.
Three, two, one.

We're debt-free!

I love it.

Woo-hoo-hoo!

So good.

That is awesome.

Sweet girl.

Oh my gosh, so good.

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Jackie's with us. Jackie's in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hi Jackie, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, thank you for taking my call. Sure.
What's up? So my question is, I am going blind, and I wanted to get some advice on what my husband and I can do financially to set us up for success for the day which I'm unable to work. I'm so sorry, Jackie.
When did you get this diagnosis? So I got the diagnosis in 2023, but I have a progressive retina disease. So I'm just, my retina cells are dying over time.
And from the outside in, my vision is decreasing. So it's been going on for a long time, but I finally, you know, went to the eye doctor, got the diagnosis in 2023.
Wow. What, how long are they saying until you're legally blind? Do they give you a time frame? 10 to 15 years.
Yeah, so it's 10 to 15 years at this point. It could be more, it could be less.
It just depends. Okay.
Are you working today? Yes, I am. Okay, what do you earn today? So between myself and my husband, we bring in $130 pre-tax.
Okay, and how much debt do you have, not counting your home? We have $19,000 on a car and $650 on a pesky little medical debt. That can go anytime.
Okay, so $20,000 makes your debt free, and you make $130,000. Do you guys have any money saved? Currently about $6,000.
We actually just moved into a super cheap rental. This is like a godsend for us.
So we're actually able to save more now than we ever have been. So that's actually why I'm calling because it's the perfect time for us to figure this out.
Okay. The emotion and the, I guess, fear is the word, that I would feel if I were in your shoes would maybe make me reach and try to change some kind of thing and try to accelerate it and try to get into high gear or something, so to speak, which is kind of why you're calling, I think.
So I completely identify with that if it was me. I've never been in that situation, but I can only guess how I would react.
It would put me into high gear. We've got to get something.
We've got to get moving here so here's some interesting numbers for you okay that run through my head um we did about four years ago ramsey research did the largest study of millionaires ever done in north america okay when they the people reached millionaire status the vast majority 89% of them, became millionaires not using inherited money. They did it themselves.
Nine out of 10 millionaires in America are self-made millionaires. Okay? That's good information.
The second piece of information is it took on average 17 years. Lots of them did it in 12.
Interesting number for you. Okay.
And what they did was they poured money and cleared their debts. And then they started putting money aside into retirement, and then they paid off their home.

When they got to the millionaire status, they're sitting with a $600,000 or $800,000, $900,000 paid-for home, and they're looking at $600,000 or $900,000 in their 401k. They did that in 10 to 17 years is the range.
Like I was saying, a lot of them did it in 12. Some of them were longer than 17.
But one third of them had an income under 100,000. So you're ahead on that.
And your timeframe does that. And so if I step aside from the emotion, which is my reason for bringing it up, and I said, I'm going to work the Baby Steps Millionaire's system.
That's your best, your family's best shot at being prepared for this. And starting kind of from scratch from the home side, they're renting still.
So that's going to be the next big amount. We'll get rid of this car payment.
Yeah, we're getting rid of the consumer debt. We're getting rid of this consumer debt in 20 seconds, and then we're going to build an emergency fund.
Then we're going to save a down payment for a modest home, and we're going to put it on a 15-year fixed rate. And then we're going to start putting 15% of our income into retirement, and we're going to throw everything else at the house and get it paid off.
You're going to see raises and increases during that decade that that all occurs. And then when the house is paid paid off you load up all your retirement and other miscellaneous investments um you may want to have some outside of retirement some mutual funds outside of retirement because you may need access to that money um if you know your site were to leave before 59 and a half and so but honestly working the standard system we have is the fastest way i know how to get you guys ready and then and i give you all i gave you all the background as to why just now okay yeah jackie do y'all have kids we do not okay okay how old are you? 31.

Okay.

And so 15 years puts you at 45, 46.

Yeah.

All right.

Right.

So, yeah, you, okay, there's a term, you can remember this too, it's a nuanced issue,

but you'll discover it later when you meet with a SmartVestor Pro.

I'm going to give you three or four things to do to go do what I just told you how to do okay now and i'm gonna load you up with gifts in just a minute all right so um it's called the term is bridge investing to have some money in a good mutual fund a pile of money to fund your family's wants or needs between 45 and 59, because you can't access your Roth IRAs and 401ks until 59. Okay.
So you have some non-retirement investing in your mix, and that might be something that is a little different for you all than I would normally do, because I'm giving you 15 years out there of sight 12 to 15 years and then things are going to get rowdy and we need you know I need a half million dollars laying over there of my of my million and a half laying over there that I can get to not because you're going to use it all at once but because you might need the income off of and you can't even access that if it's in a Roth until 59, okay?

