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From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, love, and create actual, amazing relationships.

George Camill, number one best-selling author, host of the George Camill Show, a big hit on Ramsey Network YouTube.

Be sure and check him out.

He's my co-host.

888-825-5225 is the number here.

Laurie is in Oregon.

Hi, Laurie.

How are you?

I am doing very well.

Thank you.

And thank you for taking my call.

Sure, what's up?

Well,

question.

My husband's 71 and he owns his own business and still working and he probably always will.

I'm 69 and I retired about four years ago after 30 years with a local government agency and I receive a small pension in Social Security.

We have about 500K in savings, which would be C Ds and high interest,

just savings accounts.

And we have about 700K in our retirement funds.

And we own our own home, which is worth about 400K.

Way to go.

Thank you.

Look at you retiring a millionaire.

And I am so proud of both of us.

You did really well.

I assume you started with nothing and you did not inherit this.

That's correct.

Good for you.

I only had come across you in the last year, but the amazing thing was I grew up mostly with my grandma who had exactly the same advice as you.

So I followed her advice and found that you gave the same exact advice.

God's and grandma's ways of handling money.

It's called common sense.

You know, I think you followed common sense.

But we've worked really hard.

We have one son who is now an attorney.

He worked his way through college and law school.

We helped him with

what he couldn't quite afford.

So he graduated several years ago and he's been an attorney for two years now with no debt also.

We're very proud of him.

Well, you guys have done a great job, Laurie.

How can we help today?

Well, my question is,

We have the $500,000 in CDs that will be coming due

here at the end of the year and in the spring.

We're getting about 5% on those certificates.

My question is, should we shift those over to the market?

Yes.

Okay.

That's what I was thinking.

What should we be keeping in our

emergency fund and our liquid fund?

Three to six months of expenses plus money for anything you're wanting to buy.

Okay.

If you're getting ready to buy a car, you're getting ready to go on that trip you've saved for your whole life, you're getting ready to do something expensive and you need to set aside some money for that, plus your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses.

I want you to sit down with a SmartVestor Pro.

Go to ramseysolutions.com, click on SmartVestor if you don't have a good advisor and have someone teach you about the kinds of mutual funds you can park this in.

And I want you to do it sooner rather than later.

I personally was online with my guy this morning, moving some money, making sure I got it into the market because I looked up and I had too much sitting like you did in a money market and a high yield.

And I didn't want to do that.

Because here's the thing: if you make four or five percent and you could have been making 12 or 15 percent, that means you're losing ten percent, which on 500,000 is you missed out on 50 grand.

That's what I was looking at, also.

So, um, the one thing, my my dream trip, when I turn 70 next year,

I would like to go to Australia.

You need to go.

It's a wonderful trip.

And they're wonderful people.

I love the Australians.

And I was looking at the expenses.

I've never been on a cruise, and I've never been quite that far away from home.

My question is, can we afford that?

You can't afford not to do it.

You have to do this.

You have done such a wonderful job.

Honey, the difference in this conversation, investing this money versus high yield, will pay for the trip.

Oh, okay.

I didn't think of it that way.

I did.

I mean,

50 grand is a great trip to Australia.

You can stay anywhere, do anything.

You can have a private butler with you.

Yeah, it'll be great.

And it won't cost you, but a percentage of a percentage of your net worth.

So you're doing good.

You have done such a good job.

I want you to enjoy your money as well as be generous with your money as well as continuing to be wise with your money.

You've just done wonderful.

Do not, and, you know, I want you to start planning that trip today and look at some of the high-end cruise lines.

Don't you cheap out on me, girl.

Okay?

Get the nice stuff.

Don't go on the Walmart cruise, okay?

I mean,

we're talking the big dog here, the Nordstrom cruise or whatever.

Dave has graduated over the years, and you've done nicer and nicer cruise lines.

And nicer and nicer trips.

I got to tell you, if you want to travel well, you travel with me because I'm not going to go that way anyway.

I'm not doing it anymore.

The hard part's getting hard.

It falls under the heading of life is too short.

And I'm right behind hers in age, so there we go.

So,

I mean,

we're going to do it.

This is the live like no one else plays.

So, I mean, if you're 70 and you've got a couple million dollars or million and a half dollars, folks, you're okay, and your house is was paid for you're in great shape and look at it this way you might have 10 years of good health you might have 15 you might have 20 years of good health but so when someone asks you a question like should you do this the answer is why wouldn't I

You've done it all.

You've worked all your life to get here.

You lived like no one else.

And so now you live like no one else.

Why wouldn't I?

And I'm hanging on this subject with this caller, George, because I want all of those 23-year-olds that are listening and watching us to grasp that this is the payoff.

This is how it really works.

You can't wait on the government to tax billionaires to make you rich.

That's called socialism.

It's never made anyone rich except the people running the place.

And so, what makes people rich is what she did and what her husband did.

And there's the payoff.

Okay?

And you don't even have to wait until you're this old to do it.

But,

you know, if you do the stuff we teach, you're going to be right where they are and more.

And you get to do this.

This is the, they are the poster children for,

hardly children, but poster children for

live like no one else and later you can live and give like no one else.

And I was discussing some generosity with a friend of mine this morning that we're talking about doing this kind of outrageous.

And it's just a lot of fun, George.

Yeah, this is the healthy side of YOLO.

You only live once.

This is what you hear from young people.

Well, now, Lori, we're going, Lori, you only live once.

Use this wealth now.

You've done such a great job building it.

Now you're in the deaccumulation where you can enjoy some of it.

And after you finish with Australia, you need to try New Zealand.

It's neat, too.

So just while you're down there, while you're down there running around upside down, you might as well hang out

or make plans to go back the next summer.

I don't care.

You're going to love it.

And again,

I have gone to

all over the world, countries

that I didn't even know their names when I was growing up.

And I find the nicest people everywhere I go.

This world is full of wonderful people.

There's a lot of great folks out there.

I find very few countries that I just go, This place stinks, these people stink.

I don't want to go back.

There's very few of those.

You know, very few.

Okay, Rachel, the internet officially knows too much about all of us.

So much, George.

I mean, our names, our addresses, even our relatives' names.

And what's crazy is, even if you opt out, data broker websites can still get your info.

Don't like that.

And just a year ago, get this: the average person had about 300 pieces of personal data floating around online.

Now it's over 600.

It has doubled in a year.

You guys, that is so concerning because that info then can be used in phishing scams, impersonation, and even harassment.

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Jordan is in Washington.

Hi, Jordan.

How are you?

Hey, I'm doing great.

Glad to be here.

Good to have you.

How can we help?

Hey, so

I got to calm myself down a little bit.

I've been listening to the show pretty much non-stop.

I'm a janitor, so I have hours and hours and hours to listen to the podcast.

So I've been binging your guys' stuff in the last couple of weeks.

Wow.

My main question, yeah, yeah.

My main question,

we are wanting to potentially sell our house.

We're just kind of starting the baby steps, though.

So I'm like really into, I want to pay off our debt.

I want to get this

emergency fund set up and stuff first.

But my wife, you know, it's been really emotional kind of with her.

We got four kids at home.

she's doing all the homeschooling and kind of trying to take care of everything and it's not really a house that she wants to be in so in my mind I'm very logical trying to think like hey we could do this in like the next two years but I also see our house value has gone up like a hundred thousand dollars it's probably worth about three three oh five

we bought it for like 219 and I've got about just under 200,000 left on it

and but the other thing is we've also got a lot of new housing being built in the area so i'm not quite sure how that's going to affect our housing uh price and if that's going to go up in the next few years and if waiting a little while would

they're not building houses in your price range your house is going to go skyrocketing in the next few years

okay yeah the new houses are more the new houses are more expensive

Okay, so it's definitely we can we can expect a

increase in our

okay, that's what I was thinking, and that's kind of what I was looking for.

And as I've been walking my wife through this and kind of saying, like, hey, this is what our budget looks like, and this is how much money we've got.

We've already stopped the retirement, so I'm bringing in about a thousand, a little extra a month.

And then I just started doing DoorDash on the side.

Cool.

How much debt have you got?

We've got about 31,000.

There's about 5,000 in credit card debt.

I can have that paid off very easily by the end of the year.

And then

part of this question also was that I have $26,000 on our siting on our house.

Right when we got in, there was a contractor, door-to-door person, who was like, Hey, we can do your siding, your windows.

And I was like, Well, there's a couple holes in the siding.

It probably hasn't been replaced in the last 20 years.

So, sure, let's do that.

So, I actually wasn't sure if that would qualify as a debt that would be paid off in step two, or if we should.

What's your household income?

I'm making for my janitorial job about $64,000.

I'm bringing up about $4,000 a month just recently since I stopped all the extra payments and stuff.

Good for you.

$4,000 a month.

And then

I'd love to see you plow through it.

The way we decide if something is real estate debt or if it's baby step two is if the second mortgage, in this case, the siding loan, is more than half your annual income.

This is right close, so it's kind of on the bubble.

So as far as I'm concerned, you could throw it either direction, but I'd prefer, if I were you, to be clear of it as soon as possible.

I mean, if you can clear debt at, what, two grand a month?

We haven't.

We just kind of started messing around with the every dollar budget.

So I've got the free version.

We're just kind of dinking around.

And I'm thinking

that can probably be closer to $1,000, maybe $1,200.

I don't think we can clear the $2,000.

Okay.

But we're just getting started.

You're getting started.

I want to aim that way.

And, you know, if you don't clear it before you sell the house, that's fine.

If you want to sell the house, you want to move up in-house.

That's what you're telling me.

Are you sure you can afford that?

Well, actually, my wife is wanting to move down to Oregon.

So that's another conversation that we're trying to have right now.

That takes a completely different twist on what we were talking about.

So are the house going to be more expensive, the same?

or less?

We would probably go down because right now, I think our mortgage, we got a 30-year first-time homebuyer's thing.

We got PMI.

If you're going down in mortgage, there's nothing stopping you from doing it immediately.

Okay.

You mean there's nothing stopping me from selling a house?

Yeah, and moving to Oregon.

