What if You Could Build a Life That Didn’t Exhaust You?

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people with their money, with their mental and emotional health, with their work, with their marriages, with their lives. I'm John Deloney, joined by my great friend, George Campbell.
We are taking your calls live at 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225 on this incredible, this beautiful, cold Nashville day.
Let's go out to Sheridan, Wyoming and talk to Brett. What's up, Brett? Hey, am I coming through? Yeah, you are coming through loud and clear, brother.
What's up? Awesome. So I'm 24.
I just took a new job. And so after expenses and rent and all that good stuff, I have about $1,300 each month left to play with, give or take.
I currently have $30,000 in student loans, but I do have $1,000 already saved up. And I'm hoping in the near future that I can buy a house here.
And I was just curious, it's like what money markets or mutual funds that you guys would, excuse me, sorry. I'm curious as to like what kind of ways I should invest my money in to make this dream a reality, to be debt-free and to hopefully be a homeowner here soon.
Love it. Well, I'll tell you this, right now, you should be investing in your freedom.
And that means getting out of debt as fast as possible, which then means the home dream needs to take a back seat for now. So that $1,300 extra, I don't think it's play money.
I think it's get out of debt money. And we'll get to investing soon enough because you got $30,000 in debt.
What do you make? I make about $47,000, $48,000 a year. Okay, cool.
So basic napkin math says you got $30,000 in debt. You're adding $,300 bucks on top of your minimum debt payment?

So that 1,300 is just what I have left over after all of my...

Basic bills. So you still got to make your student loan payment in that?

Yeah. No, my student loan payment is already made.
That 1,300 is like once every bit of like my rent,

Wi-Fi, groceries, gas, all that is paid for. Okay.
So you're going to be out of debt at this rate in about a year and a half. Okay.
I like to go to that. And so, I mean, that's just if you do $1,300.
If you can do $1,500, we'll clean it up faster. So that would be my challenge to you is how much faster can we get rid of this debt to get the fully funded emergency fund to then begin saving up the down payment.
And if I'm in your shoes, if that down payment is going to be, you know, let's say you're going to save up for two years, I wouldn't put it in the market. There's too much risk there.
I would put it in a high yield savings account. Okay.
How old are you, Brett? I'm 24 years old. What's your work that you do? I'm like a lower level project manager.
Okay. I'm telling you this 20 years older than you.
Okay. I'm trying to think of something cool that happened to me when I was 24.
I got married when I was 24. So that was pretty cool.
But before that, I can't remember. I can't even remember a dinner I went to.
I'm sure I did, or a concert I saw. I'm sure I did.
I don't remember it. If you will do something for your 25-year-old self, if you would go get a weekend job, or if you would leave your job and be exhausted and go throw boxes at Walmart from 6 p.m.
until midnight, and you did that for six months,

you will owe nobody any money at the age of 24 or 25.

Yeah, see, I was considering getting another job.

I've been looking around town for part-time work,

either something like early morning.

I know some of the local gyms here are looking for some morning work,

or at night, too.

So there's options here that I was considering. Dude, if you will do that, 25-year-old you will be free forever.
Forever. And I tell 20-year-olds all the time, work like crazy in your 20s.
The work you put in in your 20s pays dividends in your 40s. You have precious resources at that age, which is time and energy.
Yes. And a strange, like superhuman way to rehabilitate yourself.
I don't understand how 20-year-olds' knees don't hurt like mine do, but they just don't. It's awesome.
I mean, mine can get pretty sore sometimes too, I guess. All right.
Well, wait till you're 40, bro. You think they do.
But anyway, dude, yes, work three jobs, work four jobs. Give yourself a bananas challenge.
George just laid the math out. You can be debt free in 12 months.
Just right now with nothing changing. Do the math and see what it would take to be done in six months.
Challenge yourself. You're 24 years old.
And everyone, you'll know you're doing it right when everyone around you is like, you're crazy. You need to rest.
Honey, I'm worried about you. Yes, perfect.
But then when you hit that 25, exhale, relax.

Like it'd be amazing.

And here's what I promise you is going to happen.

You're going to find some synergy at your work too.

People are going to ask you like, man, you're like getting stuff done.

Hey, I want you to come help me on this project.

Like it just has a leveling effect that levels up every part of your life in a really strange, bizarre way, but it's pretty cool.

Are you in?

Am I in?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

I'm in.

I love talking to 24, 25-year-olds who are like, dude, I'm ready to burn the ships.

Let's go do it.

So good for you, brother.

There you go.

That's awesome.

I'm ready to get rid of this stuff because they said I want to live the American dream

best I can.

Excellent. Man, at Brett's age, I to live the American dream best I can.
Excellent.

At Brett's age, I didn't make as much and I had more debt.

And I did in 18 months.

So that tells me Brett's going to do it even faster and he's going to be going places

because I was still a knucklehead at that age.

I thought the American dream when I was 24 was a bigger truck.

I had no idea.

So good on you, brother.

Good on you.

All right, let's go to Justin in in seattle home of allison chains what's

up justin are you with us john uh you just broke up a bit oh what's up brother i'm here i think you're breaking up we got crystal clear signal man what's up all right uh i'm 23 years old. My wife is also 22, and we're over here, and we got a mortgage that we just bought on the house, like, you know, $340,000 in February.
We should have, you know, not have bought this house, but we are now in it, and now we have also car loans. So I'm calling out of getting a second opinion on some debts.

How much money do you make, Justin? How much money do you make?

Right now, $60,000. You have car loans, a $340,000 house note, and how much other debt do you have? uh so 25 000 in car loans about three thousand five hundred dollars of that 25 000 dollars could