Right.

Bridge investing. All right.
So here's the things we're going to send you the full enchilada. All right.
We're going to give you a financial peace university. We're going to give you every dollar premium, which is the budgeting app.
You and your husband go through all of those lessons immediately and then tear into this budget, tear into this debt, work these baby steps, get the debt paid off, get the emergency fund saved, get the down payment saved for the house, work baby steps one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, exactly like we teach with great intensity. And you have every reason to do that.
And then I'm going to send you the book, total money makeover that is the baby steps on steroids. It shows you exactly how to do all this also.
And I'm going to send you the book with the study of millionaires in it, in the back of it, the white papers in the back of it, it's called baby steps millionaires. So I'm going to give you every bit of that.
And then the second piece is I want you to go to RamseySolutions.com and click on SmartVestor Pro and find one in your area that has the heart of a teacher. Meet with them and tell them your story so they can help you begin to plan the investing when you get to that stage.
Hang on. We'll get you set up with every bit of that.
And we'll walk with you, kiddo. You're not by yourself.
We're scared with you, and we're also excited about how wonderful your future is going to be. This is The Ramsey Show.
You know, one of the first things I discovered working in the financial world is how absolutely devastating it is when the breadwinner of a family dies and there's too little life insurance or none at all. Grieving families are suddenly left behind scrambling to pay bills and trying to make ends meet.
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She's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.
Josh is in Phoenix. Hey, Josh, welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Josh. Hey, thank you for having me on.
Absolutely. What's up, man? Hey, not much.
I've got a quick question for you guys and try to be brief. Me and my wife, we just moved out to Phoenix, Arizona about a year and a half ago for my job.
As we moved, she was job hunting, and she follows a lot of social media, some influencers, and she's like, man, I can do this. So she was kind of doing that on the side, kind of fun, creative thing for her to do while she was job hunting.
And a year and a half later, she's kind of blown up all over social media. I mean, she's about to hit a million subscribers, a little over on some TikToks and Instagram, and we're starting to get some pretty big brand sponsorships, some ad revenue, you know, just stuff like that.
That's reaching out to us. People asking about doing a podcast with her.
We haven't said yes to any of this. We don't know how it's really going to affect our family's life.
Uh, I know you guys kind of handle this. We don't know if it's like, oh, is this something that's going to work out well for us? Do we pursue this? And it's a lot of money that some of these brands are throwing at us or people.
What's a lot of money? How much money? Podcasts, people asking podcasts. No, I'm talking about how much money.
Give me a dollar figure. You're talking about she's...
We've had a podcast haven't, we haven't cashed in anything yet. We're just kind of on standby because we don't know how it's going to affect our family.
Um, if we want our family lives on social media, we're starting to have kids. Um, but we've had podcasts, people reach out and say, Hey, let's do an episode 75,000.
We've had ad revenue say, Hey, make a video with our, um, product We'll give you $10,000 or $15,000, and that's for a 30-second video on TikTok. That number is real.
The other one's bull crap. Okay.
Nobody's paying you $75,000 an episode for a podcast that hadn't launched. That's what we don't know.
We don't know. People who have a podcast want her to come on.
And they're going to pay her $75,000 for being a guest. that's what we don't know yeah we don't well no no people who have a podcast want her to come on and they're going to pay her 75 000 for being a guest that's what people are throwing at us that's like the actual podcaster or some goober agent like some goober agent yeah we don't know what's real i'm calling bs okay maybe on that but on social it is very common for that size of an audience.
To get paid. The ad revenue is very real.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I said the first number is very real.
Yes. Okay, and even more.
That could be even a conservative number. The podcast number is not.
I've done five or six podcasts this week, and I haven't been paid for one. Right.
So we don't know. And my footprint's a little larger than you're talking about i agree that's why we're reaching i'm just saying it's just not that's not real there i know but there is a whole world out there and it is wild what people will pay so all that to say you guys could make i mean so hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by her just doing this so you're asking i hear two questions one is is how do we control it? Yeah.
Impacting our family. And what do we do with the money?