If you're going down.

I'm not going to be able to make the same.

I'm sorry.

You wouldn't make the same in a janitorial job over there?

Yeah, so I work as a government contract.

So the thing that's stopping you is you have to find a job in Oregon.

That's the thing that's stopping you.

Okay, so if you had that,

if you had that lined up, so I'm going to start looking for that and make her dreams come true because it also is congruent with

clearing all these debts because the siding will be paid when you sell the house.

You pay off the other thing by Christmas.

And so it might be spring you have found the job and you put the house on the market and make your move in the spring.

So maybe six months.

That's a lot.

Faster than I was expecting.

Well, I mean, it all has to do with you having housing that is the same or less price and you having a job.

And you'll have, you know, the fees or associated closing costs, realtor fees, plus you're going to pay down the debt.

So you won't have as much to put down on the next as you might think.

So that might be another piece of the puzzle to solve.

That might mean we're going to delay this for six months or a year.

It's not going to happen tomorrow.

Yeah.

But

the other thing is, right now I hear you very excited about doing this stuff, and I'm excited that you're excited.

She's at home fighting the bear with four kids.

She ain't excited right now.

Yeah.

It's been growing on her a little bit, and I think she's been asking to have a budget date for a while.

So talk about

where this takes us before you talk about how we get there.

Talk about why before you talk about how.

Talk about why until she finally says, I agree with why.

Now, how do we do that?

And then we start talking about what the sacrifices look like to get to the winning, to go across the finishing line.

It's a dream day.

So we get the why, and then we go, okay, what must be true now?

Let's reverse engineer it to figure out how we get there.

Well, I need a job making this much.

Yeah.

But I mean, I do stuff like he's doing, and that is I find something and I get on it and I go down the rabbit hole and I binge, you know, I'm going to learn everything there is to know about it.

And then I've got 73,000 hours invested in this subject.

And my wife has 73 minutes.

And then I expect her to understand what I'm saying and why I'm excited and so I have to go all the way back to the beginning and say why I got excited about this and then talk about what it means but oftentimes if you get excited and you start coming honey I got this great plan we're gonna sell your car

that doesn't work okay

that doesn't work at all coming in a little strong there coming in hot coming in hot yeah so yeah that that's a problem so Jordan thank you for being a new listener hang on we will set you up with the every dollar premium version so you and your wife can accomplish these goals.

It sounds like you will do it.

Again, it's got to do with a career move as much as anything here.

And start working on it.

Yeah.

You know, you can find something.

There's no reason you can't get a good job.

In today's world, it's very doable.

What are your parameters, Dave, for when someone should sell a house in order to pay off debt?

If they like the house, almost never.

Because unless the house is like a 50% of your take-home pay or something, you can't afford it.

So So if the mortgage is far too much and there's no...

If the mortgage is reasonable and they like the house, usually the house is not the problem.

I would prefer to plow through the debt.

Now, if you're facing bankruptcy because you've got so much debt and the sale of the house clears up all that debt and you don't have to file bankruptcy, well, obviously you're going to do that.

Or if you hate the house, in her case, she hates the house.

She's trapped in a small house with four kids homeschooling and she wants out of Dodge.

Oh, add to that, she wants to go to Oregon.

Ah, so there's a whole nother thing.

Family and all that, the draw with the kids and get back to grandma, all that kind of stuff.

So that's all tied in.

So this house is not something they want, or at least she wants anyway.

He's willing to sit there for a minute if it means, if it's the best way.

But there's no reason to stay in this house.

Yeah.

They don't like it.

And they're ready to move to another state and everything else.

And so,

yeah, it's not a bad thing.

It's part of a bigger plan.

You're doing it for the right reasons, not just, well, because part of it is we see people just sell the house, but then no behavior change happens.

Exactly.

Just a get out of jail-free card.

Exactly.

And even if you wanted to sell the house and it has that effect, that's dangerous because you need to build the muscles and the calluses and say, I'll never go back into debt.

I'll never go.

You got to be pissed about this stuff or you'll go back in debt because it's too prevalent.

It's too pervasive.

Everybody thinks you're weird when you're debt-free

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James is in Atlantic City.

Hi, James.

How are you?

Hey, I'm doing well.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

So I have recently moved to Atlantic City, maybe about seven months ago.

Came from a small town, had no casinos, had no access to gambling where I was from.

And since then, I have picked up a pretty nasty habit of going to casinos.

In the past couple of months, I would say less than two months, maybe

six weeks or so, I've lost about $45,000 to $55,000 of my money, basically everything that I have.

It started small, started with little bets, $25 here and there, going out with some of my new friends that I met in town.

And then all of a sudden, before I know it, I was going out alone.

Bets went up to $100 a night and then $500 a night.

And then next thing you know, I'm going in two, three, four, five thousand dollars dollars a night.

And

over the course of maybe a week and a half, I really lost a big chunk and I tried to chase it.

And then over the past maybe three weeks or so, I've lost everything.

James, I'm sorry.

How old are you, honey?

Just turned 25.

Pretty scary to be this out of control, isn't it?

Yep.

What's really kind of scary for me, too, is I don't drink.

I don't smoke.

I don't do anything at all.

I live a fully sober life.

I don't do anything else.

I've never had an addiction to anything.

Never used nicotine, nothing.

So

first real addiction I think I've ever felt.

Yeah.

Well, you're feeling one.

There's no question.

I mean, you have all the symptoms anyway of somebody who's in the throes of that.

I mean, you're watching yourself almost out-of-body experience do

life-destroying things and still do them anyway.

That's the sign of an addict, right?

Yep.

And

what's really crazy to me is it's like I black out whenever I go.

I don't even, it just feels like I'm not even myself.

And then the second I leave the casinos, it feels like I'm kind of back and I realize what I did.

Are you working?

Yeah, I am.

What do you earn, sir?

About $120 a year.

Doing what?

I own a business.

Okay.

Good.

Good.

All right.

Well, if I woke up in your shoes, is how we answer questions on this show.

George and I are not PhD in counseling like Dr.

John Deloney, who's on with us from time to time.

But sadly, for 30 years, I've dealt with addicts and

because 100% of addicts eventually have financial trouble.

And so

I'm afraid I've gotten to know something about this the hard way just by working with a lot of folks struggling with this.

So from that, that's the basis I'm answering the question on.

So I'm not telling you I'm a clinical expert.

I'm not.

I'm just a practical expert because I've dealt with so many people people in your situation.

So if I woke up in your shoes, what would I do?

I would do three things immediately as soon as you hang up the phone.

One, I would find Gamblers Anonymous in your area and contact them.

GA.

It's Alcoholics Anonymous for Gamblers, 12-step program.

And they have probably one of the better results of helping people with this than anybody out there.

Number two, I would find a coach or a counselor, a therapist in the area that you can meet with one-on-one.

And you make enough money to afford to meet with someone one-on-one, and you need to start meeting with them immediately you are in crisis.

Okay, they got to give you language for the way your brain is functioning so you can learn how both of those places will help you with that, so you can learn how to navigate your way away from this.

Okay, now you moved to Atlantic City to open this business?

No,

I've been there for here and there with family and kind of been out there.

And then I guess you could say yes, technically,

but I didn't move there to open it specifically.

It just kind of happened that way.

Okay.

What is your business?

It is electronics.

What's that mean?

So

selling, fixing phones, computers,

basically anything.

If you don't

have success doing those two two things, and the third one I'm going to tell you is find a good church in your area and start developing relationships with good men that are not hanging out in casinos.

If those three things together, Gamblers Anonymous, a therapist and a good church, and revitalizing or causing for the first time your spiritual awakening inside of you,

that's going to be part of your healing process.

If you can't get those three things together to work, you have to move away from the casinos.

I live in Nashville.

There's not any here.

A big problem I've been really having recently is

like life has just become not fun anymore, like daily things.

I don't get the level of excitement that I need from anything anyway.

It's a false narrative because

what happens is that anytime you're in an addictive feedback loop,

the addict's mind says the only fun thing is when I'm doing the addiction.

And so everything else is boring.

You're chasing that high, and so you always need the newer, better, crazier high.

And that's what happened in your situation.

So you're going to need to replace those habits with other things that are healthier.

Do you have any hobbies currently?

Not anymore.

I mean, I used to be into sports and

back where I was from, I had a lot of friends, but since I've moved up here, I don't really know many people.

You've got to rebuild it.

You've got to rebuild

a friend group intentionally as a a part of this healing that is not going to casinos.

Because you do become who you hang around with.

You noticed that, right?

Definitely.

And they push me.

I mean, the friends I go with, they bet big money, so it kind of pushes me to, you know, I think.

Yeah, you feel like a wimp when you're dropping 10 and they're dropping 100.

Yep.

Or they're dropping 100 and you're dropping or they're dropping 1,000 and you're dropping 100, whatever it is.

But yeah, you feel like a wimp.

And

the opposite is true.

I'm the biggest wimp of all, if that's the case, because I can walk through those places and watch other people lose money all day long.

It doesn't bother me a bit.

I don't feel pressured at all to join the parade of bodies created by these things.

And, you know, I'll throw out one other piece of information.

James, will you do those three things for me to take care of James?

Yes.

And something I've already done as well is

Atlantic City has a government-funded

trying to think of a way to phrase this, like a kind of like a GA almost.

Yeah, yeah.

and

I don't know anything about the inner workings of that or if it's successful, but I'm always suspect when the fox says, oh, to the hen house, here's how you fix it.

You know,

it's funded by the gambling people.

I mean, I'm not saying it's nefarious.

I don't think it is.

I think it's well-meaning.

But it's also a reaction to they had to do something because the PR around the number of lives they're destroying is pretty incredible.

And so they had to say, well, if you have a gambling problem, dial 1-800, I've got a gambling problem.

And they put that after all the FanDuel ads now.

After FanDuel made about $80 billion a minute off of people just like you.

And so it just pisses me off.

But yeah,

that's a good, that's not a bad move, but it can't be your only move.

Yeah, and then on top of that, there might need to be some guardrails around your bank accounts and your finances to stop you from doing something rash and spending a lot of money.