be refunded in a warranty on the car that we just bought. Good.
Gets us down to $22,000. Okay, what else? What other debt? So that's all the debt.
That's all of our debt is our house and the $25,000 cars. And is your wife working outside the home? No, not currently.
She's trying to do some babysitting on the side because we just had a baby son. Fun.
Congrats. Thank you.
But it's not fun because you're stressed and broke. Not fun.
Diapers are $1,000. They didn't tell you that, did they, Justin? What's that? Diapers cost $1,000 a piece.
They're made of gold, I think. No, they didn't.
Costco runs definitely helped, though. Hey, all right.
So how can we help today? We're right up against the clock, Justin, so get right to your question, brother. I have about $3,500 in a Roth IRA that I can take out in contributions and put towards this debt.
I also have bonuses that I get each year, about $6,000. I would use the bonuses toward the debt.
I wouldn't touch the Roth IRA, and I would consider selling the car. If you guys are really up against this and that mortgage is more than like 40, 50% of your take-home pay, this is an on-fire situation.
You got to get your income up. You got to sell the car and downgrade.
And long-term, you might decide we can't stay in this house. And she's probably going to have to get a job.
And so not just fiddle around the edges with babysitting, but she's going to have to open a babysitting shop in her house because y'all need income. This is the Ramsey Show.
We'll be right back. Hey, you guys.
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I'm John Deloney, joined by George Camel. 888-825-5225.
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What's up, Sam? Hey, how you guys doing? We're rocking on to the break of dawn, brother. What are you up to? Oh man, let me tell you.
The last few years of my life has been, some people would call it easy street. I would have agreed with you if you told me 10 years ago, but now I'm struggling to find purpose.
I'm struggling with being fulfilled. What does easy street mean? Well, I was in the military.
I did eight years in the U.S. Navy, and I came home, got a four-year degree.
And I made the decision, I was like, okay, if I meet my eventual wife while I'm in college, then I'll settle down, I'll start a family. If I don't, I'll go back into the service as an officer.
And you wouldn't say just have it. The Lord blessed me, and I found my wife, and we've been married now for six years.
She is a family medicine physician and board-certified surgical obstetrician, so she makes all the money, and we have three beautiful babies. I love my babies.
I love them so much. But the Bible makes it very clear it is not good for man not to work, and I feel like the pressure is on, even though I don't need it for financial purposes.
I just feel like I'm not doing anything of value, which I know is a lie. Raising my kids is the greatest value that I can have as a human being because they're going to leave the most lasting impact.
Money's only going to go so far, but my kids can make a lasting impact on their communities. But I just don't see the return on investment right now.
And that's where I'm struggling. So, man, if you were here, if you and I were just sitting, if we met up in Lubbock and we were just sitting down in the shadow of the stadium having a drink, I would get up right now and I'd walk around the table and I'd give you a hug.
Here's why. For some reason, you believe that your value is economic.
Like, that's it. And for some reason, you have backed yourself into this corner of either or.
And none of us make good choices when it's either I got to stay home with the kids or I've got to leave everything and go do like you have backed yourself into an either or you're going crazy so take all clear the clear the deck clear the whole table you can snap your fingers you got a four-year degree you got a you got you got um someone that you says a great wife who's also super talented and her talent actually makes a whole bunch of money my wife was incredibly talented, but she was a school teacher. Right? So very different.
But your super talented wife makes a jillion bucks. Forget all of that.
What do you want to do? Well, I'd say that's the part of this equation that makes me feel kind of overwhelmed. You know, like, I'm an experienced an experienced writer obviously my four-year degree was in network engineering hold on sam sam i don't care any about that crap you're saying what do you want to do we're impressed by your linkedin i promise yeah it looks great you want to do with your life i what what i what i want to do honestly is i want to i want to get into it i want to i want to grab that bull by the horns and i I want to take you.
I want to do, honestly, is I want to get into IT. I want to grab that bull by the horns, and I want to take it for a ride.
Which is for your degree in? Network administration. Why are you not working in IT? I was, but then when my wife said, Sam, why aren't you working in IT? We didn't have child care until like three months ago.
And I've been trying to fail application after application, and I'm not getting emails or phone calls back. And it's really starting to kill my drive.
Okay. So what you're finding out is you want to do a thing, and the road you're trying to take isn't working.
Cool. Can you find some folks at your local church there or over at WT and go sit there and have coffee with them and ask them about IT opportunities in Amarillo, Texas? I could probably talk to someone for sure.
I don't know who that someone would be, but I could start asking questions. All you want to do is take someone to coffee.
Do you know anyone anyone that works in it even facebook friends i gave up facebook like 10 years ago okay well you need to find some people who are in that field bro you got people you got people you're in the service with that are out of scattered across the country they are actually and i tried getting help there and uh they tried to help me get jobs but even even there i i came short but i have admittedly i have not dug in i haven't dug as deeply locally as i as i probably could have and i'm not even from here that's part of my hesitation i'm like they're gonna be like who's this guy there's nobody i don't know who he is no they're not that's that's bull crap that's a story you're telling yourself and again it goes back to you that's why i would have come around the table and the table and hugged you because the cancer here is not that you haven't found an IT job. The cancer here is you have lost purpose.
You think when you checked out of the military and married an amazing woman that there was a period at the end of your sentence, and that's wrong. It's not true.
It's a lie. And so when you go looking for a job, you're going looking for a job with one foot.
You're just sending out a bunch of LinkedIn profiles and that's not how people get jobs. And you also, I know, you had eight years in the service.
You somehow convinced an amazing physician to marry you. And by the way, you didn't convince her.
You're probably a pretty amazing guy. You went and knocked out a four-year degree when you got home.
You've got all of these qualifiers that tell me that you're a hardworking, good man. The only person in your world who doesn't believe that is you.
You're not the first person that's revealed that to me. Okay, but here's the thing.
You can't manifest that belief. You have to go,

you have to stand on a series of concrete steps that can only be stood on if you take action.

Okay, so what, uh, so, so this is you going to Sunday school this weekend and you asking for prayer requests in your Sunday school class and say, Hey, I'm a military veteran. I've got, I really want to get into IT work.
I don't even know where to start. If anyone has anybody, I would really be grateful.
I would love to take someone to coffee and learn about what's going on here in Amarillo, Texas. Or if anyone has a connection down in the multiple small startups that go on in Lubbock, Texas, I want a connection there.
And I guarantee you somebody will call you. We'll talk to you after class.
Go ahead, George. And just do your homework and research and go, what are all the jobs that I really want? What are they saying must be true for me to get this job? Okay, let me make sure I have that so that when I do show up for the interview, it's not a dud.
I know exactly what they're looking for. I've done my homework.
I know the company. I know the mission.
I know the skill set needed. And then on top of in person, go scour the subreddit threads for IT and see what people are doing, how they got the job they're doing.
Do they enjoy what they're doing? You've got a lot of homework to do. And I think that will get you get the fuel going again, get the fire lit.
Do you have a do you have any men there in Amarillo that you hang out with regularly? No, that's that's part of my problem. We moved here five years ago and I never really kind of ingratiated myself in the social circles.
Okay, that starts today. The most common conversation I have with former veterans is you more than anyone else on planet earth.
Veterans know more than anything what it's like to be in a relationship with somebody stand shoulder to shoulder with somebody who will die for you and it's almost impossible then to come home to unhook from that level of community and connection and come home and sit next to some ned flanders in a coffee shop who's like you know it's really hot and you're like dude shut. I know what real connected friendship looks like.
And what veteran after veteran after veteran that I talked to does, they just circle up and they stay inside their house. And Netflix says, hey, I got the next show for you.
Just stay there. And so your mission right now, brother, is to go find a group of men you can go do something with.
Go mule deer hunting. Go hiking out in the canyons.
Go do some stuff with other guys. And they're going to say no.
You're going to ask again. And they're going to say no.
You're going to ask again. You're going to ask again.
You're going to find a small little gang out there. Even if you can find some folks who used to be in the services and now they're retired out to West Texas.
Great, man. But your mission is to go find a group of men, one, two, five, ten, I don't care, who will do life with you.
And I promise you, there will be connections into IT. Thanks for the call, my brother.
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Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by George Camel.
Let's go out to Panama City, Florida and talk to the great and powerful Jason. What's up, Jason? Hey, how are you doing? We're just partying, brother.
What's up, man? So my question is that I have a little bit of money for my inheritance, and I'm wondering if right now is the right time to invest or if I should wait a little bit for the economy to do its thing. What does that mean? What does do its thing mean? It's been doing its thing.
Well, it's low, and right now it's starting to pick up. What economy do you live in, brother? We're at record highs every day.
Are you waiting for it to crash and then get in? Well, you know, I don't know what's going to happen with the whole election. It happened.
It happened. With it happening, but I'm worried that it—I've already invested some money for my kids okay for my inheritance in the trust fund so they're taking care of as far as them um but i'm i'm concerned about my me and my wife's retirement how much money did you get in an inheritance uh i got about a hundred thousand dollars who passed away um and i put about i, I used 40,000 to pay off all my debt.
That was the first thing I did. I paid off all my debt.
Wonderful. Good for you.
Um, so, and then I had, um, of course I took 20,000 for my kids and I put a $10,000 into, um, diversified portfolios, um, with a stockbroker, uh, and, and, and then tied a trust to it so that that's their inheritance when if something were to happen to me and my wife, specifically because I have a three-year-old son who's special needs. Do you have life insurance? So I wanted to make sure that he was taken care of if something were to happen.
Hey, Jason, Jason, Jason. Yes.
Do you have life insurance? I do. How much? I have life insurance on myself, my wife, and both my kids.
Okay. Why do you need life insurance on your kids? Just in case.
I mean, something happens to them. I mean, it's never a bad idea that my mother had life insurance on me because both of my brothers passed away.
One when he was six and one when he was 25. And it hit my family hard financially, so my mother took life insurance out on me in case something were to happen to me.
That way the funeral could be paid for. You've had a lot hit you in your lifetime, a lot of trauma.
I'm the last of my family, so my father, my mother, my mother died October 1st, and that's how I got my's how i got my inheritance i'm sorry but here's the deal you've been making a lot of decisions out of fear i can tell there's a lot of anxiousness about but what if it's not enough and what i need to take care of and i want you to just breathe exhale and slow down you're gonna be okay you are so far beyond what most people couldn't even the word trust. And you've got it set up for your kids already.
So let me just give you some facts to slow it, let you breathe when it comes to the economy. Under President Trump's last presidency, the stock market was up 53%.
Three and a half years into his presidency, it was up 53%. Under Joe Biden's presidency, three and a half years in, it was up 50%.
So basic math says over seven year period, the stock market went up 103%. It doubled.
Correct? Right. And I'm not a guru.
I don't have a crystal ball. My guess is we're going to see the same thing happen over the next seven years.
We're going to see about 100% return. And I think it's going to go half.
I think it's going to be worse than that. And you know what? What's fun about this is- You still win.
It doesn't matter. Like me sitting here trying to predict it, George- We don't time the market.
And that's what you're trying to do right now is go, well, I want to wait till the right time. I want to wait for a crash to invest.
I wouldn't wait. I would invest now.
And what you'll see is over time, the sooner you invest, the more money you're going to have later, the more time compound growth has to work its magic. And so I would, I don't know what headline you're looking at or what stock you're looking at, but I'm looking at the S&P 500, the largest 500 companies that largely represent the overall U.S.
economy. And that's, you know, when you invest in a mutual fund, that's largely what you're investing in as well.
The top companies. Can I give you a different perspective, Jason? Well, I mean, what I was worried about was rather than putting it in the stock market, should I go into CDs that are a little bit more secure but with less interest? If you want to lose money, yeah, you'll lose money against inflation.
Can I throw something else at you, Jason? Something totally different? You had $100,000 and you paid $40,000 of your debt off, which left you with $60,000. You took $20,000 and created a trust for your kids, especially a special needs trust for your three-year-old, right? So that leaves you with $40,000.
Do you and your wife have a house? Our house was a gift from my father-in-law. It's paid off.
Okay, so you have a paid-off home. Yes.
You have an emergency fund. Is this, you have an emergency fund where you are now your own bank? I don't, no, I, I, um, we only make about 30, $37,000 a year.
Cause I'm a stay at home dad. I'm a caregiver for my son.
Well, listen to me. So I don't really work.
You now have $40,000. I want you to put it in a high yield savings account.
And now you have six months. If anything ever happens, you've got six months of, of taxes, bills, groceries in an account that you never have to borrow money again.
And I want you to look at what you're actually solving for. What you are trying to solve for is you're trying to look at a crystal ball and see what's going to happen in 35 years because you're still in the backdraft of the pain of losing your mom, of losing your brothers, losing your dad.
The one thing you have never had in your home is peace. And instead of trying to solve for the next calamity coming, which by the way, they're going to keep coming.
That's just life and it sucks. It is.
I want you to solve for peace so that when those things come, you don't have a care in the world.