Is that the two questions? Yes, sir. Like how lucrative is this? Is it worth doing it? And you guys, I know you guys are all over social media.
And so how has it affected your family

with people knowing about your lives and trying to, you know, I don't, we just don't know. Is

this something we want to dive into and explore or is this going to ruin our lives type of thing? I think it's all on how you guys approach it, how you position it and the role that it plays in your life. So I do think that they're very healthy to create boundaries where you guys want.
And I would be stricter on the boundaries early on. And as you get used to something, maybe you're a little bit more flexible and you're like, yeah, that can kind of move.
We feel good with that. I don't do it for a living.
And I do think there's a world out there, yeah, where this is their world and their life and their family is their content completely. And so with those people that I've talked to in that space, a lot of them do have very strict guidelines of times that they shoot, times they don't.
Because I do think this mingling of the phone and social and videoing everything for content, which is the job, essentially, I think it does affect the family in a very negative way over time. And so for you guys just to say, yeah, we can enter into the space, but from 5 p.m.
to 8 p.m., we're not filming this stuff. We may do some content here or there throughout the day.
I don't know. Do you know what I mean? I feel like you have to be very, very, very intentional in seeing it as a job versus it being so fluid with your life because people that i see do that it it can consume you yeah it just takes over you know consumes everything if you're not it's like a reality tv show being in your house yeah i mean yeah that's it and you're the and you're the camera crew yeah totally totally so the other piece i would add to that is just to say um you know you can make decisions about kids and those kinds of things you also need to make decisions about subjects that are not going to be on the air what parts of our life are our life and they don't go on the air the first 10 years rachel was married no one ever saw winston he hated it now he's mr internet but um in the last two years he's embraced it right but but yeah that was a thing john deloney's kids faces don't show up on his he puts cartoon fake covers over them uh rachel shows her kids yeah i put mine on and um so forth and um and but the uh um but again rachel made a comment there that's accurate we're not in that We utilize social media, but we're not in the business of, quote, being an influencer or running a reality show over our Instagram or something.
We're utilizing the platform differently. So we're monetizing it differently, number one.
Number two, we don't have to have quite the shoot schedule that you guys might have can i say this too yeah i would and i don't know how you would um i don't know how you would discern this josh but somewhere along the lines that this can be an industry i think because i could feel myself get into it that you make money so fast and pretty quick like he's true like like yeah i need three stories back to back and we'll pay you 15 grand and you're like oh my god it can end up being golden handcuffs where you're making so much you're making you know 400 500 plus thousand dollars a year and it is work I'm not saying it's not but it's like how could we say no if it ever got to a point where it's stressful and starting to ruin the family it could be a hard no to stop because it's such like lucrative money does that make sense you get addicted to it well yeah and it's like we even if it's ruining us it's such easy it's money's right there like oh my gosh that would be so hard so it's like there would be some hard and fast rules of stopping if you could lay out ahead of time which i think is hard but they can be a golden handcuff kind of thing where you end up sacrificing the family in a sense even if it's going down because it's just a lot of. Does that make sense? And people feel that in other jobs too.
Rachel's in a group of ladies that you would know all of their names, and they meet periodically that are friends. And some of them, that is their gig.
And so she's getting the inside scoop on what they're making in that group. And I don't.
I'm not in the middle of that. But I've heard the numbers, and I know some of the ladies we're talking about, and they are making bank.
So her advice is dead on. What I would tell you is this.
The ones I see get messed up, and I'm looking in from the outside, are the ones who this becomes their God rather than God being their God and rather than their family is first, their relationships are first, and this is just a job. That's all it is.
And so it doesn't take over. It's in the fourth rung down the ladder of importance.
So we get to it when we get to it, but we're not sacrificing the child's mental health or our personal relationship and we're not violating people, you know, but other than that, I think you try it. I think you put some boundaries on it and move forward and don't believe everything you hear and try to cash some checks.
Let me tell you that God's gonna cut you. It's Holy Week in Jerusalem.
Crowds welcome Jesus as king. Rebellion is in the air.
Jesus operates outside our jurisdiction. Rome will descend on us all.
But instead of taking the throne, Jesus turns the tables. My house shall be called the house of prayer, but you make it a den of thieves.
The world will never be the same. Now in theaters, The Chosen Last Supper.
Get your tickets now. I talk to people every day who want to know how to do better in two areas, money and relationships.
That's why I'm pumped to bring the Money and Relationships Tour to a city near you. Join me and Dr.
John Deloney for a night that will challenge the way you think about this stuff and possibly change how you live forever. Starting April 21st, we'll be in Louisville, then on to Durham, Atlanta, Phoenix, Fort Worth, and Kansas City.
Grab your tickets at RamseySolutions.com slash tour before they're gone. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personalities, my co-host and a special guest, special gift for you guys to get to meet one of my favorite people on the planet lewis hows and he's you've you've been listening a long time you've met him before because it's not your first trip on this cabbage truck but uh lewis is a new york times best-selling author keynote speaker uh former professional football player member of the usa men's national handball team multiple bestsellers, has an incredible show called The School of Greatness.
I've been a guest on it. Rachel's been a guest on it, everybody.
And he's been a guest here many times. We're just friends in this space of helping people change their lives.
Welcome, my friend. Welcome back.
Thank you very much. Appreciate you guys.
Good to see you. The new book is Make Money Easy.
So he's on the money show to do that yeah create financial freedom and live a richer life very very cool because most people try to make it hard they do so make it easy make it easy and kind of in a different way we were on my show earlier and i love the setup because it's not about or you can say it but it's you know it's not about the investing and the and the interest rates and the mutual funds and all of it. It's so much more.
It's about the emotion, the heart, the feelings behind money, which you have to get right or it'll ruin you. The stuff that Dave loves talking about the most, the feelings.
You know, that's what we talked about earlier. Dave's big on feelings.
Loves the feels. Yeah, because, you know, you guys are the money experts.
I was just coming to this approach of like, I see so many people struggling with money, trying to understand it. I didn't understand it growing up and I was afraid of it.
So I was like, how do I have a better, healthier relationship with the idea of money when I receive it, when I spend it, when I give it, all these different things. It was very messy for me.
I learned how to make it, but I almost felt trapped by it still. I still felt like I was living in kind of an anxiety, a stress, an emotional like scarcity around it, even though