That might mean putting limits on your bank account so you can't spend over a certain amount, or if you have a trusted friend that can keep you accountable, that's going to really help with this.

Just to remove you right now, you need more friction stopping you from doing the thing.

So, as much friction as we can add, removing apps, stopping you.

I know there's some apps out there that can help with that as well.

As I was looking this up, Gamban, Bet Blocker, there's all kinds of things out there that can help, but it's the one, which one are you actually going to stick with and do?

That's the question.

At the bottom line, is

yeah, what's um

uh

oh man uh um

esterday uh scarcity loop oh

yeah read read scarcity loop by michael esterday

and um it's a good book it's worth reading um and any of you that are just interested in this subject he does it's a full unpacking of how the feedback loop works in the brain on several different things and scarcity brain michael eastern scarcity brain thank you and i called him yesterday my sorry michael

He's familiar.

Yeah, Michael Easter.

Thank you.

I know him, and he's been here and been on the show, been on stage with us, and I should have known his name.

I apologize, Michael.

Yeah, he's brilliant.

My brain couldn't.

Scarcity brain.

But it talks about this idea that we chase what we think is scarce, and the gambling addict is

the...

It's the primary thing that covers and that he gets into in this book, and

it's very interesting to read.

The good news is Mike James is young enough that he's going to recover from this, this and it will just be a giant stupid tax.

Hopefully, he looks back on.

Yeah, yeah,

you will.

I lost $50 in one night when I was 21 playing a hand of poker.

I didn't know how to play.

The last time I played, wow, that was 45 years ago.

Touch the hot stuff once.

My addiction lasted one night.

Short-lived.

Hey, quick reality check.

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Stacy's in Texas.

Hi, Stacey.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure.

What's up?

I have a question about what to do about my car.

I am in desperate need to get rid of it.

The car payment is astronomical.

The interest rate is astronomical.

And I'm trying to decide if I can do like a voluntary repossession.

That would be on my credit.

Because I'm about $20,000 upside down.

Did you trade negative equity from the other deal into this one?

Yes.

Okay.

Because typically a car won't lose that much unless it's a huge, expensive car.

So

okay, well, what kind of car is it?

It's a Hyundai Palisade 2024.

Oh, geez.

Okay.

I know.

Yeah.

And

so

and what do you owe on it?

57.

5.7?

5.7.

And you think it's worth 37?

Yes, if that.

Why?

Or like 34.5.

Why?

Because I've had it appraised, I guess you could say, at different places to see what I could get for it.

So you went to dealers and asked them what they would give you for it?

Basically, yeah.

Well, I also went to yeah, to different car lots.

That's a wholesale.

Okay.

That means they're going to buy it at a price that they can make money on it.

And so that tells me that if you look this up on Kelly Blue Book, kbb.com and look at private sale, if you were to sell it to an individual, that price is between wholesale and retail.

It's between what a dealer will ask for it versus what a dealer will give for it.

Okay.

Yeah.

So my guess is.

It was about 42.

Yeah, that's more.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking maybe like 43 or 45 is what I was getting ready to say.

So I'm making that up, but just based on the percentages of what it usually is.

Yeah, I'm seeing 41, 44 on here, just looking them up, what they're actually selling for in the market right now used.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that leaves you more like, so if you got 44 or 43 for it, that leaves you more like $13,000 in the hole.

Yeah.

And what is your interest rate?

8%.

8%.

8%.

Okay.

I know.

It's so bad.

Okay.

And so do you have any money?

Not really.

What's not really meant?

Not really.

It means you have something you don't want to tell me about.

What is it?

No.

I mean, I have all kinds of debt.

I have all kinds of debt, and I have other,

I have other, you know, I have credit card debt, I have student loan debt.

How much other debt do you have?

About $70,000.

I have $10,000 in credit card, $60,000 in student loan

Okay.

And another $10,000 in something else?

Yeah, and a negative equity loan.

Well, it's it's more like an unsecured loan.

Okay.

All right.

And what do you make a year?

$60,000.

Okay.

And you don't have any money, literally?

Well, I mean, I have like $2,000.

Okay, that's what I was asking.

I was hoping you had something.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

And

you're apparently the language you're using, you're single?

Actually, I am married, but my husband doesn't

his finances are not with mine.

Okay.

And thus we have part of the problem.

Yeah.

So does he have any money?

He has lots of money.

Okay.

He has all kinds of money.

He makes $15,000 a month.

Okay.

Then we don't have a money problem.

We have a marriage problem.

Correct.

Okay.

So that's how we're going to solve the car problem.

We're going to solve the core problem that caused the car problem.

The car problem is a symptom.

It's not the problem.

The credit card debts and the other loans are a symptom.

You're trying to act like you have a rich roommate instead of a husband.

He's trying to act like he has a poor roommate instead of a wife.

Right.

While you go out here trying to exist and run around doing things that are killing you, he makes plenty of money to have bought a car.

This is ridiculous.

Is his name on any of the debts?

No, because he had had an affair and he left for a year.

So that's why I'm in so much debt because he left and he didn't pay for anything while he was gone.

So I had to get a car and I didn't have any credit at the time to speak of.

So I just got and that's why my interest rate was so high.

And so I just was it's kind of like desperate measures.

And so when he came back.

But you had another car at the time.

You just upgraded during the time he was gone.

Yeah, because my other car was breaking down

and so so was your heart yeah um yeah yeah

so he came back you let him come back tell me about

so how how's the overall relationship thing are y'all seeing a therapist or how are you working through this

is very it's a very shallow relationship if i try to talk to him about money he says it's my problem

um and i try to ask him about the car and he's like you got yourself into it you have to get yourself out of it.

So

there's really no forward progress on any of that.

Okay, you guys need to be seeing a therapist, and you guys need to be moving towards healing or towards ending this, and then you figure out what you're going to do from this point forward.

Because this is

all of this is the backdrop for some really sad, bad decisions on your part.

Because you were desperate, you were scared, you were heartbroken, you weren't thinking clearly, and a car dealer ate your lunch.

Right.

And so

that's the back, but the backdrop is, is that you're actually better than the person who went in there and let that happen.

But

you were at a weakest moment.

Yeah.

And so we've got to get rid of the weakest moments, and that's him.

So either this marriage starts healing or he's going away.

Yes.

Yeah,

that's where we're at.

Yeah.

But yeah, and I just don't know because my card haven't is so high and I just don't I want so badly to get out of debt and I just cannot I don't want to go out I don't want to get out of debt bad enough to do a deal with the devil So he's either coming to the table We're gonna combine our finances and we're gonna dream about living a life together and that includes him cleaning up the mess that he's partly caused and he'll have to clean up eventually I mean through whether it's through a divorce or otherwise Yeah, this is gonna become his problem.

Yeah, how long have y'all been married?

12 years.

Yeah.

Well,

I think he's going to discover the Texas law is going to give you some of his fifteen thousand a month.

It's called alimony.

Yes.

So he he's getting ready to learn some things about how things work if this doesn't get fixed.

So there's a lot of reason here to fix it.

For some reason he came back.

So he there's some part of him that wants

this to go to get better, but part of it getting better is a holistic healing of your overall relationship.

And then that fixes your car problem.

If that doesn't happen, then

you've got a car problem that we don't know what to do with.

I will talk about the other parts of it, but

I don't want you to

2% of this call is your car.

98% is your marriage, okay?

Okay.

And that makes your life good 10 years from today, not your car being fixed problem, okay?

So

I want you to hear me loving you that way, okay?

So

if you're upside down, you've got three choices.

One is pay it down.

Two is borrow the difference and sell it from your credit union or from a credit card.

And I would rather you have $13,000 in debt than $57,000 in debt

and get a hoop dee to drive for a while.

And yeah, if it breaks down, fix it.

Shut up.

That's probably what's going to happen.

The second thing that can happen is you just earn enough by working like a crazy person to pay it down and get it under control so you can get it sold.

And the third thing is a voluntary repo.

Don't do that for two reasons.

One is it trashes your credit.

I'm not all about you building your credit, but it trashes it.

And two is you lose control of what they sell it for and they're going to sue you for the difference.

So

they're going to sell that car for $30,000 and come after you for $30,000 of a deficit with repo fees and everything on there.

Instead, you could be $13,000 in the hole.

So a voluntary repo is a really bad plan.

I wouldn't voluntary repo ever.

I would just make them take it if they're going to take it.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show.

Number one best-selling author Ramsey personality George Camille is my co-host.

Courtney is in New York.

Hi, Courtney.

How are you?

Hi, good afternoon.

I'm well.

How are you doing?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

So, my question today is

regarding what is the best way to pay down on my debts.

Really, they seem big.

They seem huge.

They seem like it's nothing that I'm ever going to be able to pay down in my life.

The debts that I have and my husband combined, I have my own student loan debt, which is around $200,000.

We have a house together, which is also around $200,000 left that we owe.

And I also have a car payment that sits at

$22,000.

And like I said, it just seems.

And who's the doctor or the lawyer?

I'm actually an athletic trainer, and my husband is a mechanic.

You're an athletic trainer, a personal trainer.

No, not quite.

A little bit different, but more like a physical therapist that works with

sports teams.

Yep.

Emergency care, emergency response.

And you paid $200,000 for that degree?

Yes, I did.

It's great.

What do you earn?

I earn $76,000 a year before investments and

taxes.

Before investments come out?

Yes.

Okay.

And

your husband makes what?

As a mechanic.

As a mechanic.

Yep.

He makes around $66,000 a year.

All right.

And

so we're dealing with $140,000 worth of income.

And

$200,000 house, $22,000 car.

You said he has debt too?

He doesn't.

The only debt he has, really, is the house that we have together.

He has no other consolidation.

So you're only debt size, a car, student loans, and your mortgage.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

All right.

And what part of New York are you in?

I've just got New York on my screen.

Yeah, I'm actually north of Syracuse.

Okay, okay, cool.

All right.

Thank God you didn't tell me Manhattan.

Okay.

So good.

So you got a good income.