You can just focus on being sad, on grieving.

Because right now you are in a financial position that very, very few Americans are in.

And that is you don't owe anybody anything.

You have a paid for house.

You now have six to eight months of cash in the bank that's just yours.

Period.

Nobody can take your house away.

Nobody can take food off your table.

You see what kind of position you're in?

Right.

That is peace, homie.

I would solve for peace.

And your main breadwinner in your house makes $37,000. That's not going to be enough money over the longterm.
You're all going to have to figure that out. But right now y'all are safe.
Okay. Do you get what I'm, you get what I'm getting at? Yeah.
I would not invest any of this extra money. That's just me.
My, my, my, my, the main breadwinner isn't making enough. Um, and I, I run my own small business selling stuff at farmer's markets to try to make extra money.
But in three and a half years, I only make about $10,000 a year. Okay, so let's quit that job.
I'm literally just dumping it into, re-into the company. I don't even pay myself.
Yeah, so it's been a hobby and we're going to stop that now. You're tired.
I can hear it on you. You're exhausted.
You're playing whack-a-mole with the next anxious thing that pops up. Let's just stop.
Let's just put the, stop putting quarters in the machine and quit playing. Does that sound, if you hear my voice, does that sound good? We, yeah.
I mean, I'm just, I'm, I'm, it's, it's, it's, I do a lot. I know.
I mean, I haven't, be honest with you, I haven't grieved for my mother because much to do. I know you do.
I have too much to do. I know, but here's the thing.
Your body's grieving whether you stop and do it or not. So, I never stop, man.
I'm going nonstop. I forgot what to do.
And as my friend N. Simpkins says, if busyness is your drug, rest will feel like stress.
And right now you're medicating with whack-a-mole.

You're medicating with busy.

Stop.

Tonight, it's the weekend.

You're about to come up on Thanksgiving for the first time without your mom.

I want you to write mom a letter tonight.

And I want you to tell your mom how much you miss her.

And I want you to tell your mom in that letter what kind of dad you're going to be, what kind of provider you're going to be, and how you're going to give peace to her grandkids that she'll never get to meet. Okay? You're burning your hole through your home right now with your anxiousness.
I want you to relax. You're safe right now.
You got a paid for house. You got 40 grand in the bank.
You have a small account set up for your kid's future, man. You got life insurance on everybody.
You're so far ahead of the game, my man. Now you got to turn and sit and just exhale in the sadness.
And that's part of the deal. We got to make Jason well again.
And then this whole thing will take care of itself. And then'll have to deal with the money.
We'll have to deal with, you know, how are we going to, like, we don't make enough money to eat and what job am I going to do? Am I going to go back to school? We can figure all that out. But right now, we're going to exhale.
We're safe. We're going to grieve mom.
And when the new year rolls around, we're going to figure out what comes next for our family. Thanks for the call, brother.
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The Employee Benefit Research Institute recently did a study asking how many people have a million dollars saved for retirement. According to their research, only 3.2 of Americans have a million dollars or more in their taxed advantage accounts, like a 401k and IRAs.
58% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved in their retirement accounts. Dude, that's dark stuff.
I had no idea it was that bad. 60%.
Six out of 10 Americans basically could do a month and a half in a retirement home. That's it.
As a listener of the Ramsey Show, are you staying on track with the baby steps to reach your financial goals? Here's the deal. Take a quick quiz to check your progress and receive a personalized plan just for you.

Simply head to the show notes, click on the link titled,

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And complete the free quiz.

If you are one of the six out of ten Americans that have less than ten grand,

there is a light for you, but you got to get on it.

Right?

You have to.

You got to begin to act differently.

George, that would freak me out.

That would scare me to death.

Yeah, and people think it's a life sentence.

They think their DNA inherently has this in them

where they go, well, I'm just going to,

I'm a broke person, John.

You can change.

You can just snap your fingers and go,

I don't want to live like this.

I want to change my family tree.

I don't have to retire broke.