I have. how to make it, but I almost felt trapped by it still.
I still felt like I was living in kind of an anxiety, a stress, an emotional like scarcity around it, even though I had a lot of it in the bank. So what made it easy? Well, getting in touch with my feelings is as weird as that sounds, but kind of going back into the past and assessing my money story.
And I grew up at a time in the 80s when my parents didn't have a lot. They got married very young.
They worked very hard trying to make ends meet. Four kids.
I was the youngest. And essentially, I didn't have a good belief system around money.
And there was different moments and memories that I created meaning around these money stories that was like, okay, I'm not good at making it. I don't understand it.
There's a lot of stress involved around money with my parents. It starts to feel like it's for someone else.
Yeah. And it was like scary.
And I was like, how can I receive it if I don't understand it? And as I started making it, it was out of survival to get off my sister's couch. I was living on her couch for about a year and a half when I was 23 to 25.
And I just wanted to feel like I could take care of my own life. And so I started finding many mentors, started watching some of your stuff, learning from people locally in Ohio.
And I started making it, but I didn't feel safe with it. And I hoarded it.
So I was like, what's the point of all this money if I still don't feel good? If I still feel like something's off inside of me. And so it's really been a journey over the last decade of, okay, I've got financial peace, but I have a lack of emotional peace still.
And that feels really scary. Yeah, and the tricky thing is we live in a world where they say, if you just have success and money, everything's fine.
Yeah, money. And it was the absolute opposite.
That's a lie. Yeah, that's a lie.
Money didn't solve my problems. That's right, yeah.
It helped me have an apartment to live in and buy things, but it didn't make me feel emotionally safe. Yep.
And so I was like, what's the point of all this then if I can't feel safe with the money I have? And I also feel like it's triggering so much more of my, what do we want to call it, wounds or scarcity where I felt like people were taking advantage of me and they were hurting me. They just wanted to be around me because I was making money.
So I felt unvalued even with the money I had. I was like, what's the point of all of this? Yep.
Totally. Getting to that.
So that's the approach of this conversation. So you just cycled back through each one of those things, touched them and went, okay, I'm going to own this so that it doesn't own me.
Exactly, because every time someone poked my emotional wounds, I would react in bigger