Right.

And

so

do you have opportunity to do some side hustles using your degree, your field, like personal training and other things?

Absolutely.

Okay.

How much can you add to your income if you turn that up?

If I were to, I mean, at one point right out of college, I was doing an extra 20 hours a week, and I could bring in an extra $1,500,

if not a little bit more.

Yeah, okay.

So you could bring in $1,500 a week.

Yes.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

Which is $6,000 a month, which is almost what you make now.

Right.

So doubling my income.

Yeah.

And your husband obviously can do some side stuff.

Absolutely.

How many kids do you have?

We don't.

We have a dog.

Okay.

Great.

Okay.

Bad news for the dog.

Nobody's going to be home for a while.

Leave some food and toys out.

So

the bad news is you've got this hole.

The good news is you're trying to shovel it with a shovel half the size that you've owned.

You have another shovel the same size in the closet.

And so

both of you have the ability to double your household income.

for a short period of time and use that to clean the mess up.

I mean, if we start throwing $100,000 a year at debt, I think your debt's going to go away, don't you?

Yes.

And that just means that for the next two years, you're going to work all the time and you'll be debt-free.

Right.

It doesn't seem that simple, but I guess it...

It is.

There's another part to it, and that part is living on a written budget, a detailed plan that helps you execute tactically the concept of living on nothing, making a big extra pile of money, and throwing everything in the house after we buy some food, some basic food.

We're not eating out.

We ain't got time to eat out.

We're working all the time.

And we're not going on vacation.

We ain't got time to go on vacation.

We're working all the time until we get this mess cleaned up.

You've been out of college, what, five years?

Yep.

Yeah.

Good guess, Dave.

Like you've done this before.

And so

I don't want you to go another five years and still be sitting here because you didn't address this.

Right.

I want you to get after it.

Like,

in your world, your world, the good news about your world is you have been formally trained in

systems and processes that create transformation.

Right.

And that's what I'm giving you.

So your brain already functions the way we teach.

And one of the things you know, if you have an athlete come in or a

doeboy come in with a dad bod off the street,

you know that the best thing you can do is to shock the system, not to try to do this gradually over 10 years.

Right.

And that's what I'm giving you.

Shock the system and get it over with.

Rip the band-aid off.

Don't pull it off one hair at a time.

Yeah.

And that means all guns are pointed to the debt, which means no investing.

We're going going to pause all the investments.

Stop all investments.

Stop all anything.

100% focus like your freaking life depends on it on this debt.

And that's the formula that we have seen transform people's lives when they buy into that.

And the weird thing is the more progress you start making, the more excited you get, the more hopeful you are.

Much like if you were coaching someone and they started dropping weight and they started seeing their bench press go up, they started seeing their endurance on the treadmill go up, they started seeing the results of their hard work, then they lean in even harder.

You know the kind I'm talking about?

Same thing's going to happen to you, but it comes from the singular focus.

You can't sorta kinda do it.

You tried that for five years.

Right.

And I think that's where, like, my, my husband and I have been really talking about it recently.

And his thought on it, I'm with you on the approach of ripping a band-aid off, taking care of it, and getting rid of it.

I think the way his thought process is that we'll be in debt forever, and we're doing okay.

Yeah, we live in the bottom of the bottom.

He's wrong on both counts.

You're not doing okay.

Right.

And you're not going to be in debt forever.

I'm not going to let you.

It's silly.

Don't live like that.

Life's too short.

That's a hopeless thing.

There's no reason.

It's a fatalistic, hopeless thing.

I'll always be fat, so I'm going to keep eating donuts.

Right.

It's the same thing.

Of course you're always going to be fat because you keep eating donuts.

Jeez, come on.

You know, this is me talking to me now, okay?

A little

self-counseling here.

But yeah, that's it.

Yeah, that's how it works, though.

The parallels in your world to our world, because personal finance is 80% behavior.

It's 20% head knowledge.

So hope,

which is the opposite of your husband's statements, he probably has more hope than his negative statements, but hope

is one of the equations in transformation because we have to change behaviors.

We don't change behaviors unless we think that they're going to result in a positive result.

That's intelligence.

So you would never go do the hard work if you didn't think it was going to work.

The difference is I'm 100% sure what I'm telling you to do will work if you guys will go do it guns are blazing.

The simple part is the math.

I mean, you throw six grand a month at the debt, it's gone in 37 months.

That's the math of it.

The hard part

in 24 months.

Exactly.

So that would be the game plan.

Let's get out of debt in two years instead of, well, I guess we'll just always have a payment in our life.

That's no way to live.

Yeah, come on.

Let's set Eeyore out in the backyard and let him graze.

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Dave is in Long Island.

Hi, Dave.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Dave.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

All right.

So right now,

I'm considering taking money out of my 401k to pay off my total debt.

right now I have a total of $35,020 in total debt.

And it's really the credit card that I have that's killing me.

It's a 25, it has a 27.8% APR on it, which is ridiculous.

And it's just and it's

not holding out.

What is the 35?

Give me the breakdown on the 35,000 of that.

Okay.

I have $13,323 owed to the federal government from taxes.

I have $13,250 owed to Chase

Vestal credit card.

I have $4,909 owed to my car, and then I have an additional $1,138 owed to

another TD credit card.

Okay, and what do you make, sir?

I make my household income is $205,000.

Wow.

It's a great income.

Why do you owe taxes?

So when my wife and I were my wife and I had been married for nine years, went through a really rough cash, so probably like two to three years.

At some point, we were separated and we were just not on the same page.

We used to be really

really intense about our budget meetings and we would meet every day.

We actually paid we actually were graduates from FPU.

Honey, why do you owe taxes?

Oh, the tax because

it was I

I changed my tax to

being single

on my taxes.

And then when I tried to change it back, we don't have a formal HR department.

So

I was making changes, but there was a glitch in the system that kept reverting back to

a single state.

So it was not being enough withheld.

How long have you owed the IRS?

Like a year and a half.

That interest rate makes a credit card look cheap.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

The great news is you only owed, you know, you make $205,000.

So you can clean this up real quickly on your own, but you're telling us you want to go borrow more money to pay off the other debt

at the tune of 30, 40% interest, which is effectively what you're doing from robbing the 401k early.

Oh, I thought

they were saying that the interest rate was only like 5%.

Oh, you're talking about borrowing on that 401k, not 400.

Yeah, borrowing it.

Okay,

borrowing on it.

So you're going to try to borrow your way out of debt.

You make 205,000.

Dude, why don't you just get on a budget and cut it and pay off 35,000 in like eight months?

You make $200,000.

So the thing is, I'm like talking to my wife, and she still wants to keep like...

putting money aside for our daughter and then her life insurance is also pretty very high she has um a uh preexisting condition that we didn't find out until we were until she was giving birth so her life insurance is like around two hundred dollars a month and then you know the rent we pay is like is uh three thousand and fifty a month okay you're not doing math well

you make two hundred and five thousand and you said

she pays two hundred dollars for life insurance as if that was a problem that's two thousand four hundred that's one percent of your income that is not the problem honey the problem is you guys are not on a plan, you're not working together, and you're spending like you're in freaking Congress.

You've got to stop all investments temporarily, and that includes saving for the kids temporarily.

And I want you to clean this up in under a year.

You make $205,000.

That's true.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Yeah, I mean, let's do it.

Let me help you.

205 minus 35 is 170.

yeah you still got a hundred and seventy thousand minus taxes to live on crimea river

seriously

clean this mess up quit trying to find a hack the hack is in your mirror dude You fix the guy in your mirror and that woman standing beside him and the two of us are working together because we want to get out of debt so we can build an emergency fund so we can build our retirement so we can save for our kids and we can become wealthy and change our family tree.

Now we got something to live for.

It's time to get dialed in and focused.

Y'all just been disorganized and lazy and distracted by the rough patch that you went through.

Now it's time to get on the game, man.

And the good news is, is that you called the right people that loved you enough to tell you the truth.

And the math on this is real simple when you make this kind of money.

I mean, if you guys are bringing home $11,000 or $12,000, could you throw $4,300 a month of the debt?

Because that's eight months.

All the debt's gone.

You can still live on, you know, seven, eight grand.

$3,000 a month is 12 months and you're done, man.

So I think you can do this even sooner, but you and your wife got to get on the same page, get on a written budget and go, all right, Smitshake, we're going to make this work.

We're only going to cover the necessary expenses.

Every other dollar is going to go towards this debt.

And I would start with that IRS debt.

For a short period of time.

Start with the IRS and then list the rest of the debts, smallest to largest, pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one.

And let me help you with this.

The interest rate on $13,000 worth of credit cards, when you pay it off in eight or nine months, is irrelevant.

The amount of math on that, the actual dollars that math creates is irrelevant.

It's not the problem.

If you're going to keep the credit card for 15 years, a 27% interest rate's a problem.

But we're going to keep it for 15 minutes.

You need to cut them all up.

A TV credit card?

Come on.

Or is that?

I don't know, TD?

Maybe TD Bank?

Maybe that was it.

I couldn't hear it.

Oh, I thought he bought something off the television.

Oh, gosh, I hope not.

Yeah, like shopping channels.

Are you still doing that?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

But yeah,

maybe I misunderstand.

But anyway, anyway, the great news is you have a small amount of debt in ratio to your income, and you can clean this up really quickly once you guys decide that that's what you want to do.

If you want to work a different plan, you called the wrong place because we're going to get you out of debt so that

you can build wealth, so that you can change your family tree and be outrageously generous.

You live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else.

Stephen's in Wisconsin.

Hey, Stephen, what's up?

Hey, Dave, I got to hear from you.

How are you doing today, sir?

Better than I deserve.

Can we help?

You made my day, sir.

You made my day.

So I'm not sure if I'm being too intense or if I'm just being intentional.

I'm trying to pay off my mortgage, but I have a burgeoning tax problem.

53 years old.

I'm 41 months away from paying from us, my wife and I, my partner and I, paying off our mortgage.

But when we do, that $800,000 TSP that I have right now is going to keep growing.