And so this quiz will help you start to take the next step,

figure out where you're really at. And if you just look at basic demographic data, this same six out of 10 who have less than 10,000, I'll go as high as 70%, 80% that are fragile.
It's about the same stat that are living paycheck to paycheck. But also everybody knows that they're ringing the bell saying, hey, your Social Security is going to be less than.
Like we're not solvent here in the next 10, 15, 20 years. By 2034, they're going to reduce the benefit by 27%.
And it already wasn't that high. It's a slow car crash coming.
You gotta be your own financial plan. Act today.

Act today. Act today.

Check out the show notes. Are you on track with the baby steps? Complete the free quiz.

Stare down this anxious moment in your

life and begin to do something different.

Let's go out to Stanford, Connecticut

and talk to James.

What is up, James?

Everything above the nose.

John and George, how's this day finding you?

Excellent. The same.
What's up?

Excellent. I need Thank you.
What is up, James? Everything above the nose, John and George. How's this day finding you?

Excellent.

The same.

What's up?

Excellent.

I need some advice.

We're going to tread a little bit carefully because I am trying my best to thread the needle with my mother-in-law. She keeps giving financial and career advice to my family, specifically my wife, that do not work for our family situation and really do not work in 2024.
So James, you do not have a problem with your mother-in-law. She has your proxy war.
You have a problem with your wife. I would think that you are probably correct.
I am worried that my wife is going to listen to her mother. My mother-in-law was able to raise four children in the Midwest through the 80s and 90s without working.
She, I don't believe, has ever worked a 40-hour-a-week job in her life. She, a couple of days, you know, helping out at this nursery school, a couple of days here.
So what do you disagree on with your mother-in-law? What does she want your wife to do? Stay at home? Well, yes, basically all of the advice that she's giving involves things around, we have two children under six, and it's comments along the lines of, you know, when both the kids are out of daycare, my wife works as a daycare teacher as well. When the kids are out of daycare, you can leave that job and just teach music lessons.
I make 60 an hour teaching music lessons, and that's great, but that doesn't make up for the income that we need in order to live where we live. Okay, but here's the thing, James.
I have the greatest mother-in-law who's ever lived. She's amazing.
And I expect my mother-in-law to give the advice that she's fit for how she wants the world to work. I acknowledge that too.
But when it comes to the life that me and my wife have to build for ourselves, she doesn't get a vote. And so your mother-in-law can say whatever she wants.
Good for her. That's awesome.
It's amazing. She's not the problem here.
The problem here is you and your wife are not on the same page. And so it doesn't matter what your mother-in-law is saying.
It matters that you look at your wife and your wife says hey i want to stay home and you say we can't afford to do that or we can but here's what it's going to cost you have to sell the car we can't live in this particular house or in this particular neighborhood yeah and at this point we're having to have this conversation about every six to nine months or so and i've tried showing my wife the math and that it does not work. So James, I'm hearing that your wife wants to stay home.
If she could have it her way, she would stay home. Is that true? I think that she gets the impression that she is working to pay for daycare and nothing else, and that once the children are out of daycare, that that need might disappear.
And then she wants to stay home? I think so. I think part of it may be a byproduct to that's the home environment that she was raised in.
So she has seen it work, but that I don't think is realistic or sustainable. I want you to reverse engineer y'all's dream that you decide together.
And that might mean, okay, here's the math of it. We can't do this right now.
Here's why. But if she says, Hey, my dream is really, I want to stay home.

And you want to support that dream. Then you go, let's do the budget.
What's it going to take?

Okay. I need to do this, this many more music lessons.
We need to do this. We need to cut our

lifestyle by this to get in a financial place in order to do this. So I think she's the wow,

you're the how, and you're going, well, we have no way to actually accomplish this accomplish this but then there's also the part of you don't want this to happen right now so this is really like John said this is between you and your wife she wants to stay home you don't want her to stay home and take the mother-in-law out of it yeah you keep crafting all these stories and imaginations like well it's probably because of this and maybe it doesn't... It doesn't matter.
Just forget all the story parts.

Just sit down and look at the woman that you've made humans with.

Look at the woman that you said, I do, till death do us part.

Like, what kind of life do we want to have?

What do we want this house to feel like when we get home every day?

How much are you making a year, James?

Just you?

Just myself, about $60,000.

And are you doing music lessons full-time?

No, mother-in-law does music lessons.

My wife, no.

She is a music teacher by trade.

Okay, what are you doing full-time?

I am a program director for a medium-sized nonprofit.

Okay.

Okay.

So I think we also need to go, okay, if this is in the future, my wife's staying home,

we're going to be a one-income family, what changes do I need to make?

What education do I need to get? What career moves do I need to make in order to sustain a good life for my family? And that's the part that I think scares you, is this involves you having to change too. Or at least it involves y'all having to have a truthful conversation about, hey, what do I want? What do I really want? I really want to work at this job.
I love my nonprofit work. And I know I make half of what I could make in the for-profit world, but I feel valued and loved here.
And then your wife looks across the table and says, I really want to stay at home with our kids. I see what happens in daycares.
I want to be with our kids. Okay.
Now we have a desires challenge. Both of us are being honest.
Both of us on the table. Now we're just going to look at them at math does not care about what we want.
Math is just math. So let's look at the math problem we have here.
And maybe it's for three years, I'm going to stay at this nonprofit, but I'm going to work an extra job so that you can stay home. Cause I know that's important to you.
And maybe it's, you know what, for three years, I'm going to keep working at daycare. Cause at least I to see the kids half the day.
And we're not netting a lot of new income, but this mission that you're called to at this nonprofit is really important. But now y'all are actually talking substantively.
You're being honest with one another and you're putting your hearts and minds and souls on the table. Like you promised each other you would at your wedding and your mother-in-law doesn't get a vote.
But right now when your wife says,

well, my mom says that I,

that's her knowing if she just tells you what she wants,

you're going to blow by her with a spreadsheet.

And when your wife says something and you go,

well, it's just your mother-in-law speaking,

that's you not being able to say,

I really love my work.

It means something to me.

Do you get what I'm saying?

Let's just take mother-in-law out of the equation. Let's just talk directly with your wife.
Is that possible? Yeah. Yeah.
Most of the time you sound like a, um, actually you sound a lot like me, brother. You sound like a spreadsheet guy.
You can pull up a spreadsheet and you can make the math work, or you can be real honest about it not working. I want you to sit down with your wife and talk about emotions and feelings,

which is maybe a scary thing. Here's how I feel about this.
Here's what I want. I feel like your

mother-in-law has a seat at our table, at dinner table. I feel like your mom has a seat in our

bedroom. I don't want her in here anymore.
I want it to be us. What world do we want to create?

Thank you so much for the call, my brother.

This is The Ramsey Show.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions,

it's The Ramsey Show,

where we help people with their finances

and getting out of debt.

We help people do work they love,

and we help people with their relationships

and mental and emotional health.

I'm John Deloney, joined by George Camel. We are taking your calls live at 888-825-522-522-522-522-522-522-522, what's up? Hi, I have a quick question for you guys and it might not be a short answer, but Let it rip.
it rip. It never is.
Right. So my husband and I have about $3.2 million worth of debt total.
And most of that is in our business, but some of that is personal. And I'm just wondering, is it better to focus on paying personal debts before your business? I have a friend named Denny and he can help you change your identity.
I think he should hook y'all up. Allison, Allison, here's, I hate, I'm like, am I the first one to tell you this? That's all personal debt.
Yeah. You guys signed the dotted line.
There's no, like, magic businessman who gets to take the brunt of this. Yeah, that's fair.
What's this debt? What's the business?