ways. And I think the money just made me feel even more scarce around it.
So it was really going back into the money story and healing a lot of these parts of me where I felt broken and feeling more emotionally whole. So again, I could truly have the financial piece.
And I think it's such a great example when we say money money is a magnifying glass. We've been saying that for years and that's it, right? Where you're like, all of this was in you, in all of us.
And then when you start to win with money, you are magnified, the good and the bad of us. And if you don't go back to those bad parts, which are coming out as stress, coming out as anxiety, all of that.
Yeah. It's like, what am I doing? Like I was almost better off without all this.
And you know what I mean? And it's like i what do i do because that's where i've seen a lot of people kind of savage the money they have because they're like it didn't solve the problem let me spend it all and just go back to being broke yeah yeah or spend it on vices to medicate or whatever yeah numb the emotions that's right and now dave's favorite thing to talk about is feelings here yes yes so it's really getting to a place i had interviewed dave earlier and we had a joke about feelings but but it's really getting, for me, it was getting to a place. I just want to feel more at peace and having financial peace as one part of the picture, but it amplified my lack of inner peace.
Yeah. And that has to affect relationships too.
Like you said, somebody's out to get it or I'm being looked at as a transaction here. Yes.
And at the first time I met you, you're now happily married. Yes.
When I first met you many years ago, you were a single guy. It had to affect the dating relationships.
Everything. It affected all my relationships, business partnerships, friends, family.
I had some stuff with family I had to deal with because now I'm the youngest and I'm making the most. And it felt, I just didn't know how to create boundaries.
I didn't know how to have courageous conversations. I didn't want to upset people.
I wanted everyone to like me. So let me just give them what everyone's asking for.
But then I feel taken advantage of. Now I resent people.
Now I resent. All these emotions were swirling around the center of money.
How did the spiritual part of you kind of weave into some of this too? Because that was a big part of your story. For me, it was, you know, getting, I really appreciate every time I get to talk to you, Dave, because I feel like I get to ask you these questions every now and then, and I don't hear you talk about them that much.
And I'm always like, I'm worried about asking a weird question to Dave around spirituality or relationships or feelings, but I get so much value out of it. So I appreciate you for sharing these things and opening up when I talk to you about it.
But for me, I got to a place where I was always making more money in my business. And then one year I made less.
And I remember the last time I talked to you, you were like, we made less in the last year. It was still a ton of money, but you're like, it wasn't as much as the year before.
And when that happened to me, it kind of broke me psychologically. I mean, it didn't ruin my life, but I was like, I was trying to grasp like air because I couldn't control me not making more money this year or something.
Like some things happened, shifts, and it messed with me. And I had to get to a place of really connecting more with God and faith that like money's going to come and money's going to go.
Whether I get way more money this year or next year, I'm going to be okay. If I make less, I'm going to be okay.
As long as I live in the values that you guys talk about, which is we're here to serve. I'm going to keep showing up and giving my best.
I'm going to live with generosity. And I'm also to keep reflecting on how I can improve and shift things and not just be a victim to what's happening, make decisions, make changes.
Right. But I'm here to serve.
And I think living in that state. That sets you free.
I feel emotionally free. Because it's other-centered rather than self-centered.
100%. And all that crap is self-centered that you were dealing with before.
And I was ego-driven. Exactly.
Not always, but it was like, I need to make more and it needs to look good. And what if the followers are down and what if the rate? Totally.
And I just said, screw all that. Let me serve.
Let me add value, and good things are going to happen. Which goes such against the grain, too, of the applause of the world, right? And so some people are out there, and they're like, this may not be what you're specifically talking about, but it's like, well, I want the nice car to feel like I'm successful.
You can plug in any element of this, and you're fighting against the world for what the world applauses versus what's really true inner peace, and god's applause yeah yeah make money easy is the new book by our friend lewis house recommend you pick it up immediately you'll notice it by the uh the little kind of dull green cover not a little bright got a battery in the back i love the color it's excellent makes it Jump off the shelf. Good marketing, brother.
Good marketing. Well done.
So we say money is 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge. And that really, those behaviors almost flow out of the piece that you're talking about.
Or don't flow out of the piece you're talking about. So it's not really managing the behaviors.
It's managing the emotional state to get to the behaviors. And you talk about this.
Our beliefs influence our behavior. So if we believe we're not worthy, we're probably going to not create an experience or the working environment or opportunities that add more to our life.
If we believe we're unworthy of love or if we believe we're worthy, then we're going to step into things naturally and behave in accordance and alignment with that belief. Lewis Howes, make money easy, create financial freedom, and live a richer life.
Highly recommend it. Recommend this guy.
Be sure and check out his show, The School of Greatness. You'll love it.
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Listen guys, I've heard just about every excuse for why folks think they can't get ahead with money. So let's go ahead and settle this right now.

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Might not be in all states.

Today's question comes from Kayla in Montana.

I want a new car.