And I don't want to eat a huge tax bill when it comes to retirement.

And I don't want to pass this burden onto my kids.

I think I know the answer.

And I know people call to get a swift kick in their pants.

Don't worry, Dave.

I got thick britches.

If I need this quick situation.

You're done great.

How much is in your TSP?

800 000 oh you said that i'm sorry my god son you're a millionaire way to go

well and we also have 1.33 total in retirement so 800 of that is tsp the rest is all off

okay so 800 is tsp 500 is in other retirement correct sir yes sir man way to go dude how old are you

53 sir oh you again you said that i'm sorry my god this is great well done very well done a 53 year old multimillionaire.

What's the house worth?

So the house is worth, we owe $349,410.97.

And you and your wife are in agreement on the level of intensity to pay that off in 41 months.

Is that what you're saying?

Correct.

We are.

She's my partner in this.

What is making you think you're too intense?

I see that $800,000.

I don't think we're ever going to touch that if we don't have to.

We're going to live well.

I mean, we make $310,000 a year.

A bunch of that is my military tax.

What makes you think you're paying off your house too intensely?

Just because I'm giving up one to the other, and I don't want to step over dollars to pick up nickels.

And I feel like you're going to be able to get away.

Oh, you've stopped adding to the 800?

I have, yes, sir.

Okay.

No, I would not do that.

I would continue to put 15% of my income away in retirement in baby step four while we're working working on baby step six.

And if it takes 49 months to pay off the house instead of 41, whoop-de-doop-dee, I'd still add to it.

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Buying or selling a home is a big deal.

There's a lot of drama out there right now and you can cut through the drama.

You know how you cut through drama and trauma?

Dr.

John Deloney says it all the time.

When you're in the middle of drama and trauma, use facts.

Facts are your friends.

If you want facts on what's really going on in the real estate world, not what your broke brother-in-law's opinion was because he believes in socialism he learned from his college professor, but instead you want to know what's really going on in the real estate world, just go to our website.

We'll show you.

Ramseysolutions.com slash market.

Or you can click the link in the show notes.

And the actual interest rates that are being charged are out there.

The actual volume of homes that are listed is out there.

And the actual median price and the changes in median price of house prices are there.

The actual facts are that today we've got 1,102,787 houses on the market in America.

That's the actual number of listings today.

To put that in perspective, which is the only way that number has any value, it's the largest inventory of homes for sale since 2019 prior to

COVID-19.

Hmm, more houses for sale.

Oh, wait.

More people are looking at houses at any time since 2019.

There are more buyers than there are inventory.

Anytime there's more buyers for something than there is something for sale, it causes prices to go up, not down.

And we've seen prices hold steady and slightly increase in the last 12 months.

So we're not seeing a housing bubble.

We're not seeing a correction that some of you predicted.

And I told you four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, and one year ago, there wasn't going to be one.

It's the slowest crash of all time.

And I can tell you.

It's been six years.

When is it coming?

There's a crash already if you're going to do it.

It's a slow-mo crash.

Yeah, that's great.

If you keep predicting the end of the world long enough, eventually you'll be right.

But that's not good economics.

Okay, so

I change my prediction every year.

Yeah, no matter what.

Economists and weather forecasters are the only people that can be wrong all the time and still keep their jobs.

So, yeah, there we go.

So if you want to learn more about the facts, ramseysolutions.com or click the link in the show notes.

We've got the U.S.

housing market trends, facts, the data for you to look at, and that'll help you make better decisions.

Kate's in Delaware.

Hey, Kate, how are you?

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

How are you both?

Better than we deserve.

How can we help?

I will give you a bit of background.

My husband and I have been married for 53 years.

He's 79.

I'm 74.

He has just within the last five months been designated as a hundred percent disabled veteran

from his time served in Vietnam.

Wow.

Yeah.

So he is receiving now a

our monthly income normally is $56.86 combined,

our retirement income.

He is now going to be be recei well, is receiving now

$5,300

a month.

So now

you've got $10,000 a month to work with.

Correct.

$11,000.

There we go.

Yeah, wow.

Pretty much, yes.

Wow.

How's he doing?

What a blessing.

Well, he has Parkinson's.

He has coronary artery disease and he has severe dementia.

I'm sorry.

I have been designated his

fiduciary, and I am designated as his primary care

provider.

And it's all good.

It's just a different season in our life,

and we are trying desperately to handle it with dignity and grace, and most of all, humor.

And so, what

how can we do that?

What I want to know, Dave, is

how do I best best

put into savings this VA money that's coming into us because it will have to be used for his long-term care eventually.

But I need it to be in something that is giving me more than just my student savings account, which is in now,

but that I can have immediate access to.

Do you guys have debt?

I have worked our debt down to

a little less than $8,000, which is two credit cards.

Wonderful.

Okay,

first thing we're going to do is pay those off.

The second thing we're going to do is build an emergency fund.

Do you have any savings?

I have $23,000 in savings.

Okay.

All right.

So do I take

that is what I've been putting in from his $5,000 he's getting.

Yeah, okay.

I want you to take some of that money and pay off the $8,000 as soon as you can.

Not the $23,000, maybe the $23,000 I don't care.

But some of the pay in the next couple months, use these checks to pay off the $8,000 for me.

Now you don't have any credit cards and you cut them up.

Now you just build the savings up as high as you can build it.

What kind of vehicle should I have it in?

Probably a high-yield savings account.

And

do you guys have a mortgage?

We do.

Our mortgage is about

it is $230.

Our house is worth $850.

Okay.

So we do still have a mortgage.

Our monthly mortgage is $19.40.

Is there any

life insurance that has been added with this military package that he just received?

Interesting, you should ask.

I just checked into that yesterday.

They are offering

him

a whole life

at a pretty steep monthly.

And I've listened to you long enough to know that that's not where to go.

It's not the military that's offering that.

It's a company that milks the military that's offering that.

But what I was asking is they're not furnishing him any kind of federal program with the disability that includes life insurance that they pay for.

That is correct.

Okay.

I was afraid of that.

Okay.

All right.

So we've got two goals.

Okay.

Goal number one is we're piling up cash in a high-yield savings account to take care of him and his care.

Okay.

And I want you to keep that in home.

I want you to keep that in home as long as you can by hiring people to help you in the house using some of of this money.

That's going to be your least expensive route and your highest quality of care route because you can be the advocate and manage the situation.

But don't be afraid to use some of the money to hire somebody to help you, okay?

That's exactly what the money is for.

Good.

Perfect.

And then our second goal is

you're going to outlive him.

That's statistical.

And so then how are we going to set you up later and get get rid of this mortgage?

And that's our second goal.

Okay, so and how do I do that?

There's not any magic wands on this, but I just want to be thinking towards those things because the best thing I can do is get rid of that mortgage long term.

Short term, I'm more concerned about you taking care of him and you

and using your $11,000 a month because you guys don't spend anywhere near $11,000 to live on.

We spent our monthly expenses, excluding groceries and gas, is $4,800.

Okay.

Well, with groceries and gas,

you can make it on your first number, and your second number has been going in the bank.

That's what you're telling me.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Here's what we're going to do.

I'm going to set you up with a Ramsey coach that's been trained by us as our gift,

no cost, okay?

Oh, my gosh.

So that somebody can walk with you because you need somebody in your corner.

You have been an amazing 53-year wife, and he served his country, and they waited till he was 79

to bless him with the disability that was deserved probably 20 years ago.

And so we're going to take care of y'all, okay, as best we can.

Again, Kate, we don't have any magic wands, but we're going to set you up with a Ramsey Coach to do what I can't do in this setting, which is continue to stay with you and make sure that you're cared for and you got all the answers and do the very best we can with this extra money now.

Wow.

Thank you.

Thank you for being who you are, Miss Kate.

Today's Ramsey Show question is brought to you by YReFi.

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Not in all states.

Today's question comes from Adam in New Jersey.

Dave frequently mentions that teaching is one of the top occupations of those who achieve millionaire status.

I have three children in high school, and I want to present teaching as an option for them.

My question is, how do they become millionaires on a teacher's salary?

Great question.

So he's referring to our millionaire study we did of over 10,000 millionaires, and we ranked the careers.

And the first one was engineer, followed by accountant, followed by teacher, which was the third career in there.

Yep.

Followed by business executive, followed by lawyer.

MDs didn't make the top five, they were number six, just as a thing.

So the answer is interesting, Adam.

You're falling for the classic belief that

income creates wealth.

The only way you become wealthy is to have a huge income.

And as we studied, George told you, over 10,000 millionaires, one-third of them, 33%,

never made over $100,000.

So the secret to becoming a millionaire is apparently not

just having a larger income.

Now, it doesn't hurt to have a larger income.

It's not a bad thing, but it's not the only way to get there because one-third of America's millionaires did not become millionaires because of a high income.

And that apparently is the teacher answer, right?

So, what does work?

What does work is time and consistency?

$100 a month,

$100

invested from age 25 to age 65

at the SP 500, which is the average of the stock market, rates, is $1,176,000.

$100

per month from age 25 to age 65.

So the secret there is they didn't miss a stinking month

for 40 freaking

years.

And $100

makes you a millionaire.

So the answer is not the amount.

The answer is the consistency, the steadiness, the predictability, the discipline, the stick with it.

Time and consistency, not dollar amount, are the primary indicator.

So if you want to be a teacher and you want to start saving at age 55,

you're going to have a hard time getting there.

You want to be whatever and making under $100,000 a year and you want to be a millionaire starting at age 55, you're going to have a hard time getting there.

But these teachers did not start then.

Most of these teachers started teaching straight out of college and they immediately signed up for their retirement programs and started putting money in every month and it was more than $100

even back then.

And they're teaching freaking seventh grade social studies

and they put money in every single month.

And they have a 30-year career and it's more than $100 and they've got more than a million dollars in there.

Oh, and by the way, they got married and their husband or wife was doing the same thing.

So it's not about, you know, we always hear these ridiculous people like, you're crazy.

That's impossible.

Teachers can't, you can't make it out of teachers.

Listen, you can get mad about it, but it's data.