So it's a medical practice that my husband and I own. Okay.
Are y'all physicians? He is. I am more of an office manager.
So how are y'all working through it? Are y'all making enough to pay your bills? Are y'all working to pay this thing off? How's the business working? Like, we got it 100% fully financed from the banks.

So we do have a big loan from them, but we are able to make our payments every month, which is great. What's the debt service on that? I'm just wondering.
What's the number for debt on that? What's your payment every month? On 3.2 million, what are you paying to lenders every month total? Ooh, I think it's around $30K. And what is the practice bringing in between you two and profit? So our profit at the end, like we only owned for about two to three years, but the profit every year that we've gotten is about $250 to $300, and that's after all the bills, all the loans, staff costs, everything is all paid.
So you guys are essentially, your gross income as a household is $250, $300. Yeah.
But then we have to make all the debt payments. But that's your take home? Well, that's not what we take home in our personal account.
We pay ourselves as contractors, and so we only pay ourselves about $12,000 a month. Okay.
Are you saying your profits are after making this $30,000 monthly payment? Yes. Okay.
Okay. So how many debts are there total if you split everything out? So for our business, the reason I split it up is because they're in separate accounts and they're also taxed differently.

But yes, it is all kind of one number.

But for the business, it has $2.6 million worth of debt. And then the rest of our debt is all personal.
Okay, so what is the other $600? So for the personal stuff, so my husband, because he's a physician, he graduated probably five, six years ago from school. He has 300K worth of student loans that he has to pay back still.

Okay. And then we have 20K for our car, 215 for our house that we still owe.

And then I have 4K from my schooling as well.

Okay.

So your question is, what's the best way to tackle all of this?

Yeah, like where do I start?

Is it more important to focus on paying personal stuff off or business stuff?

I know it's best to kind of tackle everything it wants if you can, but...

Well, I mean, just based on the sheer numbers,

if you just do the debt snowball, that would be your student loan first, then the car loan, then his student loans, then the business debt, and then the mortgage would come later. Okay.
So mortgages always last then? The mortgage is a baby step six item. So you can consider this kind of a consumer debt.
I mean, 2.6 million, that's trumping all of these other debts. It's going to take a while to pay this off.
Yeah. So my guess is you probably have the mortgage knocked out by the time the business debt is knocked out.
I'm hoping you guys continue to make more, take home more and use more to tackle the debt. Because right now- Well, that's my question.
You're bringing home 150 grand a year. Are you paying each of you 12 grand,000 a month, or just as a family, y'all are taking home $12,000 a month? As a family.
So we do split income. Okay.
Because I manage the medical practice, and he physically works in the practice. Okay.
So we just pay ourselves $6,000 each. Okay.
Gosh, man, he's the most... So is his reimbursement capped in Canada? I'm not really sure.
That's a good question, though. I know that we can claim capital gains, but that only comes if we ever sell.
Yeah. That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about because of the medical system y'all have in Canada, is there a cap on what he can charge per procedure or which procedures he can do or how many patients he can have? Can he work on Sundays? I've heard there's a cap for physicians that after you make a certain amount of money, physicians just take the next four months off because they can't make any more money. I'm not really sure how that all works.
I'll have to ask my husband. Okay.
If y'all were in the United States and you had a medical practice, I would tell you

y'all need to earn more money.

Yeah. Because paying off $2.6

million for $200,000,

that's going to take you forever.

Yeah. Right?

What's that? Is that 13 years?

Like, y'all are going to have to make more money.

And all of your nurses are going to

want raises. Like, everything's

going to go up, right?

And so, like, that's expensive.

I just don't know if y'all can do that in Canada.

Well, we just hope that interest rates go down

and so we pay less interest on our loans.

Oh, sister.

You have an adjustable rate loan on this thing?

Yeah, we do.

In Canada, is it every five years they adjust the rate?

I think it's every five years, yeah.

That's not on mortgages?

That's on all loans?

Not on all of them.

That's only with the business one, which is the 2.6.

Which is the giant one.

This new segment is brought to you by Dr. Butler's hemorrhoid spray,

because I now have hemorrhoids.

Here's some basic math for you on the business loan.

You pay $260,000 a year, it would still take 10 years. And that's 260 grand of extra money beyond all of your bills that you can

throw at the business debt. So that's why we're saying we need to drastically get our income up.

I'm guessing there's no way to get out of this. Like, I mean, even if you sold the practice,

you're going to lose to the tune of a million bucks, I'm guessing.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's only one way out then, and that's to increase income and decrease expenses, both in the business and in your personal life. Okay.
Which means vacations are off the table. We're not getting any more car loans.
You may want to sell the car and downgrade. Truthfully, it's such a small percentage of this debt.
I would just pay it off and keep the car. He's working Saturdays and probably being the only doctor's office open Sundays for half day on Sunday.
Like, like there's just not a way y'all just dug yourself a humongous hole. And so you have to just get it, find a way to get a big shovel.
Yeah. Yeah.
We'd have to try to find another doctor to hire and work with us part time or something like that. Potentially, but you've got to make sure that works because that doctor's going to come in.
They need a hefty salary. Come in to salary, right.
So he's going to have to, or she's going to have to earn beyond their weight, right? Yeah. They need to bring in 600 grand a year to get paid 300 grand a year.
Right. And it may be that y'all do with one less nurse and you and, or your husband has to pick up some administrative duties that most fancy physicians just pawn off on their

nurses. But here's what I would do in order.
Number one, as George said, I would split off the personal stuff. What's our take home? We're making $140,000 a year.
We're going to pay off our consumer debt, and we're going to hammer this student loan. When it comes to the business, man, I'd find out what is your cap in the medical system that you guys find yourself in Canada, and then I'd figure out ways to increase drastically the income of this practice.
I couldn't sleep with that much debt, John. I'm so sorry, Allison.
I hope you guys get out of this unscathed. This is The Ramsey Show.
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That's betterhelp.com slash Deloney. Listen, I know a lot of you would rather watch paint dry in slow motion than file your taxes.
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That's RamseySolutions.com slash SmartTax. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show.
I'm John Deloney. Let's go out to...
Oh, I'm joined by George Camel. Thanks, John.
I'm here too. Happy to help.
I felt you kicked me under the desk. Blessed be a blessing.
I don't even know what that means. Let's go out to Cincinnati, Ohio and talk to Eric.
What's up, Eric? Good afternoon. I hope everyone is doing well.
We are running a scam here called a podcast YouTube show, man. We're doing great.
How about you? It couldn't be better. Thank you so much.
That's awesome. What's up, brother? So fun fact, I've heard about you guys back in my senior year 2012, heard all about the baby steps.
And from years on, I've been on and off, on and off. And I hate to say it, I haven't been really committed to the whole thing.
It wasn't until this year when I almost got evicted that I, well, evicted from my apartment that I decided, yeah, I need to change. I need to be dedicated.
I need to be devoted. So I am for real this time going through the seven baby steps as we speak.
There you go, man. Drinking the Kool-Aid finally.
Yeah. So I've been completed baby step one.
I have $1,000 currently saved up. As of last week, I've paid off the only debt I ever had, which is my medical bill, and I'm currently ready to start baby step three.
And this is where my question comes into play. So I did my own little research about where to put that thousand dollars I have.
And two things keeps popping up. One is a money market account and the other is a high yield savings account.
Good research. So my question is, which of the two overall would be the better choice for me, as well as what situation would one be better than the other? I'll tell you what I do, and most folks out there following the Ramsey plan, they're remarkably similar.
The money market versus the high-yield savings. The money market may have an extra benefit, like you can write checks out of it, it might come with a debit card, but outside of that, they're a savings account.
And so I have a high yield savings account and you're going to get some still really decent interest rates. You're talking over 4% with some of the good ones out there.
And that'll help your emergency fund stay liquid, grow at the pace of inflation, and it's there to protect you. It is insurance.
It's not an investment. So we're not trying to make money off of this thing, but we also want to keep it somewhere safe that's FDIC insured, doesn't have any minimum balance and monthly fees and all of that.
So those are the boxes you want to check when it comes to a good high yield savings. Okay.
But also it's a thousand bucks, man. So you can drop it in a local credit union.
Like I don't, don't step over dollars to pick up nickels as my friend Lane Norton says, like don't go the nickels. Well, it's 0.1% more if I move it here.
So I would just choose one and stick with it. Yeah, overcomplication is going to be your enemy at this point.
Let's keep things simple, man. Right.
So which comes to another thing. Is there, like, any places I could look at to see, like, which would be the most beneficial place to put the $1,000? Because the one I currently, the bank of Korea, if I work with USAA, been in there for over years or since I joined the military, and they do this thing where it's like a 0.01%.
So if I leave it there, I'm only getting a penny a month. No, that's terrible.
You can do better. So there's a balance here.
And so we've got a great partner called Fairwinds. If you go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey, they've got a bundle just for our Ramsey listeners.
I've got a partner on my YouTube channel called Laurel Road. You can sign up at laurelroad.com slash George.
That's the one that I'm using. John and Jade and Rachel, they're probably all using different ones.
But the key here is you want it to be FDIC insured with minimum to no fees, and you can get that money easily. And probably a good question you might ask is, yes, George and I both put our emergency funds into online high-yield savings accounts.
I'm pretty old school. I like to go to my local bank.
I still like a brick-and-mortar bank for my house stuff. But I do have my emergency fund in a high yield savings account.