My husband lives and breathes by Dave's rules,

and he thinks we can't afford one. We're both 35 years old and together bring home $700,000.
Our only debt we have is our $600,000 mortgage on our home and a $65,000 rental home. Our net worth is close to $1 million.
We have two young daughters and plan to add to our family soon. So I want to save up and buy a new midsize SUV this year.
My husband wants to purchase a used full-size SUV and keep it for a minimum of seven years. Which one of us is correct? I don't understand.
My husband wants to purchase a used and keep it for a minimum of seven years.

Do you get it?

She wants to buy a brand new car.

Oh, buy new.

I hear, I hear.

And he wants to buy a used one and keep it.

Okay, I see, I see.

Yeah.

So the problem here, Kayla, is not the car.

And the problem here is not your husband following the ramsey rules because your husband is not following them the ramsey rules include working with your spouse and being on the same page with your spouse and you kayla have nothing to do with anything here you just stand back and ask for stuff and he decides if he's going to give it or not that is not a ramsey rule instead you should be like a grown-up person not a child wanting something from her daddy and be one of the two votes on where this freaking seven hundred thousand dollars goes that is what we. We don't teach what your husband is doing, nor what you are doing.
And so you guys got to get talking about, okay, here's the future I want, and here's the steps it's going to take to get to the future. Yeah, and how do we get there? How does a car car purchase fit in that future but you sound like a 16 year old having a hissy fit because your daddy won't buy you a car and that's just ridiculous that's not the position you should be in as the wife no but she may feel on the other end of the coin frustrated if they're making there's a serious amount of pouting in this no but if they make if they make seven hundred thousand dollars a year they make plenty of money that's what i'm saying and she doesn't she's like hey can we spend 50 grand on an suv and he's like nope nope nope nope and she's like they're not but they're they're not this is again this is like daddy we got the money no daddy's saying no we don't have the money i follow dave well you don't follow dave because you don't treat your wife like a 16 year old child yeah your wife is a full-grown woman and stuff okay so what if they so she needs to be involved in the discussion okay so if they're both the thing is positioned wrong okay that's the first okay that's my point okay so what if they're both adults and they're both talking about it and she's like listen like, listen, we have plenty of money.
We can do this. Our net worth is.

What we teach is, and what I lived with my wife who had a vote, and I had a vote, what

you have lived with your husband who had a vote, and you had a vote, was that we don't

buy a brand new vehicle because they go down in value, regardless of your income, until

you have a million dollar net worth.

And you, darling, don't have a million dollar net worth.

And so, no, I would not buy a house. I would buy a two-year-old SUV.
Yes. And I don't think you have to keep it seven years.
I don't care how long you keep it. But you buy used cars and let someone else take the butt kicking on the depreciation.
You don't spend money on things that go down in value like a rock while you're trying to get out of debt and build wealth, even if you have a $700,000 because they do have a $600,000 mortgage right so I'm like there's like there's something wrong where the heck is all this money going right right I mean my gosh you ought to be able write a check by that SUV and not even have this discussion and pay off the rental house pay off the rental house and get your house paid off and live on a hundred thousand one year what the flip are are you people doing? I mean, there's money going out of here like you guys are in Congress. So, yeah, and, you know, but the immaturity in this is just dripping.
Yeah, that's fair. So the positioning of it is wrong.
So you guys need to be like we're both going to sit down. We're both going to say, okay, this is the principles we're going to use in our house.