We didn't make these freaking numbers up.

It's not a philosophical argument, you idiot.

It's a math thing.

You argue with math, you end up looking stupid.

And so these people wailing and gnashing of teeth on TikTok that somehow we need to tax the billionaires.

What you need to do is get off your own little butt and get out of your mother's basement.

That's what you need to do.

And then you can go be somebody, honey.

That's the difference.

And so this is how teachers do it.

Steady, time

and

consistency.

And it's magical.

You know, the first time I saw that, I was like 21.

I was 21 years old.

When you saw a compound growth work?

When I saw that you could have $1,176,000 at $100 a month from age 25, and I was 21.

Wow.

And I thought, I got four years on this.

I can do this.

I can do this.

You know what I did?

I didn't do it.

It sounded cool.

Instead, I went and tried to get rich in real estate and, you know, flipping houses before there was cable TV to tell you how.

And I went broke trying to get rich quick because I was too stupid to do time and consistency.

But the thing that we did discover, Adam, and I think I always, because I was a little bit shocked too, when we got the data in, we had several aha moments from the data on this research that we did not see coming.

And one of them was teacher is in the top three.

Didn't see that coming.

I would not have predicted that.

So

you got engineer, accountant, teacher,

business executive, lawyer.

We could not figure out what was driving.

And MD is not there.

They're number six.

Medical doctor is number six.

Now, medical doctors get there generally because they outearn their stupidity.

They're not generally good with money, stereotypically, okay?

There's plenty of them that are good with money, but a lot of docs are just straight up stupid with money.

It's not unusual at all.

But the other five categories, what we did finally figured out as we sat and brainstormed through, what in the world is happening here?

What do they all share in common?

They're all process people.

There's one way to build a bridge, if you're an engineer, that it doesn't fall down.

There's a set of mathematical calculations that span that beam that keep the building from falling in.

If you put that size beam up, it doesn't fall.

You put that size beam up, it does fall.

Engineering is not art.

It is science.

You have to follow the process or people die.

You have to follow the process or the building falls down, the bridge falls down.

Accounting.

There's not an artistic element to accounting.

There's generally accepted accounting principles, and you either follow them or you're wrong.

It's called gap,

okay, in the accounting world.

G-A-P, generally accepted accounting principles.

You either do accounting properly or you get the wrong answer.

It's a math thing.

It's a process.

So find the rules and follow the rules if you're an engineer.

Find the rules and follow the rules.

Process-driven people if you are an accountant.

If you're a teacher, you have a lesson plan.

There's a process.

You lay out exactly how we're going to handle this classroom.

We don't make it up as we go.

Mrs.

Doubtfire is not your teacher.

Okay?

That's not how this works.

Teachers are process people.

Now some of you think they're otherwise and they're loving and they're kind and they are.

The good ones are those things, but they're also driving toward an end result of you actually getting an A on the exam because you freaking learned something while you sat in their classroom.

That's what teachers do.

They drive a process.

They're project driven and the kid is the project.

Okay,

guess what?

If you're a business executive, same thing.

Business acumen demands certain principles be followed.

If you're a lawyer, lawyer, try going before the judge and making up things in the law.

The judge will throw you out, maybe put you in jail for contempt.

They will sit you down, counselor, right?

There's one way to be in front of a judge.

There's one way to do litigation.

Follow the law.

Follow the system.

It's a process.

And so you submit yourselves in all five of these

career paths.

You submit yourself to a proven set of truths.

The law of gravity is this.

If you jump off a building, you hit the sidewalk.

And guess what?

Personal finance is the same thing.

You're either going to live on less than you make or you're going to be broke.

You're either going to live on a plan called a budget or you're going to be broke.

You're either going to invest money or you're going to be broke.

There's really no options here.

And the more you stay out of debt, mathematically, the more money you've got to invest.

The steadier you invest, the more money you're going to have over the longer period of time.

Period.

It's a process.

The stuff we teach is very, the baby steps.

We don't let you violate the baby steps.

Why?

It's just like accounting.

You don't violate it.

It's a process.

Follow it.

It works.

It's called common sense in our world.

We call it a lot of different things.

We laugh about it around here.

But that's the reason these teachers do so well, they're process people.

And they're not trying to flex either.

They're not trying to impress anyone.

They're trying to survive running a chaotic classroom.

So it's that simple.

You make 50 grand, invest 15% of that.

That's $6.25 a month.

You'll have $4 million from $25 to $65.

And that's if you never get a raise.

And so, if you're half wrong, they only got $2 million.

And never got a raise because it's a mean old school board.

And people don't love teachers.

And it's horrible out there in society.

We pay athletes more than we pay teachers.

Oh, my God.

But keep investing.

Many of you listen to the Ramsey Show because you're sick and tired of getting nowhere with your money.

You work too hard to live paycheck to paycheck with no money in the bank.

But here's the deal: just listening to the show won't change that.

If you want different results, you have to do something different.

We've helped millions of people save money, ditch debt, and build wealth.

And you can too.

But you got to have a game plan.

And that begins with our get started assessment.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show.

George Camill, number one best-selling author, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.

Nick is with us in California.

Hi, Nick.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

Oh, so

I've been listening to a lot of your stuff.

Went to part of a course at a church for you about 10 years ago.

Finally, started out toward the goal of

working the baby steps here.

And hurdle number one arose, which was

my wife didn't really want to participate in that.

And

so I've been doing it somewhat alone.

And I've worked baby step one and two and started into baby step three.

And each time I get my

emergency fund built up, crisis ensues.

And

a lot of the crisis really isn't crisis at all by definition.

It's self-inflicted because one of us isn't on board.

Okay.

That makes sense.

So we have 11 kids.

Four are grown and out of the house.

Nine dogs, seven cats, and a tortoise.

Most of those were kind of brought in against my will by my wife and my kids.

But here we are.

How many dogs?

Nine dogs.

With 11 kids and a tortoise.

And seven cats?

And seven cats, eh?

What circle of hell have you created?

How do they even coexist?

That's right.

What is your house smelling like?

The only one that's got a chance is the tortoise.

Right.

Because it sleeps for six months out of the year.

I mean,

that one has the easy life.

Is this real?

Are you punking us?

No, no, this is real.

So your wife started a petting zoo just for the family.

Everyone's got their own animal.

That's That's good.

Everybody's got two.

Yeah, plus we have some alternates, absolutely.

And you have 11 children, children, like humans?

Human beings, yeah.

Okay.

Four are grown and out of the house, so we're down to

seven in the house now.

Seven, nine, seven, and one.

I got you.

Okay.

Yep.

Yep.

So how can we help today, pray today?

So so recently, two of my dogs were incarcerated for biting a neighbor dog.

Shocking.

Yeah, I know.

And

you know, I my knee-jerk reaction was to surrender the dogs, which is an awful outcome because they're probably going to be euthanized.

And

it's not because I don't love them, it's because in the end of the day, I knew this was going to be an expensive endeavor.

We are now to where we know what that endeavor looks like, and it's about $4,500.

So, the dogs are in a pound because they bit the neighbor dog.

And they want $4,500 to get them out?

Is this bail?

Kind of.

So about $2,000 of it is fees, but they also want this very elaborate housing situation with concrete and attachments and roofs and all of this stuff.

So

that part of the endeavor would be about $2,500 of those dollars.

Or they will not release the dogs out on parole

if you don't build them a proper home to suit the

dictates of the county in California.

Correct.

So you're going to get them out of prison to create your own prison in your backyard for them to live in.

Ironic, Frank.

This doesn't sound like a good life either way.

And is there a chance they'll bite again?

Oh, yeah.

Well, wouldn't you?

If you were in that situation?

I mean, I want to go bite the neighbor's dog myself now at this point.

Man, I would move if I was your neighbor.

I don't know if I could live next to a petting zoo.

That's a lot of barking.

Yeah, and the problem is that at this point, they don't have to bite the neighbor's dog.

All they have to do is get out, and they're gone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're wondering, do you have $4,500?

Yes, I do.

And you're wondering, should I spend this to solve this problem?

Because I would hate to see them potentially get euthanized.

Okay.

It's sad that the dogs are caught in the

whirlwind hurricane that is your all's lives.

And so, as you said,

that you all have created.

And so

the thing is, I don't mind spending money on something if,

especially my dogs, I love dogs,

if I create a sustainable situation.

Okay?

And if I'm not kidding myself, in other words.

So, I mean, there's a thousand percent chance that these dogs are going to have a problem again, no matter what you do, and

that they're going to be taken away.

This is not a sustainable environment.

Do you agree?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, so you're throwing good money after bad at that point.

But what you do need, what you do owe those dogs is to create a better environment.

You and your wife have to be more responsible about how you're handling all these decisions, and um, that's just it's not fair to the animals, it's not fair to your kids, it's not fair to the neighbors.

Um, I mean, you've created an environment here that's not that's not manageable.

It's so the chaos with the numbers you gave us.

We can joke and say the tortoise is the only one that's got a chance, but it's the tortoise is the only one's got a chance.

And so, um,

yeah, this is not a

healthy situation, And I think the local authorities are telling you that in so many words

with their mandate to you.

It sounds very bureaucratic, and it sounds like they've overstepped bounds, but it is California, so it wouldn't be shocking or anything for them to be out of control with regulations.

Shock.

But,

you know,

there are, I got to tell you, there's

people in rural settings all across America right now listening to this, shaking their head, going,

puppy ain't going to make it.

That's what they're saying.

Because no matter where you, what you do with puppy here, puppy's in problem, and puppy's going to cause a problem.

And so it's,

you know, it's your all's job to maintain control over these situations, and you haven't because you've created an untenable situation.

Man, I'm sorry.

It's also a big liability.

I mean, if that dog bit a human, well, there's a lawsuit on your hands that could crush you guys.

It's heartbreaking.

Yeah.

Man.

Yeah.

And, well, I mean, yeah, it's real.

Yeah.

So

I don't know what to tell you, Nick.

I think

the sad thing is that this whole thing is so bizarre and so out of control that the dogs being in the pound is a minor thing compared to all the rest of the things you guys got to deal with.