Okay. And the reason there is simple.
They have less overhead because they're online. They don't have all the brick and mortars.
They don't have to cover as many bills and hire as many people

so they can pass on their savings to you in the form of a higher interest rate.

But me, as my wife says, being born in the wrong century, I still like to shake the hands of my banker. I want to see their face.
So I have both. I want to bank with a local bank for my checking account, and for my high-yield savings, I'm fine putting that online, knowing that I'll touch it once or twice a year.
Okay, it's interesting that you say that, because I do have two banks. I have one bank for general purpose, my second bank where, again, that's where my $1,000 is at.
And I was always been thinking of looking for a third one to take my $1,000 and let that... No, dude.
You don't need to overcomplicate. You're going to get too complicated.
Yeah, you're going to be like triple stamping or double stamping. Minimalist.
Yes. A checking account with a good local bank, a credit union is a great option.
And then for your emergency fund or short-term savings, we'll call it one to three or four years,

a high-yield savings account with a great online institution is great.

I mean, credit unions can sometimes have great rates, too.

They're amazing.

Hey, can you do me a favor, Eric?

Yes, sir.

This is kind of impromptu in front of, I don't know, several million people.

You cool?

Yeah, that's fine. Will you do like an impromptu debt free scream if we count it down okay you just you paid off all your debts right that's correct how much debt was it and how much was it it was around 500 bucks it was a medical bill you you owed 500 bucks? So long as there's an emergency situation.

That's the smallest debt It was a medical bill. You owed $500? It's a long story.

It's an emergency situation.

No, that's the smallest debt I've ever heard paid off.

That's amazing.

This could be a world record smallest debt-free scream ever.

How long did you have the debt for?

Oh, my goodness.

I've had this since, I want to say, December, if not January. Wow.
Dunsky. All right.
So Eric, making $100 million, paid off his debt of $500 in, will it take you one month? It did. Excellent.
Count it down, dude. let's hear your debt free scream Eric

alright

I'm debt free

that's right

way to go

we got the music

and everything

even got it

there we go

hey man

we celebrate

the big ones

and we will celebrate

the $500 debt free scream

because here's the deal

freedom is freedom

is freedom right

and it comes with a promise

you gotta promise

not to go into

consumer debt ever again

I promise

Thank you. $500 debt-free scream.
Because here's the deal. Freedom is freedom is freedom, right? And it comes with a promise.
You've got to promise not to go into consumer debt ever again. Promise, promise, promise, promise.
Because you're following this Ramsey plan now after ignoring it for 12 years, and it's about to change your life, man. I want to set you up for freedom.
We're going to hook you up with my book, Breaking Free from Broke, as well as a year of every dollar premium so you can budget your way to that emergency fund and investing and everything beyond. George, how many people do you see get to the stage and begin to try to over-sophisticate things? The amount of complication we try to do because it seems too simple.
We're like, no, it's got to be more complicated to be smart and efficient and great. And I'm going, no, if you look at Dave Ramsey, he has enough wealth to feed my family for 17,000 generations.

He owns mutual funds in real estate.

He doesn't have a crypto wallet.

He doesn't have 17 offshore accounts.

He doesn't make it overcomplicated.

And that's what I found.

It's the people that don't have wealth that want to overcomplicate it.

The ones that do have this dirty little secret where they go, yeah, I just, I have a savings account. I have money in the bank.
I invest in the stock market. I own paid for real estate.
And it's always amazing to me that when you get around those people, they have a different energy about them. You're expecting more.
You're like, no, but wait, there's a secret. No, but it's this, it's just like my give a crap.
I took it apart and I eBayed all the parts. Like I did, like if you're around Dave, just like when we go hang out right when we go to his barn or we are out traveling there's just an air of like yeah i don't care and it's because i i've just in a complicated life right i'm gonna i'm gonna do the things i gotta do to make things as simple as possible and you and i both have been hit up by the uh by the instagram bros that are like, you pay off your 3.2% mortgage and you

can get 4.8%. It's like, bro, I will...

And they use the word arbitrage and then a puppy

stops wagging its tail. Exactly.

Oh, it's exhausting. It's like, uh,

yeah. Get the whole life policy and then you can borrow

against it and then you need 16 credit cards

to maximize the rewards. And I'm going, dude,

listen to yourself talk.

Exactly. You sound like a crazy person trying to maximize

your freaking rewards to get

an extra 1% arbitrage to pay for that first class flight so you can take a picture of it and post it to your Instagram it's exhausting yeah you know what I have I have a uh an Olympic wrestling mat in my living room that I just wrestle with my daughter I'd rather spend my energy doing that that's that's a flex right. Or like, hey, wife, let's go for like a two hour walk tonight and leave the kids rather feral.
Let's just go spend time together. What a thought.
What if you could build a life that didn't exhaust you? Yeah, that you were excited to wake up and be a part of. Keep it simple.
Yeah, it's all for peace, people. We'll be right back.
Rachel, do you ever get these sketchy text messages that are like, hey, you need to update your address and verify so we can get you the package you didn't order? Yes, I have. George, sketchy and never trust them.
And that's why we recommend Delete Me. They help with that.
Yeah, they do. Delete Me actually goes in and removes your information from data broker websites.
And it is an incredible service that everyone needs. And there's a lot of shady companies out there that solely exist to sell your personal data

to bad guys. And that means your info, like your email address, your home address,

your kids' names, your name, everything is just out there for scammers and spammers to find.