And based on those principles, we are going to make these decisions together. And that's not him dictating that to you or you dictating it to him.
This is we're going to decide where we're going. And if you want to follow the Ramsey rules, it would be, I don't know that Ramsey has rules.
If you want to follow the processes that we teach that have caused people to build wealth it is two grown-ups working together toward an agreed goal and the shortest possible distance between here and that goal two grown-ups now they'll come at it from different angles we can have discussions based on our different personality styles or different histories we can have all kinds of discussions here but it's never uh i want a car and davesey. My husband's a Dave Ramsey nut, and he won't buy me a car.
And that's exactly the way this sounds. I think you're offended that she's.
No, I mean, it's just. I'm kidding.
No, I'm kidding. I'm not offended at all.
I know. But you're right.
And I think the frustration comes from when we've talked to so many married couples the positioning well that and it it reveals the state of the marriage and probably how it is and we and you care more about their marriage in that sense you as people need to become healthier and these decisions coming out of that become way more peaceful and you know more mature if you want to get really tacky i could start guessing how he makes 700 a year that causes him to be the daddy what i could do that and i probably would be right but i won't that's tacky so i think i know what he does for a living and uh that like a whole life no no no no no he's he's in an industry where he's god and he's used to being in charge oh and he makes a ton of money and he's used to telling people what to do all day long and his wife is on the list of people he tells what to do and uh and so she's adopted the position of kid rather than wife and that's where the seven assuming he makes all the 700k i got a feeling she doesn't make hardly any of the 700k or she'd be raising up even heavier yeah yeah i don't know if she made the 700k we might not have got the email so that in the way this thing's positioned and that so this is the dynamic we're talking about why are we covering this and why are we making poking such holes in it is because in all the millionaires we've studied, the data very clear 80 plus percent of them have a solid marriage relationship where the two of them are both aligned on the goals and the process to get there not you know and have the guy the guy's not like well my wife won't give me any money i work all day but she and she treats him like he's 15 years old he brings a check home and gives it to mama and mama don't take care of him and you know we don't hear that from the millionaires or the or the other or the vice versa which is this one yeah the dictator you know the home yeah yeah and that we don't this model right here of relationship does not the data does not bode well for this model. It says you're not going to do well.
I don't even care if you make 600K. You cannot out earn your stupidity.
I've tried it. So that doesn't work.
Money is such a reflection, though. It's kind of what we're talking about with Lewis in the last segment.
It's a reflection so much of who you are and your character and the health of you, right? And money either magnifies those healthy versions of you or it magnifies the unhealthy broken sides, which we all have both. Including relationships.
Including the marriage. So him bringing in, or them, she says we bring home together $700,000, so I don't know who brings it home, but the idea that you're making a lot of money is magnifying through a car purchase some of those dysfunctional parts of the marriage.
and and you know looking at that and becoming healthier in that fixes some of this but and i don't want that i guess maybe i did rise up on this i'm thinking about it emotionally uh i don't want any of you using our name or the stuff we teach as a weapon in your house and that that's what's going on here. He lives and breathes by Dave's rules and thinks we can't afford one.
So he's using like, he's like bad guying off of us. Like, well, Dave says you can't do that.
Right. Instead of actually manning up and walking through the concept and getting agreement based on logic,

instead you blame it on somebody off in the podcast land.

And that's complete cowardice.

You know, so yeah, quit using my name as a weapon.

Pisses me off.

This is the Ramsey Show.

I knew that was in there.

Hey guys, George Camel here.

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Go to RamseySolutions.com slash insurance, RamseySolutions.com slash insurance. Bob is with us in Pennsylvania.
Hey, Bob, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Good afternoon, Dave.
Thanks for taking my call. Sure.
What's up? I want to preface my question by saying thank you. Hey, Bob, welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Good afternoon, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.
Sure. What's up? I want to preface my question by saying thank you for giving us the tools to be financially successful.
Cool. We've been drinking the Kool-Aid for six years, and life is way different today than it was.
Well, thank you, sir. I'm glad.
Thank you. That being said, I'm still paying for some of the sins of the past

we are co-signed on five private student loans for two of our children to the tune of 37.5 total struggling 37.5 each or total total okay okay about passed out okay they are struggling financially, and some months we're co-signed, so we've signed up for it. We have to make some payments on these loans.
We have $500 a month in our budget. We don't ever exceed that, but we use it most months.
So my question is, we're in Baby Step 6, fully funded emergency fund. Do we back up the Baby Step 2 and pay these off? I don't really want to give them a free pass.
Or do we continue to just use our monthly budget to make the process continue? How many kids? We have three.

Two of them are involved in this process.

Child number one, his loans are done.

Okay.

And what do you guys make?

What's your household income?

$150.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, I don't want to give them a free pass, but when you co-signed, you did that. Free pass is already out the door.
Okay. Um, I wish they had, uh, gone out and built careers based on their education enough to pay $37,000,

which is not like the largest number I've ever heard. It would be like $15, $20,000 each if they were spending it.

I wish that really should be very reachable.

So I'm trying to think what I would do.

How old are these two?

32 and 26. And they each have about half of it.
I'm hesitant to try to teach someone that old a lesson, even if it's my kid. You know what I'm saying? And so, you know, if this was a younger, a little fresher,

I might say, okay, I'm going to – 22 or something.

I may pay it off, but I'm going to weave into that some kind of thing

where they pay it back or something like that.

But I think this is already way down the river, it feels like.

These kids have been out of school a long time, right? Well, the 32-year-old is one semester away from finishing his doctorate, so he's really been a student for a while. In what? The young music.
in music.

What's he planning on doing with it, Bob?