That's just,

man, I'm sorry.

Sorry for the dogs, but they were put in a situation they couldn't win.

Yeah.

And

they were put there by you guys because you allowed it and your wife encouraged it.

And you guys ought to fix that.

You really should.

It's not fair to the humans involved.

It's not fair to the animals that are involved.

And so, yeah.

What to do with the particular puppies, I don't know.

Maybe get some clarity on what the next steps would be.

Maybe you can find someone to adopt them and take them out to an area where they can thrive.

If they were rehomed on a farm somewhere where they're not going going to hurt anybody.

Exactly.

And where they're not put in a situation where they feel like they have to hurt somebody.

It changes everything.

Man.

So, wow.

Those dogs got to be on edge.

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Kelly is with us in Canada.

Hi, Kelly.

How are you?

Hi, Dave.

Hi, George.

Thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

What's up?

Hey,

I want to know the best way.

I've had my head buried in sand for a number of years.

I want to know the best way to

reestablish trust with my wife after a gambling addiction and recombined our finances after a number of years.

How long have you been clean?

About six and a half years.

Okay, well,

that's substantial.

You know, to continue to hold something against you from a decade ago

that she's agreed to continue to live with is not logical.

So you begin to prove yourself.

The way you rebuild trust is consistency over time.

Okay?

You become trust worthy, worthy of trust.

And it sounds like you've done that.

Is there some other thing you're doing that's giving her, causing her to be insecure?

So

I think for the most part, it's just me just not knowing how to approach this.

I've just kind of

started listening to your podcast,

got your YouTube channel, all that stuff, kind of binge-watching it, and I've just like I've become scared.

And I just

I think she

I think it's more of a how to initiate this and what's the best way?

Like like do we just start combining our finds and says now, just go into it head on?

Or do we just do that slowly?

So let me ask you this.

I think I'm hearing you say

maybe I'm not.

Maybe I'm if I'm reading between the lines incorrectly, tell me because I'm not positive, okay?

It sounds like that you may still be dealing with shame from six and a half years ago.

There's a little bit of that, yes.

Okay,

that's fair.

A little bit would be fair.

I deal with a little bit of shame from having lost everything and filed bankruptcy in 1988.

Okay.

So that's, you know, that's real.

It's back there.

But the further in the rearview mirror it is, the smaller it is, agreed?

Agreed.

And that's, you know, so I don't

have the same hesitation 30 years later that I did three days after filing bankruptcy, discussing something and expecting my wife to trust me and just trust my judgment.

I'm an idiot, but trust my judgment, right?

You know, and that's where we started.

And then now from there, we've become, we went through a phase where a lot of America was listening to me, but she wasn't.

And then we finally she caught up, you know, so

but uh, that happens to everybody, but

But yeah,

and that's just fair is what I'm saying.

When you make a mistake,

I'm thinking of atomic habits that James Clear wrote.

And he talks a lot in there about forming habits.

And the way you change a habit is not a forced discipline, gritting your teeth and white knuckling it.

It's changing your identity by saying,

I am not a...

gambling addict.

I'm a person who used to gamble six and a half years ago and doesn't anymore.

I used to be irresponsible irresponsible with money.

I'm not a person that's irresponsible with money anymore.

I used to be a person that was overweight and ate outrageous amounts of volumes of food.

And now I'm not a person that does that anymore.

I'm a person, I'm a fit person now.

Now I'm a person who eats reasonable amounts of food.

Now I'm a person who's responsible with money.

And you change your vernacular around it,

which kind of is a shame dealing with mechanism.

I thought that was really interesting.

I filtered that through my own experience with the shame of filing bankruptcy.

And so that helped me.

So anyway, all that to say,

a good way to approach a relational conversation of any kind, whether it's at work or your spouse or your kids, is if something's awkward or feels weird, just say, this is awkward.

And it feels weird.

I still feel, honey, I still feel a little bit of shame from six and a half years ago.

I may be more worried about me than you are at this point, but I'm also learning all this stuff about how important it is that we combine finances.

And

I don't even know how to ask you to trust in this situation, but I think we ought to talk about it because it's weird for me to say it out loud.

And it makes my stomach hurt to have this conversation.

And if you said that, she's probably going to go, I'm not worried about it.

Let's do it, you know.

Or she's going to tell you the truth and tell you what's going on.

And maybe say, hey, can you help me brainstorm some ideas of things we could do, some next steps we could take that would help us get back to a place where we do have unity with our finances.

Yeah.

I would not recommend if it was six and a half days ago,

not six and a half years ago, that she do combine finances with you.

I'd recommend that she manage all the household finances and keep your hands off of money until you've proven that you broke in a gambling addiction.

That's exactly what she did.

We did start off with combined finances, and she had to, she had to.

She had to manage them all.

Yeah,

that's the way you handle an addiction if you're going to stay together.

It's the only way that works.

So,

but now I really think six and a half years,

from a practical standpoint, I'm not a counselor, but

I'm fine with you combining finances wholesale.

If you've really been right and you're really responsible in other areas of your life and the fruit of your life, your behaviors make a statement about where your character is, and then I think you should do it.

Now, if you want a way to edge into it, a way to do it is keep everything exactly the way it is, but just start doing a budget together.

And every dollar has an assignment, and you can assign the separate accounts.

And let's do that for 90 days, and then we're going to combine the accounts if that works.

Okay.

And that's a way to ease into it.

I don't know that you need to do that, though, unless she's resistant.

No, it's more about me, I think.

What has the latest conversation been like with her around this?

Or has there been nothing for six years?

No, the latest conversation is that, okay, like

through all the turmoil,

we actually separated for

about a year, got back together due to financial reasons.

We couldn't really afford two separate positions.

And then

just recently I just said, hey,

do we want to do this for the rest of our lives or do we actually want to separate?

And we actually started talking about staying together for the rest of our lives.

And

the finances weren't part of that.

So

in terms of the finances, though, it's more about, okay,

we just kind of handle our own things separately,

but we're not doing like

proper budgeting, in my opinion.

Yeah, you're losing some synergies, and you're losing some of the oomph, the oomph forward that you could get were you to completely combine them.

So I think it's worth talking about and probably worth doing.

And I'm going to recommend you guys just walk head-on into it.

But I get that there's a tender tender place.

There's scars.

And, you know, again,

it was a little different scenario, but we lost everything.

The water got cut off.

The electricity got cut off.

There's babies in the house.

She would have left, but she didn't have a car.

I mean,

that's where we were.

And so,

you know, so when we do anything with money that makes her, that triggers those old wounds.

I can see her, the shape of her eyes change.

I start to see that that terror look, that like two tours in Vietnam look come back over her kind of type of thing, and it ain't good.

And so,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who we just went somewhere we don't need to go.

Let's push pause right here, and let's talk this back through again, and let's just wait a minute, we don't have to do anything.

And by the way, you understand that there's 83 times that amount of money over here in this other account, so calm down.

You know, and it's like, okay, okay, okay, I can breathe again.

Had a little panic attack there, and

that's normal.

I mean, if he did anything that looked like a gambling action, it would activate all that pain in her.

So, any kind of scheme he comes up with, whether it's if it's

this real estate thing over here, or I'm going to

if it sounds like he's playing blackjack, you know, if it sounds like he's throwing the slots, if it sounds like he's playing craps in his way he's handling his vernacular, he's not doing that, by the way.

Everything he said to us was real sober, very sober, his language,

he had sobriety language all over him, it was really good.

But

yeah, that's what you're facing, guys, when you want to rebuild trust.

By the way, great book on trust.

You're trying to rebuild trust.

A lot of relationships working on that for different reasons.

Henry Cloud's book called Trust.

How to Regain Trust, How to Build Trust, How to Reclaim Trust, all of those kinds of things.

And it's excellent, excellent book on that.

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Devin is in Richmond, Virginia.

Hi, Devin.

How are you?

I'm well.

I'm well.

Thank you.

Good.

How can I help?

So

I have a kind of unique question here.

I work for a company and I've had a lot of success and,

you know, making a good income, but I want your opinion on what I should do about a vehicle.

So they are offering, or you know, they've offered me a vehicle that I essentially have to rent from them.

It's $300 a month that they pay of my paycheck.

So I'm wondering, should I go along with that and

essentially lease this vehicle into perpetuity or should I

buy a vehicle?

You need the vehicle to do the job?

I do.

So I have

two cars.

I'm in sales.

Okay.

And so you're...

You have to have like a van to sell the stuff out of, or what are we saying?

No, no, you know, it's just a fair amount of driving.

And you might have to go look at customers' sites.

It's business-to-business sales.

Okay, but

you don't have to have the car, the vehicle is not particularly equipped.

It's just transportation to get to the job.

No.

No, right.

Yeah, it's just a vehicle.

You can drive anything.

You can drive anything.

You can drive anything.

It's a toilet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Will they give you the money regardless?

They're charging

him 300 bucks for the use of one of their vehicles.

This is a bad deal, man.

They should be.

Wait a minute.

What all does it include?

Unlimited fuel.

So, you know, I can drive it on vacation.

My wife is allowed to drive it.

You know, we can use it for personal, like, you know, any kind of person.

They're covering all maintenance, tires, fuel, insurance, depreciation, everything.

Yes.

And there's no boundaries like a normal lease would have?

Right, yeah.

There's no

limited miles or anything.

That's all right.

You can't drive it.

Yes.

Okay.

That is a benefit because it costs you more than $300 a month to drive a car.

For an insure?

Because they're covering insurance too as part of that $300?

Insurance, repairs, tires,

fuel

loss in value during putting miles on it it's costing you a lot more than 300 bucks to drive they're basically subsidizing it and charging you a portion yeah

they're losing money on this transaction

no listen to me they're losing money on the transaction

yeah is that it is a small car right that's the only car that they offer

and you know if i if i did buy my own vehicle i'd get a slightly larger one for my family.

You know, I've got a wife and two kids and one

that's due here at the end of the week.

But you have a car for your family, right?

We do.

We have a paid-off

World Explorer.