That's right. And then once they remove your information, then they're going to send you

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney joined by George Campbell, 888-825-5225.
The Ramsey Show question of the day. This is a spicy one.
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Today's question comes from Meg in Maine. I've been an avid follower for 20 years and I'm debt free.
However, I'm facing a bit of a challenge and would love to get your advice. I travel quite a bit now that I'm semi-retired and I've been considering getting a travel points credit card.
My plan is to charge my travel expenses and large purchases, then pay them off immediately. I feel disciplined enough to handle this without carrying any debt.
Plus the idea of earning points and not carrying so much cash is appealing. But here's the kicker.
Despite having a credit score of 833, I've been turned down for several credit cards since I haven't used one in many years. Do you have any suggestions on how to approach this situation or any alternatives I should consider? I think you should get a credit card for points if you hate widows, orphans, and those who are struggling to pay their bills.
Whoa, John. Shots fired.
Hot take. What's going on here? So I remember I was, this is not for Ramsey, I was moving across, I was moving, I was taking a long move, and the business I was moving would pay, reimburse my move.
It was a whole family with big old monster trucks. But I had to front it.

So I thought, I'm going to open up a credit card with points on it,

and I'll make just free points because I'm just going to turn around

and this new company that I'm working for is going to reimburse me for the move.

So I did that.

And I remember getting a whole bunch of free points for opening the card.

And then I got a whole bunch more points for this massive amount of money I spent right out of the gate to move my whole family. And then I was literally driving down the road and I remember thinking, wait a minute.
The credit card company is not my friend. And the airline company is not my friend.
Like they're not hooking me up like, bro, you spent money with us. We're going to hook you up.
Somebody's paying for this flight. And somebody's paying for these hotel stays.
And when I dug into it, that's when, to my horror, I realized, oh, it's not the companies. It's not the credit card companies.
It's not the airline. It's not the hotels that are paying for these rooms.
It's the single mom with three kids who just left an abusive relationship, who is struggling to feed her kids, who puts this credit card in, and then her boss cuts her hours and she gets a $50 late fee or a $39 late fee, or her APR goes from 13 to 29% in one month. She's paying for my flight or Or the single dad whose wife just passed away and like

they're scrambling and scrambling. He opens up a credit card out of desperation and then he misses a payment and it balloons on.
That guy's paying for my flights. And it all of a sudden got very gross for me.
Like I don't want to be a part of this system. I travel, you and I travel a lot.
I travel all the time, all the time.

I'd rather pay for my own flights or work out a business arrangement with a company that's paying me to come speak for them than ever think I have some single mom who can't put food on her table, pay my bills. And it just got gross for me real fast.
Yeah, I mean, there's a- You did some research on this, right? There's a moral argument to be made. Yeah.
In my book, Breaking Free from Broke, here's the

quote from the book, a 2023 study by the Federal Reserve. They set out to determine who pays for

these credit card awards and the results they'll expect that are alarming. In the report, the Fed

said, we estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated,

from the poorer to richer, and from high to low minority areas, widening existing disparities. Simple.
And here's, it gets worse, John, as I dug into it, families with household incomes below 40 grand are less likely to even qualify for these rewards, but they're more likely to pay late fees and additional interest. The family's making 100 grand or more, obviously more likely to have access to these reward cards and less likely to pay late fees and interest.
So it's not saying you're a bad person if you use the rewards. This is not a moral argument to say John is a better person than you.
I mean, I'm just kidding. I'm not.
John sleeps better at night because of it. I, I, I, yeah.
And can you play the game? Sure. Is it worth the 2%? Let's say you you spend 25 grand i mean is it really worth that well they put a huge font cash back right cash back and they go well it's points now john it's not cash oh it's what's 100 000 points i don't know it's like chuck e cheese you spend 100 a hundred dollars at chuck e cheese to get a thing that's actually worth seven dollars right so you get like a like a cool monogrammed Bluetooth speaker because I got 100,000 points.
It's a no-name brand. Yeah, it's awesome.
You get one of those sticky hands and a pack of gum, and you're like, I spent $20 for this. Refurbished new balances, right? So can it be done? Can you be super disciplined and beat the cyst? Sure.
I don't think it's worth the brain calories and the energy and the money spent to try to do it personally. And if you, I mean, geez, I don't want to make it a moral issue, but I want to call these programs to task.
If you like the idea of somebody's, of wealth being redistributed from the least of these in our communities to pay for your flights and hotels, knock your lights out. For me, George, it just got gross.
And again, we can line up the things that I need to work on. I'm not a better person than anybody, but in this one particular thing, this is just a hot button issue with me.
The banks aren't your friends. The credit card companies aren't your friends.
The airline companies are not your friends. They're running businesses.
They would not be giving you these flights if they weren't making that money up somewhere else. There's an old saying in the internet world, if you get online and you log in and you have to put your email address in for free and you get a product for free, you're the product.
They want you, right? So it's similarly asking that next layer question, who's paying for these flights actually? Who's paying for the advantage I just think I got? Because they're not hooking you up like your friend or your neighbor. Well, when you think about this, let's say you do spend $25,000 a year on travel.
I think we'd all agree that's a lot. Someone's traveling a lot with $25,000 grand a year and two percent it's 500 bucks you could put 40 bucks in a savings account every month and give yourself the rewards yeah absolutely so you're never going to convince me because of humans being emotional creatures that psychologically you're not going to spend 500 more on that card over the course of a year because you're going well i'll get some points might as well get the nicer flight well and if you if you fly like like if you fly southwest or america you fly these companies all the time you get flight points for participating i'm okay with that right because they're marking up that your ticket and they're going to give you a piece that's fine if i fly 25 times of southwest i'll get a free flight that's fantastic that's awesome it's that next level of, hey, my snickers bar my whatever your haircuts which is a i mean that's a lot of i'd get some serious cash back but instead here's what i do with my haircuts john i pay cash and i get a discount i do because we use the same barber he gives the cash discount exactly so i'm like well i'm making more by paying cash than by swiping my card which by the way, hurts the small business owner because they've got to now pay the 3% fee or pass it on to you all to get my 2% cash back.
So either way, you are not the one winning. It's the card processing companies.
It's Visa. It's MasterCard.
It's Amex. It's Discover.
It's Southwest. It's Delta.
And these are not evil companies. This is just how they do business.
And you need to understand how they're marketing to you. There's a reason they're always offering you, hey, John, you're so wonderful.
Here's more line of credit. We're going to give you an extra $5,000 in credit that you can spend.
You're telling me psychologically I don't get the dopamine hit that tells me I am winning. The banks love me.
Yeah, they love you. So I don't know.
As for me and my house, we solve for peace, and if I can opt out of a system, I like that. I like that.
This is truly how we love people think, well, they just have to say that on air. Dave secretly, no, you can check his wallet.
You can check any of our wallets. There is not a single credit card to be found.
And it's not because we're scared of Dave finding out. It's because we truly have no need for them.
Just opt out of the system. Once we started following the Ramsey plan, we're like, oh, we can just use our own money and have freedom and control over our life? Great.
Sign me up. Screw the rewards.
It's just... Where's that George Campbell t-shirt? Screw your rewards.
I like the one that says GoFundYourself. That one I'm still trying to get as part of Ramsey merch.
That's fantastic. Yeah, I don't know that Dave's going to go for it yet.

He could. I like that

though. He's not here a lot on the show.
Just imagine if

America said, Go Fund Yourself. Go fund your own

retirement. Go fund your own credit card rewards

and America would be a better place

instead of making banks and lenders richer.

If you made a shirt that said Go Fund Yourself

and I made one that said That Gives Me Hemorrhoids

you and I would both... We'd be billionaires.

America would buy those t-shirts. This is The Ramsey Show.
We'll be right back. 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. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225.

I'm John Deloney, joined by George

Camel.

This is the raddest thing

I think I got going on in my life right now.

Me and Dave Ramsey

launching a brand new tour this spring

called the Money and Relationships Tour.

It's going to be gonzo.