Do you know? Professor. His goal was to be a professor, and I think he got very close to the end and decided that, I don't know that I want to do that, and he kind of just bailed.
There's no use for a Ph.D. in music then.
I mean, the knowledge base you got could be useful in the music world, but the Ph.D. is not necessary.
It's not an entry barrier. Wow.
Yeah, it's a tough call. Yeah, it is.
I'm struggling with it a little bit, and what i'm trying to have go through my head is you know rachel's in her 30s if this was me am i going to just pay this and go okay it's my fault my mistake she ain't getting around to it by now i'm probably not going to um i need to get this off my plate for my sake and that's what's running through my head head. I think you need to clear it for your sake.
Even though I'm pretty aggravated at these two, I wish they had done better. I'm not really yell at them, but I'm mildly aggravated, like $37,000 worth.
And so, you know, but I think for your sake, your wife's sake, this is going to haunt you and nag at you and nip at your heels and bite you every three months. You've got to make a payment and all that, and you've got a good income.
I would probably go back to beans and rice and just clear this like in a year and get it out of my life and not worry about it. And then let the chips fall where they fall.
And if the kids wake up one day and send you a check, I'd cash it. But if they don't and not gonna worry about it the big deal is not it's not about them it's about you and so i think looking at it through that lens that tells me to pay it so would you dump the emergency fund and start over with how much is it just 30 30 we're a little short 30 yeah yes i would yeah yeah i just start clearing them off and then you got to decide what you know send your children an email or and to follow up with a phone call and go we paid this off not for you but because we wanted it out of our life we feel like you're still responsible for this but you do with that what you want or something like that um but i'm not gonna you know add to a burden or take away a burden from them necessarily and i was gonna say but they need to know it's paid off because they're gonna see the thing has the zero balance so you need to talk about it yeah and then even the strings attached element still affects the relationship right like if you were like i still expect you to pay me back you know what i mean i really wouldn't go into that level i just go you do what you think is right we've paid it off and we didn't pay it off for you we paid it off for us that that's the true statement uh because you didn't you didn't pay it off to help them you paid it off because you were stupid and cosign and now you got to clear it me too i did that too okay not with student loans but i've done it with other stuff with other stuff.
So I'm not picking on you. But, man, I'm sorry.
That's a bit of a quandary, though. It's an interesting discussion.
Thanks for having it with us. I think I'm going to approach it through what's good for you and your wife and let the 30-year-olds figure it out.
What was your gut, Bob, you and your wife? Did you guys have a strong opinion or leaning a certain way, either one of you? We've kind of declared war on our mortgage holder, and we're down to $102,000. Oh, man.
Every single dollar's been going to that. Oh.
And so this will put that on hold probably for about a year, because last year we paid almost $32,000 on principal. How old are you guys?

61 and 58.

Yeah, you're going to be there.

You'll be there in a heartbeat.

And this is going to just change because every time this bill comes, you revisit all the emotions.

And if I'm you, I selfishly don't want that anymore.

That's what I mean. It's like a dog biting me once a month.
You know what I'm saying? I absolutely know what you're saying. I'm fighting for you guys, and I think it's just the last thing you do to clean up.
Your kids are just too old to put them in some kind of headlock and teach them a lesson is my opinion um i can't imagine i mean my kids are similar ages and i just can't imagine doing that i can't imagine it working is what i mean i can imagine doing it but i can imagine forcing us into a life lesson yeah yeah. Yeah.
Oh, that's so hard.

I mean, if they're 22, you can sit them down and have a good talking to, you know, a little

come to Jesus meeting, but they're not 22.

And it's just, it is another example, which we have.

Never.

We have a textbook full of these examples of co-signing.

Never co-signing.

But I mean, it's this, and thank God, you know, Bob, they have the money.

We talked to a lot of people that co-sign for a car and they can't even make the payment

nor the person that, you know, had the had the like but but again it's the relational aggravation and strain that debt causes on people and it's and it's not worth it and i know he said they're still paying for it's kind of like almost the stupid tax idea hell by the way junior went on and worked on his phd while he didn't pay the loan yeah even paying for that so oh my gosh so uh pretty inconsiderate a mom and dad when your job was to clear the loan yeah you're not even making your payments on time you're 33 freaking years old yeah while you're working on a PhD that uh marketplace value if you're not going to be a professor is not probably wasn't worth what you paid for it so wow unbelievable thanks for

the call bob professor it'll come back oh man i'm sorry but thanks for having the discussion with

us i think you guys are fine you're still going to be multi-millionaires you're still going to

get your house paid off and you won't have the next three years of aggravation and that's good

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