Yeah.

It's old.

Put your family in that.

That's miles on it.

Or save up some money and buy a car for your family because you only need one car because you're getting one car from work.

You said you had two cars right now, right?

I do.

My other one is kind of a more of a farm use.

It's an old 2004 Twitter Tacoma.

Okay.

I mean, you could sell it and the Explorer and use the money piled up to get a better car for the family, right?

Farm use.

Are you in farming?

My only

just as a hobby.

I have a few cows and pigs.

Okay.

You probably need a pickup.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

My only dilemma is that if I decline the car, if I turn the car back in, they will pay me 70 cents a mile up to 7,200 miles a year.

So that's

$5,000 a year.

Which is $400 a month.

Plus that $300 that I would essentially get back in my paycheck.

Oh, so yeah, that's true.

So there's a $700 swing.

Okay, well, the way you do the calculation is this, all right?

You figure out what car you would drive, and how many miles are you putting on it a year?

You know?

With work and personal altogether, I'd be putting probably

close to 18, 18,000.

Okay, all right.

That's not too much, really.

I mean, that's about average, actually.

So,

yeah, so for 700 bucks a month,

How much value can you lose in a car?

Because whatever you buy is going down in value, right?

So much as you buy a $20,000 car, and you know, in four years, it's going to be worth $10,000.

So, we got to say, all right, $2,500 a year, $200 a month, and lost value.

That's about what you're going to have, something like that, okay?

And you pay cash for the car, whatever it is, and it's the minimum car that will get the job done because you're a little bit bigger, maybe, but other than that, it's just reliable.

And then, can I buy insurance, repairs, tires, and gas

for the remaining 500 bucks a month?

month I don't know if you can or not

not sure you can I'm not sure you're gonna break even on this so

but if you it doesn't you know you're right there's a $700 swing so how much I know you can't drive an expensive car and I know you can't drive a car with debt

the numbers don't work right Okay, so whatever you drive, you have to pay cash for, and it's probably $10,000 to $20,000 car for the numbers to work.

And then you've got to run some numbers, do some calculations, and figure out what the repairs are, what the insurance is, and then divide it out and go $700 a month, what I got to work with, $7,200 a year.

Can I operate this vehicle for that?

I don't know if you can.

I mean, with $350,000, $4 gas.

I mean, I don't know if you can or not.

I started doing research on cars with the lowest insurance cost, cars with the lowest maintenance, and start from there and see what they're actually going for.

And the lowest appreciation.

Because you're just going to destroy this car.

So you don't want anything that's brand new that's going to go down in value.

I'd get it used where someone else paid the depreciation and you can maintain it at a reasonable cost if you're going to go that route.

Yeah.

The $300 is not a horrible deal.

I can promise you that.

It's not a horrible deal.

But if you want to buy something and go the other route, take the mileage and save the $300.

That gives you a $700 swing, as you said.

Then, you know, you've got to make the numbers work in $700.

If the numbers come out to be 1,000, you're losing 300 bucks a month to drive your own car rather than drive theirs because you want a little bit bigger car.

And wouldn't do that.

Wouldn't do that.

That's like having a car payment.

I'll pass.

Yeah, I wouldn't combine your personal goals with this.

Just see it as utility for work.

What makes the most financial sense?

Good point.

Very good point.

Our scripture of the day is Psalm 119, 114.

You're my place of quiet retreat.

I wait for your word to renew me.

Ronald Reagan said, peace is not the absence of conflict.

It is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

Ooh, pretty good there.

I like that.

Curtis is with us in Texas.

Hi, Curtis.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

Yes, I have a

question about my car.

I have a $26,000 Tesla, and I wrecked it.

I didn't have insurance, and the fix on it is $13,000.

I currently have $6,000 saved, and I just don't know what to do.

What does it take to repair the Tesla?

$13,000.

And I found another place that said they could do it for $9,000 without fixing the front bumper.

But the front bumper don't need to be repaired.

Why did the front bumper need to be repaired at the other place?

Because Tesla themselves, they don't

fix everything.

They can't just fix one problem.

Okay, so they want to restore

a body shop check it and you had Tesla dealership check it.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

So you can fix it for 9K and you got 6K.

Why were you not carrying insurance, Curtis?

Isn't that the law in Texas?

No, not

collision, not collision.

Do you have liability only?

Yes, I only had liability because

at the time

I make a decent amount of money, but at the time I had just got out of jail and I had to pay all their stuff, and I was just getting back on my feet.

And the insurance was the bill that I chose not to pay.

Ouch.

So, note to self: don't drive a $26,000 car with no insurance.

Gotcha.

When you're broke, I understand that.

Yeah, okay, because I mean, obviously, it killed you, right?

I mean, you can buy a lot of insurance for this nine grand.

So, what do you make?

I make about $7,000 a month.

Okay.

And how much was your insurance?

$450,000.

Okay.

All right.

Was it a DUI you were in for?

No.

It was a drug charge I was into jail for.

Okay.

So that didn't affect your insurance then?

That's what I was asking.

All right.

I know.

Okay.

All right.

So your question is whether to fix the car or not?

Yeah, I don't know what to do.

I was thinking about just going to buy a cash car and sending that car back, but I don't know how that works, that process work at all.

No, that's called repossession.

No, we don't want to do that.

What do you owe on the Tesla?

About $24,000.

Okay.

No, you need to fix it, hon.

And you're going to scratch up the other $3,000 to do it because you don't have the money right now.

Is it drivable?

No, it's not drivable.

What are you driving?

I'm driving a rental car.

When did you wreck it?

I wrecked it about two months ago.

So I've been in a rental for about two months.

Wow.

That's expensive.

And how long is it going to take to repair it?

Because I've heard some stories about Tesla's taking a long time to get fixed up.

They said about four weeks.

Okay.

So even when, can you start the repair now and pay it in four weeks?

Yes.

I mean, would you have the other $3,000 to go with your $6,000 so you had nine in four weeks?

I have enough that I don't know if I do take, because I get paid monthly for my VA check.

I get a housing lounge and also work.

And if I take my VA check to add on to it, that will leave some bills not paid.

No, you got to pay all your bills first.

Yeah.

But can you scratch up 3,000 out of the seven you make in the next 30 days?

I think I could.

I would make it my life mission to do so and start the repair now.

Well, don't start the repair until you know you're going to have the money, okay?

Okay.

Because you can't, you can't you and you've got a car sitting over there.

You can't pay the bill that you promised to pay.

We don't want to create another problem.

All right.

So I want you to have your hands almost on the $3,000.

You need $9,000 in your account or very close to being in your account before you start the repair.

And then you need to start the repair as soon as possible.

And then get the repair done, then get the Tesla sold.

Okay, so fix it and then sell the car.

Yeah.

Because that gets you out of it.

You can't get out of it right now.

You're stuck.

Now, if you didn't fix the front bumper, what do you think?

That's nine.

He can fix it for nine.

He won't get the front bumper fixed for nine.

Yes, no.

He said 13 if he takes it to Tesla, nine without the bumper at the other place.

So nine fixes it, and you got six in the bank, right?

Yes.

That's what I thought.

The front bumper not really that much damage.

Only that knows that the

thump bumper was hit at all because Tesla got the candle fits.

Okay.

I'm just making sure it's not going to decrease the value when you go to sell it.

Now, you got to get it sold for 24 so you can get out of it at the end of the story and get your life back, okay?

Okay.

And then never drive a car without insurance again.

When you're broke, it makes you broker.

So everything compounds then, and you get in a bigger mess, in a bigger mess.

Mary's in Jacksonville, Florida.

Hi, Mary.

how are you?

I'm doing great Dave.

Thanks for talking with me today.

Sure.

How can we help?

Pretty big life decision in my mind that I'm hoping to get your input on.

I had the opportunity to go from a self-employed government contractor to a full-time employee with the lead agency that

that the grant that I work for is supporting.

And

the big thing that I think is keeping me on the fence is my age.

I'm 59.

We are on baby step five,

ideally.

Plan to have the house paid off in the next four years.

Good.

Yes, thank you.

Thanks to you all.

What are you making as a contractor?

So, my gross is $87 right now annually, which includes a 30%

fringe.

So that is built into that 87 for me to self-incorporate, pay my own taxes, my own insurance, all of that.

Okay.

So 87 minus you pay your own expenses.

Correct.

Okay, gotcha.

And so

the full-time gig that's not contract, what are they offering?

So 30% less of that.

So it's based my gross would be

63% change.

Okay.

And are you acting?

You're not coming out of pocket for that much.

I'm sorry, Dave.

Okay, your fringe is not costing you that.

$30,000?

$24,000?

You're buying your what, your own lot, your own health insurance, right?

My own health insurance.

I am self-funding my own retirement, so I'm pretty

20%,

about $18,000 a year.

You're going to be doing that anyway?

I think $15,000 I can do

at the new gig.

They're going to give you some match there, but they're not doing it for you.

Correct.

So

retirement, you got to do anyway.

You're not saving that.

That's not a fringe you're saving.

So what's the health insurance cost?

So for employee only, they pick that up.

No, no, honey.

I mean, your current cost.

Right now, it's $600 a month.

Okay.

So you're not on your husband's plan?

No, he is retired on

Medicare.

Okay.

So $600 a month.

So $7,000.

All right.

And

what else is the fringe?

Half your tax on it, your $7.65 tax.

Because you've got self-employment tax versus they're covering the W-2 tax, right?

That's right.

Yeah, so 7% would be another $7K.

That's 14.

All right.

What else?

I think the

big thing is frustration right now with the whole marketplace.

Well, I mean, it's a $10,000 pay cut.

It is.

That's a lot of frustration.

And you are right.

And that's why I'm wanting somebody to kind of walk me through this.

Math says stay.

Yeah,

math says stay on contract.

You know, unless you think that the risk is so high with the frustrating marketplace that

it's not going to be there anyway, so then we're not comparing apples to apples anymore.

So

I'm a big self-employed guy.

Sorry, I'm always going to lean that way unless there's a math reason not to.

That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books.

We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.