Wheels off.

This is a very different event than we've ever done because there is no like talks there's no like scripts you guys are going to riff based on what the audience wants to hear is that right it will not be yeah it won't be like two one-hour lectures it will be chaos it'll be a blast um it will yeah the audience gets to vote on what we talk about and um d and I will have spent the last six months researching and digging into these topics.

And then we'll spread them out and say, all right, y'all pick from this menu.

What do you want to talk about?

I think Dave's accidentally starting an improv troupe.

I never thought this day would come.

This is amazing.

This is as close as we're going to see to Dave doing improv.

So you guys are heading out to six cities.

Six cities.

So Louisville in April 21, Durham in April 23, Atlanta April 25, Phoenix May 5, Fort Worth,

Fort Worth, Texas.

Texas, y'all got to show up for me.

May 7th and then Kansas City May 9th.

We're going to be there live.

We're going to talk about relationship dynamics, your marriage, your kids, budgeting, financial

goals, whatever you got.

Your voice will drive the night.

Get your tickets at RamseySolutions.com slash tour.

By the way, great Christmas gifts.

RamseySolutions.com slash tour.

I was telling somebody in the audience, just a little bit,

I don't get nervous just being on stage with Dave for two and a half hours

and letting it rip.

Impromptu. I'll probably be a little puckered up.
Yeah. I might show up to like the Atlanta one just to see what, what the heck happens there.
You can bomb with some questions from the audience. That'd be amazing.
That'd be real fun actually. I'll put on a fake mustache.
That would be hilarious. That'd be amazing.
But then we'd all find out that, well actually you have a pretty nice beard going. Thank you.
That looks good. I haven't shaved in seven months.
This is all I got. It's barely a five.
It's like a four o'clock shadow. Couldn't even make it to five.
No, it's a noon shadow. My face just gave up.
Let's go down the street to Nashville and talk to Michael. What's up, Michael? Not a whole lot, guys.
A little bunch of stuff. We're just running the scam out here.
What's up, man? How can I help? All. So, uh, got a question.
Um, so me and my wife has, uh, finally got to the point to where we paid off all of our debt and we saved up a pretty good amount of money. And, um, we actually came into a pretty good amount of money as well on top of that.
And we ended up putting a big down payment on a house. Now, unfortunately, we, I didn't want to be in a scenario where it took both of our income to pay the mortgage.
And I'm a big farm guy. I had to have land.
So we ended up with $300,000 in debt now on a home for 30 years. And, but I did pay my, my rates down to 5%.
And like I said, I've paid off everything. I have $10,000 to a emergency fund.
I have 6,000 or six months of payments ready for any, any time. And right now it's currently only taking like $3,000 worth of money to pay all of our bills, and we grow anywhere between $8,500 to $9,000 a month.
So my question is, yes, I know I went with a 30-year note. Would it be better just to pay double payments or literally take everything I got and just keep dropping it in there until I get paid off? So you said your bills are how much per month total expenses? About $3,500 to $3,500.
$3,500. Okay.
So you've got plenty of margin to the tune of, you know, five grand a month you could just chunk at the mortgage. And then you have how much, you said you came into some money, how much is sitting there outside of your emergency fund that you could use? Outside of my emergency fund, I have, well, I put everything in the three categories.
I got 10,000 into emergency fund and I have just over 22 just for six months of everything. I'm going to that emergency so let's get your emergency fund is 30 grand well i the reason i say i got 10 000 for you like you know vehicle stuff like that they tore up um with that being said so yeah we have 32 000 and i also have um just like vacation money that we put in that we have close to five grand right now, just that way we don't spend anything extra.
So we're not going to touch the emergency fund. We're not going to touch the vacation money.
Keep your sinking funds happening as they should. But all of your future income, that five grand a month, I would be throwing at the mortgage, my friend.
How quickly do you think you could pay that off? I would go crunch the numbers in a mortgage payoff calculator calculator at ramsey solutions.com and see for yourself how quickly you can pay off 300 grand making an extra five thousand dollar payment every month it'll blow your mind you'll be done in probably my guess i mean that's 60 grand a year on top of your normal mortgage payment probably four years instead of 30 yeah i've already done that we looked into that i just didn't know if it would be smarter to put half of that money towards mortgage and invest half the other money into something else. Well, you should be investing already.
Are you investing 15% of your income? No, we have not. Like I said, we were...
So when I got with my wife, she had $100,000 in debt, and it was all school debt.

She's a school teacher, and I was big about getting that done, getting that out of our hair.

And we spent the last three years just hammering at all of our big bills. How much do you make a year, Michael?

What's your household income?

Do what now?

What's your household income?

Well, before this year, it was $120,000. Now.
Now it's $96 because I went from OTR to local. Okay.
Can I... Here's how I hear you asking this question.
You're in the studio and you're standing with me and George and you just have your head hanging in shame. Do me a huge favor, man.
Like, George and I, would we sign off on a 30-year mortgage? No. I'd do a 15.
That's what we recommend. You paid off all your debts.
You didn't go crazy. You bought a $300,000 house.
George and I both live in Nashville. We both recently bought places.
I don't know where you found a $ 000 house but god bless you and your family and your grandkids that's amazing you got yourself some land you've paid off all of your debts including the 100 grand that your wife can hear me say this dude y'all are crushing it you're doing great and how old are you too how old are you too uh i am 34 she's 36 oh my goodness this is. So can I do some fun math for you, Michael? Yes, sir.
Okay. So let's say you start investing now and you do 15% of your income.
That's about $1,200 every month going into retirement accounts. I assume you have one through your employer? I do.
Good. So we'll shovel away $1,200 into these tax advantage retirement accounts.
In 23 years, that puts you at 57, correct? Mm-hmm. You're going to have probably $1.4 million in that one account.
And by the way, 23 years from now, your mortgage payment has been gone for like 20 years, which means you probably increased your investing, and you've had freedom for the last two decades of your life. And so your neighbor's property and the property next to that one.
Do you see how it changes your options? You're doing great, man. And so you've set yourself up for that kind of future because of the hustle and grind you just spent the last few years doing.
So I know you're tired. You're worn out.
You're like, what do I do now? We got the money. You think you did something wrong? Should I do 17 things at once? Just follow these steps, man.
15% of your income to retirement. Anything beyond that, throw at the mortgage and let's be done with it.
Set a goal for, let's say, five years. And if you're like me, and I have like a kind of an obscene allergy to owing somebody something.
I just, I hate people telling me what to do and I hate owing somebody hate it hate it hate it it's like a bitch you just can't scratch yeah so sit down with your wife and say okay it's going to cost us three years of some b-a-n-a-n-a-s living but let's just do this and get this thing over with all right 38 years old that's fine but you have to work weekends saturdays whatever and we're to keep, we're just going to gnaw on this thing and gnaw on this thing until it's

gone. If it goes beyond three years and y'all can't figure out a way to do that, just exhale and just say, okay, when I'm 40, I'm going to have a paid off house and make peace with yourself and go hunting tomorrow morning when the season opens.
Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have done such a good job, man. You should be proud of yourself.
Yeah, I am. And like I said, so my wife, she has this mindset.
Like me, I'm a big avid hunter. And every time I see something

for hunting, I don't splurge on anything. I mean, I have the money to buy anything I want,

but I'm the type of guy that I'll go take my boots before I have to go buy any one.

Well, don't do that. Enjoy your life and have a good time.
And also get this house paid off.

Thank you. but I'm the type of guy that I'll go take my boots before I have to go buy one.
Well, don't do that.

Enjoy your life and have a good time, and also get this house paid off.

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